Ammonite

“Making someone better. Or, rather, helping–tricking, persuading–a body to heal itself.”

“Right. Modern medicine does it mechanically, like stitching, and chemically–antibiotics and things. But what about electrically? Magnetically? Electrochemically?”

“We do that already,” Sara said thoughtfully. “Strap a power pack around a break and it heals anywhere up to six times as fast.”

Marghe nodded. “According to what I’ve been reading, injury, like Letitia’s, produces a disorganization of the normal, healthy electrical pattern. Are you with me?”

“Yes.”

“Now what if, what if a person has enough control over her magnetic field, her transmissions, to affect another’s? What if the healthy person’s patterns could interact with the sick person’s?”

Hiam looked dubious.

“Sara, when Thenike ran her hands around Letitia, my body could feel it! It was like her pattern was talking to mine, to all the eddies and flows of my cells, saying: See? See how you should be? Like this, this is how you’re supposed to go.”

“But how? I don’t understand how she can do it!”

“The virus, that’s how. Oh, Sara, the things I’ve seen! When I woke up after being sick, it was like becoming conscious for the first time, Like a blind person seeing color… No, that’s not right. It was just more. Like I could see better and hear better and smell better, like my kinesthetic sense was more highly developed. There’s so much out there to notice, to feel. It’s almost as if the virus is part of this world, so that when the virus became part of me, I could see the world and feel it more clearly…”

Sara Hiam sat in obstinate silence.

“It’s the virus,” Marghe repeated more quietly. “It gets all tangled up in the DNA somehow, and changes things. Maybe it intensifies the semiconducting properties of our nervous systems. I don’t know. That’s something you’ll have to find out. Viruses are what you know. I can only tell you that it’s my belief that the virus allows us greater control–much, much greater control–over the autonomic nervous system, and other things.”

Sara was still silent. Marghe decided to change tactics.

“I’ve been thinking about Letitia Dogias. You’ve heard about her behavior during storms?”

“Yes,” Sara said unwillingly.

“Have you had the opportunity to find out why?”

“I’ve run some tests.”

“And?”

“And I can’t find anything wrong with her. Nothing.”

“I think I know what’s wrong with her: she’s very sensitive to the buildup of energy around storms, but doesn’t know what it is she feels, or how to deal with it. She’s got no biofeedback training at all. She overloads.”

“It could be a psychiatric condition.”

“It could. But it isn’t.”

The sky lit up in a long, vivid flash, then died back to inky black.

“What was that?” Sara asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

They listened, but there was no noise except the wind in the grass and, from a long way off down the valley, a trail of laughter.

“I’m afraid,” Sara said from the dark. “Everything’s so different. You’re so different. I remember you up on Estrade. You were so… ordinary.”

“I’m different, yes.”

There was no way to explain how it felt. How it was to be able to remember in a way she would have thought impossible a year ago; how it felt to only have three fingers on her left hand, to have nearly died. How it felt to have another life growing inside her, to have a partner. A home.

“Change is just change, Sara. Not all good, not all bad. Just different.” They were quiet a long time, listening to the wind in the grass.

“I’m still afraid. Soon the virus will come for me, for Nyo and Sigrid. And I can do nothing to stop it. Nothing. I’m a doctor and I can’t stop it.”

“You can’t stop the common cold, either.”

“But that won’t kill me.”

“No.”

“Hiam!” The call came clear through the dark.

Hiam started, then stood up. “Over here! Who is it?”

They heard the ru

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“Out of breath. A moment.” Da

“Gone?”

“They blew it up.”

“That flash…”

“Yes.”

“The people on board?”

“They didn’t take them off first.”

Marghe imagined a corona of plasma floating and frozen, orbiting the planet forever. “The Kurst?”

Da

“Sweet god,” Sara said.

“At least they didn’t kill us.”

“Not yet.”

Marghe stared at her. They were gone, weren’t they? “What about the gig?”

“Also gone. We’re cut off now. Completely on our own.”

“Not for long,” Hiam said. Now they both stared at her. “Don’t you understand yet? There’s a whole world here, and Company won’t forget it. They might be gone for now, but they haven’t given up. Company never gives up. They’ll keep at it, on and on, until they find a vaccine, or a cure, and then they’ll be back. It might be five years, or it might not be until that daughter of yours is grown, Marghe. But they’ll be back. And when they do, they’ll be holding our destruction, the destruction of all the communities of this world, in their syringes or their sprays. Without the virus, the people of this world don’t have children. No children and we die.”

We die. While they were standing there, looking at each other, wondering how they could ever be ready against that day, Thenike came back.

Dawn was cool and the sky ragged with cloud. Da

“Come north when you can,” Marghe said to Sara. “The goth are there, somewhere. You more than anyone would know what to do, how to find out more. The virus has something to do with them, I think. And I need help with those records. Letitia and Lu Wai are going to come for the births; Letitia’s promised to do what she can with the disk I found. You could travel together. The more we can learn, the better. The goth, the virus, the records… they all tie in somehow, and we need to find out what we can before Company returns. Will you come?”

“I… Perhaps.”

“It gets better, Sara. Believe me.” In time, Sara would learn that the world was not hostile, that one only had to take the proper care and give the weather proper respect, and travel did not have to be fatal. “And you, Ha

“I’d like to. But I don’t know. Whatever we become, tribe or community or kith or kindred or a howling mob, it’s my job to steer us onto the right track. Worrying about breeding herds and seed crop and irrigation isn’t that different from worrying about surgical supplies and duty rosters. I’m good at that.”

“Too good, maybe.” Da

“One of these days they’ll get someone else to do it, but not for a year or two. Until then, travel’s a luxury I won’t be able to afford.”

“In a year or two, then.” They both knew it would be longer than that. Or maybe not. Marghe looked from Da

Da

Marghe hugged her, hugged Sara, and then stepped away from them. The wind that blew from the river was cold. Thenike picked up her pack and slung the strap of her leather drumcase over her shoulder. Marghe picked up hers, then hesitated.

“No more goodbyes,” Sara said. “It’s cold enough to freeze a bird out of the sky. Get walking. And when you brew up your next cup of dap, think of us. Come on, Ha