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

For a moment Liis considered pulling herself over the edge. There were cracks and ledges she could use as handholds, and the others held the end of the line. Maybe she could find him down there, clinging to an outcropping or trapped on a ledge not visible from her perspective. She dug her fingers into the edge, tensed the muscles in her arm.

At the bottom of the shaft, on the inky surface of the water, a long white stick floated into view. She ordered the magnification on her visor increased, and her stomach lurched as the walls of the shaft seemed to shoot up around her. The thing at the bottom grew, resolved itself into of one of Penirdth’s skis.

He’s gone.

An unnatural calm pervaded Liis. She felt detached, lightheaded, as if she were only a passenger in her body. She rolled over-or her body did-and sat up; the others waited by their sleds. She struggled to her feet, heedless of the proximity of the opening. Numbly, she stumbled back to her sled and reattached the leads. She stepped into her skis. Moments later she stood in front of Yilda. He unknotted the rope she had secured to her harness, then started to coil it. When he reached Mira, he had to pry it from her fingers. He stowed the rope, then inclined his head, making contact with Liis.

“Well?”

“He’s gone.” Were the words hers? Liis wasn’t certain. “A shaft drops into the lake.”

“I see.” A pause. “As I guessed. The lake must be fed below by hot springs. Yes. Any further such, um, weaknesses should be detectable on infrared.” He pulled back and repeated his earlier gesture, pointing to his visor and spinning an imaginary dial.

Liis didn’t answer. She was thinking about how she had been carried along by Hebuiza and Yilda, trailing like flotsam in their wake. They had answers for everything; she had none. Why hadn’t they anticipated this?

Bending forward, Yilda re-established contact. “And his, um, equipment?”

Liis shook her head, not caring that he couldn’t see the gesture.

“Must be going, hey? Back in line.” He pushed off, driving his poles into the ground and propelling himself forward.

His tail uncoiled, slithered away from the group. In a daze, Liis watch Mira stumble after. Hebuiza gestured brusquely for Liis to fall in.

Numbly, she side-stepped into the tracks the two men had made. Hebuiza poked her in the back; automatically, she kicked herself into motion, working her one pole as best she could, intent on the trail.

Here I am, still following, she thought, a sudden, piercing ache in her chest making it difficult to breathe. Her eyes burnt. She felt a tear run down her cheek, cling tenaciously to the tip of her chin. She pushed forward, gritting her teeth, her legs pumping insensibly. Don’t think, she told herself. Just don’t think. The motion dislodged the tear; it dropped into the folds of her suit and was lost. A second tear began tracing a path down her opposite cheek.

No! Liis bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. I won’t!

But it was too late. The crush of repressed emotion overwhelmed her like the waters of a bursting dam.

Inside her the hollow of her suit, she wept.

The party moved steadily south as the sun crept, millimeter by millimeter, towards the horizon. The disk was huge and incarnadine, choking the land with its sanguine light and casting long, thick shadows the colour of dried blood.

Liis’ tears ended as abruptly as they had began, a sudden, passing storm. But the anguish remained. Penirdth’s death had drained her, leaving her weak and enervated. Her arm, momentarily forgotten in her grief, now ached sharply. She moved forward like an automaton, hardly aware of her surroundings. She felt no sense of urgency, only a gnawing emptiness in her chest. What’s the point in continuing? she thought. We’re all doomed anyway, aren’t we?

Her stride faltered. The distance between her and Mira grew. Hebuiza, who was in line behind her, moved up. Skiing parallel to her, he gestured irately for her to pick up the pace. Liis ignored him; she bowed her head and stared at the twin tracks in front of her, her legs moving leadenly. Clearly dissatisfied with her response, Hebuiza raised his pole and rapped her on the back, like he was urging on a pack animal.

In a flash, Liis’ indifference turned to anger. She swung her pole, oblivious to the searing pain this set off in her broken arm, and caught him squarely across his narrow chest. He reared back in what looked like astonishment, lost his balance and tumbled to the ground, tangled in the lines of his sled, one ski sticking up into the air. She would have spat if she could. Instead, she pushed on, leaving him where he was. Gritting her teeth, she picked up the pace and the distance to Mira’s hunched figure closed.

In moments Liis’ anger had dwindled; but resentment still warmed her stomach like a stiff shot of liquor. Her arm seemed to burn with the same fire. She decided she liked the feeling. As her legs pushed her forward with renewed vigour, she nurtured this kernel of anger like it was a new-born child. For far too long she had allowed herself to be carried along by the whims of others. Josua. Hebuiza. Yilda. Even the good-natured Penirdth. Yes, he had never done her any harm; quite the opposite. But she had followed him, like she had followed Josua, without question. Anger, at herself, at her passivity, pulsed inside, beating like a new heart. Her strides lengthened; she surged forward.

Eventually, she had to ease up on her pace, not because she was tired, or because the compressed ball of anger blazed any less fervidly inside her; rather it was because Mira’s tail, slithering in the track centimeters in front of tip of her ski, forced her to slow lest she run over it.

The muscles in Liis’ good arm and shoulder hurt miserably, throbbing in time to the ache in her broken one. With her single pole, she’d developed a lop-sided rhythm (a push, glide, glide) that kept her moving. It was a fatiguing process, but she managed to keep pace.

The sun finally set; the darkness of the long night enfolded them. Liis adjusted her visor, upping the gain to enhance her night vision. She was exhausted. Her earlier burst of energy had deserted her. Checking her readout, she saw that twenty-two hours had elapsed since they’d last slept up on the icefield-and that they’d covered nearly eight kilometers in four hours of skiing. With the steady wind at their backs, and flat, unobstructed terrain, their progress was better than could have been hoped. The dangerous weaknesses in the crust had diminished; on her infrared overlay, Liis spotted them only infrequently now. After weaving through an initial spate of hidden shafts, they had all but disappeared. Liis did a quick mental calculation. At this rate they would reach the Speakers’ dome-three hundred klicks away-in less than ten days, a day ahead of schedule. Leaving them plenty of time-_For what? _

Liis didn’t know. Yilda had insisted he could tell them nothing. At least not until they arrived at the dome. _Maybe he has no plan_, she thought, and this is simply a mad rush towards our own deaths. But that was wrong. There was something about the little Facilitator’s confidence that belied that notion. He was adamant they could overrun the station. Indeed, he almost seemed to relish the opportunity to try. His mannerisms, when he’d been briefing them, hadn’t been those of a harried, desperate man grasping at straws. If anything, he’d behaved more like a tactician whetting his appetite for a long-awaited assault. It felt wrong. Turning it over and over in her mind, she trudged on.

A short time later, Yilda called a halt near a break in the crust that looked like a small frozen wave, no more than a meter in height; it was the first interruption of the featureless plane they had encountered. They would rest here, he signed, for six hours. The others began unbuckling their leads, and staking out small areas on the leeward side of the rise where they would sleep. Hebuiza, who’d lagged after Liis had struck him, now caught up and drifted past her at a safe distance, two pole lengths away. He chose a place next to the other Facilitator. Immediately after he had slipped off his leads, he strode over to Yilda and touched helmets, his larger one completely obscuring the smaller man’s helmet. His movements were agitated, animated with what seemed to be a barely suppressed rage; several times he gestured in Liis’ direction. But whatever Yilda’s reaction, his body language remained neutral. When Hebuiza pulled his helmet back suddenly and stalked back to his sled, Liis laughed aloud.

Mira chose a spot apart from the others. As Liis tried to unbuckle her own leads, she watched Mira let herself fall to her knees without bothering to free herself from her harness. She remained in this position, staring back in the direction from which they had come. Back to where they’d lost Penirdth.

Had they been lovers? Liis wondered.

No. That wasn’t right, somehow. Since The Viracosa’s return to Bh’Haret, Penirdth and Mira had spent most of their time together, working in a companionable silence. Without the small intimacies of lovers. But there was a connection between them. And he’d adopted a protective, almost fatherly disposition towards Mira. As he had towards me, Liis thought. Now who would look after them?

Undoing the last strap, Liis shrugged herself free of her harness. She walked over to Mira and bent to touch helmets.

“Penirdth,” she began, feeling foolish and inarticulate. She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry-”

“He’s gone.” Mira’s voice sounded dreamy, far away.

“You should lie down.”

“The Dissolution is at hand.”

Liis had forgotten about Ruen’s ridiculous teachings. “It’s time to rest-”

“Penirdth has gone ahead. We’ll be joining him soon.” Mira clutched at Liis’ good arm. “Won’t we?”

“Yeah,” Liis answered, feeling sick. She extracted her arm and pulled her helmet away.

Liis returned to her sled. Exhaustion overwhelmed her. Yilda and Hebuiza lay on the ground, already asleep as far as she could tell. She lay down on her side, careful not to jostle her broken arm. Mira remained on her knees staring off into the distance. Liis curled around so that she wouldn’t have to see the other woman. But her thoughts returned to Penirdth. Her throat went tight; this time she didn’t weep. Instead, she offered a silent prayer up to him. And, as an afterthought, to Sav, light years away, still in stasis, and speeding towards the Hub-if nothing had gone awry.

How could she have given herself over to this?

The plan was crazy, untenable. No more for its sheer audacity, than for the trust they’d put in Yilda and Hebuiza, accepting everything the Facilitator’s had told them at face value. The small knot of anger still smouldered deep within her breast; but she was too tired to stoke it. For now it was a banked fire. As sleep took her, she found it a comforting warmth.

Five days had passed since they had lost Penirdth and Binlosson; it was the dawn of the next local