“We could cure this illness, but what about the next?” she asked.
“The next?” B’nik asked nervously.
“Don’t worry, it probably won’t happen for another hundred Turns or more,” Kindan said reassuringly.
“But it will happen,” Ketan pointed out. He looked at Lorana. “And then what? Can we preserve these rooms for our descendants?”
“I don’t think there’ll be enough genetic material left to build a cure,” Lorana replied. “In fact, I think there’ll be enough for four doses, at best.” She paused. “Of course, there is the watch-wher cure.”
“Pardon?” M’tal asked.
Lorana bit her lip before answering. “One of the vials was specially marked,” she told the others. “I read about it this morning. It was made by Wind Blossom herself, just before her death. It was meant only to be used as a last resort.
“It would turn a watch-wher into a dragon,” she said. Her face clouded as she continued. “What I gave to Arith was a mixture of all four.” She sobbed, “That’s what killed her!”
“You don’t know that,” Salina said firmly. “She was sick.”
“She would have died without it,” Ketan added. His words and expression reminded her of his loss-and Salina’s.
Lorana found herself caught in a strange, sad bond with the two other ex-dragonriders.
The mood was broken as the sound of footsteps echoed from the corridor into the room.
“Lorana!” Tullea screamed, crashing into the room, her eyes ablaze. “You-so clever! How dare you? There were five stillborn in Minith’s clutch! Five!”
She advanced on Lorana, hands raised in outrage, fury obvious to all. Unconsciously, M’tal, Salina, and Ketan put themselves between the two women. Kindan moved himself around Lorana, to block her from Tullea’s view.
“You!” Tullea turned to B’nik. “What are you going to do? You let this happen!” She turned her fury on him, slamming her fists into his chest.
“Tullea, Tullea, what’s wrong?” B’nik asked.
“Did you hear me? Five of our eggs never hatched! How can we hope to replace the lost dragons if the eggs don’t hatch?”
“Hatched? She clutched already? But the others?” B’nik asked, startled. “They were all right?”
“Yes,” Tullea snarled, staring past him toward Lorana. “No thanks to you, I’m sure!” She turned back to B’nik. “I want her turned out. I don’t want her in my Weyr. Send her back to her people.”
“We are her people, Tullea,” Salina said, drawing herself up proudly.
“She stays with the Weyr,” M’tal added.
“Hmmph!” Tullea said. “Neither of you are Weyrleader here!” She turned back to B’nik. “She should go before she kills more dragons.” Viciously she snarled at Lorana, “Dragonkiller! You should be between with your dragon and all the others you killed-”
“Tullea!” B’nik shouted, grabbing her and propelling her out of the room. “That’s enough!” Brusquely he manhandled her from the room.
“But five, B’nik! We lost five!” Tullea wailed as her voice faded in the distance.
There was a moment of silence while the others collected themselves.
“I’m sorry, Lorana,” Kindan told her. “I was hoping we could shield you from that.”
M’tal nodded sternly. Then he stopped and looked up at Ketan. “When did Minith clutch?” he asked.
“She hasn’t,” Ketan replied, his face showing his surprise.
“That’s it!” Lorana exclaimed, oblivious to the others. “We must build a shield.”
Salina turned to her. “A shield?”
“To slow down the parasites,” Lorana explained. She looked at the others and then turned to the larger map. She grabbed a marker and circled several choice spots. Frowning, she crossed out one or two.
“Look, as long as the dragons share this much similarity to the fire-lizards, any disease that affects the fire-lizards will affect the dragons,” she explained.
“Only if the fire-lizards get near the dragons,” Ketan objected. “And now that they’ve been banished, what’s the likelihood?”
“True,” Lorana agreed. “But some day they might come back, and we can’t be sure if the dragons couldn’t just as easily pick up diseases from other Pernese organisms.”
“I suppose,” Ketan allowed reluctantly.
“But if we can change this, right here,” she said, pointing to her circle again, “then all the bacteria and viruses will have to mutate before they can assault the dragons.”
“You want to change the coding of the START sequence?” Kindan asked incredulously. “Will it work? Can you do it?”
“Well, there are enough unused sequences in the PNA,” M’tal observed thoughtfully.
“And we don’t have to change them all,” Salina added.
“No,” Ketan objected. “I think we should change them all.”
“But that would only work with new dragons,” Kindan objected. “Today’s dragons have this START sequence.”
“I think we can do it,” Lorana said. “We’ll have to build a mechanism to convert all the dragons’ genes and hormones to use the new START sequence-”
“We could probably insert a change so that it occurred during cell mitosis,” Ketan suggested. Then he frowned and added, “And meiosis.”
“But not the START sequence,” Kindan objected. “The STOP sequence. That way any retrovirus will just code in junk that will be rejected.”
They spent the rest of the morning discussing the solution. By lunchtime, they had agreed on the approach. The problem now was the actual execution.
“We’re going to have to produce a short-term solution, too,” Salina pointed out. “It won’t do any good to prevent future infections if the current one isn’t stopped.”
“Of course,” Ketan agreed, wondering why Salina had raised the issue.
“Do we have enough of the basic material to construct both changes?” the ex-Weyrwoman asked.
“I don’t know,” Lorana replied. “Let’s start by looking at how much genetic material we’ll need to code the protection of the lungs.”
The others agreed and they started another round of long discussions, which didn’t end until hours later.
“By my calculations,” Lorana said, “we can do it, just barely.”
“But there’ll only be enough for one dose,” Ketan said.
The others nodded glumly.
“There’s no other choice,” M’tal said finally. “Let’s do it.”
Lorana carefully set up the sequencer. “Get the vials,” she told Kindan. “Just the red, green, and blue ones.”
Kindan looked at the vials and saw that each had a colored dot drawn on them. “How did you find out which one was which?”
“I ran a small sample through the sequencer,” Lorana told him.
“The yellow is for the watch-whers?” Ketan asked. Lorana nodded.
Kindan returned with the vials. Lorana slowly emptied each one into the hopper on the top of the sequencer.
“Are we sure?” she asked the others, her finger hovering over the ‘Start’ button.
“Do it,” Ketan said.
Lorana pushed the button.
“How long until it’s complete?” M’tal asked.
“About four hours,” Lorana replied.
“And then what?” Salina asked. “When will we know if it works? Who should we give it to?”
Lorana shuddered, knowing the answer.
Salina’s eyes widened. “Minith?” she asked.
“She would be best,” Lorana said. “If she hasn’t clutched already, then the immunity would be passed on to her eggs.”
“She can’t have clutched yet,” M’tal replied. “We would have known. Tullea must have had a bad dream.”