“You’re okay—if nothing is broken.”
He struggled, sat up, his eyes bloodshot behind the faceplate.
“Is anything broken?” I insisted.
“Fingers,”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Well take you up.”
“No.” Even bloodshot, the eyes were cool.
“You can’t climb with broken fingers. I’ll radio for help.”
“I go,” he snapped.
“Shukon—”
His good hand had gone for his gun. “I’ll kill you if you try to send me back.”
“That’s insanity.”
He waved the barrel, stared me down. “You decide.”
I stepped back, swung onto the wall, shaking. “Come on then, you determined fool. We haven’t time to argue.”
As I moved, I heard grunting and what seemed to be the beginnings of moans. But he choked the moans off short, held them between his teeth and bit them to death. When I slowed the pace for him, he pushed me hard to move faster. So I did. And, somehow, he kept up.
Eighty-seven feet down, we came upon the glittering blue tile. It was irradiated, sparkling silver at the edges. Still, this was more like it. Suddenly the rubble was not unidentifiable slag, but recognizable objects crushed and pressure-welded. Fifteen feet later, we came through the ceiling of a low corridor that was still pretty much intact.
I dropped to the floor. Shukon followed, cradling his wounded hand in the other. I pretended not to notice. I set out down the corridor, searching for significant door labels, for a room that might contain records. We had been searching less than ten minutes when my suitphone buzzed with a call from the train. I flipped the toggle on my chest pack. “Bill?”
“Walt, where are you?”
“We’re through. We may have luck soon.”
“You better. We have seven dead now.”
“Seven?”
“It’s catching on with a vengeance. Thought you’d want to know.”
“Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Bill.”
The voice was gone.
Eleven agonizing minutes later, we found the records room. Had we been gnomes, we would have danced. Rather, I would have. Shukon would have made a very depressing gnome. Too stoic. So much like . .. I hurried through the file drawers, searching. There was no project name to look for, no date when the research might have started. But I did know that the disease gave no symptoms, and I flipped through the folders, looking for pages of symptoms. And I found it. In Chinese characters in folder 2323222. symptoms: none.
I was ready to dance, gnome or no gnome, when the ceiling cracked and dumped rocks on us with a thick dusty growl . . .
There was dirt on my faceplate. I wiped it off. There was also a pain in my side, dull, that would not wipe away. A broken rib? Only cracked? I tried to move, found I was pinned by rocks. Carefully, I tensed, pain lashing sharply through my chest, and shoved out from beneath it.
There was absolutely no light. I could hear something. What? A hissing. It was Shukon trying not to moan. “Where are you?” I called.
“Never . . . mind.”
“I’ll dig you out.”
“My arm . . . is broken. My . . . left leg . . . also.”
“I’ll carry you”
“You . . . have no . . . time.”
I fumbled with my headlamp, found it had been knocked off but not broken. I screwed it tight in the socket, flipped it on. There was a glint of plastiglass faceplate in the swirling dust cloud. Overhead, the ruins screeched, groaned. Screeched like a gull My father had taken me to the sea once, had sat with me on the moss-edged rocks, had shown me the gulls .. .
“Leave me,” Shukon croaked.
I struggled over the rubble, began tossing stones off him, adrenaline almost pumping out my ears. He was right: broken leg. Smashed would have been a better word. The suit was ruptured above the knee, the bones splaying out of it, blood mingling with the dust and forming a thick black glue. The self-sealing rubber had formed a tourniquet to stop the worst of the flow. Bracing a foot against his good leg, grabbing his arm, I started to hoist him onto my shoulders.