Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [131]
'Come to do something about it.'
'We can always use the help.' Caleb put his hands on his hips, watching the ongoing work as if he was in charge of it all. 'You should have heard Denn Peroni complain about all the better things these professional engineers could be doing - but I called in some favours.'
'Where is my father?' Cesca asked, looking around and hoping to see him.
'He's at Ildira for some trade negotiations. I don't know why he'd want to go to the Prism Palace's sunshine and banquets when he could be here, with all this.' Caleb raised his hands to indicate the enormity of the destruction.
The shipyard workers were shoring up the cracked and damaged walls with thick alloy girders that had originally been fabricated as a spaceship framework. The smell of exhaust fumes had not yet been filtered from the underground air. Parts of the discoloured walls had been scoured to a mirrorlike reflective white, while drilling teams worked to straighten and repair the shafts.
Jess looked up at the newly installed girders. He and Cesca could feel the fractures like aches in their bones. 'Those support stabilizers won't be more than a band-aid for the fissures that run through the ceiling.'
'It's all we've got.'
'We can lighten your workload.' Jess reached over to take Cesca's hand. Every time they touched, it felt as if an electric circuit was completed.
Cesca said to the Plumas workers, 'You'll have to take care of the equipment and machinery yourselves, but we can deal with the water and ice.'
Jess raised his hands, and energy sparkled from his fingertips. The wentals have agreed to infuse the water molecules, inhabit the ice, and let the two of us reshape this place into what it should be.'
The Tamblyn brothers looked at each other uncertainly. 'Didn't you say that the wentals would contaminate this place?' Wynn asked. 'Our business is pumping water. We can't have it all… alive and energized.'
'The wentals assure me they can withhold their propagation and then withdraw when we are finished. They won't change it, the way they've changed me and Cesca.'
'All right. If you're sure, then be my guest,' Caleb said. 'If you save us months of work, then who are we to complain?'
Jess felt the wentals within him building up their energy in preparation. He and Cesca independently knew what to do, and took separate tasks. Even when he let go of her hand, the power within him did not decrease. He walked on the packed ice to the edge of the subterranean ocean, knelt on the frozen shore, and extended his finger into the cold sea. Tendrils of wental energy swirled out from him so that the seawater became like an artist's paint or a sculptor's clay. He drew up curtains of water that stayed, glistening, exactly where he put them.
From deep down where the artificial suns could not penetrate, he continued to draw up new currents and stir what had been left undisturbed for a long time. He sensed the pulsing, living nematodes that Karla Tamblyn had controlled, but the creatures' primitive brains remembered nothing about the attack. He explored with wental senses, but did not contaminate or harm any of the creatures.
Cesca went to the nearest wall, pressed her palm against the ice, and released her power into the frozen structure. She shifted the water molecules aside and parted the ice, letting her arm sink in up to the shoulder. Sparkling light spread out from her hand like ripples in a pond as wentals flowed into the thick ice and shot upward to find the flaws and cracks, to seal the deep fissures like a surgeon suturing an incision.
Jess drew more water from the sea and fashioned patches and seals out of new, clear ice, using it like putty to refill the gouges left by Karla's explosions, to reinforce the cracked shore so that the pumping machinery could be installed on solid, level ground.
Jess drew down support columns like stalactites and pulled up water from the ocean, freezing