Sanctuary Falling (44 page)

Annette tapped an icon representing repair priorities. Within moments she located the answer he needed. “Lotus Avenue has been misappropriating materials, if you can spare
 
people to send there, you should find enough structural plastics for your needs. I’ll arrange the appropriate requisition authorization.”

Sinclair’s face twisted into an even more threatening expression, “Put me through to the chief, I shouldn’t have to chase down materials meant for my department.”

Annette wavered, The Chief had effectively put her in charge of the extended quake relief efforts. She should have the last word, “The chief is quite busy.”

“I want to speak with her, now, put me through,” Sinclair’s face soured taking on the characteristics of a bull about to charge. He was frightening, and though he couldn’t find the chief it was well within his abilities to find Annette.

“Hold on I’ll see if she’s taking calls,” Annette tapped her pad pushing Sinclair’s face into a small box in the corner. Then Annette tapped the icon representing a quick link to Angela.
 
There was no response to the first tap, so she tapped again.

The screen lit up and Angela was smiling, “What’s up Annette?”

Annette bit her lip, “Sinclair is insisting he speak to you. It’s about the allocation of structural plastics. I located some misappropriated plastic for him and told him he could go and get it. Still he wants to talk to you.”

The corner of Angela’s mouth twitched down a fraction of a millimeter, a revealing crack in the mask Angela wore over her emotions. It was enough, after the months of close association, for Annette to read Angela’s dislike of the idea of talking to Sinclair, “I suppose you should put him through. I’ll tell him that you’ve got a better handle on those things than
 
me.”

Annette nodded and tapped the icon to link Sinclair to Angela. After a very few moments Sinclair’s face was once again plastered across Annette’s pad. “I suppose I’ll have to send my people after all. Send me that authorization.” Sinclair grunted like a cat trying to pass a hairball, and then the screen went blank.

Annette wedged her pad back into her back pocket and stepped back into class. The rest of the class was packing up to leave, she’d missed the end of the lecture. Annette tucked her pop-pad into her knapsack and started to head to her next class.

“Miss Peterson,” The instructor called from the head of the class, as he waved for her to join him.
 
Carl and the rest of the F.I.T.S made a quick exit without allowing Annette eye contact.
 
Uh-oh, it couldn’t be good.

“Yes, professor Shanely,” Annette tried not to make her approach look like a death march.

“I was just wanting to make sure you aren’t falling behind with all of the nonsense you’ve gotten yourself into,” He said gesturing vaguely towards the door.

“No, professor, I’m still doing okay,” Annette replied hugging her knapsack.

“Still I can’t say I approve of putting so much responsibility on the shoulders of a fifteen year old, even if they are briaunti. I mean you didn’t even metamorphose a full year ago. Your brain hasn’t quite completed its development. You’re still a child,” he was working himself up to a righteous frenzy of child welfare defense.

“Actually professor, I’m fourteen. I won’t be fifteen till the 22nd
 
of next month.”

He scrubbed his five o’clock shadow, “All the more to my point. You should be taking things more slowly you’ll only be young once! Once you’re old it’s too late to relive what you missed. Don’t you have any dreams or anything you wished you could do?”

Annette didn’t even pause to breathe, “Yes, and I’m living it. Is there a problem with my course work?”

“No, it is exemplary, I just worry about you socially. I mean you sit back there in the last row by the door, you never even try to pass any notes,” he glanced revealingly towards the waste basket, “You seem so alone.”

Annette made note of the shift of his gaze, “I sit back there so I don’t have to disrupt everyone when I get an urgent call. This morning for example I had to connect the head of R&D with the chief, about repairs. My pad recorded what I missed of your lecture and I’ll go over it tonight, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” He twittered gathering up his materials into his briefcase, “See you at lunch.” He hovered briefly over near the trash before heading abruptly out the door.
 

Annette took his interest in the garbage to heart. While many in the class were like her and used their pads for note taking, at least half resorted to paper. She fished around through the wastebasket finding a large wadded piece of paper on top. Smoothing until only its deliberate folds remained, she paused. It was clearly an illicit note, and none of her business.
 
Curiosity won out over propriety and she opened it.

Clear plain letters asked, “Should I ask Annette to the spring formal?” followed by four clearly scrawled yeses, one even had five exclamation marks. Below the yessed was another response in the form of a question, “Do you think she has time to go?” Annette blushed. She turned the note over and over, trying to figure out who had written it. There was no answer to be found.
  
She smoothed the paper and refolded it, tucking it inside her bag.
 
She didn’t have time for wild speculations, at least not at the moment.

Annette raced to the door to head to her next class, and nearly ran into Carl, “Oh, sorry Annette, I forgot something.”

“No problem Carl,” Annette replied on her way past him. Just then her pocket began to vibrate again.

- - - - - - - - - -

Angela broke the connection to Chavez. He was an annoying little man, even if there was something more to him on the inside. Fortunately he accepted her authority, and her statement that Annette was perfectly qualified to make determinations with regards to quake repairs. Too bad no one else was as easily mollified.

The worst thing about the quake aside from the damage, loss of life, and incessant repairs was the return of the morning briefings. Angela couldn’t even put a finger on how or why they had begun again. The truth was they helped her, in that she was no longer as free ranging as before, and the simple routine of it made it easier to just be the chief.
 

Right now being the chief was a lot more comfortable than being Angela. Angela was scared, shaking to the depths of her soul, trembling hand and foot, crying in the night, scared. The chief, on the other hand was incapable of showing fear, almost incapable of feeling it. The chief was a convenient mask to pacify everyone’s fears, even her own.

Angela shoved aside the stack of reports on her desk, people had switched back to paper because the quake had knocked out communications. Fear of a repeat kept the daily hard copies filing through the door, even once communications had been restored. Every morning she left the briefing with a stack that almost reached her chin. The stacks were scattered all over her office. One benefit of the avalanche of paper was that it totally un-fenged her shui. Her office had really become hers again.

Taking a look around the room Angela suddenly felt a twinge of the pressure building around her. Everyone wanted her to make them feel safe again.
 
Time for a little relaxation. Angela took her unlisted pop-pad, which only Annette could contact. Without another glance around the room Angela teleported herself to the little out of the way room she had claimed in the name of a hobby. Only Tina knew of it, because Tina maintained the supply of materials.

The room was locked and shielded and filled with cans of wall paint. Randomly Angela selected a can and opened it.
 
It held chartreuse, not a bad color though it would look strange over the black she had painted the walls last time she’d been stressed out. Angela contemplated throwing a coat of light colored primer up first, so the green would show true. No, she only had a little time she could steal from the chief today.

Angela carefully masked off the areas she didn’t want to paint and taped down her drop cloths, Then she poured the paint into the roller tray and started to reach for a roller. Instead on impulse she telekinetically lifted the paint from the tray and began flinging it around the room with her mind, leaving long splatter trails on the black.
 
When she was done Angela looked over the effect with a smile then opened another can. This time it was bright pink. With her hands, Angela flung the pink onto the walls in great splatters. It looked cool. It was wonderful. It was as cathartic as she needed it to be.

She ran out of pink paint and opened and flung several more colors on the walls, until almost none of the black showed through, and the paint was puddling at the base of the walls. Exhausted but calmed Angela sat on the stack of paint cans. She was as smeared and splattered with paint as the room. That was when she noticed her pocket vibrating.

Telekinetically, Angela removed the paint from her hands, clothes and face, flinging it outward towards the walls. Then she tucked her hand into her pocket. It was unusual for Annette to call twice in one day.
 
She tapped the screen and it lit up with Annette’s face on it.
 
Annette had been Angela’s liaison to reality for long enough that Angela could recognize bad news before the girl-woman opened her mouth. “What’s wrong Annette?”

“I just received word, from communications. We’ve lost contact with another factor team,” Annette responded on the verge of tears.

Angela tensed, the news didn’t necessarily mean they had died. A few of the missing factors had made their way back to Sanctuary. “Who this time?”

Annette gulped hard, “Morgan and Llonda Peterson.”

Angela scratched her mind and came to a bad conclusion, “Are they related to you?”

Annette nodded, tears welling from her eyes in rivulets, “My brother and his wife, my only family.”

Angela cringed, “ Can either teleport? Or do they depend on being dropped off? I’ll send someone to look for them immediately!”

Annette wiped her eyes and cleared her throat, “They’re dropped, and as per your standing orders someone was already sent. Their dimension couldn’t be located.”

Angela fought the impulse to end the communication. A few people had shown up again in such circumstances, but not many.
 
“I’m so sorry, were. . .”

Annette interrupted, “I have to put you on hold chief I’ve got an incoming message.” The screen slipped into screen saver mode for am moment. Angela suddenly realized just how many messages the girl must be fielding on her own during the day. Annette had become quietly
 
indispensable.

“Chief, it’s Chavez again, he won’t talk to me only to you. Can you deal with him twice in one day?” Annette said, her face a mask of composure. For an instant Angela saw a piece of the chief in the girl, until another tear squeezed its way from the girl’s eyes.

“I can take it,” Angela answered.

The image quickly shifted to Sinclair’s face, “Chief, I have some new information, we were doing repairs on Ralph’s old office and found some plans, a prototype, and some notes and figures. Here’s the really scary part I think he knew about the quake before hand, or at least suspected it was possible.”

Angela blinked, speechless.

Sinclair took her blinks as acknowledgment, “Apparently he discovered pressure was building on the surface of the asteroid in which Sanctuary exists. He also documented some
 
temporal differential inconsistencies he called slippery time. He was expecting something bad like the quake. All of his documentation leads to the main point of his theory. The dark are apparently using pattern’s of crunch bombs in an attempt to crush Sanctuary by pulling the fabric of space-time protecting us into a singularity. Ralph calls it a singularity knot.”

Angela broke through her shock, “Why didn’t he mention it?”

Chavez shrugged, a gesture not fully appreciable through the pads, “Maybe he didn’t want to worry anyone. He was working on a solution. But recently he notes that Sanctuary can’t be saved. Maybe if Ralph’d worked it out sooner he could’ve used the new device he was working on, some kind of
 
generator to weave a new kind of space-time bubble. It theoretically would be invulnerable to the kind of machinations the dark are pulling.”