“Is anything the matter, Laintal Ay?”
He stuffed his old hunter’s blanket into a pack, punching it down. “I’m leaving Oldorando.”
“Leaving … ? Where are you going?”
“Oh … let’s say I’m going to look for Aoz Roon.” He spoke bitterly. “I’ve lost interest in—in everything here.”
“Don’t be silly.” She moved a step forward as she spoke, to see him better, thinking how large he seemed in the low-ceilinged room. “How will you seek him in the wilderness?”
He turned to face her, slinging the pack over one shoulder. “Do you think it’s sillier to seek him in the real world or to go down in pauk among the gossies to find him, as you do? You were always telling me I had to do something great. Nothing satisfied you… Well, now I’m off, to do or die. Isn’t that something great?”
She laughed feebly, and said, “I don’t want you to go. I want—”
“I know what you want. You think Dathka is mature and I’m not. Well, to hell with that. I’ve had enough. I’m going, as I always longed to do. Try your luck with Dathka.”
“I love you, Laintal Ay. Now you’re acting like Aoz Roon.”
He took hold of her. “Stop comparing me with other people. Perhaps you’re not as clever as I thought, or you’d know when you were hurting me. I love you too, but I’m going…”
She screamed. “Why are you so brutal?”
“I’ve lived with brutes long enough. Stop asking stupid questions.”
He put his arms round her, dragging her close, and kissed her hard on the mouth, so that her lips were forced back and their teeth slid together.
“I hope to be back,” he said. He laughed sharply at the stupidity of his own remark. With a final glance, he left, slamming the door behind him, leaving her in the empty room. The gold had died to ashes. It was almost dark, though she saw points of fire in the street outside.
“Oh scumb,” she exclaimed. “Curse you—and curse me, too.”
Then she recovered herself, ran to the door, and flung it open, shouting to him. Laintal Ay was running down the stairs and did not respond. She ran after him, clutching his sleeve.
“Laintal Ay, you idiot, where are you going?”
“I’m going to saddle up Gold.”
He said it so angrily, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, that she remained where she was. Then the thought occurred to her that she must get Dathka at once. Dathka would know how to deal with his friend’s madness.
Just recently, Dathka had become elusive. Sometimes he slept in the unfinished building across the Voral, sometimes in one tower or another, sometimes in one of the doubtful new places springing up. All she could think of at this hour was to run to Shay Tal’s tower to see if he was with Vry. Fortunately, he was. He and Vry were in the middle of a quarrel; her cheek burned and she cowered almost as if Dathka had struck her. Dathka looked pale with fury, but Oyre broke in on them and poured out her tale, oblivious to their troubles. Dathka gave a choking noise.
“We can’t let him leave now, just when everything’s falling apart.”
With one deadly glance at Vry, he ran from the room.
He ran all the way to the stables, and was in time to catch Laintal Ay walking out, leading Gold. They confronted each other.
“You’re plain mad, friend—behave sensibly. No one wants you to go. Come to your senses and look after your own interests.”
“I am sick of doing what everyone wants me to do. You want me here because you need me to play a role in your schemes.”
“We need you to see that Tanth Ein and his mate, and that slimy toad Raynil Layan, don’t take control of everything we’ve got.” His expression was bitter.
“You don’t stand a chance. I’m going to find Aoz Roon.”
Dathka sneered. “You’re mad. Nobody knows where he is.”
“I believe he went with Shay Tal to Sibornal.”
“You fool! Forget Aoz Roon—his star’s set, he’s old. Now it’s us. You’re getting out of Oldorando because you’re afraid, aren’t you? It so happens I still have a few friends who haven’t betrayed me, including one at the hospice.”
“What does that mean?”
“I know as much as you know. You’re getting out because you’re afraid of the plague.”
Afterwards, Laintal Ay repeated obsessively the angry words they exchanged, realising that Dathka was not his ordinary rather emotionless self. At the time, he simply acted on reflex. He struck Dathka with all his might, bringing up his open right hand and dealing his friend an upward blow under the nose with the edge of his palm. He heard the bone go.
Dathka fell back immediately, clutching his face. Blood flowed, and dripped from his knuckles. Laintal Ay swung himself up into the saddle, spurred Gold, and edged through the gathering crowd. Chattering with excitement, the crowd swarmed round the injured man, who staggered about, cursing and bent double with pain.
His temper still raging within him, Laintal Ay rode out of town. He had brought few of the things he intended to bring. In his present mood, it felt good to be leaving with little but his sword and a blanket.
As he went, he felt in his pocket and brought out a small carved object. In the twilight, he could scarcely make out its shape—but it was familiar to him since boyhood. It was a dog which moved its jaw when its tail was worked up and down. He had had it since the day his grandfather died.
He pitched it into the nearest bush.
XIV • THROUGH THE EYE OF A NEEDLE
Humankind feared the bite of the phagor, but the bite of a phagor tick was more to be dreaded.
The bite of a phagor tick causes a phagor no irritation, and scarcely more to a human. Its mouthparts have adapted over the millennia to piercing skin tissue with a minimum of damage, and to sucking up painlessly the fluid food its requires to further its own complex reproductive cycle.
The tick possesses elaborate genital organs and no head. Its mouthparts are divided into two pairs. One pair consists of modified pincers which penetrate and inject a cocktail of local anaesthetic and anti-coagulant into the flesh, the other of sensory organs bearing a complex blade covered with teeth which, projecting backwards, anchor the tick comfortably into position on its host.
There the tick clings, resisting dislodgement, to drop off only when gorged—unless the questing beak of a cowbird discovers it and gobbles it down as a delicacy.
Multitudinous Embruddocks for the helico virus are provided in the cells of the tick. And there the virus tarries, inert, awaiting a certain harmonic which will draw it into the orchestra of life, although it is sparked to quasi-activity if female phagor hosts are on oestrus. Only twice in the cycle of the great Helliconian year does that harmonic trigger the active phase of the virus.
A chain of events then operates that will eventually decide the fate of whole nations. Wutra, the philosophical might claim, is a helical virus.
Obedient to the external signal, the virus streams forth from the cells of the tick, down its mouthparts, and into the body of a human host, where it makes its way along the bloodstream. As if tracing its own air-octaves, the invading force moves through the body until it reaches its new host’s brain stem and flows into the hypothalamus, causing severe inflammation of the brain, and frequently death.
Once in the hypothalamus, that ancient sector of awareness, the seat of rage and lust, the virus replicates itself with a reproductive fury which may be likened to a storm over the Nktryhk.
The invasion of the human cell represents an incursion of one genetic system into the precincts of another; the invaded cell capitulates and becomes virtually a new biological unit, complete with its own natural history, much as a city may change hands in a prolonged war, belonging first to one side, then to the other.