Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [228]
A prolonged silence followed. For once in her life Nancia longed for a softperson's physical extrusions. It would be enormously satisfying to take Fassa by the shoulders and shake her out of the trance in which she had fallen. Why couldn't softpersons keep transmitting datastreams while they were processing?
She had to content herself with blinking Fassa's cabin lights and assaulting her with raucous bursts of music from Flix's latest sonohedron.
"Do I take it," she inquired when satisfied that she had the girl's attention, "that you recognize some salient features?"
"Yes . . . I think so, anyway." Of course, Fassa would have no control over the visual detail, not to mention the accuracy, of whatever images she'd stored from her previous visit. She would be dependent on whatever her non-enhanced biological memory could provide. Recognizing this, Nancia didn't count on learning much.
"Those gardens on the side of the mountain," Fassa said. "He had the terraces in place a year ago, but nothing was planted. I thought it was something to do with the mine."
Nancia switched the signals going to Fassa's display screen to show the mine entrance. Blue-uniformed figures moved in and out, pushing wagons on railings that curved around the side of the mountain. A magnified display showed that the figures were shambling Angalia natives, neatly dressed in blue shorts and shirts and working together with the precision of a choreographed dance. One native heaved a sack from the mine entrance and tossed it over his head; another casually moved into place just in time to catch it; by the time he'd turned, a third native had backed his wagon down the rail system and into place to receive the load.
"Amazing," Nancia commented. "I thought the Angalians couldn't be trained."
"Blaize," Forister said hollowly, "has certainly been a busy little boy."
"It doesn't look all that bad so far," Nancia pointed out. "Fassa, do you—or the others—recognize anything else?"
She let the display screens sweep over a panoramic view of the mesa and the surrounding countryside. Suddenly Fassa gave a cry of recognition. "Oh, God, he's left the volcano!"
Nancia halted the display and studied it. An evil-looking bubble of brown and green mud heaved and burst and formed again, roiling continuously in the midst of the tall grass covering the rest of the basin.
"I don't suppose planting flowers would do much to disguise it," she agreed.
"You don't understand." Fassa sounded close to tears. "That's how he controls them—how he makes them do things for them. If the Loosies don't please him, he cooks them alive in that boiling mud! I saw it done last time—I'll never forget those screams."
"Alpha? Darnell?" Nancia queried the other two.
"That's right," Darnell told her. "Revolting."
Alpha nodded silently, the movement barely visible to Nancia's visual sensors.
She could think of no more encouraging words for Forister.
* * *
Micaya persuaded Forister to let her confront Blaize initially. "I'll wear a contact button," she promised him. "You and Nancia can see and hear everything that goes on."
"It's my duty—" Forister began.
"Mine too," Micaya interrupted him. "The young man is more likely to confess if he doesn't think he can bring family influence to bear."
"He can't," Forister said grimly. "I'm not here to intercede for him."
"Yes, but he doesn't know that," Micaya pointed out.
Nancia kept all her external sensors trained on Micaya as the general picked her way along a path of rounded volcanic stones to the door of the permalloy hut. On both sides of the path, feathery grasses and blazing tropical flowers grew in exuberant, uncontrolled patterning, throwing up their seed-heads and blooms above Micaya's crisp silver-sprinkled hair. Nancia recognized Old Earth species mixed with Denebian starflowers and the singing grasses of Fomalhaut II, a joyous blaze of pink and orange and purple flowers.
Micaya entered the hut and Nancia's field of vision contracted to the half-circle covered by the contact button. In the shadowy hut, stacked high with papers and