by Guy Haley
“The Earth is not dying,” said Mika quietly. “It’s a leftist lie.”
“They’ve been saying so for years,” agreed Hesperon, a tall youth whose athletic prowess was only outdone by his cruelty. “It’s nonsense.”
“The world ends incrementally,” said Yuri. He put his other arm around Hesperon’s shoulders and hung between his friends. “What is normal for us grows but slightly worse in our lifetime, and that slight worsening is normal for the next generation, who know nothing else. By little steps we walk the long road to Armageddon.” Through a gap in the crowd, he could see the rain streaming down the balcony door. In his womb of luxury, the sea’s wrath was distant. How long would it remain so? His friends did not notice the shift in his focus. He hung from them, their costumes’ accessories clamouring for his attention. All he saw was the storm. “There are neither enough circuses nor bread to keep the masses happy in the face of that hard little reality, so we feed them hope instead.”
“You’re a cheery bastard, Yuri,” said Oswald. “I need another drink.”
Yuri laughed. His attention left the tempest, and returned to the circle of glitter and perfect bodies. He removed his arms from his friends and clapped his thin hands together. “I try my best. Now, excuse me, I must mingle.” He swirled his cloak of feathers and disappeared into the crowd.
The party was in full swing. The third of the bands had begun to play. Holographic art writhed in the air in time to the music. The finest delicacies in food and intoxicants made their way around on platinum trays borne by naked girls. The uppers and lovebombs were taking effect, and many of Yuri’s friends were naked, or playing kink games on the dungeon stage for all to see. Playmates and bodies-for-hire stalked among them. There were few parties as notorious as Yuri’s. He owned the Crystal Tower. He owned the people that serviced his companions. He owned the companies that provisioned them. Yuri was surrounded by the cream of the world’s jaded youth, all Pointers, all fabulously wealthy, all fawning over him to ensure they’d make the next guest list. They had everything they could ever possibly want, and it was not enough. Yuri gave them distraction from their lack of fulfilment. He was among his own kind. They loved him; they loved him for his parties, but even bought love counted.
The event should have been perfect. But this was to be his penultimate extravaganza. He’d make the announcement later, following it with details of his final frolic, one that would shock the world with its debauch. That made him happy, on a certain level. Underneath his purchased joy, he despaired.
His father was sending him away.
The band played on.
THE SHIPS
IN THE SOLE luxurious room of the staging posts, Yuri watches shuttles ply back and forth to the fleet and awaits his turn. Around him are his brother and his servants. He feels empty inside. Is this how Anderson feels?
Sand, flying a crew transfer pod out to the Mickiewicz, feels the fear of departure keenly. She is wondering: why did I sign up for this?
Anderson does not care.
Dariusz is in the crew transfer module held by Sand’s shuttle, strapped in. The transfer module is cramped. He is surrounded by people, all of whom look the same – grey jumpsuits, shaved heads, taut faces. They are elbow to elbow. It is uncomfortable. There is an unpleasant tension to the air, like animals trapped too close together. The smell of human bodies, even washed and deodorised, is somehow offensive.
Some of the faces he knows, some of them have trained alongside him in the long, long programme. None of them he would call friends. Dariusz developed a reputation for being aloof, and he was. He could not forget the thing that nestled in his blood. He feels it now, although there is nothing to feel: a presence inside him, filling him up with a purpose that is not his own. He could not and cannot stop thinking of what he has been asked to do. More pertinently, what he has agreed to do.
Seven years. It has been seven years since Dariusz agreed to Browning’s plan in the bar. They never met. An injection from a man on a dark night, then he heard nothing from the movement again. For all he knows, it is a joke, of a particularly elaborate kind. He turns the facts over in his mind like they are pebbles, smooth and cold to the touch. He was accepted into the programme. He remained in the programme, as his wife was rejected, and rejected again. The movement must be real. He has decided that many times. Doubtless he will do so again.
He remembers police, grim-faced, standing framed in the porch as rain hammered from their caps and capes. He knew why they had come before they opened their mouths. He did not think to ask them in out of the rain. He stood numbly, staring at the square carp pond behind them in the garden.
Lydia was overjoyed that he and Danieł were to go, even though she was not. He should have seen that as a sign.
They had found her in the Jezioro Szmaragdowe, the emerald lake, they said. The name was poetic, the place was not; an old gravel pit whose depth was its only notable characteristic. She had been dead for a few hours, they said.
Lydia was pleased he had found a way out for their son. His eyes fixed on the corner of the pond in the garden. They kept the carp they would eat on Christmas Eve in there. Not any more. He thought, incongruously, of sawing the fishes’ heads off with a knife. The quickest way to kill them. It seemed barbaric. The policeman’s gun took up the lower part of his vision, covered over by his transparent plastic cape.
Did he know why she did it? Did he have any ideas? The policeman assures Dariusz he was not under any suspicion.
No, he says. Yes, he says. We are leaving, my son and I, she had to stay behind. Too unstable. He involuntarily casts his eyes skyward. One of the policemen follows his gaze. Dariusz has never felt so blank. He is a skin stretched on a frame of bones, scraped of flesh and feeling.
Unstable? The older policeman says it in a way that suggests he knows it already.
You will have to come with us, to identify the body, says the younger.
And to answer a few questions, says the other. You are not under any suspicion at this time, he repeats.
Dariusz feels guilt. He knew this would happen. Arkadiusz said they would try, but he knew it would not be enough. He rebuked himself, feeling part of him recoiling from his mind. To save a son, lose a wife. Cold. He knew it would happen. He cannot deny it.
Danieł.
Dariusz goes with them. What is he going to tell Danieł?
On the shuttle, years later, his eyes swell again from his loss. He is not alone. Many people are crying. Conversation is subdued. A few of the colonists are excited, most are not. There are no windows in the crew transfer pods. One hundred people sit ignorant of their place in the cosmos. The trip over to the ESS Adam Mickiewicz, so short in principle, drags on.
A clang of metal on metal announces their arrival.
After an interminable time, the doors hiss open, and Dariusz steps onto the deck of the Mickiewicz. The craft is utilitarian, but glorious in its boldness. He feels sick at what he is to do.
They are sent off to their decks in groups. Each deck is filled piecemeal, they are too cramped to take all their passengers at once. Dariusz does not see his deckmates as he is put under. Like a fish, he thinks, dying alone in an alien environment. It is the last thing he thinks before, temporarily, death overtakes him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sabotage
REALITY STARTED WITH a chime.
Dariusz came awake precipitously and painfully. His lungs were full of chill. He opened his mouth in panic. He gaped until he coughed, a rush of cold liquid spilling down his chest. He coughed again, his stomach muscles wrenching. He was pinned in place and could not bend forward, could not clear his airways easily or comfortably. He panicked, soundlessly, until he managed to inhale properly, frozen air rushed into his lungs, and when he breathed out his panic came with it. He struggled against the restraints as he screamed. Pain stabbed his arms and legs. He had been buried alive, trapped in the cold Earth to die a second time.
“Hibernation sequence e
mergency termination underway,” said a dispassionate machine voice. “Stages one through three complete. Stand by for ejection. Emergency decompression in five, four, three...”
Memory rushed back. Not dead. Aboard the Mickiewicz.
“No!” croaked Dariusz. “C-c-countermand that. Continue with standard waking cycle.”
“State identification.”
“Szczeciński, 501-36, geoengineer first rank.”
Dariusz’s inChip sounded its note in his mind, telling him that the machine had accessed his personal records, checking his authority.
“Emergency decompression halted. Proceeding with standard waking programme. Remain still.”
Dariusz shivered. He was freezing. Thick, icy pseudo-amniotic fluids filled the sarcophagus to his waist. A drain gurgled hungrily by his feet, and the level dropped quickly. Soft blue illuminated the interior. A few centimetres from his face the square window showed the dark outside. Another stab of pain in his arm as needles withdrew.
“Resanguination complete. Stabilisation under way. Remain still.”
The hibernator hummed and hissed around him as it adjusted his body chemistry. He shivered violently.
“Biochemical cycle complete. Remain still.”
The sarcophagus lid opened to the report of a klaxon. Yellow light came and went in the window as the beacon flashed on top, granting brief, jaundiced glimpses of the corridor. There was a hiss as the pressure equalised. The sharp smell of refrigerant gases diminished, replaced by stagnant air.
The lid opened, spilling light and Dariusz Szczeciński out into the corridor.
He gasped as his hands hit the deck. It was thick with frost. He stood, wobbly as a faun.
“Lights!” he said. A spasm of coughing wracked him. Gratefully he bent double, and spat up gobbets of fluid.
Reactive panels in the ceiling glowed.
Dariusz shook. The metal floor burned his skin.
“You are in shock. You must remain here to await the arrival of emergency drones,” said the voice.
Dariusz ignored the voice. The hibernation deck computers were electronic, not organic, and could only sustain low-level personality facsimiles. They were ill-equipped to adjust themselves to novel circumstances where a simple solution already existed, in this case summoning the medical drones. That simple solution had been deactivated. No team of drones would be coming to his aid. The computer would realise, eventually, and call for aid from elsewhere, but he should be done by then. He was fortunate only machines looked over the sleeping expedition. If Browning’s plan had worked, he should be free to move around – if he did not succumb to hypothermia. Shivers marched convulsively over his skin.
The deck, being circular, sloped upward in either direction. The ship spun as it sailed onwards, centrifugal forces granting the deck an apparent gravity of a quarter g – here, at least. As he got closer to the ice shield cap, the decks would increase in size, their ‘floors’ falling further away from the ship’s axis, so the feeling of gravity would increase. ‘Down’ was away from the axis – his feet were pointing out into deep space, his head towards the ship’s spine. The shield cap was two kilometres to the left of him, the drive and secondary cap some three kilometres to the right. Sarcophagi lined both sides of the corridor.
Using the wall to steady himself, he walked slowly up the curved floor to a locker set between two hibernation units. The names of their occupants were displayed on panels above each sarcophagus in blue, their vital signs dormant. The interiors were dark. Dariusz’s face reflected in the plastic windows, obscuring the sleepers. He passed one whose status panel had turned to red – a hibernation failure – and was glad he could not see inside.
Dariusz’s fingers were clumsy with the cold and years of disuse. He keyed open the locker on the third attempt.
Inside the locker were jumpsuits of smartcloth, and shrink-wrapped packs of a dozen litre-bottles each. The bottles held post-hibernation recovery fluids, a cocktail of minerals, tailored vitamins and proteins. He pulled the suit out, dragging bottles onto the floor with it. He looked at them dumbly for a second, forgetting what he was doing, where he was; his limbs were weak and unnervingly elastic. More shivers. He was going to die if he did not hurry. With hands that refused to bend, he wrestled his unwilling body into the suit. It took an age. When he had himself in the garment, it zipped itself up. He gulped down two bottles of the drink as the jumpsuit adjusted to his body, forming shoes around his feet and altering its fit. They were flimsy-thin, but warm, warmer once the heating unit activated. The drink tasted vile, salty and sweet, with an unpleasantly synthetic strawberry flavour. He vomited twice. He had been told that this might happen. He had been told a lot about the after-effects of hibernation, but being told never matches experience. This was akin to a combination of severe flu and the worst vodka hangover he had ever had. He hoped the signs of his early waking would be lost in the general chaos of the scheduled revivification, or he’d be dead.
He drank some more.
He sat panting from the effort. The simple movements exhausted him. After a time he felt a little better. His inChip said ten minutes. It seemed longer.
He walked around the circular deck until he reached the orange door leading into the access corridor that ran the length of the ship. There were two of these, on opposite sides. It did not matter which Dariusz took. The door bore the number ‘14A,’ and a coating of frost as fine as fur. He shivered violently once as he keyed open the door, and then the chill fled his limbs.
The door opened silently into the accessway, a tube five metres across, its bottom floored with textured carbon panels. Another orange door, leading into the other half-segment of his hibernation deck, stood opposite him.
Pipes ran along the ceiling of the corridor. Along its length, every so often, were lockers and panels. His task would be easier, he thought, if he could open one of those to deliver his cargo. Every twenty metres, the corridor was framed to either side by paired, numbered doors, leading onto other decks.
To Dariusz, the corridor appeared to slope downwards, as it followed the outside of the vessel’s widening bulk. Down at the end, directly behind the massive ice cap, was the Systems core and the nutrient feed he must access. Frost glinted off every surface. The air was sharp. His breath plumed on the way out and caught uncomfortably on the way in. His hands tingled as feeling returned. He was grateful of the smartsuit’s facilities.
He walked on shaky legs, gulped from the nutrient drink. He had two thousand metres to go; it might as well be two thousand kilometres.
He passed along the corridor, slowly at first, then with increasing speed as he regained something of his strength. He supposed he could thank the drinks for that. His heart ran fast, a combination of waking from hibernation and nerves at what he was about to do. He did not trust his body: hibernation was dangerous, and an emergency awakening made it more so. Every unaccustomed twitch or twinge in his organs made him stop and bring up the medical data from his implant.
He broke his journey at deck 46, Danieł’s deck. Families were kept apart in case of major deck system failure. Parents are afflicted with fears only other parents can understand; out here in deep space, Dariusz’s fears were redoubled.
He went into the B half of the deck and called for the lights. Thirty-two decks nearer the cap than his own, it was six times the size, with three concentric levels. He called for the lights, and began to search. The names of those within stared at him in cold blue, a few an unfortunate red.
Eight per cent. Eight per cent. Eight per cent. The figure went around and around his mind, spinning like the ship and generating its own frightening gravities. He counted down the numbers, seeking the pod that held his son.
He found it. The panel above the sarcophagus glowed blue.
Dariusz let out a sigh of relief and pressed his face against the transparent panel. It numbed his face. “My son, my son,” he whispered. Danieł was safe.
He spent a time peering into the v
iewport, searching for a face, but as before he saw nothing but the grey of unlit amniotics. He kissed the panel, then left. There was no guarantee he would see his son again, but for now, at least, he lived.
At the prow of the ship, the decks became very large. The last deck was over two kilometres in diameter, its outer corridor close to six and half kilometres long.
The entryways to the last five decks were sealed with large double doors, big enough to admit maintenance and loading vehicles. Whereas the lesser decks seemed to be pierced by the access corridor, with the last five it was the other way round, the access corridor bulging high as the deck passed through it. The illusion of gravity here, further from the rotation’s axis, was stronger, but still weak.
Dariusz made it to end of the corridor and opened the leftmost door of the primary deck. Inside the entrance was a rack, containing a dozen white bicycles. He took one and headed for the second radial shaft, one of four lifts that climbed to the inner ring. He pedalled like an old man, his joints aching. It was a relief from walking. The action was soothing, and his mind wandered back to the time he chose not to turn for home, and instead rode to the Dąbie Sailing Club.
His thoughts lost in the whisper of the tyres, he did not hear the security drone until it was upon him.
Dariusz glanced over his shoulder. Flashes from the drone’s warning lights bounced off the corridor walls, picking out details in red and yellow.
He pedalled faster, flicking through the gears of the bike. He wobbled, then picked up speed, his stiff legs aching. He glanced back repeatedly. He still could not see the drone directly. The drone let out two whoops.
“Warning. Warning. Unauthorised access. Halt. I am authorised to use force. Halt and await processing.” Its mechanical voice echoed up the corridor. The noise of its fans rose as it accelerated.
Dariusz whipped past the first radial lift shaft to the inner ring. The drone was coming closer; there was no way he could outpace it on the bike, and it was another fifteen hundred metres to the lift he needed. He pedalled frantically, seeking to gain as much ground as he could, making it most of the way to the next shaft. When the drone was close, he squeezed the brakes hard and jumped off, dropping the bike to the floor beneath him. He cleared the handlebars, but caught his shin a painful blow on the pedal as he leapt. He fell to his knees beside the bike, flicked the quick release mechanism on the front wheel and drew it out, then scrambled to his feet and stood with the wheel in his hands. He’d have only one chance. Adrenaline washed away his fatigue.