“Sandie, I suppose I need to ask you specifically if it is safe to disembark,” Cammarry said.
“It is safe to disembark. The original overseeing system for hanger bays in Eta, SB Juliet Poyntz, is gone. It is dead, to use a biological reference. Its corpse remains in the nonphysicality, but that is all,” Sandie answered. “Do you want to discuss options for finding the people in the habitat?”
“Khin, Vesna, Alizon and I can manage that,” Cammarry snapped back.
Alizon reached over and lightly squeezed her arm. “I am here, and will help however you need.”
Cammarry nodded at him, licked her lips, and then spoke. “Sandie, what are your ideas?”
“This hanger bay is at the pinnacle of the shell of Eta. I have logs and records showing deck plans, transport systems, and various entry passages into the biome. I can display them on the shuttle’s screen for your review, or project them in three-dimensional images, whatever you prefer.”
“I would have preferred to dock on roughly the same level as the biome. Not be stuck up here, lurking over the top of this world. I did that before, and it was not good,” Cammarry stated. “And how will we transport the teleporter to the biome? Taking the equipment to them would be easier than bringing the people up to here. At least I think it would, you said they are in the biome, not in this labyrinth of corridors.”
“I agree, a close hanger docking position would have been more ideal. However, this hanger bay, Baker 1221, was the only one which I could remotely access. I apologize it was not better situated. I have been scanning the nonphysicality here, and have been unable to locate any automacubes to assist in movement of the teleporter,” Sandie replied.
“If Old Bill was here, that horse could carry the machines,” Khin suggested. “Are there horses in this place?”
“Khin, we are a good distance from the biome,” Cammarry answered. “Even if they have horses we would have to go to the biome to get one, then catch it, bring it back here, and then have it carry the teleporter to the people.”
“A wheelbarrow would be a great aid,” Alizon stated. “Do these places have things like that?”
“Shall we find out?” Cammarry smiled and extended her arm out. She took Alizon by the hand. They stepped around the seats and approached the side hatch. “Sandie, save the ideas for later. Now we need to find some method of hauling the teleporter. Unless you honestly think we can just set it up here and have the people come to us in some way.”
Sandie responded, “I conjecture a low possibility for the surviving humans to come this far into the habitat’s shell. I have only caught glimpses of them on the surveillance monitors. I tried audio contacts at those moments, but with no success.”
Cammarry opened the hatch, and all four people stepped down onto the deck of the hanger bay. It was very silent and the temperature was cool and very dry.
“Check all those lockers, and cubbies, and storage containers,” Cammarry instructed. “I have seen automacubes using carts, so if we find something like that it might work for our needs. This really should have been a factor we considered before now.”
Khin and Vesna had gathered their supplies and with their rifles slung over their backs, they began searching the hanger bay. Alizon also did so, but was much more hesitant to just open up doors and panels than was Khin.
“Wizard Cammarry? This place has been stripped of its treasure. ‘Search a room, might find your doom, but find a treasure, you have pleasure.’ Here, someone else got all the pleasure,” Khin announced as he, not so carefully, shut a closet door.
“My Khin is correct. Nearly everything is gone. Gone for a long time,” Vesna added as she stood up from where she had been searching a low and long storage area.
“Beautiful woman,” Alizon called out. “I believe I have located something which might serve our purposes. It is prosaic, but functional.” He drew out a slide board which had small caster rollers on it. It had been at the back of a locker.
“Very good. Now we need something to use as a lead, or leash,” Cammarry said.
“The restraints in the shuttle do unbuckled from the seats. Those could be used to hold the machine to that slide board,” Vesna suggested. “It will be awkward, but we could both push it from behind and pull it from in front.”
“My Vesna, she is so smart. My mother says, ‘someone who ponders, seldom is lost and wanders.’ I will help get those straps.”
“Beautiful woman? Will we need those items in that machine? Is it safe to disassemble them?” Alizon asked. He was remembering the nausea inducing time without gravity.
“Go get them. One way or the other, we will go back via the teleporter, not the shuttle,” Cammarry said. “The teleporter will take us right back to Alpha, or the needle ship. Now that it is here, the shuttle is superfluous.”
The four of them quickly had the straps and cargo webbing removed from the shuttle and the teleporter was packed onto the sliding board. It rolled easily along, but at some thresholds all four people would need to guide it through the doorways. It did not roll exactly in alignment and tended to veer to the sides.
“Sandie, can you access the corridors and give me a path to get to the biome, using this contraption?” Cammarry asked. “I want the quickest and easiest way there.”
“I am not sure of the status of any of the lifts or elevators. The tube transport system has a hub not far from your location. It is to your right and then two hundred meters straight ahead,” Sandie replied.
“We are not taking a ride in one of those here, unless there is no other way,” Cammarry remarked. “What about the synthetic brains and artificial intelligences here in Eta? Just overpower one of those, and find out what we need to know.”
“I have only found the two functioning systems, and both of those are damaged and already operating outside of their design parameters. If I interrupt them in their current status, I conjecture too high a possibility of them having a cascade failure and losing all functionality. SB Tokoloshe was designed for security oversight, but is now only partially functioning, and serving as Eta’s hydrology manager. SB Niebo is a tertiary system for sky tube and energy management which is more than fully occupied by maintaining the temperatures and weather in the biome.”
“You had no compunction about pressing me far beyond my limits and abilities,” Cammarry snapped back. “I guess you have a double standard. One for me, and a lesser one for everything else. What good will hydrology do when those gravity sink holes rip this place apart. We need to get to those people and evacuate them.”
There was no response for a while. The silence felt obdurate, unyielding, as if it was a presence. Cammarry then realized it was not just the lack of Sandie responding, but the fact that ever since docking and stepping out of the shuttle there had been a sort of traumatic quietness. No background humming. No subtle utility system noises of vents, and pipes, and power conduits. Nothing. As she waited for Sandie to speak through the com-link, all she could hear were the three other people. Their breathing, their steps, and perhaps even the regular beating of their hearts. Everything else was oppressively noiseless.
“Cammarry,” Sandie shattered the silence. “You are correct in your assessment of the hydrology situation. The water system will passively continue to function for roughly sixty hours, if SB Tokoloshe fails completely. I have overridden it, and while there is no link for you to interface with it, I have acquired security access to the elevator system. I can deliver you to the biome with a high degree of certainty.”
“So where do we go?” Cammarry asked.
“Take the corridor to the next junction, turn left and proceed to the hospital. There is a transport elevator there which will take you directly around to a biome entrance,” Sandie replied.
“Hospital?” Cammarry’s voice shook. “Like the Special Care Unit was a hospital?”
“That place was a bad place,” Khin said. “The cubies white did not do right. At least not at first. But Vesna and I got through
that.”
“Yes, my Khin, we did, but many others did not.”
Cammarry looked at those around her. Inwardly she felt sick, nauseated, and overall a bit quivery. Then she said, “Proceed. I wish I had the Willie Blaster, so that I was not going there unprotected.” She rested her hand on the revolver in its holster, but it was not as reassuring as the Willie Blaster had been.
They pushed the teleportation equipment along and made the corner. The sound of the rolling of the casters echoed eerily down the still corridors. The air was stale, cool, and very dry. Smells which were old, decrepit, and offensive sat in pockets in the non-moving air. Lighting came from overhead fixtures, but only about one out of every seven or eight was functional.
The closed doors marked ‘Hospital Center For Radiation Mitigation’ were standing before them. Symbols were pasted on the walls of the nearby corridor, some of which had peeled off in the dry air. The crumpled remains of posters, flyers, and signs littered the floor, but nothing else was around.
“Radiation?” Cammarry stated. “Why would they need radiation mitigation?”
No one answered her question. Whether it was rhetorical or not, only Cammarry knew. She took a deep breath and pushed on the doors. There was no nine-section color control pad, just a stainless steel bar with the word ‘Push’ inscribed on it. The doors swung open on old-fashioned hinges.
There were four lights on, one in each corner of the narthex they entered. Those lights were barely enough to see that rows of chairs which were set before them, all empty. Beyond that there was a railing of some kind of polished wood which separated the area from the back part. The back part had multiple doors, of a matching polished wooden construction. A booth, sat in the middle of the narthex, with the rows of chairs all situation so people would face the booth. From the inside of the booth, high-backed chairs, and monitors were arranged around a countertop. If someone had sat in one of those chairs, he or she could have looked out at the rows of chairs.
Khin rushed forward, around the rows of chairs, and vaulted over the counter into the booth. “No one is here! Not like that SCU with the old people.”
“There were children in that place too, do not forget,” Vesna corrected him, but with a playful gentleness.”
“Right, but not at first. At first it was all just old people and sick people who could not get around. Until Jerome and I came…”
Vesna glared at him, and even in the dimly lit narthex, Khin saw that look. He changed the subject quickly. “No one is here. I can tell, no one is here. I can tell, there is no living smell,” Khin rubbed the end of his nose. “My nose knows. No smell, no one home. No one has been here for a long, long time.”
At the back of the narthex, between two of the wooden doors, a blue hand-shaped symbol turned on. It glowed in a blue iridescence.
Cammarry pushed the teleportation equipment along, with Alizon assisting. It passed between the swinging doors, which shut with a quiet puff after they all passed through.
“There is a gate here.” Vesna walked over to the railing and saw how it was latched. She pulled the gate open. “Khin, quit playing and move those chairs for your wizard. She need you to work, not play, lollygag, or fiddle around.”
Khin jumped back out of the booth, even though there was a small half-door in its side, and started to push the rows of chairs apart so that Cammarry and Alizon could push the equipment though.
“Cammarry, if you jack in the fusion pack to an access port in this area, I can better assist you by searching the nonphysicality here. I am limited by what I can do, because so many of the AIs and SBs which had operated here have ceased to function.” Sandie’s voice was light and nonthreatening.
“No. We need to just get to the biome, and find those people. I am not helping you advance your own agenda behind my back,” Cammarry answered. “That elevator looks powered, and you said it could take us down to the biome. I assume you meant it would traverse though the shell in some manner, and not just open up and drop us two a few kilometers in freefall.”
“I am only trying to render aid and assistance in accomplishing the mission. I thought perhaps I could access a public address system and call to all the humans in the habitat. I have tried speaking to them in limited ways, when they have been seen, but to no avail. I have been unable to find a biome-wide public communication address method. Also, if I can assess the records here, in this hospital, I may gain a better understanding of what may have caused these people’s reluctance to come forward when summoned. Knowing their story would assist us.”
“Maybe they are just smart enough not to trust you?” Cammarry said icily. “I know your story.”
Alizon took his hand off the equipment and tenderly laid it on Cammarry’s shoulder. She reached up and squeezed his hand.
“The elevator is ready. It is wide enough for the teleportation system as you are hauling it. The elevator appears to have been designed to transfer objects like the treatment beds and tables which are in the adjoining rooms,” Sandie replied.
“Interesting. You can tell what is in rooms which we have not yet opened, but you ask me to jack my fusion pack into an access port here? That seems like you are giving me two different renderings of your abilities.” Cammarry again began pushing the teleporter toward the now open gate in the railing which Vesna had pushed to the side.
“I am just trying to help,” Sandie responded. “I have no intention of being duplicitous.”
“Cammarry?” Khin asked. He caught Vesna’s disapproving look, but continued on anyway. “You and your spirit-ghost are quarreling. That is not good. My mother always said, ‘Fighting with words is a coward’s way. Use words to build up, all the day.’”
“Khin, shut up,” Cammarry snapped at him. “I am sick of hearing about father and mother and what they might have said. It is inane, and ridiculous. I do not care what those people say. Nor do I want to hear quotes from Jerome’s reading. We have a job to do here, and if you just want to babble along, you might as well be riding on Bigelow’s carousel.”
Khin’s smile faltered for only a bit. He did not reply.
Vesna opened her mouth and stepped toward Cammarry, but restrained herself. Her eyes were hard and narrowed toward Cammarry.
Cammarry pushed hard at the teleportation equipment, and it bumped up against a chair which fell over with a thud. The wood of the chair split as it hit the floor. Alizon helped Cammarry push the equipment over to the elevator. Khin and Vesna walked cautiously behind them.
Pressing her hand on the blue symbol, Cammarry did not look at the others. She gazed at the door, waiting for it to open. When it did, she half expected some horrible surprise, but inside the elevator it was well lit, despite being musty. The air was even more stale than what they had walked through, and Cammarry wondered if the elevator felt somehow violated as it had been forced to open its mouth for her. There was almost a sense of reluctance as the doors opened, although mechanically they functioned perfectly. ‘Do elevators have feeling?’ Cammarry caught herself wondering as she leaned against the teleportation equipment and shoved it inside. ‘AIs have feelings, sometimes, so why would an elevator not have those as well?’ She did not voice her pondering, but instead just roughly heaved everything inside the elevator. She stepped inside, and there was plenty of room still.
“This is a conveyance to get us where we need to be?” Alizon asked innocently.
Vesna and Khin stepped to the far side of the teleportation equipment and were partially hidden from Cammarry’s view.
“Yes. Those buttons in that column near the door control where it will go. I am not sure which of those symbols reflects our destination. Do any of them look like some animal or biome?”
Sandie spoke. “The symbol fourth up from the bottom is the one you need to activate. That will take you to the biome level.”
Cammarry leaned forward and stared at the symbol. It was nothing she recognized, and looked like a lopsided glob with a line through its center. Nonethe
less, she pressed the button.
The doors beeped several times, and then slid closed. The doors seemed somber and defeated as they locked together. Cammarry again wondered about machines and emotions, but said nothing. A melancholy milieu was almost palpable inside the elevator. Cammarry could see that Alizon also felt it, but neither one said anything.
The elevator shifted slightly and began its arcing descent as it followed the curve of the shell. The sense of shifting and moving was slight, and Alizon did not have any motion illness or sensations of queasiness. Nor did Khin laugh about flying or the potential for flying. They all stood in the deep quiet that had settled onto them. It was like the oppressive silence which they had first encountered in the hanger bay was following them, taking steps right behind them, lurking somewhere just out of their full perception, yet noticeable at the fringes of sensation. Or so Cammarry considered.
The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books Page 212