Macao Station

by Майк Берри

  ‘Why would anyone want those places?’ answered the man, turning to face Carver. His face was expressionless. ‘They’re dead.’

  ‘I guess,’ agreed Carver, unstrapping from the chair and pushing himself into something approximating a standing position. ‘I need the toilet, man,’ he said, which was true. He was almost bursting, in fact. He felt his face flush with embarrassment, a most annoying sensation.

  ‘You’re wearing a space suit,’ said the man, a little frown creasing his weathered brow. ‘Piss in that.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ said Carver, realising he sounded like a petulant child. ‘I don’t like it.’

  The man nodded, sighing, politely exasperated. ‘So,’ he said, with what Carver took to be forced levity. ‘Maybe we should let you go — you know, release you.’

  Carver felt a grin trying to spread across his face, but he tried to restrain it, aware that it might be a sinister grin, a grin that might betray his secret intentions. ‘Hey, that’d be great,’ he said in his friendliest voice. ‘I’ve worked hard cutting that rock. I mean, I know we ain’t done yet, and I’ll still help. It’s not like I’ve got anywhere else to go, right?’

  The man was studying him closely, that dead, vacant gaze seeming to wash over Carver like ice-water. ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I guess you don’t.’ He snaked his body out of his own chair and pushed across to the restraining device.

  Carver felt his heart begin to hammer in his chest like an engine approaching the redline. He clenched every muscle in his body, trying to control it. ‘Hey, look, thanks for this, man. It’s pretty good of you to let me go.’ His mind was spinning now, in dark and tightening circles, closing in on that grim, inevitable finality like a shark circling closer to its prey: You’re dead, you crazy fuck! Let me go, and you’re dead meat. Go on! Do it! His head was throbbing again, as if his brain had swollen tight against the inside of his skull.

  ‘Well,’ said the man, releasing the restraining device from the face of the console and raising it to look into its display, ‘it’s what the dragon wants.’

  ‘That’s great,’ said Carver, floating closer to the man with nonchalant slowness. ‘Good old dragon.’ He wondered briefly if invoking its name would cause it to appear, to speak to him again — maybe to manifest in the flesh, vengeful and ravenous and angry — but he heard nothing. It occurred to him, also, that the crazy dragon-man hadn’t been speaking to it, either, this morning. No, he reminded himself, that’s because it’s pissed with him. He’s failed it. And now he has to go. Out with the old, in with the new. . .

  The man was tapping at the screen of the restraining device now, his gloved fingers somewhat clumsy. He held it up for Carver to see the screen, his face a perfect poker-playing blank. A glowing legend on the screen read NO PRISONERS. ‘Okay?’ he asked. ‘You’re released.’

  Carver, still floating closer, felt a euphoric thrill go through his body, almost a sexual pleasure. And the grin was breaking out on his face now — he couldn’t help it any longer — like a predator breaking cover. ‘That’s great,’ he repeated. And it was, wasn’t it? First positive development since he’d been caught on Aitama, what seemed like a million years ago. ‘Can I see it?’ he asked, reaching out one hand for the restraining device. The shadows of the cockpit seemed to lean over him, enfolding and cocooning him. The man shrugged and passed it over. It was a grey metallic box, just small enough to hold in one hand. Heavy. Sharp-edged.

  ‘Do it!’ hissed the dragon, making him start and almost drop the device. ‘Do it!’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I will.’

  The crazy dragon-man tried to push himself away from Carver, but Carver grabbed his wrist and held on. The crazy dragon-man was strong and rugged-looking, but Carver was an absolute beast, almost half his weight again. ‘What?’ asked the crazy dragon-man, his face twisted in confusion.

  Carver just laughed — he couldn’t help himself — and hefted the restraining device. Heavy. Sharp-edged. He felt the dragon smile — a vortex in the darkness, a cleft in reality. He swung the metal box, falling in. Out with the old, he thought, as blood flew in a thick scarlet gout. In with the new.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Lina returned to the admin offices carrying two bundles in her arms like a human forklift — Marco’s stuff and her own. People ran everywhere, carrying piles of clothing, dragging their children, jostling, shouting, dropping things as they went. Chaos had arrived, unbidden and unexpected, on Macao. The air tasted bad. It was cold. She walked through a Dantean scene of fear and disorder — scrolling images of rusty metal and clamouring refugees.

  She wondered what Ella had stayed to talk to Halman about. Something she wasn’t allowed to hear. Something to do with her? Marco?

  Two men in space suits ran down the corridor carrying an immense length of water pipe between them, brushing people aside as they went. What the hell did they need that for? Maybe they were just moving it out of the way.

  As she reached the corridor that connected the admin offices together, she saw Ella emerging from Halman’s office. Ella noticed her at the other end of the passage and offered her a wan smile before walking off into the bustling crowd. Lina considered giving chase, trying to extract some information from her, but she didn’t really have the strength for it. Instead, she returned to Amy’s office — or what had once been Amy’s office — which was to be the dorm where she would sleep until either the power was properly restored or they were all dead.

  The dorm was rammed with people, sitting on mattresses with the defeated expressions of refugees everywhere. There was just enough space to step carefully between the makeshift beds, picking through the maze of sprawling bodies, bags and items of clothing. The chemical stink of the air was even further fouled by the smell of sweaty, nervous human bodies packed into close proximity. There was a hubbub of fearful chatter in the air.

  Si Davis was sitting on the bed of a young woman from aeroponics, over by the far wall, seemingly in an island of good-natured serenity just large enough for the two of them. They were laughing — actually laughing! — and leant together, reading something off a datasheet. Lina smiled a little to herself. She had to admire Si’s opportunism. And his fast work. Lina couldn’t remember the woman’s name for sure — Michelle, she thought — but whoever she was, she was a pretty young thing. A passing twinge of emotion went through her — jealousy and nostalgia, mainly, entwined into an unpleasant, greasy sadness. She turned away from them, heartened and saddened in equal measure, and looked around for Marco. She couldn’t see him.

  She went to the bed that had been assigned to her — really just a thin mattress placed directly on the floor. She threw down her luggage and checked under her covers without much real hope. Then she checked under the heaped covers of Marco’s bed, next to her own. He was, of course, not there.

  ‘Where’s Marco?’ she asked the room as a whole. She could barely hear her own voice over the racket. She was not the only one calling somebody’s name. ‘Marco!’ she yelled again, worriedly scanning around.

  She spotted Ella’s son Clay, sitting on his own bed with earphones in, staring into a handheld video game. She rushed over and dropped to a crouch in front of him. Apart from his hair, which was dark and crew-cut instead of blond and crew-cut, he looked like a perfect, smaller-scale, male version of his mother. He was also Marco’s best friend and closest competitor at school.

  ‘Clay!’ Lina yelled into his young face.

  Clay continued to stare into the screen for a moment, then he paused the game, took out one earphone and looked up at her. ‘Hi, Lina,’ he said.

  ‘D’you know where Marco is?’ she asked him.

  Clay shook his head. ‘He said he was going with Rocko,’ he replied helpfully. ‘But that was a while ago.’

  ‘I only went to get our bags,’ said Lina to herself. Niya Onh went past, dragging a huge metal crate by one handle. Si Davis came to her aid, though possibly just in the hope of impressing his new friend. ‘Ha
ve you seen Rocko?’

  ‘No, sorry,’ said Clay. ‘Maybe Mum saw them?’

  ‘Thanks, Clay,’ said Lina absently, already rising and starting to look for Rocko.

  She found him in the corridor outside, moving pieces of medical equipment into one of the offices for Hobbes.

  ‘Where’s Marco?’ she asked without prelude.

  Rocko’s face took on an instant expression of concern that was so fearful and so genuine that Lina felt a chill run down her spine. ‘Why?’ he asked, wiping a sleeve across his sweaty forehead and leaning against the monitoring station that he’d been trying to manoeuvre through the narrow doorway. This blocked the doorway temporarily, trapping Hobbes on the other side and clearly incensing him. Hobbes shoved the heavy piece of equipment out of the way, making Rocko move aside, and dashed off down the corridor, muttering. ‘Isn’t he with Clay?’ Rocko asked.

  ‘He told Clay he’d gone to find you,’ said Lina, tears beginning to swim in front of her vision. ‘I only went to get our bags,’ she said again, as if this exonerated her from blame.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ cooed Rocko, moving towards her and gripping her in a tight embrace. His skin felt smooth and warm against her. He patted her aching back with one hand.

  ‘Where is he?’ she sobbed, aware that she was suffering a totally unnecessary overreaction, but unable to stop herself nonetheless.

  ‘He’ll turn up,’ said Rocko softly. Lina wept onto his chest, jostled by passers-by, lost in her own microcosm. ‘He’s just a little spooked out right now. He probably needed some space. I should have been watching him, but I thought he was with Clay.’

  ‘Maybe he did need some space. . .’ said Lina slowly, a new thought dawning on her. She lifted her head from Rocko’s chest and looked up at him. Rocko, she thought. Hero of the day. ‘You might be right,’ she said, sniffing back the tears. She snorted back a runner of snot that had almost dropped onto his shirt. He didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Sure I am,’ he agreed encouragingly.

  Lina released him gratefully and stood back. ‘Thanks, Rock,’ she said, slightly embarrassed. ‘I, er, I have to go.’

  ‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘You want a hand or something?’

  But she was already away, moving through the busy corridor as rapidly as she could without actually injuring anybody, dodging trundling hardware and temporarily-deserted items of luggage. As she got further from Halman’s office, the epicentre of the chaos, she began to pick up speed. Soon she was running through deserted corridors ignoring the twinges from her back, ignoring the headache that still raged inside her skull.

  She ran through the rec area, dodging between the immense pillars, tripping once on a jacket that somebody had dropped, rising, throwing it away and continuing without pause. She passed the canteen, glimpsing the untidy jumble of chairs and tables, vaguely distressed to see them all vacant for the first time that she could remember. She headed through the plaza, past the shuttered-up Miner’s Retreat, and then into the living quarters. She took the stairs up to the refinery level, emerging into the machine rooms, re-tracing the route that she had shown to Marco.

  The machine rooms were an ominously silent robotic graveyard. Silvery gas tanks and complex-looking metalworking machinery loomed out of the darkness at her as she passed, levers and handles and outcropping corners seeming to reach for her.

  She skirted around the outer wall of the great spoke, through the little side door, through the dark storage room, and into the spoke itself. She stood for a moment, staring up into that vast darkness, now almost as thick as pitch, where only a few feeble red LED-strips offered any illumination at all, stretching up into infinity like a runway into heaven.

  She went to the lift, where her suspicions were confirmed. It wasn’t there. She pressed the pad to call it, kicking her heels impatiently as she waited. The awe that she usually experienced in this place had turned into fear. The space was so vast, so dark, so. . . industrial. . . She stared around at the thick cables, feeling them groaning under their unthinkably heavy burdens. Soon she began to hear the lift descending towards her. Then she saw it, and saw that the cage was empty.

  She waited for the lift to slow to a complete stop then jumped into the cage and jimmied the latch shut behind her. She fumbled for the hanging control pad and hit the UP button. There was the traditional bang as the magnetic catch released and the lift began to rise into the blackness of the spoke.

  The dense forest of cables towered around her, constricted by perspective, ending in a black pit above. The journey seemed to take a very long time.

  She reached the top and virtually floated out of the cage. How long did they have left before the power went off and the air was sucked out? Halman had said two hours. Had it been closer to one or two by now? She cursed herself for not bringing suits. She should have thought. But somebody would stop them from draining the air, surely. Rocko had seen her go. Surely she had time enough.

  She bounced and swam through the narrowing tunnels until she reached the ladder that led up to the hub itself. Exactly why there was a ladder here she had no idea, because it was easier to just jump up into the hub than to actually use it. This was what she did, and she shot into the steel drum of the hub itself with more speed than she had intended, flying right across to land awkwardly on the opposite wall.

  ‘Mum!’ cried Marco in alarm.

  She looked up and there he was, floating dead centre in his jeans and T-shirt. She pushed off and headed towards him, crashing into him and banging her chin on the top of his head. They tumbled together onto the opposite wall, almost falling down the hatch to the floor below, locked in a death grip.

  ‘Marco!’ she exclaimed, letting him go. He scrambled to his feet, drifting away from the floor-slash-wall again, back towards the centre.

  Lina pushed off again as well, and they floated together in that eye of stillness, equidistant between the curved walls. On either side of them, perfect circles of space peered in: belt on one side, endless starscape on the other.

  Lina extended one hand to gently touch his face. Marco flinched away from her, tears in his eyes.

  ‘You ran away,’ she said softly, not intending it as an accusation.

  ‘I. . . I. . .’ he stammered, tears streaming down his face now. ‘I don’t want you to go, Mum! Don’t go out there!’ He waved one arm angrily towards the belt. ‘I don’t want you to go out there!’

  ‘Marco, I have to,’ she said, knowing that this was true. ‘Something bad is happening here, Son,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Something wrong. . . It’s something that threatens us all. And I have to fight it. I have to try. So yes, I intend to go out there to the shuttle.’

  He shook his head, angrily, refusing to even consider her words. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘You don’t have to! Don’t go out there! He’s out there!’

  ‘Marco. . . We’re all in serious danger here. That means you, my son, are in danger. If we leave the shuttle out there then we won’t have the parts we need to fix the power and the air. And then,’ she continued slowly, emphatically, ‘we will die. I cannot allow you to die if there is a chance that I can prevent it. I made that promise before you were even born — it’s an implicit one, a promise that all mothers make.’ She snared his thin arm with one hand and drew him closer. ‘I have to try and fight it. And it’s going to be okay. I’m gonna fly that shuttle back in here tomorrow, and your old mum will be a hero.’ She forced him to look at her, steering his face with one hand under his chin. ‘And then, once Macao has everything it needs, I’m going to take that shuttle, we’re going to get on it — you and I and anyone else who wants to come — and we are going to Platini Alpha. We’ll sleep all the way and wake up in a new world. You were right. It’s time we left this place. But first. . .’ She stared into his quivering, tear-streaked face and felt herself beginning to cry again, too. She was turning into a veritable salt-water tap these days, it seemed. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ she said again, drawing him to her chest and squee
zing him as tightly as her aching back would allow. But as she looked out at the belt, where it hung in the glasspex circle above his shoulder, she wasn’t so sure. It stared implacably back at her like an eye, until she had to look away.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  ‘Head through the corridor behind you,’ said the dragon in its calm, insistent voice. ‘Find the airlock.’

  ‘Right,’ agreed Carver. ‘Right, that makes sense.’ Everything the dragon said seemed to make perfect sense — it seemed a very sensible creature, all in all.

  He swam through the doorway that led out of the shuttle’s bridge and into the echoing bowels of the great ship, clawing his way along the handlines provided for that purpose. Drifting globules of blood surrounded him like evil fairies, sometimes spattering softly against his suit or face. He didn’t look back at the bridge where the crazy dragon-man had died. Crazy dragon-man mark one, he reminded himself. He smirked contemptuously as he went. It was kind of funny, really, the whole thing. The old emissary was drifting in the belt now like the worthless jetsam that he was.

  He passed through the thick doorway, designed also to act as an emergency bulkhead, trailing his gloves across the ancient metal as he went. Huge pieces of alien equipment loomed from alcoves on either side of the passage — gunmetal-coloured, statuesque machines whose purpose he would never understand. Thick, ribbed pipes and armoured conduits hung from the ceiling, wrapped around protruding brackets and corners like massive techno-snakes, threatening to entangle his clumsy body. The air tasted sharp and coppery, like the taste of a battery on the tongue. Steam hissed from a vent in the grilled floor, making him recoil, blinded, waving it away from his eyes. His body spun around, inverting, and he bumped his head on the floor before he could right himself.