his teeth at the spacious rooms, the grand fitments, the cleanliness and fresh flowers.
‘Do you suppose we’ll be here long?’ he asked. ‘I could get used to the idea.’
The gaffer was afraid to sit down.
Holy exhibited no inhibitions. He leaked in a chair made of cushions.
A high-ranking company official arrived soon after, his manner cryptic.
Purvis was agitated, Oreo silent, Holyhead posing the only question.
‘Everything malfunctions,’ Niaan answered, adding, ‘You’ve studied the map provided?’ Someone nodded. ‘Good. I’ll expect you to start in six hours. Report to Curtis when the blockage is cleared. And good luck, gentlemen.’
The official left. Amused, thought Purvis. But it was irrelevant, the man’s true identify, ology, status. They were here, begun, and the job must be finished.
‘Curtis?’ queried Oreo, smoking.
The mould-man, presumably.
It was four o’clock local, a Tuesday.
Purvis studied the map again. Vas 16 stretched for eight thousand kilometres. Subsection 9 was all but inaccessible, a series of roof falls and strata terracing making the approach difficult. The blockage itself was unidentified, information pared to a minimum.
Just unplug it, he told himself, reassuring.
Oreo said, ‘I’m going to take a bath.’
Holy jumped up. ‘I’ll join you.’
‘What? No way! You’ll rust. Besides...’
‘Yes?’ The machine was unconvinced. The tub, he’d seen, was big enough.
‘I, er, would like some privacy.’ Oreo gazed at Purvis, who ignored him.
Purvis knew the answer to be simple. There were two baths, one en suite, concealed behind a secret door in the master bedroom. He’d steered the pair of them away from it earlier, claiming the room by right and the facilities by deception, top of the pile in a two man one robot hierarchy. He wished to soak his own limbs, to think and whistle; to prepare himself mentally.
iii
Following Genie’s disappearance Niaan sat in the truck for hours, its backup field pulsing fitfully, his mind spinning colours before his eyes. Palpitations rocked him, a minute yet disturbing tremble of his heart. Adrenaline haunted his body. His pulse sounded loud in his ear, a steady drum-beat he failed to decipher. A telling sound.
Explosions filled the sky and the vehicle shook. He stepped outside. It was dark, a storm criss-crossing the blue horizon, honing its knife edge, keen and sharp. Figures, sprites or fireballs, cavorted there.
He rushed back inside and signalled the Judge, instructing its space wagon to rendezvous at this position.
She took twelve minutes to arrive. He boarded to find screens blazing with overload, the wagon’s improvised shield unable to cope with the interference from Lobo’s magnetic dudgeon.
Niaan filed a search pattern and waited, but the screens became increasingly confused, displaying multiple images. There were thousands of Genies, they told him. And then there were none.
Hours later he woke in orbit.
Afraid...
iv
19.45
They boarded the excavator, the air thin and oily, waxing the robot’s smile. The gaffer folded his arms, leaned back in a stretch-seat and listened to the rumble of the digging machine, map in pocket, Oreo cleaning his nails. Two mould-men played dominoes. A lightbulb swung on a wire. They’d feasted on shrimp and pasta, a concoction of sauces from the apartment’s chef, black coffee and white brandy, a fat cigar. The first of many as both Purvis and Oreo had lined their pockets with rich, pungent coronae. Holyhead just couldn’t acquire the knack of smoking, although stubbornly he’d tried.
‘Stick to bubble-gum, kid,’ Oreo suggested, at which the robot farted, proving he was their equal in many ways.
Now, accelerating, speeding toward the unknown, Purvis was convinced he was about to die. His human contemporary sensed it, the subliminal uneasiness, content though to blame the gaffer for every quirk.
Holy tested, vented, and recalibrated his knees.
Running under the planet’s surface to a depth of up to five hundred metres, the ductlike vasa spread in a web of narrowing arteries. They squirmed outward like soft clay squeezed between fingers, impregnating the surrounding rock in roughly circular channels that displayed no obvious centre, their one artificial locus the residential tower about which most human activity revolved. The map showed them in three dimensions, ranged like mould through cheese. Where each artery narrowed was a cube - or so the map’s representation indicated. This was the extent of the excavation, the channel behind regular and enlarged. Purvis pictured the many burrowing heads, the munching diggers as predators eating from the tail. Vas 16 stood ten metres tall where they’d joined. The excavator was built of silicone and plastic, materials imported, assembled in vacuum, driven by an archaic system of induction motors; primitive, as these took up a third of the available hold space. The maintenance triangle, along with the two mould-men and grids of shelving, occupied the middle third. The forward area housed the cutting machinery.
The ride was slick, noiseless, the bulb throwing random shadows.
Light and shade swung in his imagination, the former silhouetting a flock of plate iron cockerels.
Oreo complained of feeling ill. That was to be expected.
The cigars, Purvis supposed, contained some form of mild sedative, a subtle medication to ease those worries and inner conflagrations Lobo engendered. He lit another toward journey’s end, the elapsed time seventy minutes.
The mould-men finished their game without either having won and physically cranked open the large side doors. The darkness smelled sweet. It was cool, too, a faint breeze pushed by distant activity.
And dry. Dry as bones. The subsection was still 120 kilometres up the line.
Moisture vanished from the gaffer’s lungs. He took a swig from his flask, then palmed a reading from the monitor he wore. Oxygen high. His cigar glowed. Holyhead underwent an equipment check. They could do little without him.
Purvis realized the mould-men were waiting. He’d drifted. Have to watch that. Shoving Oreo he straddled a humming caterpillar and they continued, the breeze turning to a gale as the metres diminished, roof and walls sucking at limbs and hair.
Dry...sixty kilometres...thirty...
The caterpillar shook, bounced as if over rocks, speeded up and slowed to a crawl with the scream of emergency braking or trashed machinery. The duct shimmered all round. There was a groan. Flakes of soft bioluminescence spangled his brown overalls as he stepped off the transport. Holy and Oreo appeared beside him and they stared at the mould-men, who were sleeping. Purvis nudged one for an explanation, but he was inert, unconscious astride the cat.
Dazed yet inquisitive, the two men and one robot indulged in a moment of recuperative silence.
Oreo gasped, spat, and jerked as if he’d expelled something unpleasant from his stomach.
Purvis shuddered. They were grossly similar, the mould-men, peculiar isomorphs.
‘Come on lads, we can’t stand gawking. Looks like we make it on foot from here.’
Five kilometres to go.
23.50
Chewing, Oreo kicked through the debris. ‘What do you think happened here, boss?’
‘An explosion.’
The man scowled. He waved his sandwich. They rested in a cavity, an operation’s room at the juncture of subsections 8, 9 and 10, tributaries, capillaries to the main channel of the vas. ‘No holes in the walls,’ he pointed out. ‘No indicators to detonation.’
‘The explosion was contained.’
Oreo looked quizzically round the small space. ‘How?’
Purvis shrugged. ‘What’s your explanation?’
‘These consoles, all this test equipment, apparatus...and whatever that is.’ A knotted purple cylinder. ‘Something tore it up.’
‘Such as?’
Oreo bit into his sandwich, sh
owing his teeth and shaking his head in imitation of a grisly monster.
‘Flawed,’ commented Purvis, dismissive. ‘No footprints.’
Oreo finished chewing and swallowed. ‘It wiped them out with its tail.’
‘And went where?’
‘Where d’you think? It was so fat it got stuck, and that’s where we come in.’
Holy laughed. ‘Like Winnie the Pooh; he ate so much he got stuck in a hole in a tree...’
00.26
‘Can you see anything?’
‘No, it’s dark up ahead. Like a fuse went.’
‘How much clearance do you have?’
‘Fifty, narrowing to twenty. Enough to squeeze through.’
‘No. Come back. Let Holy open it out.’ It seemed crazy not to risk the machine.
‘I thought we’d agreed,’ said Oreo, muffled. ‘...I think I can squeeze through,’ he reiterated.
Ten heartbeats. Twenty.
‘Oreo?’
The lingering draught was warm and stale. The oxygen count had dropped considerably.
‘Hey, Oreo!’
‘I hear you - quiet.’
Purvis nodded to Holyhead, who displayed his tunnelling fans.
00.39
Light poured from the machine, illuminating a cavern forty metres wide.
Evidence of methane. No smoking.
A trickle of coloured fluid, like a drawn glass filament, drained from the centre of the domed roof. The duct reconfigured opposite. The cavern reminded Purvis of a cartoon stomach. He scratched his head. ‘Switch off a minute,’ he told Holy, and sure enough, the space was transfixed by a luminous stalk, a thread of falling brightness that formed a pool before seeping away.
‘Doesn’t splash,’ said Oreo.