Cataract. Part 17

"Wait-" she shouted. "Don't come any closer-"

He didn't hear her clearly. Heedless of the swirling lights, he waded knee-deep through to help her. And sank up to his waist in the brash. "What the h.e.l.l-"

Tsia cursed under her breath. His pack seemed to drag him down in a cloud of phosph.o.r.escence. Before she could climb over to help him, he was up to his chest in night-gray weeds that sparkled with greenish lights. He threw out his arms to catch his armpits against the sagging clumps, but she could see the floating mats tear with every thrust of the wind.

His eyes rose slowly to hers. "I think," he said, "I'm going down."

"Your antigrav-"

"Just cut out. This is dead weight, all the way." He sank another handspan, and his blunt fingers tightened on the gra.s.s. "I thought you just checked the settings."

"I did."

"There's something moving around my legs."

"Eels. Sucker fish. I don't know."

"Can't you feel them?"

"A shadow. Nothing more. Don't straggle. Do you have an enbee?"

" 'Picker's still got it. You?"

"Lost it on the bridge." Her stomach tightened. She judged the distance between them and eased forward

another half meter. Bowdie appeared through the gra.s.s, and the brash mat s.h.i.+vered; Wren sank another handspan. "Bowdie!" she shouted. "Stay back!"

The other mere froze. "What--"

"Stand still," she shouted. "Your enbee-quickly. Throw it here."

"What?"

"Your enbee!"

Wren jerked and sank abruptly up to his neck in a new swirl of greenish light. "Don't move," she snapped at him harshly. "You'll tear the brash and tangle like a stick in a pile of yarn."

He didn't nod, but his eyes, black and unreadable, stared back into her own. Behind him, Bowdie mpved quickly back to a more solid clump, and his long fingers searched his harness as his own heart began to pound. Tsia could feel the strength of it like the points of light in his field.

"Get the line," she directed.

Bowdie nodded and shouted behind him to Striker. "Get the line up here!"

"G.o.ddam worm-sp.a.w.ned reavers," Tsia cursed under her breath. Kurvan eased up beside Bowdie to a

precarious perch on a thick mat of mallow. He dumped his own pack in an awkward tangle, then tore

open the flap and yanked out a metaplas form.

"Stay back," Tsia snapped as he tried to approach. The gra.s.s mat s.h.i.+mmied. Her knees sank in. The wind roared through, and, with a silent ripple and a cold, steady gaze, Wren disappeared in the lake.

Tsia lunged forward, heedless of the thin, tearing brash. Her arms plunged into the blackness; her face hit the water. She groped wildly. There were swirls of green sparks of light, but they did not lighten the blackness. She grabbed hair, pulled and tore at nothing and realized it was only roots in her hands.

Kurvan scrambled across with a rod pieced together from the config gear and spread himself out on the other side of the sinkhole.

"Hurry," she snapped, her arms deep in the water.

Kurvan gave her a cold look. "For Daya's sake, he's got an enbee. He can breathe as well as you."

"He gave his to me on the platform, and I lost it in the sea-"

"s.h.i.+t."

"Give me yours here; I'll give it to him when I reach him."

"Haven't got it," he returned, stabbing down with the rod. "Lost it in the lake."

"Where's Bowdie's?"

"Said he lost it back at the bridge." He stared down as if he could see through the water. "Can you feel him?"

"No, but he's right below us."

"Daya," she cursed under her breath. How long had Wren been down? The water swirled and sparked and fought beneath her hands.

"Get an e-wrap," she shouted at Bowdie. "Spread it out- and get an enbee from Nitpicker or Striker."

Striker started searching her harness, while Doetzier and Bowdie yanked the config gear from the packs.

The first e-wrap they unfolded ripped itself from their hands and blew away across the meadow like tissue paper. The second one they configured as they sat on it, letting it mold itself to the contours of the gra.s.s. In the dark, as it s.h.i.+fted its colors to the meadow, it was invisible to Tsia. Quickly, Doetzier caught the connected lengths of metaplas that Striker slapped into his hands.

Tsia hooked her feet in a tangle and deliberately thrust her head and shoulders beneath the black surface again. The slimy gra.s.s clung to her face like seaweed. Her hands stretched down. She could almost feel Wren beneath her. His heartbeat, his cold, steady thoughts. He was there. She knew it. She caught cloth in her hand. A sleeve-the fingers that followed to clamp down on her arm could not be mistaken for roots.

Tsia lifted her head from the water. The gra.s.s wallowed beneath her weight. Her lungs ached with tension. How long had Wren been down? Two minutes? Three? She could feel the time in his lungs.

She writhed and twisted, and her body rolled back a bit on the mat. Her face came free. Wren, feeling her pull, began to kick against the water. Instantly, curls of phosphor sparks whipped around his body. The root mats swirled around his feet. They tangled and tightened until they trapped his free arm in thick and rotting debris. Desperately she finned a message against the back of his hand: Pa.s.sa nyey. Don't fight. Don't struggle. She could barely hold his weight against the pull of his pack.

Kurvan s.h.i.+fted his position, probing down with the pole, and with his movements, Tsia's face slapped water in a flare of green sparks. She jerked her face out. "Stop it. Stop!" she choked. "You're driving him under!"

"I almost had him," Kurvan snarled.

"I do have him," she returned savagely. "Get back. Ease back-let Doetzier through."

Even in the dark, she could feel the other mere by those tiny dots in his field. Lights of hope, she thought as he shoved the configured e-wrap platform forward. Kurvan rolled away to the side. Two of the packs' antigravs were fixed to the corner of the e-wrap, and the flexible platform rested on the water and weeds. She could feel the whine of the power cells on the edges of the wrap. The sound cut through her biogate like a sonic on full, and she could not stop the snarl that stretched across her face.

"Have you got an enbee?" she snapped at Doetzier.

He jerked it from his harness and held it out over the water to Tsia's stretched-out hand. But the wind gusted, and Kurvan lost his balance. The mere fell against Doetzier and the enbee disappeared in the brash.

"s.h.i.+t!" Kurvan lunged after it, but missed.

"It's gone," snapped Doetzier, hauling at his shoulder. "Let it go. Give Feather a hand."

She glared at Doetzier as if she did not see him. "Hurry," she snarled.

"Do you have him?"

"Barely, Hurry."

"Don't let go."

"G.o.ddam it, then, hurry!"

"Give me the pole," he directed Kurvan. The other mere shoved the metaplas length across the gra.s.s. But the gra.s.s mat rippled. Kurvan and Doetzier both fought for footing. Kurvan started sinking, and Doetzier fell against him. The tip of the pole caught in the water. Silently, neatly, with a line of green light to show the path of its pa.s.sage, it slid from Kurvan's hand like gla.s.s and sank beneath the surface, just out of Doetzier's reach. Violently, Kurvan cursed.

"I'm slipping." Tsia's voice was matter-of-fact now. The hand clenching hers seemed to tighten. Just before he died. The sense of Wren was no longer sharp in her gate. The chill tang, cold, like old metal, was not as strong on her tongue. She tried to reach his biofield, but she could feel only a cold deliberation not to move. A steady determination that faded with every breath she let out of her lungs. "Do something," she cried out. "I'm losing him!"

Doetzier looked up, met her eyes, saw the bared teeth and the wildness that stretched taut across her face. "The antigrav isn't strong enough. He has to get rid of the pack."

"He's carrying the scame-the med gear, not just the breaker gear."

"It's too heavy. He's got to drop it."

"I told him not to move." And he could not hear her anyway, said some back, callous part of her brain. He was already almost unconscious. The filmed messages she pressed against his skin created no response. The only thing left in his brain was a frozen certainty that if he moved, he would make it worse.

"If he stays as he is," Doetzier snapped, "if he keeps the pack, we can't bring him up through the gra.s.s. We have no way to cut the growth. My flexor doesn't work against it. Does yours?"

"Of course not."

"We can't tear it or we fall in ourselves-"

"For Daya's sake, don't tear it," she snapped back. "Those roots are the only thing other than my fingers holding him near the surface. If he sinks beneath the mat, he won't come up again. There are eels down there. And sucker fish. He's out of air. He has to come up nowl" Doetzier clenched one hand in a half fist as if he could strike some sense into her across the short expanse. "He has"-his voice was cold and clear-"to get rid of the pack. Signal him with your hands."

"G.o.ddam you," she screamed. "He's unconscious."

"You're a guide," he snarled in return. "Reach him through your gate. Force him to think again. To fight."

Tsia glared at him, at Bowdie, at Kurvan. At Nitpicker, who eased up from behind the other three. Her eyes were wild. "Where's the line?"

"Striker's digging it out. We configured the e-wrap first."

"Then give me the sleeve of your blunter."

He did not hesitate. He shrugged out of the jacket and twisted one sleeve around his hand. He threw the other across to her. She barely had time to wrap it once around her hand before she started to sink forward. She twisted her head to stare down into the water. Gray water. Green sparks. The stench of rotting weeds and roots. Her eyes turned to Doetzier's. Her voice, when she spoke, had a curious, pleading sound. "Don't let me go."

He nodded. She hesitated, then lunged forward and down, and into the depths of the swamp.

Swirling, circling sparks... Her right arm caught with a wrench as the blunter jerked taut between them. Then she sank down by Wren's body. As her feet hit his chest, she hauled up on his weight and kicked her legs around him. Roots caught on her neck and she flinched at their touch. She could see nothing but glinting, greenish sparks that lit the bubbles of her movements. She could feel only wirelike strands that matted like wet string in the wind.

She tore at Wren's pack. The brash caught in her fingers like old pasta, and in her frustration, she screamed through her biogate. A violent surge answered like a wave that rolled through her mind. Claws seemed to grab at her flesh. And then her hand caught a seal. Instantly, she stripped it open and jerked it from his limp shoulder. Like claws, her fingers raged at the straps. Water and weeds swirled in her face. Fish b.u.mped her legs and back. She could feel the pressure of the water. Or was it that of her heart?

Ruka was tearing at her thoughts. She was swimming-no, she was fighting with Wren's pack. Its weight pulled back, then sank slowly down in the gra.s.s, pulling a ma.s.s of brash after it like a slow, green-lit whirlpool. The root mat tore.

Rotted gra.s.s was in Tsia's nose, weeds across her eyes. Ruka screamed in her head and leaped across the flooded creek to race toward her through the gra.s.s. She thought she saw stars in the sky. No-that was phosphor in the water. She was still looking down.

Doetzier hauled her up till her arm flopped over the edge of the e-wrap platform and tilted the raft in the water. He could not lift her further, her legs wrapped stubbornly around Wren's waist.

"Striker," he cursed, "I need help."

It was Nitpicker who crawled out and dug her fingers into Tsia's s.h.i.+rt. Together, they hauled up the guide. As Tsia's shoulders cleared the raft, the top of Wren's head broke the surface in a soft wash of green light.

"Let go," Doetzier snapped at Tsia. "Let go, so we can bring him up."

Can't let go, she snarled back in her head. Won't. She struggled weakly in his grip. The antigravs whined into breakdown, and the energy field pulsed in the water.

"Let go-Feather," he snapped, "give him up."

"You'll drop him!" she cried out as his hands tried to pry off her legs.

"G.o.ddammit!" He shoved her back, and she lost her grip. Then Doetzier got Wren by the shoulders and

hauled up so that the other mere's face was clear. Water washed over the raft's edge.