by Gary Gibson
Scientists, engineers, and soldiers. Sam wondered if that was significant.
‘One thing I’ve picked up,’ said Joshua, stepping closer to Sam, ‘is that most of them—the military types, I mean—are nearly as young as they look. I don’t think any of them are older than their mid-twenties back in the real world, with the possible exception of Traynor. He acts like he’s older.’
‘About water,’ said Sun, her face still pale with shock. ‘Maybe there’s some inside the ship?’
‘Maybe,’ said Joshua, ‘except there’s no way inside it.’
‘Kim mentioned something about a bay being accessible,’ said Sam.
Joshua nodded. ‘Inside the bay, there’s a door that won’t open.’ He nodded along the underside of the lander. ‘You can take a look yourself if you like.’
Sam followed the direction of Joshua’s gaze towards a lowered metal ramp that led inside the lander’s lower fuselage. At that moment, one of the construction robots appeared at the top of the ramp, laden with what looked to him like sliced-up sections of the fire-damaged hull.
‘So if there’s a door in there that won’t open,’ asked Sam, nodding towards the robot, ‘how did that machine get through it? Because I’m guessing all that junk it’s carrying came from somewhere further inside the ship.’
Joshua stared after the robot as it slowly lumbered the rest of the way down the ramp. ‘Well, shit,’ he said under his breath.
‘Maybe I will take a look inside,’ said Sam. He looked at Sun, then back at Joshua. ‘You coming?’
They both nodded, and Sam made his way towards the ramp, giving the construction robot a wide berth as he passed it by. Then he noticed something floating to one side of the machine and keeping pace with it: a softly glowing ball of ruby light about the same size as his thumb.
He reached out to touch it without thinking. He was startled when the ball of light suddenly expanded into a flat panel featuring the outline of a hand. The robot meanwhile came to a sudden and jarring halt.
‘Sam?’ asked Joshua. ‘What is it?’
‘Can you see that?’ asked Sam, nodding at the panel.
Joshua shook his head. ‘See what?’
Sam reached out and laid his hand on the panel, which was clearly a virtual projection of some kind. The panel flared an angry red before shrinking back into a tiny sphere.
Sam blinked and drew his hand back. The machine heaved back into life and resumed lumbering away from him.
‘You didn’t see that?’ asked Sam, staring after the machine.
‘All I see is a mechanical octopus thing,’ said Sun.
‘No.’ Sam shook his head. ‘There was a…a projection, like an AR display, floating right next to it.’
‘What did it look like, exactly?’ asked Sun.
‘Like a security panel. The kind with handprint identification. I touched it, but nothing happened.’
‘You must be wearing live contacts,’ she suggested.
‘I haven’t used live contacts in years,’ said Sam. Even so, he reached up and tried to pinch out a contact lens he was pretty sure wasn’t there. It didn’t feel like there was anything there, at any rate.
‘All right,’ said Joshua, staring at him, ‘file it under weird and inexplicable, along with pretty much everything else I’ve seen and heard today, and we can worry about what it means some other time.’ He nodded up at the top of the ramp and the dim interior of the lander beyond. ‘Shall we?’
* * *
The ramp terminated inside a cramped cargo hold about the size of a domestic garage and filled with empty metal shelving. A single, featureless door, surrounded on both sides by more shelving, was set into a bulkhead at the rear of the hold. The door had no handle or visible means of opening it, although Sam saw another virtual projection floating next to it, about level with his shoulder. It looked the same as the one he’d seen floating along beside the robot.
‘I guess you don’t see that either?’ Sam asked.
They both shook their heads. Sam described what he could see.
‘Try seeing what happens when you touch it,’ suggested Joshua. He hung back near the top of the ramp, as if afraid to come any further inside.
The ruby ball expanded into another hand identification panel. Sam laid his fingers and palm against it and got the same result: it flashed once, then shrank back into its original state.
Sam shook his head. ‘The same thing happened.’
He tried pushing at the door, in case he’d triggered some hidden switch without knowing it. It didn’t move, even when he put his shoulder to it; it felt solid enough to withstand a battering ram. He pushed at it again anyway, feeling a growing sense of frustration. There could be a radio inside, or something else that could tell them why they were here.
‘Okay,’ said Joshua, sounding tired. ‘At least that’s something we didn’t know before.’
The robot they’d passed earlier reappeared at the top of the ramp behind Joshua, clanking noisily, having apparently divested itself of its cargo of junked metal. Joshua moved to one side, but instead of continuing the rest of the way inside the bay, the machine remained where it was.
‘What now?’ asked Sam, his frustration flowering into anger.
‘Maybe,’ said Joshua, speaking slowly as if thinking out loud, ‘it’s waiting for you to move away from that door.’
Or maybe someone’s controlling it and laughing their socks off, watching us get all worked up, thought Sam. But he did as Joshua suggested and stepped back.
The machine moved the rest of the way inside the bay, but stopped just short of the door.
‘Damn it,’ Sam shouted. ‘What the hell’s wrong with the thing?’
‘I give up,’ said Joshua, turning to make his way back outside. ‘Let someone else try and figure it out.’
Sam resisted the urge to kick the machine and followed Joshua and Sun back down the ramp. As soon as their feet touched the ground, they all heard the machine whir back into life.
Sam raced back up the ramp in time to see the machine pass through the door. He briefly glimpsed a corridor on the other side in the instant before the door slid back into place from a hidden recess within the bulkhead.
He pressed his hands against the surface of the door. It would be so easy, he knew, to give into his anger. All his emotions felt wound up almost beyond control, rage shifting into despondency, then back again like the throw of a switch.
He pushed at the door, trying to get it to go back into its recess, but it didn’t move. He leaned forward until his forehead rested against the cool metal, feeling a faint vibration that spoke of active systems. The ship was alive, however badly damaged it might be.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said carefully, ‘about where we are.’
‘And?’ said Joshua from behind him.
‘It’s going to sound stupid.’
Joshua waited a moment before replying. ‘The kind of thing you don’t want to say out loud?’
Sam turned to see both of them standing at the top of the ramp. ‘When I look at what’s out there,’ said Sam, ‘I see trees that look like they were made by somebody who tried to invent a tree from scratch without ever having actually seen one. It’s the same with that matted stuff that looks a little like grass, but isn’t. I started to wonder if maybe…’ The words stalled in his throat.
‘That maybe,’ said Joshua, ‘we’re a lot further away from home than you want to admit to yourself.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ Sun snapped, her face twisted up in an angry scowl. ‘That this isn’t Earth? Because if you are, you’re both out of your minds.’
‘I’m not saying that’s what it is,’ Sam said quickly. ‘There’s got to be some explanation for all this that makes more sense, but then we have these…these bodies, and there’s this lander, and…’
‘Here’s an idea,’ suggested Joshua. ‘Maybe we’re in some private reserve for genetic experiments. Some place they kept out of the news, som
e place nobody knows about.’
‘Is that what you think this is?’ asked Sun.
‘It’s a lot better than finding out we’re lost on some alien world, doesn’t it?’
‘Or perhaps we’re all dead,’ said Sun, her voice low and flat. ‘Perhaps I died mid-flight in my sleep, and I woke up here with the rest of you in Hell.’ She looked between them. ‘Or didn’t you think of that?’
3
THE INTERFACE
It didn’t seem like there was much else for them to say or do, so they made their way back down the ramp and walked across the clearing to join the rest of the stranded, as Sam was coming to think of them. The sun had started to dip towards the horizon and the air already felt considerably cooler.
In their absence, some of the others had got busy digging a small pit, filling it with dry branches and tinder collected from the surrounding forest. Sam watched as a woman with short, messy blond hair pushed a stick amidst the tinder, expertly twirling it back and forth between her hands in a practised rubbing motion that suggested a life spent largely outdoors. Before long, pale smoke billowed upwards.
‘Nice work, Jess,’ someone said to her approvingly.
Jess flashed a lopsided grin at the man who had spoken. Most of the stranded, however, were directing their attention at Traynor, who stood addressing them.
‘All I’m saying,’ Sam heard Traynor say, ‘is that our priority has got to be finding our way back to civilisation, and I figure that means putting someone in charge. Otherwise—’
‘Your priorities are all wrong,’ said Sam, coming to a halt across from him, the newly-built campfire between them. Flames crackled amidst the tinder, growing brighter.
Faces turned towards Sam.
‘How so?’ asked Traynor, clearly unhappy at his interruption.
Sam looked around and tried to make eye contact with as many of the stranded as possible. He again noticed how some of them were bunched around Traynor on one side of the fire, the rest sprawled out on the other.
‘For one,’ Sam said, ‘we don’t even know where we are.’ He nodded to a woman sitting near Traynor. ‘Sorry, we spoke earlier but I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Piper.’
‘You said when you went scouting through the forest around here you didn’t see so much as a contrail. Has anyone else seen any sign of aircraft or anything else since they woke up?’
Heads shook all around the fire.
‘In that case,’ said Sam, ‘wherever this is, it’s a long, long way from civilisation.’
‘It wasn’t much more than a quick reconnoitre,’ Traynor pointed out, a touch defensively. ‘If we don’t try and get back to civilisation, we’ll all die here.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said someone on Sam’s side of the campfire. ‘What if someone’s coming to rescue us? What if they find the lander, but we’re not here?’
‘The way I see it,’ said Traynor, ‘the only people who could possibly know where we are, are the same ones who kidnapped us and stuck us in those pods. If they’re looking for us, I figure that’s a pretty good reason not to stick around.’
Sam listened to the murmurs of assent from all around the campfire. ‘That doesn’t change the fact we’ve got no way of knowing if we’re ten miles from civilisation, or a hundred, or even a thousand,’ he insisted. ‘We don’t know what kind of dangers are out there. If somebody’s bitten by a poisonous animal or gets an infected cut, there’s nothing we can do to help them, and we can’t leave them behind. We’ve got nothing to carry water in, and no way to protect ourselves from the heat and humidity. We wouldn’t get a hundred kilometres.’
He glanced up at the sun, dropping now behind the trees, and felt a shiver at how orange it looked, how bloated and unlike the sun he knew. He remembered what Amit Subarash had said, about half a day having passed as it was locally measured. He pushed the thought away, still unwilling to explore its implications.
‘We have more immediate needs,’ Sam continued. ‘It’s getting dark and the temperature is already starting to drop. We’ve got a fire going, which is good, but we need to talk about shelter and where we’re all going to sleep tonight.’
‘Not to mention food and water,’ said Joshua, ‘unless there’s something hidden away inside that lander.’
Sam nodded. ‘That’s another thing: since the water over by those boulders is probably contaminated from the chemical foam the robots were spraying, we should follow it back upstream to where we can get a fresh supply. Otherwise I don’t see us lasting more than a couple more days.’
There were more murmurs of assent this time, and several nodding heads. Traynor muttered something under his breath and sat back down. Sam tried hard not to show his satisfaction.
‘While we’re at it,’ Sam continued, ‘why build the fire here? Why not under the lander, where there’s shelter from the rain?’
‘I tried doing that before,’ said Jess, ‘except one of those machines went and sprayed foam all over it soon as I lit the damn thing.’
This time, Sam couldn’t help but grin. ‘In that case, maybe we can make a shelter to cover the fire over when we need to.’ He nodded towards the setting sun and again pushed away his growing sense of unease. ‘We should set a watch for rescuers or signs of predators.’
‘I’m all for finding water,’ said a man next to Joshua, ‘but damn it if I’m not hungry. What about finding something to eat?’
‘If we end up stuck out here long enough,’ Piper mused, ‘we could always try hunting.’
‘I would prefer we avoid killing anything regardless of the circumstances,’ said Kim, his voice strained.
‘I agree,’ said Amit. His expression was just as stony as Kim’s. ‘I find the idea of consuming animal flesh deeply objectionable.’
‘What,’ said Traynor disbelievingly, ‘you’d rather starve?’
Amit locked eyes with him. ‘I am a lifelong practitioner of Jainism, Mr Traynor. I will not be a party to violence against animals or sentient creatures of any kind.’
‘Oh God,’ Jess groaned. ‘He’s one of them. A Mannite.’
‘As am I,’ said Kim, ‘and very proud of it, Miss Underwood.’
‘Me too,’ said Sun.
‘Count me in as well,’ said Joshua. ‘Although I’m kind of agnostic as far as meat goes, at least in an emergency like this. But in principle, I’d prefer to avoid having to eat it if we can find alternative sources of food.’
‘Fucking Greens,’ someone beside Traynor muttered, their voice barely audible, but Sam didn’t see who it was.
‘Well, I’m not a Mannite myself,’ said Sam, ‘although the only meat I eat is the lab-grown variety. We can always try foraging for wild plants and roots, but with any luck, we’ll be back home before it comes to that.’
‘What kind of wild plants and roots?’ Ethan asked with a worried expression.
‘Wild carrots, I guess,’ said Sam. ‘Yams, too. Hard to say, without knowing just exactly where we are.’
Kim regarded him levelly. ‘I believe, Mr Newman, you’ll have a very hard time finding any such thing here.’
‘Why?’
‘Surely,’ said Kim, ‘I’m not the only one who’s prepared to accept the evidence of his eyes?’
Sam felt his face grow warm. ‘Let’s not jump to any conclusions about where we are until we’ve got a better idea of what’s happened to us.’
‘Denial is all very well,’ Kim spat, ‘but if we’re going to make plans of any kind, they’re going to have to be extremely long-term ones.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ muttered Jess, ‘you’re not back to this alien planet bullshit, are you?’
Kim stared at her in apparent disbelief. ‘Look at the forest around you, or your own body, Miss Underwood, should you need to remind yourself. You’re all fighting over how we should get back home, as if we’re still on Earth—as if we haven’t all been reborn much younger than most of us remember. Maybe you should start thinking instead about
how we’re going to live the rest of our lives on this world, however we got here.’
This world. The words hit Sam in the soft tissues of his gut.
‘I admit there’s something very weird going on,’ Jess insisted, her voice quavering slightly, ‘but just because we don’t understand what it is doesn’t mean—’
‘It’s almost night,’ Kim interrupted, something hard and unyielding in his gaze. ‘When the stars come out, you’ll all have to face the truth.’
Jess opened her mouth, then closed it again, looking away from him.
The only sound Sam could hear were the cries of some strange bird or animal deeper in the forest. All Kim had really said was the same thing they’d all been thinking, when they allowed themselves to.
‘Tell them,’ said Sun, ‘about the door.’
Sam saw that she was looking at him.
‘What is this?’ asked Amit, looking over at Sun.
‘We went up into the lander,’ Sun explained. ‘Sam saw one of the robots go through the door.’
Ethan stood and stared at Sam, clearly excited. ‘Did you go through it?’
‘The door wouldn’t open for the robot if we were anywhere near it,’ Sun explained.
‘I heard it opening once we went back down the ramp,’ Sam added. ‘I ran back in, but the robot had already passed through and the door had closed again. I did catch a glimpse of a corridor on the other side.’ He looked around at them all. ‘There’s something else as well—I could see a virtual access panel next to the door, but Sun can’t see it and neither can Joshua. And I’m quite certain I’m not wearing augmented contacts.’
More murmurs spread around the fire. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell us this straight away?’ Traynor demanded, getting back on his feet.
‘Well,’ said Sam, ‘I’m telling you now.’
Another of Traynor’s group stood. ‘If we can get in there, we can find out where the hell we are!’
Within seconds, nearly all of them were headed back towards the lander. Sam watched Traynor say something inaudible to Jess and found himself picturing a limousine tumbling end over end.