A deep sigh from the speakers. "Whatever you say, Colonel Miraz."
"You do good work," Tora answered. "You can have good feelings now."
When the com channel shut down, she studied Annia. "Sick."
Annia nodded. "I have the plague. I'll be all right for a few hours, but the sooner we get the cure to the DPH, the sooner I can get help."
For the first time since Annia had seen Tora stride competently into the clone infirmary aboard Guardian, the clone looked distressed. "You are primary."
Annia wondered exactly what that meant to Tora. It wouldn't be anywhere in her simulated memories or conditioning. She had come up with it herself.
"The cure is primary," Annia told her.
Tora cocked her head the way she had when she had been struggling to reconcile her instructions to take all the humans to lifeships with the fact that Annia wanted to evacuate Guardian on a shuttle. Annia said, "Anyone can get the cure out of the databank and to the DPH. I'm not needed anymore."
Tora shook her head. "You are primary. You go get cure now. I make the Admiral Hirshorn listen."
Annia didn't know how to interpret that, but Tora pointed to the data terminal, and Annia went as ordered.
The search had found a subset of files matching Annia's search parameters, and when the files passed through the gaeans' filter and appeared in the monitor, Annia waited only long enough to confirm it was her familiar little phage genome rotating in the middle of a cloud of data before snatching a crystal from the storage rack under the board and fitting it into the padded clamp. Then she started the download.
Under the crystal, the laser flickered red as it began to copy the data into the crystal's structure, its heat changing the atoms from their natural state to one of the other nine states of matter in combinations that enabled the crystal to store a hundred thousand terabytes of data in a volume no bigger than the end of Annia's thumb. She didn't need a fraction of that capacity for her little virophage.
Her hands streaked the board with sweat. Her heart beat faster now than it had when Solante's bulls first took the cure away from her. What if accessing the data caused the files to self-destruct? What if the gaeans' filter didn't include the writer? What if Solante had tampered with the data itself? Annia wasn't enough of a gene-tech to be sure the genome hadn't been altered.
Movement at the periphery of her vision made Annia sit up straight as Maycee said, "Haven't you got that cure out yet?" Then she saw the gaeans hovering over Liam who had recovered enough to sit up. She darted to them "What have you done to Lee?" she demanded.
"He'll be all right," Annia said. "He was helping your friends with the data bank."
Maycee slapped Taha's big shoulder. "I didn't tell you to misuse Lee. I'm sorry, Annia, they're usually more careful." She squeezed in between the aliens and stroked Liam's face. "Are you all right, honey?"
"Not damaged." Liam tried to stand, and the two gaeans held him down while Annia said, "Don't try to get up."
"Don't stand up," Maycee crooned. "You already did so much."
"I am well," Liam insisted. "No more damage."
"Hith lek iss thixed," Heth explained.
"It is?" Maycee felt the bloody belt tied around Liam's leg below the knee. "Just the two of you manged it?"
A flick of bells like a shrug from Taha.
Liam eased Maycee back from him and stood, teetering a little, but the leg held him. He probably had some residual dizziness from whatever had caused him to black out when he helped the gaeans decrypt the database. With a few steps, he had his balance back. "Fine now," he told Maycee and the hovering gaeans. "No damage."
Annia had been watching Maycee for signs of either seizures or monomaniacal outbursts, but she seemed to be altogether herself. Annia frowned. "Did you change your clothes?" Maycee had definitely not been wearing that red shirt and black trousers when Annia installed the neuromodulator.
"And cleaned my hair, too. I was disgusting."
"You were showering and changing clothes while the rest of us were stuck here trying to get someone at DPH to listen to me?"
Maycee touched her fingertips to Annia's cheek. "You're sick, aren't you?"
Annia pushed her hand away. "That's not the point."
"How long can you hold on?"
"I have a few hours before I'm too sick to work."
Maycee touched her cool, slick-scaled palm to Annia's face. "Is that download ready?"
Annia checked the crystal and found the laser had gone dark. She took the little dodecahedron from the clamp. "If it downloaded. If Heth and Taha's filter worked right. I haven't checked it, and I'm afraid of Solante's system. He could have set it to do destroy anything anyone tries to download without authorization."
Maycee looked to the gaeans. "Did you get that?"
Both gaeans flicked their bells in the affirmative. "Thilther ith kooth." Filter is good.
"That's all right then. Let's get all of you to the hospital. Taha, Heth, little help?"
The gaeans swung their heads around to look at Maycee, and Annia barely had time to snatch Honeybear from the seat where it curled. A moment later Annia stood a good deal closer to the gaeans and to the other humans who had been in Solante's com station with her. They had to be packed into close quarters because they had translocated into the intake area of the hospital, and it seethed with huge bodies in various shades of green from near-yellow to near-brown. Gaeans swayed between humans sprawled on pallets or on the bare floor. Gaeans crouched in groups of three over sick people, presumably doing whatever gaeans did when they were manipulating things on a cellular level. A double handful of the smaller human-gaean hybrids like Cho'en darted among their big...cousins?...hopping over human bodies on errands or crouched among the full gaeans making the third in one of the healing clusters.
"When did this happen?" Annia asked.
"What did you think I was doing all the time I was gone? I went to the warren, and after I sent Taha and Heth to you, I told Mother Katha what we needed here." Maycee pointed to a grey-green gaean so huge she had to duck her head to keep from hitting the ceiling. Her head had to be almost as long as Annia was tall. "She rounded up the healers and brought them here."
Taha nudged Maycee with her muzzle. "Thust ko helth." Must go help. She cocked her head toward the nearest sick body. Heth gave Liam a similar parting bump. This one (three) "...koeth altho." Goes also. Affection/interest/sorrow at parting. Then the two gaeans stood and waddled toward the nearest sick body. In a moment, one of the hybrids—brassy gold with a dark mane—joined them and squatted beside their patient.
Maycee turned to Annia. "Let's get that crystal copied at least twice, then I'll get copies to Planetary Health here and Charmmes Labs on Firstep."
"You shouldn't be doing so much translocation until I check your implant to make sure it's working properly."
"Let's keep our priorities in order, shall we?" Maycee said. "It feels fine, and it's doing its job. I've never been able to translocate without Cho'en's help before, and my mind-touch is more consistent."
Maycee turned her head. "Oops. Mother Katha wants a word with you." She took hold of Annia's arm, and once again, Annia went from one place to another without warning. Suddenly, she stood almost under the belly of the giant gaean. She looked up, and Mother Katha's head descended from the ceiling. One flat golden eye as big as Annia's head stopped in front of her face and blinked, the lower eyelid rising and dropping.
Greeting/respect/warning. "Hwee loth thith one." The big head made a gesture toward Maycee. "To thot to thith aketh."
Annia translated. We love Maycee, but do not do this again. Annia didn't need to be warned. She still shuddered at the thought of Elizabeth-Belle with the power to translocate armies or manipulate minds.
The big creature blinked again and seemed satisfied with whatever she found in Annia's mind. She turned her head to look at Maycee with the eyes on the other side of her head. Beloved/close-as-kin/warning.
Maycee laid her hand on Mothe
r Katha's nose, which was probably dangerously impertinent. "I have Cho and Liam and Annia and the entire warren."
The gaean bumped Maycee with her muzzle and raised her enormous head back to the ceiling.
Maycee took hold of Annia's arm. This time Annia was ready for the jump from where she stood to the middle of the lab where she and Elizabeth-Belle had built the virophage.
Elizabeth-Belle sat in front of the second monitor staring at the single strand of DNA rotating in its cloud of data. She looked up. "I suppose that crowd out there is your doing?" she said to Maycee.
Maycee took the crystal from Annia's hand and fitted the crystal into the clamp on the processor. She started the copy process. "Check the compiler, Annia. If it's working, we can produce a small batch of the cure. It won't be much, but we can treat the most essential people to keep them going until the big labs can get it to us in volume."
Annia deposited Honeybear on the shelf under the empty tribble cages and went to investigate her equipment. She found the compiler in working order. She left Maycee to start the compiler working on a batch of the phage and went to the first aid cabinet next to Honeybear. She peeled and attached an analgesic for her headache and an anti-pyretic. She debated the stimulant tabs. They would probably accelerate the progress of the plague, but they would also keep Annia moving. She decided she needed to be able to work more than she needed rest. She used two.
"One copy," Maycee said when Annia returned to the work station. "I've checked it, and it came through Taha and Heth's filter just fine. I don't have any way to be sure Solante didn't meddle with it, but if he did, Ethan-George will catch it at Charmmes Labs."
While Maycee and Annia worked, Elizabeth-Belle had remained at her monitor, staring at the genome she had been looking at when they came in. Maycee went to look over her shoulder. "That's our mutation?"
Elizabeth-Belle didn't move or speak.
Maycee went in an instant from behind Elizabeth-Belle to facing her across the work station. "What are you going to do about it?"
Elizabeth-Belle started and glared at Maycee. "There's no need to make a spectacle, Magdalen-Carroll."
"Oh good, you haven't lapsed into catatonia. I had started to wonder."
Elizabeth-Belle sighed. "If you're going to be a nuisance, I'll go see to getting that mess out there organized." She swiped her hand through her monitor, scattering the data and image to static before she stalked out of the lab.
Maycee watched her go, then turned back to the monitor. "Well, isn't that interesting."
"What?" Then Annia realized the monitor hadn't re-formed the scattered image. Elizabeth-Belle had deleted the record of the Charmmes variation. "Why did she do that?"
"The vagaries of the Charmmes mind. Maybe even Lizabelle knows a disaster when she sees it." Maycee paused. "More likely, she didn't like the idea of anybody having more power than she does."
Maycee returned to the processor. "Second copy is ready to go. I'll take one to Planetary Health, then I'll get the other one to Ethan-George at Charmmes Labs." She paused. "Actually, I think I'll stop at DPH long enough to register the patent in your name. Ethan-George isn't above pirating something that looks lucrative." She closed both crystals in her hand and disappeared without a word or warning. Then she popped back. "And get some rest. You look like death's maiden aunt." Then she was gone again.
Annia actually didn't feel too bad with two stimulant tabs pasted to the skin below her collarbones. She started a third crystal copy of the phage data and checked the compiler. It hadn't completed the first dose yet. Annia left it working and stepped back out into the teeming intake area.
She didn't see anyone she knew. Even Solante's med-techs had gone elsewhere, upstairs maybe, with the patients there. If she knew how treatment was being organized, she could help with triage. The nearest thing to an authority figure she recognized was Mother Katha, dominating the room with her size and the susurration of her hundreds of bells. Annia raised the long skirt of her coat and wove between bodies in varying degrees of illness toward the gaean matriarch.
She took only six steps and found her foot coming down in a clear space. The gaean's torso loomed almost in front of Annia's nose. The vast head sank to Annia's level, and the gold plate of an eye studied her. "You are lookink thor" this one. Mother Katha didn't refer to herself as three in one. Maybe she was old enough for her three original personalities to integrate completely.
"Are you in charge of this?" Annia waved at the chaotic room. "I can help sort patients by urgency."
Amusement/respect/correction. "You are thick."
"I have the plague," Annia admitted, "...but I have some time, and the cure is coming. Maycee is taking care of it."
Negative/correction/gentle rebuke. "Hwe to thot theet you." We do not need you. "Ko to sleeth." Go to sleep.
"I could help," Annia insisted.
Behind her, a familiar voice said, "Excuse me, Mother Katha."
Annia thought the speaker was Elizabeth-Belle until she turned. The woman looked enough like Maycee and Elizabeth-Belle to be a clone from an older brood. She ignored Annia.
Katha jingled her bells in acknowledgment and cocked her head. The woman said, "A team of our med-techs is coming from from Firstep. Can you transport them?"
Katha lifted her head and fixed her eyes on an open space across the room. A pair of hybrid gaeans and several of the full gaeans had cleared a space in the middle of the intake area. A handful of Charmmes cousins, alike as clones, appeared in the open space with a pile of crates at their feet.
The Charmmes woman said, "Ethan-George will need a space in which to work."
Annia didn't understand. Was this the same Ethan-George who ran the Charmmes Family labs? What was he doing here? She said, "What does he want a work space for?"
The woman's eyes barely flicked to Annia. "He'll be the one designing the cure."
Fond/exasperation/rebuke. "Ith cure alreathy," Mother Katha said. "Shaktaleth-Cahel ith there thow." Magdalen-Carol is there now.
The Charmmes woman looked annoyed. "Well we weren't informed."
Strained patience/affection/exasperation. "Hwee hwill thend him thack." We will send him back.
A well-aged version of Jordan-Kyle had left the pile of supplies in the middle of the circle of gaeans and stamped toward Mother Katha. Annia expected him to step on someone's fingers or toes. He probably wouldn't notice if he did. One moment, he was bearing down on the gaean matriarch. In the next, he was gone like a burst bubble.
Satisfaction/amusement/indulgence.
The Charmmes woman threw her hands up. "You might as well send us all back. There's nothing for us to do here now."
Correction/rebuke/patience. Mother Katha put an enormous four-fingered hand on the woman's shoulder, turned her around so she could see the intake area. "Thlenty oth work to to." Plenty of work to do.
"You want us to do tech-level med-care? This is gaean work until we get a cure."
Correction/rebuke/patience, Mother Katha repeated. She pointed at the nearest patient.
Annia said, "Can't you help the gaeans with healing? Maycee could work with Cho'en."
"Excuse me." The woman stared at Annia with Maycee's green eyes—if Maycee were trying to stare an insect into submission. "I don't know you."
Rebuke/anger/rebuke. The huge head dropped so the gaean could stare straight into the woman's face with one golden eye. "Thith ith thother Hattia. The thaketh cure." This is Mother Annia. She makes cure.
Had the gaean really called her Mother Annia?
She must have because the Charmmes woman pulled herself inward the way Jordan-Kyle had done when Cho'en corrected him, and her voice was subdued. "Excuse me," she repeated, but the words had an entirely different inflection this time. "I wasn't aware. I have to go organize some kind of system to for this chaos." She turned her back to leave Mother Katha's presence.
"Elizabeth-Belle is here somewhere," Annia said. "She'll already have started organizing."
&n
bsp; #
Tora surveyed the street outside the hospital. There were had too many sick people. They could not all get inside. There would be sneakdillies in a few hours, and all these people would be helpless. Maybe sneakdillies would not like the sick smell and would stay away.
"Colonel."
Tora heard Mr. Ventnor's voice and didn't feel tired anymore. He came toward her at a trot, and Dess and Mr. Bracxs followed more slowly.
When he reached her, Mr. Ventnor slapped Tora's shoulder in greeting, then he surprised her by cupping the back of her neck and giving her a kiss. She did not expect to be touched that way outside of his barracks, but she felt so pleased to see him that she decided she did not mind. She bent her forehead to his for a moment and wished they could be in his barracks, fed and showered and comfortable.
She pulled herself back to her job and raised her head. "Where is General Baldwin? Where is the Admiral Hirshorn?"
Mr. Ventnor handed Tora a communication clip. "Your Civilian Communications Corps reached the Navy air control fleet coming up the river. General Baldwin is with them. They're planning to disembark on the waterfront."
Tora did not think that was a good idea. "Humans will want to fight." She started toward the waterfront at a trot.
He nodded, keeping pace with her. "Ms. Stamos is trying to convince them to use the dock on your lot and infiltrate slowly, wearing stripped-down uniforms. The Admiral doesn't like it, but General Baldwin is working on him. The problem is Hirshorn doesn't understand the way these people think. They come to the frontier and set up under camp charter because they're suspicious of authority. If they see too many uniforms, they'll think they're being attacked, and there are more projectile weapons around town than maybe you realize."
Tora didn't like that. "What do people want? What keeps them quiet?"
"They want a cure to the plague, but I don't recommend saying too much about that. We could have mobs of people trying to get to the hospital for the cure—even those that aren't sick—and that could lead to riots."
"What else?" Tora asked.
"They want to be left alone to take care of themselves, but at times like this, some of them think maybe taking care of themselves means taking what their neighbors have."
Farenough: Strangers Book 2 Page 30