You can turn up your suit temperature, or you can turn it down.
That’s all.
Why?
The why is easy. You remember those pieces of the wreck I went to so much trouble to position around you?
There was a point to all that.
There’s a point to you.
I SUPPOSE THE terror was too much for Kanto, and that the passage through the narrowing had weakened its leash. Whatever the case, the monkey was out of the chamber, gibbering and shrieking, as it headed back the way we had come.
None of us had spoken until that moment. The chamber had struck us into a thunderous, paralyzing silence. Even when Kanto left, we said nothing. Any utterance would have felt like an invitation, permission for something worse than these stone ghouls to emerge from the walls.
Lenka and I looked at each other through our visors. Our eyes met, and we nodded. Then we looked at Rasht, both of us in turn, and Rasht looked as frightened as we felt.
Lenka went first, then Rasht, then I. We moved as quickly as our suits allowed. But even though none of us felt like lingering, I was no longer having to work as hard to keep up with the other two. My suit still felt sluggish, but it had not worsened since I came into contact with the silver contamination. Lenka and Rasht, though, were not moving as efficiently as before.
I still could not bring myself to speak, not until we were well away from that place. If the monkey had any sense, it was already through the narrowing, on its way back to daylight.
But when we reached the junction, the intersection of four tunnels, Rasht made us halt.
“Kanto’s taken the wrong one,” he said.
In the chaos of footprints, there was no chance at all of picking out the individual trace of the monkey. I was about to say as much when Rasht spoke again.
“I have a trace on his suit. In case he…escaped.” The word seemed distasteful to him, as if it clarified an aspect of their relationship best kept hidden. “He should be ahead of us now, but he isn’t. He’s behind again. Down this shaft, I think.” Rasht was indicating the rightmost entrance of the three we had faced on our way in. “It’s hard to know.”
Lenka said in a low voice: “Then we have to leave. Kanto will find his own way out, once he knows he’s gone the wrong way.”
“She’s right,” I said.
“We can’t leave him,” Rasht said. “We won’t. I won’t allow it.”
“If the monkey doesn’t want to be found,” I said, “nothing we do is going to make any difference.”
“The fix isn’t moving. I have a distance estimate. It isn’t more than twenty or thirty metres down that tunnel.”
“Or that one,” I said, nodding to the middle shaft. “Or your fix is wrong, and he’s ahead of us anyway. For all we know, the magnetic field is screwing up your tracker.”
“He isn’t behind us,” Rasht said, doggedly ignoring me. “There are really only two possibilities. We can check them quickly, three of us. Eliminate the wrong shaft.”
Lenka’s own breathing was now as heavy as my own. I caught another glimpse of her face, eyes wide with apprehension. “I know he means a lot to you, Captain…”
“Is there something wrong with your suits?” I asked.
“Yes,” Lenka said. “Mine, anyway. Losing locomotive assist. Same as happened to you.”
“I’m not sure it’s the same thing. I fell in the pool, you didn’t. Can you still move?”
Lenka lifted up an arm, clenched and unclenched her hand. “For the time being. If it gets too bad, I can always go full manual.” Then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and reopened them. “All right, Captain.” This with a particular sarcastic emphasis. “I’ll check out the middle tunnel, if it’ll help. I’ll go thirty metres, no more, and turn around. You can check out the one on your right, if you think Kanto’s gone that way. Nidra can wait here, just in case Kanto’s gone ahead of us and turns back.”
I did not like the idea of spending ten more seconds in this place, let alone the time it would take to inspect the tunnels. But Lenka’s suggestion made the best of a bad situation. It would appease the Captain and not delay us more than a few minutes.
“All right,” I agreed. “I’ll wait here. But don’t count on me catching Kanto if he comes back.”
“Stay where you are, my dear,” Rasht said, addressing the monkey wherever it might be. “We are coming.”
Lenka and Rasht disappeared into their respective tunnels, their suits moving with visible sluggishness. Lenka, whose suit was more lightly armoured, would find it easier to cope than Rasht. I speculated to myself that the silver contamination was indeed having some effect, but that my exposure to the pond’s microorganisms had provided a barriering layer, a kind of inocculation. It was not much of a theory, but I had nothing better to offer.
I counted a minute, then two.
Then heard: “Nidra.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I hear you, Lenka. Have you found the monkey?”
There was a silence that ate centuries. My own fear was now as sharp and clean and precise as a surgical instrument. I could feel every cruel edge of it, cutting me open from inside.
“Help me.”
YOU CAME BACK then. You’d found your stupid fucking monkey. You were cradling it, holding it to you like it was the most precious thing in your universe.
Actually I do the monkey a disservice.
As stupid as he was, Kanto was innocent in all this. I thought he was dead to begin with, but then I realised that it was trembling, caught in a state of infant terror, clinging to the fixed certainty of you while he shivered in its armour.
I made out his close-set yellow eyes, wide and uncomprehending.
I loathed your fucking monkey. But there was nothing that deserved that sort of terror.
Do you remember how our conversation played out? I told you that Lenka was in trouble. Your loyal crewmember, good, dependable Lenka. Always there for you. Always there for the Lachrimosa. No matter what had happened until that point, there was now only one imperative. We had to save her. This is what Ultras do. When one of us falls, we reach. We’re better than people think.
But not you.
The fear had finally worked its way into you. I was wrong about greed being stronger. Or rather, there are degrees. Greed trumps fear, but then a deeper fear trumps greed all over again.
I pleaded with you.
But you would not answer her call. You left with Kanto, hobbling your way back to safety.
You left me to find Lenka.
I DID NOT have to go much further down the tunnel and reached the thing blocking further progress. It had trapped Lenka, but she was not yet fully part of it. Teterev had come earlier—many years ago—so her degree of intregration was much more pronounced. I could judge this in a glance, even before I had any deeper understanding of what I had found. I knew that Lenka would succumb to Teterev’s fate, and that if I remained in this place I would eventually join them.
“Come closer, Nidra,” a voice said.
I stepped nearer, hardly daring to bring the full blaze of my helmet light to bear on the half-sensed obstruction ahead of me.
“I’ve come for Lenka. Whatever you are, whatever’s happened to you, let her go.”
“We’ll speak of Lenka.” The voice was loud, booming across the air between us. “But do come closer.”