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She brushed a lock of dark hair off her eyebrow as she sat down across from
me, her dark eyes deep with concern. "Rechar is taking your message to Majer
Henslom. I told him to be careful."
I nodded. "What's first?"
"The number two big magshuttle will be ready at 0800 tomorrow. Lieza will be
the pilot, and I'm waiting for a return call from Subcommander Kemra."
"Next?"
"Locatio got the bloc cleared, and the marcybs are settling in. He says you
owe him."
"He's right. I do, if I live long enough for him to collect."
Keiko gave me one of those level stares.
"Bad joke," I said out loud.
"You won't get out of comptime that easily, Coordinator."
Having heard of Keiko's handling of K'gaio she was as much K'gaio's
representative as my assistant I had this feeling Keiko would drag me back
from the dead to make sure I completed my quota. She was competent enough that
she might actually manage it.
Keiko raised her eyebrows. "All right. What's next?" I braced for the rest of
her list.
After Keiko left more than forty minutes later, I looked at the screen before
me, since using the eye-resting screen was easier for admin trivia than
concentrating on holding the images mentally. And centralizing the
record-keeping certainly took less power and equipment than holding open
two-way transmissions to every demi that owed the system. Besides, that kind
of link would have required personal comptime and just added to what I owed
the locial.
Even being chief negotiator, or spokesman, or whatever for Old Earth didn't
relieve me, not in my mind, anyway, from my allotted compensatory-time. I
reached for the keyboard, then straightened. Much as I dearly wanted to
whittle it down, compensatory-time would have to wait... a long, long time,
the way matters were proceeding, and by then I'd owe enough that I'd die with
a comptime debt.
"Crucelle?"
It took a moment for him to uplink, or break whatever connection he had. 'Yes,
Ecktor?"
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"Start diverting locial critical production into the hardened stores."
"We started yesterday."
'You're more of an optimist than I am."
"That was Arielle."
"Our darkangel. Your darkangel," I corrected.
The screen beeped, and a flashing icon on the upper left corner of the screen
coincided with the mental "power interruption" alarm that rang in my thoughts.
"Another crisis. Reads cyb all over it. Link later." I broke off and tried to
scan the system.
Locial power systems were nearly foolproof and tamper-proof, but outages did
occur. The link had offered no hints, and I could sense the oversystem,
outside the admin building, was still operational. I bolted upright. At the
moment there weren't any other demis in the building, except Keiko. That
didn't surprise me. There was no sense in being at possible ground zero when
it wasn't necessary.
Standing at my door already, Keiko looked at me as I hurried out.
"I don't know, but it's here in the building," was my answer to the unspoken
question. I don't know if I took the stairs two or three at a time, but I was
on the main level fast enough.
Outside the screen room on the main level, I passed Vyl-dia draff, but draff
by choice, and bright enough. Her once-long blond hair was cut short, almost
like a marcyb.
"Hello, Vyldia."
"Hello." She looked down, but I was already well past and heading for the
closed ramps down to the mainboards and powerlinks. I slipped into the ramp
well, lit only by red lights, and eased inside the door at the top of the ramp
leading down to the first level, senses extended and hearing torqued up.
Breathing as quietly as possible, I paused inside the closed door, and let my
vision adjust to the dimness of the emergency red-lighting.
Silence except for breathing on the main access bay in the middle of the net
repeater filters. Silence, except for the muted click of a slugthrowers's
lever being switched to shred.
I dropped flat and used the overrides to kill the emergency red-lighting as
well about the only vestige of net-control left to me in the building's
powerless maintenance levels.
Rrrmrttttttttt. . . . Projectile fragments sprayed head-high, then dropped to
knee-high, uncomfortably close to my head.
As the echoes died away, I inched forward, hugging the right-hand side of the
ramp and imitating a snake sliding down through the darkness toward its prey.
I stepped-up hearing and metabolism. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]