Pascale's Wager: Homelands of Heaven

by Anthony Bartlett

  Finally at about ten she emerged from the stall and carefully pushed open the door of the restroom, listening closely. The corridor outside was poorly lit and she was sure there were no cameras mounted there. She looked both ways. Everything was deserted. One direction led back to the transport deck and opposite it she saw the plastic strip barrier opening on to the workshop. At the other end of the corridor was a door with a dull glow showing through a reinforced window.

  She crept along the corridor and looked sideways through the window. There was another passage running at right angles up to some kind of office with its own window. If there was anyone on duty they would be based there. She carefully opened the door and made her way along the corridor, sliding in next to the glass. Very slowly she inched her face around the edge. A man with his back to her was propped up in a swivel chair in front of three video screens. It didn’t seem he was looking at them but was watching a small hand-held device. She checked the video screens above the man; one of them covered the Bubble transport deck and the others seemed to show only the glimmer of ice-fields surrounding the building. The man shifted in his chair and she dodged back immediately behind the wall. She returned quickly to the corridor with the restroom. She now knew that the inside of the tractor workshop had no camera, so she headed straight to the plastic strips and pushed inside.

  She threaded her way through the shop, grabbing a power screwdriver and wire cutters from its littered benches. She found the tractor bay and the fleet of ice-tractors, fully maintained and ready to go. Her heart was pounding. This was it. Her complete break with the Homeland, her father, the whole system. She clambered up on one of the sixteen-seaters, opened the cabin door and found the box with the travel log. She quickly searched the entries looking for Poll but there was nothing there. She jumped across onto the second big tractor, opened the cabin and found the log. This time she located the entry she was looking for: “Day 100, Poll Sidak, Men’s Camp, Hut 9.” She jumped down onto the four-seater and climbed inside. It felt comfortable, as if it was already hers. She scanned around on the shed walls for an electrical access panel and saw one very close to the big retractable door. She popped it open with the power tool and quickly recognized the wiring colors from the Training Center computer. There were two feeds and she assumed that meant two cameras. It would take her less than a minute to strip the feed wires and splice them into one. But the wires disappeared into the wall and she had no idea where the cameras were, and so which one to cut and which one to save. Simply cutting both would surely send the watchman down to investigate. There was a fifty per cent chance of choosing the one that looked away from the exit lock. She took a wire in each hand, felt them and placed her bet.

  She returned to the four-seater, jumped up and entered the code to start the engine. She put the vehicle in reverse scraping a sixteen-seater as she swung round but she made it safely to the exit position in front of the wall. The remote was located up on the driver’s window pillar where she remembered it. She hit the button and waited for the wall section to roll back and then she inched the tractor into the lock. She pushed the button again, jumped out and raced over to the panel, cutting, stripping and splicing the wires in seconds, then dashing back to the lock and slipping through the gap just before the section trundled shut. She vaulted into the cabin as the outer gate began to lift, closing the cabin door and at the same time flipping the switch for the heat.

  She did the same thing as Rip had done, putting the tractor in gear the moment there was clearance for its roof. Again the antenna scraped, but immediately she was out on the tundra, heading directly away from the building and picking up speed. As she bounced through the gears, plunging forward into the arctic night, she searched around for the beacon device. There was a display screen on the console and she pushed a toggle next to it. It flickered and a message came up, “Set Destination”. All she had to do was toggle up once and “Camp (Men)” appeared. She depressed the toggle again and a gently pulsing light showed with a directional arrow. She swung the vehicle about so the arrow was facing the beacon and then she bumped the vehicle into fifth.

  There was no way of knowing whether the splicing of the cameras had worked or if even now the watchman was frantically informing Sector Security. But at least for the moment she was well ahead of any pursuer and she felt safe. As she was thinking this she suddenly realized the tractor was churning forward without any lights, traveling in complete darkness apart from the console. She scanned around for headlamps and finally found the switch. A great flower of light bloomed in front of the tractor showing a bright sheet of ice beneath an immense wall of black. It was only a moment later she glimpsed markers passing by on the left at intervals.

  7. ON THE RUN

  She nearly missed it, with the hypnotic sameness of the road, but after traveling for the best part of two hours she sensed a momentary change, as if the surface had altered its steady grinding note then quickly returned to it. She hit the brake and stopped. After a moment she put the tractor in reverse and slowly backed up. As she gazed at the road in its brilliant pool of light she saw what looked like a set of tracks breaking the straight-line of the roadway, producing a small ridging. The direction of the break seemed to be to her right. She toggled the beacon to see if there was anything leading that way, but it simply showed “Camp-Men” and “Camp-Women” straight ahead and “Base” right behind. The tracks seemed significant. If there was something down there it might prove a place to hide. But even without this incentive the tracks seemed to invite her. She put the ice-tractor in gear and slowly crawled to the right, her eyes glued to the window and the ice ahead. The going became bumpier and at times the ruts seemed to disappear, but the weight of some vehicle had splintered the ice cover fairly recently and it continued to hold just enough impression for her to follow.

  She couldn’t be sure how long she followed the tracks—it could not have been much more than a few minutes—but suddenly they took her down a small dip, into a saucer-shaped depression. Something about the way the beam of the headlights bounced off the opposite rim and then flashed over the area between made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She slowed even more, scanning the darkness intently for what she thought she'd seen. The slight creasing on the ice continued and then all at once it disappeared. Reversing, she swung the tractor to both sides, peering into the gloom. As she turned to the right, she glimpsed the outline of a large mound. Crawling closer she saw what looked like a large tumulus of ice with a flat near-side. Her heart raced as she drew up and stopped the tractor, gazing at the object in the ghostly light. It was unmistakably some kind of construction, a recessed wall under an ice-covered overhang, and tucked in to its side was what looked like a control box. What could it possibly mean to have a building like this so well hidden and in the middle of nowhere?

  She zipped up the front of her therm-suit and jerked its hood around her head, then pulled down the sleeve extensions which formed emergency mittens, and zipped them up too. She clambered out and hurried in the numbing cold over to the control box, pulling it open and hitting the button inside. There was a brief silence, then the noise of a hum and a crack and the door began to retract. At once she retreated inside the tractor and slipped it in gear, moving into the lock when the door was raised. It wasn’t difficult to locate the inside control and the corresponding switch for the inner lock. Scrambling out once more she pushed the switches and retreated back to the tractor. She watched the inner wall section slowly pull to the side. The sharp light from the headlamps projected into the dark interior picking out the shape of an ice-tractor parked at right angles to the lock. Beyond it and lower to the ground was the astonishing sight of a Bubble, a Sector Communications Vehicle. She inched forward and could clearly see there was a rail line beneath the Bubble and, most amazing of all, she could see the rail stretching out and disappearing into the dark oval of a tunnel. Her mouth fell open. She knew the Bubble-track system as well as anybody and there was absolutely no informat
ion of a rail tunnel, let alone one out this far. It could only mean one thing. Only one agency would have use for something like this, and have the ability to construct it and conceal it from sight.

  She swung the tractor round beside the parked tractor, drawing up beside it as the lock grumbled shut behind her shoulder. The vehicle had to belong to the stranger whom Rory had talked about this morning, the one who had been looking for her. She could almost feel the other world reaching out to meet her and at the very same moment she felt her own power to surprise it. The crucial question that she needed to answer was where had this tractor traveled from to get to here.

  The new tractor was exactly the same size and design as hers. She tried the handle of the door and it was unlocked. For a moment she was fearful there’d be a keypad and code to start the motor but there was nothing. She hit the start button directly and the machine broke into the familiar ascending whine. Yes, it was ready to go. There was a screen similar to the one in the first tractor and she pushed the toggle next to it. The blank space lit up and showed the pulsing light of a beacon, but without a name. She toggled left and right but nothing changed. This vehicle only had one destination and it lay at something like forty five degrees to the left of the beacon direction from the tractor she had just left. This was a significant difference and as she gazed at the small yellow spot expanding and shrinking on the screen she understood clearly what it was. Without a doubt here was the transit point between the sunshine world and this one, a place reachable by this ice-tractor and where some further means of transport must await. The stranger who had been looking for her, and very likely a companion too, had arrived from this shining spot, driving from there to here, and then riding their private Bubble to the Sector. All she had to do was to point the tractor back in the direction of the beacon and she would have solved the riddle of the Homeland.

  She was transfixed, staring at the beacon, knowing that this was where she had to go, this was where her destiny lay. But, of course—it was a crucial part of everything—first she had to get Poll. She broke herself free, went back to the first tractor and shut it down. She took her school bag with its supplies and returned to the new vehicle. She re-opened the lock and slipped the tractor in reverse, going through the steps to exit the shed and close its doors. Then it was night again out on the icefield. She headed back to the road that led to the camp, calculating it would lie more or less directly across the path of the new beacon. When she got to the markers it was almost one o’clock in the morning. She made a right turn to go in search of Poll. As she did she reached into her bag and dug out some food, a protein cake and one of the energy bars. There was a long journey ahead.

  ***

  Poll had been walking for six hours or more, really more running for a minute or so and then slowing down to walk until he had the energy to run again. But his bursts had gotten less and less and he was now just stumbling along. He had passed the relays and three exhaust manifolds in sequence, confirming the pattern he had discovered. He felt terribly weak. The poor diet and the constant assault of the cold had taken their toll. The tunnel of course was warm and he had to carry his greatcoat under his arm, with the gloves and food bundle shoved in a pocket, hampering his movement and causing him to sweat almost as much as if he’d been wearing it.

  He did not know how much longer he could keep this up. He had stopped a few times to eat the dry scones in his pocket and scoop up brackish water from the deeper pools. Each time it had been more difficult to will himself back to movement. As he hobbled along he also knew certainly that his nemesis, Guest, could not be far behind. His initial decision had been right, to start out at once, because he’d soon come across the broken relay with its flashing alert along the route. That also meant it would take little more than an hour for the work detail to reach the relay, replace the part and inform Guest on one of the tunnel phones. Guest would radio the Sector to get it switched on then head straight for his lair in the condenser hall to find out if he, Poll, had identified the switch as it went live. When he found nobody at the computer he would immediately suspect something and begin a search. At the most it would be one more hour before he sent someone down the tunnel. Poll could imagine who it would be.

  His lungs felt as if someone had sawn them through. Every breath was another cut of the saw. His head was beginning to spin and he wondered how he had ever imagined he could do this. At the closest the rocket port was something like another hundred kilometers. What had he been thinking? He had set out on whim to prove himself right and he had not thought through the fine details, let alone the physical challenge. Right now it would be Nute and Dogg pursuing him, the young, wolfish Icemen who could travel much faster than he could and would be dying to beat him within an inch of his life.

  The thought of this and the certain doom of all his hopes spurred him on beyond his body’s limits. His rasping breath and his feet clumping against the tunnel floor forced him to strain his ears continually, to catch any sound of pursuit. He wondered briefly whether, if the pursuers gained on him, he would he be able to hide inside the heavy doors leading to the refrigeration coils, of which he’d seen a couple, but he dismissed the thought at once. Just a few minutes in there and his body would freeze and after the exhaustion of the tunnel it would not stand the shock. His only hope was to get to the next shaft to the surface and perhaps elude them there. He continued to count the fans every half a kilometer: he had passed ten since the last exhaust manifold which meant there were about fourteen more before the next condenser hall and shaft.

  Counting distracted his mind from the ever increasing agony of his chest and legs, but he could not avoid the tunnel, a nightmare from which he was unable to awake. The mildewed storm lamps, the hemorrhaging walls, the constant sweating wind in his face, it was like the stories of hell they sometimes told in the Holo-casts. He was fated to push himself round and round this stinking tunnel for all eternity. Suddenly he thought he heard a voice echoing up the walls. Then, yes, there could be no doubting it; he heard his own name being called: “Poll!”

  “Hey, Poll, we’re after you! You can run but you can’t hide.”

  He almost gagged from terror. But the jolt of fear became adrenaline which allowed him to start running again for real. Did they know he was near? Had they heard him? There was no way he would reach the buffer room before his pursuers saw him but he desperately had to try. He redoubled his effort to run, his legs shaking and weak and his chest feeling as if a huge grinder had worn away his lungs until he must simply stop breathing. He could hear the voices gaining on him and felt sure by now they would hear him too. He thought he could detect Nute's vicious mocking tones. He made a superhuman effort and increased his speed. The voices seemed to fade but now instead he could hear the steady rhythm of a single pair of running feet. He was certain they were Nute's.

  About fifty meters ahead he could see a pile of materials used for reinforcing the tunnel walls. Something told him if he could reach that pile he had a chance. He dared not turn his head for fear he would stumble but he knew the running feet were only a few paces behind. It was as if Nute was enjoying the chase, keeping a steady rhythm, confident of his prey. Poll could now see the pile, only fifteen paces away. It contained waterproof cement bags, heavy wire netting, and various lengths of steel rod. Now he was three paces away and suddenly he dropped the coat from his arm in the path of his oncoming pursuer. He heard Nute swear and leap out of the way. At the same moment Poll came level with the pile and without hardly knowing what he was doing he grabbed up one of the rods in his right hand and crashed against the wall with the other, pivoting around and whipping the rod up and back with all his force. Nute had just side-stepped the coat and was unable to swerve in time. Poll's desperate lunge caught him full on the side of his head, felling him like a tree limb.

  The Iceman was down and out, with a very surprised look on his face. But Poll had no time to gloat. Another Iceman was about three storm lights away and was coming as fast as he co
uld, grabbing for his gun. Poll dived for his coat and turned to run again. The Iceman got off a shot but it went wide in the poor light. Poll crouched low, weaving as best he could, while the Iceman steadied himself to get a better aim. This time the bullet whistled close above, but Poll was now in the shadows and increasing his distance from the marksman all the time. There was one more shot which thudded into the wall behind and then the Iceman gave up. He was not that keen on the chase and anyway Nute needed help. As for the fugitive, no one ever escaped the tunnels.

  Poll continued to run, his body filled with an amazing burst of energy because of the battle, the only one he had ever been in. Soon he could hear nothing more behind. After several minutes, however, his pain and exhaustion returned, and worse than before. He slowed down to a hobbling pace, and he understood he now had another problem. The Iceman who had shot at him would have found one of the tunnel phones and reported the story to Guest. It would no longer be just a problem of camp discipline but a criminal matter, and the other camps would be alerted. Guest would speak to the next camp’s top Iceman and the message would be passed on to the squad leaders. They would be out on work duties and it would take time to make contact with them, so he perhaps had a chance. In any case he had to watch out for squads from the next camp working in the tunnel—another thing he hadn’t fully thought through.