“Yes. And I need to know quickly. This has priority over everything. We believe someone is currently using one of this department’s portal doors, and they really shouldn’t be.”
“Okay. Well, actually, that can be checked quite simply.” He went over to his station, looking back at Kohei with a quizzical expression. “You sure it’s in use?”
“Reasonably sure, yes.”
Fitz started calling up data on his screens. “Do you know how portal doors are powered?”
“Not got a clue,” Kohei said, amused by the way technical types always tried to establish some level of superiority over everyone else.
“Portals.”
“What?”
“Portals power portals.” Fitz smiled and tapped a ridiculously complex graphic on his central screen. “The solarwells send electricity back to Earth’s central grid via portal, and Connexion is the single biggest market for that power. Portals use up a hell of a lot of energy to maintain their entanglement. The greater the distance they bridge, the more power they consume. It’s not governed by an inverse square law, thankfully, but this department consumes a pretty hefty number of megawatt hours.”
“Okay, I get it. You can monitor that power consumption.”
“Yes. Every Connexion portal door has a one-centimeter portal built in, which supplies it with power direct from the central grid. And we…Oh, wait, that’s wrong.” He leaned forward, studying the screen.
“What is?”
“Our power usage monitor is offline, but its display function has frozen in a loop. How the hell did that happen?”
“Can you restore it?”
“Sure. Hang on.” Fitz typed quickly, muttering at his mInet. The graphics on the screen changed. Several red icons appeared. “Holy shit,” he exclaimed. “What is doing that? Not even our six-meter portals eat this much power.”
—
Callum sat beside Savi’s cot all day long. She slid in and out of consciousness in front of him. Some of the times when she woke, she seemed puzzled by his presence.
The doctor, a middle-aged South African man, ran through her injuries for him. Her clothes had protected most of her skin from the direct blast, he said, but her head and arms and hands had been exposed, and she was close to the bag when it detonated. Callum guessed her grains had been ruined by the explosion, or ripped away when the blast wave tore her flesh off; which was why Connexion Security didn’t know who she was when they dropped her through the portal. The surface wounds and burns were slowly turning septic, which if unchecked was going to produce severe blood poisoning. Connexion didn’t send metabiotics to Zagreus to counter that. And even if she somehow got through that, she would need modern medskin applied under controlled conditions to restore her natural skin. Her eye was damaged beyond repair, although the doctor thought the optic nerve was still intact, so an artificial retina implant might return her vision. His biggest worry was head trauma. Her responses were deteriorating at a rate the other injuries didn’t quite account for.
“Just a few hours more,” Callum told her in one of her better lucid periods. “I have to wait for my crew. They exposed themselves to get me here.” Though he was beginning to wonder if he dared wait that long. The sight of her, so weak and damaged, was agony. Delaying her admission to hospital was a violation of every feeling he had for her. Time itself became intolerable.
All day long he heard the voices outside, growing in volume. Not with anger, just the sheer number of people who were gathering outside the longhouse. Foluwakemi kept coming in to give him updates. Every human on Zagreus had arrived for the vigil. So far they were being patient, but expectation was growing. With that, tempers were shortening.
“Could you just come out and talk to them?” she pleaded.
“They wait,” he said forcefully, gripping Savi’s hand tighter so she moaned. “If Savi can do it, they bloody well can. When my friends arrive, then this is over. You have my word.”
An hour before sunset, when the sheltered canyon was already reduced to a gloomy half-light, more than two hundred people marched down to the arrival lake. Foluwakemi said they were making very sure there were no screwups when Connexion dropped his friends in the geothermal vent.
Solar-charged lamps were switched on around the sickbay as darkness finally fell, making it appear even more macabre. Callum didn’t know when he’d eaten last. Sleep was also a distant recollection, something he used to do in his previous existence. Apollo had to keep sending alert signals to his auditory grains as well as purple flashes to his screen lenses as he kept drifting off.
His time display told him it was two and a half hours after sunset when the cheering started outside. He frowned, puzzled by the sound. Then Foluwakemi rushed in. “They’re here,” she shouted excitedly. Moisture was glinting in her eyes. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you, detoxification man? You can take us home now?”