by Patty Jansen
Maybe he should clean up and get changed. That’s what normal people did when they arrived in a place. He couldn’t remember the last time he washed. Probably on the interplanetary.
The room held a small cupboard that had a space for hanging uniforms and two shelves, one of which contained towels, a bottle of all-purpose washing gel which he recognised from the interplanetary, and dental hygiene paste, the other a spare blanket and set of sheets. A drawer underneath held the ubiquitous copy of the ISF manifest, as well as an environment suit liner. The vacuum suits would be in the entrance hall.
Fabio picked up his possessions from the floor and arranged them in the cupboard, hanging up his shirts—they looked a bit rumpled—and putting his boots in the bottom drawer and his empty duffel in the very top shelf. He didn’t know where to put the medicines, so he left them on his bed, three jars with little pills. Labels said how often the contents needed to be taken, but apart from a code, the label said nothing about the contents. It hadn’t worried him earlier, on the shuttle or interplanetary. It worried him now. He’d have to look up the code. He’d have to find out what to do when the pills ran out.
He took a towel and clean underwear and went out to the corridor.
He walked in the direction Major Doric had indicated the bathroom to be. Apart from his footsteps and the sound of air hissing from the vents, there was no sound. No voices behind the doors, no music. The silence pressed on him.
He found the bathroom—couldn’t see a men’s or women’s indication, but that wasn’t customary in all settlements. He pushed open the door and peeked in. Well, bathroom was a misnomer for the tiny hole-in-the-wall with two humidi-vac cubicles, which were the same brand and size as the ones on the ITV. Which was: tiny.
Outside the cubicles there was a small change room with white but badly rust-stained tiles. The doors didn’t close properly on either of the two cubicles. There was a bench were Fabio took off his uniform. He folded it neatly, but gathered it would probably get wet, seeing as the rubber threshold under cubicle doors showed yellow streaking from where mineral-laden water had squirted through.
Interesting shades of yellow and orange. Did he say anything about the ship’s cubicles being dirty?
It was debatable how clean excessively recycled water was anyway. Whenever anything went wrong with a habitat, it happened in the bio plants. If the Ph balance was wrong, the algal baths quite quickly degenerated into a stinking mess. Most closed-system bases operated on a mixed bio and chemical recycling process. The chemical process needed more tech and energy, but at least it was reliable.
Energy this base had plenty of, with the stick farm outside.
A card slot was next to each cubicle. Fabio pushed the door, but it wouldn’t open until he had retrieved his card and slid it through the machine. The door creaked, its hinges caked with rust and salt.
Inside the cubicle was barely enough room to turn around. Fabio pressed the release causing jets of heavy steam to hiss out of holes in the wall. It was hot, and steamy. He let the steam massage his skin.
Then he remembered the water rations, and grabbed for the bottle of all-purpose cleaning gel. He put it in his hair, but he was halfway through soaping himself when the mist cut out.
What the fuck?
Dripping wet, he went outside. Cold wind blew over his skin from the ceiling vent. He wriggled the card out of his clothes while trying not to get them wet and slid it through the receptacle again, went back inside and pressed the button. No go. Back outside, dripping water all over the floor. The screen on the slot said, daily shower allowance used.
What the fuck—seriously?
He shivered, while bone-dry air blasted over him. Already his skin was drying, with the soapy residue starting to itch. Whoever’s motherfucking idea of a joke was this? Someone who was watching him on camera, knowing that he was new and wanting to play a practical joke on him?
He opened the bathroom door a crack and looked out. The corridor was empty. There was no sound. He shut the door again, but the display on the machine hadn’t changed.
Opened the door again. Still no one. He called, “Hey, can anyone help me with the water?”
Nothing except the hiss of air out of the ceiling vents. Maybe he hadn’t been loud enough.
Oh, for fuck’s sake! He didn’t want to have the whole base out here laughing at him, all those people who had seen him come out of the lift and being taken to Doric’s office.
He dried himself in the towel, pulled on his uniform, grabbed his access card, went into the hallway and knocked on the nearest door. No reply. He tried the door handle. It was locked. Where was everyone?
Knocked on another door. “Hey, is there anyone here? There’s a problem with the water.”
Nothing. He banged on another door with the same result. He went further up the corridor, where his room was. All the doors were closed, and since he’d noticed how the door to his cabin shut hermetically, probably in case of dome failure, no light would be peeping from underneath closed doors either. When walking around with Manning in the other base, he had seen some people. Not many, but this part of the base was deserted.
It was an asylum for crazy people.
In memory, he was in a long, concrete corridor. Smoke was creeping in from under the doors to the left. A cloth over his mouth made him feel claustrophobic.
Hello! he screamed. His voice sounded muffled. A door to his right led into a dormitory. All the beds were neatly made, and empty.
He yelled into the room, Hello! Anyone here?
Further down the corridor, he came across a body slumped on the floor. Colourful clothing. His heart skipped a beat. Was that—?
He pushed the woman’s shoulder and she rolled over. She was black-skinned, with her fizzed hair cropped close to her head. A trail of blood ran from her nostril. Her eyes were open.
Elsewhere in the building an alarm wailed. He had to get out. He had to find a suit, because he’d left his in the truck. The truck would have gone, taking the refugees to higher ground. It wouldn’t be long before the wall of water came and would freeze over the valley floor—
In the corridor in the base at Io, Fabio arrived at a closed door.
There was a panel on the wall next to it. Fabio pressed a couple of buttons.
Nothing. They’d locked him up in here. They only pretended that he was free to go wherever he wanted. This was a prison after all.
Wait. Think. Deep breaths.
He studied the text on the little display. It said equalised. So the panel was not armed—which meant that the other side of the door was pressurised. The display flashed enter access code.
Well fuck, he hadn’t been given an access code and suddenly entering that door seemed like the most important thing in his life. Making sure that he wasn’t locked in. Finding a live person to talk to.
He put both hands on the door and tried to push it sideways. It didn’t budge.
He banged on the door with both fists. “Hey, is there anyone in this place?”
Nothing.
Then a thought. Of course he had been given an access code. That was the function of the card. He couldn’t see any slot to insert it, so he tapped it against the panel. To his surprise, the door slid open.
Well, duh. Let’s not panic for no reason.
On the other side of the door was another corridor, similar to the one that held his room. Grey walls, grey floor, grey ceiling and black doors.
He was about to turn around when he heard the muffled sound of voices. Fabio ran down the corridor, and located the room where the sound was coming from. When he knocked on the door, someone, a male voice, shouted, “Hello? Who’s there?”
“Hey, mate, can you help me with the water?”
“I would love to, but we can’t get out,” the voice replied, in a thick accent that made Fabio sure that this was someone from the civilian settlements, mainly on Europa, Ganymede. “Some dickhead locked the door.”
Locked? What the .
. . Fabio pulled the door handle, but it wouldn’t move. “Why would anyone do that?”
“Some lock malfunction. We tried to go for dinner, but couldn’t get out,” the man said. “We’re hungry.”
Dinner. Fabio hadn’t even considered that. Doric had said nothing about it.
“Have you tried the comm?”
“They said they’re sending someone, but that was an hour ago.”
“They’ll be coming from the main base.” This was another man.
Strange that the research base itself would have no one with a security override. Did he even believe what the man was saying?
In the military, one contacted one’s superiors and unless you were on punitive detention, the superior came to help you out. That was the rule.
“Have you called your superior officer?”
“We’re visitors. We don’t have a superior officer on this base.”
That sucked. Should he do something about it?
His subconscious was telling him that he knew how to open doors, but the voice of his rational mind was starting to resemble that of Admiral Sanchez. Keep your head down, Velazquez. Don’t get involved in things you don’t understand. You’re in enough trouble already.
That was all very well, but he couldn’t leave these people in here all night without dinner, could he? Surely there was no harm in fixing what was no doubt a simple malfunction. It was easy enough to do: forget to change the settings on the door and it wouldn’t open until someone gave it the right command. “Wait. I’ll go and find someone.”
As he went by his room, he saw that someone had put a tray with a covered plate on the floor next to his door. He wasn’t hungry, but picked it up and put it on the tiny desk in his room, and then left the room again.
The other end of the corridor led to a staircase, which he had used when Major Doric had brought him here. On the level above was another empty corridor without a living soul in sight.
A second floor up, he met a female private coming out of a lift with armful of mops and brooms and a vacuum cleaner.
She frowned at him.
“Excuse me, have you got security clearance to open doors? There’s people down there locked in their room and they need dinner.”
She looked at him strangely. “And who are you and where did you spring from?”
“I’m—” he realised that none of his shirts showed his rank and his status as member of the Special Ops division. “Fabio Velazquez. I’ve just arrived today.”
“Ah. You’re the mining astronomer.”
“Yes. Can you help and open the door? I think their door lock has malfunctioned. They called someone, but no one has arrived yet.”
She shook her head. “Sorry. If I had that type of security clearance, I’d get a better position and be out of here in no time. Have you tried the workshop?”
“No, where is it?”
“You can’t go there. You need to call them. They’re in the main base.”
“Oh. I’ll try that, then.” Although he was reasonably sure that the people inside the room had already done that.
Probably help had already arrived.
Maybe he should go and eat his own dinner and keep his nose out of things that were none of his business.
He returned to his room and lifted the lid off the tray. The plate underneath contained fried protein cubes and mash with a couple of cherry tomatoes and a few leaves of lettuce. He could live with the protein cubes, if they were decent quality, which these ones were, and the mash, which was nothing more than a bland filler, but he forced himself to eat the tomatoes and lettuce first, not because he didn’t like them but, man, were there no other vegetables that were easy and quick to grow in closed-base hydroponics?
The tray came with a built-in e-ink display that contained instructions about how to dispose of scraps and where to leave the tray after use. It also described rules of the base’s personal allocation of alcohol.
When he pushed the tray aside, the surface of the tiny desk came alive with e-ink. On further inspection, he found that the desktop could be detached from the wall. There was a bracket in the top corner of the room that could hold it, and a controller stuck to the underside. The base entertainment included a lot of local news shows, both from ISF and COF sources. This was going to be useful. Fabio flicked through and came across a news provider calling themselves Law’s News. He guessed this had something to do with the Law family which held huge assets in COF territory. This service was based on Ganymede.
One of the first listed news items was Historic delegation leaves for Io. It went on to describe that the first delegation ever had been sent to Calico Base as part of a new agreement of openness. They had sent four people: a trade representative, a diplomat, a COF government representative and a security specialist. There was a picture of them before departure, a historic delegation. Three men and a woman. He’d seen those people being roughed up in the entrance hall.
The article crowed, COF governor Anise-Leontine Law said, “We have great hopes for repairing frayed relationships with ISF and defusing tension that exists between civilians and military bases and risk of conflict that might entail. The previous armed conflicts are all too clear in the memories of our older residents. We do not want to go down that road again and we’re glad that ISF has seen sense in allowing the delegation to visit.”
Suddenly, he had a thought: what if the people locked in the room were the COF delegation? They were visitors, the man had said. They had no superiors on the base, he had said.
Locking people up in a room was hardly an example of diplomatic finesse. Surely, this had to be an accident that had the potential to cause much damage. He’d better go and check.
That was one thing he remembered: in times of need, you looked after other people.
Jaykadia
* * *
GOVERNOR OF THE COUNCIL Of Four, Anise-Leontine Law, looked up when Jaykadia opened the door to her office, and a smile of recognition spread over her face.
“Jaykadia, what an honour this is, for you to come and see me here.”
Jaykadia shut the door behind her, and crossed the room.
“I wish it were a happy occasion that I came see you about,” she said.
She sat down in the chair opposite her aunt’s desk.
Behind her aunt’s chair was a large window which looked out over the many domes and arches and delicate architecture of Galileo City. It disturbed her that all this might be in danger. The settlement was so fragile, protected from the harshness of space only by the dome, transparent and looking so insubstantial.
“I had a visit from Preston,” she said.
“I know,” her aunt answered. “He’s been here as well.”
“So you know what it’s about?”
“Yes. The situation is quite interesting.”
Interesting was not the way Jaykadia would have put it. “Why do you say interesting? I think it’s quite serious. He wants me to move all our maintenance outside, he refuses to say for how long, he leaves me with no way to cater to all these people he wants to bring in and, on top of that, it’s quite likely that he’ll spring some surprises on us.”
“Preston plays politics very well,” her aunt said. “He’s going to tell everybody how important this exercise is and draw a lot of civilians into it, but the only thing that interests him is expanding the force at our expense. You can be sure that when this exercise is over and all the soldiers have vacated your sheds, there will be something left for you to concede. Whether he wants to maintain a permanent unit on site, or wants you to house equipment, or wants you to sign a contract, he will try to encroach on your land and your business. And he will use it to strengthen his position in his face-off with Sanchez.”
“I don’t have time for his games. If he wants to secede from the inner system division of ISF, let him do that. I don’t care.”
“But they will care.”
“Of course, but why does he need to bother us with it?”
“Because he wants to enlist us as supporters. He wants to make sure that we are so dependent on him that we have no option but to follow wherever they choose to take us.”
Jaykadia stared at her aunt.
The Governor of the Council Of Four was not a dumb woman. If Preston played political games, Anise-Leontine Law was right up there with him.
“You can’t seriously suggest that Preston is preparing to go to war with the inner system section of ISF?”
“Well, he’s planning something.”
“But why? Why would he care? Why would they care? Space is huge. Let them each control a part of it and be done.”
But she knew that her aunt was right, and also that Preston was planning something, and that she should try to keep out of it as much as possible, especially with anything remotely connected to Mars, because that was forever a hotbed of conflict.
“We should keep a very close eye on them,” her aunt said.
“Yes, but how can we influence them?”
Her aunt nodded, but did not say anything. She had this infuriating habit of waiting to speak until the other party figured out what she wanted them to see. Throughout the discussion, she would give them little clues to what she thought.
“Come on aunt, I’ve got lots of stuff to do. I don’t have time to play this game today.”
“Remember Mars?”
“How could I not remember it?” So many people had died in that disaster, when an asteroid hit the dome where a conference was being held, including most of the delegates.
“Do you remember what the International Space Force said then?”
“Of course I remember,” Jaykadia said. “How can that still be relevant?” She still remembered the speech by Sanchez that blamed Allion for the disaster, because they had lax safety procedures. Privately, some people went much further: they accused Allion of deliberately targeting the dome.
There had been lots of military people in her life even then, and they all listened to Sanchez, hands on their hearts. It was a bit scary.
“Things take a long time in space.”