‘Why are we even bothering? She hasn’t answered in three months, she’s not going to start today.’
‘Tell her she’s got a week left to live. That might stir her up.’
‘Janil!’ Their father’s voice broke across the transmission. ‘That will do! Larinan, just follow the protocols and ask the usual questions.’
‘Will do. How’re my levels? The lights flared when I stepped in.’
‘All fine. This new suit is holding up, no worries. Now, are you going to talk to her or just stand there like a dummy?’
Lari toggled the coms again.
‘Do you feel like talking yet? What’s your name?’
From her position on the floor, the girl regarded him. ‘Why didn’t you come yesterday?’
‘What?’ Lari was so startled at actually hearing her speak that he thought the voice was coming from somewhere else.
‘Good work, Larinan. Finally!’ His father’s voice was jubilant. ‘Now, don’t give too much away, but keep her talking. Whatever you do, keep her talking.’
‘I … How are you?’
‘Why didn’t you come yesterday, eh?’ The girl’s voice was soft and Lari could tell she was fighting fear. In truth, he felt pretty nervous himself.
‘I couldn’t come. Something … happened.’
The girl nodded, not taking her eyes off him.
‘How come you wanna know my name?’
Her accent was strange. Each individual syllable was lengthened, and the words blurred into one another, so that she seemed to be speaking entire sentences as one long word, rather than individual ones. Lari had to concentrate.
‘Your … name?’
‘Yeah. Every time you come in here, it’s always the first thing you ask. Why do you wanna know so bad?’
‘I don’t. I mean, I do … I just want to know what to call you when I talk to you.’
The girl thought about this for a second, then nodded.
‘So are you going to tell me?’
‘Perhaps. Not right now, though.’
‘Ask her how she’s feeling, copygen.’ Janil’s voice crackled through his earpiece.
‘How are you?’
The girl stared at him then leapt to her feet. It was the first time Lari had seen her upright in such close proximity. Before she’d always been curled on the floor or hunched against the wall somewhere. He realised with a start just how tiny she was. Her arms and legs looked as though they’d snap in a strong breeze, and the top of her head was barely level with his chest. She faced him squarely, her chin tilted upwards defiantly, her hands on her boney hips. Beneath the thin white gown they’d clothed her in, her breasts were little more than two tiny lumps, so small that she looked more like a young boy than a teenage girl.
‘How am I? You mob have stuck me here in this place, don’t give me any food, and you keep making me sleep when I don’t want to, dream when I don’t want to. And you’ve been doing stuff to me when I’m not awake, eh? I’m not stupid. Look …’
She pointed at a small round bruise on her upper arm. A tiny dot of dried blood clung to the centre of it.
‘When I wake up I’ve got these. Didn’t have them before, but I wake up and there they are. And this place you’ve got me in …’ She waved an arm around the white chamber. ‘It’s bloody cold and there’s nothing to reach. Nothing to feel. And it’s too bright all the time. You want to know how I’m feeling? Have a think.’
She folded her arms.
‘Listen …’ Lari started to speak, but his father’s voice filled his earpiece.
‘You need to get her trust, Larinan. Reassure her. Tell her you’ll get some food.’
‘But we don’t have any food suitable for her metabolism.’
‘We’ll find something. Just reassure her, Larinan. Apologise.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ Lari told the girl. ‘Really. We don’t want to hurt you or anything. We just need your help.’ It was a lame thing to say, he knew.
The girl’s eyes narrowed. ‘My help?’
‘Yeah. We need to know how you work, how your body works. And about how you live.’
‘Live?’
‘You know, out there.’ He gestured back towards the airlock doorway and watched the girl’s expression. She took a small, involuntary step back.
‘You lot’ve been watching us for a long time now. What could we tell you that you don’t already know?’
‘All sorts of things. We need to know how you survive out there. How you’ve managed to last this long.’
‘How come?’
‘Sorry?’
‘How come you want to know this stuff all of a sudden? And why me? You coulda grabbed Dariand, or Dreamer Gaardi, or Gan, but you lot’ve been chasing me. Why?’
Lari thought desperately, searching for a convincing lie.
‘You’re young. You’re special.’
It was not a lie, but it didn’t reveal too much, either. The girl looked him up and down, taking in the suit, the helmet.
‘I’ll make a deal with you, eh?’
‘A deal?’
‘No way!’ Janil burst out. ‘We don’t make deals with the subjects. That’s completely unacceptable …’
‘What deal?’ Lari asked.
‘You want me to tell you things, then okay. You ask me questions and I’ll answer them, but you gotta answer my questions, too. Anything I ask.’
‘I can’t promise …’
‘Then we got nothing to talk about.’ The girl lowered herself to the ground, her back against the wall again, and resumed the hunched, silent position she’d been in when Lari entered.
‘Larinan, do something! You can’t let her retreat into herself.’
Awkwardly, Lari crouched beside her.
‘What do you want to know?’ he asked softly.
‘What do you look like under that thing?’
‘My helmet?’ He lifted his gloved fingers to the faceplate. ‘Just like a normal person. Like you, only bigger and paler.’
‘Show me.’
‘I can’t.’ He shook his head. ‘The light in here would … I’d get hurt.’
‘Thought you said you lot were the same as us?’
‘There are a few differences.’
‘That’s the deal, then.’
‘What is?’
‘If you want me to talk any more, you gotta show me. Take that thing off your head.’
‘Don’t even think about it, copygen.’
Lari toggled the suit’s external coms off.
‘Can we dim the lights in here?’
‘No,’ Janil snapped immediately. ‘The radiation system is preprogrammed.’
‘There’s no way, Larinan,’ their father added. ‘It’s too great a risk to you. And to her. No Darklander has laid eyes on one of us for hundreds of years. We have no idea how she’d react.’
‘Well?’ The girl was looking at him impatiently. ‘You gonna show me what you’re hiding under there, or not?’
Lari moved over to the closed inner-door. The girl rose and followed. He toggled his coms on again.
‘I’m sorry. There’s no way I can. It’s just too dangerous.’
‘That’s a pity. Would’ve been nice to talk some more.’
‘We can talk again, just—’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s it. No deal.’
The lights flared again briefly and Lari glanced up into the glare. He knew his father and brother would be watching his every move. Hoping they were ready to respond, he reached up with one gloved hand and snapped the seal that held his helmet secure.
‘Larinan! NO!’ Over the hissing rush of air out through the neck of his suit, Lari was barely even aware of his father’s shout.
‘SHI!’ Janil’s curse was the last thing Lari heard before his earpiece came out as he lifted the helmet awkwardly off his shoulders.
The heat was strange. It was intense, but almost so much as to be cold. The light burned with a fierceness Lari could ne
ver have imagined. The moment his head was exposed, the chamber flared again and the brightness was like a physical blow, searing the skin from his scalp and nose and the tops of his ears. Gasping, he was barely even aware of the floor coming up under him as he collapsed to his knees, his helmet dropping heavily and rolling away, forgotten. Instantly, his wristband started chiming and sending urgent pulses up his arm.
‘I … There,’ he gasped.
Light danced across the back of his eyes, leaving the white room an indistinguishable blur. As he fell, rolling onto his back and struggling to shield his head with his hands, he was dimly aware of a shadow leaning over him, sheltering his head.
The girl touched his face and her fingers felt like icy spikes dragging across his cheeks. She leaned into his blurred field of vision and Lari thought she was going to kiss him. Her lips came closer and closer, down towards his face, but they stopped and he stared up into those dark eyes as they hovered above him. There were horizons in them.
‘Saria,’ she whispered.
Then the chamber’s circulation fans screamed into life, the lights dimmed, and Lari let himself fall into the cool darkness of unconsciousness.
Ma Lee used to tell her about night spirits.
‘Don’ you be wanderin’ around in the middle of the night, girl. You walk into the wrong place, an’ one of them’ll have you; suck the heart right outa you, eh? Cold, they are. Cold an’ empty and looking for something to fill them; looking for life. You got it, they want it.’
Lari.
Just briefly she’d reached him. Right at the moment before he’d collapsed. And he’d been there, just like anyone would … Hot. Alive. Kissed by skyfire, true, but no longer a hole in the world.
Not just like her, no. But not all that different, either.
There’d been none of the Earthmother in him, though. She knew that the moment he lifted that shiny thing off his head. This creature had never walked on the dirt, driven his toes into red dust, or drunk water from the deep places.
He was like an empty person, a burned-out mind but alive, like she imagined one of Ma’s night spirits would be. A living, empty wisp of life, latching onto any source of warmth it could find; draining it dry, until there was nothing left, but never being filled itself.
‘We need your help,’ he’d said.
Saria raises her head and stares up into the glare above.
They need her help.
But how?
And why should she give it to them?
‘Shi!’ Janil was running for the stairs before Lari had even finished falling.
‘Shi! Shi! Shi!’
What in the sky was he thinking? Didn’t he realise what would happen?
‘Stupid bloody copygen!’
He was across the locker room in two steps and punching open the inner door.
‘Where is he?’
Through his headset, his father answered straightaway. ‘About half a metre in on the left-hand side.’
‘Conscious?’
‘Can’t tell. The girl’s blocking the view.’
‘Is she attacking?’
‘No. I think she’s trying to shield him.’
Stepping into the lock, Janil closed the outer hatch behind him.
‘Okay. Open it.’
‘Are you suited up?’
‘There’s no time. Just open it.’
‘Janil …’
‘Do you want your youngest son to become a shiftie, Father?’
Dernan Mann didn’t respond and a second later the entry to the exposure chamber slid back.
The glare was incredible. Janil squinted into it, crowding towards the back of the lock to avoid the direct light from the emitters. Even so, he could feel it pricking his skin and immediately his wristband was screeching.
‘Janil?’
‘Hold on, Father. My eyes …’
He blinked two or three times, fast, trying to clear the tears which reduced the room beyond to a bright blur. A dark smear of colour against the white floor shimmered into view, and, shielding his head with one hand, Janil reached into the chamber with the other, grasping at air.
‘Come on,’ he muttered.
The pain was slow to build, just a light tingle at first, but within seconds he felt as though he’d plunged his arm into boiling water.
‘Shi!’ Instinctively, he jerked back into the airlock, curling his arm protectively into his chest.
‘Janil! Are you okay?’
‘Yes,’ he snapped.
‘You almost had him. You were within a couple of centimetres.’
‘Standby.’
Taking a deep breath, trying as best he could to prepare himself for the inevitable searing, Janil plunged his arm into the white once more.
It’s flaring! Some part of his brain registered the bursts of light coming from the emitters, even as the rest of it struggled to ignore the pain. Just like the copygen said …
Then something was shoved into his hand … cloth … skin …
With every bit of strength he could muster, Janil hauled backwards and felt his brother slide across the floor. It took several seconds to heave him into the airlock, where Janil collapsed on the floor, half under the dead weight of an unconscious Larinan.
‘We’re in!’
Immedately the inner door closed, and as the cooling darkness slid around them, the last thing Janil noticed through the narrowing gap was the girl, silhouetted against the flaring light, watching the two of them lying there, her eyes a pair of dark pools. It felt like she was looking right through him.
‘Janil?’
‘Get a medik. Then come and help us out of here.’
The com went dead. Lari was pinning him to the floor and he found it impossible to lever himself out from under him. His arm was stinging, too.
In his arms, Lari groaned.
‘Hang in there, copygen. Someone’ll be along soon.’
Lari’s face was a bright, angry welt of red skin, which was already going puffy around his eyes and mouth.
‘You stupid, stupid shi,’ Janil told him, but, even as he said it, he couldn’t find it in him to really mean it. ‘You could have killed us both.’
The outer door slid back and their father reached in and helped Janil out from under his brother.
‘A medik’s on his way up. He’ll meet us in my office.’
‘Why not here?’
‘He’d have to come through obs. We can’t compromise the program.’
‘Sky, Dad! Don’t you think it’s time we let go? The program’s dead. You heard the Prelate. Finished. All you’re doing now is forcing us to make desperate, stupid mistakes.’
‘We’re not arguing about this now, Janil. Help me get Larinan upstairs.’
Lari groaned and tried to sit up.
‘Steady there, copygen.’ Janil knelt beside him. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘What …’ His brother’s eyes rolled back in their sockets and he passed out again.
Taking an arm each, Janil and Dernan Mann hoisted Lari up and slung his arms around their shoulders, holding him suspended between them. The movement brought Lari round once more.
‘Try to walk, Larinan.’ Dernan Mann was rewarded with another groan as the three slowly picked their way across the locker room and up the stairs into obs, one slow step at a time.
‘What in the sky possessed him, do you think?’
Janil threw his father a contemptuous glare.
‘You saw it as well as I did, Father. He was trying to save this program, just as desperately as you are.’
‘No, not the program. The girl, I think.’
‘It’s the same thing.’ Janil staggered slightly under his brother’s weight. ‘For such a runt, he weighs a tonne.’
‘Either way, he made some progress, you must admit.’
‘What progress?’
‘He got her talking. He got her name.’
‘Ha! A name isn’t going to help us untangle her genetic heritage, Father. A
name isn’t going to teach us how to find high-protein food and water out in that wasteland. A name isn’t necessarily going to stop the copygen here from being declared a shiftie and sent to take his chances down below.’
‘He’ll be fine. He’s exposed, but I’ve seen field agents take far worse and survive.’
‘You’d better hope. Because when the Prelate hears—’
‘She won’t. Unless someone reports it.’
‘She told us to keep her fully informed.’
‘Only of developments relating to the subject. And as far as I’m concerned, this has no bearing at all on the project itself.’
‘You should have been a politician, Father, not a scientist.’
Dernan Mann didn’t reply. They continued on through the lab, ignoring the startled exclamations of the two scientists working there, and along the corridor into the office, where a medik was waiting.
‘What happened?’
‘Radiation exposure as part of a controlled experiment.’
The man raised an eyebrow. ‘Controlled? This was done deliberately?’
‘No,’ Dernan Mann snapped. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. There was an … error of judgement on his part. More than that I’m not able to tell you.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s classified.’
Lari woke up again and tried to sit up.
‘Just relax, son. It’s all right. Lie back …’
Janil left the medik working on his brother and headed towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’ his father asked.
‘The lab.’
‘You should get your arm seen to.’
‘My arm is fine. If he’s able to survive this, I certainly will.’
‘Janil, you’ve been exposed …’
‘Only for a few seconds, Father. If you want to worry about something, worry about what your obsession with that girl is doing to those around you. Worry about getting a little bit of scientific objectivity back.’
‘Janil …’ Dernan Mann stopped, suddenly aware of the medik listening in. He grabbed Janil’s unburnt arm, his voice an angry whisper. ‘We have one week, one week, Janil, to find something in that girl’s makeup which will persuade the Prelate not to shut down the whole project. One week. And in that time, I’m prepared to take whatever risks I deem necessary to keep moving ahead. It would appear that your little brother feels the same way, but what about you, Janil? Are you prepared to do whatever is required?’
Skyfall Page 27