The olz were unable to maneuver the pathetically light bodies of the dead through the narrow doorways, so dead and dying lay together in huts foul beyond belief with the accumulated filth of winter. Farrari and Liano carried the dead to the death huts, cleaned and cared for the sick, and secretely added powdered nutrients to the watery soup compounded of the last of the village’s stock of rotting tubers. They had no hope at all that this would give the living the stamina they so desperately needed to survive until the weather improved, but in one day they could do no more. At dawn they were on their way to the next village.
And again Death had come before them.
Each day brought another village, another pile of dead, another cluster of pathetic, starving olz about a nightfire. Farrari lost track of time. They were both near exhaustion when they haltingly made their way across a finger of the vast clay wasteland that remote centuries of careless agriculture had devastated. When finally they neared the other side and pointed their way toward a fertile valley, the narmpf sighted zrilm hedges that promised dry leaves for it to munch and increased its floundering pace with an impatient snort.
Suddenly Liano cried out. Farrari halted the narmpf with a slap of his hand and turned. An of stag,gered toward them. His taut skin had the unhealthy, pasty pallor that all of the olz had taken on during the winter months, but with an ominous difference: even at a distance Farrari could detect an ugly flush of fever. The of stumbled and fell as he approached them and lay motionless.
Farrari ran to his side, and Liano leaped from the cart and followed him. The narmpf snorted again, this time in alarm, and shifted its feet nervously.
The ol was dead. They carried his frail body to the cart, and Liano gently touched a puffed ridge of flesh that ran the length of his spine. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” she whispered.
Farrari turned the narmpf aside, and they retraced the ors steps, skidding down a last, steep slope Farrari wondered awesomely how the dying ol had managed to climb it—and turning into a narrow lane lined with tall zrilm hedges. A short distance farther on they came upon the village, with its circle of low clay huts about the fire-blackened hollow where the clay cooking pot stood, and, nearby, the clumsily-dug well and a pile of water-soaked quarm logs.
The logs were a danger signal. Quarin was strictly rationed, the olz never had enough, and they kept their meager reserve in storage huts. The soggy logs meant that this village had not had a fire for many nights, and that meant serious trouble.
Farrari crept under the cart for shelter from the driving rain while he lit a torch, and they went quickly from hut to hut. All of the olz had the strange swelling on their spines. More than half of them were already dead. Farrari mutte’ed, “They’re so weak from hunger that they have no resistance.”
“We’ll need help,” Liano whispered.
He stood guard while she talked with base. Then he violated a fundamental rule of ol existence—fires permitted only during the hours of darkness. He dragged dry quarm logs from the storage hut and started a roaring blaze around the clay pot. While the water heated they carried the dead to the death huts, splashing through thick, oily smoke that hung near the ground over, yellowing puddles. The death huts were quickly filled, and they laid the overflow to rest in a neat row beside them.
The miracle was that so few of them were children. He mentioned this to Liano, and she said, “During the winter, the children eat first.”
Farrari cleaned accumulated filth from the empty huts, and when the water had heated Liano transformed some of it into a nourishing broth with a sorcery no native yilesc could have achieved. They bathed the living olz, forced broth past their fever-swollen lips, and carried them to clean huts.
When darkness came on Farrari moved the cart to the edge of the wasteland and turned on a direction signal. A short time later an IPR platform floated down. Dr. Garnt clambered over the side, muttering, “So you’ve got yourselves a situation.”
“Is that what you call it?” Farrari asked glumly.
When they reached the firelight he had to laugh in spite of his dark mood. The portly doctor was ineffectually disguised in an of loin cloth. “If a durrl sees you, he’ll make four olz out of you,” Farrari hissed.
“I didn’t have time to diet,” the doctor whispered sourly.
The platform’s pilot, one of Isa Graan’s men, helped Farrari to unload supplies. They packed in as much as the cart would hold under its false bottom and concealed the remainder behind quarm logs in a storage hut.
Dr. Garnt returned to the platform swearing softly to himself. “Some damned virus,” he whispered to Farrari. “This world has already given us some choice specimens, but we haven’t encountered this one. Did you notice the in flammation along the spine? Nasty. Put up the tent and I’ll go to work.”
They stretched a tent over the platform, and the doctor fussed and muttered and clanked equipment for hours until Farrari anxiously began to watch for the dawn. Finally he emerged with a flask of clear liquid.
“It complicates things, having to give it to them orally,” he explained. “But I’d be cashiered and sent home if I started mass injections. That doesn’t apply to you, of course. Let’s have your arm.”
He inoculated Farrari and Liano and delivered terse instructions about the antitoxin he’d concocted. Graan’s man muttered about the time and took off while the doctor was climbing aboard. “Have you checked the neighboring villages?” he called. “Better do that. We’ll start mass-producing this, just in case. I’ll be back tonight.” The platform vanished into the thinning darkness.
Liano crept into the yilesc’s hut for some badly-needed sleep. Farrari continued to make the rounds of the huts, this time coaxing the swollen lips to accept Dr. Garnt’s medicine. A gray day pushed aside the gray dawn; the rain changed to wet snow and the wasted bodies of the dead lying outside the death huts were mercifully cloaked in white shrouds.
A distant, sputtering bray brought Farrari scrambling from a hut. Through the snow he dimly saw, on the skyline where the dying ol must have seen them, a durrl mounted on a gril. Farrari watched uneasily until he passed from sight. The smoke from the forbidden fire still hung near the ground, and Farrari could only hope that the durrl had not seen it; but a short time later he heard the braying close at hand and the durrl rode slowly into the village.
He halted, looking down at the fire, and Farrari instantly averted his eyes. An ol did not look directly at a durrl.
The durrl grunted an ol word. “Sickness?”
“Much sickness,” Farrari said.
At a nudge from the durrrs knee the gril reared gracefully and started away. Suddenly the durrl saw the yilesc’s cart and narmpf. He leaped from the gril with a bellow of anger.