‘Oh.’ I was instantly contrite. ‘Sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘Maybe I should go forward, and let Merrit help you up.’
‘Yeah, okay. That’s a good idea.’
It worked, too. Haemon made way for Dygall, who made way for Merrit, who reached down and helped to pull me back into the air duct. After squirming into my spot, I couldn’t even see her face – just Dygall’s backside, across the gaping access hole.
‘Merrit? Did you cut off your wrist band?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied, from behind me.
‘Where is it?’
‘Right here.’
‘Pass it over. Dygall! Tell Haemon to pass me his wrist band!’
When I had both wrist bands, I dropped them through the hole onto the floor. Then I sealed up the access panel. ‘Okay,’ I said, when I’d finished. ‘Let’s go. Who’s got those scissors?’
‘I have,’ said Merrit.
‘Keep them. Dygall! Tell Haemon we’re heading for the Vaults!’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘And be careful with that flask. Don’t touch the lid or anything.’
‘Can I roll it along?’
‘Roll it?’ I wasn’t sure. ‘Better not. It might hit Haemon’s foot. Can you stuff it down the front of your suit, do you think?’
‘I’ll push it,’ said Dygall. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be all right.’
So we set off for the Stasis Banks. The trip was a slow one, because Dygall was having trouble with his shoulder, and my ear was very painful. No one had the strength to talk much. I wanted to find out what Merrit and Haemon could tell me about the rest of the ship – about Technical Fault Protection, and the filtration pumps, and the Remote Access Repair Units – but I couldn’t bring myself to raise the subject. They both seemed to be in a state of shock; I could sense that they had seen some very nasty things.
In the end, though, I had to ask one question. Just one.
‘Do you know what happened to Caromy?’ I inquired. ‘She was in pump station one . . .’
Merrit didn’t answer immediately. Up ahead, Dygall halted for a moment before proceeding. At last Merrit sighed.
‘No,’ she replied softly. ‘I never saw Caromy. I was in the Depot.’
‘Right. Thanks.’
I knew that thinking about Caromy wouldn’t do me any good at all. So I tried to focus on our immediate situation. Our first priority would be to find my mother – my mother and Arkwright. Our second would be to find more liquid oxygen (or something similar). Our third would be to solve the mystery of the malfunctioning food dispensers. Or should we look for a secure space before worrying about food? Perhaps it would depend on what Arkwright said.
And then there was my father. We had to find him. I refused to accept the possibility that he had been squirted by a sampler, or swallowed by an On-board Transport Vehicle. It hadn’t happened. It couldn’t have happened.
‘Cheney?’ Dygall had stopped again. ‘Have you noticed something?’
‘What?’
‘Check out the walls.’
I shifted, and my collar-spot illumined a small patch of reddish tissue.
‘What about the walls?’ I said.
‘Haven’t you noticed?’
‘Noticed what?’ I was getting impatient.
‘They’re swelling,’ said Merrit. ‘They’re inflamed.’
‘Huh?’
‘Look how red they are. They weren’t like that before.’
Peering down the squashy passage, I realised that she was right. Its lining had become a deep, angry red. Not only that, but it was puffing up. It was constricting our space.
‘Oh no,’ I breathed.
‘Could it be us?’ Merrit sounded hopeless. Despairing. ‘Could we be irritating the airways? Like dust, or gas molecules . . .?’
‘The question is, will it get any worse?’ said Dygall. He was craning around, peering back over his bottom at me.
‘What if we get stuck in here?’
‘Okay, wait.’ I was trying to put my thoughts in order. ‘Ask Haemon where we are. Ask him if we’re nearly at the Vaults.’ As Dygall passed on my question, I laid my bare hand flat against the shiny surface that was pressing down on all sides.
It felt warm. Almost hot.
‘Haemon says we’re about ten minutes away from the Stasis Banks,’ Dygall reported.
‘Okay. Well . . . let’s try to get there as fast as we can.’
We tried. We did our best. But there was the pressure flask, and Dygall’s shoulder, and as we struggled on, our route became more and more difficult. It wasn’t long before I realised that the walls were closing in with a vengeance. I found myself pushing back bulges. Forcing up the ceiling with the top of my head.
I never knew a Shifter who suffered from claustrophobia. We were used to confined spaces – all of us. But when it came to being trapped in a wet, clinging bag . . . well, I don’t know anyone who could have put up with that for long.
Dygall was the first to break. ‘Cheney! We’ve got to get out of here!’
‘Okay. Okay -’
‘Now!
’ ‘Next access panel. Tell Haemon.’
‘Haemon! We’re getting out!
’ ‘Don’t let him go first, Dygall! Do you hear me?’ I couldn’t tell – the billows of red flesh were like a smothering curtain. ‘I’ll check it out myself, okay? Dygall?’
‘I heard you!’
The next few minutes were hard to take. Sweat broke out all over my body. I had to force myself not to panic. The space in front of me grew smaller and smaller; the encroaching walls pressed my head down, and seemed to tighten around my chest. Finally, I couldn’t even raise myself onto my elbows – I had to wriggle along like a snake.
‘Here!’ Dygall squawked at last. ‘We’re here!’
‘Good . . . great . . .’ I could barely gasp it out. Then I felt the lurching, and the thumps. I caught a flurry of movement. ‘What are you . . .? Dygall! Let me!’
He didn’t, though. He punched through the access panel and shot up through the hole (which opened onto B deck) without even pausing to scan the room above it for OTVs.
I guess he’d had about as much as he could take.
‘Dygall!’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Are you crazy?’
‘I’ve got the flask, remember?’ A pause. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing here. Just a few samplers. The door’s sealed.’ As I pulled myself through the hole, he added, ‘Do you know this cabin? I don’t.’
It was a single-occupancy cabin, which had probably featured all the standard fittings: bed, Interface Array, bathroom, extension table, storage hatches. Now it was like someone’s abdominal cavity – a bag of strangely shaped, oddly coloured organs. But some things hadn’t changed. There were still pillows, and cushions, and insulation sheets, and several glass bottles, and . . .
‘Look!’ cried Dygall. ‘Look at that!’
I was so astonished that I froze in the act of hauling Merrit out of the air duct. There, on the pulsing pink wall, hung a sword and its sheath. The blade was slightly curved, and the hilt highly decorated. It didn’t look like something you would have found at the Battle of Waterloo.
‘It’s a samurai sword! From Japan!’ Dygall exclaimed. ‘Can you believe that?’ For the first time since Haemon’s birthday party, he sounded exactly like his usual self. ‘It’s the real thing!’
‘Who the hell was allowed to bring a samurai sword onto Plexus?’ I said, as Merrit clambered to her feet beside me.
‘I don’t know. Someone from Japan?’ Dygall approached the sword, but couldn’t stretch far enough to lift it down. ‘We could use this,’ he said, turning to me. ‘These swords were vicious.’
‘All right. Hang on.’ I bent to help Haemon, who was the last person out of the air duct. He then clung to my arm until I gently placed his hand on Merrit’s elbow. ‘It’s all right, Haemon,’ I assured him, noting the way he shied at the sight of a
sampler flashing past. ‘These are only samplers. They can’t hurt you unless you’ve been scent-bombed. Dygall – don’t touch that sword. You’ll drop your oxygen.’
I had to wipe my hands on an insulation sheet before I lifted the sword down from its bony brackets. We were all slightly sticky; our hair was plastered with gummy stuff, and our suits looked as if we’d been rolling in mucus.
It was disgusting.
‘Okay,’ I said, balancing the sword in my left hand, then my right. It was surprisingly heavy for something so thin.
‘Okay, I’ll take this, Dygall can have the oxygen, Merrit can keep the scissors, and Haemon . . . whatever we find next, you can have that.’
‘But where are we going?’ Merrit asked. Her voice trembled. ‘How are we going to get around? We can’t use the air ducts. We can’t use the filtration ducts – they’re full of fluid.’
‘What about the cable conduit?’ I suggested. The air and filtration ducts ran through the conduit, which provided a kind of outer casing. But Merrit shook her head.
‘You’d be climbing on the power cables,’ she said, hugging herself. ‘It’s too dangerous – especially with a sword.’
‘Are you sure?’ I wasn’t convinced. ‘It’s pretty big, that conduit. And it was designed for manual intervention.’
‘Cheney, we’re not properly insulated. Anyway . . .’ She hesitated, and swallowed. A ghastly expression flitted across her face. ‘Anyway, there – there are RARs in the conduit . . .’
‘Oh.’
She had a point. I looked at Dygall, who said, ‘Arkwright and the others . . . they wouldn’t be in the ducts any more, either. They’d be stuck using streets and tubes.’
‘You’re right.’ I abandoned the conduit idea. If we used the conduit, we might miss my mother. ‘We’ll have to go back down, though. Back to A deck. We’ll have to use the stairs.’ Realising how dry and sore my throat was, I crossed to what had once been the kitchen, and picked up a glass bottle. It contained some sort of carbonated fruit juice. When I broke the seal, the hiss made us all jump. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ I said, setting my sword down, ‘and then we’ll go.’
The bottle passed slowly from hand to hand. I don’t know why, but something about it – about drinking, one after the other, from the same bottle – made me think of that moment just before the start of a basketball game, when you all clap hands together. Or the point in a war story when a group of soldiers is set to go ‘over the top’. I think everyone else felt it too – the sense of being part of a team, with a job to do, rather than a sad little clutch of terrified kids.
Maybe there was something in that bottle besides carbonated fruit juice. On reflection, there probably was. It certainly left a warm feeling as it trickled down my throat into my stomach.
‘Right,’ I said, after we’d drained the last drop. ‘I’ll go first. Dygall can bring up the rear. Merrit, you keep your eye on the ceiling. Haemon . . .’ I stared down at him, wishing he didn’t look so small and defenceless. ‘Haemon,’ I said, ‘you take this bottle. The next hard surface we come to, we can smash the end off it, and then you’ll have your own weapon. Okay?’
He nodded.
‘Okay.’ I raised my sword, and put one shoulder against a sagging door panel. ‘Let’s go.’
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
It was tricky, getting through that door. Even with my whole weight pressed against one panel, and Dygall’s body wedged against the other, we could only push open a small hole, not much wider than my head. After Haemon and Merrit had squeezed through – Merrit clutching the scissors, in case something horrible was waiting in the street outside – I had to prop the hole open with my sword sheath so that Dygall and I could wrestle our way out of the cabin.
But we managed, at long last. And we were lucky, because no Remote Access Units or On-board Transport Vehicles were poised to grab us. The street was empty, except for a few samplers crawling along the walls.
This was no guarantee, however, that it would remain empty.
‘Okay,’ I panted. ‘Stair shaft.’
‘Not the lift?’ said Merrit, as I pressed forward. It was Dygall, however, who replied.
‘Are you kidding?’ he said. ‘The lift? Who’d be stupid enough to step into a lift? They probably have teeth, by now!’
‘Shh.’ For the first time in ages, Haemon spoke. ‘Don’t make so much noise!’ he hissed.
I agreed with him. The less attention we drew to ourselves, the better. So we hurried towards the closest stair shaft in perfect silence, save for when Dygall stumbled over a lump in the floor.
The stair shafts were closed off with hatches, but these hatches were very rarely used. Normally the shafts were left open. Only during emergencies were they supposed to be sealed.
The trouble was, our recent red alert had been just such an emergency.
‘Dammit!’ I said, when we reached the first shaft. Its hatch was in place, and its swivel lever now looked like part of some giant, deformed ear. I tugged one coil – nothing. I pushed another – no response. Everything was so slimy, I couldn’t get a firm grip.
‘Let’s try the next shaft,’ Merrit proposed, under her breath.
‘At the next junction, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
I swallowed. The next shaft was down the starboard tube. We would be very exposed, out there on the platform.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s try it.’
I peered around the corner, up and down the tube. In the distance, to our right, I could see a Remote Access Laundry Unit skittering away in a mist of scent pellets. So I decided to head in the opposite direction.
‘Down here,’ I whispered. ‘Dygall, keep your eye on that RAL, will you? Make sure it doesn’t turn around.’
Dygall nodded. I struck out along the platform, treading carefully over bumps and ridges and the odd, slithering sampler, until I reached the next junction. One cautious peep into this particular street told me two things: firstly, that it contained no obvious threat (just a distant corpse, lying in a red puddle), and secondly, that its stair shaft was also sealed shut.
I could have cried.
‘Next one,’ I said softly. ‘Dygall?’
‘We’re okay,’ he reported, in a barely audible voice.
‘Blue things.’ Merrit put her mouth to my ear, lifting her scissors to point at the ceiling. ‘Look.’
‘It’s okay.’ What else could I have said? ‘We’re not wearing wrist bands.’
Then I crossed the intersection, and made for the one beyond it. By this time the platform was so slick that Haemon nearly slid off onto the tube track. Merrit caught him just in time, though his weight probably would have pulled her down if I hadn’t grabbed her collar. The scuffle made me nervous; though I wasn’t sure how the OTVs located their targets, there was every chance that vibrations might have something to do with it.
Luckily, the next stair shaft had been opened up, and left open. One quick glance inside told me that it was empty, though its internal structure now closely resembled a series of ribs fanning out from a central spine. In other words, there was a good chance that one of us might break a leg trying to descend what had once been a perfectly good staircase.
At least, however, we wouldn’t be eaten. Or sprayed with acid.
‘All right,’ I said to the others. ‘You stay here until I’ve checked outside the bottom door. If it’s clear, I’ll give you a yell.’
‘Be careful,’ Merrit pleaded.
‘You too.’
It turned out to be worse than I thought. The stair-ribs were as slippery as glass, and bent under pressure. In the end I gave up trying to stand, and slowly bumped down on the seat of my pants – bump, bump, bump. On the way, I passed a hatch that made me pause for an instant, desperately clawing at the greasy handrail.
That hatch, I knew, opened into the cable conduit, which lay between A and B decks.
‘Cheney?’ said Merrit, from the top of the stairs. ?
??What are you doing?’
‘Nothing. I’m – nothing.’ I decided not to inspect the cable conduit. Who knew what might be lurking behind that hatch? Gazing up at Merrit, I added, ‘You’re better off sliding. Just hang on till I give the all clear, and come down one at a time. Or you’ll smash into each other.’
I’d hardly finished speaking before I reached the bottom of the stairs, bumping to a halt opposite the gaping A-deck doorway. Through it, I could see nothing but the wall across the street. Even so, I lifted my sword, clasping its hilt in both hands. Its tip hardly wavered as I climbed to my feet. Slowly, very slowly, I edged around the wall until I was almost hugging the doorjamb. From there, I had a view of the nearest junction, and part of the A-deck starboard tube.
Nothing dangerous was immediately visible.
Millimetre by millimetre, I then poked my head around the doorjamb, to survey the streetscape on my right. I saw a cloud of milling scent pellets near the far junction, and a mutilated door about halfway down the street, but nothing that especially alarmed me. Though I thought I recognised the street, I couldn’t be sure. Everything had changed so much.
‘Okay.’ I pulled back into the stair shaft. ‘Who’s first?
Merrit?’
‘Haemon,’ she replied. But just as she was settling Haemon onto the topmost rib (‘Be careful of that bottle,’ she advised him), something astonishing happened. There was a wet, popping sound, and the conduit hatch sprang open, slapping against the wall.
‘Ch-Cheney?’ someone croaked.
I almost died. I almost dropped dead of fright, before I saw who it was.
Inaret.
I recognised her face instantly, despite the fact that it was a deathly colour. She was shaking so hard that I could see the tremors even from where I was standing. Her dark curls were smeared with dried gloop.
‘My God,’ I sighed. ‘Inaret.’
‘Oh, Cheney . . .’ Merrit’s voice cracked. She sounded as if she was going to burst into tears.
I knew how she felt. The sight of that little girl, fumbling out of the shadows, was almost unbearable.
I looked away quickly, to check the street again.