Skyfall

by Anthony Eaton

  She’s so hard to read, he’d thought. How can you be so close to someone, and at the same time so far away from them?

  ‘I think I’ll go back out to Woormra.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Now.’ She headed for the lab. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be back before first shift.’

  ‘Eyna—’

  ‘Dernan, don’t worry. I just want to have another look around.’

  She’d smiled, and the door had closed behind her.

  Bringing himself back to the present, Dernan Mann told himself that, all things considered, Larinan had done a good job down there. Much better than he could have hoped.

  ‘Is she trying to open the hatch?’ Janil had returned to obs.

  ‘Of course. How’s Larinan.’

  ‘Dopey. Nauseous. I got his helmet off, but he wouldn’t let me help with the rest of the suit. Said he’d manage.’

  ‘How were his levels?’

  ‘His band stopped chiming before he was even out of the chamber. He copped a dose, but nowhere near maxing out.’

  ‘What happened in there?’

  Janil shook his head. ‘No idea. Hang on …’

  Crossing to the nearest terminal, he pulled up a scrolling display.

  ‘There. The moment he stepped into the chamber there’s a small spike in ambient UV – he obviously didn’t notice it – and then there’s the two big ones here and here. That’s when his band started up.’

  ‘So we’ve got a problem in the emitters.’

  ‘Looks that way. Hard to say for sure, though. It’s all back to normal now.’

  Sure enough, the display showing the current levels inside the chamber was unwavering.

  ‘Do you think Larinan somehow caused the flaring?’

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  Dernan leaned down and studied the readout closely. ‘Something caused it, that’s for sure.’

  ‘We’ll run diagnostics. In the meantime there’s nothing more we can do.’

  ‘Are we going to put him in there again?’

  ‘Not today. He’s had enough for the moment.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  Dernan Mann looked at Janil and could see the smouldering anger behind his son’s eyes.

  ‘He did well in there, Janil, all things considered.’

  ‘He got one reaction out of her.’

  ‘That’s more than your mother got. You’ve seen the footage.

  ‘Actually, I’d call it a hell of a lot less than Mother got.’

  ‘Perhaps. It’s a matter of perspective, I guess. But whichever way you look at it, we have to keep trying. We don’t have any choice. If it all goes completely bad, if the sky does fall, then Lari and that girl might well end up being the only hope any of us have.’

  ‘It won’t come to that.’

  ‘It might.’

  ‘Then Sky help us all, in that case.’

  ‘The bottom line is that I can find no reason for the lights to be flaring.’

  ‘It must have something to do with the power supply, Janil.’

  ‘I’ve checked. I’ve run diagnostic programs across every chip, processor and sensor. Everything comes back green.’

  ‘But those surges—’

  ‘We can manage, Father. I’ve got the environment boys improving the suit shielding, and the tech department is going to replace every key component in the emitters. Give me twenty-four hours and we’ll be able to put someone back in that chamber.’

  On a chair against the wall of his father’s office, his head spinning, Lari was only half listening. They’d been going on like this for an hour now, backwards and forwards, covering the same ground again and again until Lari felt exhausted. Of course, that could have been caused in part by the exposure. Since coming out of the chamber he’d been feeling tired, vaguely nauseous and kind of displaced.

  He glanced at the printout in his hand of the exposure data from detectors built into the inner layers of the suit. That second flare had taken him perilously close to maxing. If it had happened again before he’d left the room … He shivered. Still, it would have been ironic if after all those mornings sneaking out onto the balcony he’d got himself maxed right here in the heart of DGAP with his father and brother watching. The girl hadn’t seemed to notice any difference, though. When the light flared, she behaved as though she hadn’t noticed anything. Suddenly, she seemed a lot more alien.

  ‘Hey, are you listening, copygen?’ Janil snapped his fingers right in front of Lari’s nose. ‘Try and concentrate, will you? This is your health we’re talking about.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Did you hear what Janil was asking, Larinan?’

  ‘No, sorry. I was thinking about something else.’

  ‘You’ve made contact with her now and protocols would normally require that you continue until the subject feels comfortable in her environment and we can commence further testing. But if after today you don’t want to go back in, we’ll quite understand. I’m sure Janil could—’

  ‘No!’ Lari leapt to his feet. ‘No, it’s fine. I’ll keep going in.’

  ‘You sure, copygen? You’re not too nervous? I mean, you came pretty close to shiftieland this morning. And you’re looking kinda pale. Nobody will blame you if—’

  ‘I’ll be fine. Just get the lights fixed.’

  ‘That’s the problem. If we can’t find any reason for the flares, we can’t fix them. All we can do is pad up the suit, replace the circuits and monitor you when you’re in there.’

  ‘Something must be causing it,’ said their father.

  ‘We’ve been through this.’

  ‘It’s not a problem.’ Lari interrupted before his father and brother could start the conversation for the third time. ‘Just do what you can. I’d rather be doing something than just sitting around out here all day, feeling useless.’

  ‘Of course, there is another consideration,’ Janil said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Should we be risking our control subject in such a dangerous environment? We’re trying to match up his genetic makeup with her environmental adaptations. If we irradiate him to the point where he starts to undergo genetic breakdown, then we might as well just head down to the lower levels, grab the first shiftie we find and use them instead. It’d be exactly the same.’

  ‘As long as we can minimise the risk of exposure, then we need it to be Larinan who begins to socialise the subject. That’s the whole point of his involvement. He’ll be the one who eventually—’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Lari said again. ‘You can’t take away the one job I’ve been given. Not now.’

  His father sighed. ‘I need to think about this. There’s nothing else Larinan can do today, anyway. Janil, you keep at it here and I’ll take Larinan down and put him on the maglift home.’

  Lari followed his father to the hub.

  ‘Authorising Mann, Larinan to Dome 3327 North.’

  The reader chimed and Lari’s name appeared on an allocation screen.

  ‘There you are. Go home and rest, Larinan. You had a big dose of unfiltered sunlight this morning and it’s probably knocked you around more than you realise.’

  Lari did feel tired. His eyelids were heavy and the thought of sleep held a lot more appeal than it should have.

  ‘I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The lift doors closed and Lari sagged against one of the benches, grabbed the handgrip and tried to keep himself awake as the lift dropped out of the hub and transited into the first horizontal shaft west.

  Above his head, the newspanel burbled away with the usual mix of political and human-interest stories, and around him the lift hummed as it slipped from one shaft to the next.

  He must have nodded off, because it seemed like only a few moments before the lift surged upwards and started slowing. As the doors slid aside and he stepped out, he knew right away that something was wrong.

  This wasn’t his dome. Everythi
ng was different.

  The light was dirty, grey and dull and the dome’s internal towers loomed close overhead, blocking what little sunlight managed to penetrate the tangle of the city above. It was like the low-level res dome except worse.

  He spun round, but the maglift doors were already closing, and all Lari could do was watch helplessly as the bright, warm beam of light between them shrank to a narrow slit and then vanished, leaving him alone in the dim lower-level light.

  Or not quite alone.

  The moment the lift departed, two dark shapes detached themselves from the shadows beside the hub and positioned themselves on either side of him. Both wore masks of semitransparent material that covered their faces, and their features were blurred and vague inside the tight-fitting cloth.

  ‘Mann?’

  The speaker was the smaller of the two. A girl.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Larinan Mann?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘This way.’

  She set out across the narrow common towards the nearest utility tower, and her silent colleague reinforced her message with a none-too-gentle shove.

  ‘What’s going on? I’m supposed to—’

  ‘Hurry up. Gregor doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’

  A knot in the pit of Lari’s stomach tightened.

  ‘Gregor? What does …’

  Another shove, more savage than the last, almost flung him off his feet.

  ‘You’ll find out. Now move, or I’ll make you.’

  Lari followed the girl and as they crossed the common he realised that not a single light was showing anywhere in the whole dome. Not one window was lit in any of the towers, and no light came from the entry lobbies or any of the sphere lamps dotted around the common. Nothing. The whole dome was sunk in a dead twilight, the only illumination the fractured sunlight that penetrated the layers of the city. The air was different, too: stale and musty.

  ‘What’s wrong with this dome?’ he asked, but the only reply he received was another shove.

  The internal tower loomed over them in the same state of disrepair as the rest of the dome. Several windows were cracked and broken, which was odd in itself, because as far as Lari knew the domes used clearcrete, not glass, for all their windows. Debris littered the three steps to the lobby and the front door had been smashed off its guide runner and was permanently wedged open. Inside, the darkness grew thicker. Broken furniture was strewn across the floor and dark, empty spaces opened like hollow eyes into the shafts where the building’s internal lifts should have been.

  ‘Larinan. How nice to see you again.’

  Gregor sat on the far side of the lobby. Beside him, a small powerlamp threw a glimmering puddle of yellow light onto the floor, and behind him in the shadows loomed two enormous bodyguards wearing the same face coverings as his escorts.

  ‘Come. Sit down.’ Gregor gestured to an upturned box. ‘Don’t be afraid, Lari. You won’t come to any harm. You have my word on that.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘All in good time, Larinan. Can I offer you a glass of water? Probably not up to the standard of your upper-level stuff, but thirst-quenching, nonetheless.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  In the dull light Gregor’s scarred visage was even more hideous than Lari remembered it.

  ‘No, I insist.’

  Lari found himself pushed down firmly onto the box and a grubby glass of liquid was pressed into his hand.

  ‘I’m not thirsty.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ Gregor’s eyes were cold. ‘Now, cheers. Make sure you drink it all.’

  Lari looked at the glass. Whatever was in it wasn’t water. It was cloudy and gave off a faint odour of ammonia.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘I told you, Larinan, it’s water. Or at least what passes for it in lower-level domes. Now drink it, or I’ll get one of my friends to feed it to you. You have my word that you won’t come to any harm.’

  The scarred man leaned back and watched expectantly. Lari lifted the glass to his mouth and the ammonia smell tingled at the back of his nose.

  ‘Trust me, Larinan.’ Gregor’s smile didn’t waver, though his eyes were grim. ‘People down here drink this every day.’

  Taking a deep breath, Lari took a sip and gulped.

  ‘There. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Still alive.’ Gregor leaned forward now, resting his hands on his knees. ‘But you haven’t finished it, Lari. Go on.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m getting bored, Larinan.’ A menacing undertone crept into Gregor’s voice. ‘I’m not going to wait a lot longer.’

  ‘But I …’

  Lari didn’t get to finish what he was going to say. Gregor nodded and the man behind him seized Lari’s arms, twisting them savagely and sending a bright bolt of pain through his shoulders. At the same time, the girl grabbed a handful of Lari’s hair and pulled his head back hard until Lari was staring at the roof.

  ‘Drink up,’ she said, and poured the rest of the glass into his mouth. Most of it went into his nose, his lungs and over his clothes.

  Lari writhed, gasping in their grip, but to no avail.

  ‘Not good enough,’ Gregor observed, his tone almost casual. ‘Too much spillage. Get another glass.’ The girl released his hair and disappeared behind him, but his arms were kept pinned. ‘You’re going to drink a whole glass, Larinan, whether you want to or not. I suggest you get it over with before I decide to get more … extreme.’

  Seconds later the girl was back, another glass in her hand, filled to the brim. She leaned close to his ear.

  ‘I’d drink this one if I were you.’

  Her breath was hot against his skin. Then his head was pulled back again and she was holding the glass to his lips, leaving Lari little choice but to swallow.

  The water burned slightly as it slid across his tongue. His gorge rose against it, but Lari forced it down, swallowing mouthfuls as large as he could manage. It took five or six large gulps before the glass was empty.

  ‘Good. More?’ Gregor asked.

  Lari could only shake his head.

  ‘Fine. Let him go.’

  As his arms came free, Lari sagged on the wooden crate, his vision swimming.

  ‘So, what did you think of our water, Larinan?’

  ‘That wasn’t water.’

  ‘Yes, it was. I told you. That’s what we get down here. Ninety-six percent human greywater, badly filtered and swimming with sky-knows-what microbes. Slightly different from what passes for water in Dome 3327 North, I imagine.’

  ‘Is that why you kidnapped me? To half drown me?’

  Gregor laughed. ‘Kidnapped? Goodness no, Larinan. You’re not kidnapped. Hijacked, perhaps, but only temporarily. You’ll be free to go back up to your home shortly. All you need to do is listen to me for a few minutes and then we’ll send you right back as though your lift had never been intercepted.’

  Gregor stopped speaking and for a moment there was silence.

  It was true silence, Lari realised. In this dome there were none of the usual noises that formed the background to skycity life: no whirring ventilators, no gurgle of water in pipes; even the constant hum of electricity though the walls and conduits was absent.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘I wondered when you’d ask. Welcome to Dome 87b, Larinan Mann. One of the oldest domes in the city. One of the first hundred built, in fact. About the last of them still standing.’

  ‘I thought all the domes still stood. Plascrete doesn’t degrade.’ Gregor laughed again and the dark figures standing around him chuckled too.

  ‘Is that what they teach in the advanced school these days, Lari? Plascrete breaks down, just like everything else. It crumbles, and decays, and rots. Just like flesh. It’s the way of the universe. And these early domes that they built before they’d knocked out all the flaws in the plascrete compound rot more than most. That’s why they’re the ideal place for underworlders like us. Shift
ies. Burned men and women. Dregs.’

  ‘Why have you brought me here?’

  Gregor ignored the question. ‘Tell me, Larinan. How long do you think it’s been since people lived in this dome?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look around. It’s clearly abandoned. The towers are coming down, the filtration systems are shot to bits, even the autotint isn’t functioning properly – not that it makes much difference all the way down here. So tell me, how long ago do you think it was that the Prelature moved the families who lived here out into safe, functioning accommodation?’

  Lari looked around, taking in the crumbling walls, the shattered glass windows, the settled dust and grime.

  ‘I don’t know. A hundred years? Two hundred?’

  The smile faded from Gregor’s face. ‘More than a hundred families live down here today. They still have to dwell in this … filth, drinking filthy water and living short, hard, painful lives. What do you think of that?’

  ‘I …’ Lari looked around again. ‘But there’s no power.’

  ‘Not at the moment, no. It’s the middle of the day, so nobody should be here. They’re all out being … productive.’ Gregor paused and a bitter edge came into his voice. ‘This dome doesn’t even have a governor, Lari. That’s how old it is. They removed the governor centuries ago in favour of a city-controlled roster. Power here is rostered for the first two hours of third shift. If you live here, that’s all you get. Every single day. Two hours every four shifts.’

  Lari couldn’t take it in. This didn’t feel like the same world as the one in which he lived.

  ‘But I didn’t risk bringing you all the way down here to lecture you on the social inequities of our beloved city, Larinan.’ The edge went out of Gregor’s voice as though it had never been there. ‘Not at all. You recall that you owe me a favour?’

  Lari nodded.

  ‘Well, the time has come to start repaying. I’m sure you don’t have any objections.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Nothing major, Lari. Nothing difficult. Just information.’

  ‘Information?’

  ‘I understand there’s been some excitement in DGAP lately. And that you’ve recently been allocated to the research team alongside your brother and father.’