Contents | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8
“Long time no see,” said Selina.
She kept her eyes on the sheaves of holo papers, not sparing Shay a glance. Shay knew better than to loiter in the doorway, so instead, she waited by Selina as she sat at a bench buried in work.
“Ravinder? Rav? Fix these numbers. The conjunction rates are terrible on that last sim,” said Selina, reaching into the holo-projected papers, removing the offending page and throwing a glowing clump of data at the back of the lab tech’s head.
A new holo popped up in front of Ravinder, who grunted an acknowledgement without turning. Before Ravinder was a dancing jumble of holos and screens, overflowing with numerals and symbols, some dripping from the top display, splashing into the lower ones. Ravinder’s fingers danced over the haptic field of a customised keyboard, his eyes never leaving the lapping currents of data.
Shay looked around the white-walled lab, seeing only automata. There was life but little evidence of it in the lab techs. Each of them worked fast, with tranquil motion, rehearsed and smooth. There was no talking, no discussion, but somehow, there was harmony and order. Things seemed to flow. Selina packed her holo pages together like a news reader of old finishing a bulletin, then looked up at Shay.
“So, you’re here. Bad circumstances, I know, but I presume you’re ready to work?”
There was so much to say, so many questions to ask, and even condolences to be dispensed with. But no, nothing of that sort for Shay. Not from Dr Selina Garvey.
Her.
She was all business, the opposite of Ben. Perhaps this was the attraction? It had been a decade since Shay had last been face to face with Selina, and for her, not even a day had made itself known on her face. Shay, on the other hand, felt heavy with scars, burdened with life. Selina was comfortably cruising towards sixty-nine but moved like a much younger woman, arrogance in her slipstream, purpose propelling her, circumstance not slowing her.
Her.
The beginning of clear, continuous memory was post-procedure for Shay. Before then was vague chaos, rage, fear and incomprehension. That space was vectorless and filled with boundless emotion. This made her earliest memories impossible to navigate. That time lived in her mind as one smooth, amorphous block, impenetrable and hostile. Then came the operation. The procedure. That was the melting away of an epochal ice sheet, leaving behind hills and valleys, something navigable and reassuringly complex. From their first encounter in this new perceptual world, Shay began to brew a mild dislike for Selina Garvey, which she would distil over time.
Her.
She was aloof, off-handed, and often dismissive. She was all energy, all-knowing, and beyond reach or reproach. Shay had thought of her as polished narcissism and air-gapped charm. She even wrote a song about her, openly wondering who the enigmatic doctor was in verse and chord. Selina had never let on if she knew a chart-topping song was entirely about her. The song stopped short of speculating what power Selina had over her father, though Shay often wondered about this, too. It seemed like she treated him like an accessory rather than an equal, and her father was keen to follow her like a little dog, wagging his tail.
Shay knew what Ben saw in Selina well; that analysis didn’t go far beyond her superficial charm and intellectual appeal. She was naturally beautiful with the easy confidence of a god. Shay didn’t hate Selina in the same way Craig did, though. She didn’t think anyone could. Her feelings tended less to strong emotion, eschewing her childhood resentments and her brother’s influence. That balance, though, could be knocked either way by a feather. She owed Selina her sanity but not her fealty. Perhaps that would change?
Shay sighed, holding the other woman’s gaze. She frequently felt this way in Selina’s presence: agitated, off-kilter, and annoyed. Selina studied her, weighing up what to say. Then she relented.
“I am sorry you had to come here in such circumstances. Ben, I… I don’t know where to begin. What happened to him was tragic. I had hoped we would all be up here together and have a chance to work together. I’m sorry, Shay.”
Selina did not look sorry. Her eyes were fixed on Shay, exerting uncomfortable pressure. Shay looked back, seasoned in resistance, features blank, finding that contempt was leavening the words she wanted to say. She broke first, looked down to her pristine white shoes, and then back up to Selina, going for anodyne.
“What happened to him then?” Shay asked.
She knew the official story but wanted to hear something - anything that would provide more detail, no matter how inconsequential. Selina directed them to her small office cubicle in the corner of the lab with a twitch of the head. They walked passed rows of fabricaria, maker machines, and holo terminals staffed by battery-lab techs, all manipulating 3D data maps and punching, plucking and stroking holos. Colourful liquids danced in tubes while micro fabricaria built into walls performed arcane feats Shay still had to learn. Nobody paid attention to Shay or Selina as they cut through the sterile air towards Selina’s office. A large round door dominated the back wall of the lab. It was sealed shut, and a red light pulsing softly in its curved lintel. Shay thought better of asking what was through there - for now.
The office was a squat, transparent cube where papers and tablets gathered like dust in an abandoned house. Selina shifted a pile of paper documents from a chair, ushering Shay to sit. She rounded her desk and did the same with her chair. The desk was a riot of piles, vials, and things Shay recognised from her past. Her childhood.
Shay pointed at a bio-formed crescent of white sponge.
“A brain cot?”
“Yes, a heavily modified version of what you have. Technology has trundled on a little since your device,” Selina said.
She sat back, examining Shay as if peering over half-moon glasses.
“So, your father? I presume they told you it was suicide? Well, I don’t have much to add to that. I was the last to see him, and he seemed fine. He never said anything untoward and looked forward to testing his new design. We had dinner together, and then the next thing I knew, there was a strange alarm going, and he wasn’t inside the facility. He went outside. Jumped, they said.”
Selina stared off into the middle distance, seeing neither lab nor contents. Shay had been told the same thing—the official story.
“Don’t you think the suicide thing is, well, strange? No note, nothing to suggest it was going to happen. Are they investigating this?” said Shay.
Selina nodded, “Of course.”
Her voice was absent; she was elsewhere, occupied. Then she turned her gaze back in the room and upgraded it to a stare focused on Shay.
“I presume he said nothing out of the ordinary to you?” said Selina, suddenly interested.
Shay shook her head. What had Ben said to her? Nothing beyond the usual updates. His video messages could contain no specifics of his work, as most things on Venera slept under a heavy blanket of secrecy.
“What had he been working on?” said Shay.
“Bio-exo suits. He was trying to see if we could grow a next-generation suit for outside, possibly even for use on the surface. It is early days, but promising work. Artemis is a leader in that technology area, but concerns about such exotic synthetic biology mean the research gets done here rather than on Earth,” said Selina.
Shay imagined Ben working on this problem, having the chance to be an engineer again, and doing so in this environment. Things seemed to happen here. The daytime corridors pulsed with activity, doers doing, people as cogs in an unstoppable machine – one Shay had yet to figure out.
Through the window behind Selina Garvey, abstract actions and opaque work relentlessly and quietly continued. Shay considered how long it would take to get used to working here and what, if anything, she could add to the lab’s silent symphony. She had floated past a three-person room on The Aurora, catching a stray conversation. “Yeah, I mean, it’s just second-degree nepotism, isn’t it? She’s famous; she has family on Venera, so doors get opened, doors that normally get slammed in our faces.”
They hadn’t seen her, and zero gravity negated footsteps, so Shay had just floated by, the words drifting around her like smoke. She wasn’t offended, though. She was a former musician with a lab job in a prestigious place. Of course, favouritism would sting some. It was easy to see past these objections when all you could see was a debt visible from forty million kilometres away. This reduced her care in the opinions of others to zero. She was down a deep and dark well, and Venera and Artemis were a lifeline. She wouldn’t leave it be because a few people tutted or felt slighted. She would even tolerate Selina Garvey for the money. What choice did she have, after all? What choice did she have but to be here, even without Ben?
“I still can’t believe he’s gone,” said Shay, transfixed by the brain cot on the desk. It was ten centimetres long and curved like a scimitar, and, in a certain light, hair-fine filaments glittered. Shay shivered, thinking that in her head, those iridescent tendrils grew through her brain, puncturing and infiltrating her thoughts. She turned from the device, deciding not to push it away but, instead, to ignore it entirely. Selina caught this, watching Shay, mentally jotting an observation before sighing, “I can’t believe it either. I’ve kept busy, trying not to think about it. There will be a service for him, Humanist, as per his request. I think they wanted to wait until you arrived.”
Shay hung her head, shaking it.
“I hadn’t even thought about that,” she confessed, fighting the impulse to tears. Crying didn’t seem like a safe option with Selina. The older woman glanced at Shay, perhaps detecting this, then busied herself with things on the desk, shuffling papers and moving pens.
“I trust you have seen your work rota,” Selina said.
Shay turned away and looked out to the lab, watching the docile efficiency of the wordless lab techs and willing herself to be that calm. But something had to give; either her tear ducts or her tongue.
“Why did you get me this post? There must surely be plenty of lab techs with more experience and less baggage for you to choose from,” said Shay.
Selina kept sorting papers.
“Your emotional control is still rather digital, eh? We had aimed for analogue there, but behaviour modification is an imperfect science. Nevermind. I found that about your music; it was like an emotional dump valve for you, wasn’t it? Things you couldn’t say without screaming them. Almost like a fragment of the old you was still in there, keen to lash out. Not that I subscribe to any of that Freudian nonsense, of course. Still, your music, it must be frustrating to lose that outlet.”
I haven’t fucking lost anything.
Shay turned back, eyes blazing. Selina was unfazed.
“I haven’t lost my music,” she said, fighting the urge to scream at the other woman.
Why can’t this cow ever let it go?
Selina smiled weakly, “I’m sorry, old habits die hard. I shouldn’t tease you like that. Why you for this job? We go back a long way. A favour to Ben. I wanted to help you.”
Selina puffed her cheeks, exhaled loudly and recommenced fiddling with her papers. She stopped and looked at Shay briefly before putting the papers down and tapping an index finger on her head.
“You have a fully operational example of my work in your skull.”
“What has my implant got to do with anything?”
Selina stood, looking suddenly tired.
“You’re not here as a lab rat or a test case, but I won’t lie; yours is one of our few long-term successes, and the analytical data alone is worth having you here. I want to replicate your longevity and learn how to improve the device. There’s still so much we don’t know. Having you here should change that, Shay.”
Shay deflated inside. Favouritism for a job is one thing, but coming all this way to be a guinea pig? That was quite another.
Shay went to speak, but Selina beat her, “Go out to the lab and find Dakesh; he’ll get you set up. It really is good to have you here. It helps, you know, with Ben gone.”
And with that, she was dismissed. Her assigned guide, Dakesh, showed her around the lab with no great enthusiasm. His introductions were simple, with little to no feedback to his monotonous, almost bored tone. Shay stifled a yawn whilst listening to him, unable to pull her gaze away from his hooded eyelids. They hung as limp as his bottom lip. Dakesh gave her access to training data and reminded her to do safety training and further inductions. She left the lab with more questions than answers.
She didn’t know what happened to the note Angela had slipped her and did not want to consider that her room had been searched. Although she had none of her possessions here, it was still a violation of her space. She thought of Silverbaum, too, and had looked him up in the directory. He was stationed close by the infirmary.
On her way to the transporter, Shay bumped into Cat, literally as opposed to figuratively. Both women had been occupied by things other than looking where they were going. In Shay’s case, it was her thoughts and staring at the floor, wondering, can I make it here for six months? Cat was preoccupied by a handwritten procedure she was scowling at.
“Shay! Oh shit, sorry, girl, I was looking at this god-awful procedure that was in my shift handover. Honestly, I leave the asylum, and the bloody loonies take over. Check the state of this,” said Cat, thrusting an A4 sheet of hieroglyphics and badly drawn block diagrams in her face.
Shay would have had an easier time decoding crop circles. Before she could answer, Cat snatched it back.
“I mean, these bloody people up here, Dugmore or Barrymore, or whatever twat it is that does the maintenance when I’m off rotation. God! I mean, a bloomin’ pencil drawing? Give me a break! Oh, how have you got on? Been to see the wicked witch yet?” said Cat.
“You mean Dr. Garvey,” said Shay, smirking as the reference instantly landed.
Cat nodded, folding the paper into a hip pocket. She nodded a greeting at some passing faces Shay had not seen before. She noticed they all had orange piping on their jumpsuits.
Maintenance.
“Listen,” said Cat, looking over Shay’s shoulder. “I need to nip off, but fancy grabbing dinner tonight, 1730 hours? You can tell me all about The Wicked Bitch of the West.”
Shay nodded, and with that, Cat was off, bouncing down the corridor after the maintenance people she had seen. Shay watched her take the page from her pocket and show it to them, and all four of them started laughing as they rounded a corner into another corridor. A lifeline of normality in this swelling sea of strangeness.
She thought again of her media training, the constant invocations to be more personable and “approachable”, whatever that meant. Well, she knew what the PR ghouls and A&R fools meant: do a better job selling things and making us money. Perhaps this advice, the corporate nagging of yesteryear, had a grain of wisdom buried deep within, one that would sustain her on this remote, alien outpost. Perhaps, just perhaps, sociability was the key to sanity here. The first step to testing this would be dinner with Cat. Ben had sustained himself here with that, after all. For now, though, Shay felt like an oxygen atom trapped in a tank, unable to react with the handful of noble gases she shared the container with. One of the few bonds she had made was in the infirmary, and Shay followed the instructions of several terminals to get there.
Pathfinding was not her strong suit, and she detoured through several corridors that were not marked as she expected. She knew she was in Dome Two, having taken the transporter around the exterior of Dome Three and coming down onto the circumferential ring that held the three domes in place. Here, she could see down into the sulphuric soup of atmosphere that obscured the land below.
He’s down there.
The thought came, unbidden and unwelcome, but always ready to appear with every downward glance to terra firma—to terra incognita.
Terra inferno.
Beneath the undulating mass of clouds, would anything be left of him? Would there be anything to recover? Shay looked up, gazing out through the unfolding clouds. As one amber mass swirled and unravelled, she caught sight of a right-angled patch of darkness. It seemed to be glancing through the roiling storm, surreptitious and wary. It was a shadow, the threat of form ready to puncture cloud. It vanished as quickly as it appeared, an apparition smothered by the weather. This was the second time she had seen something lurking in the clouds.
At the next transporter stop, Shay alighted in search of an info holo. She found one but could not find any data on what she had just seen. Instead, she discovered that she was in the wrong dome. Since no one had bothered to stop her, she just kept walking. After all, it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission. She also reasoned that a walk wouldn’t do her any harm. Ahead in the curved corridor, a ramp spiralled up to a broader space, and she followed it. None of the dozens of people passing her made to stop her, so she kept going. She was rewarded with what felt like rain at the end of the spiral. She looked up and gasped. Ahead and above her was a forest canopy. The tops of the trees were obscured by something like rain clouds.
That’s actually clouds!
They gathered dozens of metres above her, conspiring to rain. Around her were acres of woodland, humid and aromatic. Mighty trees of all descriptions, and some beyond, grew from a thick soil peppered with bushes and plants. Twigs and mulch snapped and squelched under her shoes as she moved to the thick tree line, her mouth hanging open. There were flowers, and Shay moved towards them, utterly in awe. She recognised one instantly, lobster claws or Heliconia. It had grown all over the hotel she had stayed in during a tour of Brazil. The pink and green flowers hung from bent stalks that draped a rock wall like a fringe, just like they had her balcony in Brasilia all those years ago.
Shay walked further into the trees, taking a path from which two preoccupied women appeared, one carrying a net full of what looked like butterflies. The air was thick with nature, pungently contrasted to the sterile air her lungs had grown accustomed to the past few weeks. The rain was mist, small beads of sweet distraction dappling her jumpsuit and the giant leaves around her in a gentle, welcome rhythm. She came to a clearing and was met with idle stares from two techs busy tightening bolts in a metal box.
“I’m looking for the infirmary,” said Shay.
The techs looked at each other, and one sent Shay back the way she came to the transporter.
I’m definitely coming back here!
She followed the directions she was given and got to the infirmary moments later, in Dome One. It was a small ward, and Angela was hooked up to machines and tended to by a nurse in an all-white jumpsuit. The security man, Errol, lurked by the bottom of her bed, arms folded, staring impassively.
“Is she ok?” asked Shay.
The woman looked up, taking in Shay and glancing at Errol before issuing a weak smile and walking on. Errol faced Shay, slow and deliberate, eyes polished stone.
“She should be fine. The doc here induced a coma to help her heal. She had a bad fall in the atrium. Went over the railings, two stories down,” said Errol.
“Went over?”
“That’s about the size of it. I can’t say how exactly, but I’m looking into it. Pretty soon, my full days will be spent investigating the goings on here, as if I wasn’t busy enough already.”
“You are investigating what happened to my father?” said Shay.
Errol nodded, “Yes, ma’am. One unfortunate event I can deal with, but several? That stretches my resources. Add to that, I don’t like coincidence. Not been so much as an engineer farting in the lunch line, and now this, a week after Ben. I don’t like it. I don’t like coincidences.”
Shay looked down at Angela, her eyes closed, her mouth, nose and arm host to tubes. Machines in the wall above her beeped and blinked, assuring anyone who looked that Angela was still alive.
On The Aurora, Shay had asked the computer, a dumb servant, some arcane assistant from the early days of fake AI, for Pink Floyd’s Coming Back to Life. She curled in her zero-G bag, tissue pressed to her eyes to dam the tears and stop them drifting off. Her father had been so enraptured by this music from another age, and she, engulfed by the most selfish grief, listened to it, marooned in space, suspended between two worlds, soon to be alone on arrival. Looking down at Angela, she felt a visceral link to that moment, alone, suspended in pain. The tears prickled, unwelcome, unwanted but necessary, needed on a level she couldn’t speak for. Without choice they fell, heavy and wet and soaking her sleeve.
Errol’s phone started to ring, and he tapped his ear. Shay couldn’t hear what was being said and gained nothing from the security man’s grunts. She thought of Angela’s words again: trust nobody.
Could she trust security? Could this man have taken the note from her room? He looked at Shay, nodded unseen to the speaker in his ear, and mumbled affirmatively. He tapped something on his belt, terminating the call.
“Would it be possible to see my father’s quarters, his stuff?” said Shay.
Errol nodded. “Yeah, it’s all still there, untouched. Come by my office later today, and we’ll arrange access. Right now, I’m needed in Hydroponics.”
He went to move off, excusing himself. Shay put a hand on his arm, stopping him. He stared impassively into her face. It had become a drying green for tears.
“Ms McLaren, I need to go, please, there’s a situation in Hydroponics.”
Hydroponics. Ron Silverbaum.
“Is everything alright?”
“I don’t know the full picture, but I need to go,” said Errol.
Shay bobbed in Errol’s wake for a beat before whispering, “Shit...” and following. She got to the transporter, slipping between the closing doors, standing before Errol.
“What is going on in Hydroponics?” she said.
He loomed over her, a mountain to a flea.
Errol regarded her for a second before sighing, “More of these goddamned coincidences.”
The transporter zipped off in tense, uneasy silence.