Down Deep

Chapter Eighteen - Grant

Hundreds of thousands of books. Maybe even millions, filled the library. Every single one of them were useless. Even being in a vacuumed and dry environment had done damage to the old text. When he and Zdana had gone to the nearest shelf, both had been horrified that the book she had grabbed had crumbled in her hand. Others were more stable; however, the pages were very brittle and so yellowed with age, they were not easy to read. The conditions the books had been left in should have guaranteed their preservation so their destruction had baffled the two.

Giving up on the books, they turned to the terminals. Those had aged far better than the books had. Grant had gone to work on the history and news inserts. He was finding a lot of things that were no longer on Citynet. All of it was interesting, but useless and did not give them the answers they were so desperately seeking.

Zdana had given up on the terminals after two weeks of pouring through one ecteronic book after another. He would hear her moving around the offices searching for anything to make this adventure worth the risk they were taking.

He had never seen her so scared then when she turned on the air circulation system. The big fan that drew the air down into the city had not only been loud when it came on, it had drained all of the backup battery power and took a huge chunk out of the main power grid. Once it was moving, the power levels had dropped and the batteries were again recharging.

Zdana had been awake for four days on Citynet watching the alert systems. Control had reported the spike to the council and it had sent out a mass panic that one of the reactors was melting down. Days of searching for the power spike, led to a full run down of the power grid. He and Zdana had worked from two different terminals to insure the Capital over looked the power being taken by the Fens, Deeps, and lost city. It had been a close call and left them all a little shaky.

'Decompression sickness.' Grant nearly jumped out of his chair at the excited call behind him. He turned to look at Zdana who was holding a stack of papers in her hand. They looked almost new and he wondered where she had found them. They no longer needed the rebreathers, and he could see her face was flush with her excitement.

'What now?' He asked confused.

'Decompression sickness.' She said again grabbing a chair and thrust the papers at him. He took them and looked them over. He did not understand most of the technical terminology, however he understood basics of what it meant. 'It is what makes those like me and the people of the deep so sick when we come up high.'

'Interesting,' Grant said handing her the papers. 'but how is it relevant?' She sighed frustrated and showed him the papers again.

'This is part of a project funded by the council Grant.' She said and he frowned taking the paper again. The words on the top were in red listing it as classified and for the council's eyes only. The title was about countering the effects of decompression sickness for rising to the surface.

'Okay, so the council at one point wanted to send people up top.' He said still not understanding her excitement over this. Unless she was thinking about using it to make it easier for people of the deep to come up here. Zdana was glaring at him annoyed. Then it hit him and his eyes widened in shock. She smiled relaxing. 'Why would they want to go up to the surface, if the radiation from the glow is so high even heavy duty protective suits would not save you?'

'Now you are getting it.' Zdana said excited.

'Wait,' he started 'where did you find those papers? They look brand new.'

'Some of the offices have sealed cambers for important papers.' She told him gaining a look of thought. 'They have their own power source and the conditions inside the safes are kept ideal to preserve what is inside. There were a few books as well that were in excellent condition. The folder I pulled those out of had a note attached.' She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket.