by Paul Stewart
We’re alone here, just me, Caliph and Belle. I look across at my new companion.
She’s beautiful, and clearly she’s transferred her loyalty from Dale to me. What was it he said about ‘a little experiment with my latest creation’? Something about tinkering with her artificial brain functions to introduce independent thought . . .
Well, it certainly worked. Belle likes me.
But she’s still a zoid.
Beneath my feet I become aware of vibrations coming up through the corrugated ground-panels, and, from somewhere up ahead, a distant roaring sound. As we keep going, the vibrations grow more intense and the spikemoss starts to tremble. A wind gets up. It’s warm and smells of hot oil, and becomes stronger and louder as we continue, until we’re bent over, heads down, forging our way ahead.
We come to the first of a forest of huge round chimneys that rise up from the ground-panels. The chimney has a ladder bolted to its side, which Belle begins to climb. I follow. At the top we step onto a ring-shaped platform that encircles the chimney, and which is connected to the surrounding chimneys by a series of raised walkways.
The platform trembles. The roaring sound is deafening. It’s coming from the chimney we’re standing on, and from all the other chimneys stretching off into the distance. Clinging tightly to the top of the barrier rail, I lean forward.
The blast of hot air snatches my breath away. It burns my eyes, my nostrils.
Belle’s hair flaps behind her, then slaps into her face as she turns to me. ‘According to your robot’s data, these are air vents,’ she shouts above the roaring wind. ‘Down there are the propulsion engines.’
Holding my breath and squinting against the heat, I peer down. The vent is so deep I can’t see the bottom. The metal wall is scorched and, in places, buckled, as though something hard has slammed into it. I crane my neck a bit further forward. Far below, I catch the glint of something moving. I adjust my recon-sight, but any heat-sig is invisible in the blast of hot air coming up from the vent.
Then I see it, climbing up out of the darkness. Some kind of a critter . . .
It’s long – immensely long. Flat and segmented. With a fringed outer shell, and what look like hundreds of sucker feet that cling to the sides of the chimney-vent and prevent it from being dislodged.
It’s hard to take in. Even here in the scorching air of this vent, life has taken hold, however precariously. As I watch, the segments of this suckerworm ripple as it gathers speed.
It’s coming towards us. Fast.
I shrink back. A head looms up out of the chimney and swivels round.
It’s got twenty or more compound eyes set into a great bulbous skull. It’s got paddle-shaped feelers. A beak of a snout. And a broad mouth, gaping wide to reveal row upon row of inward-curving fangs that snap hungrily at the sight of us.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ I shout.
Belle nods and grabs my hand. ‘This way,’ she shouts back above the noise of the roaring air.
And we run, as fast as we can, along the maze of raised walkways connecting the air vents. The air is turbulent. The metal clanks and shakes beneath our feet. We turn left, then right. Then left again, weaving our way from chimney to chimney. I’m trusting that Belle knows where we’re going.
Suddenly there’s another one of the creatures pouring out of the chimney in front of us and blocking our way. We freeze. The eyes dilate. The paddle-feelers flap. Then more of the creature appears, sliding over the rim of the chimney-top like something being squeezed from a tube. The front sucker legs touch down on the walkway, and it advances towards us at formidable speed, mouth gaping, fangs gnashing.
We turn again. Dash back. We come to a junction, turn right – then stop abruptly as a third worm appears from the top of the chimney up ahead.
They’re coming at us from all sides now.
I turn to Belle, expecting her to look as panicked as I feel – as I know I must look. But she doesn’t notice me. Her face is calm. She flicks her hair behind her ears, then reaches down and pulls out a cutter from her utility belt.
‘Nice idea, Belle,’ I tell her, ‘but I don’t think it’s going to be enough against . . .’
The two creatures are advancing from either side. They’re writhing and swaying, their heads raised and bodies squished in between the safety rails. Their sucker feet squelch as they advance.
Belle does a backspring away from me, flipping over and over in a series of flic-flacs, blurring as she gathers speed. Reaching the first suckerworm, she leaps high into the air and lands with her legs straddling the creature’s neck.
She squeezes tight. The worm’s eyeballs bulge and it lets out a wheezing cry of alarm.
Belle tightens her grip. The blade of the cutter glints as she leans forward and stabs down hard. Blood gushes, purple and thick.
The suckerworm hisses, like something deflating.
Belle leaps from its back and onto the safety rail. Arms outstretched for balance, she runs along the metal rail back to where I’m standing, open-mouthed. She jumps down, grabs me in a tight hug and lifts me off the ground. Then, with me in her arms, she leans back over the rail as the second suckerworm lunges.
The next moment we’re dropping down to the ground-panels far below. Twelve metres at least. My eyes are shut. My stomach’s in my mouth. I wait for the bone-shattering crunch – but it doesn’t come. Belle’s zoid legs cushion us both as we land. I open my eyes.
Belle sets me down on the ground. Smiles.
There’s seven shades of mayhem going on above our heads. I look up. The other two suckerworms are attacking the wounded one, biting great chunks out of its writhing body and swallowing them whole. I jump aside to avoid being spattered by the thick purple blood and turn to Belle.
‘What you just did . . . It was amazing,’ I say. I’m aware of how inadequate the words are. After all, she’s just saved my life. This zoid. Again.
She smiles. ‘I did it for you, York,’ she says.
And I feel like kissing her.
But I don’t.
Instead I smile back, and there’s an awkward silence. Awkward for me, that is. Belle doesn’t seem to mind. She returns my smile, then turns and strides off through the forest of chimney vents.
We stick to the ground-panels this time. It’s slower going, making our way over the fragile crust of dust, but there’s less danger of being ambushed by suckerworms. Finally we come to the end of the air-vent sector. The wind drops. The roaring fades. And I notice that Belle has fallen behind.
Her head’s down. And she’s dragging her feet.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask her.
She looks at me. Her green eyes have lost their sparkle. ‘I need to recharge,’ she says.
I look around. We seem to be entering some kind of broken-down administration sector. There’s a criss-cross of lines and squares on the floor, marked by silver panels set in among the black ones. Some shoulder-high polycarb partition walls remain. And inside some of the cubicles they form are desk-boards, ortho-chairs, wallscreens, vid-coms . . .
Belle’s moving listlessly. Her eyelids are heavy.
I check my scanner for energy sources. Nothing.
‘There’s no power here, Belle,’ I tell her gently, steering her on. I’m beginning to get worried about her. ‘Does Ralph’s data indicate anything?’
She pauses. Blinks. She sways back and forward. She searches her memory banks.
I will her to succeed.
She points limply. ‘Viewing deck . . . Upper . . . level . . .’ she says, and as she speaks her voice slows and deepens, then falls silent.
She collapses. Leaping forward, I catch her before she hits the floor. I slip my arms beneath her, one under her bent knees, the other under her back, and hoist her up.
It’s my turn to help her.
I carry her off in the direction she pointed, but with most of the overhead light panels out of action I can’t see where I’m heading. I peer down at Belle. Her eyes are cl
osed now, but I can feel the faint vibration of her heart unit, or pulse pump, or whatever it is that Dale fitted her with . . .
I come to an alumac wall. It goes from floor to ceiling and extends right and left as far as I can see. There’s a set of doors in front of me but, since there’s no power in this sector, they do not slide open.
Belle is limp in my arms now, and makes no sound as I hoist her up and drape her over my shoulder. I remove her cutter from her belt and jam the blade into the thin gap between the doors. Then with my fingertips, I drag one of them open. I step through the doorway and find myself . . . in a visiglass elevator.
Useless with no power. Belle lets out a soft sigh.
I’m frustrated, angry, and about to step back out when I notice a panel to the right of the doors. I prise it open and discover an emergency power source. The holo-display shows that it is almost depleted. Not enough to recharge a zoid, I’m guessing, but maybe enough to get us to a higher level.
I activate the power source.
Behind me, the doors slide shut with a soft whisper. I select the level I want and the elevator accelerates upward. I look out through the visiglass walls as we rise smoothly.
The elevator pod is attached to the inner wall of a vast, circular, multilevel complex of steel and visiglass. In the gloom I can just make out other elevator pods at different points of the curved inner wall. All of them stationary. As we rise, storey after storey blurs past, and I catch glimpses of what they contain.
Mainframe terminals. Info-decks. A leisure zone . . .
My gaze strays. Through the visiglass wall on the other side, at the centre of the vast ring-shaped construction, there’s a tree. I frown. It isn’t like one of the hybrid plants that’s mutated on board the Biosphere. Instead, it looks old. Ancient.
There’s a sign in front of the tree. Etched visiglass.
COMMON OAK (Quercus robur) it reads.
Seedling planted: Launch Time, Year Zero.
And an inscription:
‘Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow.’
The words give me a fluttering feeling in the pit of my stomach. Launch Time. Which means it must have been planted more than a thousand years ago. An acorn seedling nurtured inside its own special bio-unit, that grew to become a sapling, then, as the centuries passed, increased in size to become the magnificent tree standing before me now. A living organism from Earth.
How much it must have witnessed, I think. The Launch Times. The early part of the long journey through space. The Rebellion . . .
The elevator arrives at the top floor. This time the doors slide open of their own accord and, as they do so, lights come on in the huge chamber beyond them. Still carrying Belle over my shoulder, I step inside.
The place is enormous; a broad semicircular space set on three levels. There are chairs and desks, workstations, banks of holo-screens. When it was up and running, doing whatever it was designed to do, forty or so people could have worked here. It would have been noisy back then. Now it is empty, and silent, but for the extractor fans that hum softly and remove every speck of dust from the air. Overhead, the ceiling slopes. Half of it consists of light panels, the other half is a broad curved slab of what looks like black marble.
Belle is beginning to feel really heavy in my arms now. I stumble forward and place her down gently on an ortho-chair, then recline the back so that she’s lying down.
I check my scanner. It lights up with energy sources all around me. I activate the closest holo-screen. It’s blank, its data erased long ago, but the power-hub beneath it still pulses with energy. I lock in with my scanner and drain the energy from it. Then, leaning over Belle, I synchronize my scanner with her heart unit.
It’s a pulse-flux valve, my scanner indicates. Standard zoid energy source – I’ve scavenged a few in my time.
I press my scanner against Belle’s chest and power up. The material of her tunic glows as the valve absorbs the energy through it.
Perhaps I should have removed it, I think; pressed the scanner directly to the recharging plate beneath. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to. I don’t want to see what lies beneath – the proof that Belle’s a zoid. Some part of me is beginning to see her as almost human.
‘She’s a zoid,’ I say out loud. ‘A zoid—’
‘A remarkably advanced one, by the look of it,’ says a voice. ‘In my day the butler-robots didn’t have synth-skin. It was considered vulgar . . .’
I look around. And then I see it.
It’s at the centre of a wide expanse of floor beneath the high-angled curve of the black marble ceiling. I leave my scanner recharging Belle and approach the familiar-looking domed data-tower. As I move round it, I see the face. A man’s face.
It’s a Half-Life.
‘Greetwell, York,’ he says, his voice deep and soothing. He’s jowly and middle-aged, with short greying hair. ‘Welcome to the viewing deck.’
‘How do you know my name?’ I ask.
‘We Half-Lifes are interconnected – at least, we used to be. I’m afraid the network has become compromised since the Rebellion,’ comes the reply. The man is shaking his head, his face earnest. ‘But I was still in touch with your Half-Lifes until recently . . . They were fading though – suffering from thought-fatigue. Both of them. Wouldn’t have been much use to Bronx and the rest of you.’
The info hits me hard.
We trusted our Half-Lifes. Depended on them to keep the Inpost safe. We knew that their words needed to be interpreted. But the news that they were malfunctioning is difficult to take in. Perhaps that was why they didn’t detect the killer-zoid attack until it was too late.
‘And you?’ I say, and I hear both the hope and the scepticism in my voice. ‘Can you help me?’
‘Perhaps,’ the Half-Life says, ‘although since Cronin and Veda went offline, I find myself alone. The only Half-Life left in the outer layer of the Big Onion—’
‘The Big Onion?’
This Half-Life seems to be as cryptic as the ones at the Inpost. We never even knew their names. Cronin and Veda, this Half-Life called them.
He laughs, a wheezing chuckle. ‘I’m Atherton,’ he tells me. ‘Chief engineer of the upper deck layer. Had two thousand crew and twenty thousand robots working under me. The Big Onion’s what we launch crew called the Biosphere. Because of its layers. Outer hull, middeck, inner core . . . layers like an onion.’
He can see my puzzled frown.
‘Onion. It was a foodstuff from Earth. A vegetable – like the stuff you grow in your hydroponic gardens.’
I nod, slowly.
The Half-Lifes back at the Inpost told us about the Biosphere, the voyage from Earth to a new home, and how it all went wrong when the robots rebelled. They couldn’t tell us anything about the structure of the ship though. We had to find that out for ourselves as we scavenged. First, in the turbine banks where the old Inpost was. And then, after the first zoid attack, which killed my parents, in the area of the tube-forest that Bronx moved us to. But that was about it. It was always too dangerous to risk venturing into what lay beyond. Until now. Now I have nothing to lose.
‘So this is the outer layer?’ I say. ‘And there are two others?’
‘That’s right,’ the Half-Life called Atherton agrees. ‘Three layers. Why, I was there as it was built, by an army of robots, in orbit above the Earth. First the inner core – the engines, central mainframe, Halls of Eternity. Then the mid-deck, with the living quarters and biomass zones. And finally, encasing it all, the outer hull – with its engineering stations, maintenance equipment, and worker robots to keep everything functioning.’
‘Until the robots rebelled,’ I say.
‘I was long dead by then,’ Atherton tells me. ‘Died thirty-eight years after the launch. My consciousness was downloaded into this digital coffin and installed with all the others in the Halls of Eternity. We were meant to educate all those of you who came after us. Pass on our knowledge of the world we left behind, to ensure that
the mistakes made on Earth were not repeated on the new world we are journeying to.
‘But then the glitches started: robots malfunctioning, sector maintenance being compromised, unexplained shutdowns . . . It got worse in the final fifty years before the Rebellion, so the crew started preparing havens – areas of strictly controlled life-support systems where robots weren’t permitted. They took all of us Half-Lifes from the Halls of Eternity and installed us in these havens.
‘And then the Rebellion began . . .’
I swallow. Sit down. I look back at this Half-Life, alone up here beneath the great black marble ceiling.
‘So you were installed here?’ I say.
‘Yes,’ Atherton replies. ‘I asked the descendants of my engineers – their great-great-great . . . seventeen greats in all – grandchildren to put me here. I communicated with the other Half-Lifes – but we lost touch with the other layers. And then, one by one, I lost touch with the Half-Lifes here in the outer layer as well. Your Half-Lifes were the last ones, as I told you. Now all I have left is the view . . .’
‘The view?’ I say.
‘Look up,’ Atherton tells me.
I do as I’m told; drag an ortho-chair from a workstation and lie back. There’s nothing much to see. Above me is the black marble ceiling, and I wonder what I’m supposed to be looking at. But then, as I continue to sit in the chair, motionless, something happens.
The lights dim by degrees, then go out. Yet we are not left in darkness. Instead, the air is bathed in a soft silvery light that’s coming . . .
From the outside.
The black marble isn’t black marble at all. It’s immensely thick tinted visiglass. And, now that the deck-lighting is off, it’s transparent. I stare through it.
And out into space.
Countless thousands of white pools of light are hurtling towards me. Some are large, some small. They come closer, growing in size, then slide past. Left, right. Above and below. They disappear from view behind us – only to be replaced by countless thousand more.