City of Ruins

THIRTY-SEVEN



Once the Bug stops walking, its movements become smooth. Paplas positions it over the cave opening. For one heady moment, I can see down the hillside into Vaycehn itself.

Dust still rises from the new death hole, but the dust is now just a blight on the landscape, not the overwhelming part of it. A fire burns a few kilometers from the death hole, the result—one of the hotel staff told me that morning—of damage from the groundquake.

Apparently groundquakes don’t just cause things to collapse, they cause systems to fail. The collapse might ignite a fire or start a flood of water in addition to the damage from the collapse itself.

As Bridge and I look at the city, Paplas adjusts the controls. His hands fly across his control panel, stopping occasionally to grab a lever and pull it. It’s almost as if Paplas himself has dozens of arms just like the Bug does.

Finally he stops moving for a brief moment. He turns his head slightly, looks at Bridge, and says, “Now we descend.”

The Bug’s pod floats downward, almost like a ship. In fact, I would think of it as a ship except that it is not moving on its own propulsion, but being levered down by the legs. Some remain on the surface as the pod eases into the darkness. Others float past us as they make their way down, anchoring those bendable feet on the side of the cave itself.

It’s not quite right to say that the walls have closed in. We just feel closed in because the big black legs take up so much space inside the hole.

I’m also not in control—of the mission, of the Bug itself, of Paplas. So I sit, with my hands clasped, letting someone else do work I would rather do.

I glance at Bridge. His expression is hard, as if he’s willing himself to remain calm.

Paplas is grinning, his hands moving delicately over the controls.

It takes less than three minutes to descend to the cave floor, the same distance it took me half my life to climb up. No wonder I had no sense of how deep we were before. The equipment the Vaycehnese use is so quick and sophisticated that it makes long distances seem short.

The legs work their way down and settle around us. Paplas turns to Bridge.

“Now for the fun,” Paplas says.

Bridge frowns at him, not understanding. I do. Working equipment in a particular setting, even if the setting is ruined and dangerous, can be a great deal of fun.

With a jerk of the pod, Paplas moves the Bug forward. I can’t tell if that jerk comes from a part that needs repair or a flaw in the design. As the Bug flattens itself out to move into the corridor, Bridge says to Paplas, sounding a bit nervous, “I guess you assessed the damage yesterday, huh?”

“Assessed?” Paplas says, not looking back.

“You know,” Bridge says, and he does sound nervous. “Figured out how bad the damage is, how much work you’ll have, how long it will take?”

I suppress a smile. Bridge has worked with me long enough to learn my work habits. He’s come to expect them from everyone who does work in places that Bridge sees as alien.

“Why would I do that?” Paplas asks.

Bridge looks at me, panic clear on his face. I smile and shrug, expecting this. Paplas has a system. He’s clearly done this before. To him, this is a cleanup task, not an exotic adventure.

I glance at the control panel. On it, Paplas has a map of the corridors, some areas shaded dark. A small red beacon shows where we are.

It takes just a moment to get to the first rock fall. The Bug stops. Paplas grabs something from under his seat, then turns to us.

He’s holding ear protectors.

“I almost forgot,” he says. “Put these on.”

I take mine. They’re a bit greasy, either from being under the seat so long or from the previous user. I wipe the part that will go against my ears, then put on the ear protectors. Instantly, all ambient noise vanishes.

Bridge deliberately widens his eyes as he looks at me, an expression that means You’ve got to be kidding. Fortunately, he doesn’t say that to Paplas.

Instead he wipes off the ear parts and stick them on, then glances at me.

Paplas has put on his own ear protectors. He doesn’t look at us as he moves one of the legs forward.

It feels odd to see the leg move and not hear the attendant sound, almost like we are in space. I’m suddenly more comfortable.

Bridge is not. He squirms in his seat.

I smile reassuringly at him.

The leg jams against a head-sized rock. Instead of picking it up, as I expect, the leg starts vibrating.

It takes a moment, without the sound, to realize what the leg is doing.

It’s pulverizing the rock.

I frown. I thought we were going to lift the rock out of the cave, carrying it in those legs just like Mikk and Roderick had done as they worked to get us out ot one of the corridors.

Instead, Paplas is destroying the rock.

I want to ask what’s going to happen to the dust, but I can’t. Even if he let me talk, he wouldn’t be able to hear my question.

Instead, I sit forward on my seat so that I can see better. Half the legs have moved to the front of the pod and started pulverizing.

I know now why we needed the ear protectors.

The Bug vibrates a little. I want to know why the sound won’t cause the rock walls around us to vibrate and collapse. I want to know if Paplas has done this before (although it seems pretty clear that he has).

Bridge clutches the edge of his seat. I lean as far forward as I possibly can without attracting Paplas’s attention.

The rocks gripped in the legs grow smaller. Dust forms, and so far, none of my questions have been answered.

* * * *