Serpent's Gift (34 page)

¦Janet, I can't!" he yelled at the table.

198

. "Rob," she shouted back at his disembodied voice, "there's something wrong with the school's computers! Someone's put something like a virus program into them! We've got a real crisis!"

"I know! I know! I'm getting Doctor Blanket. Meet me!"

"Rob,
wait]"
he heard her call, but he was already racing barefoot down the hall, just as George Bailey selected a piece of luggage he would never take anywhere.

Minutes later he was stumbling around in the darkness of Doctor Blanket's quarters, searching through the blackened cupboards, looking for the light-damper. For the life of him he couldn't remember where they normally kept it, and without that safety device, the Avernian couldn't leave seloz's quarters.

White light could burn seloz's flattened, cilia-covered body, because Doctor Blanket was from a world circling a red dwarf sun.

The million-year-old fungus being stood with part of seloz's body on end in the corner of the room, cilia rippling. The Avernian glowed like a phosphorescent baby blanket.

Rob racked his brain, trying to recall where he'd last seen the light-damper, but the Avernian's anxiety was like a fog in his mind, making it hard to think.

He banged his shin on a corner and cursed. The pain spurred him to action, and he methodically yanked open drawers and dumped the scanty contents until the little instrument tumbled out.

Gotcha!
Rob thought triumphantly, snagging the small Mizari device.

Clipping it to the right shoulder of his beat-up tee, he turned it on and checked its power. It reported that it was working fine--not that he could tell in this darkened room.
Okay, let's go,
he said, kneeling before the alien. The being slid into his open arms and undulated over his shoulders until seloz covered his back like a glowing cape. To an onlooker, Rob would appear to be a figure walking in a shroud of darkness, surrounded by a bizarre, phosphorescent glow. ¦

The psychologist moved to the computer, logged in his route
to
Heather's room. The lights along their path would be dimmed for Blanket's safety.

The computer beeped at them. "Rob, are you there?" Janet's voice called out.

"I'm leaving here, Jan, no time to explain!"

"Don't you dare! I'm in your quarters. I'm trying to catch up to you!"

199

He rolled his eyes. "I told you to meet me at Blanket's ..." "You told me to meet you. You never said
where]"
"Meet me at Heather's. She's in trouble."

"Heather! That's what I--"

"I'll see you there!" Then he and the Avernian were out the door, racing for the elevator.

By the time he skidded to a stop in front of Heather and Hing's suite, Rob was panting. He tapped in the emergency override to the door lock and it slid open obediently.

Cautiously, Rob glanced around before plunging in, just to make sure everything was darkened. As planned, everything was dim, just enough light to help him pick his way. This was the living room that the two roommates shared. Empty.

Rob crossed the room purposefully, placed a hand against the door to Heather's room. "Heather?" Rob hit the override code to the bedroom door. The lights in Heather's room were also dimmed, but the computer screen glowed brightly in the darkness. In its light, he could see Heather, slumped in the chair before the terminal. In the eerie glow her skin was waxen.
Is she dead?
Quickly the doctor lifted the child, carried her over to the bed, and gently laid her on it. Her skin was cold and clammy. Quickly Rob activated the bed's heating element. th
e
Avernian ordered, and before Rob could ask what the alien intended, seloz flowed from his shoulder onto the little girl, covering her protectively with seloz's glowing form. Rob immediately removed the damper, and clipped it to Heather's jumpsuit, to keep the alien safe.

Then he returned to the screen, moved to shut it off. That was when he first realized what was on it.

A woman. Red-haired. Upturned nose. Just as he'd seen her in Heather's records.
Heather's mother!
Rob blinked, disbelieving, hands hovering over the keypad. Then he remembered what Kintha had told him. Some image of a red-haired woman had warned the station just before the crash. Rob stared openmouthed at the screen, trying to assimilate what was on it.
How could
that be
Heather's mother?

|This was impossible, his common sense told him, unless this is some kind of bizarre home video. But even as he thought that, he knew it couldn't be.

The clothes were all wrong, the setting.

200

Besides, the computer clock in the upper right-hand corner of the screen was giving him the same date and time as the clock he could plainly see in the fancy office.

But even more bizarre than this image of Heather's mother as the ultimate businesswoman was what the woman herself was doing. Her expression was one of sheer terror, as she pressed her hands to the inside of the computer screen like someone imprisoned behind a plate of clear plas-steel.

Her hands were even flattened as though this screen were the only thing separating her and Rob, as though if he broke it, she could emerge. She pushed desperately against the screen, and he faintly heard her crying,

"Help! Help me! Get me out of here, please! Oh, help, somebody!"

The woman stared straight at him, begging for help. It was the eeriest thing he'd ever seen, worse than the sixth remake of
The Fly--
the first holo-vid version--when they'd used a woman scientist instead of a man, and she kept begging the audience, "Help me. Help me."

Then the woman that looked like Heather's mother stared directly into his eyes and begged, "Please, Dr. Rob. Please help me!" He staggered back, stunned. The face and body were adult, but only now did he realize that the voice was purely Heather's.

Doctor Blanket's clear thought cut through his startlement.

But,
Rob thought, baffled,
isn't this Heather?

Blanket told him.

Realizing the Avernian was giving him good advice, Rob quickly saved the image for further study, then ruthlessly cut it off, shut the terminal down. But somehow he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd just turned his back on someone in dire need, like ignoring an emergency broadcast. Shaken, he went back to the bed, to Heather and the protective Avernian.

Rob quickly examined the child. She was worse than he first thought. Her pulse was thin, thready, her skin cool to the touch and clammy. Her eyes were rolled up into her head. Her extremities were icy. Quickly he wrapped her legs and feet in the bed's heated blankets, tucked her arms under the covers. That was when he realized he'd failed to bring his medical kit.

He couldn't have been more astounded if he'd left his arm behind.
Damn,
Gable! And you call yourself a doctor?

the Avernian admonished.

fault, it's mine. I pushed you so hard telepathically, I permitted no stray thoughts to cloud your mind.>

Before he could frame a response, Janet jogged into the room, blinking at the alien's glowing form in the dimness.

"Rob, you here?"

He moved to her quickly, grabbed her by the shoulders so fast she gasped.

"Janet, thank heavens you're here!"

"I'd have been here sooner if I hadn't been chasing you all over this school!

The computers are going nuts! The defense systems have caught

something. A virus program, maybe, but I can't get them to tell me anything about who it is. I'm afraid it might have something to do with the crash at the station. I'm afraid . . . Heather's at the bottom of it."

"You're right, she is, but there's no time to discuss it. Her mind is trapped in the AI, and while it's there, Heather's body may die."

Janet blinked, uncomprehending. "Her
mind!
What are you talking about?"

Only then did she seem to realize the youngster was flat out on the small bed.

"Later!"
Rob said forcefully. "Right now, I need you. Go to the infirmary. Get me a complete medical kit, an ICU cart, and an a-grav stretcher. But before you leave here, go into the living room and tell Nurse Ch'eng Hao to get down here. Before he came to StarBridge, he worked in ICUs with coma patients, and that's the closest thing I can compare this to. Please. Do it
now!"

For a half second she looked like she might argue, then she glanced at the child on the bed covered by an alien. Muttering a quick
"Di'os!"
she left the room.

"She's freezing," Rob said to Doctor Blanket, knowing the Avernian could understand that communication just as easily. "Like her brain's not keeping her body going. What can we do to help?"

Rob thought he could feel Doctor Blanket shudder.

"Holy shit," Rob muttered. The whole idea was terrifying. "We? You and me?"

202

"Could we get trapped, too?" What would it be like to die inside a computer?

To plunge into the Mind. To go inside the AI of a computer. Rob felt sweat sheen his forehead, make his underarms feel dank.

A sound from the living room brought him out of it. It was Ch'eng. He could envision the Asian's broad, gentle smile. Nothing fazed Ch'eng. He'd seen it all.

The doctor swallowed, and allowed his hand to rest on his Avernian friend's gently undulating cilia. "Just as soon as Ch'eng and I get her on life support, we'll go," he promised steadily. "We'll go together, old friend."

At first it had been easy. Heather had slid into the machine, just like the last time. No resistance. Once again, she was in a place that her mind perceived as physical, though in reality, she knew, most of it was just an illusion of physicality--a way for her limited senses to deal with her surroundings.

At first it was darkness and brightness, following a maze of grids in infinite space. This time, it was familiar, so there was less disorientation. It almost felt comfortable. She traveled the bright grids, her mind searching ahead, looking for markers.

The first thing she eliminated was her money-collection program. It hurt her to do it, and she stood there for a little while, watching the balance increase by fractions, quickly building up to a sum she could barely imagine. A sum that belonged to
her.
But, finally, she wiped it out, plus its backup, and any traces that it had ever existed. It seemed to take forever, following all the thin strands that ran to so many other programs. But she did it the hard way, eliminating each individual one. Creating the program had been so much easier.

Then she went after the phone call to the broker. That was harder. There were defense systems around that, waiting to trap her. Her mind perceived them as big STOP signs in all the wrong colors, heavy road barriers in eye-searing shades.
They
liked to be able to account for every call, be able to know who was talking to who. The snoops. What business was it of theirs anyway? She dodged the defenses, crawling under the barriers, around the STOP signs.

203

The defenses were sophisticated, but not perfect. She wiped the call.

Unfortunately, that left a huge hole behind, a telltale spot of tampering. She tried to eliminate it, but could not close the gap.

It'd be easy to find such a big space, and that worried her. They'd know someone had erased something, but there was no way for them to find out what it had been. Heather turned to the next item on her list.

Now mesh fencing had sprung up under the road barriers, around the stop signs. Fuschia pink. Boy, she hated that color! It took forever to travel the program, searching for a weak spot. She finally found one, a break in the mesh, worked at it, and eventually squeezed through.

She lay on the other side, gasping, exhausted--just as though she'd actually done it physically. That must have taken hours, getting through! Her mind accessed the computer's chronos. Three minutes. She'd only been inside three minutes. Heather couldn't accept that; her time disorientation was complete. She was starving. She had to have been here hours--no, days!

Yeah, days .. . days of wandering this weird place, looking for the markers she'd put here, for markers others had put here but that she'd be familiar with.

Do Heathertoo next,
something told her, but she shrugged it off. Heathertoo would be easy to eliminate, after all, she'd built her. That wouldn't take any time at all. She needed to tackle the big jobs while she still had the energy.

She could wipe Heathertoo on her way out.

That thought tugged at her oddly. She realized she didn't want to eliminate her grown-up self.

You've got to! Do it now!

She stuck out her lower lip.
No. Not now. Later. Now, I'm going after the
money. That'll take a long time, a lot of work. Lots harder than just a simple
phone call. I'll wipe Heathertoo on my way back.. . I promise.
She felt oddly despondent about making that commitment. It seemed like murder, almost.