by Rik Hunik
Chapter Two
We climbed flight after flight after flight of stairs. It was less than an hour since I woke up in a strange room on an unfamiliar world and here I was now, climbing with a stranger into a further unknown. Which was all very noble, but I was hungry and thirsty and out of breath. The air seemed thin already and we were going higher, though it hardly seemed that way in the featureless white fog. I wondered what kind of spectacular view the fog was concealing. I wondered how much higher we had to go. I wondered how thin the air would get. My chest tightened at the thought of no air. "What about air?"
"My dad told me where to find pressure suits, kind of like the one you're wearing."
I looked down and for an instant I remembered being in this pressure suit, complete with helmet and gloves. Reassured, I pushed on with more energy, almost eager to get up there, like I had some business to attend to, though I had no idea what it might be. As long as I kept up Neola seemed content to forge ahead, up stairs, ladders, and ramps.
Finally, on a level stretch, she turned aside, touched the wall and opened a door. I still didn't know how to do something as basic as opening doors like that, yet another reminder that I was an outsider. It was scary, not knowing who I was.
I followed Neola through the door into a corridor cut through the rock. Dim overhead lights came on as we approached and shut off after we passed. She opened the second door on the left and we entered a cafeteria. The familiarity of the establishment amazed me, but amazement was quickly replaced by disappointment when I saw that it was not functioning.
Neola motioned for me to sit. While I found an unpadded plastic chair she pulled a backpack out of a cupboard, opened it, and dumped the contents on the table in front of me. I grabbed a bottle of water, twisted the top off and chugged half of it down. The bottle felt warm but the water came out cool.
I picked out a food package at random and Neola joined me. I couldn't read the squiggles that passed for an alphabet here but they all seemed to be the same kind of nutrition bar anyhow. It tasted bland but I ate it quickly, washing it down with the rest of the water in the bottle. It must have had some additives because it sure refreshed me a lot.
Neola polished off her bar even faster. "Easy on that water. We only have a couple of gallons." I nodded and reached for another bar. "Eat it quickly. We have to leave soon." She let out a brief laugh. "Usually people never come this high, but Zyla is really pissed off at me and she knows about you, so I don't know how far she and her friends will follow us, I just know she won't give up easy." Her face went solemn and she took a bite out of another nutrition bar. Between chews she muttered, "Stubborn bitch."
"Why is she so mad at you? It sounds to me like she took your man, so you should be mad at her."
She looked at me for several seconds and I thought she wasn't going to answer. Then she sighed and said, "She's always been hot-headed. We grew up together and we were close friends. Sure I had a wild fling with Ben before I knew how much she cared about him, but that's over. If she could just get it through her thick skull that I don't care about him anymore we could be friends again."
When we left the cafeteria Neola led me deeper into the rock. Out of her pack she pulled a ball on a stick, she gave it a twist and it glowed yellow. She said, "The lights on the Grand Staircase haven't worked since Grandpa was a boy. He said he knew people that actually used the elevator when it was working."
Despite the impressive name the Grand Staircase was more utilitarian than grand. Barely wider than my outstretched arms, it was just a rising spiral cut through the rock. We started climbing. And kept climbing. And climbing.
We had enough food and water to last a couple of days in one pack so we took turns carrying it. Despite my mental illness I was in excellent physical condition and I felt like I came from a world with stronger gravity, but the endless stairs would have wearied anybody. I was beginning to see where the staircase earned the appellation of grand. When I called out, "Stop. I need a breather," Neola didn't argue. I shrugged off the pack and sat down.
As I rested on the stone I couldn't help but regret leaving the soft bed I had so recently been in. "When do we get to those pressure suits you mentioned?" We had climbed at least a couple of thousand feet. My ears had popped several times and the air was noticeably thinner.
"I don't know where to get any. I was just pushing Zyla's buttons."
"But down there you told me..."
"I didn't want you to get discouraged."
"Well I wasn't then, but I certainly am now. Even more so."
She laughed. "And so is Zyla, I hope." She raised a finger. "But think about it. If the air was too thin, how could the river be there?"
I didn't know about any river but it sounded like a valid argument to me. Neola handed me a bottle, which I gratefully accepted. The cool water was invigorating, and my headache eased a bit. I rubbed at my temples, then took another drink. Neola held a little white pill out to me. "Take this. It helps relieve altitude sickness."
I'm sure part of my pain was associated with my memory loss, but I swallowed the pill and we shared the rest of the water in the bottle. She put the empty in the pack, shouldered it and said, "Let's get going. If Zyla is following us I don't want to give her a chance to catch us."
Another thousand steps higher we finally came to a landing that had access to a corridor that led us to an exit door with gray daylight showing through the window. Neola shut off her glowing globe and stowed it. When we stepped outside onto a stone catwalk we were assaulted by the ubiquitous roar, much louder than before. Several hundred yards away to my left I saw a waterfall, splashing off the rock wall, coalescing, splashing, plunging. I looked up and up until the waterfall vanished into the clouds hundreds of feet above. I watched it for a minute or so before I glanced at Neola standing beside me. Her face was slack-jawed with awe. "Have you been here before?" I asked her.
She turned to face me with a jerk of her head. "What? Oh yes. Once before, with my dad, years ago. It's beautiful, isn't it?"
"Spectacular." I stepped close to the railing so I could see how far down the water fell. That's when I noticed the cables, similar to the lower ones but as thick around as my body and much further apart. They stretched for miles before fading into the thin haze of cloud. Dozens of massive boulders were suspended in random array on the Net. A falling rock that size could do some serious damage. "Pretty strong cables," I said.
"Some people say they're magic, but Dad told me it's just advanced technology. I don't understand the difference."
I let out a little laugh but I wasn't sure why. "Sometimes it is hard to tell." I looked down but all I saw was the waterfall plunging into churning cloud several hundred feet below.
Neola leaned on the handrail beside me and followed my gaze. "There never used to be this much cloud and fog all the time. The priests say the climate control machines are functioning perfectly well, but even so the temperature continues to decline and so does the air pressure. Most people stay inside all the time." She pointed up at the waterfall. "This is the last river still flowing and it gets smaller every year, even if the priests do deny it. They say it's just part of a longer cycle."
That struck a chord in my subconscious and I tried to listen to it, but it faded too quickly. I found myself gazing out at the boulders. "What happens to those?" I asked, pointing.
"They stay there until they're broken apart or dislodged. Netrunners used to break them up for the raw material but our population has decreased so much that nobody has cared for decades. I don't know how many years it's been since anybody came up to this level." She looked out and up. "It looks like the clouds are clearing. You'll get a view yet. Let's go."
So we started climbing stairs again, but before we had risen more than a couple of hundred yards, there came from above a loud boom, like a single clap of thunder. I stopped in my tracks and peered up into nothing but mist. A siren blasted so loud I clapped my hands over my ears. Before I could ask what it was, it so
unded again. "Fall alarm," Neola shouted between blasts, crouching down and pressing against the rock wall, pulling me with her. She pointed with a finger, then pressed her hands over her ears. I followed the direction of her finger but didn't try to talk as the alarm continued to blast at intervals.
About a mile away, following a shower of smaller pieces, a huge mass hurtled down through the clouds and landed, with a tremendous crash, on top of a smaller boulder already suspended in the Net. The smaller boulder shattered like a hammered pebble. The Net sagged sharply at the point of impact and rebounded gently. The spreading ripple in the Net was quickly absorbed by the resilient cables. I heard boulders and numerous smaller shards of rock bouncing off the cliff not very far from us and I saw tons of broken rock falling through to the finer Nets.
"Wow," Neola said. "You don't get to see something like that every day." She seemed to be a lot less concerned about stone projectiles than I was.
"Does anybody ever get hurt by falling rocks like that?"
She glanced at me, then looked down at the Net again. "Yes." Her voice was tight.
As realization dawned on me I spoke aloud without intending to. "Somebody you knew?"
"Yes. My father."
"I'm sorry."
"Me too. But get over it. I did." She turned away without another word and started up the stairs. I watched her back for several seconds. She was young and strong. The heavy burden didn't show.
I followed her and we climbed. And climbed. The higher we got the smaller and further apart the clouds became. To either side I could see the vertical stone cliffs curving inward a greater and greater distance. Patches of green and purple vegetation colored the gray rock.
I got into a rhythm climbing the stairs and my mind drifted and I nearly bumped into Neola. With a grand gesture she directed my attention outward. The waterfall was a vertical, silvery ribbon much further away now and not nearly so loud. The vertical cliff faces kept curving inward until they joined about ten miles away. But it wasn't a valley. My eyes swept up and down, trying to take it all in.
I was standing on a narrow ledge inside a cylindrical hole many tens of miles deep at the very least. My hands clenched the railing. It felt solid but seemed frail. I leaned back and looked up to the sky, a circle of dark blue with five suns. My head spun in confusion. That couldn't be right. Neola grabbed my arm as I slumped to a sitting position, one hand still gripping the railing. There should be only one sun. I knew that. More knowledge tickled the fringe of my consciousness without coming into range.
"Are you alright?"
I looked up into Neola's concerned eyes. I didn't feel alright but I nodded, then looked past her. Still five suns. "There shouldn't be five suns. That's wrong."
Neola followed my gaze. "Of course it is. There should be six sunlights. One of them went out yesterday."
New confusion drove away my approaching memories. "How could a sun go out so quickly?" But I could see she was right. The suns, or sunlights, as she called them, were evenly spread around the circle of the sky, with one double-wide gap.
Neola shrugged. "That's what we're going up there to find out."
I had come from up there. I didn't remember but somehow I knew I had something to do with it. I stood, my weariness abated by the sense of urgency that now infected me. "Let's get going."
Neola was a bit surprised at my enthusiasm but she didn't argue. We climbed some more stairs but now, as often as not, the trail was simply an incline. On our next break I asked, "Do these stairs and trails go all the way to the top?"
"I hope so. They're for emergency backup in case none of the elevators are working, which has been the case for longer than I've been alive, but nobody has used this route for a lot of years."
I shared her hope. The air kept getting thinner, we were resting more frequently and I was getting a headache again. At last we topped a long staircase and stepped onto a broad ledge cut deep under the overhanging face of the cliff. Despite the crushing weight of the rock above me I felt a comfort under it, where I didn't have to see the circle of alien sky with its five sunlights, nor the hole that went down who knew how far.
Twenty feet away from the edge was a set of double doors, with a row of windows to each side. "Wow," Neola said beside me. "Should we go in?"
It sounded to me like she had never been here before. "Of course. It looks important. Let's see what we can find."
She did her thing to the panel by the doors and they slid apart. "Show me how you do that." She demonstrated a quick little push and slide movement. I tried it a few times and it worked for me.
When we passed through the doors a light came on overhead and the doors slid closed. When the air pressure increased I realized we were in an airlock. I began to feel better.
The doors cycled open and let us into a full-sized facility. There were banks of electronics and unfamiliar machinery, which both of us left alone. We found another dining room, with pure, cold water available, but we had to eat the rations we brought with us. We even found some rooms with beds like the one I woke up on. They looked inviting. I could hear one calling to me. I said, "We should sleep here. We have thousands of feet to climb and I'm wiped out now and it's unlikely we'll find a better place."
Neola looked fresher than I felt but the beds convinced her. She insisted on sleeping in the same room as me, in the cot next to mine. She was a slim, athletic girl, with rounded limbs and nice, tight curves, but although she was pretty I felt only a slight desire for her. Maybe she was too young or too skinny, or maybe I felt disloyal for even thinking as much as I did. Neola, for her part, seemed to be oblivious to the effect she might have on a man. Still, it was comforting to have another person in all this emptiness.
