(eng) Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Retrieval Artist 04 by Buried deep

Author:Buried deep [deep, Buried]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Thirty-one

The situation in Sahara Dome was getting worse.

Scott-Olson had returned to her lab. She saw no point in staying in the conference, watching the disaster unfold. She could see it a variety of ways—on a wall screen, through her links, or on one of the screens mounted on her main desk.

She kept the wall screen on—she had to stay informed: information had suddenly become a lifeline to her—but she shut down the news portion of her links. Having the information come through the links made it too personal. She didn’t want to think about the disaster that was befalling the city in which she had spent most of her life.

The lab wasn’t making her much calmer. Six of the mummified bodies were in her cooler. The skeleton of Lagrima Jørgen had its own table, the orange bones glowing in the lab’s bright light.

Soon this place would fill with more bodies—some human from attempting to stop the fleeing Disty, and a whole lot of Disty. She doubted the local Death Squad even existed any more, so she was gearing up her team to handle the Disty bodies as they got brought in.

She had already made up a bed for herself in the small side office, and told her assistants to do the same. Even if it were possible to get home—and at the moment, it wasn’t; no one could safely step outside in Sahara Dome—she wouldn’t leave. Not with so many corpses on the way.

Every time she looked at the wall screen, she saw a massacre. In some ways, it was as hideous as the one she’d found buried in the Disty section. Disty climbed over each other to get out of the Dome. They shoved each other aside, trampled each other, and some—abandoning the principles of Disty life—punched each other.

The train station was the worst. No new trains had entered the Dome, and no more were coming. Someone had ordered train travel to Sahara Dome to end.

The trains that originated here had gone, probably with Disty engineers at the helm. Even engines that had been in storage sheds for maintenance were put into service, probably causing disasters farther along the tracks.

But no one had told the Disty that more trains wouldn’t arrive. The Disty crowded the edge of the tracks, pushing and shoving and arguing. More filled the station, and even more filled the streets outside the station, all of them trying to get out of the Dome.

They wouldn’t, and Scott-Olson wasn’t sure what would happen when they realized that. Would they pry open the Dome exits and flee? She’d already seen trains leaving with Disty clinging to the outside. Those Disty had to know they were going to die.

She had heard, but fortunately hadn’t seen, that the Disty were taking enclosed dune vehicles outside the Dome. Those vehicles wouldn’t get the Disty far—maybe to Wells, if they were lucky. Real lucky. She had even seen a report that a few Disty were driving aircars out of the Dome, something

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