by Gayle Greeno
“Parm has ’Printed!” Khar trembled with a strange exultation.
“But that’s ... that’s impossible!” The world spun around her, then slid to a nauseating halt, crashed at her feet. She let her staff slip from nerveless fingers and a part of her heard the metal tip chime against the marble, a peal of doom. “Parm’s imprinted on George Barbet? He can’t change! It doesn’t work that way! It doesn’t work! It’s never happened before! Not even to the Seeker General and Koom. ”
“It has now.” Khar stalked forward and greet-sniffed Parm’s face. “And you’d better help Harrap before he’s convinced he’s lost his mind or been invaded by demons.”
In all the histories, in all the legends, in all the nearly two hundred years of recorded ghatti-human bondings, some as strange in fact as they were in fiction, nothing like this had ever occurred. Except now she bore witness to it whether she believed it or not. Believe, her mind shouted at her, Khar can’t lie, it’s true. I don’t know how, but it’s true. She cradled Harrap’s large hand, totally limp, in both of hers. It felt no more icy, no more clammy than her own. “Harrap! Harrap! It’s all right. Believe me, it’s all right!” His superficial, rapid breathing and unfocused eyes made it clear he labored from shock.
A thready piping of a thought crossed her mind, transmitted with difficulty. “Mindwalk ... if ye will.” With no one else to offer the traditional greeting, Parm offered it himself, voluntarily throwing open his mind to mesh with hers. Khar nudged her hand to make her react.
“Parm, what have you done?” Her tone severe, she thumbed back Harrap’s eyelid, then pressed her fingers against the bull-like neck to test his pulse.
“Explain later. Didn’t mean to hurt him. Will he be all right?” The ghatt blinked several times in rapid succession, his throat flexing with a nervous, dry gulping noise. She felt a sudden and equal thirst. “Is the other one gone?”
“Who? Georges Barbet? I don’t know,” and she realized she truly had no idea what had become of Barbet since his fall; things had happened too fast. “Khar, go check, would you?”
“Don’t have to. Didn’t you hear him leave? He rode out of here as hard as if all the powers of darkness chased after him.” The ghatta turned somber at the thought. “Not good he got away like that.”
“No use crying over spilt milk, and there’s enough of that in the Square and everything else at the moment. Seeker General isn’t going to like the damage claims on this incident.” Doyce motioned to two of the bystanders. “Here, get his stool righted and elevate his feet, can’t you? And mind the robe. Stop standing around gawking and give me a hand.”
The heavy teak door slammed open and the All-Shepherd Nichlaus swirled out, his lean face suffused with anger. “Who dares disturb our Lady’s peace like this?” He stopped short, inspecting Harrap and the dappled orange and black ghatt on his lap. His voice bit with glacial contempt. “What is the meaning of this, a ghatt and a Shepherd sprawled on the steps like common drunkards? You profane a holy place with these ... these antics! Send that ghatt away this instant!”
“It’s too late for that,” Doyce addressed him, feeling an overpowering weariness at her own words. “Far, far too late for that and for I don’t know what else. The ghatt stays, I’m afraid.”
Khar sauntered over and considered the Lady’s Shepherd, her head craning one way and then the other. She swirled around him twice, coming closer and closer with each silken sweep, and ended by twining herself hard against Nichlaus’s shins, first one side of her furred length, then the other until he stepped back, revulsion clear. With a seductive twist and roll she threw herself on the ground in front of him, digging one shoulder and then the other into the spot where he had stood. Nichlaus stood woodenly, robe clutched up to his bony knees, trying to pretend not to notice.
Little did he know, Doyce winced, that Khar’s face wore the exact same expression of distaste. She had applied one of the most intimately damning of ghatti insults to humans, the purposeful touching and apparent affection, then the contemptuous shoulder roll, as if rolling in something spoiled and rotten. To anyone who knew ghatti well, the gesture and the intention reeked with unmistakable contempt. A few appreciative snickers filtered from the now subdued crowd, and the All-Shepherd spun around, stung by the laughter and, his robe hissing around him, stalked inside.
“Self-indulgent, Khar, she reprimanded. Claire knelt beside Harrap, bathing his face with a cloth dipped in a basin of water she’d miraculously rescued from somewhere. Doyce chaffed his wrists, thinking furiously, trying to plan what to do next about Harrap and Parm. Not to mention the absent Georges Barbet. Curse it all, she had no ’script suitable for calming him. Considering his size, the dosage would have to be massive. Blast the eumedicos, never a one around when they really needed one.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Now, everyone, back to your stalls, your shopping. There’s still a good part of the day left and pleasant times to be had if you all work together to put things to rights.” The voice personified cool authority with a leavening touch of good humor to it, a voice that she had heard daily for nearly ten years of her life. And one that she had never ceased to miss since leaving the eumedicos. Mahafny Annendahl, her teacher, her taskmaster, her mentor, her friend during those long, arduous years of training. One of the few who had wished her well when she had left in disgrace.
Time stood still, then reversed itself with sickening speed, nearly crushing her with the weight of memory. So many years she’d striven to scale the summit of her new life, leave the valleys of her despair and failure behind, and now the sound of a single voice sent her avalanching down the incline of years, nearly flattening her with the burden of remembrance....
She lay curled on the bed, knees drawn up, pillow crushed tight against her face and chest, barricading her from the spartan quarters, just wide enough for cot and desk, the ordered shelving of leather-bound tracts on anatomy and pathology, neurology, obstetrics, her dog-eared pharmacopoeia, the precious microscope with its mirrored reflector, the burner and alembic—used more for making clandestine cha than for experiments. The muslin pillowcase clung to her cheek, the fabric drenched in tears, her face and eyes raw from crying, sinuses flooded, nose streaming. The handkerchief was a wadded, wet ball, capable of absorbing no more. She let it drop off the edge of the cot, pulled the pillow tighter against her face, her hot, moist breathing reflected back at her, stifling her.
A light knocking rattled the door and she tensed, or perhaps she heard the wind. An open window at the end of the corridor could produce the same result, goblin rattlings when the breeze changed or a storm veered through. Besides, no one had ventured near since she had left the wards in disgrace, running, stumbling, throat scoured from the screams she’d swallowed down to avoid disturbing the other patients. Even then, even then, she hadn’t wanted to upset them, to imperil their healing or their hope. A creak of hinges, the complaint of floor-boards told her someone had entered her room, moving with light assurance as habit and training dictated. Never reveal your anxiety by rapid movement, agitation, running. Anxiety is as contagious as any disease. She had broken that rule today, but at least she hadn’t shouted. She clutched the pillow tighter, molded her face into its damp bulk, lacking the strength to care who stood beside the bed, though she could sense the presence.
A hand pressed against her shoulder, forced her to roll back while peeling the pillow away from her face, fresh air tickling and drying the moisture. She kept swollen eyes closed, hard to breathe on her back, her flooded sinuses draining down her throat, gulping to cope with the overflow. “Doyce, what’s wrong? What is it?” An arm slipped behind her back, brought her unresisting into a near-sitting posture, pressed a clean square of cotton into her hand. She used it automatically. She knew the voice, had prayed to hear it earlier while there was still time, still hope—Mahafny Annendahl, her teacher. But Mahafny had not been making rounds the last few days, had turned over her teaching duties to Terence di Siguera, her second,
while she had escorted some trainee to the Research Hospice in the north. Gone, just when Doyce needed her support the most.
“He died,” she declared, voice clogged and thick. “He died! He was a nice old man who died when he didn’t need to! If we’d acted aggressively, we’d have had a chance to save him.” She hunched forward, mopped at her face, kept the handkerchief pressed to her forehead, veiling her eyes.
A shift in the bed, a tilt of the mattress toward the right told her that Mahafny had sat down. “Surely you’ve had patients die before, this can hardly have been a first.” A neutral tone, not a question, simply an understated reminder of reality.
She brought herself fully upright on the bed; forced her back against the wall for support. “Of course I have. But I knew what was wrong, don’t you understand? And di Siguera didn’t even listen to me until it was too late. Even if he didn’t believe me right off the bat, why didn’t it show clear in the mindtrance?” Her fisted hand drummed in frustration against her knee. “Why ... didn’t ... he find it?”
Had it been only three days ago that they’d brought Edam Sellicote in? She remembered that it had taken the combined efforts of his two sons and a nephew to literally drag him to the diagnostic clinic. Three were necessary because Edam had been protesting and digging in his heels all the way, despite his weakness.
“No need, no need ta worry. Don’t know what got into them to make’m so concerned,” he wheezed as di Siguera examined him, listened to his heart, inspected his throat and glands, poked and prodded at the man while Doyce stood at his shoulder, jotting notes. “Touch o‘the bloody flu, that’s all it be. Aches and pains in me back and chest, arms and legs jellylike. or they’d never have dragged me in like a lamb. A powerful scratchy throat, then ye feel like someone stoked a furnace inside you ’cept you be too busy shivering and shaking to be able to heat up proper. Sorta like being in the sauna and the ice tub all ta’oncit.”
One of the sons, bandy-legged and burly chested, already ruddy with tan from the spring sun, maintained his grip on Edam’s shoulder, pinning him to the examination stool. “Now, Da, mayhap it is just the flu, but we got a busy spring aheada us and you know it. You out sick any length o’time and we can’t keep to schedule. We be booked solid for the next octant and ye know it.”
Edam cuffed at his son’s hand. “ ’Course I know it! I told Avram zactly how many to book, how many we’d agree to take, din I?”
She waited for di Siguera to ask what Edam Sellicote did for a living, ready to note it for the records. A person’s occupation could be important, provide a leading clue as to the illness or type of injury. But di Siguera acted abstracted, distant, his thick fingers with their mossy dark hair on the back still ranging with care over the old man’s body. She hated to disturb the eumedico’s trance, his inner communing with the patient, but decided to risk it. Any eumedico deep into the trance rarely noticed outside interruptions unless they bordered on the cataclysmic. Best to complete the record. “And what is it you do for your living, Master Sellicote?”
His round head with its scattering of sleeked back hair tilted up to beam at her, complexion walnut-colored from years of outdoor activity that even a winter indoors couldn’t fade. “I bayint one‘o the best sheep shearers around. We travels the entire spring slipping the little woollies outa their winter jackets, we do. Neddy and Kevin, my boys, works near fast and clean as do I. My newy, Avram, does the bookin’, the weighin’ an tallyin’, minds the finances.
Neddy thrust his arms back, brought them together to crack his knuckles. “Aye, we do just fine, Da. But we need three healthy men to meet the schedule. Kev an I’ll shear by lantern light if we must to finish this job and let you rest, but we need you bad.” He threw an explanation in Doyce’s direction. “They holds patient and still for ol’ Edam here, and he peels those fleeces off slick and smooth, all in one piece and without airy a nick to the sheep or the fleece.” Doyce nodded her comprehension. Her mother had depended on superior yarns for her weaving, and a fine, undamaged fleece enhanced the value of the wool.
Di Siguera interrupted, his olive complexion sallow and drawn. The trance drained the eumedicos, she knew. “You’re right as to influenza, but I want you checked into the infirmary for a few days’ observation and rest. What I don’t want is to have his turn into pneumonia.”
For no reason she could put her finger on, the diagnosis nagged at her, too superficial and obvious. Still, she could keep an eye on Edam Sellicote for a few days, reassure herself that di Siguera hadn’t missed anything. Though she wasn’t initiated in the trance state yet, perhaps she’d notice some symptom, some little thing that would convince her. Besides, the obvious diagnosis was so often the right one, and who was she at this stage of her training to second-guess?
And so she charted the old sheep shearer’s progress on each of her rounds, stopping to chat, to listen, if nothing else. She enjoyed speaking with Sellicote, glad to listen to someone who enjoyed nature and the work he did. She had also discovered they knew a few people in common and that he had heard of her mother, admired her work. “She weaves slow and true, they say, and any fabric ye buy from her will wear longer than you do,” he’d chuckled. “Best buy it while ye be young to get the most use of it.”
At first he’d appeared a bit better on her night rounds, but by the next day her doubts increased. His lips and nails had taken on a bluish cast and the fever returned, kept rising. His chest rose and fell too quickly, his respiration rapid and shallow, and worst of all, she found subcutaneous edema in the chest and neck area. She made a little tsk-ing sound before she could stop herself, but went no further. “So where were you shearing the past oct or so?” she asked, hoping for distraction while she took his pulse.
Edam smothered a cough, groped on the side table for a mug of water. “Neustadt, Dejemmal, and Salton.” The word “Salton” came out “S .... s ... Sal ... ton,” as he tried to override the cough reflex. “H‘ain’t been there nigh on to twelve years. They had to give up grazing sheep there when they had a ’thrax outbreak. Put down every horse’n cow, sheep’n goat, burned the earth, turned it over just to be safe. Anything to contain it. Lovely, lush place, too, the woollies look so right on those rolling green hills. T’were the sky green, the sheep’d be the puff clouds. Glad they think it safe to try again.”
“‘Thrax?” she queried as she tucked his arm back under the covers, saw the little rippling motions of the sheet as he vibrated with chills. “You mean anthrax?” Her mind clicked back and forth, digesting this new piece of information, discarding other pieces, waiting to test this new alignment and fit. And worst of all, it did, practically all of it. Something that made sense to anyone country-raised rather than city-bred like di Siguera. She chatted a little more, then wheeled off down the long, wide passage between the rows of beds, walking steadily, not letting her white coat flap after her, betray her excitement. Where in the name of heavens had di Siguera hidden himself? Probably in his cubbyhole of an office; waiting for her and the other trainees to come back with their reports, rather than making the rounds with them, supervising, correcting, amplifying. When it came to ways to subtly slack work, Terence di Siguera had mastered them all, managing to indicate far more important yet highly illusory tasks at hand. Yet Mahafny seldom found fault with him.
Doyce poked her head inside the door as she knocked, not waiting for permission to enter. Di Siguera manhandied a large and dripping sandwich, mouth whale-wide as he strove to cram it between his jaws, eyes squinted shut in happy anticipation. It made her realize her own hungry rumblings—late afternoon and he had finally found time to eat; she’d had nothing since sunrise but for a cup of cha, cold, and swiped from one of her fellow eumedico trainees when he’d abandoned it to respond to an emergency. The final cold mouthful, dense with settled sugar, had given her a jolt of sorely needed energy, now long-gone.
“Terence,” she interrupted, smelling the stacked beef, the sweet peppers and lettuce dripping with oil and balsamic v
inegar, mouth watery with shared appetite. “I know you’ve thought of everything, but did you deduce any trace of Bacillus anthracis when you tranced?” She pushed on hurriedly, terribly aware of the strong jaws chewing, distorted cheeks bulging with the effort. “Woolgatherer’s Disease,” she amplified. “Pulmonary anthrax. Terence, you heard him say he shears sheep for a living.” She rushed on, “And he just mentioned to me that he’d sheared in Salton. They had a severe outbreak about twelve years ago. Just started running sheep again. You know how long the spores can live on in the soil even if all the animals have been destroyed.” She ground to a halt, waited, wishing fervently she dared steal the other half of his sandwich, or better yet, have him offer it.
He swallowed hard, gave a tight little smile of satiated enjoyment and shifted the plate nearer to him and away from her as if aware of her thought. “Surely it’s unlikely. I caught no trace at all when I read him. Just a nasty case of influenza.” She detected the faintest drift of worry from him, intangible yet there like a cloud slipping across the sun and then moving on. His voice droned on as oily and slick as the herbed oil glistening on his mouth and chin. “Surely it’s long gone by now, twelve years should be more than enough. I’m still afraid of pneumonia, though.”
“Couldn’t we try some penicillium, though? If it is pulmonary anthrax, it’s the only thing that will stop it, especially if we start it now. And if it is pneumonia, it won’t hurt for that either.”
He toyed with the sandwich, considering, shook his head with a pained decisiveness. “No, you know how hard it is for us to extract penicillium from the broth, to retrieve enough of any great strength. I can’t authorize wasting it on something that will run its own course, that we can control with expectorants and decongestants, a febrifuge. He’s a strong man, he can fight pneumonia if it develops.”