Micro

Chapter 30

The Pali 30 October, 4:00 p.m.

This thing would kick ass in Boston traffic,” Karen King remarked. She was driving the hexapod up a steep slope, guiding it across a jumble of rocks and grass stems. It lurched.

“Please! Watch my arm.” Danny was sitting in the passenger seat, gripping his left arm, which hung like a sausage in the sling. It had become badly swollen, filling the sleeve of his shirt. The hexapod moved along steadily, its legs whining, climbing through a vast, vertical world glowing with a million shades of green. In the cargo compartment, in back, Erika sat huddled, tied in with rope. Rick walked along beside the vehicle, holding the gas rifle and looking around, alert for predators, a bandolier of needle-bullets slung over his shoulder.

The terrain had gotten very steep. The soil had given way to crumbly lava pebbles and grit with protruding masses of lava rock, everything festooned with grasses and small ferns. Koa and guava trees twisted this way and that, mixed with thin, straight shafts of loulu palms. Many of the trees were draped with vines. Branches rattled in a steady wind that blew across the mountain face, and the breeze occasionally battered the truck and the humans. A wall of mist drifted through the vegetation—a cloud—followed by brilliant sunshine.

The deaths of Peter Jansen and Amar Singh weighed on the students. Their group had been winnowed from eight people stranded in the micro-world down to four survivors. Their number had been cut in half in just two days. Fifty percent fatalities. That was a horrible statistic, thought Rick Hutter. It was worse than the life expectancy of soldiers fighting on the beaches of Normandy. Rick could see more fatalities coming—unless by some miracle they were rescued. But they couldn’t reveal themselves to anyone at Nanigen now; for Vin Drake had mobilized his resources to try to find them and make them disappear. “Drake’s still looking for us,” Rick remarked. “I’m sure of it.”

“That’s enough,” Karen said to him. There was no point talking about Vin Drake, since all that did was to make them feel more helpless. “Peter wouldn’t give up,” Karen said to Rick, more calmly, as she worked the controls, guiding the truck straight up the face of a large rock. Rick jumped on board for the ride.

They had gotten into mountain vegetation. Occasional gaps in the canopy revealed a striking vista. Cliffs and blades of the Pali plunged all around, and a waterfall roared nearby. Somewhere above them, a curving stretch of ridge formed the lip of Tantalus Crater. As the machine marched along, its feet stirred up living things. Startled springtails bounced away, flipping through the air; worms wriggled and seethed; mites scuttled here and there, sometimes climbing up the legs of the hexapod. They had to keep brushing mites off the vehicle, or the creatures would crawl around inside it and all over the gear, dropping small blobs of mite dung and getting everything dirty. And in the air all around, insects by the thousands flew, humming past, spiraling around, glittering in the sunlight.

“I can’t stand all this life,” Danny complained. He hunched forward over his bad arm, looking utterly miserable.

“If the batteries last,” Rick was saying, “we might make Tantalus by nightfall.”

“What then?” Karen said, working the controls.

“We do reconnaissance. Watch the base, then decide our next move.”

“What if the base isn’t there? Torn out, just like the stations?”

“Do you have to be such a pessimist?”

“I’m just trying to stay realistic, Rick.”

“Fine, Karen. Tell me your plan.”

Karen didn’t have a plan, so she didn’t answer Rick. Just get to Tantalus and hope something turns up. It wasn’t a plan, it was a hail—Mary pass. As they moved along, Karen considered their situation. She was profoundly frightened, she had to admit it, but her fear also made her feel very alive. She wondered how much longer she had to live. Maybe a day, maybe hours. Better make the best of it, just in case your life turns out to be as short as an insect’s, she told herself.

She looked over at Rick Hutter. How did the guy do it? There he was, tramping along with the gun slung over his shoulder, swaggering a little, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world. For a moment, she envied him. Even though she disliked him.

She heard a moan. It was Erika, sitting in the back of the truck with her arms wrapped around her knees.

“Are you all right, Erika?” Karen asked her.

“All right.”

“Are you…scared?”

“Of course I am scared.”

“Try not to be too scared. It’ll be okay,” Karen said.

Erika didn’t reply. She didn’t seem able to handle the pressure of this journey. Karen felt sorry for Erika, and worried about her.

Don Makele paid a visit to the communications center at Nanigen, a small office equipped with encrypted radio gear and corporate wireless networking equipment. He spoke to a young woman who was monitoring all the corporate channels. “I want to try to get a ping from a piece of equipment we’ve lost in Manoa Valley,” he said to the young woman. He gave her the serial number of the piece.

“What kind of equipment is it?” she asked him.

“Experimental.” He wasn’t going to tell her it was an advanced hexapod from the Omicron Project.

Typing commands by remote, the young woman switched on a high-power seventy-two-gigahertz transmitter on the roof of the greenhouse in the Waipaka Arboretum. It was a line-of-sight transmitter. “Where should I point it?”

“Northwest. Toward Supply Station Echo.”

“Got it.” Tapping a keyboard, she oriented the transmitter.

“Now ping.”

The young woman entered a command and stared at the screen. “Nothing,” she said.

“Start pinging in a search pattern around that location.”

She worked the keys for a while. Still nothing happened.

“Now point the transmitter up the mountainside. Do sequential pings.”

After she worked some more, she brightened. “Got it. It pinged me back.”

“Where is the equipment?”

“Gosh. It’s on the cliffs. Halfway up Tantalus.” She called up an image of the terrain on her screen and pointed to a spot on the mountainside, far above the bottom of Manoa Valley. “How did the equipment get there?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Makele answered.

Somebody had survived. They were now driving the hexapod straight up the mountain. Interesting.

Makele returned to Drake’s office. “Just for the hell of it, I pinged the hexapod. I got a ping back. Guess what. The hexapod is halfway up to Tantalus Crater.”

Drake’s eyes narrowed. What the hell. Somebody had survived the predator that had eaten Telius and Johnstone. “Can we find that hexapod, retrieve it?”

“Those cliffs are really steep. I don’t think we could reach the hexapod right now. Plus we can’t get a tight fix on it. We can get its approximate location on the cliffs. Only good to a hundred meters.”

A tiny smile formed at the corner of Drake’s mouth and grew wider, until it had become a grin. “I wonder…maybe they’re heading for Tantalus Base.”

“Yeah, could be.”

Drake broke into laughter. “Tantalus Base! Ha! I would like to see their faces when they see Tantalus. They’re in for an ugly surprise—if they get there.” He became serious. “You go up to the crater and make sure they get a surprise. I’ll keep track of their progress.”

Rick was driving when there was a beep, and the hexapod’s communication panel lit up. A display flared: ANSWERBACK 23094-451.

“What the hell was that?” Rick said.

Danny slumped in the passenger seat next to him. “Turn that thing off.”

“I can’t. It’s just doing this shit on its own.” Rick began to wonder: was somebody trying to talk to them? Maybe it was Drake. But then the panel went quiet again. He had a feeling, though, that Drake might know where they were. If so, what would they do if Drake found them? The gas rifle would have no effect on a human of normal size. Karen walked alongside.

“The radio’s acting funny,” he said to Karen.

She shrugged.

The terrain trended upward at a steep angle. They came to a low cliff, and the walker climbed it. At the top of the cliff they made their way around a bunch of sedge grass, and came to a rock. “Stop!” Rick said. He advanced toward the rock; he had seen something under it. Something black and shiny. “It’s a beetle hiding under there,” he said. “Erika, what kind?”

Erika focused her attention on the beetle. It was a Metromenus, the same kind they’d seen when they’d first arrived in the micro-world.

“Be careful,” Erika said. “They have a nasty spray.”

“Exactly,” Rick said.

“What’s up?” Karen asked him.

“It’s a chemical war out there. We need chemical weapons, too.”

“We don’t need it,” Karen said to him. “We’ve already got the benzo spray.” She lifted the spray bottle out of her pocket—the self-defense compound that she had made in the lab, which she’d hoped to show to Vin Drake. But when she squeezed the pump, nothing came out. It had been used up spraying the centipede.

Rick was determined to reload the bottle with spray. He crept ahead with the gas rifle, took aim, and fired at the beetle. The needle penetrated the beetle’s shell. There was a muffled explosion, and the beetle shuddered and sprayed chemicals around in its death throes, until the air reeked of acids.

Erika assured them there would be a lot of spray left in the beetle. Rick put on his mad scientist outfit: the rubber apron, the goggles, and the gloves, and he went to work.

First, he flipped the dead beetle over on its back. Next, with his machete, he began tapping around on the jointed segments of the abdomen, looking for an opening.

Erika gave him advice. “Cut between segment six and segment seven. Lift the sclerite plates off—gently.”

Rick sliced into the beetle, working the blade along a joint between segments, then pried with his machete, lifting up the armored plates. They came off with a tearing sound, revealing fat. He started cutting into the fat carefully.

“You’re looking for a pair of chemical sacs at the base of the abdomen,” Erika explained, kneeling next to Rick. “Don’t burst a sac or you’ll be sorry.”

Rick lifted out a football-shaped organ, then another one. These were the chemical sacs. They were closed—muscles clenched them shut. Following Erika’s instructions, he cut the muscle, and the sac began to leak liquid. It stank.

“That’s benzo,” Erika said. “It’s mixed with caprylic acid, a detergent. That helps the chemical stick to surfaces, which enhances its power as a weapon. Don’t get it on your skin.”

It pleased Karen to see Erika interested in something, for a change. Erika had gotten so quiet, so depressed. At least this would distract her.

Rick collected the liquid in a bottle and screwed on the top. Then he handed it to Karen. “There you go. For your protection.”

Karen wondered at Rick. He certainly had energy. She should have thought of collecting more chemicals herself. Rick seemed quite skilled at this business of getting along in the micro-world; he even seemed to enjoy it. It didn’t make her like Rick Hutter any better, but, somewhat to her surprise, she found herself glad to have him along on the journey, anyway. “Thanks,” she said to him, stuffing the bottle back in her pocket.

“Don’t mention it.” Rick took off his outfit and stored it away, and they resumed their upward climb.

The land grew impossibly steep. It went almost vertical, and they arrived at the base of an endless cliff. The cliff ran upward as far as the eye could see, an expanse of bubbly volcanic rock draped with lichens and hanging moss, and dotted with clumps of uluhe ferns. There seemed to be no way around it.

“Damn the cliff, full speed ahead,” Rick said.

They made sure the equipment was tied down, and then Rick jumped in back with Erika, and tied himself in. Karen drove. The truck’s feet stuck to the rock beautifully, and the truck moved upward. They made excellent speed, gaining altitude fast.

But the cliff just seemed to go on forever.

The day was coming to a close, and they didn’t know how far they had come, or how far they had to go. The battery readout showed that the power had been draining steadily; the vehicle had only about a third of its battery power left.

“I think we should bivouac on the cliff,” Rick finally said. “It might actually be safer than anywhere else.”

They found a ledge and parked the truck on it. It was a lovely spot, and it looked out over the valley. They ate the last of the katydid steaks.

Danny spread out some things in the back of the truck, where he intended to spend the night. His arm was clearly swollen. It felt bloated and lifeless. It didn’t seem to belong to him anymore, but had become a dead weight.

“Oooh,” he whispered. He clutched his arm and made a face.

“What’s the matter now?” Rick Hutter said to Danny.

“My arm just popped.”

“Popped?

“Nothing. Just a noise in my arm.”

“Let’s have a look,” Rick said, bending over Danny.

“No.”

“Come on. Roll up your sleeve.”

“It’s fine, all right?”

Danny’s left arm had remained paralyzed, and it hung in the sling. The arm had packed the shirt sleeve, giving the sleeve a bulging, taut appearance. The shirt was filthy, too. “You might want to roll up your sleeve to let your skin get some air,” Rick said. “That arm could get infected.”

“Go away. You’re not my mother.” Danny stuffed a rag under his neck as a pillow, and curled up in the truck bed.

Darkness fell over the Pali. The night sounds rose up again, the cryptic noises of insects.

Rick settled down in the passenger seat. “You sleep, Karen. I’ll stay up.”

“That’s all right. Why don’t you sleep, Rick? I’ll do the first watch.”

They both ended up wide awake, keeping watch in smoldering silence as Erika and Danny slept. The bats came out, and squeals and echoes sounded near and far, crisscrossing the sky, as the bats plucked moths and other flying insects from the air.

Danny stirred. “The bats are keeping me awake,” he complained. But soon they heard him snoring.

The moon climbed high over the Manoa Valley, turning the waterfalls into silver threads falling into emptiness. Around one of the waterfalls an arc of light glimmered. Rick stared at it: what was that light around the waterfall? The light seemed to shimmer, change.

Karen had noticed it, too. She pointed the harpoon at it. “You know what that is, right?”

“No idea.”

“It’s a moonbow, Rick.” She touched his arm. “Look! It’s a double moonbow.”

He hadn’t even known moonbows existed. Here they were, travelers in a dangerous Eden. It would be just his luck to be stuck in Eden with Karen King, of all people. He found himself glancing at her. Well, she was beautiful, especially in the moonlight. Nothing seemed to keep Karen down for long, nothing seemed to defeat her. Karen King made a good partner for an expedition, even if they didn’t get along personally. She did not lack courage, that was for sure. It was just too bad her personality was so unruly, so contrary. He drifted off, and woke later to find that Karen had fallen asleep against him, her head nestled on his shoulder, breathing gently.