Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [89]
… And then Data felt himself float free from Soong’s consciousness. He had been caught up in the drama of the situation, but he suddenly realized that he already knew the outcome of the situation: Soong, Graves and Vaslovik had, of course, escaped. Otherwise, he, Data, would not have been created. It was an odd thing, Data reflected, to become so engrossed in a situation where one knew the end before it began. With the exception of the Sherlock Holmes stories, he had never been very interested in serialized fiction (“Cliffhangers,” he thought dryly), but he now realized that he might have to reevaluate this position. Sometimes, he decided, the important question was not “What happened?” but “How did it happen?”
And when he reintegrated his mind with his creator’s, Data was surprised to discover that events had not paused (as they might in a holoprogram), but continued to unfold. Soong was now reaching down to haul up Ira Graves. His graduate advisor rolled over onto his side, panting heavily. Soong tied the rope to the now almost depleted antigravs and dropped them down to Vaslovik.
Data felt Soong’s doubts that he would be able to haul up Vaslovik—his reserves were almost gone—but then he heard Graves stir. Soong spared a moment to look at Graves and was surprised to see that the anxious dread he had expected to see had been replaced by grim determination. Apparently, somewhere on the way up the cliff face, Graves had decided he wanted to live.
Their grunts and the irregular thump of Vaslovik’s feet against the cliff wall echoed in the cavern. But, sometimes, in the silence between breaths, Soong believed he heard something moving far below them. Was it the grinding of rock on rock or the pounding of many feet? Soong could not say. He would have liked to scan with his tricorder, but the seconds it would have required seemed precious and irretrievable.
He focused past Vaslovik’s exhausted face, now no more than ten meters away, and tried to see if anything was moving down below. Shadows shifted and danced, but there was no way to know if they were caused by the shifting of the rope or other, more ominous movements. When Vaslovik’s head came level with the edge of the cliff, Graves reached down and grabbed the professor’s arm. Vaslovik didn’t even wait to unclip the rope before he began to urge them toward the tunnel mouth. They had to scramble up five hundred meters of steep, slippery, treacherous caverns, but then the yacht’s transporter would be able to get a lock on them. And then, safety.
Vaslovik and Graves stumbled away, supporting each other up the icy slope, but Soong felt compelled to hang back for a moment. Exhausted as he was, he managed to still his breathing and listen, awed by how quickly the chamber could settle into stillness, how natural it seemed. Their brief scuffling about, he reflected, was only a tiny aberration in the life-span of the place. Not a breath of wind stirred. Silence ruled here. He began to wonder if they had frightened themselves over nothing.
But then Soong felt it through the soles of his feet—a resonant thump. Despite Graves and Vaslovik’s calls, he unhooked the lamp from his harness and leaned out over the edge of the cliff as far as he could. The deep gloom swallowed the beam about twenty meters down, so Soong flicked the light off. Then, far below, he saw the dim glow of the work lights they had set up on the cavern floor. It was hard to be sure, but he thought he saw jagged shadows shifting about below.
This was a mistake, Soong thought. And now it’s long past time to go.
Withdrawing from the edge, and running for the tunnel, he found himself thinking of his childhood home and the route the neighborhood kids had used to get back and forth from school.