The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (60 page)

Her eyelids could not shut out the brightness. Neither could the meter or two of water she dared put between herself and the sun. But she didn't cook, her hair didn't flame, the air didn't sear her lungs going in. She would survive.
Dive, surface, dive, surface. Finally the light grew dim, then with extreme suddenness went out entirely. Once again Caroline had been blinded. She relaxed and adopted the "drown proof" floating posture. This was definitely a good news/bad news sort of situation. She was alive, but this also meant other things might live in the sea. On the other hand she hadn't seen anything floating or swimming by when the sun was up, and she'd been able to see damn near all the way to the bottom.
She felt itching, and knew her sunburn was now much worse. Water is transparent to ultraviolet light. Well, there was nothing she could do about it.
Finally her sight returned enough for her to tell which direction to swim. She had drifted slightly off-course during her desperate cycle of diving and breathing. She corrected her course, and kept swimming.

The ship's metal wall was smooth and featureless, and it slipped out of the water almost vertically without obvious handholds or openings. Caroline swam around it, looking for a way up.
The ship had crashed hard, and its seamless hull was split in several places. The sea had entered through these, filling the ship's lower section with water. Caroline squeezed through one of these openings and found herself enveloped in nearly perfect darkness. It was cave darkness, and she knew her eyes would never adapt to it. Working entirely by feel she found the edge of what had been a wall or bulkhead or floor before it had been broken in the crash, and she hoisted herself out of the water.
The gap where she had entered was barely visible, a lesser darkness outlined by perfect black. She heard the waves lapping at the walls around her. The floor, if that's what it was, was tilted at a small angle, a few degrees at most. From echoes Caroline estimated that she was in a smallish room, less than three meters square for certain, but it was hard to tell because of the break.
Exhausted, she finally let herself collapse for a few hours of fitful sleep. She had been awake for twenty-six straight hours.

Working entirely by feel, she began to explore. An hour of careful work told her that the ship was more or less upright, and she was at least standing on a floor. She found the outline of a door, and mounting bolts where furniture or equipment had once been fixed in place. She supposed that the room's contents had all gone out the gap when the ship crashed.
The door wasn't latched, and she was able to slide it aside. The echoes told her this was a hallway.
Through her useless skills, an ability to think like someone of Lawrence's age and temperament, and not a little luck, Caroline had already passed tests that would have eliminated most of the good citizens of Cyberspace. But there were plenty of other surprises he might throw at her, depending on just how seriously he wanted to be left alone and by whom. If his intention was to limit his visitors to those who had been around before the Change, there might not be any more difficulties. On the other hand, if he wanted everyone to stay the hell away, her problems might have only just begun.
In the dark ship there would be lots of opportunities to kill her, Caroline knew. There could be holes in floors, airless or poison-filled chambers, sharp edges and dangerous objects galore. The ship could also be inhabited, though she'd seen no evidence of life yet and didn't really expect that particular challenge. Caroline thought about all of this as she edged down the hall, carefully testing the floor and following the wall, until she found another door.
It was locked.
Caroline found the fifth door was different. She was able to force it open, and almost stepped through when she realized it didn't have a floor. It was a vertical shaft.
She felt around the sides and almost fell through the door before she realized there was a ladder within her reach. Instinct told her to go up, and she wasn't eager to keep trying doors on the half-submerged level where she had entered. Working very slowly, she moved herself onto the ladder. She could hear the water lapping not far below her; it had filled the shaft to the level of the sea outside.
Hooking an elbow through one rung of the ladder, she hung on and clapped her hands sharply. The sound echoed several times, and Caroline smiled in the darkness as she worked out the period. There were three echoes in the time it took her heart to beat once. That meant the echo time was about a fifth of a second, which made the shaft (if Lawrence had not altered the speed of sound for some reason) about seventy meters high. The rungs were about a third of a meter apart, so she knew she should expect to find the top of the shaft after counting a couple of hundred rungs.
Now she began to climb, one rung at a time, feeling at each step for the next rung, for another door, for hazards. She found the next door after counting twelve rungs. She couldn't force it open, but it didn't matter; she wanted to go higher anyway.
The third door came open for her, revealing only more blackness. As did the sixth and seventh, and the tenth. The fifteenth door came open for her too. She had only counted a hundred and eighty-six rungs, but something outside that broken door caught her eye and she carefully eased herself out of the shaft.
There was a light.