by Adam Roberts
‘Turn the scrubber on!’ said Mo. ‘Turn it – on.’
‘Wait,’ said Lwon, putting his hand up. ‘We don’t even know what model it is.’
‘What’s to know?’ said Marit, slapping his legs to warm them. ‘A scrubber’s a scrubber—’
‘We can’t afford any mistakes,’ said Lwon, turning the bulky device over and over. ‘A single mistake could kill us all.’ But there were no instructions printed on the machine; and he couldn’t draw out the theatre of his moment for much longer.
So he turned the scrubber on. It made no sound, but the dust near one of its circular apertures stirred and started drawing slowly in.
‘Why don’t we all take charge of a different thing each?’ said Gordius. ‘Then we all got a stake – yeah?’
All faces turned to the far end of the cleft. The light was strong, the shadows it threw black and stark, stretching oddly over the slant surfaces of the walls. ‘What’s you say there, fat-boy?’ demanded Marit.
‘I’m only saying,’ said Gordius, his voice audibly quivering with retreat, ‘is that – look, there’s seven of us. The fusion cell, the scrubber, the light, the, uh, the spore pack, the, uh, uh, the biscuits – that’s five items. Divided equally between . . .’
‘Oh, you want the biscuits, do you?’ bellowed E-d-C. The effort of shouting caused him to cough violently. ‘Those biscuits got to last us until we get the spores growing their slop. You eat them all up, what we going to eat?’
‘We could eat him,’ said Mo, showing thirty-two teeth. ‘He’d last us a while. And as for half-man there,’ Mo gestured towards Jac, ‘I guess you don’t eat as much as a regular guy?’
‘Hey, don’t misunderstand. I don’t want the biscuits,’ insisted Gordius. Even in the bitter cold of that space, he was perspiring. ‘I wasn’t saying that! I mean – sure, I’d like a biscuit, but, sure. The food should be equally divided, until. Sure. But, look, I don’t mind, and I guess Mr No-legs here doesn’t mind either. Why don’t you five divide the five items between you? And then you could – you could—’
Lwon interrupted him: in a loud, stern-to-be-kind voice. ‘Your best bet, Softbody, is keep your opinions to yourself. We got a lot to do just to stop ourselves dying right here and now.’ He looked in turn at the other four: Davide, Mo, Marit and E-d-C. ‘I know you, Ennemi-du-Concorde, and you know me. I know you are strong, and that you got the willpower. You know the same of me, I think. I’m not setting to boss you – I’m not setting to boss any of you.’ The scrubber in his arms was carving a spectral Doric column out of the floating dust near his shoulder. ‘I tell you what,’ he said.
‘What?’ boomed Marit, with sarcastic emphasis.
‘I say when we get ourselves sorted, and the air and water and food supply is settled, when that’s done I say we excavate seven completely separate chambers, and have one each. Then we don’t need to be in each other’s hair. Then we can just wait out our time best as we can. But until then . . .’
Davide, evidently, had a practical mind. ‘Break that lightpole into seven,’ he said, ‘and I don’t reckon you’d have enough light to even grow the spores.’
‘They’d grow,’ said Marit. ‘But slow – slow – and small. But you’re right, the better bet is keep the pole in one piece. Or maybe break it in two.’
‘And there will be time to discuss all these things,’ said Lwon. ‘But not right now! Now, we have more immediate concerns!’
Jac examined the whole space. It didn’t take him long. ‘We could make a window,’ he said.
This was the first time any of the others had heard him speak, for he had kept his peace on the outbound flight. The sound of his voice made all eyes turn towards him. ‘You say – what was that, Leggy?’
‘We could make a window,’ Jac repeated. ‘Let sunlight in. I know we’re a long way from the sun, but we’d still ensure a degree of . . .’
Mo started laughing: a curt, barking, aggressive noise that transformed almost at once into coughs. Lwon said, dismissively: ‘sure, half-man. You do that. You conjure your magic window and set it in the side of the rock.’
For some reason, Jac persevered: ‘there must be silicates in this rock. It wouldn’t be hard to run a line from the fusion cell, melt the—’
‘Talking of which!’ boomed E-d-C. ‘I’m cold as the grave.’ He started an ungainly, ill-coordinated crawl over the surface of one wall towards where the fusion cell was lodged. Lwon followed him with his gaze, but did nothing to stop him. He still had the scrubber, after all.
E-d-C’s large hands grabbed the cell, turned the massy object easily in the microgravity, and dialled up some heat. As soon as he did so, the others began to shuffle, or scramble, over towards him. The air was horribly, horribly cold; and although the fusion cell put out only faint warmth it was better than nothing.
All except Lwon. ‘Don’t get too cosy,’ he yelled. ‘We need to find water before we can get ourselves all warm like a cat on an exhaust plate. We need to find some ice or we’ll all be dead in days.’
The other four alpha-males ignored him. Gordius was whimpering a little as he tried to extricate his bulk from where he had wedged himself. Jac made his way hand-on-hand over to the big fellow. ‘You’re stuck in there pretty good,’ he observed, bracing his thigh-stumps against the rock and pulling at an arm.
‘I bounced in the dark,’ said Gordius, struggling, ‘and then – wham. It shot me in here, like a . . . like a . . . ouf.’ He came loose and floated out.
They gathered their various bits and pieces and tucked them all into the cleft to keep them from moving about. Davide propped the light pole at an angle, wall to wall, somewhere near the middle. Then they all set about unpacking the three excavators with which they had been supplied. The scrubber would keep the air fresh, but without water they would not last long. That meant digging through until they found ice. ‘What if we don’t find any?’ asked Gordius. He knew the answer to this question as well as any of them; but that didn’t stop him asking it aloud. ‘We die,’ Jac told him. ‘What if we find some, but not enough to last us eleven years?’ Gordius pressed. ‘What if there isn’t enough ice in this rock to last seven men eleven years? What then?’
There was no point in answering him.
E-d-C had brought out the first of the excavators, and was examining the device. ‘Anybody here ever worked as a miner?’ he asked.
The scrubber had cleared some of the dust out of the air; and the breeze had settled, running toward the scrubber along one wall and away from it along the other. Jac found that he was able to cough up and moisten his mouth sufficiently to get most of the grit out of it. ‘I dated a Moon Miner once,’ Mo said. ‘She was tough as a battlebot.’
‘She ever impart the wisdom of her profession to you?’ E-d-C enquired.
‘No.’
‘Then press your lips tight, idiot,’ E-d-C snapped.
Mo glared at him. Lwon spoke up, to defuse the hostility. ‘By the time we’ve finished our term here,’ he declared, ‘we’ll all be expert miners.’ He had the second excavator and was examining at it. ‘It is a series of problems to be solved,’ he announced. Even with the heat from the fusion cell, their environment was extraordinarily cold. Breath spumed from his lips with every word Lwon spoke. ‘That’s all it is. If we take each problem in turn and solve it, working together, then we’ll get through it. It’s a series of problems to solve – all that’s left, after that, is the will to endure our time here.’
All that’s left after that, Jac thinks, is the will.
‘So I’m no expert,’ E-d-C, ‘but these look like utility models. Decades old. Second-hand. I can tell.’
‘You amaze me,’ said Davide, in a perfectly unamazed voice.
‘Eleven years,’ said Gordius, apropos of nothing.
‘There must be a schute,’ said Marit. ‘An schute. Ein schute. I,’ he said, rummaging. ‘This?’ It was a coil of black cable, about as thick as a man’s wrist. There were three schutes, roll
ed together: one for each digger.
They unspooled one of them, and found its business end: a pen-nib-shaped bit. ‘All three together,’ said Lwon. ‘E-d-C – and Davide take first shift. We dig until we find some ice.’
Davide, holding the third excavator, removed his attention from the controls to angle his face in Lwon’s direction. ‘That sounded very much,’ he said, ‘as if you were giving me an order.’
The tone in which he said this, as much as the words themselves, brought a frozen quiet to the space. Everybody looked at Lwon.
‘If you’d prefer not to, Davide,’ Lwon said, in a low, measured voice. ‘That’s fine. But if we don’t find water, we will die.’
‘I’ll have a go!’ said Gordius, brightly, holding his arm out for Davide to pass him the excavator.
Saying nothing, Davide uncoiled his own waste schute, and fitted the open end into the port at the back of the excavator.
E-d-C had already fitted his schute to his digger. ‘So, the exhaust,’ he said. ‘Through the rock? Or through the stuff they sprayed to seal this cave?’
Marit, near the ceiling, reached out and thumped the artificial substance with his fist. Then he wrapped his arm back around his knees and hugged himself. Jac, from the other side of the cleft, saw how vigorously he was shivering. In the microgravity the little muscular tremors made him jiggle in position slightly, as if he were being agitated from without, like a particle in Brownian motion.
‘The thing about the seal,’ said E-d-C, ‘is that at least we know it’s not too thick.’ He pushed off with his feet, dragging his excavator with him. On reaching the ceiling he pressed the sharp end of his schute against the material of the ceiling, and turned the device on. Jac expected – he didn’t know what: whirring, lasers, something. But the point simply sank into the material. It pulled a metre or so of hose after it. Then it stopped.
‘I’m going to try this one on rock,’ said Lwon, scrabble-pushing himself to the other side of the cavity and pressing his waste schute against the wall. This time there was more noise: a coffee-grinder whirring sound. The schute-point burrowed more slowly into the rock, and tugged one, then two, then three metres of hose after it. Then it stopped.
Davide had picked a third place on the rock, and his schute dragged less than two metres of hose. The three men took their respective machines to different parts of the cavewall, and set the drillmouth against the rock.
‘Is there no way we can – what’s the word—’ Marit said, evidently unhappy that he didn’t have one of the drills. ‘Dowse?’
‘Dowse?’ Lwon repeated.
‘You’re just going to dig? That’s blind luck. What if there’s no ice in the direction you choose to excavate?’
‘Then,’ said Lwon, ‘we try another way. We keep digging until we find it.’ And he started his machine.
It wasn’t an excessively loud sound, but it wasn’t restful on the ear either, and there was no escaping it. Lwon, E-d-C and Davide ground at the rock in sweeping or circling motions. The first two were able to provide traction by setting their feet against the other wall, and Davide dug his heels into the edge of the ceiling. But it did not go quickly, and there was nothing at all for the other four prisoners to do but watch. The fusion cell was giving out a modicum of heat, and although it did little to warm the air more generally, Mo, Marit and Jac clustered around it, and Gordius got as close as his great bulk would allow. ‘Why isn’t the fusion cell hotter?’ Mo wanted to know. ‘It’s got enough energetic potential to blow the whole asteroid to dust. I mean, if all released at once. So why did they set the heating element to max-out at such a low threshold?’
‘Why do you think?’ growled Marit. ‘They’re sadists. Low-level bureaucratic sadists.’
‘I think,’ Jac put in, emphasising the first word, and continuing in a singsong voice, ‘there’s a more practical reason. It’s cold now, and will be for a while. But there will come a time when our main problem will be finding ways to radiate excess heat.’
‘Shut your head-hole, Leggy,’ said Marit. Jac looked away, smiling.
Grrn, grrn, grrn, went the drills.
‘I’m thirsty,’ said Gordius, eventually. ‘Would it have killed the Gongsi to maroon us with a couple hundred litres of fresh water? Would it? How much would that add to their precious expense sheet?’ He kept chattering on. His was the type of personality, Jac noted, that was unable to leave well alone.
The dark grey walls made a Λ. The air was filled with scraps and orts of dust, crumbs of rock. The smell of cordite was in Jac’s nostrils. Stenchy, stenchy.
‘It would only be postponing the inevitable,’ said Jac. ‘They could hardly supply us with eleven years’ worth. We will have to shift for ourselves. Might as well start as we mean to go on.’
‘But,’ said Gordius, pressing his fists into his ample stomach. He didn’t say anything else.
‘You sound like you’re on their side,’ observed Mo. ‘That’s a provoking attitude to take.’
‘I will say it one more time, Leggy,’ said Marit. ‘And no further warnings. Keep your head-hole shut.’
Jac regarded him with a sly eye. But he didn’t say anything else.
‘Eleven years,’ said Gordius. ‘We won’t last one. We’ll die of thirst in a week. There’s no ice in this rock. There ought to be a law. The Gongsi ought to be compelled by the Lex Ulanova to survey their prison stroids, to ensure—’ He petered out.
They fell into an unhappy silence. Jac watched the three diggers. Davide was the most aggressive, straining his muscles to try and force the drillmouth hard against the rock. Jac wondered if that would make a difference; presumably the machine processed as much matter as it did, regardless of whether it was pressed or merely set against the rock. But Davide was an impatient man. Everything about him made that fact plain. He would have to learn to shed his impatience, Jac thought, or he would not last very long. Lwon was more methodical, moving the drill in a tight circle and slowly carving out a metre-diameter circular space. E-d-C was making more dramatic, sweeping leftto-right gestures with his machine, scraping out a shelf. It required considerable muscular effort to move the excavators – weightless but nonetheless massy – through this shuttling series of motions. Jac wondered how long it would be before he exhausted himself. From time to time E-d-C and Lwon would stop, examine the area they had carved out, and check their machine. Davide did not stop.
Time passed. Nobody had any way of measuring the time: none of them had any bId connection any more. Jac cast his mind idly back to his schooldays. How had ancestral humans done it – measured the passing of time? (He was going to think: how did cavemen manage? But that seemed, in his present situation, too much like irony.) Water clocks. Pendula. Both things that depended on gravity. What sort of clock could they build in this gravityless environment? Sundials. There was no sunlight, here.
It didn’t matter. Time didn’t matter. Only the will mattered.
Davide was sweating, despite the ferocious cold.
Jac watched the particles of dust sliding slowly-slowly in beautifully coordinated trajectories, slowly, in towards the intake end of the scrubber. Gordius saw that he was looking. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said.
‘You do?’
‘You’re thinking: what if the power chip in the scrubber malfunctions?’ Jac hadn’t been thinking that, actually, but he didn’t say so. ‘Well,’ Gordius went on. ‘I was thinking that too. Without the scrubber, we’d all asphyxiate in a very short time. But, see, if that happens, we can hook it up to the fusion cell.’ He said this as if he had spotted something terribly clever and useful. Jac went back to watching the dust patterns.
Time passed. The next thing that happened was that Davide broke off from his digging. ‘Somebody else have a go,’ he gasped. ‘I need a rest.’
‘You’re straining at the machine,’ observed Lwon, over the noise of his own digger. ‘You need to take it easier.’
‘Two-and-a-half-hours a day,’ Davi
de snapped back. ‘Minimum – minimum. Any less than that, and your muscles will waste. You’ll end up looking like Leggy, there.’ He nodded in Jac’s direction. Then he pushed off and flew slowly over towards where the biscuits had been stowed. Lwon saw what he was up to, quickly enough. ‘Wait!’ He shut off his digger.
‘I’m either having some biscuit,’ Davide announced, ‘or I’m eating your flesh, raw, Lwon.’
‘We all eat at the same time, and we all take the same amount,’ announced Lwon, forcefully. ‘That way we avoid falling out. If we start fighting amongst ourselves, then we might as well cut our own throats. And the biscuits won’t last us long, anyway. We should keep them till we’re really hungry.’
‘I am really hungry,’ Davide barked. ‘Did you just see the job of work I did?’
Jac watched Lwon’s face, as he sized-up the situation – whether this big man was going to back down, or not. Lwon evidently decided the latter was the truth of it. ‘In that case, we all get one Lembas. All of us – one each.’
Davide growled, but made no objection. So E-d-C shut off his digger too, and the seven of them gathered around the food. Davide took it on himself to hand out the supplies: one biscuit per person. ‘Leggy here don’t need a whole one,’ he said. Marit laughed. ‘I’d be happy with half,’ Jac said, mildly. But Lwon spoke up: ‘give him the same as everyone else, Davide.’
Nobody got very far with their biscuits. Without water, it was too parching a meal, not calculated to please dusty mouths. Jac ate some few nibbles, and put the remainder back. Davide went to the far side of the cavern, turned to face the rock, wedged himself in, and went to sleep. Or perhaps he didn’t: he was shivering pretty violently, and it was hard to imagine he got much rest. But he made a performance of sleeping, and of do-not-disturb, and everybody else let him be.
‘Come on,’ said Lwon. ‘We need water.’ Gordius again offered to take his turn, but Marit overruled him and took the spare machine. Drrn, drrn, drrn.
They laboured for a long time. The relatively high pressure in their pocket meant that the air was dry, and that fact combined with the dust meant that everybody felt terribly thirsty. ‘Could they not leave us a single keg of water?’ groaned Davide.