| |
ONCE AGAIN I SCRAMBLED through my pockets, and once again I found that card. Damn; I still hadn’t given it to her. But I had a bigger issue on my mind right then. A real doozy. I tugged out the canister of ‘Kill&Chill’ and shuddered horribly.
To delay making the final decision I carefully re-read the label:
'One Hour Matrix-Energy Inverter
(Cryogenic Life Preserver)
WARNING – ENSURE THAT REANIMATION UNIT OR
RESUSCITATOR IS AVAILABLE BEFORE TREATMENT.
[FOR HUMANS ONLY]'
Oh God: the resuscitator! I’d sent it back!
But then a tiny remnant of reason in my brain remembered that the only people who were likely to pick up the container’s signal and collect it were the local truckies, and I knew they’d been kind of busy pretty much since I’d set that container to go. So there was still the faintest hope that Tyge might still survive, if they could get her out, and drive her to the clinic, and set up the device correctly ...
Alright so it really was the faintest hope, but I had to do it. Had to. I’d promised her I would save her. This was the only way, now. If only...
Something snapped loudly behind me. The roof slammed down. Fuck! Tyge’s head was right down. Her windpipe was probably folded in half! Shit shit shit shit shit! It was now or never. They'd find us dead but at least for Tyge she'd have a half-a-millionth more of a chance than me. Go! Go on! Do it!
And I let another five seconds edge by. I was quivering. Terrified.
The big ugly cell suddenly lurched again. Closer. It was a mere hand-span away.
“I have to do this!”
With my guts twisted tight, I twisted the top of the canister. A power cell inside screamed to life. I counted down, “Three, two, one...” As I thrust it deep under her left armpit I howled in utter anguish. There was a muffled ‘hoosh’. I fell back sobbing. Then, for her sake, I pulled myself together and grabbed her lifeless hand, felt the chill blood flood into it from her core, felt it hit one degree Celsius. Her life functions had just dropped to one notch above zero. She was effectively dead. “I love you,” I cried, tugging pointlessly at her hand, “I love you.”
The cell walls flexed and grumbled nearer. The truck beneath me groaned under the pressure. Yet there was still one more thing I had to do. I pushed Sharp’s mysterious card into Tyge’s hand and clamped her fingers to it tightly.
Instantly a crude hologram popped up. If there had been anywhere to go, I would have leaped back in surprise, but The Crush was shoving into the back of my head by then, forcing me steadily towards her. It must have been pushing my implant into the weak field of the card or something because suddenly the hologram became crystal clear. In a flash I saw two girls at the zoo in front of a tiger. The little one was looking up with admiration at her big sister. The older girl gave the little one a hug. Both were grinning, very happy, as they turned to the photographer. And behind them prowled the tiger. Its mighty head suddenly turned, looking for one terrible instant straight at me. How the Hell did Sharp end up with this ...?
Oh.
I roared, I howled, I screamed, I punched at the cells around me, then wept pathetically. “fuck you, Destiny, just fuck you!” I said to the dripping bulge of silicone compounds that was now only centimetres from my face, “Just kill me ‘cos I’m just a total bloody useless failure! I’m sorry, Tyge, I am so sorry...”
At which point thick cheese got pushed into my face.
Then something went clang.
I froze (so to speak).
Something shivered through the truck.
Somehow, transmitted not through air but via a narrow band of taut metal, came the faint whir of a winch. Suddenly I didn’t care that a living blob of rock was forcing cheese up my nose. WE WERE SAVED!
And at the last possible moment it occurred to me to hold on to something.
#
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO record in writing the exact sound a three tonne spider truck makes as it is pulled from a gigantic organic bottle full of highly compressed cheese, but it is a sound I shall remember for the rest of my days. Couple that with a cry of pain as I went from stationary to twenty kilometres per hour in two tenths of a second, then decelerated again to zero.
What had happened? Did the cable break? Of course – we had just smacked into the kink in the shaft. The next direction was going to be up. Straight up. My unlikely vessel had merely paused, presumably while the winch far above took up the slack, but I knew what was coming next. With all my strength I got the best possible grip I could get on the seatbelts. The tail end went up, fast! Tyge and I now dangled out of the cabin, and remained like that for two agonising minutes, she like the corpse she virtually was and me like someone trying his uttermost not to be a corpse.
If I thought the previous two minutes had been bad, the current two were far more terrible. I didn’t think I was going to make it, but I kept gritting out, “I can do this.... I can do this...” (and occasionally, “I am never, ever, going to eat cheese again”).
A lifeless titanium leg dangled near my ear, occasionally swinging to smack me lightly on the side of the head. My arms hurt terribly. About halfway up, where the skin pore opened out enough, we passed Tipper’s strider-spider. I suppose she was checking that we were still with the program. I was very heartened by her concern, but I didn’t wave, of course. As I mentioned, I had both hands somewhat committed to the task of preventing a nasty fall, and it simply did not occur to me that my helmet would have patched me straight through to her radio if I’d spoken, so I didn’t let her know what Tyge’s death-like dangle really meant.
I guess I was also distracted by the fact that Ms Sharp was in with her.
(Apparently, as I found out later, we'd actually been saved by Octave. The plucky little robot had carried the cable the last five metres where the remaining gap was too small for any human to penetrate. And why had Tipper taken Sharp down? Because Sharp had insisted. And why had Sharp taken Octave down with her? Instinct, she told me later, pure instinct.)
Anyway the two of them gazed in horror at the two of us: all actors in some horror flick – me so bad at it I’d even forgotten my lines. The ascent continued. My cheese-debilitated grip was slowly slipping and I found myself begging to God for enough strength to keep going. The pain was intense.
The hole widened. The lights became brighter. I rose into their glare and heard a brief cheer that died horribly as I guess the onlookers spied the 'dead' Tyge.
Somehow they snagged us sideways. The body of Tyge's smashed truck angled towards the edge. I could see vaguely familiar figures hauling on ropes as the winch, somehow mysteriously above the centre of the skin pore, eased the cable out again. With inexpressible relief I saw the edge of the skin pore pass below me, hands connected with my clothing and I let myself drop into the waiting arms.
Someone reached into my breather field and wrenched off my rescue helmet. Suddenly there was sound again. “It must’ve got busted,” Stevedore was saying, “Tip couldn’t raise you. Stupid implant-compliant crap.” He lobbed it away, then dumped me unceremoniously onto my feet. “Right, now for Tyge.”
There was a flurry of action around the truck; power tools screaming; people shouting; metal being ripped apart. I hobbled closer and tried to look over their heads. Suddenly someone was yelling at me. “So how long, mate?”
“How long what?”
“How long’s she been down?”
“Errrr,” my befuddled head struggled to remember things, “about three hours?”
The guy screamed. Well – more a sort of animal howl of despair. Everyone on the extraction team stopped, looked at him. He pulled himself together enough to say, “She’s a goner, mates. She’s been down the whole time.”
Finally I came to my senses, “No! No no no no no! Five minutes, max. I used Kill& Chill! She’s fine! Just get her to the clinic!” Weeping again. Desperate.
I was drowned out by a mighty cheer. Within seconds they literally tore her truck apart. They didn’t let me get near. “Just leave it to us, Doc,” Stevedore growled at me repeatedly. I watched, anxious, as they gaffer-taped her shattered legs into two crude splints, everyone talking at once. But they were taking much too long! Hadn’t they heard what I’d said?
“We’ve still got to get her to the clinic...!” I shouted, not wanting to even consider the notion that the resuscitator might not be there.
“Just leave it to us, Doc,” ordered Stevedore again. He plucked up Tyge as if she were a bag of laundry and strolled away. The crowd opened a path for him as if they already knew what the plan was. Wish they’d told me.
I staggered after him, my legs hurting. “We’ve got to hurry!”
Someone slapped me on the back. They were trying to talk to me, slowing me down, “Good on you, doc!” “Well done!” “You’re a hero, mate!” They were trying to shake my hand and everything. Nodding, smiling, confused, angry, I pushed on after Stevedore. His spider was parked a little way off, crouched so low the chin of the cabin was right on the ground. The lid was open. He stepped up and into his driving position, then turned to look back for me. “Hop aboard, Doc.”
I got in, glad that we were getting somewhere at last, although why they chose to use his truck, versus a much faster six-leg personal strider, was beyond me. Feeling sickened by the thought that this was not over, that Tyge still might not make it, I clambered in with him.
He didn’t even sit down.
It was at that moment, stunned, pained, and with people still trying to catch my eye and shout cheerful things at me, that I became aware of the fact that I was already back in Edgetown. The legs of the buildings stood all around us. WTF? Not possible! But there they were! I peered up, dazed and confused, recognising the main street from below, except that the taxiway was missing. And there was an extra row of fat metal legs standing where there had never been legs before. Crazy. Nuts. Impossible!
Stevo gave me no time to try and reconcile these facts with the other fact I knew: that the skin pore had been some fifteen kilometres out of town. Without even sitting down he kicked at one of his controls and his vehicle began to rise. We ascended majestically into the light, higher and higher, until suddenly it occurred to me to look up. The only reason striders stood this high was to dock into a building.
I just had time to see a docking sphincter opening above us. We rammed in, something shattering loudly just behind my head. Stevo had left his lid flipped back. But that wasn’t the major thing that concerned me. I was back in the old Crush Club!
Why the hell were we here?