*C*O*N*T*A*G*I*O*N*
Planet Reading.
Napir stayed back, not taking part. Napir-Cetra had attended many such functions as part of his training. He was Mlande-Mother-Cetra's son, considered quite sensitive to the voice of the Planet, expected to take her place one day on the Council of Elders and eventually take a leading role in Planet Readings. Napir couldn't avoid attending, unfortunately, but he could carefully avoid participating and potentially revealing that he was not Napir-Cetra.
Many hundreds of Cetra had gathered, led by their council. Many were infected with the One Self's original virus. Some now carried the redesigned and very infectious cold virus. Memories and knowledge assimilated from absorbed healers told the One Self that while the Cetra understood elements of contagion, they didn't have a particularly detailed or sophisticated understanding of the underlying biology or chemistry. They used the word "virus" in a vague and general sense of disease, of miasma or poison, as something to be cured. They lacked in-depth biomolecular knowledge of how a biological virus worked or was constructed.
The new virus would spread easily among the close-packed group, simply by their own acts of breathing and talking among themselves. Many of those present would be infected by the end of the Planet Reading. Then they would pass it to their other contacts. Soon their new genes would be producing specialized proteins and transformation mechanisms, preparing them for mutation, limiting their lifespans and reproductive potential, and keeping them under the dominion of True Life as ordained from the beginning of Creation.
Unaware of the dangers of crowding, the Cetra formed loose, concentric circles: The councilors in the center, the rest in jumbled rings beyond. The people murmured among themselves. This Planet Reading was one of the largest ever undertaken. More Cetra were pouring in from every continent, worried about the Planet's cries of distress.
Cries the One Self couldn't even perceive. Peculiar, but perhaps not surprising. The Lifestream was food-quintessence-energy, as the Cetra and other lesser lives were food-biomass and food-chemical-energy. Sustenance was sustenance, and existed solely for the maintenance, expansion, and propagation of True Life. The One Self never bothered itself with the pseudo-feelings of food.
High Councilor Iounn-Cetra raised her staff. The crowds quieted.
The councilors closed their eyes and began to hum. Slowly, the other Cetra picked up the melody, swaying in a group—meditation? Meditation. Connectedness.
A joining of multiple parts? Aetheric communion? Or a false communion, a mere imitation of a True Joining?
The One Self knew the Cetra communed with the Planet. They used the Lifestream to connect with all things, all small life they noticed. It wasn't True Union. They remained physically separate; they never became One. Not as True Life did.
Napir imitated the humming and swaying. No more could be dared lest it might be detected. Out of caution, the other replacement-copies had not attended the Planet Reading. During the past few days, they had infected a large number of random Cetra and replaced many known healers, but too many duplicates congregated in one area might be identified as imitations. The One Self didn't know how much this peculiar communion might reveal. Would the Planet or the untouched Cetra detect the copies through their communion? So far, they hadn't seemed to notice. They didn't even notice the infection that altered their very bodies.
The new, infectious virus was even now working its way through the Cetra ranks with each social encounter, incorporating itself into their very genetics. This Planet Reading was a gift, with so many in such close quarters, breathing and speaking and singing, spreading fluids and virus particles to one another.
Their dominance on this world would soon end, and True Life would be free to feed and grow and reproduce, to again propagate and sail among the stars, spreading to new worlds to begin the cycle anew, to continue the natural order.
The councilors gasped as one. The collective of Cetra voices went silent.
"The Planet wants us to leave the Knowlespole!" High Councilor Iounn-Cetra announced, shocked.
"The Planet has called upon Shiva's power. The continent will become unbearably cold," another councilor proclaimed.
"A giant glacier will form to stem the bleeding of the Lifestream and cover the north completely," a third said.
"It is a great calamity, a crisis to the Planet. A calamity that fell from the sky and created the terrible wound. The Planet battles its damage in the north even now."
The crowd murmured and shifted restively.
"This isn't any different than before," a woman near the front called out. "Shouldn't we have learned something new?"
"We did," an infected man next to her said. He touched her arm. "We're to leave the Knowlespole."
"What about the meteorite?" another man asked. "Did it really cause so much injury that the Planet would send us away?"
"What of the healing?" someone from the assembled ranks cried. "What of healing the wound? We can help!"
"Is the wound the crisis, or the meteorite? What's happening? Why is the Planet so vague about it?" another asked. Others called out with their own questions and comments.
"Quiet!" High Councilor Iounn-Cetra shouted. The crowd subsided.
"We must have another Planet Reading," said Mlande-Mother-Cetra. "We must have more information."
"We will. The Planet has expressed great trepidation and terrible pain. The wound is the priority now, but there is more. More than it can express through its agony. It fears a terrible danger."
"Yes," said Mlande-Mother-Cetra, "The rest of us sensed that much information, but so much is unclear. Why does the Planet want us to leave? Something more than cold is happening on this continent, and it centers on the crater. We need to investigate."
"We have investigated," said Councilor Umay-Cetra, an impatient expression on his face. "Your own son traveled there and saw it with his own eyes. He stands with us now. What say you, Napir?"
Calmly, Napir answered, "It is as you have stated, and as I already told the council. There is a massive crater in the north, with Lifestream hemorrhaging into it. While I was there the cold grew noticeably. That's all I know."
"We must send another expedition," High Councilor Iounn-Cetra said. "Larger this time, with more experienced personnel. We need to bring back samples of the meteorite and the damaged earth in the crater. We need to commune directly with the Planet at the wound site. Maybe we'll learn more that way."
Napir remained silent. The One Self considered, unable to decide if this development was adversity or opportunity. More Cetra—more food—would come directly to its current lair. Its central mass had grown from feeding on the lesser life that returned to the crater, but it could gain so much more with the addition of Cetra. Cetra in the capital city, and Cetra at the impact site.
It could feast.
But the Cetra could communicate directly with the Lifestream, the Planet, though such communion seemed to provide little more than impressions and feelings. Based on what the sensitive Cetra reported, their latest communion with the Planet lacked words and specificity. Nonetheless, the Cetra might learn too much at the point of impact, and then retaliate before the One Self was ready. It needed more time to infect the population. Just a few days more.
It focused on Councilor Umay-Cetra, already infected but unknowing, and tickled a memory.
"Grandfather?" the councilor gasped. He reached out. "Grandfather, is it you?"
High Councilor Iounn-Cetra frowned at him. "Who are you talking to?"
"My grandfather! Can't you see him? He's right there, right in front of me!"
"There's no one there, Umay."
"I see him! I hear him!"
The crowd murmured. The One Self triggered another memory, at random, in an uninfected woman.
"Sarruma!" she shrieked. "Sarruma, you're alive? But you're dead!"
"Who—?" said her companion.
"Sarruma, my husband! He was killed five years ago in a rockslide! But he's here, right now! He's—he's smiling at me!"
The One Self reached out again, to nine Cetra at once. They reacted obediently, shrieking and crying about their dead mothers, their dead brothers, their lost relatives and friends. All gone to the Promised Land, the Lifestream, returned to the Planet and now, to their clouded, sickened minds, returned to them by their Planet's Will.
So easy. The Cetra brain and mind were so easy to influence and confound. The One Self gloated, pleased with its near effortless manipulation of their bodily and mental quintessence, their very thoughts.
The sea of Cetra streamed and flowed uneasily around those having visions of dead loved ones. "It's the Lifestream!" someone shouted.
"It's an evil omen!" another screamed. "Ghosts are walking!"
High Councilor Iounn-Cetra pushed magic into her voice and thundered, "Be still!" The command reverberated throughout the people, the streets in the city, even the surrounding forests. The crowd jolted and shivered as one.
When the last echoes faded away, the shell-shocked people turned their eyes to her.
"It's a miracle," Mlande-Mother-Cetra said to High Councilor Iounn-Cetra. "Something similar happened to my daughter. She saw the spirit of a deceased childhood friend the other night."
"Why didn't you report this?" Iounn-Cetra demanded.
"She's been ill with a cold. You know how cold medicine sometimes affects people. I assumed it was just a bad reaction."
Napir added, "It was just a temporary fit. She ran out into the night chasing her friend. When I found her, she was back to normal."
"Where is she?" Iounn-Cetra asked. "I want to speak with her."
"She stayed home," Mlande-Mother-Cetra replied. "She didn't want to spread her cold to others. She is training to become a healer, and is sometimes oversensitive about germs."
"It's a portent!" an old man broke in, raising his hands to the sky. "True visions from the Lifestream! Not mere memories, but joyous reunions from the Promised Land! We are blessed by the Planet, truly blessed!" Many Cetra joined him in beseeching calls and gestures to their beloved Planet, begging for their own lost loved ones to appear and reunite with them.
Iounn-Cetra winced and addressed the multitudes surrounding the Council. "I want everyone who has encountered a deceased person to come speak to me immediately after we disperse. We will get to the bottom of this!"
Napir said, "Siliwe is still very infectious. Perhaps it will be better if Mother interviews her, rather than someone outside the family?" The One Self didn't want the High Councilor to interview a duplicate. It also didn't want to absorb and replace a council member yet. It seemed ill-advised, as the councilors led the Planet Readings. Napir- and Siliwe-Cetra's memories told it that Mlande-Mother-Cetra would not suspect her daughter unless the duplicate behaved inappropriately.
Siliwe would behave perfectly, of course.
Melande-Mother-Cetra nodded her approval of Napir's suggestion. "It might be easier that way. I'll provide a full report."
"Very well," High Councilor Iounn-Cetra agreed. She addressed the crowd: "I shall call an immediate emergency session of the Council of Elders. We will discover the nature of these strange events." Her gaze took in the defiant and questioning faces, and her expression hardened. "Everyone else, go about your normal business. This Planet Reading is adjourned."