Serpent's Gift (35 page)

The girl got back on the grid and followed it a long time before she found herself in front of what her mind perceived to be a huge vault. There was still the tiny remnant of a bright glowing string leading from her money-accumulation program right into the vault.
That's where it is,
Heather thought.

All the money. My money.

She would have to go in there and wipe it out, make it go away. Her chest felt tight, her eyes stung. She wanted to weep, but couldn't. That money would've gotten her off this rock, away to freedom. With the help of Heathertoo, she could've lived a

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great life, had anything she wanted, gone anywhere ... But that was before she'd killed anybody. If she got caught now, the only place she'd be going was jail, for a long, long time.

Her lip trembled, so she bit it, and stepped up to the vault. She concentrated, and a keypad appeared at exactly her eye level. She smiled. Now she was on familiar territory. She rubbed her hands together, then wiped them on her coverall.

Biting her lip in concentration, she rested the fingertips of her right hand on the pad.
Now, be careful!
her inner voice warned. She tapped in a sequence.

Heard something in the giant door click and shudder. She tapped in another.

More clicks, a groan. She smiled. Slowly she tapped in another cadence.

Suddenly the keypad glowed bright red and felt burning hot. She yelped, tried to yank her hand away, found it was glued to the pad. The heat seared her. She screamed, grabbed her wrist with her left hand, pulled and tugged desperately to no avail. Suddenly police sirens wailed, just like in the movies. A thousand aircars were circling the vault, their sirens flashing, the alarms threatening to shatter her eardrums.

Remember, they're just illusions the defense system is sending you!
her inner self said calmly.
Keep working. They haven't nailed you yet. You can
still defeat them.

Sweat poured down Heather's face, dripping into her eyes. She

concentrated on her burning hand, telling herself it was just a computer illusion, that her fingers weren't blistering on the keypad, that she could still do whatever she wanted. The heat abated. She swallowed, tapped another sequence. The heat stopped completely, and there was a loud click from inside the vault door. She tried another combination.

The police sirens stopped, and the aircars slowed, but kept hovering.

Heather felt a surge of optimism. She continued her combinations, the patterns coming from the computer itself as she tapped its mind. The aircars slowed, then disappeared. And finally, with a massive groan, the vault door slid open.

Her hand was freed from the keypad, which promptly disappeared.

The youngster stared into the vault, an endless chamber filled to bursting with stack after sky-high stack of crisp new bills. All denominations. From all over the galaxy. Her eyes widened as she stared at it all, even though she knew it wasn't real. Physical money didn't look like that anymore. Mizari credit disks were greenish, and they were the common method of physical exchange these days.

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She prodded the computer's mind. Would something terrible happen if she crossed the threshold? She looked down. A wire-thin ray of blue light stretched across the doorway. She probed deeper into the alien mind. The light winked out.

Once she got inside, would the door slam shut behind her? She closed her eyes, concentrated. The vault door dissolved, leaving the chamber wide open. Someone else could worry about sealing it back up.

Cautiously, Heather stepped inside.

All the time, of course, she knew this wasn't real, that she was actually inside the computer, but the imagery her own brain constructed to help her fathom out these challenges was so real, she could feel the marble beneath her feet, smell the unique smell of real money. Just like that time Mom and Dad had taken her to that museum, the old Treasury, where they showed how money used to be made....

She shook the thought away, knowing she couldn't afford the distraction.

She followed the narrow aisleway that wound through the bottomless vault, searching for her account. Heather thought she must've walked ten miles before finally finding it. It sat on a shelf just at her eye level, with a little sign under it that said, "Heather's money."

She looked at it, stunned.

It was a tiny pile compared to the huge mounds of cash surrounding it. She touched it, estimated how much there was there. To her it was still a frightening amount, more than she'd ever had, more than she could ever imagine earning. Yet, compared to what was here, it was nothing.

The child suddenly felt smal , tiny, insignificant in this huge place. All the work she'd done, yet the fortune she'd amassed seemed so trivial compared to all of this.

Stop worrying about that,
a voice inside hissed at her.
You don't have all
day. Get rid of this stuff, and get out of here!

She nodded obediently, touched the money reverently one more time, then dipped again into the computer mind. One by one, she redistributed her tiny stacks over to surrounding ones, where their small amounts would never be noticed. It would be nothing to those accounts. Nothing. Yet, it had been so much to her.

The last stack sat there, ready to be moved, when Heather reached out impulsively and grabbed it. She couldn't let it all go, she just couldn't. She couldn't be left with nothing.

Don't!
her inner voice warned.
It's just an image. It's not real! Don't do it!

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It was too late. She ignored the voice, grabbed the money, and shoved it into her pockets. Then she ran--ran as hard and as fast as she could. Through the twisting corridors of the vault, to the door, to freedom. An alarm sounded in her ears, but she ignored it. There was no door on the vault. She'd get out easy.

The yawning opening came into view. She raced for it, chest heaving, just as a gate of bars began descending from the ceiling, ready to trap her. The gate slammed to the ground seconds before she got there, and she hit the bars hard, squeezing, pushing, forcing her body through.

Then she was out, running down the grids, police sirens loud now, aircars giving chase. Panic rose in her chest.

Throw away the money,
her voice said.
Then get away!

"No!" Heather screamed. "I won't!"

She felt the stacks of bills grow heavy in her pockets, turn to solid gold, weigh her down, make her feel as if she were racing through molasses. The aircars were catching up.

"Dammit!"
she screamed, trying to pull the huge, impossibly heavy bars out of her pockets, but they were too large to force out past the tight, strong material. One of the police aircars buzzed her as the weight of gold grew too heavy. She fell, expecting to land hard, but she pitched forward off the grill into endless blackness, plummeting down and down.

She screamed for just a second, then flailed her arms, trying to plunge into the computer mind, make it grant her wings, a parachute, an a-grav belt, anything. But nothing appeared and she kept falling. The gold in her pockets crumbled to dust, spilling out, swirling around her in a tornado of shining particles, blowing away. When not a speck was left, she finally hit bottom, with a rude thud, but no injuries.

"Shit!" she grumbled irritably, and tried to concentrate, bring up the grid.

She'd have to go back to the vault, go back in, find that stack, get rid of it all over again. She must've been crazy to try and physically take it. She calmed her mind and concentrated, waiting for familiar signposts to appear.

But nothing happened. She concentrated harder, probed the AI, tried to force it to comply. She looked around. Nothing. Where was she now? Around her was only a black void. She shivered.

Far away, she noticed something gray, a tiny blob, floating toward her. She was relieved that the blackness was no longer total.

The speck grew larger, larger, until Heather realized it was

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nothing she recognized at all. It was huge, shapeless, like an amoeba, translucent. . . wet. .. sticky . . . like something alive. Like something from the organic portion of the AI? Heather felt panic building as it grew bigger and bigger, speeding toward her in the void.

Run!
her brain ordered, and with a high-pitched child's scream, she did, bolting in any direction she could, as long as it was away from that
thing]

Her legs pumped hard, her breath burned in her lungs, her blood rang in her ears--

--but it caught her anyway, slapping her hard, wrapping its gooeyness around her legs. Heather was screaming wildly as she fell again, this time with the protoplasm monster clinging to her. Then another one was there, smacking against her, holding her down while two more of the jel ylike entities appeared and headed purposefully toward her.

With a terror that left her teetering on the verge of complete insanity, she realized that hundreds of them were coming, thousands, ready to encase her, entomb her alive.

As she screamed--it was all she could do, they had her arms and legs by now--one of the plasma things slapped over her face, filling her eyes and nose, her mouth, stifling the sound.

She could still breathe, somehow, still hear, still even see, though it was like looking through medical jelly. She was trapped, utterly, helplessly trapped.

This was the greatest terror she'd ever known, worse than the time she'd thought Uncle Fred wasn't going to stop until he'd killed her, worse than when Khuharkk' had roared at her, worse than
anything.

With all the strength she could summon, Heather sent her mind out, desperately seeking help, begging for help, pleading for someone, anyone, to--please!--help her.

But as the plasma imprisoned her, burying her under tons and tons of goo, she knew it was hopeless. No one would hear her here in the depths of the AI. No one would even look for her. Who would look for a telepath in the bowels of an artificial intelligence? Still, she could not quiet her mind, it was the only weapon she had.

By now the plasma things totally encased her, so many tons of

-them that there was no blackness anymore, just a sickly off-white fading into gray. She could no longer sense the computer. There were no images she could recognize; she was in complete sensory

deprivation.

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I've been here for years,
she thought. I
must be old by now.
Old and shriveled, with white hair. Her mind roved the emptiness wildly, like a feral thing, touching nothing but cold barrenness. Years like this. Her whole life.

However long you could live in here. Alone.

Suddenly something flickered at the edge of her vision. Heather strained toward it, searching, hoping against hope. Then she saw it again. A glimmer.

Bright whiteness.

Heather trembled. That's how the attack of the plasma beasts had started, something sparkling in the void. She blinked and stared. No, this was different. The whiteness glowed bright, made motions that were somehow familiar. The figure grew larger in her vision. She recognized wings. Wings.

That was something she understood, wings. She thought of huge white birds, thought of pelicans, of winged horses ... of angels. Like the angels her mother had told her about, not the ones Uncle Fred and Aunt Natalie had described. Guardian angels with enfolding wings and gentle faces, not avenging ones with lightning bolts or swords.

She remembered the church her parents had taken her to when she was hardly more than a baby. Big statues of white-robed angels everywhere.

Guardian angels. Mom said they were always around you, watching out for you. Heather had stopped believing in all that stuff when her mother had died.

But now, her heart surged. This was an angel, oh, please, make it be one! A guardian angel, come for her. "Oh, please," she cried out in a choked voice.

The figure drew near, huge, massive, gleaming wings beating back the gray plasma, the whiteness glowing so bright it hurt her eyes. She saw its face, just as its voice touched her mind, and she felt a burst of ecstatic hope.
Dr.

Rob!

"Heather!"

It
was
him! He'd come for her!

"Here!" she yelled. "Over here!"

Now she could see him fully, as glorious as an angel, giant wings waving gently, keeping him elevated, apart from the tunnel of goo. He stared at her, as though he couldn't see her clearly. i

"I'm in here! Don't leave me!" she nearly screamed in her panic.

He smiled at her then, as though he'd just found her. His face had that relieved look that people wore when they just found their lost child--a child they really cared about. Her parents had looked at her like that once. "Oh, Heather. Thank heavens," he said softly. There was no anger in his voice.

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He didn't know ... couldn't know what she'd done, or he wouldn't look like that. "Oh, Dr. Rob," she stammered, "I'm sorry. I did a terrible thing! I didn't mean to be bad .. . not like that... I'm sorry ..."

"I know, honey. I know. Let's not talk about that now. We can deal with it later, once we're out of here." He held his arms out invitingly to her, and the plasma-goo parted before the light emanating from him. Heather flung herself into his arms, felt him enfold her, pull her to his warm, strong body.

Burying her face against him, she closed her eyes.
"Please take me away
from here,"
she whimpered, like a two-year-old. She felt something odd was covering him, like feathers, but not feathers. Something plush, cool, like cilia.

Soft, downy cilia. She pressed her cheek against it.

"Your wings are so beautiful, Rob," she said, then felt silly for blurting it out.

She heard him chuckle, felt it ripple through his body, felt the happiness, the relief flow into her. "Are they, honey? Someone must have rung a bell, because I didn't think I'd earned them yet. Come on. Let's go. Hold on tight."

The powerful wings pumped hard, and they began to climb, up through the blackness. Heather dug her fingers in the cilia and held on.