Spider Play

by Lee Killough

  A sense of something else urgent interrupted the thought. A moment later it burst from the sludge in her head. Mama! Where was he? Here, too?

  “Mama! Where are you!”

  No reply came back. Did he even hear? He might be on the far side of the rim.

  “Mama!”

  Again she heard nothing except her teeth chattering and her breath, hitching with the searing cold of the air.

  Zipwit! Of course she heard nothing, making all this noise.

  Breath held and teeth clamped tight, she strained her ears. Now did she hear anything? Something, yes, and it sounded different from the rhythm up top, the beast in the dark. Mama, hopefully.

  Keeping close to the deck, using its green edge for orientation, Janna pushed off the portal rim in the direction of the sound. Urgency warred with the fear of pushing too hard. She had to find Mama and get out of here, but not pull so hard she caromed out of control, maybe losing her sense of direction and missing him.

  Every few seconds she held her breath and listened again, and finally felt confident she heard breathing. With her hands rapidly losing feeling inside her sleeves, Janna gave into urgency and pulled harder on the next portal rim.

  Beyond it, the deck outline curved sideways. While wondering why, she ran head-on into something and ricocheted into the upper bulkhead. Bad enough, but reacting to keep control came with the syrup slowness of a dream, bringing a bolt of fear, followed by snarling fury at herself. No . . . no you don’t! Keep moving! Don’t you dare let yourself freeze!

  Echoing the words of instructors at the Academy. Never give up. Never quite fighting.

  I will survive!

  She pushed off the bulkhead for the deck. Only to collide with something else . . . but quickly identified it as the cable by its length along her body. Elation cut off her curse. That made the first object likely the emergency capsule. More important, now she knew how to find her way back to the cable. Look for where the corridor widened.

  Realizing she and Mama had gone different directions along the rim brought a gut lurch at how easily they might have drifted too far apart to find him.

  Pulling down the turtleneck and cracking off the ice from her breath, she shouted, “Mama!”

  Still no answer. Hearing his breath over the violence of her shivers confirmed she remained headed for him, however. Closing in.

  Yes! Her pulse jumped. Ahead across the corridor, no green showed around the lower half of a portal and the deck edge beneath. It had to be Mama blocking the light.

  A push off the wall changed course toward the void. Seconds later she connected with a solid shape. She grabbed what felt like an arm and shook him.

  “Mama.” No response. Shaking him harder still brought no response. “Mama! Wake up!”

  Janna ran her hands over him. As far possible to tell with numb fingers, he wore no jacket either, and while she found his head, could not determine if he had an injury. She smelled no blood. If any, though, it had probably frozen. He felt ice cold. Was that his skin, though, or hers? He shivered less that she did.

  A moment of relief that he might not be as cold switched to fear as the true significance oozed out of her brain . . . deepening hypothermia. She had to get him out of here!

  How to move him. Haul him by the collar of his sweater? Except, could she tell if she had a grip? Instead, she slid an arm under his, then using the portal’s outline as a guide to the position of the rim, pushed hard with her feet to send them toward the cable. Pushed hard but with frightening dream slowness. Another bad sign.

  Relief came with seeing the deck’s edge curve out. Followed by indecision and the beginning of panic. Mama’s lack of consciousness meant something seriously wrong. They had an emergency capsule here. Maybe she ought to put him in it while she went for help. Surely it had heat. How to get him in, though. It stood upright against the wall, she remembered, and she had no idea how to take it down. Putting Mama in it as it was might be good enough.

  Dropping a leg, she felt resistance indicating her foot touched the deck. A gentle shove altered their course to follow the deck edge. When the arm she stretched in front of her touched the capsule, she lowered both feet and pushed herself against the wall. Keeping her hold on Mama, she groped along the edge of the capsule for some kind of latch. The medics opened that capsule outside Lemieux’s lab from the side. She found no latch. But would she know if she did? She felt as though she wore boxing gloves. This might not even be the side it opened from.

  Swearing, she pounded her fist on the lid. “Open, damn you!”

  Nothing happened.

  About to thump it again, she found herself wondering what she was doing, and why?

  Until panic sliced through the confusion. Confusion, another sign of hypothermia. Soon to be followed by fatal drowsiness.

  No! We will get out of here!

  That meant climbing the cable. Could she do so one-handed and unable to see or feel the loops?

  Find a way. Do it!

  Step one, kick away from the capsule to reach the fence around the cable end. Next, pull up over the fence to the cable itself. Moving Mama needed little effort. Or would if the dark stopped dragging at her like ever thickening syrup. She prodded herself to fight it, cursed herself to incite anger. Damned if she would let whatever — whoever — left them to freeze win!

  She found the cable and gripped a chase with her legs while she groped up and down in it for a loop, trying to visualize how far apart they were. Find one and she ought to be able to locate others. Except being so numb, how would she know she gripped one?

  She lashed at the sludge in her head. Think!

  Okay . . . instead of fumbling blindly, be systematic. Loops attached to the cable. Find them. Run the back of her hand up in the chase until it met resistance.

  Despite her shivers, she managed to follow that resistance out of the chase toward her chest. Direction, at least, she felt. Could she be sure her fingers grabbed the loop?

  Pull down and see what happens.

  Janna pulled . . . and to her relief, felt air pressure on her face, indicating movement. To confirm the direction as up, she located the edge of the chase and kept her hand following it. Shivering creating a drum roll. Though headed up, following the chase also indicated a slow ascent. How far had they come?

  A look down found no deck outline.

  “Hello?”

  Her voice sounded hollow. So they were at least in the shaft. But slowing.

  This time she barely reached the loop she found, and pulling resulted in a slap on her head and no new movement. Grimly, she fumbled up through the crushing darkness for the loop again. Her gut twisted at Mama’s immobility, but she had no time for more than noting he still breathed. She had to focus on escaping from here. The sooner they did, the better chance he had to keep breathing.

  If only moving were not so difficult, and drowsiness threatening to engulf her.

  Pulling on the loop felt weak. But it moved them . . . at least a little way. Then, gritting chattering teeth, she struggled for the next loop. And the next. Endlessly, it seemed . . . slipping off many, having to try for them again until she wanted to weep in frustration. Instead, she turned it to anger . . . cursing herself, mentally screaming: Don’t you dare give up! Don’t you dare go to sleep!”

  Then, an eternity later, she reached up to find no loop, no cable, and they floated into emptiness. No! She struggled to understand it. What happened to the shaft? Where were they now?

  Until the meaning of the green circle ahead sank into her brain. Portal! They were in the ring hall! She wrapped both arms around Mama, pulled her feet under her, and pushed off the surface they found there. Once in motion it occurred to her they might need a code to exit, which she could not remember. What would she do then?

  But no. At their approach, the portal split open. They sailed through into a blast of heat and searing, blinding light.

  Eyes squeezed tight, Janna realized they overshot the threshold platform int
o the shaft. But made no effort to stop their tumble. Voices babbled around her. Shift change? People!

  “Help,” she rasped.

  Chapter Ten

  Thursday

  Somewhere in the process of being pulled from the shaft and hearing someone call for Med, she must have must have blacked out. Because Janna opened her eyes to a reverse of last time, not icy blackness but light and warmth. In a bed, warmly cocooned in what looked like a sleeping bag with zips on both sides. Tubes in her nose delivering warm air. Warmth in her stomach. Warmth flowing into an arm with the elbow area exposed, delivered through a tube from a clear cylinder in a machine with a piston. At a click, it pushed incrementally forward.

  Dr. Argus Waller smiled down at her. “Welcome back. I’m—”

  “Dr. Waller.” Her voice sounded as raw as her throat felt. Skipping Where am I, because she recognized an intensive care unit, and How long have I been out when a chrono on the opposite wall read: 05:11, she asked the more important question. “How is Detective Maxwell?”

  “Surviving. Recovering. As are you.” Waller looked up at a vitals panel on the wall above the bed. “Core temperature coming up satisfactorily. You’ll blister and peel from frostbite on your extremities and face but likely won’t suffer permanent damage.” His mouth thinned. “No thanks to your idiocy. What brainbent notion possessed you to enter an unheated module without being dressed for it?”

  “We didn’t! Does Detective Maxwell have a head injury? He was unconscious the whole time getting out of the ring.”

  “There’s no sign of a head injury.”

  Alarm shot through Janna. She knew that kind of tap-dance phrasing, the half truth that withheld less positive information. “But what?”

  “What do you know about his narcolepsy?”

  “Narcolepsy! Mama doesn’t— ” Two images cut her off . . . remembering that officer firing the sleeper around her shield into Lemieux’s lab, and Doubrava at the top of the shaft, invisible behind the light he shone on them.

  Anger boiled up in her. Doubrava! With a sleeper. Must have used one on them, the son of a bitch!

  Why? Only one reason she saw. He was their smuggling killer.

  The ghost, beside them all the time. Smiling and smiling and a villain. Laughing as he acknowledged himself a suspect . . . expecting not to be considered seriously. Until, what, worry that once they started tracking the ghost up through the station, he had insufficiently disguised the point of his transition from ghost to Assistant Chief Doubrava.

  Because he was right about not being able to wear the clingskin forever. No doubt he spread the false chop about them. Then, what, hoped for violence when he — deliberately? — left them alone to find Saleem?

  Discovery of the wax must have come as a shock, but he covered it. Felt so confident he dared to tell them how the killer came by it, the bastard. Did he bring the sleeper planning to use it? Or merely to give himself an option of turning them into corpsicles . . . written off, when found, as Darwinian failures for trespassing in a dangerous environment without preparing for it.

  Lucky she came to before they froze. Had her position behind Mama blocked some of the sleeper’s effect?

  Never mind. Save speculation for another time. Right now . . . “I need to see Chief Geyer.”

  A corner of Waller’s mouth twisted. “That’s convenient.” He raised his voice. “Come on in, Chief.”

  Geyer glided into the room . . . fixing Janna with eyes cold and dark as Level Eighteen.

  Janna stared back, refusing to be intimidated. “Doubrava—”

  Geyer cut her off, voice low, flat, and cold as her eyes. “How the hell did you get his authorization code to use at the security barrier, and why the fuck were you in a restricted area?”

  Janna wished to hell she were standing instead of trapped flat like some sacrifice on an altar. “Since the datanet wouldn’t give us the information, we were seeing if the lower rings had . . .” What did Doubrava call them? “. . . ring halls. That would explain why the individual that surveillance caught planting the wax sabotaging Chenoweth’s suit didn’t leave by the portal we were watching.”

  “Barrier.”

  “Captain Doubrava gave us the code to let us examine personnel records and view call logs.”

  Geyer’s lips disappeared in a tight gash. Considering how to feed Doubrava his guts? Or them theirs. “If you wanted to know about the ring halls, why not ask Doubrava instead of abusing his courtesy?”

  Only remembering who abused who kept Janna from wincing. “We were concerned that if there were ring halls, he had deliberately withheld the information from us.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I had no idea at the time, but now I know he didn’t want us tracking the individual who replaced Chenoweth’s wax. Because it was him, Doubrava. He killed Chenoweth, then tried to freeze us to death when we learned Twenty had a ring hall and would track him.”

  “No. I reviewed the surveillance while waiting for you to come to and I’ve seen the individual entering the ring after you. It wasn’t Doubrava.”

  Of course. Protecting her own. “It was Doubrava. He said Athena alerted him we’d used his code at the barrier and he told her to let us through, then came to see why we were there.”

  Geyer’s eyes narrowed.

  “Ask Athena if she alerted him. Ask her if he told her to let us through.”

  Geyer turned away. Turning back moments later, she said, “During the assault on you Doubrava was in his quarters. Athena identifies him as entering the module at twenty-one oh nine and not leaving again.”

  Establishing an alibi. “Athena notified him we wanted to enter a restricted area and we’re supposed to believe he reacted by saying let us through, then went his quarters? Athena wouldn’t ID him leaving if he wore a clingskin mask. Clingskin . . .” Janna began.

  At which point Geyer turned into an olive-skinned male in scrubs with blue and green swirls.

  Janna blinked. What the hell?

  A mystery solved by checking the wall chrono. She had passed out for ten minutes. Narcolepsy? Thank you so much, Doubrava.

  The nurse — Nathan Garner on his name tag — carried a drink bulb with long tube. “Dr. Waller would like you to have more warm liquid. It’s broth.”

  “I’d rather go see Detective Maxwell.”

  “Not possible.” He held out the tube.

  Sucking down the fluid, she had to admit it felt good, though closing her lips around the tube hurt.

  She shifted in the wrap to see if she could free her other arm and hold the bulb herself. Exploration discovered bare skin. Of course they cut her clothes off. Off Mama, too? Goodbye sweater. Too bad.

  “I hope Maxwell was out when you cut off his clothes so he didn’t see his sweater being destroyed.”

  “He was out, but we saved what we could . . . took the front off in a single piece and taped the edges to keep them from raveling so it can be attached as a panel to another sweater or a pillow.”

  Janna winced. “Saved it?” Sheesh!

  The nurse’s brows went up. “It’s unique. Those colors! Too total! We sent a sleeve down to a chemist friend to analyze the dyes.”

  What? They wanted those colors? Perhaps no surprise considering what she had seen some people up here wearing. But . . . wait a nano. “Maxwell’s aunt knitted the sweater using wool from her own sheep. I think she created the dyes, too. If so, your chemist friend can’t reproduce them without permission. I’m sure everyone up here knows about patents and intellectual property.”

  The nurse grimaced and nodded. “I’ll pass that on.”

  After he left, the cocoon’s warmth prompted memory of Chenoweth wrapped in cold. Anger hissed through her. She wanted to be out there hunting down Doubrava. Seeing his expression when he saw her still alive. Once found, though, what then?

  Despite emotions and questions stewing in her head, Janna found herself drifting off.

  Until roused by a sharp: “Time to
wake up, Detective.”

  Geyer stood by the bed, arms full of clothes. “Disconnect everything.” Speaking to the nurse behind her . . . Garner.

  The chrono read: 06:59.

  “Dr. Waller’s orders—”

  “I’ll deal with Waller.”

  Reluctance in every line of his face and body, Garner disconnected the IV, removed the tube delivering warm air, and clicked something near the head of the wrap. Then left.

  Geyer held up a yellow sweater that opened in front. “This is mine, since the only shirts I saw in your luggage are turtlenecks and you don’t want anything being pulled over your face and ears right now.” Geyer eyed her. “I hope you’re not shy, because I’m going to dress you. You’ll find your hands too tender to do it yourself.”

  “Okay.” Janna could not imagine Geyer lying for the privilege of dressing her.

  Geyer unzipped both sides of the bed cover and flipped the top down over the footboard, then opened the wrap in a rip of pressclose flaps.

  After the wrap’s warmth, the room temperature set Janna shivering. “Let’s do this fast.”

  Geyer dressed her impersonally, as if handling a display mannequin . . . yet with care. Soft gloves went on her hands before Geyer worked the sweater sleeves up Janna’s arms. Thick, soft socks went on her feet before pulling on cargo pants. Topping in all came another thick sweater, also fastening up the front.

  Dr. Waller swept into the room. “Now see here, Chief—”

  “I need them for statements.”

  “Take them here.”

  “Sorry, no.” Not sounding sorry. “She’s wearing enough to keep her warm. Same for Maxwell.”

  “If either of them—”

  “Yes, yes. Any harm is on my head. I’ll bring them back afterward. On your feet, Brill.”

  Janna appreciated the cushioning socks as she pushed into moccasins thankfully a larger size than hers. But she appreciated the lack of gravity even more . . . keeping weight off her feet. Geyer’s hand under her elbow steadied her.

  Out in the hall Mama waited with the Mohawk-haired Hatcher and a Viking-looking officer. Janna caught her breath. Her face must look the same as his, but his coloring made the red and white mottling on his nose, lips, cheeks, and ears more startling.