The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller (25 page)

I spun in a circle. The panel beside the desk was painted to mimic a landscape, but I had seen Lee use it before. I opened it. A weak smell of garbage wafted from the chute. I climbed on the desk, inserted myself into the chute, and let go.

My shoulders bumped against the tight walls as I fell. The chute felt impossibly close; if it narrowed, it would crush me. Fetid wind blew past my nose. Just as I began to fear I'd be smashed to pulp by the landing, the chute angled. I slid down the slope, rustling plastic paper stuck in the seams of the walls. My palms skidded through slimy patches. The slope leveled further. I braked my socked feet against the tight metal walls; in the moon's low gravity, I slowed quickly. It was perfectly dark, but I could hear the draft of an open space ahead. I pushed out hard with all my limbs and scraped to a stop.

One foot dangled down into empty air. Through blind groping, I discovered I was at the joint of several garbage chutes. I wormed my way around the hole, felt around until my hand encountered another upward-sloping tube, and wriggled inside. I peeled off my socks. The space was so tight and the gravity so low that I could climb upward using nothing more than the friction of my skin.

A half foot at a time, I pushed myself up the black tube. When I reached a vertical rise, the pad slipped from my waist. I wedged my body against the wall, trapping it, then awkwardly transferred the tablet to my front. Climbing higher, my hand scraped the end of the chute. A panel gave under my hand. I pulled myself out into a dark office.

I hurried into its reception area, then eased open the door into the halls. The lights were dimmed, the tunnel empty. I walked swiftly down it until I got my bearings. I headed straight for my bunk's bathroom and rubbed myself down with dry soap to remove most of the worst smells and stains. I had banked enough water for a shower, but for the moment it would be too noisy.

Quiet as a shadow, I hauled myself up to my bunk, slid my tablet under my pillow, and lay still. I was half asleep when the door opened, fanning light inside from the hallway. Whoever was there watched us for a couple minutes before closing the door and walking away.

In the morning, I showered and inspected myself for damage, but showed just a small scrape on my left elbow. As soon as I stepped into Joachim's reception, Lee beckoned me over.

"Seen anything funny lately?" she said.

"Like what?"

"Someone hanging around. Unauthorized attempts to access our network. Anything."

I pretended to think. "Not that I recall. Why?"

She sighed in annoyance. "We think someone tried to break in last night."

"What? What happened?"

"Someone entered the office without access. They were gone before security arrived."

"Who was it? One of Mr. Joachim's rivals?"

"We don't know." She glanced at Joachim's office. "But it won't happen again."

She handed me the day's messages and I headed into the tunnels. I was relieved to hear I'd made a clean escape, but Lee's last words sounded ominous. When I got back, a man in a gray uniform was installing an old school key-operated lock on Joachim's door.

"We'll need your tablet tonight," Lee told me. "Security upgrades."

"Sure thing." I snatched a waiting envelope off her desk and practically ran down the tunnels. At the offices of its recipient, I informed the assistant I would need to hand it to Mrs. Ulner myself. Refusing to take no for an answer, I used the wait to repeatedly overwrite all the files I'd stolen from Joachim's pad, then deleted them along with hundreds of dummy files I'd ginned up to help lose the originals in the morass.

As Lee closed up the office, I handed over my tablet. For the last week, I'd kept at bay the hollowed-out, subservient ennui brought on by our drugged food, but as I trudged to the cafeteria, it surged over me like floodwaters. I sought out Vette, sat down, and stared at my plate.

She laughed. "You look like your master just scheduled you to be neutered."

"More or less," I said. "Lost all my files. Don't think I can get back in. I'm completely shut out."

"Sounds like you should kill Lee."

"What?"

"You're her backup, right? If she dies, you take her place."

I squeezed my temples. "This isn't a conversation."

Vette shrugged. "What's the big deal? This is essentially a feudal empire, isn't it? Assassination for personal gain is all part of the game."

"Hacking into a computer is one thing," I said, keeping my voice low. "Hacking into a person is quite another."

"Well, you've got to do
something
to earn Joachim's trust. It's been three weeks. Clock's ticking."

"I don't have enough time. I can't work my way up the food chain in a week." I chewed a spoonful of starch, but I couldn't get myself to swallow. "I should just walk outside and die."

"You don't have to
kill
her," Vette said. "You could just disable her. Take her out of action for a week while you swoop in as the savior."

I set down my spoon with a plastic click. The idea came to me wrapped up like a present: first, it was a welcome surprise, and second, I didn't know
what
the idea was yet, just that I had it. I sat there at the table, trying not to think too hard, allowing my semi-conscious mind to unwrap it without damaging whatever was inside.

"I've got it."

Vette looked up from her plate. "Yeah? Gonna break her kneecap? Shove her down the stairs?"

"I'm not going to cripple her body," I said. "Just her reputation."

She gave me a crooked look. "I like where this is going."

It took me a few days to set up. I had to watch him on his walks. Get the timing down. It turned out I needed Vette's help, too; confined to the underlayers, she'd made a few contacts there, including in the division known as Extra-Site Maintenance and Utilities. She procured schematics for the suits. I built a simple simulator and honed my timing. When Joachim's suit was sent to the lower levels to be serviced and refilled, the oxygen tanks were given special attention.

I don't know how Vette accomplished that last part. Given the dark turn her thinking had taken, I didn't want to ask.

By the time I was ready, we had just six days until the Pods were scheduled to displace us. Even if this cuckoo plan worked, I still had several barriers between me and the information I sought. I was going to need every minute I could get my hands on.

That morning, I entered the office with a question about the new security on the tablet at the front desk. It so happened that Lee was helping Joachim climb into the silvery suit that would keep him safe from the vacuum outside.

Lee glanced over her shoulder, brows bent in an impatient vee. "Yes?"

"Nothing," I said. "It can wait."

I backed out, making sure none of the door's locks engaged as I closed it. Behind the front desk, I sat on the edge of my seat, keeping both ears open. Someone knocked from outside, startling me; I answered it, brusquely took their envelope, and informed them there wasn't a chance in hell they'd see Mr. Joachim that day.

The door was still clicking shut in my hand when Lee screamed.

I bolted through the door to Joachim's. Lee faced the wide viewscreen.

"What is it?" I said.

She pointed. The screen showed a panorama of gray, the flat, dusty landscape punctuated by boulders and small rills. Several dozen yards out, Joachim lay facedown in the grit, his silver suit perfectly still.

"He fell," Lee said. "Why doesn't he get up?"

"He just fell? What's wrong?"

"I don't know." She brought her tablet to her mouth. "Mr. Joachim! Can you hear me?"

He remained still.

"Is he breathing?" I said. "Don't you have access to his vitals?"

"Yeah. Yeah." She swiped at her tablet, calling up the feed to Joachim's suit. "He's got no oxygen!"

"We have to do something," I said.

Lee gazed numbly at her screen. "I'll call security. They'll send someone for him."

"There's no time. He's risking brain damage every second he's out there. Three more minutes and he'll be dead."

She continued to stare at her pad, as if it would assess and solve the problem for her.

I snapped my fingers under her nose. "Lee! I need your help. I'm going outside."

She blinked at me. "But we don't have a second suit."

"Cycle the airlock. As soon as I'm headed out, call medical and security. Be ready to open the door as soon as I'm back."

"But you'll die!"

"Maybe," I said, just as I'd mentally rehearsed. "But we don't have any other choice."

Lee tapped commands into the airlock's pad. A metallic hum reverberated through the room. The outer doors closed with agonizing slowness. I breathed deeply and steadily, attempting to flood my bloodstream with oxygen. The outer doors finished their cycle. Air hissed into the closed chamber. Long seconds later, the hissing ceased. The inner doors parted.

I gave Lee a thumbs up and stepped inside.

She reversed the inner doors and they came together like praying hands. The vents began to suction the atmosphere from the small metal chamber. My ears popped. I took a last breath and let some of it out to reduce the pressure-damage to my lungs. My eyes bulged. The noise of the wind faded. The outer doors opened in perfect silence, revealing an ascending staircase smeared with fine gray dust.

Have I mentioned this was a stupid plan? It was possible I would die. Equally pressing, it was possible
Joachim
would die, and I would be transferred or demoted, with little chance of prying my way deeper into G&A's secrets before the Pods flung me back to Primetime. Even if I executed my rescue with flawless aplomb, there was no guarantee it would get me more than a Christmas card.

But it was perhaps not as stupid as it sounds. There are more myths around the vacuum than there are of the ocean.

For instance, as I climbed the stairs, I didn't feel particularly cold. The feeling of cold is caused by the heat of your body radiating to colder particles around you, so I didn't freeze for the same reason I couldn't hear my feet thumping up the steps: there was no atmosphere to carry my heat away. I didn't explode, either. There just isn't that much difference between one atmosphere and no atmospheres. I felt pressure on my eyes, ears, lungs, and anus, but it was nothing more than discomfort.

I crested the steps. Monochrome moonscape spread before me. The earth's blue marble hung in the sky, enveloped by star-pricked darkness. Sunlight glared steadily from Joachim's silvery suit. I ran across the craggy surface, strides soaring in the fractional gravity. My steps vibrated up through my soles and knees, but all I could hear was the swirling thunder of my blood in my ears.

I'd gotten lucky. Joachim lay less than a hundred feet from the head of the stairs. I slid beside him, elbow slicing through the frigid dust. He wasn't a small man, but here on the moon, he weighed no more than thirty pounds. I slung him over my shoulders. Lungs burning, I stood and jogged back toward the stairwell.

Red squiggles bloomed in my vision, burst capillaries giving out as my heart pumped harder, trying to circulate what little oxygen remained in my bloodstream. I clamped my mouth shut. Joachim's limbs jounced against my back. The burning in my lungs became bonfires. My vision pinkened. My legs became wobbly as unprocessed lactic acid built up in the muscles.

I stumbled, somehow righted myself. Dust exploded from my pounding feet, shooting away in bizarre radial bursts, untroubled by wind or the resistance of air. I reached the steps. My thighs shook as I leapt down into the airlock. I landed hard, spilling myself and Joachim onto the gritty floor. Involuntarily, I tried to gasp, but when I opened my mouth to take in air, the vacuum took it from me instead.

As my vision grew gray, I felt the floor rumble beneath me. Was it all cracking apart? And then I felt numb, as numb as when the Pods pull me through time, and a warm wind stirred my hair, as if I'd washed up on a tropical beach, and I smiled and closed my eyes.

While my consciousness rested on a faraway shore, my body continued to toil. My lungs took in air, which my pulmonary veins sent to my heart, which distributed oxygen to my brain.

I woke. Past the inner airlock doors, Lee had stripped off Joachim's helmet and pressed her ear to his chest. Woozily, I watched her attempt an awkward set of chest compressions.

People in green uniforms arrived a couple minutes later. They carried Joachim to a cart idling in the hallway, then did the same for me. I was brought one level down to a hospital of sorts where I was treated and questioned. I lied in very straightforward terms.

My eyes didn't feel too good, and there were moments it felt like I might never catch my breath, but unless the effects of solar radiation cropped up soon, the doctor didn't believe I'd suffered any long-term damage from my suitless minute on the surface of the moon.

I asked about Mr. Joachim, but they told me nothing. Two hours later, he requested my presence in his recovery room.

His face was flushed, eyes bloodshot, capillaries popped like an old drinker's. He smiled without apparent pain, however, and gestured me to a seat.

"Thank you, Adam," he said. There was a ragged edge to his voice. "Lee told me what happened."

"What did she say?" I said.

"That when she was preparing to go outside, you volunteered instead."

I smiled rigidly. The evil bitch had caught me in a bind. I could either stay silent and let her appropriate half the credit, or speak up and expose myself as accolade-hungry, egotistical, and disloyal to my superior. Either path thwarted my goal.

"I just wanted to get you back inside," I said.

He chuckled. "You're a diamond in the rough, kid. You'll go far."

I forced a smile. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Lee was supposed to be disgraced for incompetence and cowardice while I was supposed to be rewarded for quick-thinking and bravery. Instead, we were status quo. A moody fog rolled in from the deep waters of my brain. I asked to return to work. I needed to think, not to wallow, and I always thought best while my feet were in motion.