'Welcome to the moho,' a sidebar opened. 'Located at the edge of the East Pacific
Rise, Nazca Depot accesses the subplanet at a depth of just 3,066 fathoms.'
There were nuggets and sidebars scattered throughout. A quote from Albert Einstein: 'Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.' There was a table of residual gases and their effect on various human tissues. Another article featured Rock VisionTM, which produced images of geologic anomalies hundreds of feet ahead of a mining face. Ali closed the magazine.
The back page advertised Helios, the winged sun on a black backdrop.
She noticed her neighbor. He was only a few seats away, but she could barely make out his silhouette in the dim light.
He was not looking at her, yet some instinct told Ali she was being observed. Faced forward, he was wearing dark goggles, the sort welders use. That made him a worker, she decided, then saw his camouflage pants. A soldier, she amended. The jawline was striking. His haircut – definitely self-inflicted – was atrocious.
She realized the man was delicately sniffing the air. He was smelling her.
Several figures appeared at the doorway, and the presence of more passengers emboldened her. 'Excuse me?' she challenged the man.
He faced her fully. The goggles were so darkly tinted and the lenses so scratched and small, she wondered how much of anything he could really see. A moment later, Ali discovered the markings on his face. Even in the dim light, she could tell the tattoos were not just ink printed into flesh. Whoever had decorated him had taken a knife to the task. His big cheekbones were incised and scarified. The rawness of it jolted her.
'Do you mind?' he asked, and came a seat closer. For a better smell? Ali wondered. She looked quickly at the doorway. More passengers were filing through.
'Speak up,' she snapped.
Unbelievably, the goggles were aimed at her chest. He even bent to improve his view. He seemed to squint, reckoning.
'What are you doing?' she demanded.
'It's been a long while,' he said. 'I used to know these things....'
His audacity astounded her. Any closer, and she'd lay her open palm across his face.
'What are those?' He was pointing right at her breasts.
'Are you for real?' Ali whispered.
He didn't react. It was as if he hadn't heard her. He went on wagging his fingertip.
'Bluebells?' he asked.
Ali drew into herself. He was examining her dress? 'Periwinkles,' she said, then doubted him again. His face was too monstrous. He had to be trespassing against her. And if he was not? She made a note to say a quick act of contrition some other time.
'That's what they are,' the man said to himself, then went back to his seat, and faced forward again.
Ali remembered a sweatshirt in her daypack, and put it on.
Now the chamber filled quickly. Several men took the seats between Ali and that stranger. When there were no more seats, the doors gently kissed shut. The LCD said seven minutes.
There was not another woman or child in the chamber. Ali was glad for her sweatshirt. Some were hyperventilating and eyeing the door, full of second thoughts. Several had a sedated slackness and looked at peace. Others clenched their hands or opened portable computers or scratched at crossword puzzles or huddled shoulder-to-shoulder for earnest scheming.
The man to her left had lowered a seatback tray and was quietly laying out two plastic syringes. One had a baby-blue cap over the needle, the other a pink cap. He held the baby-blue syringe up for her observation. 'Sylobane,' he said. 'It suppresses the retinal cones and magnifies your retinal rods. Achromatopsia. In plain English, it creates a supersensitivity to light. Night vision. Only problem is, once you start you have to keep doing it. Lots of soldiers with cataracts up top. Didn't keep up.'
'What about that one?' she asked.
'Bro,' he said. 'Russian steroid. For acclimation. The Soviets used to dose their soldiers with it in Afghanistan. Can't hurt, right?'
He held up a white pill. 'And this little angel's just to let me sleep.' He swallowed it. That sadness washed over her again, and suddenly she remembered. The sun! She had forgotten to get a final look at the sun. Too late now.
Ali felt a nudge at her right. 'Here, this is for you,' a slight man offered. He was holding out an orange. Ali accepted the gift with hesitant thanks.
'Thank that guy.' He pointed down the row to the stranger with tattoos. She leaned forward to get his attention, but the man didn't look at her.
Ali frowned at the orange. Was it a peace offering? A come-on? Did he mean for her to peel and eat it, or save it for later? Ali had the orphan's habit of attaching great meaning to gifts, especially simple gifts. But the more she contemplated it, the less this orange made sense to her.
'Well, I don't know what to do with this,' she complained quietly to her neighbor, the messenger. He looked up from a thick manual of computer codes, took a moment to recollect. 'It's an orange,' he said.
Far more than seemed right, it irritated her, the messenger's indifference, the idea of a gift, the fruit itself. Ali was keyed up, and knew it. She was frightened. For weeks her dreams had been filled with awful images of hell. She dreaded her own superstitions. With each step of the journey, she was certain her fears would ease. If only it weren't too late to change her mind! The temptation to retreat – to allow herself to be weak – was terrible. And prayer was not the crutch it had once been for her. That was concerning.
She was not the only anxious one. The chamber took on a moment-to-moment tension. Eyes met, then darted away. Men licked their lips, rubbed their whiskers, took bites at the air. She collected the tiny gestures into her own anxiety.
Ali wanted to put the orange down, but it would have rolled on the tray. The floor was too dirty. The orange had become a responsibility. She laid it in her lap, and its weight seemed too intimate. Following the instructions on the LCD, she buckled into the seat rig, and her fingers were trembling. She picked up the orange again and cupped her fingers around it and the trembling eased.
The wall display ticked down to three minutes.
As if signaled, the passengers began their final rites. A number of men tied rubber tubing around their biceps and gently slid needles into their veins. Those taking pills looked like birds swallowing worms. Ali heard a hissing sound, men sucking hard at aerosol dispensers. Others drank from small bottles. Each had his own compression ritual. All she had was this orange.