Germaine led her to the ledge and then climbed out awkwardly, crawling to the rear where a very young mer-maid cradled a child in her arms.
Daneh took one look at the baby and made a reasonable diagnosis, but she wanted to be sure. She looked at the mer-maid and held out her arms for the baby.
“Daneh is a doctor,” Germaine said. “A real doctor. She might be able to help.”
The girl looked up at her pleadingly, then handed the baby over.
Daneh walked carefully through the crowd of mer-folk, packed nearly hip to hip on the small ledge, to where the light was better and examined the baby closely. It, she wasn’t sure if it was a he or a she because of the recessed genitals, was clearly a newborn, but the baby was far under what should to be normal weight and had a yellowish tint to the skin. It was sleeping but when she rolled back one eyelid it woke up and gave a pitiful mew of displeasure. The whites of its eyes were yellow as well.
“It’s not serious,” she said, returning to where the girl lay. “I think. If we can get it out of this cave. Is this a he or a she? I can’t tell.”
“He,” Germaine said. “What is it?”
“Childhood jaundice,” Daneh replied. “I’m relatively sure. It’s definitely jaundice. In adults that comes from damage to the liver but in children it can manifest from birth.”
“He’s never been strong,” the girl said, her mouth working. “And he’s been that color.”
“He needs sunlight,” Daneh said, looking around the gloomy cavern. There were only a few slits that let in light. “Which clearly is in short supply. It helps if he can be given oil from fish livers, if I recall correctly. But sunlight alone might cure him.”
“Just sunlight?” Germaine said, aghast. “Are you sure?”
“No,” Daneh snapped. “I don’t have medical nannites to make a diagnosis, nor do I have any to effect a cure. But I’ve seen it before and we had items at Raven’s Mill that permitted me to research a similar case. And sunlight alone worked for her.”
“He can hold his breath well,” the girl said. “But if he swallows water he won’t be able to cough it back out as weak as he is.”
“Mer children, we have learned,” Germaine said, “have a much stronger breath hold reaction than normal human children. But it’s a long swim.”
“Where would you take him on the surface?” Daneh asked.
“There’s a sheltered cove that we use to wean the children to the outside,” Germaine replied.
“Not far, I take it?”
“No.”
Daneh stripped off her mask and placed it on the child’s head where it conformed as well as to an adult. The mer-baby didn’t like the sensation and gave off a tooth grating yowl of fear, thrashing his head from side to side.
“It’s okay,” Daneh said, putting out her hand. “He can use it to breathe on the way out. But, please, bring it back to me,” she said, gesturing at the blue-lit water. “There’s no way that I can make that swim on my own.”
“Thank you,” the girl said, crawling over and touching her on the leg. “Thank you.”
“Thank me when he gets well,” Daneh said, squatting down to hand the child to Germaine who was already back in the water. “It will probably be a week or so. And he may have sustained some permanent liver damage. And there’s a possibility with infantile jaundice of brain damage. But if we caught it in time, he should be fine.”
“Thank you,” the girl said again, slithering over the edge of the rock into the water and heading for the entrance.
“You might not be so bad after all,” Rema said from the water’s edge.
Daneh walked over and dangled her feet in the water, looking around the sound-drenched cavern.
“Like I said when I surfaced,” she sighed. “This is one hell of an Achilles’ heel.”
“Let me tell you a story from the bad old days,” Rema said, hoisting herself out and sitting with her tail flapping in the water. “Fur seals give birth once a year. They congregate in colonies up in the Arctic. When the pups are born their fur is milk white, ice white to blend into the ice they are born upon. It’s also very soft.”
“I’m not going to like this story, am I?” Daneh asked.
“No, you’re not,” the mer-woman replied. “Well, at some point this was discovered by man. And men would go up into those seal rookeries and use clubs to bash in the heads of the seal pups. Up on land, there wasn’t much that the mothers could do.”
“I was right, I didn’t like the story,” Daneh said, looking around the cavern. The mer-babies were apparently born with almost gray tails, but over time they took on the whatever shade they were meant to have as adults. She could envision the genetic coding still. She shook her head and sighed again. “You need guards. Guards with legs.”
“And give our hearts into the hands of the guards, you mean?” Rema asked. “You see our problem. Who watches the watchmen?”
“There’s one group that, at least in this generation, I would trust with this treasure,” Daneh said. “But only one group. And only in this generation.”
“And what do we pay them with?” Rema asked. “Sex with mer-maids?”
Daneh laughed and waved her hand at the expression of fury on the mer-woman’s face.
“No, it’s not that,” she said, still chuckling. “It’s just that the only representative of that group has, unless I’m much mistaken, already been paid in that coin.”
Elayna had invited herself along so it was a fairly large group: the three riders, Herzer and Bast, Elayna, Jason and Pete who took off, strapped to various dragons.
“Delphinos were signaling that there was a group of tuna feeding somewhere to the southwest,” Jason called as the wyverns reached cruising altitude. They had fed skimpily and were hungry for more.
The group headed out in the indicated direction and soon saw the feeding school, spotting it first by a large flock of birds overhead.
“There’s more than tuna down there,” Herzer called as they swept low over the assembly. The school of fish — it was hard to call them bait fish since most of them were fair-sized eating for a human — was absolutely huge, stretching for nearly a klick in one direction and a half a klick in the other. The fish were mouthing at the surface creating a pattern of circular ripples while at the edges the larger predators churned the surface into froth.
“Mackerel,” Pete called. “And there’s everything on them. Sailfish, marlin, tuna. Hell there’s probably wahoo and barracuda in the mix!”
“We can just fill this net with mackerel,” Jason said. “Mackerel’s good eating. Getting them back is going to be the problem.”
“Dolphins,” Koo called. “Or maybe delphino, bearing in from the northeast.”
“How do you want to do this, Jason?” Joanna called.
“This was Herzer’s idea,” Jason pointed out. “The riders are going to have to stay up at the surface. And God only knows what’s down there. Can they swim that long? How do we get back? Is something going to eat them?”
“Joanna, can you hold out on breakfast for a while?” Herzer yelled.
“Not happily,” she replied. “But if you want me to play shark guard, I will.”
“And you’re positively buoyant,” he said. “The riders can hold onto you if they get tired.”
“I’m only buoyant up to a point,” she replied. “But I see the logic. The wyverns can feed first.”
“Then we get one or more of them back so the riders can hold onto them,” Herzer said. “If the delphinos will let us, we’ll ride back with them, the dragons following. Maybe the dragons can pull the net, maybe the delphinos. We’ll scoop some of the mackerel for them, making their hunting easier.”
“That’s how we usually handle it,” Jason said. “But with lots less fish.”