“Why?”
For a moment she only gazed at him, but her eyes slowly softened. “I think you’re to blame.”
“Me?”
“I think your enquiring mind’s rubbed off on me, made me question things more than maybe Ken would have wanted. He’s become a bit cagey lately. Although I do now know what one of the promises of The Promised Land is going to be.” When he just waited, she grinned and told him, “We’re to be free to have as many children as we wish.” Morgan thought of his mother’s long wait for her allocation of a second child. It wasn’t a pleasant memory. “But I suspect such freedoms are going to come at a cost.”
“A cost?”
“I think… Well, I suspect The Promised Land’s going to turn out to be a bit harder than we’re led to believe. Which is why I’d feel a whole lot happier having you there, and why I think you’d be really useful…and to everyone, Morgan, not just me. I reckon we’d benefit from your problem-solving mind, one you can turn to anything.”
After her next yawn she slid down under the sheets before turning over and pressing her back against him. He too slipped under the sheets but then wrapped an arm around her, holding himself close against her back, breathing softly on her neck until she seemed to go to sleep.
For something and somewhere nobody but Ken seemed to know much about he marvelled at how accepting the agri-engs were, how seemingly unquestioning of their fate; how much faith they all clearly placed in what to him still remained little more than a mythical land. And it still remained a land in which he couldn’t really see himself ever fitting in. It just didn’t feel right.
“The Promised Land,” he quietly said to himself as his eyes grew heavy. “A promise of unchecked procreation,” which at last brought him a grin of sorts and stirred his lately nascent interest. But it soon wilted when he recalled his mother’s tired-looking face. It made him wonder what that promise might really mean in the cold light of a new and unknown land’s own day. And with it, he finally resolved to sort out a viable plan of escape from amongst the fear-fuelled ideas that now overwhelmed his thoughts.
33 Into a Last Day
As time excruciatingly slowly crept nearer the day of their departure, Morgan went through his manuals umpteen times. Each revisit revealed nothing of The Promised Land, nor even much about the journey itself. All they really told him was to keep them with him at all times, and that during the “Transfer” he would sit with Stephanie and someone called the “Featherer”. The wording seemed to imply that they would be apart from all the other agri-engs travelling with them.
His instructions, even more puzzlingly, repeatedly warned him never to speak of what he would see, not to anyone outside of the two who would be sitting with him. They also warned him to follow the guidance of someone referred to as the “Autonomous Delivery Assistance Manager”, whose instructions he assiduously had to follow to the letter.
Other than that, his manuals only promised to give him the fastest and most accurate access to Stephanie’s own—should the need arise.
On the night before the planned departure, Stephanie brought Morgan a large bag full of clothes to try on. He’d never seen anything like them before: short trousers, short-sleeved shirts and a hard-wearing jacket—all with a wealth of deep pockets—and a tough, broad-brimmed hat. Then out of the bag he drew a pair of shoes, but ones made from strips of a stiff material and with deeply grooved soles.
He stared at her, speechless, but she just waved him into trying them all on. Everything fit well enough, but maybe because they were plainly meant to be loose. When he stared at her again, newly attired, he felt colour rise to his cheeks.
“Don’t worry, Morgan. We’re all going to look just as daft. I imagine we’ll soon get used to them, though.”
“You’ve got the same?”
“More or less.”
He opened one of the wardrobe doors and stared aghast at himself in its full-length mirror. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
She laughed as she came up behind him and tugged and pulled at the material until it only marginally looked any better. “You’ll do. Now, out of it all and put them away until tomorrow. You’ll need to be ready for when I come for you at ten.”
“You’d better get Gareth to tell me in good time, then. I’ve no way of telling myself, remember?” to which she nodded.
For the first time since they’d been sleeping together, Morgan and Stephanie made love that night. Unhurried, they savoured every moment, prolonging their closeness as though to block out the growing mix of trepidation and excitement the prospect of the following day’s events had inexorably fostered upon them.
When Morgan awoke the following morning, groggy and slow to remember that this threatened to be his last day in Rundkern, he found Stephanie already dressed, gathering together her things before leaving. He stretched out in bed, groaning. By the time he’d fully opened his eyes her face hovered close above his own.
“Thank you,” she softly said and kissed him briefly on his lips. When he only frowned up at her, she smiled. “For last night,” and he relived the warmth and passion for a moment as he grinned up at her. Then she was at the door. “Gareth will keep you abreast of the time. Get a shower and some breakfast—a light one, mind—then get dressed in your new gear. Okay?”
He nodded, a disapproving look scrunching his face, but then she was gone and oppressive silence filled the room.
Come half-past-nine, and having only been in his new clothes for fifteen minutes, he realised how rough and itchy the fabric felt, stiff and constraining despite its loose fit. More discomforting, though, Gareth, too, sat in similar garb across from him, silent as usual but with his strong build now more obscured. He seemed just as embarrassed.
Stephanie’s knock didn’t come soon enough, but when she entered, the way she carried the comical look appeared somehow becoming. Clearly in a bit of a flap, she didn’t notice his warm look and admiring eye.
“Sorry I’m a bit late but there’s been a few last minute problems. It’s all sorted now, though, so come on. Time you said goodbye to this room,” and she favoured them both with a brief smile.
“Aren’t we going to look a bit suspicious, going out like this?” Morgan said, nervous now at how near he was to finding out if his desperately thought-out plan of escape would really work.
“Don’t worry. We’re not going out,” and she went and stood by the door as Morgan’s hopes seemed to crash in about him. “And if you get your arse into gear, I’ll show you why.”
She led him out into the corridor he’d so far only ever glimpsed, past a flight of descending stairs and to an unadorned door at its far end. As Gareth came up behind them, Stephanie blinked into a reader to one side. The door slid open, revealing a small, dimly lit room that looked barely big enough to hold the three of them.
Soon crammed in between Stephanie and Gareth, Morgan got that same feeling he’d experienced in the pods when he’d sent them hurtling back down towards the sky. This time it only lasted a brief few moments, though, before he abruptly felt heavier and the door reopened.
In the half-light, a crush of people shuffled past from a stairway to one side that descended towards the door, their file turning away as it passed into a large room facing Morgan. Above the slowly receding line of heads, he could make out the benign image of Ken displayed on the large screen at the far end of Erebus’s gently lit chamber.
He glanced back up the stairs, wondering if he could force his way out against the flow before Gareth could stop him. He’d worked out the perfect place to hide, at least until the departure was over, and somewhere to which no agri-eng could ever gain access. Surely Mr. Craytov would then help him, keep him safe once he’d gone to the man with his revelations.
But then doubt once again crowded in around Morgan, doubt that his boss would really want to get involved in anything so out-of-the-ordinary. Morgan’s sudden indecision and the now more pressing thought of losing Stephanie, of her maybe going into some
danger he ought to be there to protect her from, let the moment slip by. Before he knew it, he was being jostled along in the crush towards Ken’s soft but carrying voice as it continued to welcome people in and to wish them a safe journey to The Promised Land.
People soon recognised the colunus, though, opening up a way ahead for her and the two men at her heels, and as a result the stairs quickly fell behind. Stephanie was smiling all the while, greeting folk with a word or two, encouraging, considerate and almost affectionate as she placed a hand on an arm or took another briefly in hers. And so, slowly, they made their way into the chamber proper.
Where tinted glass had once dominated, empty shelves now filled the walls, around which people were changing out of their usual clothes and into the strange new garb. Down the centre of the chamber, where previously there’d been nothing but a blank metal floor, a wide staircase crammed with newly attired people now dropped away yet deeper still. Morgan’s stomach seemed to dive just as deep at the thought.
Everyone gave way to Stephanie as she led Gareth and himself down the steps and beneath Ken’s image. Morgan averted his face, just in case, as the man himself continued to welcome all to the promise of The Promised Land. To Morgan’s ears, however, Ken sounded far too encouraging.
At the bottom of the stairs, a narrow shaft presented the topmost rung of a descending series, about which agri-engs were patiently queueing to climb down. Here, Stephanie told Morgan to follow Gareth into one of a number of adjoining washrooms, to make sure he could last the next two hours without needing to go. Once they were both back with her, she took them over to the shaft.
The next man to step onto the top rung faltered at the sight of the colonus and held back, but Stephanie encouraged him to stay with his wife so they could descend together. Then she directed Morgan to go ahead of her, down into what seemed to him to be the finality of a muffled clamour that warmly wafted up from below.
Morgan, though, only turned and froze, unable to take his gaze from the steps that rose back towards his last chance of escape. They led to a familiar place, to Rundkern and his family. Enticingly, fewer people were now coming down and less of a hubbub drifted to his hearing from the chamber above—a clearer pathway to the freedom he now so coveted. But only when his thoughts finally turned to the security of his treasured lecy systems did his feet at last unfreeze.
He tensed and leant forward, about to run, when a hand softly took his own, startling him and unfixing his stare. Stephanie stood beside him, her eyes flicking to where he’d been staring. He knew damned well she’d read his thoughts. He could see it in her eyes, see the sadness there, the hurt.
“I need you,” was all she said, levelly and quietly.
Morgan swallowed before forcing a lame smile onto his face as his gaze become inextricably drawn to her wide and unblinking eyes. He then seemed to swim in their soft blue depths for an age before he found himself saying, “And I need you, too, Steph. But—”
She blinked, freeing him from her disabling gaze, and stood aside, her head now lowered, the way out and back to Rundkern open before him.
Once more he turned and stared—this time down into the dimly lit shaft, at the sight of which he drew in a deep breath. “Whatever my future may hold… Well, I suppose, ever since I met you, I’ve known you’d have to be a part of it. For better or worse, eh, Steph? For better or worse.”
He stepped onto the top rung, and without looking back, briefly nodded before climbing down ahead of her, down into the oppressive warmth drifting up from the ordered activity below.
34 A Journey Begins
Not that far down, a man at the bottom helped him step onto the floor of a small, round room, from which another offset shaft clearly offered further descent. To one side, though, stood an open hatchway into which Stephanie crawled before reaching back out to help Morgan in. As he reached for her hand, he noticed Gareth’s curt nod as the man joined the queue for the next shaft. Morgan returned him his own as Stephanie grabbed his hand and abruptly pulled him into the hatchway.
After a short but confined crawl, he tumbled after her into a cramped oval-shaped room, its low shiny ceiling likewise curved to form an elongated dome. Three substantial seats secured to the floor almost filled the dimly red-lit space, one ahead of the other two and facing a sloping desk. Each heavily padded seat was strung with straps.
Morgan had by now become dazed by it all, his old anxiety about going below sub-floor level resurfacing as a renewed swill of fear within his guts. It must have shown on his face for Stephanie held his hand briefly and smiled. She was no doubt about to speak some reassuring words when someone else clattered in through the hatchway.
“Morning,” a youthful voice breezily called, and a lad of about fourteen squeezed past them, his face aglow. He slipped into the foremost seat and quickly strapped himself in.
“Our featherer,” Stephanie told Morgan, an indulgent grin on her face as she returned the lad’s greeting. Then she encouraged Morgan into one of the two remaining seats and expertly strapped him in, making sure he was tightly secured but not too uncomfortable. Before doing the same for herself, she glanced at the desk. Morgan followed her gaze and saw the time steadily progressing on a screen at its top—the first he’d ever seen it displayed on anything other than his own vision.
“We’re slightly ahead of schedule,” she announced, tightening her seat’s last strap. As she placed her manuals in a compartment in the arm of her seat, she told Morgan to do the same with his. Meanwhile, the featherer had busied himself at the desk, all sorts of images, figures and diagrams appearing on the various screens with which it was littered.
Something then struck Morgan and he quietly said to Stephanie, “It seems a weird place to start from. I mean, how are we going to get above the sky from down here, down below Erebus and out in the middle of our section?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered back, “but there must be a way,” and again she checked the displayed time. “Well, in just another twenty minutes we should find out,” at which he took note of the time himself. The thought that come eleven-thirty he’d permanently no longer be in Rundkern unnerved him somewhat and his thoughts soon turned to his estranged family, the one he now accepted he’d never see again.
A few minutes later, and a whirring noise drew Morgan to look behind them. A hatch was slowly swinging into place over the hatchway, a resounding clunk as it pressed home followed by a sharp report.
“Hatch sealed,” the lad announced then sat back, monitoring the displays.
“Thank you,” Stephanie said, then explained to Morgan that nothing more needed doing now until well after their departure. “About twenty minutes in and we’ll have to…” she’d started to tell him when a soft male voice filled the room.
“Welcome one and all,” it said before a short pause preceded, “I am your Autonomous Delivery Assistance Manager…but if you have any questions, you may call me Adam for short. Firstly, though, please listen carefully, for I am about to prepare you for your journey into The Promised Land; a journey to another new beginning in the long history of mankind.”
The look on Stephanie’s face matched Morgan’s own: rapt attention mixed with mounting anticipation. After all this time, he’d finally come to accept that The Promised Land truly did exist, that it was a real place, and somewhere to which they would soon be journeying. How could it not be when everything around him now screamed that it must be so.
Adam spoke again.
“At precisely eleven-thirty-three and forty seconds, your momentous journey will begin. Even though nothing will seem to be happening during the first twenty minutes or so, you must remain seated, your seatbelts securely fastened.”
Morgan glanced at Stephanie. Her lips were drawn tightly together, her gaze firmly fixed on the time. Morgan noticed it now read “11:17:56”. He held his breath until it displayed “11:18:40” then quietly said, “Just fifteen minutes to go.”
Stephanie was all smiles when she turned
to look at him, but then Adam spoke again.
“The words I am now saying are only being heard by the three of you: the J-Section Colonus, her assistant and their featherer. You alone will get to know more about our journey. But what you will soon see must remain entirely between yourselves. Is this fully understood?”
They each affirmed it as so.
“Good. Then before I continue addressing all agri-engs, there is something you alone must know.” Adam paused and they waited.
“For your featherer to do his tasks he must have clear sight of what lies before you, but it will only make sense to him and be seen by no others but you three. Whatever you yourselves make of it, though, you must never mention any of it to anyone else. It is critical that none know of anything outside The Promised Land, taking only their memories of Rundkern with them. And in time, even those will fade. Now, however, I must get back to addressing all agri-engs.”
In the silence that followed, Stephanie reached across and took Morgan’s hand, squeezing it gently a few times before Adam announced: “At about eleven-fifty-three you will begin to experience…”
For some reason, perhaps the imminency of their departure, Morgan again thought of his family and home. Though he’d now made his decision, his eyes still welled as the reality of what he was about to lose sank in. It helped that Stephanie’s shallow breathing and her hand, still holding his, brought him the comfort and reassurance he needed.
But by the time he again became aware of what was happening in the room, the time had moved on to “11:27:21”. He drew in a deep breath as he heard Adam say that if there were no more questions he would then leave them to make themselves comfortable. Presently, soft soothing music drifted in to their already darker room.
“Are you all right?” Stephanie whispered, to which Morgan nodded unconvincingly. She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his fingers, and at last he smiled back at her.
Beyond Ever Blue Skies Page 17