The Darwin Elevator (5 page)

Neil went on. “They’ll have to take their own air and water. Put their lives in the hands of environment suits made decades ago. One little puncture, Tania, and that’s it.”

Tania knew all this. She’d studied SUBS, as much as one could. Little had been learned before the bulk of the human brain trust perished. It bore some similarity to Alzheimer’s, a disease cured almost a century earlier. Only one detail mattered: Outside Aura’s Edge, the disease killed most people in less than four agonizing hours. Around 10 percent survived only to be left in an animalistic state, “devolved,” their primal urges and emotions amplified beyond what the sane mind could handle. Entering Darwin would not help them. The Aura did not cure SUBS; it only put the virus in stasis. Leave its relative safety, and once the inactive cells contacted active ones, they’d wake and grow again.

A microscopically small percentage was totally unaffected.

“Point being,” Neil said, “I’ve set things in motion. Today, in fact.”

“Then we’ll have it soon?”

“Patience, dear. Even if the data is out there, they have to find it, bring it to Darwin, and get it up here. All difficult tasks.”

Her mind raced. She knew of the scavenger crews in Darwin; their adventures beyond the Aura were often talked about. The romance of danger and adventure in forbidden places. Tania assumed the stories to be greatly exaggerated by the time she heard them. “Who did you hire? Someone trustworthy, I hope?”

“I have no idea.” He patted her arm. “Nothing to tie me to it, should things go awry.”

Chapter Four

Darwin, Australia

13.JAN.2283

The armored truck hummed through Darwin’s old warehouse district, crushing rock and garbage alike beneath its thick, knobby tires.

“Where is everyone?”

Skyler emerged from a daydream at the sound of the voice. He’d slumped into the deep cushions of the passenger seat and let the warmth of the day and the motion of the ride lull his senses. He looked across the wide cab at Angus, and noted the tense manner in which he gripped the steering wheel. “Hiding. Watching from inside.”

Angus nodded, but his brow creased. “Why?”

The innocence in his voice made Skyler grin. Angus had lived a privileged life by Darwin standards. He’d grown up inside a sky crane, sitting beside his pilot father, flying water shipments from East Point up to Nightcliff. At age six, his dad let him take the stick for the first time, or so Angus told it. He was seventeen now, all gangly limbs and shaggy black hair, and already a better pilot than Skyler.

If only he had some street smarts,
Skyler thought. “A working vehicle, this far from the Elevator, means nothing but trouble to these people.”

Angus eased back into his seat. “Right. Makes sense.”

They drove past a lone bicyclist, wearing a scarf across his face and an AK-47 on his back. Saddlebags were strapped to a frame over the wobbly back tire. A courier.

“Don’t fool yourself,” Skyler added. “Once they realize we’re not from Nightcliff, they’ll try to take it.”

A white lie, but he wanted Angus alert. In truth, the locals had no use for such a large and complicated machine. They couldn’t maintain it, much less charge the capacitors. And even if it were stolen, Skyler knew there were twenty more just like it waiting, never used, at a supply depot in Russia. The same place he and Skadz found this one, three years ago.

No, the bicyclist, disappearing in the rearview mirror, had much more reason to worry. A bike meant all sorts of opportunity.

Skyler turned to face the window, watching with vague interest as a light drizzle rearranged the dirt on it.

Looking up, beyond the rooftops, he could see the cord of the Elevator. Morning sunlight glinted off the thin thread. It looked like a strand of spider silk, stretching to infinity. After all these years the sight still filled him with awe.

Lifeline to Earth, they say. Yet everything of value goes up
.

He strained his neck to look higher, tracing the line until it faded into the sky.

“Any climbers?” Angus asked.

“Not a damn one,” Skyler said. He frowned. Ten hours ago, Skyler had stood on the roof of his hangar and watched with growing concern as the stuck climbers began to move again. Instead of continuing their journey up to Gateway Station, the vehicles had come down. Since then, nothing. The cord, for the first time Skyler could remember, was vacant.

If the situation went on much longer, he feared, a full-fledged revolution would ensue. As nasty as Blackfield was, Skyler didn’t like the alternatives. Ambitious crime lords, or even zealous Jacobites, would try to fill that void.

The truck slowed. Skyler turned his attention forward and saw a shanty building that had collapsed into the road. Laborers young and old, of varying ethnicity, scrambled over the rubble, picking it clean of useful items. Bits of copper pipe, electrical wiring, insulation. They worked under the watch of two Asian men armed with machetes, enforcers for whatever local gang claimed this stretch of road. They shared a cigarette between them, and one swatted a resting worker, using the flat of his blade to urge the sullen youngster back to his task.

The laborers would be paid with a meal, perhaps two. A hell of a way to put food on the table, Skyler thought. The city teemed with such unskilled workers. Those who’d fled to Darwin as the disease raged across the planet, with nothing but the clothes they wore and no goal other than survival. Few had the skills humanity needed, and they found little opportunity to better themselves. To learn a trade here meant moving up into a wholly different caste. The ability to stitch a wound or a sweater, fix a bike, cultivate a seed—such knowledge made all the difference.

Several lean-tos, made from bits of tarp and plastic trash bags, clustered around the base of the debris pile. A Middle Eastern family huddled within one, wrapped in threadbare silk scarves and thin blankets. One child among them was racked with a violent cough.

“Go around,” Skyler said. Though he was immune to the disease beyond the city limit, earthly ailments were another matter. “Not too slow.”

Angus complied, jerking the vehicle hard to the right and accelerating. He squeezed the truck between the rubble and a concrete wall across the street, a scant few centimeters separating them from the hard surface.

“Nice piece of driving,” Skyler said.

At the next corner, a small crowd gathered around a man clad in improvised white robes. A Jacobite preacher. He stood atop a wooden box, his face contorted as he spewed a sermon. A woman paced back and forth in front of him. She hoisted a tattered flag, blood-red with their emblem hand-painted in white: the Christian cross, with a ladder forming the vertical part.

Skyler had no stomach for the sect, who believed the space elevator to be Jacob’s Ladder. They preyed on the bored and desperate rabble of Darwin’s outer districts and in Skyler’s view were little more than a criminal gang. Worse than that, a criminal gang with devout followers.

“Give this freak a wide berth, Angus,” Skyler said.

“Gladly,” he replied.

Skyler scanned the crowd and the buildings all around them. Jacobites usually traveled in groups, often armed.

The sermon halted at the approach of the vehicle. As the truck rolled by, the preacher stared at Skyler with an unflinching gaze full of simmering hatred.

He must think we’re from Nightcliff,
Skyler thought.
And if he has friends around
 …

“Quickly now, Angus.”

The kid steered back into the center of the road and pushed the accelerator. The electric motors whined from the surge of power, and Skyler felt himself pressed into his seat as they picked up speed.

Through the side mirror, Skyler watched the preacher and his crowd fade from view.

After a few blocks, he told Angus to ease up. The streets were clear here, and safe, in relative terms. One of the rare neighborhoods that banded together for the collective good. Such places were easy to spot from above, with gardens flourishing on every roof. Maintaining a grove of papaya or banana trees wasn’t easy with thieves or jealous vandals next door.

He wondered, not for the first time, how much food Darwin would really need from orbit if the populace would stop living like prisoners in a gulag.

Crumbling warehouses passed by, each one a relic of Darwin’s boom years after the Elevator arrived. Skyler tallied the faded logos of aerospace companies and construction firms.

More than a few bore the Platz Industries name. On one, a likeness of Neil Platz had been painted to resemble Stalin. Skyler smirked at that; the drawing was rather good.

“Turn in here,” he said, pointing at a nondescript parking garage.

Angus swerved the vehicle into the open maw of the multilevel structure. Darkness swallowed them. Inside he stepped hard on the brakes, just centimeters from an interior iron gate. “What now?”

“Just wait,” Skyler said.

A thick exterior barricade rolled closed behind them, sandwiching the vehicle. Angus began to drum his fingers on the steering wheel.

With a loud creak, the gate in front lurched and rotated out of the way.

“Take the downward path,” Skyler said. “Nice and easy.”

The vehicle spiraled down a decrepit concrete ramp, descending three levels before reaching the bottom. They rolled to a stop in front of a rusty chain-link fence, illuminated only by the truck’s headlights.

“Engine off please,” Skyler said. “Lights, too.”

Devoid of enthusiasm, Angus complied. The whine of electricity from the motors faded to a stop, leaving them in a silence broken occasionally by dripping water. The only light came from the gauge cluster on the dash.

“Thought there’d be guards,” Angus said.

“Who said there aren’t?” Skyler removed his pistol from its shoulder holster and placed the weapon deliberately on the dash in front of his seat. He turned to his right, nodding calmly at Angus. “Shouldn’t take long,” he said. “Keep your wits about you, eh?”

Angus kept his eyes forward, studying the layout of the room. “You’re going in there alone? Unarmed?”

Skyler nodded and pushed open the passenger door. “Relax. Prumble and I go way back.”

His worn combat boots thumped against the floor as he dropped from the vehicle. Without another word, he slammed the door shut.

Two floodlights mounted high on the walls blinked on, filling the space with a sodium-yellow pall. They hummed like swarms of insects, electricity stressing the antique wiring. Skyler kept his head down, letting his baseball cap shield his eyes from the jarring brightness.

He approached the fence with his arms spread wide, palms open. A narrow gate in the center unlocked with a dull click, and Skyler pushed through it. On the opposite side, he waited. The sodium spotlights clicked off, plunging the area into darkness again.

He heard the slightest scrape of metal and saw a tiny yellow dot on the wall in front of him as a peephole opened.

“What’s your business here?” came a voice.

Skyler fought the urge to laugh. Prumble’s theatrics grew with each visit. “I’m expected. Skyler Luiken.”

“Luke Skywalker?”

“That never gets old,” Skyler growled.

“Ah, sarcasm! The lowest form of wit.”

Skyler smirked, despite himself, and shook his head. “Open the bloody door, Prumble.”

The peephole snapped shut. Skyler looked back at Angus, whose face was drawn in red by the dashboard lights. The kid gripped the steering wheel with one hand, drummed it with the other.

Nearly a minute passed before a brief commotion from beyond the door, as many locks were undone.

Finally the door opened. “Leave your weapons outside.”

Prumble was already snickering when the door slammed shut. “How’s the new guy?” he asked between laughs.

Skyler grinned. “On pins and needles, thanks to you.”

The fat man wore a constant, jovial smile. Despite the cold of the garage, beads of sweat dotted his bald head, and he dabbed them with a white handkerchief. He motioned for Skyler to follow him. “You have a keen eye for people, Skyler.”

“Speak for yourself.” Skyler gestured to the vast space he now stood in. “The vaunted private army of Mr. Prumble.”

Prumble chuckled, the sound echoing through the cavernous garage. “Must keep up appearances, you know. Come, come. I want to hear all about the mission.”

Skyler followed the man, who’d been his fence and friend since the scavenger crew’s were first given run of the old airport. Prumble required the aid of a cane and he moved at a languid pace through the former parking garage, which served as a warehouse. Random items crowded every available space, many of them procured by Skyler and his crew. They passed organized sections of electronics, weapons, preserved foodstuffs, furniture, containers, clothing … at least fifty sections, organized in a way only Prumble could understand.

“What have you brought me?” Prumble asked.

Skyler rubbed his hands together, then breathed on them. “I always forget to wear gloves when I come here.”

“You’re stalling.”

“I’m cold! Cold … and stalling.”

“Bloody hell,” Prumble said. “Not again.”

“We had it. The exact model you requested. Pristine condition, too.”

“And what? It fell out?”

“Nightcliff ordered us to land,” Skyler said. “When we saw the Elevator vacant—”

“So ignore them, damn it. They wouldn’t shoot you down.”

“Sam said the same thing.”

“You’ve a keen eye for people,” he repeated. “Listen to them once in a while.”

Crestfallen, Skyler spread his hands. “They were spooked. So were we, really. Rioters at the gate, the climbers just sitting there, dark, on the cord. I had to land.”

The big man grumbled a response. He led Skyler to a specially constructed room, retrofitted into the far corner of the underground garage. Skyler recognized the enormous steel door like an old friend. He and Skadz had pulled it off a meat locker in Perth, a decade ago, at Prumble’s request—their first mission for the man.

A keypad on the door served as the lock. “Avert your eyes,” Prumble said as he tapped the numbers. The latch released with a dull thud.