Skyfall

by Anthony Eaton

  ‘Look at it, Lari,’ she’d told him on that first morning she’d taken him outside for sunrise. ‘Look at how clear it is, how … real. Can you taste the air? That’s real air. Outside air.’ She’d breathed in deeply and Lari, imitating, did the same.

  ‘You remember this, okay, Lari? Remember this place, remember this morning. Promise me you’ll remember.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Good boy. Because things are happening out there – out here, I should say, that are so big and exciting we can’t even begin to imagine what a different place this world is going to be.’

  ‘What things?’

  She smiled down at him.

  ‘Impossible things. You’ll see one day soon, I promise. And you’re going to be such an important part of them, too.’

  She fell silent then and for a long time they’d stood, mother and son, watching together the gradual creep of daylight across the skycity, until finally her wristband began to chime.

  ‘We have to go in now, Lari.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Taking his hand again, she’d led him back to the hatchway, then crouched to his level.

  ‘Lari, darling?’

  ‘Yes, Mum?’

  ‘This has to be our special place, okay? Just for you and me. You can’t tell your father or brother about it, because then it won’t be just for us, all right?’

  Lari nodded.

  Eyna Mann leaned forward and kissed her son’s forehead.

  Lari stood before the enormous window wall of the main room of their apartment, staring out at the city, and traced his fingertips lightly across his forehead. Even now, after all these years, if he closed his eyes and concentrated he could still feel the faint, dry imprint of that kiss. That morning his mother had marked him as hers and even after she’d vanished, just a year or so later, that claim still lingered. It was why he kept returning to that balcony, time after time.

  Shaking his head, Lari turned away and went into the kitchen.

  His father wasn’t up yet. Strange. His protein allowance still sat in the dispenser beside Lari’s and his caf cup hadn’t been touched. Lari looked at the time: just a few minutes to first shift. His father should have been on his way in to DGAP by now.

  ‘Weird.’

  Lari grabbed his own allowance and tore the wrapper from it, dropping it into the reclaimer as he made his way back out into the living area.

  ‘Dad?’

  His voice echoed off the hard surfaces of the apartment.

  ‘Dad? You awake?’

  Dernan Mann’s bedroom door slid aside and Lari stared in. Apart from the rectangle of light thrown in through the open door, the room was dark, the light block still engaged. Lari pressed his finger to the pad beside the door and clean, filtered light flooded inside.

  The room was empty, bedclothes flung aside and his father’s sleeping robe spilled in a crumpled heap where it had been dropped. The untidiness was almost as out of character as his father’s unexplained absence.

  ‘Weird.’

  His father’s white DGAP coat was missing from the wardrobe. He’d gone in to work, then. Early. And without caf.

  Lari left the room. Dernan Mann’s behaviour, or anything else to do with DGAP, for that matter, had long ago ceased to interest him.

  In his own room, Lari flicked his terminal into life and chewed his protein bar as he waited for the machine to read his wristband and authenticate his logon. The hard paste tasted even worse than usual.

  ‘They must have lowered the production standard again,’ he muttered, grimacing.

  The newswebs were full of the usual city stuff. Scrolling quickly through the major pages, a story on one of the sidebars caught his eye:

  Mann Dismisses Rumours of DGAP End-Date

  as ‘Terrorist Propaganda’

  Port City, Central

  Speculation continues in the middle and upper levels of the city as to the possibility of a final shutdown date for the Darklands Genetic Adaptation Program. While sources close to the City Prelate deny that increasing pressure is being brought to bear to bring to a close one of the longest scientific experiments in recorded history, rumours continue to circulate among middle-level management that DGAP is indeed being slowly ‘wound up’.

  ‘There’s no denying it,’ said one source, a DGAP field agent who wishes to remain anonymous. ‘Over the last few years, there’s been a gradual scaling down of everything in the organisation – budgets, new investigations, reallocation of personnel away from field duties and into administration. It makes sense, when you think about it. The Subjects are all but extinct, and therefore so is the danger of the evolutionary pollution that they present. Without the subjects, there’s really no point in the city continuing to fund such a massive, unwieldy bureaucracy as DGAP’

  The head of DGAP’s Research and Investigative Science Division, Doctor Dernan Mann, dismissed the continuing talk of an end-date for the experiment as ‘preposterous’.

  ‘DGAP continues to amass and analyse data relating to the ongoing genetic stability of the human race,’ he recently told a conference at the DGAP headquarters in Port North Central. ‘The Darklands program has always had the dual functions of containment as well as social and biological study, and these will remain vital areas of scientific interest long after the population of actual field subjects has atrophied beyond statistical significance. To say otherwise is simply to give voice to propaganda circulated by underworld shifties whose ignorance is rivalled only by their stupidity.

  ‘I would suggest, in fact, that in many ways the role of DGAP has never been more critical. We should remember that of the twelve global darklands Zones created over a thousand years ago in the aftermath of the Pacific Circle disaster, the Antipodean Darklands, of which we are the custodians, is the sole remaining inhabited one. This puts DGAP in the unique position of measuring and assessing the very rate and change of evolution itself. No other scientific body in history has ever had such an opportunity, to say nothing of the vital knowledge that even the few remaining subjects might reveal about the human genome, about which we are still making new discoveries.’

  DGAP was formed in the mid twenty-first century in the aftermath of the Pacific Circle disaster as a response to the increasing concerns about …

  Lari punched a couple of keys and his terminal flickered back into standby mode. Leaning back in his chair, he sighed. Pity. He’d hoped the reporter might have known something more than the usual pile of accusations and denials that got flung around whenever DGAP was allowed to be publicly discussed. But there was nothing in that article Lari couldn’t have written himself.

  Perhaps I should try and get a placement in newswebbing. The thought brought a smile to his face. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d listened to his father and Janil bemoaning the increasing sterility and apathy of the subjects and the futility of the whole project. Between his father and his brother, Lari probably had enough inside information on DGAP to have the whole organisation shut down completely. Public opinion was always fairly heated where DGAP was concerned, especially lately.

  But it wouldn’t do any good. He knew that too. No point having a story to tell if there wasn’t any way to get it out there, and the Prelature wouldn’t be allowing any exposes on DGAP to reach the nets in the near future.

  And it’s not like Dad’ll let me, anyway. Lari knew he was already a large enough stain on the family’s reputation, and even though Dernan Mann hadn’t exactly been rushing to get Lari into DGAP, he knew there was no way his father would add to the gossip by placing his youngest son outside the family field.

  The com buzzed and his terminal flickered back into life.

  ‘Kes! What’s up?’

  On the display, his friend shrugged. ‘You know, the usual.’

  ‘You get a placement?’

  ‘Nope. What about you?’

  ‘I’m considering newswebbing.’

  Kes shook her head. ‘Like your father’s gonna allo
w that. I can’t believe he hasn’t pulled you into DGAP yet.’

  ‘He says there’s nothing for me to do there, and there’s no point placing me until there’s a position.’

  ‘And you’re happy with that?’

  ‘Not much I can do about it. You know how it is. Besides, I’m not unhappy with the way things are.’

  ‘I bet. You know you’ll have to get yourself placed soon, don’t you. The city won’t let you just hang around being unproductive forever.’

  ‘I guess. But nobody seems worried at the moment. Anyway, what about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘You’ve been waiting as long as I have.’

  ‘That’s different, and you know it.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  "Cause unlike you, my family field is clearly well below my potential. The city’s not going to put me into reclamation like Mum and Dad, but they don’t want a mixed-use kid like me getting under the noses of all you upper-level types either. What if I scrambled like your brother and got promoted above kids like you? I’ve gotta wait until they find somewhere suitable for me. You, on the other hand, have a well-established family field, and the brains to work in it, so you’ve got no excuse.’

  ‘Except laziness.’ Lari grinned at her.

  ‘Except that,’ Kes agreed. ‘Speaking of newswebbing, have you checked out this morning’s item?’

  ‘You mean the DGAP “story”?’

  ‘Yeah. What’s the deal?’

  ‘Kes.’ Lari sighed. ‘You read the piece. You know it’s just the same old stuff they churn out every few weeks.’

  ‘On the nets, yeah, but what does your dad really say?’

  ‘Why do you get so hung up on this? Every time DGAP is mentioned on the nets, you quiz me on whether there’s some kind of conspiracy going on.’

  ‘Well? Is there?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot.’

  Kes changed the subject, like she always did when Lari irritated her.

  ‘Are you up for a bit of fun?’

  ‘That depends on what exactly you mean by “fun”. The last time you suggested “fun” I ended up getting barred from the rec dome for a month.’

  ‘That was an accident. Anyway, I got barred too.’

  ‘You’re a nightmare.’ Lari shook his head. ‘What have you got in mind?’

  ‘I can’t tell you over the com, you’ll have to see for yourself. Wanna meet up?’

  ‘Your dome or mine?’

  ‘You come here. It’s a pain visiting you.’

  ‘You hate it, don’t you?’

  ‘I hate that you can walk into my dome any time you feel like it, but I need clearance to visit yours. Doesn’t mean I hate you, though.’

  ‘It’s just a security measure, Kes. A lot of important people live in 3327, and with the underworld …’

  ‘Let’s not get into this again, Lari. Just get over here and meet me in the ref.’

  She cut the com without giving him a chance to respond.

  Lari changed into his city clothes. Kes was his best friend – his only friend if it came to that – but she got awfully hung up on stuff and sometimes it was just too easy to stir her up. Still, she was fun to hang out with, especially at the moment when he had nothing better to do. Lari knew it was just a matter of time until the city lost patience with him and he was finally forced into DGAP with his father and brother, but he was determined to put that moment off for as long as possible.

  There had to be some compensations for being Dernan Mann’s copygen, after all.

  Falling.

  In her dreams, she is falling into a cold, white world.

  Again and again she reaches out desperately, searching.

  Nothing.

  Only the cold and the blue. The searing clear blue of the sky, just like the desert, but dead, no life anywhere.

  Dariand!

  Wanji!

  Nobody answers. No earthwarmth tingles through her in response. No hint of ground or fire or smoke or dirt.

  Just the sky.

  The cold, distant sky.

  And she falls again …

  He was out over the field. The thrum of the resonators a lullaby as he soared through the vast, empty sky. Then the nightmare began with an urgent, warning screech from the main interface …

  ‘Shi!’ Janil cursed, but before he’d finished spitting out the word his flyer started shuddering, pitching violently. His fingers flew across the main panel as he struggled to regain control, but nothing he did made any difference and the flyer was falling … screaming … plummeting from the sky towards the desert that loomed below, an empty wasteland of death. And over the top of all the noise came the chiming …

  ‘Shi!’ Janil struggled into consciousness, slick with sweat, his breathing heavy.

  Beside his bed, the terminal read 0303. Fourth shift still. The com-chiming grew louder, more insistent. It had to be his father. Nobody else would call at this time of day. Still groggy, Janil stabbed a finger at the interface pad beside his bed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Janil.’ Dernan Mann’s voice was the same as always. Authoritative. Unapologetic. ‘Get into DGAP. I’ll see you there.’

  The line went dead. That was his father. No apology for calling at this hour, no explanation. Just crisp, ordered, scientific necessity.

  Janil sighed. There was no point arguing. His father wouldn’t have called him in without a logical, valid reason, and even if he did object, Dernan Mann would be genuinely surprised. In Dernan Mann’s world, science and logic ruled over all else.

  ‘And I’m getting the same way,’ he muttered as he rolled sluggishly out of his bed. It was a sobering thought. Only eighteen years old and already he felt … burnt out. Empty inside. It was the price of brilliance, he knew.

  It took only minutes to throw on his work clothes and bolt down a protein bar. As he chewed on the paste, he stood and looked out the clearcrete window of his apartment, across the city. The view from here wasn’t as good as from his father’s dome. Janil had pulled every string he could to get a space allocation for one person and this was where he’d ended up – in a mixed-use dome with a recyc plant downstairs and decidedly shi water. This little two-roomer had one major thing going for it, though; down here he didn’t have to look at his brother every waking minute.

  The com chimed again.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Why aren’t you on your way?’

  ‘Father, what’s—’

  ‘Later, Janil. Not over the com. Now, hurry.’

  The line went dead again, and Janil’s brow furrowed. The winds were certainly getting at his father this morning. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Dernan Mann so agitated.

  His apartment was on the top level and as he stepped out of the lift foyer into the common, he was aware of the faint metallic tang from the recyc plant in the building behind.

  From the towers a few lit windows indicated other early-risers, and from a couple of apartments he could hear the faint bustle of people getting started for the day. Steam mains in the walls hissed and shuddered as food units were brought online. Over near the hub a couple of shifties were listlessly running a cleaner across the ground. As he passed, they both stared at him.

  ‘Morning.’ He nodded and was rewarded with blank stares. At least these two weren’t so badly messed as some. Their faces seemed almost normal; one had just the faintest ridging of scar tissue rippling across his neck and right cheek, and the other a series of small, discoloured tumours dotted across his bare scalp. They both watched him pass with indolent indifference before returning their attention to their cleaner, which had moved on without them. Janil flicked his wristband across the allocation plate.

  ‘Mann. Port North Central. DGAP hub.’

  The reader chimed and within a couple of minutes his maglift arrived, his name flashing on the display above the door. Once he was aboard, with a firm grip on the safety hold, the doors closed, the couplings diseng
aged, and with a magnetic hum the lift dropped into the system.

  The newspanel on the ceiling cluttered the silence with babble from one of the citywebs.

  ‘Controller, engage user interface, Authorisation Mann, password, entropy.’

  ‘User interface engaged!

  The user interface program used the same woman’s voice as the lift controller: measured, easy on the ear and perfect in both tone and pitch. Janil had always liked it. He knew the voice was synthesised, most probably designed by programmers a thousand years ago to be clear and emotionless, but all the same he liked to imagine that somewhere in Port City lived a real woman with this voice. He wondered what she’d be like.

  ‘Controller, mute newspanel for duration of this allocation. End user interface.’

  Obligingly, the newspanel faded into silence and Janil was left with only the hum of the resonators outside and his thoughts for company. Yet another advantage of being a Mann, he reflected. Most citizens had no idea that the user interface even existed, let alone access to it.

  He wondered what could possibly have gotten his father so worked up. Janil was old enough to remember a time when mornings like this weren’t so unusual in the Mann household. Once, his father used to rush into DGAP during the small hours of fourth shift three or four times a week.

  Not for years, though. Not since Mum.

  Janil himself had been in the program for five years now, and even in that short time it was impossible to escape the fact that things were winding up. The subjects were dropping like flies and their DNA was a mess, nowadays. A millennium of deprivation and radiation will do that to you, Janil thought.

  If it hadn’t been for the entropy scenario, Janil would have quit and looked for reallocation long ago. That and the fact that it wouldn’t have done for the son of the head of research not to follow his father into the family field.

  The eldest son, anyway.

  Just the thought made Janil’s eyes narrow slightly, but he tried to push the anger back down inside himself.

  ‘Stay cold. Stay clinical. Unharnessed emotion makes you unscientific.’