Living Hell

  Teillo, I remember, had been very amused by this. ‘That boy,’ he’d chuckled, ‘is a genius at pushing buttons.’ In a funny sort of way, I knew what he meant. For all Dygall’s noise, he had never actually built a flame thrower. Nor had he sabotaged a mimexis program, or designed his own search-and-destroy robot. As I said, he liked annoying people. And one way of annoying people is to challenge their most deeply held beliefs.

  No one would have been allowed to join A Crew if they had regarded violence as a solution to anything. Naturally, Dygall’s attitude worried everybody. As for Dygall, I think he enjoyed all the extra counselling he received for his destabilising tendencies. He always did like to be the centre of attention.

  ‘For my party,’ he suddenly declared, ‘I want an historical set piece. The Battle of Waterloo or something.’

  Merrit rolled her eyes.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure the little ones will love that,’ I remarked.

  ‘The little ones won’t be allowed in here,’ said Dygall. ‘It’ll just be me and you and . . . I think you should come, too.’ He nodded at Merrit. ‘You’re obviously bored.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘I can tell by your hair. Only a person who’s very, very bored puts so much time and effort into a hairstyle.’

  Merrit had long, straight, black hair, which she wore in a complicated pattern of fine plaits. I think her mother used to arrange it for her. When I saw Merrit flush, I knew that Dygall had gone too far.

  Merrit was rather sensitive, you see. She couldn’t laugh things off – and she didn’t know Dygall all that well. She didn’t understand that he would say whatever popped into his mind. He was never intentionally cruel, I don’t think. Just tactless and impatient.

  ‘You’re a good one to talk about boredom-related hairstyles,’ I said to him quickly. ‘How long did that lunar landscape on your own scalp take you to finish?’

  Dygall put a hand to his head. ‘Next time,’ he replied, in tones of deep satisfaction, ‘I’m going to leave bits. I’m going to write my name in my hair.’

  And that was when reality intruded. Even as Dygall spoke, Firminus opened the chamber door. He approached Haemon’s father, and they exchanged a few words.

  Suddenly, the program faded. We were all left standing in an empty beige-coloured compartment.

  ‘I’m sorry, everyone,’ said Firminus in his calm, dry voice, ‘but we’re going to need this chamber. We have to run a few charts.’

  The little kids groaned. Merrit and I frowned at each other. Firminus worked in Navigation; he wouldn’t have interrupted Haemon’s birthday party to run a few star-charts unless our course required urgent analysis.

  ‘Do you need me, Firminus?’ Merrit inquired.

  ‘Not at present, Merrit, thanks all the same.’ Clearly, Firminus wasn’t prepared to give us any more details. ‘I apologise for the interruption.’

  ‘Oh, we were nearly through,’ Haemon’s mother replied. She sounded genuinely unconcerned. ‘Haemon’s had a great time, haven’t you, honey?’

  Haemon smiled shyly, and nodded. Like his mother, he was very sweet-natured. And he didn’t know enough to be worried. None of us did, at that stage.

  We didn’t realise it was the beginning of the end of everything.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Dad didn’t come back to our cabin for supper that night.

  We always used to eat supper together, if we could – Dad, Mum and me. Mum was very firm about that. Even though we could have ordered our rations from any food dispenser on Plexus, she insisted that each evening meal should be a ‘family’ one. Looking back, I can see why. My parents were busy people. They were both Senate members. Dad was on the Navigation Executive Committee. Mum filled an identical role for MedLab. Unless they had a firm schedule, and stuck to it, family time was likely to slip away from them.

  Back then, of course, I didn’t really appreciate this. Family life didn’t interest me. I was seventeen; when I turned eighteen I would receive my own cabin. Not a family cabin (the family cabins were always quite large), but a cabin nonetheless. Sloan Molyneux, my designated Big Brother, already had his own cabin. He’d had it for two years. It wasn’t one of the spares – it had actually belonged to a deceased crew member – but it was still wholly desirable, in my opinion. Of course, there wasn’t much you could do to stamp your personality on any part of Plexus. Not if you hadn’t boarded the ship with a few souvenirs from Earth. On Plexus, there were very strict rules about property, and very few personal possessions. Pointless energy consumption was also frowned on. That’s why Sloan hadn’t arranged any knick-knacks beside his bed, or installed a pretty picture on his Interface Array. But his cabin, despite its standard fixtures and fittings, still seemed to reflect his character – perhaps because his character was so calm and controlled.

  As for me, I had plans for my cabin, when I finally got one. I was going to grow a plant. (That was allowed, provided you cleared it with Sustainable Services.) I was also going to hang up my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s wristwatch, which I would be receiving on my eighteenth birthday. And I was going to invite Caromy to inspect my new quarters. That was definite.

  Perhaps, when she saw that I had finally grown up, she would look at me in a different way.

  On the day of Haemon’s party, however, I was still living with my parents. Our cabin designation was C9A69 (cabin number nine, A deck, sixty-ninth street). Cross- passages joining the tubes were always called streets, when I was young. As for the tubes, they were our highways. They contained the tracks for our On-board Transport Vehicles (OTVs), which used to carry us from one point to another around the entire circumference of the ship’s drum. By slapping the little red panel at any junction – wherever a street met up with a tube – you could make the next OTV that came along stop for you.

  There were never any accidents involving OTVs. I once saw Yestin fall off a platform into the path of an oncoming vehicle, and it stopped instantly. That was when he was still having dizzy spells; after that, my mother insisted that he stay well away from the platform edges, unless accompanied by someone of superior height and weight. But he was safe enough, really. We all were. The long-range sensors on the OTVs, and their extraordinary hair-trigger braking mechanisms, ensured that no one was ever hit.

  I think there were twenty On-board Transport Vehicles altogether: five for each tube. The port-tube OTVs travelled clockwise; the starboard-tube OTVs went anti-clockwise. You could catch them in either direction on both A and B decks, continuously. And if you wanted to get from the port to the starboard tube in a hurry, every street had a street shuttle.

  The street shuttles were like mini-OTVs. They weren’t enclosed, though. And they didn’t contain seats. They were just moving platforms with hand-grips. It’s amazing to think how easy we had it then. Imagine! A special vehicle, just to carry us from one end of a street to the other! Not that most of us used street shuttles. We were supposed to walk as much as we could – and sometimes we even ran. Sometimes the younger Shifters would race the street shuttles, which weren’t very fast. That was one of the attractions of racing, I guess; the fact that you would generally win, if you were competing against a street shuttle.

  It was always hard to stop the little kids from running in non-designated areas.

  Speaking of non-designated areas, my family’s cabin was in a residential pressure cell with a lot of other large cabins. Haemon’s family lived on our street. Yestin’s family lived just above us, on B deck. Our cell wasn’t far from pump station number two, with its air pump, its filtration pump, and its photosynthesis machines. Oh – and it didn’t take us long to get to the Health Centre, either. That was in an open deck cell, free of streets and bulkheads. On both decks of this pressure cell there were courts and gymnasiums, and enough open space to kick a ball around.

  Not that you could just wander in to play ball whenever you felt like it. Access to the Health Centre was strictly rationed, so that
everyone received enough ‘free-motion’ exercise time. Competitive sport took place on Sundays, and you could watch the games if you felt like it.

  Everything had been carefully thought out for our comfort and convenience. I can hardly believe that now. I can hardly believe we were so important.

  Why didn’t I savour it while I could?

  Anyway, when I arrived back from Haemon’s party, my mother was already in our cabin. She was doing three things at once: loading the laundry dump, studying the Interface Array, and talking to someone at MedLab. In those days, Plexus had a very complex communication system. You could log on to the Visual Interlink Network (VIN) wherever there was an Interface Array, and the visuals would pop up like a window on a wall. (We used to call it Vindow, because of this portal effect.) There was also a voice patch sewn into the collar of every garment, which allowed you to talk to any person on board. The ID bands around our wrists did more than monitor our vital signs. Each one contained a genetic signature that served as a lock-in code. By tracking our genetic signatures, CAIP – our Core Artificial Intelligence Program – could route signals from one person to another.

  ‘I’ll have to go, Sadira, Cheney just walked in,’ my mother declared, upon catching sight of me. ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow. After I’ve read that report. Linkdown.’ She signed off. ‘How was the party?’

  ‘Good,’ I said. The three-dimensional diagram displayed on the family-room Interface Array was labelled ‘Proopiomelanocortin chain.’ Mum had obviously brought some work home with her. ‘We finished early. Firminus had to run some charts,’ I continued, and seated myself at the table. ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Some kind of anomaly, your father says.’ Mum went to the food dispenser, and keyed in directives. ‘He won’t be eating with us. He has to stay on the Bridge, for now.’

  ‘Really?’ I was surprised. ‘Is it an emergency?’

  ‘Of course not. We’d be on red alert if it was.’

  ‘Is that curry?’

  ‘I think so.’ Mum lifted the cover on the first tray, and sniffed. ‘Yes. That’s curry.’

  We ate our supper. Mum asked about the party, and I asked about Yestin, who hadn’t been able to attend. According to Mum, Yestin’s artificial osteocytes weren’t behaving quite like the real thing. ‘But we’re sorting it out,’ she assured me.

  Yestin’s health was of great concern to my mother.

  She was fifty-one, then (seventy-five in real time), but she didn’t look it. Her hair was still brown, straight and fine and cut in short wedges. Her voice was still strong, and her movements brisk and full of purpose. Though small, she had a dominating presence – perhaps because of her large, pale, penetrating eyes. She always wore red. Not that she had much choice, mind you. Our clothes only came in four colours: red, navy, black and beige. But given even this small selection, my mother always, always wore red.

  ‘My turn to clear up,’ she announced when she had finished, and leapt to her feet. She was one of those people who are always darting around like electrons. You didn’t often see her sitting still, unless she was studying a cardiograph or something. (My father called her Comet.) ‘Weren’t you going to play chess with your dad tonight?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You’ll have to find someone else to play with, then.’

  ‘I think I’ll visit Sloan. We missed our Hobnob, because of the party.’

  ‘Are you sure he’s not at work? Sadira was complaining how she never sees him any more. He’s always got his nose stuck in some Petri dish . . .’

  ‘I’ll visit him at work, then.’

  Sloan and I met three times a week, for an hour in the late afternoon. These sessions were called Hobnobs. They were part of our Brotherhood program. I always looked forward to my Hobnobs with Sloan.

  My Hobnobs with Dygall, on the other hand, weren’t so much fun.

  ‘See if Sloan’s found out anything from Firminus,’ my mother urged, as I headed for the door. ‘About this anomaly, I mean. Your father was very vague.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Back by twenty-three hundred, Cheney.’

  ‘Yup. I know.’

  ‘And tell Sloan to give his mother a call, will you? I’m sick of having Sadira moan on about how she never sees him.’

  Sadira was Sloan’s mother: a Medic, like my own mum. Firminus was Sloan’s father. I don’t know why Sadira and Firminus partnered up, because they were very different, but it was an inspired genetic splice. Sloan was the result, and he combined all the best features of each parent. Though tall and slim and well-organised, like his dad, he wasn’t as stiff or as finicky. Though he had his mother’s heavy, lustrous hair and rich colouring, he never complained about anything. (Life wasn’t ever quite good enough for Sadira.) Sloan had his father’s high cheekbones, but his mother’s large eyes; his father’s incisive brain, but his mother’s smooth voice. It made you wonder if someone had broken the genetic manipulation laws. How could someone so perfectly conceived have been produced by sheer chance? That’s what I thought at the time, anyway.

  As far as I was concerned, Sloan’s only fault lay in the fact that he didn’t think much of Caromy. Though I never heard him say a bad word about anyone, his tone, when he spoke of Caromy, was slightly dismissive. I got the feeling that he considered her a little less bright than most people on board.

  Had it been anyone but Sloan, I might have wondered if jealousy played a part in this attitude. After all, Caromy was First Born, while Sloan had come in second. But resentment like that would have been illogical, and Sloan was always logical. Always.

  It was what I admired about him.

  ‘Where are you, Sloan?’ I inquired, as I headed for the port tube. (I had called him up to pinpoint his location.)

  ‘Are you working?’

  ‘I’m always working, Cheney. You know that.’

  ‘In BioLab?’

  ‘In my cabin.’

  ‘We missed our Hobnob today. Because of the party.’

  ‘Yes, of course. You must tell me about the party. In great detail.’

  ‘Now, you mean?’

  ‘Whenever you like.’

  So I went to visit Sloan in his cabin. Here I found him poring over some kind of slowly unfolding calculation on the Interface Array, surrounded by various oddly shaped, transparent vessels full of soupy jellies. I peered at these vessels, one by one.

  ‘How are the little guys?’ I queried.

  ‘Oh, thriving. No complaints.’

  ‘This one’s new.’ I pointed.

  ‘Not really. It’s garden-variety sulfolobus acidocaldarius, from the purification tanks.’

  ‘No mutations, or anything?’

  ‘Not of any interest.’

  ‘You ought to teach them a few tricks.’

  Sloan smiled.

  ‘Oh, they can put on quite a show, when the opportunity presents itself,’ he said placidly.

  I knew what he was talking about. Plexus was practically run by micro-organisms. Rotifers in the filtration ducts consumed other microbes that were harmful or toxic. Bacteria helped to repair the hull by excreting certain metals. Algae and azotobacter fixed nitrogen for the photosynthesis machines. Almost the entire Plexus cleaning system was based on microscopic organisms that quietly ate up grime and mould and bits of skin, scrubbed the air clean, processed sewage, and helped to purify water.

  Sloan was one of the people who took care of all these microbes. After two years of Rotation Assignments, he had found his niche in Sustainable Services among other ‘Sussers’ who monitored the health of our microscopic populations.

  He called the populations his ‘little guys’.

  ‘Some of our halobacterium salinarum are getting a bit frisky,’ Sloan said. ‘That’s been interesting, because they’re tough little guys. It’s got to the point where adjusting pH levels just doesn’t make an impression. We might have to do some genetic tweaking.’ His eyes narrowed, and another slow smile crept across his face. ‘It
seems a pity to interfere, in a way, because I’ve always had a soft spot for the post-Darwinist position. Survival of the fittest, and all that.’ Seeing my doubtful expression, he gave my arm a reassuring pat. ‘Don’t worry, though. We have to guard against mutation in this environment.’

  Sloan could talk for hours about prokaryotic cells and mycoplasma genitalium, but only if given the chance. He was well aware that most people didn’t share his enthusiasm for microbiology. ‘So tell me about the party,’ he said, abruptly changing course. ‘Was everyone there?’

  ‘Pretty much everyone. Except Yestin. He was at MedLab.’

  ‘Ill?’

  ‘Tests. Did you hear that Firminus threw the switch on us?’ I asked, and Sloan blinked. We were sitting at his modest extension table, which was attached to the bulkhead. ‘He said he had to run some charts. Something’s going on. My dad didn’t make it home for supper.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said Sloan.

  ‘You haven’t heard anything?’

  Sloan shook his head. ‘Not a word.’

  ‘Dad was talking about “anomalies”.’

  ‘Anomalies in what?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  Sloan rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. Then he shrugged. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if it’s anything important, we’ll find out soon enough. So what else can you tell me? What did Dygall do?’

  Sloan always liked to hear about Dygall. He would lean back and absorb the news with an air of detached enjoyment. I had seen the same expression in his eyes whenever he and Dygall got together. You could have sworn that Sloan was observing the behaviour of a particularly aggressive microbe.

  I don’t think Dygall liked him much.

  ‘Dygall said we ought to expose ourselves to mimexic monsters,’ I reported. ‘Otherwise our first alien encounter is going to scare us all to death.’