Skye Object 3270a (7 page)

“But why go down the Well?”

“That's not the right answer.”

“Well then,
how
could I go down the Well?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Take the elevator, ado. What did you think? Tours go down every day.”

“Oh sure, but those people have to come right back up.”

“Not really,” Devi said. “They're down for seven or eight hours.”

“Do you think that's long enough . . . ?”

“Probably not,” Buyu said. “Apolinario was down there for days.”

“And his plague was active,” Zia added. “Skye, the fact that you have ‘puzzle pieces' is a pretty good sign that the governors don't even recognize your infection as a threat. But you know I've been interning with a planetary biologist, and believe me, Deception Well is a crazy world. With the help of the governors, the biosphere has learned to grow its own libraries. There are hundreds of thousands of communion mounds sprouting from the soil. They're made up of thousands of different organisms, some native, some Chenzeme, some from Earth, all living together as one. Maybe that had a purpose once, though really I think they're just a chaos of smart biology that learned how to get along. The point is, they act like libraries of biological data, especially
human
biological data. If there's already a cure for Compassion in the biosphere of the Well, then we're going to find it in one of those mounds.”

Skye felt her pulse quickening in anticipation. Communion mounds were not found in the city, but only in the Well. “We could bring Ord with us. It could sift through a mound, and find the molecular structure we need.”

“Exactly. Let the little chemist be useful for once in its pointless existence. Where is it, anyway?”

Skye shrugged. “Around.” Ord was always around. That was its deepest instinct.

“Aren't the communion mounds off limits to tourists?” Devi asked.

Zia gave him a dark look. “I said we were taking the elevator down. I didn't say we were going on a regular tour. Regular tourists are escorted by nasty little robot wardens, so that they can't get away with anything. However” —she patted Buyu's knee— “we are lucky enough to have a trained explorer in our midst.”

Buyu blushed. Even in the dim light, Skye could see it.

Zia went on with her explanation. “Buyu hasn't been placed on an explorer team yet, but he is allowed to escort small parties down on day trips, so we won't have to take a robot warden along. With any luck, we can tap a mound and city authority will never know the difference.”

Skye shook her head. Already she could see a hundred things wrong with the plan—not the least of which was that Buyu would be risking the career he wanted so badly. If it was discovered they were tapping the mounds, Buyu might be permanently suspended from the explorer corps. “It might be all right for me and Ord to try it,” Skye said, “but you three . . . you've got nothing to gain and everything to lose by defying city law.”

Zia pouted. “That is not the answer I coached you to say. Try again.”

“Sooth, Zia's right,” Devi said. “Try it again, because we have a lot to lose too. Skye?”

Buyu nodded. “Don't make me kidnap Ord and go by myself, Skye. Without you, the little guy would melt into a puddle at the bottom of my pack.”

She laughed softly.

“Say it,” Devi whispered.

“Say it!” Zia commanded, louder.

“Say it,” Buyu muttered. “Please Skye?”

Skye closed her eyes, thinking of the thousands of lifeboats that might even now be falling in long slow orbits around Kheth. If there was no cure for this plague, they would be falling forever. She opened her eyes, and looked at her friends, one by one. “You all are crazy! Crazier than me. But okay. If you know how, if you want to do it, then
I
'
ll go for that!
Okay?”

“Slick,” Zia said, nodding in satisfaction.

“First elevator down tomorrow,” Devi added.

Buyu had already turned to more pressing matters. “We never ate dinner,” he moaned. “I'm
starving!
”

N
o one was more real than Yulyssa Desearange. She was the oldest person in the city, and yet she had not let the years harden her thoughts and beliefs. Her eyes and mind were always open to the subtle changes of the world around her. She saw everything, and she could read meaning into every detail. When Skye walked into their apartment, Yulyssa took one look at her and asked, “Are you all right? What's happened?”

She lay half-reclined on the sofa, a small woman of delicate build, several centimeters shorter than Skye. In the evening Yulyssa often lay on the sofa, visiting friends through the atrium in her head. Now she sat up. Her long, black hair slipped like a veil across her finely sculpted cheek. As with any real person, her age did not show in her face or in her body, but only in the weight of her gaze and the calmness of her bearing. Compared to Yulyssa, Skye felt that everything about herself was in a muddle: her health, her hair, her judgment, her dress. “Oh, I—” She searched for something to say. “I'm exhausted. It's been a terribly long day.”

Yulyssa's eyes continued to take her measure, but she asked no more questions. “I heard you and Zia set a jump record.”

“Sooth. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be.”

Ord had slipped into the kitchen. Now it came out with a glass of water for Skye. She drank it gratefully, while Yulyssa made a space on the sofa for her. Skye sat down. “I met a new boy tonight. I've never met anyone like him before.”

“Divine Hand,” Yulyssa said.

Skye turned to her, furious and frightened to think that Yulyssa had somehow been spying on her. “How do you know that?”

“Siva Hand called me an hour ago. She was in quite a state. Divine had gone out with this wild foreign girl and he hadn't come home when she expected.”

“You're not serious.”

Yulyssa's smile was deliciously naughty. “Oh I am.”

Skye covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. “Poor Devi.”

“Don't think too badly of Siva. Like most of us, she lost all her family when the Chenzeme warships wrecked our ancestral world of Heyertori. She never got over it. Not really. We were all refugees when we came to Deception Well. Siva worked as hard as anyone. She denied herself a family for years upon endless years. When she finally retired from public service, it was to have a child. Specifically, it was to have Divine.”

Yulyssa shook her head. “It was not a healthy choice. The past is the past. Siva should have let it go, as the rest of us have, and started anew. But she would not. She had Divine made from the genetic record of her first born son, who died with our world of Heyertori. Divine is a genetic clone of that young man. He is a constant reminder to her of what she has lost, and what she still could lose. Even the most logical of us can be haunted by a dread that the past will repeat itself . . . and Siva is not the most logical woman I have ever known.”

“So she worries over him all the time,” Skye said. How dreadful, to be the stand-in for a dead past. “Doesn't she know that will only drive him away?”

Yulyssa shrugged. “The heart is ruled by its own kind of sense.”

“Or nonsense,” Skye said. “Did she really call me a wild foreign girl?”

“Yes. Those were the words.”

“Actually, that's kind of slick.”

Yulyssa nodded, her tongue firmly in her cheek. “I thought so.”

Skye kissed her. “I'm going to bed now, before I fall asleep on my feet.”

Skye was up again before first light. Overnight, the Makers that lived on her skin had cleaned away the day's sweat and oil, so that she woke up clean. Her bed was slightly stained, but a nanodrizzle, looking like a thread of glistening water that never got anything wet, was already flowing over the waste and absorbing it. Within minutes the bed would be clean too.

Moving quickly, Skye first stuffed her skin suit into a cloth sack, then pulled on a blue sweater and gray knickers. She ran her fingers through her short, soft brown hair, then glanced at herself in the image wall. A wild foreign girl, huh? Well, at least her nose had healed.

She went barefoot into the gray, predawn world, while Ord followed in the shadows, the light from the street glinting off its golden hide. Wild canaries were just starting to sing their morning greetings, while a gutter doggie wandered fat and stupid up the street, its sausage-like body bloated with the waste matter it had scavenged in the night. It looked at her with dull eyes, then headed on toward its tunnel, where it would unroll its sponge-like body into a great, flat sheet that it would press against the tunnel walls. The walls would absorb its waste, returning the matter to the city's recycling system.

The streets were empty, the restaurants closed. Skye saw only two ado boys, making their slow way into an apartment building. Judging from their haggard faces, they must have just barely survived a hard night of partying. She hurried on to Shachi Street, then down a short flight of steps into a transit station. An empty car was already waiting on the platform. Its door slipped silently open as she approached. Ord scuttled after her, then reached for her sack with its tentacles, and climbed aboard. Skye dropped onto the seat. “Elevator terminus,” she said.

The door slid shut, enclosing her in an airtight capsule. The car accelerated away from the platform, following the track through a white gel membrane that sealed the station from the airless tunnels of the transit system. As soon as the car
shooshed
through the membrane, there was nothing to see, for the transit tunnels were pitch black. Skye could feel the car turning though, as it shot through the city's industrial interior, making for the core and the elevator column. Only moments later the car slipped through another gel membrane, and once again, the clean white light of a transit station spilled through the windows.

Zia and Buyu were already waiting on the platform. Skye waved, then hopped out when the door opened.

“Feeling okay?” Buyu asked, his thick brow wrinkled in dire concern.

Skye was relieved to see that he had removed his nose bell. “Sooth, dweeb. I'm not contagious yet.”

“I didn't mean—”

“Buyu? I'm joking.” She turned to Zia and they smacked their palms together. “I'm scared.”

“And I'm your mother.”

Skye grinned. Buyu and Zia were already wearing their skin suits. The garments were required gear planetside, an intelligent hide that would protect the wearer from scrapes and jabs and encounters with unfriendly beasties. Buyu's skin suit was the muddy brown color of the explorer corps. Zia's gold suit gleamed beside it like hot metal.

“You're not dressed,” Zia observed.

Skye hefted her cloth sack. Ord's little golden head peeked out of it. “I'm going to change now. I didn't want Yulyssa to know that we were . . . you know. She's so smart. Sometimes I feel like she knows what I'm thinking before I do. I didn't want her to guess . . . Well, it's silly. I'll go change now.”

When she came back, Ord was on the shoulder of her glowing blue skin suit, the sack had been stashed in a locker, and Devi still hadn't arrived. Buyu had bought breakfast though, so the three of them sat on the station stairs, eating, while they watched transit car after transit car arrive at the station. Only a few ados got out. Most of the new arrivals were real people, dressed in skin suits for the journey down to the planet where they had been forbidden to go for most of their lives.

“What if the elevator car fills up?” Skye wondered.

Buyu said, “I reserved four tickets. We'll get on if we're at the gate on time.” Then, after a pause, “Maybe Devi changed his mind.”

Skye felt a flash of temper, but she bit down on a retort. Hadn't she been thinking the same thing?

“How much time do we have?” Zia asked.

“Couple of minutes.”

“Zeme dust.”

Skye stared at the white gel membrane that sealed off the transit tunnel, willing another car to come through.

None came.

Apparently, everyone who was going on the dawn tour had already arrived.

Well, Devi was under a lot of pressure at home.

She thought about sharing with Zia the things Yulyssa had told her last night, but she was pretty sure Devi wouldn't like it. He would probably be angry if he knew
she
knew. Maybe he did know. Maybe that's why he hadn't come.

She stood up, then pitched the remains of her breakfast into a recycle slot. “Let's go.”

“You don't want to wait just another minute?” Zia asked.

“Why? If he were coming, he'd be here. Something must have come up, but that doesn't mean
we
should miss our ride down—unless you've changed your mind?”

“Knock it off, Skye. You're talking like a dumb ado.”

Zia got up and dumped her trash too. Buyu devoured his last bite, then pitched his rubbish and grabbed a pack he'd left lying on the stairs. He hefted it. “Food and a few supplies. We'll be on our own for hours.” He grinned, obviously delighted at the thought.

They passed through the gate and into a huge loading bay, its roof lost in shadows far overhead. The elevator car waited behind a transparent wall. Perhaps “car” was the wrong word, for this car was the size of a building nine stories high. Through its tall window walls Skye could see people milling about between rows of benches on the lower floors.

She followed Buyu through an open airlock. A smiling attendant greeted them just inside. Skye was pleased to see that the interior was not nearly so crowded as she had feared. There were a lot of people on the first floor, but an escalator on one side of the huge, open room made it easy to reach the upper levels. Most of the real people were traveling in large groups of long time friends—only a few of them, like Yulyssa, ever seemed to do anything alone—and so they were clustered on the first three floors. Skye, Zia, and Buyu, rode the escalators up, until they found an empty floor. Then for good measure, they went one floor higher.

Rows of benches faced the window wall, but Skye spurned them. She sat cross-legged on the carpet, her knees touching the glass as she looked down at the loading bay. Zia dropped beside her, while Buyu sat on a bench. “Longest jump we'll ever make, hey ado?”

Skye raised her hands. “And look. No tether.” She gazed across the loading bay, but she did not see Devi. “I don't feel sick at all.”

“Hush. Don't talk about it here.”

“Do you think he got scared?”

“Maybe. I'm pretty scared.”

“It's funny, ‘cause I'm not. Not really.”

The lights dimmed. Skye tensed. At the gate she'd been given a radio headset to listen to an information monologue if she wanted, but she'd dropped it on the first bench on her way up. If she had a question about the Well she would ask Buyu or Zia. Otherwise, she just wanted to experience it, to discover it for herself.

She felt herself drop. It was only a brief plummeting sensation, but suddenly the floor of the loading bay rushed up to engulf the window. A fleeting interlude of darkness followed, lasting maybe a second and a half, and then the elevator fell into sunlight. The dizzying speed and the abrupt transition—it
was
like jumping.

Kheth had risen just a few degrees over the rim of the planet. Its slanting rays had barely touched the land below them, but here on the elevator column its light seared. Skye craned her neck to look down upon a cloudless pre-dawn world. The ocean glimmered faint gray, but Deception Well's equatorial continent remained a dark silhouette, its ragged southern edge looking like black fingers raking the water. The elevator rushed toward it with heart-hammering speed.

“Message, Skye. Real time.”

She turned to scowl at Ord. It crouched at her knee, its tentacles contracted into stubby limbs. “From who?”

“Devi Hand, no doubt,” Zia said.

“Yes. Smart Zia.”

“You talk to him,” Skye said. She did not want to admit to the disappointment she felt.

“Never mind,” Devi called, his voice arriving from the direction of the escalator. “I guess I found you.”

Skye twisted around in surprise. Devi was just pulling off the little radio headset each of them had received at the gate. He dropped it on a bench. He wore an olive-green skin suit, with his blond and red hair tied in a neat ponytail behind his neck. Watching him, Skye couldn't decide if she was furious or madly happy. Maybe both.

He studied her in turn, as he made his way past the benches. There was something of dark anger around his eyes, enhanced by the little triangle of red beard on his chin. “Are you still talking to me?”

Skye flushed and turned back to the window. Then she gasped in surprise. Already, they had fallen halfway to the world. She put her hand on the glass. “I thought you weren't coming.”

He sat on the bench next to Buyu. “I told you I was coming.”

“Sooth.”

“I got held up.”

“It's what we figured,” Buyu said.

That wasn't quite true, but it was nice of him to say it.

Devi added, “I searched all the floors on the elevator car and I didn't see you. Did you know the floor below is empty? When I saw that, I thought
you
had decided not to come. That's when I called.”

“I said I was going,” Skye answered.

“Sooth.”

Below them, the ocean had begun to flush pink with the dawn's light. Skye could just make out a ragged line of forest along the coast.

“I'm moving out of my mother's house,” Devi announced.

Skye twisted around to look at him. “Your telescope—”

He shrugged. “There's not much to see from inside this nebula anyway.”

She nodded, wondering if it was all her fault.