allowed any."
“I’ll get you some," he said, going back to the door. He stopped there. “You’re right, by the way. You are pretty off-putting
in the morning."
Balveda shook her head in the darkness. She put one finger in her mouth and rubbed it around on one side, as though massaging
her
gums or cleaning her teeth, then she just sat with her head between her knees, staring at the jet-black nothing of the
cold rock floor beneath her,
wondering if this was the day she died.
They stood in a huge semi-circular alcove carved out of the rock and looking out over the dark space of station four’s repair
and maintenance
area. The cavern was three hundred meters or more square, and from the bottom of the scooped gallery they
stood on to the floor of the vast
cave—littered with machinery and equipment—was a thirty-meter drop.
Great cradle-arms capable of lifting and holding an entire Command System train were suspended from the roof above, another
thirty
meters up in the gloom. In the mid-distance a suspended gantry lanced out over the cave, from a gallery on one side
to the other, bisecting the
cavern’s dark bulk.
They were ready to move; Horza gave the order.
Wubslin and Neisin each headed down small side tubes toward the main Command System tunnel and the transit tubeway respectively,
using AG. Once in the tunnels they would keep level with the main group. Horza switched on his own AG, rose about a meter
from the floor and
floated down a branch tunnel of the foot gallery, then started slowly forward, down into the darkness,
toward station five, thirty kilometers away.
The rest would follow him, also floating. Balveda shared the pallet with the
equipment.
He smiled when Balveda sat down on the pallet; she suddenly reminded him of Fwi-Song sitting on his heavy-duty litter, in
the space and
sunlight of a place now gone. The comparison struck him as wonderfully absurd.
Horza floated along the foot tunnel, stopping to check the side tubes as they appeared and contacting the others whenever
he did so. His
suit senses were turned as high as they would go; any light, the slightest noise, an alteration in the air
flow, even vibrations in the rock around
him: all were catered for. Unusual smells would register, too, as would power flowing
through the cables buried in the tunnel walls and any sort
of broadcast communication.
He’d thought about signaling the Idirans as they went along, but decided not to. He had sent one short signal from station
four, without
receiving a reply, but to send more on the way would be to give too much away if (as he suspected) the Idirans
were not in a mood to listen.
He moved through the darkness as though sitting on an invisible seat, the CREWS cradled in his arms. He heard his heartbeat,
his
breathing and the quiet slipstreaming of the cold, half-stale air around his suit. The suit registered vague background
radiation from the
surrounding granite, punctuated by intermittent cosmic rays. On the faceplate of the suit’s helmet, he
watched a ghostly radar image of the
tunnels as they unwound through the rock.
In places the tunnel ran straight. If he turned he could see the main group following half a kilometer behind him. In other
places the tunnel
described a series of shallow curves, cutting down the view provided by the scanning radar to a couple of
hundred meters or less, so that he
seemed to float alone in the chill blackness.
At station five they found a battleground.
His suit had picked up odd scents; that had been the first sign, organic molecules in the air, carbonized and burned. He’d
told the others to
stop, gone on ahead cautiously.
Four dead medjel were laid out near one wall of the dark, deserted cavern, their burned and dismembered bodies echoing the
formation of
frozen Changer corpses at the surface base. Idiran religious symbols had been burned onto the wall over the fallen.
There had been a firefight. The station walls were pocked with small craters and long laser scars. Horza found the remains
of one laser rifle,
smashed, a small piece of metal embedded in it. The medjel bodies had been torn apart by hundreds more
of the same tiny projectiles.
At the far end of the station, behind the half-demolished remains of one set of access ramps, he found the scattered components
of some
crudely manufactured machine, a kind of gun on wheels, like a miniature armored car. Its mangled turret still contained
some of the projectile
ammunition, and more bullets were scattered like wind-seeds about the flame-seared wreck. Horza smiled
slightly at the debris, weighing a
handful of the unused projectiles in his hand.
“The Mind." Wubslin said, looking down at what was left of the small vehicle. “It made this thing." He scratched his head.
“Must have," Horza said, watching Yalson poke warily at the torn metal of the wreck’s hull with one booted foot, gun ready.
“There was
nothing like this down here, but you could manufacture it, in one of the workshops; a few of the old machines still
work. It’d be difficult, but if the
Mind still had some of its fields working, and maybe a drone or two, it could do it. It
had the time."
“Pretty crude," Wubslin said, turning over a piece of the gun mechanism in his hand. He turned and looked back at the distant
corpses of
the medjel and added, “Worked well enough, though."
“No more medjel, by my count," Horza said.
“Still two Idirans left," Yalson said sourly, kicking at a small rubber wheel. It rolled a couple of meters across the debris
and flopped over
again, near Neisin, who was celebrating the discovery of the demised medjel with a drink from his flask.
“You sure these Idirans aren’t still here." Aviger asked, looking round anxiously. Dorolow peered into the darkness, too,
and made the sign
of the Circle of Flame.
“Positive," Horza said. “I checked." Station five hadn’t been difficult to search; it was an ordinary station, just a set
of points, a chicane in the
Command System’s double loop and a place for the trains to stop and connect themselves with the
communication links to the planet’s surface.
There were a few rooms and storage areas off the main cavern, but no power-switching
gear, no barracks or control rooms, and no vast repair
and maintenance area. Marks in the dust showed where the Idirans had
walked away from the station after the battle with the Mind’s crude
automaton, heading for station six.
“You think there’ll be a train at the next station." Wubslin said. Horza nodded. “Should be." The engineer nodded, too, staring
vacantly at the
double sets of steel rails gleaming on the station floor.
Balveda swung herself off the pallet, stretching her legs. Horza still had the suit’s infra-red sensor on, and saw the warmth
of the Culture
agent’s breath waft from her mouth in a dimly glowing cloud. She clapped her hands and stamped her feet.
“Still not too warm, is it." she said.
“Don’t worry," grumbled the drone from underneath the pallet. “I may start to overheat soon; that ought to keep you cozy until
I seize up
completely."
Balveda smiled a little and sat back on the pallet, looking at Horza. “Still thinking of trying to convince your tripedal
pals you’re all on the
same side." she said.
“Huh!" said the drone.
“We’ll see," was all Horza would say.