AE in the Irish Theosophist | Page 5

to transmit all the necessary information, and I reboot my
entire neural net. All those chips in my spine warm up.
Vince appears, looks around, and swears as I allow the data transmit.
He dissolves, fading away in the air in front of my eyes. Suzie's body
network has him now.
He's gone, and Suzie has a big grin on her face as she lets go of my
hands. She headbutts the wall, giving herself a bad bruise on the cheek.
"I'm going to tell them you resisted my attempt to save you," she says,
walking over to the airship controls. She kills all the communications,
then takes out her stun gun and fires it into the control panel. Sparks fly.
I check. I'm unable to piggyback a signal out of the gondola. "That you
were crazy right there at the end. They'll believe me too. You're
suicidal, and dangerous, and there is no reason for anyone to attempt to
come back in here."
A trickle of blood runs down the side of her nose as she walks over to
the airlock door.
"You should have told me you were going to leave, sixty years ago,
Vincent. Or at least invited me aboard your damn ship."
"Uhmfff mfffmfff," I say, and meaning it.
"It's too late for sorry," Suzie says. "I've let some of your gas out on the

airbag. You won't be able to rise, but you might be able to float around
on the level you're until you starve or die of dehydration. Good bye,
Vincent, it was so nice to see you again." She gets in the airlock. The
tube pulls away and she's gone. The Air Guard is gone. They're not
coming back.

#

It takes the better part of an hour to free myself and stand up. Again I
ripped off the gag.
I have my advanced senses though. I can see thermals outside. I can
find out how to fly this airship. Each instrument has a tiny instruction
manual icon floating over it.
As I sit in the pilot's chair, trying not to freak myself out because he'd
only been in it just an hour earlier, Vince appears next to me.
"Shit!" I scream.
"Relax, I'm not going to hijack you again," he says.
"You didn't get . . ."
"I really didn't want to end up with those two psychos. Gave them a
copy of myself that will self-destruct in a few hours. Wouldn't want to
miss out on all the fun here."
"Me dying?"
"Well," Vince says, "the airbag thing is a problem of course. But
remember when I said you should trust me?"
"You always say that," I sigh.
"Who decided to make a run for it sixty years ago when we realized we

were almost bankrupt?"
"Me."
"Right. Now what you should have done was listen to me then." Vince
walks around behind me. "I told you it was a bad idea. It felt wrong,
didn't it?"
"You wanted to buy an airship," I say. "But wouldn't tell me why."
"I told you to research what happens at the heart of a gas giant," Vince
admonishes me from the other side of the chair.
"You moron," I snap. "Most theories propose a giant diamond at the
center of the giant, squashed into being by all those pressures at that
depth. Which, if you're thinking of trying to get at it, means we get
crushed too. You know what else, diamonds really aren't worth all that
much these days."
Vince pretends hurt. He claps a virtual hand over his chest.
"Why are you focused on one big diamond?"
I frown.
"Every day these aerostat cities are dumping carbon-based trash that
falls downward," Vince says. "Where it gets crushed. But look around
you," he points at the roiling cloud we're in, and at the massive
upwelling thermals.
Deep down at their hearts they're strong enough to throw almost
anything up. And no tourist ship has gone this near. Civilized cities and
easy tourist jaunts avoid that kind of turbulence.
"No diamond prospector ever found anything when they first came to
Riley, even in the upwells," I say. "Yes," Vince says. "But that was
before almost seventy years of dumping trash into the atmosphere, right?
It was virgin then. Humans hadn't been dumping shit into the lower
atmospheres yet."

I'm dumbfounded. He's got a point.
"Do you trust me?" he asks again.
This time it is from somewhere inside me. Looking down in the depths
of Riley, I've managed to reclaim my Id.
"I want to see this," I whisper, as we begin to slide downwards.
"Better buckle in, then," Vince says in a last fading whisper.

#

There are journeys, and then there are rides, and this was a ride to