Definitely not what Ray would have chosen as his only trip away from the endless rolling waters of LoiLoiKua, the mournful chanting and dreary singing of the whale people, the drumming on the waters that woke him at all hours. It was hard on the nerves. Before the young were transported to that school near Kezdet, Ray had always liked the singing. That was the period during which he established his reputation as a good governor. The truth was, though they were a superstitious lot and a bit too given to passively accepting whatever befell them-otherwise, they would have moved on when the water overtook the land, not just adapted and evolved into water dwellers-they were easy to govern. They had been happy, satisfied, content. And then some idiot told them that a solar catastrophe was damaging their environment. They did not adapt this time. They became whirlpools of anxiety. What would happen to their young? Their beloved children would perish as would all LoiLoiKuans if their sun and their water betrayed them.
Well, sure. Ray tried to tell them that sort of thing was years, maybe decades, in the future, and they didn't really need to worry about it, but there was no shutting them up until the Federation took the problem under advisement. With unusual speed and efficiency, the children had been lifted into tanks that were loaded aboard a huge cargo ship and transported to Maganos Moonbase. The locals didn't write, of course, since they lived underwater. Neither did the kids. Ray certainly had not been given communications equipment sophisticated enough to allow the kids to hail the home-folk every week or so.
So the adults had stayed unhappy and just a tinge bitter, though they still considered Ray their friend. Little did they know how happy he would have been to turn the whole moist mess over to some fresh new officer who was, as Ray confided privately to his fellow commanders, heh heh, wet behind the ears to, heh heh heh, get his feet wet.
But he thought, when he got the invitation to speak at the council on Rio Boca, that at least the Federation recognized his work and was rewarding him by sending him home in time for Carnivale.
That would have been wonderful, to see his brothers and sisters again, to get into a costume that excused all sorts of behavior unbefitting an officer and a gentleman, and to parade through the streets to music a whole lot livelier than a LoiLoiKuan lament.
He simply could not believe it when the council ended early and everyone was dismissed, told to report back to their duty stations at once. Just because a few guys had gotten sick. Probably the hotel food. It didn't keep very well in hot climates, and all of the planets in the Solojo system were pretty tropical. The incomers who had set up some of the new industries should have paid attention to his mama and other locals who knew how to preserve and prepare food in the climate. He hadn't had any trouble himself, well, not at first, but he had been ordered back two days before the start of Carnivale. His ship left four hours before his sisters and brothers were due to arrive from Paloduro to catch him up on the news and take in the first of the parades on Rio Boca.
After that, all of them were going back to Corazon on Paloduro to see the hometown events where Ray could let his hair down without quite so much Federation scrutiny.
He was so disappointed and angry he felt literally sick by the time his shuttle docked on the small island containing the goofy sand castle outpost building the LoiLoiKuans had designed as an acceptable surface structure on their world.
He felt as if he was burning up, had started to cough and yes, finally, the effects of whatever bug had ended the conference early began to tell on his own digestion. He threw up on the beach as he disembarked from the shuttle, and almost didn't make it to the latrine. He sat in there for hours afterward, coughing when he wasn't making use of the bowl from one end or the other. He felt as if his chest were in a vise. Finally, he had to abandon the latrine and the castle because there simply wasn't enough oxygen in there. He couldn't get his breath. He dragged himself out onto the beach. He had no idea what time it was when he reached the water because he kept conking out every time he pulled himself forward a little and collapsed into the coughing fits again. What he coughed up had become bloody. This was some case of dysentery!
Finally, in his fever, he reached the water's edge and dipped his face and hands into it. He knew it was only lukewarm, about like swimming in pee he always thought, but he was so hot that it felt deliciously cool.
He didn't know when the LoiLoiKuans found him and dragged him the rest of the way into the water, carefully keeping his head above water, while they called for their healers, cleaned him, and sang to him.
He didn't know when the healers reached him and saw him, no longer coughing, eyes fixed and glazed, limbs dangling limply, doing their own slow dance to the rhythm of the waves.
Chapter 15
Jalonzo was told by his school counselors that, like a lot of extremely bright youngsters, he was intellectually too far advanced beyond his peers for normal socialization. Which meant basically that he didn't have much in common with a lot of the kids at school. He tended to watch other people a lot and not say much unless he had something to say, and sometimes other people misinterpreted his actions and had trouble understanding where he was coming from. He had the same trouble understanding them at times, too. But he pretty much understood gamers, and that and his knowledge of the structure of the games was the only protection he had for all of them.
He felt bad about the nachos. Really bad. Two of the older guys got sick pretty quickly after the new game began. The others, even the girls, were so absorbed in the new game they barely noticed. When Atl of the Flowing Waters cried out as Avilix the Stone-faced slumped across the dice, Jalonzo walked around the table and patted Avilix, who was actually Jorge Ramirez, on the back saying, "Good death, Avilix! Now you have to leave until the others can bring you back to life again! I will take you now to the underworld to await rebirth."
It was a good thing for Jalonzo he was so much bigger than the other kids, even the older ones like Jorge, who was almost twenty. He half carried Jorge away up the stairs. The smaller boy spewed once and Jalonzo ran with him to the upstairs bathroom and got him in a stall just in time. He went back to clean up the mess, then returned to the bathroom. Jorge had fallen forward with his head against the door. Jalonzo couldn't crawl under the door very far but managed to push Jorge's upper body back enough to get the stall open, flush, and with a grimace, clean Jorge before laying him as gently as possible on the tile floor in front of the stall. It was a good place to be for someone who felt the way Jorge did. The tile was cool but not cold because the air temperature was too warm for that. Jorge was burning up.
Lupe Sanchez, Princess Papan in the new game, threw up on the floor. Jalonzo didn't want to be cleaning up girls, so he figured it was time to let somebody else know what was going on. "Princess Atl, you and Princess Papan have been kidnapped by the Trickster Twins. You come with us to the underworld now."
"But Jalonzo, I mean Quetzacoatl, I-"
He shot her a pleading look and nodded to Lupe. Her eyes opened wider, her mouth forming an "O," and she got up and took Lupe's other side.
He helped Maria get Lupe onto the stool, then went to clean up the mess downstairs.
The gamers might be focused, but they could still smell. "What's the matter with Jorge and Lupe, Jalonzo?"