Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [83]
She went around another right-angle bend in the corridor and found a bank of mechanical lifts. One set of doors opened as the motion sensor mounted above detected her approach. Zamina grabbed the edge of the door as she went in, using it to stop her momentum.
Two cake monsters trotted around the comer with an easy and unhurried lope. Zamina jammed her thumb into the touch pad marked 'CONCOURSE'. The cake monsters picked up their pace when they saw the doors closing.
'Take the stairs,' Zamina screamed at them.
The doors stopped closing as the motion sensor picked up the two new potential passengers. Zambia stared in disbelief as the doors began to slide apart. She scanned the touch pads until she saw a red one marked 'EMERGENCY'. She jabbed it so hard that she sprained her index finger. Nothing happened. The regulating computer was waiting for the additional passengers to board before initiating procedure for an unspecified emergency.
Zambia actually felt her lips pull back from her teeth as she prepared to fight.
The leading cake monster pointed its hand at her. Zamina saw the muzzle of a gun push through the palm and jumped for the sheltered comer by the lift door.
There was a series of bangs and the bronzed mirror at the back of the lift went crazy paving.
Not fair, thought Zamina, not fair at all.
The lift regulator sensed the structural damage to the lift and upgraded the emergency from unspecified to possible localized decompression. Accident statistics were converted into a series of probabilities and balanced against the lack of corroborative data from its other sensors. A query flashed down a priority channel to the complex's mainframe, where it was tackled by the ethics subroutine.
The ethics subroutine determined that given the rapidity with which fatalities occur during explosive decompression it would be acceptable to save the individual in the designated safety zone rather than risk his/her life by waiting for the two other humans to join him/her.
An authorization flashed back up the priority channel to the lift regulator. The decision was logged in deep back up along with the statistical argument in case of an inquest.
The lift regulator received the authorization, logged it in its own back-up files and initiated emergency procedures. It sealed up the lift and dropped it downwards at close to human tolerance.
The doors slammed shut in the cake monster's face, there was a metallic clunk outside and Zamina felt the lift drop. She screamed as her feet left the floor. Yellow sealant gel forced itself out of the centre crack between the doors and around the frame.
Zamina found herself spreadeagled on the ceiling, looking down as concealed vents sprayed white foam into the lift. Strands of the stuff floated up towards her. At this point she passed out of fear and into a zone of high-pressure calm.
She remembered a kinky trick in Boston whose particular turn-on was taking foam baths with her and Roberta. No sex. just a nice long soak. Easy money, Roberta said, and a free bath. The trick had a mirrored ceiling above his Roman bath and Zamina used to look down on herself, just her face protruding from the foam. Roberta used to surreptitiously clean her delicates in that bath, vigorously scrubbing under the waterline. God knows what the trick thought she was doing.
There was a grinding scream from outside the lift and her strange calm cycled back down to terror. Zamina tried to stick to the ceiling by an act of will and went into the foam face first. She heard a muffled crash and the chiming sound of the floor indicator.
The foam began to subside and hands pulled her upright. Zamina came out of the lift, spitting out foam that tasted of nail-vamish remover. She quickly looked around. She was in the main concourse of Olympus Mons West. The lift had come down the thick central column that descended from the ceiling five storeys up.
The celebrated panoramic windows that overlooked the west slope of the volcano were to her left. People