Mr. Hollin had been up and down the river since the quarantine was lifted five days ago, checking for plague outbreaks among the residents of tiny posts and farmsteads from the mountains above Cyrion all the way to the coast, making sure they had been inoculated and reassuring everyone that trade would continue uninterrupted with only minor precautions against contagion.
Annia had spent a few nights at his home downriver from the town, but a house felt strange—so much space—thirty square meters—and just Ferus and Annia to fill it.
The plague cure had been propagated to the edges of known space with lightships carrying cases of the DV to the furthest worlds with populations numbering in the mere hundreds and no way to manufacture it themselves. Admiral Hirshhorn had arranged for Annia to be registered as a United Worlds citizen and negotiated for the Federation to release her from indenture and to cancel the search for the stolen clones, who were worthless anyway since their alteration. Annia herself was more-or-less worthless to the Federation as well since her "stolen" data was now virtually public property.
But not entirely public. The Charmmes research labs under Ethan-George had, indeed, tried to patent the cure under the Charmmes name. Apparently, there had been a butting of heads between Mother Katha and Ethan-George, but Mother Louise, the head of the Charmmes family, had intervened and registered the patent under Annia's name. She now received a modest payment from every world that purchased the cure for its population. Modest, by Charmmes standards, was apparently enough to purchase...well, a lot.
Annia didn't want to be wealthy. She wanted to be able to sit on the dock on the lake watching Cho'en hunt eels for dinner and smelling woodsmoke and hearing Tora and Liam training and Maycee telling them not to kill each other or knock the fences down with their exuberance. She didn't even want to replace her emergency shelter with a more permanent home. The shelter had everything she needed for comfort, and Ferus' house was as permanent as she could deal with at the moment, and the hospital had everything she needed to keep busy once she had recovered enough to do more than sit and doze. She wanted to see if her virophage could be adapted to attack any virus other than the plague.
She tried to sit on the deck in front of Maycee and Cho'en's shelter and read. Mr. Hollin had brought her a reader to download the latest medical texts from the universal database. She ignored the one written by Ethan-George Charmmes detailing the history of the Century Plague and its relationship to modern DV technology. She found one instead on management and correction of a new psychosis appearing in an XX96538-26 series of sex-workers. When she tried to lose herself in the text, however, the silence around her seemed to swallow her up.
A loud rap on the gate startled her, and she dropped the reader.
"Annia," Dess called. "Are you here? Tora said to bring him here instead of the hospital."
Annia stepped out onto the raised deck. Mr. Bracx tried to wave to her. He flinched. Annia could see the swelling around his wrist and forearm from where she stood.
Dess said, "We think it's only a sprain. Colonel thought it wouldn't be too much for you."
Another handful of Tora's militia came in behind them. Dess said, "And she said you wouldn't feel up to cooking yet, so we brought our midday meal to you."
"I'll get my kit." When Annia came out of the shelter carrying her EMK, Mr. Bracx sat straddling the bench at the long plank table with his forearm planted on the tabletop. The rest of the militia were laying out bread and meat and soft cheese. Ms. Stamos was raiding the garden for sweet-leaf and crunchy vine fruit.
Annia scanned the arm. A simple sprain. Painful but easily repaired with a little glue and anti-inflammatory.
"How are you feeling?" Lize asked. She set a roll of stuffed bread beside Annia. "Tora seemed to think you weren't up to anything strenuous."
"Tora isn't a doctor."
Lize smiled. "No point arguing with her. The hospital is running in top shape with all the Maycee clones and Cho'en's people. A red-headed Maycee came down to the clinic and threw a fit over the equipment. There's one of the two-leg Gaeans there now.
"How are the Procreationists?" Annia asked.
"They lost a lot of kids," Dess answered. "And a lot of what the Colonel has us doing now is suppressing backlash from the community for their role in the outbreak."
Annia sprayed Mr. Bracx's arm with a layer of gel-cast to hold it immobile for a few hours while the sprain finished healing.
Lize said, "The real fundamentalists are moving upriver into the mountains. They're setting up camp there and starting up farming. I doubt they know anything about growing crops, but the machinery mostly manages that part anyway."
"Some are moving east into the hills for the same reason," Dess added. "The rest are sticking it out. Younger families mostly."
"Feels better," Mr. Bracx said. He tried to flex his fingers, but Annia had put an inhibitor inside the cast. The tendons needed to rest completely until they finished healing.
Annia finally sent her EMK back to her shelter and ate her bread roll, listening to the militia, smiling at their jokes, nodding when Ms. Stamos asked her if she wanted a pint of cider.
She had her back to the water, so the first she knew of activity on the dock beyond the trees was when Dess waved a hand and shouted, "Hey, Mr. Hollin. You're in time for midday."
Annia turned and tried to climb out of her place on the bench without falling backward.
"Whoa, Ms. Annia. No need to be in such a hurry."
Ferus leaned over her, resting both hands on the table and bent so he could kiss her. "Ms. Maycee gone already? We tried to get downstream fast enough to catch them for a good-bye before they went. What's on the table?" He squeezed between Annia and Mr. Bracx and reached for a bread roll.
Puffy's squeal warned Annia that Mr. Groche's had moored his ship and come up the boardwalk. Then Pachyderm's big pink fore-segments landed on the table with a thump and a scrabble of toe-feet, and its proboscis engulfed Lize's half-eaten roll, which she had put down in front of her.
"Hey now, you big worm, get off." Mr. Groche dragged his pet off the table and heaved it onto the top of the fence where it exchanged clicks and squeals of challenge with Puffy and the more dominant of Annia's catpils. "I'll have one of those if there's plenty," Mr. Groche announced.
Ferus drapped his arm around Annia's shoulders which enabled her to lean into his ribs which felt good since she was already getting tired again.
Tora strode through the gate on Annia's side of the lot with Mr. Ventnor. She scanned Annia. "Sleep cycle," she said.
Annia meant to protest, but Ferus preceded her. "Not right this minute, Ms. Miraz. I'll get her all tucked up in bed when we get home."
Tora huffed and glowered, but Ms. Stamos distracted her with a bread roll, and she allowed the modification to her orders.
Ferus breathed into her hairline. "Come on along, Ms. Annia, if you sit up much longer, you won't be able to walk as far as the boat."
She did wake up long enough to walk down to the dock and climb on the boat. Mr. Groche didn't submerge the vessel, so she sat on the deck, resting her back on Ferus' chest with his arms around her, and watching sunlight slide along the surface of the river, broken by the occasional boil of eels. Out in the center of the channel, the green-scaled backs and flicking wingtips of the giant manta-fish made little splashes as they spied for bird-flies.
Ferus' house came into view around a bend, a wood-shingled bungalow with tall windows reflecting the mountains with the minarets and spires of Cyrion city by their feet. Bird-flies swooped at the eaves, and a clutter of catpils waited for them on the dock.
"Ought to build on a bit now there's two of us under the roof full time," he said thoughtfully.
"Full time?" Annia didn't know exactly how she felt about that. She had just gotten used to having a home in her cool green lot full of catpils and the cottony pollen carriers from the trees and the smell of water from the lake beyond the trees. She balked at the thought of having her roo
ts pulled.
"Well, you never did ask me to set up householding with you all formal and legal, but I took it you were just shy."
Ferus' house had trees around it and catpils and the smell of water. She said, "Growing up in dorms, you don't feel like you have a home. Ever since I got here, I've been expecting the Black Man to come and take me back to Ifni."
He rubbed his cheek against her temple. "Yetfurther won't give you up without a fuss."
She pulled his arms tighter around her. She would even make a deal with the Black Man if she had to.
Ferus said, "Settle down for a bit, get your feet back under you, read your journals, take a few trips with me—there's people in the settlements and over on the little continent who wouldn't say no to some doctoring here and there. Life’s like that. There's always yetfurther, and if you stand still a bit, all that yetfurther will come back to fetch you."
He waved his hand at the approaching dock. "How about we call that Farenough for now. Then we'll see what comes back from the yetfurther and decide how we feel about it when it gets here."
The boat bumped up against the dock. Candy and Honeybear—who got along like long-lost tangle-mates—rippled up out of the hatch and over the deck and onto the planks. Annia had tried to find Honeybear’s original owners. The child, Rhea, had been one of the first to develop the active virus. She had almost certainly died in the early days of the outbreak. Annia tried not to think about that. Especially at night before she fell asleep.
The two catpils dove into the squirming, clicking mass of Ferus' resident catpils. Pachyderm's head emerged from the hatch, then its mid-portion appeared, draped over Mr. Groche's shoulders. The captain said, "You don't mind if I don't stay. My wife is waiting downstream, and I'll be back with fiber bales and ocean eel in a five-day or so."
"Best to your wife, Mr. Groche." Ferus boosted Annia onto the dock. The catpils twined around her feet, rearing up to be petted until he swept them aside so he could stand beside her.
Mr. Groche backed the boat out into the current, closed the hatch and submerged. Annia said, "Are you really going to call this place Farenough?"
"Don't see why not."
That would do, she supposed. She could stay here in the farenough for a while, and eventually, when she was ready, maybe something would come back from the yetfurther to find her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Farenough: Strangers Book 2 Page 34