The Magister (Earthkeep) (9 page)

"It swallows the light," Reggie said.

"It's a Swallower," said Enrique.

Zude blinked.  Something stirred at the edge of her memory . . . that name.  But Maiz interrupted her thoughts. 

"A tiny black hole perhaps?" their pilot speculated.  "I regret that we have no probes on this pod so we could reach out to it." 

She released the hover and eased the phaeton away from the cliff.  They started slowly downward again.

"Maybe the holofilm will show something," Ria mused, pausing the holocorder and staring back at the disappearing Swallower.

Maiz was addressing the comunit.  "420 and still on descent."

"Are you dawdling again,
Sojourner
?" chided Tiny's voice. 

"Affirmative." Maiz smiled.  "I suggest you expect an unusually long silence from us when we go under the destroyer some minutes from now.  We have inquisitive passengers, and our holo-artist wants to experiment with both figure and color."

She glanced up to catch the Magister's smile.  Ria grunted and replaced a holocartridge.

Tiny's acknowledgement was the last they heard from her for a long stretch.  The phaeton continued her drop.

"Destroyer ho!" Zude whispered suddenly.

And there she was, still many meters below them, the huge old war vessel lying almost upright, listing only slightly against the cliff wall.  Her hull was broken by several craters, one that might have been a torpedo's point of exit.  Over half of her bulk was supported by a wide ledge, but a huge portion of her stern cleared the shelf and hung free, cantilevered over the deeps.

Zude studied the abandoned form below them.  She thought she could make out anti-aircraft stations on the bow, and certainly those unsubstantial protrusions further aft were hangers for depth charges.

"My usual rap," Maiz told them, "would inform you now that this was a U.S. Navy war vessel with a displacement of 1,700 tons.  Her propeller was driven by diesel power or perhaps by steam turbines.  She cruised at 36 knots, about 40 miles an hour." 

The Lieutenant Commander shifted her attention to the comunit.  "
Sojourner
reporting.  We are at the destroyer site holding steady."  Her eyes roamed the screens and manifold reads.  "All systems in peak condition.  We will notify you when we dip under the vessel.  Give us 10 minutes there for our holocordering.  We will hail you upon emergence." 

"Acknowledged,
Sojourner
."

To Ria she said, "I'll take us in as close to the cliff as I can.  We'll drop to her starboard side, there where she juts out off the shelf.  Then you can get a continuous shot of the descent and the hull bottom as we go below her."

Ria nodded and balanced herself in a flexible squatting posture.  Zude, across the pod from Ria, gathered the two children to her, placing them at good vantage for the approach to the ship below.  The destroyer was bathed now in the full range of lights from the phaeton.  As they drew nearer, the ship's features, though still a monochromatic blue-gray, seemed to emerge from the darkness.  From a bent hook swung a heavy chain, describing an arc of a few feet.  Glassless ports stared empty-eyed into the ocean.  A collapsed railing scraped the deck at eccentric intervals.  Zude could not shake the feeling that the vessel was alive, if only with memories of the men who had sunk with her to their deaths.

"We are moving down the gunwale now," Maiz told the Seadrome, noting the time.  "You will hear from us in 10 minutes, Tiny. 
Sojourner
out."

"Acknowledged,
Sojourner
.  Hurry ba. . ."  Tiny Nauru's voice snapped off abruptly, seconds before the pod reached the bottom of the destroyer's hull and slid beneath her.  Zude was struck by the utter stillness that followed the loss of contact with the Seadrome.  The soft subliminal hum of the comline had accompanied them since their launching.  Without it now, the phaeton was a silent circle moving soundlessly in the deeps.

Here behind the ship with the cliff so close, the mood was vastly changed.  Space was more cramped, the lights bounced off the destroyer with a subdued resilience, and Zude felt somehow the servant of this ancient wreck rather than its explorer.

"Yes!  Ah, what a sweep!"  Ria bent to keep the destroyer's hull in her viewer.  "Great, Maizie."

Maiz drew the phaeton to a hover stance, only inches, it seemed, from an ungainly apparatus protruding from the very end of the ship. 

"What is it?" Regina cried, pointing.

"That's the propeller, Redge," said Zude. 

It was at that moment, out of her years of lazy rest against the cliffside, that the destroyer executed one of her tiny shifts in position.  Perhaps she scratched a microscopic itch, or accommodated with a minute shrug to some texture in the corner of a dream.  In fact the old ship had frequently shifted her various slopes and planes over the decades, nestling herself ever more inexorably into the rock that lent her its couch.

This particular shift differed from countless others only in the fact that it gave at last a long-awaited margin of movement to one of the vessel's depth charges that had been wedged between its packing and a crushed portal placement.  Deprived of its purpose of destroying enemy submarines, it had languished disappointed in its watery prison, tapping incessantly against its strictures and awaiting the moment of release.  Now it suddenly floated free and drifted out over the port side of the stern.  It dropped into the triangle between the cliff and the suspended hull, descending slowly into the lights of the Sea Shrievalty's phaeton just below.

"Look out!" Ria cried, sighting the drum only a split second before Maiz saw it.  The Commander's quick response was in time to prevent full impact of the ancient little bomb, but the drum brushed against the pod on its way to the depths beneath them.  That brush and the force of Maiz's evasive action thrust the phaeton hard into the cliff behind it.

A crash.  Lights died and alarms sounded. 
Sojourner
's passengers were thrown against the walls of the phaeton and its center shaft.  The children shrieked.

"Reggie!"  Ria reached for her daughter even as she cushioned the assault of Enrique's body against her chest.

"Mami!" called Regina.  She hung on to the arm of a seat cup as it wheeled out of control.  Zude caught her before she struck the console.

"Ria!  Are you all right?"  Zude realized that the searchlights were out, that the pod was in almost total darkness.  Only control panels glowed or blinked urgently.  She hugged Regina and felt for the solidity of Ria and Enrique.

"Fine.  Fine, Zude," Ria said.  Enrique shrieked.  "He's hit his head.  But he's okay.  Reggie?" 

"I'm here, mami.  Here."  She reached out to find Ria's lap, her eyes showing her fear. 

Ria held both her offspring.  "Great Goddess, what happened?"

"Don't know."  Zude moved toward Lieutenant Commander Maiz, whose fingers were shadows flying over orbs and through force fields.

"Damages?" Maiz asked the computer.  "Damage account!"  Her voice was louder, her fingers flew faster.  "Computer, assess and recount!"

The compuvox was steady.  "Hull intact.  Core crystal coherence 100% dispersed and lateral matrices splayed in polaric stasis.  Pressure at 80%.  Life support at 83% and falling.  Emergency measures require manual initiation."

"I'm cold!" cried Enrique.

"Yes, preshi," cooed Ria.  "We'll be okay."

"Commander, what was that -- that drum?"

"A depth charge, Magister.  Shaken loose.  It only brushed us.  Not hard enough to explode." 

Maiz's hands were flying again.  Her white head bounced back and forth from one monitor to another.  The compuvox spoke. 

"Oxygen at 79.1%."

"If it could still explode," Zude added, a question in her voice.

Maiz did not meet Zude's eyes.  "It could, Magister."

Suddenly Zude was cold too.  Like ice. 

"It will drop to the bottom?" 

Maiz nodded.  She pressed in a calculation.  "It will take almost an hour for the charge to reach the bottom of the trench.  I'm not sure how much danger we are in from its impact.  More urgent is the fact that
Sojourner
is becalmed, and I can't raise the emergency systems.  Excuse me, Magister." 

She circled the center shaft, issuing occasional vocal commands, her hands weaving over tabs and activating the array of screens.

Zude spoke to Ria and the children.  "We're in trouble."  She stroked Enrique's head.  "Relax and breathe shallow.  Slow."  She demonstrated for Reggie and Enrique. 

"Oxygen?"

"Don't know, Ria.  Maizie will tell us in a moment.  Important thing to do now is to keep warm and relax."

"Relax!" Ria began again.  Then she caught herself.  "We can do that, huh, Reggie?  Rique?"

"Sure you can."  Zude grinned at the children, both obediently intent upon being calm.  "Close your eyes and pretend you're in your hidey-hole, sleeping away until Boisterous Bear finds you and brings you breakfast."

"Of honey," Reggie said bravely.

"Of real honey," Ria echoed, nodding to Zude.  "Real honey and corn cakes."  She adjusted the seat cup and jostled them to more comfort on her lap, kissing the small bump rising on Enrique's forehead.

Zude turned back to their pilot.  Her chest felt tight.  The compuvox sounded. 

"Oxygen at 61.8."

Maiz was muttering in the dim lights, her face a map of growing consternation. 

"Magister," she said, finally letting her hands drop, "our emergency procedures fail to respond.  We can sustain pressure in the pod, but I cannot activate the reserve air and heat necessary for us to survive until rescue."

The two Kanshou looked at each other wordlessly.  Zude broke the connection by leaning over Maiz's shoulder.  The list that filled the screen in front of them seemed vaguely familiar. 

"Those are codes?  For accessing emergency measures?"

"Affirmative.  Checked and double-checked before launch and now inoperable." 

Maiz's jawline tightened.  Zude studied the screen. 

"Commander, when you check the codes before launch, do you put the measures into full operation?"

"Negative, Magister.  That would activate them unnecessarily.  All that's required is assurance that the codes are in place." 

Without warning, the voice of Commander Raola Ark prodded Zude's memory: "
Doctor, I have the new computer codes. . ."
  Zude dropped to one knee beside the pilot and pointed urgently to the monitor before them.  "Commander, that's what happened.  Jass took the new codes!" 

Lieutenant Commander Maiz looked askance at the Magister kneeling beside her. 

Zude tapped the screen.  "The codes were revamped, right, after the regular upgrade of the phaetons?"

"Of course.  And locked into the system."

"Wrong on that count, Commander.  Before you got to the Seadrome, Commander Ark gave Dr. Egarber the comcube for the
Sojourner
.  When he left he took it with him."

Realization crept over Maiz's face.  "Then these are the old codes."  She shook her head.  "Magister. . ."

Zude leaned toward Ria.  "Jass's subvention belt," she said abruptly.  "The comcube may be in one of the pockets."

Ria pointed with her chin to the belt on the floor, now couching the microcorder.  "There."

Zude snatched at the belt, exploring its compartments.  She shook her head.  "Nothing."  Again to Maiz.  "Are there patterns to the codes, Commander?  Could you predict what the new ones might have been?  Run a search?"

"Right."  Maiz was already at work inputting variables and calling up probabilities.  The air was distinctly chilly. The compuvox reported. 

"Oxygen at 50.1."

"Ri," Zude said, now back in her seat cup. 

Ria stroked Regina's black curls.  "We're in big trouble, right?"

"Maybe.  The oxygen has crashed, and we can't access the reserve.  They'll get a rescue phaeton to us.  We just need to last until then."  She checked her tacto-time.  "They won't even start worrying about us for another eight minutes.  Then it's a twenty-minute trip to the trench."

"We'll freeze first."  Ria rubbed the bundles on her lap. 

As if on cue, Enrique bawled, "I'm cold!"

"You are, you are," Zude told him.  She unfolded her Magister cape from its pouch.  "This will keep you warm as toast."  She draped the tekla over the children and secured it behind Ria's back, making a cocoon of its special textures.  "Can you breathe in there?"  She ducked her head under the cape.

"It's a tent, Zude," Reggie said.

"Right.  It allows you your air.  Can you go to sleep?"

"We'll try," Ria answered for them.  "But Zude -"

Zude stopped her.  "Relax.  We're not licked yet.  Look, I saw those codes on the screen.  If it's true as Bosca says that everything we see is still in our cells somewhere. . ."  She reclined the seat cup and stretched out.  "I'm about to attempt total recall." 

"Magister, we need only the first two codes to activate our life support."  Maiz spoke without interrupting her task.

"Good.  Now just let me relax.  I might be able to do this."

"I can't reach your hand, Zudie," said Ria.  "Imagine that I'm holding it."

"Your foot will do," Zude whispered, laying her hand on the toe of Ria's boot.  She closed her eyes.  As she breathed herself down into a lighter state, Zude heard the compuvox register oxygen at 38.2.  She took one precious deep breath of air and let some ease soak through her muscles. 

Deliberately she replayed the scene in the Seadrome.  There was the comcube, leaping out of the Manifest port; there was Jass pocketing the cube.  The screen, what was on the screen?  Zude breathed herself deeper still.  There, the list of numbers!  But what were they?  She peered at the memory of the screen.  Each line had consisted of some 20 numbers, interspersed with a series of letters.  Just the first two lines, that's all she needed.  Just the first two lines.

Bosca, where are you!she muttered under her breath.  I may have seen them, but not a one of those numbers is coming back to me!  She tried for another deep breath and panicked to realize that she couldn't execute it.  The phaeton was becoming stuffy.