Engineman - Eric Brown [219]
Roberts was attempting to squirm down after the girl, and there was something faintly ludicrous, and at the same time terribly touching, about his futile efforts. He gave up at last and knelt, panting and staring down helplessly.
As my gaze adjusted to the sunlight and shadow in the well of the crevice, I made out greater detail. Elegy was wearing a red dress, and I saw that what I had at first taken to be torn strips of material hanging down her arms were in fact rivulets of blood. There was more blood on the slab of rock near the surface, splashed like patches of alien lichen.
"Elegy," Roberts called. "Can you hear me? Take deep breaths and try not to panic. We'll have you out in no time."
The girl stared up at us, blinked. If she'd heard, she gave no sign. She began to cry, a thin, pitiful whimpering reaching us from the depths.
Bartholomew knelt and peered down. He looked at Roberts. "Is there nothing you can do?" To his credit, there was a tremor in his voice.
"I contacted emergency services in Timbuktu as soon as I found out what had happened. They won't be here for another two, three hours." Roberts shook his head, went on under his breath, "But she might not last that long. She's bleeding badly and God knows what internal injuries she's received."
Bartholomew, down on one hand and knee like a dishevelled, ageing sprinter, just closed his eyes and kept them closed, in a gesture more demonstrative of despair than any amount of vocal bewailing.
Suddenly I could no longer bear to watch - either the little girl in agony, or Bartholomew in his own mental anguish. My redundancy, my utter inability to do a thing to help, only emphasised my fear that Bartholomew might resent my presence.
I strode over to the edge of the rock, taking measured breaths and trying to quell my shaking. Elegy's continual, plaintive whimpering, echoing eerily in the chasm, cut its way through the hot air and into our hearts.
There was a drop of perhaps ten metres to the shale-covered slope of the hillside. Elegy, pinned between the two planes, was positioned a little way above the surface of the hill. It occurred to me that if only we had the right tools to cut through the flake of rock...
I returned to the small group gathered around the dark crevice. "Are you sure there's nothing back at the Oasis? Drills, cutting tools - even a sledge hammer? The rock down there can't be more than a metre thick."
Roberts shook his head. "Don't you think I've considered that? We might have hammers, but we'd never smash through the rock before the emergency team arrives."
From down below, a pathetic voice called out, "Daddy!"
"Elegy, I'm here. We'll get you out soon. Try not to cry."
"I'm all bleeding!" she wailed. "My leg hurts."
As we watched, she choked, coughed, and blood bubbled over her lips and down her chin.
"Elegy..." Bartholomew pleaded, tears appearing in his eyes.
"We've got to do something," I said. "We can't just-"
Ralph was squatting beside Bartholomew, holding him. He looked up at me then and stared, and it was as if the idea occurred to both of us at the same time.
"Christ," he said, "the continuum-frame..."
I felt suddenly dizzy at the thought.
Ralph looked from me to Bartholomew. "It might just work, Perry..."
"We could position it down there on the hillside," I went on. "If we took the truck we could have it back here in twenty minutes."
I knelt beside Bartholomew, who was staring down at his daughter, his expression frozen as if he had heard not a word we had said. I said, "It's the only way to save her. We need the frame!"
He slowly turned his head and stared at me, stricken. Some subconscious part of me might have been aware of the incredible irony of what I was asking Bartholomew to sanction, but all I could think of at the time was the salvation of Elegy Perpetuum.
"It would never survive the journey,"