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Reynolt had one foot hooked over a ceiling stay, so that she hung down close to the MRI without getting in the way of the techs. She didn't look around as they came in. "Okay, induction complete. Keep the arms restrained." The tech slid his patient out into the middle of the room. It was Trixia Bonsol; she looked around, obviously not recognizing anyone, and then her face collapsed into hopeless sobbing.
"You've deFocused her!" Vinh shouted, pushing past Trud and Trinli. Pham anchored and grabbed, all in one motion, and Vinh's forward motion reversed, bouncing him lightly against the wall.
Reynolt looked in Vinh's direction. "Be silent or get out," she said. She jerked a hand at Bil Phuong. "Insert Dr. Reung. I want—" The rest was jargon. A normal bureaucrat would certainly have kicked them out. A
Silipan drifted back to Pham and Vinh. He looked subdued and grim. "Yeah. Shut up, Vinh." He glanced at the MRI's display. "Bonsol's still Focused. We've just detuned her linguistics ability. It'll make her easier to...treat." He glanced at Bonsol uncertainly. The woman had bent in on herself as far as the restraints would permit. Her weeping continued, hopeless and inconsolable.
Vinh struggled briefly in Pham's grasp, and then he was still except for a tremor that only Pham could feel. For a second it looked like he might start bawling. Then the boy twisted, turned his face away from Bonsol, and screwed his eyes shut.
Tomas Nau's voice came loud in the room. "A
Reynolt's tone was almost the same she had used with Vinh: "Give me a Ksec. I have at least five cases of runaway rot."
"Lordy...keep me posted, A
Reynolt was already talking to someone else. "Hom! What's the story on Dr. Li?"
"He's rational, ma'am; I've been listening to him. Something happened during the radio show, and—"
Reynolt sailed across the room to Dieter Li, somehow missing techs, zipheads, and equipment. "That's bizarre. There shouldn't have been live crosstalk between physics and the radio show."
The tech tapped a card attached to Li's blouse. "His log says he heard the translation."
Pham noticed Silipan swallow hard. Could this be one of his screwups? Damn. If the man was disgraced, Pham would lose his pipeline into the Focus operation.
But Reynolt still hadn't noticed her AWOL technician. She leaned close to Dietr Li, listened for a moment to his mumbling. "You're right. He's stuck on what the Spider said about OnOff. I doubt he's suffering from real runaway. Just keep watching him; let me know if he starts looping."
More voices from the walls, and these sounded Focused: "...Attic lab twenty percent inchoate...probable cause: cross-specialty reactions to audio stream ID2738 ‘Children's Hour'...Instabilities are undamped..."
"I hear you, Attic. Prep for fast shutdown." Reynolt returned to Trixia Bonsol. She stared at the weeping woman, her look an eerie combination of intense interest and total detachment. Abruptly she turned, her gaze skewering Trud Silipan. "You! Get over here."
Trud bounced across the room to his boss's side. "Yes, ma'am! Yes, ma'am!" For once there was no hidden impudence. Vengeance might be unthinkable to Reynolt, but her judgments were ones that Nau and Brughel would enforce. "I was checking out the effectiveness of the translations, ma'am, how well laypersons"—namely the patrons of Be
The excuses were lost on Reynolt. "Get an offline team. I want Dr. Bonsol's log checked out." She leaned closer to Trixia, her gaze probing. The translator's weeping had stopped. Her body was curled in a quivering tetany. "I'm not sure if we can save this one."
Ezr Vinh twisted in Pham's grip, and for a moment it seemed he might start shouting again. Then he gave Pham a strange look and remained silent. Pham loosened his grip and gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder.
The two of them stayed silent, watching. "Patients" came and went. Several more were detuned. Xopi Reung came out of the MRI much like Trixia Bonsol. Over the last few Watches, Pham had had plenty of opportunity to watch Silipan work, and pump him about procedures. He'd even got a look at a begi
But something really deadly had happened here. Mindrot runaway. In attacking the problem, Reynolt came as close to emotion as Pham had ever seen her. Some parts of the mystery were solved right away. Trud's query right at the begi
The nav zipheads were not affected. Brughel's snoops were moderately affected. Pham watched everything Reynolt did, trying to absorb every detail, every clue.If I can make something like this happen to the L1 supportnetwork, if Brughel's people could be disabled...
A
Xopi Reung flat-lined shortly after they brought her out of the MRI. Reynolt broke off from managing the Attic reboot, spent frantic moments with the translator. Here, she had no success. A hundred seconds later, the runaway infection had poisoned Reung's brain stem...and the rest didn't matter. Reynolt looked at the still body for a second more, frowning. Then she waved for the techs to float the body out.
Pham watched as Trixia Bonsol was moved out of the clinic. She was still alive; Reynolt herself was at the front of Bonsol's carrier.
Trud Silipan followed her toward the door. Suddenly he seemed to remember the two visitors. He turned and made a come-along gesture. "Okay, Trinli. End of show."
Silipan's face was grim and pale. The exact cause of the runaway was still unknown; it was some obscure interaction between the zipheads. Trud's use of the ziphead net—his query at the begi