“Conjecture … lemma … simple closed curve… .”
Weil, how about that!
“I think,” she said slowly, “he might be in the cell on the far right.”
Calum was so absorbed in the diagrams he was tracing on his cell wall that she had to hiss several times before he finally noticed-and even then he did not look up.
“Just a minute, I’m thinking,” he said-and then did a comical double take, looking up so fast that he nearly lost his balance. “Acorna? What the-”
“We’re rescuing you,” Acorna explained patiently.
“Who’s wel And do you have anything I can copy this down on? I don’t want to lose it, and the trouble with drawing diagrams in the condensation on the wall here is …”
“Ten thousand devils fly away with your diagrams and drop them in the dung of the camel pits of Sheol!” Acorna ripped out a variation on one of Rafik’s favorite curses. “Do you want to wait around until they come to torture you into releasing the hold on ^as. AcaSeckit Or do you think you could drop your mathematical conjectures long enough to climb up this rope?”
Calum gave a dubious glance at the slender rope and the narrow space of the air vent through which Acorna was whispering to him, then looked back once regretfully at the drawings he had traced on the wall of his cell.
“Oh, well, I can probably reconstruct it later,” he muttered. The vent opening was a tighter squeeze for Calum than it had been for Dr. Hoa or Acorna, but when he seemed to be stuck fast Markel inspired him by mentioning a few of Nueva Fallona’s favorite Palomellese tortures, then commented that if Calum’s shoulders were really wedged firmly into the vent his feet would doubtless be at a convenient height for Nueva’s attentions.
“She likes playing with matches,” he said.
Calum made one last convulsive effort, freed his broad shoulders, and wriggled upward into the tunnel, clutching the rope.
“Oh, well,” he said, as Acorna exclaimed over his scrapes, “it’s only skin, plenty more where that came from.”
They replaced the vent, went back around the curve, and collected Dr. Hoa, who was trembling violently in reaction to his salvation.
“I am not a man of violence,” he whispered in apology. “I am a scientist. .. and I was trying to get away from people like these. Now we are all trapped. …”
Acorna touched his cheek with her horn and the spasms stopped. Toward the end of their passage, they had to tie the rope around his shoulders, and Acorna pulled him behind her, with Markel helping the scientist over the joins and aprons that connected the klicks of interior tubes and conduits. As soon as they reached Markel’s nest, the boy picked up his listener, a device that sat comfortably in his ear, and indicated that Acorna should make Dr. Hoa comfortable on the pile of miscellaneous clothing and thermal sheeting behind them.
Acorna was glad to oblige. While she was at it, she also assessed the scientist’s other injuries and healed them. He had been badly knocked about before the Palomellese even began their systematic destruction of his fingers and hands; she could not blame him for having given them enough information to use his research, nor for the fear and despair that had all but overwhelmed him in the tunnels. But as she soothed his bodily aches, he seemed calmer and more in control of himself. When she was nnished, he caught her by the arm, his eyes once more alive with intelligent curiosity.
“Ki-lin?” he asked in a bare whisper that would not reach Markel, occupied with eavesdropping.
She smiled and put her finger across her lips as their young guide so often had.
He closed his eyes once, indicating he understood, but he also put one frail, healed finger to his lips and then pressed it against hers.
She turned to take a water bottle from the rack above her head and handed it to him. Though he clutched the bottle as possessively as any thirsty man would, Acorna did not have to warn him to take small, slow sips and accustom his body to water again.