Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (36 page)

“Not all those are panda bones,” Auckland said.

“Wait for it,” Risa said.

On the video, Toby came to the same
conclusion, because he selected several for his sample pouch. “There are tooth
marks on this bone. . . bigger than bobcats.”

Next, Toby pulled out a wooden bowl
stained with blood and said, “Evidence of ritual cannibalism. In such cases,
the tribe will feed on the strength of their enemy or preserve the memory of
their loved ones. Which—” He grunted in pain and glanced down to see a spear
sticking through his side.

Someone shouted the word “
Granith
”
in Pandanese.

The violence startled Auckland back from the screen. “How?”

Risa paused the feed and said, “When
he leaned forward over the sarcophagus, his armor shirt rode above his hip,
exposing a wedge of visible fabric near the flashlight. His lecturing had
pulled the guard in. The neoprene and Kevlar took the brunt of the assault. He
really was just grazed.”

“Idiot.”

“Yeah. Well I would’ve spent the
next minute screaming in shock. Watch this,” she said, pushing play.

The guard threw another spear, which
Toby blocked with the thin gray domino. The flashlight rolled across the floor,
causing a strobe effect as Toby scrambled for the deflected spear. When the
fanged warrior charged, his medical coworker with minimal defense training
braced the butt of the spear against the stone step. At the last moment, he
raised the spear point and the massive attacker impaled himself. Auckland recalled that this was why Romans made their spearheads out of lead, so they
couldn’t be reused.

While the aborigine was on his knees
coping with the shock, Toby pulled out a knife and plunged it into the creature’s
ear hole with surgical precision. One deft twist and the panda collapsed.

“Ooo,” Auckland said with a wince.

“Yeah. My man must have watched
that part with computer enhancement a dozen times already . . . in slow motion.
Toby never loses his cool for a moment. He waits till he’s outside to cut the
spear out of his suit so he doesn’t leave a blood trail.”

Toby picked up the flashlight and ran
before others could be attracted by the scuffle.

“I thought he couldn’t kill,” said Auckland, nervous.

“Murder. If someone attacks him, he’s
allowed to respond in kind,” Risa clarified. She froze the video feed again. As
Toby raced out, he didn’t notice, but his flashlight beam washed over a
throne-like black chair on a dais. “Look familiar?” asked Risa.

“Part of a stasis chamber,” the doctor
replied. “Did any Magi survive?”

She shrugged and resumed the video.

The chase scene cut to a garden
inside the bowl of the crown. Red velvet covered every surface. The plant
resembled heather with spaghetti-colored stalks and crimson tufts at the tips.
His blood wouldn’t stand out there as he pinched the seams of the wound
together and treated it. Once disinfected, he coated the injury with a clear
Superglue patch. “Seeds from the forerunner biosphere must have landed here.” As
he worked, his breathing was so labored from the run and the pain that the
interior of his facemask fogged. To see, he had to lift the visor.

“What the hell did he just do?” Auckland demanded.

“Relax, he does it all the time in
the jungle,” Risa explained. “Toby can go natural for up to half an hour
without ill effects. He likes to remove the mask for the kill during a hunt. He
says the filter mask limits his senses. A little grass never hurt anyone.”

Auckland froze the playback again.
“No, but the material on the ground appears to be mold or fungus. That puff was
something releasing spores. If that stuff grows in his lungs, it could be
fatal. I remember a case where a patient coughed up tiny mushrooms for a week.”

Risa wrinkled her face. “Gross.”

“That’s why the pandas didn’t
search in the long grass for him—the red dust is a more deadly guard than their
spears.”

****

Back in Elysium, Yvette ran to the
shuttle to greet Auckland. When she saw Toby hooked up to an oxygen mask, she
refused to leave his side. Once the spore infection was confirmed, she promised
to nurse him back to health. No one else wanted to risk contagion near Toby
when he coughed up the red phlegm. Auckland couldn’t afford even a minor
reduction in his lung capacity. The newcomers slept in Nadia and Rachael’s
rooms while the two were away hooking up water and temporary power at the two
more accessible mines. Johnny stayed on the distillery cot while Oleander was
supposed to be out spying on pandas; however, Yvette suspected that those two
were ‘hooking up’ in a different way.

During Rachael’s week-long absence,
the others built new rooms deeper in the cave system. The plaster was still
drying in places when the women returned from the mines. Nadia seemed
suspicious of Oleander’s cheerfulness. The power engineer tried to solicit
Yvette’s opinion as an empath. “Have you seen the two of them spending time
together alone?”

Seen, no. Heard? Yes, but she
hadn’t asked that. “No,” Yvette replied. “Excuse me, I have a mission in the
kitchen.” Toby lost a lot of weight before he bounced back. To help him
rebuild, she fixed his favorite chicken and rice dish for lunch.

Unsatisfied with the answer, Nadia
lurked at the edges of the dining hall, plying others with questions. No one
would tell her outright about the infidelity. With such cramped living
quarters, they wanted the illusion of privacy. Plus, as a former victim of
cheating, Nadia was known to overreact. Nobody wanted to be at ground zero
again.

On their day off, the doctor,
Pratibha, and the Herkemers played bridge at one of the tables, each side
chatting about plans for the plantation and bragging about the tournaments
they’d won.

Although the dish took hours to
prepare, Yvette hummed as she stirred a sauce that bubbled in a pan. The wild
rice was steamed to perfection, forming tiny hexagons.

The crew members were drawn into
the dining room to watch and smell the air. “She’s making gourmet food again.
Dios
mío
, that’s making me hungry.”

“Half butter,” Johnny, the cook,
noted. “One of her uncle’s recipes. Definitely not on the UN diet regimen.”

Auckland whispered, “The important
part is she seems to be happy again.”

The Elysium leader wandered in,
cursing as she ran simulations on
Sanctuary’s
collapse. Rachael read the
results with another policy change. “No good. Once the crops die, the air
quality decreases and people can’t live there. Eventually, the water drops
below the critical threshold and our ship is like a submarine that sinks in the
San Marinas Trench. The whole shell implodes. The impact in the desert looks
like the forerunners flew low and tried to eject just before the disaster.”

Yvette shaved curls from a fragrant
block of pale cheese onto Toby’s plate.

Johnny asked, “So, do you think the
pandas came from the crash?”

Auckland shook his head. “From what
we could tell, only seeds survived.”

“Why do pandas even have fur in
this heat?” Johnny asked. “Everything else is almost bald.”

The team debated, and Auckland shared Olympus theories. “In caves and at night the planet is cool enough to need
fur. Red insists the reason is probably waterproofing. The natives stay
outdoors in the rain and swim frequently. Sojiro believes the L pandas are
modified Earth stock and evolution hasn’t bred the old traits out of them yet.”

Rachael glanced up from her
computer as Nadia whispered something in her ear.

“How did Zeiss take the news about
the shuttle staying?” asked Johnny.

“He didn’t mind,” the leader
relayed, “but Snowflake made two of the control couches disappear soon after
you left. Only four planners are left. None of you are allowed back into the
ecosphere until we pass the test.”

Risa said, “With the environment
degradation in
Sanctuary
, we’re adding another gift per year. Since
Zeiss wanted numerals before copper, I slipped that one in. That way, we can
have addition next year.”

“They have numbers,” Johnny said.
“I’ve heard them. They count up to twenty, and that’s a person’s worth. Twenty
people are a village, and twenty villages are a tribe. They can count up to
8000 that way.”

Risa said, “Trust me, math will be
easier with Arabic numerals instead of tick marks. Although, we may also need
to change the names for each digit place so they can conceptualize larger
values. We’re also giving them a zero, which will blow their minds.”

After she pulled the dessert out of
the oven, Yvette announced, “There. I made enough for everyone. I’ll be back
when this cools. Please leave a slice of the soufflé for Toby.” There was loud
approval as people grabbed plates. “But since I did Johnny’s chore for today,
he should do mine.”

Herk chuckled. “Repainting the
camouflage on the distillery? Johnny was the one
sleeping
there most
recently. Sounds fair.”

Rachael glanced from her boyfriend
to Oleander, the tall blonde who he had allowed to slip in front of him in
line.

“Wait,” Johnny said. “We already
painted it a couple times.”

Risa nodded. “Yeah. It wears off in
the sandstorms and has to be reapplied every so often. We’ve all painted at
least once. You’ve just been skipped because you’re
dating
the woman
making up the schedule.”

“I think that would be a good
idea,” Rachael said, frostily. “It might build a little character. Does anyone
want to volunteer to help him?” No one raised a hand. “I didn’t think so.”

On Mercy’s third wedding anniversary, she woke at six in the
morning. She didn’t want to, but she had to report the air and ground moisture
measurements along with a hundred other pointless values. She didn’t need the
numbers because she could tell the low humidity by the static around the house.
Zeiss should be thawing in three hours.
She had just enough time to walk
to Olympus, shower the sweat off, and change before the meeting. Glancing out
the window at the brown of the dying trees and grass beyond the Hollow made her
cover her head with the pillow.

Ever in tune to her moods, Lou
stirred. “What’s wrong, beautiful?”

“We’re dying. Everyone is dying: us
and the pandas. Toby’s study proves the outer tribes aren’t having enough
births to grow at a healthy rate. They still lose half the babies, which
explains why they adapted to have twins so often. Their population should be
surging by now from all the extra food. Instead, the independent tribes are
like the bees on earth—one bad winter and they could be gone. Toby thinks it’s
because the females are only fertile 1 or 2 percent of the time. For humans,
that’s the condom failure rate.”

“We’re making a difference,” Lou
said, kissing her forehead.

“Not enough.”

“Hear about the man who jumped off
a hundred-floor building and lived to tell about it?”

“No,” she replied.

“He told the people on floor 98,
97, 96 . . .”

She giggled, and his next kiss
caressed the warm spot under her right ear. His beard tickled her neck and
shoulder.
Oh, yes.
When she stroked his side affectionately, she
discovered he had nothing on but his Speedo. His abs still felt like Tarzan’s.
Just as she stirred to return his affections, Mercy felt like someone was
watching her.

Turning, she saw Stu standing in
the doorway wearing only his diaper. The
Llewellyn
men liked to run around unencumbered.
Stu didn’t speak yet, partly
because he could communicate most of his needs through the Collective
Unconscious. “Hey, big boy. How are you doing?” she asked her toddler.

“Ready,” growled Lou.

Mercy cleared her throat. “I think
I’ll fix all three of us some breakfast.”

Stu left the doorway to walk
silently to the kitchen. With her eyes closed, she could sense him standing
patiently beside his bowl like a pet cat.

Lou groaned from stifled foreplay.
She patted her husband’s behind as she reassured, “Don’t worry, the Zeisses
volunteered to watch Stu for four hours today while Sojiro compiles the reports
from Labyrinth.”

“Last year our date ended at around
third base,” he complained.

“Red promised no lima bean incident
this year,” she said. Licking her lips, she kissed Lou on the nipple and above
the navel. “That’s a sneak peek.”

He moaned and twisted the sheets.
“Could we have a lunch date this time? I can’t wait till evening.”

“We’ll see,” she said with a wicked
smile.

****

As it happened, Red was dying for
full gravity and the sight of anything other than the gray walls of Olympus. She had been thawed every few months and always saw the same boring thing for the
day. Red agreed they could escort Mercy back to the farm early for lunch.

When
the Zeisses arrived at the house, Red made a point of complimenting Mercy on
the décor. Her friend had taken up sewing, and every corner had some splash of
color. The second thing Red did was pick up the gorgeous, blond-haired,
blue-eyed toddler. Her own child might look like that some day. As she hugged
the scamp, she released the scent of bubble gum through the air.

She
was surprised when Stu jerked the ribbon out of her hair, causing her tresses
to cascade down. The child grinned, waving the prize triumphantly.

“He
likes ribbons,” Mercy explained.

“He
can already open a bra,” Lou bragged. Mercy elbowed him discreetly.

The
couples had a nice meal, complete with salad, soup, corn, and lasagna. Mercy
seemed the chattiest. “The chickens love the lower gravity zones, I think
because they can actually fly there.”

“What
about other animals in the ecosphere?” asked Zeiss.

“Whenever
I walk through the low-energy zones to Olympus, I just turn on the gravity
generator closest to me,” Mercy said, passing a basket of rolls. If there was
an empty spot on someone’s plate, she offered to fill it.

“The
effect is like those energy-efficient lights in the grocery store that only
turn on when you walk down that aisle,” Lou clarified.

Red
wrinkled her brow. She’d never really been to a supermarket because assassins
might catch her there. However, Conrad was signaling her to nod. “Sure.”

Obviously
starved for adult interaction, Mercy kept talking. “The lizards always try to
pounce, but they don’t expect the increased gravity.”

“Every
week, one of them breaks their neck. She has a lot of lizard recipes now,” Lou
said. “With enough oregano, you’d never be able to tell.”

Red
stopped with the fork a centimeter from her mouth.

“Gotcha,”
Mercy said with a smile. “Don’t worry. That’s turkey.”

Stu
looked at her with red sauce smeared on his face. He didn’t care what his mom
fixed; it was all good.

After
they finished the main course, Mercy laid out cookies for the guests. Then Lou
cleared the plates while Stu resisted being cleaned with a washcloth. As the
child reached for a cookie with determination, Mercy put her hand on her hip.
“If I give you a cookie, you promise to keep it out of your hair and go down
for your nap like a good boy?”

Stu
blinked his long lashes earnestly. Red handed him the biggest cookie.

“Suck
up,” Mercy said. “He won’t remember that bribe an hour from now.”

Red
leaned in to baby talk the happy toddler. “Tell Mommy there’s a reason Mira is
your favorite aunt.”

Zeiss
pushed himself away from the table and said, “You two get going on your date.
I’ll do the dishes.”

“Beers
are in the cooler on the back porch,” Lou said, removing his apron.

Mercy
put Stu in his crib, gave Red the magic lab coat, and hugged her friend
good-bye. “Thank you.”

As
the celebrating couple departed, Zeiss commented on a squeak in the front
door’s hinge. Together, Red and Conrad washed the dishes but couldn’t put all
of them away. Red whispered, “I have no idea how she has this kitchen arranged,
and Mercy is an organization freak. Just leave the rest here, and come try out
the porch swing with me.”

In
the quiet of the afternoon, Red rocked on the swing, staring at the extensive
gardens. She worried about all the picking tomorrow, whereas Conrad paced the
wooden porch. She said, “Technically, this is our first whole day off together
in almost four years.”

“We’ve
been inactive for too long. I feel useless,” he said. “I’m the commander. I
should
do
something.”

“Maybe
one of those beers would help,” she said, going to fetch two.

As
she returned, Zeiss said, “A few of those latticework boards on the porch look
loose, too. You know, Lou probably hasn’t been maintaining this place like he
should. I know he’s too proud to ask for help, but it wouldn’t hurt if we fixed
a few little things while he was out.”

Red
sighed, sunning herself on the porch. “You want to spend your vacation oiling
hinges and repairing woodwork, knock yourself out.” She handed her husband the
key from the lab coat. “You know where the shed is. I need my vitamin D from
sunshine or I’ll get cranky.”

Three
minutes later, Zeiss called, “Mira, you need to see this!”

She
ran, expecting a snake or a water leak. What she witnessed was more
horrible—Yuki’s map of the mountain in blue finger paint. “Get out of there!”
she told her husband. When he stepped outside, she slammed the door. “You
didn’t see that.”

“What?
This is important. The Magi have been hiding things from us.”

“Things
that got Yuki kicked out,” she said, relocking the shed door.

“What
about the oilcan?”

“Back
to the porch before something sees us.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him
along.

As
they snuck by the toddler’s window, the tall man peeked inside. The crib was
empty. “Uh-oh. Someone broke out of jail.”

Red
laughed. “I’ve heard he does that sometimes. I’ll bet Stu went straight for
those cookies.”

The
two tiptoed to the kitchen in order to catch the culprit in the act. No
toddler. They raced through the house. When they failed to find him, Red let a
word slip that adults shouldn’t employ around children.

“I’ll
take the front, and you take the back,” Zeiss said.

They
split up, each calling loudly. Two minutes later, Zeiss hit the emergency
broadcast button. “Sojiro, search this grid for signs of Stu. He seems to have
escaped.”

“Lou,
stop,” Mercy answered, with a giggle. “Hold on. We’re by the waterfall. Lou and
I can locate him faster.” She paused, and then panic made her voice shrill.
“Oh, God. He’s heading for the tower by the computer lab. Run.” The power lines
from Park’s generators to the house were raised eight meters above the road by
wooden lattice towers.

“Why?”
asked Red, already on the way.

“Ribbons,”
Mercy explained, panting as she jogged. Red recalled the colorful fabric strips
hanging from the tops as windsocks and to warn away low-flying robots. “Hurry!”

As
Red spotted the toddler climbing, she shouted, “No!” She ran all-out for the
base of the tower. This was all her fault.

She
heard Zeiss say, “Coming.”

Showing
no fear, Stu was almost to the top. If he fell, it could be fatal. Mercy
wouldn’t survive carrying another child with no doctors on board. Then Lou
would off himself. Three lives were on the line.

Red
clambered up the triangular support lattice so fast she developed a stitch in
her side. “Don’t move,” she ordered the toddler.

He
just giggled and went higher. Leaning out over the road, he reached for the
flapping pennon.

With
a grunt, Red grabbed his diaper from the back. Moments later, she had Stu
protectively against her chest. Eight meters was a lot higher than it sounded
when carrying a child in one arm. She descended as quickly as possible.

“Careful,”
Zeiss warned from across the road. “That’s not a ladder—”

Red
heard the crack before a piece of crosshatching the size of a paint stir-stick snapped
off in her left hand. Off balance, she tipped backwards. The moment stretched
out forever. Calling out to her husband, she said, “Catch us!”

Halfway
down, the world stopped making sense. Her stomach flipped. Her hair floated
around her for a moment like in Olympus. Zeiss cleared the last few meters in
impossible bounds and leapt into the air to enfold her. His side slowly smashed
into the wooden tower, splintering several more thin support sticks. Then, they
slid down the sloped tower as if they were sinking through water.

Only
after her feet were on the ground did Zeiss collapse to a sitting position in
pain.

“You
were amazing. How did you do that?” Red asked.

There
was a ragged gash along his side, from knee to ribs. Nails or jagged beams had
slashed his skin open. “Wasn’t me,” he said, wincing as he pulled out one of
the large splinters jutting from his forearm.

“Sojiro?”
she asked over the emergency channel.

“Not
me,” the man in Olympus replied. “Mercy adjusted a gravity generator to slow
your fall—set off all kind of alarms up here. I just watched. The waterfall
hung in midair for a while, which was really freaky because she didn’t even
bother with the voice interface this time.”

Red
looked up, and Stu followed her gaze. Standing above them on the cliff was
Mercy. One hand was joined with Lou’s and the other raised in front of her like
a movie poster of Moses parting the Red Sea. Her talent aura was blazing like a
rum Molotov cocktail. Lou was limp on the ground.

Stu
reached his arm out to mirror his mother’s and said, “Again!”

****

The
women pulled the wagon carrying their husbands and an excited toddler downhill
toward Olympus for medical treatment. Stu wore earphones and listened to
something called the Wiggles. Lou had to be knocked out for the pain.

Red
asked, “What the hell just happened?”

“Lou
gave me too much through our link. He tastes blood, and his ears are ringing.
He needs time in a healing pod,” Mercy replied. “Without a doctor, Z will, too.
We have about forty left.”

Red
asked, “How were you able to float down off that cliff like a Hollywood angel?”

“Lou
couldn’t walk, and I couldn’t carry him.”

“But
how
?” Red stressed.

“I’ve
been gradually growing more sensitive to the ship. I can hear it through the
Collective Unconscious. With Lou’s help I could make
Sanctuary
hear me
as well,” Mercy said, staring at her child in the wagon.