Humans spend their lives in mazes. If they escape and cannot find another maze, they create one. What is this passion for testing?
- Kerro Panille, Questions from the Avata
RAJA THOMAS awoke in darkness and it was like that most recent time, awakening in hyb. He found himself disoriented in darkness, waiting for dangers he could not locate. Slowly, it came to him that he was in his groundside cubb.... night. He glanced at the luminous time display beside his pallet: two hours into the midnight watch.
What awakened me?
His cubby was eight levels under the Pandoran surface, a choice location cushioned from surface noises and perils by numerous color-coded passages, locks, hatches, slide-tubes and seemingly endless branchings. The Ship-trained found no difficulty recording mental maps of such layouts, the more remote the address the better. Thomas resented being buried in these depths. Too much travel time to places which demanded his attention.
Lab One.
He had gone to sleep while wondering about that restricted place. The source of so many odd rumors.
"They're breeding people who're faster than the demons."
That was the popular story.
"Oakes and Lewis want nothing but servile zombies!"
Thomas had heard that story from one of the new militants, a fiery young woman associate of Rachel Demarest.
Slowly, he sat up and tried to probe the darkness around him.
Odd I should awaken at this hour.
He touched the light plate on the wall beside his head and a dim glow replaced the dark. The cubby appeared boringly normal: his singlesuit draped over a slidesea.... sandals. Everything as it should be.
"I feel like a damned Spinneret down here."
He spoke it aloud while rubbing his face. Presently, he summoned a servo, then slipped into his clothing while waiting for it. The servo buzzed his hatch and he stepped out into an empty passage lighted by the widely spaced ceiling bulbs of nightside. Seating himself in the servo, he ordered it to take him topside. He felt oppressed by the travel time, the weight of construction overhead.
I never needed open spaces shipside. Maybe I'm going native.
The servo emitted an irritating hum full of subsonics.
At the surface autosentry checkpoint, he keyed his code into the system. With the green go signal came the blinking yellow light for Condition 2. He swore under his breath, then turned to the lockers beside the topside hatch and took out a lasgun. He knew the hatch would not open unless he did this. The weapon felt clumsy in his hands and, when he holstered it, he was intensely conscious of the weight at his waist.
"Doesn't take much sense to know you shouldn't live in a place if you have to carry a gun." He muttered it, but his voice was loud enough that the blue acknowledge light winked at him from the sentry plate.
Still the hatch remained sealed to him. His hand was moving toward the override switch when he saw the little blinker at the bottom of the plate demanding: "Purpose of movement?"
"Work inspection," he said.
The system digested this, then opened the hatch.
Thomas slipped off the servo and strode out into the topside corridors, sure now of why he had awakened at this hour.
Lab One.
It was a mystery of peculiar odor.
He found himself presently in the darkened perimeter halls, passing an occasional worker and the well-spaced extrusions of sentry posts, each with its armed occupant paying attention only to the nightside landscape.
Plaz ports showed Thomas that it was moonlight out there, two moons quartering the southern horizon. Pandora's night was a buzz of shadows.
After a space, the ring passage ramped downward into a hatch-distribution dome about thirty meters in diameter. The passage to Lab One was indicated by an "L-1" sign on his right. He had taken only two steps toward it when it opened and a woman emerged, slamming the hatch behind her. It was dim in the dome, lighted only by the moonlight coming in through plaz ports on his left, but there was no mistaking the almost disjointed agitation in her movements.
The woman darted toward him, grabbing his arm as he passed, dragging him along toward the external ports with a strength which astonished him.
"Come here! I need you."
Her voice was husky and full of odd undertones. Her face and arms were a mass of scratches and he sensed the unmistakable odor of blood on her light singlesuit.
"Wha...."
"Don't question me!"
There was wildness, a touch of insanity, in her voice.
And she was beautiful.
She released him when they reached the barrier wall, and he saw the dim outline of an emergency hatch to Pandora's perilous open air. Her hands were busy at the hatch controls, keying the override system in a way that did not set off the alarms. One of her hands reached out and grabbed his right wrist, guiding his hand to the lock mechanism. Such strength in her!
"When I say so, open this hatch. Wait twenty-three minutes, then look for me. Let me in."
Before he could find the words to protest, she slipped out of her singlesuit and thrust it at him. He caught it involuntarily with his free hand. She already was crouching to thong her feet and he saw that she had a magnificent body - smooth muscles, a supple perfection - but swatches of Celltape criss-crossed her skin.
"What's happened to you?"
"I warned you once not to question." She spoke without looking up, and he sensed the wild power in her. Dangerous. Very dangerous. No inhibitions.
"You're going to run the P," he said. He glanced around, looking for someone, anyone, to call on for help. The circle of the distribution dome contained no other people.
"Bet on me," she said, standing.
"How will I tell the twenty-three minutes?" he asked.
She crowded close to him and slapped a panel beside the emergency hatch. Immediately, he heard the sentry circuit's hum, then a deep male voice: "Post Nine clear."
A tiny screen above the circuit speaker glowed with red numerals: 2:29.
"The hatch," she said.
There was no way to avoid it; he had felt her wild strength. He undogged the hatch and she thrust past him, swinging it wide as she dashed out into the open, turning right. Her body was a silver blur in the moonlight and he saw a dark shadow coming up behind her. His gun was in his hand without thinking about it and he cooked a Hooded Dasher that was only a step behind her. She did not turn.
His hands were shaking as he resealed the hatch.
Running the P!
He glanced at the time signal: 2:29. She had said twenty-three minutes. That would put her back at the hatch by 2:52.
It occurred to him then that the perimeter was just under ten kilometers.
It can't be done! No one can run ten kilometers in twenty-three minutes!
But she had come from the passage to Lab One. He unwadded her singlesuit. Blood on it, no doubt of that. Her name was stitched over the left breast: Legata.
He wondered if it was a first or last name.
Or a title?
He peered out of the plaz port, looking to the left where she would have to appear if she really did run the perimeter.
What would a Legata be?
A voice on the sentry circuit startled him: "Someone's out there, pretty far out."
Another voice answered: "It's a woman running the P. She just rounded Post Thirty-Eight."
"Who is it?"
"Too far out to identify."
Thomas found himself praying for her to make it as he listened to each succeeding post report the runner. But he knew there was not much chance. Since learning about The Game from Waela, he had looked into the statistics. Fifty-fifty in dayside, yes. But nightside, fewer than one in fifty made it.
The timer beside his head moved with an agonizing slowness: 2:48. It seemed to him that it took an hour shifting to 2:49. The sentries were silent now.
Why didn't the sentries mark her passage?
As though to answer him, a voice on the circuit said: "She just rounded East Eighty-Nine!"
"Who the hell is that out there?"
"She's still too far out to identify."
Thomas drew his lasgun and put a hand on the hatchdog. The word was that the last minutes were the worst, Pandora's demons ganging up on the runner. He peered out into the moonshadows.
2:50.
He spun the hatchdog, opened it a crack. No movement.... Nothing. Not even a demon. He found that he was swearing under his breath, muttering: "Come on, Legata. Come on. You can do it. Don't blow the fucking run at the end!"
Something flickered in the shadows off to his left. He swung the hatch wide.
There she was!
It was like a dance - leaping, dodging. Something large and black swerved behind her. Thomas took careful aim and burned another Dasher as she sped past him without breaking her stride. There was a musky odor of perspiration from her. He slammed the hatch and dogged it. Something crashed into the barrier as he sealed it.
Too late, you fucker!
He turned to see her slipping through the Lab One hatchway, her singlesuit in hand. She waved to him as the hatch hissed shut.
Legata, he thought. Then: Ten klicks in twenty-three minutes!
There was a babble of conversation on the sentry circuit.
"Anybody know who that was?"
"Negative. Where'd she go?"
"Somewhere over near Lab One dome."
"Sheee-it! That must've been the fastest time ever."
Thomas slapped the switch to shut them off, but not before a male voice said: "I'd sure like to have that little honey chasin...."
Thomas crossed over to the Lab One hatch, heaved on the dog. It refused to move, sealed.
All that just to put a hashmark above her eyebrow?
N.... it had to be much more than the mark of success.
What were they doing down there in Lab One?
Again, he tried the hatchdog. It refused to budge. He shook his head and walked slowly back to the autosentry gate where he picked up a servo and rode it to his quarters. All the way down he kept wondering:
What the hell's a Legata?