A Deepness in the Sky

Pham sent his vision back into the MRI gear. Yes, there were the pellets. Given a proper magnetic pulse, they would be high-velocity buckshot. But the program, if it was in the controller...Tiny eyes swept along the superconductor interface. He had enough localizers to talk through the optical link and wipe her pointer program.She still doesn't know what Ican do with them! The hope was like a bright flame.

He tapped his fingers on the palms of his hands, maneuvering the devices into place. Hopefully, it would look like nervous gesturing to Reynolt. "Interrogation? You're still loyal to Nau?"

"Of course. How could it be otherwise?"

"But you're working behind his back."

"Only to serve him better. If this had turned out to be Ritser Brughel's work, I wanted a complete case before going to my Podmas—"

Pham lunged outward from the wall. He heard Reynolt's pointer click uselessly, and then he slammed into her. The two of them tumbled back into the MRI cabinets. Reynolt fought almost silently, slamming her knee into him, trying to bite at his throat. But he had her arms pinned, and as they sailed past the magnet box, he twisted and slammed her head against the cover plate.

Reynolt went limp. Pham caught himself on a stop, ready to smash her again.

Think.The party at North Paw was still going on, an idyll. Pham's timer showed that 250 seconds had passed since he had left the harbor.I canstill make this work! There were necessary changes. The blow to Reynolt's head would show up on an autopsy....But—miracles!—her clothes showed no sign of the struggle. There would have to be some changes. He reached into the MRI target area and swept the nickel pellets into a safety bin....Something like his original plan could still work. Suppose she had been trying to recalibrate the controllers and had an accident?

Pham moved her body carefully into position. He held her tightly, watching for any sign of consciousness.

The monster. The Frenkisch Orc. Of course, Anne Reynolt was neither. She was a tall, slender woman—as much a human as Pham Nuwen or any of the far descendants of Earth.

Now the carven legends on the Hammerfest walls had a clear translation. For years and years, Anne Reynolt had fought against Focus, her people driven back step by step, to that last redoubt in the mountains. Anne of Arnham. Now all that remained was the myth of a twisted monster...and the real monsters like Ritser Brughel, the descendants of the surviving Frenks, the conquered and the Focused.

But Anne of Arnham had not died. Instead, her genius had been Focused. And now it was deadly danger to Pham and all he worked for. And so she must die... .

...Three hundred seconds.Wake up. Pham tapped out instructions. Botched. He typed them again. Once he weakened the SC connectors, this little program would be enough. It was a simple thing, a coded beat of high-frequency pulses that would turn the bugs in Anne's head into little factories, flooding her brain with vasoconstrictors, creating millions of tiny aneurisms. It would be quick. It would be lethal. And Trud had claimed so many times that none of their operations were physically painful.

Unconscious, Anne's face had relaxed; she might have been asleep. There were no marks, no bruises. Even the slender silver chain around her throat, even that had survived their struggle, though it had been pulled free of her blouse. There was a 'membrance gem at the end of the chain. Pham couldn't help himself. He reached over her shoulder and squeezed the greenish stone. The pressure was enough to power a moment of imagery. The stone cleared, and Pham was looking down on a mountain hillside. His viewpoint seemed to be on the cupola of an armored flyer. Ranged around the hillside were a half-dozen other such vehicles, dragons come down from the sky to point their energy cannons at what was already ruins, and the entrance to a cave. In front of the guns stood a single figure, a red-haired young woman. Trud said that 'membrance gems were moments of great happiness or ultimate triumph. And maybe the Emergent taking the picture thought this was such a moment. The girl in the picture—and it was clearly Anne Reynolt—had lost. Whatever she guarded in the cave behind her would be taken from her. And yet, she stood straight, her eyes looking up into the viewpoint. In a moment she would be brushed aside, or blown away...but she had not surrendered.

Pham let the gem go, and for a long moment he stared without seeing. Then slowly, carefully, he tapped a long control sequence. This would be much trickier. He altered the drug menu, hesitated...seconds...before entering an intensity. Reynolt would lose some recent memory, hopefully thirty or forty Msec.And then you will begin closing in on me again.