The Alton Gift (43 page)

"Zandru's frozen backside," Ulm muttered. "Who would have thought such a place existed?"

One of the workers broke off what he was doing and hurried toward them. "Jeram! Praise Aldones, you're back. The protease sequencer is down to sixty percent efficiency, and as near as I can make

out, the reagent's contaminated. It'll take two days to synthesize another batch—"

"It's all right, Ethan," Jeram said, patting the young man on the shoulder, "I'll look at it in a minute. Come this way, Ulm, and you, too,
Dom
Danilo." He led them to a quieter corner of the room. The wall-mounted shelving held various strange devices of metal, plastic and glass. A table-high freestanding cabinet doubled as storage and workspace. "Your body, Ulm, has done in a few days what it would take weeks—tendays, I mean—with all this equipment."

Ulm looked blank, so Danilo asked, if that were true, why did so many die?

"Because this is a particularly virulent agent," Jeram said. "It acts so fast and generates such a high fever that most people don't have time to produce enough antibodies."

"So they die first?" Danilo said.

Jeram placed a chair beside the cabinet and gestured for Ulm to sit. "If we could keep the patients alive long enough, more might recover. That's one of the approaches we've been trying, medicines that slow down the rate of viral replication. Now," he looked at Ulm, "we can use your antibodies as a template—a set of instructions—so we can give sick people the same level of immune response they would eventually develop. If we do it right, they will then pass on an attenuated, harmless form of the virus."

Ulm looked confused and frightened. His gaze flickered over the room, its strange equipment, the bustle of incomprehensible activity. Danilo, who had years of encounters with off-worlders, did not understand half the things Jeram said. How could Ulm comprehend what was asked of him? How could he give consent?

"This will only take a minute." Jeram told Ulm to sit while he rummaged in the shelves and brought out a flat box covered with panels of dark glass. He set the box on the cabinet and touched the panels along its side. An array of colored lights winked across its top surface.

Danilo knew something of Terran medicine. Giving a sample of blood was neither dangerous nor painful. With his
laran
, he sensed the old man's bewilderment shift toward terror.

Gently, Danilo took Ulm by the arm. "Let me go first. Jeram, you will take some of my blood and explain to Ulm what you are doing."

"
Vai dom
!" Ulm, stunned, blurted out. "You must not bleed for me!"

Danilo hushed him with a gesture, then sat quietly as Jeram rolled up his sleeve and went about taking the sample. He was not afraid of shedding his own blood; he would have given it all, and his very life, to defend Regis.

The procedure was accomplished in a few minutes, and then Ulm took Danilo's place. The whitened eyebrows lifted slightly at the touch of the automated tourniquet, but otherwise Ulm gave no sign of any distress.

"Is that all there is to it?" Ulm asked, rolling down his sleeve.

"To your part, yes," Jeram said. "Our work will be fractionating and analyzing the sample you've given us. Once we've programmed the sequencers, the computers will do the rest. Ulm, I can't tell you how grateful I am—we all are. If this works, you will have saved thousands of lives all over Darkover."

"Well, I don't know about that," Ulm said, looking uncomfortable.

"Speaking for the Comyn Council as well as myself, we stand in your debt," Danilo said. "Will you accept the hospitality of the Castle?"

Ulm shook his head. "No, what would I do in such a place? Besides, Rannirl will fret if I'm not back soon. My place is in the camp, and then home before snow closes the passes."

"You came to Thendara for help," Danilo said, "and you will not return empty-handed. Let us at least show our gratitude."

For a moment, Ulm's expression took on the aspect of a hawk newly freed from its hood. "Never came asking for gratitude. Only justice. Only what's due."

Danilo had handled birds of prey as a boy, and he recognized the flash of pride. Any further offers would only shame this proud old man. "Then let me ride with you back to your people at the camp," he said gravely, "while you explain to me exactly what the matter is, that you came to Thendara for your rights."

Jeram had been full of optimism at first, for the immune serum he extracted from Ulm's blood performed perfectly in both test tube and computer simulations. When he tried to synthesize it, however, he met with dismal failure. Something in the sample, some incorrigible trace of biochemical chaos, defied replication.

He ran the protein assembly program four times and came up with four different and equally useless results. Each seemed to make sense, but when he tested them, the proteins were physiologically inert. He didn't think the molecular assemblers were at fault, so the problem must lie in the information he fed into them.

In the laboratory, Jeram stared at the computer screen, his eyes watering with the strain of a second night on double-strength coffee instead of sleep, and restrained himself from putting his fist through it. At least then he would be doing something, instead of retrying the same futile tests.

Jeram cleared the screen and leaned back. The chair creaked under his weight. In an instant, he became aware that he was not alone in the laboratory. He turned his head, his neck joints popping.

Marguerida stood at the door, wrapped in a thick shawl, earthy green

wool knitted in interlocking cable stitches. "When was the last time you slept?"

"
Domna
, don't badger me. I need a miracle, not a mother."

"Point taken." She gave a self-deprecating smile and brought up a second chair. "Now, tell me what's going on."

"It's what's
not
going on." He tapped the last coding algorithm on to the screen and explained the problem.

Marguerida nodded, her eyes thoughtful. She might not have advanced scientific training, Jeram reminded himself, but she was University-educated and literate, an intelligent woman who had been exposed to a variety of cultures and had successfully adapted to them. Sometimes he forgot she was not Darkovan.

"I am and I'm not," she said absently, responding to his unvoiced thought. "I was born here and spent my first five years in Thendara, most of that time in the John Reade Orphanage. After Sharra was destroyed, Father took me away. I grew up on Thetis."

"A very different world from this one." Jeram had heard of the balmy climate and warm, shallow seas of that planet.

"Returning to Darkover in my twenties was a strange experience. I had almost no memories of this place, and yet it felt like home. I knew things I couldn't possibly have learned. It wasn't until I fully recovered my
laran
that everything began to make sense. It was like remembering who I truly was. I don't know what I would have done without Istvana and my other teachers at Neskaya. Gone mad, I suppose."

Jeram looked away, thinking how similar their stories were. Not where they were born, but the suppressed memories and newly awakened psychic abilities, the way their pasts had shadowed them. The teachers who had saved their sanity.

"I wonder…" she said. "How much do you know about
laran
monitoring?"

Jeram replied that it had been done to him at Nevarsin Tower. Puzzled, he asked, "Why?"

"I learned a little, first at Arilinn and then at Neskaya. It's the most basic level of Tower training. I never had the desire to go further, but anyone who works as a monitor must be able to not only sense but also actively adjust the physiological processes of those in their care— breathing, for example, or heart rate. Even hormonal levels."

Jeram shook his head, confused. He knew she had a point, but he was too tired to follow her logic.

"How different can this antibody be from the other natural substances of a human body?" she said. "If a trained circle, working under the direction of a Keeper, can separate out atoms of copper from crude ore, then it stands to reason they might also be able to complete your analysis."

"I don't know, it's pretty tricky stuff. If the computers can't handle it…"

Another part of Jeram's mind insisted he was thinking like a head-blind Terran, trying the same thing over again in the insane hope of getting a different result. Maybe it was time to start thinking like a Darkovan.

Marguerida pressed on, her voice gaining in certainty. Her golden eyes glowed faintly, as if some inner fire had sprung to life. "Maybe your computers can't replicate the Darkovan antibodies because there's more to them than a simple chain of molecules. Maybe there's another dimension, the
laran
that's bred into us."

"Certainly, your psychic abilities go beyond anything in the Federation," Jeram admitted. "I have some
laran
myself…"

Enough to blow me out of the water when you blanked out my memories.

Marguerida flinched visibly at his thought.

"
Laran
is just a human trait, developed through natural selection and isolation," Jeram said. "The computers should compensate for the genetic drift."

"That's where you're wrong," Marguerida said. "There's no question that Darkover was colonized by a Lost Ship. Some time after Dark-over's beginning, if the stories are true, human women bore children fathered by
chier"
—seeing Jeram's look of confusion, she explained—"a nonhuman sapient race, strongly telepathic, hermaphroditic, and extremely long-lived. They may be extinct now, but at least one was still alive during the time of Regis Hastur. Linnea or Danilo may know more of what happened to him—her, I'm not sure. Legend says that our
laran
originated with them. You can see traces of their heritage in the Comyn—not only our
laran
, but the six fingers many of us have, as well as pale eyes and slender build."

"That still doesn't explain why I can't replicate the immunoglobulins

from Ulm's blood," Jeram said doggedly. "First of all, the donor is not Comyn, and second, as I told you, the computer protocols already include the necessary adjustments."

"That is, if the changes are purely physical," Marguerida said. She paused, rubbing her fingertips across her temples and muttering under her breath about
this damned headache
. "What if there's a
laran
field around the protein molecule, a psychic vibration, something that can't be measured by ordinary instruments? Something that could be perceived and manipulated by a trained telepathic mind? I know how fantastical it sounds, but in the twenty-odd years I've been on this planet, I have seen more things than are dreamt of in
anyone's
philosophy."

It was as outlandish an idea as Jeram had ever heard, and he had half a mind to tell Marguerida so. But what better idea did he have to offer?

It was time, he repeated to himself, to think like a Darkovan.

The decision of whether to perform the experiment in the Terran Base or in the newly refurbished Comyn Tower, as well as all the subsequent arrangements, took far longer than Jeram expected. He understood that ordinarily the Keeper simply decided things, and her word was law. This circle, however, consisted of Istvana Ridenow, Linnea Storn—the elegant beauty who, Jeram gathered, had once been consort to Regis Hastur—Moira DiAsturien, and Laurinda MacBard, with Illona acting as their monitor. Each one of them was accustomed to having her own way, and while they were exquisitely courteous to one another, their discussions amounted to exercises in diplomatic pig-headedness.

At last, the Keepers agreed that, despite the advantages of working in the Terran Medical Center, with supplies at hand and where their results could be easily verified by computer analysis, they preferred a setting that could be safely shielded. The Terran Base provided only flimsy protection against the fear and anger pervading the city. Comyn Tower, on the other hand, had been designed to insulate the minds of those who worked within.

Despite Jeram's reluctance to relocate, Marguerida accepted the decision as an accomplished fact. She recruited Ethan and his friends to transport the blood samples, reagents, and various portable instruments that Jeram determined were the bare minimum.

Comyn Tower, as he understood it, had been abandoned for some time. Another Tower, referred to in strained whispers as
Ashara's
, had functioned in one capacity or another until fairly recently He asked Marguerida why it was not still in use, and she pretended not to hear.

Housekeepers had clearly been at work in Comyn Tower, for the entry hall and stairwells had been dusted, and intricately woven rugs laid on the stone floors. The room they were to use was three-quarters of the way up the physical tower itself, a space Marguerida called a
matrix laboratory
, although Jeram could not imagine doing experiments here.

The room had a surprisingly light, airy atmosphere. Panels of translucent blue stone alternated with the smooth, fine-grained granite of the walls. A sideboard bore an array of pastries, candies, honey-glazed nuts, and beverages. With a good deal of bustle, the equipment from the Medical Center was arranged on a round table, and benches and cushions were brought in for everyone.

After Ethan and his friends left, a hush fell over the room. Laurinda MacBard took the centripolar place. Ever since their first meeting, Jeram had found her intimidating, although she treated him with scrupulous politeness. The other Keepers assembled around the table, with Illona sitting on a bench set to one side. Marguerida led Jeram to a seat along the opposite wall.

"I'll need to tell them—" he began.

"They will know. Illona says she has linked to you before. She will be monitoring, but she'll also be facilitating the rapport with you."

Marguerida left, and the work began. The women in the circle set their stars tones on the table around the vial containing a sample of Ulm's blood. The sparkling blue-white stones caught and intensified the light. Then, as Jeram watched, they began to glow. Slowly, the light grew into a ring and then spread through the room. It bathed the faces of the Keepers in a pale, eerie radiance. Jeram closed his eyes against the brightness…

… and felt a faint touch, like silk brushing the inside of his skull. Although he could not have told how, he recognized the mental presence of Illona and, through her, Laurinda.

For a long moment, he hovered, suspended in a sea of misty blue-white, surrounded by cool, pulsating globes of the same light. Gradu-

ally, the colors shifted, so that he traveled between swirling disks of red, in a sea of golden liquid. The disks faded to mere ghosts, residual energy imprints of the red blood cells. Vision shifted, as if he were approaching a planetary system from space. He passed between spheres of color and energy, some as huge as gas giants, others tiny asteroid belts. These were not celestial objects but particles of infinitesimal size.

A sound like a vast ocean filled his hearing. He shrank further and now perceived that the golden sea was not entirely liquid. Shapes emerged from the faint currents, complex threads and globules, the tiny nodes of electrolytes, nutrients, and waste.

Show us
, whispered a distant voice, so subtle it did not disturb the slow, floating dance of the molecules.
Which one
?

How could he tell? The long, immensely complex chains loomed ever larger. There were dozens of them, all different. With an effort, he summoned an image, the pattern on the computer screen. Some parts of the molecule resembled any other immunoglobulin, but the specific sites
here
and
here
… He forced himself to concentrate, to bring the configuration into focus.

Ah, yes
! responded the voice, and then trailed away.

Nausea rose up, and his throat stung with acid. He blinked, his eyes focusing reluctantly.

Illona leaned over him, one hand on his arm, and urged him to close his eyes. Sick and disoriented, Jeram obeyed. He felt a cool touch on his brow, and his unease vanished.

When he opened his eyes again, Illona was smiling at him. The women of the circle had risen, some stretching, others helping themselves to the food and drink that had been laid out on the sideboard. They had, Illona explained, been working for over an hour, and that was a long time for anyone who was not accustomed to it. At her advice, he ate some fruit, sweet and intense like sun-dried apricots. It helped to steady his nerves.

With a nod, as one acknowledging an equal, Laurinda handed him a small vial of serum.

As soon as Jeram felt steady enough, he took the sample back to the Medical Center laboratory. Excitement thrilled up his spine, sweeping away the last remnants of fatigue, as he watched the indicators change.

Positive
…
positive
…

Marguerida joined him a short time later, just as the computer simulation confirmed the test tube results. "Well?"

He grinned. "Break out the champagne. We still need the final litmus test, a live subject, but yes, I think we've got a biologically active serum here."

In the end, Jeram decided to test the serum on three people in the city clinic-shelters, each in a different stage of the fever. The most ill, a young woman, had been unconscious for the last day, her body radiating heat like an oven.

The next morning, the fevers of all three patients had broken. Over the following days, even the woman who had been critically ill was able to sit up and take some food.