The Last Hope

21. A Broken Family

Po stretched himself a few times. Looking at the sun, he realized to his amazement that it was already afternoon. The Dragon Warrior had only wanted to rest briefly under a maple tree which stood in Dr. Wu's garden. But then somehow tiredness got the better of him. All that fuss with Dao and Shen had really gotten him down...
The panda sat up with a jerk.
He almost forgot Dao and Shen again! Quickly, he got up and ran down the hill towards the hut along a stone paved sidewalk through the densely growing Chinese garden. The panda slowed his pace. The door of the hut was still open, and the old goat crouched next to it, along with her grandnephews. Po craned his neck, but he couldn't see anything inside the hut. He tiptoed the remaining meters until he finally reached the old lady.
"And?" whispered Po excitedly. "Has he woken up now?!"
"Shhh!" the goat admonished, pointing into the shed.
Cautiously, Po ventured a look inside. The two peacocks lay together, leaning against a wall. Dao still hadn't regained consciousness. After the uncontrolled seizure, he eventually fell unconscious. Shen was still awake and had wrapped his wings around his brother, who was now lying peacefully next to him. When Shen noticed the panda's shadow, the peacock raised a finger feather admonishingly and held it in front of his beak. Po understood and covered his mouth with his paws as a precaution.
"Better we leave the two alone," the old goat whispered and got up.
Po was reluctant to leave, but he followed her advice and together they marched back to the doctor's house.

On the terrace sat Dr. Wu and seemed to have made a snack.
"Wonderful," the old lizard goanna greeted the two hoofed animals with the panda. "You're just in time for late lunch."
Po's face lit up as soon as he saw the full pot of noodle soup on the table. "Oh yes, I'm starving!"
After the food was distributed in bowls, everyone sat down comfortably. Po wasted no time in scooping up the noodles. As he paused, he noticed the silence around him. Nobody exchanged a word. Not even the goat.
Dr. Wu bowed his head apologetically. "I'm sorry if I don't talk that much. But I rarely have company at dinner. I guess, Dao's condition hasn't changed, has it?"
Po nodded. "No, unfortunately."
Dr. Wu shook his head. "It's a miracle that he came back at all. No one would ever have believed that." He stirred his bowl. "Least of all his father."
Po dropped his ears. "It must have hurt his father a lot, right?"
The doctor let out a deep, loud sigh. "Well, it's a shame. But also in general with this family. You'd think, she's only plagued by tragedy. First these illnesses of the children, then the death of the lady, Dao's disappearance, the massacre of his first son", he glanced at Po. "In the end the death of the lord himself..." The doctor put the plate aside. "It's always been a tragedy with them. It doesn't matter with whom. Since I first practiced there as a doctor at the palace, I had never had good news to share."
Po raised his eyebrows. "How come?"
Dr. Wu fell into brooding again. "During the period when Shen was born and after that, the mother was quite ailing and had to stay in bed at times. She couldn't take good care of her son, and anyway, Liang couldn't do it anyway. Although it was difficult for him to bring something towards him. The lord had always been pretty secretive, at least sometimes. Therefore, at first, I had to go to the palace more often to inquire about the well-being of his wife. And after the birth of Dao, the mother had finally lost her mind. I tried to treat her with medication, but she never got back to the way she used to be."
"Didn't any relatives take care of her?" Po wanted to know.
The doctor raised his scaly eyebrows. "Mm, they don't have close relatives here. The family originally came from India, having emigrated to China a few generations earlier. Even if they did, no one seemed to care about their fate. Although..." Dr. Wu leaned back in his patio chair and thoughtfully clasped his cold reptilian hands on his stomach. "Even if a visitor came, it was rather unusual. Once, Lord Liang had a heated argument with another Peacock Lord, but he has never been seen since. And especially when he was visited by this woman, the ruler made a dismissive impression on me when I was summoned to see him afterwards."
Po briefly stopped shoveling the noodles into his mouth. "A woman?"
"A peahen, to be more precise," Dr. Wu said more. "That's why I was so surprised. I assumed she was from his circle of acquaintances. She was almost dark mixed with purple. I had never seen someone like her before. I had only seen her two or three times near the palace. She always carried a black hand-held fan in front of her face." He paused. "But there was something inside of her which briefly gave me chills."
Po felt a cold shiver under his fur. "Uh, I think, I know that feeling," and his thoughts were transported back to Mendong City. Apparently, women really can be worse than somebody thought sometimes. He thought of Xiang's words, who always found fault with women - somehow with good reason.
"I only heard from distant relatives once, when I asked about the illness, how they had Shen and Dao, too," Dr. Wu continued. "This phenomenon first appeared in a peacock girl. It was thought to be an isolated case, but when Shen also got the same, I was sure, it could be hereditary."
"Can't that be prevented?" Po wanted to know.
A mocking smile crossed the doctor's mouth. "You don't seem to know much about hereditary. Something like that is just as unavoidable as bringing a panda into the world black without white color."
Po scratched his head thoughtfully. "Is it such a bad disease?"
The doctor pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Well, my guess is that there's a 90% chance of dying after childbirth. It may not necessarily mean that the child dies. There are not yet many cases to be able to make a prognosis with certainty. More research would have to be done, although of course we don't want to hope that the disease will occur more frequently in this family, but it cannot be ruled out if it is inherited. To be precise, I'm only aware of three cases so far. Once that of the distant relative, then Shen and Dao. But I was able to conclude one thing from this: both boys and girls can be affected. The disease is therefore probably not gender-linked. But she is not to be underestimated. One child, the distant relative, had already died from it." He sighed heavily. "I think, it would have been a beautiful girl. Although she was not under my treatment, but Lord Liang told me that she was just as white as Shen and Dao. Only with bluish spots on the tips of the feathers. Therefore, according to my theory, the debilitating disease is linked to this coloring of the plumage.*"
Po slipped the remaining noodle water from his bowl, then he set the plate down on the table. "But Shenmi is also white," he objected. "And I don't remember that there being any problems when she was born."
The doctor raised his hand. "I know that. But she does not have all the typical characteristics. The cases it has covered so far have been white with another color component. Colored eyes and partly colored spots on the feathers. It may well be that this phase of weakness is linked to this appearance. Once this phase has been overcome in childhood, health seems to stabilize. It is only when aging sets in, when the person is no longer the youngest, that weakness comes back to haunt them. Just like what happened to Shen."
Po exchanged an uncertain look with the goat. "So could Dao suffer later, too?" he asked, worried.
Dr. Wu shrugged. "Possible. But to say for sure, we would have to wait and see. As I said, there are far too few cases to be able to say anything with certainty."
"Then how does it come that Shen's kids don't look like their father?" Po wanted to know. "They don't even look like their mother, or their grandparents."
The doctor grinned. "Genetics is an interesting scientific field. It depends on the genetic mix and how the disease, or coloring, is inherited. Of course, if she is dominant in the genome, all of Shen's children would suffer, more or less. But since this is not the case, this disease must be recessive."
Po didn't understand anything. "What?"
"A scientist from Europe had done a study on this," Dr. Wu explained more. "For years he had studied the inheritance of color in plants and even animals. So he had roughly divided genes into dominant and recessive. One is what you see directly, the other is what you don't see directly, but you have it... But that would be going too far now. It depends on the partner's genes. If both partners carry the weak gene, the chances of the child having the condition would be 50 percent. If the partner is nothing like that, then the probability of getting sick is 0% or 25."
Po rubbed his head. "Okay, that's going too far for me. I only know about pie quarters. That's how I learned fractions. The pie of 1/3, or ¼ quarters... but that's getting too complicated for me."
"Maybe it's all nonsense," the doctor dismissed.
"How so?" Po looked confused at the lizard goanna. "Should I forget that now?"
"Basically, it's nonsense to bring up probabilities," Dr. Wu said. "It comes as it comes. It may have been fortunate for Shen that none of his children have the hereditary disease, but they could also be carriers of the disease." He looked up at the sky. "Perhaps if Shen's mother's genes had been different, the child would probably have been colored normally, but the next child might be affected because the lord's child would be a carrier of the disease..."
"Okay, okay, stop, stop!" Po shouted. "This is getting to be too much for me now!"