“I was explaining the sequencing differences between the dragons and the fire-lizards,” Wind Blossom told her daughter calmly. After a pause, she added with only the slightest hint of a purr in her voice, “Were you enjoying the end of Pass festivities?”
Emorra thought that over before responding. “I’m drunk,” she declared.
“So I had gathered,” Wind Blossom said frostily.
“What’s it like?” Tieran asked, eyes wide with interest. “I’ve never been drunk,” he admitted. Hastily, he added, “Yet.”
“I think it’ll hurt in the morning,” Emorra admitted, her face still red. Why in the world would I ever have thought that my mother and Tieran were… ardent about anything, Emorra berated herself. “Why worry about the sequencing?” she asked, trying to sound normal.
“We’re looking for common immune system limitations,” Tieran explained.
Emorra blinked, thinking. “The infection?”
“I was hoping we could prove that it couldn’t cross to dragons,” Tieran said.
Emorra cocked her head, questioningly.
“We are still working on it,” Wind Blossom added pointedly.
“It’s the end of the Pass-haven’t you got anything better to do?” Emorra blurted. “Alcohol blunts inhibitions and slows reasoning,” she remembered as her brain processed the words her mouth had just uttered.
“Like what?” Wind Blossom asked.
“Like-like… well, you’re too old!” Emorra said. Clasping her hand to her head in frustration at her own stupidity, she turned around and stomped away.
“Alcohol reduces sexual function,” Emorra recalled with infuriating clarity as she strode away. Hmmph!
“It was bacterial in nature,” Wind Blossom repeated. “The general spectrum antibiotic knocked it out.”
“Didn’t you teach me not to jump to conclusions?” Janir asked. “Isn’t it also possible that the bacterial infection was a secondary infection that took advantage of the compromised immune system, just like Tieran said?”
“So you’re arguing that we only knocked out the secondary infection, giving the fire-lizard’s immune system a chance to handle the primary infection,” Emorra suggested. They were gathered in one of the classrooms at Wind Blossom’s invitation.
“Exactly,” Janir agreed.
“Wind Blossom and I agree that it really can’t be proved either way,” Tieran said, with an apologetic look toward the old geneticist. “But what can be proved is that the antibiotics saved Grenn’s life.” The little brown fire-lizard gave Tieran an approving chirp.
“Grenn?” Janir asked.
“That’s what he’s named the fire-lizard,” Wind Blossom explained, waving a hand toward Tieran.
“No, that’s the name that was on his bead harness,” Tieran corrected. “It’s the name he was given by his original owner.”
Emorra’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have that harness?”
Tieran nodded. He drew it out of the pouch he had hanging over his shoulder. “Right here.”
“May I see it?” she asked, extending a hand. Tieran handed it over, not without misgivings. He didn’t know if he was more afraid that Emorra would be immediately able to identify Grenn’s owner by the beads, or that she wouldn’t. Emorra was studying the beadwork carefully.
“This symbol here-do you see it?” she asked, holding the harness up to the others. “What do you make of it?”
“There’s the caduceus of Aesculapius,” Janir said. “The standard symbol for medicine-”
“Or a doctor,” Emorra interjected. She peered more closely at the beadwork. “But what’s beneath it?”
“It looks like some sort of animal,” Tieran suggested tentatively.
“But it’s hard to tell,” Janir complained.
Emorra looked at them all. “I just received a message from Igen, detailing a plan to begin a beadworks,” she told them. “To my knowledge, there were no beads brought over from Landing, nor any that landed with the original settlers.”
She fingered the small beads sewn into the fire-lizard’s harness.
“These beads should not exist.”
“Really, Mother,” Emorra said, “you and that boy!”
“He is not a boy,” Wind Blossom countered. “He is nineteen!”
Emorra tossed the correction off with a wave of her hand. “Are you so desperate to make amends with him that you’d deprive someone else of their fire-lizard?” she sniffed. “That’s beneath you, you know.”
“Emorra, it’s been two months since the fire-lizard appeared,” Wind Blossom replied. “I would have thought that if anyone was missing a fire-lizard, we would have heard of it at the College by now.
“You can’t deny that the fire-lizard was sick with an illness we haven’t seen before,” she continued.
Emorra grimaced. The fire-lizard had been ill. Both fire-lizards had been ill. Clearly they had caught the disease somewhere. If they could get it, so could other fire-lizards. If the fire-lizards could get it, then perhaps the dragons. Possibly the day of planet-wide disaster she had been fearing was just around the corner. Although, it could be that the disease was rare, or propagated slowly, or its method of transmission…
“Were you asking people if they’d lost one or two fire-lizards?” she asked abruptly.
“Tieran’s drum message asked if anyone was missing a gold or brown fire-lizard,” Wind Blossom answered.
“Did you mention the illness?” Emorra asked, trying to recall the drum messages that had been sent while they were in quarantine.
“Not in connection with the fire-lizards,” Wind Blossom said. “But we had to have a reason for the quarantine. It’s a wonder that more people haven’t been asking, putting two and two together. In fact, I’m rather surprised that-”
The sound of a dragon arriving cut her short.
“I would have expected him sooner,” Wind Blossom said, glancing out the window to confirm the arrival of M’hall from Benden Weyr.
“Maybe he had better things to do,” Emorra said waspishly.
“Maybe he didn’t wish to infect his dragon,” Wind Blossom returned imperturbably. She started out to greet the bronze rider, then turned back to ask Emorra, “Did you want to come along?”
Emorra shook her head. “No, I’ve got a class to teach.”
Wind Blossom met M’hall just inside the archway of the College.
“I was hoping to meet you,” M’hall said as he caught sight of her.
“And I had been expecting you,” Wind Blossom answered with a courteous nod. She gestured toward the kitchen. “Shall we see if Moira has anything for a Weyrleader fresh from between?”
M’hall smiled. “Yes, please!”
Moira did, indeed, have a fresh pot of klah and some scones still warm from the oven. “There’s butter, too,” she said. “Alandro’s gone to fetch it.”
“Many thanks!” M’hall replied, taking the tray and finding a quiet alcove. Once seated, he poured for both of them and waited until Alandro arrived with the butter. They each had a hot buttered scone. That done, M’hall got right to it: “Tell me about these fire-lizards and your medical emergency.”
Wind Blossom repeated the events as best she could. When she was done, M’hall leaned back slowly on his bench and sighed. Then he straightened again, buttered another scone, and ate in thoughtful silence.
“And the beadwork? No one on Pern now could have made it?” he asked at last.
“So Emorra informs me,” Wind Blossom said. She waved a hand in a throwaway gesture. “Of course, beads are such tiny things that they may have come across from Landing uninventoried.”
M’hall snorted. “Not from what I’ve heard of Joel Lilienkamp! Rumor has it that he hand-counted each nail that he came across. I can’t see how he’d miss beads.”