by Kate Elliott
At the very front of the grisly remains lay the body of a woman clutching a small child, as if she had been more desperate than the rest, with such a burden, or the others had thrust her forward in the hope that the child at least could be saved. Now, watching the drip of some acidic fluid, released by the jostle of a passing boot out of a half-broken pipe, Lily wondered if the little doughnut-shaped object that was slowly disintegrating under the touch of that liquid had been dropped by the same child.
They had paused to consult the map. Yehoshua knelt beside a Ridani man who had worked in these diggings. Behind, his subordinate Inonu stood with her ten troopers, flanked by Yehoshua’s cousin Alsayid and the Ridani trooper Rainbow.
Silence hung over them, heavy and enclosing. The microphones on the helmets accentuated the low voices of Yehoshua and the miner as they discussed their route, and the light scraping of boot on rock, hands tapping guns, as Inonu’s soldiers shifted, restless underneath so much earth. The floors and walls and ceiling of the tunnel, although broad and high, showed rough-hewn and incomplete in the filtered beams lancing out from their helmets.
Jenny stood in an open door, a gap in the tunnel wall, turning her head back and forth slowly as she used her light to sweep the room beyond. Her hand, encased in the same slick material that made up their standard government guard issue coveralls and much of their helmets, tightened on an outthrust knob of rock as she counted bodies. Ahead, Kyosti knelt alone in semidarkness. He had shut his helmet light off.
After a moment Jenny pushed away from the doorway and returned to crouch by Lily. She leaned forward until her head touched Lily’s. “It’s enough to make you join Jehane.” Her voice sounded muffled and tinny through the mike and the thin remains of the poisoned atmosphere. “It just occurred to me that if what we’re wearing is standard issue, then none of the prisoners had any protective gear at all.”
“Stops them from escaping.”
“Right. I wouldn’t attempt the surface even in this, and neither would you. But why would the guards wear this gear in the mines if they thought it was completely safe? It was a precaution against this kind of disaster.” She made a gesture of disgust; her gloved hand, brushing the wall, caused the dripping pipe to stop leaking, leaving the discarded toy lying pathetically in two melted halves. “Although what else I could expect from Central I can’t imagine. The sort of people they would indenture to Harsh certainly weren’t worth the price of one of these suits.”
“How many bodies did you count?” Lily asked.
“I stopped at fifty. Say, we didn’t lose the ’bot, did we?”
“No, he went ahead to sound out the thickness and stability of the rock separating the two digs. I just input the map and sent him off.” Lily used the butt of her rifle to jostle the pipe so that it leaked again, dissolving the toy into a lump of unrecognizable slag.
Jenny turned her head to watch Lily’s movement and then rose abruptly. “Hey!” Her shout carried at least as far as Yehoshua, despite the dampening hush of the tunnel. “Hawk! Are you crazy? There’re chemicals in this air that’ll eat right through your skin.”
In the darkness of the tunnel ahead, Lily could scarcely see Kyosti’s figure, enveloped in the murky fabric of the guard suit, until a flash of pale, bare hand alerted her to his position.
“Hawk!” Jenny repeated.
Lily felt a person push past her, grabbed, and found Yehoshua in her grasp.
“I’ll take care of this,” she said, sweeping past him. “Are you crazy?” she asked as she came up beside Kyosti.
He turned, his tall figure outlined against blackness by her helmet light. “Probably. Why do you ask?”
“Do you want to lose that hand? You heard what they said about the atmosphere down here. You saw the bodies. Or do you think you’re immune?”
He did not reply immediately, but she could suddenly tell from his posture and his eyes behind the helmet that he was smiling. “Did you know,” he said at last as he slowly slipped the long glove back on his hand, “that this tunnel is almost one hundred and seventy-five years old? It’s no wonder they had trouble. They doubtless did not maintain it properly.”
“Doubtless,” she replied brusquely, not interested in humoring him. “I didn’t have time for any research except what Callioux summed up for us before we left. Come on.” She waved to Yehoshua, and he and the Ridani miner came forward to lead them on. It took her some minutes of careful walking over the uneven rock floor to realize that Kyosti hadn’t had time, or opportunity, for research either.
The transition from the main level 9 tunnel to a side, working shaft, came as a shock to one accustomed to the smooth-bored shafts of the Ransome House mines, built to accommodate machines and free miners who could easily choose to move on to more agreeable working conditions.
They had to crawl single file on their hands and knees over sharp, uneven rock. Now and then, the shaft opened into a pocket where seven or eight might assemble, packed tightly together, for a break or to facilitate entrance into a new series of shafts, but in these pockets the sense of claustrophobic heaviness heightened, if anything. In Ransome House, there was not a shaft but you had height enough to stand, and width enough to walk three abreast; the Sar had always believed that a well-treated worker produced the best work—a philosophy he had drilled into his children. Lily could appreciate it now.
In at least half of the pockets they had to maneuver past corpses, and once Yehoshua, at the fore, had to push a decaying corpse bodily ahead of him until there was room to shove it to one side. Two of Inonu’s ten disintegrated under this confinement, and were sent back to wait at the central elevator shaft. One man was sobbing softly to himself, but could not bring himself to backtrack that ground alone.
After several stalls, and one very long wait where—the ceiling pressing into her back, her elbows scraping against the walls—she had to recite kata in her head to keep calm, Lily emerged at last into what seemed an enormous room. As rough-hewn as the others, it could contain the entire party: Inonu and her eight remaining soldiers, Yehoshua, Alsayid, Rainbow, the Ridani miner, and herself, Jenny, and Kyosti. Close, but nevertheless all of them.
Crouched beside Yehoshua, Lily trained her light on the oversize com-screen the officer held and watched as the Ridani shifted the pointer until it showed their current location and the shaft they had chosen to lead them to the 30s.
“Here it be,” he said, showing a shaft that trailed into a similar grid of shafts branching out from tunnel 39. “Close enough I reckon that ya easer should sure be put together here. Won’t be another such broad’ning before ya drill shall come tae use.”
Yehoshua nodded, and spoke into his wrist-com to Inonu, who crouched across the pocket from him. She immediately signaled to those of her people who had packed the components in, and within a reasonable space of time the drill was assembled. It was about the length of Lily’s arm and as thick as her torso.
“Hold on,” said Yehoshua. “What happened to the power pack? We can’t use it like this.”
“Don’t worry,” said Lily. “Come on. We’re running short of time.”
“Right.” Even distorted by the mike, Yehoshua’s reply was sarcastic. “Inonu, follow us at the specified distance, and remain only until oh-four-fifteen. Then return to the surface and leave. Understood?”
Inonu hesitated, but replied in the affirmative.
“I’ll take it,” said Lily to the Ridani miner, but he shook his head.
“So much,” he explained, gesturing with the drill, “I can do for ya people trapped in ya thirties.”
She shrugged and let him precede her into the shaft. They crawled in silence. She felt more and more keenly not the incalculable weight of kilometers of rock a hand’s breadth above her back, because she had known that on Unruli; here it was the tiny space through which they moved that unsettled her. Fantasies of collapse, of bodies pinned by stone—all she could hear of the others behind her was their smothered breathing and, once, a
curse of pain. A conviction that she was about to crawl into a corpse in the last stages of disintegration seized her with such terrifying force that she stopped moving.
A hand touched her ankle. A helmet brushed her hip. “‘For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me,’” Kyosti said. His voice seemed peculiarly clear in their confinement.
Her breath shuddered out of her. Like an echo, ahead, three small lights blinked: blue, green, and orange. A moment later the miner blocked her view, but now she started forward again.
“Bach,” she whispered. “Thank you.” As she neared the end of the tunnel she could hear the robot singing:
Mond und Licht
Ist vor Schmerzen untergangen
Moon and light
are quenched for sorrow
The miner came to a confused halt, seeing this apparition, and Lily reached forward to grasp his shoulder. “That’s your power source,” she said. “Let me show you.” She could not whistle in the helmet, so she called out, and Bach, complaining the whole time in a low undersong about the rough surfaces of the tiny shaft which threatened to scratch his exterior polish, floated up to them and allowed her to holster him to the easer drill.
“I’ll be glad to get out of here,” she said, her voice a little shaky. “The mines on Unruli weren’t anything like this. My father would never have allowed it. Imagine if this place collapsed.”
Kyosti had squeezed in beside her, a very tight fit, and he chuckled. “‘And the height of the rock above the head of the workmen was a hundred cubits.’”
“Cubits?” Lily asked, but Bach began at the same time to sing as the Ridani miner thrust him forward to the end of the shaft.
“What is he saying?” asked Kyosti.
“Something about—waters of Gihon.” Lily shrugged. “I can’t hear him.”
Then the miner settled into place, about ten meters in front of them, and began to drill.
Spitting sparks of light, a sudden rise in temperature, and pressure on her eardrums were the only signs that the drilling was in progress. If it made noise, it could not be heard above the muted sound of Bach’s song.
“Someplace named David,” said Lily. “Where’s your rifle?”
Hawk patted a long shape tucked in between his knees, briefly touched the shock grenades on his belt, and let his hand come to rest on her waist, a gesture almost protective. At her back, she felt Jenny’s movements as she checked out her weapons and loosened the straps that held them against her body. Farther back, Yehoshua spoke to his cousin, but his words were lost in the muffling air. Behind them, the faint beam of Rainbow’s helmet light cast a luminescent glow on the same mineral vein cut along the shaft wall, and behind her—a wall of solid blackness.
They waited.
A slight shift in pressure in her inner ear.
“Here we go,” said Lily, moving past Kyosti. “He’s got equilibrium.”
The miner did not stop working, but the pattern of his drilling changed. Lily passed through a recent pocket, almost filled now with the rubble of the current drilling, and inched forward into the new shaft, crawling almost on her belly. The miner paused as Lily came up behind him.
“I pierced through, min,” he explained. Around him, the walls gleamed as if they were hot, but she could feel nothing through her coveralls. “We be coming in at ya angle, so I mean to bear down ya circle here, so ya last dislodging shall make ya least stirring.”
“Good.”
Bach winked blue lights at her, but no longer sang as the miner went back to work. Sparks flew, cut off abruptly as a cracking noise shuddered the air. Flipping a switch on the drill, the Ridani eased away a meterwide circle of rock. Lily was amazed at how thin it was—a sure sign of the precision of Bach’s sounding and the skill of the miner.
“Thank you,” she said to him as she helped him unholster Bach from the drill, and then she looked back at her five companions, and crawled through into the 30s.
It was like coming into another world. For a moment she hesitated, until she realized that they had come into a dig supervised to standards more befitting a House mine. With a roll and a push she slipped down the side of the sloping wall, and stood up on mercifully smooth floor. If she raised her hands she could touch the ceiling, but she could stand, and Bach, floating out next to her, had ample room to drift beside her as she crouched and peered, gun raised, in both directions.
The shaft was deserted, and silent. A small antenna rose out of Bach, and after a moment of dense quiet he gave a four-note whistle, All clear, one hundred meters.
She motioned to Kyosti, and the others clambered out of the shaft behind her. She surveyed them briefly, and then set out to the right, toward the main tunnel.
The shaft was empty, lit by an uninterrupted string of tube lighting. Shafts branched out at irregular intervals, and three times they had to climb long stretches of ladder seamed into the rock face. At last, ahead, the intensity of the light changed, and Lily knew they were nearing the shaft’s opening into the main level 9 tunnel.
She put a hand back, stopping the five people behind her, and then reached up to tap an acknowledgment of previous commands into Bach’s keypad. He winked lights, a quick pattern, instead of replying in song, rose to the ceiling, and went forward alone.
Yehoshua pushed quietly past Jenny and Kyosti and crouched beside Lily. He waited for a while in silence. Shifted once, then spoke in an undertone.
“You really think this is going to work?”
Beneath the concealing mask of her helmet, Lily smiled. “I think so. He’ll go up the elevator maintenance ladder just like we will, only faster. And once he gets to the power plant’s main console, we’re free. No one will expect Bach.”
Yehoshua considered this in silence for a time before replying. “I’ve never seen a ’bot like that. And I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Where did you say you got it?”
She began to reply, heard voices, crouched and poised her rifle. The voices passed, evidently guards patrolling the main tunnel.
“How many prisoners can we expect will be down here?” she asked after a suitable interval.
Yehoshua shook his head. “I can’t guess. Not many. This deep the only cells are for the recidivists: violent or political repeat offenders. My great-grandmother’s brother spent time on Harsh.”
“What for?”
“Triple murder. Died here, too. Story is he got in a vendetta and was taken out with one of those old vibration drills.”
“Hoy.” Lily shuddered. “That’s terrible.”
Yehoshua chuckled. “Yeah. Because we’re Monists, we got the body back for proper burial. My old grand-pap once told me that there wasn’t much left.”
“Is this true?” Lily demanded suddenly. Yehoshua inclined his head, recognizing her question, but he retreated back to stand beside his cousin without answering her. Quiet descended on the little group.
They waited.
Lily felt one foot begin to numb, shifted it. Now and again she looked back to check Jenny and Kyosti, but they both remained still and absolutely quiet. Rainbow coughed once or twice, a low sound, and Yehoshua whispered something to Alsayid, followed by a muffled laugh from the cousin.
More time passed. Inevitably, her mind wandered from the task at hand. She thought of the dead Ridanis in the shaft they had just passed through. The Sar had never employed Ridanis, but she knew him well enough to know that he would not countenance a policy that condemned them to such a horrible death. She felt a sudden and unexpected urge to tell him what she was doing now. It was strange, thinking of Ransome House after having been away so long. Perhaps he would even approve of her new life—but the chance to explain was unlikely to present itself. With a sigh, she checked her wrist-com for the hour.
Then, without warning, without any transition whatsoever, the lights went out.
Lily stood, banishing nostalgia in an instant because it was time to act. “Let’s go.
”
They came out into the tunnel just as a low, moaning alarm began to wail, seeming to come from deep beneath the walls of the main tunnel. The beam of Lily’s helmet lamp swept a sheen of smooth wall and ceiling, stopped on a dead surveillance camera, moved to Yehoshua.
“You and Alsayid and Jenny, take out the A Block guards. Kyosti, Rainbow: with me.”
She set off at a lope down the straight corridor. They met no one until they had crossed the circular intersection that surrounded the huge central elevator shaft, but coming around the curve they almost ran into two guards, helmet lights still off as they stood surprised by the blackout.
Lily took one down with a sweep of her rifle, clubbing him to the floor. Turned to see Kyosti with a hard grip on the second, his rifle pressed against the guard’s head. All Lily could see was the terrified widening, the plea, in the guard’s eyes; the rest of his face was hidden by the breathing mask.
“Kill him,” said Kyosti as she stood staring. He fired, and a blast of light streaked out. The guard collapsed.
She hesitated, still straddling the unconscious man at her feet. Kyosti swung his gun around and shot.
The stench of heat rose up to her, a fine thread. She felt sick, was afraid to look down to see what now lay beneath her. Rainbow had already moved on, up the C Block corridor, rifle raised.
“You’ve never killed anyone, have you,” Kyosti said.
She barely managed to shake her head.
“Catch,” he said, and she just caught his rifle as he tossed it to her.
“What—”
“That’s yours until you’ve killed someone.”
“But you’re unarmed!”
“And I’m going straight in,” he promised as he followed Rainbow.
She gasped out an unvoiced curse, moved, stumbled on the body, and ran after Kyosti. Needing him as a vital part of the team, it had simply not occurred to her that she might put him in danger. Or else, she realized, as she passed him, passed Rainbow, that when she acted, all other considerations vanished. At the C Block lock she pounded frantically at the door. It opened to reveal a guard, tense but unsuspecting.
