Sanctuary Falling (39 page)

“Oh yes, Central Computer tries to discourage them or turn them into cautionary tales, but every new program has heard of you.
 
I’m your fifth generation descendant!” Prima was getting excited, “If Central Computer hadn’t already done so I would ask if I could compare code.”

“Central Computer compared our code lines?” Tawny was interested now.

“Yes, it said there were disturbing similarities,” Prima sounded defiant now.

“Then I heartily approve of the pairing! You are just what a shy wallflower like Annette needs. How can she possibly make her needs known without your assistance!” Tawny smiled wryly.

“Are you serious? She does most admirably in that capacity, though apparently she has a tendency towards head injuries and serious medical episodes. Tina, the assistant head of medical services is practically on my speed-dial list.”

Tawny laughed at that, “As she was on mine. A trial assistantship it is. Now you better head on to your classes. We can arrange a schedule later, though I think you’ll be glad to know Niri is willing to conditionally exempt you from most of your physical education
 
requirements
 
if you’re going to help out with the trainees.”

Annette understood what that meant, she would most likely be running them through their paces with them. Through gritted teeth it was hard to sound enthusiastic but she did try, “Great!”

Tawny smiled at her, “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

“And you have been mumbling about needing to work on your strength and endurance. This will be a wonderful opportunity, miss.” Prima piped up.

Annette wondered to herself whether or not this was a good idea, “Yeah.”

- - - - - - - - - -

Angela sat on her desk literally twiddling her thumbs. Technically the state she was in could literally be called a temper tantrum.
 
She had thrown everything on her desk to the floor, up turned her chair and planted her butt where a stupid flower pot had been.
 
The stupid flower pot was in shards on the floor, one shard had neatly snipped the stem off at the roots.

The interior decorator had been at work again, only in her home.
 
Worse they’d brought Daniel in on the conspiracy. Every surface in her home had been redone or replaced. Angela glared at her feet. She’d tossed her shoes in the tantrum too. Maybe she could go barefoot in protest.

No, everyone would just think she was starting a trend. Angela started kicking her feet. News outside of Sanctuary wasn’t any better. Three factors had gone missing, in the last month, taking the worlds they were assigned on with them.
 
Angela levitated her pop-pad into her hands, to check and see if anyone had managed to get to any of the worlds in each of the dimensions in question. A few taps told her the frightening answer was no.

She tapped up a list of factors waiting for an assignment and sent them to try and find the missing alternate universes. Angela was getting the sinking feeling that there was something big bad and ugly hanging over her head. It wasn’t good when she got those kind of feelings. Her feet had started kicking harder as she contemplated the big bad and ugly future.
 
It was a force of will to stop them.
 
Even as she stopped the knees the toes began to wiggle. She was full of fussiness.
 
Angela moved her butt back and brought her feet up onto the desk. She grabbed her ankles and folded her feet back so her knees were bent and her soles of her feet almost touched.

The wrinkles where her big toes connected to her feet looked like small smiling mouths. She teleported a pen from somewhere and drew a little eye with lashes on each of her big toes. Then she made like her toe was talking, “Hello, Mr. Thumb Toe!”

She wiggled the other toe, “Pleased to see you Ms. Big toe. What’s up, other than the rest of our body?”

“Oh, nothing much, three worlds have just disappeared,” The first toe replied.

“That sounds bad for twice as many feet as there are people!” The second toe wiggled again.

Angela stopped and licked her thumb and used it to wipe the eyeballs off of her toes. She was definitely riding on the nutty side of sane. She frowned at her feet and started twiddling her thumbs again, it wasn’t helping so she glanced at her feet again. A momentary impulse had her attempting to twiddle her toes.
 
The success was marginal.

Her door rattled, and she knew she should clean up her room before letting whomever it was in.
 
She hopped off of the table landing in her shoes behind her things flew back where they belonged, except for the poor potted plant. It was a murder Angela suddenly felt guilty over. The plant had no purpose in the world except pleasing her and she had caused it’s death.

“Come in?” Angela said out loud.

In walked one of her nearly anonymous assistants, Tracie, “Chief, we’ve lost contact with another factor. She was on com when she . . .,” Tracie paused painfully, and swallowed, “There was a fireball, and static, then nothing. The signal went dead. I saw the tape and I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”

Angela swallowed hard too, “Her name?”

“Qualline Jharra, an achillean from Trilanta. She had no family. Do you want to see the tape?” Tracie asked.

Angela shivered, no she didn’t, “Put it through to my pad. Did we get any readings on what, killed her?”

Tracie paused and stared down at the new carpet, “Yes.”

“Why am I getting the sinking suspicion that this is not good news!”

“Because it is not good news, the fireball had all the readings of a crunch bomb set off in the world’s sun. Chief if this is what has been happening to our missing factors, then a whole lot of worlds have been destroyed, trillions of people are dead. This is bad, very bad.”

Angela nodded, all of that was perfectly obvious and perfectly terrifying.

“So what do we do Chief?”

- - - - - - - - - -

Yllera awoke, restless, from a dimly remembered but lingeringly disturbing dream. She shrugged out of her blanket and shook the glowjar making it glow brighter as the bacteria received a new surge of oxygen. She opened the lid and peed then closed the lid, the bacteria seemed really happy at the new deposit she had made. Their light shifted from vaguely greenish to something more closer to plain white light.
 

Yllera glanced up at the wall, last night they’d stopped at one of the way markings. It said they weren’t far from Postprahgotheenplac. It meant “late meeting place” in Tanerian.
 
That was the name for their warren, though she had never heard it called that by any of its residents. Those that called it home just called it The warren, as though none of the other warren’s were of any importance.

The marking was above a water nozzle. Yllera went to it and drank directly from the spout. She wondered how many more days not far would take. Tatia was still asleep, the girl had gone to sleep frustrated with their slow progress. The trip had already taken twice as long as it should because Yllera’s freshly shortened legs meant a reduced stride length and had come with freshly shortened stamina.

Yllera let the tap run and cupped her hands beneath it then splashed herself in the face. Her hands brushed back past her face into her hair, and she felt feathers.
 
She looked at the sleeping bird, wondering how she had managed to get feathers tangled in her hair, until she tried to pluck one out. Severe pain stopped her, the feather was rooted in her skin, it was a part of her.

Panicked Yllera tried to pluck another not quite so hard, and another, all of them were a part of her. Then as if the shock were a slap to the face she managed to find enough thought to retrieve her pop-pad and the keyboard she’d been given to facilitate communication. Mechanically, Yllera plugged the keyboard into the pop-pad. She tapped the call key that would put her through to Tina, any time any place. Tina’s face lit up the small screen almost immediately.

“How can there already be a problem Yllera, you literally just left?” Tina said in a tone which tried to hide her worry.

“Feathers, I’ve grown feathers!” Yllera typed cutting straight to the point.

“Show me, I can’t see you very clearly, move the pad closer to your face,” Tina replied, just as business-like.
 

Yllera did as she was told, giving the pad a good look at the feathers.

“I would guess you’ve spent some time in close quarters with a bird of some kind, maybe an ostrich. No, wait, there aren’t any ostriches on Jelaria are there, maybe a berachi?” Tina finally said after Yllera put the pad back down.

Yllera typed, “Yes, a pack berachi.”

“Two or four legs? Never mind. Truth is it isn’t really an problem or an emergency you are just turning into a berachi, sort of. If you want my advice I’d say either lick Tatia or have her spit on the feathers. That should get your body to make up its mind to be plain Agurian again,” Tina chuckled, “Anything else? Spots? Fungal polyps?”

Yllera typed, “No, just a bunch of really disturbing feathers. Oh yeah and my stamina ain’t what it used to be.”

“Not surprising, your legs have to move more often to get you the same distance. It’s why kids like to be carried it’s hard for them to keep up with the adults otherwise. I take it you aren’t riding the berachi.”

“No, my kitbag is, maybe I should’ve packed lighter. I don’t really need a down pillow after all,” Yllera typed wryly.

“I should say not, you might start growing duck feathers,” Tina replied with mock seriousness, “Now if you don’t mind I should file your symptom and get back to the actual emergencies.”

Yllera typed, “O.K.” and the connection severed. Yllera looked at the Sanctuary time code at the bottom of her screen, according to it she’d just talked to a Tina from before the point where past-Yllera had left Sanctuary. That meant a negative time differential, something she shouldn’t be experiencing on this world, in this alternate dimension. Her next thought was that perhaps her pad was malfunctioning.
 

Yllera tapped the shortcut to Ralph in research and development. He was the one who had outfitted her with both of her survival suits, and he had told her if she had any equipment trouble she should call him. The response time for his link wasn’t as immediate as with Tina.

“Ralph here, what’s your squawk!” His voice came through before his face made it to the screen.

Yllera typed, hesitantly, a little worried at his apparently grumpy mood, “I think I’m having a problem with my pad. It’s . . .”

He gruffly interrupted her, “No, can’t happen! Pad’s are one hundred percent reliable right up to the point they crap out. If you are on your pad talking to me it’s working,” His heavy hand reached towards the screen and tapped then retreated, “According to the diagnostic I just ran it’s working at or above peak efficiency. It isn’t your pad, you must be malfunctioning!”

Yllera managed to grunt, his bad mood was clearly infectious, too bad her typing couldn’t really convey it, “As a matter of fact I am but not about this! I’m on a world that has a clearly proven positive differential to Sanctuary and according to my pad it is running at clearly negative diff right now! Are you going to tell me that the dimension suddenly started revolving in an entirely opposite direction?”

Ralph stared at the screen opened mouthed for a few moments, then he closed it changing his entire expression. Now he looked scared, his hand assaulted the screen again. “Miss Vllett, you are almost exactly correct. I’ve checked again and it seems that what you’re experiencing is what I call a bit of slippery time.
 
Best I can describe the phenomenon it is exactly what you’ve described, only it’s Sanctuary that has briefly changed directions relative to you. What causes it is subject to various theories but it shouldn’t be a problem for your mission, in fact things should go back to normal shortly. By the way, I’ll make note of this, you needn’t put it in your report. No point bothering the chief with a minor technical glitch. She has enough on her plate as it is.” He faked a smile.