Rigi curtsied very low indeed. “Thanks to the house for welcome and to the Creator and Creatrix, their gifts be praised.” Beside her, Makana bowed low as well.
“You may rise, please. Sir, your charge is safe with me. Please remain outside, for I cannot offer you proper hospitality.”
Makana's ears tipped a centimeter, a touch of // confusion// drifted past Rigi's nose, and she translated into Staré, “The Wise One healer does not have Staré seats or a proper place for you, and asks your pardon and that you remain outside her shelter.”
He looked from Rigi to the other human and back. He released a hint more //confusion//, then bowed a little. “I wait at the cart, but will come if called.”
“Thank you, Makana. I will not take excessive time.”
Rigi followed the Retired Matron into the house. As she’d guessed, medicinal things, files, books, and some equipment filled every niche not taken up by religious materials. Rigi had never even seen a Retired Matron until the night of the blindgass attack, when she had begun helping her minister to the others. The Retired Matron had insisted that Rigi stay in contact. “You said that you believed that I needed to know of a problem affecting the Creator’s creatures, Miss Auriga?”
Rigi nodded, eyes on the wooden floor. “Yes, honored Matron. My uncle Ebenezer Trent was called to the edge of the Kenusha Plain because of reports of disease among the Staré there. Alas, the reports were true, and, honored Matron, I fear that the disease he describes is an old plague the Staré elders call fur-drop. He reports that it begins with sudden shedding, and that while not fatal in itself, secondary infections can be lethal. The mechanism of transmission is not known at this time, nor is it known if humans can be infected.”
The old woman sat. Rigi waited. “Why is this of human concern, Miss Auriga?”
“I do not know, honored Matron.” She should not have bothered the woman. “Except, ma’am, your pardon, but after I followed Mr. Trent’s instructions, I felt as if you needed to be informed. I do not know why.” Rigi licked her lips, still not looking up. “Um, I now hold basic certifications in human and Staré first response, honored Matron, if that clarifies anything.”
“Ah,” the old woman sighed softly. Rigi heard the comforting sound of memory beads clicking. “It does indeed, Miss Auriga. It tells me that you have taken to heart our duty to our fellow created beings, and to train your gifts as the Tradition encourages.” Rigi flushed a little. The Retired Matron continued, “This is my word to you, Miss Auriga. Study infectious disease nursing, study it now. And I will tell the active Matrons to be aware of a possible need, and to see to the Temple supplies. Creator and Creatrix forefend that they are needed, but calls for mercy know no time or season, and blessed are those who serve the servant.”
The familiar words sent a chill up Rigi’s spine. There was nothing in the Tradition as she knew it about Matrons and Guardians seeing into the future, but, still, something inside the back of Rigi’s mind went on alert. “I thank you for the word, honored Matron, and I will study as you recommend.”
“And Miss Auriga, do not refuse help when offered, no matter how weak that offer may seem. The Creatrix dances in small as well as great.”
Rigi curtsied very low. “Yes, honored Matron.”
The old woman stood, came to Rigi, and traced a sign of blessing on her forehead. Then she looked into her eyes. “You have another question, child?”
Rigi blushed. “It is unworthy, ma’am, but I was given a fruit with golden flesh and a bright red peel. My family cook candied the peel, and it is now pale pink. May we eat it? The giver does not know the Tradition.”
The Retired Matron smiled and patted her shoulder. “Yes, child, you may eat it. To do otherwise would be wasteful and unkind to the giver.”
“Thank you, honored Matron.”
The prohibition on bloody and blood-colored food irked Rigi some days, especially while they’d been on Home and she’d smelled strawberries for the first time. Strawberry ice-cream had been the closest she could come to tasting the fruit. Rigi departed the small house, bowed again to the carved stone in the garden, and hurried to take her seat in the cart before Stodge started bouncing. He acted even less patient than usual. Makana said something under his breath about wombows and foolish behavior, then allowed Stodge to trot along the wombow path. He did have a smooth trot, unlike the cream-colored wombow Rigi’s father had rented the year before. Of course, the one time that wombow had trotted had been when Rigi and Makana had been attacked, causing her to fall out of the cart. Rigi had been delighted that her father chose not to buy him.
Rigi decided that after she and Makana returned to the house, she would unhook Martinus from the deep charger and take him out to play pull-the-rope. When she’d been younger, Rigi had not understood why she had to have a chaperone as well as Martinus when she went out. “Martinus is a good m-dog, and he won’t let people bother me or cause trouble,” she’d not-argued.
“Auriga Maris Regina, a chaperone is not a guard. You are not of age, so you must have a chaperone.” Her mother’s tone had ended the argument. Happily, Makana and the other Staré of the household counted as chaperones even though they were not human. Some of the other young ladies who attended Rigi’s Temple only had human chaperones. They never seemed to be permitted to do anything or to go anywhere. Sometimes, very deep down inside her mind, Rigi wondered if some of the respectable ladies actually believed the silly whispered stories about Staré seducing human women. If they did, they obviously had no concept of anatomy, let alone of Stamm. Rigi sighed aloud, shaking her head.
//Mild concern// “Is there difficulty, Miss Rigi?”
“No, Makana. I was just thinking about how confusing humans can be at times.”
“Ah.” Anything else he might have said got lost in shouts and the sound of breaking wood. Rigi twisted in the seat and watched two carts and a larger wombow wagon collide as the animals struggled to reach each other, bellowing and slamming their forefeet on the ground, trying to kick free of the vehicles with their hind feet. The drivers, human and Staré, cursed each other and the wombows. Had someone hitched up a fertile female by accident? Stodge snorted. “No, you do not,” Makana informed him, tapping the round rump with the go-faster stick. Stodge jumped a little and accelerated from trot to a bouncy gallop. Rigi dropped into the floor of the cart and held on, wincing at the occasional firm thump. At last the cart slowed and she heard Stodge panting. Makana let him slow farther and Rigi got back onto the lightly-padded seat. Stodge plodded ahead, then stopped. Makana got down to look him over, and Rigi did likewise.
Aside from tender feet, Stodge didn’t appear to be too out of sorts. Rigi checked under his harness but he had not rubbed any fur wrong or gotten hot spots. His tongue hung out of the side of his mouth and he seemed uninterested in moving quickly. He’d stopped a few hundred meters from the house. Rigi considered the exhausted wombow and the distance. She said, “I can walk the rest of the way, Makana.”
“Very good, Miss Rigi.” He nudged Stodge into motion and the wombow plodded up the street, around the corner, and stopped in the yard with an enormous whunf of air. Makana took him out of the harness and walked him, but Rigi did not see anything wrong, and neither did the Staré. Stodge had probably not run that far with a load before, she decided, and all jokes aside, no one really bragged about the blistering speed of a galloping wombow.
Rigi went inside, unplugged Martinus, and chased him around the yard and vice versa.
“Wooeef! Wooeef!”
And proper m-dogs and bio-dogs did not say weef or wooeef. “Woof, Martinus.”
“Wooeef?”
She heaved a sigh and waved the rope. The robotic dog lunged for the end and pulled against her. She’d never get him to bark like a bio-dog on a regular basis, she decided. Martinus was Martinus just like Rigi was Rigi.
Rigi sometimes wondered if being ladylike had escape clauses, and if so perhaps she could agree to dress properly and be polite to every
one in exchange for getting to play with Martinus. After all, proper young ladies did not play pull-the-rope with m-dogs. But then people also said that neoTraditionalist women all submitted to their husbands in all things and did not think for themselves and didn’t dare speak up or disagree with men. Rigi knew from personal experience that her mother and father disagreed quite often, but politely, and not on important matters. And her mother had a beam-shooter instructor card and full permits, while Rigi only had a hand-shooter permit. For all that she was almost a grown-up Rigi still did not understand them, and decided that she probably never would.
Rigi and Martinus ran around and played until he’d worn off the slight overcharge on his batteries. She cleaned his feet, then they went indoors. As soon as she’d changed into house-shoes, she heard, “Auriga, have you mended those dresses?”
“Wheee!” Martinus shifted to block the back door and Rigi crouched as Paul, wearing nothing but what the Creator and Creatrix had given him, crawled toward her at top speed, leaving a damp trail behind.
“Paul, you naughty pouchling,” Siare announced, closing from behind and holding a large towel. Rigi intercepted and distracted her brother as Siare pounced, wrapping him in the towel and swaddling him before he could complete his escape. “A terror bird is going to catch you and take you away if you do not stay in the hopling room, little bouncer!” The high fourth Stamm female turned around and hurried her charge back into the warm nursery. Paul giggled ferociously and waved one arm in triumph.
“Ah, I have one mended, ma’am.” Her Staré made dresses rarely needed work, but the fabricated garments were a different story. Thin thread and small seam allowances, trim that came loose as she watched, so frustrating.
“Good. And do not forget that we are going to visit Mrs. Nolan this afternoon. I’ve rented a flitter.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Should she tell her mother about Stodge’s little adventure? No.
Rigi sat, listened, drank tea, nibbled a bland sandwich, and let her mind wander. She did not know three quarters of the people her mother and Mrs. Nolan talked about, and had little interest in what their off-world children were doing. Instead Rigi planned a landscape drawing that she’d been thinking about, and tried to recall if she still had that sketch of the wombow dairy or if she’d given it to someone.
It was not until Mrs. Nolan’s fifth Stamm general servant came in that Rigi’s attention returned to the moment. Mrs. Nolan lived on the far western side of Sogdia, outside the municipal shields, and had more staff than did Rigi’s parents. The young male bowed and started to pick up the now-empty tea tray. As he moved, clouds of fur drifted off of him, and Rigi saw bare skin around the edges of his modesty apron and vest. He moved awkwardly, and Rigi froze as he staggered, lifting the tea tray with effort. She got to her feet and before the adults could say anything, opened the door for him. He ear-bowed, walking unsteadily. Before he cleared the door, he staggered and started to fall. Rigi grabbed the metal tray, rescuing the dishes. She put them on the closest flat surface and knelt beside the male, taking his foreleg pulse. His fur came off in hand-fulls.
“Auriga Maris Regina, what is going on?” Her mother loomed up. “Is he ill?”
“Very ill, ma’am.”
Mrs. Nolan leaned around her mother. “Do you know what it is?”
“I believe that I do, but I cannot confirm the diagnosis, ma’am. I’m a primary response nurse, not an epidemiologist.”
Rigi knew in her bones what made the male’s fur fall off, his pulse race, and his exposed skin flush as with extreme heat and exertion.
Fur-drop had reached Sogdia.
3
Plague and Memory
The other Staré in the household took one look at the male and fled, except for a seventh Stamm female. Rigi and Mrs. Nolan gave her very simple orders, and rolled the young male onto a blanket. The nearly-white low Stamm female and Rigi pulled the male into the Staré quarters and made a place for him to lie on the floor.
“Give him water and broth if he asks. Do not bathe him, do not scratch him,” Rigi ordered in Staré.
“Give water and broth. No bath, no scratch.” It was just as well that the Creator and Creatrix had made seventh Stamm Staré without intelligence, because otherwise the female would have fled as well, Rigi mused. Then she washed her hands and removed as much fur from her clothes as possible. As she did, she noticed more of the odd glittery dust. Mrs. Nolan commed the Sogdia medical center for Staré and told them about the male’s illness. Rigi would file her own report later.
Once they’d gotten airborne and her mother initiated the auto-pilot, Mrs. deStella-Bernardi asked, “What is wrong with the male, Auriga?”
“I, I think he has what the Staré call fur-drop. It appeared in the Kenusha Plains Staré a month ago, and their tradition maintains that it appears in years without a wet season. Uncle Ebenezer said that the disease itself is not fatal, but that secondary infections are a great danger. It begins with rapid, out of season shedding, as you saw, ma’am.”
Her mother thought for several minutes. “Can humans get it?”
“Thus far no, or I have not heard that they can. The Staré elders here know that it has been observed, ma’am, but I do not know more.” Rigi looked at her dress. It was one of the fabricated ones, and she wasn’t overly fond of the peach color anyway. “I believe that it would be best for me to put this in the burn trench and not wear it into the house, ma’am, since I could not get the fur off entirely.”
Her mother stared at her. “It can be washed.”
Rigi shook her head. “Yes, ma’am, but we do not know how the disease spreads, at least not that I have heard, and I do not want to risk infecting Siare, Shona, or the others if the pathogen remains in the bits of epidermis and hair.”
A very long silence followed that statement. At last her mother sniffed, took a deep breath, and said, “I defer to your training, Auriga. I will bring a change of clothes to you by the burn pit. We can clean your shoes. What about your underthings?”
“They should be clear, ma’am.”
“Good.”
Was she overreacting? Rigi considered what she had read and the infectious disease protocols and decided no, she was not. The sunlight through the flitter's canopy made the dust on the fabric shimmer. She’d never seen that dust before this year, and the Staré elders had said that fur-drop struck in years without a wet season. She would include the glittery dust in her report.
The landed, paid the rental, and Mrs. deStella-Bernardi vacuumed out the flitter despite the protests of the fifth Stamm attendant. “My daughter tracked on the carpet,” was the excuse. Rigi walked home and went straight to the burn-pile. Her mother hired a powered transport and reached the house first, meeting Rigi at the burn pit in the far back of the property. It wasn’t really a pit, but by tradition any small waste combustion system and power generation unit was called a burn pit. Rigi stripped off the dress and bundled it into the fuel hopper. She had not been wearing a sun-shade or scarf, and the long dress had covered her underskirt and leggings. Mrs. deStella-Bernardi also had warm water in a bucket with soap, and a second bucket of clean water. Rigi took the hint and scrubbed her arms again, then her hair and face. As she rinsed, a towel appeared. She dried, then put on the sturdy every-day dress. That done, she cleaned her shoes, glad for once to have been wearing synth-leather and not the real thing. She tossed the water as far as her strength permitted, into a weedy area that the Staré avoided.
Only then did Rigi go inside. She marched straight to her computer and logged into the medical network. There she filed her report and looked for any further information. She didn’t see any, and so she went to the “General Query” forum, opened the infectious disease discussion folder, and posted her observation and speculation about the glittery dust. Before she could log out an alert pinged and a human face appeared in the comm-incoming corner. Rigi answered it, “Miss Bernardi on the net.”
“Miss Bernardi, this is Dr. Rajnanda, chi
ef of Staré medicine. Give me your exact observations, please.”
Rigi took a deep breath. “I was visiting the house of Mrs. Thomas Nolan, in the Sunset sub-section west of Sogdia proper. A fifth Stamm male, younger than twenty years based on claw curvature and density, came into the room to remove the tea service, sir. He was shedding profusely, to the point that bare skin had appeared under the waistband of his modesty apron and at the wear points under his forelegs. He appeared unsteady, dizzy, and had difficulty lifting the two kilo tray. I opened the door, then caught the tray when he lost his balance and collapsed in the hallway. He had elevated pulse, over one hundred beats per minute, shallow breathing, and felt over warm. Those places where I touched him, the fur came loose, leaving bare skin. He also had no scent, and expressed no scent while being examined. A seventh Stamm female assisted me moving him to a semi-isolated room. I left instructions for her to give him water or broth if he asked for them, and to avoid bathing or scratching him. I then washed my hands and removed as much fur as possible.
“With the fur, I noticed a glittering dust. I have seen that dust only once before, a month ago, after the last major dust-roller from the northwest. Once I got home, I destroyed my outer garment in the burn pit and washed before coming in contact with any Staré.”
Dr. Rajnanda nodded once. “Good thinking, Miss Bernardi. I fear you may have encountered the index case for Sogdia. How many Staré might have been in contact with the male?”
“I believe twelve, sir, ranging from fourth through seventh Stamm. By the time the female and I had moved the patient, the others had fled the building, or so their employer believed.”
He looked as if he wanted to say something uncharitable. He settled for, “Blast and shed it. Thank you, Miss Bernardi. Were you able to speak to the patient?”
Stamme: Shikari Book Three Page 4