by James Bow
“No, he clocked out a half-hour ago. He won’t be back till late.”
That threw me. Nobody was going to be ordering me out after all. It was a relief to still have a job, but I didn’t like the idea that the confrontation had only been delayed.
“We’re a bit short-staffed,” Marni went on. “After yesterday, the CommController gave anybody who needed it the day off.”
I looked around at the workers moving around, doing their jobs, all in solemn silence. “Why didn’t you take the day off?” And by “you” I mean “everybody.”
Marni shuddered. “And stew at home? No, thank you.” She handed me a sheaf of papers. “Here’s your orientation papers. Somehow we forgot to give these to you yesterday. Esther will get you started with the canisters.”
Let no one tell you that any job is too small or that any person is unimportant. Those Communication Hub workers were heroes that day for showing up. I thought that as I started my last day on the job.
And let me tell you that it was boring. Grabbing canisters, glancing at addresses, sorting them so they’d go into the right tube? The job kept me busy, but it was so mindless that my mind started to work on its own. It ran over what the Grounders had told me: Gabriel saying, “I’ve never been satisfied with the explanation that her death was a suicide.”
Then, Isaac: “Did we check these batteries?”
Someone tapped my shoulder and told me my shift had ended. Marni had left, Ethan hadn’t come in yet, so I left, ate dinner at the galley, and kept stewing.
I should have gone home, but I needed to think. I couldn’t do that in my apartment, with its spyhole in the wall. I decided to wander.
It was evening, and the people were thinning out. Even though the light shone as bright as ever through the small gaps in the window shields, we kept to the Old Mother Earth clock. There were night workers, but many people went home at the end of the “day.” Even in broad daylight, Iapyx slept.
I found myself at the Sunside Point, where I’d seen my father fall. As good a place as any to remember the dead, I suppose. I looked up at the anchor and saw it still behind scaffolding. I was surprised. This close to Solar Maximum, they were taking a long time to shine it.
I looked away and thought about Mom, Isaac, and faulty batteries.
Then, for no reason I could think of, I remembered what Ethan had said to Marni: “From the batteries that got mixed up, to the messages that never arrived, to the records that were lost.”
Records.
My mind flashed to my conversation with Nathaniel.
“What caused the fault in my ornithopter? Does the white box say?”
“The evidence was inconclusive.”
Somebody was sabotaging Iapyx. I could see that. I could also see that, as crazy as the Grounders were, it wasn’t them. At least, it wasn’t Rachel or Aaron or Michael. So who was it?
And if somebody was attacking the Grounders, had my ornithopter been a target?
The Grounders suspected the mayor’s office, its security staff — specifically Nathaniel. That was silly. What reason would he have to do this?
But Nathaniel had known Mom, and Mom had known something about his family history that almost everybody in our colony had forgotten.
It was crazy. I was letting the Grounders’ conspiracy theories affect me. But there was one place I could put my suspicions to rest.
* * *
Once upon a time, I learned to work my ornithopter by cleaning it, repairing it and flying it, repeatedly. So, while the flight academy was headquartered in Daedalon, in practice it was split between Daedalon and Iapyx, allowing our training runs to shuttle back and forth between the cities. With space at a premium, we stuck our offices where we could, on either city.
The Iapyx side had the record room. And I still had keys.
I don’t know why I’d kept them. Nobody had thought to ask for them. And maybe I’d always hoped to come back.
Though not like this. Not after hours, sneaking like a thief, spinning elaborate murder plots like a Grounder.
We were two generations removed from computerized locks. It was simple to get inside the record room. We were also two generations removed from computerized records, however. The shelves of boxes and books that stretched before me were daunting.
But I treated the challenge like the safety protocols required before launching an ornithopter. My crash had been nine months ago, well short of the two-year requirement that paper be recycled. I went through the shelves, eliminating sections where the reports were too old, or were maintenance records, requisitions, flight manifests, until I found what I was looking for: routine arrival logs.
I scanned the dates, closing in on the day Isaac died …
… and found a gap on the shelf.
It was small, less than half a centimetre: a sloped space where two volumes leaned against each other. I wouldn’t have noticed it, or given it a second thought, except that the logs on either side of this space covered the week before and the week after my crash.
I frowned at the thin space. Somebody had taken the log. Why would anybody take it and not put it back? I couldn’t check the sign-out sheets, so …
But as I looked around, my eyes fell on a bin in the corner labelled TO BE PULPED. There were books inside. On a grim hunch, I limped over. I didn’t have to dig very far to come up with the arrival log in question.
I flipped through the pages. The dock hands had been diligent as always: every flight in and out of Iapyx had been logged in careful box script, all well organized. I ran my fingers down the entries until I found the date I was looking for.
There I was: Ornithopter Flight, Freight Class, Simon Daud Pilot, Isaac Daud Navigator. Left Daedalon 14:00 hours. Arrival Iapyx due 15:02 hours. Arrival: n/a.
Strange how “Not Applicable” could mean something so disastrous.
Scanning backward, I looked for names I recognized. And I found one.
It was a flight by a passenger-class ornithopter, bearing the mayor of Iapyx and his entourage. They’d paid a visit to the mayor of Daedalon a few hours before my maiden flight; a quick there-and-back. It may have been part of Matthew Tal’s undeclared campaign for the Captaincy, but otherwise nothing unusual. Except that the flight back to Iapyx had one passenger fewer than the outbound flight.
Scanning forward, I found that passenger.
Nathaniel Tal had hopped aboard a freight-class flight one hour after my departure, even though there were other passenger-class flights available.
I flipped the ledger closed and leaned against the shelves.
Nathaniel Tal had stayed behind on Daedalon, even though in all the times I’d seen Mayor Matthew Tal, his brother had always been by his side.
I’d hoped I wouldn’t find this, much less find it in the to-be-pulped pile months too early. Finding an arrival log in its place without Nathaniel’s name would have silenced the whispers in my head that had started when Isaac told me he thought Mom had been murdered. Now I had to wonder: Why had the batteries on my ornithopter failed on the very flight where my brother told me there might be a conspiracy against my family?
Could Nathaniel have sabotaged my ornithopter? Could he have killed Isaac? Could he have killed Mom?
I wasn’t going to sleep until I had answers.
* * *
The security office was located in the mayor’s offices. They never closed, but I knew I couldn’t just walk in and look under things. So my trek took me back to the Communications Hub. The public window was closed, but I was able to let myself in, and found people still working. The pace had slowed, but one or two deliveries shot through the tubes. A handful of workers busied themselves repairing canisters. I followed the wall and came upon a door that I’d passed during my walk with Gabriel. The sign on it read OVERSIZED DELIVERIES.
It was a large room, with bins on wheels, each filled with boxes too large to go into an average pneumatic canister. Sometimes things just had to be walked to their destination.
<
br /> One man worked away in a corner, checking address labels and placing packages into the right bin. He didn’t look up. Quietly, trying to look like I was supposed to be there, I walked the line of bins, looking down at the labels. I passed packages addressed to the infirmary, the vocational school, the arboretum, before finally finding the bin for the mayor’s office. I placed the arrivals log on top and took the handle.
The guy in the corner straightened up and spotted me. “Oh, hey,” he said. “Just got the final deliveries ready to go.” Then his eyes met mine, and we recognized each other. I was staring across the empty room at Ethan. His brow furrowed.
There was a moment’s silence before I tried to keep up the ruse. I shifted the bin. “So, this one’s for the mayor’s office?”
“Uh …” He raised a finger, pointing. “Your shift ended hours ago.”
“I’ll just take this over, shall I?”
Ethan came forward and grabbed the other side of the bin, blocking me. “What are you doing, Simon?”
“Just doing my job,” I said, mustering confidence.
“No,” said Ethan. “You’re doing my job.” He struggled for words. “Look, you don’t have to do this!”
I was momentarily blank. “Do what?”
“Prove yourself. I mean, in your condition, you shouldn’t be pushing yourself like this—”
“Pushing myself? My condition?”
“Going into the maintenance tunnel? Getting heatstroke?” said Ethan. “Pulling two shifts after you passed out and had to go to the infirmary? You’re not a pilot anymore; you don’t have to be a hero all the time!”
“Ethan, no! It’s not about that!” We stood there, on either side of the bin, staring at each other. I’d been sidetracked. How was I going to convince Ethan to stand aside?
Maybe with the truth.
“Look,” I said, slowly. “I know I’m not supposed to be here. But I need to get into the mayor’s offices, and this bin and my uniform can give me cover.”
Ethan’s expression grew more perplexed. “The office is always open. Just walk in.”
“No.” I took a deep breath. “They can’t see me. I mean, they can’t see me as anything more than a communications worker. It needs to be a secret.”
Ethan’s mouth dropped open. I wasn’t sure if he was getting ready to shout for security.
“It’s important,” I added, quickly. “There are things I need to know, and they’re not going to just tell me. It might tell us who’s responsible for the sabotage.”
Ethan closed his gaping mouth. For a moment, neither of us said anything. Then he stepped aside. “All right, then. You’d better go.”
I smiled as I pushed the bin forward, but then he grabbed the handle beside me. “But I’m coming with you.”
* * *
Ethan and I walked through the corridors of Iapyx, pushing our rumbling bin of packages ahead of us. One of its wheels was sticking, and it wobbled and juddered as we went.
I’d expected to feel self-conscious doing this. Having Ethan there, looking at me warily, as if I might make off with the bin, made me doubly so.
“So …” he said, carefully. “Why do you think the security office knows something about the failures that they aren’t telling people?”
It’s hard to explain yourself when you’re not sure what you’re doing. We boarded an elevator while I thought about my answer. “Let’s just say I don’t think they’re looking at the right target,” I said at last.
“What do you mean?”
“Who do you think set the device I found in the maintenance tunnels?”
The question took Ethan aback. “Well, the Grounders, of course! The device was sabotage, and everybody’s saying—”
“Is it easy getting into those tunnels?” I asked.
“No. Access points are locked. You have to sign out the keys and—”
“Who has access to those keys?”
His nose wrinkled as he concentrated. “A few maintenance people, I suppose. The people who do the audits. You.”
“So, who in the Communications Hub do you think is a Grounder saboteur?” I wondered if he’d name the CommController.
Ethan’s eyes widened. “No! Not my friends! Nobody!”
The elevator doors parted outside the mayor’s offices.
“That’s why I want to look here,” I said.
We shoved the bin forward and entered the mayor’s offices. The night receptionist sat at the front of a large room filled with a squadron of desks, all in rows. A motivational poster had been tacked to the wall behind him: Stand Firm in the Light — Let Others Take Shade Behind You. His typewriter clicked and rang as he attacked the top page of a large pile of forms.
Ethan made to push the bin past the desk. “Package delivery.”
The receptionist hardly looked up. “You know where to go.” Then he gave us a second look. “Why are there two of you?”
Ethan opened his mouth to reply, and froze. I saw his eyes dart this way and that, as though searching for an answer. Silence stretched. The receptionist’s frown deepened.
I coughed. “It’s my first day.”
“Yes!” said Ethan, as if grabbing a lifeline. “I’m showing him the ropes.”
The receptionist chuckled. “Sounds like you’re learning quickly.” He gave me another once-over, then turned back to his typewriter. “Go ahead.”
We pushed the bin out of the reception room and into the corridors behind. I had to hold tight to the handle to keep Ethan from running ahead with it.
We passed the security chief’s office. The light was on inside, and I heard a throat-clearing sound: Nathaniel, presumably, working late. I wondered if he ever slept. Two doors down, we came to the delivery room.
Ethan breathed a sigh of relief when the door shut. “Oh, thank the Creator!”
The room was mostly bare. There was a row of intake and delivery pneumatic tubes along one wall and, across from that, a table laden with packages too big to fit. Ethan set to work sorting out the incoming packages and putting the outgoing boxes in the bin. It was quick work.
It was also a waste of time. There were no records here. Nothing that screamed “evidence.”
That’s when another inspiration hit me. My arrival log had been placed in the “to be pulped” bin. That had to be recent. If it had been put there for a reason, maybe there were other things these saboteurs wanted pulped.
I looked at Ethan. “Where do they put the recycling?”
Using the bin as cover, we pushed deeper into the mayor’s offices to a door marked DISPOSAL ROOM. Like the delivery room, the disposal room was small. Bins of paper lined one wall, full of ancient forms, retired inspirational posters and handwritten notes. Piles of other temporarily abandoned supplies lay where they’d been dumped.
Ethan stared dubiously at the mess. “What, exactly, are we looking for?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m hoping I’ll know when I find it.”
I sorted through the papers. Ethan tackled the abandoned supplies. I was shoving through forms and records that were two years old when Ethan said, “This is odd.”
“What?” I looked up.
Ethan pulled up a tarp that had been lying over a piled pyramid of tubes. The tubes were all short — no more than thirty centimetres in length. They were translucent. Grouped together like that, they reminded me of …
The trunk line of pneumatic pipes.
Was this the proof I was looking for? There must be many reasons why a bunch of tube segments lay discarded. “Maybe they were doing some renovations to the pneumatics here?”
Ethan shook his head. “These are mains.” He picked one up. “You can tell by the thickness of the material. If there were renovations to be done to the mains, we’d do that.” He looked up at me. “We have to keep track of where these things go. We’d have to order the pipes, fit them ourselves, and dispose of the waste.”
I turned back to my bin. There were many forms here, all two
years old. Except for …
I pulled it out. Ethan peered over my shoulder at it. “What is it?”
“A requisition form,” I said. My brow furrowed. “Signed two months ago. To the pipe makers of Octavia. The form’s not due to be pulped for another twenty-two months.”
“Why would the mayor’s office bypass the pipe makers here?” asked Ethan. “Unless …” Ethan was coming to the same conclusion I was, and he didn’t like it. Neither did I.
I’m not a brave man, or an idealist. I follow the rules and I keep my head down. But how am I supposed to feel when the people whose job it is to enforce the rules, led by the brother of the man who makes them, don’t follow the rules? “We need to get out of here.”
We slipped out and picked up our bin. I folded up the requisition and shoved it behind the cover of the arrival log. We turned a corner and almost ran into a phalanx of security officers. They muttered at us as they dodged past.
There were more security officers around now. A lot more, running back and forth, too busy to notice us. I glanced at a clock as we passed. The bustle was odd for so early in the morning. Everybody radiated a sense of purpose that made me nervous.
We pushed the bin forward as fast as we dared, passing Nathaniel’s office, which was now dark. Another group of grey-clad security officers rattled past. These had sidearms. My heart leapt at that. Sidearms? Our security officers never wore sidearms! As we neared the reception area, I could hear the mutters and clatter of a busy crowd.
What was the security office doing, and why was it doing it now? It had been nine months since my accident, and two months since the pipes were requisitioned. For both pieces of evidence to be sent to be pulped now felt like tying up loose ends. You only do that when you’re about to finish something. Or when you’re about to start something.
We reached the reception area. It was full of officers now, moving back and forth. Nobody had any time to look at us.
Ahead, a clutch of guards left a meeting room off to the side of the main entrance. One had a stack of folders under his arm. He stopped, looked at them, then turned back to the room, setting them down on the nearest table. Then he hurried after his colleagues.