Dead rats in the streets meant human death to follow. Agonizing, painful death. That was no myth.
There had to be a connection. He was a man of observation, of learning. Surely the secret of how this disease spread could be seen, if one was brave enough to watch. Surely knowing that secret could provide a means to protect his people.
Xuai Chi had hung his rat cages to keep their occupants from any contact with their wild kin. His servants had been instructed to tolerate no wild animals on his property. Now, Chi took a bamboo pole and used the hook at its end to bring two cages to the table.
There was a rat in each. The animals should have been running around with excitement. The lowering of their cages meant food, or a bath, or time to explore Chi’s lap and fingers. Each crouched quietly, staring at him. It was as if they knew something was wrong.
For an instant, the scholar hesitated. It wasn’t usual for him to think about his captives as anything but a means to an end, a welcome reminder he had a purpose even in exile. Little Blossom had been the exception, her personality as shining as her white fur and pink eyes. Yet he paused to offer the rats the hint of a bow.
From that moment, Chi worked quickly. He lifted the silk from the basket with a pair of tongs. Two of the afflicted rats lived; the third was curled in death. Their fleas seemed intent on desertion, springing to the arms of his coat. They fell to the floor before Chi had to brush them off. Foul things. He promised himself to be careful of them. It was well known that fleas would lie in wait. That was another reason Chi had hung his cages. To keep his animals free of such vermin.
He used the tongs to lift a living rat from the basket. It squirmed feebly as he placed it in one of the empty cages, then buried its head in the soft grass and lay still.
The second rat went into a cage containing a healthy rat. The afflicted animal also buried its head and lay still. The cage’s original occupant retreated to the far side and, to Chi’s surprise, stayed there. When he’d introduced a new individual before, the rats immediately engaged in mutual inspection, grooming, or dispute.
Could the animals sense—and fear—the disease? He had read accounts of birds sounding an alarm before an earthquake. A study of animal senses might prove worthy.
In a distant future. Chi set their cage to one side. He then took the cage with the second healthy rat and placed it beside the one with the sick animal, their bars almost touching.
After checking food and water, he left the rest of the cages hanging from the rafters as before. The basket, and its foul contents, he took outside and burned, first pouring oil over the entire mass. He removed the silks he’d wrapped over his hands, tossing them in the fire to blacken, curl, and disappear.
And after that, Chi checked to make sure the courtyard gates were closed, then made himself and Little Blossom tea.
Xuai Chi dipped his brush in ink, then began the final sheet of his record. With each press and lift, the sentences took life before his eyes. His arm wanted to shake with fatigue; his triumph defied it. “I have found the means by which the Disease of the Rats is transmitted from one living creature to another,” he wrote. “It is a means we can defend ourselves against. . . .”
Chi laid the brush on its jade rest and steepled his fingers, considering his next words. If he was wrong, if he’d misunderstood or missed something, he could be offering a false promise of safety. Would he trust his family to his idea?
“Yes,” he said aloud, looking through the screen at the smoldering pyre that had been his pavilion. From her perch on his desk, Little Blossom paused in her fastidious grooming ritual as if she thought he spoke to her. Chi offered his ink-stained fingers for her to sniff. “You were the final clue, my tiny friend,” he said.
Starting the day after capturing the sick rats, Chi had visited the pavilion each dawn and dusk, careful to wear clothing whose fabrics he knew had been soaked in essence of chrysanthemum. He wrapped his hands in silk treated the same way. It might be an idiosyncrasy, to loathe the rats’ fleas so, but he succumbed to it. There was no one to judge him vain or a fool.
The two afflicted rats had died almost at once. He left their bodies alone and watched the healthy animals. Three more days passed and all else seemed normal. As normal as life could be without servants. Chi dug undersized turnips and onions from the garden to add to his boiled rice. He buried the peels for fear of attracting the village rats, should any survive.
The morning of the fifth day, running through a downpour, the scholar entered the pavilion and knew something had changed. The animals were silent.
The rats in cages on the table were lying on their sides, mouths bloodstained. They’d bitten through their own fur and skin, as if in terrible pain. As he approached, they squeaked piteously as if he, their faithful caregiver, could help.
Both? Chi frowned. He’d expected the rat sharing its cage with the dead animal to become ill, not the one separated by bars. He looked up. The rest appeared unaffected, paws tapping at the bars for his attention.
He went closer to examine the sick animals, then started back. Their fur was swarming with fleas. The creatures must have survived the death of their hosts, the sick rats. He should have killed the dreadful things by bathing the sick animals before bringing them into his pavilion.
Xuai Chi’s first impulse was to take the cages and burn their infested contents, before the fleas could spread further. Later, he couldn’t explain what prompted him to instead unhook a cage with a still-healthy rat and bring it near the cage of a sick one.
Before he could put the cage on the table, he saw a flea leap into it from the sick rat’s cage.
Moving very carefully, Chi put the cage on the floor, then covered it with the nearest cloth to hand, a plain muslin sack. He could hear the rat sniffing the cloth, then scampering about as if entertained.
Four days later, Chi was filthy, weak, and almost out of food. It didn’t matter. The rat under the muslin sack was dying. The rest, out of reach of the fleas, were healthy.
Little Blossom, who had stayed within the protection of his treated coat, was healthy, too.
Chi had dreamed of an accomplishment to restore his place as a scholar. He’d found far more. Kunming City, his home, was a hub of trade. From its wharves, ships carrying silk and other goods traveled via canal and river to the ocean, then to India, Africa, and as far as the newly opened markets of Venice.
Ships that swarmed with rats. Rats that carried fleas.
Chi dipped his pen and stroked the words that would change the world:
“The Disease of the Rats is transmitted from the sick to the healthy by the bite of fleas who have fed on the first then attack the second. Actions that prevent fleas from biting, such as essence of chrysanthemum and removal of flea-carrying animals from dwellings, will protect people from the ravages of this disease. I have seen this with my own eyes and swear it is true. . . .”
Venice, 1302 AD
“They say the surface of a clear lake is an aperture into another world, another time, an other reality.” The tall figure leaned out over the balcony rail, then turned away in disgust. “You’ll find no clear lakes near Venice these days, Merchant. Silt, sewage, and poison. There’s good reason we drink wine. Come inside. Sit with me. I would hear this urgent news of yours.”
“I appreciate your granting me audience, Doge . . .”
Fingers crusted with emeralds and gold wrapped themselves around a goblet, lifting it to thin, unsmiling lips. The eyes above the rim reflected both gems’ fire and something of the blood-red tint of the wine. “Grant?”
The merchant inclined his head immediately, his hands twisting together. “Please accept my apology. I failed to follow the appropriate channels.” He peered up, his look bolder than his words. “But my information can’t wait on protocol—or worse, be lost.”
“Sit.”
He started to obey, then froze above the lush tapestry seat. “I’m fresh from the docks, Your—” as if the most powerful man in Venice couldn
’t see and smell that for himself.
His host waved him down. “Chairs can be replaced. I’m told you have news out of China, news of such marvelous nature that your ship’s captain refused to dock until assured you’d be escorted to me by my guardsmen, snarling a number of barges in the process. There have been calls for his head. And yours.”
The merchant paled. “As the Lord is my Witness, Doge, that’s your right. Let me speak first, for the sake of Venice.”
“Speak, then.”
Long past midnight, the doge sat at his desk, candles unlit. He didn’t need them to know what lined his walls. Latin alchemical manuscripts lay stacked on shelves, translations from the original Arabic and Egyptian. There were accounts from travelers, curled maps and fanciful drawings. To his left, behind glass to show their inestimable value, some of the new encyclopedias. Knowledge was his passion.
And now he possessed more.
But what to do with it?
The merchant and everyone who might have spoken to him were in custody, guarded by those loyal to the doge. Safe from rebels who would overthrow the republic and replace it with princes. Safe from a papacy that claimed dominion over all.
Safe. For now.
Sheets of parchment lay cool and bare beneath his restless fingertips. He had urgent letters to write, beginning with one to each of his ministers. This knowledge would ensure Venice’s supremacy as well as the safety of her people.
Or would it? The doge stared at the darkness beyond the glass, as if seeing the face of Europe. He knew firsthand how politics filtered knowledge, hoarding its potential, dispensing what was expedient, distorting source and content. What if he couldn’t control it? Worse, what if his enemies controlled it first?
He lit a single candle and studied its flame. The risk was too great. A nod. He would write to them all, every learned man he could find, starting with the medical school in Salerno and its upstart cousin in Montpellier. He would charge his network of informants to disperse this new knowledge out of China as far and as quickly as possible.
To stop the Black Death. Yes. He wanted that. Any sane man would.
To stem the rising power of the Church and its meddling in governance and trade?
He wanted that even more.
London, England, 1497 AD
“They say the surface of a clear lake is an aperture into another world, another time, an other reality.”
“I think I’ll use that in my ‘Ode to Seasons,’ William. You don’t mind, do you?”
“It’s not my saying, Byron. I believe it is out of China—as is so much else these days.” William bent into the oars, easing them through the water so hardly a ripple spread to disturb the lilies. Or the eligible young ladies seated along the shore. They were supposedly preoccupied with ink and brush, but their display of bright silk gowns and parasols was likely more artistic than any sketch produced by a group so consumed by giggles. They weren’t unguarded. Sentinel cats dozed in the sunlight at their feet and servants waved pyrethrum fans to fend away insects.
“I’d love to study there. You could come.”
“What, China?” William shook his head. “Too far from home, my friend. I plan to attend the London College of Physicians, or mayhap the Collège Royal in Paris. Lenses. The mechanics of the body. Medicine is where to make a mark, Byron. And fortune.”
“I’ve sufficient fortune, William. Medicine doesn’t interest me. Public office, now. There’s a future.”
“Ambitious, aren’t you?” William stopped rowing, his round face troubled. Lily pads kissed the hull. “You’d have to pass the civil service exams. Not to mention you have to qualify to take the bloody things. Scant few who do come from England. By the time you make Lord Mayor of London, you’ll be gray, and they—” a nod to the shore lined with dewy-eyed maidens, “—won’t be waiting.”
Byron dipped his hand into the water, then brought his fingers to his lips and licked them. “The Thames, William, safe to drink within our parents’ lifetime. Their lifetimes, a third longer than our grandparents’. Trade routes to Zimbabwe, Ghana, and Songhai, protected from the threat of malaria, typhus, or sleeping sickness. Our world is changing for the better because it is served by those educated in the arts, philosophies, and sciences. I know I must study. Public office must be filled by those who understand the past and can build for the future.”
“I’m all for clean water,” William replied, “and I won’t deny the inventions of our time are marvels, Byron. But have you tried getting an audience with one of those old men? Before every city wanted nothing but esteemed scholars, you could at least bribe a permit from a bored young clerk with a pint.” He dug in the oars again, as if straining against fate. “You heard they refused John Cabot permission to cross the Atlantic?”
“What did you expect? The inspectors found a rat in his hold.”
“And I say it was probably put there—” William paused. “I know what you’ll say. There are no rats left in England and Cabot deserves time in the Tower for being so careless, no matter how it came on his ship. But there’s a difference between care and obsession, Byron. You have noticed, I’m sure, the wealth of our northern neighbors, the Danes. They traffic with the New World and have managed to avoid contamination.”
“They claim.”
“Who’s to call them false? We’re being closed off from the rest of the world, Byron, while scholars from the East build us better toilets.”
“It’s not a perfect system,” Byron said. “Yet, imagine what things might have been like if China hadn’t shared the knowledge of how diseases spread from beast to man?” He gave a theatrical shudder. “Thousands dying, without understanding how or why. At best, they’d seek answers from religion, fearing divine punishment. At worse, they’d hunt for those to blame. It might have been people, not vermin, who were slaughtered.” Another shudder, less contrived. “It would have been a black time, William. The scholars spared us that.”
“Ay. Well, if you must become a dusty old thinker, where will you go?”
“I’ve applied to Maimonides, in Tudela, Spain. Some of the most famous Jewish, Arab, and Chinese scholars have attended.”
“Then you’ll come home.”
Byron leaned back, arms behind his head. “I’m more ambitious than that, fair William. Maybe I’ll find a way to set foot in the New World.”
“And maybe,” William laughed, “you’ll start by acknowledging the frantic waving of that dainty treat before she falls into the river and you must explain your woeful neglect to her father.”
An estate in Yunnan Province, Central Asian Bios, 2003 AD
“They say the surface of a clear lake is an aperture into another world, another time, an other reality.”
Song Xai squinted at the tiny pond, ablaze with reflected sunlight. “If that’s so, Grandfather,” she ventured, “it must be warmer there.” She’d already pulled her sleeves over her fingers; now she tucked her hands under her arms.
Her grandfather’s face creased into a hundred tiny smiles. “You don’t have to stay out here with me, Little Blossom. Your mother values your visits also.”
She didn’t move from her seat on the stone bench. Any chance she had of convincing him and, through him, others meant persistence. The chill of late autumn was a small price to pay for the future. “I’ve something to discuss with you, Grandfather, that is best said out here, in your garden, where there will be no interruptions.”
Dr. Song Li’s smile faded. “Perhaps it is something best not said at all.” For an instant, Song Xai glimpsed the will her grandfather must have shown in the Council of Civils, when he was one of the Thirteen who governed this bios.
“I must. I need your wisdom.” She paused to marshal the arguments that had seemed so irrefutable on the speedtrain, then changed her mind. His familiar presence comforted her into the simple truth. “Grand-father, there is a man—” His expression cheered until Song Xai shook her head. “A colleague. A visionary. He leads a team of researc
hers. His work—our work—could change the shape of the world.”
“Why would you wish to do that, Granddaughter?” The wording might have come from a civil inquisitor. Song Xai refused to hear any threat in her grandfather’s soft voice. She needed him. Even in retirement, Song Li wielded immense influence over the reigning civils, his age and experience treasures beyond price.
In his own way, he had been a visionary. And he loved her. With his support, her dream could happen. Would happen, she told herself.
Like a lucky omen, a flock of cranes appeared in the sky, their huge wings beating in synchrony. Gathering her courage, Song Xai pointed at the birds. “That is our dream, Grandfather.”
“To visit the Sub-Saharan Bios?” He tilted his head like one of the tiny birds flitting through the branches of his garden—migrants lucky to avoid the harvesters in the befogged mountain pass. “It can be arranged, Little Blossom, but even I can’t shorten the months in quarantine you must endure in both directions. Surely such a trip would disrupt your research.”
Despite what depended on this conversation, she couldn’t help but smile. “To fly, Grandfather.”
He rose to his feet, startling the cats dozing around his ankles. “What?”
She stood also, bowing ever so slightly. “We have completed model prototypes stable in the four required dimensions. The new waterjet engine proved ideal for controlled propulsion through air. We are ready to build an experimental atmosphere ship to test with a human operator. To fly like the birds, Grandfather.” Song Xai heard the longing in her own voice.
Her grandfather frowned. “The waterjet was developed in one of the American bios. How did you—?” His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “Your ‘visionary’ colleague is one of them.”
She blinked at the venom in his voice. “Most of our team is based outside this bios, Grandfather. There’s nothing unusual in such collaboration.”
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