37 - Oh My Dear and Protective Page!

Terry dove into central processing, finding that the node he was encased in – the entire moon station was a computing node – was filled with more information than he could imagine. The great node was down on the planet itself of course; probably as part of the Font of All Knowledge’s palace.

From his vantage point he could see the pulsing webwork of lines as people with appropriate access, the right class, tapped into cenproc from wherever they were, at whatever time.  A seething world, each person in a bubble of their own processing, interacting, trading information that showed as colours.  A world that he'd had no idea was there.

It was simple.  If people didn’t know what they were missing, or were told it was just beyond their comprehension, besides your great great grandfather signed away your rights to access that knowledge anyway... People just didn’t bother.  Or were punished away from wanting to know about it.

Terry had to close his mind down for a moment, think of coolness and space, just breathing.  He couldn't help remembering the smell of a nasty, nasty summer week when he’d been punished for inappropriate questions and rebellion, refusal to stop challenging father... he’d been locked in a lightless closet the whole time, with a chamber pot and water and that was it.

Now he looked down at the planet, the whole system working, glittering, in front of him.  These programs were overseeing the biomats in the north, locking the sand down so that the winds wouldn’t cover up good earthan soil with poisons and kill rare and precious imported plants and animals.

Horses.  Why horses?  They were so big... and needed so much water... the computer code was spread over the globe in a way that he entirely expected.  Everything centred around Xanadu, fading to a thin, even spread over the rest of the planet, with hot spots where earthan reforming was actively happening.

Everything was on hold now, though. Because of the cessation of the water coming from the moon.  But...

Behind his eyes, Terry looked again at the code.  It didn’t make perfect sense.  There were at least two hot spots, still active coded ancient and long-term. But there was more activity there than should be --and a great deal more than was listed.  An earthan code that had self-modified to be that efficient that it was spreading without support?

There were a handful of ancient codes relegated to this particular continent but nobody bothered with it anymore.  Maybe in a thousand years or so when they needed more space. It had been renamed Hinnom and forgotten about after... After Gregori and Petra’s people ... along with Nancia, on Sheol... all perished in those awful plagues and sandstorms after the illness that had nearly killed everyone.  That latitude obviously needed more work before human beings could comfortably... what is that?

A faint glitter of ancient code.  Owner code, but nothing like the Font’s.  It was an entirely different signature. It was a completely new access... temporary but...

With a grunt, Terry settled deeper into his lounge chair and started to go down into the code plastered through and into the continent of Hinnom. How is an owner... how is an owner making new code on an abandoned continent? There are no owners but one, the Font of All Knowledge, Perrin Thermontaler, the Owner and sole proprietor of the planetary company of Chishiki. But...the colour of that was wrong.  It was strong. It was bright. Perrin’s coding is always bright yellow.  This was bright blue. The code here appears normal, there’s an antivirus purge just finished... there’s a pale white streak of code that opens an access.  A backdoor but it’s the size of a small cat perhaps. A rat? A ferret or a weasel? That’s impossible.  Animals cannot code. OH MY DEAR AND PROTECTIVE PAGE!!! BEES!

36 - Your Main Target

“Your main target should be the surdeniliarch and His Radiance,” Shashi said.  “Normally you understand I’d put Lainz first, but we’ve got a political situation developing here that the Milar need their war master for.”

“Endarken.” Dukir searched his thoughts for a moment.   

“Something to do with the Rumon?”

“Everything always happens at once, you always said.”

She looked tired and it wasn’t just the new mother tiredness.  Even with all the zardukar behind her, maintaining the four in code was wearing.

“What does the konsiliarch sound like?”

“Concerned that she hasn’t heard from Ilax in a few days.  Says, somewhat tartly, that this lin was supposed to make communication between our countries possible not cut it off all together.”

“Let her know that it’s to do with Xanadu and the Owner.”

“You’ll be out with them before I write to her next, surely.”

Dukir settled himself on his couch, checked that he had the stinger firmly set in his cheek, smiled at his daughter.  “Of course.”

**

The stinger, from Diryish, was a gold button that stung like bakon shit when it activated. *owner permissions confirmed. Temporary access granted.*

The code land became apparent to him slowly, as if a fog were thinning in front of his eyes, layers of code, like an onion, layers of access. Each layer... if he entered it, would probably open up to him as if he were stepping into a complete land.  No wonder you never showed me this, Diryish. He wanted to swear but it was just overwhelming to see.

I can’t make sense of it all, in just this one trip.  But I know what I’m looking for.  I’m not too proud to follow a ferret.  And I’m never going to let the boys forget that, once I get the lot of them out of that level.

The trick was not to try and go inside, and find a code from there, but let it spin and whirl like a soap bubble unpopped.  You could see all the way to the core, the owner’s core, if you were patient and had the strength.  All Dukir needed to do was follow that simple streak of white fur that marked the ferret’s passage.

That level. That segment. Ahah! Bees.  A honey tree full of bees.  That’s my boys.

All I need to do is dig my line in here... outside these levels... reach my hand in... He caught a bee in his reaching hand and it dug into his palm as if he were home.  He didn’t flinch, but reached right into the image of the tree, grabbed a branch, felt the grasp of palm and then the sword-callused hand grabbing for and latching onto his wrist.

Then wait.  Wait for every far flung bee to gather together, here, before he yanked both of these idiot young men out of the owner’s control. *D...ukir?* it was Kyrus, His Radiance.   

*Dukir! Oh, Light and Dark! Ilax! You aren’t a hive of bees... I’m not a tree!  We cannot play the owner’s games here, he caught us!  Ilax!*

*I’m here. Spymaster.* Ilax’s voice grew stronger as the hive of bees gathered. *I’m almost together and have information.  Wait for that last dozen of bees...*

*Security! We’ve got to... what the fak... Tizrav!*

The ferret leapt straight into a security dragon’s face, grabbed it by the nostrils like a snake and shook her body like a whip-crack.  The program dissolved in a sparkle of subroutines as the honey tree and the hive reformatted their shapes into Ilax and Kyrus.

*Get us out of here!*

The distant thunder, as more programs realized there was a virus in their system, rolled toward them.  Dukir took a mental breath and heaved.  He hadn’t let go the moment he’d laid a hand on them and Kyrus hadn’t let go his wrist in turn.  It seemed as though they jumped and then it was like pulling someone out of waist-deep sand. Fak it was like pulling an old warbird out of neck deep sand. The ferret sneezed and jumped away, into the bush, making it clear she could find her own way home.

Dukir felt like he was being torn in two but the membrane between that reality and this one stretched and stretched, Ilax and Kyrus pressing out against it. Then it popped as they followed the hole his hand had made, sending them tumbling out of code entirely, and sealed behind them.

The whole world went from silent to chaos.  Zardukar cheering, laughing. One or two just weeping.  The hive roared up away from everyone but Hara and Kyrus the younger. Rasheem came clashing in to make sure everyone was safe. Ilax sat up creakily slowly on his couch, coughing, and Kyrus rolled right off onto the floor, catching himself on his forearms before his forehead smacked into the floor.  “Ow.” Babies, startled out of sleep whimpered or cried and were soothed or nursed into a happier, at least quieter, state.

Dukir sat up rather more quickly, since he’d just dipped into and then out of code.  He ran his tongue over the raw patch on his inner cheek where the stinger had dissolved.   

“Welcome back, Radiance and Surdeniliarch. You have to leave this project for a time, there’s political situations brewing.  I hope the owner hasn’t noticed all this ‘poking holes’ in his country.”

Voice raw, Ilax coughed again and accepted the propolis from one of the zardukar and people quieted down to hear what he had to say.  “I... see.  The owner’s codes are a mish mash of good and bad and they don’t all work well together.  One reason we could hide so well was that his security dragons tend to cycle to a certain point, then freeze and reset and they aren’t set up to cover this hole, so I don’t think he’ll notice.” His eyes went over to his daughter’s still form, her eyes flickering back and forth under her eyelids, but he addressed Mother Thriti, even as he levered himself up to go to her.  “Inamour, are you all right?  Are you all here? What political situation?  How long have we been under? Why are they in the code?”

“You were lost long enough for them to try and get you out,” Dukir said. Ilax nearly stumbled to the seat between Ky and Hara’s couches.  “That’s why I’m so weak?”

“Are you all right, deovar?” Kyrus’s voice came from where they’d helped him up and sat him back down on his couch.   

“We’ve been in the code for days.”

“Endarkened.”

35 - I Have One Trick

Dukir, worn to a thin shadow of himself, paced back and forth in the hall outside the throneroom.  Inside, the lot of them lay, unconscious, unmoving, barely breathing. The boy’s ferret lay curled under his chin, also locked away somewhere. The bees hovered, dove on them, then hovered again. It looked like one of the old folk tales where a sleeping curse had been laid across the kingdom.

The Dry was on the edge of ending, the last, desperate gasp of heat where everything was down to dregs of moisture and desiccated; hardened and mummified with a kernel of moisture left in its centre.

Dukir had killed a warbird getting here so quickly, and very nearly killed himself, as if his physical presence could actually help, sending another of his out to the edge to try and pick up his operatives in Xanadu, to support them if they should need it.  Dammit young man, you are a good Radiance.  My old friend threw great children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren... why did you have to go and do something so stupid as to get yourself lost in the owner’s country? The empty wind blew across the open galleries, moaning, as he paced.

He rubbed a finger over the mark the temporary nose-ring he’d worn as a warbird racer, to cover his story getting back to the city so quickly. They were all crazy enough to race... and were paid to race even in the Dry.

“An endarkened, fakkin’ ferret can get in and I can’t?  I want to go in and haul them all out by their collective ears and loincloths!”

“Da, you taught me that an intelligence officer who talks to himself is on the edge of retirement,” Shashi’s voice was fond as she stepped through the security door to the hallway, the Rasheem standing well back out of the range of the veil of bees over the door.  The Great Hive had been upset and no one dared cross a single bee right now. Her daughter peeked under her armpit from the baby sling.

“Silly of me, I know.”  The look he gave her as she pressed a glass into his hand and a roll into the other, was partly annoyed.  “I’m not hungry and I don’t need –“

“Stop it.  You’re going to try and go in.  I know.  Even if all you can do is storm around the edges and raise a ruckus then that is what you’ll do.”

Child of mine.  If a ferret can get in, I will most certainly get in.  Even if I have to follow the ferret down the rat hole.  Which is actually what I intend to do.

“Eat,” she continued.  “We have to get them out soon or we might lose Ilax first.  He’s the least use to coding in that state.”

“But he’s a mander warrior so he’s probably got a lot more fight in him than you give the man credit for.” Dukir ate the roll in three bites, hardly tasting it, chased it with the drink, glad to not taste it.  He’d never gotten the taste for the bitter propolis mix.  He handed her the glass.  “You’re right though.  I’ll have water and then we’ll see if I enter from here, with the rest of them.”

Her smile was solid, though he could see the fear she hid from everyone else.  One by one we go in, and we don’t come out.  It could be Perrin’s security doing it, but I don’t think so.  I think it’s loss of line and sources.  Stack us all up like cord-wood... like code wood.  Hah.  I’m going to go in and really see what’s going on.  I have a single trick that Diryish left me that I might use.

Kyril Oakwind

You may have noticed in the comments in post 34.  Kyril Oakwind has lost her battle with cancer.

Savage Kitsune just let me know (thank you SK) that she went into hospice care on Saturday and died that night.

She was a fan and a commentor and I just cannot concentrate on other words than these, tonight.

I never met her face to face but I feel she was a friend.  We spoke through the bookblogs.  I thought that my words made her happy and her commentary certainly always, always brightened my day and gave me encouragement.

Ave, Kyril.   

34 - I Flyer Than Dragon

I want boy. My boy.  I fierce. I sleek.  I not happy. Want happy. I day day day happy, then not happy. Want happy back.  Tizrav! Tizrav!  My boy is still.  Pfft sneeze. Too still.  I lie on he chest and put nose up under ear and snuffle pfff and he not twitch.  He not there.  I getting old need to hunt male soon.  My male.  Make lots and lots and lots of little slinkhunters.

I a hunter.  I slinksneak through darkest tunnel.  Tunnels.  There.  Tunnels in the head. Dream tunnels.  I curl on he chest, tuck nose under tail.  I hunt my boy... and he and her and him and him...the old males... all in the dreamland.  Dream tunnels. Thick and thick and all colour.

Sniff.

Sniff. Pff sneeze.

Scratch.

Snarl. Thing like worms with eyes taste like venom.  Snake. Peacock snake. I pounce! SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE ROLL BITE SHAKE SNARLING SHAKE.

It taste nasty. My dream-self pees on it and it goes 'way like dream things hunted do. All dream prey goes 'way, can't eat here. Pfft sneeze. Why he here?  This is silly.  No eating here. He and she and he and he and he all need to come home.

I trail.  Pff sneeze. Old he. Old hes. Hiding. I hunt I trail I am slitherslink silkswift windhunter.

In my dreams I ignore dragons. They ignore me. They stupid.

Trees that scream scent and I sneeze and sneeze pfft roll in them.  This dream stinks. Sneeze. Pfff. This dream has lava and glass and thorns and bitey things and stingers and stickers and stick to me’s.

Hunting. Pff sneeze. I dance and jump and shake them off, bite them down, tear them.  Pffft sneeze. I dance. I slither. I sleek.  I mark the nasty trees make them mine.  I fierce.

Pff sneeze. I hotter than lava. I dancer than wind. I flyer than dragon. I prettier than peacock snake. I sleeker than water. I dance. I sleek along. I bounce bounce bounce crash slide hide lick.  I lick scent.  Nose quiver, whisker dance. Whisker taste. Body taste.

I want my boy.  I dance on his head make him stay still. I best tunnel hunter in the world. I am Tizrav.  I find he.  And her. And he and he and he.  I am Tizrav.