Moreta

by Anne McCaffrey

  S’peren managed to hide his surprise at Leri’s outspokenness. Of course, they were old friends and she probably felt able to be candid in his company. Then he took a quick sip of the wine. What could Leri possibly be suggesting? He liked Moreta very much. She and Orlith had done a fine job of healing a long Threadscore on his Clioth’s flank last Turn. And Clioth had risen to fly in Orlith’s last mating flight. He had been perversely relieved when Clioth had failed, despite his admiration and respect for Moreta, and despite a natural desire to prove his bronze dragon superior to the other bronzes of Fort. On the other hand, he had never questioned Sh’gall’s ability as a flight leader. The man had an uncanny instinct for which dragon might be failing in strength or losing his flame, or which rider might not be as courageous as he ought in following Thread out of path, but S’peren did not covet the Leadership half as much as his Clioth yearned to mate with Orlith.

  “K’lon?” Leri said, breaking into his thoughts. She and her dragon looked toward the weyr entrance.

  Clioth confirmed the arrival of Rogeth to S’peren, telling his rider that he was moving over to permit the blue to land on Holth’s ledge.

  “About bloody time that young man came back to his own Weyr,” Leri said, frowning. “There has to be another dragonrider able to do what K’lon’s doing or he’ll kill himself. Misplaced guilt. Or more likely the chance to get in and out of Igen to see that lover of his.”

  There was no question that the blue rider was exhausted as he entered the weyr. His shoulders sagged and his step had no spring. His face was travel-stained except for the lighter patches of skin around his eyes, protected from flight dirt by his goggles. His clothes were stiff with moisture frozen into the hide by constant journeys between.

  “Five drops from the blue vial,” Leri said quickly in an undertone, leaning toward S’peren. Then she straightened, speaking in a normal tone. “S’peren, fix a mug of klah laced with that fortified wine of mine for K’lon. And sit down there, young man, before you fall.” Leri pointed imperiously to a chair. She had replaced her one stool with several comfortable seats positioned, as she phrased it, in noncontagious spacing in front of Holth’s couch.

  K’lon barely avoided falling into the appointed chair; his legs slid out in front of him as he slouched into the seat. Dangling helmet and goggles from one limp hand, he accepted the mug from S’peren.

  “Take a long swallow now, K’lon,” Leri said kindly. “It’ll restore your blood to normal temperature after all that betweening. You’re nearly as blue as Rogeth. There! That tastes good, doesn’t it? A brew of my own to hearten the weary.” Though her voice was kind, she watched K’lon intently. “Now, what news from the halls?”

  K’lon’s weary face brightened. “There is good news. Master Capiam really is recovering. I spoke to Desdra. He’s weak but he’s swearing out loud. She said they’d probably have to tether him to his bed to keep him there long enough to regain his strength. He’s yelling for Records. Best of all”—K’lon seemed to shrug off his fatigue in his cheerful recital—“he insists that the disease itself doesn’t cause the deaths. People are actually dying from other things, like pneumonia and bronchitis and other respiratory ailments. Avoid those and”—K’lon made a wide sweep of his hand, his helmet and goggles clacking together—“all’s well.” Then his expression altered dolefully. “Only that’s just not possible in the Holds, you know. So many people crammed into inadequate space . . . and not enough facilities . . . especially now, when it’s got so cold. The Lords Holder would put people into hide tents that are well enough for a Gather but not for the sick. I’ve been everywhere. Even holds that don’t know what’s been happening elsewhere and think it’s only them that’re in deep trouble. I’ve been so many places . . .” His face turned bleak and his body slumped deeper into the chair.

  “A’murry?” Leri spoke the green rider’s name gently.

  K’lon’s misery broke through the tight hold he must be keeping on his private anxiety. “He’s got a chest infection—one of the weyrfolk nursing him had a bad cold.” His condemnation was plain. “Fortine gave me a special mixture and a comfrey salve for his chest. I made A’murry take the first dose and it really did stop him midcough. And I rubbed the salve thick on his chest and back.” Some instinct made K’lon look at the other two riders and he saw their unvoiced apprehension. “I’ve got to go to A’murry. Whenever I can. I can’t give him what I’ve got over! And don’t tell me it’s enough that Rogeth and Granth stay in touch. I’ve very much aware that they do, but I have a need to be with A’murry, too, you know.” K’lon’s face contorted. He looked about to break into tears, a display he averted by drinking deeply of the wine-laced klah. “That’s quite tasty, really,” he said courteously to Leri. Then he finished the drink. “Now, what else can I tell you from my . . .”

  He paused, blinked, swallowed, and then his head began to loll to one side. Leri, who had been waiting for that, signaled urgently to S’peren.

  “Perfectly timed, I think,” she said as S’peren caught K’lon before he slid from the chair. “Here.” She tossed a pillow and pulled the fur from her shoulders. “Roll him into this, pillow his head, and he’ll sleep a good twelve hours. Holth, be a pet and tell Rogeth to go curl up in his own weyr and get some rest. You”—she prodded the resisting flesh of her queen with her foreflnger—“will keep your ears open for Granth.”

  “What if he’s needed?” S’peren asked, arranging K’lon comfortably. “By the Halls or the Hold or A’murry?”

  “A’murry is, of course, a priority,” Leri replied thoughtfully. “I can’t really condone his breaking of quarantine. I’ll think of some discipline later, for K’lon has disobeyed a direct order. I have just decided that we can use other messengers in K’lon’s place. Especially if most of what he does is convey supplies or healers. Weyrlings can do that! They’ll feel brave and daring, and be scared enough to be careful. Packages can certainly be deposited without making contact and messages collected at a discreet distance from cots. Let them practice setting down by a pennant instead of a ridge. Good practice.” Leri peered down critically at the sleeping K’lon. “However, you’d better circulate the news he brought us from the Hall—that the plague doesn’t kill. We must be more wary than ever for our convalescents. No one with the slightest sign of a head cold or even a pimple is to attend the riders.”

  “It’s hard enough to get weyrfolk to tend them,” S’peren remarked.

  “Hmm! Ask the laggards who will tend them in their hour of need?” Leri rolled up the rider lists and stowed them carefully on the shelf beside her. “So, old friend, you’ll bring the good news from the Healer Hall to the Lower Caverns and then tell off the wings which are rising to Fall tomorrow!”

  Healer Hall, 3.15.43

  The light of the many glows that Capiam had ordered to illuminate the tight and fading script of the old ledgers shone harshly on the handsome countenance of Tirone, Masterharper of Pern, who had drawn a chair up to Capiam’s wide writing desk. Tirone was scowling at the healer, a totally uncharacteristic expression on a man renowned for his geniality and expansive good humor. The epidemic—no, one had to state its true proportions, pandemic—had marked everyone, including those lucky enough not to have contracted it.

  Many believed that Tirone bore a charmed life in the pursuit of his duties across the continent. The Harper had been detained on the border between Tillek and the High Reaches on a disputation over mines, which had prevented him from attending the Ruathan Gather. Once the drums had sounded the quarantine, Tirone made his way back to the Hall by runner relays, past holds where the plague had not penetrated and some where the news had not spread. He had a fine old row with Tolocamp to be permitted within the Hold proper, but Tirone’s logic and the fact that he had not entered any infected areas had prevailed. Or had one of the guards told the Masterharper how it was that Lord Tolocamp had returned from Ruatha?

  Tirone had also prevailed on Desdra to permit him to visit the Maste
r Healer.

  “If I don’t get details from you, Capiam, I shall be forced to rely on hearsay and that is not a proper source for a Masterharper.”

  “Tirone, I am not about to die. While I laud your zealous desire for a true and accurate account, I have a more pressing duty!” Capiam raised the ledger. “I may have recovered but I have to find out how to cure or stop this wretched disease before it kills further thousands.”

  “I’m under strict orders not to tire you or Desdra will have my gizzard to grill,” Tirone replied with a jocular smile. “But the facts are that I was woefully out of touch with the Hall at this most critical time. I can’t even get a decent account from the drummaster though I quite appreciate that neither he nor his journeymen had the time to log the messages which came in and out of the tower at such a rate. Tolocamp won’t talk to me though it’s five days since Ruatha Gather . . . and he shows no signs of the illness. So I must have something to go on besides incoherent and confused versions. The perceptions of a trained observer such as yourself are invaluable to the chronicler. I am given to understand that you talked with Talpan at Ista?” Tirone poised his pen above the clean squared sheet of hide.

  “Talpan . . . now there’s the man you should talk to when this is over.”

  “That won’t be possible. Shards! Weren’t you told?” The Harper half-rose from his chair, hand outstretched in sympathy.

  “I’m all right. No, I didn’t know.” Capiam closed his eyes for a moment to absorb that shock. “I suspect they thought it would depress me. It does. He was a fine man, with a quick, clever mind. Herdmaster potential.” Capiam heard another swift intake of breath from Tirone and opened his eyes. “Master Herdsman Trume as well?” And when Tirone nodded confirmation, Capiam steeled himself. So that was why Tirone had been allowed to see him: to break the news. “I think you’d better tell me the rest of the bad news that neither Desdra nor Fortine voiced. It won’t hurt half as much now. I’m numb.”

  “There have been terrible losses, you realize—”

  “Any figures?”

  “At Keroon, nine out of every ten who fell ill have died! At Igen Sea Hold, fifteen were weak but alive when the relief ship from Nerat reached them. We have no totals from surrounding holds in Igen, nor do we know the extent of the epidemic’s spread in Igen, Keroon, or Ruatha. You can be very proud of your Craftsmen and women, Capiam. They did all that was humanly possible to succor the ill . . .

  “And they died, too?” Capiam asked when Tirone’s voice trailed off.

  “They brought honor to your hail.”

  Capiam’s heart thumped slowly in his anguish. All dead? Mibbut, gentle Kylos, the earthy Loreana, earnest Rapal, the bone-setter Sneel, Galnish? All of them? Could it really be only seven days ago that he had first had word of the dreadful sickness? And those he had attended at Keroon and Igen already sick to their deaths with it? Though he was now positive that the plague itself didn’t kill, the living had to face another sort of death, the death of hopes and friendships and what might have been in the futures of those whose lives were abruptly ended. And so near to the promise and freedom of an Interval! Capiam felt tears sliding down his cheeks but they eased the tight constriction in his chest. He let them flow, breathing slowly in and out until his emotions were in hand again. He couldn’t think emotionally; he must think professionally. “Igen Sea Hold held nearly a thousand people; only fifty were ill when I attended them at Burdion’s summons.”

  “Burdion is one of the survivors.”

  “I trust he kept notes for you.” Capiam could not prevent his tone from being savage.

  “I believe he did,” Tirone went on, impervious to the invalid’s bad temper. “The log of the Windtoss is also available.”

  “The captain was dead when I reached the Sea Hold.”

  “Did you see the animal?” Tirone leaned forward slightly, his eyes glinting with the avid curiosity he did not voice.

  “Yes, I saw it!” That image was now seared in Capiam’s memory. The feline had paced restlessly and vividly through his fever dreams and his restless nightmares. Capiam would never forget its snarling face, the white and black whiskers that sprang from its thick muzzle, the brown stains on its tusks, the nicks in its laid-back tufted ears, the dark-brown medallions of its markings that were so fancifully ringed with black and set off in the tawny, shining coat. He could remember its fierce defiance and had even then, when he’d first seen it, conceived the notion that the creature knew perfectly well that it would take revenge on the beings who had restricted it to a cage, who had stared at it in every hold and hail. “Yes, Tirone, I actually saw it. Like hundreds of other people attending Ista Gather. Only I’ve lived to tell the tale. Talpan and I spent twenty minutes observing it while he told me why he thought it had to die. In twenty minutes it probably infected many people even though Talpan was making the gawkers stand well back from the cage. In fact, I probably contracted my dose of the plague there. From the source. Instead of secondhand.” That conclusion afforded Capiam some relief. Made more vulnerable by fatigue, he’d come down with the plague a bare twenty-four hours later. That was better than believing that he had been negligent of hygiene at Igen and Keroon. “Talpan deduced that the animal had to be the cause of the disease already affecting runners from Igen to Keroon. I’d been called to Keroon, too, you see, because so many of their folk were falling ill. I was tracing human contagion, Talpan was tracing runner. We both reached the same conclusion at Ista Gather. The creature was terrified of dragons, you know.”

  “Really?”

  “So I was informed. But K’dall is among the dead at Telgar Weyr and so is his blue dragon.”

  Tirone murmured, all the while writing furiously. “How, then, did the disease get to Southern Boll if the creature was killed at Ista Gather?”

  “You’ve forgotten the weather.”

  “Weather?”

  “Yes, the weather was so mild Keroon Runnerhold started shipping early this winter, the tides and winds being favorable. So Lord Ratoshigan got his breeding stock early and an unexpected bounty. As did several other notable breeders, some of whom attended Ruatha Gather.”

  “Well, that is interesting. Such a devastating concatenation of so many small events.”

  “We should be grateful that Tillek breeds its own and supplies the High Reaches, Crom, and Nabol. That the Keroon-bred runners destined for Benden, Lemos, Bitra, and Nerat either died of the plague or were not herded overland.”

  “The Weyrleaders have issued an interdiction against any travel to the Southern Continent!” Tirone said. “The Ancients had excellent reason for abandoning that place. Too many threats to life.”

  “Get your facts straight, Tirone,” Capiam said, irritated. “Most life here was created and nutured there!”

  “Now, I have never seen that proved to—”

  “Life and its maintenance are my province, Masterharper.” Capiam held up the ancient ledger and waggled it at Tirone. “As the creation and development of life was once the province of our ancestors. The Ancients brought with them from the Southern Continent all the animals we have here with us today, including the dragons which they genetically engineered for their unique purpose.”

  Tirone’s lower jaw jutted slightly, about to dispute.

  “We have lost the skills that the Ancients possessed even though we can refine runners and the herdbeasts for specific qualities. And . . .” Capiam paused, struck by an awful consideration. “And I’m suddenly aware that we are in a double peril right now.” He thought of Talpan and all his bright promise lost, of Master Herdsman Trume, of the captain of the Windtoss, his own dead craftsmen, each with his or her special qualities lost to a swift, mortal illness. “We may have lost a lot more than a coherent account of the progress of a plague, Tirone. And that should worry you far more. It is knowledge as well as life that is being lost all over Pern. What you should be jotting down as fast as you can push your fist is the knowledge, the techniques that are dying in men’
s minds and cannot be recovered.” Capiam waved the Record about, Tirone eyeing it with alarm. “As we can’t recover from all the ledgers and Records of the Ancients exactly how they performed the miracles they did. And it’s not the miracles so much as the working, the day-to-day routine which the Ancients didn’t bother to record because it was common knowledge. A common knowledge that is no longer common. That’s what we’re missing. And we may have lost a lot more of that common knowledge over the past seven days! More than we can ever replace!”

  Capiam lay back, exhausted by his outburst, the Records a heavy weight on his guts. That sense of loss, the pressure of that anxiety, had been growing inside him. That morning, when the lethargy had passed, he had been disquietingly aware of the many facts, practices, and intuitions he had never written down, had never thought to elaborate in his private notes. Ordinarily he would have passed them on to his journeymen as they grasped the complexities of their craft. Some matters he had been told by his masters, which they had gleaned from their tutors or from their working experiences, but the transfer of information and its interpretation had been verbal in all too many instances, passed on to those who would need to know.

  Capiam became aware that Tirone was staring at him. He had not meant to harangue; that was generally Tirone’s function.

  “I could not agree with you more, Capiam,” Tirone began tentatively, pausing to clear his throat. “But people of all ranks and Crafts tend to keep some secrets which—”

  “Shells! Not the drum again!” Capiam buried his head in his hands, pressing his thumbs tightly into his earholes, trying to block the sound.

  Tirone’s expression brightened and he half-rose from the chair, gesturing for Capiam to unplug his ears. “It’s good news. From Igen. Threadfall has been met and all is clear. Twelve wings flew!”

  “Twelve?” Capiam pulled himself up, calculating Igen’s crushing losses and the numbers of its sick riders. “Igen couldn’t have put twelve wings in the air today.”