The giant wall screen switched to side-by-side mode. On the left was The General’s silhouetted figure. On the right was the invading fleet of The Scourge.
“Who is with me?” asked The General, softly.
Hundreds of seats pushed back as corporate bigwigs and planetary dignitaries from most of the GaFTA-member planets stood up and applauded.
I felt sick to my stomach. Groupthink is scary.
My phone hopped back on my waistband and started tugging on my shirt, but this time I ignored it.
Queen Sherrhi and Tomáso had shifted position when everyone stood up, so I now had a chance to see the far end of the room. Over Poly’s shoulder I saw a familiar looking server standing by a steel door.
It was Rosalind.
I ran in her direction, but was twenty paces away when she went through the door.
I could hear Poly’s footsteps behind me and was glad she hadn’t shouted “Jack!” to get me to stop.
I’d been jerked so many different ways in the last few hours that I no longer knew what to believe about anything or anyone. My personal b.s. detector was clicking like a Geiger counter at Chernobyl.
I had plenty of questions and the only thing I was sure of was that Rosalind would have some of the answers.
Chapter 31
“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no fibs.”
— Oliver Goldsmith
Rosalind increased her lead while my phone opened the thick steel door. I used the time to pull my backpack tool bag out of its laundry bag disguise, slide my arms through its straps, and mount it securely between my shoulders. I expected Poly to catch me and try to stop me or come with me, but Tomáso had seen her and blocked her progress with several sub-trunks in order to talk.
I would have been okay with Poly coming along, but confronting Rosalind—again—felt personal. I wanted a one-on-one showdown with her this time.
When the lock clicked, I pulled on the door and sprinted down the long narrow corridor before me. The wire-enclosed light fixtures overhead looked like they were original equipment from nearly a century ago. I was reasonably sure some of the bulbs in them were that old, too, from the wan, tired light they gave.
I held my phone out in front of me. I knew it would be a lot better than me at picking up subtle clues about where Rosalind had gone. There weren’t any choices for a hundred feet—just uninterrupted corridor—but then my path opened up into a wide room filled with water pipes big enough to fill a Dauushan swimming pool in minutes. Twisted pipes with large brass wheel valves blocked my way to the left and right. Unless I wanted to practice being a contortionist, I wasn’t going in either of those directions. Across from me, thirty feet away, was a continuation of the first corridor, blocked by a steel mesh door.
“That way,” said my phone, reshaping its mutacase into an arrow.
It took only a few seconds to unlock the steel mesh door. I could have done it myself, without my mutakey, if I’d had a paper clip. I sprinted to try to catch up to Rosalind.
This corridor, like the other, had concrete walls, floor, and ceiling. I was probably inside the base of the dam by now and felt like a nineteenth century Egyptologist exploring the possibly booby trapped passageways of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. I remembered reading that the entire structure of Hoover Dam had been assembled like putting together Lego blocks, with inspection tunnels and miles of cold water pipes to chill the curing concrete running inside it. I’m not claustrophobic, but the thought of so many tons of artificial rock above me was still disconcerting.
“How are you tracking her?” I asked my phone.
“Olfactory cues,” it answered.
“Perfume?”
“No. Sweat.”
Okay then. I guess if my phone thought it was easy I’d follow its lead.
“Jack?”
“What?” I replied between deep breaths from running. Unlike Tolkien’s dwarves, I was not a natural born sprinter.
“There was something added to the food at the buffet.”
I puffed a few more times before I answered. The echoes from my rapid footfalls made it hard to hear.
“I—thought—you—said—there—wasn’t.”
“New chemical signatures downloaded from Galnet expanded the list of substances available for detection.”
“What—did—you—find?”
“High concentrations of Vonaduzit, a recently developed psychotropic drug that affects most sentient species.”
“How—does—it—work?”
“It increases suggestibility and compliance in test subjects, according to a 2028 study by ManDest Pharmatek.”
“ManDest?”
“Formerly Manifest Destiny Drug and Device Company.”
“Owned-by…” I said, as if I didn’t know.
“…EUA Corporation.”
The unanimous support for The General’s plan made more sense now. The groupthink was chemically induced.
We came even with a concrete staircase leading up to the left.
“Please stop running,” said my phone.
It didn’t have to ask me twice—I needed a break.
“Now hold your breath.”
I inhaled and complied.
“Up the stairs,” said my phone.
I’d already started as it was speaking. I could hear Rosalind’s footsteps echoing in the stairwell without electronic amplification.
“Rosalind,” I shouted. “Don’t run. I just want to talk.”
“Hah!” said an alto voice above me.
I think she has trust issues. I was closing on her when I got to the fourth landing. I didn’t need my phone to tell me Rosalind was running down an intersecting corridor off the stairway. If my sense of direction was working properly, she was heading back toward the downstream side of the dam.
This section of corridor was darker than the ones I’d traveled earlier. Only every third or fourth overhead bulb was functioning. Illumination levels didn’t matter, though. I was gaining on her. Ahead, Rosalind started weaving left and right, as if trying to evade me, even though I wasn’t quite that close yet. Ten or fifteen feet separated us.
Then I knew I had her. The corridor ahead was a dead end. A small, steel-barred window let in the twinkling stars and lights from the Arizona-side power station below. She kept running and weaving. I went even faster, eager to catch up and talk.
If I hadn’t been completely focused on Rosalind, I would have noticed the yellow hazard warning signs on the walls, but I didn’t—and that was my downfall. I bobbed when Rosalind had weaved and fell into a narrow, vertical inspection shaft leading down several stories to the base of the dam. I wasn’t fast enough to extend my arms and stop my fall while my head and shoulders were still outside the hole, but I was able to brake with my tennis shoes and my backpack tool bag by arching my body after only descending a dozen feet.
Why did I have to fall for Rosalind in the first place?
I shifted so I was wedged in place with my shoulders and feet extended. I wasn’t in immediate danger of testing the Terran gravitational constant so long as my muscles didn’t cramp and Rosalind didn’t throw fifty pound weights down the shaft.
A shadow blocked the scant light coming from above. I looked up. It was Rosalind, kneeling at the edge of the opening.
“Are you okay, Jack?” she asked.
“Come to gloat?”
“No. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine. Thanks for asking. Have a nice day.”
I tried sliding my back and butt cheeks up a few inches, adjusting my feet to retain the elevation. If I kept at it, I could be out of the hole in an hour or so—less, if my phone could get some rope out of my backpack tool bag, climb out, and anchor it to something in the corri
dor.
Hey, where was my phone?
“You should be able to work your way out in an hour or two,” said Rosalind.
“I thought you were trying to kill me.”
“Not at all. I don’t want to kill you.”
Odd. She almost sounded sincere.
“What about when Sally tossed me off the bridge?” I said.
“That was just to keep you busy and out of the way,” said Rosalind. “I didn’t want you interfering while I was busy back in town.”
“Sending a pair of spider-drones to cut the bungee cord sure felt like you were trying to kill me.”
“What spider-drones?”
“The ones that almost sent me plunging to my death.”
“I didn’t send them.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I didn’t!” said Rosalind. Her tone made me think she wasn’t lying, but I knew I was easy for her to fool.
Her denials were starting to piss me off.
“Why not?” I shouted up the shaft. “Wasn’t I just another mark for you to manipulate? A rube for you to screw and abandon?”
“You don’t understand!” she said. “My brother dropped me on Orish with nothing. I had to come back with a fortune in gems to pass the initiation.”
She’d said something about that at the K Street Bar, but I hadn’t really processed it.
“I didn’t want you hurt back then, either,” Rosalind continued. “I told you to stay by the van.”
“Uhhh…”
“And you were the one who abandoned me just outside the vault.”
True, but…
I kept inching upward as she talked.
“I knew I was manipulating you,” she said, “but you were so kind and innocent and trusting. I felt awful, except for the sex part. That was kind of nice…”
Was she still trying to manipulate me? I didn’t know one way or the other, but thought any compliment out of her mouth was probably an attempt to blow smoke.
“… in an enthusiastic, inexperienced way.”
Okay, now I was sure I wasn’t sure of what I knew.
“You—forgot—me—the—minute—I—left,” I said, clenching my teeth between my words as I forced my body upward.
“Trust me, Jack. I didn’t,” she said, softly. “I’ll always remember you.”
“Trust you?” I laughed. “I’m not a gullible kid now.”
I paused on my climb. The shaft narrowed as I went up, making it easier to move.
“Be that way,” said Rosalind. Her voice hardened and her inflection changed. “You were chasing me. What did you want to talk about?”
I pushed up a few more inches along the smooth concrete sides of the shaft. I needed to buy myself time to think about my response. It was still a long way to the top.
“I wanted to know about EUA’s end game for the kidnapped CEOs. We discovered the suggestibility drug in their food. What do you hope to gain?”
“I remember you fondly, Jack,” said Rosalind, “but don’t think that means I’m going to share all the details of my plans, my brother’s plans or EUA’s plans.”
“So you and your brother both do work for EUA,” I said. “It’s nice to have that confirmed.”
“I didn’t say that,” she said. “Do your own leg work with your leggy redhead.”
“Is it the cross-licensing?” I asked. “No court will uphold those contracts once we show they were signed while the signatories were drugged.”
“You’d have better luck fishing with worms,” said Rosalind. It sounded like she was smiling.
I wasn’t, however. I looked up and saw that I had at least six more feet to go.
“Ransom?” I mused, while I climbed. “The corporations would pay—and would keep their mouths shut about it to protect their stock prices.”
“You go on thinking it’s about money and markets,” she said. “That will be productive.”
I didn’t really think this was about financial gain. EUA Corporation already had plenty of assets. The more I thought about it, the more it felt like yet another repeat of EUA’s primary theme—establishing Terran hegemony over the rest of the galaxy. Somehow this was going to turn on blackmailing the Dauushans into producing the weapons and starships EUA needed for a war of conquest.
While I was thinking and climbing, I hadn’t been speaking. That was a bad move.
“Sounds like you’re all out of questions,” said Rosalind. “It’s time for me to go.”
I heard her knees crack as I sensed her rising. Footsteps echoed down to me as Rosalind skirted the hole I was stuck in.
Then a Rosalind-sized weight fell on top of me and knocked me at least ten feet farther down the shaft.
No, scratch that. Not a Rosalind-sized weight—Rosalind.
It took all my muscles to prevent our combined mass from falling. Her panic-driven gyrations on top of my chest made climbing nearly impossible. I could see my phone and its glowing screen in the dimness at the top of the shaft.
“Somebody tied my shoelaces together,” said Rosalind.
“Not somebody, something,” I corrected. “And stop squirming!”
Above me, my phone flashed a “thumbs up” Like symbol.
“Sorry about that,” it said.
“You’re sorry!” said Rosalind.
“Any chance you could call for help?” I asked.
“No signal, sorry.”
What happened to my phone’s previously evident initiative? My back muscles were starting to cramp.
“There’s an observation window in the face of the dam at the far end of the corridor,” I said. “Maybe you can get signal there?”
My phone didn’t reply, but I did hear the sound of its pseudopods scurrying away.
“Can you try to support your own weight?” I asked Rosalind.
She was sort of sitting in my lap, but our bodies were leaning back at more than forty-five degree angles inside the shaft. My legs and back were the only things keeping both of us from falling. It was more than one kind of pain for her to be so close to me again.
“Maybe it would be easier if I could separate my feet,” she said. “Why did I have to wear lace up shoes today?”
“They sort of go with your server’s outfit,” I said.
“Shut up, Jack.”
“Keep trying.”
Rosalind had to wriggle her butt to angle her feet properly, which might have been pleasant in different circumstances if she wasn’t a manipulative con artist. The first time she tried to climb she moved up a few inches, but her shoulders were squashing my head against the shaft’s wall, so I shouted for her to stop. It came out as something muffled and inarticulate, but Rosalind understood what I meant.
“What now?” she said.
“Maybe you could rotate ninety degrees?”
“May you could try lifting us both.”
I braced myself and was able to make a small amount of vertical progress, but it was a strain.
“I’ll try turning face down,” said Rosalind. “Then I can use my hands and arms to push, not my shoulders.”
“O-kay,” I said, fighting a muscle spasm.
I heard footsteps far away in the corridor above us, heavier than the pitter-patter of tiny pseudopods. Rosalind turned her body on top of mine until she could put her hands on either side of my head. Then she put her linked shoes on the opposite wall and arched her back to try to climb up backwards. It felt wonderful to only be supporting my own weight again. Rosalind started climbing rapidly. I followed, keeping pace a few inches below her.
Three feet from the top, Rosalind lost purchase with one of her hands and fell on top of me. I saw it happening and braced myself so we didn’t lose a
ny altitude. Then I saw the face that went with the new footsteps. It was Poly.
“Well, doesn’t that look cozy,” she said. I was glad her tone sounded more amused than unhappy.
I didn’t say anything—it was hard to talk with Rosalind’s full weight pressing on my chest. Still, my eyes pleaded with Poly, telling her this wasn’t what it looked like. To be fair, I was so tired and befuddled by the circumstances that I didn’t know what it did look like or whether or not I had any reason for feeling guilty.
“Thanks for getting here so fast,” said my phone from the other side of the opening.
“I wouldn’t have missed this for all the stars in the galaxy,” said Poly.
“Help me up,” said Rosalind, extending her hand.
Poly grabbed it and pulled Rosalind out.
“So you’re the one who gave my partner the shaft,” said Poly.
I wasn’t used to hearing her speak in a monotone.
“Shut up,” said Rosalind. She dropped on her stomach, flat on the cool concrete, waiting for her muscles to unkink.
“A little help down here, please.”
“Sure,” said Poly. “I’m always glad to get you out of a hole.”
Poly knelt by the side of the shaft, near Rosalind, and reached down to grab my arms. We locked wrists, and with her help I made it the last few feet. The two of us embraced, still kneeling. Poly’s hands rubbed my sore back under my backpack tool bag. When I looked up from our hug, I saw Rosalind running down the corridor away from us. Poly tried to freeze her with the server’s personal sweetener, but those devices are notoriously inaccurate except at close range.
“Thanks,” I said. I wasn’t moving very fast.
“You’re welcome,” said Poly. “Are you okay? Anything hurt?”
“I’m fine. The only things hurting are my pride and my back muscles, but I’ll live.”
Xenotech What Happens: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 3) Page 25