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Korvan thinks there's been an epidemic of something that is obliterating the blue spots on everybody that catches it. There are always trivial epidemics that nobody notices. Korvan's found evidence of one that's making 'blueskin' no longer a word with any meaning." "Remarkable!" said Calhoun. "Did you do it?" asked Maril.
So it seems much the best thing for Korvan to discover what's happened to the blueskin pigment, and how it happened. But not why." She read his face carefully. "You aren't doing it as a favor to me," she decided. "You'd rather it was that way." She looked at him for a long time, until he squirmed. Then she nodded and went away.
I'll tell him how you've acted up to now, and your attitude, and of course that you're Med Service. He'll be glad to help you, I'm sure." "Splendid!" said Calhoun, nodding. "That will be Korvan." She started. "How did you know?" "Intuition," said Calhoun drily. "All right. I'll count on him." But he did not. He worked in the tiny biological lab all that ship-day and all the next.
Instead, he said thoughtfully, "There's something you could do. It needs to be done. The Med Service in this sector has been badly handled. There are a number of discoveries that need to be made. I don't think your Korvan would relish having things handed to him on a visible silver platter. But they should be known...." Maril said, "I can guess what you mean.
I'm sorry it's so important to him." Calhoun did not ask the obvious question. Instead, he said thoughtfully; "There's something you could do.... It needs to be done. The Med Service in this sector has been badly handled. There are a number of discoveries that need to be made. I don't think your Korvan would relish having things handed to him on a visible silver platter.
He had to sit by while an extremely self-confident young Darian doctor one of his names was Korvan rather condescendingly demonstrated that the former blue pigmentation was a viral product quite unconnected with the plague, and that it had been wiped out by a very trivial epidemic of such and such. Calhoun regarded that young man with a detached interest.
"Because I was there," said Maril. She said, somehow desperately, "I know you did it! But the question is, are you going to tell? When people find they're not blueskins any longer, when there's no such thing as a blueskin any longer, will you tell them why?" "Naturally not," said Calhoun. "Why?" Then he guessed. "Has Korvan " "He thinks," said Maril, "that he thought it up all by himself.
Or they might simply land the rest of these ships." "If I'd realized what you were about," said Maril, "I'd have joined in the lessons. I could have piloted a ship." "You wouldn't have wanted to," said Calhoun. He yawned. "You wouldn't want to be a heroine. No normal girl does." "Why?" "Korvan," said Calhoun. He yawned again. "I've asked about him.
You said they only took hold of people in terribly bad physical condition, but then they could be passed on from mother to child, until sometimes they died out." Calhoun blinked. "Yes?" "Korvan," said Maril very carefully. "Has worked out an idea that that's what happens to the blueskin markings on Darians.
Maril had vanished, to visit or return to her family, or perhaps to consult with the mysterious Korvan who'd arranged for her to leave Dara to be a spy, and had advised her simply to make a new life somewhere else, abandoning a famine-ridden, despised, and out-caste world. Calhoun had learned of two achievements the same Korvan had made for his world. Neither was remarkably constructive.
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