Mirror Space - Marianne de Pierres [76]
Thales licked his lips. Black spots flickered before his eyes. He was having trouble standing now, and this was not helped by the brutal way she had cut to the chase. ‘B-Bethany knows me t-too well, perhaps.’
‘Sit down,’ she ordered, and pointed to a bench by the blood analyser.
Thales stumbled over to it. He hadn’t slept since Aleta, nor barely eaten. And then the attack . . . He sank onto the hard, cold surface with relief.
Samuelle followed and repositioned herself in front of him. ‘Thales, listen to me. I want the same thing for different reasons. I don’t much care what’s happening to your planet but what Farr is planning affects Consilience. There’re many that have devoted their lives to our belief of balance and peace. He can’t be allowed to destroy that.’ Her wrinkled face took on the semblance of dried carrion. ‘He won’t be allowed. We need you alive, Berniere. And you need us.’
‘Why do you need me?’ Thales rasped. A peculiar halo had grown around Samuelle’s head, as though the hood of her nano-suit was glowing.
‘We want to study your blood and your damaged skin. Find out what Lasper used to blackmail you. We need to be a step ahead of him.’
‘You want my skin?’ He glanced dazedly around the laboratory. What did that mean? What did that really mean? But the halo had made it too hard for him to think. It bleached his mind with its astringent light.
A balol materialised suddenly at his elbow and grasped his arm. He smelt it; felt the scrape of its tough exoskeleton.
‘I think that you need to lie down, young man,’ rasped Samuelle. ‘Now.’
TEKTON
It seemed that no time at all elapsed between Tekton and the detrivore falling through the floor of the taxi, and Tekton being scooped up by the small salvage tug.
With no breathing apparatus though, he was too busy gasping for oxygen to appreciate the tug’s immaculate timing. Even when rough hands forced a mask to his nose and mouth, and hauled him into the tug’s small cabin, the Lostolian barely registered the gravity of his situation.
Only after moments of sucking in brackish, wonderful air did the world begin to make sense again. Tekton clung to the mask and watched the tug operator fume the circling detrivore with a hand-manipulated nozzle.
The detrivore convulsed and its muscle coordination deserted. The tug operator sent his craft scuttling beneath its erratic wing beats and deep into the shadows of a broken, but gently revolving, giant wheel. At least, that was what Tekton thought the gangling structure and attached carriages to be.
The pilot wove the tug with extraordinary skill between criss-crossed girders while the detrivore gave clumsy pursuit. Without the coordination needed for fine manoeuvring, it slammed into the metal struts and then dropped away into the chasm.
The operator cackled into his breather mask, then lifted it to spit cigar smoke out of one side of his mouth. ‘’Nother one down,’ he crowed and snapped the mask back.
He didn’t speak again until he’d threaded a path through the giant wheel, and deeper into the metal pot-pourri that surrounded the abyss. Floating alongside the wheel was a conical-shaped mass, decorated with gaudy stripes.
He tethered the tug to the base of it and popped open the cabin door. After a short crawl up an external staircase he was inside the cone. Tekton followed more slowly, his body aching from trauma and adrenalin poisoning. The steps, like the ones up to Farr’s chapel, made him dizzy, and he welcomed the firm grip of his saviour, who reached down and pulled him up the last few.
Tekton almost fell into the darkened space. While he struggled to sit up, the man slammed the door shut and pressed various panels. Light flooded the cone and Tekton felt a welcome blast of oxygenated air on his skin.
The tug operator peeled off his mask and hung it on a hook near the door. He held out his hand for Tekton’s.
The archiTect obediently removed it and handed it over. He inhaled the air with a sigh of relief. ‘I am indebted to you...sir,’ he managed after collecting