Heritage of Flight

by Susan Shwartz

  "Why you know: some things just go with a meal. Like glasses of water, or napkins, or..."

  "Or bread?” asked Alicia.

  "That's right. Those things don't really count. Lohr always said that whenever there were two foods, you always had to eat the solid, high-protein stuff first, because you might not have time to eat it second; and it's what really stays with you."

  "Bread,” mused Pryor. “Bread. Pauli, excuse me.” She walked off with that rapid medcrew stride.

  Pauli stared helplessly at ‘Cilia. “Why isn't Lohr here with you?” she asked.

  The little girl smiled as she always did at the thought of her splendid older brother, on whom even Captain Yeager relied. Her waxen skin almost glowed as if she were returning to normal health. Then she dropped her eyes—the faintly manic, dilated eyes of the poison victim—to her paper. “I sent him to talk to the others. They need him too."

  Behind her rose Pryor's voice, not the gentle, controlled tones of the physician that the entire settlement had come to trust, but sharp, imperious, demanding to know how the bread had been baked for the Kwanzaa feast. She'd be wanting samples of the flour next, perhaps even the grain, Pauli was sure. She yawned and reached for a stimulant, then started to put it back in her pocket. Perhaps it might be a good idea to sleep now.

  Realspace reeled about her, colors strobing, then fading to black as sounds dopplered past her range of hearing, only to explode in strident demands: PAULI DO SOMETHING! She did. She screamed, and Jump snatched the shriek from her lips. She could feel her throat rasp and vibrate with the scream, but she heard nothing. She looked down, and saw herself wavering in and out of existence; and facing her came a witches’ star of enemy pilots, each with her own face as the RED ALERT lights and klaxons brayed...

  Rafe's icy hand on her shoulder brought her fully awake. He leapt back just in time to avoid the counterattack some residue of her nightmare made her launch. She thrust clear of the covers that seemed to smother and imprison her and wiped a shaking hand across her brow. 0h, God, sweating like Ari. Or Ramon. Why'd Rafe wake me?

  She looked up at him, appalled, and he bent to pick up a blanket and lay it about her shoulders. “You'll freeze like that, Pauli."

  She gasped and sank back on the bed.

  "Bad dream?” he asked, smoothing back her hair. Over her head, he breathed the words “in a minute!” but she intercepted them.

  "What's ‘in a minute'?” she mumbled. She was so tired; and her relief that she too was not about to convulse and hallucinate made her want to sleep even longer. But if Rafe was signalling “in a minute,” something was wrong. She reached for her clothes, but couldn't find them in the dark. The LEDs on the chrono she hadn't turned off before collapsing into bed read 4:00.

  "The lights won't work,” Rafe told her. “There's been a power failure. One of the techs went crazy and tried to take apart computer interface with the generators. When we caught him, he started to scream that we were evil and had to be wiped out."

  "Ohmigod,” Pauli moaned, and it wasn't a prayer. Her feet, scuffling against the cold floor, kicked against her clothes and she bent to retrieve and tug them on. “Why'd you let me sleep?"

  "Pryor's orders. Apparently you told her she could either rest or be sedated. She returned the compliment."

  She swore, and knew that Rafe turned aside to hide an out-of-place grin. Stamping into her boots to settle cold feet in them, Pauli rose. “All right, Rafe. The lights are down because some maniac attacked the computer. What else?"

  Rafe looked away. “We're on backups over at the lab. When the system crashed, it took most of the research database with it."

  "Shit,” Pauli whispered, almost prayerfully.

  "Yeah,” said Rafe. “Now we have to start all over. And when you see the mess outside—Pauli, I don't know how much time we have left."

  17

  Shivering from the speed with which she had waked, Pauli strode outside and found half the crew who had been detached from the Amherst for duty here waiting for her. She also found catastrophe. Smeared across one of the central storage domes was a crude representation of a Cynthian, its huge wings daubed black, its jaws flowing a crimson that ran down to stain the snow like sacrificial debris before a bloody altar.

  Smoke rose from the remnants of an outlying storehouse, adding an eerie cast to the deep gray sky. Much of the compound lay in darkness; rocks had shattered many of the greenish lights.

  In the graveside glow of those remaining lay, writhed, or danced many people who clearly belonged in quarantine. Some should have been sedated or restrained. Some cried out in pain, their faces twisting horribly, while others tried to curl around on bellies as distended as those of women about to give birth. One or two people had bloodstained bandages swathing what should have been hands or feet.

  Pauli pointed at them. “Those people should be cared for!” she declared, unable to keep the sick disgust from chilling her voice. “Have there been any deaths? What's happened?"

  "Only two deaths so far,” one of Alicia Pryor's assistants spoke up. “But a whole complex of new symptoms."

  "Where's Dr. Pryor?” Pauli interrupted.

  "Down with fever. No, it's not the madness. She caught it from that dive into the river. The rest of us

  ...Captain, we've been working till we drop. We drafted as many able-bodied as we could, but then that"—he pointed at the twisting, grimacing figures—"started."

  "What about the ones with the bandages?” asked Pauli. “What happened to their limbs?"

  "Spontaneous amputation,” said the assistant. “About twenty-four hours ago, each man complained of burning on his skin, and stabbing pains in the extremities, which turned black, gangrenous. Finally—you can see that there was very little bleeding. No infection, either.” He seemed bemused by the cases.

  Pauli stifled an insane impulse to spit, to turn her face away, to hide indoors until the last of this unholy settlement died, and she could die too. One night's sleep, she thought, because they forced me to take it; and this is what happens! “So, not only couldn't medcrew care for our sick,” she made herself say, “but the rest of you couldn't protect vital installations."

  "Ma'am!” interrupted one of the crewmembers. “These aren't poor sick people; they're mad—criminally insane, maybe. Only some of ‘em scream and hop about. Others—you see that moth on the wall, don't you? They're crazy too: quiet, mean crazy, though. Some of them have taken the law into their own hands, and sentenced us all to die. Request permission to break out sidearms, ma'am."

  "Permission denied,” Pauli snapped. “I'm not having you use weapons on—"

  "These civs are crazy!” shouted a crewwoman who wore security insignia and should have been more stable.

  "They're not civs, damn you!” Pauli interrupted, her voice rising into a scream of rage that warmed her as nothing else could have done. “We don't have civs and crew here anymore. We have sick and well; sane and crazy—and right now I'm having trouble telling which is which. Those people are your fellow settlers, lady: and you will damned well remember that!"

  The woman tried to meet Pauli's eyes, succeeded bravely for an instant, then glanced down. “Yes, ma'am."

  "All right, then. Now, I'm going to get the reports of the techs and scientists who've been working while the crew I thought I could trust plotted violence against their neighbors. And when I get back here, I want to see that ... that artwork gone, and those people decently restrained and tended. Is that understood?"

  The crew's “Yes, ma'ams” were roared so loudly that the people twitching under the sodium lamps whirled around to take notice. One of them laughed, the shrill, nerve-shattering laughter that Pauli had heard too often in the past days. Breathing hard, she strode over to the labs. For once, the tall Rafe had trouble keeping up with her.

  "Didn't know you had it in you,” he murmured. He didn't mean the fast pace, either.

  "Neither did I.” Now that she'd tongue-lashed her crew, guilt began
to creep out from somewhere in her belly to chill the rest of her.

  "Fine. Don't make a habit out of it."

  Rafe slapped a hand against a palm lock bearing the signs of hasty installation, and the door irised. The first thing Pauli noticed was the computer. Its hum was stilled, and the lights of its drives were dark.

  "We've asked for new supplies of all the food served at that damned feast of Beneatha's delivered here. Fortunately I took a lot of notes by hand,” Rafe said.

  Pauli sniffed. After the incredible luxury of uninterrupted sleep, her senses were as keen as the edge Dave ben Yehuda honed on a bush knife. “What's that I smell?” she asked. “It's sour."

  "That's a new one,” Rafe said. “Did more foods turn up while I was out?"

  "Just that.” The tech pointed at a sack from which spilled flour.

  Pauli walked over to examine it, put out a finger to touch it, then drew it away and wiped it on her coverall. She was—it had been a settlement joke when they still had things to laugh about—barely an adequate cook, but even she knew that flour should be fine and powdery. This sample was discolored, and had an oily feel.

  "Let's see the grain from which they make this flour,” said Rafe. The assistant hoisted a sack onto the lab table and opened it. “It's a rye-wheat blend,” he said. “The grains are modified for frontier use."

  Rafe dug in a gloved hand and withdrew a handful, sniffed at it, then ordered, “Bring me a lab animal."

  Pauli winced, knowing how the other beasts had died. Rafe shrugged helpless apology at her, opened the cage, and held out his hand. But when he offered the beast the flour and the grain, it backed away, its hackles up.

  "It smells something bad,” Pauli breathed. “But what?"

  Rafe bent to examine the grain again. “This is ... look at these seeds,” he said.

  Pauli leaned closer. “They're dark ... rotten,” she ventured.

  "That's a fungus,” Rafe told her. “Jared, try to find out if botany section has samples of these grains still on the stalk. Yes, you can tell Beneatha I think we're onto something. In the meantime,” Rafe turned, automatically heading for the computer, and swore. He sighed. “How am I going to identify this fungus? I've gotten too damned dependent on the computer."

  To be trapped, stymied, because the computer had failed! In that moment, she could understand Pryor's howl of rage at frontier conditions.

  Beneatha ran in, stalks of grain in her trembling hands. Even to Pauli's untrained eyes, her skin had the waxiness she had noted in people entering the early stages of the madness, and her eyes were very bright.

  "You should be in bed,” she said. “Don't make me order you."

  "Don't order me,” Beneatha said, her voice reedy. She raised one hand to her throat as if she found breathing difficult. “I had one seizure, but the medcrew says I had it easy. I have to help,” she added. “Please let me. You have to, or I think I'll go crazy again."

  Rafe shook his head at Pauli and took the grain from the woman. Delicately he reached for an ear of rye and examined it.

  "It seems blighted,” he observed. “Bent and oblong. And look at this color? What rye have you ever seen that's purple"

  Pauli watched as Rafe examined several more stalks of grain. Each, the rye especially, bore the marks he had noted: a distinguishing violet color, and the bent, oblong shape.

  The xenobotanist shook her head. “I'd have noticed anything unusual,” she stated.

  "Then you'd better look at this,” said Rafe. He tilted the bag onto the lab table, and Beneatha bent over it.

  Almost half the stalks in that sack bore the violet taint of fungus.

  "It wasn't like this when we harvested it,” she said.

  "It was rainy this summer,” Rafe said. “And we've never tried these particular strains in Cynthian soil. But you're the xenobotanist. If this were a classroom—hell, Beneatha, if we were in a lab on Earth—what would you call this violet stuff?"

  Beneatha shook her head. Her face ticced, then went calm as she thought. Instinctively she turned toward the nearest keyboard.

  "Stop wishing for the computer!” Rafe said. “It's down, and I don't have time to reprogram it. Think, Beneatha! Once we all had memories, not hardware. We need your memory!"

  "Claviceps purpurea," she muttered. “That's what it looks like. And if this sack is any indication, then our entire grain supply—"

  Rafe's eyes were very, very sad. “Our grain supply is contaminated with claviceps purpurea. Ergot. Now, I do remember about that ergot; there was a man in class with me who had a ghoulish fascination with it. A concentration of 0.05 percent of ergot is enough to produce symptoms of poisoning. And we have—what? Let's estimate that 40 percent of the grain in this sample is contaminated with it."

  "So there's more than enough there,” Pauli spoke carefully, “to turn sane, hard-working people into screaming, dancing vandals.” I didn't eat any bread, she remembered. I'm not going to run crazy and abandon my people, my husband, my child. God, what a bitch I am to be relieved. Let's see, though. Who else at the feast didn't eat the bread? They can be released for duty right now.

  "That's right,” said Rafe. “Here's the source of the madness. Ergot is very rich in alkaloids that paralyze the motor nerves of the sympathetic nervous system, and affects how the body uses adrenaline. Normally, when you're frightened, adrenaline makes your blood pressure rise. You have more energy for the short term, your nerves are sharper, and you can run or fight, if you have to.

  "But if you have ergot in your system, then adrenaline expands the blood vessels, and blood pressure drops. Since the ergot also causes muscles to go into spasm—including the muscles of blood vessels—you can get thrombosis and every kind of cramps. Bloodflow slows to the extremities, which chill and look bruised. In some severe cases—like those poor bastards you saw—gangrene sets in."

  "The summer was wet,” Beneatha said. “No one thought anything of it, except to thank God we didn't have to irrigate. Ergot? That's stuff from the Dark Ages, when people danced before plaster saints. Why not ask me to believe in witch doctors?"

  Rafe's voice was very gentle as he handed her back the grain. “There's something else,” he told her. “Sometimes the ergot mutates. Then you have not just ergot, but lysergic acid, tasteless, colorless, and even more powerful. That's what's giving you the madness, the flashback hallucinations, even poor little ‘Cilla's religious visions."

  "Why didn't we find traces of it in their bodies?” Pauli asked.

  "Because 95 percent of any dose is absorbed within five minutes after ingestion,” Rafe told her. “The consequences, though..."

  "Do people ever recover?"

  "Instinctively Dr. Pryor used adrenaline—epinphrine, she called it—to treat the hallucinations. But the adrenaline only intensified the symptoms of ergotism, made the patients even wilder, and might even have caused them to burn out. But the tranquilizers calmed that. With luck, there won't be much permanent damage; though"—he shook his head—"I don't see much chance for the women who were pregnant to give birth to healthy children."

  Beneatha hid her face in her hands.

  "There's got to be some drug that's a specific antagonist for lysergic acid. Thing is"—he shook his head—since it's almost never used, I don't know what the drug is; and we can't ask Pryor. If only I had the database up..."

  "I'll check the grain,” Beneatha said, her thin voice moan. “If it's contaminated, I'll burn it!” She dashed out of the lab.

  Rafe shook his head. “She's probably right to do that.

  "Does this mean we can never grow crops here? asked Pauli. She had grown very still. If Rafe said “yes, it was their death sentence.

  "No, only that after a wet summer, or a cold winter, we must examine them very carefully. If Beneatha says that the grain looked fine when she harvested it, I see no reason to doubt her word. But something—something in the soil, something in the grain itself, or our storage methods—caused it to turn bad.


  "The problem is, we need the computer to find out.'

  Pauli paced back and forth. She felt as if she could smell the poison in the grain, which seemed so harmless The violet of the fungus infection was even a rather attractive color. “Computer...” she mused. “Thorn There's communications gear up in the caves. Didn't we have a terminal there too?"

  Rafe leaned over the table to give her a hug. His arms felt so strong, so good, to Pauli. For a moment she clung to him, savoring the closeness. Then she pulled away.

  "Then that's it,” she said. “Someone has to climb up there and check the computer. It's funny: right before poor Beneatha's karamu. I promised to send someone to check on Halgerd. Now it looks like I'll have to go myself."

  Rafe glared at her. “Don't argue,” she said, holding up a hand. “I'm no good around a lab, but I have been up to the caves—"

  "As have most of the people here, remember?"

  "Yes, but can they fly back? Who else knows how to use Borodin's gliders? Are you going to send Lohr? Even if you trusted him around Halgerd, do you think he'd abandon the littlests? He's terrified for them. It's like the bad old times on Wolf IV have come back to snatch away the happiness they had just started to trust.

  "No, Lohr's not going. And you're needed here. You know how to work with this ... this ergot. What do I know, Rafe? I can climb, I can fly—and I can deal with Thorn Halgerd without wanting to shoot him where he stands.” She held out her hands to her husband, who stood with his back half-turned on her.

  "Rafe, you can keep order here as well as I. I'm the only one well enough trained but expendable right now to go up the mountain in winter, and you know it. But I can't do it if you're angry. Rafe, I need your support!"

  Rafe crossed the table and held her close again. “You and your damned risks. I didn't want to love a pilot,” he murmured. “I was so glad when you were stationed here. And now ... you've found yourself a whole new set of dangers. You go, Pauli. But you'd just better come back safe. You see, you're right about every point except one: I can keep order. That much is true. But the only reason people listen to me is that I have you to back me."