Bloodhype (13 page)

BIOENGINEERING PERSONNEL ONLY

ADMITTANCE RESTRICTED

Besides bending, Mal and Kitten had to step high to avoid stumbling over the two corpses that lay crumpled just inside the entrance. Even in the dim light Mal could tell how one had died, from the unnatural angle at which his head rested. Dressed in mechanic’s overalls, the other lay prone with an unfired sonic pistol in one hand. His other hand covered most of his face. Which was just as well, if the long grooves seared into the revealed cheek were any indication of what lay beneath. Milk-white bone gleamed at the bottom of one groove. The muscles in the man’s face and arm were frozen at full contraction. What the hand covered would not be pretty, no. The flying snake had been at work here.

Kitten was busy examining the numerous long tunnels which led from the small room. Clearly they were in the maintenance arteries of the island. Water trickled along the floor of several dark corridors, disappeared into unseen drains. The natural stone walls were damp at the entrances to some, hot and dry at others. None rose higher than the cramping height of the room they were in. Philip turned without speaking and plunged down the one closest on their left. At least it was a little wider, if not really spacious.

There was barely enough light from the widely spaced red fluorescents to make out the form of the lanky youth moving ahead of them. The otherworldly figure moved with a slightly bloody tinge to it from the safety lights. It was leading them who knew where? Maybe it was all a stunt of their captor’s. Kitten had experienced his sense of humor. Maybe he’d decided on some especially gruesome way of disposing of them, decided it would be safer to write off the fabulously profitable shipment—unlikely as it seemed. At any moment their guide could disappear around a turn, leaving them to wander in a maze of filthy underground passages among unseen terrors while Rose’s whining laugh echoed from hidden speakers.

She found herself dripping inside the fancy evening dress. It had not been designed for running over slippery floors in a hunched over position.

“Too frigging humid!” she muttered.

“Nonsense!” replied the disgustingly cheery voice of the Tolian. Excepting its lack of large land masses, Repler was much like his home world. Like many races, however, the Tolians did not go in for colonization on any significant scale.

“If it bothers you, just think how nice and dry you were a short while ago—on his Lordship’s playtable.”

“You’re not being funny,” Kitten replied, panting heavily now. No doubt the damn tunnel ran out under the ocean and they’d run like this all the way to Repler City. “How’d you like me to tie knots in your whiskers?”

“Have to catch me first.” The little alien was the only one whom the low ceiling didn’t inconvenience. He had plenty of room. His webbed feet made loud slapping sounds, like sponges, wherever they hit the trickle of water which flowed along the center of the floor.

“Where does this highway lead, anyway?” asked Mal. Kitten stared at him enviously. Despite his huge bulk, he didn’t even appear to be breathing hard. “And where does this water come from?”

The youngster’s voice drifted back from close ahead. “Condensation. The tunnel—this one, anyway—is a service access to the sewage plant. Both the intake for fresh water and the outlets for treated sewage are monitored from there. Each has an electrified gate at the end which is controlled by the master island defense computer. But they can both be shut down from the plant for up to an hour. If I can cut the power to the gates from the plant console, I can probably also powerdown the alarms without alerting anyone. That way, if someone comes in and inspects the system after we’ve started out, nothing will seem amiss. Unless he thinks to check the gate power lights, in which case we’d be finished. But since the entire system is automatic, that’s not likely. We shouldn’t have any trouble.”

“He says,” added Mal sardonically. Even he was beginning to pant a little now. “Assuming all this works, how do we get from the plant to the hoveraft?”

“One outtake tunnel comes out at the mouth of the harbor inlet. The gates at the end of each are designed more to keep out undesirable marine fauna than intelligent beings. It’s an efficient design but not very sophisticated. From the gate it’s a short swim to the landings. While powerful, the real island defenses are located further out. And don’t worry about the water. Compared to the seas of most worlds, the salt content here is very low. Of course, the treated sewage, while thoroughly sanitized and thinned, wouldn’t taste particularly good.”

“Oh thanks,” said Kitten drily. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The tunnel made another sharp bend. Abruptly they found themselves in a small, well-lit room full of banks of automated machinery. Mal and Kitten stretched luxuriously.

Down a short, broad rampway to their right were two wide channels of water, one slightly greener than the other. Clear plastic domed above both. One end disappeared into the floor, while the other flowed off into a black hole in the stone wall. Philip noticed Mal’s stare.

“The one on the left carries out the treated sewage. The other draws in seawater for purification.”

“Surely the two don’t open to the ocean next to each other,” asked Porsupah.

“No. The intake channel leads out almost at a right angle from here. It opens on an untouched section of coast. The sewage channel exits near the inlet. The current is strongest there and aids in carrying the mixture out to sea. We’ll be hugging the shore there, so the current shouldn’t bother us. And swimming out with a current will help considerably. I don’t know if we could make it against the intake pumps . . . The roof of both tunnels is uneven, but air shouldn’t be a problem.”

“What do you mean, ‘shouldn’t be’?” Kitten asked.

“Well,” Philip glanced at his wrist chronometer, “it ought to be getting dark out by now. I didn’t get a chance to look at any tide tables, and to ask would have been awkward, let alone suspicious. Sometimes when both moons are in the sky and Aug. is at its highest, the water level rises all the way to the roof of the channel.

“Not a drawback,” said Porsupah to Kitten. “It’ll do you well to hold your breath for a while.”

She looked at him appraisingly. “I don’t know whether to start with the whiskers on the left or the right. What do you think, Captain?”

But Mal was watching Philip. The youth had already removed the metal panel that protected one heavily instrumented locker. He’d magically produced several complex but tiny tools, including one intricate-looking screwdriver affair with a head that was geometrically insane.

Philip put the tools neatly aside, looked up. “Captain, I think you ought to station yourself by that door over there.” He added apologetically, “It’s the only entrance from the complex proper. Miss Kai-sung, Porsupah-al, if you could remove a section of that plastic doming large enough for us to slip through, it would save a little time. The left-hand channel—there are transparent pressure-sensitive bolts on each side. It takes four, two to a side, to release one section.”

Mal was sure the minutes were not being split into 60 equal parts. He found himself glancing anxiously from the access tunnel they’d used to the single doorway, then back to Porsupah and Kitten, who were working feverishly on their second bolt. Not having been removed for some time, the bolts were proving stubborn.

After a while, he found himself watching their guide intently. The youngster was working quickly and steadily. The long fingers moved spiderlike over the web of wiring, impulsistors, solid and fluid state components.

“Think we’ve been missed?” he asked.

“There’s no way of knowing whether anyone’s been ordered to visit you after I delivered the food,” said Philip without looking up from his work. “I do know that there wasn’t any tridee pickup in your suite. It doesn’t make any difference now. I don’t advise going back to check on it.”

Mal wasn’t surprised to see that the youth was sweating heavily. Whether from the concentration he was applying to his work or from nervousness, he couldn’t tell.

The young engineer worked carefully now. “I just negated the alarm system. It should only take a minute now to cut power to the sewage gate—damn obsolete solid switches . . .”

“Isn’t there an override on the computer for emergencies—like an unauthorized interruption in the power flow?” Kitten asked.

“This is where it would be managed. I’m handling that, too. It’s tricky . . . I’m more worried about someone coming in while we’re trying to swim the gate and switching power back on. We’d still get out . . . well-done.”

“Hey, what . . .?”

Mal didn’t think, didn’t look. He whirled and chopped hard, using his weight. The man never finished the sentence. Mal had become so absorbed with Philip’s manipulations of computer innards he’d completely forgotten he was supposed to be watching the door. The man had entered unseen and uttered the single exclamation of surprise. Now he was lying motionless against the half-open portal.

Mal carefully closed the door, repressing an almost overpowering desire to look out and see if anyone else was beyond. He turned and bent over the fallen figure in the green biotech uniform.

“I didn’t mean to hit him so hard,” he said quietly. “He startled me.”

“Yes,” said Philip. He craned his neck for a better look, turned back to the console. “I believe you’ve broken his neck. Remind me to announce myself in advance if we’re ever to meet on a dark street.” He carefully replaced the exopanel and stood up, brushing his hands. “No sense letting them know what sections have been toyed with.” He looked over at Kitten and Porsupah. “How are you coming with that doming?”

“A second,” said Kitten, struggling on the last bolt. It came loose with a soft pop as the vacuum was broken. Together they lifted the released section and slid it over the doming in front. The revealed space left plenty of room for even Hammurabi to slip through with centimeters to spare.

Mal took a step towards the channel, then paused and looked at Philip.

“Yes, I concur, Captain.” Mal nodded and went back for the body of the dead technician.

“Even if they’ve discovered our absence, they’ll have no reason to suspect you’ve come this way,” the youngster continued. “There are dozens of branches leading from the maintenance pod we entered.”

“Let’s discuss it later, over a mug of hot ceebeetea at some suitable city saloon,” Mal said, hefting the corpse over his shoulders. Porsupah and Kitten had already slipped into the greenish liquid. They waded easily into the deep channel, holding onto projections from the sides to prevent the light current from pulling them down the dark cave.

“What do I do with the body? Like you say, the current carries sewage away. But this island isn’t big. I wouldn’t want some detection device to discover it floating about Rose’s defense perimeter while we’re trying to reach the raft.”

“When we leave the gate, I’ll hold it up while you center it underneath,” said Philip. “The grating will pin it on the bottom securely enough.” He put a hand on either side of the opening, slipped into the gentle flow. “I’m going to replace the panel from underneath. Since the bolts are clear plasticine, too, it won’t show tampering unless someone looks hard right at the seals.”

“You’re awfully proficient at escapes for . . .”

“ . . . an apprentice sanitation engineer?” The youngster grinned. He helped Mal lower the limp body into the water. “I read a lot of cheap adventure stories.” He reached up. Despite his height, he had to jump to grab hold of the edge of the removed section of doming. Successive jerks and tugs, with Mal holding him around the hips, slid it neatly back in place over their heads.

“What about this ‘gate’ you keep talking about?” asked Kitten. “With the power turned off, will it open?”

“Oh, it can be raised manually, all right. The positive charge it normally carries is considered sufficient to discourage nosy visitors, intelligent or otherwise. Nothing so crude as a manual lock on it.” He turned and let himself drift into the brackish flow, moving easily with an occasional long, sinuous stroke. The others followed.

The water in the channel was comfortably warm, a carry-over from the sewage sterilization procedure. Still, Kitten found herself shivering slightly. There were no lights in the long cave and darkness was total. She swam with slow strokes, letting the current do most of the work. Now and then her hand would give notice of a slight bend in the channel. The youth hadn’t mentioned anything about side tunnels, so she wasn’t afraid of fumbling off into some fish-trap or heat chamber—much. She could sense pressure waves from a large mass moving parallel on her right. The faintly neanderthalic ship-captain, no doubt. She recalled how easily, accidentally, the big man had snapped the technician’s neck, and mentally resolved to put a moratorium on all threats of arm-breaking.

Porsupah was somewhere behind. Being capable of swimming circles around any of them, it was decided that he should follow at a distance. This would enable him to give them a little time if any pursuit should develop. That beggared the fact that there wasn’t a thing they could do about such pursuit, but it seemed too reasonable an idea to ignore.

Somewhere up ahead their youthful guide felt for a gate that might or might not be charged with lethal current. She took another breath. He’d been right about the tides. In some places there wasn’t enough room to get one’s head above water. In such spots she had to turn on her back. Then she would drift with only the upper part of her face above water, sometimes scraping the cold stone of the roof as she drew in long draughts of moist, stale air. Then it was turn, dive, and swim, heading for the next air pocket, pushing off the wall for a little extra distance and hoping she wouldn’t miss it.

That happened only once. She surfaced and the air pocket was a blob of water-weed. She had to swim frantically ahead until a small pocket appeared. Panic would have used too much air, so she stayed ever so calm.

It was indeed totally black—cave-black, coal-sack black—in that tunnel. Blacker than the inside of your eyelids when closed. The only light in that mile-long, days-long swim was the glow from her own wrist chronometer. A numerical firefly, it followed obediently, seeming a separate existence and not a part of her arm.