35 - It's Just In Case

Mariush stood looking over the edge of the Sunrise Loggia balcony, watching the FireDrakes test- hurling a half-scale model of Mom, to see if they could actually get the full sized version of her into orbit.  All down the canyon, floating like odd, pulsing balloons, were the newly made ‘Catchers’ being tested as a way of getting everyone back down to the planet, should they not succeed in taking over or blocking Station.

Behind her she could hear the murmur of voices as the children spoke with their zardukar teachers.  “But why do people keep writing in the lin that you programmers… are bad?” That was Maks.  “They make zardukar sound like a filthy word!”

“Because our function was hidden by us being sex workers.  No one would look twice at us, in every Hive Lord’s bedroom.  It’s how the Lainz Emperors kept track of all the…”

She half turned so she could see down the canyon and back into the room just by turning her head.On the floor, Homa sat, shrieking with giggles as she dug her chubby little hands into a bowl full of smooth bones and hurling them into the air.  Alissa sat next to her and with flickers of her fingers melded the bone-chips into various forms that buzzed and hummed and crawled and jumped and flew all around the two. “’GAIN!” Homa squealed.

The model arced up over the edge of the rim, plunged through one of the Catchers, tearing it to shreds in the process, but slowing its fall enough to let a half dozen FireDrakes catch it.  Given that it was an unresponsive ball rather than a functioning machine attempting to help them, it was pretty impressive that they caught it.

Homa dismantled three of Alissa’s toys just by clapping her hands and they shivered into component pieces.  Alissa looked put out for a moment as the baby took apart what she’d just built, before putting her finger into the bowl and drawing out a long, elegant string of snake. A mist of wings from the bowl of sugared bees beside her rose up and made the new snake fly.  The hundreds of tiny, sugared bees’wings, discarded into the honey syrup, glittered as if they were gold as they twinkled around the slowly twining snake.  It actually moved a great deal like the ‘Drakes, though its wings were smaller.

The bone ferret on Alissa’s shoulder opened its mouth as if it squealed except there were no vocal cords, nor air to force over them.  It launched off her shoulder and began chasing the new air-snake up into the high ceiling crenulations, where they clung and clicked and rustled in the ceiling patterns.

The baby and the little girl sat, staring upwards at the once dead creatures, the baby laughing and clapping, the girl with a more than slightly confused look on her face as she reached out and took another honey-cake to nibble on.  The bone toys clicked and rattled all around them and their tea set.

Shashi and her father came up behind Mariush, quietly, watching the two girls and sparing a glance out at the machines working with the bugs.  Dukir’s hair and goatee were neat and long and clearly visible through the ornate green lace veil.  He was bent over his elaborate stick as though frail and delicate boned.  He did not resemble any of the officers he’d been playing… one bald as as an egg, the other with short hair and clean-shaven under the face coverings, unlike both his Emperor and Ilax.

“Mariush.  How is everything going?” Shashi didn’t have her youngest with her this time and helped Dukir settle onto the bench at the balcony’s edge, under the shade banners that took the place of flowers once they died back in the heat.  “How on earth is she still doing that?  I thought she was locked away from all code.”

“I don’t know.  She’s not getting enough connection to fight her restrictions.  It’s as if she can still access code but much much more slowly than she’s used to.  His Radiance gave me every code he had to let me ‘outflank’ her and make sure she doesn’t succeed in killing anything else.  We’re disagreeing about that little fact.”

“Is is her idea or a Hippifrei idea?” Dukir murmured quietly.  Alissa looked up at him as he spoke, as if his lower voice drew her attention, even away from her new best friend, Homa.

“Hippifrei.  We had no idea things were getting that bad out on the grass,” Mariush said.  “People have been forced to go into code and leave their bodies behind… so that the children could eat.  Her father did that… and it didn’t save his wife.  It saved our siwion there.  She’s badly hurt but will not credit it.  She cries and stamps and hurls the bone creatures to bits against the walls.  She only tried to hurl one at me once.  I took it away from her and ‘turned it off’ in a way she couldn’t undo.”

“So she’ll at least obey you and is – so far – not actively trying to kill people.”

Mariush looked grim.  “She also tried to kill Homa once.  Because she loves her.  But she tried it in code and Homa… my little baby… smacked her as firmly as the old man would have.  She hasn’t tried since… but she sometimes cries because Homa is alive and out of her control and could die anytime.  She worries constantly that the baby isn’t letting herself be controlled.  She chews her fingernails bloody in her sleep.”

Dukir nodded.  “But she’s sleeping regularly now, I take it?”

“Yes, and its helping.”

Alissa set the bone toys to dancing in front of Homa and wandered over to where Mariush stood.  Slowly, as if testing to see if it was all right she put out her hand and took hold of Mariush’s outer veil, carefully, between two fingers.  She didn’t look at any of the adults, but looked through the balustrade’s carved stone flowers, the fingers of her other hand, still sticky with honey, laced through the ornatework.

“Why are you doing all of that?” She asked, sounding truly curious.

“We are trying to get off planet before the next courier comes through,” Mariush explained again.  “That is if Terence doesn’t manage to subvert Station, with his Mom and his brainseed.  A contingiency plan.”

“Why don’t you just used the owner codes and make the Station give you a ride back down?” Alissa giggled as  Twenty-Three missed its swing and the model plunged several hundred feet before Fourteen and One Hundred Nine and Five managed to catch it.

“Because we don’t have the owner’s codes to either Station, or Glass Mountain,” Mariush explained patiently.

“Oh.  You could just ask me,” Alissa said and let go the balustrade to go back to Homa.  “I’ve got all the codes.  My daddy gave them to me.”

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My sincere apologies for the past week.  I've somehow gotten caught up in an 'I can't write' cycle.  Hopefully this will be fixed this week.  I took two days off around July 1, since that's our Canada Day... and couldn't manage to put word to screen after that.

I may have to take a week's formal holidays this summer... I'm not sure I can keep up my normal five days a week posting.  We'll see.  Thanks again for the support.