Walking to the Stars (21 page)

Nick pushed ahead, through what his memory said had once been a tropical garden but was now a dense thicket of bushes and trees, all of them with sharp edges that whipped at his face.

"Hey, Talgerit, can you make some light?” Nick asked as he almost fell out of the thicket, the dark shape of a building looming overhead.

Talgerit slid out of the thicket behind Nick, Samuel after him, crunching fallen branches and muttering about the trees.

"Don't need to,” Talgerit said, and when Nick glanced back, Talgerit's face was lit by a pale glow.

Talgerit opened his stolen jacket, and the Wagyl scale on a cord around his neck glowed, blue and white, shimmering in the darkness against his chest.

"What does it mean?” Samuel asked, as Talgerit covered the scale up again.

"Don't know,” Talgerit said, and he held out his hand, a glowing sphere of light forming on his palm.

"That way,” Nick said, pointing at where his memory said the Physics Department was.

The globe of light bobbed ahead of them, drifting toward the building, until it nudged up against a substantial pale red brick and sandstone wall.

Nick scrambled through the undergrowth and across the rubble of what had once been a covered walkway, to where the glowing globe lit a shattered window.

"Think this was an office,” Nick said, carefully pushing broken glass off the windowsill. “C'mon."

He heaved himself over the windowsill, and fell into the room, landing in a pile of dried leaves and, probably, rat shit. Samuel was next in the room, and Nick barely got clear in time, then they both leaned out to help Talgerit climb in.

The globe of light followed Talgerit in, reminding Nick of childhood balloons floating on a string.

"Wow,” Samuel said, and Nick looked around the office, where books crowded the shelves and the shell of a computer sat on a sagging desk.

The office door opened, with some shoving, and the light drifted ahead of them, into a long hallway.

"Dusty, but intact,” Samuel said, following the globe of light. “I'd expected the building to be bombed, or gutted by looters."

The next door that Nick pushed open was a computer lab, with rows of desks holding desktop computers, the chairs at the desks still in place. Apart from the faint scurrying of rodents, Nick could see no indication the room had been disturbed since the university was evacuated.

"Why is all this untouched?” Nick asked. “Why hasn't the army, at least, taken all the hardware?"

"Could the building be radioactive?” Samuel asked. “If I can find a real laboratory, I might be able to tell..."

The ball of light flared briefly, and Talgerit said, “We have a problem."

Nick closed the computer lab door and asked, “What kind of problem?"

Talgerit opened his jacket, and the Wagyl scale around his neck shone as brightly as the floating ball of light.

A long roll of what sounded like thunder echoed through the building, the floor under Nick's feet vibrated and dust rained down on them.

"Explosions?” Samuel asked.

"The Wagyl,” Talgerit said. “Maybe on the roof."

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"You had classes in this building?” Samuel asked, watching Nick push the double fire doors open, onto an echoing entrance hall of broken glass and shifting shadows.

"First year medical students had to do compulsory science units,” Nick said. “It wasn't pretty. It doesn't mean I have any idea where the research labs are, though."

"I'm guessing the basements,” Samuel said. “It's easier to keep things secure down there, then there's the whole containment issue. If you're going to make a mess, do it where there are no windows."

Talgerit looked upward, to where the crunching and crashing on the roof of the building had come from. “I could go, see the Wagyl...” he said, sounding hopeful.

"Oh no,” Nick said. “Firstly, we're not going to the basement without you and your lights. And secondly, we're not going to the basement without you because there are things running around here, and they're not rats. I don't think they're even really things. If you'd like to tell me they're very small Wagyls, I'm not going to be surprised."

Samuel swung his head, and sure enough, something hopped and slid, just on the edge of his vision, melting away.

The dog whined, pushing between Talgerit's legs, until Talgerit settled him.

"I don't know what they are, but they're not Wagyls,” Talgerit said.

Nick rubbed at the dust on the wall, revealing a building directory and map. “Stairs are down this corridor,” he said, pointing.

Samuel followed Talgerit and Nick, staying within the glow of Talgerit's globe and watching out for the things that were moving in the shadows, out of reach of the dog as he rushed at them.

"Don't stand on any of those things,” Talgerit warned, unnecessarily in Samuel's opinion. “I think they own the building."

"Should the labs smell?” Nick asked, as they crept down the stairwell, the stink of mould and decay growing stronger, even over the lingering smell of Talgerit's Featherman boots, which dangled around Talgerit's neck on a cord. “What does physics research smell like?"

"The labs I'm used to smell of coffee and shorted circuits,” Samuel said. “I have no idea what gravity wave research smells like."

The stairs ended in a hallway so dark that Talgerit's globe struggled through the opaque and musty air, and the floor was dank and slimy underfoot when Samuel stepped off the final stair.

Samuel grabbed onto Nick's shoulder, and said, “I guess we just work our way along the corridor, opening doors."

Talgerit set more balls of light floating around them, and Samuel picked his way through sticky slime, to the first door.

The sign hanging crookedly off the door read Experimental Quantum Dynamics, and Nick nudged at the door and asked, “What's Experimental Quantum Dynamics?"

"About as magic as Talgerit's lights,” Samuel said, pushing his shoulder against the door, alongside Nick's. “High energy, high impact electron destruction physics, I suspect. Well outside of my area of knowledge."

The door gave way with a rending of rotten wood and corroded metal, and they shoved it open far enough for one of Talgerit's globes to float in.

"Oh,” Samuel said, at the hulking machines that filled the lab. “They're electron lasers."

Nick tugged on Samuel's arm, and said, “Keep moving, no matter how exciting the lasers are."

The next room was an office, with shelves that had collapsed under the weight of mildewed files and journals, and the door after was a workshop.

It wasn't just an ordinary workshop, but a huge machining workshop, with precision lathes, heat pumps, gas expanders, spot welders and banks of tanks of compressed gas, some of which had ruptured messily sometime in the past. The workshop ran back, into darkness, and Samuel picked his way over upturned lab stools, to where the little things hopped and scampered around, just ahead of the dog.

"This workshop...” Samuel said, shaking his head. “This must be where most of the equipment was manufactured. That's a precision mill, and that's a plasma welder."

"Can you use all these?” Nick asked.

Samuel shook his head. “Maybe the lathe, and the mill, as long as no one wanted me to produce anything usable. I'm not sure there's anyone still alive how knows how to even power up some of these things."

They worked their way through the workshop, past equipment that Samuel couldn't identify, and each intact drill press and recognizable 3D printer made Samuel more and more hopeful that if he could find the right lab, the guts of the gravity wave clock would still be intact.

He'd hoped for identifiable, or locatable, so intact, or assembled, or potentially functional would be better than he ever dreamed of.

The doors at the far end of the workshop didn't so much open as fall apart, when the three of them pushed on them, the rotten wooden panels and cracked glass panes crumbling.

"The Condensed Matter Research Group,” Samuel read off the wall sign on the other side of the door. “BioAcoustics, Medical Radiation Physics—that's a lab we don't want to go into—and...” He rubbed the heel of his hand across the pitted letters on the sign and leaned closer to peer at them. “Gravitational Waves Research Group. Down this corridor."

"You found it?” Talgerit asked, sending more balls of light bumping off the ceiling ahead of Samuel, and this time, Samuel could hear the little things skittering around in the corners, making the dog whine.

"Nearly,” Samuel said.

Nick slung his arm, sweaty and filthy, around Samuel's shoulder, as Samuel slid through the muck on the floor, past the door with the BioAcoustics lab sign. “How does it feel?"

Samuel grinned sideways at Nick. “Ask me again when we've found the lab, and it hasn't been gutted already."

Part of the sign was missing, but the half that still hung from the door clearly read
Waves Research
, and that was good enough. The doors were stuck, warped and swollen in the dampness, but the three of them persuaded one of the doors to pull free of its hinges and frame.

"Well, the lab's not empty,” Nick said, and Talgerit whacked Samuel on the back.

"Steal the clock, go home,” Talgerit said. “I'm hungry."

Samuel walked into the lab, Talgerit's lights floating around him, and touched the nearest desk, then the rig in the middle of the lab.

"Now how do you feel?” Nick asked.

"It's all here,” Samuel said. “This would have been the superconductor containment vat, for the niobium bar. The laser set-up for the clock should be..."

Samuel pushed aside a stepladder, and pulled the remnants of a tarpaulin off the structure beside the containment vat.

"This is the laser for the clock,” Samuel said, and he could hear his voice was odd, his throat too tight to speak properly.

"We have to carry that home?” Talgerit asked. “Is it heavy? Can we borrow a truck, unna?"

Nick patted the containment vat. “Possibly not all of it.” He sounded hopeful.

"Only some of it,” Samuel said, pulling the stepladder closer and testing his weight on it, then deciding that was a bad idea when the ladder creaked and the rung snapped. “The important parts. You might want to get comfortable, because this could take some time."

Talgerit lifted the dog up, onto a desk, and the dog curled up in Talgerit's lap when Talgerit sat on the desk, too. Nick said, “Let me know if you need a hand,” and propped himself on a workbench, and began to chew on a meal replacement bar.

"Could I have some more light?” Samuel asked Talgerit, reaching into his jacket pocket for the shifter he'd stolen from the APC.

More globes bobbed past Samuel's shoulders, sending crazy shadows across the side of the clock laser housing, and Talgerit said, “You could make your own light now. The Wagyl lives here, so lights are like breathing."

Samuel looked up from adjusting the shifter to fit the corroded bolthead on the side of the clock laser housing, and Nick held out his hand, palm up, and creased his face in concentration, rearranging the dirt and his beard.

Talgerit laughed, making the dog yip, and said, “Breathing, Nick. Not that thing you're doing."

Nick stopped squinting and let out a long breath, and they all stared at his extended palm.

"I don't know, Talgerit,” Nick said, before breathing in and out again loudly. “Not all of us have trained for years to be Feathermen."

"You can breathe, eh?” Talgerit asked.

"Last time I checked,” Nick said.

Samuel turned back to the bolt he was attempting to loosen, gave the bolthead another unsuccessful twist, then hit it with the side of the shifter, so the thud echoed around the lab and rust flaked off the bolthead.

On the next try, the shifter gripped, and the bolt moved, undoing slowly. Behind him, Talgerit started laughing, as loud as the clang of metal on metal had been, and Nick laughed, too, sudden and surprised.

Samuel glanced back, still twisting the shifter, and laughed as well, because Nick had managed to make a small, sticky-looking ball of light, but with his other hand, not the one he'd been holding out and concentrating on.

"Told you it was like breathing,” Talgerit said.

Samuel pulled the bolt he was working on out of the laser housing, and moved on to the next bolt, and Nick said, “Now how do I get it off me?"

Samuel shook his head, whacked the bolthead hard, just to start with, and began unscrewing it.

Eventually, the housing cover pulled off, and the cryogenic chamber lid lifted, exposing the workings of the laser clock, and Samuel let out a long sigh.

Talgerit grunted, possibly in his sleep since he was curled up on a desk with the dog, and Nick asked, “Found something?"

"Want to look?” Samuel asked.

Nick squelched across the lab floor, and leaned over Samuel's shoulder.

"Wow,” Nick said. “That is a big chunk of glass."

"That's a piece of flawless sapphire,” Samuel said. “That's what we're here for."

Samuel touched the rounded side of the sapphire, where the housing had exposed it, just to feel the cold rock under his fingertips.

"Is it going to be an issue to get it out of the machine-thing?” Nick asked.

Samuel shrugged. “The manuals indicated that it should just lift out on its cradle. Of course, those manuals are now somewhere in the river, but I spent enough nights memorizing the instructions on the freighter that I'm not too worried. There should be a carry case for it somewhere. Do you want to look for it?"

"That's it?” Nick asked. “That's all we're here for?"

"The sapphire, and some of the peripherals,” Samuel said, reaching into the housing and feeling around for a release lever. “Spend a few minutes searching, see if the back-up discs were left onsite, then crack open the desktop computers, and pull out the hard drives."

The cradle the sapphire rested in wiggled in Samuel's hands, but didn't swing, so he yanked on it, trying to pull the hinges past the corrosion stopping the mechanism.

"Hard drives?” Nick asked, over the noise of him yanking open storage cabinets and store cupboards, searching for back-ups and for the case. “Won't they be useless after the bombs and all this time?"