Captain Cosette (7 page)

Don’t
you
start
falling
for
him
,
you
silly
girl
. 
Go
to
sleep
.

But it would be nice to give him a hug, sort of an
“I’m sorry your brother died” type of hug, just to see what his arms would feel like around her, even though her head would be at the level of his shirt pockets.

Go
to
sleep
!

Oh, well.

Tomorrow is another day.

Chapter Five

Cosette sat down on the leather seat of the teaching machine, her mood optimistic.  “What am I going to learn today?”

Professor Roland turned left and right, his green laboratory coat swirling, as he double checked the connections. 
“What?”

She watched him checking the manual. 
“Why do you have to look things up?  Don’t you know it already?”

He glared at her and adjusted his glasses. 
“I told you already, this machine is second-hand, taken from the Alliance.  It’s primitive, and it’s had rough treatment.  Oh, don’t worry, it won’t hurt you.  But I need to triple-check everything.”  He stared out the dirty window at the parking lot beyond.  “If I was in a modern facility, this machine would be half its size and fully automated.”  He broke out of his reverie and resumed checking the connections.  Finally he put gel on the headband and fastened it over her brow. 

“
What am I going to learn today?” she asked again.

“
Today you learn….”  He grabbed the clipboard and studied it.  “Today you learn background information.”

“
What’s that?”

He tapped the screen, pulling up the menu. 
“You need background in operating computers…” He tapped a title, and a submenu appeared.  “Might as well do some undergraduate chemistry and physics, the basics.”  He moved through other menus.

“
How much can that machine teach me?”

He laughed, indicating her question was childish. 
“There’s not a library in any computer on Sorine that can match the archive in this machine.  Look here.”  He began tapping the screen.  “You want to know maintenance?  How about every piece of military equipment ever made, Union or Alliance?  Spacecraft, orbiting stations, wherever you get sent to work, even how to pilot the spacecraft.  See here?  Historic works of war, strategy and tactics.  And more and more and more.  You see?  You could spend every day in here for a year and hardly scratch the surface.  But today all you need is to learn to how to catalog those rifles, and get some background knowledge.”  He enlarged one menu.  “Shouldn’t take but a few minutes.”

Someone ran past the window, shouting.

“Ah,” said Professor Roland.  “Sounds like the men are coming back.  They’re going to want those rifles.  We’d better get started.”  He adjusted the cap on her head, and tied the leather straps on her arms and legs. 

In the distance she could hear the sounds of gunfire.
  “Shouldn’t we wait?  That fighting sounds close.”

“
No, no, no, we need to get this done so you can make those rifles available.”  He held out the gauze-covered grounding disk.  “Now bite down and hush.”  He pressed a key, and again she felt the sensation of a piece of soft material drifting down onto her mind.  “The bell will ding when it’s finished.”

The sound of fighting rose in the hallway, and he stepped away from the machine. 
“One moment,” he said.  “I have to tell those people to be quiet.  I’ll be right back.”

She watched with anxiety as the professor stepped out of the training room and closed the door behind him.

Another layer of knowledge settled on her brain, dimming her vision and muffling sounds.  She could hear weapon fire outside the room, and something thumped against the outside wall.

Another layer, and another.  Each packet of knowledge was gentle as it settled down, like soft snow from a windless sky. 

But like falling snow, the layers accumulated.  Her arms and legs grew numb, and she felt them twitching within the constraints of the leather straps.

I’m
starting
to
twitch
. 
I
didn’t
do
that
last
time
. 
Something’s
wrong
.

When
is
he
coming
back
? 
What
happened
to
him
?

I’m
frightened
!

The layers kept falling, burying her mind, dimming her perception.  The room seemed far away, as though she was looking at it through a tunnel.  Sounds muffled until she could only hear her own pounding heart, and then the pounding of her heart softened.

Too
much
! 
Too
much
! 
Turn
off
the
machine
!

She cried out, her teeth still clenched on the ground wire disk, but could barely make a grunt.  It was like being in a nightmare, the sort of nightmare where she could not make herself move, could not struggle against the restraints, could not make herself heard, and the unnamed horror kept growing.

She spat out the grounding disk and tried to scream.

The falling packets became a blizzard, unrestrained.  An avalanche engulfed her mind and her senses failed.  She could see nothing, hear nothing,
and feel nothing.  Her body was lost.  There was nothing left of her but a tenuous candle of consciousness as a snowstorm of information softly and gently obliterated her.

And then she flickered out.

*

She was moving.

Or she was being moved. 

“
….the door while I ….”

Silence.

What
was
that
?

Movement again, and dull sounds without meaning.

“…be permanent or she might be able to….”

“
…can’t you …”

“
…find her way out by herself….”

Long stretches of quiet that seemed endless, and then again the sounds.

“…can’t swallow, so this tube…”

“
…use a ventilator until she…”

One sound, one word, reverberated.  She could make no sense of it, but it matched the edge of one packet of knowledge among the many that smothered her.

Ventilator
.

Snap
.

“
Positive
-
end
expiratory
pressure
is
maintained
during
a
breath
…”  Floating in her mind were the parts of different ventilators and how they worked.

“
…seems to be trying to breathe on her own.”

“
…can see by the oxygen analyzer that she’s…

Oxygen
Analyzer
.

Snap
.

“
Two
dissimilar
electrodes
immersed
in
an
electrolyte
solution
….”  Dials, sensors, cables, an array of analyzers lay before her.  They settled into the context of her mind.

“
…making some progress.”

“
Can she hear me?”

“
Rasora, we can’t tell if….

Silence.

“…sugar may be low.  Check her blood chemistry….”

Chemistry
.

Snap
.

A parade of elements swam before her, combining and recombining in an orderly fashion.  The knowledge slid into place in her mind, reducing by a fraction the weight that buried her.

Light appeared.

A tiny circle of light, far in the distance and very dim, but it was light.  Shadows moved.

“See there?  Her pupils dilated.  I told you her brain wasn’t fried.”

“
But what if she stays like this?”

“
She’s fighting back.  Just give her time.”

Silence.

“No progress?”

“
Not today.  I asked them to send down a specialist with the next shuttle, but they…”

Shuttle
.

Snap
. 

Snap
. 

Snap
.

Schematics roared through her brain, wiring diagrams snarled, engine specifications detonated.  A riot of knowledge about shuttles and other space craft bullied its way into her mind like shrapnel and took up residence.

She cried out with the pain.

“
She moved!  Look at her arm!”

“
Calm down, Rasora.  It was just a twitch.”

Something gripped her hand and she clung to it like a mast in a hurricane.  The circle of light grew larger, and she could see a face.

“Can you hear me, Cosette?  Squeeze my hand if you can.”

The words had no meaning.

She closed her eyes, blocked out the light, and slept.

*

She drank from the glass being held to her lips, but spilled much of it.  Someone wiped the water from her face and neck.

Other pieces of knowledge had slipped into place as she woke and slept, and with each piece she saw
and heard more clearly.  She still could not speak, though.  Everything was dim and language made little sense.  People kept talking to her, but unless they happened to say something that triggered another piece of information to seat in her brain, it was all a meaningless jumble.

A tall man sat by her, talking to her, holding her hand.  He said his name was Rasora, but she forgot it after he said it.  She knew she ought to say something to him, but no words ever formed. 

The circle of her vision had enlarged yet again, and she was able to move her eyes and look around the room.  The walls were painted a powder blue, and artificial flowers stood in a vase beside her bed.

Time seemed disconnected, uneven.  Sometimes minutes passed slowly, sometimes hours would pass in the blink of an eye. 

She liked it when people talked to her.  Sometimes they said a word that caused a bit of knowledge to fit, and every time that occurred, her burden lessened.  She remembered feeling crushed, obliterated, but now she could chew and swallow and observe the things around her.

She blinked, time flickered, and a man in a lavender laboratory coat sat beside her. 
“How are we doing today, young lady?”

She focused on him, trying to understand.

He picked up her hand.  “Can you squeeze my hand?”

She liked him holding her hand.  He had brown eyes.

The man looked past her.  “How long was she connected to that wretched machine?”

A voice behind her said,
“Maybe half an hour.  They were keeping Professor Roland alive, and no one thought to go look in the lab.”

“
And it didn’t shut itself off?”

“
He had all sorts of menus opened.  He said he didn’t know that all of the open menus would execute.  He knew how to run the machine, but he hadn’t been trained, he was just using the manuals.  Wouldn’t her brain stop receiving information after a while, anyway?  Just fill up?”

The man reached out and put his hand on her head. 
“There are a hundred billion neurons in the human brain, and it has ways to layer information that go beyond the numbers.  Ever see one of those paintings that looks like one thing, and then another?  Hidden pictures, three dimensional images.  A single neuron in her brain could be a part of many different bits of information.”

He pulled his hand away. 
“And the information from the machine was put down everywhere, not just in her memory lobes but the parts that see and hear and move.  She almost died because the part of her brain that tells her how to breathe was stuffed with information.

“
Now her mind is rearranging it all, like unpacking after moving in to a house.  Only in her case, everything is still in boxes, she can’t move around, and there’s no room to unpack.”

A tall man entered the room, a man with strong angles to his jaw and deep, dark eyes. 

He
looks
familiar
. 
Have
I
seen
him
before
?

“
How’s she doing?” he asked.

“
Better every day,” said the doctor.  “Talk to her, Rasora.  It’s good for her.”

“
Are you sure it’s safe to keep her here?”

“
This spaceport is better guarded than your training camp was.  When there’s space on the shuttle, we’ll take her up.”