The Darwin Elevator

by Jason M. Hough

Page 42

 

  And now, her first word from Neil. The cryptic nature did little to help her anxiety.

  Stepping out of her room into the dark hallway, she considered waking Natalie. Whatever happened now, they were in this together, and Tania found she craved the comfort of a confidante.

  Speak to no one.

  She heard the words, in Neil’s authoritative voice. Memories came with it, of sitting under an avocado tree, of watching ants devour a lone straggler fallen from the maze of branches. He’d spoken to her in that voice then, urged her to take on the project alone. She’d betrayed him then, but wouldn’t now.

  Moving at a natural pace, Tania made her way to Gray Level. She rarely visited the section, but the layout mirrored the others. As she walked, she wondered if a guard might stop her. In the past few days, some of her staff had complained of being questioned when moving between levels.

  Again, orders.

  She considered contacting Alex Warthen directly, demanding an explanation, and the thought made her miss Neil even more. She always took such concerns to him and knew he would champion her causes in front of the council.

  She reached room thirty-two unscathed. From the faded sign on the wall, it was a typical station conference room.

  Trying the door, she found it locked. A swipe of her access card did nothing. On the manual keypad below the card slot, she tapped the numbers that spelled Antelope.

  The lock disengaged with a subtle click, and she opened the door to a room full of people. Neil Platz was not among them.

  “Come in and close the door,” a man at the table said. Tall and thin, gray hair in two tufts over each ear, and wearing square-rimmed glasses. He looked vaguely familiar.

  She took one step inside and let the door click closed behind her. An oval-shaped table dominated the room. Chairs had surrounded it, but they had been pushed to the far wall.

  Roughly twenty men and women stood at the table, studying maps of the station splayed out across the surface. As Tania entered, they all stopped and stared at her.

  She thought she had seen a few of them around the station, but she couldn’t name a single one.

  “What’s going on here?” she asked. “Who are you?”

  “Karl Stromm,” the balding man answered.

  “Do I know you?”

  He shot her a friendly smile. “I served you breakfast this morning. ”

  The memory jumped to the front of her mind, clear as day. This man, in an apron, dishing out her imitation eggs. She looked over the rest of them, and the pieces fell into place. Low-level maintenance workers, cooks, cleaning crew.

  People who went unnoticed.

  “I take it that Neil did not brief you,” Karl said.

  Tania shook her head.

  He nodded, once. “Join us at the table. We need your help. ”

  “Help with what?” she asked, cautiously approaching the map-laden surface.

  “Neil wants to stay a step ahead of the enemy. ”

  She felt her pulse quicken. “What do you mean?”

  “Mutiny, Miss Sharma. Mutiny. ”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Darwin, Australia

  9. FEB. 2283

  In the middle of the road, Skyler dropped to his knees and erupted into a bitter laugh.

  The gate to Prumble’s garage lay in a broken pile of twisted iron. Debris littered the street in front of the building, a pair of rag-clad pickers filling burlap sacks with the choicer pieces. They scattered at the sound of Skyler’s laugh.

  My ship destroyed, my friends killed or captured, my hangar looted, and now this?

  Skyler glanced over his shoulder at the Elevator. It had never seemed farther away.

  Numb, he forced himself onto unsteady feet. One foot in front of the other; repeat. He lumbered to the garage entrance and shuffled down the ramp. The smell of smoke overwhelmed his senses. He pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose.

  At the bottom of the ramp Skyler flipped on the light attached to his gun barrel. The inner door leading to Prumble’s warehouse had been smashed away, along with most of the surrounding wall. Beyond lay charred, shattered shelves and overturned plastic bins, their sides partially melted.

  Prumble must be dead. Dead, or gone. Nothing of value remained here. It had been ransacked, then scuttled. At the back of the garage, Skyler found Prumble’s office. The meat-locker door lay on the ground, crumpled like a discarded lager can. Scorch marks marred the ground around it.

  They’d used high explosives. Skyler had no doubt who the culprit was.

  New goal, he thought. Find Russell Blackfield and put his eyes out with a hot poker.

  One more check box on a growing list of impossible tasks.

  He left the garage, his feet moving on their own, for he had no will to keep going. He took shelter from the rain in a building across the street and doubled over from pain. A pain born not of his injuries but of despair. His hope of fixing the Aura, and returning to orbit, faded, stomped out by the cards that fate had given him. He had to turn his focus to survival now.

  Maybe he could go to Grillo and beg for a job piloting one of his shitty boats. To come this far, only to join up with that bastard? It almost seemed the perfect end to this series of tragedies.

  Perhaps he should just walk away, into the Clear, as Skadz had done. Leave this mess to those forced to wallow in it.

  He thought back to the day he’d met Prumble at the café. The feeling he’d had seeing that satchel full of pristine bills.

  The café. Prumble had joked of retiring there. Half-joked, Skyler thought. He certainly knew the owner well enough. And he did say it was where he met his contact from Nightcliff.

  Skyler thought that maybe if he waited at the coffeehouse long enough, the man from Nightcliff might come in again, looking for Prumble. He lived in Nightcliff, and that meant a potential way in.

  Or perhaps the old woman who owned the place had heard from the big man. Maybe she even knew if he’d survived the attack on his home.

  Near exhaustion, devoid of other options, Skyler did the only thing he could do: walk.

  He arrived very late. Between the hour and the heavy rain, the streets were mostly empty. Only one other shop was open near Clarke’s: a one-room card house. The occupants, four elderly men, huddled around a table playing mahjongg. They barely registered Skyler’s passing.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. The café was open. Even better, it was empty.

  The old Sri Lankan woman sat behind the counter, knitting. She eyed him with suspicion but flashed a toothless smile nonetheless.

  Skyler couldn’t recall her name. He asked for coffee, plus a bun filled with some kind of bean mash. He tried not to imagine the origin of its contents, and wolfed it down before he was even seated. Belatedly he wondered how he would pay for it.

  When she brought the coffee, Skyler thanked her, and said, “Do you speak English?”

  “Little,” she said.

  “Have you seen Prumble? The fat man?”

  Her eyes narrowed. The smile remained. She shook her head slowly.

  “Please,” he said, “his garage was attacked. I have to find out if he survived. ”

  “I no know him,” she said.

  Terrible liar, Skyler thought.

  He looked at his coffee cup. “He gave you the coffee beans, yes?”

  Her eyes shifted, uncertain.

  “I retrieved those for him in Vietnam. You know Vietnam?” She just stared. “Prumble sent me to retrieve some parts for an X-ray machine. We dropped on a military hospital, looking for them. ”

  The crone just stared at him. He wasn’t sure if she understood any of it.

  The details of the mission flashed through Skyler’s mind like a daydream. “I remember we found the parts we needed straightaway, and had some time to explore. Skadz and I went to a house on the base; it belo
nged to some Communist Party official. There was a whole cache of supplies stacked in the basement, including a case of preserved coffee. Coffee, yes? In a special can. ” He approximated it with his arms. “Had a white stripe across it, diagonal, like this. ”

  Her eyes briefly shot toward the bar. Skyler hoped he was getting through to her.

  “Coffee,” she finally said.

  “Yes. From Vietnam. From Prumble. ”

  She shuffled away, under the flimsy wooden plank that was the bar, and through a curtained doorway.

  “Look,” Skyler called after her, “Prumble met a man here a few weeks back. A man in a long overcoat. I need to contact that man. If you can help …”

  No sound from behind the curtain. Skyler gave up and sipped his beverage, enjoying the rich flavor.

  He looked out the dirty window and watched the rain pummel the alley beyond. Merciless, tonight. He looked up the side of the building directly across. On every windowsill, containers of all sizes and shapes had been set out, precariously, to catch what water they could.

  He wondered if anything would ever change here. The city was gradually dying. Entropy would win.

  Sound from behind the bar caught his attention, and he turned back.

  Prumble stood there, leaning on his cane, a huge grin across his face.

  “I can scarcely believe my eyes,” he said.

  “Prumble!” Skyler stood and embraced the man.

  “I figured you were dead,” Prumble said, laughing.

  “Likewise. I went to the garage …”

  “Ah, yes. Blackfield’s work. I was inside at the time. ”

  “And you survived? Well, clearly. What were they after?”

  Prumble sighed. The old woman set a cracked mug in front of him, and he thanked her. To Skyler, Prumble said, “Dirt on Platz. Something tipped them off. ”

  “I may know something about that,” Skyler said.

  “Oh?”

  Skyler leaned in closer. “Have you heard anything about Sam, or the others?”

  The fat man shook his head. “I’ve been keeping a low profile. But your question fills me with dread. ”

  “A lot has happened. ”

  Prumble picked up his mug. “Come with me, and tell me all about it. I prefer not to sit next to a window under Nightcliff’s shadow. I’m a wanted man, after all. ”

  Skyler followed him through the curtain behind the counter, and up a narrow, steep flight of stairs.

  “Renuka was kind enough to offer me a room,” Prumble said as he foisted his girth up the steps, “as long as I need it. Her husband and her son have both passed away, it seems. ”

  They entered a small room, with Prumble only just fitting through the door. It stank of old socks, and measured barely two meters on a side.

  However, devoid of furniture, it provided enough room to survive. Instead of a bed, layers of threadbare carpet and blankets covered the floor. Moth-chewed pillows filled one corner.

  “It’s comfortable enough,” Prumble said, carefully taking a seat on the floor. Skyler sat opposite him.

  Prumble busied himself for a minute, adjusting the stack of pillows behind him to support his bad back. “Tell me,” the fat man said.

  “In a moment,” Skyler said, lying down on the soft floor. It felt warm, and smelled of cinnamon. He closed his eyes.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Anchor Station

  9. FEB. 2283

  Tania kept her gaze on the floor. She pulled down a baseball cap she’d borrowed to hide her face. Surprise would be lost if anyone recognized her too quickly.

  Two guards manned the security desk. They hunched over a well-worn board game and paid little attention as the cleaners arrived. Routine behavior, their reaction said. Both were lightly armed, with handheld toxin-based immobilizers and standard batons. Both were out of shape.

  “Your weapons please,” said one of the cleaners. Another opened a canvas bag and held it out to them. “Slowly. ”

  The two guards looked up from their game, bewildered. From the back of the group, Tania observed unnoticed. The guards focused completely on the weapons now pointed at them. After a brief exchange of glances, they placed their weapons in the offered bag and slumped back, waiting.

  “Show me the duty roster,” the leader said.

  One of the guards cautiously picked up a clipboard from the desk and handed it over.

  The cleaner did not so much as glance at it. Instead he passed it over his shoulder to another in the group. His attention never left the two confused sentries. “Access cards. ”

  The men hesitated, if only for an instant, before producing their key cards. These, and the clipboard, made their way back to Tania. She glanced at them and flashed a quick nod at the leader of their mutinous party. She realized she had forgotten his name.

  The guards waited, confused.

  “Where are your quarters?” the leader asked.

  One of the guards said, “Green fifteen. ”

  “Green seventeen,” said the other.

  “Lead the way. ” Four of the supposed janitors followed as the two guards stood and shuffled toward their rooms. The other cleaners took positions around the security desk, pretending to do their jobs.

  Time for Tania to play her part. Without a word, she turned and ran along the upward-curving hallway. After a few hundred meters she came upon another large cleaning crew milling about the door to the main computer lab, which had been propped open with a black plastic bucket.

  Tania acknowledged them with a flashed thumbs-up and moved through the open door without breaking stride.

  Inside the lab, she took a sharp right and angled toward a pair of double doors marked Security Personnel Only.

  Karl waited there. She showed him the keys, flashing a smile, hoping it conveyed confidence. In truth, she felt nothing but dread at what they were doing.

  “Good work,” Karl said. “Any problems?”

  “They cooperated. I didn’t have to talk to them. ”

  A loud clack emanated from the lock as she swiped the card through the reader.

  “No one enters,” Karl said to the crew at the main door. Then he led Tania inside the Anchor Station security control room.