“Don’t worry about me, roomie. I’ve got a plan. I’ll make it, and someday I’ll come back to check on you. Maybe give you a rescue, if you need it.”
She managed a hesitant smile. “That’s so you. Alright, but don’t think I’m going to be some helpless victim here. I’ve always been better at blending in. I bet I’ll end up being the one to rescue you.”
“Sounds like a bet to me.”
“Good idea. In three years I’ll be an adult, and at the rate you’re growing up you will be too. So whichever of us is better off then gets to swoop in and rescue the other. The loser owes the winner… um…”
“A big hug, and a chance to say ‘I told you so’,” I suggested.
“Deal. Good luck, nut.”
“Good luck to you too, Dika. May the most awesome girl win.”
It wasn’t long before the proctor arrived to collect Dika for her day in the Hole. I was a little worried about her, but she’d come through punishments before. She’d survive, and without me there to draw attention to her she’d have everyone convinced she was completely reformed in a week.
A few minutes after that the bot stirred, and silently glided out of the room. I grinned triumphantly. I’d been counting on that. The bots had a lot of routine duties to see to, patrolling the building and grounds to make sure everything was safe. The surrounding forest was full of wild animals, and some of them would happily make a snack of a little orphan girl if they got the chance. Since the security computer thought I was safely restrained, keeping an eye on me would be a lower priority for it than watching out for the whole community.
Getting out of the capture web should have been impossible. It was much too strong for me to just tear free, even if I ramped my strength up to max and burned off my whole energy reserve struggling. My teeth would probably cut it if I could bring them to bear, but the way I was trussed up made that pretty much impossible. Fortunately I had other, less predictable options.
I closed my eyes, and focused on my chemosynthesis system. I’d learned a couple of years ago that I could use it to change my scent, so the mosquitoes that swarmed in the damper parts of the forest wouldn’t think I was food. I could secrete other chemicals, too. The network of microscopic nanofabs in my skin could make any molecule I had data on, and the database I’d been born with had a few dozen useful entries in it. Signaling pheromones. Body odor, and agents to neutralize it. A cleaning solution that could have saved me a lot of trouble this morning, if I’d thought to use it on my face.
Capture web solvent.
The transparent goop seeped out of my skin, and started to eat away at the webbing. Unfortunately the disposable shifts they issued residents at the orphanage must have been manufactured from the same base, because my clothes dissolved too. Wonderful. Well, that was just extra motivation to make sure no one saw me leave.
What did it say about my family, that mom had made sure her baby girl had a handy way to escape from standard police restraints?
Hopefully I’d get the chance to find out someday. But there was a lot of capture web, and my feedstock reserves were tiny. I got my arms free, and wiggled off the bench. But my ankles were still stuck together when I ran dry. I could cannibalize my own flesh to make more feedstock, but I didn’t exactly have a lot of spare weight to lose. Besides, that would take ten or fifteen minutes. What if Matron Gisel came back before then?
Instead I managed to wiggle around enough to get my ankles up near my face, where I could gnaw away the remaining strands. They were a lot tougher than the zango’s bones, but they weren’t as hard as my teeth. A few moments of frantic work left my jaw aching, but they parted one by one.
The moment I had the last one free I was on my feet, and rushing towards the window. It didn’t have a lock, and it took only a moment to work the latch and swing it open. Then I was outside, with the sun on my face and leaves all around me.
I wasn’t sure how my tree climbing actually worked. My database said it had to do with ‘van der Waals attraction’, but we’d never covered that in science class. All I knew was that my skin will stick to anything if I want it to, and it only takes a thought to turn the stickiness on and off.
I slithered silently up the side of the tree, leaving no marks on the rough bark behind me. There was a long branch I could use to cross a narrow spot in the yard surrounding the orphanage, and reach a greatoak in the surrounding forest. But those security bots were roaming around somewhere out here, and I had no idea if I could actually fight one. Better to do everything I could to avoid them.
Well, at least I was already naked. Reluctantly, I activated my stealth suite.
My skin changed color, blending in with the bark I clung to. I stopped breathing, switching to my little internal oxygen store. Active sound suppression would quiet my heartbeat and any other small sounds I might make, and there were other measures I didn’t really understand. Things to hide me from motion sensors, bottle up my body heat, and counter a long list of other senses.
None of it was perfect. If I was careless enough to get too close to a bot it would still see me, and probably tag me as a threat instead of a harmless little girl. I couldn’t keep it up for long, either. The system sucked down buckets of power, burning energy faster than a hard workout. But I only needed it for a few minutes.
Like a ghost, I vanished into the vast expanse of trackless forest that surrounded the orphanage. Let them try to pick me out among the monkeys and dire badgers, if they didn’t just give up and assume I’d been eaten. How much effort would they go to, for the sake of one troublesome orphan?
Chapter 2
Three weeks later, another dawn found me carefully peering through the upper branches of a goldenbough tree at the perimeter fence surrounding the Faith’s Door Spaceport.
I’d lost two kilos on the trip, and I was getting really sick of the taste of raw meat. But I’d crossed two thousand kilometers of jungle, swamp and hill country to reach my destination, at a pace I knew no one else at the orphanage could have matched. No one would be expecting that. Even if the matrons hadn’t given me up for dead, they wouldn’t be looking for me here.
Now all I had to do was somehow sneak past spaceport security, and talk a space captain into hiring me. Or maybe stow away on a ship, if I had to.
Easy, right?