The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [82]
Gaunt ignored her sarcasm. "You've just left that man alone, looking after that whole complex. How can I turn my back on you, and still have any self-respect?"
"Plenty of people do exactly that," Nero said.
"How many? What fraction?"
"More than half agree to stay," Clausen said. "Good enough for you?"
"But like you said, most of the sleepers would have known what they were getting into. I still don't."
"And you think that changes things, means we can cut you some slack?" Clausen asked. "Like we're gonna say, it's fine man, go back into the box, we can do without you this time."
"What you need to understand," Nero said, "is that the future you were promised isn't coming. Not for centuries, not until we're out of this mess. And no one has a clue how long that could take. Meanwhile, the sleepers don't have unlimited shelf life. You think the equipment never fails? You think we don't sometimes lose someone because a box breaks down?"
"Of course not."
"You go back in the box, you're gambling on something that might never happen. Stay awake, at least there are certainties. At least you know you'll die doing something useful, something worthwhile."
"It would help if you told me why," Gaunt said.
"Someone has to look after things," Nero said. "The robots take care of the rigs, but who takes care of the robots?"
"I mean, why is it that everyone has to sleep? Why is that so damned important?"
Something flashed on the console. Clausen pressed a hand against her headphones, listening to something. After a few seconds he heard her say: "Roger, vectoring three two five." Followed by an almost silent, "Fuck. All we need."
"That wasn't a weather alert," Nero said.
"What's happening?" Gaunt asked, as the helicopter made a steep turn, the sea tilting up to meet him.
"Nothing you need worry about," Clausen said.
The helicopter levelled out on its new course, flying higher than before - so it seemed to Gaunt - but also faster, the motor noise louder in the cabin, various indicator lights showing on the console that had not been lit before. Clausen silenced alarms as they came on, flipping the switches with the casual insouciance of someone who was well used to flying under tense circumstances and knew exactly what her machine could and couldn't tolerate, more intimately perhaps than the helicopter itself, which was after all only a dumb machine. Rig after rig passed on either side, dark straddling citadels, and then the field began to thin out. Through what little visibility remained Gaunt saw only open sea, a plain of undulating, white-capped grey. As the winds harried it the water moved like the skin of some monstrous breathing thing, sucking in and out with a terrible restlessness.
"There," Nero said, pointing out to the right. "Breach glow. Shit; I thought we were meant to be avoiding it, not getting closer."
Clausen banked the helicopter again. "So did I. Either they sent me a duff vector or there's more than one incursion going on."
"Won't be the first time. Bad weather always does bring them out. Why is that?"
"Ask the machines."
It took Gaunt a few moments to make out what Nero had already seen. Halfway to the limit of vision, part of the sea appeared to be lit from below, a smudge of sickly yellow-green against the grey and white everywhere else. A vision came to mind, half-remembered from some stiff-backed picture book he had once owned as a child, of a luminous, fabulously spired aquatic palace pushing up from the depths, barnacled in light, garlanded by mermaids and shoals of jewel-like fish.
But there was, he sensed, nothing remotely magical or enchanted about what was happening under that yellow-green smear. It was something that had Clausen and Nero rattled, and they wanted to avoid it.
So did he.
"What is that thing?"
"Something trying to break through," Nero said. "Something we were kind of hoping not to run into."
"It's not cohering," Clausen said. "I think."
The storm, if anything, appeared to double in fury around the glowing form. The sea boiled and seethed.