The Rossak drug is but one path to infinity. There are others— and one, as yet unrevealed, which is greater than all.
— REVEREND MOTHER RAQUELLA BERTO-ANIRUL
All of the Sorceresses who received Dr. Suk’s new test vaccine died. The total mortality rate shocked Raquella. In an increasingly strident voice, the Supreme Sorceress characterized it as another complete failure that demonstrated the incompetence of the HuMed researchers who had forced their services upon the people of Rossak.
Ticia Cenva tended the patients closely, refusing to let Raquella “torment” them. She had one of her Sorceresses send samples to Dr. Suk aboard the orbiting ship, but even upon analysis, he could not understand why the treatment had proved so deadly. At worst, it should have been ineffective.
Raquella began to wonder if something else— Ticia herself?— was at work here.
Looking like a vulture in her black mourning robe, the Supreme Sorceress scowled at the six dead women, victims of the test vaccine, as if displeased with their weak expressions of agony. She directed her ire at Raquella. “Your efforts are pointless. Any fool can see you are not helping.”
“And what would you have me do? Just watch them die?”
“That appears to be what you’re best at.”
“At least we tried.”
Ticia did not seem interested. “The strongest will survive, and the weak will suffer the fates that they deserve. That is how our bloodlines have always worked on Rossak. That is why the Misborn are cast out into the jungle. Those who cannot meet the challenges of the universe will perish. From our DNA storehouse, we can breed replacements, as soon as we choose desirable characteristics.”
Raquella looked around her at the death ward, saw the overwhelming numbers of patients, smelled the stink of sickness. It was night now, and most of the people were either sleeping, or possibly dead. “Genetic samples cannot replace the friends you will lose, if you reject our help.”
By now, most of the population had been exposed to the mutated retrovirus. Up in the LS Recovery, Mohandas had still been unable to identify the key ingredient in the cenote water sample, much less reproduce it. He needed more from the source itself.
Since his test vaccines had all proved fatal, Raquella no longer had any choice. The tiny tracer she had planted on Jimmak had shown her where to find the cenote. Once the medical technicians and Sorceresses had access to the water, they could cure all the sick, save their population.
The Misborn would suffer. They might even be killed. But there were far more people in the population of Rossak, and she could no longer justify remaining silent. Her duty was clear.
Sick and exhausted after wrestling with her decision, Raquella went to seek a few hours of sleep. At daylight, she would lead an expedition to the cenote to get what they so desperately needed….
* * *
IN THE LOW light of amber glowpanels, a black-robed woman made her way past sleeping plague patients, many of them curled up in blankets on the stone floor. Weeks earlier, they had run out of beds.
She struggled against the growing effects of the illness. She could feel the Scourge, used every thread of her mental powers to drive back the symptoms, but she knew it was there inside her. No matter how strenuously she denied it, how much spice she consumed, the evidence of her affliction screamed from every muscle in her body.
But Ticia Cenva had a mission, something she had to do.
Entering an adjacent chamber, she paused and calmed her breathing, trying not to make any sound. These were the quarters of the HuMed doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel. She paused at a bed in the women’s section, one of several in a long row. Lying on her side, Raquella Berto-Anirul slept the deep slumber of exhaustion, breathing rhythmically.
Ticia’s eyes narrowed, and she felt energy building in her mind, the power of long-restrained destruction. As the daughter of the great Zufa Cenva, she had always been prepared to give her life in a final flash of glory, but had never found her opportunity. She was weak, a failure— an unused weapon that no longer had any purpose. Inner, nagging voices called her a coward, playing upon her survivor’s guilt.
The Rossak Epidemic was killing all of her people, and she could do nothing about it. Anger and determination were all that kept her on her feet. Her body stiff, Ticia glared down at the woman she hated. Raquella believed she could come in from the outside and prove how simple, weak, and ineffective the Sorceresses were. That could not be allowed.
The weakest patients would all die, a necessary price to maintain the strength of Rossak bloodlines. Everything was recorded, documented, stored within the hidden computers that tracked the DNA of the human race. Even if Dr. Suk’s vaccine had worked, it would only have staved off the inevitable and left the survivors tainted forever. She couldn’t stomach the knowledge that her people were so feeble they could not keep themselves alive without outside help. Better that they die here and now, so that history would blame the meddling doctors rather than find fault with Ticia’s leadership.
As if from a distance, the Supreme Sorceress acknowledged that the first-phase symptoms included irrational thoughts, paranoia, anger. But the onset of the disease in her body had moved slowly, stalled by her own mental fires, and she never thought to question her motives. Her blame and resentment made perfect sense to her.
Bending over the sleeping form of Raquella, Ticia knew she needed to finish this quickly. No one suspected that she was here, or that she had begun to show signs of infection herself. But Ticia had one last thing to do before melting in the plague fires that were consuming her. Her skin already felt hot, flushed with fever and with the exertion of walking.
Slipping a hand into her dark robe, she brought out a tiny apothecary bottle and removed the cap. Raquella’s lips were parted slightly in her deep breathing. With trembling fingers, Ticia fumbled with an applicator and drew out a few drops of the viscous, oily liquid. The smell was bitter, pungent, giving the barest hint of how deadly the draft could be.
Many years ago, Aurelius Venport and his pharmaceutical scouts had discovered the incredibly potent toxin, a chemical so deadly that they had named it only the “Rossak drug.” The chemical had no legitimate uses outside of the assassin’s trade. No known antidote had ever been found. Once administered, the Rossak drug was always fatal, even in minuscule doses.
Raquella rolled slightly, tilted her head, and opened her lips a little farther. As if cooperating.
Seizing her chance, Ticia dripped liquid into the detestable woman’s mouth. The poison went in smoothly, easily, just as it had when Ticia killed the test subjects who had received Dr. Suk’s new vaccine. Now, everyone would believe the cure was a false hope, and that Raquella’s unexpected healing ability had merely been an illusion, and a swift relapse had killed her after all.
It served the woman right for flaunting her superiority in front of all the Sorceresses. Raquella never should have come here.
As Ticia reached the doorway, she heard Raquella lurch awake, coughing and sputtering, already trying to fight off the Rossak drug. No matter. Nothing could alter her fate now. The Supreme Sorceress fled through the shadows.
* * *
HER MIND IMMEDIATELY recoiled from the bitter taste that spread through her mouth. The acid flavor of death. Raquella’s fleeting, drowsing memory told her of the droplets she had felt on her lips, so different from the curative water of the secret cenote where Jimmak had taken her. That had been a life-giving baptism. This was something entirely different. A life-taker.
Poison.
She was already lost, drifting into dark unconsciousness. Suddenly light flared in her mind, showing Raquella a new way to fight back, a weapon she had not known she possessed. Her body had been altered in the crucible of the Scourge, after assimilating the incomprehensible mixture of environmental chemicals. Raquella had unexpected skills and new resources now, deep within her very cells.
Utter calmness pervaded her, and in her mind’s eye Raquella saw the connections that led from the core of her brain— neural pathways spreading outward to veins, tendons, muscle— governing every function, whether voluntary or automatic. All so clear, like a human blueprint. The insidious poison pervaded her blood, organs, and immune system. The Rossak drug seemed almost alive, malicious, secure in its evil purpose.
No, it wasn’t evil— but the poisoner was.
“I will not give up,” she murmured. “I will fight back. Only fear can kill me now.”
Going deep within herself, Raquella waged an internal war.
She shored up her body’s defenses and constructed a biochemical wall against the poison’s attack. Then she confronted the enemy head-on. Analyzing the molecular structure of the Rossak drug, she shifted the elements around, reconnecting free radicals, snipping off dangling protein chains. Taking away its weapons.
In the process, Raquella patiently transformed the poison, breaking it down until it was rendered impotent. It could no longer harm her. Because she was doing this for the first time, she explored her abilities, and realized that she had complete control over every cell and extraneous molecule in her body. Her medically trained mind marveled at the thought. She was the master of even the most intricate functions of this complex biological machine.
Like the evermind Omnius.
The thought disturbed and intrigued her. How similar were human beings to the thinking machines they had created? Perhaps more than either of them would ever admit.
And she saw something else inside, like an amazing storybook deep in her genetic code. At first it came to her drop by drop, like the water trickling into Jimmak’s pool, then in a gush of data, as hereditary memories of her ancestors inundated her. She knew this vault of knowledge had always been there, passed from generation to generation, sealed and unreachable… and now, through the catalyst of the deadly poison, she had received the key and unlocked the door.
The rush was like trying to sip from a torrent. Much went into her brain, flooding her consciousness, although it had been there all along… lurking, hiding, waiting. Strangely, her mental access was limited to only her female predecessors.
Then, in the midst of her euphoria, the memories slipped away, tantalizing and out of reach. At first, Raquella felt like an orphan when all those wonderful ancestors abandoned her. Then, slowly, she understood that they would come to her on occasion, assist her, and recede again into the reverberating past.
In the echoing emptiness without clamoring memories, she noted that the Scourge retrovirus was no longer active in her system. She had neutralized it entirely, creating invincible antibodies in its place. Raquella could track the path of any disease through her cellular structures, follow it like an avenging force, and drive the enemy away. She would never need to fear getting sick again.
In the deepest regions of her cells, Raquella worked with what she had, achieving results that Mohandas Suk could never have hoped to attain in his orbital laboratory. She had her own laboratory now, inside her body, and presently she created exactly what she wanted: the precise antibodies needed to synthesize a swift and potent vaccine that would wipe out the Rossak Epidemic.
She did not need the cenote water. Her own cells and immune system were a factory far more complex and efficient than all the facilities Mohandas Suk used aboard the LS Recovery. Raquella could make as much antidote as was necessary.
The poison had not killed her, but had instead liberated her. It would save everyone on the planet. Exactly the opposite of what Ticia Cenva had planned.
* * *
THOROUGH TESTS, AS well as Raquella’s own new intuitive comprehension, proved that Suk’s original vaccine would indeed have bolstered the immune systems of the epidemic victims. She also understood that the test subjects had died not because of a failing in the medicine, but from murder.
Ticia Cenva.
In her new awareness, Raquella did not focus her thoughts on vengeance, but on healing. Through catalysts produced by the biofactories in her body, she was able to transmute the existing supplies of vaccine, enriching it with antibodies from her blood. She had no need of the cenote water, no need to destroy the Misborn and their squalid existence. She had everything she required in her own body.
Raquella went about administering the cure to the dying patients who crowded the wards and infirmaries in the cliff city. The remaining HuMed doctors and medical assistants stumbled along, helping her. As more people were cured and left their beds to help in the efforts, the Rossak Epidemic slowed, stalled, and finally retreated.
It seemed ironic that Raquella had obtained the water for her original cure from outcasts, people the Sorceresses thought were worthless. Now, her altered internal chemistry would save those women who had treated the Misborn as little more than animals, or mistakes.
Far from celebrating their rescue from the viral scourge, Ticia Cenva was nowhere to be found. Raquella, who had once again miraculously sidestepped death, was not surprised that the Supreme Sorceress remained in strict isolation. Raquella and her swelling ranks of healthy assistants distributed the vaccine vials and ministered to the sick.
When Raquella knew the vaccinations had been given to nearly everyone in need, she demanded to know what had happened to the Supreme Sorceress. Had Ticia avoided the virus, or succumbed to it? As the other women eluded Raquella’s questions, she sensed direct and indirect lies. The Rossak women were concealing something important.
On her own initiative, fearing nothing, though she knew the Sorceress had tried to poison her, Raquella went to the private chambers of Ticia Cenva. She had never wanted to usurp the authority of the Supreme Sorceress, had only meant to fight the epidemic and then leave Rossak. But Ticia would probably see her now as a smug victor gloating over the vanquished.
When she reached the private chamber opening, Raquella found her way blocked by a shimmering energy barrier— a wall of force projected by an angry and delirious mind, not by a Holtzman shield generator. On the other side of the impassible barrier, she saw a distraught young Karee Marques. On her left, blurred by the waves of power, stood Ticia Cenva, glowing like a psychic weapon about to fire.
Only fear can kill me now, Raquella assured herself, and she sought out the calmest place in her spiritual being, a place that no one could take from her. From that personal stronghold, that citadel of her soul, Raquella stared at the energy barrier, employing powers that no Sorceress had ever discovered.
The barricade disappeared, falling away like the last flickers of a dying charge of electricity. Fiercely, Ticia tried to reconstruct the wall, but each effort fizzled, and it would not stand. With it, the Supreme Sorceress lost her psychic glow, as if the tides of desperation had washed it away. Utterly defeated, Ticia Cenva stood shaking, her beautiful face a mask of anguish and disease.
Raquella stepped through and confronted her nemesis who swayed on her feet, red-faced and perspiring. Obvious plague lesions now covered her face and arms; her skin and eyes had a yellowish cast. Karee Marques huddled out of the way, frightened by the play of power she had just witnessed. Five other Sorceresses emerged from the rear of the private chamber, awed by the obvious failure— and sickness— of their leader.
“Tell me what you have been hiding,” Raquella demanded, in a Voice that was not entirely her own. Her female ancestors within, a veritable horde, spoke with her, from the past to the present and the future. Words echoed through space and time, and folded back on themselves.
“I can’t…” Ticia said. “I c-can’t…”
“Tell me! Tell all of our ancestors the blame you have cast, the lives you have taken, the future you have stolen!” The Voice again, this time stronger from Raquella’s throat, much more importunate. The utterance sounded compelling, impossible to defy.
In a torrent of confession, Ticia revealed how she had foiled Raquella’s attempts to save the people of Rossak, how she had killed the vaccination test subjects and tried to poison Raquella. The reasons had made sense to her, had demanded her action, in the disorienting and paranoid early stages of the mutated Scourge.
With her new understanding of the Supreme Sorceress, Raquella realized that Ticia Cenva was hiding much more, and her secret went far beyond petty rivalry. “Now tell me what you are protecting here.” Like a primal thing, the Voice surfaced, and it was undeniable.
Ticia could not resist. Moving jerkily like an ill-used puppet, Ticia led Raquella to an immense cave chamber filled with computers and other electronic equipment, a vast reservoir of information. The computers hummed softly as they processed data, exchanged it between machines, and constantly built upon it, taking it to higher, more comprehensive levels: the DNA breakdowns from billions of people of varying races, the most detailed repository of genetic records ever compiled, not just during the original Scourge, but from many generations of breeding on Rossak.
Somewhere in her subconscious, Raquella had already known about this place. As the plague-stricken Supreme Sorceress confessed under the demands of the Voice, Raquella sensed that the ancestors within had guided her into this situation, as if they had foreseen it and moved the human beings around like game pieces. What am I destined to do here?
She answered her own question, and the realization gave Raquella an eerie feeling, simultaneously uncomfortable and reassuring. Women who had long ago turned to dust were watching her, guiding and counseling her in the important forthcoming decisions.
Suddenly Ticia coughed and stumbled. She slipped to her knees on the hard stone floor.
Raquella hurried to her. While Karee Marques held Ticia still and tried to comfort her, Raquella removed a vial of vaccine from her own pocket. “Your disease is in its advanced stages, but this drug will still flush it from your body, neutralizing the virus.”
Lying on the floor, writhing in pain, Ticia fell into a fit of coughing. Her blue eyes were rheumy and streaked with red veins, a window into her soul that suggested she was much older than her actual years. For some time now, she had been forced to consume large quantities of melange, which had given her a more youthful appearance and intense spice-blue eyes. That was all changing now, as the Scourge ran roughshod over her defensive systems.
With her last burst of strength, Ticia pushed Raquella away. “Don’t want your help! Now you know about our genetic database. The computers. You’ll bring the Cult of Serena in to destroy everything we have worked for.”
“I don’t want to destroy your work,” Raquella said. “I want to build on it. Fanatical mobs destroyed the Hospital for Incurable Diseases on Parmentier. I have no love for their cause.”
Ticia grew quiet, but the hatred in her eyes flared even hotter. When she withdrew her hand from a fold in her dark, perspiration-soaked robe, the Sorceress held a small, open bottle of a bitter, acrid substance. Her fingers were smeared with it. Raquella instantly identified the liquid as the Rossak drug that had nearly poisoned her.
Raquella grabbed for the Supreme Sorceress, but with a last flare of mental power, Ticia knocked her away. The bottle dropped to the floor and broke. Before anyone could stop her, the Sorceress lifted her poison-smeared fingertips to her lips. A single drop was enough.
The life faded swiftly from Ticia’s eyes, and she stared off into infinity.