Part 26 (2/2)
The creeping hand was at her elbow, and she could not feel relief. The fingers slid along her arm, as if they took strength or balance from her body. The weathered hand looked gray against the drab shades of her blunter. The wrinkles in the cloth forced Doetzier to lift his hand three times. But he touched the box -that red-black demon-and crept toward the winking lights.
Slow, oh, G.o.d, so slowly, as if she burned by millimeters. His fingers did not close around the edges, and she almost snarled at him to take it from her arms. She s.h.i.+vered, violently this time, and the scream she let with the motion out rang in her own ears like the squeal of metal on metal. Her eyes went blind. And then the lock of the r-con on their bodies disappeared, and her muscles, pressing so hard against the rocks to hold the box in place, smashed forward. Her cheek struck stone. Her legs gave way. She slid down into the water.
Chill fluid filled her nose and eyes as she straggled back to the surface. Her ears were deaf for a moment with the water that clogged their ca.n.a.ls. Her whole body trembled. The fire was still in her muscles, like a sunburn that fades only slowly, and she worked her jaw for a moment before any sounds came out.
Doetzier still stood near the wall, but he leaned against it now, the r-con still in his hands. Bishop grasped Tsia by her armpits and tried to drag her to her feet, but she shook him off. She tried to take a step, but fell against the bigger man. He caught her and searched her face. ”Dear G.o.d,” he whispered, ”what are you made of?”
Her lips moved, but, like Doetzier, she could not yet speak. Her hands reached up to the lapels of Bishop's jumpsuit for support. The odor of oil and dirt in his clothes still cut through her nose, and her lips bared back from her teeth. The freepick shuddered. She tilted her head against his chest to stare up at the edge of the pit. Ruka's eyes no longer peered over the rim, The cats were gone from her gate, and she could feel only Ruka now, retreated to the forest, and that hunter presence near him.
She glanced around. Wren's eyes were still haunted with flashbacks, but he was breathing harshly to control his fear. Nitpicker leaned heavily on Laz. Mina, who stood on the other side of the pit, stared at Tsia like Bishop, while Bowdie moved toward Doetzier and studied the box in his hands. Striker watched in silence, her face an expressionless mask. Doetzier's tortured gaze met Tsia's.
Bishop stared down at Tsia, then across at Doetzier. ”I had heard,” he said hoa.r.s.ely, ”that there were those-one in every ten thousand-who could withstand the effects of an r-con. Are you one of them?” ”I have a small field warp inside my heels, pelvic bones, and sternum.” Doetzier's voice cracked, and it was a moment before he could continue. ”It's s.h.i.+elded-can't be detected with normal scans. The warp shunted part of the effects away from my body.”
”I should work salvage more often,” said Bowdie, ”to get some gear like that.”
”And you?” Bishop asked, looking down at Tsia's pain-blanched face. ”You had a warp, too?”
”No.” She pushed herself upright from his support. ”But one learns.”
”You can't do that your first time in the field.”
”No,” she agreed shortly.
He stared at her. ”How much time have you spent in r-cons?”
She closed her eyes, her arms sculling in the water to keep her balance. ”Three months. Solid.”
”Dear G.o.d,” he repeated. He stepped back from her as if she were somehow inhuman.
”Someone coming,” she said flatly.
Doetzier turned his head. It was a slow movement, as if he had somehow aged in that hour-or the burn
still touched his muscles. He looked at Bowdie, then Laz. ”Can you-get the r-con back up there?”
Bowdie nodded. '”Give me your foot,” he directed Laz. The freepick, his own muscles trembling, took the r-con in shaking hands and looked up the wall to the ledge.
”Don't drop it,” Doetzier snapped.
Laz tightened his grip on the box. He stepped up in Bow-die's linked hands, using his own to balance
himself against the rock. His tall, gangly form unfolded so that he looked like a spider climbing out Gf water. When he set the box back on the ledge, Bowdie almost dropped him back in the well. As quickly as their burning muscles could move them, Tsia and Doetzier waded-half swam-away from Bishop and back to the other side of the pit. Nitpicker eased herself down in the water, and Laz took her head in his hands.
Overhead, a face appeared like a shadow against the gray sky. It remained there for only a moment, then disappeared. Tsia could feel the satisfaction in the woman's biofield. She could smell the zek's sense of urgency as the woman walked quickly back to the hut. Tsia's voice was still hoa.r.s.e as she murmured, ”She's gone.”
Nitpicker cast Tsia a look. She struggled to put her legs beneath her and stand up on her own. Her face paled, and one hand went to the back of her head. ”You said”-her voice was little more than a croak of her own-”you could image the node. What about the lift? Can you drop it down?”
Tsia shrugged, winced, and closed her eyes for a moment as the burn surged, then faded in her muscles. That was something else that took time to remember-the long-term effects of the r-con. ”I have a single ghost line active. Nothing on a regular trace.”
”How is that possible?” Laz demanded in a low voice. ”The node is completely down.”
”No,” she returned flatly. ”Kurvan wanted you to think that. He locked each trace individually. Us”-she gestured at the meres-”he blocked through our mere IDs. You, he locked out through your freepick codes. Narbon or Decker probably fed him the information to do it.”
Mina snapped, and Tsia heard the tremble in her voice. ”How do you know that?”
”Because I heard him explain it.”
”And the ghost line you have open?” That was from Doetzier.
She shrugged slowly. ”An old line. Kurvan overlooked it.”
He regarded her for a moment in silence, and she could almost hear his thoughts churning inside his skull. But Mina was looking at Tsia with a frown. ”If your ID dot is locked, how could any ghost be viable?”
”Later,” Striker said sharply. ”Let her work first-to save your life,” she said with irony. ”Then you can ask her questions.”
Mina gave Tsia a strange look, but subsided. Beside her, Laz's energy was tight, and that focus he had used to keep the pilot's head out of the water distracted Tsia until she shut it out. It had gotten easier, she realized, to shut off the biofields. Ruka's voice was so constant now in her head-like a smell to which one became inured-that all she had to do was focus on his snarl. Or try to touch one of the other cats- that watercat still watching, or that hunter on the edge of her gate.
Slowly, she tuned out everything. Then, as the water began to chill her chest, she imaged along the old ghost line. It was still thin, but the false man still moved in Ciordan. It took a minute to catch up the full sense of the web in which he was woven. She formed and sent a command along the web, and the node responded with a surge of biochemical energy. She felt the old ID dot go active. In an instant, warnings triggered across the node. She ignored them. If the guide guild was notified that she was alive, there was little she could do about it. She could either use the web to get out of the pit, or drown with the meres in the water.
”The rocks and sticks that knocked the r-con off the wall,” Laz started. ”If you can call your link to help you with that...”
”The lift is locked through the node,” Nitpicker interrupted. ”No amount of pus.h.i.+ng from any animal will extend it over and down to us.”
”What about linking our harnesses?” Striker suggested. Her voice was tight as she controlled the pain from the burn in her leg.
”There's nothing over which to hook them.”
Mina said nothing, but she trembled enough that the water s.h.i.+vered around her. Bishop stroked her arm. She shoved him off. ”I'm not scared,” she snapped in a low voice. ”I'm angry.”
Bishop let her go. ”All right.”
Tsia ignored them. Imaging along a ghost line was like running her fingers along a single strand of an old spider's web. Extraneous images fell away like dust. There was almost no stickiness to the images she was able to find.
”Thin?” Doetzier murmured.
She barely nodded. ”This web is so starved for depth that if it turned sideways, I'd lose it altogether.”
She created an imaged pathway for the ghost man to walk along. Created a task he had to do that required him to link to the node. Then she walked her mind along the link until she reached the main traces. It took ten minutes to image her way to the mere node lines. Another minute to set up the codes. Thin? she snorted in her mind. She worked so fast that the ghost man's web was as bare of image as a winter tree is of leaves.
Did he wear a certain type of clothes? She didn't care. Did he stand in a certain room to image the codes to the mersat? She didn't bother to define it. Only one thing filled her mind: the link she created to hold her to him, and to pa.s.s her on the node. And then the codes clicked in, and the ghost man set a trace from the node to the freepick stake. A second later, the lift pipes extended over the rim of the pit.
”It's coming,” Mina cried out. ”You're doing it.”
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