Designing Read Free

most things apart. They simply part in the precise weak points that I identify. It just takes practice.”
    “How did you alter the torture harness?”
    “Trial and error, combined with terror that a friend would be paralyzed for life if I didn’t succeed.” She shrugged. The redesigning process was a bit of a blur. The wound in Niika’s back was never far from her mind, and she had just acted. No thought required.
    “You can create on instinct?”
    “I don’t create. I never create. I just redesign using components at hand.” She shrugged. Her mind was running through her inventory and coming up with components to create a set of wings. There was no stopping it; she was going to build them. She had no idea if she would ever have the nerve to try and use them.
    She opened the door to her home, and he came in, gasping in shock. Ula smiled and kept moving. “I will just pack a bag. You can dig around and play with whatever you like.”
    She heard a few of her machines click and twist as he examined them.
    Shaking her head and thinking about boys and toys, she grabbed a bag and shoved in a few days’ worth of clothing. She usually wore leathers to work. It cut down on fire from sparks when she welded. No one wanted to run around the house while on fire.
    She looked around and shrugged, returning to Deniir before he found her fire extinguisher.
    She paused when a shout and a hiss preceded the white cloud of vapour that tumbled down the hall toward her. “Breathe through your mouth for a moment. The taste will fade.”
    When she turned the corner, his gold hair was sticking up straight, his face betrayed his shock, and the expression on that face was priceless.
    He closed his mouth, and it took him a few attempts to speak. “What in the name of the first feathers was that?”
    His mouth sounded dry, so she moved to the side of her workspace and poured him a glass of water out of her storage canister. “Drink this.”
    He shuddered and swallowed rapidly, obviously running his tongue around the edges of his mouth.
    She stifled her grin. “That is the fire-suppression system. It is an herbal extract that Emharo found for me in some underwater plant life. I powder it and then put it under pressure in a canister.”
    He blinked. “So I see. What was the cloud of gas?”
    “It absorbs all heat in the area, including the heat from open sources. Fortunately, it does not take heat from anything biological. I don’t know how it works, but it does.” She shrugged. “I just design and build things, I don’t always know how they work.”
    He blinked. “That doesn’t seem right.”
    Ula snorted. “Welcome to my world. Are you ready to leave?”
    He carefully put down the canister and nodded. “Yes, please. I am terrified of how you get rid of household pests.”
    She chuckled as they exited through the front door, and she armed her defensive systems. No one was going to get any of her projects without blowing the entire house to hell and back. There was nothing safer than a pile of radioactive matter blasting up through the floor to dissolve the floor if the right code wasn’t entered.
    “Will your workshop be secure?”
    She laughed. “I think so. It has the best lock I could design.”
    “In that case, I believe we should be on our way.”
    He offered her his arm, and she inclined her head. “Thank you, but contact is not necessary. I have heard that your kind is sensitive to it, and I don’t want to take any chances.”
    Deniir looked a little put out, but she merely smiled and walked down the narrow path that led away from her home. She heard a sharp chirp from behind her and turned.
    Deniir had folded his cuff back and was typing rapidly with two fingers. “There. We should be seeing the pick-up in a few minutes.”
    “You have shuttle clearance for the interior?”
    “I do. The engineers have been providing your people with any number of handy devices. They are appreciative.”
    She snorted. “Just watch