by Rob Boffard
Anna
The smell in the amphitheatre has gotten worse.
In the past, the station council used it to hold meetings, addressing the techs and functionaries that kept Apex and the wider station beyond it running. It’s a huge room, two hundred feet wide, with a dozen rows of tiered seats sweeping down to a stage below.
The rows are packed with people. They lie on the floor, slouch against each other in the hard plastic seats, huddle in small groups along the walls. It’s baking hot, and the thick scent of sweat hits Anna like a fist across the face.
She’s still not sure why everyone congregates here. People have occupied habs and laboratories, the gallery, the mess hall. But the amphitheatre is in the centre of the sector, furthest from the borders. It’s as if Outer Earth has decided to draw itself in, as if the people inside it find comfort in spending time together here.
She looks around, finally spotting her parents on the bottom row. Her mother, Gemma, is asleep, her head resting on her knees. Her father, Frank, is deep in conversation with someone, off to one side. As Anna gets close, she sees it’s Achala Kumar.
Anna only really met her a few days ago, after everyone had packed into the amphitheatre. She feels the same morbid curiosity as the first time she saw her. It was her son Prakesh who created Resin.
Achala looks as if she hasn’t changed her clothes in a week. The lines on her face are like deep cuts. “Don’t tell me that,” she’s saying to Anna’s father. “Don’t say that. I deserve a place on that ship more than anyone.”
“Achala.” Frank Beck puts a hand on her shoulder. “Think about what you’re saying. I know you want to see Prakesh again, but—”
“I have a right,” Achala says, raising her voice. “They can’t tell me I don’t.”
“We don’t even know if he survived.” He ignores the shock and anger on Achala’s face. “I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”
She slaps his hand away, then turns on her heel and stalks off.
Frank Beck’s shoulders slump. For a moment, he looks so defeated that Anna wants to run after Achala Kumar, scream at her, tell her to leave them alone. She settles for wrapping her arms around her dad from behind, resting her head on his shoulder. She has to stand on tiptoe to do it.
He nuzzles his head against hers. “Hey you. What are you up to?”
“Just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Fine, sweetheart. Just fine.”
“What was that about?” she says, pointing at the retreating Achala.
Frank sighs. “What do you think? She wants a guaranteed spot on the Tenshi.”
“She wants to skip the lottery?”
“Mm-hmm.” He perches on the edge of a plastic chair. “Can’t say I blame her. If you were down there, I’d probably be doing the same.”
Anna moves in next to him. “You don’t control who gets to go. Why’s she bothering you?”
“That’s what friends do. They listen to each other, even when one of them isn’t thinking straight.” He sighs, rubbing his left eye with the heel of his hand. “You’d think her husband would talk to her. He’s a good man–used to work on the space construction corps, you know…”
Anna tunes him out. She’s thinking about the lottery.
What’s left of Outer Earth is dying. The fusion reactor keeps them spinning, maintaining the artificial gravity, and it keeps the water and the lights on. But its shielding is failing. No one knows when it’ll go, but once it does, it’s all over. Outer Earth will become a frozen tomb.
The asteroid from the Shinso Maru should have fixed it. It had all the tungsten they needed to shore up the reactor. But now it’s gone, taken by the Earthers.
Their only hope is the one remaining asteroid catcher in existence: the Tenshi Maru. And it’s still three months away. When it finally arrives, it’s going to attempt the same re-entry manoeuvre that the Shinso did before it, using the asteroid it brought back. They’ll ride it down, all the way through the atmosphere, taking their chances on Earth.
There are only a few spaces available on the ship. To get there, they’ll need to leave via Apex’s twelve escape pods–each of which can only take three people.
Everyone else gets left behind.
Even then, the trip will be crazy dangerous. The escape pods will get them most of the way to the Tenshi, but they can’t dock with it directly–something about airlock compatibility. Every person in the pods will need to strap on a space suit, and transfer over to it.
Anna flashes back to the nightmare, when she was drifting in space, alone and terrified. Even the thought of going zero-G is enough to make a cold sweat prickle the back of her neck.
She needs to do something normal. Something beyond just worrying and surviving. She could go back to the Apex control room–it’s not good for much these days, but in the first days of the crisis Anna spent a few hours there, trying to reach the Shinso on every wavelength she could think of. She got nothing but static.
She dismisses the idea–there’s nothing for her in the control room any more. “I’m going to go find some matte-black,” she says. “Finish the painting.”
Frank gives her a tired smile, a final hug. Anna heads back up the stairs. Only a few lights in the ceiling are still illuminated, and she has to watch her step in the gloom. She picks up her pace as she hits the corridor, using the movement to chase the thoughts away.
The painting she’s working on is in a corridor two levels above her: a mural of Outer Earth itself, hanging above the planet. Anna’s never been outside, so she has to work from her imagination. She can’t say why she’s doing it–a few months from now, there’ll be nobody alive to appreciate it.
She uses matte-black, a gluey residue left over from water processing. It’s difficult to work with, but it’s perfect for painting: a deep, velvety black that no other chemical mix can replicate. Anna loves it, even if it sticks her fingers together.
Her father used to work in the water-processing facilities, and she never wanted for matte-black. That’s all changed. Still, she has at least one good source for it.
The hab is on the other side of the sector, on the top level. She comes to a halt outside the door, getting her breath back, resting her head against the cool metal wall. Not for the first time, she marvels at how white the corridors are here. How impossibly clean they are.
She raps on the door. There are muffled sounds from within, as if the occupant is getting out of bed. “Just a minute,” he says.
“It’s Anna,” she says.
“Yeah, OK. Hang on.”
The sounds continue. She’s still standing there twenty seconds later, about to knock again, when the door clunks open.
All the doctors Anna has ever known look like they haven’t slept in years. Elijah Arroway is no exception. It’s impossible to picture him without the deep bags under his eyes, without the weary slump of his shoulders. Arroway was put in charge of fighting the Resin outbreak, and he still looks as if he hasn’t quite recovered.
He’s been handling water processing for Apex. It was what he did before he became a doctor, and they needed that more than they needed his medical training. All of which made him Anna’s number one matte-black source.
He attempts a smile when he sees her, doesn’t quite manage it. “Anna. Not a good time, I’m afraid.”
“Oh. OK,” Anna says, frowning. It’s not like Arroway to be so abrupt. She shakes it off–they’re all on edge. “Just came for the matte.”
“The… right. Of course.”
He turns and walks back into the hab. It’s tiny, no more than a few yards across, with a single cot tucked against the wall on the left. The door to the bathroom at the back is slightly open, and Anna can smell the tang of the chemical toilet.
There’s a low table in the corner. A rectangular plastic container sits on top of it, filled to the brim with the glistening black substance. Anna leans against the doorframe, and, as she does so, she notices something odd. There’s a duffe
l bag on the unmade bed, jammed full of clothes. The bottom half of a sleeve hangs out of it, draped across the covers.
“Here,” Arroway says.
Anna pulls her gaze away from the bag. She has to take the container with both hands, and the matte-black sloshes gently as she does so. She gets her forearms under it, smiling thanks.
“Moving hab?” she says, nodding at the bag.
Arroway grimaces again. “Toilet’s broken. They’ve got a spot downstairs I can use.”
“Right,” she says, and then can’t think of anything else to say.
“Well,” Arroway says, nodding to her. He closes the door gently, clicking it shut in her face.
She stands there for a moment. Then she shakes her head, and walks back down the corridor.
The matte-black in her arms is heavier than she expected, and she has to stop to rest several times, carefully placing it next to her on the floor. The second time she stops, she idly dips the tip of her index finger in the substance, tracing a delicate curlicue on the corridor floor. She rubs that fingertip against her thumb, enjoying the slightly rubbery give of the matte-black.
She’s still there twenty minutes later. Still rubbing the matte-black between her fingers.
The fire in the gallery. Arroway’s bag. The lottery.
They go round and round in her mind.
She’s being paranoid. She’s bored, and she’s scared, and she’s looking for something to distract her. The things she’s seen are utterly unrelated.
Anna gets to her feet, leaving the matte-black on the corridor floor. After all, it’s not like anyone is going to steal it. She rubs her index finger and her thumb together once more, then jogs off down the corridor.
22
Riley
I don’t know how deep the cave goes.
There’s a lantern propped by the entrance, but its light only reaches a few feet in. The space I can see reminds me a little of the Nest, back on Outer Earth: a total mess, with blankets and tools spread out over the uneven floor. A battered metal stove is puffing away, smoke curling out of the top and collecting near the ceiling. The narrow entrance is covered by planks of rotting wood, nailed together to form a makeshift door.
The stranger is crouched by the stove. He hardly said anything on the way over, only that his name was Harlan, and that he had a place where I’d be safe. He has dark brown skin, offset by a scraggly beard. Both the beard and his hair are streaked with grey. Guessing his age is impossible–he could be forty, he could be four hundred.
He wanted to leave Syria’s body behind. I wouldn’t let him. He carried it on his back, bringing it into the cave. It’s somewhere behind me in the darkness. I keep wanting to look, have to force myself not to.
It crossed my mind that it might not be safe, that all this could be a trap. I found I didn’t care much. There’s nothing Harlan can throw at me that I haven’t survived a dozen times already.
He shuts the stove door with a clank, then gets unsteadily to his feet, pulling something from a pocket in his cavernous coat.
“Eat this,” he says. He has the strangest accent, mushing together certain sounds, as if he never quite learned how to form individual words. “You were damn lucky with the wolves. They got a big pack round these parts, gettin’ more aggressive every year. No idea why those three were off alone, but those leaves you used must have changed your scent some. You want to be careful, though. You pick the wrong kind of leaves, you get this rash all over your body. Itch’ll drive you crazy.”
I stare at him, my mouth hanging open.
He grimaces. “Sorry. I ain’t talked to other people in a while. Guess I ain’t used to it. Here.”
I reach for the food, then hesitate. Alarm bells are going off already. But my hunger wins out, and after a moment I take it. It’s like a strip of tree bark, brown and hard, with a grainy surface. I have to work to tear a chunk out.
The taste nearly knocks my head off. It’s salty, like the fried beetles we used to get in the market, only a thousand times more intense. My stomach growls, and I take another bite, filling my mouth with the chewy substance.
“Good, isn’t it?” Harlan says, grinning. “Cure it myself.”
Cure. I suddenly realise what I’m eating. “This is… meat?” I say, speaking around it.
Harlan has gone back to work on the stove. There are logs piled up next to it, and he’s busy jamming one of them inside. Light dances on the rock walls. “Mule deer. Caught it last spring, down near Whitehorse. First I’d seen in years. Didn’t even think they were alive any more. Can’t believe I got it before the Nomads did, I tell you that. Set a trap, over by the falls. Sucker walked right into it.”
I make myself chew slowly, savouring the taste. It’s not just delicious–it’s incredible. For a moment I forget about where I am, forget about everything except this, the first piece of meat I’ve ever eaten. I tell myself to take it slowly, not wanting to upset my stomach.
“Where are we?” I say, after I finally swallow.
Harlan glances up at me. His eyes are rimmed with wrinkles, an endless field of them, reaching all the way round to his temples. “You don’t know?” he says. “Seems strange, since you crashed down here. Figured you might have had some idea where you were going. That space station you came from–hey, is that really true, by the way? You ain’t just trying to fool me? Because if you are…”
I shake my head. “No, it’s the truth.
He gives a long, low whistle. “Boy. Is it still there? Or did they come crashing down, too? I think everyone else you came down with is dead, or they will be soon. Can’t survive long in these mountains ’less you know what you’re doing.” He’s having trouble controlling his volume–some sentences are almost shouted, while others drop to a whisper.
I focus on the first question he asked. “I got separated from the others,” I say, doing my best not to think of Okwembu.
Harlan jams a piece of the meat in his mouth, swinging round and pulling a battered backpack from its spot near the wall. He rummages in it, then withdraws something long and thin. It’s paper–a whole roll of it, torn at the edges but otherwise intact.
“Scooch over,” Harlan says around the dried meat, and unrolls the paper across the dirty floor.
It’s a map. I’ve seen plenty of them before, but always on tab screens, crisp and sharp. This one is faded, the tiny place-name letters all but gone. The land on the map, marked out with thick black lines, forms an uneven, top-heavy blob. At the top, near the map’s edge, the land breaks up into dozens of tiny islands.
“Hold this side down,” Harlan says, tapping the edge closest to me. The paper feels fibrous under my hands, almost alive, as if it too came from an animal.
“All right,” says Harlan. He rests a finger on the map, where the left-hand part of the blob begins to curve and mushroom out. “This is where we are. The Yukon. Canada. Ring any bells?”
I shake my head, but he’s no longer looking at me. “Not that it matters,” he says. “Canada, the States, whole damn planet far as I know. Most of it’s all dust now. Everything below this line is dry as anything.” His finger traces a curve across the blob, east to west, a little below the place he called Yukon.
“So why is it OK where we are?”
“Can’t say. A few years ago, we were living in one of the bunkers here.” He taps a point about ten inches below Yukon, his finger nudging the faded word Utah. “Those were bad years. Ever since I was a kid. Dust storm three-quarters of the year and frozen solid for the rest of the time. Air was nasty. You couldn’t stay above ground long, not that people didn’t try. We didn’t get a whole hell of a lot further than Red Rocks. I remember this one time, Garrison told us about this electrical spike he was reading down by…” He looks at me. “Doing it again. Sorry. Just, I don’t know, click your tongue or something if I talk too much.”
“It’s OK,” I say. “But… what about up here?”
He shrugs. “We got word that things were changing
. That you could live outside. Trees, air, whole deal. Paradise, compared to where we were. You hear that kind of thing, you go for it. Beats living in a tunnel underground, believe you me.”
Trees. I glance at the door, thinking of the barren landscape beyond. The only trees I’ve ever seen were the ones in the Air Lab–the big oaks. I try to picture a forest of them, stretching to the horizon. I can’t even begin to imagine it.
Harlan sees where I’m looking. “They’re down at the lower elevation, round Whitehorse. Not much of a forest, but it’s there. Air’s good, too. Go outside anywhere south of the 49th parallel, and you gotta be wearing a full-face gas mask.”
“What about the wolves? How are there… I mean, we thought all the animals were dead.”
He grunts. “Oh, they ain’t dead. Not completely. Most parts, sure, you never see ’em, but animals are funny. They find ways to survive. Probably don’t need no more than a handful of ’em to do it, neither. You ask me, I think they just kept moving. Couldn’t go underground, like we did, so they found places they could get food. ’Course there’s been a lot more in the last few years, now the air’s cleared up.”
“And there are more people here? In Yukon?”
“The Yukon. You gonna live here, you gotta get the name right.”
He turns away, letting go of his side of the map. It curls over, covering my hand. I spread it out again as he jams a poker into the stove, muttering to himself.
“Why are you up here, and not in the forest?” I say, still staring at the map. “Is it because of the… the Nomads?”
He grunts. “Something like that.”
“Who are they?”
Harlan doesn’t answer, poking at the fire.
I don’t bother repeating the question. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is getting back out there. Prakesh and Carver must have come down close by, and if Harlan knows this place as well as I think he does, then we might be able to find them. I actually smile–the thought of seeing them both again, of coming across them, seeing their faces, feels amazing. I could bring them back here.