Annia held very still. "What exactly did Maycee send you to do? We're locked in this room, and there are people with weapons outside the door."
Two gigantic heads swiveled toward the door and back to Annia. "Helch whith thucherth."
Annia frowned. "Thuchers?"
Heth and Taha looked at each other. Heth had a heavier jaw than Taha, and Taha was darker green with a paler green underbelly. Their pale crests flicked up and down as they hissed, clicked and jingled at one another. Taha turned again to Annia and raised one hand. Taha's hand was thick and square and four-fingered with heavy, blunt nails. She folded the fingers together into the center of the palm one at a time. "Itt, ith, eth, tith."
"Numbers," Annia almost shouted.
The strangers recoiled from the volume of her voice and flattened their crests against their heads.
"I'm sorry," Annia said more softly. "The encryption on the data bank. Can you break it?"
Both crests rose, and Taha dropped her head to chuff through her throat nostrils. Interest, enthusiasm/pleasure/affirmative.
"This way," Annia turned slowly and made a gentle gesture to summon the big strangers closer. "It's here." She led them toward Liam.
Liam leaned his weight on the back of the chair as the strangers closed around him and bent their heads over the monitor where Liam had been looking at numbers. They raised their heads.
Distress/confusion, Heth said.
Taha turned her head to Annia. Dismay/apology/query, This One (three) unable to assist.
Annia frowned. "Your eyes. The monitor isn't designed for your eyes."
Heth and Taha conferred for a moment and said, Affirmative.
Annia leaned against the wall. She was very pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes. "Then there's nothing we can do."
Liam did not understand. Heth and Taha could not see the monitor, but he had seen Cho'en look at monitors and see them. He leaned over the back of the chair and peered at the mass of numbers. They looked just as they had before.
Taha swiveled her head toward him. She looked over the top of his head at Heth. That One (one only) sees.
Heth said, Affirmative. Proposal, query, mind touch, invitation to suggest alternatives.
Agreement, mind touch. Taha said, That one (one only) "Whill asthitht." Query.
Annia said, "Do you mean Liam can help you?"
Liam had not realized they were talking about him. "Can help," he said.
Annia came to his side so quickly she startled Heth and Taha. "Sit down and look at the monitor, Liam." She guided him into the seat as though he could not do it himself.
Heth and Taha loomed up beside and behind him. They settled their bellies to the floor and put their hands on him. Taha's thick, blunt nails pressed into his cheek. Heth's hand circled his wrist.
When they touched him, their minds came into his. They had big minds with many parts that glanced apart and merged again. When all Heth's circling minds combined, numbers ticked deep in her dark and solitary center. Taha never came all the way together as one. Language filled her mind like bright fabric in wind.
Heth requested him to look at the numbers on the monitor. Liam looked, and the numbers turned back into patterns and fit into other patterns to make bigger patterns, and this time, Heth's three minds combined and took in the whole pattern as Liam saw it. Then Taha took all the numbers and patterns and made them into ideas humans could understand. Taha dropped her head almost into Liam's lap, blocking Liam's view of the monitor, and aimed one golden eye the size of Liam's open hand at the control panel. She raised her head and put her thick, olive-skinned hand over a lighted sensor. Her fingers moved, and in the monitor, some of the patterns moved around and came together in bigger pieces. Every time she moved a small pattern, a big pattern became bigger. He liked to see how the numbers went together. He bent closer to the monitor. His eyes felt dry. They burned from staring into the cloud, but he did not want to look away and not see when Taha moved more numbers.
Then Heth began to take the pattern that Taha made bigger and bigger, and Heth began to make the numbers do things. The numbers weren't just numbers. They meant things. You could put them together in ways that weren't just numbers but could be places that turned into pictures or words or symbols or different numbers, and the pattern told the numbers what to do. He could not make his head go fast enough to keep up with the moving patterns.
Both Heth and Taha had their hands over the lighted sensor that told the monitor how to move the patterns. Liam wanted to put his hands over the sensor, too, and do things to the patterns, but he did not know how to make them do things that would make sense to humans. He tried to understand what the big strangers did, but he had no simulations, and he could hear their minds the way they heard his, but he could not understand, and it was all too big and he wanted to understand all the numbers and the patterns, and the movements, but he couldn't fit it all inside his head, and his head hurt, and his eyes burned, and he was dizzy, and he couldn't sit up, and he fell down, and got tangled up in numbers and couldn't get up again.
#
While Liam and the gaeans—and Annia wouldn't have expected the original gaeans to be so different from Cho'en—worked on the encryption of the database, Annia moved to the com station. She gathered up Honeybear's limp body, piled it in her lap, and tried to find a way to communicate with the DPH in Cyrion. She scrolled through frequencies, looking for one that registered above or below the range of the interference field projected around Murrayville. From time to time, she caught a burst of something like speech through the static, but when she tried to focus on the channel, it disappeared. The shield had enough jitter to permit the occasional momentary wave to pass through, but never enough to allow communication.
Where had Maycee popped off to? She could get into the DPH with a crystal—assuming Liam and the gaeans managed to extract Annia's data from the bank—and convince them to start compiling the cure.
She didn't have Maycee, so Annia plodded methodically through the communication channels. As she sifted down the spectrum, she began to hear coherent conversation. There must be dozens of low-frequency short-range transmitters in Murrayville, and their owners were exchanging information. They might have been below the range of the blockade, but they didn't have enough power to transmit outside the town limits anyway. As with so many of her problems lately, she didn't have much choice by way of solutions, so she sifted until she found the clearest channel.
Someone said, "...just saw two militia go by here with one of Solante's bulls."
Voice only, no holographics. A female voice replied, "They're working together now, but it's the Colonel in charge of them all."
Annia wondered exactly how Tora had seized control of Solante's police. Of course a 222 wouldn't rest until she had all the soldiers she could see. Tora was probably already trying to figure out how to get her hands on the Cyrions.
A second male voice said, "There's nothing going on in the north quarter except their black flyers. We've stopped fifty people from trying to leave town that way. Sure as the Black Man, those police would shoot them down, and I don't mean stun."
Tora bent over Annia's shoulder. "Stun only," she barked at the pickup.
Annia jumped and put her hand to the broadcast key. "Say again," she told Tora.
Tora said, "Black-uniforms do not use projectiles. Stun only."
Annia lifted her hand from the key.
"Who's that?" the woman asked.
Someone else, a man Annia hadn't heard before, said, "Hey, that's the Colonel. What's she doing on the exchange?"
This time Tora got her hand to the broadcast key before Annia. "I negotiate with black-uniforms. No projectiles. Stun only. All humans stay in quarantine."
"That's not her," a second woman said. "The Colonel wouldn't talk like that."
"Don't be stupid," someone sneered. "She's a clone. Everybody knows she talks like that."
"There's no way a clone could even control the
militia, never mind Solante's bulls, and that's just tug dung to say she can tell the Cyrions what to do."
"I heard she's a special model the Federation designed to control humans. Then they plant them on United Worlds planets programmed to take over everything. Then the Federation comes in and sweeps it all up."
Tora hip-bumped Annia out of the com chair. "Be quiet. Doctor Annia has cure for disease enemy. Doctor Annia wants to talk to doctors at the city. How does she do that?"
"A cure?"
"That's impossible. The plague can't be cured."
"I heard it mutates too fast for a DV to kill it."
"That's part of the Federation strategy. They weaken us with the disease, so we'll give up without a fight when their ships get here."
Annia rubbed her palm over her forehead. Her face felt hot, but that might have been because her fingers were cold and sweaty.
"No wasting time," Tora barked. "Doctor Annia wants to talk to city doctors. How?"
A moment passed in silence while the exchange operators internalized Tora's instructions. Finally, one of the men said, "We can't help. We don't have enough power to transmit through the field."
The woman said, "You could line up two or three power generators."
"You'd have to be right up to the edge of the com shield."
"Three generators would melt the transmitters."
"It won't matter how close you get to the inside of the shield; there's no one on the other side near enough to receive."
"The relay buoy will be disabled."
Tora interrupted. "You tell General Baldwin. General Baldwin is with Marines."
"No way we can reach the Navy base."
"Don't the Marines use a different frequency range than civilian communications?"
"Not as low as our range," the woman said. "We can't broadcast that high."
Someone cleared his throat into his pickup. "Actually..."
"Saahir, is that you?" the woman asked. "I thought you were barred from the exchange for the year."
Long silence.
"Saahir?" the woman repeated.
"But it's an emergency," the boy protested, his voice breaking into an adolescent squeak on the end of the word. "...and I know how to get our equipment to broadcast in the navy range."
Tora sat with her eyelids half shut and a smile of satisfaction on her mouth while more and more faceless voices debated the merits and technicalities of the young man's proposal. Finally, the man who had gradually emerged as the leader of the exchange said, "You there, Colonel Miraz?"
"I am here," Tora said.
"Because we think we have a way to work it, and Saahir is going to be off the exchange for another year when his mother finds out he already had the equipment built and set up."
Tora nodded, still with that smug smile on her face. "Good. You go tell General Baldwin Doctor Annia has cure." Annia expected at any time to see Tora plant her booted feet on the com board and lean back with her hands behind her head. Instead, she got up and went back to patrolling the perimeter of the room as if the guards outside might burst through the walls at a moment's notice.
Honybear had begun to twitch. Apparently the sonic assault had knocked it unconscious, but hadn't killed it. Annia gathered it back into her lap and dropped into Tora's abandoned chair. She leaned her forehead on her hands. Her headache had intensified, and her forehead definitely felt hot. She turned her head to cough into the fabric of her uniform. The virus had reached her lungs. The partial treatment had barely bought her a few hours. How many hours left? She forced herself to think only as far ahead as getting the cure to the DPH. Once they had it, every compiler on the planet would be dedicated to manufacturing, and Annia could survive long enough for the cure to get back her.
She rested her head on her folded arms. A little sleep would help. Not even sleep, just a doze. The rest might hold the plague at bay just a little longer. She didn't really believe the exchange operators could contact Baldwin. How could they—a bunch of amateur hobbyists with scavenged equipment—if Solante's station couldn't broadcast powerfully enough to get through, the amateurs didn’t have a chance.
Something thumped off to her left. Something closer to hand than the muffled pounding of fists and heavier, harder things on the door. She picked up her head.
Liam had slumped to the floor. The darker-colored gaean...Annia thought it was Taha...raised his head and upper body off the floor and supported him on her arm.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He dropped Honeybear at Annia's feet. It reared up and squealed at him, offended, maybe, at being locked in a small crate.
Liam cocked his head at the doors of the lift and scanned the atrium and the balcony. "Enemies coming," he said. "Twenty-four."
Tora snapped her head around. "Fall back. Protect humans."
Annia said, "Tora, don't fight."
Lift doors opened on either side of the atrium, and projectile weapons rattled all around them.
Annia's throat hurt, and her eyes felt dry and swollen. She said, "Whatever you've asked for, you won't get it. They'll invade the town and tear it apart looking for it. Murrayville will be destroyed as thoroughly as if they had firebombed it."
He shook his head. "I don't think my children will let that happen. I'm thinking of putting my son in charge of my personal guard."
Behind him, Tora said, "No."
Solante ignored her. "But it won't come to that. I am perfectly willing to destroy the data if they try to invade."
"Then you won't have it, either."
"I'll still have one reservoir of the cure." He nodded at the catpil at Annia's feet. "And if that fails, I have the designer of the cure who can reconstruct it for me, so I think I'll put you somewhere out of harm's way now."
He singled out one of the guards who wore a blue cap in addition to the sash. "Put all three of them in holding on the first floor. The man with the cap pushed Annia toward the lift. Six more aimed their guns at Tora and Liam.
"Don't fight," Annia murmured to the clones.
The clones followed Annia, Liam impassive, Tora glowering at their guard. Especially after the leader of the troop pulled the communication clip from Tora's collar. Honeybear loped after Annia, clicking, until she scooped it up and carried it with her. She hoped—assuming they all lived long enough—that Honeybear would be able to get along with Candy and the rest of the catpils at the camp.
Liam balked at the lift, unwilling to enter the confined space with the guards, but Tora walked right in after Annia, and Liam followed her.
The lift descended one level and glided to a halt. The doors opened.
Annia heard an ominous whine. A dusky voice, clipped with tension, said, "Lower your weapons."
The guards hesitated, then allowed the muzzles of their projectile guns to drop toward the floor. By moving slightly to the right, Annia was able to see what cowed them. She recognized the girl in the dimly lit corridor outside the lift doors by the parallel scars from her forehead to her cheeks. When she saw the pulse cannon held in the girl's unsteady arms, she understood why the guards had given up so easily. At close range, the weapon would drill a hole half a meter wide in the back of the lift and anyone standing in its way while the energy field around the beam would electrocute everyone within two meters.
The girl said, "Lock the doors open. If I hear them closing, I will fire."
The guard nearest the control panel pressed the lock button. He also surreptitiously pushed the emergency alarm.
Maybe girl had some way of hearing the small movement, or she merely anticipated that someone would make the attempt. "I disabled the alarm. Let the prisoners out."
The lieutenant said, "Put down the cannon, Medea, before you do something that will really make the boss angry."
The girl said, "When this gun gets too heavy for me to hold, I'm going to pull the trigger."
The lieutenant glared at the blind girl. Given her blindness, he probably assumed he could get his gun up and shoot h
er, her hand was on the trigger arm, and a death spasm might kill them all.
Tora snapped an order. "Outnumbered. Fall back. Wait for reinforcements."
The guard looked yet more confused. Tora sighed. "Release prisoners. Wait for reinforcements."
The cannon sagged a few inches in the girl's arms, but she heaved it back up again, shaking with the effort. That decided the guard. He grabbed Annia by the arm and shoved her so she stumbled out into the corridor and almost into the muzzle of the cannon. She twisted to one side just in time. "I'm Annia," she said. "I'm a doctor. I'm not going to try to hurt you." Honeybear rippled up Annia's arm and curled around the back of her neck. It raised its forequarters so its head was level with Annia's eyes and clicked furiously at the guards in the lift.
The girl's head twitched very minutely in Annia's direction.
"I have my catpil with me," Annia hurried to explain before the girl lost her concentration on what she was doing.
Tora ignored the men in the lift with her and stepped out with her eyes on the blind girl. She glanced back at Liam, following close behind her, and shook her head. The girl was not a friend.
Annia said, "We are all clear. None of us wants to hurt you."
"Lock the doors," Medea said.
Annia used the panel outside the lift to close the doors between the corridor and the scowling guards, and lock them.
The girl lowered the muzzle of the pulse cannon. She sidled until she could feel the frame of the lift doors and sweep her palm over the wall until she found the identification pad. "Scramble access code Medea six." The pulse cannon almost slipped from her arms. She wrestled it up again and backed away from Annia and the clones. "Who are you?"
"My name is Annia. I'm the doctor who treated your face. These are my friends Tora and Liam."
"You can't get out of this house without me, and I can't do it by myself."
Tora said, "Enemy."
Annia ignored her. "We came for the data Solante stole from me. I won't leave without it."
Farenough: Strangers Book 2 Page 27