Andrea Cort 03: War of the Marionettes

by Castro, Adam-Troy

  the many loops and knots all churning in blur so confused that she could no longer track any of the limbs to their individual owners let alone determine whether the one bent on murdering her was winning or losing but as the violence of the battle shattered the polished stones of the riverbed to pebbles and then to dust she caught fleeting impressions of whips snapped in half big black heads slashed open and slick with blood she didn’t see the berserkers whip hit her at all she just felt a sudden impact in her gut just below the ribcage it was followed by a sudden hot flare of agony as something hot and liquid rained down on her belly and thighs she looked down unbelieving and saw the thick whip embedded in her flesh withdraw from the wound the grit of the battlefield below glistening with her own life’s blood I’m dead the Porrinyard s thought separated by hundreds of kilometers they both sank into darkness

  meanwhile I had never gotten my head all the way around the strange union that had turned to squabbling lovers into the composite personality I knew as the porn yards I had always known that they were one person but I had never been able to comprehend how they dared to give up the torment of living alone in their own heads in exchange for everything they’d gained by being a larger fuller and richer entity I’d felt a little of what that decision must have been like when I gave up years of determined misanthropy to allow them into my life no longer a living complete in and of myself but instead forever requiring them in order to exist as more than a shallow fraction had always struck me as like a shallow taste of their union but as I

  bent over Oceans unmoving frame as it sank deep into the upstairs bed where we’d moved him I found myself achingly aware that ours had never been even that strong counselor of all the things that could have interrupted myself recriminations the one I wanted least was Tara Fox’s voice what you would want me to remind you that the stakes here are higher than one life I considered kicking that unfeeling mask of hers driving her to the ground with further blows that’s a good one coming from you her gaze offered neither confrontation nor apology just the patience of a machine that had just provided the only relevant datum path will ania who had spent the last few minutes in frenzied examination wiped the sweat from her forehead he’s not dying what there’s nothing wrong with his pulse his respiration or the way his pupils respond to light his Airways look clear and he shows no indicators of dehydration or any other signs of systemic malfunction if I had to give a name to whatever’s happened to him I would call it a simple faint possibly delayed stress from last night’s ordeal does he have a history of this kind of thing counselor no and the likelihood of the body before me waking up in the next few minutes still offered no comfort when there was no way of telling until then just how much of the Porrinyard Gestalt would still be at home I brushed my one long lock of hair away from my face and said we can take a few minutes then I’ll stay with him maybe you two can load up some provisions Parkville Ania nodded and left the room Fox didn’t what about Maren later I said she nodded and left maybe I’d matched her own skill at chiseling entire layers of meaning from the most clipped sentences it didn’t matter to me not right now I could only stand beside the floating platform holding Oceans hand and realizing not for the first time that love makes us weaklings Andrea court Skye remains alive at this time a wave of relief knocked all the remaining support out from under me and I slumped where I stood hating my eyes for burning so much alas her injuries are severe her long-term survival will depend upon reaching medical care in time will she we would not normally do this counselor but we believe that she still has an essential part to play and have therefore taken the liberty of slowing her metabolism still further to a state that mimics cryogenic suspension of course this presupposes that she will not suffer further injury and means that she will not be aware or helpful during this interval I was not qualified by this I wanted to dam the Vlade and dam the fate of the human race and damn everything as long as I could drop everything I was doing to race to her side an Ocean Parkville aniyah’s analysis of his physical condition is correct he will be awake and able to function if only as a stressed fraction of himself within a few minutes I found myself absurdly grateful for that small blessing I thought you didn’t want to hold my hand we do not but we are not totally unfeeling and we can offer you small mercies when compassion warrants besides the AI source added their voice taking on a certain Ryan aside rarely heard from them before it was just about time for you to contact us and start yelling I didn’t but now that my immediate panic over the Porrinyards had lifted my mind was functional again and went where it needed to go I don’t need to I may be angry again later but I’m not feeling it now did you have any difficulty drawing your

  conclusions it was a straight line really if I’m correct that you engineered the Villani to help work out your big question and I think I’m pretty safe on that score then it only stands to reason that you’re also responsible for the Ballet’s increasing human pull on human beings and that means you’re also almost certainly the ones responsible for giving the dance pilgrims all their specific modifications and you don’t wish to rail at us for exploiting your species in this manner once upon a time I might have but then I’d been with the AI source long enough to understand that it wouldn’t make any difference no I just want to know why us simply put your potential for problem solving is so profound that it surprises even us I considered asking them about Marian Schiff why not if they recruited and altered her they’d know how to find her and getting that answer would uncomplicated not quite nicely but there were still things going on between the missing girl counselor Fox and the late mr. Schiff still worth exploring and right now I was still irrational enough to care more about the form beginning to stir beside me than about anything else in the universe yes before I move on there’s one last thing I need to know what I took a deep breath did Tara Fox come to you for her enhancements there was a pause an odd question one not directly associated with your problem I’d learned a long time ago that the truth could be a tiny thing indeed lost in a thicket of distracting irrelevant details the best way to deal with those was not to ignore them but to understand them cutting my way closer and closer to understanding answer me no Andrea court counselor Fox did not come to us we would have refused such a request the last thing we would ever want to do to such an interesting human being is take away her splendid unpredictability by rendering her more like us I wasn’t surprised the AI source envious for our irrationality they would have seen harming it in any way even by request the moral equivalent of splashing paint on a great work of art but that didn’t resolve the question of Fox’s self-imposed condition was there some other agency capable of doing that to a person did she go to your rogue intelligences is what I’m looking at the work of unseen demons the AI source made a sound suspiciously like a chuckle no Andrea Court it is not their work either

  we terminated the link just as Ocean opened his eyes and turned to me it was a good thing the AI source had warned me what to expect because something important had gone out of him since his collapse not his intelligence or his warmth or even his love for me but the invulnerability that had always made me see him in particular as a source of strength there was a fresh hesitancy about him something having to do with the way his eyes faltered before finding mine Skyee was still part of him she was just back rounded the same way she was when our sometimes complicated schedules required her body to sleep while his remained awake I ran a hand over his bristled scalp hi he blinked a number of times before refocusing his smile so tentative it broke my heart a little hello are you alright not quite Skyee’s been hurt I know I haven’t lost her but I can’t feel her I don’t know what she’s doing he was further from panic than I would have been but it was a growing possibility in his near future I squeezed his hand and tried to show a confidence I didn’t feel I’m told that they’re bringing her somewhere where she’ll get some help that’s good he breathed it hurt what hurt she got speared if you want to call it bet of Lonnie whipped through the abdomen I’ve never used Andrea the
pain when you live as many years without hope as I have you lose the neck of summoning it it will and come to see it as something false and dangerous capable of destroying you if it turns out to be a lie in the end but it was all I had damn it all I could cling to on this world falling to pieces around us so I surrendered to faith and said shh don’t worry she’s getting the help she needs she’ll be okay by the time you feel her again he stirred again in a moment I mistook for more aftershock and then turned pale a moment I mistook for something far worse and then his hand closed tight on my wrist Andrea what love this thing that’s happening this madness I saw a desperate unwanted understanding in his eyes and leaned in close knowing even before he spoke that whatever he said next was going to change everything what I think he licked his lips as if ceasing even that opportunity to delay the words that would make the possibility real Andrea I think it’s viral.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Infected

  Oscin told Skye’s

  story in precise but impassioned strokes using the third person she for everything Skyee had seen or thought or done but never allowing any doubt that these counted has his memories and experiences as well whenever relating something Skyee had said out loud he even softened his voice to approximate hers becoming so much like her in carriage and demeanor that it was impossible to avoid taking comfort in the sensation that she had entered the room and was still with me an actual presence in every sense but fact when he got to the part about the one allied Fulani who had gone berserk and attacked the others around it I began to see what he had meant about the madness going viral when he described the others attempting to restrain its whips rather than just kill it outright I felt a chill that had little to do with the relative coolness of the air inside the Royko home and when he concluded with the berserkers whip point spearing Skyee through the abdomen I could only look away my eyes burning with loss I could only hope to be not just premature but unwarranted if she dies I thought ready to deliver a vendetta with the rest of the sentence but there was nothing I could say after that if she died and the composite personality known as the Porrinyards went with her it made me no enemies I did not already have it just turned the universe a place I had long understood to be cold and pitiless but that had turned a shade brighter with their presence back into a prison I had no desire to know by this point Ocean sat on the edge of the bed his legs dangling his strong shoulders bent and diminished by the weight of uncertainty I was against the wall my arms folded across my chest in a stance that mimicked self-sufficiency but was actually as close as I could come to holding myself together Fox stood in the doorway her arms at her sides paying attention but so remote that she seemed more supernatural presence than actual presence of us all only Pavel Ania showed clear urgency she’d started pacing midway through Oceans explanation and now stood facing him urgency burning in every pore take me to her Ocean rubbed his eyes his measured words emerging in dribs and drabs I don’t think that’s such a good idea I’m not sure you appreciate how much she needs immediate care not just the possibility of care hours away Ocean gave her a bleak look of course I do that’s me bleeding to death out there we have to do something I know but I’m not sure that finding her in time if that’s what you mean is even possible we have to try pavel Ania said I wish I could but I only know what the journey looked like at ground level to a wounded person being raced across dusty terrain at high speed and while we know her starting point the chief challenge facing anybody traveling a desert unknown to them is that all compass directions look pretty much the same as Pavel aniyah’s beseeching gaze darted from Ocean’s ravaged expression to my heartbroken one and Tara Fox’s unaffected mask she found nothing but acceptance of the same grim calculus we’d have the advantage of being able to search from the air that would not be as helpful as you seemed to believe even if we could fly low enough to determine which group of migrating Villani was carrying wounded human beings a coarse error as minor as a couple of degrees would likely lead to us flying past Skye’s group without ever spotting them Parkville Ania was not immune to the human ailment we all retain from infancy of sometimes demanding a different outcome just because we stamp our foot and insist on it we could keep flying in circles until we saw them circles would not be helpful but even a proper search grid attempted on our own is likely to miss her multiple times and take far longer than she has left he hesitated as if remembering anew that this was more than an abstraction to him I’m sorry fool Ania I promise nobody here needs Skye saved more than I do not even Andrea but there’s nothing we can do she got it she wore the look of a woman choking on something indigestible but she got it and with Ocean no longer an acceptable target she cast about for another passing up Fox and settling on me at first anger made her regress to what must have been some rear bone dialect which flew from her lips with the force of stones but after several sentences of that she switched back to mercantile no less dipped in venom all right counselor I have yet to see you contribute a damn thing except promises if you have something to contribute then contribute it I met her challenging stare with one of my own she held it longer than most people would have faltering only after the silence between us had passed beyond uncomfortable and then she looked back immediately her defiance unshaken keeping my eyes on her I said viral Ocean rubbed the back of his neck yes well then let’s go check that out catching ourselves up on the spreading chaos across lon took all of 20 minutes on Roy goes home hi Tech’s connection the nonstop chatter between embassies and their remote personnel always busy but a flood since the catastrophe began already covered volumes of material but Oceans talents as a silent person included the superfast processing of incoming data and he was able to give us the highlights as he encountered them the latest developments painted the deterioration has not just progressive but exponential in the last hour no less than 20 pilgrim camps had been attacked by large numbers of Lani with casualties ranging from the light to the horrific but she skimmer carrying wounded from one of the pilgrim colonies had been batted out of the Skye by of Lani who’d leaped a hundred meters straight up to get at it some places were holding out twenty dance pilgrims had taken refuge within the private home of an elderly human couple named Minnie and Earl something who had like Paul Rico clouded the Confederate ban on human travel here and built their own unauthorized homestead in one of lawns greener regions they were not part of the dance pilgrim movement then their house was reputed to be nothing more than a simple cottage constructed of native wood but they had the benefit of local vani who were protective of them and they’d repelled three attacks without human casualty but two of the defenders had switched sides during the most recent wave and had been put down by their erstwhile allies again I said it is a pattern Oshin acknowledged other developments included considerable Vlade on Villani violence Warren’s attacking one another with a savagery unprecedented in all our observations of the species one sizeable force of hostels had invaded a breeding warren in the southern desert and murdered all the eggs in the nursery as well as to human beings and three Burstein II who had been present performing a census the deaths among the indigenes were now estimated in the six figures and were still climbing Croy had declared a worldwide human evacuation a measure doomed to failure if even a measurable percentage of the dance pilgrims decided to join the diplomatic Exodus there just weren’t enough vessels in orbit to rescue more than a few civilians and the safety of any surviving diplomatic indentures took precedence over that of dance pilgrims who had committed a Confederate crime just by being here in the meantime the embassy itself had been ordered abandoned with all planetside operations ordered moved to the polar site of the Chi installation and the embassies that hadn’t ordered evacuations yet were expected to make that call within the hour in case the maddened Villani decided