CHAPTER XI
Song of the Deep
Running track?
Angel wanted to snort. The “track” looked like a big, flattened circle. Seriously? A circle?
She stood with Mason Qazik, the running coach, in the risers above the outdoor track. It amazed her that this huge place existed, open to the sky, inside the sports complex building. Below them, athletes were running around the track, some in pairs, some alone. Mason squinted at them, the pupils of his dark eyes like pinholes in the sunlight. The breezes stirred his straight hair. He stood at average height, maybe a bit less, with a lean build and long legs compared to the rest of his body.
A runner, Angel thought. She had a similar build, especially her legs. Most dust gangers did in the aqueducts.
“Those eleven runners are the ones trying out for the team,” Mason was saying. “They won’t all qualify, probably. On any other world, a lot of them wouldn’t bother to try out.” He gave her an apologetic look. “I’ve so few candidates here, though, they know they might make the team even if they have no chance anywhere else.”
“Eleven?” Angel couldn’t fathom why so few came to run for him. They weren’t even fast. “This team, they always run in loops down there?” She didn’t get it. They weren’t reaching any useful place, just going around and around in a circle.
“Well, yes.” He considered her, looking worried. “I’m not saying you won’t be working with good runners. We do have some Olympic-level athletes. You might know Azarina.” He motioned to a young woman with a long black braid hanging down her back. She’d pulled ahead of all but one other runner on the track. The woman reminded Angel of Colonel Majda, though younger, with a more carefree manner in the way she moved.
“Majda,” Angel said.
“Yes!” Now Mason sounded greatly pleased. “Azarina Majda.” In a confiding voice, he said, “She’s damn good. One of my best. I don’t think she could beat you, but she’d give you a run for your money.”
Angel wasn’t sure what he meant, but he continued to show respect, which she appreciated. So she said, “Eh.”
Mason seemed worried rather than relieved by her reaction. “You’d be working with Tayz Wilder, too. He’s our best distance runner.” He motioned at the guy out in front, a fellow pounding the track at a good, solid clip. “In the last Olympics, he placed fifty-sixth in the royal marathon, and he was on the young side then, only twenty-two. He’ll do a lot better this time around.”
Angel almost said eh again, but then thought maybe he needed more. So she said, “Sounds like a good runner.” He didn’t seem that fast, but what the hell.
Mason looked a bit less worried. “Are you staying in the city? Or do you return to the, uh, the Underground after you finish work?”
“Undercity,” Angel said. “Yah. I go home to sleep. See husband.” She missed Ruzik.
“If you ever need a place to stay, we have quarters for the team here in the complex.” He spoke as if he were trying to sell her something. “We can set you and your husband up with a great suite. Whatever you need.”
Angel considered him. “You want me to run, yah? Because you don’t have fast people.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it that bluntly.” He winced. “Actually, knowing me, I probably would if you let me blabber for long enough.”
Hah! Blabber. Great word. Angel couldn’t help but like this guy. “We got plenty of good runners. Some better than me.”
He stared at her. “What?”
“Faster runners.” Angel could just imagine how the batty robots at this place would panic if a flood of Undercity gangers arrived to run circles in their sports complex. Yah, that would be fun. “You should bring them here, too.”
“You and your husband aren’t the only ones?” He looked ready to jump up and down. “There are others?”
“Like Tam,” Angel told him. “She’s faster than a skitter-kit jolting from key clinkers.”
Mason squinted at her. “Uh, what?”
“Tam is faster than me,” Angel said. “She can go all day like that. Good climber, too.” She’d seen Tam Wiens scramble up rockslides so fast, she could outrun the collapse of the rubble.
“Yes!” Mason turned ecstatic. “Please do bring them.”
Angel crossed her arms and glowered at him. “The cops won’t let them come.”
“I’m terribly sorry about what happened.” Now he looked ready to have heart failure. “I give you my word I’ll take care of it. You and your friends, your teammates, the other runners, they’re welcome here. I give you my word.”
For about three seconds, Angel felt good. Triumphant. Then she remembered that she had to convince her “teammates” to come here and run pointless circles in the hot, too bright sun with people who didn’t like them. Now she felt stupid.
“I can’t promise they’ll come,” she admitted. “A lot will probably say no.”
He spoke carefully. “We can offer many incentives. We understand that, uh, amateur athletes need transportation, places to stay, amenities. Perks.”
Angel could tell he wanted her to make a proposal. She considered the thought. “You can get snap bottles of filtered water, yes? And food. Meat. Green plants too, the kind you can eat.”
He looked confused, like he’d expected her to ask for something else. “That’s it? Food and water?”
“Runners get thirsty.” Angel felt like an idiot stating the obvious but given all the pure water these people took for granted, she never knew what she needed to tell them. “Get hungry, too.” She grimaced. “Always hungry. Never enough food.”
He regarded her for a long moment. Then he spoke quietly. “Yes, we can provide as much filtered water and quality food as they want. We have a nutritionist who can make sure they get everything they need.”
They were making progress. “I can’t promise they will come,” she told him. “But for good meals and filtered water—yah, they might.” Dryly she added, “Make sure they run for you before they eat. Not after. You give them lots of food, some will eat too much and get sick.” She’d seen it the day they let the army doctors test them for Kyle traits in return for free food and water.
Mason spoke in a strained voice. “Of course. We’ll be careful.”
Angel nodded, accepting his proposal. She’d bring it to the Undercity when she went home. She’d only been out in this overly bright world for thirty-five hours, but it felt like forever. She found it hard to believe the daylight would go on for ten more hours, and then darkness for thirty-five hours at this time of year.
Although some slicks she’d met said they didn’t like working at night, Angel didn’t mind. It felt like home. Slicks did their routines in shifts of threes. Their first “workday” came in the morning, eight hours long. They slept in the middle of the day, when the heat reached its people-roasting worst. Second workday landed in the afternoon. Then people had dinner and slept while the sun went down. Later they came back for a night shift, eight hours. Afterward they went home to sleep or do whatever. It all started again at sunrise. Every ten days, they had two free days with no work. Angel had already figured out that more important people with more important jobs got more free days. It had no more logic than other slick customs. The more high-status they considered your job, the less time they expected you to spend doing it. Weird.
She stayed a while longer, talking with Mason. Once he realized she did intend to work with his team and might even bring more runners, he seemed as happy as a kit with a ball of string. And ho, did he like to talk! Angel discovered that if she just stood, nodding every now and then or saying maybe a word, he could carry the entire conversation. Eventually, when hearing all those words wore her out, she managed to get free and head for home. She had no trouble leaving the sports complex; the robots went out of their way to guide her off the premises. She hadn’t thought robots had moods, but these seemed delighted to see her gone.
As Angel walked along a blue path in one of the many city parks, her comm buzzed with a familiar tone. She tapped the receive panel. “Eh, Ruzik.”
“Eh. Where?”
“In city.” She warmed at the thought of him. “Coming home.”
“Nahya.” He sounded tired. “Not come home. Stay in city.”
“Say what?”
“Not come back. Bad here. Sickness. Red rash.”
“Got vaccine.” She used the Skolian word for vaccine since it didn’t exist in their dialect.
“Might not work.”
Angel didn’t like the sound of it. “You got rash? I come back.”
“Nahya.” He spoke firmly. “Not have. Am fine. Many others not fine. Dying.”
“Ruzik, you not die.” She had to get back to him, get him somewhere safe.
“Am good. Really.” In a softer voice he said, “You not die, either. Stay in city.”
Angel stated the obvious. “Need to help. Can’t if I not there.”
“Yah, help. In city.” He spoke with urgency. “You be backup comm.”
What? “Not ken.”
“Sickness in Deep. Majda party in Deep. Can’t leave.”
“In Deep?” Angel had never gone that far below the Undercity. “Not get home?”
“Can’t. Spread rash.” He switched into Flag. “We’re in quarantine. It turns out we’re all carrying the virus now. This is a new version. We can spread it even though we aren’t sick.”
“Majda colonel too?”
“Yah.” Ruzik took a breath so deep, Angel heard him inhale. “All stuff here glows blue. Walls, floor, rocks. From tiny crits in air. Gets into comms. Mess them up. Max does fixes, but the more backup we got, the better. You backup in city. Need you there.”
It was one of the longest speeches he’d ever made in dialect. If he spared that many words to make his point, it had to be important. “I stay.” Angel spoke firmly. “You check in each hour, yah?”
“Yah.” He sounded relieved. “You good?”
“Fine. Maybe run for city slicks. They want you, too.”
He snorted. “Not think so.”
“Offer good prop. Water. Pure. Food. Good food.”
“Got food. Got water.”
It was true; with the work she and Ruzik did, going between the Undercity and Cries, they usually did get enough food and water. Angel didn’t push. If she ran for the team, he probably would too. Right now, she just wanted him to stay healthy. “Not drink bad water,” she told him. “Not get rash.”
“Yah. Will do.” His voice sounded odd, as if he were holding back.
“You not sick? That truth?”
“Is truth.” Now he sounded like himself. “Bhaaj fine. Byte-2 fine. Tower fine. Majda queen and her dust gang fine.”
Angel breathed out with relief. “Talky in hour, yah?”
“Yah.” His voice softened. “You stay good.”
“You too.” She cut the link.
Angel headed to her office in the Selei Tower. Maybe she could discover useful info about the red rash in all those slick networks she’d found to explore.
Bhaaj finished checking the two children with her scanner. “Got virus,” she told them, just as she had told everyone else she’d treated in the past hours. “Feel sick? Rash?”
“Nahya,” the smaller girl said, a child of about six with pale gold hair. As far as Bhaaj could tell, some Deepers had lighter hair and skin because their bodies had less melanin, which protected against sunlight. The changes seemed deliberate, given that people in the Undercity also lived underground, and they mostly had darker coloring similar to the upper classes in Cries. Whatever the reason for the change, it had faded into the misty history of the aqueducts.
“Not sick,” the older girl said. She looked like an eight-year-old version of her sister.
Bhaaj held up her air syringe. “I protect. Give vaccine, yah?”
They shrugged permission, not even asking what vaccine meant. They’d probably overheard this conversation enough in the past few hours to memorize it. So Bhaaj gave them a dose. The vaccine did even less when administered after people had the virus, but since every person Bhaaj had checked already carried it, the point was moot.
“Warning,” the air syringe told her in an androgynous voice. “My supplies are down to two percent. I can’t synthesize any more of the medicine you are using.”
The girls in front of her giggled, young enough to be unfazed by talking things. Bhaaj tried to smile, with little success. “You got home?” she asked them.
“Brother,” the older girl said. “Big. Twelve years.”
“Hoshma?” Bhaaj asked. “Hoshpa?”
“Nahya,” the girl said.
“Saints,” Bhaaj muttered. Didn’t any kids here have parents? Most of the people she’d treated were younger than twenty-five. A few had lived longer, but so far she’d seen no one older than fifty. They just looked older, worn by starvation, thirst, and disease, with no medical care beyond the infirmary run by their overworked healer. She’d seen no sign of gangs or punkers. They all took care of each other, children raising children, with great reverence for their “elders” who’d managed to survive past the doddering old age of thirty-five.
“Go home. Stay with brother,” Bhaaj told them. “Come back if get sick.”
“Eh,” the older girl told her. With that, they held hands and ran off, maybe going home, maybe going to play, maybe going to die.
A woman spoke behind Bhaaj. “I need a new syringe.”
Bhaaj turned with a start. Lavinda stood there, looking like how Bhaaj felt: exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes. Her black hair had escaped her braid and hung around her face in straight tendrils.
“Yah.” Bhaaj held up her syringe. “Mine too.”
They headed back to the infirmary in silence. Talking took too much energy. Bhaaj had learned more about the Deep in the past few hours than in the entire rest of her life. The effects of malnutrition and inbreeding, missing limbs, scoliosis, thinning of the skin, malformed organs, and other health conditions—it affected at least twenty percent of the population. Many medical journals also classified the Kyle traits as negative mutations. The genes not only gave rise to the neurological changes that created psions, they also involved other changes, some serious, some fatal. With that included, almost seventy percent of the Deeper population experienced genetic conditions that affected their health and well-being.
Lavinda spoke in a low voice. “Why do they stay down here? They’re dying.”
“Why does your family live on Raylicon?” Bhaaj asked. “The entire world is dying.”
“It’s home. Our legacy. The birthplace for all of us, Skolian and Trader alike.”
“Yah.” Bhaaj lifted her hands, then dropped them. “That’s what the Deep is to these people. It’s all that most of them know.”
Near the infirmary, the hum of machines greeted them, low and even. They walked past the rippled wall that separated it from the cavern—and the scene beyond hit Bhaaj like a fist. Patients lay on every available surface that could be converted into a bed, or in makeshift cots cobbled together out of random supplies. Karal had scooted her mini-clinic to the far side of the large area, giving more space for beds. She stood now before the three holobooths she’d set-up, which glowed with the images of Cries doctors, several of them talking at once. Every now and then, the holos flickered, either fuzzing out or disappearing altogether, then reforming.
“Where is the Deeper healer?” Lavinda said.
Bhaaj glanced around the room, but she couldn’t see the woman who’d first greeted them. “Maybe she’s out treating people.”
“Need water,” a man said in a ragged voice.
Bhaaj turned to a man lying on a bed to her left. A worn-out blanket covered most of his body, but his bare arms lay on top the threadbare cloth. An ugly rash covered his arms and face like a distorted map of some planet’s continents drawn in mottled red bumps.
“Here.” Lavinda slipped a bottle out of the bag she wore slung over her back. Snapping it open, she tilted the bottle to his lips. He tried to gulp down the water, and he did manage a few swallows. “My thanks,” he whispered.
Lavinda smoothed his hair back from his face. “Healer treat you?”
“Yah.” He closed his eyes, his ability to talk used up.
Lavinda looked up at Bhaaj, her face drawn. “We have to do something.”
“We are.” Bhaaj couldn’t tell whether or not their efforts helped. If the vaccine didn’t work, or if Karal and her advisors didn’t come up with a better solution, the entire population here could come down with the carnelian rash. She hadn’t found a single person who wasn’t infected. Some were already showing symptoms, the rash, a fever, chills, nausea, and a hacking cough.
Lavinda was watching her closely. “The people we’ve treated came here because they or someone they knew is sick. It isn’t surprising they’re all infected. That doesn’t mean everyone in the Deep has the virus.”
Bhaaj exhaled. “I hope not.”
They headed towards Karal until they came close enough to hear her and the flickering holo-doctors, who seemed as unsubstantial as mist drifting in a desert, about to disappear any moment.
“It’s carried by the algae,” Karal was saying. “The particles are too small to see when they float in the air, but they spread on surfaces everywhere.”
“Air?” a man in one holobooth asked. He was standing in front of a board covered with chemical symbols. Static partially obscured his voice. “It’s transm . . . not only water . . . air too?”
“Air, yes, and the algae.” Lines of strain creased Karal’s face. “The algae are everywhere, on the walls, ground, ceilings, rock formations. Even on the people. It activates receptors in their skin that makes it glow blue.”
In another holobooth, a woman sitting at a high-tech console said, “I’ve been studying the specs you sent.” Her image wavered and washed out. When it reformed, she was saying “—the virus can spread even without the algae. That just offers a good substrate where it can breed.”
The doctor in the third holobooth spoke, a gray-haired woman in a blue lab coat. “If you aren’t meticulous with the quarantine, it could spread to the Undercity.” Her voice turned grim. “You have visitors there, Doctor Rajindia. You must quarantine them from Cries.”
“We can’t let it into Cries,” the man at the table said. “You must maintain the quarantine.”
“Yes, absolutely,” the glossy-console doctor stated. “We have to protect the city.”
Karal regarded them with a sour look. “First and foremost, we have to protect the people here.”
“I’m trying alternate versions of the vaccine based on the data you’ve sent,” the man said. If he’d noticed Karal’s cold tone, he gave no hint. “I have a lead on a modification that might be more effective against this new variant.”
“Good.” Karal glanced at her own console. “The algae are getting into my tech-mech.”
“Could you repeat that?” the doctor at the high-tech console asked. “I didn’t catch it.”
“The algae are damaging my equipment.” Karal spoke urgently. “Send me any results you have. Don’t worry if your tests are inconclusive. Send me a continual stream of your work, thoughts, anything. That way, if we lose our link, I’ll have what you’ve done so far to work with.”
“Will do,” the man said.
“I’m sending now,” the gray-haired doctor said.
Across the infirmary, a woman lying on one of the beds started to cough, a hacking sound that felt explosive in the otherwise quiet room.
“I have to go,” Karal told her advisors.
“We’ll keep you updated,” the man said.
After Karal signed off, she glanced at Bhaaj and Lavinda. “Are you two okay?”
“Fine,” Lavinda said. “We need more vaccine.”
Karal motioned, her gesture taking in the entire mini-clinic. “Take what you need.” With that, she headed toward her coughing patient.
Bhaaj exchanged a look with Lavinda. “Do you know what we need?” the colonel asked.
“We can figure it out,” Bhaaj said with far more confidence than she felt. “We should look for air syringes.” As she glanced around, her gaze raked across the back wall of the room, which was only a few meters away. “Lavinda, wait.” She motioned at a row of stalagmites that bordered the wall like a series of rippled cones standing guard over the infirmary. A person’s foot showed next to one of them. “Someone is back there.”
Lavinda grabbed a sterile smart-cloth from a tray and headed with Bhaaj to the wall. When they stepped around the cone, they found a woman slumped against the rocky wall behind it. The Deeper healer. She sat with her eyes closed, her legs stretched out, and her arms limp at her sides.
“Healer?” Bhaaj knelt on one side of the woman and Lavinda on the other. This close, Bhaaj could see the telltale rash on the woman’s neck, arms, and hands.
The healer opened her eyes and watched Bhaaj with a bleared gaze. “Eh?”
“We help,” Bhaaj told her. “Got water. Meds.” Except they had no meds. They’d exhausted them, besides which Karal had already vaccinated the healer and treated her for the rash.
The woman’s voice rasped. “Just need—rest. Just—a little.”
“Here.” Lavinda opened her snap bottle and sterilized it with the smart cloth using great care, as if she could protect the healer from the virus even now as it raged through the woman’s body. Lavinda tilted the bottle to her lips, and the healer drank in gulps.
After a moment, the woman’s gaze focused on her. “The hums—?”
“Hums?” Lavinda asked.
“I think she means the chorus.” Bhaaj had become so used to the distant singing, she’d almost stopped noticing. She spoke gently. “Hum still goes.”
“Not . . . hear.” The woman closed her eyes and sagged against the wall. She laid her hand on Bhaaj’s arm. “Sing it, yah?”
Bhaaj felt as if her heart were breaking. “Can’t sing.” She had no idea which was worse, her inability to do anything even remotely resembling the beauty of that soothing music or knowing that if she tried, she’d sound so horrible that she’d ruin whatever comfort it offered this dying woman.
Lavinda spoke quietly. “Raja, ramp up my ear augs so I can hear the music better.”
“How is this?” Raja asked.
“Yes, that works.” Lavinda’s gaze seemed to turn inward.
Then she sang.
Her voice came out on one syllable, the “ah” favored by the ethereal chorus. She had perfect pitch, exactly on tune for the haunting melody that had continued nonstop since they arrived. Bhaaj doubted the same people were singing now as before; even if the entire chorus had managed to stay healthy, no one with an unaugmented body could go for that many hours and still create such a clear, effortless sound.
Lavinda sang to the dying healer. The purity of her voice was stunning; no wobbles, no slips, no wavering, no scratchiness, none of the errors that plagued Bhaaj when she tried even simple tunes she’d known since childhood. Lavinda’s voice was sheer joy to hear, earthy in the lowest ranges, warm and full in the middle, and as clear in the high ranges as water burbling in a mountain creek. The size of her range astounded Bhaaj, and she sounded exquisite everywhere, never struggling for the lowest or highest notes. Bhaaj stayed frozen, mesmerized.
The healer let out a long sigh. She took Lavinda’s hand and tightened her hold on Bhaaj’s arm with her other hand. “My name . . . Sarzana.”
Bhaaj’s voice cracked. “You honor us.”
“The Bhaaj.” Her voice was low. “You came to help. Brought city queen.” She spoke to Lavinda, who kept singing, but low enough so they could hear the healer. “My thanks.”
“Your name will know honor.” Bhaaj’s voice shook. “All will sing the tale. Sarzana saved the Deep.” She had no doubt about what would have happened if Sarzana hadn’t sent Paul for help. This mutated strain of the rash would have wiped out most if not everyone here. “All will sing your name.”
“Words kind . . .” The healer closed her eyes, and her head rolled to the side.
“No.” Bhaaj grasped her shoulders, drawing the woman back up, cradling her body against her own. “Come back.” Memories crashed into her mind of that day when she’d held Sparks in her arms, the small girl’s body covered with that hideous rash, red and oozing. Bhaaj had begged her not to die while tears streamed down her face, one of the few times in her life she’d openly wept.
No response came from the healer. Her body remained limp in Bhaaj’s arms.
Lavinda’s voice faded into silence. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Bhaaj kept holding Sarzana. “Wake up,” she pleaded. “Wake up.”
Someone laid a hand on her shoulder. Looking up, Bhaaj found Karal kneeling next to her, her motions strained, as if the doctor had aged years in the past few hours. She scanned Sarzana with her monitor. “She’s gone.” Softly, Karal spoke to Sarzana’s lifeless body. “I—I’m sorry.”
“She didn’t come back here to rest.” Still holding the healer, Bhaaj sagged against the wall, too depleted to hold herself up. “She knew she was dying. She didn’t want anyone to see.”
“I gave her everything I had.” Desperation edged Karal’s voice. “It should have cured her even if she was showing symptoms. And she wasn’t, not when we arrived. Damn it, I should have found a way.”
Bhaaj lifted her head. “It’s not your fault your medicine doesn’t cure this variant of the rash.”
Karal opened her mouth to respond, then stopped when a commotion came from outside. Someone was calling out. It took Bhaaj a moment to process the Iotic words.
“Please!” That sounded like Captain Morah. “Help us.”
“What the hell?” Lavinda let go of Sarzana’s hand, careful but fast, then jumped to her feet and strode out from the sheltering row of stalagmites.
Bhaaj straightened up, then stopped, still supporting Sarzana.
“Go ahead,” Karal said. “I’ll take care of her.”
With an exhale, Bhaaj laid down Sarzana’s body as gently as she could manage, then sped after Lavinda. The colonel had headed across the infirmary, making her way toward a group entering the room, all three members of Ruzik’s gang, plus Captain Morah, Lieutenant Caranda—
And Lieutenant Warrick.
Both Morah and Caranda were holding up Warrick. She sagged in their grip, her face pale.
“Shit,” Bhaaj muttered as she made her way among the beds where people slept or had dropped into a coma. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, she thought at them.
“—how long has she had the rash?” Lavinda was asking as Bhaaj joined them.
“I’m not sure.” Captain Morah nodded to Ruzik. “He noticed it first.”
“Tired,” Warrick muttered. They helped her sit on a makeshift platform, and she rested her head against the wall next to it, closing her eyes with an odd look, as if she didn’t believe how badly she needed the support.
Bhaaj glanced at Ruzik, who had stayed back with Tower and Byte-2. “You see her rash?”
“I see she too pale,” Ruzik said. “Ask her to push up sleeve.”
Warrick opened her eyes. “I thought I felt worn out because we were working so hard.” She gestured to Ruzik. “If he hadn’t asked me to look, I doubt I’d have noticed until I collapsed.”
Bhaaj nodded, then turned to Ruzik and his gang. “And the three of you?” Let them be all right, she thought to the ancient deities she didn’t even believe in. He’s like a son to me. They are my family. Don’t take them. I’ll give you anything, anything you want. Just spare them.
“Am fine.” Ruzik pushed up the sleeves of the pullover he donned in the chill air of the Deep. No trace of the rash showed anywhere on his arms. “All clear. Not hot. Not cough.”
“Same here,” Byte-2 said. “All good.”
Tower also nodded to Bhaaj.
Bhaaj exhaled, her relief so big that she doubted her attempts to look impassive fooled them.
Lavinda was speaking to Captain Morah and Lieutenant Caranda. “Any signs at all?”
“Nothing for me,” Morah said.
“I’m good,” Caranda answered. Although she refrained from comments about the Undercity and their diseases, it offered little satisfaction to Bhaaj. She’d far rather hear insults from healthy people than remorse from the dying.
Warrick mumbled, “Can’t believe I forgot my last checkup.” Her body slumped to the side.
“She needs to lie down,” Captain Morah said.
Lavinda looked around the crammed infirmary. “There’s no room.”
A woman spoke from behind them. “I can clear some of these beds.”
Bhaaj turned with a start to find Karal watching them. In a voice aching with pain, the doctor said, “Some of the patients no longer need theirs.”
They all stared at her. Finally Lavinda said, “Where will you put the bodies?”
“I—I don’t know.” Karal took a breath. “I haven’t had a chance to think that far ahead.”
A woman Bhaaj had thought was sleeping in a nearby bed opened her eyes. “Queen’s dust ganger use my bed.” She sat up slowly. “I switch with her.”
Disbelief flashed across Karal’s face, followed by hope. “You get up? You sure?”
“Yah, sure.” The woman shrugged. “Less sick now.”
“Ah goddess!” Karal yanked the monitor off her med-belt and scanned the woman. “You’re getting better!” She switched into the Deeper dialect, which sounded even closer to Iotic than Undercity speech. “Getting better, yah?”
“Yah.” The woman spoke as if to say, Sure, I’ve rested, now I can get up. She had no idea of the import of her words, that it meant you could survive this version of red rash.
A man spoke behind them. “Not need my bed. Give to sick.”
Bhaaj swung around. The man who’d been sitting up when they first came to the infirmary now stood behind them, watching their group with curiosity. Traces of the rash remained on his face and arms, but he looked a lot better than when Bhaaj had last seen him. “I go,” he said. “Not like it here. Go home. Sleep there.”
“Wait.” Karal stepped over, scanning him. “Let me check . . . ah, yes, I see. The treatment I gave you slowed the disease enough for your body to fight it off.”
“Eh?” he asked.
“Healer meds help,” she said. “And you strong. Not die.”
He nodded his thanks. “I go now.”
Bhaaj felt how much Karal wanted them to stay until she was certain their recovery would continue. But what could she do? The infirmary couldn’t handle the influx of new cases unless some people left, either on their own—or as the end of a life-watch.
As Karal went about getting Warrick settled, Bhaaj spoke in a low voice to Lavinda. “We need to find a place for the people who’ve passed away.”
“Is there a burial site near here?” Lavinda asked.
“We don’t have cemeteries,” Bhaaj said. “Plots of dirt like that don’t exist in the aqueducts. We cremate our dead and spread the ashes over a place with meaning to the departed.”
Lavinda motioned at her remaining two guards. “We can help carry people.”
“Yah.” Bhaaj spoke to Ruzik. “Our guards help, too. All work together.”
Ruzik and Morah considered each other with a decided lack of enthusiasm. With that mutual dislike settled, however, Ruzik, Byte-2 and the Majda guards went off together to help the Deepers.
Tower stayed behind.
“Eh?” Bhaaj asked her.
Her protégé spoke in a subdued voice. “Not just Majda guard.” She pushed up the sleeve of her pullover, revealing a trace of the rash on her lower arm.
Damn! Bhaaj’s pulse surged. “How long?”
“Not know. Not look.” Tower grimaced. “Then start itch.”
Bhaaj wanted to curse at the universe, or at least at the portion of it that had inflicted this virus on her people. “You get more meds from Karal. Fast.”
“Too late.”
“No. Not too late.” Bhaaj had to believe the treatment could help. She couldn’t lose her Knights this way. They’d trusted her when they’d agreed to protect Lavinda during this visit, but it had all gone wrong. “You strong,” she told Tower. “Young, healthy. Get better.”
Tower just nodded, nothing else to say. She headed toward Ruzik and the others, including Karal, to get the treatment that just might spare her from becoming one of the bodies they were preparing to take from the infirmary.
“What about you?” Lavinda asked her.
“Eh.” It took Bhaaj a moment to put her thoughts in order and push up her sleeves. Her skin looked fine, no rash, just scars from her youth that she’d never bothered to have removed. Or maybe she’d never felt ready to erase those signs of the life that had defined her childhood.
“Is good.” She looked up at Lavinda. “And you?”
The queen rolled back her sleeves, revealing clear skin. “Nothing.”
“Good.” Bhaaj watched her Knights across the room. She wanted to go hover around Tower, Ruzik, and Byte-2 and ask if they were okay again and again, as if repeating the question could somehow improve the answers.
“Come on.” Lavinda rubbed her neck, a simple massage that probably didn’t come close to relieving her strain. “We should get back to doing scans and vaccinations.”
Bhaaj made herself nod. “Of course.”
They made their way across the infirmary, moving among beds crammed so close that barely a handspan separated them. People murmured, slept, or stared at nothing. She and Lavinda helped anyone they could, offering filtered water, making them more comfortable, giving words of comfort. By the time they reached the wall that separated the infirmary from the cavern, Bhaaj felt as if she’d aged a year. Stepping around the wall, they looked out—
“Ah, no,” Bhaaj said.
People hadn’t just trickled into the cavern, they’d flooded it. Patients lay everywhere on rough pallets, some with kin or circle members, some groaning, some silent, some so pale they already looked like death, all waiting for just a few moments with the Deeper healer.
Except their healer couldn’t help. She lay dead in her tomb of stalagmites.