by Linda Nagata
Mounds were Chenzeme devices modified by the Well governors. They were supposed to collect data on human beings … and the plagues that could affect them? Skye hoped so. “Okay Ord,” she said, stepping back at last. “It’s up to you now. Can you find evidence of the Compassion plague? And can you find a cure?” Among all the long, green, data-bearing molecules that crawled through the Well’s biosphere and colored its water, there had to be some smart molecular machine that could defeat the Chenzeme nanotech weapon she carried in her cells.
“City library agrees it is possible,” Ord said. “Skye is very smart to know this. Good Skye.”
“Now, Ord.”
“Yes.”
She looked at Devi. He smiled encouragement. Then he nudged Buyu. They exchanged a strange look. Then they stepped back several paces. Skye frowned suspiciously, but she was distracted by Ord as it explored the mound, gingerly touching it with the sensitive suction cups at the ends of its tentacles. Finally, it rolled the end of one tentacle into a sharp spear point and pierced the mound. There was a hiss, as a horrible odor erupted from the wound. Skye hadn’t thought anything could smell worse than the stink Ord had released in the tunnel, but this – it was worse. She screamed in disgust and scampered away, crashing into Zia in her haste to escape the stench. “Oh, help me,” Zia moaned, falling dramatically to her knees. “Even Ord’s farts don’t smell that bad.”
Upslope and upwind, Devi was half bent over with laughter, while Buyu wore a twisted smile, as if he were trapped between guilt and amusement. “You knew!” Skye accused. “You both knew Ord would pop open that stink.”
“Sooth,” Devi grinned. “I did some reading on mounds last night. They present some interesting questions.”
“Yeah? Question this!” She scooped up a handful of humus and half-rotted leaves from the wet forest floor, and threw it at him. He dodged, and dove laughing behind a fallen log covered in green and brown moss. Skye raced up the slope with another clump of humus in hand and slammed it down on the backside of the log … then peered over to see the results of her work. But Devi was gone.
Uh-oh.
The counterassault fell before she could scramble away: a tall shrub leaning over the log started to shake violently, showering her in huge drops of water. “Gutter dog,” she growled, swiping her wet hair out of her face.
It wasn’t even noon yet, but she felt exhausted. Giving up, she sat down with her back to the log, looking at Ord as it balanced motionless on the mound, its tentacle jabbed deep inside the structure. Buyu was sitting on the ground drinking water and looking a little lost. Zia was pulling some rations out of his pack. “Here,” she said. “Eat something.” She tossed a packet toward Skye but it went wide. Devi’s hand, gloved in olive-green, reached out to catch it with a sharp smack. He leaned over the log and handed it to her. “For you, my lady.”
“Thanks.”
His red and blond hair was dripping wet. It fell half across his face as he looked at her in concern. “Are you okay?”
“Sooth.” She lied. In truth, she was feeling seriously tired, and a little dizzy. “You?”
He caught another packet from Zia and climbed over the log. Then he sat down beside her. “I look at you sometimes, and I get a little scared.”
“I look that bad?”
He smiled. “Hey Ord,” he called. “Find anything?”
“Yes Devi. Many plague vectors and associated antibodies. Much Earth-clade genetic data. Also, information storage systems and—”
“Have you found what we’re looking for?” Devi interrupted.
“City library says yes.”
At first Skye wasn’t sure she had heard right. Then a hot flush of relief rushed out of her pores. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the log, realizing for the first time just how really scared she had been.
“Hey.”
She opened her eyes and turned to look at Devi. With his long, wild hair falling over his tanned face, he did not look much like the mannered astronomer she had met on a rooftop just last night. He gazed into her eyes and he said, “You’re okay. You understand? It’s all going to work out.”
She nodded, blinking back a sudden, frightening surge of tears. The lifeboats were out there, she was sure of it. And if Ord was right, then the Compassion plague they carried wouldn’t be a threat to anyone anymore.
Chapter 12
Ever since the warden had been destroyed, Buyu had been in radio contact with the explorers stationed at the elevator column, assuring them his party was in no danger. Now he looked at Devi and said, “Another warden is on its way.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” Devi’s face was bright with a triumphant grin. “We’ve got what we came for.”
Skye reached up to her shoulder to stroke Ord’s tentacle. “Now comes the scary part. We have to tell city authority what we’ve learned.”
“They won’t want to listen to us,” Zia said. “We’re just dumb ados.”
Skye thought about it. “You know, I think there’s only one person we need to convince.” She plucked Ord off her shoulder, holding the little robot in one hand like a doll. A smooth, gold, gelatinous doll, with a round head and tentacles for arms. Its body felt firm yet flexible, a water-filled cushion warm against her skin. “Ord, I want you to contact Yulyssa for me. Real time.”
“Sure Skye. Then go home?”
“Sounds like a good plan to me.”
Ord’s face took on a look of intense concentration. Several seconds passed. Then its mouth opened. It spoke in Yulyssa’s voice.
“Skye?”
She sounded worried. Skye realized she had never contacted Yulyssa in this way before. Quickly, she explained where she was, though she did not explain why. “Yulyssa, I need your help. I’ve learned something about my great ship, and it’s of concern to everyone in Silk.”
Skye expected an outcry, but Yulyssa’s answer was calm. “Tell me.”
“Not like this. I have to say it all at once or no one will listen. I want you to get me an audience with the city council.”
This request silenced Yulyssa for several seconds. Skye imagined her accessing data bases, checking the news … or just thinking. Finally Ord’s mouth moved again. “You’re sure, Skye? The city council is not a forum for speculations. Unless you have something concrete, I don’t think—”
“They’ll want to know!” Skye insisted. “Trust me on this. Please.”
Again, Skye listened to a long interval of silence. Then, “All right. I’ll request an audience.”
“As soon as we reach the city, okay? It would be dangerous to delay.”
Sensei Matilé met them at the elevator terminus. Her hard-eyed gaze went straight to Buyu. “Buyu Mkolu, you have failed at your first duty as an explorer: to keep your clients safe.”
“He has not!” Zia interrupted. “Buyu used the warden to distract the viperlion. Without his quick thinking, Skye might have—”
“Clients should never be permitted to approach dangerous wildlife.” Sensei Matilé straightened her already-straight shoulders. “Buyu Mkolu. Your presence is required at an official inquiry this evening.”
Buyu met her gaze, looking grim but determined. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Unfortunately,” Sensei Matilé continued, “the inquiry will have to wait until after an emergency council hearing. Buyu Mkolu, you have been summoned to testify, along with your clients. I am to escort you there. I don’t know what’s gone on today, young man, but I will find out.”
Danger was a word the city council always respected. Every member had faced the unexpected rise of perilous events many times in their long lives. They had seen terrible things, and survived them. It was not in their nature to dismiss warnings, even if the warning came from an ado who was barely fourteen.
Skye sat with Devi, Zia, and Buyu, at a broad table in the council chamber. Ord fidgeted nervously, clinging to the table’s underside. Ever since they’d boarded the return elevator, Ord had urged th
em over and over again to report to the monkey house. Skye tried to be patient. She explained why they couldn’t, but Ord would not accept it.
As they had taken their seats in the council chamber, Ord crouched on the table, starting in again. “Please Skye. There are puzzle pieces in your sweat. Please go—”
She leaned forward, whispering fiercely, “If you mention the monkey house one more time, I’ll give you to Zia to play with. I swear I will.”
Ord fled beneath the table, though Skye could still feel the tap of its tentacles against her knees.
Like the others, she still wore her skin suit. Her hair was still soggy from the rain. And she was tired. She rubbed at her face with the palms of her hands, wishing she could just go home, go to sleep, deal with things tomorrow.
Impossible.
She looked up at the waiting council members. Six of the seven were already present. They sat behind a raised desk, staring down at the four ados who had summoned them. Two of them were actually present, in the flesh. The other four had come as ghosts—holographic projections—though they looked absolutely real. Skye knew they were ghosts only because she had seen them wink into existence instead of walking into the room.
One councilor looked annoyed at this sudden meeting. Most of the others seemed curious. Only Kona Lukamosch, the council president, appeared openly concerned.
Kona had been reelected every year as council president ever since the city was settled. He was a large, well-muscled man, dressed in black, with long black hair fixed in tiny braids gathered in a neat ponytail at the back of his neck. Skye felt uncomfortable under his gaze, so she turned to look at the audience behind her.
There were seats for at least a hundred spectators, but so far only about twenty were taken. Yulyssa sat in the center of the front row, between Sensei Matilé and Devi’s mother, Siva Hand. Behind them were Buyu’s parents, surrounded by an entourage of aunts and uncles and cousins. Zia’s mother and father had also come, though they were sitting (as usual) on opposite sides of the auditorium. Behind the family members, Skye recognized three mediots from some of the less popular news and gossip services.
Of course there was no telling how many of the city’s six and a half million people would watch the video transmission of this hearing. Probably not many. Skye hoped it wouldn’t be many. She pushed her wet hair out of her face with a nervous hand, just as a holographic projection of the seventh councilor winked on behind the raised desk.
“All present,” council president Kona Lukamosch said. He was one of the two councilors who was not a ghost. His gaze fixed on Skye. “Skye Object 3270a.”
“Sir.”
“We’ve gathered here at the request of Yulyssa DeSearange, one of the city’s most respected citizens. Yet Yulyssa was unable to tell us the subject of this session. Perhaps you could enlighten us?”
“Yes sir.” She struggled against her fear and her misgivings. A rosy flush heated her cheeks. If she had a choice, she knew she would choose to disappear. She would give anything to be alone in her bedroom, waking up from a bad dream. But this was real, and it was about more than just herself and her own future.
She swallowed against a dry throat. Then she said, “Sir? I do ask that you let me make my full explanation, before you reach any judgment.”
“Huh.” It was a skeptical grunt. “We’ll do what we must.”
“Yes sir.” She glanced at Devi. He nodded encouragement. Zia squeezed her hand. So Skye began her story in a voice that shook only a little. “As you probably know, I wasn’t born here in Silk …”
At first she explained to them only what they already knew, that she had arrived in Silk on a lifeboat, that nothing was known of her past, and that it had always been assumed she was the lone survivor of a great ship destroyed by the Chenzeme.
“An accident happened yesterday that made me rethink that explanation.”
She told of her bloody nose, and of what Ord had found when it performed a routine analysis of her blood. “In six days, maybe longer, I’ll become contagious, capable of spreading Compassion plague to every adult in Silk. A day or two after that, I’ll die.”
Two of the council members sprang to their feet, demanding an explanation. Others, including Kona, looked thoughtful. Skye guessed they were linked through their atriums to the city library.
“There is no danger just yet,” she said softly.
“According to your DI companion!” one of the councilors shouted. “Is it a medical specialist? I don’t think so.”
“It has contact with medical specialists,” Skye said, her voice shaking a little more now.
Kona Lukamosch spoke next. “This room will be sealed until the status of this infection is confirmed.” The audience murmured in outrage and fear, but Kona ignored them. He fixed Skye with a calculating gaze. “Please go on.”
She nodded. “It occurred to us”—Here she glanced at Devi, Zia, and Buyu—“that my great ship might not have fallen victim to a Chenzeme warship after all. If Compassion plague was taking the lives of all the adults, it would only make sense for them to try to save their children—all their children—by putting us aboard lifeboats. We weren’t sick. We wouldn’t have shown any sign of the disease. So they would have no reason to think we were plague carriers too.
“It’s true that no other lifeboats have ever been seen. I don’t know why, but I do know they’re out there. They have to be out there. I can’t be the only one.” She stared down at the table, where her gloved hand clawed at the cultured wood. Zia’s gloved hand moved to cover hers, gold on blue. “The city council has never been interested in looking for other lifeboats. I was afraid you would refuse again, if you had reason to believe these other children were carriers of an incurable plague.”
“We could never endanger the city,” Kona said softly.
Skye looked up, startled by the unexpected sympathy in his voice.
“We have a duty to protect our own people,” Kona added.
She nodded. “I know. That’s why we took this trip today, down to Deception Well. Ord told us the monkey house had no cure for Compassion. So we went to the Well, to look for a cure–”
Here some of the councilors again interrupted, outraged, but Skye continued speaking, louder now, to rise above the protests.
“The Well is known to host hundreds of thousands of Chenzeme plague structures,” she said. “Those that affect humans are concentrated in the mounds—”
“You cannot have touched the mounds!” one of the councilors cried, her voice cracking in fear.
“But I did,” Skye said.
Again a chorus of protest erupted, but Skye kept speaking, determined to get through this: “Ord tapped a mound, and found a cure.”
Then she repeated the claim to make sure everyone heard. “We found a cure! Ord found it. With the information Ord carries, the monkey house doctors will be able to synthesize a Maker that can eliminate Compassion plague. So even if every child from my great ship is a carrier, they won’t be a danger to anyone here. Please listen to me! These children are real. They are human, and they are harmless, and it’s the duty of every citizen of this city to look for them, and to rescue them.” She shook her head. “If we don’t help each other, then we might as well count ourselves the allies of our enemy, the Chenzeme.”
Buyu spoke after that. Then Devi, and finally Zia. They all told the truth. None of them flinched in their opinions. The councilors asked questions, but even so, it was over quickly. Perhaps it was too much to expect an immediate decision, but Skye was disappointed just the same. She let Ord crawl up onto her hand again, taking some comfort from the slick touch of its curling tentacles. “Skye is sad?” it whispered.
“Just a little.”
They were placed under arrest. A security officer escorted them to a temporary doorway newly opened in the floor of the council chamber. It was covered with a gel membrane. “This is a stairway down to a transit station,” the security officer explained. “Proceed one at a tim
e, and quickly board the waiting transit car.”
Skye went first. She could not see the stairs through the white membrane, so she felt for them with her booted feet. Ord clung to her hand as she moved gingerly downward. The membrane squeezed at her ankles, then her legs, her hips, her belly, her chest. Finally she ducked beneath it and found herself in a narrow passage lined with more white membrane, though here it was thin, so she could see through it to the walls of the stairway. City authority was trying to keep any possible infection contained inside the membrane’s walls.
Ord dropped from her hand and scurried ahead. “Monkey house now?”
“Sooth. No choice now.”
She glanced back, but no one else had started down yet. So she hurried forward, following Ord. The membrane became a tunnel across an empty station platform. Its end kissed the open door of a transit car. Ord scurried inside, and Skye followed. Still no one appeared behind her. The door slid shut, the membrane withdrew, and the transit car pulled away. It didn’t ask her where she wanted to go.
At the monkey house Skye was assigned to an isolation chamber. It was a comfortable-looking room, furnished with a sofa, a low table, a bouquet of flowers, and a sleeping pad. One wall was transparent. It looked out onto a small anteroom.
Skye jumped in surprise as a woman in a silver skin suit appeared suddenly beside the sofa. “Hello Skye. I’m Dr. Alloin.” She smiled, but her eyes looked worried.
The doctor was present only as a holographic projection. She relied on a collection of robotic arms to do the medical work. The arms grew out of the wall as Skye watched: tiny hands and sharp needles on the ends of long, flexible cables. It looked creepy. Even Ord hissed, batting at the arms with its tentacles until Skye whispered, “It’s okay.” But her heart was racing.
The robotic arms pinched at her, and measured her temperature. They looked down her throat and into her eyes. They took her blood. They injected her with several painful jabs. Then finally, they went away. Dr. Alloin said, “We’ve uploaded the biochemical data from your attendant. While it’s being analyzed, I’d like you to rest.”