Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [126]
Eventually, he was able to figure out that he had been in a far worse position than anyone else when the boat ran into trouble. Ikram Mohammed, to whom the bunk below his had been allotted, had not even been in it at the time. Knowing that the first deployment of the boat’s “legs” was due, Ike had got up and gone to the wheelhouse to monitor the AI’s performance. Because Dulcie Gherardesca and Lynn Gwyer had been in the bunks on the starboard side the momentum that had hurled Matthew into empty air had merely jolted them against the side of the boat, inflicting no significant injury and insufficient pain to cause overmuch confusion. Unfortunately, when Dulcie had leapt out of bed to find out what was happening, she had landed on top of Matthew’s supine body, and when Lynn had tripped over him her knee had added an extra measure to his tribulations. Because their first priority had been to find out what had happened neither woman had stayed behind to help him.
It was not until a full half-hour later that the second part of Matthew’s ordeal began, when his three companions had had to reach an agreement as to which of them was going to reset his dislocated shoulder.
“Why don’t you draw lots?” he suggested, bitterly, as the discussion of relevant qualifications became positively surreal.
In the end, it came down to a matter of volunteering. It was Dulcie Gherardesca who finally accepted the responsibility.
By this time, Matthew’s IT was at full stretch, and it had no available response to the new flood of agony but to put him out like a light—a mercy for which he was duly grateful, although he came round again to find that although the job had been properly done his nerves seemed reluctant to concede the point.
His right arm felt utterly useless, and his head still felt as if a riveter had driven a bolt through the cerebellum from right to left. He had no idea how much time had passed, but the sun had come up and the cabin was bright with its light.
“What the hell went wrong?” he demanded, trying to expel his distress as righteous wrath.
“Unanticipated problem,” Ike informed him. “First major stretch of fast shallow water. The underwater sensors worked perfectly, and she steered like a dream. For a few minutes I thought we might not need the legs at all, but when the time came we may have been going just a little too fast. When we tested the legs back at the ruins it was only a matter of letting them pick the hull up and walk sedately along for a while, until it was time to drop it again. The real thing was a lot more challenging. Theoretically, the AI should have been able to decelerate smoothly enough—but the theory hadn’t taken account of the kind of vegetation that was growing along the canyon walls.
“You saw the stuff we were passing by all day yesterday—thoroughly innocuous. Not here. Here there are active plants that dangle tentacles in the water, ready to entangle eely things whose maneuvrability has been impaired by the current. They’re programmed to grab at anything and hold hard, below the surface and above. The lead leg on the starboard side had to put down hard to begin the deceleration process, but it should have released itself almost immediately. It couldn’t—and as soon as the AI perceived that something was awry she immediately pulled the other legs out of harm’s way. It probably saved the boat from being trapped, but that might not have been so bad, given that we’re carrying the chain saws. The net effect of pulling seven legs in