crisped by solar radiation, and stained a faint yellow by the sulfurous compounds emitted by Io. But the Stars and Stripes were still bright in the ship’s lights, and from here she could see the bold black U and N and I of the words UNITED STATES painted down the hull’s flank, the identity of a drowned nation displayed to the stars.
She clipped herself to the winch unit and began her ascent, up through the lessening gravity toward the accelerator ring. Unlike some of the crew she wasn’t troubled by the transit itself, or the peculiar sensations as gravity faded away to zero and then flipped over past the midpoint as she began her descent to Halivah. But she was always disconcerted by the unnatural sight of huge masses of engineering hanging in the sky; some animal part of her was always convinced the whole lot was going to come crashing down.
Only minutes after leaving Seba her booted feet descended toward Halivah’s nose.
“Welcome aboard,” Wilson murmured through the comms. “I’m down on sixth.”
“Copy that. I’ll find you.”
61
Halivah was stirring, ending another ship’s night, but the lights were as low as aboard Seba. The ground- mandated routine of having the two hulls on different day-night cycles, so there was always half the crew awake and functional, had soon been abandoned for the tensions it caused between two sets of crewmates in different states of wakefulness. There had even been a petty dispute about which hull should have the honor of being slaved to Alma time, and which should be eight hours out of sync. Now both hulls followed the same clock cycle, both mirroring Alma time, with a rota for a small night watch in each hull.
The feel of this hull was strikingly different, however. The social engineers’ paintwork, urban design in contrast to Seba’s natural colors, had been meticulously scrubbed away, to reveal the raw textures of the artificial surfaces beneath, the plastic, the metal, the glass. Even the mesh decking plates were bare. The Halivah inhabitants as a group had decided on this as a kind of artistic gesture of their own-they chose to live with the cool mechanical reality of their environment, rather than try to mask it with the colors of a planet none of them would ever see again. Holle was enough of an engineer to appreciate the stripped-down beauty of the result.
But some surfaces had been filled in with artwork, rendered with precious smears of paint, crayon and pencil. On the fifth deck Holle paused by one painting of a kind of house filled with light, surrounded by
a dark, threatening sky-and a knock on the door represented by arcs of yellow paint. The painting was signed: HALIV. DREAM CIRCLE 4.
“Psst.”
The whisper came from under her feet. She glanced through the mesh floor to see Wilson on the next deck down, in pants and a vest that showed off his muscular torso. “You like the artwork?”
“Not much. It’s well enough done. But the subject’s obvious, isn’t it?” This was one of the most common dreams, or nightmares, endured by the crew. Here were the last humans alive (possibly), fleeing through space in these metal hulls: what if there were a knock on the wall?
Wilson grunted. “I don’t like these damn dream circles. All they do is recycle morbid rubbish like this. Feeding off each other’s mental garbage.”
“Maybe. But some days there’s nothing to do but scrub down the walls, Wilson. People need some kind of stimulus from outside their own heads.”
Wilson wasn’t impressed. “It’s just another fucking fad. The circles only caught on when we started rationing access to the HeadSpace booths. And speaking of HeadSpace-”
“Let’s go see Theo.”
“Yes.”
Holle followed Wilson down a few more decks. They passed through cabin villages that were subtly different from those aboard Seba, the crew fiddling with the partitions and gradually modifying the place to suit their own tastes.
Holle said, “I take it you haven’t found little Meg.”
“No. I got the night watch searching, and when everybody else has woken up we’ll start a top-to-bottom inspection. Probably have to take the damn ship apart to do it.”
“These kids are growing up here. I guess they’re going to know these hulls better than we ever will.”
“Yeah. Poor little bastards. Morning, Theo.”
Theo Morell was waiting for them outside a small cabin, the eleventh deck’s HeadSpace booth. He was leaning against a wall, arms folded, a handheld dangling from his waist. “I see you brought backup.”
“Thought it was safest to have a woman here, in case Cora kicks off again.”
“Oh, she will,” Theo said airily. “She always does.”
Wilson glanced at the booth, where a red light glowed over the door. “She’s in there now?”
“Yeah. Been in all night. She’s alone. Doesn’t even take her kid. You want to see?” Theo hefted his handheld and pressed a button.
A screen on the wall lit up to show a little girl playing on a sunlit patio. She was outside an apartment that overlooked a sparkling sea. Dimly realized avatars shared the space with her. The patio was wide, the sea a gleaming plain that stretched to a sharp horizon with a blue sky.
The basic premise of the scene was obvious: it was about space, room to run and play, alone and free of the pressure of people all around, free of adult responsibility. A copyright stamp, dated 2018, said that the scenario, based loosely on Sorrento, Italy, had been devised as a personal space by Maria Sullivan, a HeadSpace user in Manchester, Britain, and donated to the Nimrod project by the corporation. Holle wondered what had become of Maria Sullivan.
“So Cora is the little girl?”
“You got it. Look, I tried to get her out of there. I tried all the tactics you recommended, Wilson. Like doing deals, another half-hour and then you come out. Nothing works, not with her. Believe me, calling you was the last resort.”
“I don’t want to hear your justifications,” Wilson said. “Just shut it down.”
Theo raised his handheld, and poised his thumb over a key. “You ready for this?”
“Just do it.”
Theo stabbed down his thumb and stood back. The light over the door turned from red to green.
Almost immediately the booth door slammed open. Cora Robles came staggering out, pushing a sensor mask from her face. She wore a black all-body suit, gloves with thick touch-stimulating finger pads, and she trailed a fat cable back into the booth. She glared at Theo. “You shut it off? I wasn’t done!”
He backed off. “Cora, look, I asked you enough times-”
“Give me that console.”
“No, Cora.”
“Start me up again, you little prick!” She launched herself at Theo, her gloved fists raised.
Holle lunged forward and put herself between Cora and Theo. She took a couple of blows on the chest, and then she got her arms wrapped around Cora’s torso. Cora flailed, trying to get at Theo, but for all her anger she was weak and not difficult to contain. The suit was tight enough for Holle to feel how thin she was, her bones prominent, her shoulder blades, her hips. Either she had been skipping meals or she had been swapping food for HeadSpace credits. Wilson hauled at the data cable connecting Cora to the booth, pulling her away from Holle. Cora slipped and fell backward to the mesh floor. She lay there, panting hard, her face twisted.
Holle was shocked at the state Cora was in, and felt guilty she hadn’t noticed. Holle had grown up with this woman. Cora had always been beautiful, bright, flirtatious, a live-wire party girl. Maybe all that energy had been turned in on herself, in the confines of the Ark.
Holle kneeled down beside her. “Look, I’m sorry that had to happen, Cora. You needed to come out of there. Your little girl’s lost.” As Cora had left Meg’s father back on Earth, she was the child’s prime carer.
Wilson snapped, “She knows. We fed it into the booth. Didn’t make any difference. She cares more about her HeadSpace fantasy than about her own kid.”
“And she’s out of credits,” Theo said, grinning down at her.
