“My city?” T’sha hovered before the city’s eyes, each one as big as a whole person.
“Ambassador?” murmured Ca’aed.
“You are very ill, Ca’aed. They think it is a new virus.” Slowly, carefully, she repeated what Ta’teth had told her.
The eyes remained focused on her, drinking her in as if she were the only thing in the world. Sorrow swelled T’sha’s body. She wanted to wrap the city in her arms and hug it to her belly as if it were a child. She wanted to carry it away from here to somewhere safe, where the winds were wholesome and it could be fed and healed. But there was no safe place, not in any latitude. The whole world might be infected by now; they had no way of knowing.
“You must cut it out,” said Ca’aed.
“What?” blurted out T’sha.
“This theory is sound. I ran it through my minds. It holds, life of us all, it holds. They apply anticancer treatments now, and they have some effect, but they will take dodec-hours, and we do not have the time.” Ca’aed paused as if gathering its strength. “You must cut out the affected sections of my body. You must isolate them, burn them if necessary. If my body is spreading infection, it must be stopped.”
There was no room in T’sha for further horror. She would not permit Ca’aed’s words to enter her. “No, a quarantine—”
“Will allow me to stew in my own disease,” interrupted the city. “This way we may be able to save at least my consciousness and keep the worst of the infection out of the wind.” Its voice was calm, collected. But T’sha still heard the fear.
Cut? Cut my city…
In front of her, a ligament snapped, the ends flapping into the wind.
“I am the shelter. I am the shell,” said the city, giving the old words of the unity chant, the one T’sha had recited every year when the city passed over the First Mountain.
“We are the bone. We are the embryo,” responded T’sha instantly.
“I preserve you.”
“We preserve you. Life serves life.”
“Life serves life,” replied the city. “Cut out this disease from me.”
Every bone in T’sha’s body clenched. Cut out the disease. It was barbaric but effective if the anticancer treatments weren’t working fast enough. Cut down the sails, cut out the homes, cut through the parks, the windguides, the promise trees….
Life and bone, the promise trees, and I’ve heard nothing from T’deu. Suddenly, there was no question inside T’sha about where her brother was. He was deep inside the infected city, trying to save the beauty and intricacy he had dedicated his life to nurturing. Who knew what he carried inside him by now? The safety engineers would have to keep him quarantined even from the other citizens.
Oh, my brother! And I cannot even go to find you now.
“Are you speaking to Chief Engineer T’gen of your remedy?” T’sha asked Ca’aed, her voice barely a whisper.
“I am. He resists. Do not let him.”
Memories. A thousand, a million memories of a world that grew and changed, of life, and family and ambition, worry and debate, flight and stillness. Through all that there was only one constant—Ca’aed. Her ancient city, her soul’s home. “No, I will not let him resist.”
“I am ready.”
“Stay ready.” T’sha turned from the city walls and flew toward the isolation shells. It was not engineers she needed now but harvesters with their saws and hooks and pruning sheers. She needed to lead them deep into their city to places the engineers would numb. She needed their nets, their patience, and their precision. Ca’aed might be gutted, but Ca’aed might be saved.
But only if they were fast enough, only if they were right. Otherwise, they would be doing nothing but killing the city a piece at a time.
T’sha closed her mind against the thought and flew.
Chapter Fifteen
YAN SU SAT IN front of the full membership of the Colonial Affairs Committee of the United Nations. Their hearing room was something out of another age, with a crystal dome and green marble floor, polished wooden trim, benches and tables. All around the walls, gold leaf picked out the words of great sages from throughout history, messages of tolerance, patience, long thought, and calm.
Calm especially, she needed that today. She surveyed the committee, all twenty-two of them. She was number twenty-three. She had kept her appointment by hook, crook, and means that did not always bear the light of day, but she had kept it. Now, though, her colleagues all watched her with hard eyes and skeptical faces.
Nothing was eased by the fact that the holotank in the center of the crescent bench was activated to show the three Secretaries-General—Kim Sun, Avram Haight, and Ursula Kent. They sat in their conservative clothes and comfortable chairs with desks in front of them that had tidy rows of screen rolls laid out for convenient reference. The Secretaries looked cool, detached. The souls of worldly reason, they waited to see what the committee brought to light.