The Octagonal Raven (4 page)

I hoped that I hadn’t overlooked something, and worried that my mental faculties weren’t as sharp as I thought they were.

As I massaged the back of my neck with my left hand, I tried to ignore the burning in my lungs, and to forget that a strikingly beautiful woman had tried to kill me for a reason I couldn’t even guess at.

Raven: Vallura, 458 N.E.

After three days of work, I’d finally finished the review and comp analysis for Myrto and sent it off. I needed to get to Klevyl’s engineering assignment, since the specs had arrived while I was in the middle of finishing the analysis for Myrto, but I was taking a brief break because I couldn’t face another grind-it-out methodizer project immediately. I wasn’t sure how I ended up with such a range of assignments, except that I’d made a practice of taking anything I thought I could do.

I was staring out the window, sipping verdyn, enjoying green cinnamint tang, forcing myself to take a dose of InstaNews—the OneCys immediate reporting net. The holo image before me was that of a fuzzy off-white toroidal octagon set in against vaguely familiar stars.

I nodded. That was bound to happen. The image shifted to a reddish building set before verdant trees, trees I didn’t recognize.

That was no surprise. Students who had greater perceptual integrating abilities had an advantage, but it didn’t matter how they got the advantage. Some norms scored high on the PIAT. The image flicked again.

With a headshake, I broke the news link and let the holo images fade. The charges certainly weren’t “nothing” to me. Probably twenty percent of what I made went to fees for the glider, and I did my own maintenance, and was careful when I used it.

I didn’t even finish the thought because the commplate lit, and the gatekeeper informed me that I had a message. Myrto was the one I half-expected, but the image that appeared in mid-air, cutting off the sweep of the sun-splashed red stone of the East Mountains, was that of a smiling Kharl, wearing a dark gray singlesuit.

“I know you’ve got a lot of work to catch up on. So I’m just sending this to you so that you can see and hear it when you can. It might even give you another idea for an edart composition. And no, I still haven’t heard from Elysa. I don’t expect either of us will. When you have a minute, let me know, and I’ll fill you in on what I know about what caused your reaction.” With those words, Kharl’s image vanished.

The databloc he’d sent was a VR—of the Warsha Symphony concert that Elysa had been so successful in keeping me from attending.

I needed a break from the routine of heavy-duty methodizing, anyway. So I blocked any incoming inquiries with direct routing to gatekeeper storage, pulled on the headset once more, let myself drop into the VR concert hall, a VR re-creation of the large hall in Vallura, and began to listen.

I hadn’t intended to listen all the way through. After all, I’d heard the Uphyrd before. But I found myself listening first to
Gate of Conquest
, and then to the re-creation of
The Planets
. When the VR ended, I just sat behind my flat desk for several minutes, looking blankly in the direction of the window, but I didn’t really see the valley below. Even though it had been a VR, and not a live concert with all the overtones and electricity created by a real orchestra, one thing was brilliantly clear—Uphyrd was an amateur compared to Holst.

I’d never heard of Holst until Kharl brought his name to mind, and despite the directness and the brass—I’d always preferred strings over brass—I had no doubts about my reaction. The ancient work left Uphyrd’s
Gate of Conquest
looking pallid by comparison.

That brought up another question. Why would that be so? Without an easy answer, I began to think, and one thought led to another until I had the rough outline of another edart piece. Once I had the outline in mind, I began to speak and to throw in ideas and rough visuals to accompany my words.

I searched for the clip of the “Mars” section, then fed it in after my next words.

After a moment, I keyed in Uphyrd, banal after the Holst, but I let it run a good minute, too long by VR standards, but I could get away with it once.

I used a stock net image of the gas giant. I could refine or replace the images later.

Then I followed with the “Finding the Gate” section of Conquest…and a clip of a SysCon Gate—the supra-ecliptic one, I suspected, from the stellar background.

I stripped the Uphyrd down to eight simple notes, repeating twice.

Then I let the concluding section of Holst’s work run, accompanied by an image of the solar system spinning against the spangled darkness of space. When the music ended, I left the solar system spinning silently for a long moment.

The piece needed work, a lot of work, and I’d need to figure out the exact net-royalties I’d owe for using the clips, but I liked the idea. I’d let it sit for a day or so, then go back and check it over before it went up on the UniComm net.

During the time I’d roughed out the edart piece, nothing new had showed up from either Myrto or from Klevyl. So I pulsed an inquiry across the net to Kharl.

Surprisingly, he was in and appeared, if wearing an off-green singlesuit that was either for lab work or for some other medical effort. He stood before a set of French windows that framed a northern section of the East Mountains. “You caught up on all your work?”

“Not really, but I wanted to thank you again. I’ve got a little time before I get the input I need from the clients, and I did want to know what you’ve been able to find out.”

“Not very much. There were some strange nanites in your system…or maybe they were pathogens—the structural differences are getting smaller.”

“Could it be a version of the pre-select plague? You’d suggested an allergenic off-shoot, but what about some form of the plague itself?”

“Someone might have used those pathogens as a base, but the symptoms were even more rapid, too rapid in my screen, and they didn’t have any defense against what I dumped into your bloodstream. Pre-select plague strains probably would have shown some defensive reaction.”

“What
did
you use?”

“SADs.” Kharl’s voice was matter-of-fact.

“Search and Destroy nanites?”

“I figured I could rebuild your augmentation later—and I did—but SADs were the quickest solution. From your systemic reaction, if I hadn’t…” He shrugged. “Well…we wouldn’t be discussing it.”

“So…there were invader nanites?”

Kharl looked embarrassed. “That’s my best guess now. At the time, I was just trying to keep you alive, and treating symptoms as much as anything. Your symptoms were violently reactive—just like an acute allergenic reaction.”

“You’re telling me that they were strange. How strange?”

“They don’t have any antibody defenses. None at all.”

“Then why did they almost kill me?”

“They’re programmed to act against augnites—and only against augnites. And they release a lot of heat in the process.”

“You mean, if I were a norm…”

“You wouldn’t have felt a thing. You probably would have been a carrier for some other unsuspecting pre-select.”

“Elysa didn’t act like a norm.”

“I don’t think she was. She might not even have been the carrier.”

I pursed my lips. “I don’t like that.” Whether she’d used a spray or just been there, it meant that she’d been immunized by someone or something, and that someone had definitely gone after me.

“Neither do I.” Kharl wasn’t smiling.

I nodded slowly. “Is there anything else?”

“I’m still working on some angles. I’ll let you know if I find out anything. You probably ought to stop by the medcenter tomorrow for a screen…and a system boost.”

“Any more thoughts on Elysa?”

He shook his head, not as convincingly as I would have liked to see.

“Did you monitor the gathering? Is there a VR reproduction that shows her?”

“I’ve looked at it. There’s nothing there that I haven’t tried to track. I’ll send you a copy. You can see for yourself.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“You’ll have it.” He paused, then added, “I need to go. I’ll see you tomorrow, at the medcenter.”

“I’ll be there.” It wasn’t as though I had a real choice. Not with Elysa and her friends still lurking somewhere out beyond Vallura.

But she had been charming. I wondered if the VR would show that as well.