Crache by Mark Budz Page A

disconnected,” Ephraim says. She knows him well enough to know that he’s trying to convince himself as much as her and the others.
    “That doesn’t mean we haven’t already been compromised,” Yulong snips. “It just might not have shown up yet, that’s all.”
    “If the softwire link is down,” Lalya says, “then whatever infected the ecotecture down there can’t be transmitted to us.”
    “We hope,” Yulong says. “If it has, we’ll be the last to know.”
    “Construction’s been put on hold,” Alphonse says. “Right now, that’s all we know.”
    They seem to be in the middle of an ongoing argument, one that doesn’t include her.
    “So what have you been doing in the meantime?” Fola says, anxious to change the subject. Not only does she feel left out but she finds the discord irritating. She doesn’t have the energy or the patience right now to deal with their bickering. It seems pointless. How did she ever put up with it?
    Ephraim grinds his teeth in frustration. “Not much we
can
do.” He’s worse than the rest of them put together when it comes to sitting around.
    “We’ve been analyzing sensor data,” Alphonse says. “The last datasquirt from the solcatchers. With luck the sensor readings will be able to tell us something about the system failure.”
    “Unless the sensors are wacked,” Yulong says. “They could’ve been looping bad data.”
    “True,” Alphonse allows.
    Looping, Fola thinks. She remembers standing in a circle. Pudgy Imanol Ealo on one side of her. Snooty Tatjana Soffel on the other. Her fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Udman, leaning over to whisper in her ear. A phrase.
    “Your turn,” Ms. Udman told her. “Remember to speak clearly.”
    Fola turned to Imanol, whose breath smelled of peppered soytein, and whispered the phrase into his ear. She formed each word carefully, the way she did her letters. Imanol giggled and whispered the phrase to the next person, who whispered it to the next person, and so forth. The phrase was “cystic fibrosis,” and by the time it got all the way around the circle it came out as “sixty-five roses.”
    Bad data. Even if the input was good, all it took was a tiny misinterpretation here, a slight mistranslation there. She had spoken clearly, yet the phrase had come out wrong.
    Garbage out didn’t always mean garbage in.
             
    “Are you all right?” Pheidoh asks when everyone has left.
    She nods. “Just tired.” Instead of energizing her, the visit had the opposite effect. She’s exhausted.
    “According to your biomed readings your blood pressure is elevated. So is your heart rate.”
    “It’s just that . . .” She shakes her head. Bad sinnergy. That’s what the Jesuettes called it whenever people weren’t in group-hug mode.
    “Maybe you should rest—”
    “No.” She’s too amped to sleep.
    “—or eat.”
    No way she can eat. Her stomach is cramped, ulcerous.
    “You have a message,” Pheidoh says after a moment.
    “Who is it?” Other than Ephraim, she can’t imagine who would want to talk to her.
    “Xophia.”
    Fola blinks. Stares.
    “The transmission is encrypted and was squirted over an unauthorized channel,” the IA warns.
    Fola moistens her lips, chapped with sudden nervousness. “Put her through.”
             
    Xophia has changed. Six months on the shuttle have thinned her. She looks tired. Travel weary. Fatigue occludes her eyes, shadows every movement down to the smallest eye blink. Dressed in a pink sprayon jumpsuit, she’s floating close to a recessed, wall-mounted hospital bed covered with gauzy, antiseptic blue sheets. The gauze is wrinkled, twisted around a motionless figure that could be a gerontocrat or half-starved refugee. It’s hard to know. Her view is partially blocked by a fold-down rack of linen-filled trays. Both the jumpsuit and sheets are speckled yellow-brown.
    “We’re supposed to maintain radio silence during the trip,” Xophia begins. “But under the