“Uh, Ell?” Shan’s voice came from the other room.
Ell rushed out of the bathroom, “Where are you?”
“In the play room.”
When Ell got to the playroom she found Shan standing in the doorway. She peered past him to see Zage sitting where she’d found him when she’d picked him up from Amy earlier. “How did he get in here?” she asked exasperatedly.
Shan shrugged, “I guess he could have crawled. Even if he hardly ever does, we know he can do it.” Shan eyed her out of the corner of his eye, “But how did he turn on the video?”
Realizing that the video Zage had been watching before had indeed resumed play. Ell felt a little tingle of electricity run down her back. The little AI supplying the video normally responded to verbal control and Zage hadn’t even learned to say “Mama” yet. “I don’t know,” she breathed.
She looked up at Shan, a pleading look in her eyes, “I don’t know…”
***
Ryan looked up as Roger called his name. Roger waved at him and crooked a finger. Ryan followed him into one of the little conference rooms. “What’s up?” he asked.
Roger closed the door. “Well, I figure you’re aware that people have contacted Ell since Stockton put a bounty on her. In fact, you might have heard that when Emma and I got married she was matron of honor?”
Ryan grinned, “Yeah, I heard she was in and out in a hurry.”
“So you might suspect that I can still reach her using a special PGR chip?”
Ryan nodded.
“So you won’t be surprised that I reached out to her when you mentioned how nice it would be to get her ideas for orienting Stell’s retinal input to arrive from the same direction that her eyes were pointing.”
“Well that’s just what I had in mind when I suggested it,” Ryan cocked an eyebrow at him, “but I had no idea that Emma would solve the problem without Ell’s help.”
Roger grinned back, “But having set Ell a problem, what do you think might have happened?”
“She solved it too?”
Roger spoke to his AI, “Throw up the diagram of the port contacts.”
A cross sectional diagram of the front of an eye with a contact on it appeared up on the wall screen in the room. The rings of the two ports in the contact were visible. Little arrows showed the light entering the port at the front, diagrammed the shunt to the optical processing unit and then the shunt back to the port at the back of the contact.
Ryan stared, then thumped suddenly down into one of the chairs, “Hooooolyyy sheeit!” Then he frowned and turned to Roger, “Wait, that won’t help Stell. The light’s returning to the back of the contact and being delivered to the front of her cornea. It still won’t get through her opaque corneas and lenses!”
Roger grinned and pointed at his own head, “Look Ma, no headband.”
Ryan’s eyes flashed to the diagram, then back to Roger’s head, “Noooo!” he breathed.
“Oh yesssss,” Roger said with a big grin. His eyebrows bobbed up and down, “Quantum biomed now has a product for normal people.”
***
Shan stepped into the play room and found Ell sitting on the couch watching Zage. Her son sat, Buddha like, staring placidly at another of his interminable videos. “Hey, Elsa, you ready to go for a run?”
Ell didn’t answer. After a moment Shan looked at her more closely. There were tears running down her cheeks. Walking over he knelt and put his arms around her, “Hey, Babe, what’s the matter?”
She looked up at Shan, then put her arms around him, hugging him fiercely. Whispering in his ear, she said, “I think… what happened to Zage… is from me flying around at altitude rescuing people when I was pregnant.”
“What happened to Zage?”
“You know,” she shrugged in his arms, “how he’s wrong on all his milestones.”
Zage had turned to look curiously up at his parents. He briefly appeared to look sad, but then turned back to his video.
Shan whispered back, “He’s ahead on some milestones!”
Ell turned back to look brokenheartedly at Zage. After a moment she turned back to Shan and buried her head in the crook of his neck, “Something’s wrong Shan,” her voice broke, “and, it’s all my fault. I was such an idiot!”
Shan, hugging his wife and searching for words to comfort her with, was suddenly distracted by motion at the corner of his eye.
Zage stood up.
He stood smoothly—without unsteadiness.
He stood without pulling up on anything.
He walked towards them.
Not the staggering walk of a baby learning how to walk.
Not the clumsy gait of a toddler.
Not even the slightly unsteady tread of a young child.
He looked… coordinated.
Reaching Ell he threw his arms around her legs to give her one of his strong little baby hugs.
Ell turned and picked him up, “Oh, Zage, can you tell I’m worried about you?”
Wide eyed Shan stared at his son. Having given his distressed mother a hug, Zage simply turned his attention back to his video.
“Uh, Ell…sa,” Shan said, having trouble remembering to call her by the right name when his emotions were running so high, “uh, you’re not going to believe what just happened behind your back!”
“What?” Ell said, wiping at her eyes and peering up at him.
“Zage just walked over here.”
“Really?” she said, turning to look down at her son.
“Really! I’ll send you my AI’s video of it.”
“I believe you.” Ell said with a frown, “Oh, I guess I should watch my son’s first steps, huh?”
“Yeah, especially ‘cause I don’t think they were his first steps.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wait ‘til you see how he walks!”
***
Kristen Donsaii climbed the stairs out of the tunnel that connected her house at Lake Royal to Ell’s house across the street. She still found it astonishing that Ell had trusted someone to cut a tunnel through the bedrock under the street between the two houses. She also wondered how they’d done it without the noise of cutting through that hard rock disturbing the neighborhood. Even more, she wondered how Ell had been able to trust someone to do it and keep it a secret. And, for that matter, how she’d trucked away all the dirt and rubble from the tunnel without disturbing everyone.
And if she had paid someone to do it, why had she let them get away with leaving such a rippled and rough surface to the tunnel, especially on the floor?
Walking into the living room Kristen found Zage sitting placidly in the middle of the floor, watching one of his videos. He turned and grinned one of his sloppy little grins at her as she entered the room.
Kristen sat down beside him and pulled his considerable bulk into her lap. Zage twisted and put his chubby little arms around her as far as he could to give her one of his baby hugs.
Grinning down at him, Kristen said, “How’s the birthday boy, huh?”
Zage blinked at her a few times then turned back to his video.
Ell looked around the corner to check on Zage and saw him sitting in Kristen’s lap. Stepping into the living room herself, she said, “Hey there Mom, how’ve you been doing?”
“Things are great. It’s good to get my arms around Zage again.” Kristen put her hand up in front of Zage to block his view of the screen.
Zage put his chubby little hand up and pushed Kristen’s hand out of his line of sight.
Kristen picked Zage up and held him so his feet dangled near the floor. Nonetheless, Zage held his feet in the air rather than trying to stand. Kristen said, “I thought you said he was walking now?”
Ell sighed, “He did walk… once. I’ll send you a video record of it from Shan’s viewpoint when he was walking. In it you’ll see that Zage walked very well. He doesn’t look at all clumsy like other children, even those much older than he is. But, he hasn’t walked agai
n, at least not where either of us have seen him.”
Kristen looked up and saw Ell wiping at the corner of her eye. “You’re upset?”
Ell sat down with a thump and leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Yes,” she croaked, “something is wrong with Zage. He is all messed up on his developmental milestones. Admittedly, he’s ahead on some, but he’s way behind on others. I think it’s because, trying to rescue my security team, I flew around at substantial altitudes while I was pregnant.”
Kristen cast an arm back over Ell’s head and around her shoulders, “Wasn’t that right before Zage’s delivery?”
“Yeah, right before his delivery.”
“He would have been nearly completely formed by then. I doubt it had much effect on his development.”
“That’s not true. Anoxia during childbirth is a common cause of cerebral palsy.”
Kristen shrugged, “That might be true, but I doubt that he would be ahead on some milestones if that were the case.”
Burying her head against her mother, Ell whispered, “Maybe he’d be ahead on all his milestones if it weren’t for what I did.”
Zage reached up and grabbed his mother’s forearm, pulling it down into his lap and hugging it as if realizing she was upset, but nonetheless continued watching his show.
Kristen looked at Zage, taking in his intense focus on the video. Turning to Ell, she said, “Are you sure you should be letting him watch so much video?”
“No,” Ell almost sobbed, “but he cries when we don’t let him. It’s pitiful. There’s hardly anything else that will make him cry.” She sighed, “He’s such a happy baby otherwise; I just hate to make him miserable.”
“Don’t you think that if you leave him without his videos for a while he’ll eventually find something else to do?”
Zage turned and looked up at his grandmother with a frown on his face. It almost looked as if he understood what she had said.
Ell closed her eyes for a moment. Opening them she said, “If you’ll hold my hand while he’s crying piteously I’m willing to give it a try again.”
Kristen, thinking her daughter needed a lesson in determined parenting, said, “Sure, I’ll give you moral support. Video off.”
The video Zage had been watching, one on the insects of the Amazon, snapped off. With a wretched wail Zage turned and threw one arm around Ell’s thigh and the other around his grandmother’s knee.
“Wow!” Kristen said, “He really does like those videos, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Ell said sadly, “sometimes I tell myself it’s OK because the ones he likes to watch are educational. Other times I tell myself there is something horribly wrong, that a one year old child likes to watch stuff like that instead of cartoons.”
Kristen peeled Zage’s hand off her leg and stood. “Let’s go in the other room.” She looked at her grandson with a stern eye, “I don’t want to listen to all this crying.”
Ell pulled herself free as well and they went in the kitchen. “Here’s some salsa and chips. If you’re going to stick to your guns about not letting Zage watch videos, perhaps we should mix up some margaritas to dull the pain.”
They’d finished making a blender full of margaritas and just poured their first glasses when Zage stopped crying. Kristen said, “See, I told you he’d wear himself out.”
Ell looked off into the distance and cupped her hand behind her ear, “No, I think he’s managed to turn the video back on.”
Kristen frowned. “How could he do that?” She got up and walked over to look around the corner into the living room where Zage was sitting. Sure enough the video was playing again.
“I don’t know, but he frequently does manage to turn the video back on by himself.”
Kristen snorted and took a sip of her Margarita.
“What are you laughing about?”
“I don’t want to turn the video off either. I don’t want to listen to him cry.” She stiffened her shoulders, “But it’s the right thing to do.” She spoke to her AI, “Turn off the video. Keep it off until I give permission.”
Ell bowed her head into her hands as Zage started crying again, “Oh, I hate this.”
Kristen put a hand on Ell’s forearm, “But it’s the right thing to do,” she said, without as much conviction as she had intended.
The two women sat sipping their margaritas and trying to ignore the doleful sounds from the next room until Shan and Duncan came back. “What’s wrong with Zage?” Shan asked.
“We turned off his video,” Ell said sadly.
“I thought we’d given up on that?”
“Mom thought we should give it another try.”
Shan rolled his eyes. Turning them seriously on Kristen he said, “We’ve already tried that, a lot of times.”
Kristen shrugged, “Ell’s worried about him not making his milestones. He’s overweight, and pretty much does nothing but watch videos. I know it isn’t any fun, but part of parenting is making the hard choices for your child.”
Shan frowned and was about to object when suddenly Kristen lifted a finger and said, “See, he’s finally stopped crying.”
Shan stepped over to look through the opening to the living room. “No, he’s left the room.” He walked into the living room to search for his son.
When Shan returned, Kristen, Ell, and Duncan looked up, “Where did he go?” Kristen asked.
Shan shook his head somewhat exasperatedly, “Back to his room. He’s playing a video on the screen back there!”
“Did you turn it off?” Kristen asked.
Shan snorted, “No! If someone wants to torture the poor kid, they’re gonna have to do it themselves. I’m not gonna be the bad guy. I’ve done my time, and I’ve given up. As far as I’m concerned, if that kid wants to watch videos,” he sighed, “he can watch his damned videos.”
***
Carter looked down at his feet as he flew their Martian test waldo down toward its landing in Valles Marineres. Actually his AI still flew the waldo. He merely watched the rusty surface of Mars rise in his VR goggles. He could trust the AI to bring him down close to the surface more quickly and with less waste. If he flew it himself he’d be forced to reduce speed at a higher altitude for fear he’d be traveling too fast to stop when he got to the bottom of the huge canyon. It would be pretty embarrassing to wipe out this waldo just because he wanted to fly it himself. Also he could count on the AI to land him within sight of the opening their tunneler had made into the side of the rift valley.
Despite the practicality of letting the AI land it, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to participate in the landing himself. This wasn’t the first waldo to land on Mars. NASA had landed a number of them at various study locations they’d picked out as interesting from decades of unmanned missions. They’d been sending back samples and looking for evidence of life. So far they’d found nothing but fossilized colonies of microscopic life, nothing still growing. They still hoped to find viable spores near the poles, but hadn’t been successful so far.
The flow of the walls of the Valles past Carter’s cameras slowed as the waldo approached the bottom.
Carter saw a dark circle in the wall of the canyon. Switching control of the waldo over to his own controller he increased the lift from the waldo’s rockets and boosted over to the opening. The waldo was only eighteen inches tall, but that still made for a fairly snug fit into the twenty four inch opening. He landed the waldo just in front of the opening, then stepped inside and walked back into the opening about two body lengths. He looked at the walls of the tunnel. These walls appeared to be similar to the walls of the test tunnels the borer had melted in tests here on earth. Here it had formed a kind of glassy ceramic with tiny cracks in its surface. He wondered if the melted soil-ceramic in the Martian soil would prove to be airtight. Some of the tunnels they’d bored here on earth had been airtight, but some had leaked.
Well, if they leaked, he could seal them, but it might be a pain in the ass.
&
nbsp; Pulling his left hand out of the waldo controller glove, Carter felt around for the first of the graphene “tunnel sealer” balloons that Dr. Pace had given them. He put it on top of the port that connected to the front of the waldo. He closed and latched a grating over it and told his AI to open the port. With a whoosh the balloon vanished to Mars. In his VR goggles the collapsed balloon appeared to fly out of the port on his chest. It bounced around the tunnel a little oddly in the low gravity. Picking it up he unscrewed a protective cover off the base of the balloon and then smacked the base into the wall of the tunnel. The smack broke the cover over a bubble of cold tolerant adhesive so it stuck to the wall. Stepping back, he told his AI to inflate the balloon.
The balloon quickly blew up, occluding the tunnel. Dr. Pace had told him that it was a “standard” ¾ meter balloon which they made in some quantity over at Allosci. Since the twenty four inch tunnel was 0.71 meters, the balloon filled the tunnel with a little to spare. He backed the waldo up another couple of body lengths and repeated the procedure so that there would be two balloons that could form an airlock. He did it a third time about ten meters farther along so that the tunnel was “triple locked” for insurance against decompression. At that point he left the port to the Mars tunnel open so that air would blow through the port into the tunnel. With the tunnel opening sealed, and assuming no big leaks, he should be able to pressurize the tunnel system the borer had been making over the past few months relatively quickly. The howling of air through the grate into the Mars tunnel was pretty annoying, so he disconnected from the waldo controller and left the room. Outside in the hall he told his AI to calculate how long it should take for the grid of tunnels to fill with air and alert him when it should be about done.
When Carter returned, a slow drift of air still seemed to gently be moving through the port. He confirmed that with a small smoke generator that he turned on in front of the port. Sure enough the smoke sucked slowly into the port.
Rescue (an Ell Donsaii story #11) Page 9