THE QUESTION STALKS me all the way to Mack’s house. I can’t mention it to anyone, not even Mack, which makes it feel even bigger. At least it’s enough to distract me from the emotional aftershocks still rippling out from the footage. I just hope that my face isn’t too puffy from the crying.
I press my palm to the sensor at the side of his door and it opens. The smell of omelets turns my stomach as I enter and Sung-Soo looks up from an almost empty plate, grinning at me. His clear delight at my arrival is jarring. Some part of me is still stuck over twenty years in the past. I should have given myself more time to recover.
“Want one?” Mack calls from the kitchen.
“I’ll have a shake,” I call back.
“Can we start now?” Sung-Soo asks through a mouthful of egg.
Mack peers around the door into the living room. “Ren, please start—he’s driving me mad.”
“Okay. Give me access to your projector.” I sit on the sofa as Sung-Soo gobbles down the remainder of his breakfast. I try not to think too much about the thing in his gut. “So, there’s a much easier way for you to get an idea of people’s houses,” I begin and call up the interface to Mack’s projector. “All the plans for each house in the colony are stored on the public server. I’ll bring up some 3-D reps here for you to take a look at. Then you won’t have to ask anyone if you can look inside their house.”
Mack enters with my breakfast and sets it down next to me as I call up the files. “Though I’m sure people won’t mind if you did want to do that.”
Sung-Soo looks at me pointedly and Mack laughs. “Ren isn’t people.” He pats my arm affectionately. “She’s very private.”
I keep quiet and the moment passes soon enough. “Okay, here we go.”
The plan of Mack’s house appears in the air above the fire pit, rotating slowly in a translucent gray. Sung-Soo yelps and his plate and cutlery fly into the air as he leaps back, knocking his chair to the floor.
“Shit, I’m sorry.” I shut it down. “Sorry, I should have warned you.” I should have known it would frighten him; the pods weren’t fitted with projectors. They were designed to reach the planet’s surface and give people temporary shelter. There was no room for anything as frivolous as entertainment systems.
Sung-Soo picks up the remains of his breakfast, apologizing too, as Mack reassures him that no harm is done.
“That was a ‘projection’?” Sung-Soo asks, using the word carefully.
I nod.
“My father talked about them. I didn’t know what they looked like.”
The image of Hak-Kun lifting the crate and asking about the gravity here returns with far too much clarity. Now I see him in Sung-Soo’s face, instead of just Suh. I still don’t see Lois though. I’d never have guessed she was his mother. He never mentions her and with a shiver I wonder if it’s because she died when he was very young.
“Put it back on,” he says.
The image returns and he approaches it, this time with fascination and quiet delight. I sit back as Mack shows him how to use his hands to interact with the images. Sung-Soo laughs as he expands and contracts them, gasps as he selects sections and brings them out from the whole object to inspect more closely. He reacts with the purest joy when shown how to move from the plans of one house to the next, effectively gaining insight into the whole colony with just a sideways swipe of his hand. He’s enchanted by the technology in a way I never could be again.
Mack steps back and gives him a few moments to see if he’s got to grips with the interface. When he sees he has, Mack looks at me and inclines his head toward the kitchen. I pick up the shake and follow him in, making myself drink some of it on the way.
“It’s Carmen,” Mack says, sotto voce.
“Is she stirring up trouble?”
He leans against the countertop, nudging the frying pan with his backside. He’s a purist; he likes to cook with base ingredients rather than printing a complete meal. He’s one of those people who says he can taste a difference and is happy to waste hours every week to achieve it.
“More than that. She’s tracking my movements. Secretly. I only know because I ran a check on her activity.”
Mack is one of the handful of people on the colony with the clearance to check that sort of information. Carmen should know that it’s impossible to keep tabs on him without the chance of being found out.
“She can’t be thinking straight,” I say. “Surely she knows you’d find out.”
“Maybe she doesn’t care,” Mack replies, his arms folded and hands tucked into his armpits, drawn tight into himself. “Maybe she wants me to know that she’s doing it.”
“But why?”
“Because she thinks I’m going to break the rule and go to see Marco. To warn him maybe, or coach him in what to say to her when the ceremony is about to start. I don’t know.”
I shrug. “So what? You weren’t planning on doing that, were you?”
He tuts. “Ren, think about it. There is somewhere I need to go in the next week and Carmen mustn’t know about it.”
He stares at me, raising both eyebrows. I’m lost and shake my head to indicate that. He sighs. “I need to put the seed in place. If she sees me going into God’s city . . .”
He doesn’t need to finish the sentence. “Oh fuck,” I whisper.
“That’s why you need to do it for me.”
I step away, holding my hands up. “Oh no—no way, Mack!”
“You have to!” he hisses, closing the distance between us until he’s only inches from my face. “You’re the only other person who knows and—”
“I won’t do it.”
He grabs my shoulders. There’s no aggression, just desperation, but it still upsets me. “So you’re happy to let this happen, every year, as long as you don’t have to touch it? You think you’re less involved? That’s bullshit! You can’t just choose to stand and watch the whole of your life and let others do what you’re not brave enough to do yourself!”
“I never wanted this!” It’s hard to keep my anger confined in a whisper. “Just because you couldn’t do it without confiding in me doesn’t make me complicit!”
“You never stopped me.”
“How could I? You put it all into place before I had the chance to—”
“That’s bullshit, Ren. You had the chance, several times, but you know how much the colony needs this. If that seed isn’t there, they’ll think they’ve been abandoned. Do you want them to feel that?”
I shove him away from me, wanting to push away the way he’s making me feel as well as his physical presence. I cover my face with my hands, needing a moment with something between us, as if the skin and bones could shield me from his glare. “Perhaps we should tell them the truth.” I speak into my palms, but he can still hear me.
“Are you out of your fucking gourd?” I can feel his breath on the backs of my hands. “This place would collapse. We can’t tell them anything, about the seed or about his”—he jerks a thumb toward the living room—“bloody father or any of it.”
“You’re just afraid.”
“Of course I fucking am! They’d kill us, Ren.”
I lower my hands.
“Yes. Us. We just have to get through the ceremony, settle Sung-Soo in and it’ll quiet down again. You have to help me keep all this together.”
He looks frightened. I wonder if I look the same. Would they kill us? I don’t know; it’s impossible to predict, but he’s right about everything falling apart.
I sag. “You’ll have to show me where to go and how to get there without going inside.”
He breathes out at the sound of my implicit agreement. “Of course. I’ll do everything I can.” He pulls me into a tight embrace and even though I didn’t invite it, I accept it, resting my head against his shoulder.
“Is everything okay?”
Sung-Soo’s voice at the doorway makes me jump and instinctively I move to break the embrace, but Mack keeps hold of me.
“Ren had a nightmare last night,” he says. “She was just telling me about it and needed a hug. We all do, sometimes.”
He kisses the top of my head and lets me go. Sung-Soo’s sympathetic expression makes me feel sick with nerves and self-hate.
“I know what kind of house I want,” he says after a beat. “Can we start now?”
At last, something practical I can lose myself in! “Of course we can.” I smile. Perhaps building something real is the answer.