No Other Love

by Speer, Flora

  Merin reached the bridge first and opened communications with headquarters, explaining their problem with the cable and what had happened when she tried to reconnect it.

  “Hold on, let me confer with Gaidar,” said Tarik. “He knows the ship as well as I do, perhaps better.”

  The receiver went silent except for occasional static. Herne looked down at Merin. A wave of tenderness swept over him. Her usually crisp white coif was wrinkled and soiled. There was a streak of dust across the shoulders of her treksuit. Her back was held stiffly, her shoulders squared. When she turned her head to watch one of the lights on the control panel he put out his hand, then drew it back, certain that if he were to touch her now she would be deeply offended and would withdraw even more from him. He contented himself with a mildly teasing comment.

  “There is a smudge on your cheek. And another on your nose.”

  “Time enough to worry about cleanliness after that cable is repaired.” Her voice was cool, unemotional, a little abrupt. “Ah, here is Tarik.”

  “Gaidar and I agree that you will have to go back again to repair that connection,” Tarik said. “I’m going to let him give you the instructions.”

  “Listen carefully, Merin,” The Cetan’s deep voice rumbled out of the receiver. “Go in by the shaft on the opposite side of the propulsion system from the one you used before. That way, you will have more room to move your arms. That way, it will be easier to make a firm connection.”

  “She will be crawling at an angle that will put her almost upside down by the time she reaches the cable and the terminals,” Herne objected. He had called up the diagram of that section of the ship and was studying the screen where it appeared.

  “Let her wear one of the harnesses from the cargo bay of your shuttlecraft,” Tarik ordered, “the ones we use to lower people through the cargo bay doors when we can’t land the shuttlecraft.”

  “There is a length of metoflex rope stored in a locker on the docking deck. Attach it to the harness.” Gaidar gave them instructions on where to find the rope, adding, “Herne, you will have to keep Merin from sliding down into the main propulsion duct, and when she has finished her work, you will have to pull her out again. It would be all but impossible for her to crawl backward out of that shaft.”

  “I’m sorry about this, Merin,” Tarik said. “There is so much solar activity right now that it would be dangerous for us to send anyone else by shuttlecraft beyond the protection of the atmosphere to help the two of you.”

  “I understand,” Merin replied. “I’m not worried about my personal safety, only about my ability to make a successful repair.”

  “I will rehearse you again,” Gaidar offered. In fact, he went through the entire procedure three times, making Merin repeat his instruction back to him twice before he announced, “What you have just learned will have to do. Good luck, Merin.”

  After adding his own good wishes, Tarik signed off. When Merin turned from the communications console, Herne was watching her with a worried expression.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go in there. I would gladly do the job myself,” he said, “if only I could fit into that confounded shaft.”

  “While you find the rope Gaidar told you to use,” she said, ignoring the sentiment implicit in his words, “and bring the harness from the shuttlecraft, I will locate the second shaft and remove the grate so we need waste no time. The repairs grow more urgent with every hour that passes.”

  “You are absolutely fearless, aren’t you? You don’t mind going into those cramped shafts at all. I admire your courage, Merin.”

  “If I am not afraid,” she responded, “there can be no courage in what I do. As I understand it, to achieve courage, one must first overcome fear.”

  “I wish I knew what you really are,” he whispered. “Sometimes I suspect you aren’t human at all.”

  After he had left her, Merin slumped a little, shaking her head at the irony of her present situation. She had gone into the first shaft indifferent to her own safety. Indeed, at one level of her mind, she would have been pleased to die in there, so that the torture of her recent existence might end in a place similar to the Cubicle where her earliest life had been spent.

  But in the shock of the explosion in the shaft she had made a frightening discovery. As Herne had pulled her out, as he held her and she clung to him, she had suddenly wanted to go on living, not because her life was valuable, or even because she hoped for anything pleasant in the future, but because she did not want to leave Herne. He had become so important to her that the thought of never seeing him again, or hearing his voice, or perhaps occasionally being touched by him, was intolerable. If she died, she would leave him for all eternity. Thus, she would enter the second shaft in fear for her life, an emotion entirely new to her.

  Perversely, she savored the fear while she made her way back to the propulsion controls chamber to locate the shaft Gaidar had told her to use. There she called up a diagram screen and double-checked the shaft location, then began to remove the grate covering its outlet. This second shaft ended high in the bulkhead instead of at deck level like the first one. By the time she pulled the grate off and was lowering it to the deck, her hands were shaking so hard she dropped it.

  “Watch that!” Herne reappeared, carrying the harness and the rope. “Keep your mind on what you’re doing or you’ll botch this attempt, too!”

  Through the fear that threatened to stifle her breath, Merin was able to see that he was seriously concerned about the repairs, and rightly so. Both their lives might depend on the work she did. Summoning all her Oressian training, she asserted control over her fear as she would over any other emotion, banishing it to a small, dark corner of her mind, commanding it to stay there until she was finished with the work she must do.

  With no outward show of feeling, she let Herne fit the harness around her chest and shoulders and fasten it at the back. Next he attached the narrow metoflex rope, a combination of plastic and strands of metal.

  “Centuries ago,” he told her, his fingers busy on the rope, “surgeons used to cut their patients open with knives and then sew them up again after the surgery was completed. I once saw diagrams of the knots they used, in an old book. I used to practice tying the knots, just in case I should ever need to know how to make them. Now, here I am, remembering that book and tying surgical knots in a rope. There, that should hold.”

  “It won’t come undone until I’m out again?” Merin twisted her head around but could not see what he had done. It was hard to reach behind her back to feel the knot with both hands. She tried once more. The knot felt firm and tight. “You are sure it will hold?”

  “If that particular knot hadn’t held,” Herne told her, smiling a little, “then over the course of almost a century, a lot of patients would have bled to death. Of course, surgeons didn’t use sutures for very long. Better closures were invented. But until they were, the knots held. So will this one.”

  His smile faded. He looked hard at her. She kept her gaze on the flexlight he had once more strapped to her wrist. She adjusted the brightness with fingers that trembled a bit in spite of her efforts to control her fingers.

  “Merin, are you frightened? You needn’t be ashamed if you are.”

  “Certainly not.” She made her voice as crisp and calm as she possibly could. “Oressians are never afraid.”

  “Is that also one of your laws?” In contrast to her voice, his was gentle, and as tender as the large hand that stroked across her cheek. Merin fought the urge to catch his hand, to kiss it and hold it against her face. Instead, she bent to pick up her tools. Still not looking directly at him, she fastened the tools to her shoulder harness so she would have both hands free.

  “I will need the steps to reach the entrance,” she said, nodding toward a nearby rolling ladder.

  “They’ll just be in the way. I’ll boost you up. Remember, I’ll be right here, with the other end of the rope wrapped around my waist. It may go slack at times,
but even if you slip, you won’t go far. I know how long that shaft is and I can always pull you back.”

  “I am ready,” she said.

  Herne made a step of his hands and Merin put one foot into it. He lifted her with easy strength until her face was level with the shaft opening. She put her arms and head inside. Herne pushed her a little higher, and now her waist was in, too. She felt him lifting her legs so that her entire body was on a slant, head down, face toward the floor of the shaft. There was more room in this shaft than there had been in the first, so she could maneuver her arms more easily. She began a squirming, slithering crawl at a downward angle, stopping when she felt the tug of rope at her back, then inching forward when Herne played out more rope.

  Approaching from this direction, she was farther away from the disconnected cable than she had been while in the other shaft. She estimated that she had moved about three times her body’s length before she finally saw the cable, swaying gently with the motion of the ship, and then saw the dial. To reach both, she had to push herself out across the width of the main duct that led directly downward into the ship’s propulsion system. Why anyone would place these essential elements in such an impossible-to-reach spot, Merin could not understand. She wondered briefly if their position was some weird Cetan joke. She must remember to ask Gaidar about it.

  She had by now progressed far enough along the slanting shaft to poke her head out over the main duct. Grasping the metal edge of her own shaft, she pulled herself forward into emptiness until her arms and half of her chest were free. She wiped her sweaty palms on the sleeves of her treksuit before she detached a tool from her harness. If she dropped it, it would be lost to her and, falling into the main propulsion system, it might cause irreparable damage. For a moment she looked straight down into the glowing, churning heat of the ship’s engines. Then, taking a deep breath and willing herself not to look again, she reached across the empty space and began to work.

  Gaidar had been right; with more room to maneuver it was much easier to reattach the cable to its terminals, even though her head was beginning to ache from the downward angle at which she was lying.

  With the cable repaired and the connection tested several times to be sure it would hold, Merin replaced her first tool and took the second one. To her horror, as she reached toward the dial she felt herself slip forward until all of her body from the waist up was out of the shaft and hanging over the main duct. Surprised, not having expected to lose the support of the shaft floor, she naturally bent forward at the waist, the motion pulling her out of the shaft by another few inches.

  She nearly dropped the tool she was holding. Awkwardly, pressing with her free hand against the side of the main duct, she straightened herself and once more reached to the dial. It was quickly reset. Within a few moments she could see that the connection was working properly and the dial was registering normal numbers. From where Herne was, he would be able to see on the lighted panel near him that the repairs had been made. Merin reattached the tool she had been holding and prepared to be pulled back up the shaft.

  Only now did she realize that the knot holding the rope to her shoulder harness had slipped out of the shaft with her. As Herne drew on the rope, pulling her back into the shaft, the knot caught where shaft and main propulsion duct joined. Merin pressed herself downward, trying to make more room between her back and the top of the shaft, so the knot could fit into the narrow space. Her arms, hanging loosely into the main duct, were useless and the tools fastened to her chest further impeded her re-entry into the shaft. She dared not remove them and toss them away for fear of damaging the ship’s propulsion system. She felt the rope tighten, jamming the knot more firmly against the entrance to the shaft. The rope tugged at her again as Herne tried to pull her out.

  “Herne!” she shouted as loudly as she could, though she wasn’t certain he could hear her. “Herne, I’m stuck!”

  Frantically she searched with her fingers along the side of the main duct, trying to find a projection or rough section of metal that might give her leverage to push herself back into the shaft. The walls were perfectly smooth except where shaft and duct joined. There, she suddenly noticed, the walls of the shaft projected outward about two inches, ending in jagged edges. Against the upper edge the knot was rubbing each time Herne pulled on the rope. By twisting her arm at a painful angle she could feel where the metal had already cut into the thin rope. It would not be long before the knot was severed and she would fall to her death in the propulsion system. She knew there was no way she could possibly be rescued. Not without taking the ship apart.

  “Merin! Merin!” She heard Herne’s voice from a great distance. When she drew a deep breath to answer him as loudly as she could, she slipped forward a little more.

  “Merin, try to help me. I can’t get you moving!” Herne tugged harder on the rope, attempting to pull her up, but only making matters worse. Each time he pulled, the jagged edge of the shaft cut deeper into the knot that was the only thing keeping her from certain death.

  An hour or two earlier it wouldn’t have mattered to her. Merin began to laugh at the injustice of fate, and then to cry. The hysteria lasted only a few moments before she grew sober again and began to consider her situation.

  If Herne could not retrieve her, if everything he tried to do to move her out of the shaft only made her predicament more serious, then she would have to help herself. She could no longer depend on the rope, but her arms and her chest were free, and she did have one advantage – the same jagged protruding edge that appeared to be dooming her.

  She swung herself up as high as she could, lifting her torso off the floor of the shaft. At the same time she reached down and grabbed the metal edge of the shaft with both hands. Then, using all her strength, she pushed herself backward as hard as she could.

  The upper edge of the shaft bit deeper into the knot at her back. She felt the knot give way and heard the rope slither back up the shaft as Herne pulled it. She heard him shout at the sudden loss of her weight.

  She had no time to think of Herne or of what he might do. She was too busy to think of anything but her fight against the ship’s gravity in the deadly downward slope of the shaft. She had succeeded in pushing herself backward into the shaft by a few inches, but the sharp edge of metal had cut into her hands. Still holding onto the edge, she pushed again. Her hands slipped on her own blood. She wiped both palms on her sleeves, lifted her chest once more, caught at the edge, and pushed backward, gaining another inch or two. She wiped the blood off her palms and tried again. And again. She had to stop to adjust the tools she could not jettison, losing an inch or two to gravity in the process, though she tried to brace herself against the sides of the shaft with her legs. On the next try she got all of her chest into the shaft.

  Now her work was harder; her arms were beginning to be restricted by the sides of the shaft, but inside it she felt safer. She kept pushing herself, an inch at a time, until her head and her arms up to her elbows were inside, too. She rested for a moment, then began again. When even her extended fingertips were inside the shaft, she began pushing on the floor, using her legs as much as she could, working her way slowly backward, uphill, fighting the downward slope all the way.

  It occurred to her that she hadn’t heard Herne for a while. She wondered what he was doing. Perhaps he had called Tarik or Gaidar for advice. She couldn’t think of anything any of them could do for her, so she kept trying to help herself.

  She became unbearably tired, her overworked arms and hands aching from the strain. She wanted to stop and rest, but feared if she did, she would fall asleep and begin to slide downward again. To counteract her weakness she placed both hands on the floor of the shaft and pushed as hard as she could.

  “Merin!” From behind her, far up the shaft, she heard the sounds of banging and the ripping of metal. It continued, growing louder, then stopping while Herne called her name again and again. He did not seem to hear her response. The banging, tearing sounds start
ed once more. Her headache, which had begun earlier, became worse from the noise.

  Periodically, Herne stopped whatever he was doing and called her name. Obviously, he couldn’t hear her answers, so she decided there was no point in wasting her breath. She needed all her strength just to keep moving. By the flexlight still strapped to her left wrist she could see the trail of blood she had left in the dust along the shaft floor. When she got out of the shaft, Herne would want to fill her with medication to prevent infection. If she got out. No, she would get out. She would.

  “Just keep pushing,” she told herself. “You are making progress. An inch at a time adds up, and soon – soon –“ But it took a long, long time.

  Then, suddenly, all the noise on metal stopped. Merin could hear no sounds but her panting breath and the rubbing of her exhausted body moving up the shaft. A moment later her feet were no longer touching the floor of the shaft. They felt as if they were in open air.

  “Merin!” Herne sounded as if he was standing at her shoulder. She felt him grab her feet. Now she hardly needed to push herself along at all because he was pulling her. He held her knees, her thighs, her waist. He was lifting her over twisted metal and open panels, past a tangle of wires where the last two sections of the shaft ought to be. She had a quick impression of the control panel dangling by one cord.

  She fell down out of the shaft onto the ladder, her tools clanking against her chest. Finally, her feet touched the deck of the propulsion control room, and Herne was holding her upright, staring at her. He was wearing heavy work gloves and his face was white and hard. Oddly, she was not the least bit shaky or upset.

  “I cut my hands at the lower end of the shaft,” she reported very calmly.

  “Cut the rope, too, you idiot.” Despite the rude word, she could tell he was not angry, only relieved.

  “I slid a little too far into the main duct,” she told him, watching him remove his gloves, knowing his eyes were on her face. “At least your surgical knot didn’t come untied. It had to be sliced apart, little by little, as you pulled on the rope.”