Sanctuary (Jezebel's Ladder Book 3)

by Scott Rhine

  Putting on her jacket, Mercy said, “Let’s go outside and inspect those engines.”

  Walking around in the dim starlight, Mercy could tell that a large, open swath of grass circled most of the mountain. Pointing, she asked her guide, “What’s that?”

  Oleander replied, “Rachael says it’s a prairie—fallow ground for crop rotation. Many flightless birds live in this region. We worry that the predators hunt in the tall grass. Don’t walk anywhere you can’t see your ankles. It’s safest for now to walk along the river or stay here on Counterweight Mountain.”

  Laughing at the name, Mercy said, “Someone’s a fan of Terry Pratchett.”

  “Geek consensus. People suggested names, and the one that received the most likes won.”

  As they hiked to the peak, Mercy marveled at the other woman’s leg muscles.

  Once at the top, Oleander said over the headset, “Olympus, we’re ready to begin the check. How’s the temperature?”

  Over the radio, Red replied, “Same as any other shutter-induced night.”

  The chill Mercy felt must be due to the height. Closing her eyes, she felt each drive sphere, one at a time with her gravity sense, checking for any weakness or anomaly. By the end, she was exhausted. “No flaws or fluctuations that I can detect.”

  Red made a sizzling sound over the link. “That means Z and I can come down, and Toby can babysit for the next week. Not much can happen before then.”

  ****

  The next afternoon, Oleander nudged Mercy awake again. “I know this is your day off, but you volunteered to cross-train in security. If you’re still interested, I can run you through some paces before my next shift.”

  Mercy mumbled, “You’d do that for me?”

  “Not for you. I have a splitting headache. There was a brief burst of subspace radiation before we closed the shutters. Everyone who was outside during the event has been experiencing bizarre mental symptoms—everyone but you. Lou was a little loopy, almost drunk, and Park is sleeping so soundly Nadia couldn’t rouse him. I don’t think we want this effect when someone’s climbing the stairs, or we could have a fatality.”

  “Do you think the effect is related to our talents?” Mercy asked.

  “I don’t intend to experiment, in case it causes permanent damage, but I’m willing to give you a chance as a guard to avoid going through this migraine again.”

  In spite of the girl talk, Oleander pushed Mercy to her limits for two hours. They started with stretches, and Mercy went through several computerized ranged-weapons simulations. Oleander shook her head, mumbling, “Pathetic. You scored the lowest in the team for firearms.”

  Then they practiced basic hand-to-hand until stopping for a hydration break. While the instructor wrote on a clipboard, Mercy applied an icepack to her butt and dipped into the bucket of cold water to blot her forehead.

  Oleander grunted. “In martial arts, I’d rank you somewhere between Risa and Toby. Red said you had decent training. What kind?”

  Blotting her armpits with the cool cloth, Mercy explained, “Corp Sec taught me to use anything in my environment to my advantage. I’m better at outthinking my opponent.”

  Four meters away, Oleander nodded. “Very well, I am a kidnapper. Defend.”

  “Eep!” Rolling off the crude bench, Mercy unfolded the rag and tossed it into Oleander’s face. She kicked the bench into her attacker’s knees, hearing a satisfying thunk as she sprinted for the door. Despite the other woman’s height advantage, Mercy reached the door ahead of her and grabbed the hardwood spear propped there.

  With a deft twist, Mercy tripped her pursuer, sending her into the stone wall with a smack. “Oh, I’m so sorry. That’s going to leave a huge bruise.” She dropped the spear to help the woman sit. “Stay here with your head between your knees, and I’ll get that icepack for you.”

  As Mercy turned around, Oleander recovered enough to wrap an arm around her throat. “What?” was all she had a chance to gasp out before her air was cut off.

  Oleander’s second arm pressed on an artery, cutting off oxygen to her brain. Her attacker’s weight prevented Mercy’s weakly flapping hands from reaching the spear before everything went dark.

  ****

  Yvette leaned over her. “Headache?”

  Mercy whimpered.

  As the Frenchwoman poured a cup of steaming liquid from a thermos, she said, “This tea is brewed from gingko leaves harvested from this very mountain.”

  “Thanks. I’m guessing I failed?”

  “You’re not suited for the security team; you’re too nice. She rated you marginally competent on spear and high on running. She said you were cleared to go on long-range scouting trips with a partner as long as you weren’t attacked by anything too cute or fluffy.”

  “Ouch. In my defense, my dad was a Quaker.”

  “Do you have any other skills you might offer before we assign you ground duties?”

  “I’m really good at swimming.”

  “So are most of us. Sirius Academy was an island, and we all spent hours in the pool training. Although, Toby still has nightmares about that crash simulator and won’t go into the water for recreation. On the scale of pure hours logged, I’d venture that only Zeiss has more experience than you, but that’s because his best friends were dolphins.”

  Mercy’s face lit up. “Really? How?”

  “He has a unique variation of the Collective Unconscious. Whales and babies are drawn to him, too.”

  “Yeah. The others tried to get me to join the collective by reading that page. It felt like a cult.”

  “Only you, Yuki, and Lou have abstained out of those in Sanctuary. Lou was worried aliens would influence people who read it. I’ve seen no negative evidence, only positives. People can reaffirm you without words. You know you belong, and strong Actives like Red can sense other people’s minds at a distance.”

  “Isn’t it a sexually transmitted disease?”

  “That’s how most people get it, but it’s about sharing. The sex has to be unprotected, and you need to sleep touching for six hours—neither of which should be common for a one-night stand. We all have biohazard tattoos, yet even strong talents only infect one in ten contacts.”

  “So, without pages to read here, how could I catch it? I’m not into any spouse-swapping, orgy thing.”

  Yvette laughed. “Bonded couples are monogamous. Since Red is the Index page, she could share a little DNA with you and pass the Collective talent. It would be like adopting you as a sister, something she would not mind.”

  “Monogamous would be good,” Mercy said, thinking that Lou might really be worried about this side effect of the Collective Unconscious.

  “In a relationship, with this talent, you can communicate more fully with your partner, even to the extent of sharing orgasms.”

  Mercy cleared her throat, embarrassed at her own thoughts. “Pair-bonding is risky, though. I mean, if one of them dies, the other doesn’t last long.”

  Yvette shrugged. “This happens with any couple who truly shares their life together, without pages. It is a choice that both partners must make and continue to make. Such an intimate exchange is rare but fulfilling.”

  And neither of us are likely to enjoy that. Looking around the room to avoid eye contact, Mercy changed the subject. “So what should I do here? For a job, that is.”

  “Oleander recommended you for nurse training. You held your own with Yuki’s accident, and you seem to be more worried about others than your own safety. I can’t wave a magic wand to impart the skills, but I can begin training you as a paramedic when I’m not in Olympus. It will mean hours of extra study for you. Meanwhile, you get kitchen duty and unskilled agricultural work.”

  “I suppose that makes sense. I mean . . . yes, I’d like that.”

  “I’ll put the first month’s curriculum on your computer pad. Anything else?”

  Mercy bit her lip. “Would it go faster if I interned with Toby as well? You know, cataloging the biozon
es.”

  “What zones were you thinking of exploring?” Yvette asked with a twinkle in her eye.

  “That depends. He still thinks of you . . . romantically, and I didn’t want to step on any claim you might have.”

  Yvette waved the thought away with her hands. “I greatly respect Dr. Baatjies’ skill and he has a handsome face; however, he is not . . . adventurous enough for my tastes.”

  “His exploration is adventurous. Heck, he’s an astronaut.”

  The medical specialist sighed. “Because Auckland is out of commission, Toby and I will never be in the same place for more than a few minutes for the rest of the journey. Such a relationship would never work out.”

  Mercy narrowed her eyes. “You’re avoiding the truth again. You like him. Why should the rest matter?”

  Staring at the thermos in her hands, Yvette said, “For anyone I give myself to . . . anyone with the ability to pair-bond, I am contagious. My Ethics page would infect him. Toby’s rigid worldview may not be strong enough to bear multiple pages.”

  “So when you wanted sex on the beach with him, it was a test? A metaphor?”

  “Everything I am is exposed to the whole world every day, chérie, and being forced to tell the truth about everything is not a fate I would wish on someone I loved.” Yvette touched Mercy’s face. “But it would warm my heart to know he was happy and had a partner as kind as you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mercy spent the rest of the day peeling potatoes, boiling them, and then cleaning the kitchen after lunch. In the afternoon, she trimmed bamboo poles to precise lengths before beginning the kitchen cycle again. Because she was a little slow on the preparation, Rachael let her shift to cleanup so she could start the online anatomy and zoology courses. That evening she helped Risa assemble greenhouses for the Hollow so they could start germinating seedlings for a garden.

  She fell in bed the second night as exhausted as the first, but with more bruises and scratches.

  Chapter 20 – In the Hands of an Angry God

  When the Zeiss family left Toby alone in Olympus, he was furious. He’d been demoted from essential team member to lackey. What was he going to do up here in this tin can for several extra days? Toby kicked the rucksack in his room so hard that it bounced through the zero-g region and caromed into the shower tube.

  By the time he retrieved his bag, he’d calmed. Regrettably, the impact had broken his mother’s picture frame. The LCD liquid leaked out, and he could no longer see the images of Earth his family had sent with him on this trip.

  As he popped the ruined picture display into the recycler, he glanced over at the stasis tube. Lou wouldn’t want a one-armed woman like Yuki. If Toby could save her, she might be grateful. This might be his only chance to meet someone while he still had a sex drive. Over the link, he said, “Mercy, how do I open the stasis chamber to look over Yuki’s damage?”

  “Toby, you’re so sweet. Put your headset on speaker mode and hold it out.”

  “Okay. Done.”

  “Snowflake, grant Toby voice access to the emergency stasis chamber. Open stasis door but leave the field on.”

  A warning bloop sounded before the curved metal cover slid away, revealing sleeping beauty in her glass coffin. “Don’t fall in. Mercy out.”

  Toby turned the comm set to mute and hung it around his neck. As the last god guarding Olympus, he could do anything to this woman and no one would know. He grew excited by the possibilities.

  Despite Mercy’s warning, he reached for the hand of Yuki’s damaged arm. When he touched the invisible field, he was forced to jerk it away because of the pain that lanced through his right middle finger. Asleep: the circulation had stopped. After a few moments, he was able to massage the finger awake. Interesting.

  He lowered a sticky strap onto the woman’s wrist until it made contact. With great effort, Toby moved the arm a fraction of an inch. It might damage her stone-like ligaments, but this could work. If he could pull the arm outside the field, he might be able to reconstruct it with no blood flow, and reanimate her when it was fixed—Prince Charming ready for the kiss.

  Toby moved a large portion of the medical lab down to the stasis chamber for the procedure, including the microscope. He also rigged a block-and-tackle to haul out the resistant limb. After winching the arm free of the field, he untied Mercy’s lab-coat tourniquet. Taking repeated samples, he tagged the necrotic tissue with a borrowed black marker. Over 75 percent of the flesh around the detonation site was useless, and the damage increased every minute without oxygen. Sweating, he winched the arm up further until he found good skin. It would leave Yuki with little more than a stump, but she’d be alive. The team might even be able to rig a prosthetic for her.

  Floating back to the medical bay, he grabbed a few specialized tools, including a cutting laser and a cauterizing iron. Then, he scraped some of her cells from the tourniquet area to grow the skin graft that would cover the stump and loaded the samples into the device that would slowly grow a circle of flesh. Next, he began the excision by swabbing the area with iodine, which was probably an unnecessary precaution in disease-free Olympus. The entire operation took nine hours, but he performed what he considered the cleanest amputation in history. Exhausted, he pushed her body deep into the cushion to preserve his hard work from further degradation. He didn’t tell the others over the radio yet. At a loss for what he should do with the severed arm, he placed it in the frozen tomb beside her and climbed into the cocoon bed in his room.

  ****

  Lou’s voice on the radio woke Toby the next morning. “Hey, Bad-jizz! We hammered out the new rotation and posted it. Yvette is matron of honor for Nadia, so it looks like you’re working that shift.”

  “I’ll bet you’re probably scoping out all the bridesmaids already. What did you bring for your weight allowance—condoms or jelly?”

  “You know it. Too bad all you’ll be getting is leftovers . . . from the wedding cake.”

  The pilot’s cocky attitude made Toby want to kick something, but he didn’t want to break anything else. He tossed his pillow across the room instead, swearing in three languages. Unsatisfied, he floated down to the surgery site and inspected the tissue culture.

  “Bollix.” The patch had two separate cell donors, either from Toby himself, or someone who’d carried the woman downstairs. The result was white splotches in the field of caramel skin—a chimera graft. Yuki would cringe every time she saw it.

  Lou would never touch her spotted hide again.

  There was even a chance it was Toby’s skin covering the lithe body. “Leftovers, huh? Screw you. See how you like them, Lou.” The resources he’d used were scarce and may be needed to save a life. Nothing could be spared for cosmetic work.

  He pulled up the shoulder to place the defective patch. It wasn’t harmful, not really. As he worked, he plotted how he would wake Yuki. He could tell her everyone was dead—some empathic accident at camp, or winter freezing them all. Toby could play last-man-on-Earth. Then she’d warm up to him.

  Moments after he finished and turned off his headset’s busy/mute feature, Mercy called him on the headset. “Toby, I want you to know that because you’re trying to help Yuki, I volunteered for the shift after yours. I’ll be leaving the wedding early to bring you anything you like. Name it!”

  “From my inspection, Yuki’s arm is pretty damaged. I’m not sure we can save it.”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something. Everyone here is a genius, I’m told.”

  Changing the subject, Toby said, “I heard there’s cake.”

  “Yes. Johnny makes wicked frosting. We’ve all been sampling. I’ll bring you some of the vegetarian lasagna, too, if you want it. Because it’s Pratibha’s wedding, everything is vegetarian. Yuck. Since you’re working for all of us, I could talk the chef into making you pheasant under glass.”

  Toby smiled despite his foul mood. Maybe this girl liked him. “I don’t know. What kind of cheap date would I be if you cou
ld buy me for a little chicken?”

  “I’ll also sign up to help you map out the micro-biomes when you get back to camp.”

  “Do you have any experience in field biology?”

  “No, I figured I’d just carry the samples and do what you tell me. Zeiss has ordered that no one can travel anywhere alone until we find the predators.”

  “Right. You’ll be there to protect me.”

  “Yes. I’m learning how to use a spear.”

  “Are you just going to talk about sports the whole time, like the others?”

  “I could bring my reader along—it could recite Tennyson or Keats as we walk.”

  “I look forward to the Idylls of the King. Olympus out.”

  He picked up her lab coat and inhaled. Maybe young Mercy would do instead.

  Regardless, he needed to consult with Auckland about the painkillers and dosage before waking the patient. “Back to the freezer, Yuki. Snowflake, close the stasis cover.” Toby hid the evidence of the amputation—to give Mercy hope. He could still arrange something with Yuki later if Mercy didn’t work out.

  Toby spent the rest of his sentence learning about the windows in the control room. The others weren’t aware of this, but they could be instructed to zoom in on any person or location. The window could follow that person if commanded. Experimenting for days, he even found a setting to enhance the image, much like a military starlight scope. He told no one about this new ability, but kept it for himself. After a week of practice with the ability, he felt omniscient. This could come in very handy.

  Chapter 21 – Dark Days

  The first week of darkness passed slowly for Mercy: decorating the dorm, studying dry medical texts, picking olives on the mountain, transplanting mushrooms, processing bamboo, tying together greenhouse covers for the gardens, weeding Johnny’s herb garden, and drying fish. She also drew more than her share of kitchen duty—scrubbing, not cooking. Her arms were aching. Mercy didn’t complain because Yvette worked just as hard picking root vegetables for storage in the root cellar since they didn’t have jars to can the excess yet.