48

He waited, trying not to expend too much oxygen or energy, occasionally shaking Henry. How much time had gone by? One minute? Two? Five? When would he reach the point where he would not have enough oxygen to make it to the research facility?

It would be better to leave Henry behind, he knew. If he were just to abandon him and try to make it on his own to the facility, he might have a chance. But he could not bring himself to do so. No, Henry had been there for him after his mother’s death and for years afterward, had been a true friend. He was not willing to leave him behind.

And so he sat beside him and spoke to him through his transmitter and shook him until finally Henry gave a little groan and began to come around.

“What happened?” Henry asked. “Where are we?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Jensi. “What matters is that we have to go, right now. Can you walk?”

Henry moved his limbs, winced. “Something’s wrong with my arm,” he said.

“Can you walk?” Jensi asked again.

“I think so,” said Henry. Jensi helped him up by his uninjured arm, got him standing on his feet. He stood there, holding one arm in the other.

“All right?” said Jensi.

Henry nodded. He looked dazed, but basically okay.

“We’ve got to be quick,” said Jensi. “We’ve got to try to get there before our oxygen runs out and we die.”

*   *   *

They took off over the landscape, Jensi leading the way, Henry stumbling behind. From time to time he would call back to him, goad him along. They weren’t running exactly, Henry was too dazed to run, but they were moving quickly, Jensi’s heart speeding up.

They were perhaps a quarter mile from the facility when the warning on his RIG sounded and Jensi knew he had only a little bit of oxygen remaining. He picked up his pace, hoping Henry would be able to follow. He shouted to him, encouraging him on. The building had grown large now, and he kept his eyes open for a door or an airlock, hoping they were coming toward it from the right direction to find one. If they had to circle the building, there was little if any chance that they’d have enough oxygen to make it.

He heard Henry’s voice in his ear. “You’re getting too far ahead,” he said. “I can’t keep up.”

“Follow my tracks,” Jensi said.

“But—”

“I need to find a way in,” said Jensi. “Oxygen’s almost gone. It’s urgent.”

Henry was saying something else, but he paid no attention to it. He was running now, moving as quickly as he could. The building was only a little way ahead of him, the corner of it, but he couldn’t see far or well enough to glimpse a door. Which way should he go?

He flipped a coin in his mind and went left, running beside the wall. He ran perhaps forty yards and then decided he’d made a mistake and almost turned around and went the other way, but had enough presence of mind to realize that if he turned around he’d simply use up whatever little oxygen he had getting back to where he was. He kept going, ran perhaps another thirty yards and suddenly reached a dark opening.

He flicked his RIG light on. It was an airlock, the outer door left open for some reason. He immediately turned around, went back for Henry.

He found him near the corner of the building, weaving and swaying, just starting to turn the wrong direction. He called him and stopped him, then got ahold of his good arm and steered him the right way. His oxygen feed had shut off, having run out, and he realized he had very little time left. He felt lightheaded. There was his mother, standing just next to the building, smiling. It’s a hallucination, he told himself, she isn’t real, and he shut his eyes long enough to rush through her, pulling Henry along with him. He stumbled and nearly fell. He was breathing now already exhausted air, the little pocket of it left within his helmet, and was beginning to grow dizzy, but then suddenly there they were, inside the airlock.

He searched for the controls to close the outer door, but couldn’t find them. His mother was there beside him, having followed them in.

You always were the smart one, weren’t you? she said.

“I don’t know,” Jensi said.

“What don’t you know?” asked Henry.

If you’re so smart, his mother said, let’s see if you can figure out a way to get out of this one.

The darkness was crowding up around him, reducing his vision. He was, he knew, about to pass out. He watched his hand grope around the wall and finally find the panel and press it.

OUTER DOOR MUST FIRST BE CLOSED, said a flashing message.

His mother’s face seemed to be eaten away, beginning to collapse in on itself. He tried again, pressing another button.

The message flashed again. OUTER DOOR MUST FIRST BE CLOSED.

“You can’t do that,” Henry said. “It’d let all the oxygen out.”

Henry’s voice sounded better than his—maybe he had had more oxygen. “Henry,” said Jensi, “will you—”

And then he felt consciousness bleeding away and he collapsed.

*   *   *

A rush of wind, a strange brittle quality to the world around him, as if it could be swept away at any instant. He was standing in the middle of a dark plain, beneath a sky streaked with the reddening rays of the setting sun. There was the sensation of something rummaging around in his head, a kind of blunt and unnamed animal snuffling its way from place to place, sending out little bursts of pain all through his brain. And then there sprang up before him a dead face that at first was unfamiliar but quickly he recognized as the politician his brother had killed and shot. Fischer. The man’s head was half destroyed, blood and brain leaking from it to stain his shoulder. One of his eyes was gone, but the other eye stared at him.

“You’re like him,” the politician said. When he spoke, bubbles of blood formed on his lips.

“Like who?” Jensi said.

“What you have inside is not exactly like him, but it is more like him than the others. What he has inside is right and can be understood. Everybody else is wrong. You are neither right nor wrong.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Jensi.

“You must come to us. Come to us and we shall make you right.” And then the scene behind him began to shiver and dissolved into a torrent of blood.

*   *   *

He awoke from the dream, if it had been a dream, to find himself lying on a metal floor, staring up at the ceiling. Henry was standing over him, still holding one arm, and his helmet had been retracted. His head ached, but he was happy to realize that he no longer felt like he was suffocating.

“You’re alive,” said Henry.

Jensi nodded, sat slowly up. They were, he saw, in the airlock, both its inner door and outer door sealed.

“You managed to get it shut,” said Jensi.

Henry smiled. “Just a question of finding the right button,” he said. He nodded toward the inner door. “That door, though, is a more difficult proposition. We need a pass code.”

“So, we’re stuck.”

“Looks like it,” said Henry. “We can’t go out because we don’t have enough oxygen, and we can’t go in because we don’t have the pass code.”

Jensi stumbled up. He went and took a look at the inner door, tried to override it but without success. He examined the door for any emergency releases or other mechanisms but found none.

“So what do we do?” asked Henry.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. He took the laser saw out of his pocket but one brief attempt was enough to convince him it wouldn’t be able to cut the door open, not before it ran out of power. He put it away.

He removed the gun from his pocket, then grasping it by the barrel began to hammer its butt against the door, a slow regular sequence.

“Maybe they’ll hear it,” said Jensi over his shoulder for Henry’s benefit. “Maybe they’ll come get us out.”

Henry didn’t say anything. Yes, Jensi thought, not likely, I know. But what else is there to do? He kept pounding, hoping against hope that someone would hear.