Quiet Invasion(14)

“Speaker T’gai.” T’sha touched his forehands. “Good luck to you.”

“Good luck to you, T’sha. Ambassador T’sha.” His crest ruffled softly.

She tried not to feel the weakness in his words. “Why didn’t you report this?” she asked as gently as she could.

“We thought…we thought…”

We thought we could take care of it. T’sha dipped her muzzle to let him know she understood. No people wanted to believe they could fail their city, or even their village. No one wanted the shame of having to make promises because they were not skilled enough or rich enough to care for their own, so they struggled in their silence until it was too late.

There were always dangers, particularly in the smaller villages such as Gaith, that drifted on their own rather than following in the wake of a larger, older city. Cortices got too closely bred and became unable to cognate as required. Builders and assessors went insane and undid the work they were supposed to enhance. Corals used too many times without enough interior variety bleached in thin winds. Cancers took hold of the village’s bones.

But now, infections were spreading around the world. A fungus or a yeast that should have been easy for an engineer to excise would instead burn through a city, breaking down everything it touched, sometimes turning from the city and attacking the people.

Even so, that usually took weeks. This…T’sha didn’t dare let that thought go any further.

“We’ll talk about that later.” T’sha turned her mind to the problem. “I’m here with Ambassador D’seun and my survey team. We’ll send some of them for kites and other transports. There are several healthy cities traveling this stream. But first you need to assemble your people. We’ll need to have you checked out to make sure you are carrying nothing infectious.” We cannot let this spread. We dare not.

T’gai withered. “We must tend our village….”

T’sha swelled gently, trying to calm him with her authority. It felt strange. He was so much her senior in years. But now, she outranked him, and she must not shrink from that. “It has gone too far for that, Speaker. We need to quarantine Gaith. You must call in all the promises you have owing and divert them to diagnosis and prevention. Your ambassador will need all your help with that when he returns.”

Speaker T’gai dipped his muzzle. “Yes, of course, Ambassador. You are right.”

“Good.” She glanced around. The catchsheet was stabilized and anchored to the village’s sail struts. Someone had released a slurry of inch-long cleaners onto the sails. They slithered across the sails’ skin, ingesting the bubbling growths until the toxicity became too much and they dropped onto the catchsheet. The skin left behind was almost transparent. Even as T’sha watched, the wind tore through the skin, leaving the sail in tatters. The sail mewled and tried to draw in on itself.

She pulled her gaze away. D’suen had a great line of people gathered in the orderly chain now. That would be where T’gai could help.

“Find your teachers to keep gathering your people together. Bring your engineers and doctors. We must determine what’s gotten out and how far it’s gone.”

“Yes. Yes.” The speaker swelled again to the lines and proportions she knew. “Thank you, Ambassador.”

T’sha deflated until she was just a little smaller than T’gai. “With you, I am still just T’sha, Speaker T’gai.” She returned to her normal size. “Go. We will do what we can.”

As she watched T’gai fly away, she tried to enumerate what needed to be done. We need a quarantine blanket. We need a team to find what cortices are still working. A way to repel these flies….

Life gone insane. Life taking more than it needed, swinging from balance into chaos. T’sha circled until she was upwind of the stench and the sounds of pain. The canopy was lush underneath them. The wind had good weight and texture. This rot seemed to be interested in animal materials; maybe at least the plants below would be safe.

T’sha tensed her bones. They could assume nothing. She’d have to go down and look. If the rot had gotten down there, they would probably be forced to cut it out. That made for a wasteful, inelegant cure, especially with so much of the canopy dying on its own, but they couldn’t risk this getting carried any further.

Who knew what spores were already in the wind? Was this even really a fungus, or was she being fooled by appearances? T’sha shivered. On top of it all, here were a thousand more refugees. Some healthy cities would probably still take them in, but they would also demand hefty promissory obligations against the time Gaith, or a replacement, could be regrown. The children huddling under their parents’ bellies would be declared adults before the village was free of its debts.