16

DANCING

Two massive doors stood at the end of the passageway. One was cranked partly open, spilling yellow light into the rocky tunnel. Music mingled with voices and laughter.

The Community Center had always been full of kids when I’d looked in, but Ro and I had been shy about going in uninvited. Most of us kept to the common areas near our quarters. Many of the Merk kids were not as polite as their parents, we had noticed, but I couldn’t blame them; Mercury had good reason to dislike Earth, without our making it look as if we had come to take over. The Merk kids needed to feel superior to us, at least for a while. It would be easier going in with Bob Svoboda.

The chamber was a fused upside-down bowl, at least seven meters high at the center and sixty meters across. Dancers surrounded the screen platform—at least a hundred couples spinning, rubbing, and jerk-jumping to the percussion. The flat screen, not a 3-D holo, was picking up music and dance from a New York station, delayed by the six minutes or so it took the signal to reach Mercury at light speed, not counting relay time. There was a sharp contrast between the well-dressed New York kids on the screen and the coverall drabness of the Mercurians.

I spotted Linda and Jake. Her hair was loose and flying in all directions. He seemed to be doing his best not to become airborne. We had all tried hard not to show off by doing things the Mercurians could not—like jumping high into the air. It would be easy for us to win fights with Merk kids, given our stronger Earth muscles. I had been careful not to use my full strength when moving around. The Merk girls looked at us with some interest, which annoyed their boyfriends.

“Hey!” someone shouted. “Let’s see you go up real high!”

The dancers made a circle around Linda and Jake.

“Come on—do it!”

Jake looked around, and jumped.

“You can do better than that!” the same voice shouted.

The crowd hooted. I sensed both hostility and interest in their demand.

Jake motioned for Linda not to do it, but she went up high, turned over, and landed in a group of people, toppling them to the floor.

Everyone laughed. “Don’t worry—they’ll be here long enough to weaken!”

A boy I didn’t know shot up higher, and landed on a couple.

“I’ve sprained my ankle!” the girl complained, unable to get to her feet. Her boyfriend did not look amused. I caught his eye and he glared at me.

“How’s she going to work?” he demanded.

I felt bad.

“They’re not so tough,” another boy said, giving Jake a shove from behind. Someone cursed. Jake stumbled toward me, and I caught him.

“Calm down!” a voice boomed over the screen’s public address system, but it was too late.

A fair fight wouldn’t have been possible, despite our Earth muscles; there were only eleven of us in the hall. The crowd booed as the music dropped to a whisper and we were rushed from all sides. People fell to the floor, punching and clawing, tearing at each other’s clothes. Ro and I retreated through a sudden hole in the circle. A short, stocky girl grabbed Linda by the hair. Jake was being pummeled on the floor by three boys. The Merks were doing very well, but I was afraid that someone would get seriously hurt.

The crowd pressed in closer, cheering. I saw a familiar New York caster on the screen, speaking very low. His blindness to what was going on below him seemed comic.

A loud whistle shot through my ears as police invaded the hall. It was obvious that they had been watching the situation closely. Six green-uniformed cops penetrated the crowd and began to untie the knot of kids on the floor.

“Okay!” shouted one of the cops. His voice went through his handset and boomed through the screen speakers. “All earthies out of the hall!”

One of the other cops glared at me. Bob smiled, and I saw a bit of his parents in his features.

“It was our fault,” I said loudly. “Let’s go.”

Linda, Kik, Jake and the six others grouped around Ro and me. We turned and led the way out.

“That was really dumb,” I whispered to Ro.

“Sure was,” she said, looking exasperated.

A cop cranked the door open all the way, and we went out into the tunnel.

I heard a deep growl, as if a beast were creeping toward us from somewhere ahead. We stopped, but nothing appeared. It was invisible, I thought stupidly as the lights flickered.

“What’s that?” Kik asked behind me.

I peered ahead in the fluttering light. A cloud of fine dust was creeping toward us across the floor.

“Tremor,” I said, taking a few steps forward.

“Joe...” Ro started to say as the floor lifted, throwing me back. We clutched at each other and staggered to one side, hitting the wall with our shoulders.

Old Merk danced for us.

The tunnel floor buckled and split. Ro and I were on all fours, tasting dust.

“Back inside!” I shouted as I raised myself on shaky legs.

A crack opened near the doors and cut down the tunnel like slow black lightning. We jumped to avoid it.

The lights wavered. I saw Kik stumble, fall in slowly between blinks, and disappear. Ro and I were on opposite sides as the crack passed us, veered, and split the wall.

“Kik!” Linda cried, unsteady at the edge.

“Get back!” I shouted, afraid that the fault would widen.

“Kik!” she called. “Kik!”

Jake grabbed her.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!” she wailed, struggling. It looked as if she would pull Jake in with her.

“Back into the hall!” I shouted again.

Ro and I made our way back, staring at the fault between us. The others were at the door, but Linda still squirmed in Jake’s arms.

“Let me go, let me go!”

Jake hauled her back. “He’s gone—we’ve got to get back—try to understand what I’m saying.” She broke free and dropped to her knees. Jake tried to pull her back by one arm.

“No! No! I can see him!”

“Help me,” Jake said as I reached them. Ro hesitated at the door.

“Get inside,” I called to her and grabbed Linda’s other arm.

“He’s hanging there,” she insisted, “I can see him.” She was very strong. “I can see him—please look!”

I peered down, and she stopped wriggling. “Can’t see a thing,” I said, coughing from the dust.

“Don’t let go,” Jake whispered.

Linda looked up at me. “Joe! Look hard—I can see him, please!”

I strained to see into the gloom. There was a body hanging some five meters below us. “Jake, he’s there.”

“Looks like a shadow.”

“Let me go!” Linda shrieked, twisting her arms. “Let me go!”

“I’ll go,” Jake said, and let go her hand.

I knelt next to Linda, and we watched him climb down. Linda’s arm was limp in my hand.

Merk trembled.

“Inside!” a cop shouted. “Got to close these doors.”

“Injured person,” I called back.

“It’s you or all those in here, son.” Loss of air pressure in the tunnel might come at any moment, I realized.

“Linda,” I said, tugging her arm as I stood up.

“You go,” she said, pulling free of me.

I heard the door closing.

“Jake—they’re locking us out!”

“Coming!”

“Kik!” Linda shouted.

“He’s gone,” Jake called more softly.

The lights went out. I turned and saw that the door was three quarters closed.

“Kik! Bring him up—Jake do you hear me?”

“Head’s caved in where he hit,” Jake said. “His neck is broken and he’s stuck on some sharp rocks. No breathing at all. Get going, both of you! Can’t see. Got to feel my way up.” His voice broke and I remembered that they had been friends.

“Let’s go, Linda.” My eyes were adjusting to the light still coming through the open door.

She let me pull her up. “You bastards—you’ll leave him there,” she mumbled through her tears.

The cop cursed as the crank jammed.

Even if there had been time for Jake and me to bring up the body, Kik was too damaged for freezing, even if we’d had the facilities, which we did not.

Jake climbed up over the edge. We took Linda by the arms and led her to the door.

“Give me a hand,” the cop said as we pushed her inside.

The three of us worked the crank. It turned slowly, and I thought it might break, but finally the doors closed—just as the ground trembled again.

“What now?” I asked. Linda was on the floor nearby, crying softly.

“We wait for help,” the cop said, looking at me with gray eyes. He couldn’t have been more than five years older than me. His ruddy face was flushed from effort. Sweat ran down from under his cap as he wiped his forehead with a sleeve.

“Is that likely?” Jake asked.

The cop nodded. “The whole warren couldn’t have been affected.”

We turned and walked to the platform. Most of the kids were sitting on the floor. Bob was on the platform with the other cops, trying to get through on the intercom.

“Cable’s gone,” he said when he saw me. “At least from here out. It’s happened before. They’ll come and get us, eventually.”

Rosalie was suddenly next to me. “How long?” she asked.

Bob shrugged. “Depends on the damage.”

“But what do you think?” I asked.

“Don’t worry—the Control Center can survive anything.”

I looked around at the kids on the floor. They looked patient, resigned; they’d gone through this before. Many of them, I realized, had probably lost friends and relatives. Kik was gone, I reminded myself. We hadn’t been exactly friends, but I had come to like him from a distance.

“We’ll know soon enough,” Bob added. His parents might be dead or injured, for all he knew. “Find a comfortable spot,” he said confidently. “Air seems to be coming in well enough. We’ll have to wait.”

I noticed the way everyone looked at him. He was Robert Svoboda’s son, after all. I wondered what good that would do us if nothing could be done.

Jake was kneeling by Linda. He kissed her cheek and put his arm around her. I realized how close he had come to dying; the fissure might have closed at any moment, or another shock might have thrown him deeper. All three of us might have died if the tunnel had decompressed—but Linda, I realized with a sudden sick feeling, had now lost all the family she had left.

Ro and I climbed up and sat on the edge of the platform. A few faces glanced up at us from time to time. Linda seemed to grow calmer as Jake held her. They seemed very alone on the open floor, away from the crowd around the platform . . .

I was in a kind of shock myself, I suppose, as the situation sank into my mind. The universe is a one-way street; you can’t always know what it’s going to do to you, and you can’t do all that much back. We’ve learned a lot, and we’re going to know a lot more before the Sun dies—but what was happening here on Mercury was the result of what we had done to ourselves; many people had seen it coming—but why is it that some see and others don’t? I was a bit frightened, and one of us had died, but the Mercurians had been living with this kind of danger for decades.

The lights went out. A cry of surprise passed through the crowd. Ro’s hand slipped into mine. She squeezed hard and I squeezed back. It seemed strange to be so near the Sun and in total darkness—yet something in me needed to be here, so far from home, in the blackness, before I could become myself. That was the part of me that Ro had complained about not being able to see. We all have it, I suppose, the mysterious bit of ourselves that we feel but don’t often understand. The conscious part of us is not all there is. Self-conscious reason is the new kid on the block, evolution’s jewel—but within us still live the impulses of fish and reptile, unthinking hunger and hatred, to which darkness and danger give a home.

“We’re never gonna get out,” a boyish voice said.

“Who’s that?” a girl asked disgustedly.

“One of yours,” Bob whispered. “Sounds like he may panic. Do you know him?”

“No.”

“Shut up!” the same girl shouted.

“That’s one of ours,” Bob said.

“Can’t we do anything?” the plaintive voice asked. My stomach swam at the sound.

“Eat your way out!”

“Come on, you two,” another girl said.

“Leave him alone,” a husky female voice answered.

“He had it too good on Earth. Serves him right!”

“Earth! That’s where you have to wear a strap to keep your balls from dragging on the ground!”

“Boobs too!”

There was some laughter. It was only human to be resentful, I thought bitterly. Only human. Why weren’t people better inside as time went on?

“Cut it out!” Jake shouted from near the doors. “Insult us when the lights are on.”

“Just keep yapping, I’ll find you.”

“Okay,” Bob said. “Stay put—or you’ll have to deal with me later.”

“That goes for me too,” the cop said from somewhere on my right.

“Who are you?”

A light flashed onto a face. “Sergeant Black. There’s five of us in here, so behave.” I recognized the ruddy complexion.

“Oooooooooh!”

Everyone laughed.

“I know that’s you, Ted,” Sergeant Black said.

“Big deal,” a girl’s nasal monotone replied.

“Helen Wodka? I can tell it’s you.”

“Whattyaa—a voice printer? She’s not even here, stupid.”

“Cops could help out with work instead of following us around all week.”

“Hey kid—I work two shifts!”

“Crawl away!” Miss Nasal shouted.

“Why do you have it in for me?” Black demanded.

“Get lost!”

Someone laughed nervously. The darkness was taking away the normal walls between people; you could say what you wanted. The fun of the evening was gone, and nothing could be done against old Merk, but cops and strangers were easy targets.

I had a sudden vision of a long chain of becauses locking together to trap Ro and me here. Political delays in giving the aid owed to Mercury were going to cost even more lives—including mine and Ro’s. The past had sealed us into this hall. I waited for someone to start picking on earthies in earnest, but it didn’t happen.

We listened to each other’s breathing and to the sound of the ventilator. My eyes were wide open, searching the dark for a spot of light. I began to see patterns of brightness in the blackness. Kaleidoscope universes burst and reformed, one creation after another dying in my brain...

“Black—are you there?”

“I’m here, Helen.”

“Sorry, Black.”

“Me too,” Ted added.

A few more apologies whispered through the hall. I heard a click—a lighter blossomed, and I saw our shadows sitting on the walls. The darkness closed in again, and after a few moments I saw the red ember of a cigarette hanging in space.

Black speared the offender with his flashlight beam. “Put it out—our air might not last.” The beam died before I could see the smoker. The red spot dropped and died as Black’s words sank in.

“There must be something we can do!” Linda cried.

“What do you suggest?” Black asked calmly, and it seemed to me that these people were so beaten down that they didn’t want to do anything. Suddenly I wanted to run time back, so that Kik would come floating out of the abyss, alive and whole, even if it meant that we would have to live backward from then on.

Linda’s voice had made me edgy. I wanted to move around, fight back. It couldn’t be very serious, I told myself, if Bob and the cops were so calm. It was just a minor inconvenience. The lights would go on in a moment and the dance would start up again. But working with Bernie had taught me to be suspicious; anything that could go wrong would go wrong.

“Listen,” Bob said. “Everyone be quiet.”

I heard only breathing. Ro squeezed my hand, and we both knew what had happened.

“We’re not getting any air,” Bob said in a sinking voice. “Can’t hear the ventilator . . .”

I tensed. “Must be blocked,” Helen said.

“Don’t move around—relax,” Black said. “We’ll make it last. This is a big hall.”

But there are a lot of us, I thought.

“Can we tell if there’s air in the tunnel without opening the doors?” Jake asked.

“No,” Black replied. “It may be blocked even if there’s air.”

“Can’t we crack it a bit and listen for a hiss?” a boy asked, and again I realized how ancient much of the technology here was—there should have been pressure sensors on the doors, so you could tell if there was air on the other side, or what you would be breathing.

“Don’t talk stupid,” Helen Wodka said. “Why risk a stuck door when all we have to do is wait. A small leak will kill us sooner if we can’t close the door, if we’re not sucked out into a vacuum first.”

“We can’t touch the door,” Black added.

“How long can we breathe?” I asked, knowing it would be an unwelcome question.

“Depends on how much we use.”

“You mean we can go quietly, lying around,” the sad-voiced boy said bitterly.

“No more talk like that,” Black answered firmly.

I put my arm around Ro’s waist and held her tightly.

“What if the rest of the warrens got clobbered?” Jake asked.

I heard Bob take a deep breath.

“Leave some for the rest of us,” a girl’s voice said.

“Unlikely,” Bob replied. “It’s never happened—they’ll get us out.” He was sounding less convincing.

“There’s got to be something we can do,” Linda said again, more calmly. Again I felt the pressure to act, even though I wasn’t feeling much like Tarzan.

“Bob,” I said loudly, “—are the ventilation shafts large enough to crawl through?”

“Sure,” he answered, “but there’s probably nowhere to go. The one leading out of here is probably crushed. You might not be able to breathe.”

“We should explore,” I said. “We can do that much.”

“It’s worth a try,” Black said. “We might restore air flow if the blockage is nearby.”

“I’ll go,” Jake and I said at the same time.

“Both of you go,” Bob said. “The buddy system is safer.”

Someone stumbled toward the platform. A flashlight blinked on, throwing the beam into the high vault of the hall. “Here,” Black said, reaching up to me, “take my light.”

“We need another,” Bob called.

I took the light and cast the beam across the crowd. One of the cops handed his over at the edge of the seated crowd; the flashlight passed from hand to hand until it reached Jake.

“The shaft is behind us,” Bob said.

“Don’t lose those lights,” Black said.

I kissed Rosalie. “If you die I’ll kill you,” she whispered.

“Let’s go, pal,” Jake said.

We turned our beams onto the wall behind the platform and found the grill.

“About four meters up,” Jake said.

“Roll the platform over,” Bob said. “It’s on coasters.”

A dozen people pushed the stage up against the wall.

“Get on my shoulders,” Jake said.

I put the flashlight in my chest pocket, so the beam would shine upward, and climbed onto Jake’s shoulders. The grating felt solid when I pulled on it.

“Doesn’t move even a little.” Then I jerked harder and it came loose. “Look out.” I dropped it near the wall and heard the clatter after the slow fall.

Jake boosted me into the shaft, where I turned around carefully and looked out over the hall. Dark lumps sat in the center. Shadowed faces peered up at me in the faint light.

“Coming up!” Jake called.

“Come ahead!” I backed into the shaft.

Jake’s shape appeared in the opening and pulled itself in. I caught his face in my beam for a moment. He coughed and crawled toward me.

“We’re in!” he shouted over his shoulder.

“Be careful,” Black answered.

I turned and crawled ahead with the light in my left hand. There was no movement of air in the pipe.

“It branches here,” I called out after thirty meters. Shining the light to the right, I saw that the passage went on for a few meters and came to another grating. “What’s next to the auditorium?”

I waited as Jake relayed my question. “Bob says go ahead,” he shouted back. “It’s the police station.”

I crawled to the grating. “It’s blocked with debris on the other side—cave-in!” I backed away. “I’m going to try the left-hand pipe.”

My light flickered as I slid forward. I turned it off.

“Can’t see your light!”

“Saving it!”

The dusty air was getting harder to breathe. I crawled for what seemed an hour, scraping my knees and coughing.

Finally I stopped and flicked on my beam.

And froze.

“The pipe’s crushed!” I shouted, choking. It was like a bent straw. I struggled to control my coughing.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes!” I wished he would shut up.

“What?”

“I’m fine!”

I killed my light, turned, and started back, wondering how many of us would die. Help would reach us—but did anyone know we were running out of air? I thought of my life on Earth and Bernal. How small my problems there now seemed. I was drenched in sweat. There was less dust but the air was beginning to taste bad.

“Joe!”

“Coming,” I croaked with a dry throat.

You never really believe you’re ever going to die. When you imagine it, you stand outside yourself, watching yourself go, and you’re still there when it’s over, watching from some fabulous beyond. . . .

I heard breathing.

“Jake?”

His light went on. His face seemed old and afraid suddenly. “What’s wrong, Joe?”

“Gotta rest.” I lay down and put my head on my arms. “There’s no way out . . .”

“Then we’ll just have to last.”

“I guess . . .”

My eyes were wide open in the dark, and it seemed strange to be lying there, doing nothing. I forced myself up on all fours.

“We’d better get back,” Jake said.

He retreated to the opening, left his light for me to see by, and lowered himself over the edge until he was hanging by both hands. I came forward, picked up his flashlight and shone it down on the platform. Jake dropped slowly onto both feet.

“Catch.” The flashlight fell like a dying star into his hands. I crawled over the edge, held, then dropped. Hands steadied me as I came down.

The air tasted better. I saw Ro’s face. She was biting her lips.

“We’ll have to take it easy until help arrives,” Jake said. “Joe says both ways are blocked.” I sat down against the wall. Ro sat down next to me. “What’s going on?” someone asked from the floor.

Silence.

“Well?” the same male voice asked. “What have you big shots come up with?”

“Didn’t you hear!” Jake snapped. “We’ll have to wait.”

I heard murmuring and cursing.

“There’s gotta be something . . .”

“Ted—is that you?” Bob asked.

“Yeah, I’m not a lump yet.”

“We’ll use less air,” Bob said.

“And when that’s gone,” Ted continued, “we’ll have to open the doors. We won’t have anything to lose then—and who knows, it might be all right out there.”

Again, there was a nervous silence.

“We should have been living in a habitat by now,” Helen Wodka said. “What took you people so long? Explain me that.”

“Serves you right,” Ted added.

“Don’t be stupid,” Bob said. “They came to help.”

“Save your breath,” Black cut in. “Get some rest and leave some air.”

Jake clicked off his light and sat down at my other side.

I won’t wake up, I thought as I closed my eyes. This dark will be the last thing I see. There was a lot of shifting and coughing in the hall. Ro rested her head on my shoulder.

I woke up suddenly, surprised that I had been asleep, and took a slow, deep breath. Cool air flowed into my lungs. Ro was curled up against me. The ventilation, I realized, had also brought heat into the hall. We might freeze long before we stopped breathing.

“You awake?” Jake whispered at my right.

“Have we been asleep long?”

“Six hours by my timer.”

“Shouldn’t you be with Linda?”

“She wanted to be by herself—don’t worry, she’s okay.”

“Do you think the cop station leads anywhere?”

“You’re thinking of punching through the blocked vent,” he said.

“It’s better than this.”

“We might strike pure vacuum. And vacuums abhor people who try to breathe them. Might as well risk opening the front door.”

“True,” I said, “but if there were people in the room beyond the blocked vent, they probably kept their door to the tunnel closed.”

I heard him sit up. “Possible—I should have thought of it. Must be lack of oxygen. So we won’t breathe vacuum—but what else will it get us?”

“Bob,” I whispered.

“I heard,” he said. “Two tunnels lead off from the station. The same one we have out front, and one from the back.”

“There should have been another way out of here too,” I said.

“We planned to melt through another,” Bob said.

“Look,” Jake said, “even if we can’t go anywhere from the station, we might get some air flowing in here.”

“Maybe,” Bob replied.

“Hey—shut up!” a male voice whispered loudly from the floor.

“I already know the shaft,” I said. “Is there something I can dig with?”

Jake turned on his flashlight, stood up, and moved toward the screen unit, where he bent over and squatted under the console. After a minute of scraping and squeezing noises, he unbolted a meter length of shiny steel. “This should do,” he said as he brought it to me.

I took my light and turned it on. It seemed to be working, so I attached its magnetic surface to one end of the rod and gave the assembly to Jake.

“Shine the light at the opening,” I said.

I climbed up on his shoulders and pulled myself inside. Then I turned and reached down for the steel.

“I’ll come up and stay at the mouth,” Jake said as he handed it up. “Yell if you need help.”

“Right.” I crawled inside, pointing the beam ahead.

Breathing became harder again. I slowed, inhaling evenly. No point in passing out.

Rest, I told myself as I came to the turn, but I didn’t stop; every delay would leave me weaker. I was stirring up dust. My eyes filled with tears, and I began coughing.

Closing my eyes tightly, I felt my way forward until I touched the grating with my rod. I put it down and took out a handkerchief. Wheezing, I struggled to tie the cloth around my face.

I began to spit, bringing up gobs of dusty mucus, drooling over myself. I thought I was going to throw up, but the heaving stopped as the fabric over my nose and mouth began its filtering action. I was still getting stuffy air, but it was cleaner.

I lay down and rested, breathing slowly until I felt better; then I forced myself up on all fours again.

Removing the light from the rod, I placed the beam to shine on the grating. Slowly, I struck the rocky debris, pushing the rod through the grating to loosen the material on the other side.

There might just as well be a hundred light-years of stone ahead of me, I thought, and even if I broke through, there might not be any air on the other side.

I jabbed at the rock a hundred times, goaded on by visions of it falling away. People would die if I failed. Rosalie would die.

The light flickered. I reached over and turned it off, angry at its old design; everything on Mercury was obsolete. I knew the small space well enough by now to work in the dark. Might as well save the light, whatever there was left of it.

I picked at the wall of rubble, insisting to myself that I would find myself on the other side if I didn’t weaken. My future self was waiting only a few minutes up ahead, alive and out of danger. I needed him, even if he no longer needed me.

As I worked and sweated in the dark, I wished that he would reach across from his side of time and pull me through the rock to safety...

My heart was beating wildly as I chopped at the grating, ready to explode in my chest; and the blackness flowed in around me, imprisoning me as it solidified.