She still held her breath while Tommy cracked the door and ran over to treat the annoying little computer to the electronic version of an intimate rear intrusion with no lube. If it had started a transmission while Tommy was crossing the room, they would have been so fucked.
She relaxed and helped George carry Michelle’s decoy over while Granpa opened the black box sitting, alone, on an ordinary steel pushcart in the center of the room. The lid off of their own decoy, all three saw the same problem.
The base artifact had not been reproduced by Winchon or Michelle — perhaps they had not even been able to reproduce it yet. That was fine as far as it went. Michelle’s toy matched up on the surface. Unfortunately, for these people to tweak and change it to learn new tricks, they had connected cables to it in seemingly random places, hanging off and doubling back in a black tentacular mass that would have done credit to H. P. Lovecraft. To top off the similarity and the problems, the entire device sat within a mass of translucent, green, gelatinous goo, which moved and dripped, almost as if it sensed their presence.
Cally looked at the thing in the target box. She looked at the thing in Michelle’s box. Michelle’s gizmo had it going on with the tentacles just fine, only there weren’t enough of them. Not by a long shot.
Tommy had apparently gotten the next AID violation set on automatic, because Cally felt him peer over her shoulder. “Looks like the suit undergel we had in ACS,” he said. “Well, except for being snot green.” He looked at Cally. “So, what now?”
“You tell me. How is that goo going to react if we scrape off as much as possible and swap out black tentacle thingies.”
“Dunno,” the ACS veteran said.
“You don’t suppose we could, kinda, rip off some of those black thingies from his box and tape them to our box, or something, do you?” Granpa asked. Technology still wasn’t really his thing. Unless it went boom.
“Probably not,” the three younger operatives said, almost simultaneously. Growing up in the virgin age of television apparently left a guy… different… from growing up just a few decades later. Very different.
“Okay. Here’s what we try. Tommy, you pick up the gooey shoggoth or whatever the hell it is, and scrape any goo you can off it — keep as much goo as you can in their box. George and I will pick up the decoy and put it in there and see if we can get any of the goo to stay on it. Maybe they still won’t notice for awhile,” Cally said, doubtfully.
“And me?” Granpa asked.
“Uh… go watch the door, Granpa. Somebody needs to watch the door,” she said. He harrumphed grumpily at being shuffled off. Everybody in the room would hear someone approaching the door, so a watchman was strictly unnecessary. She expected he’d grouse at her about it when they got home. But they had to get there first.
Tommy picked up the object of their endeavors with about the enthusiasm of a fourteen-year-old boy for a baby’s dirty diaper. The goo tried hard to stick to the device, but by dint of a lot of brushing and pulling and wrestling, the big man managed to get about half of it to stay in the box.
At least, it stayed long enough for them to fit the decoy in. Then, to their immense relief, it swarmed up and around the decoy as if they were best friends. If nano-goo could have friends. The bits on Tommy even crawled down his arms and into the box, obediently wrapping around the decoy. Both devices had less goo, but at least their decoy had green goo. She’d been really afraid of how the stuff would react.
“Gross,” she said. “Lids on the boxes, me and George. Tommy, finish up with that AID. Granpa, how’re we looking?”
Instead of answering, he held up a hand and slid silently out the door, moving sideways down the wall.
After her AID terminated Erick Winchon’s call, Prida sat and stared, silently, at the far wall. Dahmer had, of course, made a valiant effort to insinuate itself into her affections over the couple of years she’d had it. The artificial human personality was limited, however, in the fundamental lack of same in the psyche of its charge. Prida had known, and still knew, of the machine’s efforts. They amused more than alarmed her. She had never become attached to her AID for the simple reason that she had never been attached to anyone, in anything but the most temporary physical sense.
When debating her course of action, in any circumstance, Prida had and used an excellent poker face. Now, she was considering the amount of trouble and risk someone would have to go through to kill or incapacitate a Darhel, as well as the amount of power that indicated. She had idly considered, herself, what it would take to kill a Darhel. She had investigated only to the extent of hitting absolutely no tripwires. Paranoid herself, she had an uncanny ability to estimate where others would put measures in place for their own safety. In particular, she had noticed very early that the Darhel tended towards the same self-honesty in their emotions as she did herself.
Anybody with the will and ability to eliminate a Darhel necessarily had the ability, and perhaps the will, to eliminate Prida Felini. Erick Winchon was a good employer. She had found some of their interactions truly delicious, although she had been a bit piqued that he had not derived equal pleasure from their mental trysts through the machine. It would have been so much more convenient if he had.
She knew Erick’s psyche, more or less. If she left his employ, even precipitously, he would simply write her off as no longer in his employ. She would not have believed the indifference if she hadn’t found it such a persistent irritation. She would also lose a terrific salary and unparalleled fringe benefits.
On the other hand, there was someone in the game who not only could take out a Darhel, but had. There was also the probable reaction of the other Darhel upon anything or anyone in the vicinity. Fringe benefits or not, Prida had more than four hundred years in which to find and enjoy jobs as good as or better than this one. Provided she was alive to enjoy them.
Yet, one didn’t want to jump the gun and throw away a good thing needlessly. Perhaps good old Pardal had just gone off and had himself a major snit, all by himself. One heard of such things happening to Darhel now and again. The thing to do, she decided, was to appear to be totally invested in the project for as long as possible, while covering her routes of escape if things suddenly blew up. Literally or figuratively.
“Dahmer, get me the head of security,” she said.
“Security, John Graham here, Ms. Felini. What can I do for you?”
She absently inquired as to Erick’s orders and more or less repeated them, telling the security head to also take over and coordinate the loaner guards from the military along with his own people. This was harmless cover for her real announcement — that she intended to spend the night at the facility, or several nights if necessary, and therefore would be making a brief run to her apartment to pick up a few necessities.
She declined the assistance of a staffer to run the errand for her, of course. Wouldn’t dream of it. Morons.
There. She could keep herself out of the way of any real hazards until she was more confident the situation was stable, and without jeopardizing her job. After all, she would be doing her job, and doing it well. From a safe distance.