Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [125]
There was a crazy half-second when Matthew had no idea where he was. Perhaps, subconsciously, his mind accepted his free-falling condition as evidence that he was in his own solar system, in one of the various zero-gee environments he had briefly experienced while en route from Earth’s gravity-well to the metal shell that was to become the core of Hope. There may have been a tiny moment when his unconscious mind reassured its conscious partner that he was safe, because he wasn’t really falling at all. Alas, he was—and for whatever reason, he realized the fact far too late.
He could hardly have had time to begin framing a constructive thought before he hit the deck, but his reflexes were a little quicker off the mark. Perhaps they would have served him better had he not been falling under the influence of 0.92 Earth-gravity instead of the regime to which they were attuned, but perhaps not. Either way, he had hardly begun to extend a protective arm, and that very awkwardly, before the moment of impact.
He landed very badly. The upper part of his right arm took the brunt of the impact, and the pain seemed to sear through his shoulder like a hot knife before his IT leapt into action to save him from further agony.
After the moment of impact things became very confused. The compensatory flood of anesthetic released by his artificial defenses was dizzying rather than merely numbing. Matthew didn’t lose consciousness, but he lost the sense of consciousness, and couldn’t quite tell whether he was awake or dreaming, or which way was up, let alone how badly he was hurt or what could possibly be happening.
There were lights and there were voices, but the moment Matthew tried to move or to direct his attention toward light or sound the lances of pain took further toll of his protesting flesh. He tried to raise himself from the deck, automatically using the palm of his right hand as a support, but the lever he applied was composed of pure unadulterated pain, and his IT would not let him bear it. His face made contact with the boat’s fleshy fabric for a second time, as if it were rudely demanding a kiss from his tortured lips.
He tried to lie still then, refusing the demands of lights and the voices alike. If he had been able to go back to sleep he would have done so, only too happy to persuade himself that it had all been a dream, and that he was still safe in his bunk, unfallen and unhurt.
But he wasn’t, and he couldn’t quite contrive to escape that awareness.
Later, Matthew was able to piece together what had happened for the benefit of his dutiful memory, but for at least ten minutes he was quite helpless, locked into his sick and bulbous head with his growing sense of catastrophe.
He felt trampling feet descend upon him and trip over him, but he could not count them or make the slightest move to defend himself from them. It might even have been fortunate that a glancing blow to his groin finally contrived to activate a useful reflex that curled him up into a fetal ball, but even that was not without cost, because it brought another flood of agony from his shoulder.
By this time, his mind was clear enough to feel alarm, but not yet clear enough to feel much else. The sense of acute danger overpowered him.
Matthew had been equipped with good IT for most of his life, although the suites that were already on the market when he was born, in 2042, had been expensive as well as elementary. Had he only had his academic salary to draw on he would never have been able to keep up with the forefront of the rapidly progressive technology, but his sideline as a media whore had given him the means to keep up and his status as an outspoken advocate of the myriad applications of biotech had virtually obliged him to do so. Unlike the macho brats who had taken the insulation of IT as a license to court danger, though, he had never been a devotee of extreme sports or brawling, and had never been in the least interested in testing the