Out of the Nest

by Cassandra Beals

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
parts 1, 2, 3

conclusion

Something tugged sharply at his wrist. Mjal didn’t have time to look before he spun, then flew, to the antechamber. He winced as his butt hit the ground. Mjal didn’t bother to look up, he just shook his head.

“How, Mom?”

“I understand what you are going through. I truly do. You feel you’ve failed your family, you probably feel you’ve failed our community. That simply isn’t true. We don’t always get it right. We can’t. All I can be sure of is that I have the best person I could hope for helping me. If the two of us can’t find a solution, then I have to accept that maybe there isn’t one.”

“What is the point of trying if there isn’t a cure?”

“We can’t give up just because there might not be a way out of this,” Xia offered him a smile. “We’ll exhaust every possibility we can think of until we find a cure or until this thing has run its course. We have to. It’s the only way we’ll ever know we did everything we could.”

“What if we don’t find anything?”

“We will learn, no matter the result. The next time something like this happens, and there will be a next time, we will at least have a good idea of where to start.”

“That isn’t very inspiring, Mom. We need to beat this thing.”

“I’m sorry I can’t do better, Son. I’m tired too.” Xia reached out a hand and Mjal took it. Xia pulled Mjal up, allowing him to notice the rings under her eyes. The signs of Xia’s exhaustion actually made Mjal feel a little better, it meant Xia really was human after all. “Did you dream up any good ideas?”

“A few.” He shrugged.

“Good! We’ll get to work on them immediately.”

* * *

Mjal stretched and flexed his torso, slowly opening his eyes. The sun was just beginning to emerge between two mountains. He sat up, only now noticing the pigeon’s station outside his lab was filled. Mjal stood, arching his back, rolling his hips, and yawning.

He carefully retrieved the message, then opened it as he walked over to get himself some bread. The words didn’t quite make sense.

Come quickly to see results. — Qhar-Jah

Mjal already knew what the results were. He had experimented with several new ideas since he’d come back from the precipice. One of his most promising had been to mix all five of the original herbal cures in various ratios. There had been a limited amount of the potent drugs after so much sickness, so he’d experimented with alternate herbs that worked together in similar ways. He wasn’t sure how, but one of his hybrid concoctions had been sent off to a group of infected people.

Mjal hadn’t just made a simple mistake, though. Each of those substitute herbs could harm a person if given incorrectly. A potion containing all of them had the potential to kill people already infected with the sum disease.

Mjal had realized what he’d done too late to stop the delivery of his ill-mixed cure. He had confessed his mistake to Qhar-jah and asked her to watch over the unfortunate recipients of his concoction as best she could instead. His former co-worker had been amazing, finding them all a place in The Constitutional. She had been personally watching over them there.

He set the letter aside and broke himself off a chunk to eat. He munched on it and a handful of nuts for a few minutes.

The more Mjal considered the letter the more ominous it sounded. He observed himself going into shock: sounds distant, thoughts slow, a sense that he was out of body. He had overcome the guilt of failing his community over the last several days with the help of his mother, but whatever happened to these people would be different. He would have personally caused it.

Mjal read the note again. What kind of change could there be? If they’d died, she would have said so. Has my concoction given the patients additional complications? A degenerative condition? That would be worse than death, he thought.

I’m being a coward and worrying about myself. Their lives are more important than me dealing with the consequences of my actions.

Mjal padded down to the unattended sky-tram and situated himself inside the bucket seat directed at Mediterranean Mountain. He coasted in without incident, then up the elevator and onto the sky-tram for Desert Mountain.

Xia had placed Shambhala’s hospital below the main residential level of Desert Mountain so that no matter what eventuality came, it would retain some warmth from the artificial climate above. Xia had also hoped that the thicker air from the slightly lower altitude would give the sick some small breathing advantage.

Despite that reality, Mjal felt colder, and his breathing grew more difficult as he moved through the hall, as if he were outside without enough clothing on as someone slowly put more and more weight on his chest. The more he thought about all the people he’d failed over the last few months, the colder and the more weight he felt.

He’d only managed a hundred paces before Qhar-jah bounded up to meet him. She stopped to hack the lingering cough that had become a part of her since she’d recovered from the sum disease. Mjal winced.

“Come quick, you have to see this!” Qhar-jah muffled another cough before turning back down the hall. Mjal hesitated at Qhar-jah’s excitement, but soon found himself trailing after her, shocked at her positive tone.

Mjal considered for the first time that Qhar-jah might have had a life outside The Constitutional as she tried to hurry Mjal along. She might have enjoyed a family. Mjal knew that through all his losses it had only been the need to find a cure that had kept him sane. He considered that without a similar focus Qhar-jah might have lost herself.

Qhar-jah led him nearly half-way around the mountain, passing room after room of acrid alkali, oil smells, coughing and moaning. Those scents and sounds were eventually replaced with spices and silence till they finally approached the cafeteria. Mjal realized it was the best place to hold so many people in isolation only then. He froze when he heard laughter just outside the entrance. Qhar-jah had to tug Mjal back into motion again.

Mjal scanned a dozen beds, all filled, as they entered. Only one patient was not sitting up and smiling. Xia herself stood alongside a second medical aide at the far side of the room, rocking in time with a song he could not hear.

Someone had painted two scenes on the wall behind them using ochre. One person stood in the first frame with many people lying down around them as though sick. Everyone was standing in the next scene; the people who had been lying down were raising their hands, and the person who’d been standing was now a little higher than the others. It looked like the others were worshipping him.

Has my incompetence caused insanity? Is it catchy? Mjal asked himself.

Xia lunged toward him, smiling. “Congratulations! I think you’ve found the cure.”

“I made a mistake.”

“Just goes to show, your mistakes are more productive than most peoples’ intuition.”

“I don’t understand.” He shook his head.

“Nor do I, but you can’t argue with the results. We’ll study it later. For now, revel in your success.”

Mjal looked over the group, the exhausted and the healthy, even the young woman he now realized was peacefully asleep in the corner. It made no sense that the mixture that might have killed them had somehow helped their immune systems fight off the disease. But the evidence was right in front of him. Mjal couldn’t bring himself to laugh in the surreal surroundings, but he eventually worked himself up to a smile.

* * *

Xia had distributed the cure through the community half a lunar cycle ago. Those who would recover had done so. She had called a gathering in the largest piece of flat land within the village for midday. The sun was fully visible but offered no heat. A light wind was picking up some detritus and snow. Mjal hoped his mother had something wise and consoling to say, at least more uplifting than the weather.

He didn’t envy her that task. The disease had shaken the village’s foundations. Everyone in Shambhala had lost several people in their immediate family and were mourning. The losses also meant that many positions in the community would go unfilled for a generation. The absences would cause tangible hardships.

Mjal did not believe optimism was possible given the circumstances, but he would give his mother the chance to convince him. He joined the others. People gave him polite nods or smiled everywhere he looked. Some did both. Several cousins hugged him. Many people just cried.

Xia appeared a moment later, clearing her throat as the crowd quieted: “We’ve suffered tremendous losses: partners, children, parents, brothers, and sisters. I would like all of us to take this moment to reflect, in silence, on those loved ones.”

Mjal lowered his head as the group fell silent. He begged forgiveness for not coming up with a cure sooner and vowed to learn from his failures. He sobbed then, as quietly as possible so as not to bring attention to himself. The disease had been something no one had ever seen before; he could not have been expected to respond any better than he had, but all those people had still died on his watch.

“Humanity is in the process of domesticating plants and animals. Domestication has given us many benefits, among them more consistent food and an end to our transitory lifestyle. Village life has given us new hardships, too; my original tribe knew of no communicable diseases.

“They are a necessary evil we must learn to combat. We must think of the people we’ve lost as sacrifices in that fight. I realize that is small consolation, everyone here has lost someone near and dear to them, but at least that means they died for a reason. No one need ever die from the sum disease again.

“I do not often do this, but today I would like you to think of the heroes of the last few months, those who worked tirelessly to care for others.”

Mjal felt a tingling along his spine. He didn’t like it. He slowly began backing up and away from the crowd. If he could move far enough away to lose contact with the crowd, there was a ledge that would hide him from sight. He could decide what to do from there.

“Mjal?” Qhar-jah said. She had taken a position well in back of the others so that she could watch out for anyone overcome by the moment. She was a nurse, always.

Mjal stopped dead in his tracks and nodded at her.

“Did you forget something?” Qhar-jah said.

“I need to leave.”

“What do you mean? You’re among friends, we all need each other right now.”

“It’s mother, she’s about to—”

Xia’s voice boomed, “I have decided that we need to know more about infectious diseases, and the spare room adjoined to Juha and my homes was a dangerous place to begin that process. I propose we create an isolated laboratory. We might call it the Asclepium after the Greek physician and in honor of the person who came up with the cure.” Mjal looked up as Xia gave him a pointed look back before moving on with her speech. No one else seemed to notice.

Mjal felt beads of sweat running down his forehead. The others either already knew or would figure out shortly what she meant and would begin looking his way. The very idea that he might get any sort of acknowledgement for his participation in what had just happened made him feel nauseous.

“Mother wants me to go,” he said.

Qhar-jah’s head flipped back and forth between Xia and Mjal. “Why would she want you to leave? Your mother is giving you all the credit for saving us.”

“I don’t want the credit, and I especially don’t want any accolades.”

Qhar-jah hesitated. “Your mom doesn’t want you to leave, does she?”

“She wanted me to go right up until the moment it became convenient for me to stay. It was part of the deal I made with her when she trained me in medicine. I was supposed to go out into the world and help people like all of my immortal siblings as soon as I’d finished.”

“I had no idea,” Qhar-jah shuddered. “Why did you agree to that?”

“I was too young to understand what I was getting into.”

“Why do you want to go now?”

“There’s nothing for me here anymore.”

“That’s not true. I know you lost your family, but there are still people here who love you.”

“I’ll also be expected to live up to the legacy my mother is giving me.”

“You could talk to her.”

“I just want to go.”

“I won’t stop you, but could you at least wait till after the speech? Your mother could arrange for an escort.”

“I’d rather travel alone.”

“It’ll be dangerous with all the animals in the wild, and worse once you run into people.”

Mjal looked over the crowd as some of them gave him appreciative nods. It was already starting.

“That’s my choice. Goodbye.”

Qhar-jah sighed: “Well-wishes, Mjal.”

Mjal offered his friend a slight bow before continuing on his way. He realized his shoulders had been tense, they started to loosen.

“Call me Asclepius,” he smiled back at Qhar-jah. His mother might have coined the name, but it suited him. Asclepius represented a new start, a break from the ties of the past. Mjal regretted the life he’d lived, the years he’d wasted with his family. Asclepius could have all of Mjal’s medical knowledge, but this incarnation of him would have the wisdom not to make the same mistakes.