by Paul Stewart
I’ve arrived at the armoury. The door opens, but I don’t move. I can’t stop listening.
‘We send in the detonation droids,’ Petra Crockett is saying. ‘Every one we have—’
‘The green light,’ Travis suddenly interrupts her. ‘The ear-piece is still active.’
‘York?’ I hear Petra Crockett. Her voice is suddenly smooth, calm and seductive. ‘York, are you there?’
I hear Travis in the background.
‘He’s in the armoury . . .’
‘York? How much have you heard?’ There’s a hard edge to Petra Crockett’s voice now. ‘Report to my chamber immediately. York? York!’
I remove the ear-piece and stand there for a moment. I don’t like the sound of that voice. Or what it’s been saying. I know where Belle is now and my plans have changed. I drop the ear-piece to the floor, and grind it to small pieces under my heel.
They won’t be able to track me now.
I tool up. Fast, efficient, my mind racing. Then I stop and look at the rows of exo-skeleton suits. They stare back at me; big, bulky, protective. No one from the Sanctuary will go out into the zones without one on.
I smile.
When I’m done, I hurry from the armoury. I give the elevator the co-ordinates, and it speeds back through the Sanctuary to the entrance. As I step out into the vast atrium, I look up through the visiglass levels.
High above, close to the top of the dome, I see Travis and Petra Crockett. They’re coming down fast in an elevator of their own. My stomach lurches. I love their Sanctuary, but Belle comes first. Thing is, they must have triggered some sort of silent alarm, because more elevators, each one full of Sanctuary-dwellers, are coming towards me from all directions.
I activate the airlock door. It opens. I step inside. I’m in the decontamination chamber, staring at a spindle-legged droid, the lights on its head-unit lighting up as it receives its orders.
I don’t give it a chance to act. Pulling my cutter from my belt, I kick away a leg, sending the droid clattering to the floor.
And I’m on it.
I plunge the point of the cutter down hard between the riveted panels that separate the headpiece and body unit, then drag the blade to one side. A shower of white sparks explodes from the breached metal, followed by a jet of claggy zoid-juice. The air fills with the stench of molten circuitry.
I remove its data-chip and leap to my feet. I press the chip to the control panel of the outer door. It opens. I leave the Sanctuary. And run. And while I’m running, I reach into my flakcoat pocket and take out a fistful of small discs – the urilium seals that I removed from each and every one of the safe-suits in the armoury – and scatter them into the grow-troughs of the swamp zone.
Without the seals, the safe-suits are no longer safe. The Sanctuary-dwellers can’t follow me now.
But their droids can.
I duck down behind a clump of marsh weed as I hear a tell-tale hum approach. The next moment, a lens-head comes flying past me, a beam of light from its eye scanning the swamp below.
It doesn’t see me. I drop to my knees and begin to crawl.
Belle is out here at the mercy of the mutants, and whatever Petra Crockett thinks, I am not going to abandon her.
The droid is the first of many. The single arc-light shines down on the swamp, and the bushes, trees and matted tendrils are raked with the headlights of the flying lens-head droids as they continue their search.
I crawl on through the grow-troughs, mud and slime coating my hands and knees. It’s dark and difficult to see which way I’m going, but at least the vicious insects are leaving me alone.
I’m looking for Zone 12 – the central hub-generator – and so follow the line of tall pylons that crosses the swamp. There are pylons just like these in the Outer Hull. They transport the power produced by the generators, and I’m hoping that these ones will lead me to the hub-generator where Belle’s being held.
I’m in luck.
An info-stack tells me I’m in Zone 10. Almost there. I’m swiping away the holo-screen when the arc-lights come back on.
That’s when I see them.
Large insects with bulbous bodies and ten thin articulated legs. There are hundreds of them, each one with a massive red eye at the centre of its head. They scuttle round me as I stand as still as I can.
Then, as I watch, they suddenly leap – in twos, threes, whole groups – high up into the air, and latch onto the power lines overhead. The cables fizz and spark. Then the insects let go and fall back down, their round bodies glowing for an instant, before they leap again.
They’re feeding, I realize.
Trying not to disturb them, I pick my way carefully through this strange, rippling swarm. They’re still all around me when the landscape changes again. I guess this must be the start of Zone 12.
It’s a jumble of giant rusted containers, some overturned, others lying at strange angles, sand spilling from them. I scramble to the top of a tall sand dune and look back. The droids seem to be giving the bouncing energy feeders a wide berth, and I smile.
The curious insects have bought me some time.
I look ahead. Far in the distance, is a huge black-rimmed indentation in the sand, power cables converging and disappearing through an opening at its centre. It is ringed by circular covers – eight of them – all but one belching steam.
‘Duct tunnels,’ I mutter, remembering what I overheard through the ear-piece.
It takes me several hours to get to the hub-generator across the dunes. The location of the mutants’ lair is making more and more sense to me. It’s remote. The insects deter the droids. And even in my flakcoat and boots, I’m finding the going hard enough. Any Sanctuary-dweller in a safe-suit would find it next to impossible.
When I finally get to the generator I’m hot and tired, and my water flask is all but empty. I circle the rim of the hub and locate the one duct that isn’t steaming. I drop to my knees and undo the grille that’s covering it with my boltdriver, then pull it to one side.
I ease myself over the lip of the opening. Then, hands and feet braced against the two sides of the tubular duct, I lower myself into the darkness below. As I drop down, I start to hear distant noises, which get louder and louder the deeper I go. Voices, old and young.
The mutants in their lair far below.
At last, my feet touch the bottom. The duct tunnel is too low for me to stand upright. Head down and one hand outstretched before me, I hurry along it as fast as I can. I come to the end. Like the entrance to the duct at the top, it’s covered with a metal grille.
I kneel and peer through.
The mutants’ lair is vast, ten times the size of the camp I was taken to by the wing-man. And the place is crawling with his mutant friends. All sorts. Winged, gilled, furry, scaled . . .
I feel my top lip curl. They disgust me. All of them. Petra Crockett’s right. They should be exterminated.
Using my boltdriver a second time, I remove the grille as quietly as I can and ease myself out of the opening. I look all around.
The floor is covered in a grey moss. Soft and spongy, it gives beneath my boots. All over the place are pieces of equipment from the Launch Times, zilched now and being used for other things. Upturned irrigation tanks serve as bedchambers, dining areas, nurseries. Turbine sails form walls to create separate living areas. Gantries have been turned to perches and roosting poles; convection pools, bathing areas . . .
I slide round the outer walls, keeping to the shadows, ducking down behind any item that offers cover. When I hear the sound of young voices, I shrink back behind a turbine sail. There’s laughter and excited chatter. A couple of voices are singing. I peek out to see a group of children playing with scraps of discarded metal, which have been turned into makeshift toys.
Two of the children are bouncing up and down on springs that have been attached to their boots. Three or four are rolling steel rings with metal rods. And a little further off, a group of them are playing some ki
nd of game with a huge polyprop ball.
It looks so ordinary. All right, so some of them have wings or scales, but they’re just a bunch of kids playing, no different from the youngsters playing their simulation games in the Sanctuary.
When one of them falls over, grazes his knee and starts crying, the others gather round. And I stay where I am, crouched down and watching, as they put their arms around him, comfort him, ask him if he’s all right.
And he sniffs bravely. ‘I’m fine,’ he says.
The ball game resumes, and I’m feeling confused. Back at the Sanctuary, it was all so clear cut. So simple. Humans good. Mutants bad.
But now I’ve seen these children I’m not so sure . . .
The next moment, though, I see something that dashes the doubt from my mind.
‘Belle,’ I breathe, spotting her over by a gantry.
Two mutants, one on each side, are holding her up. Her head’s lolling. Her feet are dragging across the floor.
I ease my cutter from my belt.
The mutants lay her down on a metal trolley and trudge off. I check round. The place is crawling with mutants, and Belle’s been dumped in some sort of holding area in the middle of them. It’s not going to be easy to rescue her. But I’ve got to try. I put my hood up and cross the spongy floor.
I crouch over her. ‘Belle?’ I whisper. ‘Belle? What have they done to you?’
‘Who are you?’
I spin round, cutter in hand, to see the mutants have returned. They’re holding whips and metal prods. They take a step toward us. One of them grabs Belle’s arm.
‘Leave her alone!’ I roar, slashing at them with my cutter, sending them stumbling backwards.
A hand closes on my wrist. Belle’s hand. It tightens painfully, forcing the cutter from my grip.
The mutants close in. They grab me and pull me away.
Belle simply watches.
They drag me over to a black pod, with power cables snaking over its smooth lid. It opens. They force me inside. It shuts. And the last thing I see is Belle’s face, still staring back at me. I can’t tell what she’s thinking.
Then the white noise begins.
‘York? Can you hear me, York?’
I must have passed out. It’s Belle’s voice. I open my eyes and she’s looking down at me.
The lid of the pod has been raised and Belle is cradling my head in her arms. Her face is full of concern. But I push her away, and she lets me.
I sit up. ‘You’re one of them,’ I accuse her angrily.
‘I don’t understand, York,’ she says.
‘There’s me, coming to rescue you,’ I tell her, ‘risking everything. They shut me in that box – and you helped them . . . Belle, I thought they were torturing you.’
‘Torturing?’ she says. Then her face breaks into a smile. The smile I taught her. ‘Something’s gone wrong with my battery-pack. They were helping me to recharge,’ she explains. ‘When we were separated, I followed you, York, to the outpost below the chimney. But too late to stop the Sanctuary-dwellers taking you.’ She smiles again. ‘I’ve been with my new friends ever since.’
New friends.
I’m relieved she’s all right, of course I am. But I feel betrayed.
‘So now you’re on their side,’ I say bitterly.
‘Belle is on no one’s side,’ a voice says. ‘Except yours, York. I wish there were no sides. Now that you have been de-programmed, I’m hoping you’ll be able to understand that too.’
‘De-programmed?’ I say.
Belle nods. ‘The sleep-pods in the Sanctuary, York,’ she tells me. ‘They are fitted with a device to control thoughts and emotions. To suppress rebellion, to encourage loyalty. And every time you sleep in one, the effects get stronger.’ She points to the pod I’m lying in. ‘This has reversed that effect. Your thoughts are now your own once more.’ I swing my legs over the side of the pod and climb to my feet. We’re in a dimly lit chamber, the ceiling and walls full of tech. Terminals, holo-screens, processors and data-stacks; lights twinkling in ever-changing constellations. A figure is standing by a screen, two feathered wings sprouting from her back obscuring my view of her.
Then she turns, and I see she is wearing a long flowing lab coat. Her yellow eyes fix on my face.
This bird-woman looks light and graceful, and I realize that the de-programming must have worked. The revulsion I was expecting is not there.
‘Greetwell, York. I am Dextra,’ she says. ‘I am what the Sanctuary-dwellers call an Outsider. A mutant. We prefer to think of ourselves as Survivors.’
She pauses, head tilted to one side, watching my reaction to her words.
‘Go on,’ I tell her.
My body aches, I feel tired, but my thoughts are clear. I no longer feel the surges of negative emotion I experienced back in the Sanctuary.
‘Doubtless the Sanctuary-dwellers have told you their version of the story. Now it is time for you to hear ours.’
Belle nods, and I sit back down on the pod.
‘When the robots rebelled in the Outer Hull, and the bio-engineers sealed the Mid Deck to keep the zoids out, contact with the Inner Core was also lost. And almost immediately, without the central controls of the core, the containment and storage systems in the bio-zones began to break down. Specimens escaped, environments merged, laboratory seals were breached. And when this took place, the unity of the bio-engineers fell apart. One group wanted to retreat to an uncontaminated refuge. The others believed in staying at their posts, no matter what, in order to confront the growing chaos.’
She’s talking quickly, her eyes intense and wings trembling. I’m struggling to take it all in.
‘Those who established the Sanctuary did so at a terrible cost,’ she says. ‘In order to build it, the Sanctuary bio-engineers seized the equipment and energy reserves that were meant to maintain the Mid Deck as a whole. They thought only of themselves – whatever their descendants might have told you.’ She shakes her head, her expression one of sadness and anger. ‘The Insiders,’ she says. ‘The three thousand.’
And I nod.
The Sanctuary had seemed so reasonable when Travis explained it. Now I’m beginning to understand that he only told me half the story.
‘Because of the resources they stole, and still hoard in that Sanctuary of theirs,’ Dextra goes on, ‘the remaining bio-engineers – our ancestors – rapidly lost control of the bio-zones. We were made to retreat from forces we could no longer control and struggled to understand . . .’
‘Accelerated evolution?’ I say.
Dextra nods. Her yellow eyes blink.
‘The Sanctuary would have you believe that accelerated evolution was an unfortunate accident,’ she says, ‘but the truth is that it was a key part of the science of the Biosphere.’
I shake my head. This is the exact opposite of what I was told back at the Sanctuary.
‘It was developed to make humans, and the world they brought with them from Earth, able to adapt to their new home. But after the robot rebellion, this accelerated evolution got out of control.’ Dextra pauses. ‘And yet it all could have been avoided,’ she says, and I see her eyes cloud over. ‘Droids maintained the seed banks and life labs of Zone 8 in complete safety, making sure the dangerous bio-research was securely maintained. But the Sanctuary re-programmed the droids to serve only its own needs, condemning the Mid Deck – and perhaps the entire Biosphere – to bio-chaos.’
I think of the critters in the Outer Deck – those strange life-forms that have adapted to the mechanical environment there – and recognize the truth in Dextra’s words.
‘But we, the Survivors, have never shared the Sanctuary’s selfish vision. We have stayed here in the bio-zones and done what we had to do to survive and fight back.’
Dextra spreads her wings.
‘Shortly after the robot rebellion, some of our ancestors took the brave decision to use this evolution technology to genetically modify their own bodies. They did this so they c
ould continue their work in all parts of the Mid Deck, from the ice and cold of the polar zone to the heat of the desert and the very depths of the ocean zone. With the droids gone, they had no other choice. It is a task that generations of Survivors have dedicated their lives to ever since, York – bringing the bio-zones back under control, containing and storing accelerated evolution in order that it can be used for its intended purpose.’
‘To adapt life here in the Biosphere to the conditions they might face on a new Earth,’ I say slowly.
Dextra nods. ‘Unfortunately, only the Inner Core has destination data, so no one knew what to expect.’ She sighs. ‘Though none of that matters if the Mid Deck is lost.’
Dextra crosses to the bank of glowing lights.
‘Despite what it looks like, York, we have made great progress. We have halted runaway evolution in all the specimens of the ocean, polar, forest and desert zones. And all this in spite of the repeated attacks of the Sanctuary.’ Her eyes narrow. ‘Yet, for all our efforts, Zone 8 has so far defeated us. Accelerated evolution there continues to run wild.’
I shudder as I remember the huge glowing creature in the sinister grasslands.
‘And now, after five centuries, our energy reserves are almost exhausted,’ she goes on. ‘If Zone 8 is not tamed, then evolution will accelerate out from it once more – and this time, we’ll have no way to halt it.’
Dextra turns back to me. Her eyes are bright and pleading.
‘We need the Sanctuary’s help. Their droids. Their energy reserves. The Sanctuary-dwellers themselves. By working together, we humans – humans of whatever form – can take back control before it’s too late.’
I swallow hard. The detonation droids from the Sanctuary are on their way. I look back at Dextra.
‘It might already be too late,’ I say.