The Dig (35 page)

What are you doing?
she chided herself. Away from this place, these circumstances, there could be
nothing
between them. So what
did
she like about him, aside from his boyish good looks? Besides his insightfulness and his quick wit? Chemistry?
Do I believe in chemistry?
Was it that she felt sorry for him?
Eh eh, no mothering.
She chuckled to herself—
though, he is extraordinarily
clean…

Hearing the buzzer vibrate on his timer, she sat up, excited. Her eyes moved to his hands, to watch them pop up, the right one zooming to the timer to press stop. They popped up for a second, then fell right back down. His eyes didn’t open. What the hell was that? Did he not lift them enough?

She leaned up and craned her neck to read the display: it flashed “00:00,” with a lightning bolt beside it. It was definitely buzzing, but he wasn’t lifting his hands again. She hadn’t seen this before, but maybe it was normal. Maybe something important was happening and he was choosing to ignore the timer until it was over. Could he do that? She remembered what he had said about the timer. He had started using it at the museum when he was seventeen, training himself to withdraw his hands when the buzzing sensation jostled his nervous system. It was his only way to get out with no outside intervention. Did he need outside intervention now? What if the timer wasn’t working right? She decided to play it safe, since he didn’t appear to be in any danger.
Wait five minutes. The thing’s still buzzing—give him a chance.

She stared at his unmoving eyes and hands for two minutes.

“Bollix!” she said out loud. “That’s it…” And reaching across the table, she pulled the artifact from under his hands. “Oops, shit!” she said as his bare hands flopped onto the tabletop. Quickly grabbing his gloves, she lifted his hands and gently laid them on the gloves.

She swallowed, and her stomach began to tighten as she watched his eyelids.

God damn it…
“Matthew?” she said with a quiver in her throat. “Matthew,” a little louder. She felt her leg begin to tremble, and her heartbeat quickened. “Matthew!” she shouted, throwing a balled up piece of paper at his face. It bounced off his chin and fell on the table.

She leaned across and began slapping his face repeatedly. Still no response.
Oh, God, don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t
PANIC
! He’s okay, he’s okay… he’s… oh, my God…

Her eyes welled with tears as the thought struck her. She pushed it away as idiotic.
He is not dead,
Tuni.
Shut your brain, idiot.
Her eyes shot down to his chest and watched for ten seconds. It wasn’t moving. She slid off the bench and around beside him, putting her hand to his neck in search of a pulse.
Oh, God, no pulse. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Where was the pulse supposed to be? Where on the neck? It was on the wrist, too! She grabbed his wrist and waited.
Was that it?
Yes! That’s it, I feel it! He’s alive, definitely alive. Oh, God, yes. But is he breathing?
She put her hand across his chest and felt it expanding and contracting—faintly, but nothing to be worried about. She put her finger under his nose and felt the air come out.

Okay, so he’s just stuck. That’s what it is. He’s stuck and he can’t get out.
She thought for a moment and dragged the artifact back, placing one of his hands on it. She looked at the timer on his other arm, still flashing zeros. Wondering if the buzzer part was really working, she slid her finger underneath the fat part of the timer and found a dull metal point.

“Ow! Son of a…
ugh
!” She pulled her finger out and stuck it in her mouth. “Bloody hell!” If a shock that intense wasn’t waking him up, she couldn’t imagine what would.
Holy crapballs!
she thought. How could he deal with that shock so calmly?

Tuni sighed and looked at his hand, atop the k’yot piece where she had placed it. Her hand wrapped around his wrist and pulled it sharply from the metal fabric. Still nothing. She slapped it back down and lifted it again.
This is ridiculous,
she thought.
He’s being bloody electrocuted by a band on his arm, and I’m trying to touch his hand to this thing.
He must be touching something else… or something else was touching
him,
rather. She looked at his sleeve and felt inside, around his arm. As she pulled his left arm to her to check it, his back began to slide slowly away from her.

“Oh, bloody hell,” she moaned. He had slumped all the way to one side, his bare cheek resting on the seat. She pulled his arm to straighten him out and began to feel a sense of dread again at how limp his body felt. She pushed the term “dead weight” from her head as she righted him. With him steady again, she slid out from the seat and poked her head under the table. Something touching his ankles? She pulled his pant leg up and saw a white sock. She reached in, past his calf—so his socks were the long sort that went nearly to the knee. It made sense. Something in his shoe, maybe? But then, how would he have walked over here?

She needed help.

She crawled out from under the table and, after another look at his motionless face, ran out the door.

“I think we should strip him down bare in his tent,” Peter said. “We’ve tried everything else. We know he was fine in there last night—everything is definitely new. Something could have slipped down his shirt or something.”

Tuni looked at him in despair. They had tried everything, and the timer apparently wasn’t doing its job.

“How long does the timer take to charge?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” he replied. “Meier had it made several years ago as an upgrade to the one his father had put together. It uses some special lithium battery to give him enough juice, but like I said, that’s beside the point. The timer is for waking him up when he’s
in
a reading. If we’ve taken everything away from him that he would be reading, the timer should be irrelevant. Come on—let’s get some more people in here to help move him.”

Rheese moved out of their way, and Tuni glanced at him. He seemed to be somewhat concerned, but she had lost any shred of trust she might have had in him.

“I’ll wait with Matt,” she said to Peter’s back as he hurried out the door.

She sat down beside Matt’s inert body, his head now lolling back against the seat back, mouth agape.

“Perhaps you should try pouring cold water over his head,” Rheese suggested, leaning against the cabinets.

“Hmm,” she muttered, not looking at him.

A few minutes later, Peter returned with Rodney, Jesse, Fozzy, and Graham. Tuni moved and allowed the five men to get their arms under Matt’s armpits and thighs, raise him over the table, and muscle him awkwardly out the door.

“Go open his tent,” Peter said to Collette as they shuffled past.

She darted ahead and unzipped it, tying it open. Hunching down, they pulled and scooted the limp body into the tent and set it down gently on the sleeping bag.

“Okay,” Peter began, “I’d like everyone out, please. We need to minimize the chance of something else touching his skin.”

Peter ignored the question from Graham, “Why does it matter if something touches his skin?”

As they all piled out, Peter saw Tuni crouching over outside the door.

“You want to help me with this?”

“Ah… I—I don’t think I should.”

“Great,” he huffed. “So you’re going to stand there and watch me strip him, but you won’t cross the line and help?”

She swallowed and sighed and finally came into the tent as Peter began pulling off Matt’s boots.

“We should leave him a bit of dignity, don’t you think?” she said, nodding to the doorway. At least fifteen sets of eyes gawked back at them. “Especially if he wakes up right now.”

“Whatever,” Peter replied peevishly. “I think there are certain things we stop worrying about in emergency situations, but if it’ll make you feel better, go ahead.”

“I got it,” Rodney said, and he untied the door flap and began to zip it up. “Let’s go, you lot. Bunch of gawking wankers, every one of you…”

The voices trailed off.

As Peter shucked off Matt’s bright white socks, Tuni turned to the gray turtleneck. She pulled the bottom up, exposing an undershirt, which she wrestled over his arms and head and tossed in the corner. As Peter unbuttoned his jeans, she untucked the undershirt and pulled it off as well. Peter moved to Matt’s feet and slid the pants all the way down and pitched them in the corner.

“Last bit…” Peter said as he slid off the black boxer briefs. “Okay, let’s make sure there’s nothing else touching him besides the sleeping bag material.”

Tuni gulped and pulled up a wrist, checking one armpit and then the other. Peter examined between the toes, then glanced around everywhere else.

“All right, let’s him roll him over,” he said, and got his hands under Matt’s legs.

Tuni turned away as she pushed against a shoulder until Matt lay facedown.

Peter sighed. “Damn it… okay, you might want to look away again—I’m gonna spread the cheeks to be sure… yep, nothing out of the ordinary there. Now, check his ears and hair.”

Tuni tilted Matt’s head to one side and looked in one ear as well as she could. Then, after lifting and turning it the other way, she examined the other ear. Then she slid her fingers into his hair, shaking it out. Nothing fell out.

“This sucks,” Peter finally said as they plopped back down beside him. “Well, let’s roll him back over and cover him up with the sleeping bag, at least a little. It’s going to be roasting in here in a couple of hours.”

As they struggled, moving him around and unzipping the sleeping bag, Tuni began to lose hope. “What if it was too much?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“He was so against longer sessions, but then he started doing them on his own. He had said he always tried to avoid it. He even said he was feeling sick last night before dinner. That he needed a break. What if it’s just too much for his mind? Like… maybe he could get
stuck
there.”

After tossing a flap of sleeping bag over Matt’s lower half, Peter sat back and looked at her with a solemn face. “I don’t think he’s
there,
Tuni.”

“What does that bloody mean?” she said with a quavering voice, her eyes beginning to well up again.

“I mean, he’s not touching anything, so he
couldn’t
be there. I’m not a doctor, so I’m not going to say the word, especially not this soon, but I think he’s just on his own right now—you know, dreaming his own dreams.”

“The word is ‘coma,’ Peter. There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Well, I tell you what—he is
not
dreaming any of his own dreams right now! I’ve seen this face when it’s dreaming.” She stroked Matt’s cheek and held her hand there as she looked at him through blurry eyes.

Peter looked at her and decided not to reply. He straightened the sleeping bag a little more and crawled to the door. “You stay with him, okay? I’ve gotta call for some help.”

She turned and gazed at him, her cheeks shiny with tears. “How is
anyone
going to know what to do with him? No one will understand.”

Peter took a deep breath. “I don’t know, but we have to get him out of here fast. I don’t think we’ll have much luck getting water into him, and he’ll dehydrate within thirty-six hours. He needs a hospital, and you’ll go with him.
You
make sure they understand.”

Tuni nodded and sobbed, unable to restrain her emotions any longer. As he opened the tent and jogged away, she heard Felicia begin to cry outside. Tuni contained her anger and didn’t scream at her, though she wanted to. Instead, she crawled to the door, gave the gathered team her best smile, and zipped the flap closed again.

A
S THE CLOUDS BEGAN TO DRIFT
apart and stars reappeared above, Irin began thinking about the next sleeping place. He moved from the front of the column and walked backward beside Pwig. In the distance, the rocky encampment had shrunk, and the mountains surrounding it appeared no taller than the Center House.

Around them, the surface was flat, and one could see all the way to its ends, where the stars disappeared. The small shrubs seemed to be houses for an endless number of the hairy crawlers, skittering about the dirt and eating small berries and things they dug from the dirt.

Irin turned around and walked forward again. His brother kept wanting to talk about the fight with the screamers, but Irin was no longer interested. He had seen a pair of flyers sail over a short time ago. Flyers had never attacked anyone in Pwin-T before, though they were known to pull a k’yon stalk from the food flats and fly away with it. Pret had told them that the flyers never seemed interested in eating the k’yon, but only in taking them off to the mountaintops to build their houses. He had also seen them in the trees, breaking off dying branches with their long beaks or picking up those that had fallen to the ground. If that was the case, though, Irin thought, what
did
flyers eat? Norrit had spotted them gliding off in the distance, and they had clearly sailed closer to the ground when they flew over the line of people, as if to have a look.