Existence

“Enough!” Tor cut in. Almost a minute had passed since realization of danger and the issuance of a clamor. And so far, no one had offered anything like a practical suggestion.

  “Don’t forget that I’m here, now. We have to do something.”

  “Yes,” the voice replied, eagerly and without the usual hesitation. “There is sufficient probable cause to get a posse writ. Especially with your credibility scores. We can act, with you performing the hands-on role.

  “Operational ideas follow:

  “CUT THE TOWING CABLE.

  (Emergency release in gondola. Reachable in four minutes.

  Risk: possible interference from staff. Ineffective at saving the zeppelin/passengers.)

  “PERSUADE ZEP COMPANY TO COMMENCE EMERGENCY VENTING PROCEDURES.

  (Communication in progress. Response so far: obstinate refusal…)

  “PERSUADE ONBOARD STAFF TO COMMENCE EMERGENCY VENTING PROCEDURES.

  (Attempting communication despite company interference…)

  “PERSUADE COMPANY TO ORDER PASSENGER EVACUATION.

  (Communication in progress. Response so far: obstinate refusal…)

  “UPGRADE CLAMOR. CONTACT PASSENGERS. URGE THEM TO EVACUATE.

  (Risks: delay, disbelief, panic, injuries, fatalities, lawsuits…)”

  The list of suggestions seemed to scroll on and on. Rank-ordered by plausibility-evaluation algorithms, slanted by urgency, and scored by likelihood of successful outcome. Individuals and subgroups within the smart-mob split apart to urge different options with frantic vehemence. Her specs flared, threatening overload.

  “Oh, screw this,” Tor muttered, reaching up and tearing them off.

  The real world—unfiltered. For all of its paucity of layering and data-supported detail, it had one special trait.

  It’s where I am about to die, she thought.

  Unless I do something fast.

  At that moment, the zep crew attendant arrived. He rounded the final corner of a towering gas cell, coming into direct view—no longer a shadowy authority figure, warped and refracted by the tinted polymer membranes. Up close, it turned out to be a small man, middle-aged and clearly frightened by what his own specs had started telling him. All intention to arrest or detain Tor had evaporated before he made that turn. She could see this in his face, as clearly as if she had been monitoring vital signs.

  WARREN, said a company nametag.

  “Wha—what can I do to help?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  Though hired for gracile weight and people skills, the fellow clearly possessed some courage. By now he knew what filled many of the slim, green-tinted membranes surrounding them both. And it didn’t take a genius to realize the zep company was unlikely to help, during the time they had left.

  “Tool kit!” Tor held out her hand.

  Warren fumbled at his waist pouch. Precious seconds passed as he unfolded a slim implement case. Tor found one promising item—a vibrocutter.

  “Keyed to your biometrics?”

  He nodded. Passengers weren’t allowed to bring anything aboard that might become a weapon. This cutter would respond to his personal touch and no other. It required not only a fingerprint, but volition—physiological signs of the owner’s will.

  “You must do the cutting, then.”

  “C-cutting…?”

  Tor explained quickly.

  “We’ve got to vent this ship. Empty the gas upward. That’ll happen to a main cell if it is ruptured anywhere along its length, right? Automatically?”

  A shaky nod. She could tell Warren was getting online advice, perhaps from the zep company. More likely from the same smart-mob that she had called into being. She felt strong temptation to put her own specs back on—to link-in once more. But she resisted. Kibitzers would only slow her down right now.

  “It might work…,” said the attendant in a frightened whisper. “But the reffers will realize, as soon as we start—”

  “They realize now!” She tried not to shout. “We may have only moments to act.”

  Another nod. This time a bit stronger, though Warren was shaking so badly that Tor had to help him draw the cutter from its sleeve. She steadied his hand.

  “We must slice through a helium bag in order to reach the big hydro cell,” he said, pressing the biometric-sensitive stud. Reacting to his individual touch, a knife edge of acoustic waves began to flicker at the cutter tip, sharper than steel. A soft tone filled the air.

  Tor swallowed hard. That flicker resembled a hot flame.

  “Pick one.”

  They had no way to tell which of the greenish helium cells had been refilled, or what would happen when the cutter helped unite gas from neighboring compartments. Perhaps the only thing accomplished would be an early detonation. But even that had advantages, if it messed up the timing of this scheme.

  One lesson you learned early nowadays: It simply made no sense, any longer, to rely for perfect safety upon a flawless professional protective caste. The police and military, the bureaucrats, and intelligence services. No matter how skilled and sophisticated they might grow, with infinite tax dollars to spend on advanced instrumentalities, they could still be overwhelmed, or cleverly bypassed. Human beings, they made mistakes. And when that happened, society must count on a second line of defense.

  Us.

  It meant—Tor knew—that any citizen could wind up being a soldier for civilization, at any time. The way they made the crucial difference on 9-11 and during Awfulday.

  In other words, expendable.

  “That one.” Warren chose, and moved toward the nearest green-tinted cell.

  Though she had doffed her specs, there was still a link. The smart-mob’s voice retained access to the conduction channel in her ear.

  “Tor,” said the group mind. “We’re getting feed through Warren’s goggles. Are you listening? There is a third possibility, in addition to helium and hydrogen. Some of the cells may have been packed with—”

  She bit down twice on her left canine tooth, cutting off the distraction in order to monitor her omnisniffer. She inhaled deeply, with her eye on the indicator as Warren made a gliding, slicing motion with his cutter.

  The greenish envelope opened, as if along a seam. Edges rippled apart as invisible gas—appreciably cooler—swept over them both.

  HELIUM said the readout. Tor sighed relief.

  “This one’s not poisonous.”

  Warren nodded. “But no oxygen. You can smother.” He ducked his head aside, avoiding the cool wind, and took another deep breath of normal air. Still, his next words had a squeaky, high-pitched quality. “Gotta move fast.”

  Through the vent he slipped, hurrying quickly to the other side of the green cell, where it touched one of the great chambers of hydrogen.

  Warren made a rapid slash.

  Klaxons bellowed, responding to the damage automatically. (Or else, had the company chosen that moment, after several criminally-negligent minutes, to finally admit the inevitable?) A voice boomed insistently, ordering passengers to move—calmly and carefully—to their escape stations.

  That same instant, the giant hydrogen gas cell convulsed, twitching like a giant bowel caught in a spasm. The entire pinkish tube—bigger than a jumbo jet—contracted, starting at the bottom and squeezing toward a sudden opening at the very top, spewing its contents skyward.

  Backwash hurled Warren across the green tube. Tor managed to grab his collar, dragging him out to the walkway. There seemed to be nothing satisfying about the “air” that she sucked into her lungs, and she started seeing spots before her eyes. The little man was in worse shape, gasping wildly in high-pitched squeaks.

  Somehow, Tor hauled him a dozen meters along the gangway, barely escaping descending folds of the deflated cell, till they arrived at last where breathing felt better. Did we make any difference? she wondered, wildly.

  Instinctively, Tor slipped her specs back on. Immersed again in the info-maelstrom, it took moments to focus.

  One image showe
d gouts of flame pouring from a hole in the roof of a majestic skyship. Another revealed the zeppelin’s nose starting to slant steeply as the tug-locomotive pulled frantically on its tow cable, reeling the behemoth toward the ground. Spirit resisted like a stallion, bucking and clinging to altitude.

  Tor briefly quailed. Oh Lord, what have we done?

  A thought suddenly occurred to her. She and Warren had done this entirely based on information that came to them from outside. From a group-mind of zeppelin aficionados and amateur scientists who claimed that a lot of extra hydrogen had to be going somewhere, and it must be stored in some of the former helium cells.

  But that particular helium cell—the one Warren sliced—had been okay.

  And now, amid all the commotion, she wondered. What about the smart-mob? Could that group be a front for clever reffers, who were using her to do their dirty work? Feeding false information, in order to get precisely this effect?

  The doubt passed through her mind in seconds. And back out again. This smart-mob was open and public. If something smelled about it, another mob would have formed by now, clamoring like mad and exposing the lies. Anyway, if no helium cells had been tampered with, the worst that she and Warren could do was bring a temporarily disabled Spirit of Chula Vista down to a bumpy but safe landing atop its tug.

  Newsworthy. But not very. And that realization firmed her resolve.

  Tor yanked the attendant onto his feet and urged him to move uphill, toward the stern, along a narrow path that now inclined the other way. “Come on!” she called to Warren, her voice still squeaky from helium. “We’ve got to do more!”

  Warren tried gamely. But she had to steady him as the path gradually steepened. When he prepared to slash at another green cell, farther aft, Tor braced his elbow.

  Before he struck, through the omniscient gaze of her specs, Tor abruptly saw three more holes appear in the zep’s broad roof, spewing clouds of gas, transparent but highly refracting, resembling billowy ripples in space.

  Was the zep company finally taking action? Had the reffers made their move? Or had the first expulsion triggered some kind of compensating release from automatic valves, elsewhere on the ship?

  As if pondering the same questions, the voice in her jaw mused.

  “Too little has been released to save the Spirit from the worst-case scenario. But maybe enough to limit the tragedy and mess up their scheme.

  “It depends on a rather gruesome possibility that one of us thought up. What if—instead of hydrogen—some of the helium cells have been refilled with OXYGEN? After experimenting with a similar, programmably permeable polymer, we find that the fuel replenishment process could be jiggered to do that. If so, the compressed combination—”

  Oxygen?

  Tor shouted “Wait!” as Warren made a hard stab at one of the green cells, slicing a long vent that suddenly blurped at them.

  This wave of gas wasn’t as cool as the helium had been. It smelled terrific, though. One slight inhale filled Tor with sudden and suspicious exhilaration.

  Uh-oh, she thought.

  At that moment, her spectacle-display offered a bird’s-eye view as one of the new clouds of vented hydrogen contacted dying embers, atop the tormented Spirit of Chula Vista.

  Like a brief sun, each of the refracting bubbles ignited in rapid succession. Thunderclaps shook the dirigible from stem to stern, knocking Tor and Warren off their feet.

  Is this it? Her own particular and special End of the World? Strangely, Tor’s clearest thought was one of professional jealousy. Someone down below ought to be getting truly memorable and historic footage. Maybe on a par with the Hindenburg Disaster.

  This was the critical moment. With their plan dissolving, the reffers must act. Any second now, a well-timed chain explosion within the Spirit’s great abdomen.…

  While the violent tossing drove Tor into fatalism, all that invigorating oxygen seemed to have an opposite effect upon Warren, who surged to his feet, then slipped through the tear that he had made and charged across the green cell, preparing to attack the giant hydrogen compartment beyond, heedless of the smart-mob, clamoring at him to stop.

  Tor tried to add her own plea, but found that her throat would not function.

  Some reporter, she thought, taking ironic solace in one fact—that her specs were still beaming to the Net.

  Live images of a desperately unlikely hero.

  Warren looked positively giddy—on a high of oxygen and adrenaline, but not too drugged to realize the implications. He grimaced with an evident combination of fear and exaltation, while bringing his cutter-tool slashing down upon the polymer membrane—a slim barrier separating two gases that wanted, notoriously, to unite.

  * * *

  Sensory recovery came in scattered bits.

  First, a smattering of dream images. Nightmare flashes about being chased, or else giving chase to something dangerous, across a landscape of burning glass. At least, that was how her mind pictured a piling-on of agonies. Regret. Physical anguish. Failure. More anguish. Shame. And more agony, still.

  When the murk finally began to clear, consciousness only made matters worse. Everything was black, except for occasional crimson flashes. And those had to be erupting directly out of pain—the random firings of an abused nervous system.

  Her ears also appeared to be useless. There was no real sound, other than a low, irritating humming that would not go away.

  Only one conduit to the external world still appeared to be functioning.

  The voice. It had been hectoring her dreams, she recalled. A nag that could not be answered and would not go away. Only now, at least, she understood the words.

  “Tor? Are you awake? We’re getting no signal from your specs. But there’s a carrier wave from your tooth-implant. Can you give us a tap?”

  After a pause, the message repeated.

  And then again.

  So, it was playing on automatic. She must have been unconscious for a long time.

  “Tor? Are you awake? We’re getting no signal from your specs. But there’s a carrier wave from your tooth-implant. Can you give us a tap?”

  There was an almost overwhelming temptation to do nothing. Every signal that she sent to muscles, commanding them to move, only increased the grinding, searing pain. Passivity seemed to be the lesson being taught right now. Just lie there, or else suffer even more. Lie and wait. Maybe die.

  Also, Tor wasn’t sure she liked the group mind anymore.

  “Tor? Are you awake? We’re getting no signal from your specs. But there’s a carrier wave from your tooth-implant. Can you give us a tap?”

  On the other hand, passivity seemed to have one major drawback. It gave pain an ally.

  Boredom. Yet another way to torment her. Especially her.

  To hell with that.

  With an effort that grated, she managed to slide her jaw enough to bring the two left canine teeth together in a tap, and then two more. The recording continued a few moments—long enough for Tor to fear that it hadn’t worked. She was cut off, isolated, alone in darkness.

  But the group participants must have been away, doing their own things. Jobs, families, watching the news. After about twenty seconds, though, the voice returned, eager and live.

  “Tor!

  “We are so glad you’re awake.”

  Muddled by dull agony, she found it hard at first to focus even a thought. But she managed to drag one canine in a circle around the other. Universal symbolic code for “question mark.”

  >

  The message got through.

  “Tor, you are inside a life-sustainment tube. Rescue workers found you in the wreckage about twelve minutes ago, but it’s taking some time to haul you out. They should have you aboard a medi-chopper in another three minutes, maybe four.

  “We’ll inform the docs that you are conscious. They’ll probably insert a communications shunt sometime after you reach hospital.”

  Three rapid taps.

 
>
  The voice had a bedside manner.

  “Now Tor, be good and let the pros do their jobs. The emergency is over and we amateurs have to step back, right?

  “Anyway, you’ll get the very best of care. You’re a hero! Spoiled a reffer plot and saved a couple of hundred passengers. You should hear what MediaCorp is crowing about their ‘ace field correspondent.’ They even backdated your promotion a few days.

  “Everyone wants you now, Tor,” the voice finished, resonating her inner ear without any sign of double entendre. But surely individual members felt what she felt, right then.

  Irony—the other bright compensation that Pandora found in the bottom of her infamous Box. At times, irony could be more comforting than hope.

  Tor was unable to chuckle, so her tooth did a down-slide and then back.

 

  The Voice seemed to understand and agree.

  “Yeah.

  “Anyway, we figure you’d like an update. Tap inside if you want details about your condition. Outside for a summary of external events.”

  Tor bit down emphatically on the outer surface of her lower canine.

  “Gotcha. Here goes.

  “It turns out that the scheme was partly to create a garish zep disaster. But they chiefly aimed to achieve a distraction.

  “By colliding the Spirit with a cargo freighter in a huge explosion, with lots of casualties, they hoped not only to close down the zep port for months, but also to create a suddenly lethal fireball that would draw attention from the protective and emergency services. All eyes and sensors would shift for a brief time. Wariness would steeply decline in other directions.

  “They thereupon planned to swoop into the Naval Research Center with a swarm attack by hyperlight flyers. Like the O’Hare Incident but with some nasty twists. We don’t have details yet. Some of them are still under wraps. But it looks pretty awful, at first sight.

  “Anyway, as events turned out, our ad hoc efforts aboard the Spirit managed to expel almost half of the stockpiled gases early and in an uncoordinated fashion. Several of the biggest cells got emptied, creating gaps. So there was never a single, unified detonation when the enemy finally pulled their trigger. Just a sporadic fire. That kept the dirigible frame intact, enabling the tug to reel it down to less than a hundred meters.