Paphos, p.17
Paphos, page 17
Crouched atop the elevator’s box, she glimpsed a row of bolts going up the far side of the elevator shaft; it looked like a kind of ladder, and naturally, it was placed as far from her as possible. She carefully stepped across the elevator’s boxed roof, hoping it did not cave in. She could reach it; she just had to repeat these steps slowly and steadily.
On the far side of the elevator shaft, she grabbed the bolts and studied her climb. Her boots were wide and thick at the toes, making them great for hiking but poor for climbing. She bent one leg back at the knee and pried a boot loose, letting it clatter down the hole in the ceiling of the elevator. She kicked the other boot off next. She didn’t like being barefoot, but these bolts were too small otherwise.
She placed one foot on a bolt and rested her weight on it. The metal bit into her toes, but she had a good grip and good stability.
There was a pattern of small ridges running along the walls, extending through the diameter of the shaft, which she used for extra support. It was not enough to dangle from, but if she tried to hold on with her hands, it gave her a little support, and she liked having options. If someone could throw a ladder down for her, that would be ideal. Of course, she wasn’t expecting that to happen. She felt tears coming… no, not tears. Laughter, she felt laughter coming. That’s it—her mom would declare her insane.
She’d never climbed before, but she must have had a gift for it. A true natural. Her grip held; her feet were secure despite aching. Her confidence swelled until the bolts became sparse, and there did not look to be another step in the climb, as she dangled precariously high up the elevator shaft by this point.
The next floor was about ten meters higher up. Looking about, she had the cable dangling down the middle, slick with grease. There was also the way back down, which she wouldn’t do. Luckily, but also a little frustrated at the timing, there just happened to be a service ladder on the far side of the shaft. The side she’d started out on, but the side across from her now. They couldn’t have built the ladder all the way down now, could they! Carolina huffed.
“Here goes,” she said before aiming and leaping for the rungs. She jumped as if in slow motion, eyes calculating distance and timing, and when the rungs were within range, she gripped them. The flow of time resumed to normal, and the rest of her slapped against the wall, her grip tested but holding.
She’d seen people do that in movies; somehow, it actually worked. Hitting the wall hurt, but the pain was kindly masked with adrenaline. Now it was just one rung after the other, much better than climbing bolts. Within a meter up the ladder, she realized how bad her toes hurt, as if she didn’t need to shut out that pain anymore. They were throbbing and red, a small price to pay to make that climb, but still, she didn’t feel their pain until just now. At least she was still moving up. ‘Hiding the pain is an evolutionary gift,’ was something Dublin might say. Not that she wanted to think of him after he attacked her dad. She used to really like Dublin.
She brought herself up to the length of the door and smiled at her success. Now she just had to open them. She thought there was a release lever on the inside… a wave of dizziness came and went. She held her head and steadied herself. The dizziness had threatened to pounce, which she did not need right now.
“Okay, where was I? Oh yes, the door.”
She wavered again; this time, she felt herself on the verge of passing out. No, not now! She held the ladder and felt her balance wavering with her vision. Despite her best efforts, her fingers were slipping as she tried to hold on. Thoughts and memories that were not hers flooded in sequence, and she was unable to keep from falling. She turned and jumped in desperation, grabbing onto the center cable, which sent her swinging.
Adrenaline snapped her back as she held on for dear life, trying not to pass out. The wave of exhaustion was sudden and unexpected, and now she dangled from the elevator cable. Her momentum bounced her against the wall and made her turn helplessly.
“Help me!” she screamed. She swung with the cable, but she could not let go without falling. “Help!” she screamed again. Spinning, she reached out with her leg, hoping to use the wall to steady herself. She aborted that attempt as the added exertion threatened what little grip she had. “Please!” she wailed. She heard the elevator doors slide open.
“Carolina?”
She looked up at one perplexed Dmitry, standing in the doorway above her. “Hold on!” he said, reaching out to steady the cable for her. She gladly felt the cable come under control, thankfully too, since her grip was moments from failing. Lucky for her, Dmitry had heard her cries and found her. He held the wall with one hand and steadied the cable with the other. He pulled the cable towards him until she rested against the wall with the service ladder. Carolina shook uncontrollably.
“You have to get onto the ladder and climb, Carolina.”
“I can’t,” she panted, refusing to open her eyes.
“Slow your breathing. I can’t reach you, so you have to climb.”
“I can’t!”
“Right now, little girl.”
Carolina grunted. She never liked Dmitry, and she hated being called that. Her dizziness subsided, and she moved her hands to the rungs on the ladder. She climbed the ladder until Dmitry snatched her at the collar and hoisted her onto his level. She plopped to the ground, not very gently.
He gave her a few moments while she caught her breath; in that time, he sat against the open doors and looked over, studying where he had found her. He looked at her and then back down the elevator shaft. It seemed most unlikely she could have climbed up that. None of them could have. The girl was breathing steadily now.
“Carolina, where is your father?”
CHAPTER 28
Austin ignored the pebbles in the back of his skull as he rested against his dirt pillow, though he was aware of each granule. He watched the clouds as they oozed across the sky of Paphos from one horizon to the other. The sky without sun lent a rich flood of purple, plus all of its many hues, and his dirt pillow did nothing to alter its beauty. It could be morning or evening, sunrise or sunset, and neither mattered.
Eventually, he did look at his watch, which did not mean anything to local time. It was 03:14:02 Earth Central. He knew this because he never changed the time when he traveled. That somehow made him feel connected to home, a valuable tip for expeditioners like him. The breeze had a dry chill, reminding him how drenched in sweat he was. It was between the lazy gusts of wind that he could smell his own combination of fumes and charring. Being on the surface again was refueling his spirits, though he didn’t yet know where he was. From here, it could be mistaken for a dry planet, but that wasn’t the case at all. Paphos was mostly tropical. Carolina…
Austin rolled to his side. It was time to get up. The adrenaline dump had left him frail, a weak husk, but Carolina was alone down there. She wasn’t safe without him, but he also desperately needed water. He needed to go back and find her; hopefully, water would be along the way. Regardless, he needed to get going. He looked up at the rings of this planet one more time, which hung sharply at a thirty-degree angle. He couldn’t be far from the quadrohuts, though the term ‘far’ was subjective when on foot.
He was on his feet, feeling wobblier than he expected. He needed to get going; he had a daughter to protect, but his body protested. A few gentle slaps across the face helped.
He followed the gravel up and found himself looking across a pocketed desert of indents, some big and some you didn’t want to fall into. He swore they resembled bomb craters. And beneath them, it was hard to imagine that facility, hidden and sprawling under the surface. It might be faster to go back the way he came, but who knew if he could get down. Not without rope, he figured. He needed supplies, and he had no way of knowing where Carolina would be now. Hopefully, her survival instincts were keeping her safe. He refused to think of anything else.
A minute was enough to show the sun was rising from the east, so it was morning. An eastern rise always made him a little less homesick, too. He tore open a glucose packet and downed it, the last one in his pocket. It’d been in that pocket so long he couldn’t even read the expiration date, not that he cared. He didn’t normally litter, but today was a day of firsts. Had it been a whole day since they first went inside? No, it was only a few hours, couldn’t be more than that. Best not to think, his head didn’t want him to.
The plan was simple: locate the quadrohuts, restock some supplies, get back in the facility, and find his daughter. First step was finding the huts. He wasn’t exactly a human sextant, but the angle of the rings hadn’t changed from his usual view, and he had a rough idea of how far he could have gone underground—though it was disorienting down there. Last, he vaguely remembered observing some dry patches to the Southeast when they were researching landing spots from orbit, so he pinged a direction to the Northwest. If he got close enough, it should look familiar, and from there he’d find the huts. He believed the train was just about underneath him as he tried picturing the layout of the tracks. Austin finally began his hike, kicking up dust that was carried away by the wind. The half-hearted gusts from before were building.
He felt the sugar in his blood already; that little glucose packet had a nice little boost in it. Ultimately, it was not enough to take away his exhaustion, just enough to keep him going. He would pace himself; pushing too fast now meant stopping too soon later. He wouldn’t stop, he couldn’t stop, not until Carolina was safe. He let his fears trail off because there was nothing he could do about them from here, fears of her being trapped with the creature, or even with Dublin. He didn’t know what that was all about, but he had to be ready for more.
None of them carried a map; they never needed it when Orlean’s prosthetic was connected to the Orbiter up above. He continued along the rim of bomb craters, though calling them that suggested a battle had occurred here. It didn’t take long before he had no sense of relation to the facility beneath him, but that wouldn’t matter if he found the quadrohuts. He shielded his eyes from the sand as another warning gust came. The clouds above were broiling with activity to the west. Guess the planet thought they needed a storm, too. Maybe it would pass by; the quadrohuts could handle wind up to about 65 kph.
He’d hiked for several minutes now, and nothing looked familiar yet. At what point would he need to head back and try again? He scanned the sky, but his head hurt to the point that it all looked the same. Soon, he’d recognize something. But just in case, he made mental notes in case he had to backtrack. It would help if he had any idea how far that train had shuttled them.
A large crunch stopped his thoughts and forced them down. He’d stepped on something brittle and lifeless, but it wasn’t dirt or a branch. He brought his foot back and saw the print left in the dirt and bone. It had to be bone; there weren’t vases on the ground out here. The wheels in his head whirred slowly. Next to his boot was a skull with a bowl-shaped cranium, short jagged teeth, eye sockets wide and deep, and a cluster of horns at its forehead. No human skull, no animal he recognized, which would be obvious given the circumstances. He’d been hiking and looking up at the sky and was otherwise lost in a swirling panic, and somehow he’d stumbled upon a den of bones. Hidden in overgrown brush, here was a veritable graveyard of alien bones. At first glance, there were at least three separate skull types. Bleached, brittle from the sun, and scattered by the dozen.
The intense sun cooked on the back of his head, reminding him how warm it was about to be if the clouds didn’t get here first. He shielded his eyes from the light reflecting off the bleached earth. He had seen nothing more than dry brambles until this crunched under his boot. How did he miss this? To the left, he noticed something else, something mechanical. Maybe they really were bomb craters he was walking around.
Austin examined his discovery and recognized a wing partially submerged, charred, and misshapen. Similar in shape to the vessel he and Dmitry recently sabotaged. This was in pieces and scattered, indicative of a crash landing. The weight of importance rested on his soul; something big had happened here, either a battle or a flat-out massacre. And here he was stepping on the bones, ignorant of sacred ground.
He wavered with thirst. Maybe he could come back and re-examine all of this later; it demanded as much, but he had to keep moving. Austin looked around and had to re-center himself on where he’d been and where he was headed. He’d lost track of his path. “What the hell…” He scanned the surrounding area in all directions, and yet nothing looked familiar. Worse, he couldn’t even find his own footprints, except for the skull he’d crushed. The shattered bones held a good impression, one solid print with the toes pointing a little to the left. One print was all he had to go on. One print would have to do. He placed his foot in the shape and positioned his body in the same direction.
It didn’t look familiar, but then again, he had hiked in a daze until that crunch. He’d been tired, distracted, and made a mistake. He was about to lose the planet’s rings, too, as dark clouds now covered half the sky.
He hoped this bootprint was correct and resumed his hike into the wind.
Charcoal clouds swirled in the upper stratosphere; the storm was headed towards him and would soon blot out the intense sun. Always a positive, always a negative, or always a silver lining, as they used to say. An hour of hiking went by; if he didn’t find something familiar soon, it meant he had gone the wrong way.
The ground rose, and he had to climb up with it, even using his hands to help himself. He only had the strength to keep going, and nothing else. He was able to conserve some of his energy by closing his eyes for a minute, incremental but helpful. The wind was against him now as he came to the top again. At first, he cursed his luck; it felt as if even nature wanted him to fail. But when he gazed from his new position, he found the start of the sprawling forest. This was his forest, and he was able to spot some clear patches he’d seen from satellite maps. This was the right direction; he’d be there within the hour. That meant the train had taken them over ten kilometers, maybe more.
Confidence sprang within him. Previous doubts were now filled with resupply checklists, an internal debate on how much water, how much food, what kind of weapons. That was suddenly a thing; of course, they didn’t have proper weapons, but he’d make do. A speck of rain touched him, and he sensed it was but the first of many more.
With determination, he descended towards the beckoning forest. Under the canopy of trees, it was now two shades darker, but the wind was no less, tossing leaves and forcing a dance of limbs. The snapping bend of wood echoed in the distance. Haha, he laughed. A tree falling on him now would just be a tragic-comedy. Let the storm come; nothing would stop him. Let the wind howl all it wanted to. He wasn’t stopping now.
CHAPTER 29
She stared at his face, his eyes dark and serious, letting the silence creep in.
“I said, where is your father?” Dmitry demanded a second time.
Carolina would not answer that question.
“Well?”
He’d get nothing out of her. She did not trust Dmitry, even though he had just saved her life. He was dangerous. However, it was also dangerous to treat him as an enemy.
“Thank you for saving me,” she said. He paused, his eyes taking her in, weighing her. She could see the wheels scheming behind those eyes. He was always a schemer, and she especially recognized it now. She would have to be careful in his presence.
“Okay, you don’t know where your dad is,” he began. “And I gather you haven’t found a way out yet.”
Carolina shook her head, a subtle gesture.
“Still not saying much?”
Carolina remained still, but she stopped looking him in the eye. Predators took eye contact as a sign of aggression.
“That’s okay, I hate the small talk anyway.”
Carolina caught herself glancing past him and tried to correct it. But it was too late; he’d noticed it. “Does something look familiar to you?” he asked, nursing his hunch.
It was familiar to her, like an old house she might have lived in. It was those memories again; she’d been careless, and he’d caught it. She said nothing, but her face gave it away. She was off to a bad start with being careful around him.
“Come on,” Dmitry said and guided her down the hallway. It was darker than she liked, tall and narrow to the point of walking side by side with him. She felt him looking down at her, an eagle at a mouse, which made her ball her fists. She tried to walk faster, moving only to the sound of their footsteps until the hallway ended in a large room. Spacious like a gymnasium, the room was littered with tables and chairs, benches too, all tossed about from some great commotion. Dmitry carried on casually. “I think this is near the first floor, if we’re lucky, we’re under the hospital rooms from the beginning,” he said. They didn’t feel like innocent observations; it felt like he was testing her. She kept her face still, wishing to conceal any sort of response. Yes, she knew things, and he’d been the first one to catch on.
He pointed at the large double freight doors on the far side of the room, beckoning her towards them. Blocking the doors was a barricade of tables and chairs, but that’s not what she was worried about. It was the invisible security system that she knew was there.
“Come on,” he urged.
Her feet stopped in place. “We can’t…”
His smile was unwelcome. “Something you’d like to share?”
“It’s blocked, that’s all,” she said, referring to the barricade, because how would she know about the security system?
“You are small enough. Climb through and get those doors unlocked,” he demanded.
