The Alton Gift

  For a moment, all the sorrows of the world settled over Domenic’s shoulders. His laran senses picked up a faint groaning, as if the planet itself echoed his sentiments. The sky shimmered, layer upon layer of veiling clouds, and the grasses bowed down in the fitful breeze.

  How many more unmarked graves would there be in the days to come?

  After Marilla’s funeral, Danilo rode out to the encampment outside the Thendara gates. The site was much larger than he expected, having swelled as the plague claimed more victims. His saddlebags held packets of herbal remedies, willow bark tea to reduce fevers, golden-flower to aid sleep, and firenze blossom poultices to soothe bed sores. He could have sent someone else, but he wanted to see for himself how the rotation of matrix healers that he and Darius-Mikhail organized had worked out.

  Within the patchwork pavilion, men huddled under blankets in neat rows. Other men, and women too, crouched beside the pallets, sponging foreheads or spooning out cups of broth.

  At the far end Alanna knelt by a makeshift bed. She wore an old gray gown and had covered her bright hair with a plain head scarf. So intent was she on her work that she did not see Danilo as he slipped past the door flap. Closing her eyes, she pulled the blanket over the face of her patient. She sat back, her hands loose across her lap, looking too exhausted to weep.

  Varinna, from the city matrix mechanics, came forward to greet Danilo. She too looked tired, but infused with a new pride and purpose. The edge of defensiveness had left her features. She and her colleagues had, at long last, been recognized as skilled and valued professionals by the assembled Keepers.

  Varinna accepted the packets of herbs with a smile. “These are always welcome! Menella!” she called to a woman tending the sick, a Renunciate by her breeches and neatly cropped hair.

  “Our thanks, Dom Danilo,” the Renunciate, a plain-faced woman of middle years, said. “Our supply of willow bark is almost gone. We have been trying to control the worst fevers, for some believe it is the heat and not the disease itself that kills. Often the body burns itself out before it can recover.”

  “We have lost several who I think might have lived if their strength had not been depleted,” Varinna added.

  Danilo knew little of healing, but what Menella said made sense. “Jeram had word that a friend of his had fallen ill and asked me to check on him—Ulm, I think he is called. Which one is he?”

  Varinna’s smile brightened even more. “Come, see for yourself.”

  Outside the tent, a crude awning had been cobbled together of tattered bits of cloth, enough to keep off the midday sun. An old man sat on an improvised camp chair in the dappled shade, a blanket tucked around his legs. As they drew near, Danilo noticed the pallor beneath the grizzled beard, the hollowed cheeks. The old man turned his head at their approach, eyes bright beneath shaggy gray brows, and lifted one hand in greeting.

  This man was sick…and is now recovering!

  “He is our first success,” Varinna said with a hint of triumph in her voice, “although I cannot claim sole credit. I suspect he was simply too stubborn to let a deadly plague get the better of him.”

  “Watch who you’re calling stubborn, for ’tis much like the ember complaining of the fire’s heat,” Ulm replied. His voice was thin with an undertone like granite. Danilo liked him immediately. “And who have you brought to torment me today?”

  “I am Danilo Syrtis, and I am more glad than I can say to see you well.”

  Ulm’s eyes narrowed as if he were considering whether the man before him, slight of build and dressed simply, might indeed be a Comyn lord. The moment of doubt passed. The old man pawed at the lap robe and struggled to rise.

  Varinna insisted that Ulm remain seated. “You stay put, do you hear? None of this popping up and down! I won’t have you relapse on me, you recalcitrant old chervine. Nursing you once was enough, but twice would be an insult.”

  As he settled back in his chair, Ulm peered up at Danilo. A wink twitched the corner of one eye. “I’d best mind her, m’lord. She’d got a tongue as sharp as a banshee’s beak.”

  “Mind your own wagging tongue,” Varinna responded, clearly enjoying the repartee. She tucked the blanket back into place and went inside the tent, leaving the two men to continue their conversation.

  Danilo dragged over a square-cut log and set it on one end for an improvised stool. “Your friend Jeram will be pleased to hear of your recovery.”

  “Aye, he’s been so concerned about his old friends, he has not set foot in this camp. Not that I complain, for what could he do here? Best that he keep to his own business—but he has not taken with the fever? Or fallen afoul of the Council?”

  “Jeram is well, I assure you,” Danilo said. “He is even now in the laboratories at the Terran Base, searching for a cure.”

  And you, my friend, may well be the key.

  “Cure?” Ulm fell silent for a moment. “Now, then, that would be a thing indeed, even greater than flying through the stars.”

  “Jeram seeks your help in this,” Danilo said.

  “Mine? What can an old man like me do, who never sets foot off my mountain except to buy a bit of salt or a few ribbons for my wife? Is it with nuts and firewood, or wild chervines perhaps, that you aim to defeat this thing?”

  “No, no,” Danilo said, smiling in spite of himself. “Jeram can explain it himself. In this matter, my own understanding is as poor as that of the chervines you spoke of. Are you well enough to ride, or shall I send for a litter?”

  Ulm said the only way he would be carried while lying down was after he was dead, and as for a horse, none would suit him better than his own pony. Varinna objected strenuously to Ulm going anywhere but back to his own bed. It took all of Danilo’s diplomatic tact to convince her of the urgency. In the end, Ulm declared that useful work was the best medicine, and Varinna relented. Even so, she insisted that Ulm rest while his son saddled his pony.

  Before they left, Danilo went back inside the pavilion to speak with Alanna. She had gone on to tending another patient. She held a basin of herb-infused water and a damp cloth on her lap.

  “Chiya,” he said gently, “there was nothing more anyone could have done for that patient. Do not blame yourself.”

  She looked up from sponging the forehead of a sick woman, all the fire in her green eyes quenched. The woman burst out coughing, bringing up gobbets of blood-flecked sputum. Alanna waited until the fit had passed and then gently wiped the woman’s lips and face.

  “How long has it been since you slept?” Danilo asked. Alanna shrugged. “You return to the Castle at night for a hot meal and your own bed, do you not?”

  Alanna shook her head. “I make up a pallet in the corner. Do not scowl at me. I must be near if one of the patients needs me.”

  “Child, you must rest, or you will become ill yourself.”

  She shot him a fierce look. “Now is when these people need my help, and I will not sit idly by while they suffer.”

  “Alanna—”

  “No, I will hear no more!” she cried, with a passion that surprised him. In her words, Danilo heard something more than stubbornness or pride. Desperation, certainly. Despair?

  “Stay then,” he said, knowing that nothing he said would change her mind, “and may the gods watch over you.”

  Danilo expected that even the short journey from the shanty camp would tire the old man, but for most of it, Ulm seemed as comfortable on his shaggy mountain pony as sitting in a chair. The placid beast, a blue roan with a lopsided star on its forehead, stepped along with almost no need for rein or spur. The two seemed to understand one another perfectly.

  Ulm chuckled at Danilo’s concern and said that being up and doing was as good medicine as any. Danilo agreed, but he noticed that Ulm clung a little more tightly to the pommel of his saddle as they passed the city gates.

  The Terran Base was strange and forbidding even to a man in good health, so Danilo persuaded Ulm to visit his own chambers in the Castle while someone we
nt to fetch Jeram. A short time later, warmed by a small summer fire and plied with hot soup and even more spiced cider, Ulm nodded off.

  Watching the old man sleep, Danilo remembered spending many hours in the very same chair. He had felt old and useless, corroded from within by unremitting grief.

  Ulm is right. The best medicine is knowing you are needed, that it matters whether you live or die.

  Danilo roused from his meditation at a tapping at the door. As Jeram entered, Danilo raised a finger to his lips and pointed at Ulm, now snoring gently.

  Frowning, Jeram hissed, “I didn’t mean for you to drag him from his sick bed!”

  “He’s only tired out from the ride,” Danilo whispered back. “There was no time to be lost, and he refused a litter.”

  “What’s that?” Ulm straightened up with a start and looked about. “Jeram! It’s a sight to see you! I was only resting my eyes.”

  Jeram crossed to the old man and took his hand. “It is good to see you, my friend.”

  “Aye, laddie, though you’re no vision of beauty yourself.”

  Jeram grinned. Purplish shadows rimmed his eyes, and he was in obvious need of a shave.

  Danilo said firmly, “I did not bring this man here for a social call but because he has recovered.”

  For a long moment, Jeram stared at Ulm. Realization dawned. Jeram’s eyes widened. He whispered something in Terran Standard, a prayer of thanks perhaps.

  “Is this true, Ulm?” Jeram said. “You are well again?”

  “Aye to that as well, although a bit wobbly in the legs. It takes more than a spot of fever to put me in my grave.”

  From the heavy wooden sideboard, Danilo brought Jeram a mug of cider, still warm and aromatic. “I said only that you needed him. I thought it better that you explain why.”

  “Some nonsense about finding a cure,” Ulm said. “The Lady from Nevarsin tended me, and what more could any man ask? The gods willed that I live, and so I have.”

  “Perhaps it was the will of the gods,” Jeram said carefully, “but how they went about accomplishing this miracle is something we men may do as well. I will try to explain.”

  Jeram took the chair Danilo indicated. The leather upholstery creaked comfortably under his weight. He took a sip of the cider, grimaced, and set the mug down on the low table. “We talk about fighting the fever, as if it were an army we could defeat. In a way, it is. A tiny one, with many thousands of soldiers, and the battlefield is your own blood.”

  Ulm glanced down at his chest with a skeptical expression, but uttered no protest.

  “To defeat this army,” Jeram went on, “your body creates its own soldiers. Sometimes the defenders are too few and too late. In your case, however, they were strong and clever. They won. Should the enemy attempt another invasion, they would be instantly ready.”

  Now Ulm nodded in understanding. “’Tis said that any man who lives through the trailmen’s fever cannot fall sick from it again. And there are other illnesses—patchfoot in chervines—that are the same way.”

  “Yes, a case of the fever confers lifelong immunity. Now, you know I am Terranan and have training in their science. What I mean to do, with your permission, is to create enough of these soldiers to protect other patients. A mercenary army, if you like, that we can send anywhere.”

  Ulm’s expression was so incredulous that Danilo thought if the speaker had been anyone but Jeram, the old man would have laughed in his face. Danilo suggested that if Ulm had rested enough, they might all go to the laboratory, where Ulm might see for himself. The old man agreed, and they left the Castle for the Terran Base.

  The Medical Center churned with activity. Worktables filled Jeram’s laboratory, slabs of flat black set on frameworks of gleaming metal and covered with racks of the most flawless glassware Danilo had ever seen. Tubing connected various beakers and flasks, transparent corkscrews and vats. Some contained colorless liquids, others held what appeared to be weak broth, but Danilo doubted that was what it really was. A team of men, and some women, too—Renunciates and Marguerida’s friend, Katherine—moved about the laboratory, operating small devices, measuring liquids with graduated tubes, mixing powders.

  “Zandru’s frozen backside,” Ulm muttered. “Who would have thought such a place existed?”

  One of the workers broke off what he was doing and hurried toward them. “Jeram! Praise Aldones, you’re back. The protease sequencer is down to sixty percent efficiency, and as near as I can make out, the reagent’s contaminated. It’ll take two days to synthesize another batch—”

  “It’s all right, Ethan,” Jeram said, patting the young man on the shoulder, “I’ll look at it in a minute. Come this way, Ulm, and you, too, Dom Danilo.” He led them to a quieter corner of the room. The wall-mounted shelving held various strange devices of metal, plastic and glass. A table-high freestanding cabinet doubled as storage and workspace. “Your body, Ulm, has done in a few days what it would take weeks—tendays, I mean—with all this equipment.”

  Ulm looked blank, so Danilo asked, if that were true, why did so many die?

  “Because this is a particularly virulent agent,” Jeram said. “It acts so fast and generates such a high fever that most people don’t have time to produce enough antibodies.”

  “So they die first?” Danilo said.

  Jeram placed a chair beside the cabinet and gestured for Ulm to sit. “If we could keep the patients alive long enough, more might recover. That’s one of the approaches we’ve been trying, medicines that slow down the rate of viral replication. Now,” he looked at Ulm, “we can use your antibodies as a template—a set of instructions—so we can give sick people the same level of immune response they would eventually develop. If we do it right, they will then pass on an attenuated, harmless form of the virus.”

  Ulm looked confused and frightened. His gaze flickered over the room, its strange equipment, the bustle of incomprehensible activity. Danilo, who had years of encounters with off-worlders, did not understand half the things Jeram said. How could Ulm comprehend what was asked of him? How could he give consent?

  “This will only take a minute.” Jeram told Ulm to sit while he rummaged in the shelves and brought out a flat box covered with panels of dark glass. He set the box on the cabinet and touched the panels along its side. An array of colored lights winked across its top surface.

  Danilo knew something of Terran medicine. Giving a sample of blood was neither dangerous nor painful. With his laran, he sensed the old man’s bewilderment shift toward terror.

  Gently, Danilo took Ulm by the arm. “Let me go first. Jeram, you will take some of my blood and explain to Ulm what you are doing.”

  “Vai dom!” Ulm, stunned, blurted out. “You must not bleed for me!”

  Danilo hushed him with a gesture, then sat quietly as Jeram rolled up his sleeve and went about taking the sample. He was not afraid of shedding his own blood; he would have given it all, and his very life, to defend Regis.

  The procedure was accomplished in a few minutes, and then Ulm took Danilo’s place. The whitened eyebrows lifted slightly at the touch of the automated tourniquet, but otherwise Ulm gave no sign of any distress.

  “Is that all there is to it?” Ulm asked, rolling down his sleeve.

  “To your part, yes,” Jeram said. “Our work will be fractionating and analyzing the sample you’ve given us. Once we’ve programmed the sequencers, the computers will do the rest. Ulm, I can’t tell you how grateful I am—we all are. If this works, you will have saved thousands of lives all over Darkover.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Ulm said, looking uncomfortable.

  “Speaking for the Comyn Council as well as myself, we stand in your debt,” Danilo said. “Will you accept the hospitality of the Castle?”

  Ulm shook his head. “No, what would I do in such a place? Besides, Rannirl will fret if I’m not back soon. My place is in the camp, and then home before snow closes the passes.”

  “You came to Then
dara for help,” Danilo said, “and you will not return empty-handed. Let us at least show our gratitude.”

  For a moment, Ulm’s expression took on the aspect of a hawk newly freed from its hood. “Never came asking for gratitude. Only justice. Only what’s due.”

  Danilo had handled birds of prey as a boy, and he recognized the flash of pride. Any further offers would only shame this proud old man. “Then let me ride with you back to your people at the camp,” he said gravely, “while you explain to me exactly what the matter is, that you came to Thendara for your rights.”

  37

  Jeram had been full of optimism at first, for the immune serum he extracted from Ulm’s blood performed perfectly in both test tube and computer simulations. When he tried to synthesize it, however, he met with dismal failure. Something in the sample, some incorrigible trace of biochemical chaos, defied replication.

  He ran the protein assembly program four times and came up with four different and equally useless results. Each seemed to make sense, but when he tested them, the proteins were physiologically inert. He didn’t think the molecular assemblers were at fault, so the problem must lie in the information he fed into them.

  In the laboratory, Jeram stared at the computer screen, his eyes watering with the strain of a second night on double-strength coffee instead of sleep, and restrained himself from putting his fist through it. At least then he would be doing something, instead of retrying the same futile tests.

  Jeram cleared the screen and leaned back. The chair creaked under his weight. In an instant, he became aware that he was not alone in the laboratory. He turned his head, his neck joints popping.

  Marguerida stood at the door, wrapped in a thick shawl, earthy green wool knitted in interlocking cable stitches. “When was the last time you slept?”

  “Domna, don’t badger me. I need a miracle, not a mother.”

  “Point taken.” She gave a self-deprecating smile and brought up a second chair. “Now, tell me what’s going on.”