A tiny corner of his conscious mind informed him that he was enduring the effects of his time in the Gravity Couch. He was reawakening.
Reassured by this thought, he somehow managed to open his eyes, to see. The other Gravity Couches came into sight, each of them filled with an inert-figure suspended in dark fluid. Fair enough, that was how he must look, then.
With shocking abruptness, his viewpoint whirled about. Suddenly, he was staring at his own tank with its piece of yellowing masking tape stuck to the operations panel. His body was immobile, eyes closed. He could not tell whether
he was looking upon a sleeping man or gazing at a corpse. For all he knew, they were all dead.
Whispering again, someone whispering.
The sound resolved slowly: a woman’s voice in the distance, voice hushed and bodiless, the sounds of a specter.
Forlorn, that voice, and now it was becoming clearer.
“Billy…”
He felt ice creep from his crotch to his heart, and found himself wondering how a ghost could experience sensation. He wanted to explore now, to find the voice, answer its siren call.
Before him, his body, formerly dead, if only in hypersleep, came to life, eyes opening. In a flash, his vision shading to green for a moment, Weir found himself back inside his own flesh, firmly anchored. His world was liquid, warm, filled with tinted blurs. He had no sense of breathing.
He had no sense of panic.
“I’m so cold…”
His Gravity Couch drained, the gel sluicing away with remarkable speed. He could move now, if only in slow motion. Lifting a hand, he pressed his palm against the cold door, pushing. The door opened easily.
Another sound in the distance, reverberant in a place that should have been anechoic: drip… drip… drip. The sound of water dripping where it was not supposed to drip.
He looked around, found the crew members still suspended in their tanks.
Only he had been awakened and had emerged. Why is that? he wondered. No answer was forthcoming, and he discovered that this did not concern him at the moment.
The dripping continued, filling his world.
The voice came again, whispering through the ship. “I’m so cold…”
Drawn, he walked, slow-motion, to the hatchway and found that his tentative steps were being made in twenty-league boots, covering great distances through the ship. Within several steps he was at the bridge of the Lewis and Clark, standing in the second level, behind the pilot’s chair.
Dripping.
Water dripped to the floor of the bridge, making pools, running in rivulets along the plating. The pilot’s chair was soaked, streaming. A woman sat in the chair, her too-pale skin drenched, glittering, her sodden hair plastered to her naked back.
As thought rooted to the deck, Weir stood and stared. Uncertainly, he whispered, “Claire?”
There was no answer from the woman in the pilot’s chair, nor did she move.
She gave no indication that she knew anyone was there.
No indication that she was even alive.
There was only the sound of the water dripping. He could not hear the sound of breathing, not even his.
Slowly, he reached out to touch her shoulder, hesitated, feeling cold stealing over his fingertips.
Fear bubbled darkly within him, rose.
He pulled his hand back, clenching it into a fist.
Whispering, he said her name again. “Claire?”
No movement, no sound, only water.
“I’m sorry,” he said, but even this had no effect on the woman sitting before him. “Claire?”
He forced his hand to unclench, straightening the fingers. He reached out slowly, ignoring the cold, touching her hair, feeling the cold wetness. No reaction. He might as well have been touching a statue.
He looked down, hoping for a glimpse of her face, a reflection, finding it in the moribund computer displays. There was something wrong with the reflection, though, something distorted. The planes and contours of her face were shifting, as though something lived under the skin, in the bone, and was pushing angrily to be free.
The fear welled up in a dark torrent now, soul-poisonous and choking.
Panicking, he spun her chair, making it rock on its gimbals.
Claire stared up at him.
“I’m waiting,” she said, the sound filling this reality with undertones of screaming, hissing, crawling voices. His soul splintered. The darkness swept through him. Silence.
Chapter Seven
He fell through the silence, through the darkness, all sensation absent.
His eyes opened, and he was flooded with light. There was a sucking sound too close to his head, then a humming that made him wince, his mind and body too sensitive, too raw to withstand it for very long. There was something in his mouth, coating his tongue, making him salivate uncontrollably.
Surging from the darkness and silence, falling back into the world, he found himself surrounded by metal and plastic, a coffin too tight around him, crushing in, threatening him with suffocation and darkness. There was light, in front of him, but he found that he could not reach it through the wall around his body.
Something moved toward him through the bright blur.
His heart pounded frantically, making the veins in his neck and wrist pulse. Blood seemed replaced with fire, yet he felt cold all over, layered with ice.
Unable to think, to reason out a proper course of action, he lifted his hands and pushed at the door of his Gravity Couch. The inner surface was slick with the remnants of the gel, smearing as his hands slipped. Furiously, he pounded the heel of his right hand against the unyielding door, trying to make it give way. This effort availed him nothing.
He lurched backward, as far as he could go, intending to kick at the door, to pummel it with his heels to make it give, to allow him freedom to breathe.
Before he could strike the first blow, there was a loud hydraulic hiss, deafening in the confined space. His tomb opened to decant him.
Offbalanced, Weir fell forward, his feet sliding in gel on the floor of the tank. With no one to catch him and nothing to grab to stop his fall, he crashed to the deck, his right shoulder, hip, and knee flaring with pain. Gel and saliva poured from his mouth, pooled by his face as he gasped for breath, a human fish drowning in oxygen. His lungs and bronchia flamed, tried to close up, leaving him wheezing and moving weakly as the claustrophobia continued to shake him, closing his mind down in a paroxysm of terror. The medical bay was a vague place to him, perceived through a veil. He fought for focus, but it would not come.
Peters was quickly at his side, one hand on his shoulder, another on his wrist, so familiar, so warm, adjusting so that she could take an ad hoc reading of his pulse.
“Claire…” he said, his voice little more than a gasp. The last thing he remembered was Claire. Something wrong with Claire.
He felt Peters’ hands tighten on him, trying to soothe, trying to calm him-back to this reality he had fallen into. He knew that she wanted to get inside his head, to deal with this latest crisis of his, but he refused that help, had always refused that kind of help. He railed against her contact, not wanting to release either the past or the nightmare until he understood it, had mapped the geography of life gone awry.
He gasped in another breath and the fires shot into his head, into his belly.
“DJ!” Peters called, her voice urgent. Her hands tightened again, then relaxed as she said, “It’s okay. You’re okay. Just breathe.” Her face came into view, a curious mixture of mother and professional medic, concerned and observant.
Weir wanted to fight her, to keep struggling for his anguish, but the edges of the nightmare were fading now, and the claustrophobia was easing, here in the open medical bay. There was a sense of relaxation in his chest, and he found that it was becoming easier to breathe. The graying at the edges of his vision began to recede, leaving a scattering of little stars flashing in his vision.
Weir looked up. Al
l of the crew stood in a circle around him, looking down.
DJ, emergency pack in hand, was kneeling beside him, checking him over for serious damage. Weir had no doubt that DJ could, if necessary, have him sedated in a matter of moments.
He pawed at the air, trying to push Peters away. She, however, was too practiced, too far ahead of him, and she evaded his telegraphed efforts, maintaining her calming contact. Weir closed his eyes for a moment as his body began to relax.
He looked up at DJ, tried to push himself into at least a sitting position.
“I’m all right now,” he said, knowing it to be a magnificent lie. Stubbornly, not willing to admit that the truth fell far short of the statement, he repeated his assertion: “I’m all right.”
To prove the point to those of the crew who doubted this assertion—everyone, as far as he could tell—he tried to push himself to his feet. His legs shook violently as he tried to stand, and his knees buckled, the muscles refusing to have anything to do with his intended course of action. DJ caught him before he could tumble back to the deck, helping him to stay upright. Peters stepped away now, and he found that he missed the contact, the support. DJ was a cold monolith.
“Move slowly,” DJ said, staring at him without flinching. “You’ve been in stasis for fifty-six days. You’re going to experience a little disorientation.”
A little. Something dark had crawled into his dreams in the tank, and he was not quite back in the real world now. Reality had not spun around him as confusedly as this since the first time he had ridden to orbit, taking an ill-advised window seat in the big elevator car on Skyhook One. In his experience, perspectives changed enormously and abruptly, following long periods of ennui. During that journey along the length of Skyhook One he had seen his world unfold and refold beneath him, a great blue and white flower afloat in a bottomless sea. By the end of the journey, he had come to an intuitive understanding of the geometry of space-time that had complemented his technical knowledge. He wondered what insights and visions awaited him now.
DJ quickly looked Weir over before letting him go. Weir wobbled for a moment, unsteady and queasy, but finally managed to keep his balance. There was a faint sense of embarrassment at standing there in nothing more than bikini briefs, the center of attention for the entire crew, but there was nothing to be done about that.
At least there was Cooper, still bare-ass naked and utterly free of all concern, leaning in to Weir and saying, “Damn, Dr. Weir, don’t scare us like that!” Weir gave him a sickly smile. Cooper seemed, on their short acquaintance, to be Peters’ counterpart, a humorous’ male spirit, a dark Pan.
“Coffee?”
“What?” Weir said.
Cooper trotted over to the wall, pulling out a large metal cylinder. He held this up for Weir to see. “Coffee.”
Weir frowned in understanding, an expression that made his face hurt. “No, thank you.” Cooper shrugged and turned away.
The crew had returned to purposeful movement, leaving Weir standing, confused and disconsolate, in the middle of the room. Miller was already into his flight suit, while Smith, in a corner, did stretching exercises, limbering himself up.
Cooper, still showing no concern about dressing, had opened the metal cylinder and was pouring coffee into a mug he had retrieved from one cubbyhole or another. DJ had stowed his emergency kit and quickly pulled on a flight suit. Starck was climbing into her flight suit, drawing an admiring glance from Cooper who, Weir noted, was mainly admiring Starck’s backside.
Without looking around, Starck flipped Cooper the bird. Cooper’s eyes lit up as he smiled. “Is that an offer?”
“It is not,” was Starck’s growled reply.
Weir went in search of his own clothes, trying to understand how anyone could get used to the effects of long-term Gravity Couch suspension. His entire body felt toxic and his mind was sluggish, drained of energy and knowledge. He felt unwilling and unable to accommodate anyone’s needs right now—he was not sure that he could even manage to dress.
At least they were close to their—his—goal. The Event Horizon was waiting, full of truths that were rightfully his. He had sent the Event Horizon and her crew down the rabbit hole. Whatever knowledge she had gleaned about Wonderland was his to hold first.
Miller pulled on his boots, quickly lacing them up, then zipped up his flight suit. There was no sign of playfulness about him, only an economy of movement that Weir envied and a fierce energy that left him apprehensive.
Miller turned towards Starck, who was pulling on her boots. “Starck,” he barked, “why aren’t you on the bridge?”
Starck gave him an acidic look, but it was not enough to make Miller relent. Still, she was not about to be bullied. Lacing up a boot, she growled back, “Do you mind if I get dressed first?”
“Yes I do,” Miller said. He bunched his hands into fists, put those on his hips, planted his feet apart, turning his head, surveying his crew, his domain. Weir honestly did not want to cross this man. “Come on, people, let’s go!”
Smith was the first one through the exit, followed closely by Starck, Justin, and DJ. Miller turned to follow, then swung back, his face a study in thunder. “And, Coop,” the Captain added, giving Cooper’s crotch a withering glance, “put some pants on.”
Chapter Eight
It seemed to Weir as though activity aboard the Lewis and Clark, once begun, never paused for a moment. Miller, Starck, and Smith went forward, into the bridge, to do whatever it was that spaceship bridge crews did at times like these.
Somewhere along the way, Peters had handed him a big warm blanket and he had wrapped himself in this, hoping to combat the shivering. He knew he was suffering from some kind of shock related to the time he had spent suspended in the Gravity Couch, but at the moment he would have preferred not to have any kind of ability to think. Either sleep or a nice warm corner would have done just as well. Neither Peters nor Cooper had been able to convince him that the ship’s interior temperature was reasonable—he felt cold.
Justin, Cooper, and Peters had set to in the crew’s quarters, turning them into a place to spend time, opening bunks, unfolding tables, taking out chairs. The Lewis and Clark was a fine example of environmental engineering, Weir thought, with just about everything aboard designed to fit into a niche Or fold away. It was easy for the crew to make room or ready the ship for the powerful thrust from the ion drive.
At the moment, DJ was moving around in the cabin, checking radiation badges, apparently for something to do while he avoided talking to Weir. For the moment, Weir found it hard to care—if anything, he would rather be left alone, huddled on a chair at the side of the cabin. This particular misery was not something he had anticipated. Scribbling equations all over reams of paper did not prepare a man for the realities of deep-space travel.
Cooper, Justin, and Peters had finished setting up the crew’s quarters and were now comfortable on bunks, Peters watching a video unit. The two men were engaged in pitching a small ball back and forth across the cabin, their expressions gradually easing into mock display of contempt for each other.
Cooper once again snatched the ball out of the air, sneering at Justin.
“When are you gonna put some heat on that?” He snapped the ball back at Justin.
Justin caught it, staring into Cooper’s eyes, challenging. “You can’t handle my junk, Papa Bear, don’t ask for the heat.” The ball sailed back again, straight for Cooper’s head.
“Don’t play ball in the house,” Peters said, not looking up from the video unit she was watching. Both Cooper and Justin ignored this automatic response from her, continuing to toss the ball between them, somehow managing to avoid DJ.
Weir leaned forward, tilting his head, curious about the video she was watching. She had taken out a handheld unit, rather than using the Lewis and Clark’s main vid system, and the sounds he had been hearing confirmed his suspicion—this was something of a more private nature rather than a professional production of some kin
d.
Peters saw Weir looking over at her vid unit, and he had a momentary flash of embarrassment at being caught in his peeping game. Rather than the negative reaction he expected, however, she turned slightly, tilting the unit so that he could see the screen. She turned her attention back to what she was watching.
Weir focused on the screen, blinking as the image changed rapidly, blurring first with a panning movement, then with a too-fast zoom. He saw the makings of a party, ribbons, balloons, heard the sounds of children and a thin background of music.
The image blurred again, then blanked. The screen cleared to show a child in a wheelchair. Weir estimated the boy’s age at four or five, wondering how far off he was. He could make only a bare guess at the nature of the child’s handicap, or how long he had been in the wheelchair, though the chair itself did not appear to have been heavily used. The boy was grinning happily, waving his arms. Not quadriplegic then, he thought; a simple paraplegia of some kind, leaving the mind intact and the body more or less functional. Some of these physical dysfunctions could be corrected now, with the help of nanosurgery, but not all.
The boy held up his arms, laughing. “Play horsey, Mommy, play horsey!” he called.
The image shook and shifted and abruptly zoomed back. Peters came into view on the vid screen, looking sunny and relaxed, her clothes bright and loose on her slender frame. To Weir she did not look the slightest bit like someone who spent a great deal of time in space.
Peters, watching, smiled.
Peters, on the screen, laughing, cried, “Want to play horsey, do you?” in a voice that bespoke motherhood and joy. She bent and grasped the child in one long swooping motion that made the boy howl with delight, lifting him out of the wheelchair, flying him through the air, somehow ending up with him on her back.
Somewhere deep inside Weir there was an ache. He chose not to address it, choosing instead to accept the diversion of Miller striding through the hatchway, coming back to the crew quarters from the bridge. He kept his silence as Miller sat down next to Peters, giving her a sympathetic glance.
Event Horizon Page 4