"Not recovered."

"Never mind. K'lon will be here soon?"

"We expect him. He's been conveying medicines and healers."

"Good. Now, I'll need a lot of sterile, two liter glass containers with screw tops, stout cord, fresh reeds span-length-I've got needlethorns– redwort and oh, boil me that syringe the cooks use to baste meats. I do have some glass ones Master Clargesh had blown for me. but I can't think where I stored them. Now, away with you. Oh, and Desdra, I'll want some double-distilled spirits and more of that restorative soup of yours."

"I can understand the need for spirits," she said at the door, her expression sardonic, "but more of the soup you dislike so?"

He flourished a pillow and she laughed as she closed the door behind her.

Capiam turned the pages to the beginning of Master Gallardy'; lecture.

In the event of an outbreak of a communicable disease, the use of a serum prepared from the blood of a recovered victim of the same disease has proved efficacious. Where the populace is healthy, an injection of the blood serum prevents the disease. Administered to a sufferer, the blood serum mitigates the virulence. Long before the Crossings, such plagues as varicella, diphtheria, influenza, rubella, epidemic roseola, morbilli, scarlatina, variola, typhoid, typhus, poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, hepatitis, cytomegalovirus herpes, and gonococcal were eliminated by vaccination . . .

Typhus and typhoid were familiar to Capiam, for there had been outbreaks of each as the result of ineffective hygiene. He and the other healers had feared they would result from the current overcrowding. Diphtheria and scarlatina had flared up occasionally over the past several hundred Turns, at least often enough so that the symptoms and the treatment were part of his training. The other diseases he didn't know except from the root words, which were very very old. He would have to look them up in the Harper Hall's etymological dictionary.

He read on farther in Master Gallardy's advice. A liter and a half of blood could be taken from each recovered victim of the disease and that, separated, would give fifty mils of serum for immunization. The injectable amount varied from one mil to ten, according to Gallardy, but he wasn't very specific as to which amount for which disease. Capiam thought ruefully of the impassioned words he had poured at Tirone concerning the loss of techniques. Was he himself at fault for not attending more closely to Master Gallardy's full lecture?

No great calculation was needed for Capiam to see the enormity of the task of producing the desirable immunity even for the vital few thousand dragonriders, the Lords Holder, and Mastercraftsmen, let alone the healers who must care for the ill and prepare and administer the vaccine.

The door swung before Desdra, who looked flustered for the first time that Capiam could remember. She carried a rush basket and closed the door with a deft hook of her foot.

"I have your requirements and I have found the glass syringes that Master Genjon blew for you. Three were broken, but I have boiled the remainder."

Desdra carefully deposited the wicker basket by his bed. She pulled his bedside table to its customary place and, on it, she put the Jar of redwort in its strongest solution, a parcel of reeds, the leafbound needlethorns, a steaming steel tray that had covered the kettle in which he could see a small glass jar, a stopper, and the Genjon syringes. From her pocket, Desdra drew a length of stout, well-twisted cord. "There!"

"That is not a two-liter jar."

"No, but you are not strong enough to be reduced by two liters of blood. Half a liter is all you can lose. K'lon will be here soon enough."

Desdra briskly scrubbed his arm with the redwort then tied the cord about his upper arm while he clenched his fist to raise the artery. It was ropy and blue beneath flesh that seemed too white to him. With tongs, she took the glass container from the boiled water. She opened the packet of reeds, then the needlethorns, took one of each and fitted the needlethorn to one end of the reed. "I know the technique but I haven't done this often."

"You'll have to! My hand shakes!"

Desdra pressed her lips in a firm line, dipped her fingers in redwort, put the glass container on the floor by his bed, tilted the reed end into it, and picked up the needlethorn. The tip of a needlethorn is so fine that the tiny opening in the point is almost invisible. Desdra punctured his skin and, with only a little force, entered the engorged vein then flipped loose the tourniquet. Capiam closed his eyes against the slight dizziness he felt when his blood pressure lowered as the blood began to flow through the needlethorn and down the reed into the container. When the spell had passed, he opened his eyes and was objectively fascinated by his blood dripping into the glass. He pumped his fist and the drip increased to a thin flow. In a curious, detached way, he seemed to feel the fluid leaving his body, being gathered from his other limbs, even from his torso, that the draining was a totally corporeal affair, not just from the fluid in one artery. He really could feel his heart beating more strongly, accommodating the flow. But that was absurd. He was beginning to feel a trifle nauseated when Desdra's fingers pressed a redwort-stained swab over the needlethorn, then removed it with a deft tweak.

"That is quite enough, Master Capiam. Almost three quarters of a liter. You've gone white. Here. Press hard and hold. Drink the spirits. "

She placed the drink in his left hand and he automatically held the compress with his right. The powerful spirit seemed to take up the space left by the release of his blood. But that was a highly fanciful notion for a healer who knew very well the route taken by anything ingested.

"Now what do we do?" she asked, holding up the closed glass jar of his blood.

"That top firmly screwed on?" And when she demonstrated that it was: "Then wrap the cord tightly around the neck and knot it firmly. Good. Hand it here."

"What do you think you're going to do now?" Her face was stern and her gaze stubborn. For a woman who had often preached detachment, she was suddenly very intense.

"Gallardy says that centrifugal force, that is, whirling the jar around, will separate the components of the blood and produce the useful serum."

"Very well." Desdra stood back from the bed, made sure she had sufficient clear space to accomplish the operation, and began to swing the jar around her head.

Capiam, observing her exertions, was glad she had volunteered. He doubted that he could have managed it. "We could rig something similar with the spit canines, couldn't we? Have to prod the beasts to maintain speed. One needs a constant speed. Or perhaps a smaller arrangement, with a handle so one could control the rotational velocity?"

"Why? Do we ... need ... to do this . . . often?"

"If my theory is correct, we'll need rather a lot of serum. You did leave word that K'lon is to be shown here as soon as he arrives?"

"I did. How . . . much . . . longer?"

Capiam could not have her desist too soon, yet Master Gallardy had said "in a very short time" or-and Capiam looked more closely at his own handwriting-had he erred in transcribing? A concerned healer with thirty Turns of Craft life behind him, he silently cursed the diffidence of the spring-struck young apprentice he had been. "That ought to suffice, Desdra. Thank you!"

Breathless, Desdra slowed the swing of the jar and caught it, placing it on the table. Capiam hunched forward on the bed while Desdra examined the various layers with astonishment.

"That"-Desdra pointed dubiously to the straw-colored fluid in the top level-"is your cure?"

"Not a cure, exactly. An immunization." Capiam enunciated the word carefully.

"One has to drink it?" Desdra's voice was neutral with distaste.