Hellspark (32 page)

As Tocohl reached up to remove it, she gasped, causing layli-layli to look sharply in her direction.

Tocohl snapped, “Nothing dangerous. Take care of Alfvaen,” but she let swift-Kalat remove the mike from her neck and hand it to Buntec.

Om im said, “Possible broken rib, layli-layli

,” and earned himself a glare from the Hellspark.

“Never mind that,” said Tocohl with an exasperated look, first at him, then at the sprookje. “I’m fine,” she repeated with the sprookje still speaking emphasis, “take care of Alfvaen.”

Behind the exasperation, her face was ashen.

“Barefoot!” said Buntec; she reached into the exposed workings of the throat mike with a hemostat and withdrew a tiny object which she laid in the palm of her hand. “Maggy was right,”

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she said curtly, holding it out for the others to inspect.

“Can you disable it?” Tocohl asked.

“Not without the proper tools,” she gestured at what was available to her, “like working on a clipper

engine with a sledgehammer.”

Layli-layli calulan slid from the rear of the daisy-clipper. She handed Alfvaen’s throat mike to

Buntec, then climbed into the pilot’s seat and strapped in. “I’ll send someone for the rest of you as soon as I’m out of range of the jammer. Get in, Hellspark.”

Buntec made a second dive into the interior of the daisy-clipper. “Emergency rations,”

she announced, “I’m famished.” She tore into the box with fervor.

“Get in, Hellspark,”

layli-layli calulan repeated. This time Tocohl obeyed. Swift-Kalat helped her into the remaining empty seat, and seeing she was unable to reach the seat belt without renewed pain, he drew the strap and handed it across to layli-layli who snapped it shut for her.

“Take good care of Sunchild, Om im,” Tocohl said and smiled wanly at the echoing sprookje.

Om im touched the hilt of his blade in acknowledgment.

Between bites, Buntec said, “Tocohl, layli-layli

—don’t mention the Hayashi jammer. Say we lost the throat mikes! Say anything, or nothing! I’ll find a way to disable it without destroying the evidence.

We’ll see whoever planted them hung!”

“Yes,” said Tocohl, and then she lapsed into silence.

Layli-layli calulan turned the daisy-clipper back toward the river, traveling as swiftly as she dared.

Just as they reached the smoother surface of the river, the arachne stood up. Picking its way carefully onto the seat, its fragile legs straddling Tocohl, it tilted its camera eye up to scan her face anxiously.

“Tocohl! Are you all right?

Tocohl

!

“Let them sleep, maggy-maggy

. They need the rest.”

But Tocohl stirred and opened her eyes. Her words were barely audible but relief rang in them.

“Maggy,” she said, “you’re all right!” Then she closed her eyes again. Some of the pain had left her face.

The arachne raised an extremity to touch Tocohl’s cheek. Then it canted closer to speak in layli-layli calulan

’s ear, “She may have a broken rib—”

“I know. Have a look at Alfvaen if you can manage it without waking them.”

While layli-layli calulan reached for the comunit to report the location of the rest of the party, the arachne, balancing precariously, climbed the backrest to inspect Alfvaen.

Buntec brushed crumbs from her breast and said, “I have an idea that might work. Look around for a small Eilo’s-kiss.” She began to dismantle the two remaining throat mikes to check for additional jammers. “A good jolt of electricity should fuse the buggers solid.

Hah

!” She’d found a second jammer, which she handed delicately to swift-Kalat to hold with the first.

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“Toes!” she continued, “what I wouldn’t give for a look at the innards of that daisy-clipper that so conveniently crashed on us.”

Swift-Kalat said, “You mean might have been sabotaged?”

it

“I checked the engine before we left camp, swift-Kalat, and it was in perfect working order then!

After which,” she scowled, “I left it to the mercies of a Maldeneantine and a sprookje.” This time, she turned the scowl on Sunchild.

“I found one,” Om im announced. “A small Eilo’s-kiss.” He looked at swift-Kalat. “If it hadn’t been for Buntec, we’d all be dead now: I know of only a dozen people who can handle a daisy-clipper that well and Buntec’s the only one present on the expedition.” He made a cheerful bow in her direction.

Grinning, Buntec returned the bow, and taking the two Hayashi jammers from swift-Kalat, she grasped them carefully between the jaws of a rubber-handled pliers from the tool kit. “Lead on,” she said, and picked her way carefully through the glittering underbrush in Om im’s wake.

She approached the Eilo’s-kiss cautiously and began to stretch in its direction. “Wait, Buntec,”

said

Om im.

“Rubber-handled pliers,” said Buntec.

“I’m not worried. Sunchild is.”

Buntec glanced at the sprookje. Its mouth was agape, displaying its red warning tongue. “Yeah, I know,” she told it, sticking out her own tongue in imitation.

Then, with her free hand, she touched Sunchild on the wrist, stroked lightly as she’d seen Tocohl do.

“Relax, friend—I don’t plan to fry.”

She touched the pliers to the Eilo’s-kiss and was rewarded with a snap and a bright spark.

Withdrawing her arm, she looked at the tip of the pliers. “Overzealous little bugger,” she said, releasing the two jammers into her palm, “Ow!—but that should have fused them solid.”

Buntec thrust the jammers into her pocket. Taking the remains of the throat mikes from swift-Kalat, she said, “May I have your attention for a moment?” Curious, he gave it—and Buntec flung the mikes deep into the flashwood, as far as they would go, where they disappeared in arabesque vine and squealing pig thicket.

“Oh, foot!” said Buntec, “I lost the throat mikes.”

Swift-Kalat smiled; Buntec smiled back, pleased that he found her fiction acceptable by Jenji standards.

“And just in time.” Om im grinned and pointed: two daisy-clippers emerged from the flashwood.

Moments later, Hitoshi Dan was pounding backs all around, welcoming them like lost children.

He was so happy to see them he gave the same welcome to swift-Kalat, who hadn’t been lost.

Buntec didn’t begrudge it in the slightest.

On the skirt of the daisy-clipper, Om im paused and held out the edge of his cloak to Sunchild.

The sprookje took it, loosed it, then turned and stepped into the flashwood, headed in the direction of base camp. “Thanks, but I’ll walk,” Om im interpreted with a grin. “After the last ride you had, I’m not at all surprised.” He bounced aboard and gave Edge-of-Dark a flourish and a wave. Edge-of-Dark took his meaning; the daisy-clipper dashed for base.

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VERYTHING REACTIVATED SIMULTANEOUSLY—from the arachne to Tocohl’s 2nd skin and implant to Alfvaen’s hand-held—and simultaneously Maggy assessed it all.

The view from

Tocohl’s spectacles, though Maggy enhanced it, showed only the tuft of moss that the sprookje had given her; Tocohl had apparently put the spectacles in her pouch. From the arachne, Maggy saw

Tocohl’s still “booted” feet; the programming she’d read into the 2nd skin’s local microprocessors had held even through the lapse of contact, she noted. (Tocohl!) she said through the implant, (Tocohl!)

There was still no response. Maggy sent the arachne up for a better look while she checked the sensors in Tocohl’s 2nd skin. Heart—and breath-rate close to normal—normal for unconsciousness, at any rate—but the swelling beneath Tocohl’s skin at the third rib on the right spoke of injury.

Using the arachne’s vocoder, she tried to rouse Tocohl to consciousness. She was somewhat surprised to realize that she would have kept trying, despite layli-layli calulan

‘s injunction, had Tocohl not stirred and spoken. “Maggy, you’re safe!”

(Veschke’s sparks!) Maggy said. (You thought something had happened to me

!) But Tocohl had lapsed back into unconsciousness and Maggy finished the thought to herself, Of course! All our contact had gone dead. You were as afraid for me as I was for you.

Having assessed the data from the 2nd skin, Maggy concluded a seventy percent chance Tocohl’s rib was broken. Concluding as well that layli-layli calulan had little interest in probability by percentage, she said only, “She may have a broken rib—”

Layli-layli calulan

, as Maggy had expected, already knew, but asked her to look at Alfvaen.

Assuming Alfvaen still had the hand-held… Maggy sent the arachne over the backrest of Tocohl’s seat.

It was no easy task manipulating the mobile in a moving vehicle, especially without stepping all over

Tocohl. When she had at last landed and steadied it beside Alfvaen, she promptly switched a high proportion of her attention to the Siveyn.

While layli-layli notified base camp that Om im and Buntec were safe and gave the location where swift-Kalat waited with them, Maggy probed Alfvaen. “Asleep,” she pronounced when her words would no longer be an interruption, “at least her heartbeat and respiration are the same as I noted when she slept normally.”

“That’s encouraging. Buntec says she seemed to sober, then began to hallucinate. She challenged Tocohl to a death duel, that’s why she’s tied. I can’t tell you anything about those growths on her skin.

They might be a symptom of Cana’s disease that hasn’t yet been noted, or they might be—” The daisy-clipper lurched slightly;

layli-layli calulan did not finish the sentence.

She concentrated on piloting for a moment, then said, in a different tone, “Your last hunch was right:

Buntec found an Hayashi jammer in Tocohl’s throat mike. But that’s a secret, you’re not to tell anyone about that just yet.”

“I will tell Tocohl.”

“Of course. That was understood. But no one else.”

Maggy scanned Alfvaen once more, considering as she did the state of Tocohl’s rib and the fact that fiction had proved true in the case of the Hayashi jammer. She was silent for the remainder of the trip upriver as she recalled all the relevant Siveyn literature.

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By the time they arrived within sight of base camp, Maggy had reached what she thought a good conclusion. “That must mean that Alfvaen and Tocohl are best friends,” she said aloud.

“I beg your pardon?”

Layli-layli calulan sounded so puzzled that Maggy momentarily lost her certainty, until she recalled that layli-layli calulan simply didn’t know the Siveyn as well as she did. “If Alfvaen challenged Tocohl to a death duel,” Maggy said, “they must be best friends. I didn’t know they were.” She sought the analogous situation—midway through Alfvaen’s favorite fiction—and found in Tocohl’s gloss the comment: “Don’t worry, Maggy. It’ll all work out right. It always does in a case like this.” Maggy knew from Tocohl’s tone that this was intended to be reassuring, so she told layli-layli calulan precisely the same.

Whether it served to reassure layli-layli or not, Maggy couldn’t tell. They had reached the base camp and the shaman shot over the barbed-wire perimeter to ground the daisy-clipper, with a jarring thump, directly in front of the infirmary. She exited shouting commands to those who waited with stretchers.

Maggy made sure the arachne got in no one’s way, then sent it springing into the infirmary after them all.

Alfvaen and Tocohl had already been transferred from stretchers to beds. “Out,”

layli-layli calulan commanded, “that means everyone but you”—she pointed a finger stripped of its bluestone ring at

Kejesli. Maggy ducked the arachne under a bed; she was not leaving Tocohl unobserved by any means at her disposal. “—And you,”

layli-layli calulan finished; she thrust her pointing finger under the edge of the bed in the general direction of the arachne.

Concluding that she meant to let the arachne stay, Maggy poked it hesitantly from concealment.

Layli-layli scooped it and set it beside Alfvaen. “We’ll get to Tocohl in a moment,” she said, stripping the ring from her other hand, “but notify me if you sense any change in her condition.”

Tocohl seemed to be resting comfortably, so Maggy concentrated her attention on Alfvaen.

Layli-layli snipped through Alfvaen’s bonds and, having shifted her to a more comfortable position, strapped her firmly to the cot, the catch-releases out of reach. Then she peeled back Alfvaen’s 2nd skin, giving Maggy’s camera eye a good look at the growths, and attached to her body various medical sensors. Next she took a sample of the gray filaments from Alfvaen’s skin.

Behind her, Kejesli gasped. “Garbage plants!”

Without hesitation or a need to scan her Sheveschkem files, Maggy interpreted that tone as one of horror. She corrected him instantly: “No, they are not garbage plants. They bear only a superficial resemblance to the species I was shown.”

“Good,” said layli-layli calulan

, “and thank you, maggy-maggy

, that saves me a lot of time.—Captain, there are sedatives in the cabinet to your right if you need one.” She set the diagnostic machine to its task of preparing slides of the sample.

Kejesli, as if exhausted, slumped suddenly into a chair, where he watched layli-layli with tired eyes.

If such behavior did not worry layli-layli calulan

, Maggy decided, it would not concern her either.

“While we’re waiting for the slides…”

Layli-layli held out her arms, inviting the arachne into them.

Layli-layli carried it across the room to place beside Tocohl.

Seeing she needed access to Tocohl’s injury, Maggy provided it: the 2nd skin peeled away from
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Tocohl’s ribcage in broad strips.

Layli-layli first probed the swelling with gentle hands, then confirmed her shaman’s diagnosis with a sounding scanner. “Yes, the rib’s broken. No complications to that though.