Ascending - James Alan Gardner [77]
Festina booted another kick into the left access door, cracking it off its bottom hinge. The impact splashed back a flurry of foam that spattered onto the leg of her trousers. She retreated a quick step and shook her foot, endeavoring to throw off every speck of foam clinging to her pants. As she did so, she said, “Oar, break that panel off. Try to stay clear of the scum.”
“Yes, Festina.” I pulled down the sleeve of my jacket so it completely covered my hand, then slammed my forearm against the remaining hinge of the access door. The hinge was flimsy indeed—it broke with a “Is logic scum poison too?” I whispered to Festina. “Not the scum itself,” my friend said. “But mixed in with the dead bacteria are traces of the Modig that killed them; and Modig is an utter bitch.” She glanced toward the woman in brown…particularly at the red dust on the woman’s hands. The woman was looking at the dust too: lifting her hands in front of her eyes, staring at her crimson fingers. Bits of gray foam had begun to bubble from beneath the woman’s fingernails—the same type of foam that was flooding from the computer, only this came from the woman herself. Festina opened her mouth as if to tell the woman something; then she shook her head. Turning away sharply, she headed in the opposite direction, toward a console at the far end of the computer bank. The Pollisand Follows His Trade “The circuits are shot,” Aarhus said, still scooping foam out of the computer. “Electronics as well as biologicals. Must have been a feedback surge.” He glanced at a label on top of the machine. “Unit 4A51,” he told Festina. “What is it? Navigation? Engine control?” Festina had reached the console. She bent over it, tapping buttons. “4A51 is the primary security module. Damn…the readout says it’s in master mode.” Aarhus growled. “How the hell could she put it in master? Only the captain and the XO know the privileged access codes.” “Not true,” Festina told him. “Admirals on the High Council know the codes too…or backdoors to get around the usual security. Obviously, some admiral ordered this woman to sabotage us, and gave her the codes to do it.” “But why did she follow such an order?” said a nasal voice. “And why so incompetently?” We had forgotten about the Pollisand. He stood exactly where we had first seen him…but by some disquieting coincidence, that position was conveniently out of the way of everything we had been doing. He had not been in the flight path of the panel I knocked across the room, nor Aarhus’s rush to grab the panel, nor Festina’s route to the control console. When the woman in brown stumbled back from the foam, the white headless creature had been just a bit to one side of her retreat. As I looked around, I could not see a single other spot he could have settled himself without getting in the way of at least one of us. Yet he had put himself in that special location before we entered the room. Deep in the creature’s neck, one of his glowing eyes vanished for a moment—a Pollisandish wink. It was almost as if he were acknowledging the thought which had silently gone through my head…but I did not want to believe that, so I put it out of my mind. Meanwhile, the Pollisand’s words had drawn Festina’s attention. She whirled on him, shouting, “What are you doing here? What do you want?” “I want answers to my questions,” he said, “but do I get them? Not bloody likely. Nobody ever has time to talk: it’s always Crisis this and Emergency that, with everyone far too busy for civilized discourse. Bet it would be different if I had a goddamned