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

He’s exhausted, Liis thought. She knew she was too; but the strangeness of the dome had made her forget. She wondered if she was also swaying.

Yilda clutched Hebuiza by the arms, touched his helmet to the other Facilitator’s. There was a brief exchange. Then he and Yilda set to unloading the sled. In moments, the smaller man had done the same for Hebuiza as he’d done for Liis: all three now had their packs on, tails coiled, and their sleds deposited in the hole. Yilda threw in the rolled up tarps and began kicking snow over the discarded gear. Liis joined him-and Hebuiza too, after a moment of hesitation.

The hole filled quickly.

Yilda folded his tools, slipped them into loops on the side of his backpack. Crouching down in front of the blister, he grabbed the ice screw to which he’d knotted the rope. He snapped a carbineer onto his harness and threaded the line through it. Turning, he signalled for Liis and Hebuiza to touch helmets.

“The dome will reject this screw in minutes.” He articulated his words precisely, the usual halt in his speech gone. “You must act without hesitation. Do exactly as I do.”

Having said that, he jammed the tip of the screw directly beneath the blister. He twisted the top of the metal tube, and the screw bit into the dome and spiralled into its white surface while he held its handle firmly. Liis was surprised; did he expect them to climb over the blister? She watched in puzzlement as the flange at the base of the handle snugged up against surface of the dome and the screw stopped turning. Yilda snatched up a flare in one hand and the end of the rope in his other. He pressed the tab at the head of the flare so that flame erupted from it tip. Then he did something that astonished Liis as much as it horrified her: waving the flare in front of him, he plunged head first into the mouth of the blister.

The broad lips curled back as if the thing was trying to avoid the heat from the flame, then sealed around him, leaving only his feet projecting. A heartbeat passed. Then his boots disappeared inside as if he’d been swallowed. The lips seemed to pucker with distaste like they just eaten something sour.

Liis and Hebuiza stood alone outside the dome.

For an instant, Liis was too shocked to react; at her feet, the coil of rope unwound slowly. The Facilitator, too, seemed surprised; at least he stood, unmoving, his visor directed at the mouth of the thing. Liis leaned towards him. She wanted to touch helmets, to ask him what was going on.

Her proximity seemed to reanimate the Facilitator. Before she could make contact, he shoved her back with one hand. Grabbing a carbineer, he snapped it onto his harness and clipped it onto the line; grabbing a second flare, he sparked it to life and dove after Yilda. His legs protruded for an alarmingly long time (though it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds) before they, too, wormed from sight.

Liis was alone.

She cursed the two Facilitators, then stooped to reach for a carbineer. She stopped. Below the edge of the blister, the ice screw was moving slowly, wiggling like it was alive. It was unscrewing. Already its flange had moved a couple of centimeters away from the surface of the dome. Liis grabbed the third flare; in her haste to light it, she fumbled and dropped it. Flaming, it rolled to the edge of the ridge and disappeared, leaving a smoky residue. She cursed, reaching back to pull one of the spares from the side pocket of her backpack. She had to twist her arm at a near impossible angle, and just managed to grasp a flare between two fingers. Wiggling it free, she got a proper grip on it and jammed her thumb against its tab. The flare caught and she threw herself towards the blackened lips.

She fell forward further than she thought she would onto a surprisingly steep pitch. Pain shattered her consciousness into bright, glittering shards. She gasped for breath, her heart hammering wildly. She felt she was going to be sick. In her rush, she’d forgotten about her broken arm.

Her vision began to clear, the dizzying lights fading into a matte black background. Except for a steady spear of light directly ahead of her.

The flare.

It lay in front of her. She snatched it up. Blinking, she looked around.

Her eyes still hadn’t adjusted, but she could see she was in a dark, constricted tunnel; its soft walls pressed against her stomach, shoulders, and back. The whole thing angled sharply downward. She held up the flare and the walls receded; the tunnel was a fleshy pink, and appeared ringed, like the muscles of an intestine. Coating its surface was a shimmering viscous fluid that dripped in long, ropy strands from the roof. Centimeters in front of her the rings constricted until the opening was no larger than the size of her thumb. Yilda’s rope ran through that ridiculously small aperture.

Liis swore. She’d forgot to attach a carbineer. And now there was nothing she could do without dropping the flare. To hell with it, she thought. She tried to wiggle forward but found she was held firmly in place. Panic seized her. She slashed at the walls with the flare like it was a knife.

To her amazement, the grip of the tunnel loosened enough for her to wiggle forward. Ahead, the opening seemed to widen. Holding the flare aloft, she inched downward like an earthworm, the rope sliding beneath her.

She couldn’t have travelled more than half a meter in this fashion when she found the tunnel no longer withdrew from the flare. The last ring had constricted like a fist around the rope. She swung the flare back and forth in front of the surface; nothing happened-except, perhaps, for the ring clenching the rope tighter. Then she jammed the flare against the fleshy material. The entire tunnel spasmed, as if in pain, the rings contracting like bands of metal around her. Breath was crushed from her lungs; pain shot through her arm making her head spin and her eyes water. She felt herself going limp.

The pressure relented. She gasped for air.

Darkness. The flare had been suffocated. Liis’ mind was a chaotic jumble. Her deep breaths filled her helmet.

Calm yourself, she thought._ Reason it through. Yilda and Hebuiza managed. If they figured it out, I can too._

What had happened when they entered? There had been a pause after they passed through the lips, their legs sticking out as if they too had run into this problem. Then their feet had disappeared. They had to have done something, before their feet disappeared, to open this obstruction…

Or was it the other way around? Had they pulled in their feet first?

Yes! Liis thought. That has to be it! The opening was a valve, like the pressure lock on a ship. The inner hatch wouldn’t open as long as the outer lips hadn’t sealed properly. And she couldn’t have travelled far enough for her feet to be completely inside the tunnel yet.

Twisting onto her side, she pulled her knees up. Liis felt her feet slip inside, the lips closing against the soles of her boots. The tunnel relaxed.

Light blossomed in front of her as the tunnel relinquished its clutch on the rope. Two meters ahead, she saw vertical flaps, silhouetted like the petals of a flower, opening up. The rings of the tunnel widened and she felt herself sliding down the incline towards the brilliance. She tried to slow her momentum, but the tunnel was ejecting her, the rings in front loosening and those behind contracting. At the last minute she thought to drop the dead flare and grab at the rope. But the line was covered with the slick mucous and it slipped from her fingers.

Liis tumbled out of the opening and onto a hard surface, instinctively twisting to her right to protect her broken limb. She was only partly successful: a shiver of pain ran along the length of her arm at the moment of contact. She tumbled down a steep incline. A chaotic world of colours flashed past, dazzling her vision. It took her a second to realise the greens and browns were leaves and stems snapping and ticking at her visor; and under her was loose, brown and grey soil that scraped at her suit.

The rope, she thought. It was to her right. She stretched her arm out.

But before she could close her fingers around the line she crashed through a thick weave of deep green into unobstructed light. She was weightless, falling. As she tumbled, several images spun past: in the distance, a panoramic sweep of forest, field, and structures that might have been buildings; the dark grey of a cliff face from which she’d fallen; the milky white of the underside of the dome; and below, the crystalline blue of a narrow lake.

I’m inside, she realised with a start, just before she hit the water.

In that last instant she had braced herself. She was lucky. During her fall she had spun so that her back struck first, protecting her arm. In the weaker gravity, the impact wasn’t that powerful. Water sloshed over her and she sank lazily, weighted by her suit. The light of the dome receded.

Relief gave way to horror.

She began kicking furiously with her legs and pulling with her good arm. In her wake, a flurry of bubbles raced to the surface.

Still, she sank. She felt her throat tightening, believed she could feel fluid seeping into her suit, imagined the cold water coiling into her mouth and nostrils.

Cold water?

The notion made her hesitate, stop struggling all together. The suit had been designed to be self-contained, to hide her heat signature; it should serve equally well to keep the water out. When she hit bottom, she could climb out.

She allowed herself to sink. Now that she had relaxed, she realised she was enfolded in an eerie silence. The muffled sounds of wind and the soft chafing of the fabric of her suit that had been her constant companions were gone. It was almost peaceful.

Her heels hit bottom, and she fell, in slow motion, onto her backside. She sat on the bottom of the lake, a cloud of silt rising around her. Delicately fronded plants swayed in the eddies of an invisible current. Silver-scaled fish darted curiously towards her, then quickly away. A long and black creature, the width of her arm, slithered past her boots and dove into the silt. It continued to burrow along the bottom, visible only as a brown, moving hump. She followed its progress until it ran under a tangle of white. With a start, she realised the white was the end of Yilda’s rope. Above the snarl, the line ran straight up to the surface. The rope suddenly went slack, and the line began descending; a few seconds later the ice screw spiralled lazily down, trailing a thin line of bubbles, to land atop the pile.

Liis rolled over onto her knees and pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. The fluid seemed less viscous than normal water; or perhaps that was only an effect of the diminished gravity. In any case, movement was