by Paul Stewart
My temples throb. I’m finding it hard to get my breath.
In all my life, I have never, ever seen outside the Biosphere. I don’t know anyone who has. Of course, I’ve often dreamed of what it might look like, and the Half-Lifes back at the Inpost showed me pictures when I asked. But those pictures were static. Frozen. Motionless images of space captured on telescope and uploaded onto a screen.
Whereas this . . .
It’s moving. It’s alive. Dazzling shards of brightness. Asteroids. Planets. Suns. Entire constellations of stars cascading out of the darkness and gliding past us.
‘Beautiful, no?’ says Atherton.
‘It is,’ I say.
‘It’s a sight I never tire of,’ he says. ‘Look. A meteor shower.’
I turn my head, look all around. Far to my left I see a display of bright lights as a thousand or more balls of ice and grit hurtle across the sky, long white tails streaming out behind them.
As I gaze at the stars, Atherton speaks again.
‘I’ll never forget the launch,’ he says quietly. ‘I was up here on the viewing deck. As we left Earth’s orbit I looked back. It was my first view of Earth from space, and I was expecting to see the familiar blue-and-green planet that everyone knows so well.’ He pauses again. ‘Except it wasn’t blue and green at all, York. It was grey and brown . . .
‘It was dying.’
I swallow.
Ever since I was a boy, I’ve had dreams of forests, cloud-filled skies, oceans . . . Earth, kept alive for me by the Half-Lifes’ images and Gaffer Jed’s stories.
But Earth is gone. Forever.
Dead.
Ahead of me, an asteroid has appeared out of nowhere and is heading straight for us. Closer and closer it comes, until it seems to fill the whole sky. I grip the arms of the chair. But then the Biosphere’s deflector-shields shimmer as the asteroid hits them and disintegrates into a shower of fizzing molten dust.
I stare out at the enormousness of the universe. All my life, the Biosphere has been my world. Now, for the first time, I realize how tiny it is. How insignificant. If the killer zoids do finally manage to wipe out us humans, it will be as though we never existed.
It’s as if Atherton can read my thoughts.
‘The zoids have been trying to eradicate us for five hundred years,’ he is saying. ‘And despite our best efforts, none of us has discovered why. Now humankind is losing the battle, York. There were no more than a thousand humans remaining at the last count. And no other Half-Lifes at all in the outer layer. The answer must lie deeper.’
My head’s whirling with a hundred questions, but just then, the lights go on. The stars disappear and I’m staring at my own reflection. I look scared. Belle approaches me and hands me my scanner.
She smiles. ‘Thank you, York,’ she says.
I turn to the Half-Life.
‘I’ve got to rescue my friends in Sector 17,’ I tell him. ‘But after that, I’ll do everything I can to find the answer.’
Atherton smiles. ‘And I shall be here, watching the stars,’ he says. ‘I’ve waited five hundred years. I can wait a little longer.’
With Belle fully charged, she and I exit the circular building, leaving behind its elevators and viewing deck – and Half-Life. We walk side by side along the base of the alumac wall. Caliph is draped over my shoulder as usual, fast asleep.
The Half-Life’s words echo inside my head.
The answer must lie deeper.
I’ve just promised Atherton that I’d try to find that answer. What have I said? I’m no hero. Just a scavenger, struggling to survive . . .
‘Are you all right, York?’
Belle’s question cuts through my thoughts. I turn to her, surprised. She’s learning fast. It was only a short time ago that she was watching my face, imprinting my expressions on her own face – learning to smile when I smiled, to cry when tears welled up in my eyes. Now she’s beginning to understand the emotions underneath, asking after my well-being; she’s trying to work out what’s going on inside me.
Just like a human.
Bronx calls it empathy and says it’s what separates us from the zoids. I’m starting to grasp the implications of Dale’s experiment – a zoid that can feel human emotions. Is that good or bad? I don’t have time right now to think it through.
‘I’m fine,’ I say. All that matters is rescuing Bronx, Lina, Dek and the others. Anything else will have to wait.
When we come to the end of the wall, Belle pauses. Then, looking up, she points across a flat plain dotted with cuboid compressor units and spidery radiation pylons towards a tangled mass of pipes and tubes far in the distance.
‘This way,’ she announces, and we set off.
The air is filled with noise. The pylons emit a high-pitched whine that gets right inside my head, while the compressor units give off a deep pulsing throb, and I find myself walking in time to it as I trudge on. It’s stiflingly hot.
Belle is strong now that she’s recharged and strides ahead. It’s me who’s beginning to flag. I haven’t eaten a thing since that meal back in Dale’s refectory.
I check my scanner. There’s nothing here to eat. No plants. No edible fungi. No critter-life either, or zoids. Bad news for my rumbling stomach – but good news for our safety.
We press on across the flat expanse of the plain towards the distant pipes. I keep my head down. I don’t want to see how far there is still to go. It’s only when we come to the first of the pipes that I look up.
We’re entering a tube-forest that’s remarkably like the one back near the Inpost. Ducts, cables and pipes stretch off in all directions, buzzing, humming, throbbing. High overhead, the hull lights glow, casting a jumble of serpentine shadows.
I check my scanner again.
Just like the tube-forest I know, this one is festooned with plants that have taken root wherever there’s water. Many of the pipes are entwined with rope-ivy, its tasselled fronds hanging down, softening the hard edges. There’s blackfern and spikemoss, leech-creeper and air-kelp – and, I’m delighted to see, the same bulbous succulents that I know are good to eat.
‘I need to recharge,’ I tell Belle as I head across to them.
It’s meant to be a joke, but Belle’s face shows not a flicker of amusement. She’s learning fast, but not that fast. She waits patiently while I uproot, peel and slice half a dozen of the succulents. Caliph is not so patient. The pungent smell of the juicy flesh wakes him up. He runs up and down my arm, shrieking noisily, and doesn’t ease up until I feed him. I have some too.
‘You recharge like Dale does,’ Belle says. ‘He calls it “eating”.’ I look up to see her clear green eyes watching my mouth as I chew and swallow. ‘What’s eating like?’
I smile. ‘Good,’ I say, and wipe the juice from my lips on the back of my hand. ‘Very good.’
Belle is staring at me quizzically. I stare back, my feelings mixed.
She’s got teeth. Pearly-white and even. She’s got some sort of tongue – though that seems to be for talking not tasting. However, since she has a power plate she has no need of a stomach.
‘My way of recharging is more efficient,’ she announces, then turns away and keeps walking.
With Caliph now trotting along at my side, I follow. I watch her confident stride, the easy swing of her arms. Her flawless synth-skin seems almost to glow. Despite what I know, it’s hard to believe she’s not human.
Suddenly she turns, hunkers down and signals for me to do the same. I realize that my earpiece is bleeping. I crouch down at the base of a broad purple pipe, turn my head, scanning the surroundings through my recon-sight, and identify the heat-sig of a zoid.
Fuzzed orange and blue. A workzoid.
Then I catch sight of it. Squat, with a barrel-shaped stomach. It has two articulated arms, one with pincers; the other has a nozzle.
A sluicer then.
It’s performing regular maintenance work. It’s stopped at a tube-junction, the orange lights o
n its domed head flashing as it checks for any blockages in the pipe connections. Then, apparently finding one, it clamps hold with its pincers, inserts the nozzle through the membrane, and sluices the inside of the faulty pipe with a hot chemical spray.
Once the blockage has been shifted, the zoid withdraws its nozzle, seals the membrane shut and moves on.
It’s an open target . . .
Suddenly, out of nowhere, there’s a blur of movement and a flash of metal – and a figure drops from the shadows, slamming down hard onto the back of the sluicer zoid and knocking it to the floor. I recognize what’s happening at once. The man’s a scavenger. Just like me. The cutter in his hand flashes as a well-aimed blow slices through the cables in the zoid’s neck.
There’s a smell of shorted circuitry. Zoid-juice gushes and steams.
The scavenger is good. An expert with his cutter, hacket and drill-spike. As I watch, he strips the zoid of useful parts and stows them in his backcan quickly and efficiently.
He’s still crouching, so it’s difficult to tell how tall he is, but he looks strong, with taut, lean muscles in his arms and shoulders. He’s dressed in dark-blue patched breeches with side pockets, a greasy-looking vest and a sleeveless jacket that’s got lots of pockets down its front, ten at least, and all of them bulging. His hair is black, and he’s got a thick dark beard.
‘So, who are you?’ he says without looking up.
I flinch. He’s talking to us.
‘Your heat-sigs are masked, so you must be wearing coolant suits, but Zabe sniffed you out . . .’
I hear a low growl. Spin round. Behind us is a critter. Huge. Covered in matted blue hair. Long arms. It’s hanging from a pipe with one hand and clutching Caliph in the other. Its single eye is staring right at us. Beside me, Belle tenses, but I reach out a hand to stop her. We don’t want any trouble. I turn back to the other scavenger.
‘York,’ I tell him. I get slowly to my feet and step out from the pipes we’ve been crouching behind. Belle follows me. ‘And this is Belle.’
The man looks up and nods slowly, as if trying to work out what to do with us. The silence goes on too long. It’s me who breaks it.
‘You might want to remove the bolt-hubs,’ I say. ‘They’re urilium.’
He frowns.
‘Behind the backplate,’ I say. ‘Upgrade sluicers have been fitted with them – and that looks like an upgrade sluicer to me.’
The man looks at the zoid, then reaches down and feels around inside the back. His fingers close on something, and the grim expression on his face relaxes.
‘You know your zoids,’ he says, and his mouth cracks into a grin. ‘Are you a scavenger?’
I nod. And, seeing me do so, so does Belle. I cross to the zoid. The man wipes the zoid-juice on his breeches and extends a hand.
‘Ellis,’ he says, climbing to his feet and revealing himself to be a good head taller than me.
I shake his hand as Belle watches. When the man offers her his hand, she shakes it without hesitation. I’m relieved. Having seen Belle at the Clan-Safe and the air vents, I know she’s more than capable of taking this man down.
The critter called Zabe swings down from the pipe and towers over us. He releases Caliph, who scampers over to me and leaps up, burying himself, whimpering, in my flakcoat.
I point at the space behind the zoid’s backplate. ‘You need to remove the spine rods first. It’ll give you better access.’
‘Be my guest,’ he says, and I dive in.
Ellis helps me with the dismantling, and by the time we’ve finished there’s nothing left of the sluicer but a couple of cables and the useless outer casing. Ellis’s backcan is bulging. And so is mine.
‘Nice job,’ he says. He pats my shoulder. ‘We humans gotta stick together.’ He looks at Belle and winks. ‘Eh, Belle?’
I’m anxious about what she’s going to say. I needn’t have worried though.
Belle winks back at him and smiles.
Ellis chuckles. ‘What say the two of you come back to the Fulcrum . . . ?’
‘Fulcrum?’
He frowns. ‘Where me and the tribe are holed up,’ he says. He squeezes the top of my arm. ‘You look as if you could do with a good meal.’
I shudder. They’re the selfsame words that Dale used. What’s more, it’ll hold us up. It’s been five days since my friends were taken, and we’ve got to get to Sector 17 before it’s too late. I notice Belle looking at me, gauging my reaction. We could make our excuses. Or, if I give her a signal, she could zilch this Ellis character and his critter with a couple of well-aimed blows. Either way, we’d be free to leave.
But I am hungry.
‘Thanks,’ I say, then tell him what I told Dale. ‘But I can’t stay long.’
Ellis clicks his fingers. Zabe’s pointed ears prick up. Then the gigantic critter shambles over to him and crouches down, his long tail folded beneath him. Ellis jumps up onto Zabe’s shoulders, then leans down towards Belle and me, arm outstretched.
‘Climb up,’ he says.
Belle goes first. Ellis helps her up and she sits on the opposite shoulder to him, taking a firm grip of Zabe’s shaggy blue hair.
The critter turns his head and inspects this new person on his back with his one large eye, the iris dilating, wide and black.
‘Easy there, Zabe.’ Ellis pats his critter on the back. ‘She’s just a girl . . .’
If only he knew, I think, as I climb up beside Belle and hold on tight. Zabe doesn’t register the extra weight – nor does he mind when Caliph scampers up and crouches at the back of his neck.
‘All set?’ says Ellis, looking first at Belle, then at me.
We both nod.
With a soft bark, Zabe stands upright. Then, pushing hard off the ground with his short legs and powerful tail, he leaps, reaches up, grabs hold of a pipe . . .
And we’re off.
The creature swings effortlessly forward into the tube-forest and through the tangle of pipes and tubes in a smooth and easy rhythm, his tail swaying from side to side for balance. We climb higher, and it isn’t long before I get used to the curious swinging motion and move in time with it, leaning first one way, then the other.
Below me, the ground speeds past. I catch glimpses of scaly reptiles with arrowhead tails lapping at water from a leaking pipe. A swarm of spotes, their pale wings catching the overhead hull light as they flap past. And zoids . . .
Workzoids going about their maintenance tasks. Welders. Sluicers. Tanglers. None of them notice us as we swing slowly through the air above their heads. Then I catch sight of the angry red heat-sig of a killer zoid. It’s out on patrol. Looking to kill.
I automatically check that my coolant suit is on, then relax when I realize that up here, on the back of the one-eye, we’re practically invisible. It’s humans that killers are after, not critters. The zoid’s completely oblivious to our presence.
I’m impressed. This scavenger has found the perfect way to get around the tube-forest undetected.
‘Cyclops are easy to domesticate,’ Ellis says, reading my expression. ‘So long as you get them young enough.’ He leans forward and pats the huge critter on his shoulder as he swings on through the air. ‘He might look fierce, but Zabe’s just a big old softie at heart. Ain’t you?’
And Zabe barks back at him, almost as if he can understand.
We’re climbing higher now, above the hull lights and into the shadows. I look up and see a cluster of pods anchored to the overhead hull casing.
The pods are huge. They appear to be made out of metal, fragments of scavenged scrap, welded into place and covered in rust-moss, rope-ivy and air-kelp. Perfectly camouflaged.
And there are critters too. Cyclops, like Zabe. A whole troop of them. Caliph squeaks his interest.
They are swinging from pod to pod, feeding off the plants that grow here. As Zabe climbs towards them, he barks out a greeting, and the troop reply with calls of their own.
‘The Fulcrum,’ Ellis ann
ounces.
As we approach, I see nests of woven rope-ivy wedged into the spaces between the pods, each of them containing an infant cyclops, peering down at us with their single eyes.
Ellis notices my interest. ‘We live side by side with the cyclops,’ he says. ‘We keep each other safe.’
Zabe comes to a halt on a small platform bolted high up between two of the pods. Ellis jumps down onto it, then helps me and Belle down. He raises his arm, and I assume he’s about to use his wrist-scanner to open some door I haven’t noticed.
But he doesn’t. In fact he isn’t wearing a wrist-scanner at all. Instead, he stares straight ahead of him at a holo-pad hovering in front of the pod. There’s a click, and a section of the matt-black panel slides open.
‘Retina-recognition,’ Ellis tells me, seeing my surprise. ‘Keeps the zoids out.’
I glance at Belle, feeling uneasy.
‘Come on in,’ Ellis says.
Belle follows him. Unlike me, she seems relaxed. Caliph jumps from Zabe’s shoulder onto mine, and I step in after them.
The door slides shut.
It’s warm inside the pod. Cosy. The light is an ambient glow that emanates from the upper panels, and there’s a sweet, musky smell to the air. Since the pods are all interconnected, it seems bigger inside than it looked from outside. I look down. Some of the metal floor panels are criss-cross grilles that reveal storage areas below our feet. There are food canisters. Munitions. Water tanks . . .
Hearing voices ahead of us, I look up again. We step through into a second pod. It’s crowded here. The warm, musty smell grows more intense. The place is full of cyclops.
Bronx wouldn’t approve. He didn’t allow critters in the Inpost. Said they were a distraction. Any straying inside were instantly expelled. It was only because he felt sorry for me losing my parents that he allowed me to keep Caliph as a pet.