7th Sigma

by Steven Gould

  His stomach, already tense, felt like he’d swallowed a stone. They had Mrs. Perdicaris. They probably knew he was here. He considered running for the grass, but they were galloping closer, and they’d see him before he could clear the bug-infested area around the Pits.

  He dropped back down the trail and ran, quickly but carefully, looking for bugs. The walls of the trail rose up and he couldn’t see anyplace to go but forward.

  He hyperventilated again and tried not to splash as he went back into the shallow water where the wagons sat. He didn’t want ripples to betray him. A quarter of the way around the tank’s edge, he saw a hole. It had been an outlet, perhaps, running through the ground, but the bugs had eaten the pipe and the ground above had collapsed. Still, water had run between the concrete shell and the earth and he could worm his way back behind the concrete.

  It’s going to collapse on you.

  He kept going. He was remembering being whipped in the stocks when he was caught by the Elders of the People of the Book and, in comparison, the possibility of a cave-in didn’t worry him so much.

  At first, the fumes were as bad as before, but he found that as he got farther behind the tank wall, there was cleaner air in his face. He was groping now, testing the footing below carefully before putting his weight on each section. While the possibility of a cave-in was worrying, the thought of stepping on a bug in this confined space was terrifying.

  A splash of light shown ahead and above. He edged forward. There was a triangular hole, a hand’s span wide, above. He found a foothold and shimmied up until he could look through it.

  He was looking back into the tank nearer the ramp, perhaps ten feet above the water. The fumes weren’t quite as bad as before. He saw the first men come down. They carried gyro rifles held at the ready. They spread across the opening, eight strong. They crouched, rifles still trained forward, and one of them turned his head and Kimble saw white hair and a familiar profile. It was Bickle, who’d been following him back in Pecosito. Bickle shouted back up the trail, “No sign of him, Deacon!”

  More footsteps and then a heavier man, white-haired, came into view. He was wearing tan fatigues—not camo like the Rangers, but plain. There was a shoulder patch facing Kimble—it had a Christian cross with a lightning bolt superimposed over it. The man stepped back from the edge and said, “Safety your rifles. Any of you think what would happen if you fired a gyro in here?”

  Kimble saw more than one of the men turn white.

  “The bugs must’ve eaten through another stretch of pipeline or something. It was just water before.” He took a handkerchief out and pressed it to his mouth while he took a couple of breaths, then dropped it to say, “Fix bayonets. I want every one of those wagons searched. Bickle, Moorecock—chem lights. Check under the wagons. Double-check the rifle crates—see if anyone has been messing with them. Remember, rifle butts and bayonets. Hell. Bickle, confirm those safeties.”

  “Yes, Deacon Rappaport.”

  Kimble watched them fix bayonets. The blades were composite with a triangular cross section. Kimble had handled one back at Ranger headquarters. Communications Sergeant Chinn kept one on his desk. “They’re only really sharp at the end but if you were poked with one—well, a flat blade makes a wound that closes back up, slowing the bleeding. The hole these bad boys punch bleeds you out quick.”

  The men splashed into the water, moving in pairs out to the wagons.

  Rappaport turned and yelled up the trail, “Bring that fellow down here, Ronson!”

  A man, dressed in fatigues like Rappaport, came down the trail to the edge of the tank. He was pushing Pierce in front of him. Pierce’s hands were bound behind his back.

  Crap.

  “So,” Rappaport asked, “where is this super spy?”

  Pierce looked around, caught a gust of the fumes from the tank, and coughed. “How should I know? You found his mule, right? I told you he was probably coming out here. You didn’t have to tie me up. We had a deal, remember? What about my reward?”

  “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth,” Rappaport said.

  Ronson slapped Pierce on the back so hard he stumbled. “That’s Luke, chapter twelve.”

  Rappaport nodded. “Patience. The Lord is good unto them who wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. That’s Lamentations.”

  They stood there until the men splashed back out of the tank. Two of them supported one of their number, half-dragging him out of the tank. Bickle reported, “Still no sign, Deacon. The fumes are fierce. Doubt he could stay in there. The rifles look all right—they’re all there. Ditto for the ammo.”

  “Right. That means he’s somewhere out there in the grass. Bickle, take your squad and sweep around the perimeter of the Pits on foot. Moorecock, mount your squad up and sweep further out.”

  “Bugs are thick in the grass, Deacon,” Bickle said. “How close to the perimeter should we get?”

  “A faithful man shall abound with blessings, son. You’ve got good light out there. Don’t be timid and don’t be stupid. If there’s too many bugs to sweep, there’s too many bugs for him, too.” His expression hardened. “I find any of you shirking your duty, though, and you’ll be envying Job his sores—got it?”

  “Sir!”

  “Moorecock, when you mount up, send one of the horse boys over the hill for the draft animals.”

  The men moved out, leaving just Ronson and Pierce with Rappaport.

  Ronson said, “You’ve decided to move the rifles?”

  “Yes. Whether we get the little sneak or not, we don’t know who else he told. Our man at the barracks hasn’t seen any unusual activity, but he’ll give us plenty of warning if they mobilize. And we’ve been watching the heliograph office ever since Bickle saw him there, but a coded message could be sent by anyone. We’ll need those rifles. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers to his harvest. The men are promised—trained men, ex-military, ex-police. Righteous men whose faith is strong, who hunger for a land ruled by the Word.”

  “The promised land,” said Ronson.

  “Damn straight.” Rappaport turned to Pierce. “Have you accepted Jesus into your life, son? Have you drunk the water that gives eternal life?”

  “Amen!” said Pierce. The white was showing around his eyes. “I believe!”

  “Good. Wouldn’t want you ending up in the wrong place.” He tilted his head up the trail.

  Ronson took Pierce’s arm. “With the others?”

  “Yes.”

  Pierce went white. “Thou shall not kill!”

  Ronson raised his eyebrows. “Shalt. Thou shalt not kill. Exodus chapter?…”

  Pierce opened his mouth and shut it.

  Rappaport said, “Come on, now, chapter twenty. And the verse?”

  Pierce said, “It doesn’t change it. Are you Christians or aren’t you?”

  “Verse thirteen,” said Rappaport. “The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him. The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.”

  And Ronson turned him around, also quoting, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill…”

  Pierce began to struggle and Rappaport took his other arm and the two men started dragging Pierce up the path.

  Kimble was desperate. It had taken him almost twenty minutes to worm back into the crevice. If I’d taken one of the rifles I could shoot the bastards through this hole. But he hadn’t, and even if he had the rocket exhaust would probably ignite the damn petroleum fumes, anyway.

  Which would destroy the gyro rifles and ammo before they could move them. It might distract them from killing Pierce, too. He felt for the waterproof matches in his pocket.

  What’s the wor
st that could happen?

  He took half of the matches, perhaps a dozen, and bundled them together between his thumb and fingers, adjusting them until the heads were all together. He took three quick breaths, stuck his arm through the hole, and scraped the heads across the concrete. The flare of heat burned his fingers and he jerked his hand back, scattering the burning matches.

  His hand was just inside the wall again when the matches reached the fumes below.

  21

  Swimming in the Dark

  It was dark, but Kimble wasn’t sure whether it was dark because he was asleep or it was dark around him. His ears were ringing and he felt like his nose was running. Sick? The last time he’d felt like this he’d had a temperature of a hundred and three. He touched his tongue to his upper lip. It wasn’t mucus—blood.

  He tried to sit up and couldn’t. Memory returned suddenly, the flash and roar and shifting earth.

  So, that’s the worst that could happen. Well, no. He wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway.

  There was a brick-sized piece of concrete lying across his cheek and dirt and gravel covered his ears. He lifted his right hand to clear his face, but he couldn’t move it, which confused him more than anything. Then he realized he couldn’t even feel his right hand. It was pitch dark but he felt a slight breeze on his cheek, and though the air was cleaner than where the wagons had been hidden, he could smell smoke and the celery smell of burnt hair. Though his ears were still ringing, he thought he heard running water.

  He could move his left hand, so he pulled the rock off his face and shoved it to the side. He reached over to his right arm, expecting to find it ending in a jagged stump or something, but he ran into dirt and rock instead. His right arm was buried. He pulled, twisting his entire body, and the arm came free, but dirt and gravel showered down and he froze, afraid he’d triggered a cave-in.

  Almost immediately the pins and needles of returning circulation let him know, in excruciating detail, that his right arm was intact, just asleep. He took a few more deep breaths. The fumes were definitely gone. He found one of his remaining matches and lit it.

  He was at the bottom of a narrow crevice, somewhere below the tank. He could see a tilted section of the concrete tank shell almost twenty feet above him. His feet were covered in gravel and sand, but they moved freely when he tried. He saw water running at the far end of his little pocket, coming down from above, then the match reached his fingers and he dropped it.

  He didn’t light another match until he’d stood carefully and stretched, moving his hands over his head and body. Besides the bloody nose, a large swath of his hair in front had been burned short and there was a tear on the upper edge of his left ear that went clean into the cartilage. When his fingers touched it the pain was so intense he nearly fell down again. There were a few stinging scrapes on his left side and he had a bruise over his right hip that felt bigger than his hand, but the ear seemed the worst.

  The water sounded like it was running harder now, and he wondered if it would fill his little pocket, drowning him, but it was still dry around him so the water had to be draining away as quickly as it was coming in. Maybe I’m just hearing it better.

  He lit another match and moved carefully down to the wet end of the crevice. The water was not only running away, it was cutting through large sections of gravel and sand. A gaping hole went down at a forty-five-degree angle. What’s more, when his match burnt out, he could see the rough outline of the hole and a shelf of rock where the water stopped descending and ran off to the left, horizontally. He looked directly at his hand but couldn’t see anything, so the light was coming in from the side, down there.

  Kimble lit another match and studied the crevice above. From what little he could see, it was closed in by the tank wall except for a network of cracks at the far end where the water ran down.

  Down it is.

  He dropped about eight feet, aiming for the flat shelf of rock, and sank to a crouch, absorbing the shock. He couldn’t see above, but he imagined his jump disturbing the rock above, causing it to fall on him like a mallet onto a peg. He crabbed quickly downstream where the light was brighter, reflected onto the jagged rock above by the rippling water. The passage curved to the right and Kimble blinked his eyes rapidly, shielding the glare with an outstretched hand. There was sunlight ahead, and his eyes watered, unable to adjust quickly. It seemed an eternity before he could focus, but there was a rock surface in direct sunlight at the far end of the irregular passage. The reflected light was the source of the illumination he’d been following.

  By the time he neared the opening he was also hearing better: the scuffing of his feet on rocks, the running water, and, as he crouched a few yards from the opening, thousands of airborne bugs.

  It was the huge pit, the one he’d looked down into, the one with the eroded passage under the road into the adjoining pit. It had been mostly in shadow before, but now the sun was higher and he could see more than the suggestions of shadows. Even from back in his passage he could see that the trail into the tank no longer bridged the tunnel between the two pits—it had collapsed, mostly intact. The far side, leading back toward the cedar grove, tilted down, not quite a cliff, but a very steep climb.

  The swarm of bugs was the largest he’d ever seen, but it was oddly unfocused. Usually, when bugs swarmed, they made a beeline for the site of their crushed fellow, rising up in the air initially, and then cutting through anything in their path. This was more like confusion. The vast cloud was spinning counterclockwise, and it brought to mind the swirling funnel of bugs descending into the hole made by the not-steer.

  Kimble edged forward again. With that many bugs in the air, he thought there couldn’t be any left on the ground, but he was wrong. The bottom of the pit glittered like the thieves’ cave in The Arabian Nights, like piles of coins—copper and silver, bronze and iron—only the coins in Ali Baba’s cave didn’t shift and crawl.

  The very bottom of the pit, just downslope from Kimble, was a dark pool of water, silty gray, with only the lightest sheen of oil. It was being fed by the icy water rushing around his ankles. Before, when he’d looked down into the pit, he hadn’t seen any water and, even though his glimpse had been brief, he should have—it was reflecting the sky clearly.

  So maybe it wasn’t there before.

  Which certainly would account for some of the swarm, displaced by water. Kimble felt sure, though, that some bugs had to have been crushed when the trail collapsed.

  Every experience he’d ever had with flying bugs told him to find a hole and hide in it, but he wanted to know what happened to Pierce and his captors. The bugs that were flying were at least ten feet above the ground. Kimble cautiously stood, ready to drop and spin the minute a bug headed his way.

  The collapsed trail overlapped the edge of the pool near its far end and Kimble could follow his own little cataract down to where it dropped over a ledge and splashed a few feet into the water below. Looking at the shore, Kimble could see lines of calcium marking where the water level had been in previous times: up from rains, down with drought. He was very cautious as he stepped into the greater pool. He didn’t want to find some piece of metal eaten jagged sharp by the blind mouths of bugs.

  The water was not as cold as the stream had been, but cold enough. Near the shore the bottom was very irregular, but as he walked out it became smoother—rubble, gravel, and silty sand forming a slightly bumpy aggregate. It deepened as he went, so he skirted the edge, far enough out to avoid the ragged rubble, but still no more than waist deep.

  His lips were dry and he was thirsty, but he would have to be severely parched before he tried the water he was wading through; at least it gave him a bug-free path. He felt better in the water. If the swarm above dropped, he would, too, lowering himself into the water.

  A few bugs had settled on the collapsed trail, but the fissured earth and grass stretched over whole sections of intact limestone substrata, dropped in situ. The collapsed dirt and rock leading up to the t
rail was a challenge, sliding down a foot for every two gained. Kimble made it halfway up before a seemingly solid ledge dropped out from underfoot and he slid all the way back down to the water’s edge and then fell over backward. The water hit his torn ear and he made an inarticulate roar, deep in his throat, without opening his mouth.

  “What was that?”

  Kimble, about to splash forward to attempt the ascent again, lowered himself slowly back into the water, and crouched until he was neck deep. He wasn’t sure whether to go completely under, hiding, or stay up and keep his sight. The thought of putting the cut underwater again was enough to tip the balance.

  It was Deacon Rappaport and Ronson. They still had Pierce, too, hands still tied behind his back. Ronson was bleeding from his mouth—a pulped lip, it looked like. Rappaport’s pristine uniform was disarrayed, but he was otherwise intact. Ronson had one of the gyro rifles and he was holding it against Pierce’s back. They came closer to the edge. Pierce and Ronson both walked hunched over and, at first, Kimble thought they’d been injured, perhaps their backs or hips, but then he realized that the bugs were buzzing overhead and the men were closer to them than Kimble was. Rappaport walked upright, smiling, as if the bugs were a million miles away.

  “And see what I said? Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand, that thou mayest do to him as it shall seem good unto thee.” He frowned at Ronson and tapped his arm. “Straighten up, man. This isn’t our plague. In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression; for thou shalt not fear: and from terror; for it shall not come near thee.”

  Kimble shuddered. The man’s insane.

  “He’s the bastard who blew up the rifles! That didn’t happen by accident!” Ronson did straighten up, but Kimble had the feeling that it was more about anger than faith. Ronson raised the rifle and shifted his aim from Pierce to Kimble’s head. “Which eye, Deacon?”