Aurora in Four Voices by Catherine Asaro, Steven H Silver, Joe Bergeron Read Free Book Online Page A

were manacled behind her back and also to a ring in the ledge. He had set her boots on the floor and chained her ankles to the ledge. For some inexplicable reason, he also put metal bands around her neck and waist. Jato leaned over to lay his palm on her forehead —
    Her hand clamped around his wrist so fast he barely saw her move. He froze, staring as she sat up. It hadn't been obvious from the way she had been lying, but the chain joining her manacles was broken.
    He found his voice. "How did you get free?"
    She dropped his hand, her face relaxing as she recognized him. "Nano-chomps. I carry a few hundred species."
    "You mean molecular disassemblers?"
    "In my sweat."
    He stepped back. He had no desire to have voracious bugs in her sweat take him apart atom by atom.
    "They can't hurt you," Soz said. "Each chomper disassembles a specific material. The ones I carry are rigidly particular, even down to factory lot numbers."
    He motioned at her manacled feet. "Wrong lot number?"
    "Apparently so. Or else flaws in the molecular structure." Leaning over, she rubbed her wrist against the chain attached to his ankle.
    "Hey." He jerked away his leg. "What are you doing?"
    "They might work on yours."
    "You don't think that's dangerous, carrying bugs in your body that take things apart?"
    "They aren't bugs. They're just enzymes. And they're no more dangerous than being trapped here."
    He knew it was probably true, but even so, he was having second thoughts about his amorous impulses. People sweated when they made love. A lot.
    "Jato, don't look like that," she said. "The chompers are produced by nodules in my sweat glands that only activate when I go into combat mode. Besides, they can't take apart people. Our composition is too heterogeneous."
    He sat on the ledge, near her but not too close, and motioned at his still-chained ankle. "Wrong lot, I guess."
    "I guess so." She tugged the manacle on her wrist, managing to slide it up about a centimeter. The skin on her wrist was more elastic than normal tissue, not a lot, but enough so she could drag it out from under the manacle. He saw what she was after, a small round socket in her wrist.
    "You have a hole," he said.
    "Six of them, actually. In my wrists, ankles, lower spine, and neck."
    That explained the neck and waist bands. "What do they do?"
    "Pick up signals." She held up her arm so the socket faced the console across the room. "If I insert a plug from that node into this socket, it links the computer web inside my body to the console."
    That didn't sound like much help. "The plug is there and you're here."
    "That's why consoles transmit infrared signals." Her face had a inwardly directed quality, as if she were running a canned routine to answer him while she focused her attention elsewhere. "The sockets act as IR receivers and transmitters. Bio-optic threads in my body carry signals to the computer node in my spine. It processes the data and either responds or contacts my brain. Bio-electrodes in my neurons translate its binary into thought: 1 makes the neuron fire and 0 does nothing. It works in reverse too, so I can 'talk' to my spinal node."
    He suspected Nightingale was probably flooded with IR signals. "How can you stand so much noise hitting you all the time?"
    "It doesn't. Only if I toggle Receive." Her full attention came back to him. "The signals do get noisy and it isn't as secure as a physical link. But it's enough to let me interact with a node as close as the one over there."
    "And?"
    She made a frustrated noise. "This room ought to be bathed in public signals. But I'm getting nothing at all."
    He doubted Crankenshaft would cut himself off from the city. "Maybe he did something to you."
    "My diagnostics register no software viruses or tampering." She paused. "But you know, my internal web is engineered in part from my own DNA. Maybe he infected it with a biological virus." Without another word, she lifted her wrist and spit into its socket.
    Dryly Jato said,