Darius aimed the silver revolver at her chest. He stuck out his tongue and licked his lips, then hesitated, as if he wanted to say something else.
“Goodbye,” he said.
A thundering boom split the air of the cavern. Darius looked at the unharmed Badger and his pistol in amazement. Another boom and something buzzed past his face.
“Drop it,” yelled a hoarse voice.
Two figures approached along the catwalk. The chamber crackled with energy and revealed a shivering Wilson, a rifle in his hands. Beside him Mary helped him walk, one arm behind his back and one holding his belt. Slime the color of a winter sky covered them both from head to toe and splotched the metal grate below their feet.
“Drop it,” Wilson repeated.
Darius kept the pistol pointed at Badger and shook his head. “That’s twice for me. You’d think I’d learn my lesson and put a spike in the boy’s ear or something. Well, live and learn. Or don’t.”
“You heard me,” said Wilson.
Darius sighed. “A man of letters would call this an impasse. A man of the people would say it’s a standoff. What do savages––who barely understand grunts and whistles––call this?”
“Shut up,” said Wilson.
“Your weapon may kill me, but mine is pointed at someone very dear to us all. In fact, a pair of dear someones. Is revenge worth the life of your unborn child?”
Wilson stared open-mouthed at Badger. “Kira, is that true?”
She bit her lower lip and nodded.
Wilson aimed the rifle at Darius. “It doesn’t change anything. You’ll die if you touch her.”
Darius rolled his eyes. “What drama! Save those emotional cliches for the Royal Theater.”
A storm of metal clicks and scrapes came from above their heads. Dozens of silver spider-arms whirred down the central column with snapping crab-like pincers.
Wilson held his rifle by the barrel and swung at the arms, trying to beat his way toward Badger, who did her best to dodge the razor-sharp claws. A gun boomed and a force like a falling tree smashed into Wilson’s left leg. He collapsed onto the metal grates, clutching his left leg in agony.
Darius thumbed back the hammer of his smoking pistol and aimed at Wilson again. A spider-arm crashed into his arm at full speed and the weapon spun into the discharge pit. Darius didn’t give it a second thought. He ducked another whirring arm and ran across the catwalk toward the entrance.
Badger kicked and punched as the arms lifted her into the air. Without warning the spindly machines went limp like dead vines and dropped her a meter to the shivering platform.
She crawled rapidly to Wilson. “You’re in real trouble.”
“Get in line, dear,” said Mary, kneeling beside him.
Wilson pushed the rifle to Badger with exhausted arms. “He’s getting away.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’re shot and I’m not leaving you.”
Mary nodded. “I told you, Kira––men always make stupid decisions on their own.”
“Right,” said Wilson, and closed his eyes.
Badger slapped him across the face. “Look at me! If you go to sleep I’ll throw you into the pit myself. Stupid, idiotic ...”
She ripped material from her tattered shirt and muttered horrible things to herself as she wrapped the wound on his upper thigh.
“I love you too, dear,” said Wilson. “Sorry about–”
“Quiet. Use those tricks of yours to calm down.”
Mary helped her lift Wilson to his feet.
“Wait,” He held up a hand. “I can’t leave yet. Get me to the reactor controls.”
The two women shuffled with Wilson to the rectangular display set in the central column above the discharge sphere. Wilson typed in the password then swiped his finger through screens full of flashing red triangles.
The cavern darkened as the interval increased in the flashes of lightning from the discharge sphere.
“There,” said Wilson. “It’s on an automated shutdown sequence. Might take an hour or more before it’s completed. I guess.”
Badger spread her hands. “Where did you get the password?”
“From Twitch––I mean, Jack. We were all communicating when I was ... ‘out.’”
“Jack? But he’s dead.”
Wilson sighed. “It’s a long story and we need to leave.”
“Right, to get that leg treated.”
“Well, mainly because of the shutdown. Something could go wrong.”
Badger and Mary helped him limp as fast as possible across the catwalk and up the stairwell to the casket chamber.
A naked Circle trooper lay sprawled on the smooth floor of the cavern. The other dead Circle were also missing gear and clothing. On the far side of the vast open space the doorway to the back entrance had been left open, and dust floated in the dim yellow light of the stairwell. Badger heard a distant rub of feet on the concrete steps.
Wilson stopped his two helpers at Reed’s body. Covered in globs of the same aquamarine slime as Wilson, the naked body had slipped out of the controller bed and sprawled undignified at the base. Wilson straightened his arms and legs and covered him with a soaked gray blanket.
“How do we bury someone who’s already in his tomb,” he murmured.
“Less talk more walk,” said Badger.
She helped him through the hatch to the medical room and onto a treatment bed.
“How do I work this thing?”
“Find a portable display screen, tap the bed number and then ‘scan.’”
Badger searched the room. “Something’s wrong––they’re all gray.”
“Check the cabinets,” said Mary. “The second one from the right.”
Badger found painkiller and a box of white gauze bandages. After wrapping Wilson’s thigh they helped him off the treatment bed.
A cascade of rotating yellow light and a repeating series of three high-pitched beeps poured from the doorway to the main cavern.
Badger groaned. “Now what?”
“The systems are losing power,” said Wilson. “It might be some kind of emergency signal.”
Mary and Badger helped him limp through the open hatch to the cavern.
“Look up there,” shouted Badger over the piercing beep.
She pointed to a pair of obsidian caskets five levels high on the wall. Bright yellow lamps rotated above both caskets and the deafening three-part beep came from somewhere in that area.
“Are those broken like the rest of this place?” asked Mary.
“Broken, or opening up,” said Wilson. “The transport systems don’t have power, so if there’s anything alive in there I’ll need to climb up and open it manually.”
Badger stared at him. “Seriously? With that leg you’ll climb like a stuck pig and drip as much blood.”
“But if there’s anyone alive we have to open the caskets. Without power they’ll die.”
Badger slipped off her boots and jacket. “Fine.”
“Kira, you don’t know the controls––”
“Who’s got a bullet in his leg? Sit.”
His mother found a stash of left-behind furs and Wilson lay on them painfully. He needed to meditate with the calming trick but couldn’t look away from the barefoot girl in filthy rags climbing a web of three-century-old cables and silver machinery.
She found a pattern. Standing on the top of a dust-covered casket with arms stretched and toes pointed, Badger grabbed a narrow metal ledge at the bottom of each level. From there she repeated the climb up piles of tarnished equipment alongside the next casket.
At the fifth level she pulled herself up and hugged the first casket. Her head throbbed with the beeping noise and only her toes supported her on the narrow ledge. She turned away from the blinding yellow light and the slick surface of the casket burned her cheek, as sticky-cold as ice on a dark winter night.
“What now?” she yelled.
Far below Wilson and Mary waved at her like tiny dolls. Both shoute
d something at Badger but the silver machinery near the casket rattled and the three-pattern beep blared loud enough to make her eyes water.
“Cat’s teeth,” she cursed. “Just like a man ... getting shot ... when you need him ...”
On her toes, she inched to the right. A display no larger than her spread fingers came to life and flashed a triangle with a jagged vertical line. Below lay a pair of smaller symbols: a happy-face circle labeled “MANOP” and a frowning symbol with “DISCON.”
“Even I’m not that dumb,” said Badger.
She grabbed a sturdy twist of cable and pressed the happy face with her left hand.
The spiraling light above the casket changed to blood-red and the repeating beeps were replaced with a piercing klaxon next to Badger’s ear.
Below her Wilson struggled to his feet and waved his arms back and forth.
“I hit the happy face!” yelled Badger.
Around the edges of the casket tiny connections popped free and blew gusts of high-pressure air in her face. Hydraulics whined behind the casket and shook the narrow metal ledge below her feet. Badger grabbed a second cable and held on as the ledge flipped down and the siren cut off completely.
In the stark silence the top of the casket slowly leaned forward and fell end-over-end through the air. The entire cavern shook as it smashed a lightning-storm of cracks into the floor and threw black fragments to every corner.
Badger grabbed more cables to her right and swung to the next section of cold-sleep chambers. She climbed down and ran to Wilson, who had limped to the fallen casket.
“I pressed the happy face,” she said.
Wilson pulled at the cracked top of the casket, his face dripping with sweat. The sides had shattered and exposed white plastic and multicolored wiring, but the black slab had held most of its shape.
Badger helped him pull up on the panel. At last it lifted free with a sound like a pack of dogs crunching on bones.
Inside lay an older man, naked and hairless, with a form-fitting perimeter of clear gel spheres surrounding his body. He didn’t move and his skin was a shade between blue and gray.
“Shock advised,” said a metallic female voice from somewhere in the broken casket.
Wilson limped as quickly as he could toward the medical room.
“I need a portable unit!”
His mother spread her arms. “A what?”
“A red box with a handle. Check below the beds!”
Badger ran past both of them and found the red box at the back of the medical room. At the gray corpse, Wilson opened the unit and took out a pair of wired ovals the size of his palm. He shoved the squishy liquid-filled spheres away from the man’s chest and slapped the ovals on his right shoulder and left side below the ribs.
“Stand back.”
He pressed a button on the portable unit and the man’s body jerked with an intense muscle spasm.
“It’s working,” said Badger.
The chest began to rise and fall. Mary found an oxygen mask and tank in the wide pool of blue slime near Reed’s shattered dome. Wilson shook out the slime and pressed the clear mask over the man’s face. After a moment his pallor changed from gray to pink.
“Mother, can you find me some towels?”
Wilson watched her leave then looked down to a pair of hazel-green eyes.
“Morning, Wilfred,” said the man.
High above them, a light above the second casket flashed crimson and the warning siren pealed again.
“I didn’t touch that one,” yelled Badger.
Metal connections popped and invisible gases hissed a cascade of noise. The casket leaned forward slowly.
Badger pulled Wilson to the floor. “Duck!”
The two squeezed against the far side of the already-fallen casket and held each other tight.
The second casket shattered on the cavern floor with a great boom and threw fragments of sharp metal and plastic throughout the vast space.
The man in the casket beside them sighed, a great rattle of exasperation.
“Three hundred years of quiet and this is the welcome I get ...”
TWENTY-TWO
Because of a rusted gear, a bit of dust, or bad luck the second casket tumbled at a slight angle. The left edge struck the floor first and the casket disintegrated into a pancaked mess of black covering, white plastic, and a clear liquid that seeped from the interior.
Badger and Mary helped the naked man out of the first casket and covered him with a blanket while Wilson searched the pile where the second had landed. His fingers touched cold skin and he desperately shoved his hands through the fragments of plastic and metal.
A woman lay under the mess: naked, hairless, and with chestnut-colored skin. Circles darkened her eyes and red marks covered the right side of her body. Her forearm and lower leg on that side were turned at unnatural angles.
“She’s not breathing!”
Wilson grabbed the portable resuscitator and slapped another set of patches on her chest while the unit charged up. Her body jumped as the unit shocked her heart. Wilson stuck a blue medicated patch in the center of her chest and pressed the button for another shock. The woman arched her back and gasped. She sank back into the mess of plastic, her abdomen and chest rising with each breath.
The strange man knelt beside Wilson and touched the woman’s forehead gently.
“Dear Parvati,” he said. “Dear, stupid Parvati.”
Wilson covered the woman with a bearskin and stared at the man. “I know who she is, but who are you?”
He tilted his head. “I’m Jack. You don’t remember that whole month in Tawang? The lumberyard?”
“But that wasn’t real. That Jack was a memory fragment.”
“The names people call me,” said the man. “Do I look fake to you?”
“Jack died weeks ago. Look––he’s still floating in that fishbowl,” said Badger.
“You think the military would trust a stupid grunt like me in a billion-dollar contraption like a hyper-oxygenated controller dome?” The man shook his shaved head. “That’s like strapping a goat inside an F-22.”
“What’s an F-22?”
“Trust me––the people in the controller domes were trained engineers.”
Badger pointed at Jack’s old dome. “If you’re Jack Garcia, tell us who’s really in there.”
“Konrad Antwarter, like it says on the side.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Look closer, it’s right underneath the lip.”
“Then why did he say HE was Jack?”
A female voice spoke up from the floor. “He thought he was Jack.”
“Don’t stress yourself, dear,” said Mary, and rubbed the cold hands of the olive-skinned Parvati.
“She’s right,” said Wilson. “Whether it was a fault in the system or some kind of tampering, most of Konrad’s personality was pushed to the side.”
A deep rumble vibrated the cavern floor. The warning siren coughed to life again and red lights began to flash over the two stairwell exits.
“Great cat’s teeth in the sky,” yelled Wilson.
Badger started to push the gel spheres away from Parvati. “So much for that automatic shutdown.”
“You can’t make her walk,” said Mary. “Her leg’s broken!”
Jack slid his hands beneath the bearskin and lifted Parvati.
“Don’t argue––just go,” he shouted.
Mary and Badger helped Wilson climb the stairwell. Halfway up they met Mast and Robb at the head of a group searching for Badger. The men carried Parvati and helped the other three up the steps as a great cracking sound came from below. The air filled with black dust that smelled like copper.
Luckily Robb had brought a lantern, and they climbed the rest of the stairs to the surface. The party stumbled through the pitch-black entrance chamber to the snow-covered fields of Station.
HE COULD DO IT.
A rifle. Bullets. Two iron rations. That was enough to mak
e it to Lagos.
Darius pushed through knee-deep drifts on the shoulder of Old Man. It would have been easier to go through the forest, but the thick branches and pockets of shadow scared him. He wanted clarity, freedom, and space.
He could do it.
A rifle and food. Warm clothing. The idiotic children back at Station would be licking their wounds far too long before they remembered to search for him. They’d wait until morning, when he’d be over the mountain and in any direction. He’d spent enough time around savages to know how to survive, didn’t he?
Don’t stare at anything; keep your eyes moving and use the edges of your vision. Don’t drink anything that’s not clear. Don’t stop.
A shadow flickered behind the trees to his left. Darius panicked and fired the rifle. The shot rolled through the mountains and he rubbed his arm. He’d jerked the barrel up, shot too fast, and the butt had slammed into his bicep.
He could do it.
Lagos was less than a day of travel if he walked through the night. Since Flora had been deposed they were a loyal Circle tribe and would trip over their own feet to help him back to his sector.
Darius stumbled and fell face-first in the deep snow. He quickly stood and wiped melting shards from his skin. He couldn’t feel his toes, and his nose and cheeks felt rubbery.
He could––
Something howled from the forest. A cross between a wolf’s call and a dog’s growl, it was deep-throated. Vicious. Eager.
Darius started to run.
EARLY IN THE MORNING and long after the congratulations, introductions, and the good and bad news had been absorbed Wilson and Badger lay down for a few hours of sleep in a hastily-cleaned room in Office.
“I still don’t know where you’ve been the last six weeks,” said Badger, stroking his hair.
He smiled. “That’s fine, because I don’t know how you managed without me.”
“Very easily. Now be serious.”
Wilson shifted his head on the pillow. “A shared dream––that’s the best description. A kind of machine to keep the people in cold-sleep from going insane.”
The Dream Widow Page 27
