“Ernon!” he shouted as loud as he could.
To his astonishment, he realized he couldn’t hear anything. His lips were moving, yet no sound was coming out of his mouth. The blast had deafened him!
“Ernon!”
He tried to get back on his feet, but a terrible pain spiked his every muscle, forcing him to drop back to the floor. And just when he thought it couldn’t possibly get worse, the mischievous lab started to spin around like a poisoned guval,11 without giving a damn that its occupant didn’t enjoy the ride.
After a while, the spinning in his head stopped, which was a good thing. The bad thing was that the flashes thinned out—an ominous sign that he was about to get swallowed by complete darkness. This prospect helped him find unexpected strength, especially after he remembered the depth to which the elevator had brought them. First, he had to find his companion.
He started to look around feverishly. He saw something protruding from beneath the huge rock that had crashed to the floor: one of Ernon’s feet. Gill turned his head in another direction, filled with horror. Alone in the collapsed cavern, maybe the only survivor of the huge blast!
He didn’t let his misfortune drown him, although his chances to escape alive seemed ridiculously small. His biggest enemy was fear… Fear, which could cloud his eyes and make him overlook possible escape routes or step over the path of being-alive. Hoping that at least his sense of smell wasn’t gone, he recalled the nine primordial Guk aromas in the tranquility harmonics. He finally got to his feet and staggered out of the room, only to find that his advance was blocked by huge rocks that had fallen from the ceiling. The rescue teams would have to dig for dozens of days to reach him—or, more likely—his decomposed remains…
Someone very clever must have slipped a fusion bomb into the base, someone sent by the temples. They moved faster than anybody could have predicted. Of course, the temples never acted directly because they didn’t want to start another civil war. At least not yet, according to the Shindam’s line of thinking. Those who usually did the killings were fanatics from the “Zhan’s Children” coria—under Baila XXI’s direct orders. The Shindam never openly blamed the prophet, although they would have liked more than anything to be able to.
As he was fumbling in the dark through the piles of rubble, he finally spotted his portable scanner, miraculously still working. Sighing with relief, he turned it on and started to explore the remains of the lab, using the light of its display. Not that he was hoping to save something of his tools—the microtomograph had disappeared without a trace, along with the god’s bones, buried under the rock fallen from the ceiling. He noticed something shiny under some twisted shards of metal, and he immediately recognized the golden bracelet—apparently unscathed—coming out from under the rock, still fixed on the god’s forearm. He gently pulled the artifact off and tried to tug the bones free. They were stuck and likely to break, so he decided to abandon them to the rescue teams, if they ever reached the room.
What could he possibly do except wait for a slow, painful death? Just as he was about to abandon all hope, he saw the ventilation shaft in the wall, hidden under electrical wires and pieces of ceiling hanging from the roof. The shaft had a reasonable diameter. He could easily crawl inside if it wasn’t clogged by debris.
Gill effortlessly pulled the grill loose, its attachment weakened by the shock wave. As he was about to climb onto the tunnel’s edge, he realized he had nowhere to put the god’s bracelet he was holding in his right hand. He didn’t want to abandon the artifact, so he pulled it onto his right forearm under his antistatic sleeve—pretty much in the same way the gods used to wear them. He pushed the scanner into the tunnel, and then, groaning in pain, he managed to pull himself in.
The passage didn’t appear to be blocked by rocks; after several feet, it turned vertically. He rose up, trying to light the black well with the scanner. Predictably, it went up as far as he could see inside it. He didn’t have the slightest idea how much he had to climb, although judging by the elevator ride, it wouldn’t be fun. He touched the shaft’s wall and discovered that it had a slippery surface, without asperities to support him. His only chance was to lean his back against the wall, press his feet on the opposite one, and climb with the help of his hands.
The very thought of being buried so deep galvanized his muscles, giving him the power of ten Antyrans. He hung the scanner around his neck and started to climb.
Just as he suspected, the progress was very slow, and he had to make huge efforts to avoid slipping back into the abyss. A couple of times, he propped himself up with his short tail, but after a few seconds, the pain became unbearable. In this way, he advanced inch by inch.
Gill had the feeling he climbed for an eternity, although he realized he had traveled maybe one-tenth of the distance before him. And he had already passed all the cracks made by the blast, which helped him rest his hands. Soon, the torture became so great that he was tempted to quit—and fall into the abyss. A thought crossed his spikes that he should try to slip down to the base of the tunnel, although he knew all too well that right at the moment when he would need to control the slide, his exhausted muscles might fail, sending him to his death.
Suddenly, he smacked his head on a metallic object—a disabled fan propeller. Despite the uncontrollable shaking, he managed to get his hands around two blades, and with his last drop of energy, screaming in pain, he pulled himself through the fan. Finally, he had somewhere to rest!
Gill looked at the darkness above him and decided it wasn’t such a bright idea to keep climbing. After all, technicians would occasionally need to fix the rotor’s engine, and to do that, they had to be able to reach it. With renewed hope, he pounded the metallic walls to find the access door. On the third bang, the plate made a hollow sound, betraying an opening. He propped his back against the rotor and bashed the door with all the force of desperation. The door flung open on the very first hit.
He landed in a narrow hallway; the stairs were carved out of bedrock—most likely one of the escape routes. He started to climb them, stumbling from exhaustion. Even at this distance, they were cracked by the force of the blast. After a few more yards, he had to pass a pile of rubble collapsed from the ceiling that almost blocked the path.
In the end, he reached a door. He rammed it with all his remaining might, but it only opened a couple of inches. By stretching his fingers through the crack, he found that a huge rock was blocking it—most likely the collapsed ceiling. There was no way of going past it, but at least he was close to the surface. He closed the scanner and dropped to the floor, leaning his back against the wall.
After a while, he began to hear distant noises, a sign that his hearing was slowly returning. Soon, the door opened, and the lights of a rescue party flooded him. The shadows told him something, but he couldn’t understand. They finally figured out he was in shock; two of them lifted him gently from the floor and laid him on an inflatable stretcher.
The chubby rescue air-jet took off for the nearest recovery dome while the healer inside began checking his wounds. Above the stretcher, a swarm of sensors flickered in different colors, searching for wounds to his internal organs. It’s OK, he thought, comforting himself. The Shindam doesn’t work with anybody. Over time, the healing of the body went tail to tail with the kyi’s mending. No wonder that Zhan’s temples enjoyed a monopoly over the recovery domes. But in the last century, the Shindam had challenged their grip, and some of the recovery domes in Alixxor became safe enough to be used even by archivists.
The healer, holding a portable scanner in his left hand, rubbed a gash on Gill’s forehead to make sure his skull wasn’t broken; he glued a patch of artificial skin over the gash and gently checked the back of his head.