Danny sat there watching Rick and Karen make up to each other, feeling extremely uncomfortable. In his opinion, this kind of stuff did not advance the effort to get back to Nanigen. He needed a doctor as soon as possible. He glanced down at his arm and almost threw up. The grubs seemed fatter than ever.
In a little while, Rick was able to stand. They began to walk. They went into the bamboo forest, where stalks of bamboo soared like redwoods. They made their way through it, and broke out onto a stunning view. They were facing the Great Boulder on the lip of Tantalus Crater, and looking down into the crater.
The crater extended beneath them, a basin stuffed with rain forest, rimmed by bare ground and patches of stunted, wind-wracked trees. All around the crater, peaks of the Ko‘olau Pali fingered into boiling clouds, and the wind pummeled the scene. At the foot of the Great Boulder lay Tantalus Base.
The base would have been virtually unnoticeable to a person of normal size. There was an aircraft runway about three feet long. At least Karen felt pretty sure it was a runway: she could see a dashed line and taxi markings. Beside the runway stood a cluster of miniature buildings made of concrete. The largest building seemed to be an aircraft hangar. The other buildings were smaller, and looked like bomb shelters. The buildings were embedded partway in the soil and were lightly covered with dead leaves and plant debris, so they blended into the micro-terrain.
Karen stopped. “Wow, Rick!” she said. “We made it!”
He turned his head and smiled, and looked at her. She rubbed his hands, his arms, to get the circulation going.
“Your hands feel warmer. You’re getting better I think.”
They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves, because they didn’t know what to expect from the inhabitants of the base, Nanigen employees who might well be following orders from Vin Drake. They decided to watch the base for a time, looking for activity. They lay down under a mamaki plant. The Great Boulder loomed above like a mountain.
There was no activity on the runway. The place seemed deserted.
The runway was strewn with stones, dried mud, plant debris. A cone of dirt had risen next to it, an ant nest. An ant trail extended across the runway and headed downslope toward the bottom of the crater.
“It doesn’t look good,” Danny Minot whispered.
Karen’s heart fell. If no micro-humans lived here, then there wouldn’t be any shuttle to Nanigen, and no chance of help. This place hadn’t been tended to; it had been overrun by ants.
But there might be airplanes.
They walked slowly down the hillside and went into the hangar. There were tie-downs for aircraft, but no planes. While Rick sat and rested with Danny, Karen explored the base. She found a room that she guessed had once held mechanical parts and supplies, but it had been emptied out, leaving bent metal pins and bolts protruding from the walls and floor. She went into another room. Empty. The next room contained living quarters. It had been flooded by rain and was half-filled with mud.
There was no sign of human life anywhere. Tantalus Base had been abandoned. There was no sign of a road to Honolulu, either. No shuttle truck. No airplanes. Only the trade wind endlessly worrying the ground and whistling through the empty halls of Tantalus.
They emerged from the complex and sat by the runway looking down into the crater. They could see the city, too, through the gap in the crater’s wall, and beyond the city the Pacific Ocean ran off into blue. Nanigen was miles away from this crater, and there was no way home.
Danny Minot lay in the rubble, holding his arm. He began to cry. His sobs echoed off the hangar and drifted into a sky shot with gray rolling clouds and wind.
Karen watched an ant hurry across the runway, carrying a seed. She turned her gaze up to the Great Boulder, and then past it to the horizon line and the clouds. Something moved against the sky near the boulder, and she suddenly realized it was the figure of a man.
Chapter 39
Tantalus Base
31 October, 5:00 p.m.
H ow long the man had been standing there Karen couldn’t say—possibly he had been watching them the entire time they’d explored the base. She saw his hair flash in the breeze, long, white. He wore armor of some kind, but she couldn’t tell what it was made of. His eyes looked hard and cold, even at that distance. He lifted up an object, and she saw it was a gas rifle.
“Down!” Karen shouted, grabbing Rick.
He fired. There was a hiss, and glint of steel ripped past them and buried itself in the ground somewhere beyond, and exploded with a thump. Karen began crawling, dragging Rick behind her, but there was nowhere to hide. Another sniper…Drake had found them…
The man’s voice came to them over the wind. “That was a warning. Stand up and show me your hands. If you have weapons, drop them in front of you.”
They obeyed him. Karen held up the blowgun so he could see it, and dropped it on the ground. She placed the container of darts next to it.
“Put your hands on your head.”
Karen obeyed, and called out, “We have two injured. We need help.”
He didn’t answer. He moved toward them, keeping the gun raised. As he got closer, they saw that he was an older man, with a weather-beaten face bronzed by the sun, and deep-set blue eyes. He clearly had muscles, and he looked physically powerful. How old was he? He could have been anywhere from fifty to eighty, it seemed. His armor had been carved from the hard parts of a beetle. A scar ran across his forehead and wandered down his neck and ran under the breastplate of his armor. He studied them, searching their faces.
The man’s eyes darted away, flicking around. Karen realized he was keeping alert for predators. He gestured at them with the gun. “Your names.”
Karen gave their names and added, “Who are you?”
He ignored that.
“My arm—” Danny began, and fell silent as the man pointed the gun at his face.
Karen added, “We need medical treatment.”
The man just stared. He poked at the blowgun with his foot. “Interesting,” he said. He picked it up, then examined a dart, and sniffed it. “Poisoned?” he said.
She nodded.
“Where are your guns?”
“We lost our only gun. A bird attack—”
“Vin Drake sent you,” he interrupted. “Why?”
Karen began to explain, “No, Drake tried to kill us—”
The man cut her off. “This is one of Drake’s tricks.”
Karen said, “You’ll have to take our word.”
“Where did you come from?”
“The arboretum.”
“And you made it up here? That’s impossible.”
Karen walked up to him and pushed his gun aside. “Give me back my weapon.”
The man’s eyes widened, maybe in surprise, maybe in anger. After a pause, he pointed his gun at the ground, and broke open the firing chamber. A smile creased his face, exposing white teeth. “Somehow,” he said, “you impress me.” He handed her back the blowgun. “Welcome to Tantalus. My name is Ben Rourke. I’m the inventor of the tensor generator.”
Karen eyed him. “How did you end up here?”
“Castaway by chance, a hermit by choice,” he replied.
Ben Rourke lived in a warren of caves near the Great Boulder, about six feet above Tantalus Base. He led them upslope toward the Great Boulder; and he helped Rick along. The cave entrance was a hole in the soil at the foot of the boulder, with a tunnel that ran horizontally inward, like the entrance to a mine. They advanced through the tunnel, while the light grew dim. After some distance they arrived at a door carved from wood. It was shut and latched with an iron hook. Rourke opened the door, and they went through it into a pitch-black tunnel. He threw a switch, and a line of LED lights came on in the ceiling of the tunnel, trending inward. “Welcome to Rourke’s Redoubt,” he said. “As I call my little place.” He closed the door behind them and slammed home an iron pin. “It’s to keep out centipedes.” He walked ahead, with a lanky, tough s
tride.
The tunnel went around a bend and sloped downward, plunging deeper into the mountain. It turned left and right, and they passed side tunnels going off into darkness. “This is an empty rat warren,” Rourke explained. “Drake’s people deemed the rats a threat to the humans at Tantalus Base, so they poisoned the rats and closed off the nest. I reopened the tunnels and moved in.” At intervals on the ceiling, LED lights cast a blue glow.
“Where does the power come from?” Karen asked him.
“Solar panel. Up in a tree. The wire runs down here to a battery pack. It took me three weeks to drag the damn batteries over from Tantalus Base even with the help of a hexapod walker. Vin Drake has no idea what treasures his people left behind when they abandoned Tantalus. He thinks I’m dead.”
“What’s your relationship with Drake?” Karen asked him.
“Hatred.”
“What happened?”
“All in good time.”
Ben Rourke was a mysterious character. How had he ended up here? How had he avoided death from the bends?
Rick tested his limbs, rubbed his arms. He was covered with bruises, he could see them in the light. At least he could move. He wondered how much time he, Karen, and Danny had before the bends started to affect them, make them sick? How long had they been in the micro-world? It seemed like ages, but actually it had been only three days, he reminded himself. The symptoms start on day three or day four.
They arrived at another heavy wooden door. The doors functioned like the bulkhead doors in a ship, sealing off parts of the warren from other parts. Rourke barred the door behind them, explaining that you couldn’t be too careful with some of the predators that lived around here. He threw a switch, and the lights came on, revealing a hall with a high ceiling, stocked with furniture, shelves of books, laboratory equipment, and supplies of all kinds. It was a living area.
“Home sweet home,” he said. He began taking off his armor, hanging it in a storage space. Side passages went off into additional rooms, and they could see electronic equipment in one room.
There was a desk with a computer sitting on it, several chairs made of twigs and woven grass. A circular fireplace hearth occupied the center of the hall. A rack near the fireplace held strips of smoked insect meat. Rourke had also laid in supplies of dried fruit, edible seeds, and chunks of dry taro root.
Rourke’s bed was the shell of a candlenut packed with soft, shredded bark. A tall pile of cut-up candlenuts sat heaped against one wall. Ben Rourke carried several of the oily pieces of nutmeat to the fireplace, and he lit the fire using a gas torch. The fire caught, throwing light and warmth through the room, and the smoke went up through a hole in the ceiling.
Ben Rourke seemed to be a jack of all trades, clearly a brilliant man who knew a lot about many things. He seemed happy in his fortress; he seemed to have found a life he enjoyed. They wondered about his story. How had he ended up here? Why did he hate Vin Drake? What had Drake done to him? Karen and Rick both glanced at their hands and arms, and noticed the bruises there. It would be a good idea to persuade Rourke they needed to leave for Nanigen soon; or to learn from him how he had beaten the bends.
The first order of business, however, was for Rourke to examine Rick and Danny and tend to their medical needs. Rourke started with Rick. He rubbed Rick’s limbs, stared into his eyes, and asked questions. He got out a small chest and opened it; it was a medical chest, rather like the kind that sea captains took with them on long voyages. The chest contained a number of items, including forceps, scissors, sterile compresses, a very long scalpel, a bone saw, a bottle of iodine, and a bottle of Jack Daniels. Rourke examined the puncture wound under Rick’s arm, where the wasp’s stinger had gone in. He doused the wound with iodine, which made Rick jump; and he said it would heal. He added, “You guys need a bath.”
“We’ve been in the micro-world for three days,” Karen said.
“Three days,” Rourke said thoughtfully. “Actually you’ve been here longer than that. I suppose you’ve noticed the time compression?”
“What do you mean?” Rick asked.
“Time moves faster for us here. Your bodies are running faster; your hearts are beating like a hummingbird’s.”
“We had to sleep during the day,” Karen remarked.
“Of course you did. And your time is running out. The bends are already affecting you; I can see it. The crash will come soon. The bruising, the pain in the joints, the nosebleed, the end.”
Karen asked Rourke, “How did you avoid the bends?”
“I didn’t. I damn near died from them. But I found a way to make it through; maybe some people can survive them.”
“What did you do?” Rick asked.
“Right now we have to deal with this fellow’s arm.” He turned his attention to Danny.
Danny had seated himself in a chair near the fire. The chair was made of wicker woven from fern hairs and tiny twigs, yet it was massive and quite comfortable. He stretched out in it, cradling his arm. The sleeve had torn off completely, and the larvae under the skin made the arm bulge in lumps. Ben Rourke studied Danny’s arm, poking it gently. “It was likely a parasitic wasp that egged you. She mistook your arm for a caterpillar.”
“Am I going to die?”
“Of course.” Danny opened his mouth with a frightened look, but Rourke added, “ Whenis the only question. If you don’t want to die right now, that arm has to come off.” He drew out the long scalpel and handed Danny the bottle of Jack Daniels. “Anesthetic. Start drinking while I boil the tools.”
“No.”
“If you don’t get that arm off, those grubs could migrate.”
“To where?”
“Your brain.” Rourke held up the bone saw and touched its teeth.
Danny leaped out of the chair and stepped backward, holding the bottle in front of him like a club. “Stay away from me!”
“Don’t spill that whiskey. I don’t have much left.”
“You’re not a doctor!” He took a glug from the bottle. “I want a real doctor!” He wiped his mouth, and coughed.
“You’re not going anywhere right now, Mr. Minot,” Rourke said, replacing his instruments in the chest. “Night is coming. At night, the wise stay underground.”
Chapter 40
Rourke’s Redoubt
31 October, 7:00 p.m.
B en Rourke loaded more chunks of candlenuts on the fire, and swung a metal cauldron over it. The cauldron was suspended on a hook and a hinged iron bar rooted in the floor—pieces of metal he’d scavenged from Tantalus Base. The water, a few teaspoons’ worth, came to a boil almost instantly. Rourke dropped a smaller bucket into the cauldron, and carried a portion of the hot water over to a wooden tub, which sat in a niche in the wall.
It was a bathtub in a private space. He added some cold water to the hot water, taking it from a gravity-fed water tank.
Rick soaked in the water. The venom was still in his system, making him feel stiff, his limbs unresponsive, and he felt a little dizzy, too. There was a lump of soap, crude and soft. It was medieval soap: Rourke had likely made it from ashes and the fat of some insect. It felt great to wash his body after crawling around for three days in the muck. But he couldn’t help noticing the dark shadows that had spread over his arms and on his lower legs. He tried to tell himself these were bruises he’d gotten from his encounter with the wasp. He felt strange, but it had to be the venom.
Danny refused a bath, afraid that the water might somehow stimulate the grubs. He sat in the chair, drinking from Rourke’s bottle of whiskey and staring at the fire.
Karen luxuriated next in the tub of hot water. It felt so incredible to get clean. She washed her clothes and hung them to dry, then wrapped herself in a robe that Rourke loaned her, and sat by the fire, feeling refreshed. Rick wore a pair of Rourke’s pants and a work shirt. The clothes were rough-hewn, but they were comfortable and clean.
Rourke, meanwhile, cooked dinner for his guests. He got a pot of water boilin
g, and added smoked insect meat, shreds of root vegetable, some chunks of leafy greens, and salt. The stew cooked rapidly, filling the hall with a savory smell. Rourke’s insect-and-vegetable stew really was delicious, and it brought their strength back fast. They sat in Rourke’s strange chairs near the fire. And they heard his story.
Ben Rourke had been a physicist and systems design engineer specializing in the most powerful magnetic fields. He had come across the data from the old Army experiments in Huntsville, and had decided to explore the method of shrinking matter in a tensor field. He had solved some of the seemingly impossible equations of turbulence in these fields. Vin Drake had learned of Rourke’s work, and had hired him as one of the founding engineers at Nanigen. Working with other Nanigen engineers, he had built the tensor generator out of modified but standard industrial equipment, purchased largely in Asia. Drake had raised huge amounts of capital from the Davros Consortium; Drake had a magic touch, a way of making it all seem exciting and sure to lead to enormous wealth.
Ben Rourke had volunteered himself as the first human to be passed through the tensor generator. He had suspected it would be dangerous, and felt that he should be the first to take the risk. Living organisms were complicated and fragile. Animals that had been shrunk in the generator had frequently died, usually by exsanguination—by bleeding to death. “Drake discounted the risk,” Rourke said. “He claimed there would be no problem.”
Rourke had only stayed in a shrunken size for a few hours before he was returned to normal size. As more people were shrunk in the generator, and as they remained small for longer periods of time, they began feeling ill, bruising easily, experiencing mysterious bleeding. They were quickly returned to normal size and examined. The studies showed unexplained degradation of the blood’s ability to form clots.
Meanwhile, Nanigen, swimming in investor money, raced ahead with exploration of the micro-world. The company decided to concentrate on exploring Tantalus Crater first. The crater had extremely high biodiversity, and offered riches of chemistry and biological compounds. Tantalus Base was constructed in modules. “We built each module as a scale model, at a 1:10 ratio, and the modules were then shrunk in the generator to make them the right size for micro-humans.” Stocked with supplies and equipment, the modules were placed at Tantalus Crater.