Albert paused to wipe the sweat from beneath the brim of his hat. The spring had been unseasonably warm. The sun’s rays shimmered in the sky like mid-summer, and the clouds still clung to the mountain tops. Albert stretched, and held his arms wide to cool himself. He stood arms out and looked around.
From his vantage point he could see one of the abandoned barns. Five years had it leaning to one side. His gut ached, as if he had been punched, at the sight. Albert thought of Trinexious as an unused barn, tilting to one side and wondering if anyone would fix it. According to the radio reports the majority of the farms in Thurvi Province, like all farming provinces, no longer yielded pre-Plague amounts. If it weren’t for reduced demand Trinexious would have faced a planet wide shortage of food and fabric.
Albert had turned the radio off half way through the report. Of course, people in comas didn’t demand dinner.

Barns weren’t the only things let go. Albert went to town whenever they needed anything not available through their own efforts or Klink, and he saw the coma-less victims, as he came to think of them, everywhere. No one was untouched. People all over Trinexious were being effected by the Plague, and very few of them could see anyone’s hardship but their own.

At least, Ralph and Selena had kind words to give if anyone came looking for guidance, but that didn’t happen often. When it did, they always said the same: give up everything except that which is most important. The Tarmons had experience with letting go.

The first thing Ralph and Selena let go was the planting of the crops. The back fields had lain overgrown and unused since the first year. They now only planted enough to feed the herd of shawk with a little extra, and a small garden near the house. For the first couple of years they tried to maintain the herd, however, they lost more calves than survived. Ralph was forced to sell off a portion of the herd. Albert  recalled the set of Ralph’s jaw when he made the deal.

Albert had seen it all.

Shaking his head, Albert looked out over the shawk. Woolly-headed, stubborn, bleaters Ralph’s dad, Saul, had called them. The all purpose animal. Soft, long coats sheared in early spring and mid summer could be sold for textile use. Milk was drunk and made into cheeses and butters. Slaughter and processing produced the staple meat of most Trinexioun diets. Some had even been broken to be ridden or to pull large heavy carts that the average klystral would refuse to pull.

Shawk were not gentle animals. They were complacent. Large, thick bodied, with horns spiraling in circles growing from behind their ears, it was easy for a shawk to hurt a person unintentionally. Studs could be nasty when roused. Fights between shawk, even females, were spectacular. Only a klystral could move a shawk that didn’t want to move.

A few klystral grazed among the herd. (It was an easy way to cut the cost of feeding them.) Klystral could be sustained on almost any kind of grass, wild or cultivated. Albert was always amazed by the klystral. They weren’t the only animal on Trinexious with dual pupils, but they were the only domesticated one. The steeds had large eyes, and tall ears with short hairs lining large the openings to funnel sound. Scaly plates ran up their long faces, and split around a forelock of hair. The plates protected the nasal cavity and their acute sense of smell. Some klystral were trained to smell out lost things and people.

The klystral had evolved to be masters of awareness in their environments. Long heads on longer necks could be turned much farther than one would expect because of the folds of skin below the jaw bone where the head meet the neck. A klystral could stretch its head around and look at a rider, or even bite if it wanted, but was more likely to itch its own rump. The sight of a klystral stretching its head back along its body to itch at its rump or hind legs amused Albert. Though split hooves made klystral very steady, Albert watched every time to see if the animal would fall over.

Albert often wondered how the animals came to be domesticated. Klystral could survive without the people who kept them. Albert was glad he had convinced Ralph to just turn the extra klystral loose in the little used pastures no longer fit for the shawk. A shawk would bust up a failing fence just rubbing its head on it, but a klystral would only graze on the wild grasses and jump over the fence if it wanted out. Albert didn’t want to see the klystral sold off, but he knew it might come to that before it was over. A good klystral was worth much to many Trinexiouns.

Albert shook himself, and surveyed the section of fence he was mending. He didn’t think he had missed anything, and he had stood there too long. He gathered his tools, and started back toward the big barn closest to the house. Albert looked at the sections of the barn roof he still needed to replace. Only the house got immediate attention when repairs were needed, but rains would be setting in soon. Though it wasn’t an old house – the families built it when Ralph and Selena were married – the two story wood and stone home was tattered. But weathered paint was the least of Ralph and Selena’s worries. The large barn was the only one used regularly, and a leaking roof could cause damage to equipment and supplies.

No matter. It would wait one more day. Today was William’s tenth birthday, and they would be celebrating this afternoon.

Albert looked forward to the holiday and birthday celebrations with William, not because it excused him from his work, but because he would want the same treatment if it were him.

Albert took his turn spending time with William. Albert loved a good story, and remembered William did too. Albert read all his favorite books to William. When he finished those he asked the people from the university to provide more fiction. They provided him a constant supply of stories, but he knew they only did so to add another element to their experiments.

When Albert’s voice would grow hoarse, he would turn on the radio and listen to the news and different radio plays. Albert listened to the same news as Ralph and Selena. Growing numbers of comas. Growing numbers of deaths. Growing numbers of ‘fear induced incidents’: abandoned comas, violence against families caring for victims in the cities, disappearances. He would comment to William about the stories they heard, and ask him what he thought. Albert told William often that it never paid to be uninformed.

Albert sat on Zema’s veranda watching the sunrise in the distance through one of Lushthyme City’s outer most Ghost Sectors, and half listening to Ralph and Zema talk. Albert often thought about what his grandfather had called the Found Things: the Old Cities with their Ghost Sectors, the hovering monorails that cris-crossed the continents (and ran through unexplored wilderness), and the numerous dams most of the rivers on Trinexious poured through. All remnants – proof according to his grandfather – of some lost culture the Trinexiouns had dubbed the Elder Race. Looking at the tall, reflective, metal and glass buildings of the Ghost Sector stretch into the sky, Albert could almost hear his grandfather telling stories. Stories about how he had explored the Ghost Sectors of several Old Cities in his youth. About the men and women who had died in the empty mysterious structures. Each hoping they could discover an advancement for all Trinexious. Stories about a time before the Ghost Sectors were deemed unsafe, and exploration was no longer sponsored by the governments and universities.

The stories were intended to warn Albert, but instead they had awakened the need to be aware of the world around him.

Albert had spent his early childhood in an Old City, and had seen how people had renovated and re-purposed the Elder Race’s smaller stone buildings for their own use: installing new power sources, and remodeling interiors by adding superficial walls, floors, and ceilings. Each one to five story building was open to anyone before being claimed by an individual. However, no other attention was given to the Found Things. Children were taught in primary school that they were dangerous. Most people avoided them.

Albert rubbed the faded scar on his left forearm without feeling the smooth depression that broke the otherwise labor toned skin. He always repeated the unconscious motion when thinking of his birth family. One of the worse beatings he had received from his father was when he had said that the glyphs on the old buildings were interesting. Albert had been six. But instead of making him afraid of the Found Things, he chose not to believe the superstitions that held sway over most Trinexiouns.

(Even Ralph refused to sit on the side of the train that looked out at the monorail when the tracks ran in sight on one another. He paid higher fares to have a seat way from the thing he didn’t want to understand.)

Albert pushed his thumb into the smooth depression, and thought, not for the first time or the last, that willful ignorance concerning the Elder Race was a somber error.

Albert looked back to Ralph and Zema. They were still talking about the Plague. He had hoped the conversation would turn to the usual re-counting of growing up on the farm. Albert had been hired onto the farm when he was eleven. Ralph and Albert had become friends, and shared many memories of events and adventures.

But, like the rest of Trinexious, Ralph and Zema couldn’t relax, couldn’t laugh, couldn’t not worry.

“It can’t be that wide spread. As far as I know William is the only victim in Thurvi Province,” Ralph said, not remembering Doctor Trian.

“No one knows how far or how many,” Zema said. “We hear new rumors everyday. The radio reports numbers of confirmed cases every evening, and the numbers keep going up. It seems like everyone knows someone effected, even if it is their third cousin’s, best friend’s, sister’s, seamstress. And worst of all is the rumor that families have stopped coming forward. Just yesterday the radio reported four comas were found just laying in a ally in Old Lushthyme. No one living near claimed them as family, or even admitted to knowing who they were.”

Ralph rubbed his eyes, then ran his fingers through his hair. He stared straight ahead into Zema’s kitchen through the glass door.

Zema’s hand twitched like she would reach for Ralph, but she picked up her drink instead.

Albert had never seen a gulf like that which separated Ralph and Zema in that moment. His chest felt split, divided at the sternum, each claiming a half. “Comas? Is that what the sick are being called? As if they’re no longer people?”

Zema looked at Albert. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it. Yes, the radio called them comas. They didn’t have names. The radio and the new papers never give names. Only numbers of comas.”

“At least you get new information here in the city,” Ralph said. His voice squeaked and rasped. “The Thurvi Province News keeps going on about us being an infection free zone.”

“The doctors and researchers don’t even know if it is an infection, or if it’s something else. And now that William is officially an early victim those reports will have to be amended, or the radio station could face government annex,” Zema said.

Albert and Ralph looked at each other and shifted in their seats. Ralph clenched his fist. Albert’s shoulders pulled back, and he stretched his neck to one side.

The sun broke the top of the tall buildings in the distance, and shone into Albert’s eyes. He raised a hand to block the light.

Zema smiled. “Time to get ready. I’ll drop you off on my way to work. My office is in a different building across campus.”

“Do you know anyone from the program we’ll be dealing with?” Ralph asked.

“Not really. But I’m sure you’ll know them well before it’s over.”

Black smoke ascended into the Trinexioun pre-dawn as the steam express click-clacked passed farms and tree groves and rolling plains, the mountains always in the distance on the right. The yellow sun gradually pushed the light of the third moon back, and left the other two invisible to the eye. Grephtundy, the second day of the work week, opened on the few beleaguered travelers, but only one was awake to see. The over night run from Thurvi Province to Nathrin Province was the longest leg of the journey south to Lushthyme City on the coast only because it was the only leg that was still steam powered. (The outer province municipalities were too cheap to buy a diesel engine, arguing that not as many people were using the trains as once did.)

Ralph Tarmon shifted in his seat on the train, and watched the Trinexioun landscape go by. The blue sky and the fresh green, spring growth weren’t enough to soothe him. The rocking of the train made his stomach turn, and the stink of burning coke from the engine made him dizzy. He had never liked traveling to Lushthyme City. The trip was long, almost the full 36 hours in a day, and the train had always effected him this way.

Now he wished the trip would be over for an entirely different reason. One year he had waited for the doctor’s appointment scheduled tomorrow. One year in which his son, his only child, had slept. One year in which his successful family farm could not keep reliable help. No one wanted to stay while William was there. They were afraid of the Plague.

Ralph snorted. He thought the Plague was a stupid name for the illness spreading over Trinexious.

Ralph forced his attention back to the landscape.

The veining of the foliage had begun. Bright rainbow colors lived at the heart of most leaves in a Trinexioun spring. The color filled the central vein then spread out to the smaller veins. The color deepened with age as the seasons changed, and finally, bled into the green of the leaf its self in the autumn. The mountain forests, which bordered the backside of the Tarmon farm, were arrayed in vivid, patchwork color every autumn.

Ralph’s favorite leaves were the blue veined, but William, like Selena, favored the reds.
Ralph marked time by the changes in nature. In nature he saw Trau and Meztin personified; he saw all the Nine.