AE in the Irish Theosophist | Page 5

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 hell and back. Or at least Riley's version of hell. I slipped ever downward to the thermal my former Id had identified as the prime upwell spot, trusting my instincts to bring the airship as far down into the depths as had ever been done.
We floated through a sea of diamond specks before we smacked the heart of the upwell and rode the thermal. It was like straddling a rocket straight back up. It spit us out high enough that we coasted into the nearest aerostat city with several hundred feet of altitude to spare.
We landed covered in diamond dust.

#

Several weeks later I'm standing near the great foam pillars of the courthouse. Suzie spots me waiting for her to come out, stops, then walks over. A green and red police droid follows two steps behind her.
"Hello, Vincent."
She doesn't seem too surprised to see me. We've faced each other in court for the past week . But all that's over. The best psychiatrists, lawyers, journalists, and judges have all pored over our plights. I'm acquitted of murder,