Adrift

by W. Michael Gear

  Beside the square and featureless walls of the smelter, an aircar waited at the edge of the landing pad. The top was up as a sunshade, and as she approached, Fenn Bogarten, her structural engineer, stepped out. Fenn’s expression betrayed his anger, pain, and worry, but a question, almost a hope, lay behind his brown eyes. As if just the sight of her meant things might turn out all right.

  “Any news, Fenn?” she asked as she tossed her bag in the back and slipped into the passenger seat.

  “No, ma’am.” Fenn told her as he climbed behind the wheel and spun up the fans. “People heard a loud bang. Like one of the timbers just snapped. Then the roof let go with a crackling as more timbers broke. It all came down so fast it compressed the air, blew Jones, Master, and O’Leary off their feet and a couple of meters down hole. They’re pretty banged up, but outside of bruises and having to clean out the seats of their overalls, they’re feeling damned lucky.”

  Kalico pursed her lips, knotted her fists as Bogarten shot them along the new haul road—as far as it went—and then lifted them over the forest on a line paralleling the tram.

  As they cleared the last of the trees, the works at the tunnel mouth came into view. The waste dump and spoils to one side created a flat next to where the portal entered the foot of the mountain. She could see the ditch where the water-make trickled out of the tunnel mouth to glitter in the hot light. A couple of aircars, two haulers, and a line of ore cars waited where the rails curved onto the dump. Even as they approached, people were emerging from the mine to shade their eyes at her approach.

  Bogarten settled them next to one of the other aircars, letting the fans spin down. Even as they did, Kalico was out, nodding in response to the subdued greetings from her people.

  In front, Aurobindo Ghosh and Desch Ituri stood, their overalls stained and smudged; haggard looks rode both of their faces. Behind them, Talovich had a stricken expression—the sort a tortured saint might wear on the way to the Inquisition. But then, Kalico could imagine his guilt. Talovich was her best structural engineer. He was the one who’d designed and overseen the installation of the shoring.

  “What have we got?” she demanded. “Tell me that there is word from Stana and Alia. Maybe tapping. Some hint that they’re alive.”

  “Supervisor,” Ghosh told her, hands spread, “About fifteen minutes ago, we felt another collapse. Shook the whole mountain. Came from deep inside. I immediately ordered everyone out of the tunnel. Not that I had to say it twice.”

  Ituri wiped at his eyes as he said, “Can’t tell if it was void migration or more goaf deeper in the mine.”

  “What are the chances that our friends are alive back there?”

  Ghosh pointed at the trickle of murky yellow water now running in the ricket. “The water-make is down to almost nothing. Supervisor, if they are alive, if they are holed up, depending upon the amount of space they have . . .” He swallowed hard. “You know how much water was running out of that head rock. Given the little that we have running now, it means the collapse is acting like a dam, backing it up.”

  Ituri couldn’t meet her eyes. “Most likely, if they’re still back there, they’ll drown before they suffocate, ma’am.”

  Fists knotted at her sides, eyes squinted, Kalico snapped. “Well, what are you standing here for? Those are our people in there. Why isn’t the mucking machine from the Number Two already down here? That’s all loose cave-in. Let’s get the tunnel mucked out and . . .”

  Ghosh—also unable to look her in the eyes—was shaking his head. “Can’t, ma’am. We’re talking tons of rockfall. The more we pull out, the larger the void migration. As it is, the falling rock is loose, so it has more volume. Eventually it will slow, the loose stuff taking up the space. The bigger the hole we make, the more room the rock has to fall as the void is enlarged. Eventually it will bring down the whole mountain. What they call a glory hole. You get that, right?”

  But to just do nothing? Those were two of her people in there. A yawning emptiness began to grow in her gut.

  Ituri added, “And the tremors we’re feeling? If they are not void migration, they’re the tunnel collapsing that last couple of meters to the working face.”

  “I don’t care! I want every effort made. Even if we have to go in and haul that rock out by hand.”

  She started for the portal. All her imagination could do was fix itself on the women trapped behind all those thousands of metric tons of rock. On their desperation, entombed as they were in the silent midnight black. Terrified as cold water rose up around their legs. Kalico could feel their fear, the knowledge that they were going to die.

  She was just inside the portal when the ground shook, a muffled thump sounding from the rock around her. She felt it—hard through her feet—terrifying in its own promise of finality.

  Kalico stopped, staring at the darkness. “Where are the lights?”

  “Shorted out, ma’am,” Ituri called from behind her shoulder. “If we’re going in, we need head lights and . . . .”

  She jumped as another thump sounded ominously from above. Not two heartbeats later, a loud bang, sort of like a muffled lightning strike, preceded a rumble. The floor twitched under her as a puff of air blew past.

  “That’s on this side,” Talovich whispered. “Supervisor, please, I beg you, don’t go in there. We don’t want to lose you, too.”

  Kalico staggered sideways, braced herself on the portal shoring. “I see. It’s just . . . Just . . .”

  “Yeah,” Ghosh told her. “We know. We’re as heartbroken as you are.”

  “What did I do wrong?”

  Talovich stepped up. “Nothing, ma’am. The math was right, the design was right. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. That’s my shoring in there.”

  “We double-checked everything,” Ghosh declared. “Wasn’t anything about Talovich’s design or construction that wasn’t top notch. I’m in charge, if there’s a fault, it’s on my head.”

  “Mine, too,” Ituri told her. “We knew it was tricky once we got into the shocked zone.” He glanced away. “We were the ones who told you we could do it.”

  “No,” she rubbed her tired eyes, staring back into the tunnel’s stygian maw. “I’m the one who sent people into that mess. Hell, it scared me that last time I was in there. It’s my responsibility for not pulling the plug. I was just . . .” She couldn’t allow herself to finish the sentence out loud. I was too damned cocky. I wanted a quick fix to the drainage in the Number One.

  First the Maritime Unit, and now this? What the hell else could go wrong?

  As if to feed on her gloom, another tremor rumbled through the mountain.

  39

  “I need some help here,” Yoshimura’s voice echoed up the stairs as Michaela braced herself against the communications room door. The room, little more than a closet on the second level, was too tight for two. Inside, Dik Dharman sat with one hand on the desk. To Michaela’s disgust, the photonic com and the hyperlink, along with the other fancy communications equipment, had been set to the side to make a place for the primitive radio. Radio? A person couldn’t even see who he or she was talking to. This was the twenty-second century, for God’s sake. How primitive could it get?

  Yeah? Welcome to Donovan, my ass!

  Michaela had come up to learn if Dik had overheard any communications between Port Authority and Corporate Mine about the cave-in. Not that it was any of her concern, but she did have a vested interest in knowing what preoccupied Supervisor Aguila. Disaster at Corporate Mine meant the woman wasn’t conjuring up terrible things to do to the Maritime Unit.

  “Yosh?” she called, hearing the man’s frantic steps as he pounded up the stairway. Coming into sight, she could see his terrified expression, and in his arms lay Toni. The three-year-old boy was rigid as a board, his arms and legs straight and stiff, his face a strained rictus. The wide-eyed stare in the boy’s paraly
zed face looked almost monstrous. The kid was breathing hard, each breath forced, and a sheen of perspiration coated his face.

  “Yosh? What happened?”

  “Don’t know,” the man almost choked. “Mikoru asked me to get him ready for breakfast. We let him sleep late. I found him like this. I need Anna up here now! She has the medical implant.”

  Michaela leaned into the communications room, grabbed for the mic, and keyed it. “Attention. Anna, we have a medical emergency on level two. Please report to the clinic. Repeat: Medical emergency.”

  “Come on.” Michaela led the way down the hall that separated the labs and to the small clinic located just below the landing pad. She opened the door to the room, and Yosh pushed past her to lay the comatose Toni on the examining table. The little boy looked catatonic, with his eyes fixed and mouth pulled out of shape.

  “My, God.” Michaela placed a hand to her throat. “What did this?”

  “No clue.” Yosh was massaging the boy’s hand. “Come on, Toni. Wake up. Toni! Do you hear me? Toni, it’s Yosh. Hey, son. Come back! Toni! Please, son. Wake up!”

  Michaela stepped back, watching as the man massaged his son’s body, stripped off the boy’s shirt and began rubbing his sweaty chest.

  “Weird.” Yosh lifted his hands, studied them as he rubbed his thumb and fingers together. “It’s like . . . greasy. Slick.”

  Michaela started to lean forward, only to have Anna Gabarron burst in, demanding, “What’s wrong?”

  Yosh cried, “Something’s wrong with Toni. He’s like, paralyzed.”

  She elbowed her way in. “Give me room.”

  Yosh and Michaela stepped back, watched as Gabarron reached down the scope from its holder, used it to peer into the boy’s eyes. “Pupils react,” she noted, “Toni? Can you hear me?”

  She snapped her fingers next to the boy’s ears, used the little rubber hammer to tap his elbows and knees. Got nothing. Pulled down the stethoscope, listened. “Heart’s racing.” Taking down the monitor, she ran it over the boy’s body. “Hundred and five beats a minute, blood pressure is one-sixty over one hundred. Not good.”

  Then she began pressing on his board-stiff body, carefully watching the boy’s face for any reaction. In the end, she pinched the child’s arm, hard. Toni did nothing.

  Gabarron, too, rubbed her fingers together, made a face. “Did he get into something? Is this some chemical? A lubricant that he might have found somewhere?”

  “As far as I know,” Yosh told her, “Toni hasn’t been off the first level. There’s cleaning supplies in the closet, but I know that Iso keeps them locked. And then there’s the kitchen. But even then, none of the cleansers would leave an oily feel. And Bill’s cooking oils wouldn’t cause this kind of a paralysis.”

  Gabarron stepped to the sink, washed her hands. Dried them. Rubbed her fingers and scowled as she washed them again with a more stringent soap. Again she dried them. “This stuff doesn’t wash off. Until I know what I’m dealing with, I don’t know what to give him besides an antihistamine to ameliorate any allergic reaction. If that’s what’s causing this paralysis.”

  Pounding steps in the hallway preceded Mikoru’s arrival. The woman’s panic was plain to see, her lips trembling. Anxiously she pushed past Michaela, crowding forward as she demanded, “Toni? What’s wrong with my boy?”

  Michaela eased out into the hallway just as Kevina Schwantz thundered up the stairs, asking, “What’s the emergency. Jaim said it was a boy. Tell me it’s not Felix.”

  “It’s Toni. He got into something. Some oily chemical. It’s all over his body.”

  “He did it this morning?”

  “Yosh says he found him in bed after he slept late. Must have got into it last night. But do me a favor. Go down and check Iso’s storeroom. She keeps it locked. Maybe it was left open by mistake.”

  Kevina whirled, thundering back down the stairs as others started up. She was calling, “It’s Toni. He’s poisoned. Some kind of reaction.”

  Michaela hurried to the head of the stairs, stopping Kel, Jaim, and Casey as they climbed. “Go back, everyone. Have breakfast. There’s no sense filling the hallway and making things worse. Yes, it’s Toni. I’ll be down with a report as soon as there’s anything to know. Casey, I need you to check with Tomaya and the rest of the children. See if they know about Toni getting into any kind of oil.”

  “Got, it!” Casey said, wheeling on the stairs and heading back down.

  “You need anything,” Kel told her, “you call.”

  “Thanks. Anna will probably figure it out. She’s giving him antihistamines. But I need the rest of you to go eat. We’ve got a busy day. We’re taking the subs out under the new protocol.”

  She gave them a “go back” wave before retreating to the clinic door. Inside, Yosh and Mikoru bent over the table. Mikoru clung to the boy’s hand while Yosh stroked his son’s hair.

  Gabarron was bent over the med com, having inserted a blood sample, and was studying the analysis as it came up on the screen.

  Michaela slipped past the parents, crowding into the space beside Gabarron to ask, “What have you got?”

  “The kid’s immune system is running on overdrive. T-cells, antibodies, histamine, white blood cell count, C reactive protein, it’s all elevated. The kicker is that the machine hasn’t identified any known bacterium, virus, spirochete, or protozoan, but it does register a high percentage of proteins that it can’t tag. What I’m not getting is any signature for the usual poisons.” She gave the machine a pat. “But, Michaela, this beast only has limited diagnostic functions for specific toxins. If it’s not in the machine’s catalog, it can’t tag it. For sophisticated analyses, you need a hospital-grade unit.”

  “We don’t have one.”

  Gabarron cocked an eyebrow, glanced back at the boy. “I’m pretty limited myself. I’m trained to render initial aid, evaluate and stabilize the patient, administer pharma, deal with immediate trauma, and give out bandages. Anything beyond that, I’m supposed to load the patient up and ship them off to The Corporation’s closest hospital for advanced care.”

  “Which is Port Authority.”

  “What do we do? Call them up, ask them to send their A-7? Try and get Toni aboard as they hover like the Supervisor did when she got here? Or send a seatruck to the beach pad and transfer the boy there?”

  “They’ll want money, Anna. Those miserable SDRs they’re so fond of.” This would have been a wonderful time to remind Gabarron that she’d been the one to piss on the Supervisor’s shoe and incite the rest to sever relations.

  Instead, Michaela told her, “Get on the radio. Have Dik patch you through to Raya Turnienko at the PA hospital. Use the hospital frequency and only the hospital frequency. Then, when you get Turnienko, agree on a specific frequency for our use so we can talk privately. We don’t want Aguila listening in. See if Raya has seen anything like this, and if she knows how to treat it. Maybe it’s something simple that we can handle here, on our own.”

  “Call now!” Mikoru snapped. “Whatever it takes, we are going to save my son’s life.”

  “I don’t care what we have to do,” Yosh insisted, panic and desperation in his dark eyes. “Mikoru and I have already lost three to miscarriage and stillbirth. Three. My son is going to live!”

  If passion could heal, Yosh certainly had it nailed.

  “We’ll do everything,” Michaela told them. Glanced at Gabarron. “Let’s go talk to PA.”

  As she led the way out into the hall, Michaela wondered what this was ultimately going to cost them. How did you pay people for saving other people’s lives? How did anyone put a price on that?

  Problem was, after a fifteen-minute conversation where Anna Gabarron read off the diagnosis from the printout, Raya Turnienko told them, “I’m sorry, Director. We have nothing similar to your patient’s symptoms in our experience. I don�
�t know what we could do if you sent him here. But, if I could make a suggestion? You have labs on the Pod. Test the boy for Donovanian TriNA.”

  “And if he tests positive?” Gabarron asked.

  “You’ll just have to monitor him, keep him hydrated. So far we have no way of purging the blood and tissues once they are infected. We’re all off the map when it comes to this stuff.”

  40

  Dek came awake, staring up at the seeming eternity of his familiar bedroom ceiling. He lay flat on his back in his great bed in Taglioni Tower high in Transluna. The intricately laid layers of crystalline glass gave the illusion of staring up through a cascade of prismatic light. That it seemed to rise to a translucent infinity was an illusion created by refraction through elongated bars of cut glass; the effect was mesmerizing. With a mental command through his implants, he could change the colors, shift the patterns into an endless display of hues and visual spectacle.

  His giant antigrav bed dominated the middle of the room where it rose from the shimmering interactive floor with its programmable imaging. Gossamer sheets, like a caress of air, fell away as he moved. On the bed beside him, the woman stirred, groaned, and reached up to flip thick red hair back from her face. Klea Morena. Dek started, wondering if this was real . . . and then, through the fading drug haze, he remembered.

  He grinned, flopping back onto the shimmering sheets as colors of red, blue, and gold ran through the hollow-fiber’s sheen. And Dek didn’t need to see the stains on the sheets to remind him; they’d had quite the night.

  Amazing what a good dose of eros would do for a man and woman.

  Even at the thought a tingle formed at the root of his penis.

  “What am I . . . ?” Klea’s horrified green eyes fixed on Dek’s, a moment of shock registering before a weary acceptance blanked her expression. “Good morning, Dek.” The words were bright, springy. The woman was an actress after all. Didn’t matter that she was one of the hottest women on holovid, or that her current dramatic adventure show was streamed by billions, here she was in Dek’s bed.