This was amoderncity ... had been! It wouldn’t have been out of place on any of the colonies where Earth people had settled.
Ok, so the general architecture was totally alien! It looked ... well, it almost looked like the forest. Or maybe a patch of mushrooms, because all of the buildings were stalk-like and capped with roof tops that had clearly been inspired by the giant trees like the one they were standing on. There were all different heights, some barely yards above the ground and all the way up to the tallest, the one Zhor had pointed out to her, which looked to be hundreds of feet tall.
But it certainly wasn’t a sign of insignificant progress and development. These were people who’d earned the right to be treated as equals.
“What happened here?”
Zhor looked down at her, struggled to think of the word in her language and realized it was not a word that he had learned. Instead, he mimed illness.
“Sick?” she guessed and then acted out symptoms.
He nodded. “Kill most all.”
The smallpox, Annika realized abruptly, horrified! The probes had detected the disease in high concentrations in a number of pockets around the planet. She had been vaccinated against the particular strain that was detected even though it was considered very doubtful that she would be exposed.
That was standard procedure—inoculating against potentially deadly diseases that were detected.
She’d thought it was odd—to discover a disease on this world that was so similar genetically to the strains to be found on Earth and also the fact that it seemed to be confined to specific areas on this world.
Now she knew why—the last part anyway. The cities! The highest concentrations of the disease—still—was in the cities.
Why, she wondered, had no one thought that was odd? Investigated it?
She wasn’t a virologist and she’d thought it was weird—almost like there was something in some areas that wasbreedingthe disease.
She frowned, trying to think of an explanation. “War? Was the disease used to make war and got out of hand?”
Zhor stared at her blankly for several moments. She saw when he understood the question. He looked horrified and disbelieving that she would suggest it. “No make war with ... sick.All die.Children too an’ old.” He shook his head. “Say it come from sky ... out dere.”
It was Annika’s turn to gape at him. She blinked rapidly, trying to assimilate it.
Of course, it had been proven that microscopic life could and did travel through space on meteors, sometimes raining down on unsuspecting worlds. It was almost a certainty, but never had been completely proven, that the Spanish Flu of the early 1900s that had killed nearly 100 million people globally had arrived from space. It had happened in a time before global transportation and hit spots all over the world at the same time and there seemed no other explanation for that.
But as horrible as that pandemic had been, and despite the fact that it had infected half a billion people, it had only succeeded in killing around five percent of the population.
If what he was saying was true, this epidemic had almost completely wiped his people out, had killed enough to cause their civilization to collapse.
It had actually had a kill rate similar to the one on Earth when the Spanish had infected the Mayans, she thought.
Andthatwas smallpox!
It just didn’t seem possible that it could’ve infected and killed that fast ... not without killing itself off.
Of course, modern civilizations were vulnerable to pandemics because of their global commerce, but they were also usually able to come up with vaccines and treatments to fight back. Unlike primitive societies that didn’t understand disease let alone know how to prevent it or treat it.
Maybe she had misunderstood?
On the other hand, it seemed doubtful that Zhor knew what had happened. She was certainly no expert and even if she had been she would have had to investigate to determine the time that had passed since the disaster, but this city seemed to have been lying in decay longer than he had been around. He was clearly a young man—even if he was also clearly fully mature.
Even if he’d been alive when it happened, he would have to have been very young.
And beyond that, it was unlikely hisparentswould have known what happened and told him unless one or both had been in positions of power at the time of the fall and even then the chances were against them knowing. It looked to be something that had happened very quickly and that would’ve caused widespread panic which would muddy the waters so to speak.
They might never really know what had happened here, but the important thing was to make sure that they (Earth people in general and the company in particular) didn’t make matters worse. They should be helping these people recover not coming in like vultures and trying to scoop up the best of what there was left to be had!
It was up to her, she realized, and no one else, to make sure these people of this world were treated fairly and that their interests were protected—not because she was somebody important but because she was the only person who knew and could stop it.
She turned to Zhor. “I have to get back! This ... this disaster here is nothing beside what’s about to happen if I don’t go back and make sure it doesn’t!” she said, gesturing toward the crumbling city.
