More voices from the walls, and these sounded Focused: "...Attic lab twenty percent inchoate...probable cause: cross-specialty reactions to audio stream ID2738 ‘Children's Hour'...Instabilities are undamped..."
"I hear you, Attic. Prep for fast shutdown." Reynolt returned to Trixia Bonsol. She stared at the weeping woman, her look an eerie combination of intense interest and total detachment. Abruptly she turned, her gaze skewering Trud Silipan. "You! Get over here."
Trud bounced across the room to his boss's side. "Yes, ma'am! Yes, ma'am!" For once there was no hidden impudence. Vengeance might be unthinkable to Reynolt, but her judgments were ones that Nau and Brughel would enforce. "I was checking out the effectiveness of the translations, ma'am, how well laypersons"—namely the patrons of Benny's booze parlor—"would understand her."
The excuses were lost on Reynolt. "Get an offline team. I want Dr. Bonsol's log checked out." She leaned closer to Trixia, her gaze probing. The translator's weeping had stopped. Her body was curled in a quivering tetany. "I'm not sure if we can save this one."
Ezr Vinh twisted in Pham's grip, and for a moment it seemed he might start shouting again. Then he gave Pham a strange look and remained silent. Pham loosened his grip and gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder.
The two of them stayed silent, watching. "Patients" came and went. Several more were detuned. Xopi Reung came out of the MRI much like Trixia Bonsol. Over the last few Watches, Pham had had plenty of opportunity to watch Silipan work, and pump him about procedures. He'd even got a look at a beginning textbook on Focus. This was the first time he'd had a solid look at how Reynolt and the other technicians worked.
But something really deadly had happened here. Mindrot runaway. In attacking the problem, Reynolt came as close to emotion as Pham had ever seen her. Some parts of the mystery were solved right away. Trud's query right at the beginning of the debate had triggered a search across many specialities. That was the reason so many zipheads had been listening to the debate. Their analysis had proceeded very normally for several hundred seconds, but then as the results were posted, there was a surge in communication between the translators. Normally, that was consultative, tuning the words that they spoke aloud. This time, it was deadly nonsense. First Trixia and then most of the other translators began to drift, their brain chemistry indicating an uncontrolled excursion of the rot. Real damage had been done even before Trixia attacked Xopi Reung, but that had marked the beginning of the massive runaway. Whatever was being communicated within the ziphead net provoked a cascade of similar flareups. Before the emergency was fully appreciated, about twenty percent of all the zipheads were affected, the virus in their brains producing out of bounds, flooding them with psychoactives and frankly toxic chemicals.
The nav zipheads were not affected. Brughel's snoops were moderately affected. Pham watched everything Reynolt did, trying to absorb every detail, every clue.If I can make something like this happen to the L1 supportnetwork, if Brughel's people could be disabled...
Anne Reynolt seemed to be everywhere. Every technician deferred to her. It was she who saved most of Ritser's zips; she who managed the reboot of limited Attic operations. And it came to Pham that without Anne Reynolt, there might not have been any recovery. Back in the Emergents' home solar system, ziphead crashes might be occasional inconveniences. There were universities to generate replacements, hundreds of clinics for Focusing newly created specialists. Here, twenty light-years from the Emergent civilization, it was a different story. Here, little failures could grow unbounded...and without some supernally competent manager, without Anne Reynolt, Tomas Nau's operation could collapse.
Xopi Reung flat-lined shortly after they brought her out of the MRI. Reynolt broke off from managing the Attic reboot, spent frantic moments with the translator. Here, she had no success. A hundred seconds later, the runaway infection had poisoned Reung's brain stem...and the rest didn't matter. Reynolt looked at the still body for a second more, frowning. Then she waved for the techs to float the body out.
Pham watched as Trixia Bonsol was moved out of the clinic. She was still alive; Reynolt herself was at the front of Bonsol's carrier.
Trud Silipan followed her toward the door. Suddenly he seemed to remember the two visitors. He turned and made a come-along gesture. "Okay, Trinli. End of show."
