Living Hell

by Catherine Jinks

  ‘Wait. Wait a second.’ Mum flapped her left hand at Sloan. Her right hand was clamped across her forehead. ‘Nitric oxide. Nitric oxide.’

  We all waited.

  ‘We synthesise our own nitric oxide. Every one of us! In our bodies! Peroxide, superoxide, lectoferrin . . .’ She counted them off on her fingers. ‘And nitric oxide! The neutrophils manufacture it to destroy free radicals!’

  A few questioning glances were exchanged. Only Sloan seemed to understand what was going on. He stared hard at my mother with narrowed eyes.

  ‘What are neutrophils?’ Lais asked cautiously.

  ‘White blood cells! White blood cells, Lais!’

  Sloan lifted his face, and scanned the ceiling. ‘Those samplers were manufactured to detect impurities,’ he conceded slowly. ‘After which they’re supposed to signal for a clean-up . . .’

  ‘Wait just a minute.’ Dad’s voice was tight. ‘Quenby, are you saying – are you saying those samplers are part of the ship’s immune system?’

  I gasped. Once again, my mind was flooded with ideas, which came together like chemical reagents, sparking other ideas. It all made instant sense. I had studied the immune system at school, and remembered how it worked: the first line of defence (skin, mucous, nose hairs), the increase of local temperature (to speed up cell production), the swelling of blood vessels in the brain, the constriction of blood vessels in the skin – and the armies of immune cells. Some of these cells were produced in the bone marrow, some in the lymph nodes. Leucocytes, they were called – white blood cells.

  They killed things. Bacteria. Viruses. Foreign bodies of any kind. They were designed to kill things.

  ‘But we’re not foreign bodies!’ I burst out. ‘We’ve lived here all our lives!’

  ‘Shh,’ said Dad. ‘Don’t panic . . .’

  ‘Cheney’s right,’ Sloan agreed, frowning. For the first time, he looked worried. ‘We’re like the bacteria in our own gut. We’re part of this system, we always have been. How can we have been identified as a threat?’

  ‘Maybe it was me,’ said Arkwright faintly. He cast his eyes around the room. ‘I popped that sub-conduit. On the Bridge.’

  ‘Oh, but we patched that up.’ Mum’s voice shook. ‘We fixed it, Arkwright.’

  ‘Yes, but suppose someone else didn’t?’ I had remembered the Remote Access Repair Units. The hydrochloric acid. I spoke before even stopping to think. ‘Suppose someone saw one of the RARs attacking the struts, and threw something at it? There are so many people on board. If just one of us panicked . . .’

  I couldn’t finish. Sloan was regarding me gravely. Lais had buried her face in her hands. Arkwright swore as Bam wriggled free of his grasp and bounded towards the door.

  Before the fleeing rodog even reached it, however, someone cried out. From the other room.

  Someone who sounded absolutely terrified.

  ‘Oh no!’ he shouted. ‘Look! Oh no! ’

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  The smell was the first thing we noticed as we poured out of the Pen. It was a terrible smell that made us all cough: a smell of burning meat, with another stench overlaying it. Then we saw Firminus standing by the door.

  He pointed.

  ‘Something’s trying to get in,’ he rasped.

  Where the two fleshy panels met, the door was changing colour from pink to brown. Bits of it were sloughing away, in yellow-and-red streaks. A pale vapour poured off the dissolving tissue.

  ‘Acid,’ said Sloan.

  ‘But – but it can’t be!’ This was Lais. ‘They can’t be attacking the fabric of the ship!’

  ‘NK cells,’ Mum croaked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Natural Killer cells.’ Mum couldn’t take her eyes off the door. Her voice sounded dull. ‘If there’s a virus inhabiting an ordinary cell, an NK cell binds to it and releases chemicals which destroy the cell membrane, so that the cell bursts open.’

  ‘Holy mother of God,’ said Ottilie. I froze up. I couldn’t think. Natural Killer cells? Natural Killer cells?

  We didn’t stand a chance.

  ‘We have to get out.’ Dad grabbed my arm. He was scanning the room. ‘How can we get out?’

  ‘We can’t!’ Lais wailed.

  ‘Yes we can.’

  It was Dygall. He seemed remarkably calm – perhaps because he was still sedated.

  ‘The air ducts,’ he declared.

  The air ducts! Yes! I peered up, searching for the access panel. Because we were on A deck, the air duct ran overhead. It ran between A and B decks, along with the filtration ducts and cable conduit. You could reach it through access panels, or through hatches in the stair shafts that could be found at both ends of every street.

  ‘But will the duct be big enough?’ somebody wanted to know.

  ‘Oh yes.’ I knew that. I had spent enough time in Sustainable Services to have learned about the air ducts. ‘There was a minimum standard circumference set, to allow for manual repair -’

  ‘Come on.’ Dad jerked me forward. ‘Kids first.’

  ‘No!’ about three women exclaimed at once. Then Mum said, ‘Not in the lead, Tuddor!’

  ‘Sloan, then! Hurry!’

  Arkwright had already dragged a stool under the access panel. It didn’t look much like an access panel any more. It had become a semi-transparent sheet of membrane, streaked with blood vessels.

  Arkwright fumbled frantically at its edges, trying to find the release catch.

  ‘For God’s sake, Arkwright, hurry up!’

  ‘Oh no! Oh no!’ Lais was shaking and crying. ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Just pull it!’ Dygall yelled. ‘Just rip it off!’

  ‘If I damage it, we won’t be able to reseal it,’ Arkwright replied, through his teeth.

  ‘Arkwright, quickly!’

  ‘Here.’ Sloan sprang onto Arkwright’s stool, causing Arkwright to lose his balance and fall back onto the floor. Sloan slid his fingers under a flap of muscle above his head. He began to peel open the access panel.

  ‘Someone has to hold it,’ he gasped. ‘While I climb through . . .’

  I glanced at the door. Its centre was now black. The brown area was getting bigger.

  I could hear the hiss of chemical reaction, even through the clamour that everyone was making.

  ‘Go, Sloan, go on!’

  ‘Yestin next!’

  ‘But there are samplers in there! Inside the air ducts!

  Aren’t there?’ This was one of Ottilie’s staff. He was in a complete panic. ‘I’m sure there are! There must be!’

  ‘No,’ I said, and had to clear my throat. My voice wasn’t working properly. ‘No,’ I squawked. ‘Just filters and scrubbers.’ ‘We’ll take a chance,’ Dad said. He released my arm, and grabbed Yestin around the waist.

  Sloan was already scrambling through the access hole. All I could see of him were his legs. Arkwright was holding the flap back for him.

  ‘You right, Sloan?’ Firminus shouted. He had one eye on his son, the other on the door.

  ‘Fine!’ came the muffled response.

  ‘You next,’ said Dad, and hoisted Yestin up towards the hole in the ceiling.

  ‘I can’t turn around!’ Sloan announced. ‘It’s too narrow!

  ’ ‘Grab his feet,’ Dad ordered. ‘Yestin? Grab Sloan’s feet!

  He’ll pull you in!’

  ‘Will you hurry?’ Lais screamed.

  The black patch on the door was disintegrating; it had been eaten away. There was a hole the size of my fist, and through it I could see . . . something. Something that wasn’t pink, like a sampler, but purple. A sort of bluey-purple.

  Pulsing bluey-purple.

  ‘Dad . . .’ I faltered.

  Dad turned. His expression was hard. ‘You next,’ he ordered, reaching for me. But Firminus was already pushing Dygall towards the hole. As Yestin’s kicking legs disappeared from sight, Firminus heaved Dygall’s unwieldy form towards them.

  ‘Quick!’ Firminu
s grunted. ‘Grab on . . .!’

  ‘Dad, that’s not a sampler, look!’ I could see more of the purple stuff now, because the hole was bigger than my head, and opening up fast. Through it, I could make out streaks of white, a ring of dark polyps, a series of small, winking mouths . . . ‘Dad, it’s something else!’

  ‘It’s attached itself to the other side of the door,’ Firminus remarked, with a kind of deadly calm. ‘It’s excreting some chemical.’

  ‘Just get up there, Cheney!

  ’ I was tall enough to reach the access panel while standing on the stool. When I grabbed the edge of the hatch, it was slippery but yielding. So I was able to dig my fingernails into it. Dad gave me a leg-up.

  I remember very clearly my last glimpse of the BioLab – a sweeping view, because I was looking down. I saw a circle of staring eyes and open mouths and sweating faces. I saw Lais cowering under a console. I saw Firminus watching the door, his arms wrapped around his chest; Ottilie standing with her hands locked together over her mouth; one of her staff hefting the magnetron pole. I saw the drooling wound in the door, which was filling the whole room with a horrible stench.

  That was all I saw. Dad gave me a huge shove, and I was suddenly in the air duct. In the dark, narrow, slick, circular air duct.

  The light in the collar of my pressure suit immediately flicked on. At least its sensor was still working.

  ‘Go! Go!’ someone screamed from behind me.

  I went. I struggled along, using my elbows and toes. (I couldn’t get up onto my hands and knees, because the duct was too small.) Ahead, I could see Dygall’s feet working desperately. The duct wall shuddered with the impact of each kick and nudge.

  ‘I’m here, Cheney!’ It was Mum, panting. Gasping for breath. ‘I’m right behind you! Don’t stop!’

  I didn’t. I couldn’t. I thrashed along, gulping down air, sliding, wriggling, until I almost ran my face into the soles of Dygall’s boots.

  ‘Go on!’ I screamed. ‘Keep going!’

  ‘Sloan, what are you doing?’ Dygall cried. I couldn’t hear the response. But next thing I knew, we were moving again.

  Shortly afterwards, I passed under a B deck access panel, and realised why Sloan had stopped. Lying across the filter screen was something that looked horribly like an arm. I might have been wrong, of course. It was hard to tell.

  Was someone lying on the floor up there? Dead or injured?

  ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘there’s something overhead . . . through the access panel . . .’

  ‘Keep going.’

  ‘It’s just -’

  ‘Keep going!’

  So I kept going. There wasn’t much choice. Whenever I came to another access panel, I would peer through the membrane net, trying to work out our position. I didn’t have much luck, though. I could tell when we passed over streets, but not which streets they were. The shapes in the compartments were too indistinct to be easily identified. I knew we were heading away from BioLab; that was about it.

  I didn’t know how many people were behind me. Had we all got out? I didn’t have the breath to ask. I almost didn’t want to.

  At last Dygall came to a halt in front of me. He yelled, in a strained and high-pitched voice, ‘Sloan says we’re at MedLab! The Stasis Banks! Should we stop here?’

  I transmitted the message to my mother. Huffing and puffing, she replied, ‘There are hardly any . . . samplers in the . . . Stasis Banks. It’s wall-to-wall . . . pods and their . . . sensors are internal . . .’

  ‘So should we stop?’

  ‘They’ve got a . . . double pressure . . . seal too. And an airlock filter . . .’

  ‘So should we stop or not? Mum?’

  A pause. Then I heard Arkwright’s voice, very, very faintly. ‘We can’t stay in here, Quenby. It’s not an option.’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘Tell Sloan we’ll try the Stasis Banks.’

  ‘Did you hear that, Cheney?’ asked Mum. ‘Tell Sloan -’

  ‘I know. I heard.’

  I passed on the message. Within seconds, the duct began to shake as, somewhere up ahead, Sloan thumped at an access panel. It took him a while to break through. I heard Dygall say ‘Yuk!’, and wondered what vessel Sloan might have ruptured in the ship’s fabric.

  ‘Quenby!’ It was Arkwright again. I could hardly understand him; his words were muffled by my mother’s intervening bulk. ‘Don’t let those kids climb down first! Tell them to keep going, over the panel, and then they can back up once I’m down!’

  ‘Good idea,’ Mum said. ‘Cheney -’

  ‘Yeah. I heard.’ Once more, I transmitted the message. Sloan, however, ignored it; I don’t think he considered himself a ‘kid’. Dygall ignored it too. He often ignored suggestions. Only Yestin did as he was told.

  Suddenly, I found myself on the edge of a void. Below me, two faces were staring up out of the dimness.

  One of them was Sloan’s.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Just crawl across the hole until your legs have drop-space. I’ll catch you. It’s not a big fall.’

  It wasn’t, either. Despite Mum’s protests, I swung myself down through the hole, until I was dangling from the ceiling like an old-fashioned pendant light. ‘There are no samplers, Quenby!’ Sloan declared, as he reached for my waist.

  Dygall was sitting on the floor, with his head in his hands. The floor itself was so soft that, if I had come down hard, I would have been cushioned.

  Sloan caught me, though. He let me down gently.

  I looked around.

  ‘It’s so dark,’ I croaked.

  ‘It’s always dark in the Vaults,’ Sloan replied, using our nickname for the Stasis Banks. ‘You know that. Hey, Quenby! I’ll catch you!

  ’ I had never liked this area of the ship. Not that I had been in it very often; you had to have special clearance. But I had visited the Vaults once or twice for school, and had found the long racks of pods rather creepy. Everyone in those pods looked so dead - though they weren’t, of course. They were in cytopic suspension, being monitored carefully by all the sensors hooked up to them. You could see them through the clear silicon casings, face after face, form after form, like the statues lined up along a particular corridor in our mimexic tour of Ancient Rome.

  I’d always had the sense that one of those motionless figures was going to open his or her eyes as I trudged past. Even though I knew it was impossible. No one just snaps out of cytopic suspension. It takes a long time, and a lot of careful adjustments. If it’s not done with absolute precision, you can get badly hurt.

  Surveying the silent ranks of B Crew, stretching for a long, long way in both directions, I suddenly thought:

  something’s wrong.

  They didn’t look normal.

  ‘Ooof!’ said Mum. She had come down a little too fast, and had fallen to her knees. But she quickly struggled to her feet again. ‘Cheney? Are you okay?’

  ‘Mum, look.’ Nervously, I edged towards the nearest pod. The beam of light from my collar-spot hit its casing, which was no longer a clear, glassy silicon, but something softer and more cloudy. (It looked almost as if it would wobble if you touched it.) Nevertheless, despite this change, my light-beam did manage to penetrate the casing and illuminate what lay beneath.

  There was still a person inside, who seemed to be disappearing into a kind of pink jelly. The tube inserted under his skin, near his collarbone, was now the same colour as the skin itself. The trodes on his body were sending out shoots, weaving a fine web across his head and limbs and torso. One of the filaments had even worked its way into the corner of an eye . . .

  ‘Don’t look!’ Mum snapped. She jerked me away. ‘Don’t look.’

  ‘Oh . . . oh no . . .’

  ‘We can’t help them, Cheney, don’t look.’

  It was too late. I had seen, and felt sick. I had to take big breaths. ‘They’re connected to CAIP,’ I groaned. ‘They’re part of the ship, now . . .’

  ‘Shh!’

&nb
sp; It was like a nightmare. It was the sort of thing only the sickest of minds could ever have imagined. But there was worse to come.

  Yestin had slid down from the ceiling. Arkwright had followed him, and now stood dragging his fingers through his sticky hair, his chest labouring, as he shook his head at Sloan. Arkwright’s knees were shaking. His expression was blank.

  Sloan frowned. He squinted up at the access panel. His collar-spot wavered over the dark, gaping hole above him.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ I whispered. ‘Where are the others?’

  But I already knew the answer. I could sense it, from the way Arkwright winced and closed his eyes.

  The others weren’t with us.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  It was Sloan who finally found the words. I was speechless.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘Tuddor sealed the panel,’ Arkwright replied hoarsely.

  ‘Behind you?’

  ‘I didn’t . . .’ Arkwright paused, took a deep breath, and turned his huge, bloodshot eyes towards my mother. ‘There were samplers coming in,’ he explained, choosing his words with an obvious effort. ‘Samplers and those blue – I mean, those scent pellet things. I’m sorry, Quenby, I didn’t know. Not until . . . it was Tuddor who made the decision.’

  Someone patted my arm, but I didn’t even look around.

  ‘What happened to my dad?’

  ‘Cheney, I’m sorry, I don’t know -’

  ‘They got him!’

  ‘No -’

  ‘They did!’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see.’

  ‘You did see!’ I could tell from his face. It looked bruised. When I stepped forward, Sloan grabbed me.

  ‘What happened, Arkwright?’ my mother demanded. She spoke very quietly. ‘You’d better tell us.’

  Arkwright hesitated, and I felt as if my chest was going to burst open. Sloan was still holding my arm. Dygall hovered at my side. Yestin was behind me – I wasn’t sure where.

  I could barely stand up, let alone keep track of Yestin.

  ‘One of the samplers got Lais,’ Arkwright sighed, at long last.

  We all waited, mute with shock.

  ‘It went straight past Tuddor and attacked Lais. The last thing I saw was, Ottilie got hit by a scent pellet. That was the last thing I saw.’