Still Baylor Charmayne’s demeanor did not crack. Our team is losing! I wanted to scream. Get out there and threaten some lives!
Each member of the House stood and voted, or abstained. I felt one moment of satisfaction when Percy O’Reilly abstained, shocking Ryan enough for everyone to see the hurt in his eyes. But Ryan recovered when one of the younger Tedds stood and voted No instead of abstaining.
All but one member had voted. The total of No votes and Yes/Abstain votes was equal. The last vote would decide whether the Music in Education bill would die on the spot or live to fight another cycle.
Unfortunately, that vote belonged to Lady Gloria Constantin.
The look on her face! If a kraken could grin in triumph before eating her prey, she would look as Lady Gloria did then.
But she wasn’t the only kraken on Olympia. I sat in my lair and contemplated mass murder as I watched my plans go up in smoke.
“Lady Gloria,” she said, “abstains.”
* * *
Boom! Gloria saved the bill. Saved by one vote, and it was hers.
But there wasn’t much cause for celebration. If a bill is going to pass in the House of Clans, it usually does a little better each time it passes through a vote. Bills that are destined to fail do worse with each vote, until they fizzle and die for good.
We had done worse. And when I reviewed Ryan’s interactions with his cronies, I vowed to make myself see them without the rosy tinge. I had to look beyond the substance of those conversations and see that he was talking to more people than usual. His circle of acquaintances had grown wider than his circle of cronies.
And this is where Percy O’Reilly fit into the picture. I believed he was the one who had convinced that Tedd clansman to vote No. And then Percy could abstain and play the field.
But Percy’s abstention infuriated Ryan.
Percy kept his head.
I felt pretty sure of it, too. So I sent a message to Percy.
I admire your finesse with the vote. But your best interests are not being served. We need a face-to-face. I’ll be in Lock 212 after 19:00, tonight. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, stop in and have a chat.
—Messenger
This time I didn’t have to forward the message to intermediaries—I sent it to Ryan using the same pathway Gloria Constantin had used. I kept Percy’s name on the communication, but only fragments of the message, including best interests, Lock 212, and 19:00 tonight. It looked like another bit of flotsam from the communications reshuffle.
She showed me what she meant. I had thought it an odd description until I saw him sitting in his private garden, sipping from an antique cup. Serenity did not often sit on Baylor’s features, but there it was. No other word described him better at that moment.
I knew why I should feel serene—I had a plan. I knew what I had to accomplish to set it in motion. I felt committed, so no anxiety crept into my consciousness at that stage of things.
But I wondered why Baylor felt that way. His bill seemed doomed. If his commitment to Lady Sheba’s dream was true, he should be very upset.
Perhaps he felt committed only to trying. If he failed, that wasn’t his fault.
But that didn’t fit his personality. Baylor took every bit of opposition personally. His revenge might be pursued patiently, for years, but he always achieved it.
Vengeance may not be what he wanted to inflict on Ryan. Schooling, perhaps? Give him slack, then yank him short?
That might satisfy Baylor. But it wouldn’t work for me.
So Medusa and I waited for Percy O’Reilly in Lock 212. We weren’t sure he would show up. And we weren’t sure Ryan would show up. And we weren’t sure Ryan and Percy wouldn’t show up at the same time, though we could probably handle that contingency.
But Percy arrived alone—an hour early. Perhaps he thought he would get a look at Messenger first, then decide whether he wanted to stick around for the message. He opened the inner door and sauntered in with the confidence of a man whose Security overlay is telling him that he’s alone. He left the inner door open.
Medusa and I hung among the cables attached to the ceiling. Percy never glanced in our direction. When he was directly beneath us, we descended to a spot behind him. I had a flashback to one of Nuruddin’s movies, in which a predatory alien sneaked up on a man in a setting very much like Lock 212. But we were kinder to Percy than the alien had been to the man in the movie.
He never saw us. We snapped his neck. His body hit the deck face-first, and blood sprayed from his nose.
Why did Percy have to die? He had been neutral about the Music in Education program. Without Ryan in the picture, I was pretty sure Percy would have let Baylor persuade him to vote Yes.
Percy had to die for just one reason—to lure Ryan into the air lock. Period. Percy would have understood that reasoning perfectly.
Medusa and I repositioned his body for maximum effect.
Medusa and I climbed out of sight and waited for Ryan to take the bait.
31
X the Unknown
He is serene.…
That’s what Dragonette had said of Baylor Charmayne, when he sat sipping tea with his wife after Lady Sheba’s bill almost died in the House of Clans.
I expected that serenity to be shattered once Ryan went missing. But it only deepened.
Though I had to admit it had an odd quality to it. It wasn’t the calm of a man who is at peace with the universe. Baylor’s serenity seemed more like certainty. There was sadness in it. A whiff of cruelty, too, though for Baylor that was normal. I floated in my observation bubble and obsessed over the nuances.
I looked up to see another Mini clinging to the outside of the bubble with her claws. Her name was Kitten.
she announced when she had introduced herself to me.
Kitten measured closer to thirty centimeters in length if you didn’t count her stretchy tail—and her stretchy middle. (She could wrap herself around things.) She had jets (one of which was located in a funny spot), but she also had four feet, and each foot could cling to things with retractable claws or with pads she could magnetize at will. This served her well, inside and outside Olympia.
Dragonette piped in.
I pulled myself up to the spot on the observation dome where Kitten perched.
Kitten’s ears twitched. They were as expressive as Dragonette’s tail.
I gazed at Baylor’s face (through Dragonette’s eyes). Kitten’s assessment rang true.
Kitten cocked her head,
as if by considering me from another angle, she would improve her perspective of politics.
Dragonette said,
Medusa chimed in.
The Minis respected Medusa as the final authority on things. They looked upon me as more of a collaborator. Unfortunately, I found them adorable and amusing, and did not generally attempt to curb their enthusiasm.
Dragonette’s curiosity matched mine; Kitten’s playful nature reminded me of a childhood that had been cut short. When Dragonette followed bees to watch them gather pollen, I encouraged her, though what the bees did had no bearing on our overall mission. And the fact that Kitten liked to sing show tunes for her own amusement seemed harmless to me—at least so far. But I could see how breaking into song at the wrong moment could spoil a mission. So Medusa’s mediation tempered our collaborations.
Medusa said,
The O’Reillys had insisted on a thorough investigation of their kinsman’s death, which had been confirmed by his locator drifting along outside Olympia. Ryan had been located nearby.
The two clans suspected each other, but mostly by default. The young men were found dead, more or less together—but the log from Lock 212 showed that Percy had opened the inner door, and then Ryan had joined him inside the lock, and then a malfunction had closed the inner door and caused the outer door to open before the lock had properly depressurized. An accident.
But anyone who examined the codes could tell that the “malfunction” could have been easily arranged by tampering with those codes. The tactic had been used by Executives in the past (which is why Medusa and I imitated it). Either Ryan or Percy could have been responsible for the tampering, and then also have been caught in the trap and killed accidentally.
Executives are uneasy with grief, which is interesting when you consider that they are the cause of most of it. Truly, if I had wanted any satisfaction from vengeance, I would have felt impoverished with the visible results. Baylor conducted his business at his usual pace. He had shown much more distress when his mother was killed on Titania.
I watched Terry to see if Baylor paid him more attention, now that Ryan was gone. So far, no such connection had occurred, which was for the best. I hated to think that Terry’s loyalties might be divided, if Baylor started treating him like a son—especially now that Terry had a Medusa unit. Medusas made powerful allies.
The thirteen had learned that lesson too well. Our children had made some demands that shed light on the sort of independence individuals could enjoy while linked with Medusa units—and that strained our acceptance of autonomy for children. They wanted to meet each other in person. They wanted a tower of their very own, where they could observe the construction of the Minis and celebrate the links they formed with them.
Oddly, Nuruddin was the most philosophical about it.
I could accept that. What worried me was the need to cover their tracks.
Yet Octopippin and her sisters felt no strain in doing that.
I moved so I could see the children’s tower, Baba Yaga. Medusa climbed from its access lock and jetted toward Lucifer, evoking Ashur’s favorite music, Debussy’s “Sirènes.” She might be a sea creature moving between coral reefs.
When the lock had cycled and the inner door opened, Kitten burst into my space and quickly maneuvered herself to a spot where she could touch me with her claws, showing remarkable delicacy. She looked into my face, seeking permission, then wrapped herself around my waist.
Medusa entered with much more dignity. The sight of her lifted my heart. The last time we were together, the circumstances had not been cheerful. I hated to think that would become the new normal.
But Medusa had come for a reason.
I had to wrestle my thoughts out of the obsessive pathway they had been traveling for the last several cycles, but it didn’t take me long.
Medusa’s tentacles moved lazily, like Dragonette’s tail.
There was a good chance that the last time we had gone, we alerted the Weapons Clan to our shenanigans. They might be waiting for us to try it again.
But Medusa wasn’t just my collaborator; she was a deadly weapon. There wasn’t any place I feared to go, so long as she and I were linked.
That’s what I thought. But I found out otherwise.
* * *
Kitten didn’t ask to go along. But she wanted to be useful, and Medusa had a plan for her.
We made our way off the leading edge and onto the spinning bulk of Olympia, Kitten in our wake. She adapted quickly to Medusa’s mission-focused demeanor, going from Playful Kitten to useful flank-watcher without skipping a beat. She was so good at this, I stopped thinking about her, concentrating instead on what I would say to the person/persons on the other side of that transmission from Escape.
So Kitten’s report took me by surprise.
This struck me as a non sequitur. I hadn’t seen any hint of an impending execution in Executive communications.
Medusa changed course toward Lock 119. I was amazed to discover that she could go even faster.
Right before the door opened, Medusa made a calm announcement.
Kitten raced ahead of us. I should have understood what she meant when she said get her, but I was too consumed with watching the seconds tick down to Kalyani’s doom.
10 … 9 … 8 …
My tactical graphic suddenly switched to Kitten’s perspective, and I saw the outer door of Lock 119 through her eyes.
7 … 6
… 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … 0 …
The door opened. A human form shot out. I watched as Kitten launched herself after Kalyani’s tumbling body, away from Olympia.
* * *
That’s when I felt true fear, not because of my worry for Kalyani and Kitten, but because Medusa and I jetted after them, right into the void—and my instincts screamed to turn around. It took every ounce of my courage not to beg Medusa to go back. It didn’t help that I couldn’t see Kitten and Kalyani with my eyes, or that Kitten’s view was even more distressing. It was like plunging into a fathomless ocean of stars, and looking at them as symbols on the graphic inside my head didn’t dispel that feeling at all. The graphic let me see the space growing wider between us and Olympia.
Seven seconds ticked off. Kalyani grew larger in Kitten’s sight. Kitten extended her feet; her claws seized the fabric of Kalyani’s clothing.
Suddenly I saw them with my own eyes. Kalyani looked tiny; she was tumbling. Kitten was too small to see, but I thought Kalyani was also moving her arms and legs. How quickly did Kitten get the membrane pressurized?
She didn’t answer.
Kitten called to Medusa,
We got close enough to see them both. Kalyani tried to bat her away, but Kitten held on.
I stretched my hands toward Kalyani. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, and I wanted to scream, too.
Medusa extended her membrane around Kalyani and Kitten.
Medusa Uploaded_A Novel_The Medusa Cycle Page 29
