Wind Spindle Chapter 4

 

Mano was lost in joy.

He tried again and again to wake his left hemisphere, the side of his brain that could isolate and differentiate.  He tried to analyze the situation. He tried, in effect, to get his mind's feet on the ground.

He felt the assistant bots lifting him from the chair (The bots were triggered?  Of course. Backups, triggered by the damaged circits.), stretching his fragile body onto the gliding table. He saw, as though through fogged glass, the dark monitors and ceilings slide by overhead, then felt the tiny cold slap of a med patch.  

He was now slipping into a temperature controlled pod.  Yes, he thought, hypothermia treatment while they do the neural scans, to control the damage.  

How much functional gray matter will I have left?  He wondered, but there was no fear - only the relentless euphoria of universal connection pouring in from his right cortex. This was what the monks in Storm Horse Temple and the shamans in Kinlani talked about, but he also felt-no, knew- it was truly of the spirit.  He finally surrendered to it.

His happiest memories rolled through his mind, in brilliant color and dimension.  He was singing science songs and history rhymes to Kallo as he rocked her. He had been whole, then.  He had had two arms to hold her and swing her, a throat that could sing, legs to chase her, to support him while he swung her through the air. How she wailed when he stopped, when he put her down.

“No, Daddy, no Daddy!”  She screamed, her arms reaching up voraciously for more time in the air.  

“First came the curious bots and then came geologists,” they would chant together as he danced through the tower with her on his shoulders, “Then cave-carvers, astro-miners, hydro-builders and biologists.

“United Earth made a world but the whole world died,” At this point in the rhyme he would hold her upside-down as she giggled, then continued.

“China made another but then the whole world died,” He flipped her upside down once more, which made her giggle harder.  Then he bounced upright her for the rest.

“And then came the gene shakers, Dine’ and Hopi, and silk makers.

“Three Masaai Sisters made the Bowl.

“And now our world of Mars is whole!”

It was a clumsy rhyme at best, one of many he composed.  He preferred she learn truths before wetbrain religious lore.  And he had taught her why.

“Elecro-magnetic fields rule over Earth brains,” he told her when she was seven years old, old enough to understand that even Mars was not populated only with scientists, “So Earthers can be made to believe almost anything,”

“But what about the temples?”

“Religion on our world is not the same.  It's more discipline than delusion,” It was not entirely true, but Mano hoped for a world free of the old lies.  His daughter could help to create that.

“But what about the sweats and sings?”

“The spirit is not religion. It isn’t affected by EMFs. The spirit is all that we are.  It’s the way we are connected to everything. They’re not the same, Puffin. Religion can bind your mind from learning.  The spirit, Maasaw's Way, knows everything and teaches everything.”

“Daddy?”

His body's reactions told him this was not part of his euphoric twilight state.  She was really here.

“I'm alright, Puffin,” he said.

  

Del had never seen the Central Grid tower dark.  It made his heart beat faster.  But the door was already open.  

The sight of Kallo weeping in a chair, with Mano in an emergency pod covered with crow-sized nursebots padding softly over him on polymer feet, stopped him cold.  Kallo saw Del, leaped from the chair and threw herself on him.  Anso and Tassie moved in, looking at the med panels.

"Left cortex bleed," said Tassie.  "I don't know brain stuff.  How do you feel, Mano?  Is there pain?"

“He can't even talk anymore,” said Kallo.

The main med panel went dark.  Then a green screen opened, scrolling:  PLAN.  POWER GRID FIRST.

Tassie gave a little breath of awe.  "If he can't talk, then he's already figured out how to bypass his speech center and merge with the med panel.  That's incredible."  

She looked up at Del, who shrugged in agreement.  At the moment Delwas  thrown off-center.  He was remembering the accident years ago, feeling helpless and so alone.  Before Kalleyno's birth Mano and his wife Ang had been Del's refuge, caring for him like a son. Del didn’t often think of his birth family; he had escaped from their coldness and belligerence.  Mano was the closest thing he had to a father, and Del would only have been surprised at a lack of brilliance on Mano's part.

Del hugged Kallo and set her down.  He stepped up to the med panel. “We need the Red Star companies on Olympus to back us,” he said.

AND THE BOWL. Mano's readout scrolled.  ENGINEERS TO UPGRADE GRID. NEED COMMS TO SURFACE.  WEATHER. STATUS.  EARTH SIGNALS.

"Until the network is back up," said Del.  

"Through the tubes?" said Anso. "That will take too long."

POWER NETWORK FIRST.

"So, how do we deliver communications without...power?" said Anso, but even as he said it, he turned and looked at Kallo. 

Kallo nodded.  

SHE KNOWS.

Kallo ran to an equipment closet, grabbing the edge of a storage tube.  Del helped her unroll the blanket-sized vellum map painted in brilliant colors.  They stood looking down at it.

“From Olympus we can get enough starting elevation to cover most of the world,” said Kallo.  “If we fly out from there we can deliver the important news in the mornings.  We can get back through the tubes.  It will take all day, but we can get news to Kinlani, the Glaciers and the Bowl.”

"It'll be like the pony express," said Anso. 

He was met with blank looks.

"The pony express? In the mid century after the European invasion. It was how they got the paper mail across the prairies and plains.  Riders on horseback."

There was a brief silence while this thought ran the room.

JUST UNTIL NEW GRID IS UP.  OUR GRID.

“Yes,” Del had been thinking the same thing.  

“What?” said Tassie, “Our own..?”

MARS.  INDEPENDENT. COMMUNICATIONS. GRID.

“Yes!” laughed Del.  

PAST TIME. said Mano.

“What about Interworld?  Company 1?” said Tassie.

ALL RADIO FREQUENCIES TO FIBER OPTICS RUN THROUGH TUBES. EARTH CAN BUY A SIGNAL.

Del laughed again.  It was one of the things he admired most about Mano. Nobody told the man what to do, or at least, not for long.

KALLO NEW HEAD OF GRID.

There was a long silence.  Tassie and Anso turned to stare at Del, sensing what was coming.

"She'll be flying," laughed Del, "She won't have time. And, Mano, she does not have the skill to manage!"

"I do too!"  Kallo stood next to Mano's readout panel.  "I can do it.  I'll take care of it, Daddy.  I won't let you down."

"She's 12 years old!" said Del.

TWENTY FOUR IN EXPERIENCE.

"She has a child's brain!"  
MUST THINK FUTURE.  SHE UNDERSTANDS.  

There was a long pause.  

The room was filled with Del's breathing.  He was the only one who knew how utterly stupid this was.  He was the only one losing.

GRID MUST BE FREE.  OPEN. BELONG TO MARS.

"You think I don't understand that?  I helped you build the whole thing!"

AND KALLO WILL NEED YOUR HELP.

There was another silence.

COULD NOT HAVE BUILT GRID WITHOUT YOU.

“You couldn't have built her without me!" Del hated that he was shouting, and that everyone else was staring at him as though he was some kind of a problem.  

CAREFUL.  

DEL.

"This is dung."  He turned to Kallo, "I built your future!  Let's see you do it without me!"

NOT. WITHOUT.  

YOU ARE

There was another silence; it seemed that Mano was trying even harder to put words together more persuasively, 

PART OF THIS  

“Which part?  The anus?” Del stomped out.