by Neal Asher
—Yes.
Go chasing down the corridor after her. Why?
—To save my goddamn soul, that's why.
You haven't done badly.
—The Earth is in ruins, the Stone is half-occupied by surly Russians, and I've lost the one person I was specifically told to protect.
But the Stone is still here, and the situation seems to be stabilizing—
—Belozersky. Yazykov. Vielgorsky.
OM-liners, hard-liners. Yes. They're trouble, and shouldn't you stick around to blunt their particular axes?
—No.
You'll leave Hoffrnan with all the problems—
—She'll let me go because she knows I'm at the end of my rope. I can't take any more. I'm of no use to her or the Stone ... except to go find Patricia.
Lanier opened his eyes and looked at his wristwatch: 0750 hours. He felt paralyzed. The voices continued in his head, back and forth. His mind was trying to cope with the intolerable and to find his place in a new situation.
He kept thinking of Earth, of people—friends, co-workei's, perhaps the very people he had met a few weeks before—crawling through the rubble. Very likely, there was not a single person alive on Earth whom he knew personaily. That was good statistics but a lousy thought, lousy psychology. Most of his contacts (his people) had lived in cities or worked in military centers.
One exception was Robert Tyheimer. A submarine commander, he had been married to Lanier's sister, who had died of a stroke two years before Lanier was assigned to the Stone. They hadn't talked since a year after her death. Tyheimer might still be alive, under the ice, waiting. If he hadn't aiready contributed to the general destruction, then Tyheimer would guard his warheads and wait ... and wait ... for the next exchange. For the final blows.
"I hate you," Lanier said out loud, eyes closed again. He didn't even know whom he meant. Three psychiatrists gathered in his head and discoursed; one, a cliche Freudian, always twisted the worst and most sordid interpretation out of his every fleeting glimmer of thought. Yes ... and your mother ... and what did you say then? Meant yourself, didn't you?
Another sat quietly, smiling, letting him hang himself in his own ropy confusions.
And the third—
The third nodded and recommended work therapy. The third resembled his father.
That interested the first.
He turned over in the bed and opened his eyes again. No sleep, no rest. How long would it take for the people on the Stone to crack? How many, and how seriously? Who would contend with the problem, himself or Hoffman?
But the decision had already been made. He had given Hoffman the grand tour—and had encountered Mirsky in the third chamber library, sitting before a teardrop. The Russian lieutenant general had been accompanied by three bodyguards, even though the library was otherwise empty. He had appeared exhausted, and ignored them.
Showing Hoffman to a seat some distance away from the Russians, Lanier had taught her how to use the facilities. He had passed the keys to her, and she had welcomed them.
He sat up and flipped on the intercom. Ann Blakely was back at her desk and still in charge of the central switchboard.
"I can't sleep," he said. "What's Heineman's schedule now?"
"He's awake, if that's what you want to know," she said.
"Fine. And in the seventh chamber, no doubt."
"No, schedule here says staging area in the southern bore hole—"
"Call him, please."
"Will do."
"Tell him I want to leave tomorrow, early, eight hundred hours."
"Yessir."
The crew of the V/STOL had already been chosen: himself, Heineman, Carrolson—perhaps the only one Hoffman would have difficulty doing without—and Karen Farley. The mission was simple and direct: they would travel a maximum of one million kilometers down the corridor, assuming it extended that far, stopping at several points along the way and descending to the floor. Who knew what the nature of the corridor would be that far north? They would then return, with or without Patricia or any evidence of her whereabouts.
There were a lot of uncertainties, but they were of a type Lanier welcomed. He had been dealing with horrors for so long that a sleek, cleanly dangerous adventure seemed like heaven.
He dressed and gathered his personal kit into a little black bag. Toothbrush, razor, change of underwear, slate with package of memory blocks.
Toothbrush.
Lanier started to laugh. The laughter seemed forced, but it gathered in waves until he was helpless. He lay on the bunk and doubled up, his face knotting painfully. Finally he stopped, gasping, and then thought of the tiny lavatory on the aircraft, with its tiny shower. He thought of taking a crap as they rode the singularity and the laughter broke out anew. Minutes passed before he could control it, and then he sat up straight on the edge of the bunk, taking deep breaths and rubbing his sore jaw and cheek muscles. "God in heaven," he sighed and stuffed the toothbrush into the little black bag.
The dead Soviet trooper floated twenty meters from the research scaffold in the seventh chamber bore hole. How he had gotten so far was anybody's guess. He did not seem to have been wounded; perhaps he had feared the fall and stayed near the axis until his air gave out. He was slowly drifting back down the bore hole, toward the sixth chamber. There wasn't enough time to snag him and bring him down. He cast a tangible gloom over the farewells. He seemed to watch with great interest, his pale face visible behind the faceplate, eyes wide.
Hoffman hugged Lanier, Carrolson and then Farley, their bulky suits interfering with the intent if not the emotion. Heineman was already aboard the V/STOL, which was attached remora-like to the tuberider.
They stood around the blunt end of the singularity for a moment, silent, and Hoffman said, "Garry, this isn't a wild goose chase. You know that. We need that little Chicana. Whoever took her away from us may have known how much we need her. Of course, I'm suspicious by nature. At any rate, you folks are on a very important mission. Godspeed."
Farley turned toward Hoffman. "We reached a decision last night—Hua Ling and the rest of us, all the Chinese. It wasn't to he announced until this evening, but nobody will object if I tell you now. We are with the Western bloc. The Soviet science team made some overtures, but we decided to support you. I think the Soviet scientists wish they could follow our lead. But I just wanted you to know, before we left."
"Thank you," Hoffman said, gripping Farley's glove. "We'll be curious. No need to tell you that. Learn all you can. There's a few hundred or more of us who wish we could go along."
"That's why I volunteered first," Carrolson said.
"Time's a-wastin'," Heineman drawled. "All aboard."
"Shut up and let us be sentimental," Carrolson scolded him.
"Everything will be fine," Hoffman told Lanier as they hugged again and held each other back to peer through faceplates.
"Let's go," Lanier said. They hooked their safety lines to a long pole stretched out near the aircraft and kicked away one by one to enter the hatch. Two people fit into the airlock; they cycled twice, Lanier waiting until last. With the hatch sealed and air pressure restored, he removed his suit and folded it into the compartment beneath the airlock controls.
With only four passengers, the aircraft interior was spacious. The forward part of the cabin was filled with boxes of scientific equipment; Carrolson and Farley checked them out before strapping in. Lanier joined Heineman in the cockpit.
"All fuel and oxygen cables clear," Heineman said, checking the instruments. "I've run the diagnostics on the tuberider. Everything's go."
He looked expectantly at Lanier.
"Then go," Lanier said.
Heineman swung out the pylon which held the tuberider controls and locked it before him. "Hang on," he said. Then, over the intercom, "Ladies, barf bags are in the pouches of the seat in front of you. Not suggesting, you understand."
He depressed the clamp controls. Slowly, smoothly, the tuberider began to slide
along the slender silver pipe of the singularity. "A little more," he said. Lanier felt himself pressed back into his seat. "And a little more still."
They were heavy now, lying on their backs in a cockpit and cabin suddenly upended. "Last bit," Heineman said, and they effectively weighed half again more than they would have on Earth. "There's a rope ladder I'll unroll down the aisle, just in case anybody has to go to the bathroom." He grinned at Lanier. "I don't recommend the lavatory
in these conditions. We didn't get enough specs to design for comfort. I'll let up on the clamps if anyone gets desperate."
"Count on it," Carrolson said from the cabin.
Lanier watched the corridor moving slowly, majestically around them, through the windscreen, the floor of the corridor merged in the distance with the pearly central glow of the plasma tube ... stretching perhaps forever.
"The ultimate escape, isn't it?" Heineman asked, as if reading his thoughts. "Makes me feel young again."
*34*
After three separate occasions where Olmy wrapped himself in his isolating net of lights, Patricia decided there was
something faintly unsavory about Talsit. Perhaps it was addictive—whatever it was.
They had been flying for at least three days—perhaps as many as five—and while Olmy and the Frant were unfailingly polite and answered her questions with seeming sincerity, they were not exactly voluble. She spent much of her time sleeping fitfully, dreaming about Paul. She often touched his last letter, still in the breast pocket of her jumpsuit. Once she awoke screaming and saw the Frant jerk spasmodically in its berth. Olmy had half fallen from his couch and was staring at her with evident alarm.
"Sorry," she said, looking between them guiltily.
"Quite all right," Olm, said. "We wish we could help. We could, actually, but..."
He didn't finish. A few minutes later, when her heart had stopped racing and she realized she couldn't remember what had made her scream, she asked Olmy what he meant by saying they could help.
"Talsit," he said. "Smooths the memory, rearranges priorities without dulling memory. Blocks subconscious access to certain disturbing memories. After Talsit, such memories can only be opened by direct conscious will."
"Oh," Patricia said. "Why can't I have some of this Talsit?"
Olmy smiled and shook his head. "You're pure," he said. "I'd be reprimanded if I brought you into our culture before our scholars had a chance to study you."
"Sounds like I'm a specimen," Patricia said.
The Frant again made that sound of amplified teeth-grinding. Olmy looked at it reproachfully and swung down from his berth. "You are, of course," Olmy said. "What would you like to eat?"
"I'm not hungry," Patricia said, lying back in her couch. "I'm frightened, and I'm bored, and I'm having bad dreams."
The Frant peered down at her, its large brown eyes unblinking. It held out one hand, spread its four slender fingers and curled them again. "Please," it said, its voice like a badly tuned calliope. "I cannot help."
"A Frant always wishes to help," Olmy explained. "If it cannot help, it feels pain. I'm afraid you're quite a trial to my Frant."
"Your Frant? You own him?"
"It. No, I don't own him. For the time of our assignment, we are duty-wed. Rather like social symbionts. I share its thoughts and it shares mine."
Patricia smiled at the Frant. "I'm okay," she said.
"You are lying," the Frant judged.
"You're right." Patricia reached up hesitantly and touched the Frant's arm. The skin was smooth and warm but not resilient. She withdrew her fingers. "I'm not afraid of you, either of you," she said. "Did you drug me?"
"No!" Olmy answered, shaking his head vigorously. "You must not be interfered with."
"This is so strange. I don't even feel it's real, but I'm not afraid."
"Perhaps that is well," the Frant said solicitously. "Until such time as you awake, we are a dream."
After that exchange, they did not speak for hours. Patricia lay facing the window, noting that the corridor had changed its character yet again. Now it was covered with lines resembing densely clustered freeways. As they spiraled around the plasma tube, one turn every fifteen or twenty minutes, she saw that the entire floor was covered with the designs, whatever they signified. There didn't seem to be anything moving, but across a distance of more than twenty kilometers, she couldn't be sure.
The aircraft's spiral course was hypnotic. With a start, she realized she had been staring at new phenomenon for several minutes without conscious awareness. The dense-packed patterns on the floor of the corridor now crawled with moving lights. Strung along the "freeway" lanes were lines of red and intense white beads. Lances of light swung up in arcs above the patterns and illuminated the edges of low-flying disks. Girdling walls at least two or three kilometers high broke the flow at regular intervals of about ten kilometers.
"We are nearing Axis City," Olmy said.
"What's all this?" Patricia asked, pointing.
"Metered traffic between domestic gates," Olmy said.
"What are gates?"
"You called them wells when you discovered the first and second bands. They lead to spaces beyond the Way—the corridor."
Patricia frowned. "People go between the wells, enter and leave the corridor?"
"Yes," Olmy said. "The Axis City regulates the flow along a billion kilometers."
"But the wells—the gates—they can't possibly open into our universe, not in present time."
"They don't," Olmy said. "Now please, hold your questions until after we arrive. Too much information could reduce your purity."
"Excuse me," Patricia said with false contrition.
"However, you must not miss this," Olmy said. "Please look straight ahead, at the wall over your couch."
She stared at the smooth white surface. Olmy made a few quick clicking noises and the surface rippled like a disturbed pool. The ripples spread wide into a broad rectangle and solidified. The rectangle became black, then filled with colorful snow. The snow attracted her eyes and the rectangular frame blurred, passing from her notice.
She might have been flying through the corridor alone. All around, the glowing, pulsing lights traveled their complex paths along the floor. Ahead, a dark circle was stnmg on the singularity, stretching from one side of the plasma tube to the other. Interrupted by the circle, the plasma tube changed color from white to a vivid oceanic blue.
"The Axis City lies beyond that barrier," Olmy said nearby. "We'll be given clearance soon, and pass through."
She turned her head and the illusion dissipated.
"No, no, please," Olmy said. "Keep watching." His tone and expression were almost little-boy eager, proud. She faced the rectangle of snow again.
The barrier filled her view. It was a somber dark gray-brown, shot through with radiating pulses of red. Where the singularity intersected it, the barrier glowed like molten lava.
Voices began speaking words she couldn't understand, and Olmy responded in kind. "We've been acknowledged," he explained to her. "Keep watching."
Directly ahead, a section of the barrier bubbled toward them and dissolved in a scatter of red pulses. They passed through.
Her first impression was that they were suddenly underwater. The plasma tube had ballooned out in all directions, widening by several kilometers and glowing the oceanic blue she had seen around the circular barrier. The floor of the corridor was still visible on all sides but reduced in definition and overlaid by the plasma's new color.
Directly ahead, two broad cubes were strung in succession along the pale thread of the singularity. Each of the visible faces of the cubes were marked with a broad horizontal cleft; the front of the foremost cube welcomed the singularity through a large hemispheric dimple, marked by glimmering spokes. At the center of the indentation was a red hole, and there the singularity was engulfed.
Beyond the cubes—and several times as broad—was a cylinder, rotating around its central axi
s, the line of the singularity. Its outer surface sparkled with thousands of lights; the side facing her was dark but for a series of five radiating arrays of beacons.
Next in line after the cylinder, three curved vanes stretched outward to the structure's maximum radius, perhaps ten kilometers. The vanes seemed to touch or support the plasma tube, making it glow blue-white around the outermost edge of each vane. Whatever else was beyond the cylinder was effectively blocked from view.
"Home," Olmy said behind her. She turned and looked at him, blinking. "The first segments are navigation and power stations, all automatic. The rotating cylinder is Axis Nader. We can't see them from this perspective, but beyond lie Central City, Axis Thoreau and Axis Euclid."
