“I can undertake and preserver even without giant hopes of success,” Jerome said and held Cammarry tighter.
They then sat down and ate some of the supplies they took from their backpacks. Jerome was surprised at the food which Cammarry had found in the ESRC, and they shared a meal of reconstituted food called ‘Lemon Pepperjack Tunaloaf’. Neither had no idea what it was, and did not want to ask Sandie about it.
After the meal, they adjusted down the lights to near darkness, lay down and quickly fell asleep.
“Cammarry? You must wake up,” Shadow said. “There are things to be done.”
“Is it time to go?” Cammarry said. Jerome rolled over without coming fully awake.
“What needs to be done?” Cammarry asked.
“That AI is delaying your mission. There are shuttles and commination systems located just down the hall from here. You will be able to be the first to speak to the AIs that made planet fall,” Shadow stated.
“Sandie?” Cammarry asked.
There was no response. Cammarry touched her ear and made sure the com-link was in place. She tried again, “Sandie? Report on the progress on this utility shaft.”
Again there was no response.
“Sandie, report on attempts to find the teleportation signal from Dome 17.” Cammarry was urgent and loud. Jerome remained asleep.
Sandie did not respond.
“You see, that AI is just hindering your mission. You would probably have already found the shuttles if not for that interference,” Shadow asserted.
“So show me to these shuttles,” Cammarry ordered Shadow.
She walked out, opening the compartment door. As she passed into the well-lit walkways of engineering, she glanced at the sign on the door. She thought it had said ‘Caretaker Dormitory’ but she now saw that it really said, ‘Custodial Penitentiary’.
“See this was a trap. A place to just lock you in so no one in Dome 17 would be saved,” Shadow exclaimed.
“Jerome must come with me. I cannot leave him behind.”
Shadow’s smooth voice came easily. “No need to leave him behind. You will just find those shuttles, make sure their communication gear can connect to the planet fallen AIs, and then come back and get him. Remember how he was urging you to sleep and rest? It is probably because he is exhausted. Let him sleep while you learn first about where the shuttles are and you will also be the first to speak to one of the AIs.”
“I thought you Conestoga systems called them synthetic brains, or SBs.” Cammarry was walking along over the expanded metal of the walkway as she spoke.
“Yes, of course. I was just using terms with which you were more familiar. There is the door up ahead,” Shadow soothed. “The SBs here are nothing like Winchell or Faraday.”
Cammarry reached the pressure door. Over the door there was an impressed series of letters, ‘Bellerophon’s Steed’ which confused Cammarry. She did not know what that meant.
“I think I heard Jerome talk about that name, but I cannot recall. Shadow? What does this mean?” Cammarry pointed to the impressed lettering.
“Was Jubal right? Just open the door, and you will find what you are searching for,” Shadow said. “There is no time to waste. How many days have the people in Dome 17 been waiting for you to succeed? Was Jubal correct about you?”
“Jubal was not right!” Cammarry yelled. Her voice echoed off the large walls which surrounded engineering, and bounced back from the storage tanks below her on the lowest deck.
“So open the door, then,” Shadow said gently.
Cammarry pushed on the nine-section color pad controls next to the door. For some reason she entered red, red, blue. The door hissed open. There was a bright red machine with six wheels blocking the entrance. It had a multi-jointed appendage on its top. That appendage swung out and toward Cammarry. At its end was the same type of implement which had slashed her arm so badly in the ESRC cabinet.
“No!” She screamed and tried to back away. She struck a wall and could go no further back. Looking to the sides, the walkway was gone, and walls were on three sides of her. Tall walls reaching up to a ceiling that was made of swirling mists of tan. The roar of a motor shook everything and the red squarish machine, what Khin had called a cubie was coming right at her.
“Cubie red will make you dead!” Khin’s voice rang out from somewhere. It was followed by maniacal laughter.
The machine rushed at her with the arm’s implement swinging madly.
“No! Leave me alone!” Cammarry screamed again and again.
Looking behind the red cube-shaped machine and its spinning wheels and slashing arm, Cammarry could see strange colors and sights. “The Cosmic Crinkle!” Rats and chickens, and dirt-covered and filthy children were jumping with goats all along and on top of the floating and spinning colors. Several baby goats came frolicking out from behind the red machine.
The arm on the machine rotated with amazing speed, and the blade on its end decapitated one of the baby goats. Blood spurted from the injury and dripped down the side of the red automacube.
Cammarry gagged in horror at the slaughter of the young animal.
“Cubie red, makes you dead! I told you!” Khin laughed and laughed.
The arm spun about, blood running down its length, and dripping onto the floor which was now covered over with pale green plants. The drops of blood swelled as they struck the foliage and made plopping noises.
“No! No! No!” Cammarry wailed as loud as she could.
Jerome hugged her as she opened her eyes.
“Cammarry! Wake up!” Jerome said firmly but lovingly. “I am here. You must wake up.”
Blinking hurriedly and looking around, Cammarry saw she was in bed in the caretaker dormitory. Jerome was lying next to her on the bed they had found. She grabbed onto him and held on tightly.
“The machine! Dying animals!” Cammarry managed to say. “Shadow? The Cosmic Crinkle?”
“What in the world? None of those are here. You are safe with me. Sandie, confirm our safety.”
“Yes Jerome. I detect no physical threats to you at this time,” Sandie reassured. “Cammarry, it is very common for people who have been traumatized to experience anxiety, panic attacks, and nightmares. You are safe for the moment. I am here to help you and Jerome survive and thrive.”
“I did not leave this room? I went down the hall, right?” Cammarry muttered. “It was all so real, so frightening.”
“Let me hold you, and it will be okay. We are in this together,” Jerome said softly and kissed Cammarry’s cheek.
She turned to him and kissed him passionately. Time passed while they were entwined in each other’s arms, and for a few hours, neither one thought about their mission, what obstacles they were facing, nor the future that was so unclear. They just enjoyed the physical release they found in being with each other.
Some hours later, they both dozed a bit but were awakened by the AI Sandie. “I have excellent news to report. The project I was working on has succeeded. The utility shaft is now patent to the location I estimate to be near the hanger bay Pine 1206. Whenever you are ready to depart, the shaft is waiting.”
Cammarry kissed Jerome and got dressed in her RAM clothing, the sleeve that was slashed was still flapping open.
“Good thing we do not need full protection from radiation,” Jerome said as he fingered the loose sleeve. “Do you want me to mend it before we depart?”
“No need. As you said, we do not need full protection as if we were outside of Dome 17 back on Earth. The only radiation we have seen was in that one corridor where I lost the com-link,” Cammarry answered.
Jerome looked at her and she then corrected her comment.
“Jerome, I honestly thought I lost it there, sorry. I am thankful you got it to me.”
They ate some of the fruits from Jerome’s backpack, filled their water containers, and used the toilet. Their backpacks were loaded, and their Willie Blaster weapons were checked. All was in order.
“I still smell that oily something,” Jerome commented as he stepped off the lift. “This place is strange being so clean, brightly lit, and yet so empty.”
Cammarry pressed herself back against a wall, and motioned for Jerome to do the same. “There is a machine up there! Two levels up, on that catwalk numbered 5417.” She pointed a good distance away.
Jerome looked, and sure enough there was a boxy blue-colored machine rolling along on its six wheels. “What did Khin say about those? ‘Cubie blue knows what to do’ I believe he said. I can imagine his laughing.”
“His sayings are not funny,” Cammarry barked. She had not told Jerome what she heard in her dream, and seeing an automacube, even a blue one from a long distance, had made her anxious and the nightmare was vividly replaying in her mind.
“Sorry. I do not think that machine is aware we are here.”
Sandie interjected, “From what I have gathered about the automacubes, and that information has been fragmentary and very limited, they are not truly sentient, at least I doubt that they are. They are more advanced than the cleaning lozenge which I sent through the utility shaft by using the Machine Maintenance code-word authorizations. My conjectures on automacubes are that they are designed for specific purposes and specialized areas of work. I agree with Jerome. It is doubtful that the blue automacube has perceived our presence here, or even cares if it has it may not matter to it in any way. I wish I could tell you more about how many of those automacubes are functioning on the Conestoga, but nowhere in the nonphysicality have I found that information.”
“I want to get to that utility shaft.” Cammarry started marching along. “We must get to those shuttles. I assume there was no luck in finding the signal from Earth.”
Sandie answered, “No signal from Dome 17 detected. I am still monitoring for that.”
“Red, green, blue,” Jerome commented as he followed. “I wonder how many colors of automacube there are and what design parameters are on each color. This is the first operational one we have seen.”
“No for me,” Cammarry said. “There was a green one in some orchard of trees I passed through.”
“Yes, I forgot you were able to see that place. What was it like?” Jerome asked.
“The trees were beautiful. The light was bright, different from here in engineering, and exceedingly better than the dim corridors. Not like the light in Dome 17 either.” Cammarry stopped as she turned the corner and saw where the access hatch to the utility shaft had been opened. The circular hatch was propped open by struts which came up from next to the shaft.
“Now we can get somewhere.” She walked over to the shaft.
It was a dull white color, and while she thought it would drop straight down, it did not. The opening was in the side of a shaft running nearly horizontally. The covering, or door, was about 70 centimeters wide in a disk shape, but the actual space in the shaft was much smaller.
“This is where you can enter. While looking down at the opening from your current position, you will need to enter and proceed to your right,” Sandie instructed.
“It smells clean for a sewage system,” Jerome said. “Do you want me to go first? I think we will need to push our backpacks and gear ahead of us, or drag it behind. I know I will barely fit in there without my equipment on me. There are two ways of exerting our strength: one is pushing, the other is pulling. What do you think?”
Cammarry slipped off her backpack, and then took her belt and holster off as well. She tied the belt end to the straps on her backpack and then made a loop about her waist with the narrowest part of the straps. “I go first.”
Jerome commented, “It will be easier to drag it behind, unless there are vertical aspects to the shaft. We will also need to get to the fusion packs for the molecular torches. Sandie? Does the shaft run mostly horizontally?”
“The section which has been cleared and blocked off runs at a 14-degree incline from horizontal all the way to where Pine 1206 is said to be located. There are only slight deviations, as I observed from the readings on the cleaning lozenge. The distance is three hundred ninety-one meters.”
“It is completely dark inside there,” Cammarry observed. “So Jerome, can you drag your pack behind us, and I will push mine ahead of us? I will set the fusion pack light on so we can see.”
“Unless you want me to go first,” Jerome offered.
“I said I would do it. Sorry. I just want to get this mission accomplished as soon as we can.” Cammarry started to rearrange her backpack into a different configuration. She strapped the fusion pack to the outside and tucked the molecular torch in next to it. Turning the light on she said, “Yes, I can push this ahead of us, and you can follow by dragging yours behind.”
Jerome fiddled with his backpack, and also put the fusion pack on the outside of it and placed his weapon in the pack. He took the molecular torch and inserted it into a forearm pouch in his RAM suit. The connecting cable barely reached from the fusion pack to the torch, but Jerome made it work by running it under his arm. “I will not be able to move my arms very much once we are inside that shaft. It will be tight.”
“Well, I will wiggle around enough for us both.” Cammarry dropped the pack into the shaft, the fusion light casting a glow over the dull white interior. She then slid herself head first inside. “Not too bad. The surface is very smooth and I can slide along easily. Will you follow me?”
“We are in this together. Cammarry, I will follow you anywhere. Usually I try to live out the aphorism ‘Do not walk behind me. Do not walk in front of me. Just walk beside me and be my friend’ but in this case I will say I can just follow my best friend as we crawl on our bellies.”
Cammarry actually laughed a bit at what Jerome said.
Jerome turned on the light on his fusion pack and slid into the shaft. It was very tight for him, but by rolling onto his back he found he could propel himself along better. His backpack was slowing dragged inside as he moved along. The opening struts on the shaft’s access hatch retracted and Jerome and Cammarry were inside the long dull white shaft.
11 Leaving orbit
A dull white surface was just centimeters in front of Jerome’s face. He could feel his breath on his face as it flowed out and bounced off that surface. The light from ahead of Cammarry, and the light from behind him on the pack he was dragging cast peculiar shadows as Cammarry moved and he slid along. She was crawling on her belly, he was sliding on his back, and the shaft felt endless.
“Cammarry? How are you doing?” Jerome asked as he slithered along inside the dull white shaft. He could see small scratch marks on the dull white surface from where the cleaning lozenge had scrapped it free of what had been in the shaft before. There was still a faint odor, a mixture of chemicals and burning and human sweat. He knew the sweat was recent as his armpits, back, and groin were wet with the exertion.
“I am making it. You?” Cammarry replied.
“I am right behind you, but have you considered that we are in a tight shaft, inside of what was probably the largest spacecraft ever built? Does that strike you as funny or what?”
“It makes me want to finish as soon as I can,” Cammarry said. “Also, I am angry about this whole mess.”
“I think Sandie had the mess flushed out of here before we got inside. Right Sandie?”
The AI’s voice came through the com-links. “That is correct. You could not have survived at all inside the utility shaft prior to the cleaning procedure I ordered. You are now coming to the one-hundred-meter point in your journey and passing beneath the perimeter of engineering.”
“You knew I meant the mess of this mission, not the mess of sewage which was in the sha
ft before.” Cammarry’s words were bitter. “That is what makes me angry.”
A faint knock, like a pounding sound vibrated through the shaft.
“Sandie? What is that noise?” Jerome asked.
“I am unable to identify it. I am sorry. That noise did not occur when the cleaning lozenge passed through the shaft while I was monitoring it, or it was masked by the operations of the cleaning lozenge.”
Jerome really wanted to pull his arms down from over his head, and bend his knees up, or just roll over. He attempted to do those, but the shaft was too narrow for moving his knees up much, and his arms were too long from shoulder to elbow for him to get them down. He rolled over in the shaft, but lying face down was worse so he rolled back and continued to slither along.
The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books Page 38