Josh Roseman - The Clockwork Russian and Other Stories

Then it was time to climb.

Which, Wen realized, she had no idea how to do.

“Okay,” Wen said. “Okay, I can do this. I can figure this out.”

Truthfully, there wasn’t much to figure out. Wen looped the microfilament around her thighs to form a sort of harness; dim memories of adventure movies that she knew were probably wrong, but it was better than nothing. She cut off the sleeves of her shirt with a utility knife and wrapped them around her hands. Then she sat on the edge of the chasm and tried to descend.

Tried. Her hammering heart had other ideas.

“No,” she said, her voice too quiet to echo off the chasm’s far wall. “I can do this.” As if to add its own form of encouragement, the comm in Wen’s backpack pinged.

“One more hour. Now or never.”

Wen played out a meter of filament, grabbed it tightly with both hands, and slid off the edge.

The first hour of Wen’s flight from the ship had been the worst; pain jolted her legs, her knees, her hips, her spine, everything. Her body bounced in unpleasant ways, and even though she’d worn comfortable shoes on the graduation trip, her feet protested every step. And the damn backpack straps kept digging into her shoulders, its weight like a small child on her back.

But every time she wanted to stop, she just slowed to a walk and checked the comm. Every time she checked the comm, sunrise was a little bit closer… and so was the substation.

“I… can do… this,” Wen panted as she jogged. “I… can… do… this!”

And every time she felt she was about to pass out from exhaustion, she put one foot in front of the other, repeating the four-word mantra in her head when she could no longer spare the breath to speak.

I can do this.

I can do this.

I can do this.

Wen hung over the edge, suspended, heart hammering in her chest. She had never thought she could be so scared, but then, she’d never dangled by a nearly-invisible thread over what looked like a bottomless chasm. The microfilament was taut in her hands, and she gripped it tightly, not wanting to move.

The comm pinged again. Had five minutes really passed while she was hanging here?

“Damn it!” she said, ignoring the shaking of her voice. “I can do this!”

Wen slowly moved one hand from the microfilament line to the spool at her waist and gently turned the controller until, centimeter by centimeter, she started to descend.

“Well,” she said, surprised she could her herself over the hammering of her heart, “this isn’t so bad.” She turned the controller again and started dropping a little faster. She had to find a cave — a deep one, deep enough that she could hide in the thermal cocoon that was part of the pack’s emergency gear — and she had to find one soon.

But she wasn’t going to do it this way.

Wen unhooked the flashlight from her pack and set it to the widest possible beam, and then activated the spool again. As she moved, she swept the light back and forth across the dark rocks until she found a promising shadow.

Wen pocketed the flashlight and, holding the line with both hands, swung her weight gently until her feet were against the uneven wall of the chasm. “I ran more than thirty kilometers to get here,” she whispered to herself. “I can damn well walk to that cave!”

It took a few minutes to figure out exactly how long the line had to be to walk horizontally to the cave, but Wen still had twenty minutes to spare when she finally reached it. She wondered how deep she was, and if she’d be protected enough — the reel at her waist didn’t have a readout of how far she’d gone — but she didn’t have time to look deeper. No, this was it. This cave or nothing.

Wen managed to swing into the cave opening and sprawl flat on the rocky floor, keeping herself from being pulled back out again. Slowly, one hand clutching a small stalagmite, Wen played the flashlight’s beam over the cave’s walls, floor, and ceiling. Stalactites, more stalagmites, a damp and acrid odor that was probably Sidqiel’s water supply — poisonous to humans, naturally — and, to Wen’s immense relief, nothing waiting to eat her. And the cave was at least ten meters deep.

The comm pinged again. Fifteen minutes. “This is it,” Wen said. She took the utility knife from her pocket and cut through the makeshift harness. Then she carefully removed the belt while holding onto the end of the microfilament, tied the two ends together, and buckled the belt to the stalagmite.

Wen shrugged off the backpack and, by the white glow of the flashlight, unpacked the thermal cocoon. According to the tag, it was rated to keep the average human alive in temperatures ranging from minus-twenty-five to plus-one-twenty-five. Wen tried to remember just how hot it got on the surface of Sidqiel during the day.

The silvery material of the cocoon crinkled as Wen climbed into it. She tried to pull the backpack in after her, just in case, but it wouldn’t fit. “Damn.”

After a moment’s thought, Wen packed as many supplies in there with herself as she could, and drank the last of her water. Then she recorded a message on the comm and set it to broadcast mode.

Finally, Wen swallowed two sleeping tablets from the backpack’s medical kit, sealed herself inside the cocoon, and waited for dawn to come. The pills took effect quickly. Wen’s last thought before her eyes closed was that, if the cocoon didn’t save her life, at least she’d die in her sleep.

Wen maneuvered the hoverchair across the stage, accepting her diploma from the headmaster. She shook his hand and gave him a tight smile, but she didn’t really feel like smiling. She didn’t even wait for the end of the ceremony; her parents helped her get into their car, and only half an hour later she was back in the hospital, hooked up to the machines that were slowly but surely repairing her body.

Wen’s mother kissed her forehead, her hand smoothing over what wispy hair remained on Wen’s head. “I’m so proud of you, love,” she said. Her round, dark eyes filled with tears. “So proud.”

“Thanks, mom.”

The doctor came in then, and Wen’s parents excused themselves. “How are you feeling?”

“Alive,” she said.

“Better than dead.”

Wen didn’t dignify that with a reply. Doctor Morn had been saying that ever since Wen had met him. In truth, she was lucky to get as far as him; the rescue ship had had quite a bit of difficulty getting to Wen’s cave, and she’d been exposed to heat and radiation that, despite the thermal cocoon, had nearly killed her.

Doctor Morn lifted Wen’s gown to check the radiation burns on her stomach and chest. She closed her eyes; she didn’t need to see the way her flesh hung oddly on her frame. The sickness that came with radiation poisoning had forced the doctor to remove large chunks of diseased skin. A graft was healing on her forehead and reconstructive surgery had fixed her nose, but they weren’t ready to do the rest of her body yet.

“You’re doing well, Wen,” the doctor said. “We should be able to cover the scars with more grafts, and I’m hopeful that, with enough drug therapy, you won’t need any more organ replacements.” She already had a new liver and pancreas, cloned from her mother’s because there weren’t enough healthy cells to get them from her own. “Do you have any questions?”

Wen shook her head. The doctor replaced the gown and covered Wen with a light blanket. After he was gone, her parents sat with her for a few minutes.

Sergeant Salzman waited until they were gone to come see her. He was young — only twenty-five — which had surprised Wen when she’d met him in person. He pulled a chair to her bedside and took her small hand in his large, dark ones, staring at her with intense, deep-set brown eyes. “You did it.”