Not that she would have had the chance. Broken shadows flickered across the skate like tongues of cold, black flame, and the boat’s own engine noise surrounded them in a cloud of bugs and bitter stench. A length of now-slack cable lashed a wake through the tree roots and swamp beneath the skate, then leapt with a crack of surprise when the skate sheered against some obstacle Rahel couldn’t see, and overturned them all into the rancid mud.
“Data point: Mathematical models indicate that inversion of skate #6398240 is unlikely while antigravity repulsor units are still engaged.”
Rahel gritted her teeth, shoving one shoulder against the side of the overturned skate and trying not to notice that the only movement she felt was her own feet sliding backward through the mud. A lurid belch of vapor curled up from the disturbed sediment, and she stumbled upright with a cough to escape the foul smell. “You could help me, you know!”
“Request noted.” The pilot, its boxy body wedged above the water in a snarl of tree roots, was silent for nearly thirty seconds. “Data point: Reinforced appendages are prerequisite before external leverage adequate for independent motion can be achieved.”
Rahel growled and dropped her head against the skate. Keim volunteered in a slow, helpful voice, “He doesn’t have any legs.”
It had been more a smart remark and less a real suggestion, anyway. “What about the antigravs?” Lifting up on her toes, Rahel stretched across the bow of the skate to rest her weary arms. Keim sat perched atop a knee of root to the pilot’s left, lips pursed as she searched for dry patches on her clothing with which to clean her ruined notebook. Rahel couldn’t help thinking how she would feel if it had been her data lost to the slough. “Any chance you can disengage the anti-gravs from there?” she asked the pilot.
“Request noted. Unable to comply. Data point: All ship’s functions are referenced via hardwired terminal junctures.”
Which, of course, ceased to be hardwired to the pilot right about the time the lower part of its casing tore away from the skate. She didn’t even bother asking about the radio—it languished along with the antigrav controls under twenty-odd centimeters of mud, sinking deeper by the minute. Rahel kicked one of the boat’s dented sides, but didn’t even get a satisfying boom! for her effort.
The slosh and suck of shin-deep mud reached them just ahead of Paval’s disgusted groan. It was a sentiment Rahel could well appreciate right now. Every step, every movement in the brackish water broke the delicate layer of surface tension protecting their noses from the cesspool underneath. Bugs and little biting things not even big enough to see swarmed each upsurge of stench, changing their focus to breath-letting orifices and sweat-sticky skin as soon as their filthy bug brains recognized that higher lifeforms were around. In general, Rahel tried to keep an open mind about the role various lifeforms played in their environments—but if she had to snort out one more noseful of midges or spit another spiderlegged intruder into her palm, she was going to storm through this slough and personally squash every flying thing she found.
Paval lumbered into view one long, awkward step at a time. He nearly lost his balance twice when his rear foot refused to peel out of the mire and his leading foot sank deeper than he expected, but he freed himself without glancing up for help, brow furrowed, mouth clamped resolutely shut against the fuzzy cloud of buzzing around him. His effort to wipe the mud from his face had only turned him into a more severe copy of himself—dark eyes smoldered inside a negative raccoon mask of cleanness, and his hair was plastered sloppily to his skull in five uneven, finger-wide furrows. Mindful of what a mirror for her he probably made, Rahel scraped her own hands down both cheeks and flicked what mud she got back into the water.
“This was all I could find.” Paval swung his arm up between them, dangling the soaked, twisted remnant of pack into Rahel’s hands as he stumbled to a stop. Invisible midges and their more visible cousins jostled for position in his breath stream. “The rest must have gone under already.”
The pack strap felt cold and slimy in her grip. Wrapping one arm under the bottom of the bag to steady it, Rahel dug her free hand inside to paw through the muddy contents. “No phone?”
Paval coughed, temporarily shattering the cloud of bugs, and sat heavily among the roots on the other side of the pilot. “No phone.”
“Damn.”
“Not that it would matter.” He aimed a sour look at the ruined notebook in Keim’s lap. “Our phones weren’t designed for swamp duty any more than her notebook was.” Rahel watched him clap an uncounted number of bugs to death between his palms, and wondered if he was thinking about the Greens. “We’re screwed.”
“Any chance your groupies will follow us in here? Maybe try and do some more damage?”
Keim looked up from her labors, as though surprised that Rahel had asked her. “How should I know?”
“You write for them, don’t you?”
Rahel countered. “You must know something about the way they think.”
“I know how the GreeNet editors think,” Keim said. She finally gave up and refolded her notebook into her jacket pocket. “And they just happen to prefer a more radical shade of Green than I might personally wear.”
Which answered at least one question.
Paval splashed one foot scornfully in the slime of mud below him. “Whatever color they are, their boats still need water. They could never make it back here through all this muck.” Another million insects died with a sharp report. “And no one in his right mind would walk in this filth.”
Grinning, Rahel yanked shut the zipper on their ruined equipment pack and turned to hang it on the bush behind her. “I guess that tells me where we’re gonna stand.”
Paval made a sound of weary sarcasm. “Oh, great.”
“What?” Bugs and noxious gas swelled up as if from nowhere as Keim slid down from her perch with a splash. “We walk? You can’t be serious!”
Rahel shrugged. “You got any better ideas?”
“Yes! We wait right where we are.”
Rahel snorted with laughter, and Paval rocked forward to hang his head between his knees. “We wait for what?” Rahel asked the reporter. “The hotel thinks we’re out here collecting samples, and Nils knows me well enough not to expect any chitchat until we’re done. It’s not going to occur to anyone to come looking for us until well after dark. Which is about…” She made a show of squinting up at the sky through the ratty canopy of leaves. “Ten or eleven hours from now.”
“We’ll all be eaten to death before then.” Paval swatted at some crawling thing on his hand, but not quickly enough to keep it from biting him.
“Well, then—” Rahel leaned over and pulled him groaning to his feet. “A litde healthy exertion won’t make things any worse, now, will it?”
“System request.”
At first, the toneless voice surprised her. Then she looked over Paval’s shoulder and remembered the disabled pilot, still propped among the tree roots and too heavy to carry.
“Data point: This unit massed 523.6 kilograms before truncation,” it said, as if reading her thoughts in her expression. Maybe it could. “Data point: Central memory package masses less than .5 kilograms. Data point: All but memory is hardware. Request: Transport memory package back to Startide homebase for installation in rebuilt chassis.”
“Sure thing.” She nodded Paval toward the Newborn, then turned to look a question at Keim. “How about you? You coming or staying?”
“Do I have any choice?” The reporter sighed as she watched Paval pry loose an access panel and pull the Newborn’s memory free. “If only the trip could be so easy for all of us.”