There were lights and there were voices, but the moment Matthew tried to move or to direct his attention toward light or sound the lances of pain took further toll of his protesting flesh. He tried to raise himself from the deck, automatically using the palm of his right hand as a support, but the lever he applied was composed of pure unadulterated pain, and his IT would not let him bear it. His face made contact with the boat’s fleshy fabric for a second time, as if it were rudely demanding a kiss from his tortured lips.
He tried to lie still then, refusing the demands of lights and the voices alike. If he had been able to go back to sleep he would have done so, only too happy to persuade himself that it had all been a dream, and that he was still safe in his bunk, unfallen and unhurt.
But he wasn’t, and he couldn’t quite contrive to escape that awareness.
Later, Matthew was able to piece together what had happened for the benefit of his dutiful memory, but for at least ten minutes he was quite helpless, locked into his sick and bulbous head with his growing sense of catastrophe.
He felt trampling feet descend upon him and trip over him, but he could not count them or make the slightest move to defend himself from them. It might even have been fortunate that a glancing blow to his groin finally contrived to activate a useful reflex that curled him up into a fetal ball, but even that was not without cost, because it brought another flood of agony from his shoulder.
By this time, his mind was clear enough to feel alarm, but not yet clear enough to feel much else. The sense of acute danger overpowered him.
Matthew had been equipped with good IT for most of his life, although the suites that were already on the market when he was born, in 2042, had been expensive as well as elementary. Had he only had his academic salary to draw on he would never have been able to keep up with the forefront of the rapidly progressive technology, but his sideline as a media whore had given him the means to keep up and his status as an outspoken advocate of the myriad applications of biotech had virtually obliged him to do so. Unlike the macho brats who had taken the insulation of IT as a license to court danger, though, he had never been a devotee of extreme sports or brawling, and had never been in the least interested in testing the limits of his IT’s pain-controlling facility. This was, in consequence, the first time in his life that an opportunity to explore those limitations had been thrust upon him. He wasn’t in any condition to savor the experience. All he could think, when he became more easily capable of thought, was that he had been betrayed: that the IT that was supposed to protect him from distress as well as disease and injury had seriously failed in its duty. He was hurtand he was damaged, and instead of protecting him as they should, his additional internal resources were making him sick.
Eventually, he was able to figure out that he had been in a far worse position than anyone else when the boat ran into trouble. Ikram Mohammed, to whom the bunk below his had been allotted, had not even been in it at the time. Knowing that the first deployment of the boat’s “legs” was due, Ike had got up and gone to the wheelhouse to monitor the AI’s performance. Because Dulcie Gherardesca and Lynn Gwyer had been in the bunks on the starboard side the momentum that had hurled Matthew into empty air had merely jolted them against the side of the boat, inflicting no significant injury and insufficient pain to cause overmuch confusion. Unfortunately, when Dulcie had leapt out of bed to find out what was happening, she had landed on top of Matthew’s supine body, and when Lynn had tripped over him her knee had added an extra measure to his tribulations. Because their first priority had been to find out what had happened neither woman had stayed behind to help him.
It was not until a full half-hour later that the second part of Matthew’s ordeal began, when his three companions had had to reach an agreement as to which of them was going to reset his dislocated shoulder.
“Why don’t you draw lots?” he suggested, bitterly, as the discussion of relevant qualifications became positively surreal.
In the end, it came down to a matter of volunteering. It was Dulcie Gherardesca who finally accepted the responsibility.
By this time, Matthew’s IT was at full stretch, and it had no available response to the new flood of agony but to put him out like a light—a mercy for which he was duly grateful, although he came round again to find that although the job had been properly done his nerves seemed reluctant to concede the point.
His right arm felt utterly useless, and his head stillfelt as if a riveter had driven a bolt through the cerebellum from right to left. He had no idea how much time had passed, but the sun had come up and the cabin was bright with its light.
“What the hell went wrong?” he demanded, trying to expel his distress as righteous wrath.
“Unanticipated problem,” Ike informed him. “First major stretch of fast shallow water. The underwater sensors worked perfectly, and she steered like a dream. For a few minutes I thought we might not need the legs at all, but when the time came we may have been going just a little too fast. When we tested the legs back at the ruins it was only a matter of letting them pick the hull up and walk sedately along for a while, until it was time to drop it again. The real thing was a lot more challenging. Theoretically, the AI should have been able to decelerate smoothly enough—but the theory hadn’t taken account of the kind of vegetation that was growing along the canyon walls.
“You saw the stuff we were passing by all day yesterday—thoroughly innocuous. Not here. Here there are active plants that dangle tentacles in the water, ready to entangle eely things whose maneuvrability has been impaired by the current. They’re programmed to grab at anything and hold hard, below the surface andabove. The lead leg on the starboard side had to put down hard to begin the deceleration process, but it should have released itself almost immediately. It couldn’t—and as soon as the AI perceived that something was awry she immediately pulled the other legs out of harm’s way. It probably saved the boat from being trapped, but that might not have been so bad, given that we’re carrying the chain saws. The net effect of pulling seven legs in and using the momentum of the boat to tear the other one free was that Voconiaexecuted a very abrupt right turn, which resulted in a nasty collision with a very solid rock face. Followed, of course, by total confusion. The legs had to get busy then, to save us from being carried into the rocks by the wayward current.
“In all fairness, the AI did a fine job. She extracted the trapped leg, got us righted, managed to keep us from smashing up on the rocks, and eventually slowed us right down. Voconiagot badly scraped below the waterline, of course, but she didn’t spring a leak. None of the legs actually broke, although a couple suffered the same problem you did—mercifully, I don’t have to stand waist-deep in the water to put the joints back into their sockets, because they’re self-righting.
“All in all, we’re a bit bruised, but we’re all in one piece—including Voconia. Until the next time.”
“The next time?” Matthew queried, blearily.
“There’s one more steep-and-shallow stretch to go. We should get there late this afternoon, if we’re on schedule. After that, it should be easy going all the way to the cataract. That’s when the real work will begin. Hopefully, your arm should be a lot better by then.”
“Should it?” Matthew retorted, skeptically. “Somehow, I don’t thinkso.”
“It’s okay,” Dulcie assured him. “It’s back in place. The ligaments are a little bit torn but they’ll heal. What you can feel is mostly just soreness. Your IT will take care of everything if you sit still and give it a chance.”