A Woman's Intuition -- Part Three

At Mium's insistence, the shuttle was landed farther away from Tiro's tent than it had been before. Landale IX came to a stop in the shadow of a ledge that stuck out from a high wall of ice several hundred meters from the normal landing site, where Wren's ship still lay.

"We shouldn't even be here," Mium said after she and Azur had stepped out into the snow. "That Motavian seemed pretty agitated." The android shook her head. "He totally creeps me out."

Azur crossed her arms and looked off in the direction of the tent. "I know. He kind of got to me, too."

"So why did we come back here?" Mium asked. "Wren's a big boy. He can take care of himself, and that doctor, too. And they've got that Whistle to help them."

"I know..." Azur said. She bit her lip. "Call it a woman's intuition. Something about the whole situation just doesn't sit right with me. The sudden change in Elm's behavior, Wren not telling Demi what's going on..."

"And they were all just standing around in the dark. I didn't buy Elm's story about the power failure."

"Neither did I. And I really don't like the idea of that little girl being in there, either."

Mium took a deep breath, then nodded. "All right. Let's go check it out again. And if that Motavian gives us any trouble..." A faint current of electricity ran across Mium's gloves. Azur looked down at them and knew that meant that Mium's claws were ready to shoot outwards at a split second's notice. "I'm sure I can convince him to quiet down."

Azur gave a knowing smile and the two of them marched over to the tent. Mium went first, keeping her keen android sensors on full alert. Azur's ears were tipped backwards. Her violet eyes darted about warily.

Mium stopped when they were only a few meters from the tent's entrance.

"What's this...?" she asked, kneeling down.

"What have you found?" Azur asked.

"It looks like that creepy Motavian dropped something," said another voice.

Mium and Azur looked up and saw Favia standing at the tent's entrance. She looked much as she had before, but she was not smiling.

Mium picked up the object she had spotted, which was a torn piece of crumpled paper. She unfolded the paper, took one look at it, and handed it to Azur.

"Unfamiliar dialect," she said.

Azur nodded and took the paper. "It's a note of some kind, and it's in Palmalatin," she said. "I guess it really must have been Elm that wrote this."

"What does it say?" Favia asked, frowning.

Azur blinked a few times and gasped. "Favia, where is Elm right now?"

"He went out into the glacier with Betty about an hour ago," Favia said. "Wren left earlier this afternoon, on foot. I'm not sure where he went..."

"Did Elm say when he would be back?"

"He should be here any minute now. Why?"

Azur looked at Mium. "I'm guessing that this note was passed from Elm to the Whistle," she said. "It says that they've gone out to get two robots that were damaged this morning. Apparently, Elm plans to have Betty repair them."

"For what end?" Mium asked.

Azur stared at Favia. "It says to kill the girl. To kill you, Favia."

Favia tried to smile and took a step backward. "What are you talking about?"

Azur handed the note to Favia. "I don't suppose you can read this, can you?" she said with a humorless smirk.

"Actually, I can," the girl answered. She snatched the paper and began to examine it. Mium and Azur exchanged surprised glances.

After she had translated it, Favia shook her head and stuffed the note in her pocket. "I don't believe this," she said. "What do I do now? They're using my only ice scooter to go...wherever it is they're going."

Azur grabbed the girl's wrist. "Then you're going to have to come with us, and right away! This is really bad news. We'll take you back to Zelan so that we can tell Demi about this. Wren must be totally in the dark. But how has Elm been able to keep this horrible plan a secret...?"

"Well, Wren's been so busy with Tiro," Favia said. "Wait, Tiro! I can't leave him here all alone!"

Mium nodded and ran quickly into the tent. She emerged less than ten seconds later with the unconscious Dezorian slung over her arm. Azur gasped when she saw his shoulder. Once again, the bandages were almost totally black with dried blood.

"Come on!" Mium said. "Let's get out of here!"

Azur nodded. Mium ran to the ship to get it ready to depart. Azur, still holding Favia's wrist, tried to run, but Favia resisted.

"What are you waiting for?" Azur asked.

"This...this is all crazy!" Favia cried. "What's going on?"

Azur took the girl's shoulders and stared into her eyes. "Look. I don't know what's going on here, either. But it looks like someone tried to kill your cousin and now they've got their sights set on you."

"But why would anyone want to kill Tiro? Why would anyone want to kill me?"

Azur rolled her eyes. "I have no idea! But we've got to get out of here, now!"

Favia started to run but then stopped and looked all around. "What's that noise?"

Azur stopped, too, but her keen Numan ears recognized the sound at once. It was the roar of an ice scooter.

"Come on!" she shouted at Favia. "Let's go!" When Favia was again hesitant, Azur pulled even harder and dragged the girl towards the place where Landale IX was hidden.

A new voice cut through the air. "You! Stop!"

Azur didn't look back but she knew that the voice belonged to Elm. Even as the roar of the scooter grew louder it was drowned out by the sound of a sonic gun being fired. Azur and Favia just kept running. In a few seconds they had reached Landale IX, which Mium had ready. As soon as the girls were safely inside the ship, Mium initiated take-off. The ship was quickly off of the ground and out of Elm's reach.

Favia sat in the small passenger compartment behind the cockpit, shaking. Azur sat next to her and put her arm around Favia's shoulder.

"I'm so scared," Favia said. "All I did was come to see my cousin and all of this weird stuff starts happening." She began to cry.

Mium looked over her shoulder at Azur, who returned the look, and frowned.

Demi had been right when she'd said that the old data classification system was hard to understand. It seemed like each datathread was somehow related to the one that came immediately before it and immediately after it, but Erol could not see how he was supposed to determine what topic was located where in the stream. It appeared he would have to browse each file, one by one. He sighed and began to slowly scroll down through the list of charts, tables, studies, and articles. The list went on and on and on.

Erol realized with a start that he had blanked out when several minutes later his eyes caught a key word: numan. Excitedly he scrolled back up to the beginning of the entry. The subject title of the file was DATA TRANSMITTED TO ZELAN BY SEED; 06/01/2284 AW. Erol knew that placed the creation of the file only a few months before Chadwick Ashley and his friends, including Wren and Demi, destroyed the Profound Darkness. And Erol also knew that it was just around that time that Seed created his Numan, the ancestor of Dahl. Erol wiped some sweat off of his brow and began to read.

The short narrative was followed by pages upon pages of complex formulas and equations that even a biologist of Erol's magnitude would take many weeks to make sense of. There was also some ordinary text, but it was written in what appeared to be a Motavian alphabet. Erol figured it must be part of the encryption Seed spoke of. And Erol, unfortunately, did not speak Motavian.

Using a side panel, Erol was able to bring up a simple language conversion program. The computer informed him that it would take exactly forty-two minutes to decrypt and translate the entire numan document. So Erol leaned back, put his feet up on the console, and took a nap.

There was a deep gorge called Crex's Wound in the glacier thirty kilometers west from Tiro's tent. Aside from the Crevice and Skure fissures, it was easily the largest crack in the skin of planet Dezo. Although less than a city block in width, Crex's Wound was incredibly long. It stretched all the way from the planet's cold and empty northern pole to the southern tip of the northern glacier, several hundred kilometers away. No bridge had ever led across it. A traveler on foot would not find a proper town or road if he traveled for days in any direction. It was a place completely devoid of life, except for the few rodents and ice worms that dwelled deep beneath the surface. Only within the ice could they ever hope to find warmth.

Crex's Wound was an empty place. No trace of Palman culture or civilization had ever existed there.

Not until Wren came.

He had been marching west for a very long time through deep snow and across wide expanses of ice. Several times his stabilizers had failed him and he had gone crashing down to the cold ground below -- something that had never happened to him before. By the time he reached the gorge, many of the antennae and instruments which covered and extended out from Wren's laconian armor had broken off. During a particularly nasty spill, the soft synthetic skin that gave Wren the appearance of a handsome Palman male had also been ripped away on the sharp permafrost. No longer did a man face the wilderness. Where he had been there was only a grotesque machine. Blue optics on twitching rotors leaked coolant and lubricant that poured down into the black and gaping facial cavity. A queue of shattered teeth stood at lax attention.

The biting winds and pebbles of ice that thrashed about high on the far northern cliffs had been known to cut even low-grade laconia. At one point Wren's hand was dislodged from his arm by a particularly fast and sudden gust. But he did not blink. He did not flinch. He had not so much as noticed.

He never stopped walking until the tips of his feet were jutting out over the edge and into the cold void. It was then that an urgent call met Wren's remaining receivers, ordering him back. Apparently, Wren had somehow misunderstood his orders. He had been told to hide. He had most certainly not been told to destroy himself.

Wren waited patiently until the message was over. When the voice of Dark Force had died in his ears, he slowly turned himself around. He tried to engage his Recover unit, but it was destroyed, and it failed him. Wren started back the way he had come, moving even more slowly than he had before. His vanishing footprints and a trail of frozen black blood were all that remained to mark his passing.