stone on his hand sent insistent signals to his leg muscles, pushing him to continue, but fatigue pulled him down. He collapsed next to the elevator entrance with his back against the wall. After a few moments a sigh of pleasure escaped from his chest. The sweet tingling from the red stone rippled across his body. It was all he could feel; beneath it was total numbness. He struggled to his feet, took a few steps, and collapsed again.
"I can't go any farther!" he shouted weakly into the echoing dark. "Tell it to leave me alone!"
"Rest for a while," not-Milly suggested from a distance. "The Navy will be along shortly. Or will it be something else?"
The darkness almost made Samson believe there was a person standing over there. That unseen person was trying to scare him. He hated that she sounded like Milly. "What is coming?" he asked. "Why am I here? I didn't want to come here!"
"It isn't that interesting, is it? Just a big, empty, dark building. It's hard to believe close to eight billion people came through this very corridor."
"I want to go back!"
"Don't you want to meet your new friend?"
"No! Where is it? What is it?"
"It's large. It's hot. Stay here a little longer. You'll see it."
Samson pulled himself up again, using both the wall and his spear. He moved into the shallow indentation formed by the elevator doorway. He peered in both directions into the darkness of the hallway. He heard a frightening raspy sound echoing from the walls not far away.
"Try the elevator," not-Milly suggested.
Cold, dusty steel rubbed across Samson's back as the doors behind him opened. He almost fell backward. He grabbed at the edge of the opening, dropping his spear. He glanced into the deep darkness of the elevator car and tried to ignore the threat its lack of illumination implied. Briefly, almost unconsciously, he felt he had once enjoyed elevator rides. Samson stooped to find his spear and something in his peripheral vision made him look toward the up-slope corridor. He saw tiny lights that seemed to float in the far darkness, and they twitched in unison and became an expanding cloud of star-like points of luminance. He turned, stumbled backward, lost his grip on the slick edge of the doorway and struck the stone in the palm of his hand on the metal. The shock almost rendered him unconscious. The concrete floor rushed up to hit him in the face. He lay stunned for a few moments, until vibrations registered on the ear which lay against the floor. An acrid burning odor reached his nose. A trickle of adrenalin urged his body to move but Samson couldn't feel his extremities, much less use them.
"Don't go into the elevator," a different voice said, speaking very close to him.
The red stone slipped off his hand. Sensation prickled under his skin out to the ends of his arms and legs. Nerves in his skin revived slowly and painfully. Flailing weakly against the floor, his hand touched something that hurt him. He cried out, dragged his hand to his chest where he could smell burned flesh. His muscles were weak and convulsing, as he scrabbled slowly in a circle until he got himself partly into the elevator.
"Do you want to go up?" not-Milly asked.
"YES!" he shouted weakly, feeling for his knees with hands whose nerves were on fire.
"Going up."
The floor vibrated under him, and as it rose above the level of the corridor he could sense that he was still not completely within the elevator car. A wave of heat flowed past him. He found one knee and pulled. Something touched him lightly, probing his back and shoulders, starting to curl around his sides. He resisted.
"WAIT!" Samson cried.
"Aren't you in yet?" Not-Milly demanded. "Shut up and MOVE! You can't understand how difficult this is for me!"
"Milly, it's in here with me! MILLY!"
Acceleration pinned his weak body to the floor. A dagger of pain stabbed the back of his neck. Darkness fell across his mind.
= = =
[You have a wife and daughter, Jon,] Admiral Demba sent to Captain Horss, printing the words on his ocular terminal.
The signs were quickly getting fresher as Demba and Horss came into the spiral corridor and began the ascent. Infrared vision and augmented sense of smell were sufficient to track Samson. Any minute now they should also be able to hear him. Now that it appeared they would soon find the boy, Demba began a silent conversation with the captain. She was still monitoring Horss's physiology by direct link to his class-1 uniform. His telemetry seemed normal enough, given the circumstances. She doubted her own body chemistry was any less disturbed.
"I don't have a wife and daughter!" he responded impatiently and aloud.
[Quiet!]
"I don't have a wife and daughter! Do you give a damn about the boy or android or whatever the hell he is?"
[I met your daughter. Makawee. I'm sorry about Chumani.]
"Chumani? What about Chumani?"
[Chumani died. She was only sixty. Why did you abandon them?]
"We don't have time for this, Admiral!"
[You didn't know.]
"No, I didn't know Chumani died."
[Two years ago. A mining accident.]
"It always is. Did she remarry? No, don't tell me. It isn't the time to discuss such things."
[It was one reason I chose you.]
"Because I abandoned my family?"
"Because I could verify you have a family," she said aloud in Twenglish, giving up listening for Samson. "The bad guys have no verifiable family. More Archives data analysis. Of course, the same could be said of me and Khalanov. We go back many years into our past - and we disappear. Both of us. I hadn't realized Khalanov had never complained to me of his lost personal history. I have no relatives to tell me things I can't remember. Records for us seem to have existed but are conveniently lost or destroyed. Much like the records of the interlopers. I've been blind to this situation!"
"What interlopers?" Horss asked
"Most of the officers who run the Navy, including Etrhnk. What I don't know is what they are. Or why. They come and go, all of them young and ruthless."
"Not something I need to worry about, Admiral! You made sure of that! You don't seem very concerned about the boy. This place should make responsible people worry about a real child!"
"I hoped there would be an active sensor sweep by some other agency, so that the yacht could use the scatter. If something happens to me, I hope you will take care of Samson."
Horss stopped walking and Demba halted a few paces ahead of him. She turned to face him, feeling her adrenaline surge before an augment brought it under control.
"If something happens to you, I'll try," Horss replied, sounding distracted. He moved toward her. She backed away and to the side, uncertain of him. He moved past her, staring into the near distance. "Something different here," he spoke worriedly. "A big heat track from up the corridor. Thermal smudges on the wall. Warm things on the floor."
The admiral opened the weapons pod on her right forearm and a projector flooded the corridor in bright light. Metal elevator doors reflected light onto Samson's spear. And onto something else. Admiral Demba started to rush forward, up the slope, then stumbled to a halt. What she saw... What she saw made her convulse and fight for breath.
Something broke in her, the shock was so great! She hardly understood what the breakage was, only that she - or reality - would never be the same! Demba could resist screaming with only her greatest will. She held her breath to keep from screaming, to keep from vomiting.
"Get us a ping, Admiral!"
She closed her eyes and used her ocular terminal to order an active sensor sweep. A complex pattern and composition of energy sprayed out from her yacht and caused reflections from every small feature of the African Space Elevator. She and Horss watched the data structure build in their eyes. They watched the machine intelligence sweep the data for patterns and targets of possible interest.
"The top floor!" they declared in unison.
A transmat reference field seized them. The spiral corridor snapped out of existence. Dazzling yellow sunlight beamed into a great chambe
r through transparent walls. Deep blue sky painted the glass between massive arches in the domed ceiling. Six black carbon tubes, widely spaced, dominated the center of the floor: the freight shafts of the African Space Elevator. Patterns embedded in the floor, graceful arcs of gray, led toward the seventh tube within the circle of six, sweeping inward from the observation elevators at six locations at the perimeter of the floor.
By one open elevator door a dark and sparkling mass lay slowly moving, as though breathing. It occasionally twitched. Sunlight danced across its coal-dark form, picking out every color of the rainbow. It was a wedge-like ramp in shape which, though geometrically precise, seemed arbitrary, temporary. It looked like black velvet dusted with precious gems. Points of brilliant color cascaded across its planes and shot the surrounding building surfaces with spectra of light.
Demba and Horss approached. They saw Samson lying in a pocket atop the slope of the thing. Demba couldn't get clear biometric signals from the child due to some kind of electronic interference from the creature, but she thought Samson was alive. The alien being shocked her, fascinated her, even despite her fear for Samson's life. The reality before her eyes was of monumental significance - if she could believe her eyes. It was almost disappointing to have her augments reign in her body chemistry and force her to become calm and cautious. She wanted to feel the fascination, even the fear. It was alien, and possibly dangerous, and there were vague but vital implications for Samson being in contact with it.
"I can't
Keshona Far Freedom Part 1 Page 14
