“Oh, sorry,” Kindan said absently, dropping his hands to his lap. A moment later, one was up again as he took another mouthful of oatmeal. Shortly after that, both of Kindan’s hands were on the tabletop again, tapping softly.
Lorana gave him a look but shook her head.
“Kin-” Ketan began again, but Salina’s look cut him short. The ex-Weyrwoman was looking intently at Kindan’s fingers.
Lorana noticed her look and frowned, closing her eyes in concentration. A moment later, she opened them again and exclaimed delightedly to Kindan, “You did it! You learned the sequence!”
Kindan, startled out of his reverie, gave her a surprised look. “I did?” he asked. As her words registered, he shook his head. “No, I was just practicing some drum codes…” His voice trailed off thoughtfully. “The drum codes are sounds.”
“But they’re grouped the same way as the PNA sequences,” Lorana insisted. Tentatively, she tapped out a sequence and then looked challengingly at Kindan.
“That was the START sequence,” Lorana said.
“No, it was the ATTENTION sequence,” Kindan corrected her. He frowned in thought and quickly tapped a different sequence. “What’s this?”
“That’s the STOP sequence,” Lorana answered promptly.
“It’s the END sequence for the drum codes,” Kindan told her. “What’s this?” He tapped a set of sequences.
“ABC, CBA, BCA,” Lorana translated.
“You’re right! PNA is based on drum codes!” Kindan declared.
“I’d say it’s the other way around,” Ketan remarked after a moment.
Kindan frowned. “I suppose you’re right.”
“But it makes sense,” M’tal said. “The genetic code is designed to store the most information possible in a group of three, so for simple drum codes it would be just as efficient.”
As they returned to the Learning Room, Kindan explained, “I had this strange dream that someone was trying to tell me something, some message.”
“Now you know what it was,” Ketan said.
Kindan, inspired by his new understanding, soon caught up with the others. Several times, in fact, they turned to him for guidance in difficult sections. He would close his eyes in thought and tentatively tap out a sequence, and correct it.
“How do you know whether it’s right?” Lorana asked when they’d solved one particularly difficult problem.
“I’ve been drumming for Turns,” Kindan told her. “It wouldn’t sound right unless it was.”
By evening the next day, they had all graduated from constructing simple codons to working through replication and the creation of proteins.
“So the PNA controls how all of the cells in the dragons are created, grow, interact, and die,” M’tal found himself explaining to a bemused B’nik at dinner that night. “And PNA contains the fundamental instructions for building defenses against disease and infections.”
B’nik, whose duties kept him from what everyone had started to call the Learning Rooms, struggled to keep up with the old Weyrleader. “So, if we can figure out which infection is affecting the dragons, we can build a defense against it?”
“That’s the hope,” M’tal replied, surprised at B’nik’s quick grasp. “But we haven’t finished the study books, and we know that there’s another room between this one and the first one we discovered.”
“What’s in it?”
M’tal shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suspect, given all that we’ve learned, it is probably a room where we can experiment and observe. Perhaps it has instruments to allow us to actually see the infection.”
“But I thought you said the infection-that ‘bacteria’ or ‘virus’ you were talking about-is too small to see,” B’nik protested.
“It is,” M’tal agreed, “with the eye alone. But there are hints in the books that there are tools that make such small things big enough to see.”
“Hmm.” B’nik leaned back in his seat, mulling over this revelation. Then he leaned forward again and beckoned M’tal to come close to him. “Caranth is getting worse,” he confessed. “How long do you think-”
“Are you asking if we can find a cure in time for Caranth?” M’tal asked gently.
“And the others,” B’nik added quickly.
“We’ll do our best,” M’tal replied. “I know what you’re facing.”
B’nik gave him a bleak look. “Do you think-” He found that he couldn’t go on and swallowed. He took a deep breath and began again. “I’d like you to take over the Weyr if anything happens to Caranth.”
M’tal gave B’nik an encouraging smile and slapped the younger man on the shoulder reassuringly. “It won’t come to that, B’nik,” he told the young Weyrleader fiercely. “Not if I can help it.”
B’nik looked long into M’tal’s eyes and then nodded slowly. With a husky voice he said, “Thank you.”
Loudly, Kindan closed his book and looked up at the others.
“Done!” he crowed. His grin faded when he saw that M’tal, Salina, and Ketan had already closed their books. He was surprised to see that Lorana was still reading. Indeed, she looked like she was just at the beginning of the book. Kindan gave Ketan a questioning look.
“She’s rereading it,” Ketan explained. “Again.”
With a frown, Lorana slammed her book shut and looked up angrily at the others.
“So what do we know?” M’tal asked. “We know how the immune system works both against specific and nonspecific assaults.”
“We know that sometimes the immune system can attack symbionts,” Salina added, still surprised that there were tiny creatures that lived in harmony with the dragons.
“And even the body itself,” Ketan added.
“And we have a vague idea of how to build new responses to attacks,” Kindan said.
“But only by changing PNA,” Lorana added glumly. “We can’t make one of these ‘antibiotics’ or ‘antivirals’ to directly assault the disease.”
“But once we can engineer a change,” M’tal corrected, “we can build a ‘retrovirus’ to correct all the genes of all the cells in the dragons, so that they can correctly fight the infection.”
“And once we get it right with one dragon,” Salina added, “we can take ichor-the dragon’s blood-from it and inject it into other dragons, and the cure will spread through the circulatory system.”
“And,” Ketan added ominously, “it’d be best to use the cure on a queen who’s close to clutching-the cure would be carried to the hatchlings.”
M’tal and Salina exchanged disturbed looks. There was only one queen near to clutching and that was Minith.
“But we still are no closer to identifying the infection,” Lorana protested. She turned toward the still-closed door. “And we have no idea how to open that door.”
“Except what’s written on it,” Kindan said.
“Does anyone know how to talk with people who have been dead for over four hundred Turns?” Lorana asked acerbically.
“There must be a way,” Salina said, “or they wouldn’t have put that verse on the door.”
“Or built these rooms,” M’tal added.
“How do we know that?” Lorana asked. “Perhaps these Learning Rooms were meant for others? Perhaps they’ve already been used and we’re not supposed to be here.”
“No,” Kindan answered firmly. “ ‘Wind Blossom’s Song’ could only refer to you. These rooms were made for us.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully and muttered, “Or you.”
“Then why,” Lorana cried, her arms flung out in despair, “don’t I know the answer?”