What is the answer? he asked.
And I answered, Nothing.
74
I STILL CAN’T MOVE—not even my eyes—but I’ve got a pretty good angle on the instruments, including the altimeter and fuel gauge. We’re five thousand feet up and the fuel won’t last forever. Inducing paralysis might stop me from jumping, but it won’t keep me from falling. The probability of terminal failure in that scenario is absolute.
It has no other option: The hub releases me, and the sensation is like being hurled the length of a football field. I’m shoved back into my body, hard.
Okay, Ringer 2.0. Let’s see how good you are.
I grab the handle of the pilot’s door and kill the engines.
An alarm sounds. I kill that, too. There is the wind now and only the wind.
For a few seconds, momentum keeps the chopper level, then freefall.
I’m thrown to the ceiling; my head smacks against the windshield. White stars explode in my vision. The chopper begins to spin as it drops, and I lose my grip on the door. I’m tossed around like a die in a Yahtzee cup, grasping at empty space, searching for a handhold. The chopper flips, nose up, and I’m flung twelve feet into the rear of the aircraft, then slung back as it flips again, smashing chest-first into the back of the pilot’s seat. A hot knife rips across my side: I’ve broken a rib. The loose nylon strap of the pilot’s harness smacks me in the face and I snatch it before I’m thrown again. Another flip, and the centrifugal force whips me back into the cockpit, where I smash into the door. It flies open and I jam my white-soled nurse’s shoe against the seat for leverage and heave myself halfway out. Release the strap, lock my fingers around the handle, and push hard.
Roll, pitch, flip, somersault, flashes of gray and black and sparkling white. I’m hanging on to the handle as the chopper rolls pilot side up and the door slams closed on my wrist, snapping the bone and tearing my fingers from the handle. My body bounces and twists along the length of the Black Hawk until it whacks into the rear wheel, rocketing straight up, and when the tail rotates skyward, I’m shot toward the horizon like a rock from a slingshot.
I have no sensation of falling. I’m suspended on the updraft of warmer air pressing against the colder, a hawk sailing in the night sky on outstretched wings, behind and below me the tumbling helicopter prisoner to the gravity that I deny. I don’t hear the explosion when it crashes. Just the wind and the blood roaring in my ears, and there is no pain from the beating inside the chopper. I am deliriously, exhilaratingly empty. I am nothing. The wind is more substantial than my bones.
The Earth rushes toward me. I am not afraid. I’ve kept my promises. I’ve redeemed the time.
I stretch out my arms. I spread my fingers wide. I lift my face toward the line where the sky meets the Earth.
My home. My charge.
75
I AM FALLING at terminal velocity toward a featureless landscape of white, a vast nothingness that gobbles up everything in its path, exploding toward the horizon in all directions.
It’s a lake. A very big lake.
A frozen-over very big lake.
Going in feet-first is my only option. If the ice is more than a foot thick, I’m done. No amount of alien enhancement will protect me. The bones in my legs will shatter. My spleen will rupture. My lungs will collapse.
I have faith in you, Marika. You did not come through fire and blood only to fall now.
Actually, Commander, I did.
The white world beneath me shines like pearls, a blank canvas, an alabaster abyss. A screaming wall of wind pushes against my legs as I draw my knees to my chest to execute the rotation. I have to go in at ninety degrees. Straighten too soon and the wind will knock me off-kilter. Too late and I’ll hit with my ass or my chest.
I close my eyes; I don’t need them. The hub’s performed perfectly so far; time for me to give it all my trust.
My mind empties: blank canvas, alabaster abyss. I am the vessel, the hub the pilot.
What is the answer?
And I said, Nothing. Nothing is the answer.
Both legs kick out hard. My body swivels upright. My arms come up, fold themselves over my chest. My head falls back, my face to the sky. My mouth opens. Deep breath, exhale. Deep breath, exhale. Deep breath, hold.
Vertical now, released by the wind, I fall faster. I hit the ice straight on, feet-first, at a hundred miles an hour.
I don’t feel the impact.