BY THE SAME AUTHOR by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Format: epub

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The first tremor hit the city just after dawn. It was no more than an insistent vibration that rattled plates upon shelves and many slept through it; others awakened and rose, rubbing sleep from their eyes and wondering if a storm was due. The second tremor came at noon and Chreena was working in the laboratory when it struck. The vibration was stronger now. Books fell from shelves and she ran to the balcony to see people milling in the streets. A twelve-foot statue toppled near the main square, but no one was hurt. The tremor passed.

Oshere limped in to the laboratory. 'A little excitement,' he said, his words more slurred than usual.

'Yes,' said Chreena. 'Have there been quakes before?'

'Once, twelve years ago,' he told her. 'It was not serious, though some farmers lost cattle and there were many stillborn calves. How is your work progressing?'

‘I’ll get there,' she replied, looking away.

He squatted on the mosaic floor and looked up at her. 'I wonder if we are tackling the problem in the right way,' he said.

'What other way is there? If I can find out what causes the genetic structure to regress, I might be able to stop it.'

'That's what I mean, Chreena. You are staring into the heart of the problem and you cannot see the whole. I have been looking at the records of the others who have gone through the Change before me. All were male, and all under twenty-five years of age.'

'I know that. It is not a great help,' she snapped.

'Bear with me. Almost all the Changelings were about to be married. You did not know that, did you?'

'No,' she admitted. 'But how is that important?'

He smiled, but she did not recognise the expression in his swollen, leonine face. 'Our custom is for the groom to take his lady to the southern mountains, there to pledge his love beneath the Sword of the One. Everyone does it.'

'But the women go too, and they are not affected.'

'Yes,' he said. 'I have given great thought to this. I do not understand your science, Chreena, but I understand how to solve a problem. First look for the deviation and then ask - not where is the problem, but where is not the problem. If all the Changelings journey to the Sword, but the women are unaffected, then what do the men do that is different? What did Shir-ran do while you were there?'

'Nothing that I did not,' she replied. 'We ate, we drank, we slept, we made love. We came home.'

'Did he not climb to the Chaos Peak and dive to the waters two hundred feet below?'

'Yes. The custom, as I understand it, is for the men to purify themselves in the water of the Golden Pool before they pledge themselves. But all men do this - and not all are affected.'

'This is true,' he agreed, 'but some men merely bathe in an easily accessible part of the Pool. Others dive from low rocks. But only the most foolhardy climb to the Chaos Peak and dive.

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