One gloved hand trailing along the pontoon’s crumbling concrete wall, Aiah follows the cable and hopes that, if a junction appears, it will be within arm’s reach. The cable is above her, fixed to the pontoon wall above her head with iron staples as thick as Davath’s arm.
—Ethemark? she sends.
No answer. He has been with the party only intermittently—with the head of the Plasm Enforcement Division wandering around in Caraqui’s sweat-walled basements, Ethemark has a lot more distractions in the office than usual.
He might, Aiah thinks charitably, be scouting up ahead.
“Careful,” says Davath. “Slippery here.”
The catwalk is covered with guano, probably from a bat or bird colony somewhere overhead. The stuff has mixed with seawater to form a slick white clay that slides treacherously beneath Aiah’s boots. Aiah steps cautiously in the mess.
Beyond, one of the cables supporting the catwalk has broken or rusted away, and the catwalk sags into the water at a dangerous angle. Aiah is breathless by the time she gets to the other side, and her boots are full of water. She wishes that when she realized the junction had gone astray, she had thought to go back for her boat.
“Here it is, miss!” Davath increases his pace along a sturdier section of catwalk, and Aiah breathlessly follows. Davath’s hand torch and helmet lamp play on a junction box and rotator, both of them bolted to the side of the pontoon where another cable joins from the pontoon above.
“Looks like a temporary installation,” Davath says, but his torch shows big deposits of rust scarring the ostensibly stainless surface of the rotator box, and it is obvious that the junction has been here for years. Decades, probably.
—Ethemark? Aiah sends again.
Nothing. She scans the wall for a communications box for her portable handset, and doesn’t find one.
Wonderful. Now they’ve found their objective, but they have no way to tell anyone they’ve reached it.
And they can’t just cut the plasm here, because the taps have to be turned all at once, otherwise the mages at Xurcal will know what’s happening and take steps to prevent it.
Davath, no sign of frustration crossing his cinder-block face, unshoulders the cutting torch and its heavy gas cylinders, which he’s been carrying this long distance. His body is built for carrying burdens, and he shows little sign of weariness.
He places the cylinders gently onto the catwalk. “Whenever you’re ready, miss,” he says.
“I’m waiting for Ethemark. He’s… off somewhere.”
“Very good, miss.”
Prestley reaches into his jumpsuit for a cigaret. He lights it and the three wait in silence, the darkness warm and close around them. Drips of water fall steadily from above, plash into the water nearby.
Aiah’s nerves jump at the sound of bolts being thrown, and then yellow light pours out into the darkness as a hatch is thrown open only a few paces away, farther along the plasm line.
“Senko only knows where we are,” a voice says, and then a helmeted man steps from the hatch onto the catwalk. He stares at them for a startled instant before raising his boxy black pistol and pointing it straight at Davath.
“Hold it right there!” he says, a thread of panic in his voice.
Aiah can only stare at him, heart hammering in her throat, as another two police follow him out onto the catwalk, weapons drawn. One of them has a submachine gun, a little gleaming wicked thing, held in his two fists.
“Who are you?” the first officer says. “What are you doing here?”
Aiah stares and tries to talk, but finds that something has stolen her breath.
Prestley shrugs and tosses his cigaret butt into the water. “We’re Plasm Bureau,” he says. “We’ve got a repair order.”
“Down here? Now?”
Prestley frowns. “Plasm gotta move, man.”
Another police voice chimes in. “Don’t you people know what’s going on?”
“Hell with that!” says the first. “I don’t believe ’em anyway!” His pistol barrel gives a little jerk toward the wall. “Up against it, all of you. Hands up on the concrete.”
Aiah mutely obeys, places her palms on the sweaty wall. She can’t seem to find her voice at all, or her mind.
She doesn’t know what to do. What she can do.
“Look at the torch!” the first cop says. “Sabotage!” He kicks the oxy cylinder with a steel-capped toe. “ID, all of you!”
His mates cover Aiah’s party with their weapons while the first cop edges out onto the catwalk behind them and begins patting down Davath. He finds the man’s ID card, looks at it in the light of his torch. “Plasm Bureau, all right. But I haven’t heard the Bureau’s on our side.” He produces a pair of handcuffs. “Put your right hand behind your back,” he says.
And then Davath moves. The huge gray body spins out of the line of fire and both hands reach out, seizing the first policeman high and low. The man gives a yelp as Davath’s big hand crushes his groin. Holding the first policeman’s body by crotch and collar, Davath charges the other two police, using their comrade as a shield.
There is a half-second’s hesitation and then guns bark out. Flashes light the huge artificial cavern. Sound hammers Aiah’s ears and she throws herself down, falling across Prestley’s legs, seawater splashing her as she sprawls on the catwalk. Over the sound of her thudding heart she hears shots, screams, and splashes; and then desperate shrieks for help.
“No! Don’t—.’” And then a horrid, crunching thud. And another. Screams. More thuds. A strange rushing sound, like an underground river. Hollow-sounding screeches that can come from no human throat.
Aiah dares to raise her eyes, sees Davath’s huge form looming against the light of police torches, an upraised gas cylinder in his hands. A desperate scream rings out. Davath brings the cylinder down, and there is a squelching thud, and the scream is cut off. Davath tries to raise the cylinder again, but instead sags against the concrete wall.
Prestley scrambles to his feet, boot-soles kicking Aiah in the face, and rushes past Davath to kneel atop the sprawled policemen. Aiah can hear him panting for breath as he makes a frantic search. One of the police whimpers. The strange rushing sound continues. The air is full of grating chirps. Prestley finds what he’s looking for and rises. Aiah can see the outline of a gun against the light of the open hatch. The cop whimpers again.
Don’t! But the words never get past Aiah’s lips, because her breath is just gone, gone. She may never breathe again.
The pistol booms once, twice, thrice. And then Prestley turns to Davath just as the big gray man finally falls, and supports Davath’s great weight until he can be lowered to the catwalk.
Aiah blinks eyes dazzled by gunshots. She forces herself to take a breath—the most welcome she’s ever tasted—and rises unsteadily to her feet. She has to hold on to the concrete wall for a moment or two because her knees have gone to rubber, and then she edges toward the sprawled bodies.
Davath lies bleeding, half-supported by Prestley. The police fired right through their comrade in order to hit him, but he still had enough strength to knock them down and beat them to a pulp with the acetylene cylinder.
“Senko, Senko, oh hell,” Prestley swears. Aiah pats herself, wondering if she’s got a handkerchief or something to stop Davath’s bleeding. Something black darts through the beam of her helmet light and she looks up to see a river of bats overhead, startled by the gunshots, thousands of gray bodies flashing in the light as they flood past. Their strange chirping grates on Aiah’s ears.
She kneels by Davath, presses her hands to the chest wounds. A gunshot has taken off most of his left ear, splashing his face with blood, and another has drilled him through the right hand, but most of the wounds seem to be at the center of body mass. Davath’s yellow eyes regard her with a strange tranquillity as she searches the front of his jumpsuit.