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Pitr started to fiddle with the mapping drone around his neck. ‘I wonder if this is any good now,’ he mused, as much to himself as to me.
‘Try it,’ I said.
Pitr lifted the drone on its lanyard, cleared his throat and licked his lips before saying ‘Show me.’
A red beam of light shot out, swung back and forth for a second, then settled down pointing back to where the tunnel split open. Pitr’s face dropped.
‘So now we don’t know where we’re going?’
I couldn’t believe Noah would send us out with such a limited tool. I tried something before I could talk myself out of it.
‘Blocked. Show me.’ Only I didn’t just speak, I ‘thought at’ the drone.
The beam of light went out, and the drone made a soft beep. A moment later, it beeped again and the light came on, instantly and steadily pointing back towards Noah. Pitr looked even more disappointed, and I felt a sinking in my own gut.
‘Do you suppose it’s taking us back to the start?’
‘Only one way to find out,’ I said, clambering to my feet. ‘Start walking.’
So we did, with every major joint aching from a combination of recent exertion and hard floor. When we reached the side tunnels the beam swung to the left and pointed down one of the intersections. We stopped and looked at each other, but there wasn’t really anything useful to say. It was either follow the beam or go back to Noah and admit defeat, and live out our lives as exiles. We turned left and kept walking.
The corridor had a couple of surprises for us. About a half hour after all the junctions had finished merging with each other, the tunnel floor suddenly decided to twist 90 degrees counter-clockwise, the floor becoming the wall. Like the path going over the void, it looked a lot more dramatic than it felt, and we just walked through the twist and kept putting one foot in front of another. A while later the tunnel turned another impossible corner, this time the floor looking like it went straight up.
We didn’t stop except for food breaks, I think because we knew we had lost a day by going all the way to the break in the tunnel. Whatever the reason, we just walked and walked and walked, and I only stopped when I found myself facing a blank wall. I must have been walking along staring at the ground or something, because when I raised my head and looked around, we were in a Transport Lobby not unlike the one Noah had first sent us to. I tried to climb up on the platform but couldn’t because my leg was so stiff I couldn’t get it to bend the right way. I stepped back and took a slight run at the lip. I sort of half jumped, half rolled onto the platform, then turned to help Pitr up. There were bench seats with cushion, and I was so tired I didn’t bother with anything other than putting my pack as a pillow at one end, stretching out on the bench and sleeping.
Pitr was shaking me awake. ‘Somebody’s been here,’ he said.
I was still trying to get my eyes to stay open, and he wasn’t making a lot of sense. All I could manage was a confused grunt. Pitr kept hauling on my arm until he managed to get me sitting upright. I pulled my arm free then waved my hands in front of me and over my head. ‘Geddof. Gimme a minute.’ I rubbed my knuckles into my eyes, then scratched hard at my hair before stretching my arms over my head. Then I arched my back and groaned.
‘Didn’t you hear me? Pitr tried again. ‘I said somebody has been here. Somebody’s been using the food dispenser.’
‘What food dispenser?’
‘The one around the corner.’
‘Right. What?’
‘There’s a food dispenser around the corner. There were empty wrappers on the floor, so I punched the button to get one out to check the date. It was only a few months old. Somebody has been using the dispenser. There must be people around here.’
I blinked. It was a surprise, but somehow not that much of one. Noah had woken loads of people, but there was no way they were all our people. I suppose it figured that we would meet others along the way. Pitr was pulling on my arm again.
‘Come on. Come and see.’
I didn’t see the urgency, but Pitr was tugging at me and it seemed easier to go along with him than to try to talk him down. I used his weight to heave myself to my feet and let him drag me off along the platform to the far end. We went around a corner, and there was the machine, next to a water faucet. I tried to show a polite interest as Pitr picked up the brick he had dropped on the floor and showed me the number on the back. That was when I thought I heard something. I held my right hand up, and put the forefinger of my left hand to my lips. It took Pitr a moment to catch on, then over three or four words his voice dropped to nothing. Turning away from the vending machine I crept back to the corner, holding my breath and hoping my shoes wouldn’t squeak. Just before I got there I heard something swish, not quite like fabric on fabric, but similar. At the corner I slowly eased my head around until I could see back down the platform to where I had been sleeping.
Somebody was trying get into my pack, and they had Pitr’s pack with them too. Whoever it was had his back to me so I started to walk as silently as I could, taking small, slow steps to try to stop my shoes from making any noise. I couldn’t see his face, but he looked the size of a youngster and the clothes he was wearing were made out of woven strips of something green. I was almost close enough to grab him when I heard Pitr shout ‘Hey!’.
The thief, who was squatting down on his heels, looked over his shoulder and I saw that he was a she. I tried a diving tackle. She half fell and half jumped to the side and I missed her. I heard Pitr running down the platform, but he was too far away to be any help. She got to her feet before I could and set off at a run. I followed. She was as fast as me and, although I couldn’t get any closer than four steps behind, she didn’t pull away from me. We got to the end of the platform, where there was a corner to the right. She turned the corner better than I did, and took three more strides away from me before I could get my rhythm back. There was a door ahead, and the girl slowed down just a little. I assumed she would stop to open the doors, and I figured if I was happy to crash into the door I could stop her opening it. Then the doors slid open sideways. I hadn’t expected that. I almost had her now and while she was still trying to get back up to speed, I tackled her again.
I knocked her over, but I didn’t get a clean grip and she slid away from me. She rolled elegantly through the fall and back onto her feet. Before I had stopped sliding she had a kick on the way to my face that I only just managed to dodge . I grabbed at her ankle as it flashed past the side of my head. I pulled, stealing her balance and using her own energy against her so that she fell across me. Again I underestimated her. As she came down she cranked her elbow so that most of her weight drove it into my ribcage. If she had been any heavier, she would have broken something, but she was heavy enough to knock all the wind out of me. I had barely enough intelligence left to put an arm through a strap of each of the bags and pull my arms in to my body.
The girl scrambled to her feet and started tugging at the bags, then concentrated on one when it was obvious she wouldn’t get both. I held on as hard as I could, but then she kicked me in the side. With a stupendous heave that must have involved most of her bodyweight, she pulled one bag free and ran off.