Wild Thing Page 7

  'Uncle?'

  Frowning, Harmon adjusted the pressor-chain's handle-patterns from an absolute to a relative emotional index range. That would provide excellent connective strength for a new stress source.

  'Uncle!'

  Harmon nodded to himself, tapped the search button, and held the end of the stylus near his lips, still unaware of Sara's presence. 'Perichoresis near concept acquisition.'

  Sara stomped right up to the desk and slapped her hand down onto the slightly-raised dome of the holo projector, interrupting the stylus's communications. 'Uncle!'

  Harmon looked up, startled and annoyed. Couldn't the girl look after herself for five minutes? 'What is it?' he snapped, moving her hand off the display node and triggering a redraw to refresh it.

  'My last arrow got lost up a tree.'

  'So? What do you expect me to do about it?'

  'Can't you magic it down?'

  'I'm busy. You may be surprised to learn that I have more important things to do with my time than telekinese toy arrows out of trees where they were shot by careless little girls!'

  She just stood there. 'But I'm hunting it.'

  'There is no-' Harmon stopped himself. 'No need to use the arrows. It is in fact better if you fight it with your bare hands.' Which would be true, were it a genuine inorganic being or spirit. After her account of battling what sounded like a spirit in the woods, he had given her a simple “panic button” to use if it happened again. Indeed, two weeks later she had triggered it. Quickly leaving his rooms, he had tracked her via a simple Sending and shadowed her at a distance, mindmeld linked. Of course, as expected, there had been nothing – apart from an odd backlash she'd somehow induced at the end. So convincing had been her charade as she'd stalked the creature, though, so deeply involved in her imaginative play, that for a time he himself had thought he sensed something near her, invisible even on the Imaginal plane. Impossible, of course. The Imaginal was the dimension of magic that overlapped the mundane world, perceptible to mages. The magic itself was what was perceived. The idea of a magic that was invisible made as little sense as a silent noise.

  Beginning to regret the whole “invisible creature” stressor, he drew his mind back to the present, where Sara looked back at him doubtfully.

  'Play something else for a change. Now go away, I'm busy.'

  With a sigh, he picked up his interrupted thought and returned to work. He didn't see her stubborn expression as she stomped out.

  Harmon was studying his revisions with a satisfaction bordering on smugness when the sound of a wailing child broke into his train of thought. Dammit, what now, he thought?

  The wailing grew louder before fading out. But less than a minute later there came another knock at the door. This time, it was the head of his irritating colleague Simmons that appeared in the gap.

  'Your girl's had a bad fall. Probably broken a leg, that's my guess.'

  Harmon swore and got up, following Simmons into Sara's room where she lay crying on her bed.

  'I hurt my leg!' she wailed.

  'Let me see.'

  His probing fingers provoked a scream of pain. He stopped, looked at her coldly. 'Try to be a little less cowardly, Sara. Tears are for weaklings.'

  A light went on in Harmon's mind. How obvious! Slipping into the Imaginal, he tapped into her pain channel, carefully adding it as another input to the original stress Source he had first constructed back in the orphanage. Returning his perception to the physical, he spoke to the now-silently shuddering girl. 'This is going to hurt for a moment. But you must lie still.'

  He turned to his co-worker. 'Simmons, come here.' Simmons approached, looking a little ill. 'It's a simple break. I'm going to set it back in position, then I want you to hold it firmly while I heal it. Remember: hold it firmly. And Sara: don't move, or it will heal crookedly and you'll be a cripple,' he said, distaste dripping from the word. 'Are we all ready?'

  The other two nodded, shakily. 'Very well. Remember, Sara: lie still now.' Harmon pulled steadily; there was a most unpleasant sound, and Sara screamed in pain.

  'Simmons! Here.'

  Simmons, eyes a bit glazed, grasped the leg gently, Sara crying out at the touch.

  'Firmly!'

  Simmons gulped but gripped the small, tanned leg more firmly, and Sara screamed again. But although her upper body writhed in slow agony and tears flooded from her eyes, she kept her hips and left leg still. Harmon's senses shifted back to the Imaginal and reached as he grasped the angry break in the pattern of the bone and began altering it, accelerating the in-built regenerative mechanisms. He was a little surprised at how easily the healing flowed; and at how quickly the girl's cries stopped.

  Simmons was quite gray. 'I say, shouldn't you have… you know, used an anesthetic or something?'

  'No. This was faster, and safer. Besides, a little pain is good for the soul. As well as being a reminder not to do foolish things,' he declared, staring at the girl as she wiped her face.

  Soon, though, she was engrossed in her magically-healed leg, scarcely believing the pain was gone. Harmon watched her feel the limb gingerly.

  'Wow!' She grabbed a tissue and noisily blew her runny nose. Swinging both legs off her bed she stood up, carefully. Put her weight on the left.

  Her sudden whoop of joy took both men by surprise, as did her leap as she impacted into Harmon with a hard hug around his abdomen before breathing a short “Thanks!” and running back out to play.

  Harmon smiled. She truly was remarkable. He ignored both Simmons' disturbed expression and the way the fellow shook his head as they left her room.

  After she left, Harmon went to a window overlooking the front entrance to watch her. He was pleased to see her stalk straight across the lawn, heading determinedly back into the woods. Smiling, he returned to his office.

  That night he visited Sara in her room. Harmon noted the brightly-painted toy arrow on her bookcase, though neither of them mentioned it. Sitting on the edge of her bed, he surreptitiously cast his usual mindmeld.

  'Do you remember your parents, Sara?'

  Harmon's question took Sara by surprise, but the girl nodded. She smiled at her most precious possession – her one and only memory of the woman she knew must be her mother. Closing her eyes, she remembered, unaware of his intruding spell: «A close, warm room; very small; where one wall, of meshed triangles, somehow moved. The smell of wood smoke. Firelight flickering on a woman's face bending over her: dark, twinkling eyes. The smile. The beautiful, fierce smile. Long, black hair hanging straight down, caught in her own small fist. The sound of men's voices outside, singing deep.»

  Sara, eyes still closed, smiled. Her mind drifted toward «another night, a cold campfire, darkness-. No.» She forced her mind away from the pain. Back to the warm embrace of the woman with the long, silky black hair.

  'Yes,' she whispered, smiling.

  She did not see Harmon frown, annoyed and surprised, then shake his head.

  Chapter 9

  'Who are they, Mr Shanahan?'

  Sara was visiting the security officer before heading off with Faith on a patrol. 'We're gonna check the lake shore,' she'd told him, 'because there could be tracks from invisible monsters.'

  'That sounds like a good idea, but please keep Faith out of the mud this time.'

  She hid a giggle at the way he said “mud” – rhyming with “wood” – but then noticed that one of the screens he was watching showed views of people in separate little rooms.

  There were only five pictures, but for some reason, it looked like one person, a grown-up man, was in four of them, in different positions. He was pacing. In the only other window with a picture in it, a woman was scratching her arm.

  Down the side of the screen, there was a list of words that looked like codes, and places. Places like “CorrWB1, CorrNSB1, CorrWB2”; and eleven two-letter codes. There were also, she saw, codes G1, G2, G3, and G4, all in green. One of the other two-letter codes was also in green and said AS. She wondered
if the four Gs matched the man in the four windows, and if the AS matched the woman.

  She knew that the windows only showed stuff where unusual things were happening. The computer did a lot of automatic watching for Mr Shanahan, he'd explained one day. Though if he wanted to, he could choose to look at any of them at any time. He'd shown her some of the views from cameras that watched the outside of the buildings from high up on the walls, sweeping back and forth across the grounds. She'd noticed each sweep took exactly one minute. She was always careful to notice as much as she could. Like how each window showed its own time, even though the time was always the same for all the windows, of course.

  'Those are the inmates. The system keeps an eye on them and alerts me if they do anything dangerous to themselves.'

  'Oh. Do you have windows for Uncle, and me? And the Director?'

  Mr Shanahan laughed. 'No, only for the inmates. The patients.'

  'Who's that one?' she asked, pointing to the man who was in the four pictures. She noticed that whatever he did in one, he did in the others, just from a different angle. He must have four cameras in his room. She wondered why.

  At her question, the man looked around, like he'd actually heard her. He looked a bit worried all of a sudden, she thought.

  'Ah, best if you don't know, Sara. He's very dangerous. A very powerful mage, and completely loopy.'

  At her sideways-tilted look, he added, 'He's mad.'

  'Where are they? I haven't seen them. Are they in some of the empty rooms?'

  He blinked. 'Oh, you mean the unused offices? No. And I don't want you to go looking for them, either, you understand? Stay away from them. They're dangerous.'

  But she knew the in-mates were all locked up. So how could they be dangerous? Aloud, all she said was, 'Uh huh, I get it. You don't want me to look for them.'

  'Good. I don't want your Uncle tearing strips off me.'

  Mr Shanahan often said weird stuff like that, so she just smiled, and told him she and Faith were going to patrol the lake now.

  She wondered where the in-mates were?

  She figured B2 probably meant basement level 2, and maybe the W, E, and NS meant compass directions. So probably the in-mates were kept in the basement. That seemed a bit mean. They wouldn't have any windows to look out of.

  She wondered how she could visit the man with four cameras, without the computer thinking it was unusual? That was a problem.

  In the afternoon, as she tracked muddy footprints across the polished floors, from the corner of her eye she noticed the door onto the stairs leading down, and remembered the man in the basement. Taking off her shoes she tiptoed over, then noticed another problem: the door was locked. But it had a ’lectronic pad of numbers beside the lock, and she smiled as she thought of a sneaky solution. It shouldn't be too hard to convince Uncle to buy her a small telescope, not if she explained she needed it to help hunt the unvisible monster.

  The next day, waiting for the delivery drone, she considered shooting its propellers to get the telescope sooner. She and Faith discussed the idea as they paced back and forth at the front steps, but in the end they decided it'd probably be better not to. But the instant the drone docked with the delivery box and deposited its package inside, she raced up to her Uncle's office so he could go and get it for her.

  It had been kind of fun playing with the telescope, but having to lurk around inside, out of sight while she waited for her Uncle to visit the basement, almost drove her mad! Luckily, she had her “unsurprising training” for the computer to do, so every now and then when it got just too boring to take, she'd sneak off to the cupboard where she had all her equipment hidden.

  She'd chosen the upper level – deserted and unimportant – for the training. Each session was exactly the same: she'd stop at the end of one of the upper corridors, carrying the very old and broken cleaning bot into view of the security camera. Then, with a long stick she'd taped to it, she'd push the bot down the corridor till she figured it was clearly in view of the camera. Then she'd wait forever, to be sure it'd been seen. Then she'd walk up, all serious, with a big frown, and put her suitcase down beside it. She'd painted the suitcase red, glad she'd brought her paints and drawing stuff with her from, from…, well, anyway, she was glad she'd kept her stuff from when she was little.

  Then she'd push and poke the disk-shaped robot, and turn it over, and say “hmm,” in a very serious voice, too – not because the cameras listened, just because it helped her Pretend properly. Then she'd open her case and get out a screwdriver and one of her coloring pencils, since that kind of looked like a ’lectronic fixing-gadget too. She'd poke at the bot like a repairman would. After a while, in full view of the camera, she'd “Humph” – with both shoulders – and put her tools back in her toolbox, fasten it shut and then look down at the bot like she was real cross, hands on her hips like she thought it was misbehaving, before finally picking it up and stomping off.

  She did that several times each day for the whole next week, and no one said anything, not even Mr Shanahan. So she figured the computer had decided it was seeing a cleaning bot break down, and had also worked out that she was a repair girl who fixed broken cleaning bots. So the next day, she'd visit the basement. She bet the G man was in B2, since B2 was deeper under the ground.

  At the door to the basement levels, she stretched up and entered the code that she'd watched – through her small telescope – her Uncle enter. It hadn't been too hard to sneak up behind him, and peep round the corners to watch what he used at the first door leading down. And it got specially-easy when she saw that he'd just changed the last number of his code to a “1” when he got to the “B1” door. The trouble after that, though, had been that by the time she'd done all her repair-girl stuff, Uncle was gone from sight, so she didn't get to see the code he used for B2. She'd chewed her lip, but decided to try changing the last code number to a “2” and see if that worked – and it did! She wished she and Faith could've gone on the adventure together – that'd be so much better – but Mr Shanahan always knew where Faith was, and it'd be pretty hard to explain how Faith could've been opening the security doors.

  She pushed the loneliness down. At least she could tell her all about it, after.

  She sneaked down the stairs and into another corridor. From not far ahead, maybe just around the next turn, she could hear her uncle's voice, and also someone else replying.

  She itched to creep up and just take a teensy-weensy peek around the corner. It was the hardest thing she'd ever done, not doing that, and instead sneaking away to try the secret entry codes on her own, later. But Miss X was always patient, and it wouldn't kill her to wait till her Uncle had left. Probably.

  She'd retreated all the way back up to the ground floor and then hid down the corridor to wait for him to come out.

  It took forever!

  In the end, her Uncle did eventually leave – and didn't see her. He just went straight up the stairs to his office instead. And so she snuck straight back down to the basement, all her equipment ready and all the secret door codes memorized. But when she stepped round the corner of basement level 2 and into the corridor with the cell doors – her cleaning bot under one arm and long stick and toolbox in her other hand – she straightaway saw a big problem. Each room had just one small window, and it looked like the bottom of each was just about the same height as the top of her head!

  At the far end of the corridor, where it ended in a “T”, there was a chair that looked just the right height for her. But she was sure the grown ups didn't stand on chairs to look inside, so the dumb computer'd probably tell Mr Shanahan someone was doing something unusual.

  For a long time she just stood there, breathing hard, before finally turning and stalking away. Eyes narrowed, she stomped off down the corridor, remembering everything that Mr Shanahan had said about how his computer worked out what was unusual. It helped him do his job more easily, he'd explained when she'd asked why there were so few windows on his screens. She knew th
ere were lots more security cameras than that, from the number she'd counted in the game she'd made of finding and counting them all.

  So three days later – three days of dragging chairs down corridors to closed office doors, then picking up her bot – which she'd named “Bork” – and holding it up to the window for no reason at all except to get the stupid dumb computer used to seeing repair-girl step up to windows on a chair – she was back in corridor CorrEB2 and pushing Bork down toward the first window. She left it for a good long time, then walked up to it with her toolbox and did her cross-at-the-bot fixing-examination. No alarms or anything went off, which she took as a good sign. She tromped down the corridor thinking serious and grumpy repair-girl thoughts, before dragging the chair back down the corridor to the first window.

  The chair was almost broken, the thick navy-blue padding squashed flat, like a really fat person had sat in it for a really long time. One back leg was bent and had a crack, but she reckoned it would be good enough. And if it did break, she'd bring her own stupid chair next time!

  Placing the chair by the first door, she picked up Bork and stepped onto the chair, holding him up next to the window and excitedly looking inside-

  And the stupid room was empty!

  Grinding her teeth, she kept “examining” Bork, then got down, dragged the chair down to the next room, and repeated her charade.

  This room had the woman who'd been scratching her arm, though now she was just lying on her bunk, asleep.

  So, she examined Bork some more for the pesky computer, then dragged her chair along to the next door.

  She almost dropped Bork when she looked inside, because she'd found the G man! He was standing in the middle of his cell and slowly moving his hands in sweeping patterns, facing away from her. She stared, wishing he'd turn around, and suddenly he stilled, and very slowly, did just that.

  She smiled, and waved.

  And he freaked out! His eyes went huge and his mouth dropped open, and he instantly did some weird thing with his hands and fingers, and suddenly he was encased in a glowing dome, so bright it hurt her eyes. He'd just made a magical protection circle! And it was much brighter, and much thicker than any circle she'd seen on the trids! She could see his mouth move, and peered forward, squinting, trying super hard to hear what he said, or read his lips. “Meh”-something “S”-something-short. Merry sand?