The Octagonal Raven by L. E. Modesitt Page B

voice were hints of contempt and dislike.
    “I certainly will.” I could promise that, especially given the way she’d phrased the request. I could ignore the contempt.
    I closed the door and walked slowly back to the kitchen where I poured a long drink of cold water—just water—and drank it. I decided against netting Gerrat or Father. They’d find out soon enough, since UniComm had monitors of all the CA freqs.
    Someone had set the laseflash well before Elysa had attempted her nanospray, or they had sophisticated enough equipment to bypass the scans of the skytors. I didn’t care much for the implications of either possibility. And either way, I should have noticed the changes to the glider.
    I shook my head. Anyone could have gotten to the glider in the time I’d been in the medcenter recovering. Anyone with the right equipment to bypass the security systems, and early enough, and they wouldn’t be on the skytors either. But that meant someone with a great deal of expertise and credits.
    The way things had gone didn’t make a great deal of sense, not from what I’d seen, but that meant that I wasn’t seeing enough. After refilling the glass of water, I headed out to the study.
    The gatekeeper offered a gentle ring, and a light on the commplate. I looked at the ID—Gerrat—and accepted.
    “Are you all right?”
    I gave him points for asking about me, first. “I’ll recover. My internal system says so, even without heading back to the medcenter.” I wasn’t about to mention the second nanospray attempt.
    “That’s good.”
    “Very good.”
    “You really like trouble, don’t you?”
    “It wasn’t my idea. How did you find out?”
    “Our monitors. The energy spike came across the skytors system, and it triggered our alerts. Someone tried to hit you with an FS-type laseflash. It’s a good thing Father insisted on a full protection system for us. For you, anyway.”
    “Has anyone ever tried something like that on you?”
    Gerrat shook his head.
    “So…does the whole world know?”
    “Of course.” My brother’s tone turned cheerfully cynical. “Noted edartist Daryn Alwyn—attacked with a laser as he left his home this afternoon. Alwyn was burned, but is expected to recover. The perpetrators and their motivation are both unknown at this time. The Civil Authorities have withheld comment.”
    I nodded, trying to ignore the continued blurs and holes in my vision and focus on the holo image of Gerrat that blocked my view of the late afternoon sun falling on the East Mountains. I could have gone VR, but for short conversations, I usually didn’t.
    “Real news like this doesn’t happen that often,” Gerrat offered apologetically. “I didn’t put it on…my team had it there almost at the time I found out.”
    “And if they hadn’t, OneCys would have had it within a few more minutes on InstaNews,” I pointed out.
    “An hour…but those viewcreds add up.”
    “I’m certain they do.”
    “You still ought to have Kharl or someone check you out,” Gerrat suggested.
    “I will.” He was right about that. “Do you have any better ideas about who’s behind this?”
    Gerrat’s smile vanished. “Like you, brother, I can speculate, but I don’t even have a good guess. They could be testing your personal systems in preparation for an attack on us, but that doesn’t make sense, because whoever it is can’t be sure they’re the same. Personal systems are personal systems.”
    That meant he was more worried than he was saying, and that didn’t help my mood much either as his image vanished.
    I looked at the East Mountains until my eyes began to blur. It didn’t help. Neither did another round of searches through the various netsystems.

Chapter 15
    Fledgling: Kuritim, 422 N.E.
    The walk from the long and low one-story quarters building was hot, despite the early morning breeze off the lagoon. Centuries back, the SysCon engineers had enlisted the environmental specialists from HMudd University