I felt like I was flying.
The stern voice of a man I despised boomed in my ear:
“Andrea! Wake up if you want to live!”
I resisted the summons, thinking only, Bringen? What the hell is Bringen doing here? Bringen should be nailed to his desk at New London, pulling the wings off various species of fly. He doesn’t care about me. I could be bobbing around in vacuum with less than thirty seconds of air left and he wouldn’t work his index finger enough to push the airlock button. He certainly wouldn’t travel halfway across inhabited space to join me in upside-down land. No, he wouldn’t do that….
I don’t know how many places my mind went after that, but sooner or later the phrase upside-down land reverberated enough for me to remind me that I was on One One One, a place where people had been known to fall from great heights.
I woke up just in time to realize I was looking down at my own legs, dangling loose over a sky lit, for just this instant, by a faraway burst of lightning. Something else, large and shapeless and flapping, was tumbling out of sight, impossible to identify as it was swallowed up by darkness.
Then I began to fall.
13. ABYSS
The tether I’d used to connect myself to the hammock’s solid rib pulled me up short just before I could decide that I was dead.
It jerked taut at the base of my spine, startling the breath out of me and arresting the plunge of my midsection even as my upper torso, and limbs, attempted to continue falling. I bent over double, grunted, thrashed in panic as I spun like a toy at the end of my line, and came close to fainting in shock.
All at once I knew someone was trying to kill me.
I’d like to report that my rage was all by itself enough to keep away the terror.
I can’t say that.
I think I vomited before it occurred to me to scream.
I’m not sure whether I did or not because I didn’t remember doing anything, and while I tasted the acid in my throat, there wasn’t anything anywhere on me. Whatever I’d lost was now well on its way to the lower atmosphere of One One One.
I gagged, tasted blood, realized I was spinning, and only then tried to scream, without any success at summoning voice.
Far below, the clouds of One One One rumbled from another internal storm. One formation lit up, backlighting the outline of another dragon in flight. I had the lunatic thought that it didn’t deserve to have such fine wings, almost surrendered to hysteria again, and in a single burst of sheer frenzy whipped my head around to see if anything at all remained solid above me.
Not much did.
The hammock’s circular spine was still intact, as were most of the bundles still attached to it; a few, containing items I’d never bothered to investigate, had gone missing. My own bag, with all its personal treasures, still hung from its tether. Everything below the circular spine was missing, and (now that I looked), much above it. The upper regions of the hammock were covered with little black spots.
I don’t eat apples. But the black spots made me think of one, infested with worm trails.
I found voice and screamed.
“HELP! FOR JUJE SAKE, SOMEBODY HELP ME!”
Silence.
No response whatsoever.
I screamed again, this time requesting specific people. Lastogne; no answer. Oscin and Skye; no answer. Oskar Levine, on the grounds that us outcasts needed to stick together. Nobody answered. The only sounds were my own ragged breath and the wind brushing over the sections of canvas that still remained.
I started cursing them.
Still nothing.
Maybe I was the last one left.
Maybe all the tents had failed, the same way mine had, and all of Gibb’s people were already dead and falling.
Maybe the AIsource had exercised their claimed ability to kill every human being on One One One.
Maybe I should just wriggle free of this tether and let myself fall.
I bit my lip in anger. No, dammit. Use your head. There was still light shining from up above, both through the holes in the canvas and through the canvas itself. Its only likely source was the superstructure of Hammocktown. There hadn’t been any of the changes in the quality or the intensity of that light, which suggested that the nets and rope bridges were still intact. I had to believe that Hammocktown was intact as well, if for no other reason than because the unknown assassin we blamed for the deaths of Warmuth and Santiago had thus far seemed happy enough to claim victims one at a time.
If the camp couldn’t hear me, there had to be another reason.
I listened, and realized that much of what I’d taken for wind was instead a soft hiss.
The bastard. Or bitch. Whatever.
They’d hiss-screened the entire hammock, to cut me off from any would-be rescuers.
I could cry for help until I scraped my throat raw, and nobody would ever hear me.
For the next few seconds, that didn’t stop me from trying.
Afterward, running out of breath, managing another look above me to confirm that the holes in the canvas had grown larger and more numerous, I became angry enough to do something about it.
Had to take this one step at a time.
The tether was the only thing keeping me alive. Getting a grip on it, behind my back, was difficult as I was bobbing and spinning from my initial fall, but I managed it. It was a thin line, but a strong one, with just enough texture to make a firm grip possible. It wasn’t the kind of rope I would have chosen to climb, but then I’d never allowed my life to depend on climbing a rope before.
I pulled and with tremendous strain managed to lift my body a few centimeters before exhaustion made me let go and fall again.
That was okay. I’d learned what I wanted to learn.
I reached behind my back and grabbed the line with both hands, with my favored hand, the right, uppermost. Holding on with both hands was not quite as difficult as maintaining a grip with only one, but still more than I could manage for very long.
This would have been easier facing the tether. The blood wouldn’t be rushing to my head, for one thing. But I didn’t need this to be easy. I needed it to be possible.
All I had to do was release the line with my left hand, move that hand just a few centimeters to a new hold directly above my right.
My left hand didn’t want to let go until I screamed at it for being so fucking useless.
Then it complied.
I rose a few worthless centimeters. The strain on my arms and lower back was horrible, but at least now there was some slack on the line.
The clouds of One One One’s lower atmosphere called to me. This is stupid, Andrea, why don’t you just let go and come to us? It’s not like you have anything special to live for.
Climbing just this little bit had taken more out of me than I could really afford. The position was just too difficult. One of Gibb’s monkeys might have managed it, but I was not built like them. I didn’t have that kind of climbing experience or upper-body strength.
To have any chance at all I had to find a way to turn around and face the line.