118 - The Bees Don't Like This Dust

Mariush’s rooms were cool and quiet, the evening breeze blowing through the treated curtains.  An electrical storm painted the badlands with faint and distant touches of lightning, and snoring mutters of thunder, but so far away as to be a soothing background.

The cooling breeze stirred the curtains around Homa’s cradle and a faint glitter of dust rose as the baby coughed.  Outside, the sand hissed against the canyon walls, thrust into the air by the force of the wind, blown over the rim, crackling against the screens on the deep balcony.  The lightning flickering in the distance competed with the silent shower of stars from the sky.

Under the cradle, in the cracks between stones, a single crystal, stirred up by the daily sweeping but always finding another eddy of air to bring it back under the baby’s bed, found enough dust and nutrient in the air to make another one of itself.  Then the two made four. Then there were eight.  Pause.

Another breeze moved the cradle’s veil and brought with it a whisp of the outside air.  Even the best filters didn’t catch everything.  Dust, metals, toxics, rare earths, terran dirt... all of it stirred on the microscopic level.  Skin shed by people, hair, droplets of grease, all the fodder of the tiniest life. 

Sixteen crystals. Thirty-two. Sixty-four.  A crackle of sand and another round of thunder from the electrical storm away toward the badlands.

Another pause as the patch of glass bug micro crystals rolled over to a smudge of fluff caught under the cradle curtain.  Then, expanding as it went, it crawled up the fabric, dying off as the chemicals broke up and melted their coating, but enough remained to reproduce.

The breeze carried a swirl of glittering dust up under the cradle and then the edge of the wood and the mattress began to twinkle, like a gradually building frost.  The baby cooed in her sleep.  Eredat and Shashi and Mariush spoke quietly in the next room, Jammileh apparently asleep as well in a sling under her mother’s veils.

The drones buzzed on the outside of the baby’s cradle filter curtains, soothing, and a burst of laughter from the next room made them rise and settle again, fanning their wings.  The breeze from the bee’s wings drove any dust away from the sleeping child, blowing anything loose into the curtains where it would be trapped and destroyed, no longer a danger.

The frosting on the edge of the mattress spread, blew away as it overtopped the surface -- everywhere but the edge of an infant hand outflung.  The glitter spread faster as it encountered her skin and her sweat.  It oozed under her until she looked as though she lay on a star-sprinkled sheet, but only where her body protected it from being blown away.  

The bees detectors saw nothing but Homa’s outline, as she began to twitch slightly in her sleep.  On her cheek, next to the mattress columns of glass motes began to grow from the mattress until they touched her face.

Still asleep, she swiped a hand over her cheek before she squirmed and settled again.  More of the glass dust blew away.  The next stalagmites aiming for her lips and her nostrils and her eyes and ears were slower. ##self destruct mode## ##target deenay destruct mode##

She coughed again and the glittering dust on her face rose in a puff as she began to fuss.  Every finger, every hair on her head, every eyelash was frosted, glittering.  She coughed harder and began to cry, tears washing tracks in the frosting of glass dust.

Her mother, in the next room, called out.  “I’m coming sweetling.  I’m coming, sorry Shashi, she’s so fussy all the time now.  I put her down because she was finally asleep.  I don’t think it’s colic.”  The inner curtain swished aside and Mariush came in, followed by Shashi holding Jammileh, and Eredat.  She flung the curtains aside in a puff of dust that made her cough and scoop up her baby before expertly setting her on her shoulder.  “That stewart. He swears the rooms are dusted every day,” she complained.

Homa coughed again and burped, then vomited her milk down Mariush’s veils.  “Oh dear.  Oh, dark, no.”  Mariush ran her hand over Homa’s head.  She looked up, eyes suddenly wide. “She’s feverish.  I’ll take her straight to the school and have Mother and her doctor see her.”

“I’ll come with you,” Eredat said.  “Here, I’ll hold her while you change your tunic.”  

“I’ll come too,” Shashi called, after Mariush’s back as she ran. Odd... the bees don’t like this dust. "I'll led Diryish know, too."

She patted Jammileh who was awakened by the fuss but quiet, just looking out of the sling.  Mariush’s ants don't like that dust, either.  They’re going after it. Both types of creatures where working in concert.  The ants milled beneath the cradle, hauling dust motes and clumps out to where the bees seized them.  "I’m sure Homa will be all right.” I hope.  Oh, light and dark, no.

She whispered a command and her moths whirled up off her veil and locked into concerted work with Diryish’s defensive systems.