Sanctuary (Jezebel's Ladder Book 3) (26 page)

The next time Mercy snuck out, the boat she had spent the
week building was padlocked to the pier. She could defeat the lock by
disassembling the craft, but that would take her remaining daylight. Instead,
she opted to creep into the shed to find the right tools. Risa was waiting for
her when she came back out with her arms full. “Let me help,” said the
head-of-security’s wife.

“Ack!”

Relieving Mercy of the stolen
tools, Risa said, “Red’s told us stories about your sister Mary pulling stunts
like this all the time to see boys.”

The thief lowered her head. “He
needs me.”

“You need to learn to follow Z’s
orders. He always has a reason. You just earned a week of extra duty to occupy
the excess free time you seem to have.”

Mercy learned to grind pieces of
curved metal to reinforce the storage room’s hull while Risa experimented with
welding techniques. After the first six segments, Mercy complained, “Why do I
have to polish both sides to a mirror sheen? We don’t care what the inside
looks like.”

Risa said, “Anything rough can rub
through a spacesuit. Even a sharp corner can be lethal.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tuesday night, Auckland needed
assistance. After she took his vitals, Mercy said, “Between the honeymoon and
Yvette’s absence, your symptoms resemble mononucleosis.”

The groundside doctor looked
sheepish. “I’ll try not to overdo it if you won’t. You have bags under your
eyes.”

“I’m getting my required six hours of
sleep a night, as long as Rosie the Riveter waits till after nine to start.”

“You look worried.”

“Yuki is having trouble adjusting
to one arm,” Mercy said, shading the truth.

“Phantom pains?”

“No. But I’ve seen her reach for a
door with the wrong arm, or attempt to stop herself from floating into the wall
with her missing left. It’s hard, especially when they kicked me out of Olympus.”

“We also serve who only sit and
wait,” he said, quoting Winston Churchill about people who waited at home while
loved ones fought on the frontline.

“Don’t give me that. I saw Sojiro
getting you hooked on
The Rich Cry, Too
.”

“Yeah, well he said the first one
was free.”

“Seriously, you need to find a
project. You could shear those Angora rabbits and learn to spin the fur into
yarn.”

“I don’t know.”

“Pratibha crochets. It makes a nice
hobby in a rocking chair, especially when you’re making booties.”

He smiled. “We’re trying, but
nothing to merit a sonogram yet. Have you picked an exercise regimen? It might
help with the nightmares and worry.”

“I always swam with my mother, an
hour every morning.”

“I could sign off on that if you
have someone stand by with a spear, in case there are sharks in Prime Meridian
Lake.”

“Deal. If I schedule it early
enough, Oleander can accompany me as part of her patrol.”

Wednesday morning, Mercy walked
down to the lake with her friend and stripped down to her underwear. Oleander
carried the clothes and followed along the shore as Mercy swam the equivalent
of twenty laps in an Olympic-sized pool. “Damn, girl, I thought I had sexual
energy to burn off.”

Accepting the towel as she climbed
out of the water, Mercy said, “This is nothing. When I was training for the
space program, I would swim the bay from our house over to the . . .” Suddenly
short of breath, she stopped to grab her knees. The memory of her lost family
and home overwhelmed her.

“It’s okay,” Oleander said. “You
don’t have to prove anything to me.”

Several minutes later, Mercy
dressed in dry clothes, and the younger woman said, “Can I call Olympus on your headset?”

“Why?”

“Z listens to all my calls now.”

“I can talk to Yuki for you,”
Oleander offered.

“She asks my advice on
personal
stuff with Toby sometimes.”

“God, no. I’ll give you access to
my gear, and you can talk to her after I’m asleep.”

“Thanks.”

Mercy waited till the lunch break
she had in common with Yuki. When they were both officially off the clock,
Mercy called her friend. “Hey, girl, anything new?”

“I made up a pedicure bag and
surprised Toby with it last night.”

“And?”

“He got really excited . . . just
before he plucked it from my hands and ran downstairs to the shower with it.”

“Okay, you’ve got to admit that’s
creepy. Does he stroke his own feet and call them precious?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Inside joke. Check out
the nail clippings. If he left a pile where other people are going to poke
their bare feet, dump him.”

“We’re kind of past that stage in
the relationship.”

“I had to try,” Mercy said
lightheartedly. “Have you looked at the island lately?”

“Your man does calisthenics every
morning. Sojiro watches him with me sometimes. Today, Sojiro played music to
accompany the workout. ‘It’s Raining Men’ was my favorite. You were right, the
artist is good company.”

“Anything interesting at work?”

“Mmm. I can’t talk about it.”

“Darn. I miss using my brain.”

“But hypothetically . . .”

“I’m listening,” Mercy said.

“What would make a white patch on
the gravity sensors?”

“How big?”

“A rectangle about a kilometer
across.”

“Sampling error. Try it again.”

“If it persists?”

Mercy paused. “True grav fields
would be spherical. I can only think of three reasons. One, the jump nexus is
interfering in a pattern, like the hexagon on Saturn. Two, one of the domino
fragments is lodged in the sensor array.”

“And three?”

“The data is buffered for almost a
day before you see it, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Someone with a higher computer
security rating could be trying to hide something from you.”

****

Thursday, Yuki ran the blank patch
again—twice, with the same results.

She couldn’t tease a reaction out
of Toby again, almost as if he’d snuck off to another rendezvous with one of
the repair crew during her shift. Yuki’s shampoo had been moved and used, and
Toby’s hair didn’t have that smell.

Whoever the bitch was, she would
have well-groomed feet. The Japanese woman monitored everything the doctor did
like the chickens watched the beetles. Some of the scratches on his back could
have been construed as letters—a taunt of ownership from another lover. Her
anger simmered.

Friday, Yuki zoomed in on the
mystery zone with the pure optics. The region was the same gold and tan as the
rest of the dunes, perhaps with more shadows. When the desired rectangle
appeared, the out-of-bounds pixels turned gray. The effect happened in real
time, adjusting to their point of view. Someone was blocking her efforts. Did
the planners already know? Were the Zeisses playing with her? Or did the crazed
doctor have a mission from someone who’d plumbed the alien secrets from afar?
She decided to call a meeting of the committee for Saturday night.

Zeiss decided to pass the meeting
off as a regular event, boring and routine. Toby was sealed off in his room,
lest he say something embarrassing or be reminded of the dreaded Yvette.

As the others arrived, Yuki paid
attention to the nails of all the women. None of them had been particularly
pampered, or freshly trimmed and filed. That left four other women as possible
lovers, Mercy included. The thought of such a betrayal made Yuki weak. Other
people stole and lied; Mercy was a rock in an ocean of human waste.

Interrupting her thoughts, Zeiss
tapped Yuki on the shoulder. “What’s the big secret?”

“How close can we approach Alcantara?”

“Red can brush the atmosphere, a
few hundred klicks up. A minimum-fuel approach would take us about two days. Why?”

With a flourish, Yuki displayed a
composite photo of the blank spot. “Someone is keeping a secret from us.”

Zeiss noted, “That’s by the nexus
point where we were supposed to enter the system.”

Sojiro gasped. “Is it a crash site
from someone who came in too fast, a refueling station, or a colony?”

“I don’t know,” Yuki said. “That’s
why I want to get closer. Whoever is masking the data in our system won’t be
able to block the visual through the sunlight windows.”

Monday evening, images of the dunes
filled the sky of
Sanctuary
until their orbit carried them over the
critical region. At the moment of truth, the shutters slammed shut prematurely,
denying them the secrets of the alien world again.

Sojiro jacked into the interface.
When he emerged, Zeiss asked, “Who is interfering?”

“Snowflake.”

Everyone in the control room
cursed. Their own ship was fighting against them.

Zeiss said, “Do you think Snowflake
switched the flight paths so we wouldn’t see this?”

Yuki shrugged.

“What are our options?” Red asked.

The manga artist said, “We can use
the instruments on
Ascension
to view the surface. Alternately, we could
launch a probe, but we’d also need to record those results from
Ascension
.”

“I want to save the probe for our
final destination,” Zeiss said, unyielding.

“
This
could be the
destination,” Yuki lobbied. “We can return with planets’ worth of data and
multiple examples of alien tech. We’ll be conquering heroes.
Sanctuary
could be carved up by the experts. It would be enough.”

“No. First, we’ll try the view from
Ascension
in a couple weeks when we’re ready.” Nothing more was decided
that night.

After the others returned to camp,
Yuki made a casual remark while she was brushing her hair for bed. “Maybe we
could bring in Mercy and see if she can sneak around the computer block.”

“No Mercy,” the doctor said.

Yuki was furious at him. She beat
him black and blue with the hairbrush. When she finished, she stood, shaking.
Toby crawled over to kiss her feet. “You know what I need, what I deserve,” he
said.

Every day, Mercy swam farther to build up her endurance and to
strengthen her resolve. Once she decided, she began to plan her escape. The
destination helped to focus her time and give the daily drudgery meaning. Her
headset would need to be left behind, and other survival items scrounged. She
hid the gear under the corner of the chicken coop because no one else gathered
those eggs. Next, she wrote a how-to manual for anyone who took over caring for
her chickens.

Only one piece of information
remained for the trip; although she had hoped to obtain it from her mother when
the time was right. Next time Oleander loaned her a comm set, Mercy called
Yuki. She made up a lie to make sure the conversation would be in person. “I need
a favor.”

“Yes?”

“You know how I’ve been swimming?
Well, I left my chronometer on this morning when I jumped in. It’s water
resistant
,
but was never meant for immersion.”

“Miss Safety ruined UN property.
That’s priceless. You want to borrow my wrist unit so Zeiss never finds out.”

“I’d appreciate that. I’m already
on probation.”

“Sure, sweetie. I never use it
because I prefer the contact-lens clock. You’ll have to reset the watch
yourself because doing that one-handed is a pain for me. When the stasis
generator froze all the electrical impulses, my eye clock lost 3,925 hours.”
Yuki recited the number like the gulag sentence in
A Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich
.

“Sure. I’ll trade you for some
berries. Sneak down to Zeppelin Point over lunch, and we’ll make the swap.”

“Deal.”

At the appointed hour, Mercy
watched her friend descend the stairs as Toby peeked out the window. Then she
remembered the telescopic windows. While her friend was occupied, Mercy
activated her interface with Snowflake. “Saturday, during the next meeting of
the planners, obscure my image from Olympus if anyone asks to see it. If I
signal you again with the word FAIL-SAFE, please give me another four hours of
obscurity.”

There was no answer from Snowflake
at this distance, but she was certain her block would hold for the few hours
she needed. While everyone important was distracted, she’d make her move.

When Yuki arrived, they hugged.
After the Japanese woman handed her the chronometer, Mercy whispered, “Thanks.
Can I ask you something personal?”

“No, I won’t tell you how I’m
planning on eating these strawberries,” Yuki said, wryly. “Although, Toby might
offer some of these to the ghost of Yvette. He still talks to her.”

“Actually, I wanted to ask about
your first time with a man. How . . . did you bleed much? Did it hurt?”

Yuki bit her lip. “I broke that myself
before a man was involved.”

When Mercy blushed deeply, her
friend asked, “You mean, you don’t . . . ?”

“No!” Then Mercy saw Herk stomping
down the spiral stairs. “Oh, crap. Toby turned us in.”

“Run. I’ll handle the boys. We won’t
be able to meet like this again.” Yuki looked surprised as Mercy kissed her on
the forehead.

“Good-bye.”

Mercy stopped at the chicken coop
to reset the wristwatch. The chronometer had lost nine hours less time than
Yuki told her to expect. How odd—she’d been very precise about her lost time.
Any investigation of the mismatch between contact lens and wrist was swept from
her list of concerns when she arrived at the women’s dormitory. The ticket for
another week of extra duty was waiting for her, signed by Zeiss himself. It
made her want to take up cursing.

****

Saturday morning, Mercy told
Oleander, “I want to sleep in today. Hauling bricks wore me out.”

The guard smiled. “That’ll teach
you to put your dirt in the boss man’s hole,” she said, quoting from
Cool
Hand Luke
, a Paul Newman prison movie that Sojiro had shown them.

Mercy wanted to object to the
implication, but she
had
been feeling like a prisoner. The moment
Oleander was asleep, Mercy began her morning chores, saving the chicken coop
for last. She strapped the oversized, waterproof fanny pack to her belt before
gathering the eggs. After dropping the harvest off in the kitchen, she told
Johnny, “I’m going to go on a honey hunt on my day off. I’m going to hide until
dark and pretend I’m alone.”

He chuckled and gave her a fat wedge
of warm cornbread to take along. Planting a peck on his cheek, she added the
food to her pack to save for later. For breakfast, she had a modest helping of
eggs.

The hardest part of the journey
would be walking, not jogging, the two and a half kilometers to Prime Meridian
Lake. She had to pace herself and keep her muscles rested. Rather than swim the
distance to the island directly, she had decided to do it in three legs, with
plenty of opportunity to recuperate in between. Reaching the dock, she stripped
off her minimalist clothes and placed them in the waterproof pack. Her Susan B
Anthony necklace went first into the RFID-protected credit-card pouch. She
decided on the neoprene cap over her hair, not to shield herself from Oleander’s
scouting, but to ease her way through the lake. In the first phase, she swam
roughly three hundred meters to the lip of the massive space window. The water
was cool, but nothing pursued her.

Mercy intended to walk along the surface
of the window for about eight hundred meters, until she was abreast of Exile Island. Like the decontamination room, the window casing was smooth enamel, extending
almost a meter above the water. Unfortunately, the surface was slippery,
offering no purchase. Normally, she could count on waves to lift her up, but
Prime Meridian Lake was glass smooth.

If she failed here, no one would
find her body. No one would know.

Calm down
, she ordered
herself. Mercy removed the pouch from around her waist, held it out of the
water, and unzipped it. Carefully, she dried her fingertips and palm on her
shorts before groping through the pack for what she needed. Mercy held her
breath as she pulled out the first sticky strap. Looping it, she smacked the
strap onto the side of the white, enamel wall. Repeating this process, she
planted a second loop. She slipped the third strap around her hand and resealed
the bag. This enabled her to climb the short wall like her father’s hero,
Spiderman.

Reaching the rim, she found the
edge was only ten centimeters. The window was recessed so the shutters could
snap into place, flush with the top. She imagined racing across the surface
with the stars at her feet, dancing across the face of the planet. Here, the
plan hit another bump. This window was facing the sun. Expecting the glassy
substance to be the same temperature as the water, she placed the ball of her
left foot down. She heard the sizzle of the water that dripped from her
clothing before the pain bit, and she instinctively rolled away, back into the
water. Once, she’d caught a soldiering iron before it hit her mother’s good
rug. Mercy had been so proud of herself for saving the rug—until she smelled
the cooking skin. This heat wasn’t quite that bad; rather, it felt a little
hotter than hot asphalt on which a weatherman had fried an egg.

The cool liquid helped to quench
the burn. Awkwardly, she stuck her face underwater and contorted to examine the
bottom of her foot. She could see the skin reddening already. There might not
be a blister; however, the mark stung. Backstroking to the loops, she dried her
hands carefully again. Peeling the slimy, wet fabric strip off her hand, she
tied it around her neck and shoulder like a purse strap so it could air out.
Then, she hoisted herself back to the top.

Once on the rim, she reclaimed the
two dry loops and tucked them into the waterproof container. Now what? The rim
was thicker than a balance beam. How hard could it be to walk on it? Her
alternative was to wait at least six hours for the shutters to close. Even if
she could hang onto the rim that long, the meeting would be over by then, and
the planners might find her. She couldn’t risk being caught; they’d find some
way to monitor her in order to prevent her from trying again. She had to press
on.

To be safe, though, Mercy wrapped
her shirt like an oven mitt around her left hand for insulation in case she
fell. Slowly, she rose to her feet and crept lensward. The constant glare from the
nearby star affected her more than the heat. The painstaking journey was like
walking on the sun. Her eyes ached, and she regretted not bringing her tinted
helmet.
That wouldn’t have been conspicuous, leaving camp with a visor on.
She compensated by focusing on the island ahead and the perfect white line at
her feet. She couldn’t afford to worry about the sky on her left or the lake on
her right. She was a tightrope walker, suspended between heaven and Earth.

As Mercy progressed to the halfway
mark, she planned her final approach. She needed to take Lou by surprise, or he
might do himself harm. She might climb a tree and drop down on him. More
easily, she could crawl into his bed while he slept. During this line of
reasoning, she wrung out her hair reflexively, like any other day at the
swimming pool. This generated a small puddle of water that caused her to slip.
She was so worried about burning herself that she held her arms straight out to
either side and twisted away from the heat. As a result, there were no hands to
slow her when her head smacked into the hard ceramic rim.

White flashed before Mercy’s eyes
as the water swallowed her. In a real ocean, her idiocy might have drowned her.
In this sculpted paradise, the shallow water was just under two meters deep.
The shocking chill snapped her out of her stupor, and she pushed herself off
the sterile, sandy bottom. If it had been mud, she might have never regained
the surface.

Panting, she cursed herself for
being six kinds of fool. Nevertheless, she was past the point of no return.
Treading water, she slapped her longest strap over the edge and onto the hot
glass. Next, she unwrapped the shirt from her hand and tossed it over the edge
like a laundry line. The cloth would steam dry in no time. She just had to
conserve energy until the strap could dry enough to support her. Floating on
her back, she tried to keep the worries at bay. Soon she could dry her hands on
the shorts and resume.

The smell of the cornbread lingering
on the leash made her mouth water.

To avoid thoughts of Lou while her
strap dried, she calculated
Mersenne
primes—a common nighttime
activity of hers, much less likely to end up in injury or pregnancy. After
several minutes, the very end of the strap was dry enough to help hoist her
back up. Next she dried her feet and looped the two smaller straps around them
in a pattern resembling ice skates. She ate half the cornbread as her reward
for surviving the first mistake. The back of her head hurt like hell,
preventing the fantasies from making her careless again.

The second time walking, her
progress went slower, but her feet couldn’t slip. When she reached the curved
end of the window channel, sweat poured off her. The cool water would feel
wonderful against her skin and the aching lump on her scalp. She developed goose
bumps just thinking about the dive as she peeled off her safety equipment and
stuffed it back in the fanny pack.