“I have been balloted,” Arlyana said. She held up her ballot card. “Continue the tour.”
“You are not the only person in the cabin,” said the bus.
As the bus spoke, a man at the back of the bus leapt to his feet. This was Moko.
Moko, shaking off his sleep and orienting himself to the situation, held up his own ballot card. “I’ve been balloted too,” he said. “Continue the tour.”
“As you wish,” said the bus.
Moko said to Arlyana, “I didn’t mean to startle you. I lay down on the seat at the back and I must have fallen asleep.”
“No need to apologize,” she replied. “Come sit with me and enjoy the tour.”
The bus took them around the Old City. The voice pointed out the Old Port, and the Old Synod, and the Old Settlement Memorial. Every one of them had long since crumbled to an abstract mass.
Midway through the tour, the bus announced that the sunburst had intensified and even balloted citizens, and buses for that matter, would be damaged by the flood of radiation coming. There was no time to return to the Sundome, so the bus scuttled over to the Old Tower and sheltered in its shadow.
“Well,” said Arlyana to Moko, “it appears we are stuck here for now.”
“So it does.”
She watched him closely. He had a handsome face, if a little pinched at the mouth. He had continued to shave after being balloted, which she looked on approvingly even though she quite liked beards. She extended her hand to him.
“I should let you know that I’m not much in favor of balloted romances,” she said.
Moko looked back at her. She was tall and muscular with dark blue skin that had gone out of fashion fifteen years ago but seemed to suit her.
“I agree.” he said. “Too desperate.”
“I would go so far as to say ‘cloying.’”
“Not to mention ‘desperate.’ It bears repeating.”
“So we’re in agreement then. Against balloted romances.”
“I believe we are.” He reached out and took her hand.
It took three hours for the shadow of the tower to connect with the entrance to a safety tunnel. For those three hours they sat together in the bus, hiding in the shade while the sun showered the world with light of many frequencies and particles of many energies, with some that knocked lesser particles off the land around them and made the world glow.
They took the Long Elevator back to Moko’s unit because it was closer. It was also much smaller and after skinnings of elbows and barkings of knees, they decided that Arlyana’s apartment would have been more suitable after all. But that was three hours down the Grand Central Line and they were already together, if not entirely comfortable, so they lay wedged between Moko’s bunk and the bulkhead above it and negotiated their future plans.
“My top three,” said Arlyana, “would be to see the First Chamber, to put a drop of blood in the Heritage Wall, and to climb Canterbury Hollow.”
“You want to climb Canterbury Hollow? Isn’t it enough to just visit?”
“I’m going to climb it and I want you to climb with me.”
Moko sighed. “I’m not sure I’m fit enough. Isn’t it around eight hundred metres high?”
“Eight-twenty-two,” said Arlyana. “But there’s only a hundred or so of hard climbing.”
“I’d need to get into shape. I’m not sure that’s what I want to do with my time.”
Arlyana tried to prop herself up on her elbow to read his expression, but she only succeeded in hitting her head. “I know this is a gauche thing to ask,” she said, “but how much time do you have?”
“Two weeks.”
She sagged back into the mattress. “You could have some of my time. I’ve got three months.”
“I couldn’t do that. It’s too much to ask.”
They lay in silence, thinking.
After several minutes Arlyana spoke up. “So what do you want to do with your time?” she asked.
Moko pursed his lips, then said, “I would like to visit the First Chamber, add a drop of blood to the Heritage Wall, and visit Canterbury Hollow.”
She laughed at that. “That’s quite a coincidence.”
“Truth to tell, I’ve had no idea what to do with myself since I was balloted. If you’ve got some plans, I might as well use them.”
Moko and Arlyana donned pressure suits to explore the First Chamber. Artificial lights illuminated the cavern. Rust-red trails of iron oxide dripped down the walls of the cavern.
The Chamber was smaller than they expected. Much, much smaller. Accustomed as they were to living in tight spaces, they still found it incredible that tens of thousands of citizens had once occupied a cavern the size of a sports chamber.
The first Deep Citizens had lived here for decades while they had drilled away at iron and stone, following fissures and air pockets to speed their excavation. As they dug down, deeper into the crust, they had built new cities in the spaces they carved out of bare rock. At first they had merely hoped to escape the solar irradiation, but after two centuries it had become inescapably apparent that the sun was not merely going to scorch the surface. The ferocity of its light was growing and soon it would burn off the atmosphere.
Having built one civilization, the Deep Citizens had to build another, this time sealed from the outside world. They adapted their existing cities and spaces where they could, but not everything could be saved. The First Chamber was too close and too open to the surface and so it had to be abandoned.
The excavating did not always go well. Several of the new spaces collapsed before they could be stabilized. In other chambers, fissures opened to the surface that made it impossible to trap air within.
The tragedy was twofold. The Deep Citizens had built chambers intended not just for themselves and their descendants, but for as many people of Musca as possible. They had drilled too fast and hollowed out chambers too large and too fragile. In their desperation to make room, they had over-reached. There was not enough space—nor air, nor food for that matter—for everyone. Even before the seals were closed, it was apparent that there would not be enough room even for all the existing Deep Citizens.
And so the Deep Citizens created the ballot.
Moko and Arlyana did not stay to explore the First Chamber as they had the Sundome. It was one thing to see the sun and the surface it had scoured of life; it was another to stand in the halls where the first ballot had been drawn.
On the morning of their fourth day, they were woken by a buzz at the door. Arlyana checked the video stream, sighed, and told Moko to stay in bed while she dealt with it.
Not knowing what else to do, he lay there staring at the ceiling with a view to getting back to sleep. That plan soon became impossible as he heard Arlyana’s voice rising with emotion and he began to wonder what “it” was that needed dealing with. Another voice, deep and male, spoke in hushed tones.
Troubled by a dread that gripped tighter as Arlyana’s voice became more strained, Moko decided that he could keep his promise to stay away from the door while keeping alert for Arlyana’s safety by watching the video feed from the door. He tapped the screen and the picture flickered on; he quickly hit the mute button.
Arlyana was wrapped in her dressing gown, talking to a dark-eyed man who had dressed and groomed fastidiously, as if he were on his way to a funeral. In his hand he held a card or maybe an envelope and he was offering it to Arlyana while she adamantly refused to take it. As Arlyana become more animated, the man seemed to crumble from within. His shoulders dropped, his giving hand fell to his side.
Although Moko could make out nothing of the conversation, the volume rose to the point where occasional disconnected phrases from Arlyana filtered back to him. Moko rubbed his eyes to make sure he was seeing clearly. If anything, it was the stranger and not Arlyana who was likely to need his help.
The door slammed shut and Moko flicked off the video. Arlyana stormed back inside the unit, tossed off her gown, and crawled naked back into bed with Moko.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
The door buzzed in three staccato bursts.
“Ignore it,” she said.
