Thresholder

Dirk sat with Perry in his room an hour later, going over the plan.

“It’s simple,” said Dirk. “You fly across, sticking close to the water so you won’t be seen, or under the water if that’s workable. You go to the place where my people are stashed, sneak in through a window, gather them all up, then fly back across. You do all that without being seen. If you’re seen before you get to the house, we scrub the mission, because we don’t want you leading anyone there. If you’re seen after you leave the house, you get back to Berus as fast as you can and try not to have a long fight. Understood?”

“Understood,” said Perry. “Who are the targets?”

“Agitators, spies, no one whose names you need to know, especially not before you pick them up,” said Dirk.

“What does an agitator do?” asked Perry.

“Agitates,” said Dirk.

“Come on,” said Perry, rolling his eyes.

“An agitator is there to pick fights,” said Dirk. “Not literal fights, not most of the time, but they raise a stink about things, they point out how shitty it is to live under a king, whatever that king’s specific flaws are, which are usually enriching themselves or base nepotism, but can obviously get a whole lot worse.” His face was tight, which it usually was, like he was about to spit. “You send in an agitator to make friends with the locals, stake out a position at a friendly pub or something, then you have them be a voice for our side. Sometimes they’re quiet and coy about it, just asking questions, claiming not to be against the monarchy per se, other times they’re out and out. A single properly trained and motivated agitator can sway hundreds. People don’t know how to stand up to someone firmly and persuasively arguing. Then sometimes, the guard or the police or whoever gets wind of someone with a big mouth, and they come in with truncheons and manacles, and if the agitator has done his job right, everyone sees that he was just telling it like it was.”

“Seems underhanded,” said Perry.

Dirk shrugged. “Their system sucks. Their culture sucks. We’re going to replace it any way we can, and this is one of the ways that works. Usually, depending on the law, it’s all perfectly legal.”

“And I’m getting these people out now?” asked Perry.

“Them, and others,” said Dirk. “If you want to operate in a foreign kingdom, you need all kinds of people, a guy who can sort out paperwork, a guy who can make sure everyone gets paid, a guy to send messages to and fro — we’re pulling up people who are vulnerable, but if you’re thinking that they’re underhanded, they’re not. They’re good people. All of them, every one, could have sat at home and had a nice quiet life instead.”

“It does help make me feel better,” said Perry. “And your other plans fell through?”

“They did. This group won’t know to expect you, but all you have to do is invoke my name,” said Dirk. “That should be enough.”

“I can speak in your voice, if I need to,” said Perry. “Would that help?”

“What do you mean ‘speak in my voice’?” asked Dirk.

“March, a demonstration?” asked Perry. The helmet was still on the table. The armor’s existence was out in the open, and Perry had decided that he’d be forthright with Dirk, given how much the man already knew. Better to be forthright now than have Nima or Third Fervor lob accusations later.

“The hungry purple dinosaur ate the kind, zingy fox, the jabbering crab, the mad whale, and started vending and quacking,” said Marchand. The voice was a perfect match to Dirk’s.

“What was that?” asked Dirk after a long moment.

“It was a panphonic sentence, sir,” said Marchand. “It’s a sentence that contains every phoneme of the English language, and was meant to serve as proof that I have your entire phonemic inventory mastered, though of course there are many variables to imitation, and I would of course restrain myself to modulations of sentences I’ve recorded you saying, where possible.”

Dirk stared at the helmet. “Is that … a radio?”

“It’s a piece of technology with all the intelligence of a man,” said Perry. He watched Dirk closely. It was a difficult thing for some people, but he didn’t think that Dirk would have the same kind of negative reaction as Moon Gate.

Dirk sat back. “You’ve been walking around with this?”

“Sure,” said Perry.

“And,” began Dirk, before abandoning whatever thought had been percolating. “How far away are we from this sort of thing? Being able to build one?”

“Given the prohibitions on research, I would say you’re centuries away, maybe millenia,” said Perry. “You can’t build the machines that you’d need to build the machines that would be able to build something like this.”

Dirk let out a breath. “It can think like a man? Do the things a man would do, but without a physical body?”

“More or less,” said Perry. “Though it would be possible to give him a body too.”

Dirk swore. “And Third Fervor, Nima, they know about this? They would know how to make one?”

“Not to my knowledge,” said Perry. “Just me. I can leave your people the books necessary to get started on it, but from your face, you’re not on board.”

“I need to think about it,” said Dirk. “I need to think about what it means. Being able to have a machine do everything, everything, that’s a dream beyond dreams.” He stared at the helmet. “Can it do poetry?”

“Uh,” said Perry. “March?”

“Would you like me to compose a poem in the moondance format, sir?” asked Marchand.

“The what?” asked Perry.

“It’s a poetic form that’s enjoyed some popularity of late,” said Marchand. “It is characterized by a scheme of alternating rhymes and four quatrains with a turn or swerve at the start of the third quatrain accompanied by change in meter. I believe I have a good composition, ‘A Garden’s Maidens Bathed in Moonlight’, which likens the blooming of a flower to a young person in their prime.”

“Nah, we don’t need to hear it,” said Perry.

“But it can,” said Dirk. He let out a breath. “I … I’ve gotta set this aside, try to think about it more later. And I’m duty bound to report it, not just shove it in a cabinet somewhere, which is what I’m tempted to do.”

“I’m trusting you with this knowledge,” said Perry.

“Good,” said Dirk. “Good, and I know that’s just a fraction of what you have, but — let’s keep our eyes on the short term right now, okay?” He gave the helmet a nervous look.

“Sure,” said Perry. “Tell me the address and I’ll find it. Go in through an upstairs window, use your name to convince them to come with me, race back to safe soil, then dump them out. Easy.”

“Easy, unless you get caught,” said Dirk. “The house is … do you have pen and paper?”

“I have Marchand,” said Perry, pointing at the helmet. “He’ll remember.”

“It’s a green brick house with a slate roof, the upstairs window is circular, it’s at 161 Faring Street, in the Meatpackers Quarter,” said Dirk. “Because I can’t get a message to them, they can’t mark the house for you, and I’m praying to gods I don’t believe in that it’ll be obvious when you see it. Make very sure you go into the right house. If the alarm gets raised, we’re fucked. Stay off the streets.” He paused. “I’ll get you a map before you go, we can work through it.”

“You get all that?” Perry asked Marchand.

“Yes, sir, I’ve pinpointed the house in question,” said Marchand.

“What, like that?” asked Dirk, staring at the helmet with suspicion.

“March, I’m going to have Dirk wear you, show him the house and make extra sure that we have the right one,” said Perry. They had enough time for Perry to blow Dirk’s mind.

“Very good, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry passed the helmet over, and Dirk eyed it suspiciously, then put it on his head. It was pretty bulky, all things considered, bigger than a motorcycle helmet and much heavier given all the metal. He looked funny in it, like a bobblehead doll, and Perry allowed himself to show some slight amusement. It was going to be tough to do what he’d told Mette he’d do, and drop the front at all times. Dirk probably wasn’t the person to do it around, either.

When Dirk finally took the helmet off, his face was a shade paler.

“Impressive,” he said.

“It’s the right house though?” asked Perry.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s the right house,” said Dirk. He placed his hand against his face and slowly brought it down, stretching his skin. “Perry, I say this with a great appreciation for everything that you’ve shown me, but what the fuck?”

“It’s a lot,” said Perry. “Whatever people you have evaluating whether a technology should be put into widespread use will have a field day with it.”

“Get me the books then,” said Dirk. “A stack of books with the specifications, I guess, something that I can read through.” He sighed. “If it were up to me, I’d bury those books in a forest somewhere and be done with them.”

“There are limits to how much you’re willing to go on your own, huh?” asked Perry.

Dirk pressed his lips together. “I have a duty to the culture.” He looked at the helmet and groaned. “I sometimes wish I didn’t.”

Perry leaned forward and put his hand on Dirk’s shoulder. “Hey. I believe in you.”

Dirk shrugged him off and rolled his eyes, and Perry laughed. After a moment, Dirk laughed too.

“Let me see that helmet again,” said Dirk. “I want to see that map.”

Perry handed it over. It was pretty clear that for a guy like Dirk, having the whole world in his palm would be immediately addictive. If they’d had the technology, Dirk would have fallen in love with the security state. They were a long, long way off from something like Marchand, but maybe it was better that people knew it was possible before they stumbled their way into it.

In theory, everything that Perry had was complete overkill for this mission.

~~~~

Perry waited until the dead of night to fly across the open sea. He stayed close to the water, only five feet above the waves, so he would be nearly impossible to spot by any watchers. He was public enemy number one in Thirlwell, the assassin who’d killed their king during a peaceful parlay, and his only solace was that they had little ability to actually hurt him, with the sole exception of Third Fervor. Unfortunately, her portals meant that she had the ability to respond almost instantly to anything that happened in the city, and given that she could sense a change in volume, she would be able to sense the shelf space opening unless he did it in a room with no openings. If Perry didn’t want to get caught, he would have to be careful about that. Third Fervor apparently did have to sleep, but only four hours a day. The Farfinder’s logs had given him a rough estimate on when it would be, but they hadn’t responded to him hailing them. He guessed that was because they wanted to stay out of the fight, or because not responding meant their future vision would work better, but it still rankled a bit.

His sights were set on the city. If it had been possible, he’d have preferred them to have gathered somewhere in the countryside, away from prying eyes, but thirty miles across the water and another twenty or so across land was a long way to travel to send messages, even with the fastest ships they had. With the harbor shut down and everyone on high alert, there was just no way to get messages back and forth, which meant that coordination was enormously more difficult.

Perry was hoping that it wasn’t a trap, but had done his best to prepare for one.

The city’s lamps were still shining bright, and if Perry hadn’t known better, he would have thought that it was just a normal night, not a period of extreme unrest. The police were out in the streets, he knew, pulling double shifts, and there were watchers scanning the skies for him, though no one had quite the right masks for the job. Perry was running dark, an invisible shape, and the clouds were out in full force, blanketing the whole city in darkness aside from the constellations of streetlights.

Perry went above the houses, swift and silent, but he stopped three blocks out from the safehouse where the people were waiting.

“Scan please,” said Perry.

The HUD slowly lit up with everything Marchand could readily identify, mapping all the patrols. It gave the impression of being more orderly than it actually was, in the same way that an overview of traffic on a mapping app would make it seem as though every car was actually accounted for. In situations like this, there was always something about how Marchand did the HUD that reminded him of video games, and this one in particular would have been a stealth game, except that stealth games always used idiotic guards following set routes with view cones as narrow as a handspan.

Perry had half a mind to drop down and kill a few of those guards. They were in groups of three, but he could kill quickly. With the sword and the armor, he might be able to sweep through a tightly-grouped trio in a single stroke.

Instead, he kept his eyes on the house and waited, crouched down, hoping that he was as good as invisible.

“I see no ambush waiting for us, sir,” said Marchand.

“Good,” said Perry. “Then we move. Pay attention to noise. I want to know right away when you hear something from inside that house.”

“Very well, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry flew from rooftop to rooftop, not touching down with his full weight, making sure that he was silent as a mouse. It would have been better if it were raining, or if there was a heavy wind to disguise his motion and any sound he was making, but he was pretty sure he was just an unremarkable dark shape.

He opened the window slowly and carefully, then slipped inside. He was in an attic, it seemed, with wooden boxes stacked up and tarps covering unknown objects. He knelt, placing his armored hand against the floor, and Marchand sent out the ultrasonic pings to try to build a map of the house.

“All doors and windows are closed,” said Marchand. “Eleven souls in the house, as anticipated.”

“Good,” said Perry. Was this actually going to go off without a hitch? As much as he’d assured Dirk that there wouldn’t be any fuck ups, he had thought there was a good chance that Third Fervor would show up and make it all go sideways.

Marchand was showing vague smears of people through the walls, and it might have been Perry’s imagination, but the whole thing seemed to be working better than it ever had before. Marchand was entangled with Perry, experiencing phantom computation, and hooked into the system of spiritual energy that was flowing through Perry. It was something that they would have to figure out at some point, and the academic tether would grow thick and full — not that it had been wanting, of late, given how fresh and new this world still was.

Perry got to the door that led down to the lower level, and when he saw that someone was walking past, he knocked.

The person on the other side froze in place, turned toward the door, and after a long time, finally opened it.

The long pause had given Perry time to pull his helmet off. He tried to present as friendly, but it was difficult with the armor. If he had the time, and wasn’t so worried about being attacked, he might have gone without armor, just so he would look more friendly. Instead, he couldn’t even put the sword away, because he didn’t want to use the shelfspace without good reason.

The woman who opened the door stared at Perry for a long, awkward moment. She was an older woman with gray hair and weathered skin, wearing a dress even though it was the dead of night. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Perry was smiling at her, a winning, easy smile.

“Hey,” he said in a low voice. “Dirk Gibbons sent me. I’m here to get you out of here.”

She stayed there, staring at him.

“I really really hope that I don’t have the wrong house,” said Perry.

“Dirk … sent you,” she said. Her eyes had gone wide. “We were supposed to leave by boat. A man was supposed to come to the back door.”

“There are too many guards,” said Perry. “There are too many people on the streets. Dirk said to use the window.” Reading between the lines, the guy that was supposed to pick them up was dead and there was a chance that if he wasn’t dead, he’d been picked up and pressed for information. “This is a better, faster way. I’ll have you safely in Berus within two hours. Can you please go downstairs and introduce me?”

Her mouth opened and closed, then she nodded slowly.

“No noise,” said Perry, still keeping his voice low. “I can explain. I have a letter from Dirk, in his own hand, if you recognize it.”

“That armor,” said the woman. “You killed the king.”

“It’s complicated,” said Perry. “Look, Dirk sent me, you’re in danger, but you know that. Go down to talk to the others, explain that I’m here, that I’m going to use magic to take all of you, a special type of lantern. Have a discussion with them. But we need to go while the weather is cooperating with us.”

“I … I’m just a runner,” she said. “I’m not —”

“Please, go tell the others,” said Perry.

She nodded at him, then quickly left to go downstairs where the others were.

Perry listened in on the conversation. It was shocking how similar it was to the symboulion meetings that he’d sat in on, and if he had any doubt that these people were a part of the culture, it was washed away as they went through the consensus building. They didn’t trust him, not even with Dirk’s name on his list, but the time had come and gone for the knock at the back door, and it was clear that the guards were swarming.

After ten minutes of talking, a heavily built man came up the stairs to where Perry was waiting.

“We’re good to go?” asked Perry.

“Let me see the letter,” said the man.

Perry handed it to him. In the end, Dirk had said that using the voice was probably just going to raise a whole lot of questions that had very complicated answers, so had thought it better to convey the change of plans in a letter.

The man took the letter and went back downstairs, where there was another ten minutes of talking.

Perry waited on the stairs. He occasionally looked at the map of the house that Marchand had made. Dirk had not prepared him for waiting on a committee, but this was the sort of thing that inevitably happened when there wasn’t a leader. Perry didn’t really know what their structure within the city had looked like, but they were only eleven people. If it was a cell structure, then maybe they hadn’t actually known each other before they’d been directed to this house.

Eventually, someone else came up to him. It was one of the melekee, scurrying and ratlike, and he looked up at Perry in awe for a moment before saying what he had to say.

“We’ll go with you,” he said.

“Great,” said Perry. “First, we need to close all the doors and windows in the house.”

When he went downstairs, the group didn’t really look like he’d expected it to. When Dirk had said ‘agitators and spies’, Perry had expected that it would be young people, mostly men and a few women, the kinds of people who, on Earth, would have been recruited just out of high school and given a ton of training. Instead, he wouldn’t have pegged a single one of them as being the spy type. There were two that were younger, but most of them were older, save for the dwarf, who looked young but might have been a hundred years old. They all looked at Perry with a great deal of awe and uneasiness. A single candle lit the room, and the curtains had been drawn to prevent the light from getting out. Still, the candle made Perry uneasy. The curtains weren’t blackout curtains, and it seemed to be the sort of thing that a passing guard would think to investigate.

“We need to go through the house,” Perry repeated for them, when the melekee man didn’t. “Close every door and window. Make sure there’s no gap to the outside world larger than a foot across.”

“How are we going?” asked one of the older men. He had a cap on and was missing one of his eyes. He had an eyepatch, but it was flipped up for some reason, and there was nothing stopping Perry from seeing the gaping hole. “Nidi said something about a lantern.”

“It’s a new type of magic,” said Perry. “We can be across in two hours, maybe less, back in Berus, where it’s safe.”

“Not safe in Berus,” said the older man, shaking his head. “But we’ll take it.”

“It is dangerous?” asked one of the women. Her arms were folded across her chest.

“It’s dangerous here,” said Perry. “They’re rooting out anyone and everyone. Depending on what they know, you’ll be put in prison or worse.”

Perry was starting to get annoyed. They’d already had this conversation among themselves, and they were raising points that had already been addressed. He could understand them being hesitant to come with some strange man, but time was of the essence.

“We need to go, and in order to go, we need to make very sure that every door and window is closed,” said Perry. He pointed at the two melekee. “Go into the attic, make sure there aren’t any holes. If there are, we need to close them. Then close everything as you make your way down.”

They hesitated, then scurried up the stairs.

“We were told to bring only what’s on our backs,” said the older man. “Can we still do that?”

“Anything you have in the house that can be gathered in five minutes,” said Perry. “But it would be better if you didn’t. And that candle needs to go out.”

The gray-haired woman who’d called herself a runner leaned forward and snuffed it out without discussion, which Perry was thankful for.

By the time the melekee came back down, every door and window on the ground floor had been confirmed to be closed. There was a draft coming from beneath the front door, but it wasn’t nearly of the size that Third Fervor could slip through, at least according to the Farfinder.

When Perry opened up the shelfspace, there was a hushed din from the gathered group. It wasn’t anything like a lantern, and they probably knew that. They also knew that his armor matched the description of the man who had killed the king of this country and who’d caused the need for them to flee in the first place.

“Go,” said Perry. “Now. You wait in there, eat food, turn a light on, sit and relax, don’t poke around too much, and wait. I’ll open it back up once we’re in Berus.”

They went through slowly, in spite of the considerable danger they were in. With every passing second though, Perry became more sure that Third Fervor wasn’t going to open up a portal. Even if she had somehow sensed the shelfspace opening, which shouldn’t have been possible in a completely closed off room, and even if she was awake, which she shouldn’t have been, to go after Perry would mean leaving the queen with only mundane defenses. He was hopeful.

As soon as the last of them was inside the shelfspace, Perry snapped it shut and made his way back up the stairs to the attic. He opened the window slowly, trying to minimize the chance that he’d get spotted, though it was just as dark as before and he didn’t think that anyone would have had a good angle on the window from the ground.

He slipped out and flew away, sword in hand, flying over rooftops and keeping alert to the patrols down below. There was no sign of Third Fervor, and without long distance communication, even if Perry was spotted by someone, the odds that she could be dispatched grew lower with every block further he got from the castle where she was almost surely staying.

He didn’t start to breathe easier until he was over the water again, and while he kept five feet above the waves like last time, it was considerably less tense than before. When he got to the opposite shore, he decided to run back to town, letting his armor do some of the work, draining energy but getting him there a lot faster.

He was stunned that he hadn’t fucked anything up, and unless he opened up the shelf to find that a turncoat had killed everyone inside — well, even that wouldn’t be his fault, it would be Dirk’s fault. Perry would be incredibly pissed off, and he’d have to restrain himself from killing the perpetrator, but it would be a colossal fuckup that had nothing to do with him.

“Sir, I’m not getting a radio signal from Mette,” said Marchand.

“Maybe she went to sleep,” said Perry.

“She had stated that she was intending to stay up until you had returned, as long as it took,” said Marchand. “I do not feel that she would abandon her post.”

“Well, shit,” said Perry. “Ping her again.”

“I have been attempting to make contact with a variety of modifications, sir,” said Marchand. “I will continue to do so. Given the construction of her radio equipment, I believe it unlikely that she’s run into a technical problem she cannot solve.”

Perry grit his teeth and with a moment’s decision, launched himself up into the air. It was slightly slower, but he was close, and he’d get a sight line to the town a little faster, along with clearing up some interference from trees or hills on the ground.

When the town came into view, he half expected flames, but it was as dark and quiet as it had been when he’d left.

It was too quiet.

He saw the devastation as he landed. Whatever had happened, it was hours past, overlapping with the time he’d been gone, and the bodies had been cleaned up. There were broken windows and shattered doors though, along with splatters of blood and trails where bodies had been dragged. He held his sword tight in his hand, waiting for a portal to open and reveal Third Fervor. If this wasn’t her work, then it was Fenilor’s, but Fenilor had no reason to do this.

Dirk Gibbons came out of the large building that served as a dormitory. He was limping, and Perry strode to him.

“We were attacked while you were gone,” said Dirk. “Either she waited until you were away, or it was an unhappy coincidence.” He had blood on his shirt, but it didn’t look like his.

“Is Mette okay?” asked Perry.

“She got punched in the chest,” said Dirk. “She’s badly bruised with a few broken ribs, but she’ll live.” He hesitated. “Moss is dead.”

“Shit,” said Perry. “Can you … I mean, dead for good?”

“That Moss is, yeah,” said Dirk. “There are others out there.”

“But the machine,” said Perry. “That’s —”

“Not here,” said Dirk with a look around. There was no one. “But no, she didn’t know about the machine, or didn’t care about it. She was here for you, and she found the other guy instead. She took him.”

“Took him?” asked Perry. His eyes went to the bedroom window, but he saw nothing there. “Kidnapped?”

Dirk nodded. “Killed six people, nearly killed Mette, then took off. I think she knew he wasn’t you, but I’m not sure what she made of him. We’re blown, this whole operation is. We’re moving out. We can’t be stationed here anymore. She didn’t see me, thank god.”

“I have your people,” said Perry. “I told them I’d bring them out when it was safe.”

“It’s not safe,” said Dirk. “I don’t know if she’ll be back, but if she was after you, then it’s better for you to get the hell out of here. Go somewhere she can’t track, somewhere she doesn’t know about. But first, we’re going to take the machine apart and stuff it in your space. If she doesn’t know about it already, I have to assume she’s going to break your boy and know everything there is to know. I have people in Thirlwell that are sticking around, but they know they’re on a knife’s edge, and we have to hope that one of them can kill him.”

“I can save him,” said Perry. “I can leave now, be there in an hour and a half, find where they’re keeping him, pull him out.”

“Can you honestly say that you can beat her in a fight?” asked Dirk. “Last time didn’t go so hot for you, and unless I’m mistaken, you haven’t gained more tools in the last day and a half.”

“I don’t need to beat her in a fight,” said Perry. “I just need to smash and grab.”

“Go see Mette,” said Dirk. “Get her ready to go with you. I’ll get some people to take the machine apart, then it’s going with you. You’re going to have to help with the big pieces. And as for your counterpart, we’re going to have to hope that I did a good enough job with the network in Thirlwell.”

“Dirk, I just removed half the network in Thirlwell,” said Perry. “Who do you have left?”

Dirk gave a grim chuckle. “If you think that’s half the network, you’re underestimating me.”

“I’m giving you two hours, then I’m leaving,” said Perry. “I’ll deposit your people, but it’s on you to get them somewhere safer than here.”

“Nowhere is safe,” said Dirk. “That’s part of the point. And we can’t get the machine apart in two hours, not without Moss, not without a whole bunch of people who aren’t supposed to know about it tearing it apart.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ll take them. I said I would. Maybe they can help.”

“How much time do you need?” asked Perry.

“Six hours,” said Dirk.

“Then I’m taking Mette and I’ll be back later,” said Perry. “You’re on your own until then.”

He’d have taken off right then if not for the fact that he had eleven people in the shelfspace that he’d promised would be put somewhere safe. He didn’t think the site of a major bit of enemy action counted, but he wasn’t sure that anywhere in Berus was safe.

And Moss was dead. Not dead dead, since there were others out there, doing their work, but the Moss that Perry had known was gone. He wondered whether they could clone him, if they took his blood before it coagulated, but he also didn’t know what Moss’ wishes were. They hadn’t been friends, exactly, but Moss had been kind and understanding, even when that wasn’t really warranted.

He opened up the shelf and had the spies come out. They looked shocked, and he didn’t know whether it was the disquieting feeling of being in a magical extradimensional place, or the clear destruction that Third Fervor had wrought.

While they were making their exit, Perry was thinking about the Farfinder. They hadn’t stepped in to help him. He was going to have a word with them, just as soon as he was able.

As soon as that was done, he went into the dorm and took the steps two at a time until he got to Kestrel's room, where Mette was laying down with her eyes closed. Her hair was plastered to her forehead by sweat, and she was mostly undressed, with a bandage across her chest that didn’t seem like it was doing much. There was blood by her mouth that had been hastily wiped away, and it seemed like she’d just been set there and forgotten, though probably because there were worse cases to triage.

“She punched me in the tit,” said Mette. She was awake, and had heard him, but she didn’t open her eyes. “Who does that?”

“I’ll kill her,” said Perry.

“You were already going to do that,” said Mette. She winced. “They took him.”

“I know,” said Perry. “I’ll get him back.”

“The idiot tried to fight her,” said Mette.

“Sounds like me,” said Perry.

“Even if you know you can’t win?” asked Mette. Her breathing was raspy. He was going to have to have her stop talking. There wasn’t anything she could say to him that he couldn’t figure out from the logs.

“I don’t know,” said Perry. “Maybe.” He watched her breathing. She’d been taken out with a single punch to her chest, and she was bruised. The tooth would fix her, but her injuries weren’t life threatening. He stepped closer to her and slipped the gauntlet off, leaving his hand bare. He placed it on her, and she winced.

“What’re you doing?” asked Mette.

“Trying to heal you,” said Perry as he pushed energy out through his hand.

He was trying to think of her as an extension of himself, which from a gender theory standpoint was probably not great, but might allow him to develop or uncover some kind of healing technique. There were books on healing that had been copied from the library of Moon Gate, but he hadn’t really understood them, and pushing your own energy into someone else was difficult even if they were a fully willing and trained participant.

“It’s not working,” said Mette.

“Give it a bit,” said Perry.

“She’s going to come back,” said Mette. She coughed, then gave a little cry of pain. “Perry, we need a plan.”

“I’m going to get him back, then kill her,” said Perry.

“We need a plan to do that,” said Mette.

Perry grit his teeth. She was right, his attempt at a healing hand was doing nothing but let him feel her heartbeat. It was possible, he was sure of that, but if it was working, it was uselessly subtle and slow. He’d keep it up for an hour, he decided, which was enough time for him to see whether it had done anything at all.

“Radiation poisoning,” said Mette. “Give me an hour and I can have a lantern in production mode. See if her armor protects her from that.”

“Rest,” said Perry. “I’ll figure it out.”

His mind was churning though. What he really needed was help. The Farfinder would be back in contact with him eventually, and failing that, he was going to have to figure out a way to enlist Fenilor’s help.