Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits (32 page)

“Where
are the shafts?” he said. “I can’t see them. Shit!”

Christ,
he’s really strung tight, Donna thought.

“Turn the
lights on,” Habershaw offered.

“That’s risky.”

“How else
you gonna find ‘em.”

John
turned the lights on, and the top of the monolith was suddenly awash in bright
light.

“There
they are,” Donna said, pointing.
 
“Right
there.”

Fifty
meters ahead was a ring of circular black holes, each about two meters in
diameter. John picked the closest one. “I guess we’ll try that one first.”

He
brought the shuttle to rest directly over the hole. It came down with a slight
bump. Donna opened the access hatch, a square opening in the cargo area’s
floor. A rush of warmish air coming from the shaft lifted her hair. When she
looked, she swallowed involuntarily. It was as if the hatch opened into a
bottomless black void.

When
they’d first seen the ring of vents, in the bright daylight, they had leaned
cautiously over the edge of one and speculated about what function they might
serve. Rachel had held to John’s arm and leaned farther out and felt the
updraft on her face. “It’s a ventilation shaft,” she’d said, “part of a static
cooling system, like a termite mound. It vents heat. That’s why the interior is
so comfortable.”
 
It had been difficult
enough to look down those dizzying, vertical shafts when there was light around
them.

* * *

A
box—with buttons that attached to an umbilical—controlled the winch, mounted in
the ceiling directly over the hatch.
 
Donna plucked the controller from its wall mount, pressed the Down
button and reeled some slack off the spool. The winch let out a steady hum as
it worked.

John came
back, put his hands on his hips, leaned out a ways and peered down. Donna
studied his face and could see the apprehension there.

“It’ll be
all right,” she said. “It’s just a black pit.”

“Sure,”
he said.

He pulled
his light from its holster, aimed it squarely down the hole and turned it on.
The light had no effect. The shaft swallowed it as if it never existed. He
could see the smooth walls for some distance down when he bounced the beam off
them, but the bottom of the shaft just didn’t exist.

“Deep,”
he said.

He let
himself imagine for a moment what it would be like to fall down that shaft. He
saw himself tumbling, glancing off the walls as he sped toward some unknown
impact below. In an even more gruesome flash, he imagined that the shaft
narrowed suddenly, and feet first, he was jammed into a space smaller than his
own diameter to be held there in a lingering, claustrophobic embrace.

He
shuddered and stepped back, angry with himself for allowing such a mind-numbing
vision to form in his head.

“Yeah,
it’s a deep bastard all right,” Habershaw said. “You sure you don’t want me to
go. Hell, it don’t bother me.”

It was a
nice gesture, but a lie. The shaft bothered everybody.

“No,
thanks. I’ll be all right once I start down. It’s my job, not yours.

John put
the rescue harness on, secured it with the straps, attached the cable’s clasp
to the ring, then slung the rifle over his shoulder. Donna handed him a
headset, and he put it on, adjusting the springy wire until the earphones and
mouthpiece were just right. Donna thought he was taking just a little too long,
but that was okay.

Once
Donna and Habershaw had put on their headsets, Donna passed the controller to
Habershaw. He tested it by running a length of wire up and down a couple of
times.

“It’s not
real fast, is it,” he said.

“Not made
for speed,” John said woodenly. “But it’ll lift two thousand kilos easy.”

“Aw, you
don’t weigh that much,” Habershaw said, trying

to inject
some levity. Donna tried a grin that didn’t work.

“Ready?”
Habershaw asked.

“Sure,”
John replied, checking the connection a final time.

Habershaw
took up the slack. John bent his legs, put his weight on the wire then dropped
slowly out into the space over the hole. Turning gently, he rested his hand on
the wire and felt its incredible thinness, its tight, rod-like insufficiency.
He had to think hard and remember that the braided wire was Coretense steel
fiber, half the size of his boot laces, but thousands of times stronger. He’d
had the same feeling about it when he was in pilot school, and the students had
“rescued” each other in practice. Adrift hundreds of feet over the hard ground
of the Mojave, he’d hoped that he’d never have to hang by the thin shit ever
again.
 
Oh, well.

He turned
his light on and pointed it downward. “Let’s go,” he said.

Habershaw
pressed down and the winch hummed. They watched as he dropped slowly down the
shaft, turning helplessly at the end of the thin, shiny wire.

“Can you
hear me?” Habershaw said into the mouthpiece.

“Loud and
clear,” the answer came back.

“What’s
it look like?”

“Nothing.
It looks like nothing,” John said. He looked up and saw their heads on two
sides of a small, lighted square in the center of the black void above. “This
is not fun,” he said.

“Think of
it as some kind of ride or something,” Habershaw said, “like at a ride park.”

“It’s too
slow and not fun enough to be a goddamned ride.”

“Sorry.
What’s it look like now?”

“Still
nothing. How far have I gone?”

Habershaw
read the numbers on the winch’s counter. “A hundred and ten meters. You should
be about halfway there.”

John
watched the light brown walls drift by and tried not to think about where he
was. He made his mind focus on Rachel. He thought about the first time he saw
her and about her thick hair. He thought about her smooth skin and her strong
limbs. He thought about the first time they slept together. He thought about
her being held captive by a highly organized group of religious fanatics. He
thought about where they’d taken her. “I wish this goddamned thing would go
faster,” he said. “We’ve got nine more of these things to go down.”

“Not
necessarily,” Donna said. “The chances are fifty-fifty that we’ll find the
right one in the first five.”

John
smiled. “Did you do that math on your own?” he asked. “Part of my
pharmaceutical training—you know, counting and dividing and all that. It helps
to know these things. Look what it’s done for me,” she said with a smile in her
voice. “I’ve got a great career with a great future—travel, adventure, the
chance to meet new and interesting people—great pay downs—just like they
promised in school. All I had to do was learn how to add, subtract, multiply
and divide. Fun with numbers—that’s the key. You gotta love ‘em—make ‘em your
friends.”

“You’re
full of shit,” the speck of light said.

“Yeah,
but I can count,” she said.

John
noticed something down below. Floor. He was coming to the bottom of the shaft.
It now bent at a sharp right angle.

“I’m
coming to the bottom,” he said softly. “Get ready to stop.”
      

 
“The bottom?” Donna asked.

“Yeah,
well, it goes off horizontally.”

“Which
way?”

“I don’t
know—I’m too turned around.”

“Maybe
it’s connected to the others. Maybe it’s one big system.”

“Stop the
winch,” John said.

“Winch
off,” came the reply.

“I can
see down it quite a ways. It’s tall enough to walk in. I’m going down it. Feed
out the line.”

“Well,
you can’t get lost,” Donna said.

“Right .
. .”

“Winch
on.”

John
walked down the tube, trailing the wire behind him. His light cast a dancing
pattern on the brown walls as he went. He went another hundred meters in before
he came to an area where several tunnels came together. In the center of the
juncture was a large hole, perhaps five meters in diameter. He approached
cautiously and looked down.

Ten
meters down was the lab floor, now covered with a mix of alien and human
machinery.

“Stop
winch,” he whispered. “Okay, this is it.”

“What
is?” Donna said.

“I’m
standing at the big hole over the lab.”

“Told
ya,” Donna said.

“Save
it.”

He
unhooked the wire from the harness and walked slowly around the opening,
keeping far back so not to be seen from the lab floor if anyone was looking.
The lab seemed completely devoid of activity; and as his confidence grew, he
moved up until he was standing on the lip looking down.

“It looks
like nobody’s home,” he said.

“You
sure?” Donna said.

“As far
as I can see. No activity at all.”

“That’s
odd,” Donna said.

“Yeah.
Odd,” he said. “I’m going down.”

He
attached the wire to the harness, sat on the edge of the hole and slowly slid
off until he was adrift in the air again. Keeping his eyes on the wire, he
spoke into the mouthpiece. “Start winch.”

The wire
slid over the surface as he started down—and immediately started to cut,
burying itself in the material.

“Stop
winch! Stop winch!”

“What is
it?” Donna said.

“The
wire’s cutting into the wall. It’s gonna bind.”

“Shit,”
Habershaw said.

He was
dangling from the wire just a meter down from the ceiling, but still hidden by
the umbilicals and other biotic structures hanging there. He waved his legs and
torqued around a revolution to take a look-see. Still nobody home.

He had
two choices. He could winch up right now and probably climb over the lip,
aborting the mission. The other option was to make what would likely be a
one-way trip down.

Rachel’s
oval face and buttery voice filled his head. She was smiling and laughing at something
he’d said.

“Winch
down,” he said.

“Are you
sure?” Habershaw asked.

“Winch
down, dammit,” he said.

He
started down and watched the wire saw through the surface of the material. A
few centimeters in, it seemed to hit a soft, wet substrate that dripped dark
fluid down the wire. In a matter of seconds, the wire had sawed a full meter
into the ceiling. He cursed quietly. That was that. They’d have no way to climb
over the lip with the wire buried like that. And with Rachel’s added weight,
going up, the wire could wind up two or three meters farther in.

Just two
meters from the floor, his descent slowed to a crawl, and he felt a chattering,
a stuttering, along the wire as if it was trying to cut into something very
tough and strong.

Less than
a meter from the floor, he stopped completely.

“Winch
down,” he said.

“It’s
winching down.”

“No, it’s
not.”

“Winch
off,” Habershaw said. “You’re right. The wire’s slack up here.”

“It’s
bound up.”

John
bounced against the wire, trying to get it to move. No luck. He reached down
with his feet and tried to touch the floor. He was still too far. He felt the
incredible tightness of the wire, and his fingers worked at the clip. It felt
as if the clip and the ring it was attached to were welded together. He reached
up, took hold of the wire with both hands and tried to pull himself up. Not a
chance—the wire was too goddamned thin. Unless he could get the pressure off
it, he’d never get the clip loose. He found the clasp on the harness and tried
to release it. His weight had locked it as tight as the wire clip. He pinched
it together until his fingers ached. No use. He’d be stranded right there until
they found him, hanging helplessly just a half-meter from the floor.