The Chaos Chronicles - The Infinite Sea Part 24

face, especially with no fins and a fogged visor. It was harder than it looked.

Someone gave him another push from behind, and L'Kell had his straps now and was towing him the remaining distance to the ledge. Then he had his hands up on it, and felt a rocketing boost under his feet. Before he knew what was happening, he'd made an effortless vault onto the ledge. Gasping, he turned and sat with his legs dangling in the water.

"/Do you suppose this air is breathable?"/ Charlene asked.

Before he had time to wonder, several sets of hands began dis- connecting his gear and lifting the hood from his head. His first ,!I'.

breath was an involuntary gasp; then he caught himself and tried to sample it more critically. It was metallic, and smelled like low tide, but seemed perfectly breathable.

L'Kell perched beside him as he looked around in the lantern '::.

glow. There was no sign of Ik, but a half dozen or so Neri were sit- ting or lying on the ledge. It was a good-sized chamber, maybe a ,:;,.

hold--or more likely, a working room; he could see obscure- looking machines mounted on the walls above his head. Instru- ments?

Tools?

Is that what the Neri were salvaging? He wondered ,,.1111. if the ship had come to rest upright, or on its side; maybe they were ii!:., sitting on a wall or part.i.tion. If it was a s.p.a.ceship, he wondered what the bridge looked like. Or if it had a bridge.

"/John? I think you'd better i',.il, take a look at these Neri. "/ ., ,..,.

He turned and looked more closely at the Neri behind him. They didn't look good. "The sick and wounded," L'Kell said. "Can you .:: ?.

i.. do anything for them?"

Bandicut suddenly felt as if he had just landed in a transmogri- fied war holo, in one of those scenes in a field triage unit, where the wounded are everywhere and the doctors and nurses are des- '.:' perately trying not to show their despair. "I don't know," he ad- mitted. "Do you know where Ik is?"

L'Kell was talking to another Neri. Suddenly he pointed.

"Down there, I think."

Bandicut squinted into the water. Lights were moving, and shad- owy figures. Moments later, the water broke, and someone surfaced wearing a helmet much like his, and was practically catapulted out of the water by his escorts. Bandicut reached out a hand to steady him.THE INFINITE SEA * 195 "Jesus, Ik, am I glad to see you!" he said hoa.r.s.ely.

Ik couldn't speak until he was freed of his gear. "Hrahh!" he cried in return, his voice strained. "John Bandicut! You came! But I thought you were down in the abyss." The Hraachee'an's eyes sparkled with an inner fire of joy.

"I was," Bandicut whispered, squeezing his friend's arm. He was so happy to see Ik he nearly wept. "But I heard you needed a doctor here."

He meant it with a trace of humor, but Ik looked around and said soberly, "It is true, my friend. I have done what I can--"

"You mean you can heal, too?"

"My stones have learned some things from yours. I hope I have helped some of the patients back in the other chamber. Only time will tell." Ik rubbed his temples with what seemed great weariness.

"They brought me out because the air was going bad and they didn't have the equipment they needed to set up air purifiers." Ik turned and scrutinized the air s.p.a.ce surrounding them. "We can last a while here, I suppose. And then we will have to put our equipment on again. I don't know how many s.p.a.ces like this there are in this wreck."

"Do you know what the wreck is? Is it a s.p.a.cecraft?"

"That is my guess. But I do not know for certain. And I do not think that the Neri know. Perhaps, for now, it doesn't matter."

"Maybe," Bandicut said. "Maybe not." He rubbed the back of his neck, frowning.

Ik turned to peer at the Neri lying on the ledge. "We should not delay. Many of these people are very ill."

Bandicut took a deep breath./Are you ready?/ "/Ready aa' I can be."/ "Then let's begin," he said. He slid over and touched the arm of the nearest patient on his side./It's going to be a long night./ *

It was an even longer night than he had imagined--perhaps not by the clock, but in the toll it exacted from his mind and body. When he finally looked up and met Ik's gaze, then L'Kell's, he could barely register their expressions. He had labored long and hard, imagining himself a physician working deep into the night in a city hospital.., and as a Neri healer, striving with inadequate tools to bring together spirit and flesh.., as one of the shadow-people of Ship-world, probing intricate and mysterious systems.., as a mage from ancient fairy tales, tirelessly spinning enchantments of healing and196 * .

power. In the end, though, it was just himself and Charlie, work- ing with the stones. And not far away, Ik working in his own si- lence.

Glancing to one corner, he noticed someone sitting between

two.

Neri--a little smaller than the Neri, its face obscured by a mask and an array of tubes and hoses. Bandicut rubbed his eyes, wondering ,ii if he was dreaming, in the surrealistic near-darkness. He glanced at his friends and glanced back. The being was still there. Who was it? Or what? A lander?

The quarx seemed to be trying to find an opening in his blurry consciousness to speak.

"/John--"/ ;.

/Yeah,/he sighed, forgetting the strange sight as quickly as he .... :' had noticed it. /You did ... good work./He felt a flicker of pain :'.

as he said that. They had lost three patients that he knew of. He I.

i: thought they had healed more than they had lost--five, maybe, or seven.

Truthfully, he had lost count.

"/I.

think.., you know...

you had better get to someJkesh air."/ /Fresh air?/he thought muddily.

ii?

"/John, r m...$obn...

I'm trying to compensate, .i;'i: "i but toe air Oas gotten really depleted..."/ ......= He rubbed his eyes again. He was dimly aware, now that he .',. ':" thought about it, that he was breathing shallowly and rapidly.

Waves 1'III' of lightheadedness were pa.s.sing through him. He was suffocating.

,.,':' So was Ik, probably. d.a.m.n. He turned his head to squint at L'Kell, and had trouble getting words out.

?i Rrrrm... hrahh.. "Ik looked unsteady, as well.

He managed to fumble for the helmet of his breathing gear. It slid away from him and splashed into the water. Sank.

Dear G.o.d.

"/John, I don't know if--"/ There was another splash, and the helmet flew back up onto the ledge, propelled by a Neri hand. Someone else grabbed it be- fore he could move. Wait... I need that...

There was some jostling around him, and then the hood came down over his head like an oversized hat, and someone was strap- ping the breathing gear onto his back.

He gasped; the air in the hood was no better; in fact, it was worse.

He started to grope blindly.*

THE INFINITE SEA * 197.

Something pushed him from behind. He flailed. The water crashed around him, deafening him, enveloping him. Drowning him. Please... no... I need... The water was cold, momentarily overwhelming his insulating forcefield--and jolting him alert for a second.

He choked, air rasping into his lungs. On about the fourth breath, it started to seem different. Better. He gulped ... sweet, oxygen-rich air. Panting out the carbon dioxide, he was still dizzy; he was tumbling through the water. Then someone was holding him.

"/ Are you . . . okay...John?"/ /Yes,/he whispered. And gradually his vision and his thoughts cleared. And slowly he comprehended what the Neri had done. The breathing gear had only a small reservoir of air; it drew fresh oxygen from the water, and flushed out the carbon dioxide. The only way they could revive him was to get him back into the water, fast.

Someone was floating in front of him, peering worriedly. Finally he made out who it was--L'Kell. And beside him, also slowly recovering, was Ik.

"/That was close, John.

We couldn't have gone much longer."/ She was right. But why hadn't his body's own warning systems alerted him to the danger, before the critical point? The stones, at least.

"/I think we were all too focused on the healing."/ /We all?/ "/The stones included.

They lost track."/ /I'11 be d.a.m.ned,/Bandicut whispered. He shook inside his helmet and gave a little laugh./The stones make mistakes. I can't tell you how much that cheers me./ "/???"/.

/You'll either understand it, Charlie, or you won't./Peering at his friends, Bandicut slowly raised his right hand and held up a circled thumb and forefinger, first to L'Kell, then to Ik. The standard diver's signal: OK / OK?

His two friends looked at him in apparent puzzlement as he wondered: might the stones have pa.s.sed on this bit of linguistic obscurity in their exchanges?198 * .

Ik finally raised his right hand, attempting to reproduce the ges- ture. He had trouble deciding which of his two thumbs to close with which finger, and finally presented Bandicut with a double-O, and a single unopposed finger sticking up. Bandicut nodded and looked at L'Kell. The Neri was trying, too, but the webbing got in the way, and his forefinger didn't seem jointed quite right for the gesture.

i;i Nevertheless, the intent was clear. Bandicut nodded.

"Are you recovered?" he heard in a scratchy voice from L'Kell.

He had forgotten about the comm in the helmet.

"I'm okay. But we can't breathe this air any longer."

"We know," L'Kell said. "Let's swim. There will be more air in the corridor, where there's a moving current." They kicked down- i!,,'."'

ward, making their way slowly through the flooded gloom.

Their swim was interrupted by a rasping outcry and sounds of :.:i:i'

a commotion. Bandicut paused, turning in confusion; he couldn't I.

!:i tell where it was happening, but several Neri streaked past them, on their way out of the compartment. "What is it?" he asked.

L'Kell shot ahead briefly, then returned, looking agitated. "The ,,ill.

lander prisoner!" he cried. "It escaped while we were distracted over the air! It's fled out into the ship."iii Ik and Bandicut exchanged glances. Ik's voice rasped incom- prehensibly; his comm didn't seem to be working. Bandicut won- {!711,1.:.

dered what Ik knew about the prisoner. That must have been the ........ ,.

creature in the face mask. L'Kell was trying to get them to move v:; faster--as if they would be of any use in trying to capture an es- i''I,II caped lander. They did their best, but in the end they simply limped .:.

along behind L'Kell.

They reentered the long corridor and followed it around sev- ".:':.,.

eral bends. The lander was long gone, but according to Neri who were swarming about, it apparently had fled further into the ship, rather than trying to get out past the Neri guards. Perhaps it knew it had no chance that way. Perhaps it was suffering from air prob- lems itself and was delirious.

Bandicut felt a twinge of sympathy for the being. Even if it got away, where would it go? It was unlikely that its people would be waiting directly outside to rescue it--and could it even survive the !l!'

decompression after so long at this depth? Quite possibly it was act- ing in blind desperation, with little or no real hope.

The layout of the ship remained unfathomable to Bandicut; he had seen nothing, really, except winding and turning corridors. But i,THE INFINITE SEA * 199 one thing he had noticed was that there were curves bending in all three dimensions in the corridors, which suggested that it was designed for either zero gravity or variable gravity. If that was the case, what was a s.p.a.ceship--starship?--doing on the bottom of the ocean? What had brought it here, and was there any relationship between it and the Neri, or the landers?

"/The stones are pretty much with you on this one."/ /Meaning what? They know what it's all about, but don't want to tell me?/ Char seemed puzzled by his tone.

"/ I don't think they know the answers.

But they suspect some of the same connections that you do."/ /And what connections do I suspect?/ "/The ship. And the landers.

Probably not the Neri. "/ Bandicut frowned, peering down the tomblike corridor. A pair of Neri were down at the far end, exploring with their lamps. L'Kell and the others nearby were looking forward and back now, uncertain which way to go. Bandicut had a sudden thought. If he were the lander, an air-breather in a foreign environment, trying to get away from pursuing fishmen, where would he go?

"/I don't know.

Is there an answer to that?"/ Bandicut turned to L'Kell. "I'm betting he won't try to get out right away. He's been down too long for easy decompression. If it were me, I'd try to find an air chamber I could hide in until my own people came back. That's if he's in his right mind."

L'Kell looked puzzled. "Why wouldn't he be?"

"He might be injured, his air might be bad, who knows?" Bandi-cut gestured. "I was pretty frantic when I started to run out of air.

And if that's the case, we have to find him fast or he may die." He thought desperately. "Are there other air chambers? Places where he might hide?"

"It's a large ship," L'Kell said. "We've only explored a fraction of it."