Because the scientists were still arguing, Axwep had suggested that Lesh and her senior colleagues, along with Eupril and some of her companions, should eat this evening on Voosla, where the food was better than on shore. However, although she made it clear that she could not repeat the invitation regularly, because any floating city was in a delicate balance with its inhabitants and the best efforts of the giqs could never gather as much nourishment as she collected for herself in open water, there were some who instantly accused the mayor of wasting public resources. Wasn’t it bad enough to have brought these scores of passengers all this way?—that was their cry, and they took no account of the fact that Voosla had been specially replanted with new high-yielding secondary growths developed at the University of Chisp, which would continue paying her back long after the return voyage.
Prominent among those who complained, of course, was Phrallet. Axwep had finally lost patience with her, and ordered that she be forbidden access to the prime food zone. Tagging along behind Thilling, Awb managed to steal in and join the company, hoping desperately as he nibbled a bit here and a bit there that his budder would not get to hear.
Finding herself next to one of Eupril’s fellow quarry-workers, whom she had seen earlier but not spoken with, Thilling said, “What’s all this about a poison, then? Why can’t it be a disease? Name of Thilling, by the way.”
“Name of Hy,” said the other. “Well, it’s because of the way it acts in living tissue, of course. Ever hear of a disease organism that simply killed the cells around it, without spreading, or reseeding itself at a distant site? Oh, we’ve carried out all the tests we’re equipped for, and we even managed to get our claws on the corpses of some of the natives. They don’t seem to care about their dead, just leave ’em to rot. And in every single case we’ve found necrotic tissue, either in the digestive tract or quite often in the nerve-pith, and if you take the dead center—excuse me!—and triturate it and apply microscopic drops to a suitable test medium, like the partly flayed rind of a cutinate … Well, what would you expect to see?”
Thilling frowned with her entire mantle “A whole series of infection-sites, obviously.”
“That’s exactly what we thought. Wrong. One and only ever one new patch of necrosis. The rest is unaffected.”
Chomping solemnly, Thilling pondered that awhile. At last she heaved a sigh.
“It doesn’t sound any more like a poison than a disease, in that case, does it? Still, it’s not my specialty, so I have to take your word. But I always thought poisons worked by spreading throughout the system.”
Awb was glad to hear her say that; it meant his own main question was likely to be answered.
“So they do, for the most part. I’ve been dealing with poisons much of my life, because you never know, when you feed new ore to a concentration-culture, whether it’s going to survive on it. But I never saw the like before: a poison so lethal that a particle too small to see with a microscope can kill cells over and over. It doesn’t dissolve, it doesn’t disperse, it just sits there and kills cells!”
“Thilling!”
They all turned, to find Drotninch approaching.
“You are coming with us to check out this hot stream tomorrow, aren’t you? Yes? Good! We’re going to leave at first bright. Lesh is working out how many mounts can be spared. Will you need a whole one for your equipment?”
With a wry twist of her mantle Thilling answered, “Not a whole one. I have a volunteer helper now.”
V
Slowly the expedition wound its way up the narrow trail cut to facilitate laying of the cutinate pipeline. It had remained alarmingly clear of overgrowth, though Lesh said it had not been recut this spring. It was as though the surrounding plants, both Gveestian and natural, had bowed away from it.
The air was comfortably calm, and since the morning of the city’s arrival there had been scarcely a cloud in the sky, let alone the threat of a storm. Nonetheless Thilling’s weather-sense was reacting queasily. She did her best to convince herself it was because of her unpremeditated decision to accept Awb as an apprentice. Taking on someone from so utterly different a background, and with such an awful budder to hint at how he might turn out in the long term … Had it been wise?