by Graeme Hurry
“You too.”
“I found the bottles three days ago. So I’ve had practice.”
“I still can’t hear Zack.”
“Give it time.”
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
Later, they looked for another exit. The extent of their world was a series of rooms and interlinked corridors all circling the large chamber where they’d been held in stasis. There were maybe thirty rooms in total, ranging from meeting rooms to dormitories. There was even a weapons room, though there were no weapons in it. But there wasn’t another exit.
“Agnes will know what to do,” said Dee, later, over coffee.
“Agnes?”
“Rolf’s sister. Didn’t you pay any attention during the briefing? You and that idiot brother of yours just seemed to stare at each other with a glazed expression on your faces, like you were in lurve.”
“Why don’t you just say what you think? I mean, it’s not as if anybody in here has feelings that you might hurt.”
She grinned, not looking at all contrite. Charlie tried to feel offended but ended up grinning back.
“Sorry, kid. Truth is I’m a little scared and humour keeps me grounded. I didn’t mean to cause offence.”
“S’okay. I guess I wasn’t really paying attention. But don’t call me kid, okay? I may not remember that much of the briefing but I do remember you’re only twenty eight.”
“That’s still three years older than you are, kid, so suck it up. Anyhow, back to Agnes.”
“Did you know her from before?”
“What, you think because we’re all Scandinavian that we all live in the same little village, surrounded by reindeer and wolves?”
“No wolves. Extinct.”
“Look, you add Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark together and you have a hundred and fifty million people. Probably twice as many by now. So no, I didn’t know Agnes from before.”
“But you’re related, right? That’s why so many telepath twins are from Scandinavia.”
“Kid, you and me are probably related. Where did you say your folks were from, originally?”
Oslo, he thought but didn’t say. “Detroit.”
“There you are,” she sat back, looking smug. “You even lie like a Norwegian.”
* * *
After dinner that second day they played chess. At first Charlie found it much harder without Zack to tell him where to move, but as the game progressed he found himself enjoying it more than he’d ever enjoyed any game of chess before. He still lost though, those first few times. He didn’t win until the fifth game, and by then he had a suspicion she’d let him.
They relaxed after the game with a glass of wine, which was a habit he knew he couldn’t afford to get used to. They’d had to try three bottles before they found an acceptable one and Charlie suspected their stocks might not last much longer.
“Fortunately, there’s a lot of whisky back there. And that only gets better with age,” she said, as if reading his thoughts.
“You weren’t?”
She laughed. “No. Sometimes you don’t have to read thoughts to know what someone’s thinking.”
“What am I thinking now?”
“Well,” she put her finger on her chin and looked up at the ceiling. “You’re wondering why this is so easy, all this talking to another person who isn’t your brother.”
He paused, unsure. “I was actually trying to work out what’s going on.”
“Weird stuff, probably. Beyond that I have no ideas.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“You saying I’m opinionated.” She punched him lightly on the arm. “Well, since you insist, I think we’ve just been forgotten.”
“Doesn’t seem very likely. I mean, we were important back then.”
“Back then is ancient history. And this place is expensive to run. Just the kind of long term project that Governments cut when they need to balance the books.”
Charlie yawned. “Time for bed.”
“Charlie?”
“Okay,” he said in answer to her unasked question. “But only because I’m lonely too.”
“Clothes on, okay? This is just about not having to wake up in the night and find the room’s empty. So that when I ask a question, there’s someone else there to answer it.”
“Definitely.”
“Even if you are a complete dork and nothing like as cool as Freya.”
“And even though you’re bound to steal the duvet and are nothing like as funny as Zack.”
“Needs must.”
“Exactly.”
* * *
Charlie wasn’t entirely sure at what point they dropped the clothes-on rule, but he woke up with a smile on his face and didn’t realise he hadn’t thought of Zack at all, until Dee sat up sharply and, as predicted, took the duvet with her.
“She’s awake.”
Charlie rubbed his eyes and sat up. “That’s good, isn’t it,” he said, then realised that it wasn’t. “I still can’t hear Zack.”
“She’s confused, Disoriented. There’s an alarm going off.”
It works, then. Charlie hadn’t quite believed they could pass messages between star systems. Mars was, well, just Mars. But Sanctuary was a long, long way away. ”Zack?”
“Agnes is awake too.”
“Zack?”
She turned, frowning. “They’re looking at his coffin now. He’s not moving.”
“Zack!” A sudden stabbing pain sliced through Charlie’s head. He let out a wail, then stopped, relieved. He’d know, wouldn’t he? “He’s not dead.”
“No. But he’s not moving. Agnes has gone to get some medical equipment.”
“Where are they?”
“In orbit, apparently. I don’t know why they haven’t landed. There are other people waking now.”
The crew. Charlie had forgotten. There would be a doctor. In the end Agnes poured cold water on Zack’s face and he woke up, spluttering.
“Ow” Charlie said, holding his head.
“Awake then.”
“And screaming.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
Hey.
Hey.
You okay?
Did it work?
You tell me. You’re the one orbiting a new planet.
Orbiting?
Talk to me when you’ve caught up.
Charlie glanced over and saw Dee frowning.
“That staring into space thing, Is that what we do?”
“Uhuh. Didn’t you realise?”
Dee stayed mostly quiet for the next hour or so, staring at the wall no doubt locked in conversation with her sister. With Zack and Freya awake again something had changed, and Charlie wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
Not at all what we’d been promised, Charlie boy. Looks like you got the best of the deal after all.
Why are you still in orbit?
Because most of the planet’s radioactive, as far as the sensors can tell. Nowhere safe for us to land.
What? The sensors…
That was fifty four years ago. More, because the data had to come back at the boring old speed of light. A lot’s happened since then, believe me.
It’s been bombed?
Looks like it.
Charlie shook his head and looked over at Dee, clearly having a similar conversation to the one he was having with Zack.
Charlie?
Later.
“You getting the same information as me?”
Dee snapped back into the room. “Sounds grim.”
Who are you talking to?
A pause. Why didn’t he want to tell him? He struggled to contain his thoughts, but he could never keep anything from Zack. His raw, unfiltered response leaked.
Shut up. Too late to take it back.
Zack’s responded with a stab of rage. No I won’t shut up. Charlie could feel Zack trying to control his anger. She looks just like Freya, so I can understand. Just stay focused.
I am focused. Just not on you. He wasn’t sure if he’d transmitted that last thought.
“Distracted?”
“Hard to have two conversations at once.”
“Switch him off then.”
“What do you mean, switch him off?”
“You know, leave the phone off the hook?”
He didn’t realise he could do that, But that was going to have to be a discussion for later. Right now he needed to make sense of what was going on.
Agnes worried them. In the madness of the first few hours Zack and Freya barely noticed her, and it was one of the crew who found her slumped against a bulkhead, staring into space. They led her to a cabin, laid her on the bed and left her there, motionless, having refused all attempts by the crew to communicate.
They knew more now, though, about the predicament they were in, because the ship had been getting light speed feeds from Earth. The only trouble was, neither Zack nor Freya would tell them what the news was. Not until they got to the surface. Typical Zack, he thought. Always in his head. Always keeping secrets.
Charlie and Dee shared a cabin again that night, even though their siblings had woken.
“What you said, before? About switching him off.”
So she showed him.
* * *
The ship had a comprehensive database holding most of the library stock of the planet, including the military stuff. Including base schematics. Including a way for Charlie and Dee to get out. There was a backdoor, apparently, in the pantry, behind all those stacks of dried food.
I couldn’t feel you. What did you do? Zack sounded annoyed.
Must be the distance. Everything’s unpredictable.
Not everything. You’re still annoying.
Charlie switched him off again.
It took them an hour to find the door, and another hour to clear all the pallets of food away from it. There were supposed to be robots down there to do that kind of heavy lifting but the only one they’d found was missing an arm and a power pack, clearly cannibalised for spares. Whatever forced the medical team to the surface had, it seemed, included the robots.
Eventually they found another staircase, this time completely free of fallen rocks. The lights didn’t seem to work so they used head torches. Charlie looked straight up but he couldn’t see the top.
“A third of a mile. We should take sandwiches.”
Charlie took the pack Dee offered him – not just sandwiches, judging by the weight, and led the way up the stairs.
It took them an hour and a half, including a lengthy rest half way up when the staircase opened up into a room sized chamber with chairs, tables and a couple of vending machines filled with ancient chocolate and soft drinks. Charlie was exhausted by the time the stairs levelled off and opened up into a long, wide passage. The heavy bulkhead door at the end was locked.
“Any ideas?” Dee punched the door, which gave off a dull metallic thud.
“Nope.” Charlie looked around, but the corridor was empty. “Nothing here we can use either.”
A control panel on the corridor wall to the left of the door had a numeric keypad and a display panel. The panel was dead. “No power,” said Dee. “I bet when the power went up here the deadlocks engaged automatically.”
“Sounds plausible. What do we do?”
“Turn the power back on of course.” She pulled the backpack off Charlie and started poking around in it, before pulling out a large battery pack.
“What, you anticipated this?”
“Didn’t you?”
It took ten minutes, but Dee managed to get the power back on. The panel glowed, but the door remained bolted. Charlie’s chest tightened. He felt his resolve disappearing. He needed to re-establish the link with Zack, to absorb his brother’s calm confidence, even though that would give Zack power over him again. But then he looked over at Dee, looking purposefully at the panel, as if trying to work out a puzzle, not fall apart in a crisis. “Conclusions?” said Dee.
“We can’t do this by ourselves. There’s a passcode, and we don’t have it.”
“Agreed.”
“The twins have access to the base schematics.”
Reluctantly, Charlie opened the link.
I know what you’re doing. Freya told me.
No time for that.
Annoyed though Zack clearly was, he pulled up the door codes. Charlie pressed the sequence and heard the deadbolts snap back. He took a deep breath and looked at Dee. “Shall we?”
They stepped through together.
“Oh my,” he said, as he looked out over the ruined wasteland that was once Wyoming.
“What happened to the mountains?”
Not a living thing was visible. The ground was covered in grey ash, whipped by a wind which took his breath away. Overhead the sky had an unnatural murky blackness.
Dee tugged at his backpack again. “Hold still. Looking for the Geiger counter.” She tugged hard and produced a dull metal box. She switched it on and they looked down at its crystalline display.
“Amber, surprisingly,” she said. “That means we’re not about to cook. Whatever happened here happened a while ago. It’s still radioactive, but so long as we don’t spend too much time out here, we should be okay.”
“Back inside?”
“Oh yes.”
* * *
Charlie realised his brother could have killed him by not warning him about the radiation. Once safely inside, he restored the link. They talked as he and Dee descended the long staircase back to the base.
I know you’re mad, but…
Why didn’t you warn me?
Charlie thought Zack had broken the link for a moment, but eventually his brother replied. Wanted to, bro’, but truth is, we had no idea what to warn you about. All we know is that Earth’s gone very quiet. I know you’re pretty dumb but Freya thought Dee would be sensible enough to take precautions. You’re wearing radiation suits, right?
Why would we be wearing radiation suits?
But you are all right, right?
That’s not the point.
They sparred for a while until Charlie’s annoyance turned into exasperation and he realised he had nothing left to say. Soon he was back at the room with the vending machines. Dee sat down heavily on one of the hard plastic seats and Charlie followed her lead. Charlie had found out nothing useful from Zack but Dee seemed to have been having a more adult conversation. She filled him in.
“Apparently there was a war, about five years after we were frozen. That’s probably when this base was shut down. No hint that it was nuclear, though. Before we lost contact we knew that the other side was winning.”
“Who?”
“The African Alliance, not that it matters much. We think our side managed to keep the colony programme secret. Whether that’s true or not mission control certainly stopped beaming messages out into space. That was forty two years ago.”
“Looks like something happened after that.”
She sat up straight and smiled. “Got an idea, Grab your backpack.”
She smiled even more broadly when the plan actually worked. As soon as they got back to the base Dee powered up the computer array. Freya provided the codes, and she was in.
Earth, from space, filled a giant screen which descended from the roof. “Earth may be a radioactive pile of rubble but it doesn’t mean the satellites aren’t still working.”
Charlie was surprised. Surely a nuclear war would fry any communications arrays.
“This feed’s from a high one. About as far out as you can get and still be in orbit. Military. Designed to be out of range of any inconvenient electromagnetic pulses,” said Dee, as if anticipating his thoughts. “Hmm.” She peered forwards and looked at the data pouring out. “Unless they developed some pretty strange weapons since we left, this mess doesn’t look man made. I’m no expert but it seems to me that this much damage should be glowing right now. It’s radioactive, sure, but not nearly enough.”
<
br /> Thick grey cloud covered the planet. They had to imagine what lay beneath.
Gotta tell you. Zack. Looks pretty grim down there.
Here too. Some energy readings we haven’t seen before.
Swap data?
Whatever had happened to Earth had happened to Sanctuary too. Same strange readings, same devastation.
“I think we need to start on the whisky,” he said, turning to Dee.
“You read my mind.” # There was something in orbit around Sanctuary, and it didn’t look man made. The New Beginning hauled it in.
Definitely alien. Some sort of weapon.
Do you think you should have it on board then?
It’s dead now. Bet if you look closely I bet you’ll see something similar in orbit around Earth.
But why?
Ah, a question for the philosophers. Personally, I don’t care, so long as whoever set it doesn’t come back.
Charlie and Dee developed a scotch-fuelled theory that it was the war that triggered some sort of over the top reaction with whatever aliens destroyed both planets. Maybe they were spooked at the thought of a nasty aggressive species with nuclear weapons which seemed quite prepared to use them. Or maybe they took one look at humanity and decided that the universe could live without it. Whatever the reason, Charlie doubted they’d be back to mop up the survivors.
It didn’t feel much like survival. There were only two of them, and they were trapped, deep underground. But he didn’t feel like giving up, and he wondered why. It wasn’t just Dee, though she was certainly an interesting new development in his life. Then came news from the New Beginning, and he finally understood.
Agnes never left her cabin. On the third day they found her in a pool of her own blood, eyes open, gazing into nothingness. She left a one word note. “Alone.”
“Much as I like you, Charlie, if it’s just you and me it’s going to feel pretty lonely down here too.”
“But it’s not just us, is it?”
She nodded, “Even though they irritate the hell out of us, knowing Freya and Zack are out there going through the same stuff makes it important that we hold it all together.”
“Knowing that there’s something other than this.”
“Exactly. We keep going for them as much as they do for us.”
* * *