“Good. Hold onto Pulou,” Weil said. “Right foot first.”
The surgeon crouched at his feet, gathering up the trouser leg to make it easier. He stepped into the right leg, then the left, and let Weil pull the trousers up and draw the waistcord snug. “Not too tight!” he pled.
Behind him the door clicked. Weil jumped. Tristan turned his head.
It was the sergeant from Communications, the dark man with the dangerous eyes.
Tristan stiffened. He felt Pulou tense, too.
“They’re coming in!” the man said. “Get him out of here!”
Tristan swallowed. “Who’s coming?”
“Security.” Weil flung his backpack over one shoulder and asked, “Get out how?”
“There’s an access to the emergency stairs from the ward,” said the black man. “It’ll have a pressure shield door. Go! I’ll cover you.”
Tristan hesitated, looked at Weil.
“It’s all right,” the surgeon said. “He’s one of the Spherzah.”
The corridor was a blur of bright light and pale walls and smooth floor. Lower lip caught between his teeth, Tristan pressed his right arm to his side and let Pulou and Weil support him up the passage, across a long room with several beds, to the door at its opposite end.
From somewhere behind them rang shouts and running bootfalls.
The Spherzah lunged at the door’s security bolt, shoved it free. The door swung away, admitting enough light to reveal a stair landing. “Go!” the man said.
Tristan stumbled over a door track wider than his body. Pulou caught him, practically pulled him through, and Weil and the Spherzah came after.
“. . . the stairs!” someone shouted from the room behind them.
The Spherzah punched the pressure door’s manual trigger. With a small explosion, the shield slammed down over the doorway.
The sound of it rang on forever, above and below, in sudden blackness. The platform they stood on shook with it.
The stairwell felt hot, its air motionless and musty. The Spherzah switched on a palm light and played it around the walls, over a sign with arrows marking an evacuation route.
“We’re directly under the passenger shuttles,” he said. “Start working your way down while I go up and seal off the access from the top.” He slipped the light from his hand and gave it to Weil.
“What?” the surgeon said. “Why?”
“Because Security will expect us to try for the shuttles. They’ll probably send someone down to meet us.”
“But what’s down there?” Weil turned the lamp and peered through the grating under their feet, down a well webbed with steel stairs. It sank to a depth the beam couldn’t find the bottom of.
“There’re caves,” Tristan said. He turned his vision away from the view and swallowed hard. “They go everywhere.”
The black man nodded. “But they’re almost two miles below us,” he said. “Don’t force your pace. There’s enough time.” He hesitated on the steps. “There will be an explosion, maybe two. Don’t stop; I’ll catch up to you.”
Then he vanished, one with the dark and the quiet.
“Who—is he?” Tristan asked of the doctor.
“Lieutenant Commander Ajimir Nemec,” said Weil. “He—said he’s one of your father’s people.”
Tristan saw, by the palm light, the lingering uncertainty in Weil’s eyes. “Do you believe him?”
“Right now, Tris,” the surgeon said, “we don’t have a choice.” He hesitated, then asked, “How are you doing?”
Tristan’s mouth felt like dust, his limbs felt limp, his whole body seemed to throb to his racing heartbeat. He couldn’t remember ever feeling worse in his life, but he said, “I’m okay.”
“Then let’s go,” said Weil.
The steps had narrow treads and steep risers and there were fifteen between each landing. Teeth locked, Tristan leaned on the handrail and reached down with one foot. Held his breath as that foot took his weight so the other could follow. The stretching, the shifting of weight felt as if his ribs jarred and scraped against each other.
On the nineteenth landing he eased himself to his hands and knees. The movement produced new pain through his chest and back. He sank over and sat down.
“Little brother?” Pulou squatted close. “It’s what?”
“It hurts,” Tristan said. He hissed it, teeth clenched, and held the brace tightly to his side with one hand.
Kneeling in front of him, Weil checked the patch on his forehead and then his throat pulse. “Is it mostly your ribs?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Have you used the morphesyne infuser?”
“No . . .”
“Here.” Weil reached under the brace and pressed the pad.
There was a tiny sting, like the prick of a thorn, in the center of Tristan’s chest.
“Just try to relax and let it take effect,” Weil said. He fumbled something from his backpack. “Here, drink some of this, too. You should have all the fluids you can take.”
Tristan found a drinking bottle in his hands. He sipped at it, found it cool and vaguely fruit flavored, but his stomach felt queasy. He handed it back.
The pain had already begun to dull, making it easier to breathe. Weil asked, “Feeling better now?”
“A little,” Tristan sighed.
“Let’s go, then.”
He crawled back to his feet, teeth gritted, and reached for the handrail.
In the haze of morphesyne, the stairwell took on a nightmare quality, an endless repetition of effort that caused pain, that cost strength, and seemed to bring him no nearer the bottom. He lost count of the landings, lost count of the times he had to stop and press the infuser pad.
Once his legs gave way altogether, five steps from the next landing. Pulou caught him as he buckled, helped him sit down on the step. He rubbed the infuser on his chest once, then again, and felt nothing. “It’s not working,” he told Weil. “Hasn’t it been ten minutes yet?”
Weil checked his timepiece. “I guess not. Is it getting worse?”
“Yeah . . .”
The surgeon felt his pulse and offered him the drinking bottle. “Try to take some more.”
Tristan managed two swallows and passed it back, his hand unsteady. “That’s enough.”
A distant concussion, a tremor through the landing startled him. Pulou’s eyes widened. Tristan looked at Weil.
“That’ll be Nemec sealing the shaft,” the medic said. “I hope.” The palm light showed the tension in his jaw as he glanced up, and then over at Tristan. “Ready to go again?”
Tristan hesitated. “How much farther?”
Weil turned the palm light downward. “I think I can see the bottom.”
Nemec caught up to them before they reached it, a voice first, and then a shadow materializing out of the dark above. His breath came hard, like a runner’s at the end of a long race.
“What’s going on?” Weil asked.
Nemec tapped his ear, and Tristan saw that he wore a receiver plug like those used by the air traffic controllers at the academy. “Right now they’re staking out the stairway entrance to the shuttle bays,” Nemec said when he could. “I triggered the shield doors into other levels as I went up to encourage that. But they won’t hold those positions forever. We’d better be gone by the time they start looking down here.”
He unclipped a sensor from his gunbelt when they reached the bottom. Sinking down to lean against the wall, Tristan watched as he ran it over the door frame. Its hum didn’t fluctuate. “No electronic devices,” Nemec said. He tested the door’s security bolt, then threw it, and winced at its thunk.
They waited.
The echo exhausted itself up the stairwell behind them but they heard no bootfalls, no alarms.
Nemec slipped through the door first, sidearm in one hand, sensor in the other. Then he returned, beckoning. “Still clear,” he said in a whisper. “Hur
ry!”
Holding onto Pulou, Tristan regained his feet. He swayed, closing his eyes against a wave of dizziness.
They stepped into a maintenance tunnel, gray with a low ceiling. Weil’s palm light illuminated glow-painted words on the wall: TERRARIUM MAIN ACCESS, with an arrow pointing the direction.
“I know where this goes,” Tristan said.
But Nemec knelt, pulling up a circular cover from the floor. It scraped, shifted. He wrested it aside, and Weil flashed the palm light around a shaft with rungs down one side. Tristan remembered Pulou’s description of burrows like a lomo’s. It seemed ages ago.
“You first, Doc,” Nemec said, “and then you.” He pointed at Pulou. “It’s about five yards down. Be careful! It’s damp and the rungs will be slippery.”
Weil disappeared into the hole first. Pulou hesitated, until Tristan said, “Go. I come behind you,” and looked at Nemec.
The man nodded. “Sit down on the edge with your feet in the hole,” he said. “It’ll be easier to get onto the rungs that way.” He took Tristan by the tunic, a handful of cloth at the nape of his neck. “I’ve got you,” he said. “One at a time now. Take it slowly.”
Bearing part of his weight on his arms felt like having his ribcage pulled apart. It strained the lacerations over Tristan’s shoulder blades. He felt one pull open, felt warm fluid ooze down his back. It itched. Eyes closed, breath raking through his teeth, he hung motionless for long moments, hugging the ladder. Then he reached down with one bare foot. . . .
He felt the grip on his tunic release only when Nemec could lean no farther into the shaft to hold onto him.
Stretching for the next rung, he felt something give in his lower back. Its twinge made him gasp, stiffen. His foot missed its hold—
His arms couldn’t take the sudden weight. The tug as he dropped was like an explosion in his chest. He didn’t feel the rung pull out of his grip as his consciousness collapsed on itself, or the arms that caught him when he fell.
He came to lying face down on damp ground, roused by Pulou keening and stroking his hair. He moved one hand enough to nudge the gan and sighed, “I’m a’right, Pulou.” But he didn’t want to move anything else. A knot throbbed in his lower back, and the reopened wounds burned across his shoulders.
The others had seen him stir. “As soon as he can move . . .” Nemec urged out of the darkness.
“He needs to rest!” That was Weil.
“Not here. We’re sitting at Security’s back door right here.”
Tristan heard a little pause before Weil said, “Come on, Tris. You’ve got to sit up now.” He offered a hand to assist. “Easy. That’s it. Just sit still for a minute.”
Tristan closed his teeth on a groan. Dragged a hand over his face when his vision spun.
“What happened to make you fall?” Weil asked.
“Don’t know.” He rubbed at his back. “Felt like—something inside moved.”
“In your back?”
“Yeah . . .”
He saw how Weil’s features tightened. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said, and held out the brace.
Tristan realized only then that he no longer wore the shirt. He looked at the medic and cocked his head.
“A couple of the lacerations were bleeding,” Weil said. “I had to take this off to apply the suture strips. Can you raise your arms a little?”
The thought of it made Tristan wince. “No,” he said. “I don’t want it.”
“You may need it later.”
“Do it later, then.”
He let Weil put the tunic over his head and guide his aching arms into the sleeves, though drawing it down to cover his back made his breath catch. He let Weil and Pulou help him to his feet. Dizziness swept over him again. He reached for the infuser’s pad. This time he felt a sting and a spread of sudden warmth under his skin.
He blinked at the cavern’s floating lights, at its turquoise walls. “Where’re we going?” he asked.
“To Malin Point,” said Nemec.
He saw the map of green lines and red lights in his mind. “That’s almost seventeen miles!”
Nemec said, “We have two days to get there. You’ll be able to rest when you need to.”
Tristan studied his dark face, his fierce eyes. He nodded acquiescence.
The knot in his back seemed to settle into his right side, hunching him that way as he walked, almost making him limp. He pressed his arm to his side and locked his teeth at the smart of sweat in his opened lacerations. Sweat soaked his tunic until it clung to his body.
He had to rest often. He stumbled frequently—went to his knees once. Pulou saved him, eased him down, and Weil, crouching beside him, said, “You’re in shock, kid. I think we’d better stop for a while.”
Nemec said, “There’s a side tunnel up ahead. It’ll be easier to defend, if necessary, than a spot here in the main cavern.”
The side tunnel was also darker, its floor rough and uneven.
“Put this under your head,” Weil said, offering his pack.
Tristan did. But when the medic peeled backing from a silver patch and reached out, he turned his face away. “I don’t want a patch!”
Weil said, “You’ve got to sleep, Tris, and I don’t think you will without help.”
He took his lower lip between his teeth and kept his eyes closed, unwilling to watch Weil press the patch to his temple.
It took effect almost immediately.
He woke some time later because he was too warm, and sweating again, and thirsty. He lay in quiet darkness. He turned his head—winced—and whispered, “Pulou?”
He felt Pulou’s hand on his head. “Little brother?”
“I’m thirsty,” he said.
Pulou reached for the drinking bottle, but Tristan glimpsed movement nearby, and a shadow leaned over him. “How do you feel, kid?” Weil asked.
“Ache all over.” Tristan shifted onto his side, and decided not to try sitting up.
The surgeon pushed away his hair, damp with sweat, to read the thermopatch, then felt his carotid pulse. “You’re feverish,” he said. Tristan couldn’t see his face but he heard concern in his voice. “I’d think it was an infection except I’ve been giving you enough antibiotics to prevent that.” He paused. “I think I should check that sore spot in your back.”
Tristan bore the careful prodding with his eyes closed and his teeth locked.
When he finished, Weil said, “By the localized tenderness I’d say that your kidney is out of position. Its connective tissues must have been damaged, too.”
Tristan swallowed. “Is that serious?”
“It—can be,” Weil said, “but we should have you under proper medical care before it gets that way.” He drew a handful of dermal infusers from his pack and shuffled through them until he found the one he wanted. Snapping off its cap, he pressed it to Tristan’s shoulder.
Tristan glanced up when Nemec, standing at the tunnel’s mouth with his sidearm prominent on his hip, left his post and came over to them. Dropping to his heels, he studied Tristan for a moment before asking, “Do you feel ready to go on again?”
“What is it?” Weil said. “Security?”
“Yes.” Nemec indicated his earpiece. “I’m picking up radio chatter from several areas. A couple of patrols have entered the terrarium now, and they can move more quickly than we can.”
“How much further to Malin Point?”
“About nine miles.” Nemec looked back at Tristan. “Can you make it that far?”
He glanced at Weil. “I guess I have to,” he said.
He rubbed at the infuser pad on his chest as he crawled to his feet and felt grateful for its sting. He wanted to rub at the knot in his back, too, but Weil said, “Don’t do that. You’ll only aggravate it.”
He couldn’t walk without limping now. He leaned on Pulou, holding his side. He had to rest more often but he couldn’t sleep. He swallowed obediently, o
ne or two sips, when the gan offered him the drinking bottle, although it made his stomach roll.
Hunched over, he focused his vision on his feet, on placing one in front of the other, until their motion mesmerized him. Until it seemed like only a dream of walking, for days, through a cave that never changed, never ended. And everything, including his feet, turned the blue color of the lichens. . . .
He woke on the ground several times, woke to the chill of wet cloths placed on his forehead and the back of his neck, and couldn’t remember that he’d even stopped walking. His mouth felt fuzzy. He tried to catch the trickles that ran along his jaw from the cooling cloths, but they only dripped from his chin. He tried once or twice to raise up, but it hurt; and a hand on his shoulder pushed him back down and a voice told him to take it easy. The voice always sounded too far away to go with the hand but he knew both were Weil’s.
He heard voices each time he began to come around:
“I need water for cold compresses.” Weil.
And Nemec: “I can get it from the misting system but it’ll take a little while.”
Once he heard Nemec ask, from somewhere above him, “How is he?”
“The fever’s getting worse,” Weil answered, “and he’s stopped sweating. That concerns me.” Tristan heard a brief silence, then, “How much farther is it?”
“Just over three miles.”
He drifted out of awareness, into a nightmare of a walking stick flashing across his back, laying open his flesh like a knife. He dreamed of being lost in a blue cave that never ended, and of falling down a stairwell that had no bottom.
His own scream and a hand clamping over his mouth shocked him awake. He gasped, and tried to twist his face away from the hand. His eyes wouldn’t focus.
Quivery hands stroked his hair. “Be calm, little brother, be calm.” Pulou.
Then Weil, saying, “Relax, kid. Easy now,” as he took his hand from Tristan’s mouth.
And Nemec, his voice grim: “They heard him. They’re heading this way. We’ve got to get him out of here!”
He felt hands sitting him up, hurting him, and snatches of talk half lost in a swoon:
“. . . don’t want him walking . . .”
“. . . carry him, then. Tie his hands.”
He groaned, “No! I’m a’right!” But he heard cloth ripping—could almost feel it—and bands being wrapped around his wrists. He tried to pull away. “Don’t!”
“Easy, easy!” Weil said. “It’s going to be okay.”