7.
The seven surviving techs and engineers of WorkPod01 formed up on the ledge outside the work area where Mughali lay dead, stored with minimal dignity, posthaste, in a food locker. "Keep an eye on each other's backs," Ridge repeated. "Those of us with guns, don't fire unless you have to because we're running low and we won't be able to recharge until we're in WorkPod01 with the door locked."
They started for home. Single-file, they walked on the high catwalk above seemingly bottomless darkness. The light around them was darkly brassy, muted but hard, a sheen of copper like at the bottom of a deadly well. Ridge took the lead, with Tomson trailing. In the middle, Yu carried a gun, while Brenna, Lantz, Mahaffey, and Jerez carried improvised tools like hammers and crowbars.
The swaying, rocking metal grid was in many places a ribbon so narrow one had to put one foot carefully before the other while holding to the railing on one side, and not look down into the abyss on the other. Tomson joked: "At least they can't fly, so far anyway, so we're safe as long as we have the bottomless pit beside us." A few chuckles rose up in the flat air.
At first the going was slow and quiet. Ridge could hear everyone's breathing. Then there was a sudden creak, a screech of metal, a clatter of dropping steel, and Brenna screamed loudly enough to waken the dead. Or the mudmen. Ridge whirled, full of concern at losing her. "Grab her!" But someone already had grabbed her, even as the section of catwalk under her feet broke off and fell twirling down into the darkness in a long curve. A minute later, they heard a faint crash. "That's a long way down," Mahaffey whispered.
"You got that right," Jerez said softly behind Ridge. "At least this artificial gravity still works."
Yu walked behind Jerez, and he helped Brenna onto safe territory. Brenna reached behind her to tow Lantz along.
"Keep going," Tomson urged as he clambered after Lantz. "Must have been old. Or else it was a trap set up by the mudmen."
"They aren't bright enough," Jerez said.
"Don't be too sure," Tomson said. "Never underestimate the enemy."
"Probably just old and rusty," Mahaffey said. "How can that be?"
"Let's talk about ourselves," Ridge said. "Everyone has at least one good story to tell about home. Let's think about home, okay? I'll go first. Back in San Diego, I like to get up early in the morning and take my coffee and stand on the back patio. It's still foggy because the marine layer hasn't burned off, but it's not really cold. I can see dew drops on the oranges that are clustered on several little trees on the back lawn. A neighbor's big fat orange cat slinks by, stalking a mouse. It's the only time of day I really have any peace because my wife and kids are asleep and the family dog is in the kitchen eating the kibble I just poured for him."
"What kind of story is that?" Jerez said behind him. "What's the punch line?"
"There isn't a punch line," Ridge said. "That's the beauty of it. Unlike this paradise in which we find ourselves walking, it's safe and quiet and uneventful at home. About all that ever happens is that a check bounces and I have to call the bank to straighten things out."
"There are no checks anymore," Mahaffey said. "Nobody uses checks anymore."
"Just keep talking and we'll be home soon," Ridge said with a wary grin, glancing over his shoulder. His strategy seemed to be working. Keep them talking, and it would take their minds off their fears. He had to remember to keep his hand on his gun and keep an eye out for mudmen, since he was walking point.
Jerez said: "I spent my childhood in Singapore but married a Norwegian man whom I met in Belgium while I was studying engineering at Louvain. I have cute little blond children and a husband who looks like one of those college students who does puppet shows at kindergartens for spending money." Several people laughed-a nervous, low laugh that told they were relieved to dump some of their anxiety, even for a few seconds. "We have a low spot in the backyard of our home in Ostende. We call it the Low Country. When it rains, which is often, the low spot fills with water and becomes a little pond. It has slimy black salamanders in it, some of them with orange zigzags on their backs. They are harmless, and the children like to put them in a glass aquarium to watch them eat insects. We always make the kids put them back because we tell them the salamander mommies are looking for their kids."
"What are your kids' names?" Mahaffey asked, and Jerez looked at him uncomprehendingly.
Yu told his little story. "I grew up in a small apartment where the older men all smoked and played board games. They didn't like a little boy around, so I spent a lot of time on the fire escape. My mother was afraid I would fall off, but I was agile as a mountain goat. As I got older, I started climbing on the rooftops and pretty soon I could see the city around for miles."
"What city?" Mahaffey asked.
"Shanghai. Pudong," Yu said. He was silent a few moments. "It was gray and smoggy a lot because the city is so huge. There are parks, but they sit under gray rain clouds. Sometimes the sun breaks through. I saw a really lovely rainbow once, a perfect semicircle with red and blue and green like neon lighting in it. I met a girl on the rooftop too, when I was 18."
"Did you screw her?" Mahaffey asked.
"Mahaffey," Brenna said in a warning tone.
"Must you be so crude?" Jerez said.
"I never did," Yu said. "However, there was an older woman. Well, she must have been about 25 and she was a little bit stocky. Her family owned a skin theater over in Fengjiang, and she sold tickets there. She used to come home for lunch every day and sit in the sun on the roof, with her top off. She had these heavy breasts, and one day she caught me staring at them. So she looked left and right and smiled at me. I was 18 and what did I know? I went over and for one dollar she let me feel them both."
"That's a crock of crap," Mahaffey said.
Ridge turned and said to Mahaffey: "Are you trying to make trouble?"
Mahaffey's dark skin looked darker, and his eyes were wild and angry. "You know what I'm getting at, Ridge. Quit dicking around with us."
"I'm not dicking around," Ridge said softly. "I'm as confused as you are, but I'm keeping my mouth shut. In a second or two, I'm going to slap your mouth shut for you if you don't zip a lip."
"I'm ready for you," Mahaffey said. He rose in a threatening pose and pursed his lips as he walked. His eyes blazed. Ridge noticed a tear in each outer corner of Mahaffey's eyes.
Tomson growled from the rear: "I want to hear some more stories, man. Keep your tongue in your head and your eyes on the road before we all drop down the drain."
"Did you squeeze her tits?" Jerez asked.
Lantz giggled. "He probably gave her another dollar and sucked one."
"Maybe," Ridge said, "we can come back to this story later. Mahaffey, since you are such a pain in the ass, has anything ever happened to you?"
"Yeah. I'm here. Isn't that enough?"
Yu turned and smashed Mahaffey across the mouth. Yu's face was contorted with rage, and his head trembled so that his black hair shook. "You bastard. You needle me again and I'll throw you down into that shit below. I'll throw you so hard you go splat. I hope those little gray men eat you alive."
Mahaffey stopped and felt his chin, then his jaw. "Ouch." Blood ran between his fingers. Ridge was afraid the two men were going to go at it, but Mahaffey grinned sheepishly. "Okay, I had that coming. Try it again, Yu, and next time my foot is going through your head. Understand, geeko?"
Yu's eyes still blazed, and his lips quivered with revulsion. "You damned lowlife. Let's make a deal, worm. You don't talk to me and I won't talk to you. Better yet, let's not even look at each other."
"Whoa," Ridge said. "Guys, we all have to live together."
Brenna started singing in a high, thin voice. It wasn't words but a sweet keening sound. Everyone was so shocked that all further conversation fell silent. The group stopped in mid-air, in just that sphere of dim light from their collective head lamps, with no view backward or forward. "Keep moving," Ridge said, and Tomson in the back said "Go! Go!" The group obediently started moving again, but Brenna did not falter in her song.
Somewhere in the darkness, a fluting noise sounded. Chills ran up and down Ridge's spine again. What on earth (or not on Earth) was going on here? More fluting voices joined in. Ridge found he had to listen very carefully or he would miss the low sound of air hitting air as those deadly mouths in the darkness communicated with one another. It was scary in one way, and yet nothing new in another way, since they knew they were being shadowed by these deadly terrors that had torn Mughali to pieces. Ridge found that if he shut out the childlike singing of Brenna, he could triangulate somewhat. His hearing told him, as he turned his head in various directions like a radar dish, that there were mudmen all around on the inner cylindrical surfaces of the ship. Mudmen padded silently along shadowy girders in midair. Mudmen moved in groups along ledges. There were a lot of them, for he could see the occasional flash of a pair of ruby eyes-the backs of their eyeballs, to be more specific, where light gathered and reflected in the tapetum, a reflective structure coating the rear surfaces of a typical nocturnal animal's eyeballs to gather, reflect, and amplify meager light sources. Most earth animals tended to reflect in the greenish wavelengths of light; whatever the mudmen were, they went lower yet, into the red at the edge of visible light. There was an explanation for everything, Ridge thought, and there would be an explanation for all this too. He told the group so, adding, "Soon we'll all have a good laugh about this."
"How about Mughali," Mahaffey said. "She isn't laughing."
"Neither are any of us," Ridge said. "Now shut up."
Brenna stopped singing. "That was a lullaby. I sang it to my babies when they were real small so they would be quiet. I will sing it to you some more if it will make you quiet."
"Thank you," Lantz said sincerely. "Well, you know I grew up near Tacoma. It rains all the time there, but it's very lovely. When I was small, my dad used to pack us in a minivan and drive us around the Olympic Peninsula. That is one of the largest nontropical rainforests in the world."
"Is that where you learned to lift weights?" Mahaffey asked.
"Yeah. Shut the fuck up, okay? I'm sick of your crap. Now listen. So we used to pull over in these dark, beautiful tunnels and get out of the van. We'd walk on tiptoes right into the edges of the forest. There was moss so rich and dark and green that it muffled your footfalls. The moss hung down in ropes and beards and sheets from all the trees. You had to climb carefully, but it took you down into these little valleys where fresh water flowed. There were these little waterfalls, and sometimes you could see a tiny little rainbow right in the waterfall, glistening over these slippery looking slimy rocks. These rocks were cold and slimy and wet. They had this green coating on them in little ropes like seaweed and you could see butterflies flapping up around where the sunlight penetrated way down into the deep parts in the forest."
"That's a beautiful story," Brenna said. "I just want to tell you that I loved walking my stroller up and down the boulevard."
"What boulevard?" Mahaffey asked.
She said with sweet patience: "All of them. Ricardo would be off flying to Rome or Cairo, and I'd be alone with the little ones. We had a sort of beat up little green hatchback, and I would take the double stroller. I'd drive down to the beach along the Rio de la Plata. I would find a nice spot to park where the airplane noise wasn't too loud from the Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, and then we would walk along the little concrete sidewalks. The sun would shine, and the bees and butterflies were out in force, the wind was balmy and the flowers were in bloom, and I would sing my lullaby to the little babies in the stroller." She raised her voice sweetly in a humming sound that Ridge found incredibly sweet. As soon as she started, echoes came from the mudmen, chilling imitations, haunting inversions of evil where Brenna shed goodness. Then again, perhaps even mudmen had some sort of soul and life. Maybe they believed in something. Certainly they yearned to eat and drink, and they had a taste for human blood and meat, so maybe they were capable of higher yearnings. Or baser yearnings, Ridge corrected himself. Brenna's lullaby from Buenos Aires trickled away. For a few minutes the mudmen continued their faint puffing and lowing, and then that stopped. Only the sound of water trickling randomly from high places to low places was audible now.
"We are getting closer," Ridge said. "Faith, y'all. We're almost home." A cheer arose. "Yeah!" Tomson cried. "Plug me in to my music and hand me a stick of stimulay. I'm good for it." Laughter followed his declaration.
They came into an area of increasing light, though still faint. The catwalk on which they trod became more visible, showing its worn metal surfaces and floor gratings.
"Eyes open wide," Ridge said. "We're coming to the end of the catwalk and up the ledge on the home side now. We've made it so far. Anybody got the key to our home?"
Tomson said: "I think we'll find it when we get there. Anybody tried reaching the CP recently?"
"I'll give it another shot," Ridge said. He cranked up his collar mike and spoke into it: "Hello, Bridge. Captain Venable? CP, this is WorkPod01. Do you read? Over." He waited. "This is Ridge speaking. Bridge, this is WorkPod01 calling. Do you read me? Over." No reply came, just a faint crackle of static.
"You all think I'm just a poor kid from Sandtown," Tomson said, "but listen. My dad was an Air Force colonel. He used to fly the most advanced jets and saucers in our arsenal. He'd bring back photographs, when it was allowed, of clouds way up on the edge of space. They were these wonderful photographs in which you'd see a green mass below, and then a sort of a haze, kind of blue streaked with white, or white streaked with blue, and above that the black edge of eternity. That always got me, particularly when my old man managed to get some stars in the shot. That always worked magic for me. We lived in a great big old house on a quiet shady street. There were these huge weeping willows all around on the lawn. Elms lined the streets as far as you could see. I had a real happy childhood there."
Mahaffey cut in: "And then you discovered drugs and whores and became a juvenile delinquent."
Tomson took the needling in stride. "I did develop a case of clap early on, because I discovered those young ladies before I could afford protection. I learn quickly though, and I caught on a lot faster than you are catching on, you son of a bitch." There was no humor in Tomson's voice by the time he reached the last sentence of that short, threatening speech.
"Quiet," Ridge said. "Here we are." They stepped onto the gridded platform that would take them to their front door. Breathing a collective sigh of relief, they closed the railings around the moving platform, which was about the size of a living room. Ridge manipulated the simple lever controls with their black rubber ball grips, and the platform quietly started moving on well-greased chains and sprockets. It made a soft, fatty sort of rattling bicycle chain sound as it traversed the last few yards of the void. The platform swung gently around a turn, around a corner in the high walls, and moved slightly upward into a spill of light. The seven staffers waited as it glided over a ledge richly splashed with homey yellow light that spilled from the overhanging windows of WorkPod01. The platform rose up, elevator fashion, and attached itself like a front porch to the metal hull of WorkPod01. The metal walls were solid steel, well riveted and tough, and painted a dull chariot red. The sealed doors of the small work factory glowered below, visible through the floor grating. Ridge felt a deep sense of relief. "Okay," he said, "now all we have to do is get in."
"That's just the trick," Mahaffey said with a hysterical little rising laugh. "We can't get in. We're locked out, and there is a reason."
"Shut up, you fool," Jerez said, banging on the sealed steel portal with the flat of her hand.
Lantz followed suit. She banged on the steel with her fist, raising and lowering a muscular arm. Nothing. Ridge shuddered, realizing instinctively that Mahaffey was most likely right. They were locked out. Like a man in a bad dream, Ridge watched the members of the team look at each other in consternation, wailing and banging on the steel. Mahaffey is right, Ridge thought. We are truly hosed. We are never going to be let in there again. All I want to know is why? No, all I want is to lie down with Brenna and pull the covers over our heads and listen to that lullaby. But first we'd have to get in, and it doesn't look like we are ever meant to get in again.
"Okay, now what?" Tomson said as he pushed his way gently through the panicked crowd. He did not bang on the locked, sealed steel doors. Instead he laid one palm on the steel and then closed his eyes as if slipping into some kind of psychoactive dream. Sweat rimmed his face, which turned a sickly shade of yellow. He opened his eyes and shook his head. "Those vibes are bad, my friends. We can never go in again. We're finished."
"That's insane," Ridge found himself saying. Several others yelled out in agreement.
Tomson shook his head again. "Sorry, folks. I'm not being psychic. I was just thinking about all that's happened. There was no key. We locked the place up and threw the key away, so to speak."
Ridge looked carefully along the grating and down the ledge below, but saw no sign of the dazed, bloodied man who had pounded on the window. Mudmen must have taken care of him, Ridge thought. He could imagine the lunch feast they must have had in the dark below. Shivering, he walked close to the riveted wall, beside Tomson, and gripped the railing. "If you and another person will brace me, I'll climb up and take a look inside." With Tomson and Yu supporting him, Ridge climbed up onto the railing. The forward sloping windows were still several feet above his head. The two men supported his legs as he stood on tiptoe. He leaned palms-forward against the wall and pressed his right cheek against the cold steel. It was to no avail. He must get higher. "Grab me if I fall," he said. Carefully, he flexed his knees. He rose up and down several times, aiming carefully how to place his fingertips. Then he jumped. His fingertips caught on the steel rim under the window. Before his grip could weaken, he pulled himself up. As he did so, he slipped his fingers into a flat area just under the thick plate windows. He figured he had enough strength to chin-up for about a minute. Dismissing his fears of plummeting down past the platform, he pulled himself up. His entire torso trembled at the effort, but he managed to raise himself high enough to get his eyes above sill level. What he saw puzzled him. The interior of WorkPod01 was well lit and clean-but there was nothing there. There were a number of oblong, slightly glowing bluish-white objects that seemed to form the tops of a number of boxes. There were intricate designs all around on the walls, which glowed with light from the boxes on the floor. In the ceiling were fixtures that looked like fluorescent tubes, but they looked cold and gray, emitting no light. There was no sign of life in WorkPod01. There was no hint of left over dinners, of chairs, of tables, of moon doors, of showers, of exercise sets, of ancient Homeric poems stashed on shelves. All the clutter he remembered was missing. It did seem that the overall floor plan vaguely resembled that which he remembered from the galley. The only other thing he glimpsed that made sense, before his strength gave out and he dropped down to the grating among his team members, were one or two places on the wall with rounded rectangles that might have been the viewing screens where the crew had seen and heard Captain Venable speak to them.
"Well?" Tomson asked. "What did you see?"
Ridge shook his head as they all crowded around. He knew his face must be pale, and their faces reflected his shock. "Nothing," he said. "I saw nothing that I recognized."
"Did someone clean it all up?" Jerez asked. The others babbled simultaneously with similar questions and anxieties. Ridge shook his head and staggered to the railing, trying to assimilate what he'd seen, or not seen. "It's crazy," he said, feeling a sickness in his gut. He banged his fist on the cold steel and yelled: "There's nothing there. No galley, no showers, no books, no moon doors, no cubicles. It's like we never existed."
"We are ghosts," Mahaffey said. His eyes looked crazy, and he started walking in circles on the platform. "We are dead people."
Brenna smiled. "We bleed when we are hurt, and you see that Mughali died. That hardly makes us ghosts."
"Bullshit," Tomson told Mahaffey. "I pinch myself, I feel it. That means I am real. You're talking nuts."
Ridge tried to grasp Mahaffey by the belt. The young man was tall, and strong, and wild. He was filled with emotions as he windmilled his arms. "Don't you see? It's all a bunch of bullshit." He looked at Jerez. "Can you tell me the names of your children?" She stared mutely back at him. He looked at Yu. "You say the woman with the tits came home every day for lunch. It's a long commute between Pudong and Fengjiang to the south. It would take her hours each way in heavy traffic. It's not real, Yu." He turned from the stricken Yu and said to Brenna: "Your children. What are their names?" She slowly shook her head, her eyes filled with denial. "You see?" he continued. "None of you remember critical things because it's all bullshit." With that, he leapt onto the railing.
He balanced precariously, squatting on the railing. Both feet were on the thick metal bar, and he leaned left with one hand touching the railing while the other hand windmilled in space for balance. Several people shouted, and several reached for him. Ridge wanted to reach out and grab Mahaffey, but felt paralyzed, partly because it all happened so quickly and partly because he had been wondering all morning what were the names of his own children. He couldn't even really picture them in his mind's eye, much as he loved them, much as he thought about nothing but his family. Mahaffey rose fully to his feet on the slender railing. He balanced there for a minute, rotating his arms while several people screamed and reached for him. Tomson dropped his gun to the grating with a loud clang and started to wrap his arms around Mahaffey's legs, but wasn't quick enough. With a wild look in his eyes, and a long trailing scream, Mahaffey jumped. Ridge watched him sailing downward. Mahaffey's shirt rippled in a breeze, and his arms and legs stuck out as if he were jumping onto a horse. He fell out of sight and everyone on the grating fell silent until they heard a single sodden splash far below. It was a splattering sound, like a palm striking down on a countertop, or a melon falling from a window to a sidewalk, and the sound left no doubt as to Mahaffey's outcome, which was the end of all struggle and some sort of eternal peace amid the debris of the universe here in this mysterious place, this dead or half-dead ship of ghosts drifting far from the sun. The remaining six team members held each other and sobbed. Several stood at the railing, clenching their fists around the steel where Mahaffey had last stood, and looked down.
"Ideas?" Tomson said, retrieving his weapon and slipping it into his belt. His eyes had a haunted look as he stared out at the distant surfaces inside the ship. Even then, Ridge thought he glimpsed tiny blurs of reddish light moving stealthily and strategically into position in the void. Were it not for the sobbing of Brenna and Yu, he thought he would clearly hear the flute drones of a dozen rounded mouths amid the slag and dross.
"I'm fresh out," Ridge said. He could almost feel the impact of his words striking his team members like a blow, sending them reeling. He shook his head to clear it. "Look, while there is life there is hope. We have no idea what's going on here. Mahaffey lost his mind and bailed out. That's not the solution I recommend."
"What do you recommend?" Tomson said.
"Yeah, what bright idea do you have now?" Jerez added.
Ridge sighed and looked up and down the steel wall, which was tighter than a safe. "We might try to make our way to the CP. We might try to find Venable in person and have a serious discussion about just what the hell is going on inside his ship, if he knows."
"And where is the CP?" Tomson asked softly.
"Where is Venable?" Yu asked.
"That's the next thing we should try to find out," Ridge said.
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