When the Devil Dances

Med-pack, among other things, that had Hiberzine in it and she’d used that too many times not to recognize the utility. Doors had already been a problem so she pulled out the door-pack including a tank of liquid nitrogen and a punch-gun. And they were probably going to be climbing some, so a coil of rope with a descent pack attached to it was piled on the top of her pack.

Finally recognizing that she couldn’t carry the Halligan tool, or the rescue saw, which had a real appeal, she closed the door and went on.

Entering another maintenance hallway she tied the children together with part of the climbing rope and got them climbing down the ladder. It descended only six levels, but as they approached the base there was a strong wind coming up the ladder shaft.

“What’s that?” Shari panted. Wendy could tell that the trip, especially carrying Amber, was already tiring her out.

“Air shaft,” Wendy said. “That’s how we’re going to get to G Sector.”

“You’re joking,” Shari said as they reached the bottom of the ladder. The corridor felt like a wind tunnel, the air hammering against their bodies.

The corridor was lined with ropes and the children grabbed them as they stepped off the ladder.

Shari grabbed one as well and walked to the end of the corridor. The opening there was the width of the corridor with droppable rail well marked with warning signs. On the right-hand side was a massive winch with a spool of cable that looked long enough to reach to China. Well before she reached the end of the corridor Wendy could see the massive airshaft beyond.

Air for a complex as large as a Sub-Urb was always a problem, especially when almost all of it was recycled in one way or another. To facilitate the transfer of fresh air, and to permit mixing of gasses, the Urb had four massive airshafts, each nearly a thousand feet deep and two hundred feet across.

The opening they were at was halfway down B sector, but it still was nearly eight hundred feet to the bottom.

“All I can suggest is don’t look,” Wendy said, walking to the winch and unlocking the clutch.

“You’ve got to be joking,” Shari shouted back. The wind near the opening felt like a hurricane.

“This is long enough to reach the bottom and then some,” Wendy shouted back, pulling out the first six feet or so of cable and dropping her climbing gear to the floor. “But we don’t really want to do that; the entrance to Hydroponics is on G Four.”

“Tell me you’re joking,” Shari said. She felt light-headed and the dim light from the shaft seemed to be coming from beyond a veil. She’d had this feeling before, when she was walking away from the Posleen assault in Fredericksburg. It was the feeling of utter, bone-drenching terror.

“I’ll lower you to G,” Wendy continued as if she hadn’t heard the older woman. “The cable is rated for three tons at a thousand feet, so you don’t have to worry about it taking your weight. The winch I marked for the different openings. When you get down there you’ll have to work your way into the opening. Hook the cable up to the take-up spool and then swing it back and forth. I’ll watch from up here; when I see you swinging the cable I’ll send down the kids. You’ll have to work to stabilize yourself on the way down; there’s enough cable, though, that we can hook the kids up halfway and you can stabilize from the bottom. Be careful and don’t let it pull you out the door.”

“This is INSANE,” Shari said, backing away from the shaft.

“Look,” Wendy hissed in her ear, taking her arm and shaking her. “The Posleen have the elevators and most of the escalators. There is no way out going up; there is a chance we can find our way out through Hydroponics. But there is no other way down. No. Other. Way. Now put the harness on and get ready.”

“The children aren’t going to like this at all,” Shari said, taking the harness with wide eyes. “And I can’t take Amber down.”

“I’ll send Amber on Billy,” Wendy said. “And I’ll just grab them and tie them to the damn thing. No, they’re not going to like it, but there’s not much they’ll be able to do about it, either: The door is locked.”

Shari shook her head at the opening, slowly buckling on the climbing harness. “How are you going to get down?”

“That’s… gonna be tricky,” Wendy admitted.

* * *

Shari walked down the wall, resolutely refusing to look down. She had, once, and that had been enough. The bottom of the shaft was shrouded in darkness, but just the sight of lights shining from other openings, deep into the well, was enough to nearly freeze her up.

And that wouldn’t have been a good thing because it was taking all her concentration to keep from oscillating. As the cable lengthened it tended to swing back and forth. The one time that she’d slipped and started to swing she had slammed painfully into the wall several times. And that was when she was only a hundred feet down or so; she really didn’t want to think about how far and hard she would swing if she lost it now.