It still is a game, she realized suddenly. A game for them. Whoever they are. But I don’t have to play by their rules. With that realization, she managed to recapture a tenuous sense of self-confidence. Now where?
The duct was pitch-black, but she vaguely recalled it leading upward before she’d switched her gear off. It looked like it had been a house once, a slum tenement for cheap labor — so cheap it didn’t even have en suite bathrooms and automated amahs to do the cleaning. Apartments there were prefab assemblies: a bunch of sealed, airtight modules connected by pressure-tight doors, bolted together in a big empty space and linked to the pressurized support mains by service tunnels like this one. This duct had to run somewhere pressurized. The only question was whether there was room for her to follow it all the way.
Wednesday braced herself against the back of the tube and began to lever herself up. The pipes and cables with their regular ties and their support grid were nearly as good as a ladder, and their insulation was soft and friable with age, forming spongy handholds for her questing fingers. She paused every half meter to feel above her with one hand and tried not to think about her clothing: the boots were a miserable pain for climbing in, but she couldn’t take them off, and as for what the duct was doing to her jacket …
Her questing hand found empty space. Gasping quietly she reached up, then felt the cables bend over in a curve onto what had to be the top of the rooms’ outer gas containment membrane. A final convulsive heave brought her up and over, and left her doubled over across the cable support, panting for breath, her legs still dangling over three meters of air space. Now she risked turning on her locater ring for a moment, still dialed to provide a light glow. Glancing around, she felt an edgy bite of claustrophobia. The crawl space widened to almost a meter, but was still only half a meter high. Ahead, there was a darkness that might be a branch off to one side, in the direction of the front door if she hadn’t lost her bearings. Wednesday pulled her legs up and crawled toward it.
She came to a branch point, an intersection with a duct that had been built with humans in mind. The ceiling rose to a meter, and another quick flash of the ring revealed lighting panels (dead and dusty) and a flat, clear crawlway. She worked her way round into it, and shuffled along on hands and knees as fast as she could go. After about six meters she came to a large inspection hatch and paused. I’m over the road, aren’t I? She put her ear to the hatch and listened, trying to ignore the thudding of her pulse.
“—be not seeing any’ting.” The voice was faint and tinny, but distinct.
“But she not being ’ere!” Protest, muted by metal.
“’An being gone. Considered an’ we tracer ’coy with ’an wall ghost? Be telling you not she’an ’ere.”
“Tell you th’man she not being not here? I an’ you wait.”
Wednesday crept forward, taking shallow breaths and forcing herself not to move too fast. On the other side of the road there’d be another apartment module, and maybe a utility hub or a tunnel up to the next level, where she could get away from these freaks, whoever they were, with their weird dialect and frightening intent. She was still sick with fear, but now there was a hot ember of anger to go with it. Who do they think they are? Hunting her like dogs through the abandoned underbelly of the cylindrical city — the years fell away, bringing back the same stomach-churning fear and resentment.
Another node, another risky flash of light revealing another tunnel. This time she took the branch that headed toward the big empty cavern at the end of the passage. It ran straight for ten meters, then she flashed her ring again and saw a jagged edge ahead, dust and debris on the floor, what looked like the mummified turds of some tunnel-running animal and a pile of blown-out wall insulation. Beyond the ledge her light was swallowed by darkness and a distant dripping noise.
Shit. She knelt on the cold metal floor and glanced back. Below and behind her, two strange men were stalking her network shadow. Here in meatspace, though, she was blocked. Wasn’t she? She crawled forward slowly and looked out into the cavern. There could be anything here: a gas trap full of carbon dioxide, or a cryogenic leak, insulation ripped and walls so cold you’d freeze to them on contact. She sniffed the air, edging close to panic again. Herman would know … But Herman wasn’t there. Herman hadn’t followed her from Old Newfie. He’d told her at the time: causal channels broke when you tried to move an end point faster than light, and the one his agent had planted on her — a pediatrician who’d spent an internship on the hab when she was twelve — was now corrupt. She’d have to figure it out for herself if she wanted to get to Sammy’s party. Or anywhere. Home, even.
“An’ chasing ghost.” The voice was muffled, distant, echoing up the corridor below her. “If she here, how an’ finding she? Dustrial yard my son, dustrial. An’ ghost I telling.” A light flickered across shadows in the gloom on the floor of the cavern and Wednesday held her breath.
“Terascan—”
“—Show none. See, titan alloy walls, you be seeing? She ghost decoy, an’ I telling you.”
“Yurg, he an’ being not happy.”
Titanium walls? She looked down. Metal ductwork. If they had a teraherz scanner, they’d find her in a flash — except these old dumb metal ducts, fabbed from junk metal ore left over from the quarrying of the asteroid, made an excellent Faraday cage. No signal. Her shoulders shook as she heard bootheels below her, stomp and turn.
“Me an’ you, we be going back uplight her patch. Wait there an’ she.”
Stomp. Stomp. Angry footsteps, moving away down the corridor. Wednesday took a deep breath. Can’t hurt? She twitched her rings back on for ten seconds and waited, then off again. The footsteps didn’t return, nor the angry searching voices, but it was several minutes before she trusted herself to turn them back on again, and this time leave them glowing at her knuckles.
“Fuckmonsters,” she mumbled. Not that Centris Magna was exactly overflowing with sex criminals, but it was easier to believe than -
Her phone squeaked for attention.
“Yes?” she demanded.
“Wednesday. This is Herman. Do you understand?”
“What—” Her head was reeling with coincidence. “It’s been a long time!”
“Yes. Please pay attention. Your life is in danger. I am transferring funds to your purse for later retrieval. Keep your implants turned off: if you do that, I will be able to make it difficult for your pursuers to locate you. There is a ladder to one side of your current location; climb one floor, take the second exit on the left, first right, and keep going until you enter a densely populated area. Mingle with a crowd if you can find one. Do not go home, or you will endanger your family. I will contact you again shortly and provide directions. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but—” She was talking to herself.
“Fuckmonster,” she snapped, trying to sound as if she meant it. Herman? After three years of silence she felt weak at the knees. Did I imagine it? She turned up the light on her finger, saw the piles of debris and the scuff marks on her oh-so-labor-intensive boots. “No.” Saw the ladder running down to floor level and up to the next corridor up beside the platform. “Yes!”