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When I got back to our apartment, Alyssa and Pitr mobbed me almost as I walked through the door, asking what I had been doing and demanding to know how much longer we were going to be kept here. I put my finger to my lips and managed to get them to quieten down a bit until we had all gone into the bedroom Pitr and I shared.
‘What’s going on? Why have you pushed us in here,’ Pitr demanded. I had sat on the bed and he was looming over me – as best he could with his height. Alyssa was standing on the other side of me, equally angry with fists dug into hips and a deep scowl lining her face.
‘Sit down and be quiet,’ I said, calmly. ‘The guards might be able to hear us through the door.’ I didn’t know if they could, or if the Go-ten had some other way of listening to us in the apartment, but I couldn’t think of anywhere more private. Alyssa and Pitr bit off their arguments in mid-word, then sat down on the bed opposite me.
‘I want to know why we are still here,’ said Pitr, visibly controlling his urge to shout at me.
‘Because they don’t want us to leave,’ I said, simply.
‘What? Why?’
‘Because they like the way things are and don’t want them to change.’
‘But don’t they understand how important this is?’ said Pitr, waving his arms and letting his voice rise. I made frantic patting motions to get him to be quiet, and Alyssa grabbed at his arm.
‘It’s not important to them,’ I said. I was going to go on with how we had all been threatened, but I changed my mind at the last moment. ‘All we need to worry about it that they don’t want us, me, to go on any further.’
There was a silence after that. Nobody looked at anybody else, all eyes cast down to the floor, and just the sound of our breathing for minutes.
‘Is there no way around this?’ asked Alyssa.
‘Why do you care?’ I asked, my emphasis on the fourth word, not the third. I wasn’t being nasty. I was genuinely curious.
‘I still have no way to get home, so all I can do is go forward. With you and Pitr.’
‘But if you asked them wouldn’t they send you home, or at least ransom you?’ asked Pitr.
‘They hunt my people and capture them, or kill them. There’ll be no ransom.’
Pitr put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned towards him
‘We’re in this together.’ he said.
Alyssa smiled at him.
- 18 –
Seeing them stirred something in me. I got up and paced around to avoid looking at them. I sat down again.
‘I haven’t given up, but I don’t have anything to tell you. All I can say is keep the packs ready to go, and always wear clothes you could travel in.’
‘That’s not much of a plan,’ said Pitr.
I shrugged. ‘I know, but for now it’s all we have.’
The next day I made my way to the laboratory as early as I could and still be sure of finding Walter already there. The guards now had directions to take me straight to him, so I didn’t have to put up with any of Cmdr. Naal’s sarcasm.
Walter led me to the section next to his, which was all storage. He could keep an eye on me there, but not have me underfoot.
‘All this stuff is unknown active. No tricks. Knock yourself out.’
There were three rows of shelves, each five metres long and three shelves high, and every shelf was covered with boxes. I sighed, and started with the first box. When the morning was passing towards lunch time, I had done three boxes from one shelf. I had found one useful gadget that would remember anything it was swiped across, and would reproduce it if it was swept over a blank sheet. It had got confused and needed to be told it was OK to carry on working. Walter was pleased, but not impressed and I was left feeling frustrated that I didn’t know what I was looking for. The break for lunch came at a welcome time.
Walter came and collected me. When we went out into the main corridor, I turned to the left to back towards the entrance I had always come in through. Walter grabbed my arm and pulled me back in the opposite direction.
‘You might be able to go that way, but I would get a reprimand. You’ll have to come along where the rest of us have to go. We’ll take the elevator down to the concourse, and go out that way.’
And now I knew what those moving rooms were called. These were very utilitarian, basic metal and cheap floor covering, and crowded. When we got out, two others were disgorging people at the same time, and everybody seemed to be trying to get out of four hinged doors. Walter took my arm again and pulled me to the left.
‘It’s a little out of the way, but then less people know it’s there so it doesn’t get crowded,’ he said, and as we made our way out through a different set of doors, I realised he was talking about where he was going to take me to eat. He introduced me to a ‘sub’, which seemed to be a loaf of ‘bread’, sliced in half and stuffed with more fillings than I could remember. There was also a bubbly variant of the orange drink I was already familiar with. I enjoyed it, but then I enjoyed just about anything that someone put in front of me and told me was food. We sat in a corner of the premises, inside this time but near to the window, and watched the bustle of people as they moved past. It took me a moment to realise that people weren’t just here for food, they were actually going places. Travelling from one location to another using somewhere that wasn’t for buggies and dignitaries.
‘So what’s this place?’ I asked, trying to sound casual. ‘I’ve only ever been taken around by buggy.’
Walter rolled his eyes and I wondered that he seemed so unlike any adults – using the term loosely – his age I was used to. ‘Such luxury. All right for some, I guess,’ he said, but I could hear sarcasm only thinly veiled beneath the attempt at humour. ‘The rest of us use this level, the concourse. You can get from anywhere to anywhere and usually just as quick as a buggy if you know the short cuts.’
‘What everywhere? Even the Captain’s palace?’
‘Of course. How do you think the junior staff get in and out? Through the front door?’
‘So can we go to the machinery yard this way? I’d like to see more.’
‘It's the only way we can go. Like I said, I’m not authorised for a buggy.’ He put his elbow on the table and worried his front teeth with his thumbnail as he thought. ‘Then again, with you tagging along I might be able to - ’
‘Please. I’d like to walk. I spend all day either in the apartment they gave us, in a buggy, or in the lab with you. A walk would be good.’
‘OK,’ said Walter. ‘I’m in no hurry anyway.’
It took about a half hour to walk to the yard. I gawked like an idiot the whole way. I had never seen anything like it. Walter explained the difference between a ‘shop’ and ‘cafe’ and an ‘office’ to me, but I was astonished with the concept of a shop. Having to pay for something you wanted seemed too alien to me.
It seemed the vast majority of sold either food or clothes. People bustled about everywhere, but none so finely dressed as those I had seen when the Exxoh took me to lunch. These looked like people who worked. There were even quite a few Crew walking around, usually carrying something, or pushing a small cart. Rushing in between everyone else were people, usually young and small, all dressed in the same purple outfit. Everybody got out of their way, and when a collision did happen, the person not in the purple suit was the one everybody looked at.
‘Who are they?’ I asked.
‘Messengers,’ Walter replied. ‘Keep out of their way.’
‘I noticed, but why are there so many of them. Isn’t there some technology you can use that’s better?’
Walter looked embarrassed as he shook his head. ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you? Sometimes I think we spend too much time trying to make what we find work rather than rediscovering some of the basics for ourselves. If the technology is there, and we can figure out how to make it work, it’s great. If it doesn’t work, or it isn’t where we need it, there’s nothing we can do. We know the tech sends messages over glass and metal wires, but we can’t make them, and we daren’t try to move them. Anyway, here we are.’
He pointed at a set of doors to our left and steered me towards them. Inside was a desk with a guard sitting behind it. Walter dug into a pocket of a jacket he was wearing and pulled out a piece of paper, and he handed this to the guard.
‘And this guy?’ the guard grunted, pointing at me.
‘Oh, that’s the Emissary,’ said Walter, casually. ‘He’s here with the Exxoh’s permission.’
I could tell he really enjoyed casually dropping that into the conversation. The guards muttered amongst themselves for a few moments, then decided to let me pass. Walter followed me inside, guided me to the entrance to the yard, and stood next to me. We looked out across the dozens of machines.
‘So now what do you want to do?’ he asked.
‘Do you know what any of them do?’ I asked.
‘Sure. We can talk to some of them using ordinary consoles, and some we can identify by looking at the inventory – that’s a list of what stuff should be around and where to find it.’
‘So what’s most important? To you people, I mean.’
Walter stopped to think, and worried at his teeth with his thumbnail again.
‘Depends who you talk to. I would guess that the Captain, or the Exxoh, would probably put any of the debonders at the top of the list, followed by Higgs platers. In fact, if you could get a debonder to work, you could probably ask for just about anything in the world and they would give it to you.’
‘Why? What’s a ‘debonder’.’
‘It cuts through things.’
‘Like a knife?’
Walter laughed. ‘Not exactly. A debonder is what cut the tunnels, and dug out the spaces we live in. Point it at anything and it eats it away into nothing.’
‘How - ?’
‘Does it work? Haven’t a clue, and I don’t think anybody else has either. But if somebody could get a debonder working, we could expand Go-yen-tan, or even use it to travel anywhere in the rock.’
That disturbed me, and it took me a few moments to figure out why. What Walter was describing was a way to get around locked doors. With a debonder, the Captain could simply drive a tunnel around the great seals at home, or at the other end of the rock. Then a worse idea came to me. If these things could eat rock, they wouldn’t have any problem eating people. It might be used as a weapon. I knew then that even if I found one and could activate it, I could never trust the Go-yen with it.
I played at trying to talk to the machines for the afternoon, but I was also looking around. For one thing, I was keeping an eye out for anything that looked like a side door. I was also looking for something big that would talk back to me, and after a couple of hours I came back to the debonder I had found on my first visit. At least now I knew what one was and what it could do, and there was nothing else better for what I had in mind. Who was I kidding ‘had in mind’? I had the vaguest hint of an idea. I thought at it again, and got the same response.
‘Incorrect operation of this unit is hazardous and could cause loss of life or extreme damage. Authorised operators only. Authorised Senior Officer override only.’
Even when I called on the drone to help, I got the same answer. Then I had an idea. It was tricky. I didn’t know exactly what the commands were I needed, and the last thing I wanted to do was give Walter any outward sign I had got anywhere. Also, I didn’t know how smart these machines were. Did I have to use special phrases, or were they clever enough to interpret what I was trying to say? There was only one way to find out. I pushed my mind out towards it.
‘I don’t want you to ‘debond’ anything, but what would you say if I asked you to move?’
I know it sounds like a crazy idea, but it worked. I almost let out a triumphant ‘woohoo’, but the response was clear.
‘Repositioning commands can be accepted from existing access level.’
‘Don’t do anything yet,’ I thought back urgently, and I could have sworn that I felt a sense of disappointment.