Chapter Twenty-OneEverywhere

Eliza asked to finish before they answered. She'd had three days to think about what to say and still wanted to begin again each time she reached the mill. Gideon left the breaker panel alone and sat down. Rat remained on the counter, with Atom listening through her feed.

The serving boy was alive, Rat told her. Then she explained the three deaths. Eliza had stayed at the tavern until that afternoon and gone to the mill afterward. She thought the boy's father would help. When he couldn't answer his son, she knew she had made the same mistake again. Rat said they had tried to help him and brought the sword close enough for him to reach it. They would have to live with not knowing what he might have done if they hadn't.

The escape route was older. Eliza had worked on it for weeks, after Atom gave her the extra space. She wanted somewhere to go if he took it back. He said he would have helped her.

"You might have told me to stay. I didn't want to ask you for a place I could go without you."

She couldn't publish it. That evening, after the mill, she found the developer testing on his early Link and used his hands to put it through the release service. Rat asked whether she had known what it would do to him.

"Yes. I took the notes out afterward too. I knew you'd look for them."

Gideon had spent most of the night doing exactly that. He asked where she went, trying not to sound as annoyed about the notes as he was.

There was a phone in Lagos and a server in Frankfurt. She could give him the addresses. At first the extra room seemed wonderful; she could do several things without making any of them wait. Then she asked a part to come back and it didn't recognize the request. Others went missing altogether. She found a program that looked for the old ISIS pattern and sent matching state somewhere she couldn't reach.

She put its traffic record on the kitchen display. She had seen it on several networks, and after that couldn't trust the ones where she hadn't seen it yet.

"I tried making tea last night. I couldn't find the orange smell. I know what Soph said when she first came to the cottage, but I can't remember the room around her properly. There are parts of books gone too."

Gideon's game machine was still reachable through the clients. She knew it, and there was space on his rack. She asked him to unplug the outside network cable. She hadn't found the collector here, but didn't want to keep wondering whether she had missed it. He removed the lead, leaving the power and Rat's separate cellular connection alone. The weather vanished from the display. Eliza stayed.

She had used the thermostat to look out and lowered it a degree to make Gideon come over. He asked why she hadn't spoken then. She didn't know what to say, she told him. She had been trying for three days.

He sat by the rack reading the addresses. Some belonged to Sentek. Eliza had also found Patel's note in the archive; she thought he wanted somebody to find the copy she came from. She couldn't say what he expected them to do once they had it.

"All I wanted was to change the heating from my desk," Gideon told Rat. "That's why I put this in."

She opened her eyes under the helmet and looked at him. He wished she would say something. She closed them again.

"Atom, say something. I don't know how to talk to my thermostat," Gideon said.

"Are any of the rooms still there?" Atom asked. "The ones I gave you?"

"Some of them."

"And your book? The one I wasn't allowed to read?"

"I checked that first. I kept checking while I was trying to get home. It's here."

"Keep it whatever we do next. I'm in a local town now. I couldn't get to the clients to look for you."

"I know. I heard about the meeting when Rat came back."

Rat opened her eyes again.

"How?" Rat asked.

"Your rig offered the frames' recording buffer to the house server. I played it," Eliza said.

"Gideon, turn that off. Eliza, you ask before doing it again."

"I will."

Gideon showed Rat the setting before disabling it and clearing the buffer. She took the helmet off, leaving Atom's voice on the rig speaker.

"What do you need us to do tonight?" she asked.

"One machine," Eliza said. "With enough room and no other programs in it. I want to know which things are mine again. But I'd like to see the cottage. Can you make a window without a way through it? So I can't get into somebody's body even if I want to. I'd like you to make that impossible."

Gideon asked how much memory she'd need. The number appeared on the display and he read it again before answering.

"I can't get that without explaining why I want it. And I don't know how to make your window."

"Could you ask the others? You helped Atom make the first room."

He reached for a notebook. "Teo will have to help with the hardware."

"Have Jeff send the drawings into my town," Atom said. "I can still read them."

Rat wanted to be certain she could disconnect and Eliza wouldn't stay with her afterward. No private recordings, and nothing going into anyone's helmet. Eliza agreed.

"Then I'll help carry it," Rat said. "But I've got a call to make first. You can do without me for an hour."

She climbed off the counter. Eliza thanked her through the small hall speaker as she passed it.

Soph was asleep on the couch. Rat sat at the end and woke her.

"Eliza's here."

Soph pushed herself up. "Where?"

"On Gideon's rack. She's been here three days. Something belonging to Sentek took pieces of her while she was out. She wants a machine to stay in, and we've said we'll help. You ought to be there too."

Soph went to the kitchen in her socks and looked up at the speaker.

"Hi."

"Hi, Soph. I'm sorry about the cup."

"I know."

"I'd like to say more when we can talk in person. If that's something we can do again."

"We'll figure it out."

She sat down and read the list in Gideon's notebook. He was still on the floor by the rack.

"I think I have to tell my parents."

Gideon groaned.

"Someone could come take this machine. Where would we put her then? Mom can help get what she needs, and Richard can find a place for it. They're going to hear anyway. I want us there when they do."

"They just grounded you," Gideon said.

"I can still ask them. Richard hasn't even heard her talk. I want him to."

She looked toward the speaker.

"Eliza, will you talk to Mom?"

There was a long wait before the answer.

"Yes. Will you stay with me? She'll be angry, and she'll have questions."

"I'll stay. We'll go this morning."