by David Coy
“Hey, speak for yourself,” Lavachek said.
Donna got that terrier look again, eye blazing. Habershaw opened the door all the way to let her outside. “Would you two mind stepping out on the catwalk for a minute, I’d like to have a word with my Oiler. You can move up and duck in the cab. They won’t be able to see you from the ground.”
Donna and John moved outside and went into the cab. Habershaw slid the door closed and turned to Lavachek. Lavachek just stared at him. It was hard to know where to begin, so Habershaw just started. “We’ve known each other a long time, haven’t we?” he said.
“Ten years in Jultosep,” Lavachek said. “The worst ten years of my damned life,” he added with a smile.
“I need you to do something,” Habershaw said.
“You always need my help.”
“I’m serious.”
“Me, too. You always need my help.”
“I need you to stand behind me on this.”
“On what?” Lavachek snorted. “What are you gonna do? I thought you’d have learned your lesson by now. Joan’s dead because of talk like this.”
Habershaw felt the urge to leap on Lavachek and strangle him. Lavachek sensed the anger but continued heedlessly. He’d just about had it this morning and didn’t care who knew it. But he leaned forward and whispered, just to be safe.
“What?” he said. “You gonna be the revolutionary now? Hell, Verde’ll end up just like Cunningham or Fuji—people wandering around starved, eatin’ each other, dying of diseases and shit, no organization. I’m telling you, Bill, them two people are gonna get us both killed. If you’d just wait until things settle down here, everything will be all right.”
Habershaw said, “There ain’t gonna be no goddamned settling down. This right here is about as settled down as it’s gonna get. We’re slaves.”
“So? That ain’t no different than it’s ever been.”
“They never had to enforce it with guns before—that’s the difference. Before, we did it because we thought we were getting something in return. Now they don’t have to give us shit. They get what they want and, we can eat dirt.”
“That’ll all change, you’ll see,” Lavachek went on. “They ain’t as bad as all that. Hell, they moved us over from the settlement, didn’t they? They haven’t slaughtered us yet, have they?”
That last part made Habershaw see red. He forced down the impulse to grab him by the neck and choke the life out of him. Until that moment, it wouldn’t have occurred to him that Lavachek was a coward. But it was one thing to poke fun at authority, but quite another to actually challenge it. Lavachek’s fear had drawn a line in his mind he just couldn’t step over. Wasn’t that the definition? Didn’t cowardice equate with overpowering fear? What did it take to get someone to swallow their dread and fight? He should know—he’d been in Lavachek’s shoes his whole life. It was a curious turnaround, Habershaw thought, that Lavachek, who until recently had been the pissed-off malcontent, and he, Habershaw, the cautious one, should now have switched roles. Fear was a more powerful motivation than he had realized. When you have it in great abundance, you just don’t know it, you only experience the paralysis of it. But being on the other side of the fence allowed Habershaw to see quite clearly. And any residual fear that might have been lurking in his mind prior to Joan’s death had been burned alive when they killed her. His hatred was so deep for the Sacred Bond and their enforcers that the mere thought of them was enough to set his blood boiling. He’d done a good job so far of keeping his anger under control, but it didn’t matter much now. So what to do about Lavachek? The answer was you did nothing. You just parted ways—with a friendly little ol' handshake.
“I can’t tell you what to do,” Habershaw said. “But if you’re not with us, there’s a good chance you’re against us.”
Lavachek snorted. “What’s that ‘sposed to mean?”
“It means you’d better not say a word to anybody about anything, or I’ll kill you with my own goddamned hands.”
“Who the hell am I gonna say anything to? Patel?” Lavachek snorted again.
“Just keep your mouth shut.”
“I ain’t been off the rig in days,” Lavachek droned. “I ain’t gonna say a word.”
“When the shelters are ready, you move off the goddamned rig."
"Fine."
“I mean it.”
“Me, too. Now, look—I said I wouldn’t say a word.”
“You’d better not . . . ”
“ . . . you three . . . you three . . . can plot your plots and skulk around all you want for all I care. I got more important things to do.”
“It better stay that way,” Habershaw said. He gave the metal wall separating the cab from the living quarters several firm knocks with his hand. John and Donna came back in a moment later. John, Habershaw noticed, was visibly nervous; far more so than when he first came onto the rig.
“Did you two kiss and make up?” Donna asked, ending with a terrier look at Lavachek.
“Yeah. I guess you could say that,” Habershaw said.
“I been kissin’ his ass for years,” Lavachek added. He lowered his head and slowly rubbed his close-cropped hair. “One more smooch won’t make any difference.”
14
T
They would go in, find Rachel and bring her out. It was a simple plan, but the devil was in the details. Habershaw agreed to make surveillance excursions into the monolith’s interior to start. They had to find out where she was and under what conditions she was being detained before they could figure out how to free her.
Habershaw found a good hiding place for Donna and John in the meantime. Between the motors in each track was a locker half as large as a utility truck. It was used for storage, and there were racks and shelves inside it. Habershaw stripped those out and tossed them overboard. Then, using a pair of grips, he bent the heavy latch on the back of the door so it could only be opened from the inside. In the event anyone came looking for them, they’d find a steel door that wouldn’t open without a lot of effort. The mercenaries, the lazy bastards, would skip the locker once they discovered the door would have to be pried open. Several air vents with angled slats and covered with fine screens made the space was fairly well-ventilated and somewhat bug-proof. In the middle of the ceiling was a small light that would provide sufficient illumination.
It was cramped and close, but it would beat the hell out of sleeping in the jungle. As a last touch, Habershaw went upstairs, came back with some wadded-up bed clothes and a pillow and tossed them into a corner. Donna made a face and decided she’d sleep on the bare floor rather than come in contact with those particular items, thank you.
“I wish we had phones,” John said.
“The bulletins say they won’t be operational for another week,” Habershaw said and shrugged. “We’ll have to work without them. Will you two be all right in there?”
“Sure,” John said. “Looks real cozy.”
“Stay out of sight until I get back,” Habershaw said. “My guess is they’ll be looking for you before midday.”
“Be careful, Bill,” John said. “They’re killers.”
“Hey, they won’t know shit. See you later.”
By the time Habershaw started across the field toward the monolith, the sun was higher and hotter still. He wondered if some new, life-threatening bug would start to hatch out as a result of the change in weather.
He went down the ramp and felt himself vanish in the bustling activity of lifts and moving pedestrians and the mountains of containers and equipment. The stacks of stuff immediately reminded him of Joan. This was her work. These were her workers. These containers and crates had her stamp on them—her touch. Without thinking, he reached out and rested his hand on one for a second.
The interior walls were lined with openings that led off into tunnels in all directions. He did an estimate and came up with the number twenty. He held his hand up to a passing lift to stop it. The driver was Peter Ho, and
Habershaw brightened at his good fortune.
“Hey, Peter.”
“Hello, Mr. Habershaw.”
“I’m looking for Rachel Sanders. She’s been hurt, and they probably took her to a clinic. Where is it?”
“Well, there’re two clinics, Mr. Habershaw. I can take you to one, but the other one is in the guts.”
“What’d you mean, in the guts?”
“That’s what we call the areas deep inside. They won’t let us go there. They keep it guarded at all times. If we have a delivery to make we have to hand it off to one of the soldiers who lifts it in. See that hole way over there?” He pointed at an open doorway on the far side of the chamber. Habershaw wished he wouldn’t do that. “That’s hole E. That’s the one that leads into the guts. Any container or item marked E goes down that hole. There’s a sub-chamber a few hundred meters in where we dump our loads. A soldier carries it the rest of the way.
“How do you know there’s another clinic in the guts?” Habershaw wanted to know.
“We’ve been taking medical equipment and stuff back in there all week. What else could it be?”
“Where’s the other clinic? The one we can see?”
“Climb up. I’ll take you over there.”
Habershaw climbed up and held onto the lift’s cage. Peter raised his load and headed off. Staying in the tire-darkened roads drawn in the floor and dodging other lifts in the intersections, he drove as fast as the lift would go. Habershaw was impressed. The skillful operation of any moving equipment impressed him. “You handle this thing pretty good there, Peter.”
“I’ve been doing it a few years, Mr. Habershaw.”
The clinic had been set up in a small chamber off a tunnel marked M in black paint. Peter stopped the lift at the metal door and Habershaw hopped down.
“That’s it, Mr. Habershaw,” Peter said.
“Thanks. Do me another favor. If you see Rachel, come to the rig and tell me. Don’t tell anybody else.”
“Okay.”
“See you around,” Habershaw said.
Peter swung the lift into the lane and hummed off. Habershaw had to think of some excuse to go inside. There was no mark of the Bondsmen above the door, which meant he could use the facility, but he couldn’t just walk in without a good medical reason and the holes in his back, not yet healed, filled the bill perfectly. He opened the door and walked down the tunnel. A single black power cable ran along the wall, fastened with brackets hammered into the wall’s smooth surface.
The clinic was even smaller than he thought it would be, scarcely ten meters across. A jumble of tables and racks of equipment were strewn all over with little sense of order. There were three examination tables separated by white plastic curtains hanging from frames. The frames looked bent and crooked. Carts on rollers were everywhere, loaded up with pans and an assortment of medical paraphernalia. Metal shelves against one wall held hundreds of bottles and boxes of drugs in uneven stacks. An irregular row of five or six chairs served as a waiting area. A young contractor, a woman of about twenty, clearly pregnant, sat in one of them, bouncing one foot, waiting for her turn.
“Hi,” she said nicely.
“Hi,” Habershaw replied.
The layout was so ill-designed that there was virtually no privacy from the eyes in the waiting area. Two patients, one sitting, the other lying down, occupied the tables.. A single doctor, dressed in a dingy gown, was examining the one sitting. He looked up long enough to acknowledge Habershaw, then went right back to work. “Have a seat,” he said. “I’ll be with you when I can.”
Habershaw knew the doctor. He was an old and bent, extremely unpleasant sort named Cochran—an old burnout, unable to retire, and the best they could get for the lowly contractors.
Rachel wasn’t there, that was clear. Habershaw wasn’t crazy about asking the question, but he had to do it.
“Have you treated a woman for glass cuts this morning?” he asked.
“Nope,” Cochran said with disinterest, not looking up.
“That solves that mystery,” Habershaw said lightly to the waiting woman. She smiled, but it was something only passing for a smile.
* * *
That left one alternative. If she was getting medical treatment it was down in the plant’s guts.
When he got back to the rig, Habershaw went straight to the locker and told John and Donna what he’d learned.
“That’s no medical clinic,” John said with a note of apprehension. “It’s a very weird-assed laboratory just filled with this alien surgical technology.”
Habershaw knew what he had to tell them wouldn’t go down very easily, but they had a right to know. He told them what he and Lavachek had seen in the last few weeks prior to the migration. When he was finished, John slumped against the wall.
“What the hell are they doing in there?” he almost whined. “What is wrong with those people.”
The idea that Rachel might be used for some ungodly experiment made him swoon with dread. He remembered how she had almost fainted when she first saw the lab—how it had made her physically sick to be in it. He looked up and blinked and his mouth turned into a straight, tight line.
“Hey,” Donna said with a focused look. “We don’t know anything yet. We’ve got a ways to go before we reach any conclusions. Besides, Jacob’s taken some special interest in Rachel . . . ”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” John said forcefully.
“Right—but it doesn’t necessarily mean what you think. Try not to think about it until we have the facts,” she said.
Sure, John thought. How do I not think about it.
“I’m as concerned as you are,” she said. “She’s my family, too."
Sure.
“There’s only one way into the lab that we know of,” Donna said to Habershaw. “And that’s through the tunnel you described as tunnel E. John and Rachel have explored it dozens of times.” She blotted her brow on her sleeve.
“So how do we get in?” Habershaw asked.
“Create a diversion,” John said. “Then go in shooting and get her out.”
“No. That won’t work,” Donna said. “I’ve got it. We’ll drop down one of the vertical ventilation shafts from the top of the structure. You know how Rachel thought that big hole in the ceiling of the lab was connected to the vents somehow. I bet she was right.”
“How? We don’t know which one of those shafts, if any, dumps into the lab,” John said. “And it’s a long drop besides. How are we gonna manage that? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
The fear he felt for Rachel’s welfare was causing his brain to shut down. Donna picked up on it. She’d have to fill in some for him right now. She hoped it was temporary.
“We’ll use a utility shuttle. We’ll steal it, fly it to the top and winch ourselves down. Simple.”
“Which one? Which shaft?” John asked.
“John, relax. We can do this.” She watched him take a breath and waited until he let it out. “That time we were up on top, remember? The first time? We counted what—ten chutes in a ring? We’ll go down each one until we find the right one that’s all.”
“What about the soldiers in the lab?” Habershaw asked. “Chances are there aren’t any,” Donna said. “They’ve put all their security at the sub-chamber where the material gets dropped off. My guess is they have no need for soldiers in the lab itself.”
“I know that sub-chamber,” John said. “It’s three or four hundred meters from the lab. If she’s in there, it should be an easy matter to drop in, kill a few bystanders, snatch her and get the hell out before the guards get to us. We know the layout better than they do. We have that advantage. We need some communication equipment. Where can we get some?”
That’s more like it, Donna thought. I thought we’d lost you.
“I’ve got some old stuff we once used on the rig,” Habershaw offered. “It doesn’t have any range, but it’ll work.”
“Good,” John said.
“What abou
t the shuttle?” Habershaw asked.
Donna shrugged and looked at John. “That’s the pilot’s job. What do you think, Soledad? Can you fly a shuttle to the top of that thing?”
“Blindfolded. The problem’s copping the shuttle. That could be tough. But I might be able to convince one of the other pilots to let us borrow one for a while.”
“Who?” Donna asked.
“I could check with Paul Mayflower. We were pretty close. I’ve known him for a long time.”
“You can’t go strolling over to the shuttle pool and say, Howdy, can I borrow your shuttle?” Donna said, “so Bill will have to arrange it. Tell him it’s for his old friend, John Soledad—that kind of thing. See if he’ll buy in. Don’t tell him he won’t be getting the damned thing back. If he doesn’t go along, we’ll kill him and steal it.”
“That’s pretty harsh,” John said with a grin, astonished at Donna's transformation to guerilla fighter.
“It’s harsh times,” she replied.
“I’ll handle it,” Habershaw said. He could schmooze with the best of them.
* * *
Habershaw found Mayflower later that day, sitting in his shuttle between flights, eating his lunch from a plastic box. He seemed eager to engage in conversation with another contractor, and Habershaw swooped right in. He was sure he’d ridden in his shuttle once or twice and told him so just to get things started. They talked about the weather, the settlement, the plant— and then the move.
They commiserated about how shitty everything was, sharing anecdotes about the contemptible behavior they saw around them. Habershaw even told him about Joan. The grief and anger he showed was genuine.
“These damn things hard to fly?” Habershaw asked, finally changing the subject.
“Takes practice,” Mayflower said. “The damned tests are the hard part. The craft is fairly easy to control once you get the hang of it. Here, I’ll show you.”
Finally, Habershaw brought the conversation around to John Soledad. Mayflower was very interested in what had happened to him as were all the other pilots. When Habershaw told Mayflower that John was in hiding, Mayflower was both surprised and concerned. When Mayflower asked what he could do to help, Habershaw had no trouble broaching the subject of borrowing the shuttle.
