Black Level
12.DEC.2284
“TO THE … WELL, screw it. To the Builders!”
Greg lifted his glass, that ever-present grin on his face somehow even wider.
Marcus echoed the motion, white wine sloshing in his own cup as he raised it. Marcus wore no smile. In fact, Tania had never seen him smile, and it wasn’t for a lack of humor. If anything he was an even bigger goof than Greg, and that was saying something.
“To the Builders,” Tania said with a shrug. Why not? Like them or not, understand them or not, the unseen alien race had certainly had their impact on the world. More so, she thought, than any human ever had, except perhaps through acts largely mythical. She clinked her glass with theirs and looked to Zane Platz and Tim. Tim joined the toast without a word, though she could see the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
Zane, on the other hand, didn’t move. His eyes were set on the drink in front of him, the remnants of dinner beside it. He seemed deep in thought, as he had that entire day. The anniversary of the Belém Elevator’s arrival, so close upon the date marking his famous brother’s death, had really thrown the man off his usual affable manner.
“Zane?” she asked. “You okay?”
Her question took a second to register. Zane jerked slightly, as if he’d been asleep. He turned to her and shrugged, a movement so slight she almost missed it. “Feeling a bit under the weather,” he said.
“You look pale.”
“Do I? I feel it.”
“It’s Greg’s cooking,” Marcus said, deadpan as always. “Only the strong survive.”
Greg laughed maniacally. “Fools!” he screeched, like some cartoon villain. “It was poison all along. Soon this station shall be mine!”
Tim laughed and Tania found herself smiling as well. She’d been on Black Level for two weeks, with little to do except enjoy the silly antics of Greg and Marcus. If anything, the time in near isolation aboard the partial space station had only served to increase their penchant for joking around. In two short weeks Tania had laughed more than in the entire year before.
Zane’s expression didn’t change. He let out a small burp and put a hand over his abdomen. “Ugh …”
Tania put a hand on his shoulder. “You should rest.”
“Or purge that slop Greg prepared,” Marcus said. “Seriously, what did you make that with? Roach droppings?”
“Do roaches poop?” Greg asked.
“Never thought about it until now.”
“It’s a good question.”
“Do they even have an anus? I wonder.”
“We’ll discuss it later,” Greg whispered out the corner of his mouth. “Seconds, anyone?”
Zane groaned again. He clutched at his stomach with one hand now, while his other hand covered his eyes. His chair made a chirp sound as he pushed back from the table with sudden violence.
“My God, Zane,” Tania said, taking his forearm to steady him.
Tim stood to help.
Suddenly Zane doubled over. His head hit the edge of the table with a deep thud that rattled the place settings. Tania tried to hold on to him, but he fell limp and weighed too much for her to overcome.
Zane hit the floor with a grunt and went still.
“What’s wrong with him?” Tania asked. Panic welled inside her, and her gaze went to his neck, looking for the rash. Is our Elevator defective, too? The possibility that what happened in Darwin could also happen here had never occurred to her until now.
But she saw nothing. Nothing except the collapsed, unconscious form of Zane Platz.
Only thirty people lived on Black Level. The station was not equipped for more, being just a single ring that had detached from the much larger Anchor Station. It had no kitchen, no recreation areas, and no medical facility.
The skeleton crew improvised as best they could, Tania thought, but it wasn’t enough to help Zane Platz.
At least he’s alive, she thought. Unconscious, but a pulse was there and he seemed to be breathing well enough.
She’d spent the night at his side, in the cabin she herself used to occupy. Other than the gentle rise and fall of his chest, he hadn’t moved since the collapse at dinner.
A number of video calls were made between Black Level and Melville Station. One of only two medical doctors in the colony did all she could to diagnose the patient remotely, but in the end the process proved too slow and inefficient.
“Move him here,” the doctor, Loraine Brooks, said. She’d been a private physician on board Platz Station before the crew fled. Her specialty was children, but like all doctors she had basic training in other areas. “He seems stable enough, and a climber car can’t be much worse than that cabin in terms of space and air quality.”
“We’ll come back right away, then,” Tania said.
Tim, listening from the doorway, said, “I’ll get some people to help move him.”
She nodded at him and took some comfort in the half smile he offered her. While she fretted and worried he’d taken control of the situation, she reminded herself to thank him for that. His presence, not just here but within the colony in general, was a wonderful piece of luck, she now knew.
In the hallway behind him, she heard Marcus. “The climber will be ready in a few minutes.”
“Good,” Tim said. Their voices receded down the hall.
The doctor on the screen gave Tania a sympathetic look. “See you soon, Dr. Sharma.”
“Thank you, Dr. Brooks.” Tania switched off the terminal.
Her old cabin, which appeared to be untouched since she left it almost a year ago, held little sentimental value. All her fond memories, nights spent sipping wine with Natalie over a board game or puzzle, were hidden behind the last days aboard Anchor Station. When she looked about the room now, she saw only a prison cell.
Tania shuddered, then turned her focus to Zane.
“Please stay with us,” she whispered. “You’ve been my rock since we arrived. The only person I can talk to anymore.” It should have been Skyler in that role. She hated herself for thinking that. She hated herself more for the lame words coming out of her. She’d heard better dialogue in those horrible old romance films the sensory chamber loved to recommend.
The truth was, when Tania looked at Zane she was always trying to find some hint of Neil hiding in there. She had no doubt that if he were here now, the colony would not be fiddling around with pouring concrete and fixing up the nearby dormitory. They would be laser focused on the Builders. Exploring the site in the forest, establishing plans and backup plans for every contingency of what may come next. Already the colony had squandered half the time before the next event, assuming the schedule she’d calculated was accurate.
Everything, she realized, that Skyler had been urging they do. He’d asked a hundred times for permission to find the other missing towers. Permission he didn’t need. Especially now that he had an aircraft.
And a lover, a voice in her head said. She pushed that visual aside with a cold shiver. “Will you ever forgive me?” she muttered, holding back tears. Another bad line from a silly romance. Tania felt like slapping herself.
Footsteps outside. “In here,” Tim was saying. “Tania, step aside. We’re ready to go.”
She gave Zane’s hand a squeeze and pushed away from the bed to let the others in. They’d brought a folding table to use as a stretcher, but it wouldn’t fit through the door. So the group lifted Zane in the blanket upon which he lay, carefully moved him through the narrow entry, and laid him on the table. Someone, not Tania, had the presence of mind to fetch a pillow to put under his head. Such a simple gesture, she thought, and yet more useful and caring than any of my stupid words.
The climber slipped out of Black Level’s meager docking bay ten minutes later and tugged on the cord until it reached a cruising speed of 1,500 kilometers per hour. Even at that blistering pace, it would take more than a day to descend down to Melville.
Once cruising, there was no
illusion of gravity to be had. Tania and Tim moved Zane’s stretcher to the opposite side of the cabin, so that when they decelerated at the other end he wouldn’t be on the “ceiling.” After that, there was little to do except wait.
The farm platforms flew by every few hours. They were spaced out along the cord, their altitude determined by the crops grown. The higher up on the Elevator, the more sunlight received during a rotation of the planet below. Unlike Darwin’s Elevator, though, there were no other stations to pass. No Hab stations, looking like orbital hotels. No quaint little Midway Station, that smallest of facilities that had been built as an emergency stop-off should anything go wrong. It had rarely been used, as far as Tania knew. She’d certainly never stopped there during her time living above Darwin.
“Should we give him some water?” Tim asked, halfway through the descent.
Tania looked up from the book she’d been reading, a worn paperback she’d found in the climber’s “boredom box.” “I’m not sure how we would in zero-g, but we can try.”
Zane looked peaceful in the absence of gravity. Not that he hadn’t before they’d left, but now he seemed younger, more vigorous somehow. His cheeks were fuller, buoyed as he floated against the belts that held him to the table.
His lips, though, were dry and cracked. But try as they might, squeezing water into his mouth from a foil packet did not work. Without gravity, the fluid just dribbled out and floated away in small spheres. Tim waved a hand towel around to capture the liquid before it found its way into anything important.
“Even if it stayed in,” Tania said, “he’d still have to swallow it.”
They gave up, and waited. And waited.
Finally, hours later, Tania felt the tug of gravity. It woke her from a light nap as the straps of her harness tightened against her shoulders.
Slowing the climber took almost as long as the acceleration process had, the progress display moving with frustrating sloth on the monitor by the airlock. “C’mon, c’mon,” Tim muttered.
When the hatch finally opened, Dr. Brooks waited just outside with a team of apparent volunteers. “Take him to the infirmary,” she ordered. With a nod at Tania and Tim, the doctor drifted inside and checked Zane’s vitals as the others began to wrangle the makeshift stretcher.
“Go with them,” Tim said to Tania. “I’ll get Karl on the comm and let him know what’s happened.”
“Thanks.”
Tania followed the main group down a spoke to the outer ring, then along a blur of corridors interrupted by the occasional bulkhead.
At Brooks’s direction, the team worked with modest efficiency to get Zane transferred to a bed. The doctor hooked up an IV to his arm and began a series of checks. “Our equipment is basic,” she explained as she held one of Zane’s eyelids open and flashed a light across his pupils. “We may have to move him down to Belém, or move equipment up here.”
“Whatever it takes,” Tania said. “Just tell me what you want to do.”
“For now,” she said, “let me work. I’ll come get you when I have something.”
Despite a desire to stay, Tania read the woman’s tone and body language, and departed. The last thing she saw was Brooks pressing her hands against Zane’s abdomen.
The doctor looked worried.
When the news came that Zane was in a coma, Tania was not surprised. She couldn’t imagine any other explanation for his present condition. The cause, however, remained unknown.
Dr. Brooks provided a list of equipment she needed, either installed on the station or accessible on the ground. “I’m loath to move him, though, and it might not be a bad idea to have the infirmary here more fully provisioned.”
Tania agreed and relayed the list to Karl. He said he’d get the scavenger crews on it immediately. With Skyler’s newfound aircraft available, they’d search nearby cities as well if the situation required it.
Zane remained stable, and as the days turned into weeks, Tania gradually focused on her duties again. She still visited with him every day. Sometimes once in the evening, other days she would make frequent stops.
Time dragged on with no changes, though. Dr. Brooks began to make more and more frequent mentions of the possibility that he might never wake up. If he’d suffered some kind of embolism, for example.
Skyler’s crew suffered a series of failed missions attempting to recover the equipment necessary to do a thorough scan of Zane’s internals. Despite herself, Tania began to wonder if there were any alternatives. When a few weeks passed with no results she even began to consider going down to Belém herself and joining the effort. But then Karl and Skyler called her with the first good news in what seemed like an age.
“We found it,” Skyler said. “Well, Ana did. She deserves the credit.”
“Please thank her for me, Skyler. Tell me what you’ve got.”
“I should have thought of it myself weeks ago. We had a similar problem once, back in Darwin. Someone needed parts for a very specific X-ray machine, and all the crews were searching hospitals without luck. Prumble and I had the idea to look for warehouses or distribution centers used by the manufacturer.”
“That’s smart,” Tania said.
“Yeah, well, if only I’d remembered my own brilliant technique. Luckily Ana thought the same thing and started searching shipping and receiving instead of the surgery wards. Long story short, we’ve got the equipment you need. Brand-new, factory sealed, never touched.”
Tania wanted to hug him through the screen. With that news she felt she could even embrace Ana. “I’d love to thank her in person, next time I’m down there,” she said instead.
“Just doing our job,” Skyler replied.
“When can you have it delivered?”
Karl spoke up then. “It’s a big crate, very heavy, and all the way on the other side of town. But we’ve got a team on it, and we’ll get it on a climber as soon as they bring it to Exodus. You should have it in two or three days, Tania.”
Tania’s patience was already stretched to the brink, and the wait that still remained felt even worse. But true to Karl’s word, two days later the equipment arrived.
Dr. Brooks was unfamiliar with the specific machine they’d fetched, and anyway she’d only been trained how to use such an instrument, not how to install it. Manuals were read; engineers and technicians were pulled off other duties. At one point Dr. Brooks had to ask Tania to leave them alone so they could work.
“I’m fine,” Tania said. “I’ll help in any way I can.”
“You’re hovering,” the doctor said. “Second-guessing. Pestering.”
Tania stared at the woman in surprise. “You … you’re right. I hadn’t thought about it. God. I hate it when people do that to me. Hover, watch over my shoulder.”
“Exactly,” Brooks said. “Attend to your other duties; we’re working on this as fast as we can.”
“I know. You’re right.” She took a moment to walk around and personally apologize to anyone she could find. Then she left and forced herself to find other things to do.
Another two weeks ground by before Dr. Brooks called a meeting with Tania, Tim, and a few others. Karl was added via the comm.
“It’s not good news,” she opened with.
Tania’s heart sank. Zane had been in a coma so long now, she didn’t think there would be much in the way of good news, but to hear it from the doctor served to slam a door shut in her mind.
The woman spoke at length of the scans they’d done, and the diagnosis. Tania listened but heard little of it. Instead she kept replaying Zane’s collapse at that dinner. He’d been so vibrant just the day before.
“… ruptured in his brain, here …”
Tania thought back to her childhood. Where Neil had always doted on her like a father, Zane had been more willing to come down to her level. He played with her as if he were the same age, on the occasions that he would visit.
“… His comatose state may be permanent.…”
It was foolis
h to pretend she’d known the man well. Zane had always been the quiet brother, content to avoid the limelight that Neil loved so much. Except when making some appearance related to a Platz charity, Zane hardly ever had his name in the news.
What impressed Tania the most about Zane Platz was the way he’d risen to the challenge of moving to Belém. Nothing she’d heard about him before that would have led her to think he would even take part in such an endeavor. She would have guessed the man was a pacifist, if anything. But the bond Zane had shared with Neil seemed enough alone to drive him. Tania could relate. Perhaps that’s why he and I have such a natural friendship.
“… We may begin to see organ failure.…”
Tania held her hand up. “Dr. Brooks, please … is there anything we can do other than wait?”
The woman looked at her with a sad expression. “There is brain activity,” she said. “You can talk to him. Play him the music he loved. Anything like that. But you’re a scientist, so I know you prefer facts. The fact is, none of that is proven to help. I fear it is often more to make those who grieve feel … useful.”
“But it can’t hurt,” Tim said.
“True enough. Beyond that, it’s the mundane things. Keeping him nourished and hydrated. Moving and massaging his legs, at least until we can get some pressure cuffs brought up. Bathing him. I’ve been doing this since you brought him in, with the help from a few of the station staff, but help would be appreciated.”
“We could have assisted,” Tania said. Tim was nodding.
Dr. Brooks waved a hand. “I know, but until we had an idea of what we were dealing with, I wanted to limit contact and keep a close eye on him. Now that he’s … stable, I would welcome the help.”
“We’ll set up a rotation,” Tania said. “Teach us what to do, and we’ll make sure it all happens.”
A few more details were discussed, and then the room cleared, leaving only Tim present, and Karl on the comm’s screen.
“Zane’s insight will be missed,” Karl started.
The Exodus Towers: The Dire Earth Cycle: Two Page 36