Catfolk are getting sick, which means Chime's friend Calsa is in danger. He has to tell Chime -

And he can't, because that would jeopardize the secret of his magic. His gut twinges.

He flops on his cot and pretends to sleep.

Dr. Montero has brought a lot of stuff, including full plastic biohazard suits and plenty of sterile supplies. They'll burn it, once they're done. He'd like to talk to the local doctors before doing anything. Due to pharmacological uncertainty, his current plan is to get saliva and skin swab samples from the sick catfolk and also from healthy catfolk and use the sequencer to detect what kinds of microbes are only present in sick catfolk saliva. If the saliva and skin swabs doesn't reveal any signs of microbes, a blood sample may be necessary, they use tiny disposable sterile needles like this. Then, maybe it's one that Exodus knows about and knows how to kill. Or maybe it's an unknown one and they'll have to figure it out. They could just use the usual set of anti-bacteria and anti-virus drugs Exodus has, or try more exotic options like a phage to hunt a particular species of bacteria or artificially produced antibodies, but he'd like to be conservative with new treatments on unknown biology. Talking to a liefling, a lot, would help with this. They can also do palliative care- Addressing the pain and monitoring for more serious issues and trying to keep everyone healthy and alive. Fluid IVs, lung lavage if they're having trouble breathing, and so on.

Nivis is undergoing a partial quarantine, itself, as well. Nobody who interacted with the aliens is sick, and everyone who interacted with them or touched things they touched or cleaned their food trays or anything like that is being made to go through checks (the same swabs and looking for unusual physiological signs), but they are being careful and double checking.

The liefling has been relieving the patients' joint inflammation.

The wroth doesn't smell anything different about the patients other than stress.

The magistrate of Orocide approves of all the precautions, but says probably everyone will get better soon and then they can reopen the town.

The saliva and skin swabs do not find any microbes only present on the sick catfolk.

Same with the blood samples.

Everyone has traces of Earth microbes on their skin, common types known to be normal on humans. The sick don't have a different amount or distribution than the healthy, except that Tolesli has more of several Ansaf microbes in his mouth, consistent with having thrown up recently.

Huh. And if he also checks for known toxic chemicals, and for radiation, and for hormone markers being markedly different between healthy and afflicted... Any luck?

When did the patients first notice symptoms? Have they done anything like taken a fall or eaten anything unusual? Any common factors among the afflicted at all? (He maintains a smooth, calm demeanor and will discuss Exodus-style medicine with doctors Shor and Mipawtn in very tentative Sotalese, in the meanwhile. He can understand liefling-lexicon better than most non-lieflings, though from a totally different angle.)

No luck.

Leslie went for a run, feeling fine, and suddenly became nauseous. As he was returning to the town, the joint pain developed rapidly. The other sick catfolk reported joint pain a few minutes later. Only some of them have had nausea, after not before, and not as badly as Leslie. 

Leslie didn't do anything unusual that Hester didn't, and Hester is still feeling fine.

One of the patients licked Hester briefly before he said to stop because of worries about alien diseases. Two of the patients are siblings who work together on experimenting with using ice as a building material; they were asleep when the party returned. One patient helped set up the ILS. There are now three more catfolk in solo quarantine just in case, and one gnomunk, all with only mild joint pain.

In general, the pain is only in a few joints, but which ones exactly varies from person to person. None of the afflicted have bio-children and only one has an adopted child... which might just be because they're younger than average.

...He also approves highly of all the caution but the symptoms are mild and don't warrant more invasive checks yet. So, time for observation.

The good Magistrate might be correct; People have been primed to think about whether they are sick, and thus report so even if it might be nothing, or something else. It's still good to be very cautious, new diseases could be very very bad, but Dr. Montero and his staff should stop poking things for now, probably.

Very well, would the guests like to sample some local delicacies while they wait?

Certainly! He's good at talking to politicians and finding things to praise - bold frontiersmanship, etc - and quite curious as to the clever applications one finds for various magics.

The magistrate is pleased that he recognizes the difficulty of running a new town. Of course his nephew (Merta translates this as 'friend child') Abilanedi has his thanks for fetching memories from Argolake.

There are three kinds of 'local delicacies': things which require gnomunk magic (fresh fruit), things that make use of the cold (shaved ice; a gelatin custard frozen solid and then fried), and techniques from the Frozen City (carbonated soup in a bread bowl; fruit with a baked chocolate shell).

The clever uses of magic that come quickest to the magistrate's mind are the newest ones: a narrow tube on a calibrated pivot that the goatseer used to make sure the runway was flat and will use to survey the ice-mountain when they start mining it; the hot blades with internally-circulating water used for cutting ice; a big turbine-but-opposite that rotates as the wind blows on it, used for grinding ice and maybe stone in the future; experiments with swirling air, initially intended for spinning yarn, which didn't work... All of that is basically just werewolf magic, though.

How long do the guests intend to stay in Orocide?

The wind turbines could be used to generate electricity, which can be used to grow crops in hydroponics systems. There is much to teach and learn once things are more settled.

They'll stay until the sickness is resolved, perhaps another cycle at most if they're lucky, and then be fetched home and replaced with a diplomatic team.

Shen, who piloted the shuttle down here, has finished his inspections and checks. They're going to be ready to take off again, and there's enough fuel to return. They also brought a VOR system and spare power cells. He sets those up while telling people the shuttle will take off back to Nivis soon, so please keep the runway clear.

The people of Orocide will keep the runway clear, and also gather half a klick to the side to watch the shuttle take off! 

After a cycle, no one new has gotten sick and only Leslie is still feeling bad. Hester, who is still totally fine, visited him and says it could be a reaction to eating something new; the Lei diet is less varied.

The shuttle taking off doesn't look like much to the people of Exodus, but it's a novel sight here. There are running lights shining steadily. The turbines whine, then roar, and the smooth metal shape picks up Equartier speed and smoothly lifts off into the air, ascending for a good while before turning deeper into the drydark.

Back in Nivis, they taxi into a hangar and can do a relatively quick post-flight inspection- It's not a commercial airliner, able to turn back around after half an hour if everything is arranged just so- And perform the slightly laborious four-hour process of loading the satellite into the cargo bay's secure mount. He's sorry to give the shuttle team a short turnaround window but Lucy really wants the satellite in orbit, today, and presenting a good face to the locals is also quite important. Maybe he can arrange time off or some kind of benefit about it.

"Very well, Shen." She wants to say don't be stupid and soft, this is what the shuttle team is for, they drilled fast turnarounds back on Earth - but she knows she won't be popular with the rest of the team if she explicitly declines extra perks, and, curse her, she cares about being popular.

Does anyone else think it's suspicious that the one Lei visitor claimed to have gotten sick, in an unverifiable way, and started a panic? What are they hiding from us? Where 'they', of course, are the elves of Lei and Allheart working together.

Our diligent agent Tolesli Ratkeeper would never fake an illness! We're still slightly concerned about a magical plague, in fact, even though we now concur that it appears most probable that he simply encountered an environmental stimulus which he was unlucky to be vulnerable to.

Also, how could delaying contact with Nivis by a single cycle possibly benefit us?

There's lots of ways there could be a temporary opportunity to seize a lasting advantage, perhaps using a new secret species to surveil or manipulate the aliens 

Nice try, but we're not going to give you ideas!

So is there going to be another turbowing trip to Nivis? Or is all the talking going to happen at the diplomatic center from now on? He still feels queasy but he doesn't feel any worse as time goes by and is happy to travel. He's been learning English!

Tolesli should not go back to Nivis, or he might get exposed again to whatever it was. Arguably he shouldn't get close to the aliens at all.

If Lei gets to swap out a representative, FD wants to swap one out too.

Weren't we just talking about opening up more parallel relationships with the aliens? Why does it matter what happens in the next few cycles before that's worked out and we stop counting representatives? What ideas didn't you want to give us, huh?

"I can't comment on communications made by other agencies in the Freedom Democracy without specific direction from my superiors."