Mindbridge Read Online Free PDF Page B

jumble of sticky gossamer, pinkish, that turned out to be a form of plant life.
    The other side of the river was lost in the fog; it must have been well over a hundred meters away. “Good time to call the floater,” Tania said. One thing you couldn’t do in a GPEM suit was swim.
    A few seconds later she said, “Should be here any-“ and the noise of the explosion and the shock wave hit them at the same time. Jacque saw the milky water flying by under his feet-the stabilizer working overtime, buzzing loudly, to keep him upright-and then he touched the surface and skied backwards for a short distance before the water closed over him.
    “See, Ch’ing?” he shouted. “What the fuck did I tell you?”
    “What?” Ch’ing said. He had forgotten their difference of opinion about the floater. “What you say, please?”
    “You, uh, never mind.” Jacque realized he’d been brooding, like a stubborn boy. And that sneaking spy tapping his bloodstream, ticking off hormones, recording every second of anger and, now, embarrassment.
    “Is everybody underwater?” Tania said. There was a jumble of responses. “Wait. Is anybody not underwater?” Everybody was. “Well, let’s take a sample of the water and go back.”
    “God. . . damned sample box is under the mud,” Jacque grumbled.
    “Then take a sample of the mud,” someone said. Jacque did, tight-lipped, then turned on his headlamp and started working his way due south. He couldn’t see anything, but it was better to move through bright opaque soup than blackness.
    His head broke out of the water and he waited for the lenses to clear. Ch’ing’s voice crackled in his ear-plugs, excited for once:
    “I think I have found an animal.”
    “An animal? How big?”
    “Not very big. Fist-sized. It swam in front of me and I caught it.” He laughed. “I thought it was a plant, but it wiggles.”
    Some plants wiggle, Jacque thought. Thanotropism.
    Ch’ing surfaced a few meters away, the creature gently cradled in both hands. It looked like a sea urchin, or some such creature, black and spiny. Rippling.
    The two of them were on the bank before any of the others came out. “Can I see it, Ch’ing?”
    “Of course. Just be careful.”
    “I’ll be careful.” Ch’ing handed it to him and there was perhaps one-twentieth of a second when the sensors in both of their suits’ “hands” were simultaneously in contact with the animal. During that instant, they heard:
     
      CH’ING                         JACQUE
      “-goddam Chinaman              “-everywhere life even
      thinks I’ll break his toy,     here floating in filth
      serve him right, if I          in sterile filth
      crush, like in diving,         like crush? and feed,
      crush and feed to the-“        is life, yes.”
     
    “What?” He almost did drop it.
    “Did you say something, please?”
    “Hmn.” He turned the animal over in his hands. In visible light it was shiny purple, and what had looked like spines were neither stiff nor sharp. They waved with an eery grace that did not suggest panic. “Cilia,” Jacque said. “Some kind of cilia. It probably swims with them.”
    “Perhaps,” Ch’ing said. “It does not seem very practical, for locomotion.”
    “Maybe it’s not actually a water animal. It doesn’t seem to mind being out of the water.”
    “You may be right.” He took the creature back and when they touched they heard:
     
      CH’ING                         JACQUE
      “-but it could be dying        “-but maybe it dies
      now wiggling like this,        this way, graceful
      like the caterpillar in        slow poem of death like
      the fire,                      caterpillar? wiggle in
      Mum said, Jacque, you          fire? Bad picture,
      get-are you reading my         splitting, yes, I see
      mind, you are my God