by Alma Boykin
In fact, the more he thought about it, the more Tsae wondered if the juniors died of something brought back from one of the colony worlds. The Lone God alone knew what nasty parasites and bacteria lurked on Sidara, for one. Tsae made a note to check with the head of colonial medicine and see what she had to say, if they had observed anything similar. Given the reptilian Sidarans’ research into biological warfare, and some of the traps and weapons they’d used in the last attempts to stop the Azdhagi, a slow-virus sort of agent might well account for what the pathologists reported. Especially if it were spread by sustained contact, like drop-scale had been before the development of antibiotics.
“No, nothing comes back from the colonies, Tsae,” Shilee brusquely reminded her colleague an hour later. “Not even from Sidara. Only edibles and processed,” she leaned on the word, “raw materials. No germs, bacteria, viruses, nothing. And we’d certainly know if someone picked up a mutagen.” Her glare scalded even through the video projection and Tsae had to admit that she was right. Azdhagi excelled in space medicine, including space-related genetic problems and the prevention of same.
“Thank you, Shilee. I just needed to confirm the null hypothesis,” Tsae said smoothly.
Her tone shifted from righteous anger to concern. “Is there something we need to look for?”
“No, not right now. I’ll sniff down a few more trails and if I find something for you to track, I’ll send you the data.” Shilee had more than enough to keep her busy, Tsae thought. She wouldn’t push him.
She didn’t. “Very well.”
The next day Maker Tsae sat in his cluttered work chamber and snarled at two data displays. Of the thousand dead male juniors, eight hundred ten came from out-Clan parents, mostly in the cities. The rest scattered between various lineages, with a cluster of ten in Raetee lineage. Tsae rubbed under his muzzle with his forefoot talons, thinking. Raetee had been an early and enthusiastic participant in Star-Strong. Could there be a connection? Then again, Raetee always had a high number of problems because they had so inbred over the previous hundreds of year-turns. Tsae marveled that they even managed to survive as a Clan; so many of their juniors had one problem or another.
Once again Tsae wished that more of the project data survived intact. Two sixes of years before, just as he joined Star-Strong, a series of equipment failures had coincided with a flood that destroyed the Makers’ labs’ secondary back-up data center. The double disaster cost the Azdhagi Makers billions of terabytes of data, affecting everything from plant breeding to Star-Strong to the development of new interstellar engines for the Imperial military. “Well, no point moping over lost prey,” Tsae sighed. The data were long gone and could not be reconstructed; meaning that ninety percent of the second and third generation participants of Star-Strong could no longer be identified and neither could their offspring. Tsae made some notes, encrypted the data sets again, and closed the files. The death of a thousand male juniors was regrettable, but he had successes that he needed to discuss and expand upon. With that happy thought Tsae went to meet with some of the other Makers to hear about the results of their work in crop modification.
On his way out he waved his tail tip to Tareshah, his secretary. The larger male raised a forefoot in acknowledgment but kept entering data into the back-up system. Tsae admired his subordinate’s determination not to lose any further information, and completely approved of Tareshah’s tertiary data back-up site. It required additional labor, but the Makers agreed that losing as much data has they had in the Great Floods would be worse.
Two days later, Kirlak heard a cough behind her and looked up from reviewing a journal file on fertility onset delays in colony-born females. Coree poked his muzzle into the doorway just far enough to hiss, “Your favorite person is here.” The he fled.
Hunh? Kirlak frowned at the strange announcement and rapid departure. Then she groaned as a burly male sauntered into the office. Cheerka didn’t even bother scratching on the door. He made himself comfortable on her spare bench and said, “So, any news?”
“No.”
“The peace keepers are looking for Four Claws again. Heard a rumor that one of his messengers turned up dead.”
“And the sun rises in the east,” Kirlal muttered. “If you are referring to the male found deceased two days ago, the official autopsy results will be released to the public pending notification of any known lineage members following identification of the male in question.”
Cheerka snorted. “How much less interesting would your life be if people carried their identification with them when they died?”
Kirlal snorted in turn. “About twenty percent. If you see Four Claws, ask him to leave a name tag with his next former employee.”
“If I see Four Claws again, the next time you meet me will be in your autopsy chamber,” Cheerka reminded the pathologist. He changed tracks. “Any official comment on the body that the juniors pulled out of the harbor at Seagate?” The story-catcher pulled a voice recorder out of his carry-pack and waited, talon poised, to hit “record.”
“I will have to refer you to Tsae. He has access to extra-district records and reports,” Kirlak reminded her unwanted visitor.
“You are no help today, Kirlal,” the male grumbled. “How about something on the rumor that a suspiciously high number of juniors are dying in the cities. Any chemical spills, someone sneak back from the colonies on vacation without going through deconn, new animal at the zoo?”
The female hesitated before shrugging her tail. “Nothing from me. You have access to the records, you go hunting.”
“I have been. There have been six sealed autopsy reports on juniors here in Central City, eighteen in the past five double-moons in Seagate, ten in the same time in New Southdown and nine in Cloudwash.” Cheerka’s neck spines rose a fraction and his tail fell utterly still. “Including my sire’s brother’s son. He died three sixts after birth, as black as coal and utterly blind. This was sire’s brother’s third clutch; a male from the first clutch died the same way, six year-turns back. Any thoughts?”
“Deathtouch,” Kirlak hissed under her breath as she made a warding-off sign.
“What?”
She waved her forefeet. “Nothing. I’m sorry for your lineage’s loss, Cheerka.” The tan-and-brown male stared at her, still and silent, watching. It unnerved the pathologist and she started reaching for the panic button to call security.
The male snorted with disgust. “May the Lone God take care of whoever or whatever is causing this plague, so I don’t have to.” With that he got up and left the work chamber after giving Kirlak a look of combined pity and irritation that sent her scrambling for the inter-office comm.
“Tsae? Yes, I’ll wait. Sir, yes, Cheerka was just here. He’s tracking something. Two deathtouch fatalities in his near lineage, and forty-one sealed junior autopsies, according to what he’s been sniffing out of the files. I thought you should know.”
Meanwhile, the story-catcher pulled on a rain drape and squelched out of the medical lab building. He walked two blocks to a transport stand and got into the first tram that passed. He slid his pass-card into the reader and tapped the debit acknowledgment, then found a place to stand. The cool rain chased more people than usual onto the trams, and Cheerka tucked his tail close under him lest it get stepped on. He got off a kliq from his office, opting to walk the last distance; he thought better if he was in motion, rain or no rain.
Cheerka wanted answers and he wanted them soon. His readers needed to know what was going on, or so he kept telling himself, pushing away the memories that his sire’s brother’s story had sent dogging his own trail. All right, he growled silently. No luck with my contacts in the Makers’ offices, nothing from Kirlak except a name, ‘deathtouch’. Time to call in a few favors. He already had his story about the murdered male: a friend of an acquaintance reported that Four Claws indeed wanted to hire a new messenger. Cheerka’s neck spines twitched under his rain cover. You do NOT try to skim from Four Claws,
no matter how slick of a bookkeeper you think you are. Anyone who covered the back trails and warrens knew that, even if they stayed out of Four Claws’ businesses. The rain remained light as the reptile walked quickly past an empty city park, around the corner of a residential block and along an old block of shops and walk-up offices, then turned up the treaded ramp leading to his third floor work space. He’d formed the main body of his lead story by the time he shook off his rain drape and hung it by the door.
The reptile typed out his post on a positively ancient text-entry machine. The clicking and chirps his talons made on the keys kept him in the mood, helping the words flow. After setting out the story and cutting in a map of the area where the male’s body had been found, (“The usual. What do you expect,” the peacekeeper had grunted), Cheerka made a pot of hot broth from the concentrate he kept in a cooler. Refreshed, the story-catcher went back and cleared up a few awkward spots and added some color here and there (“smoke-scented back-trail near Kang’s, the blood-brown stains on the pavement leaving a reminder for anyone chancing on the scene…”). Satisfied, he appended the next day’s weather forecast and the odds for the first two rounds of an upcoming regional wrestling tournament, and then sent his dispatch out to his subscribers. An hour later and it would also appear on Cheerka’s personal news-display, minus the details. Free riders get what they pay for was his motto.
Cheerka opened his message files and discovered a note from a contact with the peacekeepers at Wavebreak. The body that the juniors had dragged ashore belonged to a local poet who made his living by teaching calligraphy and by doing custom talon-written work. The peacekeepers found his mate dead when they went to tell her the news, the victim of a slow-leaf overdose. The source didn’t have any reasons for the suicides, except that the pair had just lost a second junior. The youngest junior, a female, had been run over by a transport two sixts of days before. Cheerka let out a heavy breath. It had been one of those accidents no one could have foreseen, a combination of rain-slick pavement and an electrical malfunction in the tram’s safety systems. The oldest junior, a male, had died of liver and heart failure before reaching his second growth phase. The story-catcher’s neck spines slammed into full threat/anger display and he hissed. “May the Lone God fry the storm-caught furbearer behind whatever is killing these juniors, the monstrous,” and his words shifted into an inarticulate growl of rage.
Cheerka wrote up the story’s bones but sent it to his “holding” queue until getting more information and official word that the deceased’s lineage members, if there were any, had been notified. Then he tapped his call-code into his computer and settled a headset over his ear-holes. “Cheerka for Lord Tarkeela, please,” he told the answering program. It was time to call in a favor.
Three Trees Village, Sseekhala
The lanky grey-brown reptile swept the communications receiver toward himself with his tail. “Tarkeela,” he answered, then masked a yawn. Hot, damp weather always made him sleepy.
“Lord Tarkeela, this is Cheerka. I need your help with an investigation,” the voice at the other end of the comm link began.
“Oh good,” the larger reptile said, rolling onto his flank. “Who got caught enjoying Neetai’s charms this time and has his sire paid her cost yet?”
“Ah, no one, which is probably a story in itself, now that you mention it,” and he heard scratching and tapping as the story-catcher made notes on something. “No, my lord, I need to know about something called ‘deathtouch’.”
Tarkeela’s neck spines flared as he rolled abruptly back onto his belly and stood up. He looked to see if any of the servants or his latest mistress happened to be near before speaking again. “What do you need to know?”
“You’ve heard of it?”
Tarkeela thought quickly. “Yes, I’ve heard the term, but I’m not at liberty to say where or when or from whom. Why and what do you need to know?”
“I need to know why so many male juniors have sealed autopsy records and what that has to do with ‘deathtouch’.” The noble could hear the other reptile’s eagerness over the line.
“Call me back in two time marks and I’ll see what I can find, if anything, Cheerka. You know how much the Greats confide in me these days,” Tarkeela growled, his irritation at the previous day’s regional council meeting returning.
“Two time marks. Thank you, my lord.”
Tarkeela ended the communication without replying. He took off the headpiece and carefully did not slam it onto the box, and neither did he smash the receiver with his tail. Instead he walked out onto the balcony of his room and stared into the hot sun, wishing it would bake the new chill out of his gut. What stupid, brainless, fur-covered, parasite-ridden, storm-caught son of a drug-addled pleasuremate is doing what utterly murderous, sadistic, evil… His silent imprecations trailed away. Pain in his forefeet and a creak of protesting wood warned Tarkeela to relax before he broke his talons on the ironwood of the porch. Great Lord Raetee had mentioned this “death touch” under his breath at the regional council, but only to Great Lord Kirlin and probably only because he thought that no one else could hear. But Tarkeela’s own contacts had already seen something strange and told him about it.
Stupid nobles, blind to prey under their muzzles, he fumed yet again. Well, he’d turn their own prerogatives against them. Tarkeela stalked back into his chamber and turned on his computer, plugging into the main public records network. Once there he entered his personal code and demanded access to the count of sealed autopsy reports, sorted by age and sex. As a regional councilor he had the right to know such information in overview, in case of a disaster. Tarkeela ran his eyes down the long columns and noticed two things. First, large numbers of male juniors had suddenly started dying of various causes, more than normal. Second, most of them came from the cities, except for a cluster in Raetee’s lands. None of the information had been coded as restricted and Tarkeela felt no guilt about feeding it to Cheerka. The story collector could have found it on his own, if he’d taken the time to file the information requests and then had the patience to wait a few sixts.
Grey-brown Tarkeela let his tail thrash as he read through the lists, his agitation and anger growing with each line. He gave a quiet bellow of warped laughter. “Very well, oh honored sire, those hours of statistics classes had value aside from making me break out in shatter-scale at the sight of accounting programs.” The numbers revealed nothing less than an epidemic. The spread rate seemed consistent with the endless sample problems of disease spread that he’d spent far too many hours calculating with talon on data screen. The reptile snarled at the display again, then saved the data and printed a hard copy before logging out of the government system.
When the communications system passed Cheerka’s call through, Tarkeela growled. “Story-catcher, I hope you are ready to take on the largest predator you’ve ever scented.”
Hesitation colored the reply. “Bigger than Four Claws?”
“Much bigger, Cheerka. Much.”
He heard talons on a writing surface, then, “What is it, my lord?”
Tarkeela rose onto his hind legs and paced the room. “Deathtouch is real and it is either the disease killing the male juniors or it is the name for the collection of symptoms. I’m sending you the data file, all of it from public access sources so don’t worry about that,” the noble continued. “Yes, something is killing male juniors. Yes, there is more of it in the cities than on the Clan lands. No, I do not have access to see if it is also on the colony worlds. No, I’m not going to pull rank until you have something more concrete and yes, I will sniff around the trail and see if I can catch a scent.”
As the noble dropped back onto all four feet, the frantic scratching and tapping at the end of the transmission continued for a minute, then stopped. A very long silence followed, then a heavy “whunf” of released breath. “Thank you, Lord Tarkeela. I will send you what I have and what I find, under the usual seals.” They’d traded information before, always quie
tly. Tarkeela never revealed his source, instead gaining a reputation as a master at data collection, while Cheerka suggested to his readers that rumor, hearsay, and public information combined to tell the tale. Which was true, to a point. Or he hinted that an unhappy disinherited offspring spilled the story, also a common occurrence.
“Good hunting and watch the back trail,” Tarkeela warned, then terminated the communication. He put the equipment away and heard a chime from his electronic schedule minder, a gift from Neetai. The courtesan had grown weary of his inability to remember appointments; the male smiled a little. They’d parted as friends. However, the chime warned that he had to get cleaned up and go act like a “proper noble” in a few hours.
Tarkeela returned to the balcony and looked out at Three Trees, his lineage’s estate. A number of reptiles bustled to and fro, working on the garden and trimming the black-globe orchard. The first fruit had set and the time had come for a little thinning of the smallest and excess fruit. Without thinning, too many fruit developed, stealing sweetness from each other and potentially breaking branches with the weight in especially good years. Early rains followed by two moons of dry, sunny weather signaled that this year might just be a branch-breaker, thus the extra effort put into removing inferior black-globes. We always have been eager to prune and thin, the noble observed as a shiver tickled his tail.
Beyond the garden, a small factory town spilled down the hillsides and east toward the distant plains. Tarkeela lineage belonged to the “new pack,” those ennobled for financial contributions to the Azdhag Empire. His sire’s grand sire, a brilliant metallurgist and chemist, had developed three new alloys. Two found quick application in space travel, while the third proved to be the best solid-material heat sink thus-far devised for specialty computing uses. Ennobled, the metallurgist established an estate not far from a mining district in the foothills of the Cloudcatcher Mountains. Tarkeela, fourth of the lineage, knew reptiles, not metallurgy, and used his talents to hire the best managers and advisors that credits could obtain. The lovely setting and comfortable lifestyle in Three Trees helped further sweeten Tarkeela’s offers, attracting reptiles who knew their business.
