Richard Russo Page 18

  The light frightened me. For weeks we had been exploring what appeared to be a dead, abandoned alien starship. No signs of life, no signs of machinery still functioning. Nothing. Then we reached a section with Earth-normal gravity. Soon after that we had pressurized atmosphere; more than that, it was being maintained, somehow, at a habitable temperature; then some strange, blue light; and finally this—full, day-like illumination. Too much.

  I looked at my companions and noticed that all three of us, consciously or not, had moved out of the path of the light and were well back into the shadows.

  “I don’t like this,” I whispered.

  “I don’t either,” Cardenas replied.

  “Why are you whispering?” Hollings asked, although she, too, whispered.

  “Sound carries,” Cardenas answered. “Didn’t you hear that when Bartolomeo was pulling the door open?”

  “I wasn’t sure what it was. I forgot about sound. You think our voices would carry through the helmets?”

  “Probably not,” I said, “but I’m not taking any chances.”

  “You think somebody, or something, is in there?” Hollings asked.

  “It’s not too damn likely,” Cardenas said, “but I’m with Bartolomeo on this. We can’t take chances.” She unstrapped her hand stunner and gripped it. “Didn’t think I’d ever need this. Still hope we don’t.”

  I backed farther away from the door, still keeping to shadow but gaining a greater view into the short passage. Nothing moved, nor were there shadows of any kind. Now I could see that the wall was off-white streaked with soot, or paint the color of soot. Down low on the wall, near the floor, was a raised brown smear. The first real signs of imperfection we’d seen.

  “I’ll go in,” I eventually said. “Both of you stay out here until I clear it.”

  Neither protested. This was no time for phony heroics.

  I set the lantern on the floor beside me. I wasn’t going to carry my stunner, either; I wanted both hands free. I stepped into the swath of light.

  The sounds of my companions’ breathing seemed terribly loud, and I was struck by the irrational fear that they would drown out any warning sounds. I hesitated, then stepped through the doorway.

  I stopped for a few moments when I was completely inside, waiting, then continued. As I passed the streaks on the walls, I looked more closely at them, but couldn’t determine whether they were soot or burn marks or simply paint. I knelt beside the brown smear—which, frankly, looked like dried excrement—but again, it was impossible to know what it was.

  The passage took a 90-degree angle to the right, then opened out into a large room or wide passage, but I had no idea yet how large. Once again I hesitated, keeping back so that I could not be seen, which also meant that I could not see much either.

  I took a step into the short, angled section of passage and stopped. In the far left corner—the only corner I could see, and which was ten or twelve meters away—was a pile of torn and rumpled cloth. In the wall nearby was a darker area that might have been an opening or doorway; my angle was too severe to tell.

  Two more steps, and I was around the corner, fully inside the room.

  A wild, flailing dark form lunged at me. It struck me at chest height, knocking me off my feet and onto my back with a jolt; my head slammed against the floor. Darkness covered my helmet and I cried out, some sound without words. I tried to grab the thing on top of me. I couldn’t see what it was. It squirmed and fought at my arms and hands, pounded at my suit without much effect. I tried rolling to the side and a slice of light came through for a moment. I thought I heard a faint cry or screech; the pounding shifted to my helmet, jarring my head. The darkness over my helmet shifted away for a second, but all I saw were jerking flashes of what seemed to be limbs and claws and fur before the darkness returned.

  “Cardenas!” I yelled. “Hollings!”

  The creature was long and heavy, and I couldn’t get a grip on it, couldn’t roll it off of me. I felt like an insect stuck on my back with a weight holding me down, my legs fluttering helplessly above me.

  “It’s a woman!” Cardenas’s voice cut through her harsh breathing—she’d been running. “Help me, Rita.”

  The darkness and the weight both lifted from me. I wasn’t sure what was happening. My helmet was clear, but my vision wasn’t right—silver glitter drifted in front of my eyes, and everything else was blurry. I tried to sit up, saw a tangle of pressure suits, long, whipping hair, layers of fabric, naked feet and hands, but everything began to spin around me and I lay back down.

  “God damn it, she’s . . . strong!” Hollings hissed between ragged breaths.

  I thought I could hear Cardenas grunting; in the middle of it she managed to ask me if I was all right.

  “I think so,” I said. I closed my eyes, but the spinning only increased. “If I don’t puke all over myself.” Eyes open again, I tried to focus on the ceiling above me. There was another dark smear almost directly overhead, and I concentrated on it, keeping my head and body still. The smear functioned as an anchor, and my vision slowly stabilized; I tried to ignore the movement in the corner of my sight—Cardenas and Hollings struggling with the woman.

  As my vision settled down, so did the struggle, and Hollings’s cursing slowed to a trickle.

  I finally managed to sit up, shifting around so I could lean back against the wall. Cardenas and Hollings had their arms wrapped around the woman, who was in turn wrapped in layers of cloaks or robes, and all three of them were on their knees, like one big tangled knot. The woman’s hair was gray and long and stringy, and her head was bent so I couldn’t see her face. For the moment, at least, she was resting.

  “Who’s on the monitor?” I asked. “Is anyone watching this?”

  “We’re all here,” said Casterman. “We’re on your camera, Bartolomeo. Pär and Maria are already suiting up. They should be in the ship in a matter of minutes. We figure an hour to reach you if they push it.”

  “Taggart, are you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to go with them. We’re probably going to have to sedate her to get her out of here.”

  “On my way.”

  “One more thing, in case you’ve forgotten. We’ll need a suit for her.”

  There was a long pause, then Casterman said, “We hadn’t thought of it. I guess we didn’t think about bringing her out.”

  “We’re not going to leave her in here.”

  “No. Okay, we’ll send a suit with them.”

  The woman quieted down and kept her head bowed so her face couldn’t be seen. I was still shaky, and my heartbeat hadn’t slowed much; my throat burned with each breath.

  I looked around the room, which was nearly twenty meters long. In the far right corner, on the floor, was a thick pad piled high with blankets, clothes, some metal bowls, a box, scraps of paper, and other things too lost in folds of material to identify. In the other far corner was another, smaller pile of clothes. Beside the pile was a tall cubicle with a round canister set in the floor. In the middle of the wall between the two piles was an open doorway leading into a long corridor.

  “What next?” Cardenas finally asked.

  “I wish we could talk to her,” I said. “Maybe if she heard a human voice . . . Maybe I should just take off my helmet and risk it. She’s been breathing this air, and she’s still alive.”

  “You can talk to her, Bartolomeo.” It was Rogers. “We forget because we never need it, but there’s an external speaker you can activate. It’ll also activate a mike so you can hear her.”

  I had forgotten. The speaker was small, built into the helmet collar. I fumbled around until I found the stud that activated it. I started to get to my feet, but still feeling a little dizzy, I worked my way toward the others on my hands and knees. The woman still wasn’t moving. Not wanting to frighten her any further, I stopped before I got too close.

  “Can you understand me?” I said.

  The old woman went crazy a
gain. She screeched and lunged forward, and I could see her face now—lined and gaunt—and her maddened eyes glared deep into my own. She lunged again, then sprang straight upward, breaking free of Cardenas and Hollings. I didn’t have time to brace myself before she struck, again knocking me over.

  “Stop!” I said, trying to hold onto her. “We don’t mean you any harm.”

  The old woman didn’t stay on me. She scrambled to her feet just as Cardenas and Hollings got to theirs, then she ran past me, hit the wall, rebounded and swung around the corner and down the short passage toward the circular room.

  “Damn,” Hollings said.

  “She can’t really hurt us much—” Cardenas began.

  “Speak for yourself,” I broke in.

  “Sorry. You know what I mean. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to hurt her to bring her back to the shuttle.”

  “Shit, maybe we should just leave her here,” Hollings said.

  I was fairly certain she was kidding. The two of them helped me to my feet. All that remained of the vertigo was a vague sense of imbalance, but it wasn’t too bad.

  “Let’s go find her,” I said.

  THAT turned out to be more difficult than I would have thought. When we entered the circular room, she was nowhere in sight. I checked behind the door, but she wasn’t there. We crossed the room (I still felt uneasy descending the steps to the lower, center level, and was relieved when we climbed back up), then entered the air lock.

  “Where the hell did she go?” Hollings said. “Not out of the air lock.”

  “No,” Cardenas agreed. “First, I’m certain the other door wouldn’t open unless this one was sealed first, and we would have noticed the air rushing out even if it did.”

  “Then where? There is nowhere else.”

  “The other door,” I said. “In the blue room. The door we haven’t opened yet.”

  Back into the circular room, following the wall to the right this time until we reached the door. This one, too, had a long metal handle. But after we pushed the handle down a quarter turn, we could not get the door to open. We tried it with two of us on the handle, Hollings pushing off the wall with one leg, her boot planted firmly against it right next to the door. Finally it budged, but with far more resistance than the other door. With the external mike activated, I could hear the loud squealing it made with each pull.

  After we’d managed to get it open a few centimeters, it wouldn’t go any further. Bright light slashed through the opening, but we couldn’t see very far beyond the door—just enough to see that there was a similar passage.

  “She’s strong,” Cardenas said, “but not that strong.” She shook her head. “She couldn’t have opened this door.”

  Cardenas was right, unless the door had been easy to open at first and the old woman had jammed something into it after she’d gone through. We all agreed it was unlikely.

  “Then where is she?” Hollings asked.

  Father Veronica spoke over the open channel. “There are cabinets in the air lock,” she said. “For suits or something. From what I remember, some of them might have been big enough to hide in.”

  We headed back to the air lock. When we were all inside, we sealed the door; we weren’t going to give her anyplace to go.

  The old woman was in the second cabinet we checked. She came flying out at us, screeching again, but this time we were prepared. She was still strong and wild, but there were three of us and it wasn’t long before we subdued her. I held her from behind, pinning her arms to her side, my hands gripping one another tightly; my artificial arms would not tire, although my shoulders eventually would.

  “We mean you no harm,” I said softly. “Do you understand me?”

  Her only response was a pained, high keening, which gradually faded and she let her head hang, as though she was unconscious. As before, she had ceased to struggle.

  “Habla español?” I tried next. I didn’t speak Spanish very well, but it wouldn’t take much if the old woman did. Still no response.

  “We’ve got to get her out of here before the others arrive,” Cardenas reminded me. “So they can use the air lock to come through.” She went to the door and opened it.

  Hollings picked up the old woman’s legs, bending the knees, and we carried her into the circular room. Cardenas came through behind us, then spun the wheel and sealed the door shut.

  “Français?” Cardenas tried. “Nihongo?”

  Nothing. The old woman hung in my arms like a newly dead corpse, tangled filthy hair covering her face. I thought she’d passed out, or fallen asleep. But then she began to softly weep. The sound was so quiet, almost a whimper, I doubted Cardenas and Hollings could hear her. My heart aching for her, I held the woman tightly to me, and we waited in silence for Taggart and the others to arrive.

  33

  WE sedated the old woman before putting her into a pressure suit. Her soft crying, although it had ceased long before, still resonated in me. I held her while Cardenas pulled away the layers of fabric, exposing her shoulder. Taggart put the gun against it and pulled the trigger. It took a couple of minutes to take effect, but eventually she slumped in my arms and I laid her gently on the floor.

  At rest, she looked even older than I’d thought, and I wondered if she’d ever undergone re-gen treatments. She was quite tall but extremely thin, what we could see of her. Her skin was deeply lined, and there were several dark brown spots on the backs of her wrinkled hands. Her mouth hung slightly open, revealing portions of stained teeth.

  Taggart pulled away the layers of clothing and made a cursory examination of the old woman; he was clumsy in his suit, but remarkably gentle. The one peculiar thing he found was a tattoo. The initials S.C. were tattooed in dark blue on the inside of her left bicep. He nodded when he was done, and wrapped the cloaks around her once more.

  “She appears to be okay. I don’t know how healthy, and she’s clearly undernourished, if not malnourished. But her pulse is surprisingly strong, and the heart sounds are good. Lungs seem to be clear, although her breathing is a little shallow.” He paused for a moment. “She needs medical attention, but I don’t believe she’s in immediate danger.”

  “We can move her, then.”

  “Right.”

  “Then let’s do it,” Pär said.

  We did. We bundled her into the extra pressure suit, and carried her back to the shuttle.

  THERE seemed to be too many decisions to make, too many things to be done, and none of them could wait. We put the old woman through decontamination, but weren’t sure what to do after that—leave her in the pressure suit, or take her out and risk exposing us to whatever she might be carrying? We also had to recognize that there was a risk to her from us.

  In the end, we left her in the decontamination chamber. Taggart put on a body suit, gloves, and mask, then went back into the chamber with a mat and blankets and a body suit for the woman. He eased her out of the pressure suit, cleaned her up (she’d soiled herself by then), put the body suit on her, secured her to the mat, then hooked up pressurized IV drips, including one to keep her sedated. Then he bagged up her clothes and blew them out the garbage lock, shoved his own body suit, gloves, and mask into the burn box, and returned to the main cabin.

  “The sooner we get her back to the Argonos, the better,” he said.

  “We’ll get a linkup right now and have them come and pick her up.”

  “It would be better,” Taggart said, “to bring her back ourselves. Easier on her if we don’t have to move her until we’re back on the Argonos. We can have a team ready to take her to the med center.”

  “I thought you said she wasn’t in any danger.”

  “I don’t think she is, but I can’t know that for sure. I don’t understand. Why is this a problem?”

  Others had gathered around us by now, but they were going to let us hash it out.

  “Because there might be other people in the ship, that’s why it’s a problem. We need to get another team inside r
ight away.”

  “Can’t it wait a couple of days?” Taggart asked.

  “No,” I said. “Even one day might make a difference to someone inside there.” I paused. “I’m even more afraid that if we go back to the Argonos, the Executive Council will prevent us from returning. I don’t want to take that chance.”

  “It doesn’t have to wait,” put in Youngman. “We send a team in right now. The team can stay on the ship until the shuttle gets back. Or two teams would be even better. One can rest while the other keeps searching. We can live in the suits that long. It’ll be uncomfortable, but we can do it.”

  I looked around at the others who were listening, and saw a nodding of heads. I nodded myself.

  “I like it,” I said.

  Ten minutes later, after we had gathered everyone in the main cabin, I had nine volunteers to stay in the alien ship while the shuttle took the old woman back to the Argonos; ten, including me. That was everyone. We would all stay.

  “Idon’t like it,” Nikos said over the linkup. “If something goes wrong, there’s no way to get to you.”

  “Come on, Nikos. The shuttle can be back thirty-five, forty hours after it leaves. We won’t be on our own that long.”

  “Long enough. It’s not worth the risk.”

  “Of course it is,” I said. “There might be other people in there,” I reminded him.

  “If there are, and if they’re still alive, they’ll keep for another two days. Who knows how long they’ve been on that ship? If the woman is any indication, it’s probably been years.”