One of the Scavengers had brought a flame thrower, but again he had trouble aiming it. A little bit of the flame licked across the plastic sheeting, covering one of the closed off tunnels, and a huge ball of fire shot down the passageway at high speed. A massive explosion could be heard in the distance.
The back-draft filled the hub with a cloud of dust. It was enough of a distraction for all five of us to run down the tunnel Tukarra and I had been sheltering in, to take refuge in a side room, closing and bolting what looked like a ship’s boiler room door behind us.
Chapter 18 – The Arboretum
On Cerrina, all was not well. Quite randomly it seemed, doors failed to open, lifts got stuck, and life support equipment often broke down. People found themselves in some kind of jeopardy, on a fairly regular basis. Most disturbingly, News teams or Reality TV show crews appeared on the scene almost immediately, as soon as something happened. It was as though someone was somehow, instigating the very incidents that were being reported on.
Suran was beginning to suspect there may have been a saboteur in their midst, causing the problems, and then tipping off the media. She had therefore taken it upon herself, to look out for any signs of sabotage.
She loved the plants and trees in her Arboretum and would not have wanted anything untoward to happen to them. She saw them as vital for the long term survival of the human race. Apart from providing a fresh open breathing space for children and people, her trees and plants were being scientifically studied for their medicinal values and for their potential as new food crops. Many more greenhouse domes were to be built in time, and almost all of their content would be grown from the seeds and saplings originally cultivated by her team of gardeners.
In other areas on Cerrina, whole domes were dedicated to specific food crops. Plants such as grapes, tomatoes, peppers, lettuces, peas, broccoli, spinach, onions, and melons were all grown hydroponically, without the use of soil. Moving tracks and robotic spray guns kept the roots moist and fed with nutrients.
However, in Suran’s Arboretum, all the trees, bushes and plants were grown in specially prepared compost, and kept watered by the artificial rain showers so enjoyed by all the children who came to visit her. In some areas of the dome, lighting and air conditioning were used in combination to emulate deserts, jungles, and even to play out long lost seasons. Elite and humans alike would come from far and wide just to experience the seasons and try to understand why they were so important to life in the past.
A significant part of Suran’s job was to monitor sustainability. True she was on target for the Arboretum to be completely self-sufficient in terms of its water supply; but for the moment, it was a consumer of oxygen. In the fullness of time, when all the plant life had matured, the Arboretum was expected to start exporting oxygen to the adjacent domes.
Whilst Cerrina was still close to the Earth and bathed in sunlight, the dome itself could generate sufficient electrical power to control the transparency of its own thick gelatinous membrane, to create artificial days and nights, and to keep the air conditioning running.
In contrast, by the time they reached Neptune, their final destination, they would be entirely dependent on electric light and heating, powered by Cerrina’s centralised nuclear fusion reactor.
Despite running a team of gardeners, Suran was personally familiar with the health of every tree, every shrub, and most of the plants. If anything was out of place she would spot it.
Suran could not think of a better environment to work in. Every morning, she walked to her office, past rows of brightly coloured, and wonderfully scented, exotic plants. They were currently pollinated by robotic bees, but she hoped the High Elite would soon approve her request, to introduce real bees and other insects. She also longed for the day, when she would be allowed to revive a few bird species. That was the stuff of dreams. No-one she knew had ever seen a bird, or any bees for that matter. She knew that keeping them alive and healthy, within the confines of an enclosed Arboretum, would be an enormous challenge - but she was certain it would be well worth the effort.
Right in the middle of the dome, there was a monster of a plant. It looked like an oversized Venus fly-trap. Suran was not entirely sure if it was truly contemporary to the 21st century plant life found in the rest of the archives. There was a rumour it had eaten the previous chief botanist, her predecessor and mentor. That could well have been the reason why Suran, a mere human, had been given the job. Once that rumour had spread, not one of the Elite had applied to fill the vacated position.
She looked after this monster plant herself, because she could not entertain the thought of one of her gardeners being hurt by it. Yet in the five years she had been chief botanist, she had not noticed it move - not even once.
*
Suran picked up an electronic check-list, from her office, and started her daily rounds as usual. Today, the orange, lemon, banana, cocoa, coffee and rubber trees would be given special attention.
The human gardeners, working in each of the zones, welcomed her visits. She always asked if anything was worrying them, and would offer to provide assistance should they need it. She also took note of what they enjoyed doing, and therefore how to obtain the best work from them.
Half way through her tour of the Arboretum, she stopped to look in on the monster plant. She had named the plant ‘Eric’, but that was a secret between the two of them. Eric was kept in a special circular enclosure surrounded by a handrail. Resting her elbows over the rail, and looking closely at the plant, there was no change to be seen. It still stood over two metres tall. It still had lots of long razor sharp fronds, growing from its base. Five strong stems sported large, butterfly shaped, hinged leaves. Each hinged leaf, had a pink interior, and tooth like barbs around the edge. They were the size of armchairs. Suran could not imagine any insect in their archive being big enough to make it worthwhile for these traps to be snapped shut onto.
At the top of a long stalk, standing tall, high in the very centre of the plant, was a green pod, or bud, the size of a large watermelon. Suran was not sure what its purpose actually was. As far as she knew, no-one had ever noticed that bud open up, to become a flower, for example.
Inspecting her check-list, she was reminded to look for signs of a possible air leak, that was apparently lowering the atmospheric pressure very slightly, in the middle of the dome. Tests the High Elite had run on the dome material had checked out okay. There was only one explanation she could think of: Eric must be growing his roots, under the soil in the enclosure, breaking through the airtight layer, through the concrete foundation, and into fissures in the lunar bedrock beneath.
Suran wrinkled her nose and asked the plant out loud, ‘What are you? Where did you really come from?’
Naturally, there was no reply.
*
Feeling hungry, she sat back on a nearby bench, still mesmerised by Eric. It was one of the perks of her job, to be able to eat fresh fruit for her lunch. This day, Suran was checking the quality of an orange and a banana, she had been given earlier on her rounds.
She had no trouble peeling the orange - a skill the Elite could only seem to learn with great difficulty.
Just as she started to separate the orange segments, a rather troubled looking gardener approached her. He wore khaki overalls, and a brown, battered looking, floppy hat. She told him to sit beside her, and offered him an orange segment, which he refused.
‘I have something to tell you’, he said. ‘I was showing a group of High Elite how to extract liquid latex from one of our rubber trees, when I noticed quite a large knife was missing from my utility belt. I am sure one of the group must have taken it, but you can’t go round accusing the High Elite of anything, now can you?’
‘Well, thank you so much for letting me know,’ said Suran with a calming voice. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll order you a new one when I get back to the office. In the mean time, keep a look out for anything else that might be suspicious. I’ll be calling in on your zone later on
this afternoon.’
‘Thanks,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I feel much better for having told you. I’d better get back to my trees.’
With that, the gardener touched the brim of his hat, then stood up and turned. But just as he started to walk away, his mouth opened and he raised an arm. He was pointing down one of the perfectly straight paths that radiated, like spokes on a bicycle wheel, all the way from Eric, to the outside edge of the dome.
‘There’s one of them now,’ he exclaimed.
Sure enough, Suran could just make out the white hair and silver body hugging uniform of a High Elite man, in the distance.
‘Right,’ she said, touching the screen of her electronic check list. ‘I’ll go and ask him what he’s up to. My notes here state that his group should have left us by now.’
She gave her banana to the gardener, and strode briskly down the pathway, wondering what she was going to say. By the time she arrived at the outer wall, the man was nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless, she did notice something out of place. In the wall, in eaves of the dome, there were many locked cupboards, and equipment rooms, as well as airlock doors leading to adjacent cells. Well, the door to a cable chamber was slightly ajar.
‘That can’t be right. Only engineers and technicians are allowed in there,’ thought Suran.
She didn’t have the key code to open the door, but anyone wanting to work in there was supposed to ask her for permission first.
Just as she was closing in on the partly open door, the High Elite man she wanted to speak to, ran out from behind the door and into the airlock of a nearby exit. He closed the airlock door, and waved at her through through its porthole style window. There was some steam on the glass, and all she could see of him was a cheeky smile, and a row of pearly-white teeth. The airlock was only there for safety’s sake. There was no pressure difference to equalise, and the man was through and out the other side in the blink of an eye. There was no way Suran could catch up with him before he blended in with other citizens milling around in the rest of the complex.
She ran over to the cable chamber door, that by now had swung fully open, to see if she could find out what the man had been doing in there. She didn’t know what to expect, but nothing had prepared her for what she actually discovered.
A silver uniformed, High Elite, girl was lying face down at the bottom of a rectangular pit, where the pipes and cables connecting this cell to the next were fitted. There, squarely in the middle of her back was the missing knife. A small amount of blood had pooled at the base of her spine. More blood, overflowing from the pool, effortlessly ran off the stain resistant silver material of her uniform and onto the ground.
But there was much more to take in. In the ducts, the tubes around the pipes and cables, there should have been a filler compound, but there was none there. Long, root like, tendrils had grown through the gaps and they seemed to be reaching out towards the girl. Surprisingly, they did not appear to enjoy the light now pouring in through the open door, and as Suran watched, open mouthed, the roots retreated back into the duct tubes.
Suran jumped into the pit to confirm the girl was really dead. She was. The badge, the girl was wearing, identified her as a member of the High Elite group that had visited the Arboretum, and it also showed that her name was Talaisis.
Never having seen so much blood before, Suran was struggling to keep rational, when she had yet another shock. Talaisis’ body was lying on something. What ever it was, Suran was standing on it.
Down in the base of the pit there was not a lot of light, and Suran had to squint. She put out a hand and her worst nightmare was confirmed. It was another body. It had been there for some time, probably years, and was really only a blackened skeleton. The smell from it should have been dreadful, but there was a strong flow of air, out through the ducts, around the cables and pipes where those tendrils had retreated. It appeared that Suran had found another air leak to report, but for now fighting off nausea was more important.
With steely determination, she examined the skeleton. It had to be her predecessor. Yes, it was. She found a name tag under his neck bones, but she could not find his skull.
Then Suran became aware of two electronic beeping noises. One was accompanied by a flickering blue light, the other by a red flashing light.
The blue light was nearer. It was coming from a small device being tightly gripped by Talaisis. It was a secure text messaging system. She must have been on a secret mission for the High Elite. Its tiny screen simply displayed, ‘Your report has been acknowledged.’
Suran had to turn Talaisis over, to pinpoint the source of the flashing red light. It was coming from a larger device, and the flashing light was actually a series of digits, counting down to zero. The device was a bomb; and there were only seconds left on the countdown!
Suran jumped up out of the pit and back out through the doorway, slamming the door shut behind her, and leaning her back against the door, out of breath and with cramp in her stomach.
In a brief instant she became aware of a crowd of Paperatzzi, and TV crews who had set up their equipment a short distance away. She knew that was not a good sign.
There was a huge explosion.
The door was pushed off its hinges by the force of the blast, with Suran being pushed ahead of it. The door fell back to the ground tens of metres away, but in the low gravity Suran continued tumbling through the air.
A moment later, her feet connected with the dome, puncturing the membrane. There was a sudden intense surge of air and she was sucked outside and into the unforgiving vacuum beyond.
Chapter 19 – The Plan
Tom, Ellie, Gerland, Tukarra and I were now stood panting, trying to get our breath back, in a dark dusty anteroom off the main tunnel. The Scavengers were thumping wildly on the solid, metal, heavy duty door that we had been able to lock very securely from the inside. Gerland had turned a large wheel, in the centre of the door, moving four thick bolts into the top, bottom and sides of the surrounding bulkhead frame.
After a few minutes, the thumps on the door ceased.
It was difficult to see the full extent of the room, as the only source of illumination was the ghost like glow coming from Tukarra’s suit and the meandering beam of light from a small electric torch being waved around by Tom.
Most of the space in the room was taken up by a huge metal tank, or vat, surrounded by electronic devices. Ellie picked up a plastic spanner, off a nearby workbench, and dipped it into the tank. When she pulled the spanner out again, thick oil dripped lazily off it.
‘I know what this is,’ she proclaimed. ‘It’s a dark-neutrino detector. Originally, this room must have been miles under the sea.’
Tom played his torch onto Ellie’s face. Squinting into the light, she added, ‘I remember now. My father made some modifications to a neutrino scintillation tank, very much like this one, so it could detect certain by-products from experiments he was conducting on Dark Matter, back at the base.’
Ellie put the spanner down on the bench and started to open a briefcase sized survival kit she had brought with her. The kit belonged to the Elite driver of their Hippo, and its contents were weird, wonderful, and unfamiliar.
‘What is all this?’ Ellie thought out loud.
Tukarra came over to help out. ‘It’s really great you brought this case with you. These things are just what we need.’
Tukarra took a long thin cylinder from the case. After bending it between her fingers, it emitted a bright white light. She placed it on a corner of the workbench and the light it provided, filled the room.
Ellie asked, ‘How long will that last?’
‘Oh, many hours,’ said Tukarra. She called over to Tom, ‘You can turn off your torch now. Save that for later.’
Like everywhere else in the tunnel system, the room was still pretty hot despite being deep underground. Therefore, with the Scavengers out of the way for the moment, this was a good opportunity for Ellie, Gerland, and Tom to ta
ke off their helmets and backpacks for a while. Ellie’s auburn hair was still neatly tied back, but Gerland and Tom both had ‘helmet’ hair. Gerland had what looked like golden crop circles on his head, whilst Tom’s ginger hair was once again very curly and had clearly been waiting for this moment to liberate itself.
Tukarra was still rummaging in the survival kit when she came across a plastic disc, rather like a casino chip. She called me over, and stuck it on the back of my neck. ‘You are going to need this,’ she said.
To my surprise, the disc grew in diameter, then spread out from my neck downwards. It spread as a very thin, but completely opaque, light blue layer, over my clothes and bare feet. It somehow knew not to cover my head and hands. The material was so thin and precisely fitting in fact, that the contours of my pyjama lapels and buttons cast a slight shadow, when light glanced across my chest.
Tukarra said, ‘There, that will help to keep you cooler for now and better protect you from the weather if we ever have to go top side again.’
Sure enough, and counter to my expectation, the strange properties of the material did indeed make me feel a little cooler. Despite being so thin, it was also super strong and tough under my feet, which was another bonus.
‘How come you have a white suit and I get a blue one?’ I asked.
‘Human boys and men wear blue. Human girls and women wear pink. All Elite wear white uniforms, except the High Elite who wear silver,’ replied Tukarra.
‘I guess that’s easy enough to remember,’ I said, although I was not quite sure what to make of the idea. ‘Is there any particular reason for humans wearing pink and blue?’
‘In the past, as well as eventually needing a marriage license, human courting couples also had to have a license to be seen together in public. It was a kind of pre-emptive population control. The pink and blue made the law easier to police,’ she explained.
‘I guess the Elite didn’t need a license, then?’
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