Robert Chase: The Wellness Plague

First-aid classes were suspended so that more of the colonists could aid in the search. Rey discovered to his surprise that he had free time. He used some of it to go over the notes he had made on allergies.

Even in the supposedly air-cleaned homes of the freeholders, his head throbbed and his eyes watered. Often, the families he visited would discover to their surprise that the filters had not been working for a year or more. It did not matter to them. They showed no allergic response to their environment.

Or at least most of them did not. Babies did. All babies, until about the age of three. It made no sense. Usually a child would benefit from his mother’s immune response transferred through breast milk. Here, you could almost imagine that the mother was somehow suppressing a natural immunity.

If something like that was the case, where did the immunity come from? It did not seem to have anything to do with the genetic make-up of the colonists. They had come in nearly equal mix from most of the then-established colonies, usually, though not always, from the lower end of the economic scale. The immunity had developed gradually. In retrospect, you noticed that fewer and fewer antihistamines were used. Now, only visitors, newcomers like himself, and the newborns needed medication.

It was an acquired immunity. Babies might require three years; adults seemed to acquire it in a matter of months. So how was it acquired? What was different about Far Edge? First answer: it was lower in elevation and consequently wanner than any other colony. Problem: none of the literature on allergies suggested any possible correlation with air pressure or temperature. If anything, there should be an inverse correlation. There should be more dust and pollen at the lower levels. If the flora of the world jungle produced pollen. It was astonishing how little was known about the natural lifeforms on this planet.

What about diet? Research, and his own experience, disclosed that Edgers ate pretty much the same stuff as other colonists. They had a greater amount of exotics, like oranges and grapefruit, because they were locally grown. And, as he had noticed since his arrival, they tended to eat a lot. He had put that down to the difference between their active, outdoor lives and the sedentary, enclosed life with which he had been familiar in the Terraces. If his figures could be believed, however, adults on Far Edge consumed up to 50 percent more than settlers on similar frontier colonies.

Feed a cold, starve a fever, Ben Franklin had said, hundreds of years ago and light-years away. Only allergies were not colds.

Regan Lee had flown the Sunbird , specially modified with new search gear, back to Far Edge to join in the search. Rey was still thinking about the allergy problem when his communicator chimed with a priority message: Regan had spotted wreckage near the base of a ridgeline. It was almost certainly the VTOL flown by O’Donnel and his friends.

Lopez Vega snapped the cable onto Rey’s harness and tugged hard to make sure it was secure. Rey looked doubtful.

“We use these cables for lifting everything from livestock to heavy machinery,” Lopez said, shouting to make himself heard over the roar of the VTOL’s engines. “You don’t have to worry about that.

“Keep an eye on the time, though. Ting Lim can’t hold us here for more than half an hour. If you need more than that, you’ll have to unhook and let the Canberra Freehold VTOL take you back. It’s on its way now.”

Rey nodded to show he understood. As clean and safe and simple as it was to obtain hydrogen from water, it was still not as energy-intensive a fuel as Earth’s petrochemicals had been. Having come this far, the time they could spend on station was strictly limited.

“Ready, Doc?” Ting-Lim Chan’s voice came over Rey’s earphones. As pilot, he would have to hold the VTOL steady as the combination of his reflexes and electronics allowed. Breezes were light. On the other hand, the higher air pressure gave an unexpected force to even low wind velocities. Ting-Lim was trying something never done before.

“Ready,” Rey said, his mouth so dry the word came out as a croak. Then, because he feared he might freeze if he did not move immediately, he stepped to the cargo door, leaned out, and kicked off.

The first five meters were almost free-fall. “Want to get you beyond the worst of the prop wash,” Ting-Lim had explained. His descent slowed abruptly. The world rotated around him, back and forth in 270 degree arcs. Rey closed his eyes, waiting for his rotation to damp out. When he opened them, he was just above the trees.

There are no trees on Skylandia. That was what they taught you in school. Real trees, Earth trees, have xylem and phloem, bark and leaves or needles. Local flora have none of these. But there were organisms drawing water and nutrition from the soil, organisms extending sunlight-absorbing surfaces from strengthened central stalks many times longer than a man is tall. And since that was the common, if not the scientific, definition of a tree, all the school definitions went for naught.

The ridge slanted away below him, a canted field of pinkish-white puffballs. His feet brushed the upper branches, seeming to sink into a huge ball of cotton.

“Slowly,” he said, hoping this throat mike was working. “I don’t want to get tangled.”

“Roger that.”

He moved branches aside as they came within reach. What had looked like a vine coiled around one branch vanished in a sudden flurry of sinuous motion. Startled, Rey let go of a branch, which whipped away his breathing filter.

The branches thinned as he descended, the leaves changing from white to greenish-yellow to nearly black. A dimly-lit dome seemed to open around him. The VTOL motors sounded very far away.

In school, he had watched a film titled Memories of Earth. Children in a field, playing with a dead plant called a dandelion, blowing its seeds to the wind. The tree seemed to have a similar structure. Branches extended from the top of a central stalk in all directions, forming a sphere.

“Can you see anything?” Lopez’s voice was unexpectedly loud in Rey’s earphones.

“Not yet.” Rey looked around, squinting at shadowy, unidentified forms. Sunlight poked small holes in the canopy. There was an intermittent rustling, which might have been the wind.

“There it is!” he said. “Right between my legs. No wonder I couldn’t see it at first. Great job, Ting-Lim.”

“Any movement?” Lopez asked.

“No,” Rey said. On the other hand, there were no bodies visible, either.

The VTOL had apparently crashed through the canopy and broken several branches, which slowed its fall before hitting a limb strong enough to stop it.

“It’s caught in the cleft between some of the main limbs. One of the rotors came off in the crash. The door to the cargo bay must have popped off at the same time. The whole frame is leaning over. Getting in is going to be tricky.”

Rey stopped his descent when he was even with the open cargo bay. The upper edge of the craft extended about a meter beyond the floor.

“I’m going to try to swing in.” Rey pumped the cable back and forth. His arc carried him into the cargo bay. After two unsuccessful attempts, his scrabbling hands grabbed one of the ring mounts used for lines to secure whatever was being transported. His feet found the floor. Very carefully, he unhooked the cable from his harness and attached it to the ring mount.

“The cargo bay is empty,” he reported. “I’m going forward to check the cockpit.”

As he moved forward, the VTOL groaned and tilted in response to his shifting weight. Rey held his breath, wondering how far it was to the ground. Nothing happened. After a minute, he began to edge forward more cautiously.