Clemens sighed. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘That’s better.’ Andrews nodded approvingly. ‘Has she said anything to you? Not about herself personally. I don’t give a damn about that. Wallow in mutual reminiscence all you want, I don’t care. I mean professionally. About where she’s come from. What her mission was, or is. Most particularly, what the hell was she doing in an EEV with a busted droid, a drowned six-year-old kid, and a dead corporal, and where the hell is the rest of her ship’s crew? For that matter, where the hell is her ship?’
‘She told me she was part of a combat team that came to grief. The last she remembers was going into deep sleep. At that time the marine was alive and the girl’s cryotube was functioning normally. It’s been my assumption all along that the girl was drowned and the marine killed in the crash of the EEV.
‘I assume beyond that it’s all classified. I haven’t pressed her for more. She does carry marine lieutenant rank, you know.’
‘That’s all?’ Andrews persisted.
Clemens studied his empty teacup. ‘Yes.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’
The medic looked up and met the older man’s eyes evenly. ‘Very sure.’
Andrews’s gaze dropped to his hands and he spoke through clenched teeth. It was obvious there was more, something the medic wasn’t telling him, but short of physical coercion there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. And physical coercion wouldn’t work with someone like Clemens, whose inherent stubbornness would keep him from admitting that he had no pride left to defend.
‘Get out of here.’
Clemens rose wordlessly and started a second time for the door.
‘One more thing.’ The medic paused, looked back to find the superintendent watching him closely. ‘I take comfort in the daily routine here. So do you. There’s a great deal of reassurance to be found in codified monotony. I’m not going to let it be broken. Systematic repetition of familiar tasks is the best and safest narcotic. I’m not going to allow the animals to become agitated. Not by a woman, not by accidents. Not by you.’
‘Whatever you say,’ Clemens replied agreeably.
‘Don’t go getting any funny ideas. Independent action is a valueless concept on Fiorina. Don’t think too much. It’ll damage your standing in our little community, especially with me, and you’ll only end up hurting yourself. You’ll do better to keep your long-term goals in mind at all times.
‘Your loyalties are to this operation, and to your employer. Not to strangers, or to some misguided notions you may happen to erect on the foundation of your own boredom. She will be gone soon and we will still be here. You and I, Dillon and Aaron and all the rest. Everything will be as it was before the EEV crashed. Don’t jeopardize your enviable situation for a temporary abstraction. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. Your point is quite clear. Even to someone like me.’
Andrews continued to brood uneasily. ‘I don’t want trouble with our employers. I don’t want trouble of any kind. I get paid to see that trouble doesn’t happen. Our presence here is… frowned upon by certain social elements back on Earth. Until the accident we hadn’t suffered a death from other than natural causes since the day this group took over caretaking duties from its predecessors. I am aware that it could not have been prevented but it still looks bad in the records. I don’t like looking bad, Mr. Clemens.’ He squinted up at the medic. ‘You take my meaning?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’
Andrews continued. ‘Rescue and resupply will be here soon enough. Meanwhile, you keep an eye on the lieutenant and if you observe anything, ah, potentially disruptive, I know that I can rely on you to notify me of it immediately. Right?’
Clemens nodded briskly. ‘Right.’
Though only partially mollified, the other man could think of nothing more to say. ‘Very well, then. We understand one another. Good night, Mr. Clemens.’
‘Good night, Superintendent.’ He shut the door quietly behind him.
* * *
The wind of Fiorina rose and fell, dropping occasionally to querulous zephyrs or rising to tornadic shrieks, but it never stopped. It blew steadily off the bay, carrying the pungent odour of salt water to the outer sections of the installation. Sometimes storms and currents dredged odours more alien from the depths of the sea and sent them spiralling down through the air shafts, slipping through the scrubbers to remind the men that the world they occupied was foreign to the inhabitants of distant Earth, and would kill them if it could.
They went outside but rarely, preferring the familiar surroundings of the immense installation to the oppressive spaciousness of the sullen landscape. There was nothing to look at except the dark waves that broke on the black sand beach, nothing to remind them of the world they had once known. That was fortunate. Such memories were more painful than any degree of toil.
The water was cold and home to tiny, disgusting creatures that bit. Sometimes a few of the men chose to go fishing, but only for physical and not spiritual nourishment. Inside the facility it was warm and dry. The wind was no more than distant, discordant music, to be ignored. Sometimes it was necessary to go outside. These excursions were invariably brief, and attended to with as much haste as possible, moving from one refuge to another as quickly as possible.
In contrast, the figure picking through the sheltered mountain of debris was doing so with deliberation and care. Ripley paced the surface of the immense pit, her eyes fixed on its irregular surface. The original excavation had been filled in with discarded, broken equipment. She wrestled her way past monumental components, punctured storage tanks, worn-out drill bits the size of small trucks, brightly coloured vines of old wiring and corroded tubes.
Wind whipped around outside and she clutched at the neck of the suit Clemens had found for her. The ruined mechanical landscape had seemed endless and the cold was still penetrating her muscles, slowing her and interfering with her perceptions.
Not to the extent, however, that she failed to see the expensive silvery filaments protruding from a smaller pimple of recently discarded trash. Kneeling, she began tearing at the refuse, heaving ruined equipment and bags of garbage aside to reveal…
Bishop.
Or, more accurately, what was left of him. The android components were scattered amid the rest of the junk and she had to dig and sort for another hour before she was certain she’d salvaged absolutely everything that might be of use.
She made a preliminary attempt to correctly position the parts. Not only was the result unencouraging, it was downright pitiful. Most of the face and lower jaw was missing, crushed beyond recognition in the EEV or lost somewhere within the mass of trash outside. Portions of the neck, left shoulder, and back had somehow survived intact. In addition there were sensitive related components which had spilled or been torn free from the exterior shell.
Grim-faced and alone, she began carefully packing them into the sack she’d brought with her.
That’s when the arm coiled around her neck and the hands grabbed hard at her shoulders. Another hand appeared, clutching feverishly between her legs, fondling roughly. A man materialized in front of her. He was grinning, but there was no humour in his expression.
With a cry she broke free of the arms restraining her. The startled prisoner just gaped as her fist landed in his face and her foot between his thighs. As he crumpled, prisoner Junior appeared and wrapped his thick arms around her, lifting her off the ground to the encouraging sniggers of his companions, throwing her spread-eagled across a corroded pipe. The other men closed in, their body odour obliterating the smell of salt, their eyes glittering.
‘Knock it off.’
Gregor turned, his gaze narrowing as he isolated a silhouette, close. Dillon.
Gregor forced a grin. ‘Jump in the saddle, man. You wanna go first?’
Dillon’s voice was low, ominous. ‘I said knock it off.’
With his weight resting
on the gasping Ripley, Junior snarled back over his shoulder. ‘Hey, what’s it to you, man?’
‘It’s wrong.’
‘Fuck you.’
Dillon moved then, deceptively fast. The two men in back went down hard. Junior whirled and brought a huge fist around like a scythe, only to have his opponent weave, gut-punch him, and snatch up a metal bar. Junior staggered and tried to dodge, but the bar connected with the side of his skull. The second blow was harder, and he dropped like a stone.
The others cowered and Dillon whacked them again, just to keep them thinking. Then he turned to Ripley, his expression solemn.
‘You okay?’
She straightened, still breathing hard. ‘Yeah. Nothing hurt but my feelings.’
‘Take off,’ he said to her. He indicated his fellow prisoners. ‘I’ve got to reeducate some of the brothers. We’re gonna discuss some matters of the spirit.’
She nodded, hefted her bag of Bishop, and started back. As she passed the men on the ground Gregor glanced up at her. She punched him squarely in the mouth. Feeling better, she resumed her course.
VII
There is night, which is dark. There is the obdurate emptiness of dreams, whose lights are only imaginary. Beyond all is the void, illuminated however faintly by a million trillion nuclear furnaces.
True darkness, the utter absence of light, the place where a stray photon is as impotent as an atomic anomaly, lies only deep within the earth. ‘In caverns measureless to man’ as the old stanza rhythmically declaims. Or in those cracks and crevices man creates in order to extract the wealth of planets.
A tiny but in and of itself impressive portion of one corner of Fiorina was honeycombed with such excavations, intersecting and crisscrossing like the components of a vast unseen puzzle, their overall pattern discernible only in the records the miners had left behind.
Boggs held his wax-impregnated torch high, waved it around as Rains lit a candle. To such men the darkness was nothing to be feared. It was merely an absence of light. It was also warm within the tunnels, almost oppressively warm.
Rains placed the long-burning taper on the floor, next to the wall. Behind them a line of identical flames stretched off into the distance, delineating the trail they’d taken and the route back to the occupied portion of the complex.
Golic sat down, resting his back against a door set in the solid rock. There was a sign on the door, battered and worn by machinery and time.
TOXIC WASTE DISPOSAL
THIS SPACE HERMETICALLY SEALED
ACCESS TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL PROHIBITED
That was just fine with the explorers. They had no wish to be suitably authorized.
Rains had unfolded the chart at his feet and crouched, studying the lines and shafts by the light of his torch. The map was no simple matter of vertical and horizontal lines. There were old shafts and comparatively recent ones, fill-ins and reopenings, angle cuts and reduced diameter accessways to accommodate specialized machinery only. Not to mention the thousands of intersecting air ducts. Different colours signified different things.
Numerous earlier expeditions had given the prisoners some idea of what to expect, but there was always the chance that each new team would run into something unexpected. A scrambled byte in the storage units could shift an abyssal shaft ten metres out of line, or into a different tunnel. The chart was a tentative guide at best. So they advanced carefully, putting their faith in their own senses and not in dated printouts.
Boggs leaned close. ‘How many?’ Though he spoke softly, his voice still echoed down the smooth-walled passage.
Rains checked the chart against his portable datapack. ‘This makes a hundred and eighty-six.’
His companion grunted. ‘I say we call it a vacation and start back.’
‘No can do.’ Rains gestured at the seemingly endless length of tunnel that lay before them. ‘We’ve at least got to check out the rest of this stretch or Dillon’ll pound us.’
‘What he don’t know won’t irritate him. I won’t tell. How about you, Golic?’ The third member of the trio was digging through his backpack. Hearing his name he looked up, frowned, and uttered a low, vaguely inquisitive sound. ‘That’s what I thought.’
Golic approached an ancient cigarette machine. Kicking the lock off, he yanked open the door and began loading packs of preserved narcosticks into his duffel. Naturally he chewed as he worked.
On the surface the noise would have been far less noticeable, but in the restricted surroundings and total silence of the tunnel the third man’s rumbling maceration resounded like a large, improperly lubricated piece of machinery. Boggs grumbled.
‘Can’t you chew with your mouth closed? Or better yet, swallow that crap you’re eating whole? I’m trying to figure how big this compartment is so we can decide if it’s legit toxic storage or some miner’s private stock, and I can’t think with all the goddamn noise you’re making.’
Rains rustled the chart disapprovingly. ‘Just because we’re away from the others doesn’t mean we should ignore the precepts. You’re not supposed to swear.’
Boggs’s mouth tightened. ‘Sorry.’ He stared daggers at Golic, who quite naturally ignored them. Finally he gave up and rose to squint down the tunnel. ‘We’ve circled this entire section once. That’s all anyone could ask. How many candles, again?’ There was no reply from the floor. ‘Rains, how many candles?’
His companion wasn’t listening. Instead he was scratching himself furiously, an intense nervous reaction that had nothing whatsoever to do with the bugs, who didn’t live in the shafts anyway. It was so uncharacteristic, so atypical, that it even managed the daunting task of drawing Golic’s attention away from his food. Boggs found himself staring fixedly back the way they’d come.
One by one, the candles which traced their path back to the surface were going out.
‘What the shit is doing that?’
Golic pursed his lips, wiping food crumbs from his mouth with the back of one hand. ‘You’re not supposed to swear.’
‘Shut up.’ Not fear—there was nothing to fear in the tunnels—but concern had crept into Boggs’s voice. ‘It’s okay to say “shit.” It’s not against God.’
‘How do you know?’ Golic muttered with almost childlike curiosity.
‘Because I asked him the last time we talked and he said it was okay. Now shut up.’
‘Dillon’ll scream if we don’t come back with anything,’ Golic pointed out. The mystery was making him positively voluble. Boggs decided he preferred it when the other man did nothing but eat.
‘Let him scream.’ He waited while Rains lit another torch. Reluctantly, Golic repacked his remaining food and rose. All three stared back down the tunnel, back the way they’d come. Whatever was snuffing out the candles remained invisible.
‘Must be a breeze from one of the vent shafts. Backwash from the nearest circulating unit. Or maybe a storm on the surface. You know what those sudden downdraughts can do. Damn! If all the candles go out, how’re we going to know where we are?’
‘We’ve still got the chart.’ Rains fingered the sturdy printout.
‘You want to rely on that to get us back?’
‘Hey, I didn’t say that. It’s just that we’re not lost. Only inconvenienced.’
‘Well, I don’t wanna be inconvenienced, and I don’t wanna be stuck down here any longer than absolutely necessary.’
‘Neither do I.’ Rains sighed resignedly. ‘You know what that means. Somebody will have to go back and relight ’em.’
‘Unless you just want to call it quits now?’ Boggs asked hopefully.
Rains managed a grin. ‘Huh-huh. We finish this tunnel, then we can go back.’
‘Have it your way.’ Boggs crossed his arms and succeeded in projecting the air of a man intending to go nowhere fast. ‘It’s your call; you get to do the work.’
‘Fair enough. Guess I’m nominated.’
Boggs gestured at Golic. ‘Give him your torch.’
The other man was reluctant. ‘That just leaves us here with the one.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’ Boggs waved the light around to illustrate his point. ‘And we have the rest of the candles. Besides, Rains’ll be right back. Won’t you, buddy?’
‘Quick as I can. Shouldn’t take too long.’
‘Right, then.’
Reluctantly, Golic passed the taller man his light. Together, he and Boggs watched as their companion moved off up the line of candles, pausing to relight each one as he came to it. Each rested where it had been set on the floor. There was nothing to indicate what had extinguished them.
Just a sudden downdraught, Rains told himself. Had to be. Boggs’s voice reverberated down the passageway, faint with increasing distance.
‘Hey, Rains, watch your step!’ They’d marked the couple of vertical shafts they’d passed, but still, if the other man rushed himself in the darkness, disaster was never very far away.
Rains appreciated the caution. You live in close quarters with a very few people for a comparatively long time, you learn to rely on one another. Not that Boggs had reason to worry. Rains advanced with admirable care.
Ahead of him another candle went out and he frowned. There was no hint of a breeze, nothing to suggest the presence of the hypothesized downdraught. What else could be extinguishing the tapers? Very few living things were known to spend much time in the tunnels. There was a kind of primitive large insect that was big enough to knock over a candle, but why a whole row? He shook his head dolefully though there was no one near to observe the gesture. The insect wouldn’t move this fast.
Then what?
The tapers he’d reignited burned reassuringly behind him. He straightened. There were no mystical forces at work here. Raising the torch, he aimed it up the tunnel, saw nothing.
Kneeling, he relit the next candle and started towards the next in line. As he did so the light of his torch bounced off the walls, off smooth-cut rock. Off something angular and massive.