Nexus by Robert Boyczuk (best large ebook reader txt) 📕

More people, Sav thought. More rational people. It could only help, couldn’t it? Perhaps Josua was fine after all, his plans for vengence nothing more than a febrile dream. Sav had feared far worse. He looked over Josua’s shoulder at Liis, wanting to give her a small gesture to indicate his approval, but she looked away. Her jaw began working silently, as if she were absent-mindedly chewing a mouthful of food. What’s bothering her? Sav wondered. Is she still angry at me for calling Josua insane? He shrugged it off. Whatever it was, he’d deal with it later.

He turned his gaze back to Josua. “Hebuiza proposed this? I’d have thought he’d be afraid of reviving the plague along with interees.”

Josua’s raised his eyebrows thoughtfully. “Yes. I was surprised myself. But he says it will be safe if we set up a quarantine area, keep them isolated for at least forty days. According to what he’s dug up, that’s eight times the incubation period of the disease. Liis has already identified a potential site on the second sublevel, a suite of interconnected rooms that can be easily isolated. As a precaution, Hebuiza wants to make the rooms as airtight as possible. And he wants security on all the external doors-in case our patients decide they want out prematurely. If they show no signs of the contagion in that period, we’ll lift the quarantine.”

“How many does he want to revive?”

“Six, to start. More later-if things work out.”

“And what’s my part in this?”

“We’ll need your help in preparing the quarantine area. We need to gather equipment to monitor the patients, clothing and food for them, furniture for their rooms, books and games to keep them occupied, and so forth.” Josua paused. “And we’ll need to move the cells from their cradles to the quarantine area.”

“Which means me and Hebuiza since we’re still in our suits.”

“Yes. It’s only prudent.”

“And we’ll have to open them too.”

“No.” Josua waved his hand to dismiss the idea. “You’ll only have to transport them to the quarantine area. Hebuiza thinks he can cobble together a servo to perform most of the manual functions by remote. That’s what we’ll use to open the cells when we’re ready.” Josua held out his hand to the side; Liis placed the computer tablet in it. The screen came to life under Josua’s fingers. He passed the tablet to Sav.

“Here’s a list of sites I’d like you to visit. To look for the equipment we’ll need. And things we’ll need to prepare the Ea for another longhaul-if we decide that’s the best course of action.”

Glancing down at the screen, Sav saw about twenty locations in a blue script, each followed by its geographic co-ordinates. He recognized half a dozen of them: hospitals, spaceports and shipyards, military installations and research facilities. Scattered across the world. On the bottom of the display was a page icon. In it’s centre the digits 1/7 indicated he was only on the first of seven screens. This will take weeks, he thought, pressing the icon. Another screenful of information replaced the first. And it would mean being inside his suit for extended periods, perhaps upwards of forty hours, for the more distant sites. Sav looked up, caught Josua staring intently at him.

“As you can see, it’s quite a job. Do you think you can handle it?”

Sav chewed on his lip distractedly. A few moments ago he would have welcomed an excuse to stay away from the stasis facility; now he experienced a strange reluctance to be away. But he could think of no good reason not to do as Josua had asked. It was a sensible course of action and he was the natural candidate. Josua watched him expectantly.

“Well?”

“Okay,” Sav said. “Let’s do it.”

Josua extended his hand.

Sav took it. Josua’s grip was surprisingly firm-even through the material of the glove.

He released Sav’s hand and patted him on the back. “Let’s go tell Hebuiza the good news.”

Day 19 to 31

The next day Sav discovered, at least in part, what had been bothering Liis. Josua took the morning to transfer his few possessions to a first-floor suite-a waiting room with a simple desk and chairs arrayed around the wall; a larger boardroom with an oval table and padded chairs; and a spacious well-appointed inner room that had served as the chief administrator’s office. Into this last room he moved his cot. Sav expected Liis to claim one of the other offices that clustered around Josua’s. Or to move into the inner office with him. But she did neither. Instead, after the two of them helped Josua set up his new quarters, she returned to the fourteenth sublevel. Josua seemed not to notice-or to care.

Days passed.

Shuttling a steady stream of supplies back to the facility, Sav watched the quarantine area taking shape. The three rooms Liis had chosen were at the end of an corridor. They extended further south than any of the other levels, and so there was nothing above or below them but solid rock. The same was true for three of the four walls. The fourth wall, with only a single door, would isolate the occupants from the rest of the facility.

They reworked the ventilation ducts to assure that the flow of air would always be unidirectional, and that the exhaust would flow through a sterilization chamber where it would be superheated and irradiated, before being taken up by the return ducts and vented back to the main system. Because there was no toilet or sink, they installed two tanks: one for fresh water, one for waste. Then they welded plates over whatever openings they could find in the wall, and Hebuiza had carefully sprayed every surface with a liquid sealant that solidified into a hard, durable compound that would have required a concerted effort-and the right tools-to breach. He repeated the process until the sealant coated every join in the wall to a depth of several millimeters. They rewired. Squeezing new power cables and umbilicals into the single conduit that served the rooms, they carefully sealed it. Then they moved in cots, tables, shelving and cupboards. Josua began stocking the shelves with food, clothing and medical equipment, while Liis positioned cameras and microphones high along the walls.

On the tenth day of preparations, Sav sought out Josua, with a question about the generators he’d requested. He passed through the waiting room and knocked on Josua’s door, but there was no answer. Sav pushed the door open and walked in. The office was empty.

Since he’d last been in here three days ago, a bank of monitors had been racked to the left of Josua’s desk. Each screen displayed a different angle of the quarantine rooms. In one room, an operatorless waldo-the cage for its usual human occupant filled with a mass of hydraulics, electronics, and cabling-moved, in an awkward rolling gait, between two rows of shelves loaded with medical apparatus. It stopped in front of a stack of boxes and began loading them, one by one, onto the shelves. On the adjacent monitor, Sav could see Hebuiza sitting at the far end of the same room, operating the remote, his head swinging in small circles.

“Not much longer now.”

Startled, Sav swung around to find Liis standing in the doorway. Her scars were pale white lines next to the dark semi-circles beneath her bloodshot eyes.

“Tonight we’re sealing the chamber and pumping the air out to test its integrity. If everything goes well, Josua wants to begin the revivals tomorrow. Or the next day-at the latest.” She paused. “Do you know he doesn’t call them revivals anymore?”

“Who? Josua?”

“He calls them resurrections.”

“Liis,” he said quietly. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” she blurted abruptly. “I never wanted this.” Then, appearing confused, she said, “Yes, yes. Everything’s fine.” She looked away. “Just tired. That’s all. Got to sleep.” She turned and walked into the reception room, then drifted out the farther door like a spectre, turning left in the corridor towards the elevator.

Sav let her go.

She’s tired, he thought. We’re all tired. On the screen the waldo had withdrawn a syringe from a rack between its thin, articulated fingers and was fitting a needle to its end. After a moment of fumbling, the waldo gripped a small bottle, then slid the needle through the stopper and into the bottle. A pale yellow liquid streamed into the plastic cylinder. On another screen, the Facilitator’s narrow face creased into a smile.

Resurrections?

Sav stepped up to the monitors. One by one, he turned them off. He left Josua’s office, returning to the dropship to wait for Hebuiza for their nightly run back to the Ea.

Day 32

The next morning the transfer of the cells began. They gathered on the fifth sublevel, outside a cavernous chamber, one of the largest in the facility. Although power was now more or less reliable, the overhead light panels here remained dark; there still wasn’t enough juice being generated by the solar array-and the generators they’d set up to supplement it-for this luxury. When they entered the chamber, the only illumination was cast by the pale green glow of the two dozen live cells. Liis switched on her flashlight and the space in front of them filled with the harsh wash of white light.

Near the centre of the room, a cryostasis cell had been extruded from its vertical cradle; it hung from a chain secured to an overhead winch. A thick green hose attached to the base of the cell ran back into the depths of the cradle. The cabling that had once stretched between the top of the cell to a junction box on the ceiling now hung in a slack loop at its side. In the adjacent aisle was a low-slung gurney, its concave surface matching the contours of the cell. A mass of electronic equipment and two small cylinders had been set on shelf on the bottom of the gurney.

Liis walked over to the cell, Sav trailing after. Hebuiza and Josua hadn’t followed; instead, they had gone to the AI panel. Now, glancing back, Sav couldn’t see Josua at all, and the Facilitator was only a shadow, his lanky form outlined by the soft glow of the panel he’d just wakened.

“Our first-” Liis hesitated, searching for a word, “- experiment.” She looked better than she had the day before, but still appeared agitated. Whenever Sav looked at her, she averted her eyes. “From this point on, its up to you and Hebuiza.” She placed a hand on the aluminium surface of the cell; the chain creaked and the cell swung slightly.

Sav nodded, then craned his neck to try to make out the features of the occupant, but the cell was too high to give him a clear view. He thought it looked like a woman.

“Once Hebuiza initiates the transfer procedure, the two of you will lower the cell onto the gurney.” She handed Sav a remote with two buttons labelled UP and DOWN. “Be careful. To much jostling can damage the brittle tissues. Once you’ve got the cell on the gurney, you’ll have to disconnect the cabling from the top of the cell. There’s a safety on the side of the plug you have to depress. The whole thing should slide out easily. Replace it with the one connected to the cart’s battery.” Liis tapped a cable that had been coiled over a hook at the end of the cart. “Uncoupling the umbilical is next.” She pointed at the green hose at the bottom. “Counter clockwise half a turn. Don’t be alarmed if any fluid spills out of the tube. It’s just harmless residue that was never inside the cell. The