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"Death?" K'tan finished. He shook his head. "Two, maybe three sevendays."
Lorana eyed the walls of the Bowl above them, picking out each individual
weyr.
She spotted one dragon lolling with its neck extended out over the ledge of
its
weyr, saw it sneeze and send a cloud of green ooze spraying down and out
across
the Bowl. She pointed at it.
"It may not be the way it starts to spread," she said to the others, "but do
we
know if the latest sick are close by or under those already infected?"
K'tan gasped in surprise. "I hadn't thought of that before."
"I hadn't either," Lorana admitted.
Kindan raised his hands. "Nor I."
K'tan stroked his chin thoughtfully. "But if you're right, then we need to
isolate the sick ones on the lowest levels."
Lorana shook her head. "That won't work," she said. When the other two looked
at
her in surprise, she explained, "Because the riders still have to walk across
the Bowl-and the dragons wash in the lake."
"They could be getting it from the waters of the lake, then, couldn't they?"
Kindan said, with an apologetic look at Lorana for countering her theory.
Lorana's shoulders slumped.
"They could. For that matter, they all eat the same food. The contagion could
be
spread through the herdbeasts."
"There's a map of the weyrs in the Weyrleader's quarters, I believe," K'tan
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said. "Given that any of these theories could be right, wouldn't it make
sense
to see if we spot the pattern Lorana suggested?"
"It might," Lorana agreed. "But if the weyrs aren't grouped by wings, it
probably won't."
K'tan gave her a questioning look.
"The dragons could infect each other while they're training," she explained
sadly.
Kindan groaned. "So we're no nearer than we were."
K'tan shook his head. "No, I think there's some progress-we have a number of
good ideas we can follow." He looked at Lorana. "When your father dealt with
sick herdbeasts, what did he do?"
Lorana started to marshal the list of actions in her mind. Seeing that she
was
preparing a lengthy response, he interrupted her with an upraised palm.
"I mean, what did he do first?"
"He tried to isolate the sick from the healthy," she said immediately. And
then,
as she registered the import of the words, she groaned. "Why didn't we think
of
this earlier?"
"Because we've been too near the problem," K'tan answered swiftly. "We've
been
too busy dealing with Thread and the day-to-day battle with the sickness." He
shook his head sadly. "M'tal's off training."
"Not anymore," Lorana declared. "I just called Gaminth back."
Kindan whistled in surprise at her forwardness.
"Now that's acting like a Weyrwoman," K'tan said approvingly.
"You were right to call me back," M'tal said to Lorana when they had
explained
their purpose. "Fighting this illness is just as important as fighting
Thread."
They were gathered in the Council Room. At M'tal's invitation, Salina had
joined
them. Kindan gave M'tal and Salina a quick review of their thinking.
Salina pointed to a slate chart and said, "Here're the assignments for the
riders." She looked it over and sighed. "I'm afraid it's not very
up-to-date."
She laid it on the table and the others looked it over. It was arranged by
levels, with quarters numbered from the Weyrleader's weyr.
K'tan found some colored chalks. He circled in red all those weyrs occupied
by
dragons that had gone between, and in yellow all those who were coughing.
Lorana pursed her lips unhappily. "That tells us how things are now," she
said.
"What we want to know is the progression of the sickness."
"Mm." K'tan agreed. He went back and started putting numbers beside each
illness. Salina's Breth was, sadly, number one.
"But there were others sick before Breth," Salina noted.
K'tan grunted agreement, dusted off some numbers and corrected them. They
peered
at the final arrangement.
"I don't see a pattern," Kindan said.
"Well, there wouldn't be," M'tal said after a long moment's silence. "If the
sickness is airborne and carried in the dragons' sneezes, then the sickness
would sink down into the Bowl. Because every dragon comes down to the Bowl at
some point, they would breathe in the infected air."
"Although some dragons sleep lower down and would be exposed to the infected
air
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more," K'tan commented.
M'tal accepted this point with a shrug.
"If the disease was spread by water, then every dragon would have an equal
chance of catching it," Kindan observed. He pointed to the distribution of
the
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