The Darwin Elevator (28 page)

But they didn’t understand. The third mural, almost identical to the second, showed Earth at the bottom. Darwin, and the Elevator, but with a critical difference.

A vague, ghostly column stretched the length of the cord. Iconic depictions of strange buildings crowded the ground within the column. Disks were spaced evenly along the cord itself, all the way to the top. All within the column.

Nothing existed outside that ethereal shape. Only blackness.

They’d thought it to be another guidance. Build a grand city around the Elevator. Build space stations. The rest of the planet didn’t matter now, so it had been left out of the picture.

The version of Neil in this video, now past sixty, quipped how they were well along this path. Darwin had blossomed since the Elevator arrived, and it showed no signs of slowing. Platz Industries had already begun construction of a number of space stations, just like the mural showed.

They would understand, shortly after SUBS began to sweep the planet. When they realized Darwin was safe, in an eight-kilometer circle that stretched to the top of the Elevator. A cylinder, with blackness outside. So goddamn obvious, after the fact.

The mural had been a warning.
Contain yourselves here, puny humans. A purge cometh.

A tear rolled down Neil’s cheek and he wiped it away with an angry swipe. The end of the footage loomed like a sentencing. He knew he should stop there. Why suffer such torture again? Nothing good had ever come of it.

One last look. So I never forget.

The third video segment began, twelve years after the last. Just weeks after the SUBS outbreak. The footage began like the others, except this time the passenger seat was empty. Sandeep had taken the shuttle, alone. The beginning of his swan song.

“Billions are dead because of your greed,” he’d raged earlier that day, over the radio. Neil, safe in Darwin, had listened in silence. “And
still
you want to go on! To keep the future for yourself! Can’t you see it is a curse? I will not go along, not anymore. The world, whatever’s left of it, will know the truth. Tania will know the truth!”

Neil wondered, for the thousandth time, if he should have gone along on the mission. Maybe if he’d been there with him, in person, he could have talked sense into the man. But he’d asked Sandeep to make the trip to Foreshadow alone that time. There was too much chaos on the ground, too much to do.

Faced with Sandeep’s threats, Neil did the only thing he could think to do. He’d sent the remote commands needed to shut down the tiny outpost station. The air processors stopped. The data feeds to ground died. Soon Sandeep would, too. Neil could claim a malfunction and that would be that.

The footage rolled on, like a bullet train heading toward a ravine. Neil couldn’t bring himself to fast-forward now. He sank deep into the couch and watched.

Sandeep took the only action he could: He went to the shuttle and powered it up. It would buy him air, and thus time. He sat there for a while before launching. He could have made a desperate run for the Elevator, to dock with one of the stations there.

Alas, no. Sandeep had only one thing on his mind, and it wasn’t survival. Reason had long left him. He took the shuttle straight to Foreshadow, suited up, and began construction of his bomb.

A simple device. Crude, yet ultimately effective. Compressed fuel canisters, a clever detonator made from parts yanked out of the shuttle’s cockpit. For the next hour Sandeep went back and forth, from the shuttle to the mural chamber, bringing the components and connecting them.

And with maddening, deliberate care, he kept his gaze away from the fourth mural. Above all else, he didn’t want Neil to know what image displayed there.

Neil had watched this part of the video a dozen times, frame by frame, trying to catch a glimpse. But only a tiny portion ever came into view, enough to know the fourth panel had indeed lit up, but nothing more.

Finally ready, Sandeep rested. He sat for a while and stared at his makeshift explosive. Then, at the end, he removed a grease pen from his utility pack and wrote a note on the side of one fuel canister. He drew out the block letters with calm deliberation and then stared at it, making sure the video caught his words.

I DO THIS TO END YOUR MADNESS, NOT MINE

YOU HAVE THE BLOOD OF THE EARTH ON YOUR HANDS

Static, then.

The deed was done. Foreshadow Station, the first of the Builder’s vessels, became nothing more than a cloud of debris expanding into the emptiness of space, or into the atmosphere to burn up.

No record existed of the fourth panel. No possible way to ever see the fifth or sixth. Neil carried only the knowledge of
when
the events would occur. The schedule, mapped out with simple markings between the murals. Earth’s orbit around the sun as a constant, shown in multiples and then fractions. Sandeep worked out the pattern: each event a 0.42 reduction in time from the last. Neil had spent the last year trying to coax Tania into figuring out the pattern on her own, lest he be forced to admit his insight to the plan.

Neil glanced at the data cube, and the printed label on the side. Numbers, random to anyone else, but to him they laid out the time between each of the six events.

27.86, 11.70, 4.91, 2.06, 0.87

Twenty-seven plus years between Foreshadow and the Elevator. Almost twelve before SUBS arrived. The five-year gap since then arriving imminently.

Neil had yet to wrap his head around the meager two years they would get before the fifth event, and not even a single trip around the sun before the finale.

HHe alone carried the Builder’s timeline, like a one-ton boulder shackled to his ankle. That and the knowledge that he’d killed Sandeep. He’d murdered Tania’s father. And now, in a twist of fate that chewed away at his gut, she was helping to fill in the blanks left behind by her father’s actions. He’d even sent her out to Hawaii, among the subhumans. He’d asked her to risk her life to discover what he already knew, simply to let someone else figure out the schedule. To earn valid pretense to act more deliberately, to get a head start.

Sandeep had failed, in that sense. Neil’s madness, if the term applied, never abated. He felt more thirst than ever to know what the Builders would do next.

The future,
his
future, depended on it.

Chapter Nineteen

Above Darwin, Australia

4.FEB.2283

When the countdown ended, nothing happened. The ship should have fallen out and away—a backward swan dive from one hundred kilometers.

“Where’s my release?” Skyler asked.

They were well above the atmosphere, yet the
Melville
remained firmly attached to the climber.

Angus reached above his head and toggled the release-readiness switch. Twice, and then a third time. Despite showing green, nothing happened. “Canceling the push-away,” he said. “Malfunction?”

“Jesus. Ours?”

“Has to be theirs. We’re green on this side.”

Skyler leaned forward, trying to scan the cockpit displays for errors that Angus had missed. Ultimately Gateway had final control over release. A safety mechanism, to prevent the ship from separating too early, or too late. The indicator from their side showed green as well. “Maybe that power blip earlier caused it?”

Angus shrugged. Hours ago, at the start of the ascent, the climber car had stalled for a few seconds. Nightcliff control had said, in a pointedly worried tone, not to worry.

The intercom crackled. “What the fuck, guys?” Samantha said through the speaker.

Skyler elbowed it, forcing it to the off position.

In the pilot’s seat, Angus held up a hand. They could both hear the voice through their headsets.

“
Melville,
this is Gateway control. Detecting a code red failure in the primary latch. Confirm.”

Skyler put a hand on Angus’s shoulder, indicating he would handle it.

“Control, this is
Melville
. Confirmed, we’re still attached.”

They waited thirty seconds in silence.

“Did they hear you?” Angus asked.

“Control,” Skyler said into the microphone, “
Melville
. Confirm primary latch failure. How about a switch to secondary?”

“
Melville,
there is only the primary,” came the voice.

“Why the hell is it called ‘primary’ then?” Skyler muttered.

An uncomfortable minute passed.

“
Melville
,” came the voice, “we have to bring you on up to Gateway to troubleshoot.”

Angus turned in his seat to look directly at Skyler. His eyebrows arched so high, they almost disappeared under his helmet.

“Control, repeat please. You’re bringing us up there?”

“Affirmative,
Melville
.”

Skyler grinned. “Copy. How about a grand tour while we’re there, eh?”

“Negative,” the voice said. “You will remain on board at all times.”

“How long is this repair going to take?” he asked.

Another long delay. “Unknown,” they came back with, after a few moments.

The possibility that the mission might end before it started tugged at Skyler. More than a week had passed since the return from Hawaii with no news, and no new requests, from their benefactor.

Skyler had tried, twice, to get information on Tania’s status. The guards at the Nightcliff gate turned him away, though he suspected they didn’t know anything. A crane operator, whom Skyler found in a hookah bar not far from the fortress, was friendly enough and, after a small bribe, willing to ask around. He didn’t come back the next day as promised.

Then Prumble had received a specific order from Platz for a set of spare filtration units that were, hopefully, sitting in a long-abandoned warehouse in Abu Dhabi. The mission came as a welcome break in the monotony, and Skyler figured Prumble could ask about Tania when the goods were ultimately delivered.

Samantha opened the cockpit door and floated halfway inside. “What the hell’s going on?”

“We’re stuck,” said Angus.

“No shit. Takai looks like he’s going to piss himself back here.”

“Not now, Sam,” Skyler said.

It took another hour for the climber to reach Gateway. A pair of robotic arms extended from the inner ring and began to unload the cargo containers attached.

Skyler and Angus watched as two workers, in full space-walk gear, drifted out from an airlock just above the main cargo bay. They floated past the
Melville
’s canopy and disappeared from view.

After twenty minutes of silence, the radio crackled to life. “
Melville
, Gateway. Clamp’s frozen in the locked position. Going to take about eighteen hours to fix.”

Skyler shook his head. “No can do, Gateway. We’re not outfitted for an extended stay. Not enough air.”

“We will extend a transfer tube.”

“No airlock for it. We’re only designed to drop from the Van Allen.”

Another long pause on the other end. “All right,
Melville
. We’re going to disconnect the whole climber section and bring it and your ship inside. We can do the work in here.”

“We’re supposed to stay in here for eighteen hours?” Skyler said.

A different voice came over the air. “Without proper decontamination, you must remain—”

“Decon us then,” he said. “Nothing we haven’t been through before.”

“God,” Angus said, “not that again.”

Another long period without a reply. Then, “You and your crew will be under escort, and must remain in Section B. You will leave all weapons and contraband on board.”

“Section B,” Skyler said. “Sounds thrilling.”

Before long, the
Melville,
with a large portion of the climber attachment, was tucked safely inside one of the giant cargo loading docks. After thirty minutes of waiting for the huge room to pressurize, the crew received permission to exit the ship.

A man in a yellow hazard suit and protective mask greeted them. He led them through a tunnel to the outer edge of the station. Gravity slowly returned to normal as they traveled toward the rim.

At the entrance to Decontamination, the man directed Samantha to a separate medical area. She made a rude gesture behind her back as she walked away.

“This way, please,” the man said to Skyler, Angus, and Takai.

Skyler thought the contrast between here and Nightcliff couldn’t be sharper. Clean white walls, air that didn’t churn the stomach, and a professional staff.

“Please disrobe,” the man said, “and enter through there. I’ll have your clothing disinfected.”

Skyler followed the instructions silently. Angus and Takai followed his example. The door led to a narrow industrial shower. Takai made his way into the room last, and the moment the door closed all three were inundated with hot water from nozzles on the ceiling. The liquid smelled like it contained additional chemicals.

Under the warm water, Skyler began to relax. He tried to remember the last hot shower he’d taken, but came up with nothing. “I could get used to this,” he said.

Angus grunted agreement.

Decontamination went by much faster compared to the medieval methods in Nightcliff. Drying himself, Skyler wondered if Tania was still down there, and how she fared. There had been no word of her fate since Skyler and crew were released eight days earlier.

An idea came to him, as part of a daydream. He could deliberately incur another inspection and thus another trip through the fortress. He saw himself staging a breakout, rescuing the gorgeous doctor, fleeing into the danger and chaos of the Maze. The brigand hero and his dark princess, escaping the madman’s castle—

“You lover boys enjoy the shower?” Sam asked as they exited the medical center.

The daydream faded. “Sam! Hardly recognized you all cleaned up.”

She grabbed her crotch and squeezed like a rugby captain. “They’ve got a tavern here. How cool is that?”

Skyler turned to their escort. A true guard now, wearing a black security uniform, armed with some kind of stun gun. “Is that in Section B?”