doorway shaped like the gaping mouth of a monster. He reached out and
stroked the door jamb admiringly.
The door growled and Danny jumped back, landing sprawled on the rubble.
“I told you not to touch stuff,” Wiz said.
“Yeah.” He consulted the locator to hide his embarrassment. “Uh, what we
want is down this way.”
Another couple of hundred yards and the trio came to an archway that was
still mostly standing. Through it they saw five or six searchers hovering
around like a patch of smog, pulsing weakly as they sensed their quarry.
“I guess it’s down there,” Danny said.
“Great,” Wiz said, eyeing the remains of the room. “The debris is only
about ten feet deep in there. I don’t suppose you guys brought shovels?”
Jerry looked down at the equipment festooned about him. “No. We’ve got
enough stuff here to flatten this place in an eyeblink, but we don’t have
anything that will let us move the rubble.”
“I could send shovels to you,” Moira’s voice said in Wiz’s ear.
Wiz considered. “Let’s try it bare-handed first. Where’s Bale-Zur?”
“The Watchers say it is down by the harbor.”
“Moving this way?”
“Not yet. We will let you know.”
“Well, come on,” Wiz said to his companions. “Maybe the heart is close to
the top.”
“Maybe pigs will grow wings,” Danny said, eyeing the rubble.
“Around this place you never know,” Wiz said as he cast the first stone.
As he followed the nurse down the hall, Craig felt like the place was
closing in on him. Everything was hushed, like sound didn’t carry here.
The lighting was all indirect and the colors were all neutral browns or
dark greens. It was like your senses didn’t work right.
He didn’t like hospitals anyway. They reminded him of the time he had
spent in corridors, rooms and visitors’ lounges waiting for his mother to
die. But even for a hospital this place was spooky. It was visiting hours,
but most of the room doors were closed. Only once did he catch a glimpse
of someone sitting at a bedside, a dark form outlined in the flickering
glow of a TV screen.
The nurse stopped before one of the too-wide doors, gently pushed it open
and then motioned him to follow her in.
At first he thought Judith was someone else. She was wizened and shrunken
down into the immaculate white sheets of the hospital bed. They had cut
her hair short and shaved part of one side of her head. There was a tube
in her nose and another one running from her arm to a bottle of clear
liquid hanging by the bed.
Craig looked dubiously at the nurse.
“Can she hear me?” he whispered.
“Perhaps,” the nurse said gently. “Try talking to her. You don’t have to
whisper.”
“Thank . . .” Craig started to whisper and caught himself. “Thank you.”
“I’ll be at the nurse’s station.”
As she went out the door the nurse felt a flash of pity. The young
accident victims were about the worst, second only to the little kids who
had nearly drowned. Maybe the visitor would do the patient good, but she
doubted it. After six years on Neuro she had a feel for the patients and
this one probably wasn’t ever going to come out of it.
At first the programmers didn’t have too much trouble digging through the
rubble. The pieces were about the size of Wiz’s head; small enough to
handle easily and big enough to make obvious progress. The stone was
freezing cold, but their sturdy gloves protected their hands and kept
their fingers warm.
The heart wasn’t under the first layer of rubble, or the next. By now the
job was getting harder. They started to run into pieces that took two or
all three of them to shift. More and more of the pieces were locked
together like jackstraws and could only be moved in order. Soon all three
of them were sweating in spite of the cold and panting from the effort.
“You know,” Jerry said as they took a breather, “logically the heart
should be all the way at the bottom of this pile.”