“I think it’s worth investigating,” Lorana said.
Lorana sprang up from her seat, gave herself an almighty stretch, and said, “Anything to get away from these musty old Records.”
Kindan looked at her quizzically. “Are you accusing me of that sentiment, or admitting it yourself?”
“Both,” Lorana answered, laughing.
“B’nik.”
A voice in his ear and gentle shaking roused the dragonrider. He turned over, coming face-to-face with Tullea, her eyes worried.
“I-” she began, voice low and full of apology.
“Shh,” B’nik said, raising his fingers to her lips in a gesture of understanding. Tullea’s face crumpled and she crushed herself against him.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right, love, it’s all right,” B’nik told her, stroking her graceful neck and clasping her tight to him.
Tullea tensed and pulled back. “But it’s not all right,” she protested, her eyes shiny with tears and her nose running. She shook her head helplessly. “I don’t understand, B’nik-”
B’nik tried to shush her again but she dodged his fingers.
“I never used to be like this,” Tullea continued. “I feel pulled apart, dizzy; I can’t concentrate. I feel out of control all the time, B’nik. And it’s been like this for Turns.”
B’nik nodded sympathetically.
“I want me back,” Tullea cried. “I want to be who I was, not angry all the time.”
She looked into his warm eyes and told him her deepest fear: “And if I lose you, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that.”
M’tal wasn’t in his quarters, nor in the Kitchen Cavern. As they wandered across the Bowl, they found K’tan first and decided to try the idea on him.
“Two more dragons have started coughing this morning,” he told them as they approached. “That makes seven more since the last Fall.”
“Nearly two a day,” Kindan observed. “How long from the start of the cough until…”
“Death?” K’tan finished. He shook his head. “Two, maybe three sevendays.”
Lorana eyed the walls of the Bowl above them, picking out each individual weyr. She spotted one dragon lolling with its neck extended out over the ledge of its weyr, saw it sneeze and send a cloud of green ooze spraying down and out across the Bowl. She pointed at it.
“It may not be the way it starts to spread,” she said to the others, “but do we know if the latest sick are close by or under those already infected?”
K’tan gasped in surprise. “I hadn’t thought of that before.”
“I hadn’t either,” Lorana admitted.
Kindan raised his hands. “Nor I.”
K’tan stroked his chin thoughtfully. “But if you’re right, then we need to isolate the sick ones on the lowest levels.”
Lorana shook her head. “That won’t work,” she said. When the other two looked at her in surprise, she explained, “Because the riders still have to walk across the Bowl-and the dragons wash in the lake.”
“They could be getting it from the waters of the lake, then, couldn’t they?” Kindan said, with an apologetic look at Lorana for countering her theory.
Lorana’s shoulders slumped.
“They could. For that matter, they all eat the same food. The contagion could be spread through the herdbeasts.”
“There’s a map of the weyrs in the Weyrleader’s quarters, I believe,” K’tan said. “Given that any of these theories could be right, wouldn’t it make sense to see if we spot the pattern Lorana suggested?”
“It might,” Lorana agreed. “But if the weyrs aren’t grouped by wings, it probably won’t.”
K’tan gave her a questioning look.
“The dragons could infect each other while they’re training,” she explained sadly.
Kindan groaned. “So we’re no nearer than we were.”
K’tan shook his head. “No, I think there’s some progress-we have a number of good ideas we can follow.” He looked at Lorana. “When your father dealt with sick herdbeasts, what did he do?”
Lorana started to marshal the list of actions in her mind. Seeing that she was preparing a lengthy response, he interrupted her with an upraised palm.
“I mean, what did he do first?”
“He tried to isolate the sick from the healthy,” she said immediately. And then, as she registered the import of the words, she groaned. “Why didn’t we think of this earlier?”
“Because we’ve been too near the problem,” K’tan answered swiftly. “We’ve been too busy dealing with Thread and the day-to-day battle with the sickness.” He shook his head sadly. “M’tal’s off training.”
“Not anymore,” Lorana declared. “I just called Gaminth back.”
Kindan whistled in surprise at her forwardness.
“Now that’s acting like a Weyrwoman,” K’tan said approvingly.
“You were right to call me back,” M’tal said to Lorana when they had explained their purpose. “Fighting this illness is just as important as fighting Thread.”
They were gathered in the Council Room. At M’tal’s invitation, Salina had joined them. Kindan gave M’tal and Salina a quick review of their thinking.
Salina pointed to a slate chart and said, “Here’re the assignments for the riders.” She looked it over and sighed. “I’m afraid it’s not very up-to-date.”
She laid it on the table and the others looked it over. It was arranged by levels, with quarters numbered from the Weyrleader’s weyr.
K’tan found some colored chalks. He circled in red all those weyrs occupied by dragons that had gone between, and in yellow all those who were coughing.
Lorana pursed her lips unhappily. “That tells us how things are now,” she said. “What we want to know is the progression of the sickness.”
“Mm.” K’tan agreed. He went back and started putting numbers beside each illness. Salina’s Breth was, sadly, number one.
“But there were others sick before Breth,” Salina noted.
K’tan grunted agreement, dusted off some numbers and corrected them. They peered at the final arrangement.
“I don’t see a pattern,” Kindan said.
“Well, there wouldn’t be,” M’tal said after a long moment’s silence. “If the sickness is airborne and carried in the dragons’ sneezes, then the sickness would sink down into the Bowl. Because every dragon comes down to the Bowl at some point, they would breathe in the infected air.”
“Although some dragons sleep lower down and would be exposed to the infected air more,” K’tan commented.
M’tal accepted this point with a shrug.
“If the disease was spread by water, then every dragon would have an equal chance of catching it,” Kindan observed. He pointed to the distribution of the sick dragons. “The upper levels are less infected than the lower ones, so perhaps it is an airborne sickness.”
“You can’t rule out something in their food, either,” Salina countered.
Kindan nodded.
M’tal looked up at Lorana. “Gaminth said you had a plan. What was it?”
Lorana paused before answering. “I noticed repeated references to Fort Weyr. It seems that every time the Weyrleader encounters something extraordinary, there’s a trip made to Fort-”
“No,” M’tal said shaking his head. “I can guess what you’re thinking and we can’t risk it. No one knows how the sickness spreads and we don’t want to spread-”
“But the fact that more dragons have gotten sick since we imposed the quarantine indicates that however the sickness was first acquired, it’s being spread by our own dragons now,” K’tan interjected.
“Maybe our dragons can’t get sicker,” M’tal said, “but we can’t say whether Fort Weyr’s dragons could.” He shook his head. “It’s a risk I don’t want to take. And I can’t ask K’lior to take it, especially as he’s fighting his first Fall tomorrow.”