“The nanodocs in Ceravanne’s body form an artificial immune system; designed in part to rid the body of excess metals,” her mantle whispered, and Maggie considered. It was possible that the nanodocs could-over several days-corrode the Word, but her mantle also whispered that it would take the nanodocs from a liter of Ceravanne’s blood three days to have much effect. It was hardly a workable solution.
Which meant that Maggie had to figure out how to disable the antenna. Her mantle had suggested that metallic salts would stay in the body for only a few days. And she realized with a start that this was all the Inhuman would need: it was probably designed to download its information in a matter of hours, then never be used again. In fact, Maggie realized that it probably couldn’t be used at long distances after a few days, not if the antenna system were only temporary.
Her mouth became dry, and she grew more excited.
Is there a way to get rid of these metallic salts? she wondered.
“You cannot attempt to deprive him of them,” the mantle whispered, “for he needs some to live. But if you feed him small amounts of potassium chloride and large amounts of water, his body should flush out any of these metallic salts quickly, within a few days.”
Beyond that, Maggie could guess what to do. In the daytime, the natural solar activity would help Gallen’s mantle block the radio waves. In fact, Maggie suddenly realized why the Inhuman attacked after dark-so that their victims would be converted immediately, instead of having to wait for the night.
And after dark, it would help if Gallen could get underground, where the Inhuman could not communicate.
So Maggie realized that she would have to begin flushing the excess salts from Gallen’s system. Until that was completed-a task that her mantle suggested would take a week-Maggie would have to do what she could to lower Gallen’s susceptibility. They could probably travel during the day, but at night they would have to seek shelter underground.
And still, given all of that, the Inhuman’s Word would still be lying dormant within him. Once Gallen got close to the Inhuman, or close to one of its transmitters, the Word would no longer require a strong signal, and it would be able to overwhelm him.
“One battle at a time,” Maggie told herself. “I must fight one battle at a time.”
At noon, Gallen returned to camp with food-a plump goose, a burlap bag filled with apples, plums, pears, squash, new potatoes, and a pouch of cherry wine.
Gallen passed the food out, then told the others, “There is a road just south of here, with a farmhouse. The master of the house was good enough to sell us some stores, but no wagon. We’re twenty kilometers east of a fair-sized town. I’ll buy a wagon there, and drive back to you tonight. Keep your heads low. We’ve no way of knowing these folks around here, whether their intentions toward us would be foul or fair.”
Maggie watched his eyes as he spoke, and she could detect no change in his features, no change in how he acted toward them. If he’d been seduced by the Inhuman’s Word, she could not tell. She could sense no struggle.
Maggie told Gallen that she would come with him to town. Orick said he also wished he could be off with them, but he looked around camp and decided that his greater duty lay here, to guard Ceravanne and Tallea in case an armed mob came searching for them.
Maggie was getting ready to leave, eating a brief lunch of plums and raw corn, and Ceravanne was caring for Tallea. Orick began plucking the goose with his teeth-a thankless job that he complained would leave down stuck between his teeth for days.
When Maggie finished eating, she and Gallen climbed the hillsides through the thick woods until they reached a dirt road wending through forests at the foot of the mountains.
Gallen seemed somber, distracted.
“Tell me more about what happened last night?” Maggie asked, hoping that he would at least acknowledge that something had changed.
He said, “It doesn’t matter. They were just someone else’s memories, someone else’s thoughts. I’m over it now.”
He hurried his pace, as if he were angry, and looked about. She could tell that he was still deep in thought, deeply troubled, trying to work things out.
She told him then of her own studies, and the things that the mantle had revealed, how they would need to travel during the day and go underground at night, how he could reduce his own reception of the Inhuman’s signal by drinking heavily to rid his body of any metallic salts that the Word introduced.
Gallen smiled mirthlessly at that news, and when they passed a small stream, he knelt on all fours and drank to his fill. Afterward, Maggie took his hand as she walked with him, and the sun was shining, and the road was clear, and she felt somehow relieved, hopeful that all would be well.
Maggie had not known what to expect in Babel. She’d imagined armed encampments, each city a fortress. But as they walked along the din road, past stands of alder, maple, and oak, the hills seemed little different from her home in Tihrglas. The autumn colors were on the trees, and the soil smelled rich.
And in each little valley that they came to, a few quaint cottages huddled. Most of them were of gray stone with round clay shingles. The hay houses and sheepfolds and dovecotes were made of mud and wattle, with thatched roofs made of reeds.
Instead of armies, Maggie saw children working beside their parents at cutting wood for the winter or bringing in the com.
In the afternoon they came to one green valley, where the emerald grass had been cropped short by the sheep, and Maggie stopped and looked out. The maples and alders lit the hillsides with flame. Three houses clustered together on the side of a hill at the foot of the valley, and a small smokehouse was letting its blue smoke rise lazily up. The scent of cooking sausages was strong. And beside the road, where a bridge spanned a clear river, a dozen naked children were swinging from a rope into a wide pool. Some of the little boys had thick red hair, almost fur, that covered most of their bodies, and one little girl had a face that was strangely deformed-with eyes that were unnaturally large, and a heavy brow that jutted over them. The children were screaming and laughing, splashing water at each other, and for a moment, Maggie grasped Gallen’s hand, forcing him to stop.
“Look,” she said. And Gallen suddenly became wary, scanning the hillside.
“No, you muffin, look at those children-this place!”
“Aye, it’s a pretty valley,” Gallen admitted.
“I … I think I could be happy here,” Maggie whispered.
Gallen looked at her askance. “Here? But I thought you loved fiddling with gadgets-technology. There’s nothing here for you, nothing like that. You’d be splitting logs and butchering pigs just like back home. You-your neighbors wouldn’t even be human, damn it, Maggie!”
“I know,” Maggie said quietly. Her sudden change of heart surprised even her, and she remembered the mischievous grin she’d seen upon the Lady Semarritte’s face when she’d told Maggie of Tremonthin. Somehow, Semarritte had known that Maggie would like this place.
“I don’t understand,” Gallen said. “If you want to live on a backward planet, there are valleys just as pretty as this back home. I know a place near An Cochan. And if it’s a stone house you want to live in rather than a housetree, well, one could be built.”
“No,” Maggie said. “It wouldn’t be the same. On Tihrglas, you can’t go to the City of Life to be reborn. On Tihrglas, you’re told what you must be. But here-” She suddenly got a glimmer of what it was she really was after, and she waved toward the motley assortment of children. “Here you’d never want for interesting neighbors. They’d be nothing like you, and they’d never try to tell you how you must act or what to wear.”