Forge of Heaven

“And Procyon?”

“He was with the Earth representative when the attack happened. We believe he was injured and shaken by explosion. I ask you, lord Marak, be much quieter in the system. Don’t wreck us. Let us work. The Ila occupied the system and possibly harmed some of the taps. I don’t know Auguste’s condition now. You may harm him if you press too hard.”

A pause. “Well enough. But I intend to find this boy myself if you take much longer about it, I warn you, lord Brazis, I am short of time and short of patience. The system is our lifeline, and we are approaching a critical need for it.”

“I well understand that, sir. And I ask you, in all courtesy, report to us what you do find.”

Silence, then. Silence so sudden it left a burning sensation in his skull. Brazis rubbed his ears and found his hands were shaking.

He got up from the chair and exited to Dia

“Sir?” Dia

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Fast inventory of the taps. Particularly Drusus and Auguste. Get them to check in.” He had a shuddering urge to sit down, but stayed on his feet. Dia

“Auguste’s lying down on his couch,” Dia

“I don’t doubt,” he said. So had he.

“Are you going to address the Council at all, sir?”

“No. Everything to my proxy. This is far too hot.” He had to sit down. His vision kept going in and out. He walked over to an interview chair and dropped into it.

“Shall I get you some ice water, sir? Do you need Dr. James?”

“No. Water.” Ice water sounded very good. He wasn’t sure, else. The system was under attack, and he had Magdallen, whose credentials he couldn’t completely verify—and he had Marak, who right now was in the middle of the wilderness, while the Ila claimed she was on Marak’s side. He by no means believed that.

And Luz urgently called Ian in to help her, a 40k trek by truck or beshta.

Help her do what? Silence the Ila, or keep the worldlink to the tap system from collapse?

Worse thought, could Ian possibly be heading into danger, an ambush at home?

He took a chance with his aching head and tapped into security. “Open the system, all relays.”

“All relays, sir, confirm.”

“You heard me. All relays. Do it but keep the damper in place.” If this kept up, if the Ila and Marak grew more insistent in their attempts to get in past mechanisms they likely knew far better than did the technicians managing the net, it could damage the wetware of the critical system, nanisms lodged in vulnerable human skulls—nanoceles that, in his own skull, were already busy repairing the damage, overheating his body, pushing his metabolism at the moment to fever heat.

Which pushed his blood sugar way low. He wanted an orange juice instead of the water, and asked Dia

She brought him that and a thickly iced danish, taking a subjective eternity to do it. By the time it arrived he was shaking so he could hardly pick up the orange juice.

A GRITTY FLOOR, dim light, towering, dirty facades. Procyon had no idea how he had come to be lying in discarded plastic in system twilight with a hellacious headache, but he was.

Suddenly remembering cleaning robots—stupid robots that couldn’t tell him from the trash—he scrambled up.

He got as far as his knees before the pain in his forehead dropped him onto his elbows, momentarily blind. He crawled over against the wall to let his heart settle down and his vision clear. It did, and to his horror he found himself in a service nook facing a cleaner slot, one of those little gates where the service bots went back into the secret places of the station. He’d never paid attention to them. Now he remembered being dragged off inside. If things couldn’t fit in the slots, bots took them apart, ripped plastics, shredded metal.

But they weren’t supposed to take dead bodies, let alone living people.

Had it happened at all? Or was he hallucinating the whole thing?

He didn’t know how he’d gotten here. He felt heat in his face, heat ru

That wasn’t right. Like when he’d taken the Project dose, that was what it felt like, when he’d first acquired the high-tech tap and the visual machines. Beyond the fever, his head hurt, back to front and side to side, a lancing pain that slowly centered on his forehead.

He felt of his forehead, expecting blood. There wasn’t. Just a welt. And in a self-preservative moment of clear thinking, he wanted away from that cleaner slot, as far as he could get, in case he passed out again.

He got a knee under him, hands on the wall, and levered his way up to his feet.

There. Nothing broken. Hell of a headache. General sick feeling, from gut to diaphragm.

Then he remembered Gide.

He remembered talking to Luz.

And the Ila.

He immediately tried to make the blood shunt to contact the office. The effort sent pain through the roots of his teeth, total disruption of vision and sense that dropped him where he stood. He tried again, ignoring the pain, and it just wouldn’t happen. All he heard was the distant, constant noise of the street.

Then:

“Procyon.”

Luz. His heart jolted in panic and he braced himself for the white pain that was the Ila.

But the next sound was a man’s voice, a familiar, welcome voice.

“Procyon.”

“Marak-omi.” Relief and terror at once. He was on his rump in an alley in fear for his life and his continuance in the program, and Marakhad found him again, through Luz—Marak, who had every reason to be upset with his absence in this crazed mess. He staggered to his feet. “I’m very sorry, sir. I’ve been trying as hard as I can to get back to you.” As if he’d just missed a phone call. Fool. And his voice was shaking so he didn’t know if Marak could even understand him. “I have a small problem.” Twice fool. He’d promised Marak he’d be back before now. Before…

He couldn’t remember.

“I’m still trying to get home, sir.”

“Are you in safety now?”

“I think I’m fairly safe now, yes, sir.”

“What is Brazis doing about your situation?”

“I don’t know, sir.” He didn’t know how much Marak actually knew about Brazis, about the station, or by now, about the craziness that was going on. Marak’s question, What is Brazis doing? ricocheted off the completely unrelated fact that flashed into his mind, that some tremendous force had come past him in a doorway, from the outside, from the garden. Not his apartment. The ambassador’s.

Security had suffered a massive lapse—if it wasan accidental lapse. Gide hadn’t just blown up. Someone had fired past him. He’d tried to help Gide. And it wasn’t his fault.

Very big events were sailing over his head, and one lowly tap, even if he was Marak’s, wasn’t on that high a priority for survival—not in the scale of governments having an argument. Brazis assuredly wouldn’t risk the Project for him.

But Marak, who didn’t give a damn about most that existed up here…Marak was contacting him, like the Ila, through relays he was sure weren’t part of the public system.

“I think I’m in trouble,” he confided to Marak, trying not to shiver. “I think I’m in very serious trouble.”

“Explain,”Marak said, an order from a man for unthinkable ages used to being obeyed; and just as quickly, in the tones of any man having found something lost: “Hati, I have him. He says he is away from home and in trouble.”