Andromeda Day and the Black Hole

by Charlie Jackson

  The guard caught their arms and led them out of the hall by a side door. They crossed a smaller square to the other side where there a group of Ruvalian prisoners sat on the floor, slouched together despondently.

  The guard prompted them to join their compatriots, and the two young women sat together, huddling close. The guard wandered away, awaiting the arrival of the ship that would take them to the prison.

  Andi looked at Clios. The Ruvalian girl rolled her eyes. “I thought for a moment that he was going to keep us here.”

  “Me too.” Andi’s heart was still thumping. “I suppose because of my computer brain, he can’t read my mind.”

  “You certainly intrigued him.” Clios shivered. Her green eyes were dark, like the depths of the sea.

  “It must have been very difficult for you, being so close to the man who killed your parents,” Andi said softly.

  “I wanted to kill him. I would have, if the guard hadn’t taken away my knife.” She had a determined look on her face. “One day I will kill him. I will kill all the Hoshaens, if I get the chance.”

  Andi wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. The Thoume moons were fading in the sky and the early morning sun was rising in the north.

  “Are you all right?” Clios asked, touching her on the arm. “Are you thinking of Deneb?”

  “No. Actually, I was thinking about the Hoshaens.” Andi lifted her head to look honestly at her friend. “I… I feel a little confused, Clios.”

  “Can you explain?”

  “Well, because we landed near your city, we became affiliated with you. But we could so easily have landed on the other side of the continent, with the Hoshaens. Would that mean that we would be fighting you? I’m just confused because I’ve been thinking of the Hoshaen as the enemy, but that guard who brought us here… he seemed so young and… ordinary. And the way they treat women here, it’s so different to Earth, it seems more… advanced, somehow. What I mean is, why are they the ‘baddies’, and you’re the ‘goodies’? How can I tell?”

  Clios listened to her thoughtfully. Andi knew the question must be very difficult for her because she hated the Hoshaens so, and yet the young woman thought Andi’s question through carefully. “I suppose you can’t,” she said eventually, slowly. “This war is being fought between two peoples—and I fight on the side of the Ruvalians, because that is who I am. The war has gone on for a long time, mainly over land, and this means nothing to you, because you do not come from here. Whatever I think about them, Andi, although the Hoshaens are my enemies, I know that most of them are not evil—they are just different. And I suppose you must make your own mind up about who you support.” She drew in the ash on the ground with her finger. “After saying that, it was the Hoshaens who invaded our land this time, who broke through out city walls. It is the Hoshaens who are burning our dead when they know our views on the afterlife. And it is the Hoshaens who created the Black Hole, and who use the Ruvalians they capture as slaves to mine for Indigo Quartz. We do not do that. Our miners are our people, who work on strict rotation and who are compensated adequately for their labor.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Clios looked at her then. “And I am not mistaken about Sphere. He is evil, Andi, don’t be misled by his charming manner. He is a killer.”

  Andi shivered, remembering the way his hand had lingered on her skin, under her hair. “Yes, I know.”

  Clios nodded. Then she looked up at a black spot that was gradually growing bigger against the lightening blue-purple sky. “Here comes our transport,” she said, getting to her feet. She held a hand down to Andi. “Are you coming with me?”

  Andi smiled up at her. In spite of all she had said about war and the Hoshaens, she knew that she wanted to be on Clios’s side. She took the older girl’s hand and Clios pulled her to her feet, and then they waited, their green hair blowing in the breeze as the craft lowered itself into the square.

  The guard came back to them and ushered all the prisoners onto the Praxim. It was small inside, and they had to sit in the floor in what looked like the cargo hold. The two girls kept together, saying little to the other Ruvalians.

  Andi wondered at one point why Clios didn’t talk to her compatriots.

  “I don’t want to get to know them,” the girl whispered back. “It’ll only make leaving them in the Black Hole more difficult.”

  Andi nodded and leaned back against the shuttle wall, thinking about Clios’s comment. It must be extremely difficult for her, Andi realized, to be going into the place she’d dreaded her entire life. There would be Ruvalians in the cells that had been prisoners for many years. It was going to be very hard to escape from the prison with just Lydia, and leave all the rest of her people behind in that terrible place.

  Was it possible that there was any way to free the rest of the Ruvalians? At that moment, Andi couldn’t think of a plan. But the idea had lodged in her computer brain, and it wasn’t going to go away.

  It took them about half a day to fly from the once-Ruvalian city across country to the Hoshaen prison. Andi sat near the window, looking down at the land as they flew, studying the fields and forests, and the dull hollows of mines where the search for Indigo Quartz had been carried out and then abandoned. They were given a small meal aboard the Praxim, a light, yellowcorn bread and some dusty water, which the two young women ate in spite of its lack of appeal, knowing they had to keep up their strength for the inevitable struggle to come.

  When the sun was high overhead, the Praxim finally began its descent and landed on a runway. Blinking in the brilliant sunshine, the prisoners were escorted off the craft and across the runway to the low, ugly blocks of an enormous building which the guards informed them was the main entrance to the prison.

  Andi glanced over at her friend. Clios looked frightened at arriving at the place that she had heard about since she was a child. Andi clutched Clios’s hand. She couldn’t believe they were finally there.

  They went through a pair of double doors into a large hall that looked similar to photographs of Old-Time airports that Andi had seen on the Antiquarian. The prisoners were directed to various ‘terminals’. Here they were questioned and their statistics recorded on the computer: name, age, and place of birth. Clios had already primed Andi on the answers to give, and the Hoshaen who questioned them didn’t even look up at Andi to question what she said.

  After this they were ushered back into a group. The other Ruvalians looked scared and some were even tearful. Andi could understand their fear—after all, she had every intention of escaping the Black Hole, but these others did not have that hope, and would be thinking that the rest of their life was to be spent underground.

  She felt a sudden flip of worry in her stomach, like she did on the rollercoaster ride in the VR Playroom on board the Antiquarian. What if Deneb was already dead, or if she couldn’t find him? Or what if she wasn’t able to escape from the prison? That would mean all three of them would be stuck there forever. The thought was not pleasing, and Andi swallowed nervously as they were led through the terminals and another pair of double doors and into a large hall.

  The room bustled with activity. On one side were large wagons full of what Andi assumed must be Indigo Quartz, fresh from the mines, which were wheeled through weighing rooms and then out into the open air to waiting crafts, ready to be transported to the main Hoshaen cities. Lines of Ruvalian prisoners took up the rest of the hall, waiting despondently for their trips down to the depths of the prison. Hoshaen guards prowled the lines with their rifles drawn.

  Andi and Clios were moved forward into one of the lines and they grasped hands again. Andi felt Clios’s palm slick with sweat and realized that she, too, was nervous. They waited for some time in the lines, which led up to several pairs of huge metal doors. Andi wondered what was through those doors. Some form of elevator, presumably, that was going to lead them down to the bowels of Thoume.

  She felt a brief moment of panic, almost like
claustrophobia, and had to physically stop herself from running away. She was glad she did so—shortly afterwards the wait became too much for one of the Ruvalians and he bolted from the line, racing along the hall in Andi’s direction, heading for the terminals through which they had come. Andi could see his eyes as he neared her, wide with fear and panic and determination to get out of there. Then there was a crack from one of the rifles and he sprawled to the floor, almost at her feet. Clios’s hand tightened in her own until she thought she might feel her bones crack under the pressure.

  Finally, however, the waiting was over. The dead Ruvalian was hauled away, and then there was a squeaking, grinding noise, and the metal doors at the end opened. The lines were led forward, and Andi and Clios found themselves walking into a large, windowless, empty metal room. They turned to face the doors, and Andi bit her lip as the metal barriers began to slide closed. Outside, through the tempting, taunting glass of the hall, she could see the red Thoume sun still high in the sky, and for a moment she was blinded as she looked at it, hoping it wasn’t her last sight of daylight. Then the doors closed, and the only light was from the sickly yellow glow of the bulbs in the corner of the room.

  The prisoners clung together, silent in fear, as one of the guards flipped a switch on the panel on the door and the gears clunked deep beneath them. There was a sickening lurch, and then slowly the elevator began to descend.

  Andi grasped Clios’s hand tightly as they sank deep into the ground. They had elevators on board the Antiquarian, of course, and all the townships in Earth cities had huge glass elevators on the outside that slid up and down the towers like giant zips. She had even been in one that had two-hundred-and-fifty floors, and it had taken over five minutes to get from the top to the bottom.

  This elevator, however, seemed to go on forever. She had no idea of its speed, but the gradual descent was smooth and unfaltering, a slow, steady sinking into Thoume’s heart. The lights in the corner flickered rhythmically, and the prisoners murmured, as if with every meter they went down, their spirits dropped even further. There was a small flutter of panic too, and Andi guessed that they were all thinking, as was she, that it might never end, and this might just be a nightmare from which she could not wake.

  She couldn’t tell how long they were in the elevator, but supposed it must have been about fifteen minutes before it finally began to slow, and the heavy clunking of the gears sounded as the metal box came to a halt. The prisoners muttered darkly as the guard pressed the button on the door, and then the metal barriers slid open, and Andi was greeted to her first sign of the Black Hole.

  Chapter Six

  They were led out of the elevator and found themselves in an enormous cavern, which Andi assumed was the central hub of the prison system. The walls were a dark-gray rock, lined intermittently with the same lamps in the elevator, so that the whole of the cavern glowed with a sickly yellow light.

  A huge computer station sat in the center of the cavern. On one side were a series of other elevators, some wide ones for carrying the wagons of crystal up to the surface, others, presumably, for transportation of prisoners to the deeper levels of the jail.

  The prisoners were led to a small roped-off area. Piles of dull brown clothing sat on the floor. “Change,” instructed the guard. “You may keep your underwear but leave all your own clothing behind. It is no longer yours. You own nothing in the Black Hole.”

  Andi stared as the Ruvalians around her began to strip off their own clothing without question, too despondent to worry about being seen naked in front of everyone. “Clios,” she whispered hastily. “If I undress everyone will see that I’m only green up to my elbows!”

  “Get behind me,” the Ruvalian girl whispered back. “I’ll help you, but we’ll have to be quick.” Andi hastily unbuttoned her jacket and top. She looked around, but the Hoshaen guard was watching the wagons of Quartz being loaded onto the cargo elevators, and the other prisoners were too busy getting changed to pay any attention to her.

  She pulled off her jacket and the top of her green coveralls, leaving on her underwear, and Clios slid the large cloth shirt down over her head rapidly, hiding her white skin. Just as quickly, she slid off the bottom half of the coveralls and stepped into the trousers that Clios held out for her. The whole process took less than ten seconds, and to her relief no one seemed to have noticed.

  The dull brown outfit was scratchy and ill-fitting. As Andi watched Clios getting dressed, she realized that the uniform was chosen to take away your individuality. She was no longer Andromeda Day—she was a prisoner of the Black Hole, and her name didn’t matter to these people anymore. The thought gave her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  The prisoners were then taken to form queues up to the computer station to find out where they were to be held. Clios took her hand. “We must make sure we are in the same cell,” she whispered. “Or we might never find each other.”

  They approached the station together, and the Hoshaen behind the desk asked for their names and pressed buttons on the screen. He then withdrew a small metal card from the computer and gave it to one of the guards.

  The guard motioned to the small group of Ruvalians that were in his charge. “Follow me,” he said in his growly voice. He walked across the cavern to one of the elevators on the far side of the room, and the Ruvalians followed.

  They were ushered into the elevator, which was very similar to the first, and the Hoshaen swiped the metal card he had been given through the box on the inside. The doors closed, and they began to descend again. The metal card, Andi realized, must hold some kind of chip that carried information about where in the prison they were to be taken.

  When the doors finally opened, they were faced with a junction of three tunnels that led deep into the gloom. At the head of the junction was a slim metal box attached to the wall similar to the one on the elevator. The guard slipped his card into the box and a light appeared above the top of the central tunnel. He removed his card, and they continued to walk down the indicated tunnel in the yellowish light.

  There were several more junctions after this, and each time the guard used his card to establish which tunnel they should take.

  “This is crazy,” Clios murmured. Her eyes were wide with barely held in panic. “We will never find our way out of this place.”

  “Don’t worry.” Andi squeezed her hand, although she felt frightened herself at the maze of corridors and tunnels through which they were passing.

  Finally they exited one tunnel to find themselves in a small room with another computer station. The guard walked up to the Hoshaen behind the station and gave them his card. She put it into her computer and then nodded to him. Leaving the station, she led the line of prisoners down to the cells at the bottom.

  Gradually, the prisoners were separated and led into cells, sometimes individually, sometimes in groups. Andi and Clios were last, and were relieved when they were shown into a room together. They turned and watched as the door clanged shut behind them, and the guard slid a card through the box on the wall. A red light appeared on the lock inside the cell.

  The prison had finally swallowed them whole.

  For a moment the two girls just stood and stared at the door, and then they looked at each other, wordless. Finally they glanced around the room. There were four bunks, two on one wall and two on the other. There was also a small metal table, under which was a bucket.

  There was nothing else in the room.

  “Nice,” said Andi. “Three stars, I guess?”

  Clios’s lips were pressed tightly together. “Don’t joke, Andi,” she said, and to Andi’s surprise she could see that the older girl was near to tears. “This is an awful place. We might never get out of here.” She sank onto one of the bunks and put her face in her hands.

  “Of course we will.” Andi spoke more determinedly than she felt as she sat beside Clios, putting her arm around the other girl’s shoulders. “We are going to make it out of here, and we are going
to rescue Deneb and the Golden Star, and we will make it back to Jarl, and you two will get married and have lots of babies.”

  Clios couldn’t help but laugh. “At least no-one could call you a pessimist.”

  They sat side-by-side on the lower bunks, silent for a moment. It was warmer down in the cells, and sweat broke out between Andi’s shoulder blades. “We made it in here,” she said eventually. “We’re halfway there.”

  “Unfortunately the second half of the adventure is going to be harder,” Clios said.

  Andi sighed. She got up and lay on the other lower bunk and stared up at the metal slats of the bed above her. In spite of her positive words to Clios, her plan suddenly seemed very daunting and quite hopeless. Was it really possible to rescue Deneb and Lydia, recover the Golden Star and end this futile war? “Clios, do you really think retrieving the Golden Star is going to help the Ruvalians?”

  Clios nodded. Her mouth was determined. “I know it would.”

  “Do you think Lydia will have hidden it?”

  “I am sure that is the case.”

  “We would have heard if the Hoshaens had captured it, wouldn’t we?”

  “That is very true, yes.”

  At that moment, there was a rattle at the door and a hatch to the side opened. A tray with two bowls of food appeared on the small shelf, along with two mugs.

  “Wait!” Andi ran over to the hatch and bent to look through it. A pair of Hoshaen eyes appeared on the other side, bright green in the dim yellow glow of the lamp above him. “What’s going to happen to us?” she asked.

  “Now, you eat,” came his low, dull tones. “Then sleep. Tomorrow you will go down to work in the mines.” The hatch slammed shut.

  Andi pulled a face at Clios. “Conversation’s obviously not his strong point.” She got the tray and carried it back to their small table. The two young women helped themselves to the yellowcorn bread and a thick porridge, and the funny-tasting, dusty water.

  “They want to keep us strong,” Clios said. “For the mines.” She chewed thoughtfully on the bread. “I wonder what will happen to the Black Hole once they take over the Ruvalian mines? I expect they will keep it going—it will be somewhere to send the Ruvalian prisoners.”