Wolff groaned.
"Now you must tell her," observed Beam, with a smug little grin.
"Sometimes," said Wolff, but without heat, "I hate that you're sentient. Okay, Yehudit, I'll explain in a minute, but can you see under the fold?"
Yehudit tried. "It's really thick," she admitted. "Lots of lines converge there. This looks like one of those diagrams they use in physics to explain the warp drive. Or gravity. The lines undulate, and make hills and valleys. When I say it's a fold, I mean, it looks like, um," and she grasped mentally for an example. "Like lava when it flows over something and makes a pocket? Or the area below the crest of a wave."
"Can you imagine what it would look like down there if the fold went away?"
Yehudit looked askance. "What good would that do?"
"Just try it. And brace yourself."
She shrugged, and looked down again. "Imagine what it would look like if the fold went away," she murmured. "Oh!" She looked at her grandfather, pleased. "It –"
The ground underneath them shook, hard. The ship rolled back and forth as if it were sitting in rough seas. Then everything settled down, and von Barronov looked at Wolff.
"About a four, I'd say."
"About that, yeah," replied Wolff.
"What just happened?" gasped Yehudit.
"You set off an earthquake. No big deal, not much of a temblor really, but here's a warning, similar to the one you gave yourself back at that first dig: Anything you can imagine in the Mesh – all those lines and hills and valleys you see – you can make real." Wolff looked her in the eye. "Got that?"
"Yes, but . . . "
"No buts! You have to be careful. Your mother set off a water geyser on al-Saḥra', once, without thinking about it, and caused us no end of grief trying to cover up how. Now, you say that dense fold went away?"
"Yes."
"What's underneath it? Beam, can you see it yet? I still don't see anything."
Beam shook his head. "It is massively shielded, at least from me. I can, of course, deduce its existence because I can see the area that's shielded, but that's not the same thing."
"It's a black sphere," said Yehudit.
"Ah," said Beam, looking troubled. "Could you, very carefully and slowly of course, bring it to the surface?"
"Wait," said Wolff. "What do you think it might be, Beam?"
"It is difficult to say, but I am afraid it may be a portent of the Darkness." Beam sighed. "Which I imagine I'm not supposed to discuss in front of Yehudit, as well."
Wolff looked at von Barronov; the other man shrugged.
"Yehudit," said Wolff, "for right now, let's just say that there are some truly bad people coming this way, and they're not supposed to be here for a very long time yet – according to the Guardians," he added, telling only a little white lie; the Guardians, in general, didn't have a clue, but Beam, of course, wasn't your everyday Guardian. "What Beam is saying is, this may be something that belongs to them."
Yehudit blinked. "Like, what, a beacon or something? I mean, it's like the size of a bowling ball. And why would it be two miles down? And what do you mean, 'bad people'?"
"I surmise it is a sensor array, possibly with a beacon incorporated," said Beam. "As to how it got here, the people in question are very poor manipulators of the Mesh."
"You think they rotated it here and missed," guessed Wolff.
"Yes, effectively so," agreed Beam. "They probably meant for it to go into orbit, or end up on the ground, but their aim was off, as was their matching velocity, and it took a divot two miles down."
"Which means they can rotate stuff, which you said two hundred years ago, they couldn't," said von Barronov.
"I assure you," said Beam, stiffly, "if they could rotate ships, they'd be here already, hang the damage it would do to spacetime and the Mesh. As we have previously discussed."
"But why here?" pressed Wolff.
"Again, rest assured," said Beam, "that for all their other technological failings, they are an elder race and they can sniff out sentience just as easily as the Originators could. Not that the Originators did, of course, but their instrumentation and procedures were logically correct, and would have found sentient life if it had existed within their search area."
"And you know this because . . . "
"Well, obviously by testing it against the other Guardian races, and against yourselves and the Xzl5!vt, but how ever do you think I discovered the Darkness were coming in the first place?"
"Point," conceded Wolff.
"Look," said Yehudit, getting annoyed. "Am I bringing this thing up, or not? You can explain the rest of this to me later, over a nice, soothing glass of whiskey or three, back at the house."
"Yes," said Wolff. "Slowly, like the nice sentient computer in a human suit said."
Yehudit glared at him. "You will be explaining all of this to me later, Grumpaw," she seethed.
"I will," he said. "Not that you're going to like it any better after we explain it."
Yehudit huffed, then stared down at the deck and "saw" the device again. "Okay, imagine it rising to the surface slowly, filling in the tunnel behind it," she murmured. "Give me about four hours."
"About 9 inches per second," agreed von Barronov. "That sounds gentle enough."
"Wait," said Wolff. "Go lie down in one of the bunks. You don't need to be looking right at it to see it. And you won't want to be sitting there for four hours, no matter how comfortable that seat is. Your mother woke up with a stiff neck every time she fell asleep in hers."
"Good idea." She unbuckled, realized she needed to use the head, anyway, and walked back to the living area. A few minutes after she entered the head, she emerged, grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, and climbed into the upper bunk across from the mini-galley.
"Okay," she called, "I'm working the problem."
"We'll occupy ourselves somehow," responded Wolff, smiling thinly.
"This is kind of amazing . . . if other people can do this, it will revolutionize archaeology . . . "
"Yeah," murmured Wolff, privately, to von Barronov and Beam. "On that? Don't bet."
Chapter 3
The Siren
"Take off, fast!" shouted the redhead, as she slapped the door control and the hatch came down. The pilot gave her a wave, and the contragravity ambulance raised ground.
"Damn it damn it damn it damn it," she seethed, trying to get the ambulance's instrumentation to interface with the sensors already placed on scene by the responding EMTs. "Damn it . . . Got it! Now, let's see what the oh holy hell and God in his glorious heaven Don damn it pour on the coal this guy is coding!"
"Going as fast as we can without causing a ruckus," she heard in her headset. "I can try to take a shortcut, but you're up, Dev."
"Cause a ruckus, take a shortcut, whatever, but I'll see if I can keep him alive," said Dr. Devorah Wolff Fox, M.D., paramedic and (in her spare time) trauma surgeon. She described it that way because she preferred working as a paramedic to being stuck in a trauma ER all day long. And when you worked in South Side City of Chicago, State of Chicago, where the idiotic residents continued to vote Progressive after nearly two centuries of proof positive evidence progressivism didn't work, you had plenty of business either way. "Elise, I need a unit of O positive, stat. Then we'll shock him if his BP flatlines. And get ready for some rough-and-ready suturing; I've got to do something to close up that knife wound. What the hell did he get stabbed with, a machete?"
"Wouldn't surprise me," replied her new EMT, Ellissa (Elise to her friends and co-workers, because she hated the whole "-issa" thing) Carter. Elise had been with them for about three weeks, after their previous trainee had quit the service after three months.
(In fairness, the previous trainee had suffered a nervous breakdown after a particularly nasty mass murder scene response, and the service, rather than simply terminate him, charitably had allowed him to resign, and even offered to find him a new position within the organization – but
not as a first responder.)
"Here, one unit, synthetic O pos." Elise handed over the bag, and Devorah hooked it up.
"BP is still dropping but that seems to be helping," she noted. "Let me have those fast sutures." Elise turned from the defib unit she was readying, and handed her a couple of the Israeli-style hook-and-loop adhesive sutures EMTs had been using for ages. Devorah slapped them on either side of the huge knife wound and savagely twisted them together. The leakage slowed down, but didn't stop entirely.
"Some of that coagulate, next," she directed. Elise already had it out, and handed it to her. She sprinkled it liberally onto and into the still-open part of the wound, which continued to ooze a bit and then finally stopped bleeding altogether. "Made from fucking crab shells," she murmured. "A miracle, is what it is."
"We're not done," said Elise, her eyes on the monitors. "His BP is still dropping, just not as fast. Internal bleeding?"
Devorah rolled her eyes. "Probably. Let me see." She looked at the full-body scan monitor, which wasn't entirely helpful, but that was more to hide the fact that she was really concentrating on what the patient's insides looked like. "Mmm," she said, thoughtfully. There's a big leak right . . . there, nicked the superior lobe of the left lung, wow, just missed the heart, but major leakage . . . let's see if I can slow that down . . . there.
"BP is stabilizing, not sure why," said Elise. "I don't think he'll need defib."
"I think he might have a hole in his left lung, hard to say, but maybe it's not as bad as it appears," replied Devorah. "Hopefully he can make it to the hospital this way. Maybe get another unit of O positive ready."
"Cops said it was a big Bowie-style hunting knife," said Donald French, up in the cockpit. "At any rate, that's what the dude was carrying when they killed him. How anyone can stand there and stab a guy with six heavily-armed and armored cops standing around him trying to defuse the situation is beyond me."
"It's beyond anything anyone still on Earth can say about it," grunted Devorah. "He's off to meet his Maker, who will probably sigh, pull the ejection lever, and dump him straight to Hell."
"This is a crazy goddamn town," said Elise, still watching the monitors.
"That's why none of us actually live in it." Devorah knew a lot of people in the Chicago Fire and Police Departments, and so far as she was aware, none of them lived in the State of Chicago. Most of them lived over the line in Indiana or Illinois. A few in Wisconsin. She herself commuted daily from her home on the family estate, in Southern Indiana; admittedly, most folks who did what she did couldn't afford to live so far away.
"Roof helipad is jammed, an ambulance crapped out right in the middle of it," came from Don. "They're offering wave-off to MacNeil."
"What? No, fuck that," shouted Devorah, "MacNeil is Level II. This guy needs Level I. What about Mt. Sinai?"
"Overloaded. He'd die if we took him there."
Devorah thought for a split second. "Don, land us at Stroger."
"I told you—"
"No, not on the roof, on that old pad across the street."
"Dev, hell no, you want us all to die?"
"Not gonna die. Tell them to get security and orderlies out there stat, we're coming in hot."
"They're going to poop purple with pink polka dots, sweetie."
"Too fucking bad. They should learn to eat real food. Take us down, NOW!" Devorah whirled to Elise. "Storage locker three. Open it up."
Elise looked confused. "But you said—"
"I know, I said never open Storage 3. Open it!"
The girl did, followed by a double-take at its contents. "Dev – I don't know—"
"Give me that M4!"
"The wha—"
"The one on top. Make sure it has a magazine installed. You know, the thing that goes in the bottom and looks mean. Or just hand me the gun and a mag for it."
Elise pulled out the black rifle, gingerly, and handed it to Devorah, who noted the presence of a seated magazine. "Do you know how to use a pistol?" she asked the EMT.
"Sorta. I had the mandatory familiarization course in high school, but I haven't shot since." She looked a little scared. "They didn't mention this in the job description. Or in the onboarding training."
"Forgot, you're from Fort Wayne. Yeah. Well. Stupid, because of idiotic Chicago politics, but that's what they do; we generally clue the new recruits in about a month after they're hired, unless something like this happens. Well, damn poor time to have to pick it up again, but there's an S&W 9mm in there, too. Grab it. Make sure it has a mag. Don, you got your M4 up front?"
"Of course. M9, too." The pilot – a USMC combat veteran – sounded hurt. "Not that I'd like to have to use it, but some days just don't work out that way."
"Okay, here's how it's going to go down. We'll land, we'll pop the hatch, and you and I, Elise, will stand at the back. Don will get out the front and cover from that direction, though it's fenced-off that way; if we get into more than we can handle, he'll come to the back and help. When the orderlies get here, it's their job to pull out the gurney. I'm assuming their security will be worse than useless. Oh, and here," she grabbed a folded blanket from the cabinet next to her, "cover him up with this. It's Kevlar. It probably won't entirely prevent penetration, but every little bit helps."
They shook the blanket out over the patient and fastened it down.
"Landing hot, brace for it," warned Don.
It was bumpy. But they were down.
Devorah looked at Elise. "Got your helmet?"
"Yes." The girl picked it up and put it on.
"This won't be fun, but it's part of the job. So here we go!" Devorah palmed the door control and the hatch started up.
Bullets started impacting the armored side of the ambulance.
"Motherfuckers," growled Devorah.
"I see the orderlies and their security, they're in a ground ambulance," reported Don. "About thirty seconds."
"Okay, we'll—"
A helmeted head came around the hatch coaming, followed by a hand holding a big pistol. Devorah didn't even wait for the owner to say anything (which probably would have been something on the order of "Hands up and gimme all your drugs if you wanna live"), but immediately shot him right through the helmet visor. He dropped instantly.
Cheap plastic visor. Ours are aliglass, thought Devorah, distractedly.
"Ambulance was hit, they popped a tire, but it's a run-flat," reported Don. "Fifteen seconds."
Bullets were still impacting the side of the ambulance.
Devorah decided she'd had enough. "Stay here!" she yelled at Elise, and jumped out of the vehicle, spinning as she did so as to face the direction the fire was coming from. She opened up immediately with the M4 on burst, sending three rounds at a time downrange, and hitting several gang members in the process. "I need more range time," she muttered, swinging the carbine around and looking for more targets.
Just then, the ground ambulance rolled up. The orderlies, in full armor, jumped out and ran to get the gurney, as the security guards pointed rifles in various directions and tried to look badass. One of them swung around to point at Devorah, almost immediately recognized the error of his ways, and swung hastily away as he saw, through her visor, the thunderous look on the redhead's face.
"Sweep me again, you son of a bitch, and I'll have your fucking badge," she yelled at him. "If I don't shoot you dead first."
Elise fired a shot past her head. Thankfully, Devorah's helmet prevented her from being deafened. She glanced that direction and saw a gang banger drop his rifle and fall to the ground, howling in pain and grabbing at his upper left leg, which was pumping blood out the entry hole.
"Nice," she said, ignoring the fact she'd told the girl to stay in the ambulance. "You might be a little rusty, but you hit what you're shooting at. In this case, apparently the femoral artery."
Elise was trembling.
"What's wrong?"
"He was—he was aiming right at you, Devorah." Now Elise looked like
she was going to be sick.
"Ah. Never actually shot anyone before?"
"No." The girl turned suddenly, flipped up her visor just in time, and threw up on the ground. Luckily, they hadn't eaten for a while.
"Oh, honey," murmured Devorah, keeping an eye out toward the danger direction, and clinically observing the banger Elise had shot bleed out on the tarmac. "I'm so sorry you had to do that."
She wasn't entirely sure if she meant "shoot him," "throw up," or some combination of both.
The orderlies had the gurney out and were transferring it. One of them approached Devorah. "Nice shooting, ma'am," he said, pulling out a comm. "Could you please authorize the transfer papers, and then all y'all can fly on out of here."
Devorah pulled out her own comm, activated it, scrolled down to the paperwork, scrutinized it to make sure it was correct, and touched her comm to the orderly's, which chimed to acknowledge receipt. "Thanks, Douglas," she said, reading the man's name tag.
"You're welcome, Dr. Fox. Sorry about the problem on the roof. I think you're absolutely right, that fellow needs to be here, not at MacNeil, but damn, it's surely a bad day when anyone has to use this pad. You be careful out there, ma'am." He touched two fingers to his helmet in salute, and hurried back to the ground ambulance, which took off at speed for the trauma entrance as soon as he was inside.
"Aren't they going to do anything about, y'know," said Elise, weakly, but back on her feet, pointing at the bodies lying on the ground, including the one she'd shot. He'd finally settled down and stopped moving, thank goodness.
"No," said Devorah, shortly. "Unless the gangs have their own medics, they're on their own. The cops will come and clean this up, I imagine, if they get here before the gangs' own enforcers do."
"Meantime," said Don, looking around the back of the ambulance, "why don't we get the hell out of Dodge and go get some lunch?"
Elise looked like she was going to throw up again, but managed not to, with a wan smile.
"Just another day in the Chicago Fire Department's Flying EMS," said Devorah, with a not-unsympathetic grin. "Let's button up and fly out of here."
The Lion in Paradise Page 19