Neurolink (16 page)

“Is it some trouble with your eye, friend?”

Dominic brushed away a stray tear and calculated. Then with practiced skill, he arranged his face into a smile and put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You want more Kevlax? I can get it.”

“How’s that?” Penderowski stepped closer.

Dominic leaned down and spoke in a confidential tone. “I’m bringing your council a secret offer of trade. Fuel and supplies, whatever you need. The council’s meeting me at the Net link. I have to get there at once. Can you tell me where it is?”

“Brilliant, son! Lie like the devil! Why did I ever doubt you?” said the NP.

Penderowski poked a long finger under his head scarf and scratched. “Supplies? Is it true, mate? What about medicine? My folks died of cancer. There’s a lot of cancer here.”

Dominic nodded. “I can get transgenic T-cells.”

“Excellent!” the NP crowed.

Penderowski’s cheeks creased with dimples. “The Net link, is it? Now where did they put it today? Oh aye, I remember. It’s on the
Dominic Jedes
.”

Dominic’s smile went taut. “The ship named for the man who tried to kill you.”

“Kill us? No, mate. He set us free.”

Penderowski gave complicated directions. Dominic had to go down a little farther through the mines before he could start up again into the ship that bore his name. He visualized the path as the young man described it. The NP would record everything, but he trusted the digital genie about as much as a cancer virus.

Penderowski even apologized because he couldn’t show the way personally. There were too many leaks in the tunnels, and he had to stay and repair them. “But can you find the
Dominic’s
bridge on your own? There’s no fights in some of the sections.” In the end, the young man pressed his laser torch into Dominic’s hand.

“What a dunce,” the NP said. “Long live the gullibility of protes!”

As Dominic accepted the torch, he felt a reluctance he couldn’t explain. The torch was an old model with a cracked case. Duct tape held the battery housing together. It was a piece of trash, and yet Dominic recognized its value. “You don’t have another light”

The young man thumped his chest. “Me need a light in my own tunnels? Penderowski can feel the way. You take it, mate. Be off and get those supplies. And please hurry, aye?” He pointed meaningfully at the ceiling.

Dominic padded through the dark, dripping tunnel, glancing up now and then at the pressure fractures and wondering where the next leak would break through. Soon he reached a small portal to the left, covered with a hinged steel door, just as Penderowski had described. He felt a little ashamed—more than a little. Getting those directions had been too easy. When he dealt with execs, they expected deception, but this young prote believed every word he said. The torch burned in his hand. He flashed the beam back the way he had come, but he couldn’t see Penderowski. “Thank you!” he called out. There was no answer.

“Nice work, boy,” the NP said.

Dominic groaned and fled along the passage. As he splashed through a long section of unlighted tunnel, his torch beam sparkled on dripping walls and pools of standing water, and he thought about the hairline cracks widening over his head. Above that layer of stone, the weight of the entire Arctic Ocean bore down, and every moment, he imagined it “coming into bed” with him. There were so many ways for these protes to die.

He kept picturing the silly green turban Penderowski wore to keep his hair nice in case a woman wandered by. Right now, the young man would be stumbling around in the dark, alone, wrestling with the heavy coil of compressor hose to seal those leaks. But Dominic didn’t have time to help, and he certainly didn’t want to breathe toxic fabriglass. Penderowski’s torch beam danced along the dark floor, showing him the way. “Damn!” he said aloud. His sole thought was to find the Net link and leave this hellish place. He’d had enough of bargaining with hopeful fools.

When he finally found the floor hatch Penderowski had described, he cranked it open and saw a deep, narrow well. Gouts of water bled from its stone walls and dripped down the rungs of the deserted ladder. There were no lights. He could see only a little way down. By all the principles of reason, how had he, the president of ZahlenBank, come to be crawling in this cave?

He rolled his shoulders, then knelt to retie his loose foot rags. A second later, he heard a noise.

He flicked off the torch. Silence. Was someone following? And there it was again. A small splash. A muffled footstep. Dominic remained absolutely still. He hardly breathed. Was his imagination deceiving him again? A faint light gleamed far behind in the corridor, but everything else lay in pitch blackness. The steps came closer. Soft now. Closer still. Dominic could sense the physical presence. When he knew the stranger was standing right beside him, he lunged.

His shoulder butted into a warm belly, and they fell headlong together against the stone floor. The stranger shrieked and punched Dominic in the left eye.

“Fuck! I felt that!” the NP yelled.

Dominic flinched and rolled away. He heard the stranger scramble to the far side of the passage, then he remembered the torch in his hand and flicked it on. There was Benito, Juanita’s little boy.

Dominic said, “What the hell?”

Benito curled up in a knot and covered his head with his scrawny arms as if he expected blows. He was wearing a pair of enormous striped shorts, tied under his small round belly with a length of cord.

“Have you been following me?” Dominic grabbed the boy’s elbow and shook him. Benito offered no resistance. He said nothing. When Dominic let go, he curled up again. Exasperated, Dominic swelled his cheeks and blew so hard, his lips fluttered. Then he sank back on his heels. The soft tissue below his left eye was already swelling where the boy had punched him. He was going to have a serious bruise. With a frown, he played the torch beam over Benito’s thin brown body.

“For a little guy, you hit hard,” he said. Then the comedy of the scene registered, and he let out a laugh. It felt good, like a muscle release. He realized his sinuses were clearing. That ridiculous cold was finally running its course.

“Benito, sit up,” he said. “Tell me what you’re doing here. I won’t hurt you.”

Benito uncovered his face and squinted into the torch beam. He looked sullen.

Dominic laid the torch down. Its white beam cut across the floor and bent up the far wall, and by the reflected glow, he finished tightening the rags on his feet. “I don’t have any food, Benito. You’d better go back to Tooksook if you’re hungry.”

The boy said nothing. His eyes glittered in the shadows.

Dominic stood and arched his back, and two vertebrae popped. He peered down the deserted ladder shaft again. When he glanced at the small figure on the floor, clenched as tight as a fist, something inside him softened. “I can’t find my way back, so I don’t suppose you can either. Eh, Benito?”

“Send the brat away. You don’t need baggage,” the NP said.

When Dominic approached, the boy hissed and kicked.

“I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”

Dominic scooped the boy up, half expecting another punch in the eye, but Benito lay still. He seemed almost weightless. Just as Dominic stooped to pick up the laser torch, the boy twisted and locked his small arms around Dominic’s neck and buried his head against the dirty tee shirt. He made no sound, but Dominic could feel him trembling.

“Benito, stop it. You’re too old for this behavior. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

The instant he spoke, he felt the mockery. His father had instructed him with those exact words when he was a boy. Richter Jedes hadn’t approved of fear, and young Dominic had done his best to appear brave. He lived to please his father. But even in his sheltered young life, he knew there was much to be afraid of. Now, for this boy in this place—he couldn’t even imagine. With awkward movements, he disengaged the boy’s arms and lowered him through the hatch onto the top rungs of the ladder.

“It’s all right, Benito. We’ll go together.”

DOMINIC
switched on Penderowski’s laser torch and carried it in his teeth. Its beam danced crazily over the dark stone wall as he descended. They’d been climbing down only a short while when the shaft went palpably silent. The air quit moving, and small vibrations that had been singing unnoticed in metal pipes came to a stop. Dominic gripped the ladder and listened. Another power failure. Life support had shut down. Benito continued shuffling down the rungs below, until Dominic whispered, “Wait.”

When the ladder stopped shimmying, the only sound was the boy’s breathing and his own. He counted seconds. A minute passed. The other blackouts hadn’t lasted this long. Sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down his neck. “Let’s keep going, Benito.”

The sound of the boy’s quick, light movement comforted him. He puffed out his cheeks and blew hard, then reseated the torch between his jaws, grasped a rung and lowered himself down through the silence.

Without warning, a thunderous explosion blew out a section of the shaft wall above them. “Jesus Krishna Christ!” the NP yelled. Lurid sparks flared above. Then bloodred flames. And dust. A thick cloud of dust billowed down the shaft. Backlit by fire, the dust cloud glowed orange, and rock chips rained down like missiles, slicing Dominic’s shoulders and back. The boy yelped. Then shouts echoed overhead, and the drumming of many feet jolted the ladder. Dominic sensed an army was coming down the ladder right on top of him.

“Benito! Hold tight!” he yelled.

As the ladder shook violently, he swung down and covered the boy with his own body to shield him from the falling rock. Then he flashed the laser torch to search for a landing below.

“We’ll climb down to that catwalk—you see? Hurry. We’ll let these people go by us. You stay between me and the ladder.”

The army was descending fast. Lurid dust silhouetted their jostling limbs, and their mingled shouts grew louder. When Dominic shot his torch beam up, all he could see were boot soles. He grabbed the boy and tried to slide down the ladder one-handed, but he slipped and nearly lost his hold.

Then the ladder shook with a new, heavier weight below, and a different noise erupted as dozens of white laser beams sliced up through the shaft. When Dominic looked down, he saw sweaty devilish faces shining in the orange light, and the beams were shooting straight out of their foreheads! Finally, he grasped that they were wearing helmets with headlamps.

“Damn me, it’s the miners!” The NP chuckled. “I was beginning to think they didn’t exist.”

The miners below were climbing up fast, while the miners above were climbing down with equal speed. Dominic was trapped in the middle. Just as the two groups converged, he clutched Benito to his chest and leaped onto the catwalk. The miners followed right behind, shoving him against the steel door like a piece of rubbish bashed into shore by the tide. Miners soon mobbed the catwalk, and three of them elbowed him aside to get the door open. Among the shouting, Dominic distinguished phrases. “Cave-in!” “Tons of rock.” “Three people trapped!”

When the door fell open, the crowd pushed Dominic through, and his only course was to stay on his feet and run. Benito clung like Velcro. After a chaotic race in semi-darkness, the army constricted through another small portal, and Dominic bloodied his left shoulder on the door flange as they shoved him ahead. Then he was climbing another ladder, ramming his head into the boots of the miner above because the miner below was ramming into him. Benito’s fingers dug into his flesh.

They entered a tunnel where the dust was so thick, Dominic thought he might choke to death. A few miners wore plastic face masks, but most breathed through rags tied over their mouths and noses. As soon as the space widened out, Dominic flattened himself against a wall and placed Benito on the floor between his knees. Then he tugged off his tee shirt and ripped it in two. “Here, breathe through this.” Benito didn’t seem to understand, so Dominic quickly tied one cloth over his own nose and mouth, then did the same with the other rag for the boy. The improvised breathing masks helped a little.

Someone shoved a work tool into his hand, and after a moment, he recognized it as a bucket. It was large and full of rock chips, heavy as lead. Farther along the tunnel, the miners were digging like fiends at a pile of rubble and forming a bucket line to transfer the rock. “Move it!” shouted a short, bandy-legged man wearing a red bandana.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” the NP advised. “I’m scanning that support structure, and it’s not stable.”

“I don’t exactly have a choice.” Dominic adjusted the cloth over his nose, then bent to whisper in Benito’s ear. “Stay against the wall.”

Someone handed him a second bucket weighted down with rock, so he stepped up and handed both buckets to the next person in line. “Keep the rhythm,” the miner said. Dominic noticed she was a stout, dark, muscular woman with gray hair. Other miners quickly queued along the wall, and the buckets passed from hand to hand.

“This is prote work,” the NP said. “You should refuse.”

Dominic didn’t bother to reply. The buckets kept coming, mounded high with rock and dust. Each one weighed thirty kilos at least, and the bucket handles cut into his soft hands like wire. His arms were soon beyond aching. His muscles trembled. When he staggered and dropped a bucket, the woman beside him kicked it away and elbowed him to grab the next one. Then she started singing.

She sang in a strong steady rhythm to the swinging buckets, and her lyrics were guttural grunts in some American patois Dominic didn’t recognize. Soon the whole line picked up the tune.

“Crude,” the NP said. “You want me to translate?”

By that point, Dominic didn’t have enough energy to subvocalize, much less speak aloud. More buckets. More. Would they never stop coming? Was this how miners spent their days? Dominic trained in the executive gym, but he’d never exerted himself like this. Sweat ran down his back, and his heart beat like a piston. When the skin on his fingers flayed off, he hardly felt the pain. He would never have believed himself capable of such labor. After a while, he began to grunt aloud to the woman’s song. The pounding heart rate was affecting his brain. He felt inebriated, almost jolly.