The first thing Burke noticed when they were rumbling into the village was that the pitch of the humming changed; the high buzz of the mosquitos was joined by the deeper droning of flies. His lips peeled back in disgust; that sound could only mean one thing.
Swarms of flies would fly up, break out of their mouths, you wouldn't believe how loud they'd hiss, like an angry cat.
He shook his head to get rid of the voice and jumped off the wagon before the avalanche of memories could jiggle loose.
"Ah, damn!" His feet were sticking in black mud. The whole village was surrounded by pools of stagnant water, and the torrent rains had lifted the water level almost to the surface. The mud stank of rotting water and moulding soil.
And another stench was wafting under his nose, making him gag - decaying bodies.
He slowly turned around his axis. A man was lying in one of the doorways, unmoving. Flies were covering the corpse, their crawling bodies glinting blue-green in the glaring sun.
Swarms of flies erupting, breaking out of their mouths...
He tore his gaze away to scan the survivors. The dull, hollow eyes of the villagers stared at him without curiosity, or even recognition. Many of them were probably not even aware of the wagon that had stopped a few yards ahead of him. They were lying in the doorways, or propped up against the mud-brick walls of their huts. Almost no children, a few men, a few women... all ugly. Maybe it was the illness that made them unattractive, skin drawn over their skulls, fevered eyes sunken in their sockets. Maybe it was just him.
He felt bad for noticing - these people were seriously ill, he shouldn't check them out for girls he'd like...
But that's not what it was! It was just that he had noticed that even in other villages, where people were healthy, and friendly, he hadn't found a single girl he'd wanted to flirt with, and ever since he'd become aware of it, he compulsively checked his response whenever they met other humans. And it was always like now - he just couldn't... couldn't get excited anymore.
About anything.
"Humans! I am Doctor Kova!"
Burke turned his gaze to Galen, grateful for the diversion; the ape had stopped the wagon in the middle of the village square, and was now standing on the driver's seat. "Gather here to receive your orders!"
Slowly, the humans fought out from their stupor and shuffled over to him, forming a loose circle. Burke waded through the black, stinking mud to the front of the wagon; the water was already soaking through his shoes.
Galen let his gaze sweep imperiously over the gathered humans; he was completely submerged in his role now, ape master over his human subjects, and Burke felt his back stiffen with atavistic fury.
Fury and fear. And shame about the fear, and fury about the shame...
He blinked and forced himself to focus on the ape's next words.
"I'm a doctor for animal diseases," Galen declared, still scanning the crowd for inattentive listeners, "sent by your prefect to treat the fever that is keeping you from doing the work the Lawgiver has ordained for you. You will follow my orders, as well as the orders from my humans, swiftly and exactly, and we will cure you in a matter of days."
Just buy this oil of rattlesnake, Burke thought sardonically, it'll cure all ailments, from acne to stinky feet and pneumonia.
But Galen's next orders were surprisingly sensible, which made Burke suspect that he had gotten them from Al, who was sitting on the seat next to the ape, head down, holding the reins, the perfect image of an obedient servant.
Dammit, Colonel, you commanded a spaceship! I know we're outnumbered here, but don't bow your back so willingly!
Virdon lifted his gaze as if he'd heard him, and Burke was taken aback by the look of utter exhaustion in his face. His leg had to be bothering him more than he'd admitted...
"Polo!"
Burke flinched; he still hadn't gotten used to his new name. Galen had insisted on it, claiming that their real names were just too unusual to go unnoticed and unremembered, and for some reason, had held on to the name he had made up on the spot when they had been raiding Zaius' home for the surgery book.
Galen was still looking at him.
Burke ground his teeth for a moment. "Sir?"
"You'll take as many able males as you can find and bury the dead," Galen ordered. "Go through the huts and make sure you get all of the corpses. They are breeding grounds for the illness."
Burke drew a deep breath. It was a sensible and necessary measure, but goddammit, why did he have to move those fly-covered, bloated, stinking... He swallowed. "Yes, sir."
Galen nodded curtly. "Get to it."
Slowly, reluctantly, Burke turned to the villagers, to collect the ones still able to hold a shovel. Behind him, Galen told "Tamas" to find the biggest building and require it as hospital, and to see to it that all sick humans were collected there.
More containment measures; yeah, he'd bet his - ha, no, Urko's now - ANSA knife that this was Al's strategy.
Good thing - maybe they'd even survive to leave this stinking, death-ridden mudhole again. Burke sent one of the men to collect shovels and took stock of his work force.
Fourteen men, half of them not a day older than twelve; bony, pale, eyes burning with the first onset of the fever. He sent one away who was already swaying on his feet. They were thirteen now - lucky number, eh?
"Alright, guys." He made sure to make eye contact with each of them. "I know it's probably not how you usually honor your dead, but this is a special case - we're racing against time, and the sooner they're covered, the better for the rest of us. We'll just dig one big hole for all of them. And then we're gonna dig some more, to get rid of all this stinkin', bug-infested water around your huts." He smiled grimly.
"So better think up nice names for your shovels, because you and them will become best buddies over the next days."
The humans were in bad shape, Galen decided when he let his gaze travel over them; most of them were already showing signs of the fever. It would be more difficult to get the illness under control than he had feared, with so many of them ill. If what Alan had told him about the mosquitos was true, they would need to drain the marches around the village, but for that, they needed workers. It wasn't something Peet could do all by himself, and Alan was still not fit for heavy work.
He had sent Alan to organize the rest of his suggested measures - collect the sick in one place, isolated from those who might yet have escaped the fever; close windows and doorways with gauze to keep out the mosquitos which Alan swore were carrying the disease; and burn fragrant herbs to chase the remaining pests away.
None of these maneuvers, as worthwhile they were in cleaning up the village, would cure the sick, though. They needed more direct measures. And he needed to know what had already been done in that regard.
Galen urged the horses towards the barn that Alan had chosen for their makeshift hospital and parked the wagon alongside the windowless long side of the building. He'd need to send one of his humans to guard their belongings at night, he mused when he climbed down from his seat and gingerly eased his foot into the squishy black mud; everyone knew that humans were worse than magpies.
"You," he stopped a young woman who didn't look as sick as the others, "what's your name?"
"Ehme, master." The woman crossed her wrists in front of her chest and bowed quickly, but not deeply; apparently, this prefecture insisted on the more demonstrative signs of submission. That... could become a problem, if the more rural districts kept to the same or even stricter standards, the farther away they moved from the City. Galen couldn't imagine that Peet would react well to demands that he adapt to those standards.
He didn't have time to worry about that now. "Who has taken care of the sick until now?"
The girl shrugged. "We all did, master - everyone who's still on their feet cares for them who can't get up from their cots anymore."
Galen eyed her critically. She wasn't lying; but she also wasn't telling him everything. "And nobody bothered to treat them with herbs and hexes, like your kind usually does? That's hard to believe."
Ehme's reddening face told him all he needed to know. "Take me to your healer. Come now, I won't do anything to her," he added impatiently when he saw the fear in the girl's eyes, "but I need to know which herbs she used." So he'd know which herbs had already proven useless. He didn't need to know about the hexes: they, of course, were all useless.
To his surprise, Ehme led him inside the barn, where Alan was already busy with directing the villagers to set up beds, divide sections with swathes of thin fabric, and divide off a bigger section whose purpose wasn't immediately clear to him. A tiny woman was by his side, with nutbrown skin and white hair - unusual to see a human that old. She was nodding approvingly to whatever Alan was telling her.
Ehme faltered for a moment, then turned around to Galen with a strange glint in her eyes. "That human belongs to you?"
"He does," Galen said and raised a brow at her. "His name is Tamas; you may talk to him after you've brought me to your healer."
"There she is, master," Ehme said eagerly, "talking to Tamas. You'll talk to her, and I'll talk to him." She strode off, much quicker than before. Galen followed her, biting back a grin. It would be interesting to see how Alan would handle this situation, since all escape routes were closed.
And if he didn't escape, it would probably be a healthy distraction.
He had expected to have to put on his most soothing, reassuring voice and smile, but the healer was refreshingly bold, and not at all intimidated by his title or the fact that he was an ape. She was eager to inform him about all the herbs she had been using, and Galen was surprised by her choices - willow bark and yarrow and goldenseal.
They were... sensible. They also should have had an effect on the fever. But when he asked the woman, she shook her head.
"They all die," she said. "They get the fever on the first day, they lie on their beds and don't know their own mothers on the second day, and on the third day, whoosh," she made a fluttering motion with her hands. "Spirit is gone."
She was talking of the life force, Galen assumed; it was common knowledge that humans didn't have souls.
How unfortunate that he didn't believe in simian common knowledge anymore. Though for the sake of his own conscience, he might have to hold fast to some of it...
If the old woman also used any of the hexes and talismans that humans were so fond of, she was wise enough not to make any mention of them towards the ape. Their use was strictly forbidden by the prefects, and punished severely, though Galen had never understood the fervor behind that persecution.
He ordered the healer to help bring in the sick to this place of healing, and to make sure that everyone heeded the instructions of Tamas and Polo, and went to see how Alan was doing.
The human was leaning heavily on his crutch, his face tense and pale; when he saw him, Alan sent him a tired smile. "We're making good progress," he greeted Galen. "I think by nightfall we'll have set up everything, and collected everyone who's showing symptoms."
Galen nodded, surveying the controlled chaos around them; the first patients were being led to their beds by their healthy relatives, while in other parts of the barn, women were still busy taking out the straw and hanging up cloth dividers. "I spoke to the healer," he said. "She's already using all the fever-breaking herbs known to us. So far, they haven't had any effect. I don't know if this," his hand caught the villagers' efforts in one sweep, "will be enough to make a difference."
Alan rubbed his chin. "Every little thing helps," he said. "It's the sum of all our measures that will make a difference. Did you determine the progression of the illness? Any striking symptoms that could give you a clue?"
"I haven't had the time to examine any of them yet," Galen said sharply, "they're only now being brought in."
"Has there ever been an outbreak like this before?" Alan asked, unimpressed by his irritation. "Perhaps there's a precedent that can tell us how they treated it then."
"There was indeed an outbreak of an aggressive fever some years ago, in Touba, one of the southern districts," Galen said dryly, "but I don't think you'd want to apply the district chief's medicine here, Alan. They shot the humans and burned the bodies, burned their huts and belongings, and cordoned off the area for a whole year."
The human was silent for a moment, and Galen regretted his bluntness. "No," Alan murmured, "of course not. I'm assuming it's not contagious for apes, then."
"We don't know," Galen admitted. "I assume that's why they didn't take any chances back then." He watched the rows filling up with humans. About thirty, he estimated; half the village. "These humans are lucky that the prefect needs them urgently for the harvest. That gives us a chance to find a cure for them, and maybe others in the future." He took Alan by the arm and led him towards the sectioned-off space in the back.
Alan had already outfitted that space with a wooden table that had served some farmer's meals before, but was now meant to be his examination table, another, smaller table with a chair, and some wooden crates filled with bandages, pots and bowls for making tea and ointments. Galen nodded appreciatively. "I see you've put some thought into this, Alan. Well done."
He sent the human to get his doctor bag from the wagon and to bring back the first patient with him; they quickly fell into a routine of Alan leading the patients into the examination area, jotting down the symptoms in his own, thread-like script, and leading them back to their cots, while Galen did a quick examination, questioned them about the history of their symptoms, and sorted them into one of three categories of severity.
After a short while, the young woman who had taken an interest in Alan earlier offered to get the patients for him, and Alan seemed to be relieved to agree. He sat down heavily into the reedy chair and reached for the quill. "Ready for our next patient, doctor."
Galen watched him for a moment. "How is your leg these days, Alan?"
Alan froze. "As good as you can expect," he finally said. "Doctor Kira was amazing, but she warned me that the nerve may have suffered permanent damage. I'd probably need physical therapy..." He smiled wryly. "But it's no use wishing for things you can't have. I'll do my best not to be a burden to you."
"Oh, no. No. You are not a burden, Alan." Galen put down his stethoscope and rounded the table to pat his shoulder. "I must stay conscious of your leg so that I don't overstrain you." He nodded towards the human's scribblings. "What do we have so far?"
Alan took up his notes and frowned at them. "Not much, I'm afraid. All of them complain about burning up inside - meaning, they are feverish - and aching joints, headaches, dizziness... some also say they are nauseous, can't keep anything down. You told me they have swollen glands and, uh," his eyes traveled down the paper, "two of them have developed a rash."
He let the paper flutter down onto the desk and looked up to him, his blue eyes worried. "There are a number of infections that fit those symptoms, and the conditions we found here - Malaria, West Nile, Dengue ... or maybe it's something else entirely, something that doesn't exist in my... where I come from."
"Hm." Galen had never heard those names; he assumed they were from Alan's own language. He wanted to consult with him about the herbs that the healer had unsuccessfully tried, but they would probably have the reverse problem, with Alan not knowing their names for them; and despite his unusual theories about the causes of the illness, he was no healer. Galen scratched his head; he'd have to find a solution of his own here.
"I need to consult my books," he said. "I'll leave the humans here in your care and that of your assistant..."
"Ehme," Alan said in a dry voice that suggested he had already become aware of the woman's personal interest in him. He didn't seem to be overly stressed by her advances, though, so Galen decided to ignore the undertone.
He patted the human on the arm. "You and her seem to fit together quite well. I'm sure you'll have everything here under control. Keep me advised if anything out of the ordinary happens."
"I'll call you at once when anyone deteriorates." Alan struggled to his feet.
Galen pursed his lips to fight the grim smile pulling at them. "That, I'm afraid, is nothing out of the ordinary in this village. But yes, do call me anyway." Not that he'd be able to do much about it, but he'd try. If he didn't find a cure, Kanla would have no choice but to administer the Touban treatment.
And they were now also considered potential carriers.
The little girl grabbed for Zana's hand as soon as her father had mounted his horse, and started to swing both their arms back and forth as they went towards the house. "I like your horses. But your humans didn't let me pet them!"
Zana craned her neck to catch a last glimpse of the white cotton of the wagon cover. Galen hadn't even waited for Peet to climb back into the wagon; the sight of him jogging after it clenched at her heart with both joy and something like homesickness. He had finally regained that swift, light run from before... before Urko had somehow taken all the lightness out of him. For a moment, Zana wanted nothing more than to run after him, after all of them. She already missed them terribly.
But Galen had been right, it was too dangerous. They couldn't know if the illness would jump from human to ape, and she was no longer only responsible for her own life. It grated on her that it had been Galen who had pointed this out, as if she hadn't thought of it herself. He was always so sensible when it served him.
Only she had been willing to go to the village with him, because staying in town would have meant to reveal her secret, or to look like a coward.
She blinked away sudden tears. Well, she had been a coward. No matter how she looked at it.
"I could've petted your horses!" The girl - Forla, if Zana remembered right - frowned, still not through with the subject of petting their animals. "Humans can't tell me anything!"
"But they just told you what we told them to say," Zana said absentmindedly. "If the horses had stepped on your toes, or bitten your hand, your parents would've been very angry with us."
"I know horses!" Forla said dismissively. "I pet Daddy's horse every day. Can I pet your humans when they come back? I wanted to when you were waiting for the doctor, but the dark one said he'd bite me!" She looked up at Zana with wide eyes. "You don't allow them that, do you?"
"No," Zana reassured her. She exchanged an amused glance with the girl's mother, Inta, who had been waiting under the door and was now leading them inside. "But you can't pet him, either, if he tells you he doesn't want you to."
"Why not?" The frown was back on Forla's face; she was clearly struggling with the new concept of a human having any say over its body. Zana flicked a glance at Inta, found the same blank stare over her friendly smile, and decided that now was not the time to educate her fellow apes about animal rights.
"He has been treated very badly by..." the Chief General of the Dominion's police force? Then Peet had to have earned it, certainly; in fact, bad treatment by any ape was probably well deserved, if one went by conventional simian wisdom. Zana suppressed a sigh.
"... by his former owner," she finally said. "And he's a bit hand shy. But he's a good human," she added hastily, "and he wouldn't bite anyone."
Just cut their throat, if Galen sent him... But Galen hadn't told him to kill an ape! And she'd stop thinking about that now. Zana resolutely focused on the smooth wood of the climbs as she grabbed them to swing herself into the upper level after the Chimp.
"This is our guest room," Inta said with a little apologetic smile. "It's not big, I hope you don't mind..."
"No, not at all," Zana assured her. The room was indeed tiny, no more than a holding space for a bed and a nightstand; her crate stood at the foot of the bed. Tilan had grabbed it with one foot and hauled it up over the climbs before he had left. The poorer ape houses typically had no need for human-friendly stairs, and humans just weren't equipped to use the wooden handles, although Peet had sworn that he would've been able to pull himself up - just not with a crate on his back. For a moment, he had been his old self... until he had felt Tilan in his back.
Zana forced a smile on her face. "It's lovely. And I won't impose on you very long. Just a few days..."
A few days with nobody to talk to. Well, nobody she wanted to talk to; the one person she desperately wanted to talk to had left without looking back.
Zana sat down heavily on the bed. She felt tired, and hot, and her feet were aching. Inta had put a jug with lemonade on the nightstand, and she poured herself a mug and drank it down in one draw. It wasn't really cold, not even cool, but it was liquid, and she was parched. Inta had also been kind enough to take her daughter with her to the ground level, which meant that for the first time since that terrible moment in the wagon, Zana could catch her breath and think.
Her thoughts invariably looped back to that moment, to the things she had said, and the things he had said, and to all the things she hadn't said, because she had been too shocked and horrified and ashamed to think of them.
And to all the things he hadn't said, but that she had seen in his eyes, in the tension of his shoulders, in the way he refused to look at her afterwards. Perhaps Galen was too busy right now to go over that memory again, and again, and again, as she was doing right now. Perhaps it was just festering in the shadows beneath the bustle, slowly wandering upwards like hot wax being sucked into a candle wick, until it saturated his thoughts and feelings and the memory of her with its poison. Perhaps it would billow up in the moments before he fell asleep, tinting his dreams with bitterness and grief.
She had betrayed his trust. Alan had been right. Humans really were creatures of instinct, closer to the tides of nature, and in this case, she should've heeded the human's finer intuition. Zana sighed again and poured herself a second mug of lemonade. Whatever Galen had decided, she wasn't a meek wife who'd sit with folded hands in her lap to wait until the master of the house had calmed down again. What was she, a Gorilla?
She emptied the mug in one draw.
No. She and Galen... they needed to talk. They needed to talk as soon as possible; the more time she let pass, the more impossible it would become to find a way back to... to how things had been before. When they had...
... when he had kept the forbidden book secret from her. Zana sat up straight. He had kept secrets from her, too! Granted, a book wasn't a living being, but, but, its possession had altered his life irrevocably, and it could still kill him! Talk about risks!
She jumped up from the bed and stepped to the window; the sun was already low in the sky, but it would still be some hours until it vanished below the horizon. Zana grabbed the windowsill. She knew where the village was, Forla had been all too eager to tell them about it on their way from the prefecturate to Tilan's house.
She wouldn't bring up the book, no. But she wouldn't cower before him, either. They'd have a talk, a calm talk between mature adults, eye to eye. And she'd ask him if he had really wanted her, back then. Or if he had only wanted the humans under her supervision.
There would be no more secrets.
The sky was just as brilliant as it had been above Kira's clinic: a translucent indigo, brushes of azure clouds, the white glitter of stars sprinkled in between. It seemed to Burke that he could dip his hands into the Milky Way if he stretched just a little more.
But the landscape around him couldn't compare to the barren, but clean and, most importantly, dry backyard where he had gazed at the stars with Arna. For one thing, the stench of stagnant water and sodden soil was still as strong as it had been when they'd arrived. For another, the light of the full moon was bright enough to see the decrepit huts and cart tracks where their wagon had dug through the mud. It was bright enough that he threw a long, black shadow as he climbed out of the wagon to get to the feed box at the rear.
It was almost midnight; Galen was sleeping on a cot in his cordoned-off doctor's office, Al had the night shift together with the old village healer, and Burke had been tasked with guarding the wagon - well, to be fair, Galen had sent him to sleep in the wagon, with the calculation that he'd wake up if someone tried to sneak in for some unannounced midnight shopping. He hadn't expected him to stay up all night.
It had been a long, exhausting day for Pete Burke, what with the grave digging and ditch digging, and all that wrapped into old scraps to keep the mosquitos from injecting him with whatever bug was causing these people to drop left and right. And tomorrow wouldn't be any different, except that Al had ordered the women to sew him and the other diggers protective clothing that would be better fitting and better ventilated. Burke had been the first to get the new outfit.
"Jesus, Al!" He had stared at the hood with the eye slits. "We'll look like a division of the goddamn KKK!"
In the end, he'd taken the hood, and the gloves, and stuffed them under his bedroll in the wagon. If he had to choose between being offensive to people who had been dead for centuries, or dropping dead from an infectious mosquito bite, hell, it wasn't really a dilemma.
So, tomorrow, it would be the ditch. It wasn't as if nobody knew how to dig one, or that they wouldn't have preferred to drain that water away from their houses; but everyone was required to work their ass off for the apes, and after a day in the fields, you just didn't have the energy anymore to start another round of heavy physical work. The cotton needed dry feet; the humans... nobody cared what the humans needed, as long as they stayed functional.
Good thing they were here now, huh? He allowed himself a sardonic little smile as he paused at the box, hands resting on the lid. Now that everybody was too sick to work, the apes had carted in some fresh human meat to take care of that long overdue drainage for their... their herd. Burke felt his throat constrict with anger; yeah, he really should try to get some sleep, to prepare for another day of grueling work. That wet soil was heavy.
But the truth was that he was getting by with very little sleep lately. When exhaustion finally knocked him out, it didn't take long for him to jerk awake again, jumping off whichever horror train he'd boarded that night.
In most of them, Urko was the conductor.
So, if he was awake anyway, and alone and unsupervised, for a change, he could as well make use of the opportunity. With a last glance over his shoulder, Burke dug into the horses' oats and pulled out an elongated bundle. It was risky to hide it under the horse food, as it was Al who mostly cared for the animals, but Burke hadn't known where else to put it, and he had been in a hurry at the time.
He still didn't know where else to hide the thing; inside the wagon was out of the question, and underneath the wagon bed there was nothing to fasten it with at the wood. Besides, the boxes were tarred to protect the contents from moisture.
And since he didn't have any gun oil, that was a not unimportant detail.
Actually, he didn't have any supplies for the rifle - no oil, no rags, no brush, no nothing. Well, he hadn't exactly planned that acquisition. But when Galen had sent him into the marches to "take care of" the sentry that Urko had placed there to watch the roads leading away from the clinic, he just couldn't throw the weapon into the swamp, right?
He just couldn't.
They'd need that weapon sooner or later, Burke could feel it in his gut. He had taken the rifle, and the ape's ammo, and had buried both in the feed box, and hadn't touched it at all during the four weeks of their journey. Hadn't even thought of it, some days.
But now, with that ape guard escorting them into the village, and with that invisible fence enclosing them, his fingers were itching to touch it. To feel the cool metal in his hand, the warm wood of the stock, the weight... the weight. It was solid, soothing. A breech loader, thank god - he'd have thrown a musket into the next ditch, firepower or not.
The way it looked now in the moonlight, the apes had raided a war museum and reverse engineered a Spencer rifle. Or carbine, judging by the size. He allowed himself a snort. "Monkey see, monkey do..." When he turned it around, his fingers hitched on some sort of bolt on the underside of the barrel. After a bit of fumbling, it suddenly unlocked and slid forward. A blade came gliding out of the wood enclosing the barrel. Burke held it up to his eyes to have a closer look. "Sweet," he breathed.
The thing came with a bayonet.
The blade was clean - either the weapon had been well-cared for, or it had never been used. Burke wondered for a moment what the patrols really needed those weapons for; as far as he had seen, they didn't shoot more than bushcats and rabbits.
And the occasional human.
"Not you, sweetheart," he murmured, and inspected the magazine. "You're not going to kill a human again. Just apes. Only apes. I should really give you a name, like they did in the good old days." He felt silly, but in a good way. Giddy. "How about... Lucy? Betsy?"
A movement at the edge of his vision caught his attention, a shadow hurrying among the deeper shadows of the huts, and he hastily hid the gun in the footwell, adrenaline roaring in his blood.
Then the shadow stepped into the snowy beam of the moon.
"Zana?"
Their makeshift hospital ward gave Virdon an uncanny sense of dejá vu - the rustling of cloth as people shifted in their beds, the soft moans and mutterings of those trapped in fevered dreams... but most of all, that sickly smell that seemed to solidify the hot, stuffy air even more, clogging his nose and pulling the strength from his shoulders, his legs.
It all transported him back to those days in Travin's room, when he had lain on the man's straw mattress, dying; and Virdon found himself startled into a dreamlike panic again and again now, when everything suddenly seemed to tilt and the absolute certainty slammed into him that he had gotten it all wrong, and that it should be him lying on that cot, drifting away. It had happened so often this night that he was already dreading the next assault.
I'm just tired out.
Galen would take over from him after midnight. Virdon glanced at the candle burning down in the tin holder, but it still hadn't burned down beneath the second marking in the plate. The apes didn't measure time by the hour, dividing their day instead into twenty units from dawn to dusk, and five units through the night, whose length varied depending on the season. At the height of summer, the night units were blessedly short, although to his exhausted mind, they seemed to stretch into infinity.
He forced himself to focus on the faded blue gown of the village healer instead, who was still wandering from bed to bed, with the same grace and patience as she had when she had first joined him that afternoon. She bent down and put her hand on the sweat-drenched brow of a little boy. Virdon leaned closer to catch what she was saying.
"... fever leave the brow, to the seeds I sow..." She was brushing a little cloth bag over the child's face, he realized. "Ninety-nine fevers can't touch you now, until you come and cut the row." She kissed the pouch. "In the name of the redeemer and the mothers."
His heart was pounding against his ribs as if he had fallen back into the wound fever himself; when the old woman turned around, he was still too stunned to avert his eyes and pretend to be busy with something else. He just stared at her, unable to move.
She just smiled serenely at him and moved to the next cot, tucking away the little bag in the right pouch of her skirt, and pulling out another one from the left pouch.
Virdon trailed after her as she went from bed to bed, repeating her little ritual for each man, woman and child. Every time she concluded her rhyme with the invocation of those supernatural beings, he was at the brink of asking her; but there was a silence around her, a devoutness, that choked the words in his throat.
"I don't feel it will help this time," someone whispered behind him. Startled, he turned around.
It was Ehme, his self-appointed assistant. She nodded towards the healer. "The Mothers frown at us. They don't listen to her prayers anymore."
"What are you doing here at this time of the night?" he whispered back; he had sent her home hours ago.
Ehme smiled and tiptoed over to him. She smelled of woodsmoke and mint, a well of green and cool scents in this fever-flecked darkness that drew him closer without realizing it. Suddenly he was close enough to feel her breath at his throat. "I couldn't sleep, and I was thinking of you... not sleeping, either. So I thought, if we're both awake anyway..."
Her eyes were dark and wide as she smiled up to him, and Virdon felt his breath hitch. His heart was beating against his ribs, slow and hard. "I came to help you," Ehme whispered. "So many are ill, and you've been on your feet ever since you came here. You should rest your leg a bit."
She took his hand and led him down the aisle between the beds, and he followed her like a tamed beast, and when she had sat him down on a vacant cot, he hung on to her hand and drew her back towards him as she turned to leave.
"You don't have to do this," he said, "it's no use that all of us are up at the same time. It only means that we'll pass out from exhaustion all at the same time, too, and who'll care for the patients then?"
She put her other hand on his shoulder. "I can stay up for a long time, Tamas, don't you worry."
He just shook his head, and she sighed and sat down beside him on the cot, close enough that their legs were touching. She still hadn't let go of his hand, but he didn't mind that.
"Alright, I'll bow to your greater wisdom." She smiled into her lap. "Tell me what I should keep in mind tomorrow, when you're getting your well-deserved sleep."
Virdon drew a deep breath. There was just so much to think of... things that were so self-evident to him that he was in danger of not mentioning them. These people relied on magic even more than on herbalism...
So he began with the mosquitos, and how they were carrying even smaller beasts, and how those tiny beasts were the true bringers of the illness. He let her repeat all measures to shield herself and her patients from those pests, went over the requirements of basic hygiene, like boiling the water used for cleaning and for drinking, and burning soiled straw and sheets...
"You know so much about these things," Ehme said thoughtfully. "Did your master teach them to you? Why would he do that? Humans aren't meant to be doctors."
The air was hot and stale, and reeking of sickness and ignorance, and the ruins of Atlanta flashed before Virdon's inner eye. His fingers tightened around Ehme's hand. "Humans are meant to be doctors, Ehme," he said hoarsely, "and teachers, and builders, and inventors of wonderful things. I wish you could see how it had been once."
"Once?" Ehme studied his face. "What do you mean?"
Virdon squeezed his eyes shut. He had slipped. It was just because he was so overtired. On the other side of his eyelids, Ehme was still looking at him, waiting. He could feel it. Virdon inhaled and opened his eyes again.
"Once... when I was still back home," he fibbed. "I'm not... I'm not from these parts."
"Everywhere is like here," Ehme said flatly. "Humans are meant to serve, from here to the western mountains and everywhere in between."
"I'm from still somewhere else. I... we... my friend and I, we come from another world."
There. He had said it. It wasn't the whole truth, but it was closer than anything he'd ever told anyone with the exception of Galen and Zana. A tremor shuddered down his core, a thrill of fear and exhilaration and relief. He'd told someone. He'd told her.
Ehme was staring at him. "Another world... from the stars? You came down from the stars, like the redeemer?"
"No...no! Not like... like him." He couldn't know if these people meant the same Redeemer that he sent his prayers to, if some faint, warped memory had survived the eons since mankind's downfall, but just in case that they did, he didn't want to give them any ideas. "We were traveling in a machine, like a boat..."
"And you traveled down the river of stars," Ehme finished for him, wide-eyed. "But why did you land here? And are you going back again?" She was leaning into his side now, her breath caressing him as gently as the warmth of her body.
"I hope so," he murmured, dejected. "Our ship was damaged when it came down-"
"Tamas."
They both startled, jerking apart like children caught with their hands in a jar of sweets. Ehme bowed hastily and fled, and Virdon found himself pinned by Galen's glare.
"I know I've complained about the regrettable lack of trust among our group," Galen said dryly, "so I'm touched that you trust this woman with your life. But may I remind you that as long as we're travelling together, anything that gives us away as special endangers all of us? So, please, don't trust her with my life, too."
"I'm sorry," Virdon murmured, chastised. "I shouldn't have told her. I... I can't explain it, other than I was tired and not thinking straight and she's..."
Before Galen could say anything, a shadow stirred in the deeper darkness behind him.
"Yeah, Al has a habit of spilling the beans to friendly females, ain't that right, Al?"
The road lay abandoned now, a shockingly bright band winding through the marches in the milky light of the full moon; as Zana hurried towards the village, the noisy silence of frogs and other, more furtive noises in the reeds made her almost wish for an officer to find her. The rustling and soft splashes were caused by swamp rats, she told herself; and there was nothing more sinister hiding in the shadows under the willow trees than sleeping birds and, and, dreaming beavers.
But the truth was that she was completely unnerved by now. And to think that she had pondered to find a way through the swamp itself, and stay away from the road for fear of detection! She would've completely lost her way by now, and maybe fallen into a water hole, or... did they have alligators this far north? Zana stopped and nervously scanned the pale road ahead and behind her; these beasts weren't confined to the water, even if they preferred it.
She continued more slowly now, casting nervous glances over her shoulder every few moments. The cold light and the utter loneliness in this wilderness made her fur stand on end. All the ghost stories of her childhood rose up from the moving shadows to the side of the road, all the nameless terrors that had haunted her dreams after these evenings of storytelling. When she spotted a lonely light far ahead, she almost choked with terror before she remembered that it was probably just a lantern hanging from the gate to the village she had been seeking, and not a ghost light that sought to lure her into the fathomless darkness of the swamp.
Still, her breath only eased when it turned out that it was indeed the lantern hanging over the gate of the village. The gate wasn't guarded, and not even locked; no ape dared to come near enough to enforce the usual lock-in at nightfall now. She hesitantly passed through the shadow of the gate and sighed when she discovered the hulk of their wagon cowering against a barn, fully illuminated by the moon. She took a cautious step towards it, her feet sinking into soft mud. Galen would be asleep in the wagon - how was she going to wake him without giving him the scare of a-
"Zana?"
"Mothers!" She startled so violently at the sound of that voice that a muscle cramped up deep in her chest. She inhaled, trying to stretch it out again, but it persisted, a tight spot under her ribs that made it difficult to breathe. "Must you scare me so?"
Peet jumped lightly out of the wagon. "Scare you? I just thought I'd caught the fever an' was hallucinating the sight of you! Whatcha doin' here?" In the bright moonlight, she could see him frown. "Jus' for your information, the sick people of this hovel are still sick... an' infectious."
Zana held up a hand to stop the rant she felt coming her way. "No discussions now, Peet - I'm here and I need to see Ga... the doctor. Urgently."
Peet stared at her for a moment; then he shrugged. "He's in there." He gestured at the barn behind him. "We've turned it into a hospital, he has a separate office, an'-"
"He's sleeping in there? Among all those sick humans?" Zana was shocked. Then she narrowed her eyes. "He seems to be pretty sure that it's not contagious for apes, then."
Peet wisely said nothing to that, just turned to lead the way. "It's Polo now, by the way," he murmured as they passed rows of tossing and turning humans. "Hate that name, but it's how they know me around here. There you go." He gestured at a heavy curtain dividing off the far corner of the room. The flicker of candlelight was seeping through the gap between curtain and floor.
She turned around for Peet, but the human held up his hands and smiled wryly. It was clear that he didn't intend to go in with her. Zana sniffed. Well. It wasn't his business, anyway, was it?
She squared her shoulders and brushed away the fabric with a bit more force than necessary.
He was sitting on the thin pallet they had brought in for him from somewhere, his nose stuck in a scroll that he held close to the single candle on the desk beside the bed - one of the medical scrolls he had bought back in the City. "What is it, Al-, ah, Tamas?" he murmured, not lifting his gaze.
There was just no way she could gently introduce herself. "We need to talk."
The scroll jumped from his fingers and tumbled to the floor, and he almost tumbled after it, trying to catch it by reflex. He stopped his fall in the last moment, grabbing the bedframe, and stared up at her, mouth slack with shock.
She quickly stepped into the room before he could recover and sat down on the only chair. "Please spare us another lecture of the dangers of human illnesses for apes, I just heard that one from Peet... Polo. I'm here now, we can as well get to the point."
Galen pushed himself back into a sitting position and frowned. "The point? What point? Are you going to tell me that there was a point to your secrecy... were you protecting me from the harsh truth, or a difficult decision?"
She winced at the bitterness in his voice. "No, Galen. I'd never be so condescending to assume I'd need to protect you from anything. I wanted to protect myself."
He was still staring at her, his fingers playing with the rope that was dangling from the spine of the scroll. "Protect yourself." His voice was flat. "From me."
"I breached the subject once, if you remember." She knew she should reassure him immediately that she hadn't meant to protect herself from him, as if he was dangerous to her or to the baby, but his cold disapproval fueled her own resentment. She wouldn't be judged, dammit! "In Urko's office, and you were already so sure of your own opinion, as if there was only one correct decision-"
"It was a hypothetical situation to me, one that was still preventable," Galen exploded. "I had no idea that you were interviewing me about an already existing fact!"
"As if that knowledge would've changed anything!" Zana jumped to her feet. "Do you really want to tell me that you wouldn't have insisted on getting rid of it, or on dragging me back to your parents who so generously offered to take me in all of a sudden? Even your father, who we both agree hates my sight..."
"It was a very generous offer, yes!" Galen blinked. "Did they know?"
Zana hesitated, and wished she hadn't when his eyes narrowed in sardonic amusement. "I really am the fool who knows last."
"I didn't tell them," she said pleadingly. "Your mother just... looked at me and knew, and I assume she told your father, but you have to believe me, I didn't tell anyone."
"But it seems I was the only one you were able to fool by it," Galen stated dryly.
Zana sank back on her chair. "I think Peet didn't know, either," she murmured, plucking at a loose thread in her robe. She looked up when she heard Galen cough.
"Well, I'm glad." His voice was still vibrating with a sharp, metallic undertone. Hurt, masked as anger, masked as amusement. "Idiocy loves company."
She felt nauseous with grief. "You're not an idiot, Galen, except when you indulge in self-pity and believe the hurtful things you're imputing to me right now. I thought you knew me better."
"Well, that's what I thought, too."
Stunned, she watched him roll up his scroll. Perhaps it hadn't been a good idea to come here. She had been so worried that time would only harden his resentment, but maybe she had misjudged him... again. Maybe he would've needed a few days alone, to cool off.
"That's no way to go on, Galen," she said softly. "I'm sorry I hurt you. I should've trusted you more, and not have let fear dictate my actions, but I can't change what's in the past - you can't pour water back into a broken bottle. But please, Galen, stop stomping on the shards to punish me. And it's not as if you never kept secrets yourself."
"Oh, oh no!" Galen pointed the scroll at her. "You don't get to play the 'you, too!' game with me!"
Resentment shot up again with a hiss inside her. "And you don't get to play the persecuted saint," she retorted. "You're not above reproach, Galen! You can be sensible, even virtuous when it serves you, but you have no compunction about holding back, sweet talking, or even lying, if you think you'd get farther with it than with moral rectitude. I said I'd never be condescending to you, so please, for the love of the Mothers, don't be condescending to me!"
She saw his eyes narrow. "Are you calling me a hypocrite?"
And she wouldn't take that bait. "I'm calling you a pragmatist. And... if you can't find the inner greatness to forgive me my mistake..." She sighed. "I'm only simian, Galen. I'm not infallible, or above fear, or grief, or... But if you can't love me anymore, at least be pragmatic enough to let go of your grudge, for the sake of our safety." For the sake of the baby, but how could she invoke that after having shut him out of that so completely?
"I still love you," Galen said quietly. "I fell in love with you when you stood up to Urko during the hearing, and I admired your courage from the moment I saw you in Zibaya's student rally..."
"I just got caught up in it," Zana said hastily, "I wasn't even attending her speech..."
"... and I somehow assumed that you aren't afraid of anything, least of all of me," Galen continued, ignoring her. "And even if it hadn't been about the baby... our baby, my baby, too!" He took a deep breath. "Even if it had been about something else, anything else, it would still have disappointed me that you wouldn't trust me enough to share." All his usual playfulness, the twinkling irony, had left his voice. He just sounded... sad.
Zana didn't know what to say... didn't even remember what she had feared from him - that he'd disapprove? That he'd ask her to get rid of the baby? Both possibilities seemed to be so unreal right now, looking at him hunched on the pallet. She just had to get up and sit on the bed beside him.
"I'm sorry," she repeated, "and I won't do it again. And I want to help you with this here," she waved her arm, indicating the whole barn. "You can't possibly manage it all alone, or even with Alan and Peet, there is just too much to do."
Galen shook his head. "You need to go back to Tilan. It would be different if you'd want to take that risk just for yourself, but we have to think of our baby now." An unconscious smile tugged at his lips as he said 'our baby', and Zana's heart constricted in a new wave of guilt and affection.
"There must be some way I can help you," she insisted.
"Well..." Galen's gaze fell on the scroll in his hands. "You could read those scrolls for me. My eyes are falling shut, and I reread the last herb five times, and I still can't tell you which one it was or what it's used for." He handed her the scroll and rose to gather half a dozen more. "I'll give you a bag for these... And these are the symptoms I determined from my examinations." He dumped the scrolls onto the bed and handed her a smaller one; when she partly unrolled it, Galen's exact, clean handwriting appeared.
He knelt down to retrieve a cloth bag from under the bed - a horse's feedbag, and held it up for her. "I also added 'Causes and Cures' to that collection," he said, while Zana put the scrolls into the bag. "I know it's actually for apes, but it can't hurt to look for a treatment there, too. You know, we're not that different, physically."
"No," Zana said softly, "we're not that different."
She didn't want to leave - when she thought of that white road winding through the chirping shadows of the swamp, she could feel every hair on her body rise. On the other hand, it was probably better to not arouse the attention of the prefect. Galen's cover identity had given them a whole month of relative peace, and a good headway due north, and she didn't want to endanger that.
Still... that road...
"Will you bring me to the gate, dea... Galen?"
Galen jumped to his feet. "Yes, yes of course. Do you want me to send Peet with you, at least up to the plague line?"
Zana's shoulders sagged with relief. "That would be... would be nice, dear."
Galen raised his brows. "I assume he's nearby. The curtains have even bigger ears than common walls." He held the fabric aside to let her through, but to Zana's secret satisfaction, Peet was nowhere to be seen.
They were almost at the door, when Galen suddenly stopped and tensed. Curious, Zana followed his gaze.
Galen was watching Alan, who sat on an unoccupied bed, a young woman beside him. From their closeness, and the way they were smiling at each other, she seemed to have roused his interest - for the first time since Zana had met him. Curious, she drew closer. Alan had a family back home; if that woman had managed to turn his thoughts away from them even for a moment, she had to be very unusual.
Galen had already reached them, and Zana felt a stab of regret on Alan's behalf when the female bolted. Galen shouldn't have interfered... But then she saw Alan cast down his eyes as if he was ashamed, and then Peet was there, too, and suddenly, Alan looked surrounded, and she had to know what was going on here.
She quickened her step.
"Let's talk about critical information you leaked, Colonel," she heard Peet say. "To everyone with a double x."
He looked up when she stopped at Galen's side, and she froze at the cold look in Peet's eyes.
"Let's start with Zana."