do: read; don't: visit 214

[giftedandtalented]

Mehitabel reads a lot.

She starts calling herself "Tab", for short, not that anyone calls her anything apart from Kers. She writes suitably encrypted emails to Aelise about ideas for fixing the world - mostly she asks questions, to start, forming a picture of the exact problem she has to solve.

She misses her parents, but not very much. At least she got to say goodbye.

When her brain won't absorb new information, she bounces around in zero-g.

After six months, Aelise visits again.

Tab says, "Anybody you store up here must be important somehow. If I don't know about the other secret person, I won't know how to come up with ideas that work with them being important however they're important."

Comments

[warmfeelings]

"What, is there more than one thing? Harley! My power - glitched or something - but when it came back everything was sharp for a second and I know that warmth when I feel it! You didn't even put him far away, let alone in orbit!"

[salus_populi]

"I put him in orbit," she says. "It's harder to keep an eye on him in orbit, and there's a lot of mischief he could get into up there if he put his mind to it. I took him back down when he looked like he might be getting into some. I didn't mention it because I didn't want to upset you. Are you all right?"

[warmfeelings]

"I am now," says Chelsa darkly.

[salus_populi]

"I'm sorry," she says. "Harley's ten kinds of trouble, but I need him in reach if I'm going to use him to keep everyone immortal. I've been keeping him unconscious most of the time; he wakes up when I drain him and that's it."

[warmfeelings]

"Consciousness doesn't make a difference to how it feels. It never has."

[salus_populi]

"I am hoping," Aelise says dryly, "that it will make a difference to him."

[warmfeelings]

"Excellent, best of luck," says Chelsa, still fuming at the deception.

[salus_populi]

"He's a troublemaker. I am trying to make sure he doesn't have either the means or the motive to cause much trouble."

[warmfeelings]

"You promised me, and of all the ways I could find out - I don't understand what's wrong with me," says Chelsa sitting down heavily.

[salus_populi]

"I don't either," says Aelise, coming up and hugging her. "But I intend to find out. All right?"

[warmfeelings]

"Fix it," says Chelsa desperately, clinging. "I can't live like that, not all cold - I don't know how anyone else can stand it."

[salus_populi]

"We manage somehow," she says, hugging her some more. "I'll do everything I can."

[warmfeelings]

Chelsa sobs, once.

And pulls on all the warmth she can reach, again.

[salus_populi]

Aelise pets her hair soothingly.

[pythbox]

Some days later, on her next visit to Harley, he wakes up as usual - unconscious one second and screaming the next.

But this time, when she's done draining him, instead of looking dazed but contented he takes a breath and starts crying.

And when she moves to put him under again, he hits her ineffectually and twists away—and disappears.

[salus_populi]

Aelise calls Demauri.

[alicornucopia]

"Hullo, Aelise! I usually don't hear from you this often," laughs Demauri.

[salus_populi]

"Harley's gone missing again," she says. "Be a dear and haul him back to me, would you?"

[alicornucopia]

"Sure. Wow, he got a ways away, this is gonna take a while, and I need to requisition a boat."

[salus_populi]

"I think he might have learned how to teleport. I recommend you knock him out when you find him."

[alicornucopia]

"Learned how to teleport? Lucky kid, I want to do that. Will do."

A few hours see Demauri and a laughing fishing crew speeding along in a boat to the correct location, Demauri calling directions to the driver.

They reach the correct location and Harley is - down.

The fishermen haul him up while Demauri loads up a tranq gun.

[pythbox]

Hauling him up is an interesting proposition, because he drowns along the way and for a moment the net is holding nothing but spectral flames. But drowning is slow enough that he doesn't do it again on the way up.

[alicornucopia]

Demauri's really tempted to try bantering again, but instead he just tranqs the kid, puts him on the floor of the boat head turned sideways so he can cough up ingested ocean on reflex without just swallowing it again, and ties his ankles together and his hands behind his back.

The fishermen turn around and head back for shore. Demauri watches the kid.

[pythbox]

Harley is too unconscious to be very interesting. But even unconscious, he doesn't look happy.

Perhaps it's all the drowning that did it.

[alicornucopia]

Demauri reserves judgment on that. Aelise wants him, and he loves her, and he can take or leave Harley.

He hauls a salt-stained Harley before the Empress, when he gets there.