Peter studied him, as if he was trying to figure out if Bannister was serious. Bannister didn’t smile, so Peter took back the cloth and spread it on the table. “That silvery surface on the top,” he said. “That’s Ségolène’s contribution. That’s what made me think of this. Show them, Ségolène.”
She dug into the satchel and pulled out a necklace that Noa had seen her wear before. It circled the neck as a rigid piece of wire. Hanging from it was a triangle shaped network of tiny circles of metal. It was one of the few pieces Ségolène had kept for herself, instead of giving them away to anyone who admired them.
Ségolène laid the necklace down and fingered the woven metal. It flexed and bunched around her fingertip. “This is a scaled down version of chain mail.”
Cai slapped his forehead and groaned. “Mail! Why didn’t I think of that?”
Bannister lifted a brow. “Something from history, I presume?”
Cai nodded. “Ancient Terran. Before the invention of gunpowder. The warriors of those days wore chainmail armor. It was flexible, allowing them to move and fight, yet it could also stop most sword strikes.” He groaned again. “It’s so obvious, now!”
“Yeah, now he sees it,” Haydn murmured.
Everyone laughed, including Bannister.
Ségolène picked up the necklace once more and shook it gently, so the mail shivered and rippled. “This is basically what the top layer of the cloth is made of. I reduced the pattern down to micro size.”
Bannister dropped his arms. His mouth opened. “You printed it?”
Ségolène shrugged. “Sure. Plasteel is fractal in nature. You can reduce down to molecular size…only it wouldn’t be useful at that size, so I kept the scale large enough to manipulate with your fingers, so people could actually put the suit on.”
Bannister took in a deep breath and let it out. “Jewelry….” he muttered and shook his head. “Very well. The other layer?” He looked at Peter.
“Well, the mail can stop micro tears and punctures, unless the force is high enough. At the size it is, it loses some of its strength. If the plasteel is grown the right way, it will shield against most radiation, too. It’s not air tight, though. So I added the second layer.”
Ségolène was jiggling with excitement again. “This part is so great!” she admitted, as if her own contribution wasn’t amazing.
“About thirty years ago, some frustrated medico chemists were screwing around in their labs. There was an accident with a recycler and a tube of left over chemicals and a flash oven…or that’s the way the story goes.” Peter shrugged. “What they came up with was a completely inert substance. For thirty years no one has been able to figure out what to do with the thing.”
“Goofy gel,” Bannister said.
Everyone looked at him.
Bannister shrugged. “I do have friends,” he said. “One of them is a chemist. He told me about it. When they get bored, they run experiments on the gel. It can take hundreds of Kelvins in heat and not warm up by so much as a centigrade. It doesn’t freeze in sub-zero temperatures. It absorbs radiation. It runs like water while it is in a sealed environment and hardens to a solid when exposed. Well, a type of solid. It is still liquid inside the solid exterior. You can fold it, roll it, stamp on it. Once it is solid nothing changes it. Not heat, not cold, not other chemicals. It just sits there, driving every junior chemist with a spare lab crazy with frustration.”
Peter nodded. “That’s the second layer,” he said. “The layer on the inside dries around the mail, welding them together. The other side is also only a few molecules thick—that’s what makes it soft and pliable…and air-tight.”
“If anything does manage to punch through the chainmail,” Ségolène added, “the gel will seal the hole almost instantly.”
“Self-healing,” Haydn murmured. Admiration colored his tone.
Everyone looked at Bannister expectantly.
Bannister touched the cloth almost reverently. “You know what is the really brilliant thing about this? Apart from the fact that a couple of mechanics figured it out while all my chemist friends are saying it can’t be done?”
They waited.
Bannister looked around the group. “Goofy gel is made up of recyclables.”
“Recycled what?” Noa asked.
“Anything. The heating process that makes the gel breaks anything down to elements. The chemical cocktail rearranges the elements into the formula for goofy gel. It’s a catalyst, so the cocktail can be used over and over. We can build this out of left-overs.” He got to his feet. “You’d better go and tell the captain.” He was looking at Noa.
Noa jumped. “Me? But…you’re the ranking…”
Bannister shook his head. “Take your friends with you and arrange their passes while you’re telling Magorian. We’re going to need both of them.” His smile was unforced. “We have suits to build, people.”
* * * * *
The pressure suit project turned from purely theoretical to highly practical almost overnight. The workshop moved from the Captain’s conference room to a room deep inside the Bridge area—a cavernous hall that echoed emptily, but not for long because soon there were dozens of strangers coming and going, making Noa and the others jumpy and nervous, until Bannister pointed out that no one could enter the Bridge area without proper authorization.
Work benches appeared. So did tools and supplies. Whatever they asked for was provided within hours, if possible. Often, the black-uniformed Bridge guards brought whatever the items were, looking around curiously while they placed the new supplies wherever Noa asked them to put them.
She quickly learned to map out on a portable screen the work flow of the room, to avoid wholesale chaos. Each section of the long rows of benches focused on a different aspect of the suits, from internal linings, to the helmet, airpacks, boots and gloves.
When Noa tried on the prototype gloves and flexed her hand, she realized there was something they had overlooked.
“We’re going to need specialized tools,” she told Bannister, sliding the sample glove back on. “Look.” She tried to pick up the pry bar sitting on the workbench and her fingers scrabbled uselessly. She held her hand up again. “The gel mail is super flexible, but it doesn’t do ninety-degrees and my fingers are big with the gel mail all around them. When the suit is on, there will be a layer of air between me and the glove, too.”
Bannister frowned down at the pry bar. “Got a solution, Doria?”
She nodded. “Big handles, big levers, big switches. Everything gets a handle, including something as simple as a pry bar. Everything gets a tether of some sort, to keep it from floating away. Even if the business end of the tool is micro-small, the end we get to hold has to work with limited dexterity.” She flexed her hand again. “No electronics, either. Gears, levers, manual settings that can be worked with a fist.”
“Go to it,” Bannister told her.
“It’s just…” She hesitated.
“What?”
“I have a friend. Two of them actually, who know industrial fabrication…”
Bannister groaned. “Shuffle them through security!” he told her, walking away. “Get them cleared and they’ll all yours.”
“Thank you!” she called after him, which he waved off.
A small corner of the big hall was retooled to Jardin’s and Jenny’s specifications. The ringing sound of metal on metal became a part of the working day, as the two of them built tools to fit Noa’s specifications.
The work was taxing and absorbing. Noa got immense satisfaction from following the development of the suits from concept through all the stages of development. There were not enough hours in the day. She resented having to quit for the day and go home.
Home was no longer a comfortable escape from the world, because when she was home, her thoughts were free to wander. Except they didn’t wander. They tended to turn immediately to speculation about Haydn Forney.
There was no time in her day to do more than
speculate, though. It was usually very late by the time she reached the Midnight Garden, with just enough time to drink a single cup of tea, before the garden closed for the night. Haydn was nearly always there, too, which made her arrive later and later.
She didn’t know what to do about him. He haunted her thoughts. Those thoughts had grown wild and heated. It was hard to look him in the eye and pretend that nothing stirred her, that her heart was not racing and her belly swirling.
“Why in the stars don’t you say something?” Ségolène had demanded when Noa simply had to speak of her turmoil or bust from holding it in.
“But…it’s Haydn Forney,” Noa said helplessly.
“So?”
“He’s…”
Ségolène just looked at her. “We might have picked him up off the alley floor. Only, he don’t live there anymore, honey. You’re not the only one to notice.”
“You?”
Ségolène rolled her eyes. “Like he’d ever look at me as anything but a pair of hands that is good with tools.” Her hand came up to her face as she said it.
“Exactly!” Noa said.
Ségolène leaned closer. “You need to get over yourself, Noa. Look around. We’re not the losers anymore. Lizette is madly in love, Peter is too busy making goofy gel to sell drugs and we’re all working on the Bridge, for stars’ sake!”
Noa wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “I don’t think Haydn has seen that, either. He’s indifferent, Ségolène. I’m just a unit member to him, the key to him getting outside and seeing the stars for himself.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t ask,” Ségolène said smartly and got to her feet, as Cai came over to the low table and armchairs that they used for relaxation.
“Can’t ask what?” Cai said.
“Ask Noa!” Ségolène said, resting her hand briefly on his arm. She laughed at her own joke and walked away.
Cai watched her go, then looked at Noa.
She shook her head. “Not about what you think,” she said softly.
He gave a tiny shrug.
“Although she has a point about asking,” Noa said.
Cai’s gaze drilled into her. “A point you should take,” he said.
“You first,” Noa shot back.
Cai’s gaze dropped to his feet.
“See?” she said. “Easier to say than do.”
Speaking to Haydn was shoved aside by the endless work and the lack of hours in the day. Then one of Farnell Acardi’s Cavers killed a Bridge guard in the middle of a riot and everything changed.
Chapter Eleven
Noa spotted Bannister at the back of the big hall, standing on a table. She climbed up next to him. “Do you realize you’re grinning?” she asked him.
Anselm held out his hand. “Look. Blisters.”
“I’ve seen blisters before. They don’t look so bad,” Noa assured him. “Just don’t peel the skin. They’ll get infected….”
Anselm shook his head. “I’m smiling because I have blisters. I’m a theoretical physicist, Noa. If I was leading a normal team—don’t screw up your nose. You know what I mean.”
“You have colleagues. I have friends. I know.”
“If I was leading a bunch of colleagues, this room would be full of people working at their direction. My colleagues would still be sitting in the conference room, monitoring. Only, look.” He lifted up his blistered hand to take in the room.
Noa looked. “I see a bunch of people working, too.”
“The people who thought this stuff up are the ones doing the work. That’s why I’m grinning.”
Noa smiled helplessly. “We’re mechanical engineers. We get things done,” she reminded him.
“Even Paderau Zingle, praise her heart,” Anselm said. “Look at her.”
Paderau was busy at the micro-printer, turning out bolts of chainmail to make the top layer of the suits.
The big doors to the hall pushed open. They were opened hundreds of times a day, so Noa barely paid any attention, until she saw the phalanx of black-uniformed Bridge guards march through them.
Her breath caught, even though she had no idea why. Her instincts, though, were alarmed.
She could name at least nine of the twelve guards by their first names and knew the rest by face. They were often in here, dropping things off, watching the work and more often than not, dropping pithy comments about how slow it was progressing, that they were milking the job.
Everyone would tease right back, accusing the guards of getting in the way, of not being smart enough to recognize brilliance at work and other silly barbs that always left everyone smiling.
The guards weren’t smiling now. They were armed.
Cold fingers walked up Noa’s back.
“This doesn’t look good,” Anselm said.
It wasn’t possible to see where they were aiming—there were simply too many people and too much equipment in the hall to guess their intentions but Noa knew, anyway.
Haydn stood at the long bench on the far side of the hall, watching the guards approach. He had been fitting the environmental controls and wiring them up, only the suit he was working on rested on the bench, now. He stepped away from the bench as if he intended to confront the guards and Noa gasp.
“No, don’t!” she cried and leapt from the table and raced to Haydn’s side, dodging and weaving between people and things.
Haydn threw out his arm as she got closer, warding her off. “Don’t come near me,” he said quietly. The shadow was back in his eyes.
Noa halted, squeezing her hands into fists that hurt.
Bernice Daly, the sergeant at the front of the guard unit, spoke. “Haydn Forney?”
Haydn looked at her. “You know who I am, Bernice.”
Bernice shook her head. “I’m here to escort you to Security.”
“Are you arresting me?” Haydn asked. His tone was almost disinterested.
“For questioning,” she amended.
“Why?” Noa demanded. “He’s done nothing—”
“His father is Farnell Acardi,” Bernice snapped.
“So?” Noa demanded hotly.
“Noa, leave it,” Haydn said softly. “You can’t reverse this. It is what it is.” He raised his voice, so Bernice and everyone could hear him. “They just want to give me the same three hour grilling they always do, about how much of my father’s son I really am.”
Bernice stepped forward and took his arm. “We might have left it at that, except your father went and killed Lieutenant Mateo.”
Noa gasped. Anwar Mateo had been a jolly man, with small, sparkling eyes, a belly and a smile for everyone. He had been fast on his feet, though, and sharp eyed. Noa suspected he was very good at his job, possibly because of his pleasant manner.
Anwar Mateo was dead?
From the blank faces and angry gazes of the guards, she knew it was true.
Haydn’s shoulders shifted. He squared them. “Okay.”
He didn’t look back as they led him out.
The workshop was silent. Even the printers had momentarily ceased their constant whisper.
Ségolène put her arm around Noa’s shoulders. “He put up with deeper shit for a long time. He’ll be fine,” she said quietly.
Noa thought of the way Haydn’s eyes had lost all their warmth and life. “Maybe not. Not this time.”
* * * * *
No one laid a hand on him this time, yet Haydn still stumbled through the Bridge Gate feeling like an army had walked up and down his body with hob-nailed boots. Everything ached. The bones of his face throbbed as if they were on the build up to exploding.
Each step hurt. Even his heels hurt. He moved forward a pace at a time, working it. He wanted to be away from the Bridge more than he wanted the pain to stop. As he got farther down the Collina, putting the Gate behind him, the steps grew easier. Life came back to his limbs. He had been scrunched up in a corner for hours. Moving was stretching out some of the kinks.
He rounded the mi
ld curve of the Collina and saw the gate just ahead, with the Aventine and the bulk of the tankball arena visible. It was dim, beyond the road. He didn’t know the exact time. The darkness told him it was late.
Just keep walking, he told himself. If it was very late, the train would be working on an on-demand basis. At least he wouldn’t have to wait for one, if it was.
He came to halt when he spotted the dark shape at the end of the road, huddled up against the wall. He couldn’t see the face, yet he knew who it was, anyway. Noa had her arms around her knees, her head on them. It was an eerie echo of the position he had been locked into.
Had she been waiting all that time?
His heart gave a little jolt and he steeled himself against the sensation, keeping it contained. He moved forward once more, angling toward her.
Noa looked up, blinking, as he got closer. If she had been asleep, then she really had been there for a long time. Haydn ground his teeth together, determined not to let that affect him.
She got to her feet with supple speed, pushing against the wall. She came toward him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Haydn told her.
Her marvelous eyes, huge and black, gazed steadily. “How bad was it?”
He shrugged. “Been there. You know.”
She shook her head. “No, not like this, you haven’t.”
“You really shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?”
There were too many answers for him to pick the best one quickly. He just looked at her, instead. “Don’t you get it? I radiate toxins just standing here.”
“They really aren’t going to charge you for something your father did, are they?”
He laughed. It was a dry, cracked sound. “Of course they aren’t. They didn’t take me in because they think I had something to do with it.”
Noa frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s because you didn’t grow up with my father.” He sighed, looking out toward the Aventine, where the little, trendy market squares would all be silent and dark. It would be empty out there. Too empty for his liking.
“So explain it to me,” Noa insisted. Her fine pointed chin was up.
“You should go home.”
Junkyard Heroes Page 10
