Moreta (Dragonlady of Pern)

by Anne McCaffrey

  S'ligar took a thick roll of hide from his pouch. With a deft flick of his wrist, the roll fell into five separate sections on the sand. Mindful to make no physical contact with the other Leaders, S'ligar slid a section to each of the other bronze riders.

  "Here are the names of my wingleaders and seconds, since naming people seems to be a deficiency in our queens. I've listed my riders in order of their competence for assuming command of either wing or Weyr. B'lerion is my choice of a personal successor." Then a rare and brilliant smile crossed the High Reacher's face. "With Falga's complete accord."

  K'dren roared with laughter. "Didn't she suggest him?"

  S'ligar regarded K'dren with mild reproof. "It is the wise Leader who anticipates his Weyrwoman's mind."

  "Enough!" M'tani called irritably. His dark eyes were angry under heavy black brows. He threw his lists down to join S'ligar's. "T'grel has always fancied himself a Leader. He reminded me that he hadn't been to either of the Gathers so I'll reward his virtue."

  "You're fortunate," K'dren said with no humor in his voice. He added his lists to the others. "L'vin, W'ter, and H'grave attended both Gathers. I've recommended M'gent. He may be young but he's got a natural flair for leadership that one doesn't often see. He wasn't at the Gathers."

  F'gal seemed unwilling to lose the sheets he unwound. "It's all on these," he said wearily, letting them flutter to the sand.

  "Leri suggested me," S'peren said with a self‑deprecating shrug, "though it's likely Sh'gall will make a change when he recovers. He was too fevered to be told of this meeting so Leri drew up the lists."

  "Leri would know." K'dren nodded. He went down on his haunches to pick up the five slips of hide, aligning them at the top before rolling. "I shall be pleased if these can gather dust in my weyr." He stuffed the roll in his pouch. "It is, however, a comfort to have made plans, to have considered contingencies."

  "Saves a lot of unnecessary worry," S'ligar agreed, bending to scoop up the scraps into his long‑fingered hand. "I also recommend that we use entire wings as replacements, rather than send individuals as substitutes. Riders get used to their wingleaders and seconds." The recommendation found favor with the others. "Full wings or substitutes is not the real worry." L'bol glowered at the lists as he assembled them in his hand. "It's the lack of ground crews."

  K'dren snorted. "No worry. Not when the queens have already decided among themselves to do that job. We've all been informed, no doubt, that every queen who can fly will attend every Fall."

  M'tani's scowl was sour and neither L'bol or F'gal appeared happy, but S'ligar shrugged diffidently. "They will arrange matters to suit themselves no matter what, but queens keep promises."

  "Who suggested using weyrlings for ground crews?" M'tani asked.

  "We may have to resort to them," S'ligar said.

  "Weyrlings don't have enough sense ..." M'tani began.

  "Depends on their Weyrlingmaster, doesn't it?" K'dren asked.

  "The queens intend," S'ligar put in before M'tani could take offense at K'dren's remark‑"to keep the weyrlings under control. What other choice have we in the absence of ground crews?"

  "Well, I've never known a weyrling yet who would disobey a queen," F'gal admitted.

  "S'peren, with Moreta ill, does Kamiana lead?"

  "No. Leri." S'peren looked apprehensive. "After all, she's done it before."

  The Weyrleaders murmured in surprised protest. "Well, if any of your Weyrwomen can talk her out of it, we'd be very relieved." S'peren did not hide his distress. "She's more than done her duty by the Weyrs and Pern. On the other hand, she knows how to lead. With both Sh'gall and Moreta sick, the Weyr at least trusts her."

  "How is Moreta?" S'ligar asked.

  "Leri says Orlith doesn't seem worried. She carries her eggs well and she is very near clutching. It's as well Moreta is sick or they'd be out and about Pern. You know how keen Moreta is on runners."

  M'tani snorted with disgust. "This is not the time to lose an egg heavy queen," he said. "This sickness hits so fast and kills so quickly, the dragons don't realize what's happening. And then they're gone between." He caught his breath, clenching his teeth and swallowing against tears. The other riders pretended not to see his evident distress.

  "Once Orlith has clutched she won't go until they've hatched," S'ligar said gently to no one in particular. "S'peren, have you candidates safely at Fort Weyr?"

  S'peren shook his head. "We'd that yet to do and thought there was worlds of time for Search."

  "Pick carefully before you bring anyone new into your Weyr!" L'bol advised sourly.

  "If the need arises. High Reaches has a few promising youngsters who are healthy. I'm sure an adequate number can be made up from the other Weyrs?" S'ligar waited for the murmur of assent to go round the circle. "You'll inform Leri?"

  "Fort Weyr is grateful."

  "Is that all?" L'bol demanded as he stirred toward his dragon.

  "Not quite. One more point while we are convened." S'ligar hitched up his belt. "I know that some of us have thought of exploring the Southern Continent once this Pass is over."

  "After this?" L'bol stared at S'ligar in total disbelief.

  "My point. In spite of the instructions left to us, we cannot risk further contagions. Southern must be left alone!" S'ligar made a cutting gesture with the flat of his huge hand. He looked to the Benden Weyrleader for comment.

  "An eminently sensible prohibition," K'dren said.

  M'tani flourished his hand curtly to show agreement and turned to S'peren.

  "Of course, I cannot speak for Sh'gall but I cannot conceive why Fort would disagree."

  "The continent will be interdicted by my Weyr, I assure you," F'gal said in a loud, strained voice.

  "Then we shall leave it to the queens to communicate how many wings each Weyr supplies for Fall until this emergency is over. We've all the details we need to go on." S'ligar brandished his roll before he shoved it in his tunic. "Very well then, my friends. Good flying! May your Weyrs‑" He caught himself, a flicker of uncertainty for his glib use of a courteous salutation not entirely appropriate.

  "The Weyrs will prosper, S'ligar," K'dren said as he smiled confidently at the big man. "They always have!"

  The bronze riders turned to their dragons, mounting with the ease and grace of long practice. Almost as one, the six dragons wheeled to the left and right of the red butte, to spring agilely into the air. Again, as if the unique manoeuver had been many times rehearsed, on the third downstroke of six pairs of great wings, the dragons went between.

  Fort Weyr, 3.14.43

  At about the time the bronze dragonriders were meeting at the Butte, Capiam had discovered that if he timed a fit of coughing, he could miss some of the incoming, more painful messages. Even after the thrumming of the great drums in the tower had ceased, the cadences played ring‑a‑round in his head and inhibited the sleep he yearned for. Not that sleep brought any rest. He would feel more tired when he roused from such brief naps as the drums permitted. And the nightmares! He was forever being harried by that tawny, speckle‑coated, tuft‑eared monster that had carried its peculiar germs to a vulnerable continent. The irony was that the Ancients had probably created the agency that threatened to exterminate their descendants.

  If only those seamen had let the animal die on its tree trunk in the Eastern Current. If only it had died on the ship, succumbing to thirst and exhaustion, as Capiam felt he was likely to do at any moment, before it had contaminated more than the seamen. If only the nearby holders hadn't been so bloody curious to relieve the winter's tedium. If! If! If? If wishes were dragons, all Pern would fly!

  And if I, Capiam had any energy, he would apply it to finding a concoction that would relieve and, preferably, inhibit the disease. Surely the Ancients had had to cope with epidemics. There were, indeed, grand paragraphs in the oldest Records, boasting that the ailments that had plagued mankind before the Crossing had been totally eliminated on Pern, which statement, Capiam maint
ained, meant that there had been two Crossings, not one, as many people, including Tirone, believed. The Ancients had brought many animals with them in that first Crossing, the equine from which runners originated; the bovine for the herdbeasts; the ovine, smaller, herdbeasts; the canine; and a smaller variety of the dratted feline plague carrier. The creatures had been brought, in ova (or so the Record put it, from the Ancients' planet of origin which was not the planet Pern, or why had that one point been made so specifically and repeated so often? Pern, not simply the Southern Continent. And the second Crossing had been from south to north. Probably, Capiam contemplated bitterly, to escape feline plague carriers that secreted themselves in dark lairs to nourish their fell disease until unwary humans took them off tree trunks, days from land. Couldn't the Ancients have stopped bragging about their achievements long enough to state how they had eradicated plague and pandemic? Their success was meaningless without the process.

  Capiam plucked feebly at the sleeping furs. They smelled. They needed to be aired. He smelled. He didn't dare leave his room. "What can't be cured must be endured." Desdra's taunt returned to him often.

  He was a healer. He would heal himself first and thus prove to others that one could recover from this miserable disease. He need only apply his trained mind and considerable willpower to the problem. On cue, a coughing spell wracked him. When he had recovered sufficiently, he reached for the syrup Desdra left on the bedside table. He wished she would look in on him.

  Fortine had, conferring three times from the doorway, seeking authority on matters Capiam could not now recall. He hoped that his responses had been sensible. Tirone had appeared, very briefly, more to assure himself and to report to the world that Capiam was still part of it than to comfort or cheer the sick man.

  Fort Hold proper had not been sullied by the plague, even though healers, master, journeyman, and apprentice, had journeyed to the stricken areas. Four of Fort's seaside holds and two coastal cropholds had succumbed.

  The syrup eased Capiam's raw throat. He could even taste it. Thymus was the principal ingredient, and he approved of its use on his person. If the disease ran the same course in him as it had in the cases he had studied, the cough ought soon to pass. If, by virtue of the strict quarantine in which he lay, he did not contract a secondary infection, pulmonary, pneumonic, or bronchial seemed the readiest to pounce on the weakened patient, then he ought to improve rapidly.

  K'lon, the blue rider from Fort Weyr, had recovered totally. Capiam hoped that the man had actually had the plague, not some deep cold, and his hope was substantiated by the facts that K'lon had a close friend in plague‑stricken Igen, and that the Weyr healer, Berchar, and his green rider weyrmate were grievously ill at Fort Weyr. Capiam tried to censor his own painful thoughts of dragonriders dying as easily as holders. Dragonriders could not die. The Pass had eight Turns to go. There were hundreds of powders, roots, and barks and herbs to combat disease on Pern, but the numbers of dragons and their riders were limited.

  Desdra really ought to be appearing soon with some of the restorative soup she took such pleasure in making him consume! It was her presence he wished for, not the soup, for he found the long hours of solitude without occupation tedious and fraught with unpleasant speculations. He knew he ought to be grateful to have a room to himself for the chances of further infection were thus reduced to the minimum, but he would have liked some company. Then he thought of the crowded holds and he had no doubt that some poor sod there would dearly love to exchange with him for solitude.

  Capiam took no pleasure in the knowledge that his frequent harangues to the Lords Holder about indiscriminate breeding should prove so devastatingly accurate. But dragonriders ought not to be dying of this plague. They had private quarters, were hardy, inured to many of the ailments that afflicted those in poorer conditions, were supplied with the top of the tithe. Igen, Keroon, Ista. Those Weyrs had had direct contact with the feline. And Fort, High Reaches, and Benden riders had attended the Gathers. Almost every rider had had time and opportunity to catch the infection.

  Capiam had had severe qualms about demanding a conveyance of Sh'gall from Southern Boll to Fort Hold. But, on the other hand, Sh'gall had conveyed Lord Ratoshigan to Ista Gather for the purpose of seeing the rare creature on display quite a few hours before Capiam and the young animal healer, Talpan, had their startling conference. It was only after Capiam had reached Southern Boll and seen Lord Ratoshigan's sick handlers that he had realized how quickly the disease incubated and how insidiously it spread. Expediency had required Capiam to use the quickest means to return to his Hall, and that had been a‑dragonback with the Fort Weyrleader. Sh'gall had taken ill but he was young and healthy, Capiam told himself. So had Ratoshigan, but Capiam found a rather curious justice in that. Given the infinite variety of human personalities, it was impossible to like everyone. Capiam didn't like Ratoshigan but he shouldn't be glad the man was suffering along with his lowliest beasthandler.

  Capiam vowed, yet again, that he would have far more tolerance for the ill when he recovered. When! When! Not if. If was defeatist. How had the many thousands of patients he tended over his Turns as a healer endured those hours of unrelieved thought and self‑examination? Capiam sighed, tears forming at the corners of his eyes, a further manifestation of his terrible inertia. When, yes, when, would he have the strength to resume constructive thought and research?

  There had to be an answer, a solution, a cure, a therapy, a restorative, a remedy! Something existed somewhere. If the Ancients had been able to cross unimaginable distances to breed animals from a frozen stew, to create dragons from the template of the legendary fire‑lizards, they surely would have been able to overcome bacterium or virus that threatened themselves and those beasts. It could only be a matter of time, Capiam assured his weary self, before those references were discovered. Fortine had been searching the Records piled in the Library Caves. When he had had to dispatch journeymen and apprentice healers to reinforce their overworked craftsmen in the worst plague areas, Tirone had magnanimously placed his craftspeople at Fortine's disposal. But if one of those untutored readers passed over the relevant paragraphs in ignorance of the significance ... Surely, though, something as critical as an epidemic would merit more than a single reference.

  When would Desdra come with her soup to break the monotony of his anxious self‑castigation? "Stop fretting," he told himself, his voice a hoarse croak that startled him. "You're peevish. You're also alive. What must be endured cannot be cured. No. What cannot be cured must be inured, endured."

  Tears for his debilitation dripped down his cheekbones, falling in time to the latest urgent drum code. Capiam wanted to stop his ears against the news. It was sure to be bad. How could it possibly be anything else until they had some sort of specific treatment and some means of arresting the swift spread of this plague?

  Keroon Runnerhold sent the message. They needed medicines. Healer Gorby reported dwindling stocks of borrago and aconite, and needed tussilago in quantity for pulmonary and bronchial cases, ilex for pneumonia.

  A new fear enveloped Capiam. With such unprecedented demands on stillroom supplies, would there be enough of even the simple medicaments? Keroon Runnerhold, dealing as it did with many animal health problems, ought to be able to supply all its needs. Capiam despaired afresh as he thought of smaller holds. They would have on hand only a limited amount of general remedies. Most holds traded the plants and barks indigenous in their area for those they lacked. What lady holder, no matter how diligent and capable, would have laid in sufficient to deal with an epidemic?

  To compound demand, the disease had struck during the cold season. Most medicinal plants were picked in flower, when their curative properties were strongest; roots and bulbs gathered in the fall. Spring and flowering, autumn and earthy harvest were too distant, the need was now!

  Capiam writhed in his furs. Where was Desdra? How much longer did he have to endure before the wretched lethargy abated?

  "Capi
am?" Desdra's quiet voice broke into his self‑pitying ruminations. "More soup?"

  "Desdra? That message from Keroon Runnerhold, "

  "As if we had only one febrifuge in our pharmacopia! Fortine has compiled a list of alternatives." Desdra was impatient with Gorby. "There's ash bark, box, ezob, and thymus as well as borrago and featherfern. Who's to say one of them might not prove to be specific for this? In fact, Semment of Great Reach Hold believes that thymus is more effective for the pulmonary infections he's been treating. Master Fortine holds out for featherfern, being one of the few indigenous plants. How are you feeling?"

  "Like nothing! I cannot even raise my hands." He tried to demonstrate this inability. "The lassitude is part of the illness. You wrote that symptom often enough. What can't be cured,"

  Summoning strength from a sudden spurt of irrational anger, Capiam flung a pillow at her. It had neither the mass nor the impetus to reach its target, and she laughed as she collected the missile and lofted it easily back to his bed.

  "I believe that you are somewhat improved in spirit. Now drink the soup." She set it down on the table.

  "Are all healthy here?"

  "All here, yes. Even the officious Tolocamp, immured in his quarters. He's more likely to catch pneumonia while standing at unshuttered windows to check up on the guards." Desdra chuckled maliciously. "He's got messengers stationed on the forecourt. He sails notes down to them to take to offenders. Not even a tunnel snake could slip past his notice!" A tiny smirk curved Desdra's lips. "Master Tirone had to talk long and hard to get him to set up that internment camp in the hollow. Tolocamp was certain that offering shelter would be an invitation to undesirables to lodge and feed at his expense. Tirone is furious with Tolocamp because he wants to send his harpers out with the assurance that they can return, but Tolocamp refuses to believe that harpers can avoid infection. Tolocamp sees the disease as a visible mist or fog that oozes out of meadows and streams and mountain crevices."