It was so orderly, it was very nearly a dance. The enormity of it dived straight to the center of T’sha’s being and left her stupefied. Her family was in there somewhere. Mother, Father, her little sisters, her brother…Oh life and bone, brother!
“Ca—” she began, but she cut herself off. She could not rob Ca’aed of any of its concentration. She instead ordered the headset to find her brother on its own. A cluster of dirigibles flew the speaker’s flags. She turned her flight toward them, beating her wings against the wind until she felt her bones would break.
“Ambassador!”
The voice came to her own ears, not her headset. T’sha saw a solid red crest spread on the wind and recognized Deputy Ambassador Ta’teth rising above the dirigibles. She put on a burst of speed and flew to meet him.
“Ambassador,” he gasped as if he’d been the one flying so fast. “I am glad you are returned. We’ve been doing our best—”
“How bad is it?” T’sha cut him off, fanning her wings against the buffeting wind. She could smell the disease from here, cloying and sweet, just like the scents that had surrounded Village Gaith. The flies would be descending soon.
“Bad. The engineers are trying to keep up, but it is spreading too fast, in too many places.”
“How did this happen?” T’sha demanded. Ta’teth dipped and shriveled before her outburst. T’sha cursed herself and dropped until she was level with her deputy. “I’m sorry, Ta’teth. I’m sorry. I do not blame you. But does anyone know what happened?”
Ta’teth recovered his size. “The best theories are from the indentures from Gaith, and they are very serious.” T’sha grit herself against her impatience. Ta’teth was also scared. Ta’teth loved Ca’aed as she did. He was doing his best. “They think it is a new kind of virus.”
“But that’s a fungus!” retorted T’sha.
“No,” said Ta’teth. “It’s cancer.”
“What?” The word was out before T’sha could stop herself. Cancer? How could that be cancer? A virus might cause a cancer, yes, but not like this.
“They think…” Anticipation of his own words made Ta’teth shudder. “They think it is a new strain of virus that has managed to take advantage of the People’s close relationship with the cities. They think it replicates in sections, part of it in the people, part of it in the segments of the city’s anatomy that are chiefly animal. The virus sections lie dormant in the hosts, mimicking, they think, familiar nutritive elements. They possibly even infect the monocellular nutritives and through them infect the hosts. The dangerous phase does not start until two or more sections of the virus are combined, possibly in the presence of an additional chemical stimulus—”
“In such a place as in the city’s bowels.”
Ta’teth dipped his muzzle. “Then it replicates furiously, devouring its host and releasing the undetected spawning segments, working too fast to be completely stopped or destroyed.”
T’sha did not deflate. She felt paralyzed by Ta’teth’s words, frozen as cold as a New Person. “It is a good theory. Is it being tested now?”
Again, Ta’teth dipped his muzzle. “They are hunting for viral DNA segments now and trying to map its life cycle.”
“And we might all be carriers?”
“Yes,” murmured Ta’teth. “Of portions of the disease, at least.” He swelled and shrank. “There might be more than one strain.”
The words sank into T’sha and she shivered, releasing old memories. What is the nature of life? went the first riddle in the story of Ca’doth. Three possible answers—a stone, a shell, the wind. A stone because life is strong and underlies the whole world. A shell because life contains and shelters what is precious. The wind because it is everywhere and cannot be stopped.
It is everywhere and cannot be stopped. “Have you told Ca’aed?”
Ta’teth collapsed in on himself. “No. I didn’t think…I…”
T’sha flew over him, brushing her fingers against his crest. “No shame, Deputy. I’ll do it now.”
T’sha flew past the chains of her people being evacuated to the isolation shells, past the engineers with their flocks of tools surrounding them, between the walls patched with this strange, sweet cancer that mimicked a fungus so well. She knew where she wanted to be. There were eyes beside the main portal. Pretty silver eyes, which watched the winds and the world. She wanted to be there when she told Ca’aed.