by M M Buckner
Mes dieux, but I was breaking the cardinal rule of life: Never leave a safe habitat without a surfsuit. Every citizen on the planet had been drilled about the danger of environmental toxins. Yet here I was brazenly exposing myself. Some toxins killed in a matter of hours, but the worst ones, the ones that gave me nightmares, were the slow-acting biochemical molecules that rotted away different parts of your body over many years. If I could just get to the surface in time and find therapy, I’d be okay.
Too late for second thoughts now. I’d made my choice. Whatever was going to happen had already begun. I was sitting on the kitchen floor pondering these things when the lights blinked on. Merida had brought the habitat’s power back up. Time to move. Just as well I didn’t have longer to think—I might have bailed on the whole plan.
Instead, I hastily cranked open the hatch to the power plant, stuffed Jin down into the airlock, then climbed in beside him. It was a tight fit, and I had to twist around and press against him to lock the hatch. He made a noise, but I couldn’t hear him very well through the fabriglass. No time to delay. I pulled the big round ring to start the airlock running through its cycle.
When we tumbled out of the airlock, I felt more naked than ever before in my life. The atmosphere in the power plant was hot, dry and bitingly acrid. It tasted of ozone. I could almost feel my skin crackling, as if invisible poisons were already entering my pores. I had to force myself to concentrate on immediate matters. So I switched on my stolen electric torch and scoped the layout. We’d fallen onto a small steel platform just below the airlock. A deep shaft opened below us, housing two segmented columns of turbines. They were spinning like mad, roaring and throwing off static. An odd ladder of knotted cable hung down between them. I couldn’t see how far down it went.
Just then, Jin sagged against me in his fabriglass wrapper, and I had to prop him against the wall. My torchlight seemed dimmer than before, and I noticed black spots in my vision. It could be I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. To get Jin away from here, I had to keep up my strength, so I took time to pull the air cylinder from my shoulder pack and put my mouth to the valve. I twisted it open slowly. The air jetted out so fast, it cut my lip.
Merida would know exactly where to look for us, so we had to move fast. I sucked a few gulps of oxygen, then stowed the cylinder and wrestled Jin into position over my shoulder. He’d grown so light, any child might have managed him, and yet I found myself panting. Was it my imagination, or did each breath burn all the way down into my lungs?
Clutching Jin’s body, I seized the knotted ladder and clambered down the first few rungs. The ladder swung back and forth under our weight, and my torch kept getting dimmer. Maybe the battery was weak. Plenty soon, it failed entirely, and I could see nothing but the sparks flying from those twin columns of turbines. At least I’d gotten a glimpse of the layout. As we descended farther, hot turbulent breezes told me we were passing close between the spinning turbines.
At that moment, light blazed down the shaft from above. I jerked in surprise, my foot slipped, and I nearly dropped Jin. The airlock was opening. Merida had already found us. She’d activated the overhead lights, and now it became obvious that my sight bad narrowed to tunnel vision from lack of oxygen. But the lights revealed something else. In the slick gray wall surrounding the turbines, I glimpsed a small orifice tapering inward. As I watched, it puffed open, men closed up so tight it virtually disappeared. The gray wall looked wet and fibrous. There might be handholds. If I could leap from the ladder between those two turbine columns and find a purchase on that wall, Jin and I might be able to squeeze through that little orifice.
Above me, Merida was shouting orders at the musketeers, and I felt their weight shuddering the ladder. They were coming down after us. “Give me grace,” I whispered aloud. Then I cradled Jin’s body in my left arm, clung to the ladder with my right, and stretched one leg out between the turbines toward that gray wall. I lost my balance and fell. My shoulder pack slammed against a turbine and burst open, raining out gear. Jin and I pitched forward and bounced into the wall.
Desperately I flung out my free right hand and grabbed for the fibrous surface. Light beams splintered down from above as I clawed for a hold. I heard more shouting. At last, my fingers closed on a rubbery wet tendril, and I gripped with all my might.
We’d fallen a long way. The little orifice I’d seen in the wall was far above us now, but a wet sucking noise drew my attention to another similar one just below us. And there was another off to the side. Two more. Apparently, these pores riddled the wall. I watched this one puff open, then close tight. With agonizing care, I worked down to the little pore and pushed my fist through. It felt moist and fleshy. As if in reflex, the pore yawned away from my fist like a mouth. Before it could close, I jammed my head and shoulder through. Grunting and heaving, I squeezed Jin halfway through the opening with me. All at once, the pore wriggled and writhed and spat us the rest of the way through.
We fell straight down into blank darkness. I locked my arms around Jin’s body in what may have been a death grip. How long does a second last? Not many could have passed, and yet it seemed like an eternity before we landed, with a mighty splash, in a body of cold black fluid. The transition took me by such surprise I inhaled and choked.
The air trapped inside Jin’s fabriglass wrapper saved us. He bobbed to the surface like a balloon and brought me up with him. For several minutes, I could do nothing but hold on to him and cough and spit and throw up fluid from my lungs.
When I came to my senses, I realized we were caught in a boiling current, and in the inky blackness, perception really played tricks with me. The fluid seemed to be surging up like a fountain, with Jin and me balanced at the very top. Fluid swirled around my body and tugged at my musketeer uniform like a rising tide. We must have fallen into an underground spring or artesian well. Anyway, I wanted off, so I pointed my body at an angle to the boil and started kicking, pushing Jin’s buoyant fabriglass bag ahead of me. With much effort, I finally reached a solid wall. Only then did I realize that my lungs no longer burned and that my energy had returned. Whatever else might be in this atmosphere, it seemed to have more oxygen.
In the darkness, my hand located a small flat shelf sticking out from the wall just above the bubbling fluid line. It felt wide enough to hold both of us, so I hoisted Jin up, and pulled myself up dripping wet beside him.
“Jin, ça va?”
He moved, but I couldn’t hear if he said anything. At least he was still conscious.
Fluid streamed down my face and neck and got into my eyes. I had swallowed plenty. Some of it still gurgled in my lungs. It had a funny sweet taste, but there was no way to guess what it contained. One thing for sure, it had entered my bloodstream by now.
The spring or river, whatever, it was definitely rising. In just moments, the fluid level had already welled up several centimeters above the shelf where we were crouching. Soon, we’d be up to our chins again. I sat there shivering and thinking. What next, Jolie? The electric torch was lost. Likewise the air cylinders, the food, the climbing rope. I didn’t have a single piece of communications gear. I didn’t even have a chronometer to tell the time. More than that, I had no clue where we were, except that we were giga-deep in the Earth. Curious place for a sun-loving surfer girl to be.
Wouldn’t you know, Jin picked that moment to collapse against me in a lifeless heap. It was all I could do to keep him from slipping off the shelf. Sacrée Loi, let me speak plainly. I whimpered like a child.
Cowering in the dark, with the fluid rising every moment, I rocked Jin in my arms and begged him to wake up. My first botched rescue had half paralyzed him. What had I done this time? His air cylinder would run empty soon. I had no way to time it. But if I unsealed the fabriglass and removed his helmet, I would condemn him to the same fate I was surely facing—exposure to toxins. Either way, he would die. My doing. My fault. As the fluid level rose to my shoulders, I blubbered away, hopelessly begging him to forgive me.
He’d made a bad choice when he picked Jolie Sauvage for his angel.
Every lame move, every preter-inane choice I’d made since leaving Palmertown cycled through my mind like reruns of a bad movie. I used to mink of myself as a thrill-charged surfer girl with nerves of iron and the cheek to match. Then I remembered Luc’s accident. My fault. Mea culpa. All I ever did was rush into things without a plan, without a notion of the risk. Adrienne had been right, I needed a nursemaid. Mes dieux, but I missed my friends!
It was then I began thinking of delivering Jin back to Merida. The rubbery fibers which formed the walls of this place weren’t easy to grip and climb, but I could do it. I could scale back up to that mouth-like opening and find the power plant. Merida and the musketeers would be waiting. So what if they murdered me? Without therapy, my fate had already been ordained by the toxins I’d breathed and swallowed. Better to the quickly. At least, with my last act, I could undo this terrible mistake. Merida might play ungodly games with Jin’s brain, but maybe she would keep him alive. Maybe.
Self-doubt is a horrible thing. It saps your energy and keeps you from making the bold leaps necessary for survival. Lucky for me, I’m not a deep thinker. My mind skips along the surface of things, where facts tend to stand out in bright colors. I didn’t doubt for long. No, Merida would not keep Jin alive. Call it lizard-brain instinct, I knew that sooner or later, her experiments would kill him. I couldn’t give up now. There was no easy way. Somewhere overhead, the open surface waited. I had to get Jin up there and signal for help. Keep focused, Jolie.
With shaking legs, I stood up on the narrow shelf and tried to hoist Jin’s unconscious body over my shoulder. Wouldn’t you know, he picked that moment to wake up in a panic. I suppose he was suffocating. Anyway, he began clawing so violently at the inside of the fabriglass bag that he broke out of my grip and fell into the liquid. I couldn’t see through the darkness, but I heard splashing, so I dove in and swam for him.
Fabriglass is tough material. You need a diamond blade to cut it—or maybe just a meta-surge of adrenaline. By the time I reached him, Jin had managed to tear a rip in the bag, and it was filling fast with liquid and sinking.
“Jin, relax! Stop kicking!”
He didn’t hear me. When he sank below the surface, I dove with him, trying by feel alone to free him from the lethal bag. I felt his hands moving. With unbelievable strength, he tore the rip wider and wider till he’d rent the bag from one end to the other. Then he shed it like an old skin, and we kicked to the surface. He tore the helmet off with so much force, I heard the gasket rip. And I heard him sucking great gulps of air.
“Hil—hil—” he spluttered unintelligibly.
“Jin,” I panted, touching him in the darkness to make sure he was there. He shook himself and treaded the fluid with steady, powerful kicks.
“Hilarious!” he yelled at the top of his voice. And then he began to laugh.
15
The Bridge and the Fissure
THE BLACK TIDE surged around us, lifting us higher, and the walls echoed with Jin’s laughter. “This way, pet. We’ll cross this river. There’s a bridge. And beyond that, a chamber.”
“What? You can see in the dark?”
“I hear it,” he shouted, still laughing. “Jolie, I hear everything!”
“You can hear a bridge?” I’d browsed video about ancient bats navigating through dark caves. “You mean like sonar?”
Jin laughed even louder. He was swimming away from me. I heard long measured strokes. He seemed to have recovered from his paralysis. Quickly, I followed in his wake.
The surging liquid thrust me bodily against a large outcropping. Its surface was slick and wet and hard to grasp. I felt Jin’s hand gripping my upper arm. In one easy motion, he hauled me up out of the fluid and set me on my feet. “The bridge,” he said. His strength seemed superhuman, and yet as I bumped against him in the dark, I felt his wasted limbs and skeletal torso. He hadn’t miraculously sprouted muscles. What could have produced such a physical change in him?
“Stay close to me, pet. The footing’s precarious. This bridge is very old.” He snatched the collar of my uniform just as I lost my balance. “Wonderful!” he said. “We must get to the chamber. It’s coming clearer by the second.”
I clung to him on the greasy, wet structure he called a bridge. The surface felt like gelatin, only it seemed to be creeping around my feet like something alive. I couldn’t find traction. How could he see where to stand? I asked, “What’s coming clearer, Jin?”
“You worry so much, pet,” he answered with wry amusement. His soft Pacific accent touched me to the quick. He sounded like himself again. He said, “Take my arm. I can read your thoughts. I can hear the cells in your body. They make a sort of chittering. The sensations are coming from everywhere. This is amazing!” Then he let out an exuberant whooping laugh. “Hoo-hoo-hoo!”
About then, we both slipped and fell in a sprawling heap together, and my fingers touched down onto the viscous oozy surface. Jin hooted again like a delighted lunatic. “Forgive me, pet. This is hard to get used to. I need time to adjust.”
“Jin, stop it.” I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. This “bridge,” as he called it, terrified me. I couldn’t see a thing. The dark was so thick, it seemed as if the very fabric of space were closing in on us. Only the fluid gurgling below gave me a sense of dimension. That and the warmth of Jin’s body. His skin felt hot to the touch. I clung to him.
“That base note I was hearing before,” he said, “it’s fracturing.”
“Huh?” I didn’t have an inkling what he meant.
“Noise. Feedback. It’s like a scream. I have to find the patterns. This is—not what I expected.”
A shiver ran up the back of my neck. “Jin, what are you talking about?” I tugged at his arms, trying to get his attention and bring him back to the present.
In response, he sprang to his feet and hauled me up so fast, my bream caught in my throat. “You’re right, Jolie. This air is filled with toxins. Come on. Let’s cross the bridge. I need to reach that chamber.”
He grasped me around my middle and lifted me off my feet like a package. “Chemicals,” he said, sauntering through the darkness. “You’re wondering where I get my strength. Acetylcholine, adenosine triphosphate, adrenaline, a whole alphabet of brain chemicals. Ha. I can name them all if you like. I just realized I control their manufacture now.”
Without warning, he started sprinting along the bridge. I locked my arms around his waist, totally disoriented. He leaped into the air, and it seemed as if we’d never touch down, but he landed perfectly on one foot and kept running. “This is marvelous,” he shouted. “Hoo-hoo! I’m in conscious control of my entire brain. I can do anything!”
“Jin, slow down!” I pleaded, bouncing along on his hip.
“You want light, pet? You want to see? Certainly.”
I sensed a faint rosy glow. After hours in pitch-darkness, the light came as a shock, and for an instant, my mind reeled trying to comprehend where it came from. Jin still held my waist in the crook of his elbow, so my perspective was way off kilter. I whipped my head around to locate the light source. The glow was radiating from Jin’s forehead! Gradually, his whole face grew luminous. Sacred Angels of Physics!
“See what I can do?” He grinned like a goblin. “I can tune my brain’s energy to visible wavelengths. This is fun!”
“Stop it! Please!”
“Ah, you’re crying. Sweet little savage. Your fear rings in my head. Please don’t be upset.” The glow radiating from his face subsided, but after that, it never completely disappeared. “We’re nearly there, Jolie. Hold on.”
“There? Where?”
Jin loped on across the narrow slippery bridge. In the spectral glow, the walls around us sweated and glistened, and when I looked down, I saw the bridge’s surface ripple with shades of gray, like colorless rainbows gliding through an oil slick. The river of gurgling fluid lay far, far below. Abruptly, Jin halted
and set me on my feet.
His forehead grew more luminous, and I saw him wince and press his temples. “That awful static. It’s the Net! The signals are full of cross-talk and echoes. Rumors. Gossip. Cyclones of feedback corrupting the code. No wonder people get confused. I wouldn’t have expected Net beams to penetrate this deep in the Earth.”
“The Net?” I squatted and clung to the bridge so I wouldn’t slip again. “You mean the actual Net? By any chance, can you hear Luc Viollett’s voice?”
“Don’t worry, pet. We’ve crossed the bridge. The chamber’s not far. I sense its resonance. A focal point of energies. That’s where we must go. First, we crawl. Then the chamber. You’re still with me, yes?”
“I’m with you, Jin.”
The structure he insisted on calling a bridge abutted a rough, furrowed wall. I felt it with my hands in the semidarkness but couldn’t find any opening. Jin moved my hands down to the base of the wall, and I felt a whoosh of air rushing from a low horizontal fissure. His face brightened with that eerie flesh-colored light that seemed to issue directly through his skin. He pointed, and I could see the crack running along the base of the wall.
“We’ll go together,” he said, crouching down.
I dropped to my knees beside him. Then he drew my hand to his lips. “La Sauvage. You trust me.”
It was a simple statement, spoken with evident surprise. In answer, I lay down flat on my belly and wriggled into the fissure. The opening was narrow from floor to ceiling, but very very wide in the horizontal plane. Maybe this fissure ran for hundreds of kilometers, an empty gap in the layers of folded Earth. When my eyes adjusted to the thin light radiating from Jin’s forehead, I could see hundreds of stalactites dripping, dry as dust, from the low ceiling. Some were tiny nubs, but others had grown long enough to meet their counterpart stalagmites on the floor below. These reminded me of miniature columns in an ancient gothic hall, except they seemed too spindly to support such a vast roof.