Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy Series, Book 1)

Chapter Eight

Chapter 8

GRACE FOUND IT hard to sleep, finally fell into a deep dream just when the rest of Sell would be waking up, and then woke up feeling awful some scant three hours later. Even breakfast did nothing to improve the day, so she moved to her school area to figure out if whoever had been talking to her the previous night had been using some kind of code.

It took her a while, but then one of the combinations of letters she tried gave her a word which made sense. They were using each finger to represent three letters, and perhaps one number, starting with the little finger. So the word they had been transmitting was ‘hello!’ Interestingly, it was in Kwaidian, so it turned out that her studies had come in useful, after all.

She practiced the code for an hour or two, until she felt confident enough to be able transmit and receive messages with a reasonable degree of accuracy, and then decided to see if a couple of hours on the music squares would help drive the sensation of fuzziness away.

Grace was no expert on the squares, although she enjoyed the combination of music and exercise that they gave her. It wasn’t until nearly an hour later that she realized that the squares were ten wide and eight deep, which meant that the code could be applied to music if she were to ‘repeat’ each finger on a square.

She gave a huge leap, to try and recreate ‘Hello’ in sound. It was difficult, but not impossible. The sound resonated around the Squares chamber. Excited, she tried to make a whole sentence out of the squares. At last she managed ‘my name is Grace’ before collapsing on the floor, exhausted.

“Keep.” She instructed the automated recorder. It would never be a popular dance in Sell, but it did give an extra dimension to the exercise.

She decided to finish her workout by running twenty laps around the floor perimeter, the standard Sell distance for her category. Even that was nearly too much for her, and she found her chest was heaving and her heart beating frenetically when the sound of the front lift disturbed her.

Dripping with sweat, and feeling anything but welcoming she went to the reception area. Vion was standing in front of the lift. As he saw the state she was in he raised one eyebrow, but said nothing.

“Do you want the interscreen back? I’ll go and get it.” She turned in the direction of her office.

Vion stopped her by holding up one hand. “Not the reason I came,” he said. “I think my skyrise will be able to manage with one interscreen less. I’d like you to keep it … you never know when it might come in handy.”

“Thank you.” She looked at him questioningly.

“Do I have to have a reason for the visit?” he asked plaintively.

“Definitely.”

Like a little boy caught out, he grinned. “Well, I had better own up then. I was curious to hear what you found out.”

She smiled. “I got nowhere.” She explained all the digging she had done, and the questions that in the end she had had to ask her own brother. “—Who refused to answer me. Said he was too busy,” she finished up.

Vion stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I can’t believe that we would have anybody killed,” he said slowly. “Can you?”

“I have no idea. But why are there no records of the rest of them? Can you think of anything good to account for that?”

His eyes rested on the black circles under hers. “You need more sleep, Grace. You mustn’t get obsessed about this.”

“That is just what I think somebody should do! If we all sit around pretending stuff doesn’t happen … what do you mean, obsessed?”