"Shit!" she grumbled irritably, and tried to concentrate, bring up the grid.
She'd have to go back to the vault, go back in, find that stack, get rid of it all over again. She must've been crazy to try and physically take it. She calmed her mind and concentrated, waiting for familiar signposts to appear.
But nothing happened. She concentrated harder, probed the AI, tried to force it to comply. She looked around. Nothing. Where was she now? Around her was only a black void. She shivered.
Far away, she noticed something gray, a tiny blob, floating toward her. She was relieved that the blackness was no longer total.
The speck grew larger, larger, until Heather realized it was
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nothing she recognized at all. It was huge, shapeless, like an amoeba, translucent. . . wet. .. sticky . . . like something alive. Like something from the organic portion of the AI? Heather felt panic building as it grew bigger and bigger, speeding toward her in the void.
Run! her brain ordered, and with a high-pitched child's scream, she did, bolting in any direction she could, as long as it was away from that thing]
Her legs pumped hard, her breath burned in her lungs, her blood rang in her ears--
--but it caught her anyway, slapping her hard, wrapping its gooeyness around her legs. Heather was screaming wildly as she fell again, this time with the protoplasm monster clinging to her. Then another one was there, smacking against her, holding her down while two more of the jel ylike entities appeared and headed purposefully toward her.
With a terror that left her teetering on the verge of complete insanity, she realized that hundreds of them were coming, thousands, ready to encase her, entomb her alive.
As she screamed--it was all she could do, they had her arms and legs by now--one of the plasma things slapped over her face, filling her eyes and nose, her mouth, stifling the sound.
She could still breathe, somehow, still hear, still even see, though it was like looking through medical jelly. She was trapped, utterly, helplessly trapped.
This was the greatest terror she'd ever known, worse than the time she'd thought Uncle Fred wasn't going to stop until he'd killed her, worse than when Khuharkk' had roared at her, worse than anything.
With all the strength she could summon, Heather sent her mind out, desperately seeking help, begging for help, pleading for someone, anyone, to--please!--help her.
But as the plasma imprisoned her, burying her under tons and tons of goo, she knew it was hopeless. No one would hear her here in the depths of the AI. No one would even look for her. Who would look for a telepath in the bowels of an artificial intelligence? Still, she could not quiet her mind, it was the only weapon she had.
By now the plasma things totally encased her, so many tons of
-them that there was no blackness anymore, just a sickly off-white fading into gray. She could no longer sense the computer. There were no images she could recognize; she was in complete sensory
deprivation.
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I've been here for years, she thought. I must be old by now. Old and shriveled, with white hair. Her mind roved the emptiness wildly, like a feral thing, touching nothing but cold barrenness. Years like this. Her whole life.
However long you could live in here. Alone.
Suddenly something flickered at the edge of her vision. Heather strained toward it, searching, hoping against hope. Then she saw it again. A glimmer.
Bright whiteness.
Heather trembled. That's how the attack of the plasma beasts had started, something sparkling in the void. She blinked and stared. No, this was different. The whiteness glowed bright, made motions that were somehow familiar. The figure grew larger in her vision. She recognized wings. Wings.
That was something she understood, wings. She thought of huge white birds, thought of pelicans, of winged horses ... of angels. Like the angels her mother had told her about, not the ones Uncle Fred and Aunt Natalie had described. Guardian angels with enfolding wings and gentle faces, not avenging ones with lightning bolts or swords.
She remembered the church her parents had taken her to when she was hardly more than a baby. Big statues of white-robed angels everywhere.
Guardian angels. Mom said they were always around you, watching out for you. Heather had stopped believing in all that stuff when her mother had died.
But now, her heart surged. This was an angel, oh, please, make it be one! A guardian angel, come for her. "Oh, please," she cried out in a choked voice.
The figure drew near, huge, massive, gleaming wings beating back the gray plasma, the whiteness glowing so bright it hurt her eyes. She saw its face, just as its voice touched her mind, and she felt a burst of ecstatic hope. Dr.
Rob!
"Heather!"
It was him! He'd come for her!
"Here!" she yelled. "Over here!"
Now she could see him fully, as glorious as an angel, giant wings waving gently, keeping him elevated, apart from the tunnel of goo. He stared at her, as though he couldn't see her clearly. i
"I'm in here! Don't leave me!" she nearly screamed in her panic.
He smiled at her then, as though he'd just found her. His face had that relieved look that people wore when they just found their lost child--a child they really cared about. Her parents had looked at her like that once. "Oh, Heather. Thank heavens," he said softly. There was no anger in his voice.
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He didn't know ... couldn't know what she'd done, or he wouldn't look like that. "Oh, Dr. Rob," she stammered, "I'm sorry. I did a terrible thing! I didn't mean to be bad .. . not like that... I'm sorry ..."
"I know, honey. I know. Let's not talk about that now. We can deal with it later, once we're out of here." He held his arms out invitingly to her, and the plasma-goo parted before the light emanating from him. Heather flung herself into his arms, felt him enfold her, pull her to his warm, strong body.
Burying her face against him, she closed her eyes. "Please take me away from here," she whimpered, like a two-year-old. She felt something odd was covering him, like feathers, but not feathers. Something plush, cool, like cilia.
Soft, downy cilia. She pressed her cheek against it.
"Your wings are so beautiful, Rob," she said, then felt silly for blurting it out.
She heard him chuckle, felt it ripple through his body, felt the happiness, the relief flow into her. "Are they, honey? Someone must have rung a bell, because I didn't think I'd earned them yet. Come on. Let's go. Hold on tight."
The powerful wings pumped hard, and they began to climb, up through the blackness. Heather dug her fingers in the cilia and held on.
"You know, this isn't just me helping you, Heather," Rob said. "I'm not a telepath. I couldn't do this by myself."
"Who's helping you?" she said suspiciously, fearing police. Authorities.
"There are friends taking care of you back at the school, making sure you don't get hurt--your body, I mean. And here, inside, there's someone with me.
Someone different. Someone you've never seen. Someone kind, but not human. Don't be afraid when you see this someone, okay?"
"You'll be there?"
"Right there." He squeezed her tight, made her feel secure.
"I won't be scared."
"Good."
Then they were on grids again, bumpy ones, but familiar.
"Almost home," he said.
Home? she thought dazedly. "Do I have a home?" she muttered.
She was suddenly overwhelmed with sleepiness, felt her eyes Close without her volition, felt herself drifting away, safe in Rob's arms.
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* * *
"Here she comes," said Ch'eng Hao as Heather's eyelids began to flutter.
Rob nodded, watching her face, seeing the eyes move back and forth as if in REM sleep. He was only partially aware of Ch'eng, of Janet, of the small bed on which he sat, even of the physical presence of the little girl he held snugly against him, with Doctor Blanket covering
them both, linking them.
"Hold her tight, Dr. Gable," the nurse had told him. "And talk to her if you can.
You never know what they can sense when they're out like this."
Ch'eng had set up a brainwave scanner, attaching a small patch to Heather's forehead.
It had been hard, remembering to speak aloud even as Doctor Blanket took his mind on a dizzying descent into the depths of the computer brain. He'd seen so much, understood so little, until Blanket found Heather. A little spark of true intelligence amid all those dispassionate decision-making synapses.
She'd shone like a diamond chip almost buried in coal dust.
"Heather," he said, his voice sounding more like a croak, "can you hear me, honey?"
"Heather, look at me. It's Dr. Rob."
Obediently, she opened her eyes, the lids fluttering weakly. She was still so pale that her freckles stood out in sharp relief even in the dim light. "Dr.
Rob?" she whispered.
He summoned a reassuring smile, then hugged her, and weakly she smiled back. She glanced around, trying to figure out where| she was, who was here. Her eyes met Ch'eng's and he grinne toothily at her. "Hey, little one!
Welcome back!"
She blinked acknowledgment, looked around some more. Janet leaning against the wall. The child stiffened slightly, looked back at Rob worriedly.
"Sshh," he murmured. "We'll talk about all that later, when you're feeling better. You need to sleep for a while, so I'm going to give you something so you'll sleep, peacefully."
"But what if I dream about those things?"
"Don't worry, Doctor Blanket will make sure you only have good dreams."
For the first time, she glanced at the fluffy white rectangle cloaking them both, seeing how it glowed in the darkness. Her eyes widened. Would she be terrified? Rob swallowed, ready to jump in with soothing reassurances.
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The glistening cilia rippled, undulated like a miniature grainfield. The child stared in awe, reached out stubby fingers, touched the creature.
"Oh..." she breathed, "it was you... you and Rob... Oh, aren't you beautiful!"
Rob felt his whole body sag in relief. Her voice was the voice of a child, even a younger child than her actual age. Gone was the brittle cynicism Heather had always exhibited, of someone pushed too hard, too fast, with knowledge that she'd stolen instead of learned.
"Heather, this is my friend, a very special friend, Doctor Blanket. Doctor Blanket is an Avernian, a neuter, not a male or female. So when we speak about this person, we use the Mizari pronoun 'seloz,' because it's not very nice to call someone as special as Doctor Blanket an 'it,' is it?"
"Seloz saved me?" she murmured.
"Yes. Seloz pulled you out of the computer. I just went along for the ride."
"Can he, I mean, seloz, see me?" she asked, wonder-struck.
"Sort of. Doctor Blanket certainly knows you're here. Seloz is really worried about you, Heather, so Doctor Blanket's going to stay with you while you rest, make sure you don't have any bad 'dreams, okay? And when you wake up, you, and me, and seloz are going to have a few talks. Understand?"
Heather's green eyes lifted to meet Rob's. She knew exactly what he was talking about. She nodded solemnly.
"Okay." Rob nodded to Ch'eng.
The nurse looked over his readouts and made an adjustment. Within moments Heather's eyelids dropped. Rob gently eased her back onto the bed. But just before she lapsed into deep sleep, Heather reached out and gently gathered the alien to her. The Avernian flowed, until seloz lay cuddled in her arms, exactly like a real child's security blanket.
Rob smiled. It was the first really childish thing he'd ever seen her do.
"Are you okay?" he asked the Avernian, speaking aloud because his mind felt drained. "She's not squashing you, is she?"
Rob got up, stretching, feeling all his bones and muscles creak. He bowed to Ch'eng, who only grinned and waved. Then he walked over to Janet.
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The engineer was leaning against the wall, arms and ankles crossed. She cocked an eyebrow at him and asked, "You okay, good Dr. Clarence?"
He started at the reference, then realized it was pure coincidence. She'd stopped in his quarters, and It's a Wonderful Life had been playing.
"I ain't up t'goin' ten rounds wit' you at the moment, shweethart," he warned her in his best Bogie imitation.
Janet's eyes never left the sleeping child. "Rob, do you have any idea what she did?" Her voice was even. Modulated. A good indicator of how tightly she was reining in her emotions.
"No one yet knows exactly -what she did," he countered.
"Oh, come on! I know Kkintha told you about the redheaded woman that predicted the crash. That program originated from here, from Heather.
You've got to know that. I know it. And pretty soon StarBridge Station Security's going to know it."
Rob shook his head. "I don't believe she had anything to do with the crash of the Night Storm." A sudden thought struck him. "Serge! Hing! Has there been any news?"
"They were trapped in an airlock for a while, but they're fine now. The hospital at the station is keeping them for observation. They asked me to transmit all the files on how Serge's hands work. Apparently they're going to have to do some repairs on them. But they have a Mizari healer with experience in microengineering up there, so she ought to be able to handle just about anything."
"That's the best news I've heard all day," Rob said, feeling relief so profound his knees sagged.
Janet was still looking at him. Rob sighed. "Janet. Not now. I can't take any more right at the moment. I told you, my gut reaction--and I was right about the toilet blowup, remember--is that this time, Heather is innocent."
Janet bit her lip. "I'd like to believe you, but..."
"How can you be so sure?" she asked the alien.
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None of them touched, or even came close, to that area the Mind knew as
'Traffic Control," either here at the school, or at the station. Heather did not cause the disaster today.>
Blanket hesitated again, searching for words.
Janet nodded. "That figures. Everyone and his brother are busy comparing the two systems, trying to find something, a difference maybe."
"A patched-on program?" Rob suggested. He hated talking computerese with Janet. In moments he'd be in over his head.
To his surprise, she didn't immediately shoot him down. "There are always patches, changes bei
ng made to programs," she muttered, thinking.
She frowned. "Okay, but that's down here. The program failed at the station."
"Could the patch have been added on here," Rob asked, "but designed solely to affect traffic at the station, in the hopes no one would look over here?"
Janet mulled that over for a while. "Yeah. But that only makes her look worse." She nodded at Heather's still form. "If she was responsible, that's how she'd have to do it. From here."
Janet still looked skeptical. The Blanket was a completely nontechnological creature. Rob knew Janet would have to question Seloz's judgment on this.
"With all due respect, Doctor Blanket,
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you've said yourself the artificial intelligence is hard for you to fathom.. ."
"Maybe Heather's adult image got transmitted for a second, because of some kind of crossover?" Rob mused aloud. "A crossover with that patch?"
"If there even is a patch," Janet said, sounding like she was at the end of her rope. "But in case there is, I'll have Security start trying to trace it. If it's as sealed as Blanket says, I'm not sanguine about them finding it, though."
She rubbed her forehead as though she could erase the troubles within.
"This is making me crazy. All I know for sure is that kid is dangerous] She can go mind-dancing with the AI, Rob! No one's ever done that, no one!
Having her here is like sitting on a bomb! What are we going to do? She's only eleven. What's she going to do to us when she's twelve? Fifteen?"
Rob put a hand on Janet's shoulder. "I know. It is frightening. But I was in her mind, and I saw how terrified she was. I can't believe she'd go back in the AI again voluntarily. She was scared almost literally to death, Janet. And with Doctor Blanket to keep tabs on her, she can't do anything without us finding out immediately! What else can we do?"
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