“Suppose he returns with more questions. Do I answer them?”
“I think so. I hate all conspiracies unless I’m a part of them, and Chan Dalton is certainly sneaky, and he’s certainly up to something. But I don’t read him as a turncoat and a traitor. If I’m wrong about that, shame on me and him both. But if he comes back and asks questions, give him whatever you can. Just make sure that whatever you tell him, you also tell me.” Korin stood up, slowly and creakily, the multiverse transition list in his hand. “I want to think about this. You get to work picking the site for our camp.”
He turned away, his ramrod back for once bowed. Elke, leaning again over her console, thought he looked a thousand years old.
She comforted herself with the thought that whatever Chan Dalton was doing or planning, Dag Korin had probably seen it all before.
32: ESCAPE TO NOWHERE
It was possible to sleep in a space suit; the manufacturers even claimed comfort in repose, asserting that the universal flexible joints and air cushions made their suit as relaxing as any bed.
Perhaps they were right — in free fall, where thermal balance was perfect and contact with walls or floor was gentle and infrequent; but for someone on a planetary surface, on a rock-hard floor sloshing in icy water that seemed every few minutes to become a little deeper and colder …
Chrissie switched on the tiny visor display and looked at the time. Half the night was gone, which was good; but also bad, because it meant that dawn still lay half a night away. She activated the shielded spotlight in her helmet and used it to stare enviously at Tarbush. He lay flat on his back, helmet open and snoring softly. Big ugly bruiser. It was tempting to wake him up, just to tell him how lucky he was.
She turned off the light, lay back, and stared into the darkness. Even the glitter of the ceiling had faded to nothing. The creatures beyond the inner wall had ceased their clatter and chatter. That at least was welcome. Except that when morning came they would waken, and the horrors would start all over again. The jungle of Limbo, which only a day ago had been filled with the alarms of a dangerous unknown, now felt like a sanctuary. Given a chance to escape from this building, Chrissie would fly to it in a bare moment. Up, outside, through the open gate of the fence …
Pure wishful thinking. She and Tarbush had poked and pried and hammered for three hours. The walls vibrated and boomed like a giant drum, but they remained impenetrable and they gave not a millimeter. They were sounding now, a low hum that rose and fell in pitch like a mournful siren. It was a rising wind, calling aloud as it swirled around the outside of the building. Back on Earth, in a childhood that seemed like a forgotten dream, she had always loved the sound of the surface wind. It soothed and calmed and sustained her.
Not tonight, though. Now she felt as pent and chained and restless as a trapped wild beast. Now the strengthening wind was finding its way into the building’s narrow air ducts, where it sobbed and wailed and cried as if it were a trapped animal itself.
She heard another noise, a low mmm — mmm — mmm. This one was closer. She concentrated, and at last realized that it was Tarbush muttering to himself in his sleep. Dreaming. Pleasant dreams, probably. He was far too placid in temperament for nightmares. Damn the man. He would sleep through Armageddon. How come they got along so well? The attraction of opposites? People had a phrase for everything.
The muttering stopped. Chrissie heard movement next to her and opened her eyes. Tarbush was awake. His helmet spotlight was on, and he was sitting up. Chrissie said, “What’s wrong?” and sat up herself.
“Listen.” He turned his head from side to side. “Where’s it coming from? It woke me up.”
“It’s the wind outside the building. I think another storm is on the way.”
“Not that. Higher pitched.”
“I don’t hear it.”
“You’re not tuned in the way that I am. Shh.” He held his hand up to silence her. “There. That.”
Chrissie heard all the same noises as before. “What?”
“It’s Scruffy. Whining. Can’t you hear her? But where is she?”
The high-pitched keening? Was that what he meant? “It’s coming from an air duct. I heard it when you were asleep.”
“You should have woken me. Which duct?” He was on his feet, moving to peer into the pipe from which they had cut the coarse covering mesh. “She’s not in here. It must be the other one.”
He went splashing away into the darkness, his progress marked by the bobbing beam of light from his helmet. “Damn.” She heard him grumbling to himself. “Covered with a filter. Have to cut it. Hold on, girl.” A remark not addressed to Chrissie. The beam of light steadied. A few seconds of silence, then, “Come on, sweetheart. Easy goes. You don’t want to be on the floor, you know how you hate getting your feet wet.”
Tarbush sloshed his way back toward Chrissie. She shone her own helmet light, and saw the ferret nestled against his chest. “Didn’t I tell you Deb and Danny would find us?” he said. “I’m sure they sent Scruffy here. She followed my scent as far as she could, then looked for another way to reach me. Isn’t that great?” He sat down, sending a surge of cold water over Chrissie.
She wiped her wet face. “Tarb, my dear, I hate to spoil your fun and your reunion, but we don’t really need Scruffy inside with us. We need ourselves outside with her. If Friday Indigo or the Malacostracans find her they’re more likely to kill her than appreciate her. Tell her to go back the way she came. Then she can lead the others to us.”
“All in good time.” He was fiddling with Scruffy’s collar. “Here we are. I thought there would be one.”
“Would be what?”
“A message from Deb and Danny. Hmm.” He had removed from the collar a broad silver ring a couple of inches across. He inspected it in the light of his helmet lamp. “Doesn’t look like a message. What is it?”
“Let’s have a peek. Maybe the ring opens up.” Chrissie held it close to her nose. “It’s from Deb all right — see the little entwined DB on the side? But I don’t think it can be a message. It’s a — I think—” There was a soft click. “The outside opens up. Not a message, though. A reel of twine? But this is so thin — you can only see it from really close up when the light is right. Oh!”
“What?” Tarbush craned forward.
“It’s a monofilament strand. Deb used one of these once to cut the head off a man who was trying to rape and kill her.”
“I remember. But why send this to us? If she knew we were in trouble, a gun or a batch of explosives would be more useful.”
“She had to send something small. Something that Scruffy could carry. She tried to give us a weapon, and she has. The problem is, we don’t know how to use it the way she would. And there’s hordes of Malacostracans, we could never take on all of them.” Chrissie was twisting the ring, which suddenly split in two. The thread, almost too fine to see, stretched between two matching circlets of silver. Chrissie took one ring carefully in each gloved hand and spread her arms.
“How long a length do you have?” Tarbush held Scruffy firmly, making sure that the ferret could not get near the danger zone between the two silver rings.
“I don’t know. But the thread is ratcheted inside the rings. I can make it longer or shorter, as I want. Hold something out to me — something we don’t need.”
“I’ll have to put Scruffy down. Do we want to keep her here?”
“I told you, we should let her go.”
“Then hold on a minute.” Tarbush stood and walked over to the air duct. “Go on, Scruff. Find Deb Bisson and Danny Casement.” The ferret hesitated, reluctant to enter the dark, narrow passage. “I said, go on. You found us, that was your job. It’s not safe here for you.”
He held the animal forward again toward the duct. She nuzzled his hand, then vanished in a sudden blur of brown fur.
“Hope she’ll be all right,” Tarbush said as he splashed back toward Chrissie. “Listen to that wind! It’s not nice out there.”
“Tarb, it’s not nice in here.” While he had been gone, Chrissie had removed the compass from the sleeve of her suit. The instrument had provided nothing but nonsense readings since their arrival on Limbo, and now she balanced it on the top of her boot and brought the silver rings carefully down, one held in each hand, so that the thread lay across the compass.
“Careful!” Tarbush said. “Don’t ruin your suit, you may need it again.”
“I know that.” Chrissie bent forward. All her attention was concentrated on the filament, thinner than gossamer, that spanned the distance between the rings. She was exerting hardly any pressure, but the thread was sinking effortlessly through the hardened plastic and metal of the compass. When she paused and delicately lifted the rings, the compass fell into two neat halves.
“Now I’ve got the feel of it. The question is, will the monofilament do the same thing to the wall?”
“Even if it can, how does that do us any good?” Tarbush picked up the halves of the compass. “To cut something apart, you have to place the rings on both sides of it. We’re inside the wall.”
“So we have to be tricky.” Chrissie stood up and went across to the closer of the ventilators. “Before I waste any time, let’s see if there’s any point in even trying.” She reached far inside the duct, her hand still holding its silver ring. She brought the other hand around in a semicircle, so that the monofilament met and cut into the perimeter of the duct. A crescent slice, carved from around the wall, silently slid free and splashed into the dark water at her feet.
“Principle established,” Chrissie said softly. “This will cut anything. Now for the tricky bit. I have to widen the hole more and more, and hope I can get one hand all the way to the outside.”
“Chrissie, let me do it.” Tarbush held out his hand. “My arm’s longer than yours, and stronger. I can reach outside easily.”
“You could — if you could get that great ham fist into the duct at all. Which you can’t. Stand clear, sweetheart. Keep your light focused on where I’m cutting. I don’t want to start slicing pieces off my own arm.”
She was moving one hand in a wider arc, excising from the wall a circular cone half a meter across. As it came free, Tarbush lifted it clear. “Hm. This is warm ,” he said. “That thing you have isn’t just a monofilament. I wondered how it could cut so easily. There must be nanos inside the thread, freeing molecular bonds.”
“Deb specializes in tricky weapons. But now for the hardest part.” Chrissie had her arm in the enlarged hole up to the shoulder. “I can reach all the way through, but I have to enlarge the duct at the outside edge because unless I do that we have nothing useful. I’m going to work one hand outside, hold the ring against the outer wall, then slide both hands in unison to slice a cylindrical section. Don’t breathe.”
“I’m not sure it’s necessary to go to all that trouble.” Tarbush had been examining the conical wedge removed from the wall, and now he moved forward.
“We want to get out, don’t we?” Chrissie, her hands encumbered with the rings, could not easily push at him. She said sharply, “Get your hand out of the way. If you stand like that you’ll lose some fingers.”
“No. Back off, Chrissie. I need to try something.”
“Tarb!” But he was dangerously close to the monofilament, and she was forced to pull her hands clear. “What are you playing at?”
“Just watch. We haven’t used my strongman act for years, but let’s see how it plays on Limbo.” He stood in front of the ventilator pipe, took a deep breath, and punched his fist deep into the expanded hole that she had made. Chrissie heard nothing, but she saw a cloud of powder fly out around his arm.
“What did you do?”
Tarbush was pushing his shoulder and then his head into the hole. “Take a look at the piece you cut out.” He was grunting at some great effort, interspersing his words with gasps. “Push your finger in it — you can, it’s soft as cream cheese. This whole building must have an — integrated structure. Very strong when it’s complete, forms a single unit, but if any part is — destroyed — the rest is ready to crumble. We’re lucky that Deb’s — monofilament cutter didn’t bring — the whole place down on top of us. But we have to move fast — it’s self-repairing, and it’s starting to adjust. Going to be touch and go. One more push — hah! — I’m through! My arm’s outside. Now for the big push. Look out back there.”
He emerged from the hole, coated in gray powder and coughing and choking. “Should have closed my suit — up my nose — going to sneeze.”
He did, in a vast explosion of air loud enough to hear above the sounds of the storm. Then: “Follow me! Close your suit. It’s a mess outside.”
A mess inside, too. Chrissie imagined that she could see the room starting to sag and melt around her. She heard sounds — not the storm — from beyond the wall to the inner chamber. She closed her helmet and followed Tarbush. His head and torso had vanished, and his wriggling legs and kicking feet sent back prodigious clouds of disintegrated wall. The hole, barely wide enough for him, should have been easier for her. It wasn’t. Already it was starting to seal. She snaked through, fast as she could, and felt the closing wall begin to squeeze tighter. She gave a desperate kick and plunged headfirst forward. Her helmet cracked against a hard, slick surface.
“No time for acrobatics.” Tarbush was lifting her easily, setting her on her feet, shouting in her ear. “Can you stand up?”
Chrissie was about to shout back “Of course I can!” when the wind caught her. Inside the building she had never dreamed that it would be so strong. She felt herself sliding away sideways, down a wet and slippery incline. Only Tarbush’s invisible grip on her arm saved her from being blown away.
While she stood braced against him, the darkness was suddenly dispelled by strong light. She turned, and saw a green globe of luminescence drifting across the sky. Tarbush shouted, “They’ve got us,” and pulled her close. The globe lengthened to become a tall cylinder, a vortex column that stretched toward earth and sky. When it touched the ground it vanished. Chrissie felt her skin prickle.
“Not the aliens,” she screamed at Tarbush. “Some local sort of electrical activity caused by the storm. But the wind!” She could feel her feet slipping. “I can’t hold — it’s too strong.”
“Let yourself go. We can’t travel upwind, but if we can reach the forest—”
He released his hold. Chrissie went slithering and skating away into the darkness. She could see nothing. She felt nothing, too, until with a teeth-loosing jolt she hit the boundary fence. A moment later, Tarbush crashed into the mesh wall a few feet to her left.
“Damnation!” His howl of rage carried over the wind. “We have to try to drag ourselves around to the gate — but which way? I have no idea.”
“It may be guarded anyway.” Chrissie lay spreadeagled on the fence. “Can you shine your helmet light over here? I ought to have turned mine on before I started.”
“Wait a second.” After a moment’s silence, he shouted back. “The damn thing’s not working. I hit the fence face first. But if—”
Before he could finish, another ball of light began to form behind them. Tarbush turned, and saw every building of the Malacostracan encampment glowing with its own halo of electrical discharge. The area around the buildings was — thank God — deserted. While the globe was extending toward earth and sky, he turned back to Chrissie and realized what she was doing. Pinned in place by the wind, she had taken a short length of the monofilament thread and was stretching out to slice through the fence wires that she could reach. As she cut further, the section she lay against began to sag under her weight. In half a minute the left-hand side gaped open.
“Go on.” She inclined her head. “Through.”
“What about you?”
“Go!”
Tarbush obeyed her cry. As he passed through the hole in the fence he grabbed at the cut edge. It opened farther under his weight.
“You now!” he shouted
, but she was already through and sailing past him. The bright circlet of the monofilament ring glittered with green light and spun away from her hand. He made an instinctive grab and missed. Good thing, too. The invisible thread could easily have severed his forearm. Forget it. Deb surely had more, and the little ring would be hard to find even in calm conditions.
As the wind caught him from behind and the green light vanished he ducked his head forward and followed Chrissie. He had little choice. Although it was no longer raining, trying to walk on the slick surface was like skating on ice. He managed to keep his feet, but he went wherever the wind pushed him.
Toward the forest, or away across many bare kilometers of rock? He could not tell where he was going, until something grabbed him at knee-level and tipped him over. He sprawled headlong forward into a tangle of tight-knit bushes. His visor was still open, and thorny twigs scratched his nose and mouth.
“Chrissie?” He shouted as loudly as he could.
“Right here.”
He could see nothing. He closed his helmet and began to crawl blindly in the direction of her voice. The suit protected his body, but the vegetation resisted his progress like something alive. While he was still struggling forward a faint light shone ahead. The lamp in Chrissie’s helmet? She had managed to get it working; but it was moving away from him.
“Stay there! I’m coming.”
“I can’t. I have to keep going. Follow me.”
As he came closer he understood why. Chrissie had been blown into a thin stand of stalky reeds, and they were not close-grown enough to provide shelter from the wind. She was tunneling on, deeper into a denser thicket. He flattened as low to the ground as he could and butted his way along until he was at her heels. He grabbed her legs and inched forward until his head was next to hers.
“What now?” For the first time since they left the building he didn’t have to shout.
“We have to find our way back to the camp. I’m sure Deb and Danny are wondering what happened to us.”
“We can’t go anywhere while this storm lasts. But neither can they. We’re all stuck until the wind dies down.”
The Spheres of Heaven tmp-2 Page 39
