Alexei explained, "These are my fellow students and colleagues. The swimming equipment is part of our service. Sometimes we have to inspect the pipes from the inside. Sometimes there are air bubbles. Sometimes we have to retrieve a broken robot or a piece of something that has caught somewhere. We do not have to do that very often. In fact ... I can't ever remember having to go into the pipes at all for anything a robot couldn't handle. But, nevertheless, we have our responsibilities. We have to keep ourselves ready and able to handle any possibility, any emergency at all. So we practice and drill and keep ourselves focused on our responsibilities to the water of the community. Today—ah, today we get to put into practice what we have practiced. They shall be ... the decoys."
"So this is how you do it," Mickey said. "I've always wondered about that."
"Wonder no longer," Alexei said. "Sooner or later, somebody was certain to figure it out anyway. No matter, I already have three other ways to move things from here to there—just not as exciting. I leave it to you to figure them out, Mikhail. I will bet you a day's interest that you cannot."
"I can't afford that bet." Mickey laughed.
Alexei laughed with him and clapped him on the shoulder. "You are smarter than you act. This is a good trait." To the rest of us, he said, "We have to assume you are being watched. At the very least, monitored through station security. There are those damnable little cameras everywhere. They saw us coming up the service elevator. They know that an access hatch was opened. That was why I used my own card. So they could monitor our progress. Very shortly, they will be monitoring the progress of five divers through the pipes—and one of them will be carrying my locator. Five divers, not six, we will keep them wondering what happened, da? They will meet the divers on the topside of Disk Seven. But by then, we will be somewhere else, and they will have lost us. I am too clever for my own good." To his Russian comrades, Alexei shouted, "What is taking you so long? Do you think we have all night? Look at the time. We have less than an hour—"
"Alexei," said one of the men, a dark brooding fellow with eyebrows like furry caterpillars. "The deposits are made, da?"
"Da."
"This is good. We have made our own reservations, we will be on the one a.m. car. If what you say is true—"
"You have told no one else?"
Caterpillar-brow shook his head. "I think the word is already spreading. But no, we have told no one. Go now. Godspeed!" He glanced around. "Godspeed to all of you." Then he grabbed Alexei and the two of them exchanged kisses on each cheek, the way they do in Europe. I'd never seen men do that before, kiss each other—even friends. It sort of freaked me. I looked at Douglas and Mickey and tried to imagine them kissing. It didn't seem right, but it didn't seem as wrong anymore either. What the hell did I know?
THE CORE
We were going up the Line—by hand.
From an Earth perspective, we were going up. From the Geostationary perspective, we were going sideways—starside—outward toward Disk Seven.
From our perspective, we weren't going any direction at all. Just forward along a never ending pipe. There was water on the inside of the pipe; we could hear it. There were handholds running the length. We were climbing to forever. I wondered how long it would take to climb the whole Line—
"How come we can't take a maintenance car?" I asked. "Look, there are lots of tracks along these pipes. And there's a car over there."
"The maintenance cars are monitored." Mickey said. "We don't want to leave any evidence of where we started and where we got off. Most of all we don't want anyone showing up to meet us. Just keep pulling yourself along."
Alexei showed us how to do it. "Don't try to hurry," he said. "You'll tire yourself out. Slow and steady does the job. Do like I do, hand over hand, counting like this—like music ... and one ... and two ... and three ... and four ... like that. That's how to make the best time over a distance." He added, "If you did this all the time, you would know how to go faster, but I need you to conserve your strength. We have a long way to go. Almost two kilometers. We can do it, but you must concentrate. Mickey, do you know a good song? Something to give us a pace?"
"Alexei, you forget who you're talking to. I couldn't carry a tune in free fall." And then, after Douglas and I finished laughing, he said, "No, I mean it. I can't sing. Douglas?"
Douglas snorted. "Chigger is the one in our family who sings. Charles?" He was right behind me. "How about a song?"
Without hesitating an instant, I began, "It's a small world, after all—" Four voices shouted for me to stop before I finished the first line. Two of the voices contained serious hints of violence, Dad's and Doug's.
"Now, I'm going to have an earworm, all night," Douglas muttered. "Whose good idea was that?"
"I think we should all save our breath for a while," Dad said, "and just concentrate on the job at hand."
The job at hand was the next handhold—and the one after that—and the one after that—I could feel the slap of the plastic handholds against my palms like a steady beat; it echoed up through my wrists, my forearms, my elbows ... there was a rhythm to it. For some reason, I started thinking of a song that Mom used to sing to us when we were small. "Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ... ?"
A Mercedes Benz was some kind of car they didn't make anymore, but it didn't matter. The song always had such a plaintive quality, it might have been about my life. I didn't even realize I was singing it aloud until Douglas joined me on the chorus. I stopped, embarrassed.
Dad was right behind Douglas. He called up to me, "Charles—I didn't know you liked Janice Joplin."
"I used to," I said. "Until about four seconds ago." That came out a little nastier than I intended. "Why didn't you tell me about John Coltrane?"
"Huh?"
"The Coltrane Suite. You never sent me a copy."
"Yes, I did."
"I never got it."
"It came back refused."
"I didn't do that."
"It must have been your mom—" He stopped himself. "I'm sorry, Charles, I promised myself I'd never say anything bad about your mom, but there were times when she acted badly. I sent you a lot of stuff, a lot of music. She sent most of it back; she told me not to send you any more. She didn't think it was good for you to spend all that time locked up by yourself with your headphones on. I liked it that you were always so interested in my recordings. I think that's why she did it—to keep us apart, to keep me from using the music as a way to stay close to you. I'll get you another copy. I promise."
"Never mind. I don't want to hear it."
"Have it your own way." Dad sounded hurt. I didn't care. John Coltrane was just mine. Not his. Couldn't he let me have one thing that was just mine alone? Couldn't he let any of us have our own lives? He was always using us—like Stinky's monkey—without asking permission or telling us what was going on. He didn't trust us. So why should we trust him?
I felt Doug pulling himself up closer to me, alongside me. He looked at me oddly. "Chigger, we've gotta talk."
"There's been enough talk already," I said. "I don't need any more. Thanks."
Doug looked annoyed. "What's with you anyway?"
I indicated Stinky's chimpanzee with a backward nod; it was clinging happily to my neck. "I got a monkey on my back."
"In more ways than one," Douglas said. "I'm not going to talk to you when you're like this." He let me pull ahead so he could follow me again. Dad came after him. And we kept going.