24 - I Can

I’m appalled.  We’re in the code with Werfas getting ready to hold open our line back into our own wetware and we can’t go on.  But we have to.  My papa is in there.  Kyrus’s da is in there.  Just because I’m young doesn’t mean that I’m stupid or impetuous or silly, but I’m not giving up.

“Ky... remember when the Nadumar and the Rumon ambassadors worked together in Milar?”

“You mean when they moved the earth off the school?”

“Yes.  Could you and Werfas working together do something like that?  Make it look as random as that volcano?”

“That wasn’t random.” His voice is grim.  “That was Prime going further than just flaming his enemies into rubble.”

“Wing brother.” Werfas had come in as far as we have, because we’d stopped.  He’d picked up on the trouble the instant he clapped eyes on it.  “What we need is a way of cooling that lava where it is.  See?  The code for the volcano is far enough away that a riverwall or a rainwall could be built, here.”

We’re crouched in the talus below the road, the heat from the lava flows enough to make the sweat pop up on my face and in my armpits.  Everything is peaceful, even the distant security dragons are far enough away to be slowly sweeping elegant twinkling specks in the unnaturally blue sky.  I’m starting to really dislike that colour over my head.  It’s the colour of disaster.

“So yes we can stop the lava flow but then what?”  I had to snap at someone, fair or not. “The code for the gate is denatured.  It’s destroyed.  We still won’t be able to get in.”

“But...” Kyrus sounds thoughtful.  I refrain from poking him or teasing him right this instant so I don’t distract him.  “We’d have a dome of lava rock... solid code... to work under.”

“If we had a cliner around here who could create a space for us to work.”  Werfas grinned.  “Where ever will we find such a rare and talented fellow?”

That’s our cue to poke him, both of us, just out of relief.  We might not be able to go in immediately but we’ll have a chance to see if there’s undamaged gate code under there.  Or reinstall our own.  If the lava stone code is thick enough it won’t set off the security.

“We two can do it,” says Kyrus.  That boy.  He’s looking sideways at me.  He knows I’m as good in code as he is, but he’s still trying to get all high bird and protective on me.  Lainzer.

“All right.” I say.  “I’ll reserve my strength, just in case.”

He brightens as if I’ve given him an excuse, when I’m just being honest and straightforward.  “Just in case!”

I’m going to have to kick him once we all get out of here.  I tell myself to be serious, it’s not just Lainz who don’t treat people equally, it’s all varying degrees of weird.  I want to get my papa – both of them-- out of code first.  That’s what’s important.  Focus, Hara, I tell myself.  Keep your focus.

I draw back a little bit, keeping an eye on the dragons in the distance.  In this space you never know if it’s something big, far away, or something tiny a great deal closer.  There’s no proper perspective here and the horizon changes at Perrin’s whim.

The boys join hands and close their eyes, though they don’t need to do that here.  Below I watch code melt as Werfas makes it go away, slowly, carefully, the lava flowing humps up, dams up and the cooling surface cracks and splits to show red veins bleeding.  Land shifts and subsides and a stream rises out of the rocks near us to Ky’s calling.  He nudges it over as quietly as he can, making it look like the natural reaction of code to commands from elsewhere.

The water hits the lava and disappears, too hot to even show as steam.  It will take a while for the lava and the water to cool enough to make that dome Werfas was talking about.  If I can work hidden inside the owner’s code, surely I can slap up a new gate for us all, quickly.  I can.  I know I can.