Macao Station

by Майк Берри

  Halman called in at the aeroponics department, where white-coated technicians tended plants that hung with their roots suspended in a nutrient-rich vapour. The heat and humidity were stifling, almost suffocating. It was a strange place, where the plants themselves, with all their organic randomness, looked like alien visitors in the bright, sterile environment. Shiny steel shelves stretched away into the distance, pinched by perspective. Tomatoes and peppers, almost artificially red, dotted the greenery like bright baubles. Cabbages hung like beach balls that had frozen in mid-air.

  Aeroponics was one of the few departments on the station that typically took care of itself. Or at least, its staff took care of its running without too much cause to bother Halman, which amounted to the same thing from his point of view. Even so, he liked to walk the floors, talk to the people, be seen to show an interest.

  Halman was an honest creature at heart, and he found himself wanting to tell everyone about Nik’s concerns for the air system. When he spoke to Ola, the woman in charge of the department, the truth almost spilled out and he had to bite his lip to restrain it. He reminded himself that there was no need to scare people, least of all the slightly-nervous head of aero. She was efficient, but she was a known worrier at the best of times. Anyway, he was confident that Nik would fix it. Satisfied that he had done his duty by the aeroponics team, he continued onwards.

  He took the stairs up to Macao’s plaza, one of the more spacious areas of the station. Except for Gregor’s bar, The Miner’s Retreat, the retail units of the plaza were dead-eyed and shutter-mouthed. There weren’t many entrepreneurs willing to set up private businesses on a far-flung mining outpost, it seemed. Gregor, thank goodness, was the exception to the rule. Even at this hour, The Miner’s was open. Tobacco smoke and the smell of stale synthihol wafted from its shadowed doorway.

  From there, he wandered through the rec-area, between the massive tubes through which materials were shuttled from the refinery to the dispatch area of the hangar. The tubes were ten metres wide each, grey and heavily-armoured, and they always looked like the exposed bones of the station to Halman. Off-duty workers promenaded between them, looking out of the windows, chatting, drinking coffee, laughing together.

  He passed the kitchens, checking in to chat briefly with the head chef — a slightly pretentious title for a man with little more culinary skill than Halman himself. Stocks were getting low, but that was normal this close to resupply. There had been a temporary glitch in the water purification system a week before and the kitchens were still full of jury-rigged sterilisation equipment that nobody had yet dismantled. Halman requested that they take care of it sooner rather than later. The head chef shrugged and went back to his work. Halman didn’t have the heart to pursue it.

  He walked past the admin offices, pleased that nobody collared him on the way. His own door stood invitingly open and he could see his half-eaten apple browning on its plate amongst the detritus of his desk. Amy Stone, his second-in-command, bustled past, distracted, offering a token greeting.

  He continued into long rows of living quarters, occasionally stopping to exchange small-talk with someone or other, taking his time. If it hadn’t been for his perpetual concern about the air system, he believed he would even have been enjoying himself.

  He headed up the stairs, hubwards, to the refinery. He entered the department through thick sound-deadening doors hung with plastic curtains, emerging into a huge, shadowy cavern of deafening noise and massive crane-arms. Staff members crawled between the metal megaliths like ants. Sealed vats large enough to play football in stretched away into the distance. Control panels flashed; robotic arms tipped giant crucibles of searing molten metal into chutes and hoppers; steel walkways criss-crossed the ceiling, connecting mezzanines and observation platforms.

  The heat was far worse than inside aeroponics and Halman began to sweat at once. The concavity of Macao’s floor could be clearly seen here, this being the inside, hub-most layer of the ring and the view being unbroken by walls or bulkheads. Above Halman’s head, beyond the high ceiling of the refinery itself, was the spindle of the station — the hub of the great wheel — crammed with kinetic defence systems and communications equipment.

  He walked across the steel mesh platform and descended a short flight of steps to the main floor of the refinery, his boots crunching through rock dust and metal particles. His entrance was heralded by shuddering metallic groans and ear-splitting screeches as the robot arms went ponderously about their work. As he approached the nearest of the grinders — a huge, squarish lump of a thing that took raw material straight from the main hopper and crunched it into gravel — the refinery’s second-in-command, a serious woman named Sarissa, rounded the corner of the machine and almost bumped into him.

  She looked up, startled. She had an intelligent, if unsmiling face, haggard and pockmarked by tiny burns. She was holding a datasheet in one hand and a lump of glossy stone in the other.

  ‘Halman!’ she exclaimed in surprise.

  ‘Hi, Sarissa!’ he shouted back. A head-splitting, repetitive clanging noise began in the distance of the refinery as some heavy piece of equipment began its work.

  Sarissa lifted her ear defenders and slid them back on her head, pushing back her strawlike grey hair. ‘What?’ she yelled.

  ‘Hi, I said. How’re things?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ Sarissa shouted, nodding emphatically.

  ‘I spoke to Liu,’ Halman continued as slowly and clearly as he could. ‘They’re short on two-three-five down there.’

  Sarissa frowned heavily, shaking her head. ‘We’ve hardly had any in lately. We still don’t have a batch for them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  A refinery worker in full hazmat gear squeezed past Halman and scampered away between rusty metal towers.

  ‘No reason,’ Sarissa explained. ‘Just random. Some’ll come in sooner or later. Maybe today. Who knows? Is it urgent?’

  ‘Not yet, I don’t think. But if you have any at all, just take it down, will you?’

  ‘Sure, I’ll send it today.’ She hefted the lump of stone — presumably some item intended for analysis — and Halman got the impression that she would like to be away about her business. ‘Anything else?’ she asked, seeming to confirm this.

  ‘How are we for the rest of it? Oxides, copper, iron, nickel, heavy metals?’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Good. Lots of silver — a surprising amount. Once again, it’s just a random spike. The hoppers, overall, are as full as they ever get at this point in the cycle. We’ll be glad to get it all onto that shuttle.’

  ‘That’s great, Sarissa. Keeps us spinning, right?’

  ‘Right,’ she agreed, still not smiling.

  ‘What about water ice?’

  ‘Oh, loads. They ran a couple of shifts’ worth of just ice last week.’

  Halman nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Everything else okay?’

  ‘Well. . .’ she said uncertainly, looking away. Her fingers clenched and unclenched nervously on the lump of rock, massaging it.

  ‘What?’ Halman asked, sensing something wrong, something she didn’t really want to tell him.

  ‘We’ve, er, we’ve. . .’ she trailed off, still not looking at him. Her face worked with conflicting emotion but no sound came out.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘People have been reporting some slightly weird occurrences these last few days.’

  ‘Weird?’ parroted Halman, his brow furrowing. ‘Weird like what?’

  The noise was increasing in volume now and Sarissa had to raise her voice to a bellow in order to be heard. ‘Things have been going missing. You know — safety equipment, mainly.’

  ‘That is a bit weird,’ agreed Halman. Why would anyone take safety equipment? ‘Maybe people are misplacing stuff.’

  Sarissa shook her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she yelled. ‘Stewart was burned yesterday because he didn’t have the gloves he should have had — couldn’t find them.’

 
‘Pull someone off duty and get them to go through the whole place,’ Halman shouted. ‘Actually, two people. We can’t be having accidents because of shit missing. That’s just insane. Farsight’ll scrag me if someone dies.’

  ‘And. . .’ she started uncertainly. She looked up at Halman, seemed to steel herself and began again. ‘And. . . some people are saying the place is haunted. I know it’s ludicrous, but there you are. One of the guys was almost hit by a falling block yesterday, down at the far end near the crucibles. When we got up there, there was a shackle-pin missing.’ She puffed her cheeks out and shrugged, visibly lost for an explanation. ‘Those things don’t just come out on their own — they can’t. At least in theory. Nobody wants to go down there now. I pretty much have to force them, and even then they’ll only go in pairs.’

  ‘That is very odd,’ agreed Halman, genuinely puzzled. ‘But I expect it’s nothing. Even so, check the whole place out. Even if you have to stop production entirely for a day.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. . .’ she replied, looking away into the clanking, living depths of the refinery. ‘I’m sure it is just nothing. I mean, I wasn’t going to even mention it. I filled in an incident report, of course, but. . . The shackle pin is weird — it shouldn’t be possible — but I’m sure there’s a good explanation for it. And I’m also sure that it is just a one-off. Pretty sure,’ she finished unconvincingly.

  ‘Even so, I want this place checked over. That’s an order. Full safety survey. This talk of haunting is just the sort of bullshit we don’t need. I can’t have people scared to work, and I can’t have somebody killed if we could have prevented it.’ He stooped low, catching her eye. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Okay.’ And then she scurried away between billowing shadows and swinging cranes, quickly lost from sight.

  Halman stood for a moment, sweating, his ears ringing. ‘Haunted!’ he said aloud. ‘Bullshit!’ And then he turned and wandered back the way that he had come.

  Chapter Six

  Lina found Marco lying asleep on the sofa in the living room with a piece of half-eaten toast balanced on a plate on his chest. He had been watching the holo, which was still showing the final scenes of a Farsight film about the Corp Wars called The Bitter Frontier. It was a favourite of his, and one that she disapproved of. The holo was the only light source in the room, and shadows lurched across the walls in time to its hectic strobing. The fridge-freezer, which was slowly dying, could be heard even over the crashing sounds of interstellar warfare.

  Lina sighed and cautiously approached the prone form of her son. Her suspicions were confirmed — he was sleeping.

  She smiled to herself, wanting to reach out and touch him, maybe brush his tangled blond hair away from his eyes. That hair — an unruly shock that resisted all attempts at styling — was the perfect image of her own. She contented herself by simply standing and regarding his expressionless, slumbering face for a moment. He was a good boy, and a wave of simple love — an ache, almost — washed over her. How he could have turned out so well with a mother who was always at work and a father in Platini system, she couldn’t imagine. But there it was — somehow it had happened anyway.

  Suddenly, he started, some deep part of his brain alerting him to her presence, and sat up. The plate slid slowly off his chest and clattered onto the floor. The toast, of course, fell butter-side-down. Lina vaguely remembered hearing some scientific explanation as to why that usually happened — something to do with aerodynamics, she thought. Never mind.

  ‘Mum,’ he said, sleep-slurred, blinking up at her.

  ‘Hi, kiddo,’ she answered, gently forcing herself onto the sofa beside him. His face was endearingly confused. He craned to see the fallen toast, then relaxed against her.

  ‘I was watching the holo,’ he said unnecessarily.

  ‘You know I don’t like you watching that Farsight propaganda film,’ she said, putting an arm round his shoulders.

  ‘No, Mum, I know.’ He sounded like he was coming more fully to his senses now. ‘I just like it. I know nobody really won the Corp Wars. Farsight was no better than anyone else, right?’

  Lina nodded, looking into his face. That face was still a little cute around the edges, but soon it would be a handsome face, she reckoned. The flickering red and green that pulsed from the holo in alternating waves cast him in a surreal light, making him look like some sort of alien visitor from a more perfect universe. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘But now, they’re better than they were, and the Corp Wars were a long time ago. The company provide us a living, right? But I still don’t like you watching that film, on principle.’

  ‘Okay,’ he agreed. He paused for a moment, then changed the subject: ‘I’m hungry, Mum. I didn’t eat my toast.’

  ‘No,’ she answered. ‘I reckon the floor ate your toast. Holo — change, random.’ The holo obediently flicked to a scientific documentary about Predecessor ruins. There wasn’t really that much to say on the subject, in Lina’s opinion. Everyone knew they hadn’t actually left anything behind. Except, of course, for the hard core of idiots who insisted that the drug fader had come from DSH-3. ‘I’ll fix you some proper dinner.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’ He snuggled against her appreciatively.

  ‘No worries. I’ll see what we’ve got.’ Reluctantly (in truth, she was tired enough to fall asleep next to him) Lina forced herself to stand up and go into the kitchen.

  ‘Maybe we could have those burgers?’ Marco called from the other room.

  Lina rearranged the jumble of brooms, pipe-offcuts and shoes around herself so that she could actually access the fridge-freezer. She managed to get into such a position that she could open the door and extract the burgers — real meat burgers saved from the last shuttle — and some salad grown in the aeroponics room. ‘Yeah,’ she called back. ‘Burgers it is.’

  She managed to wriggle her way free from the clutches of a broken vacuum cleaner that she had never quite managed to fix, snagging a half-loaf of bread as she went. She picked her way to the stove and began to cook dinner.

  ‘Mum?’ said Marco from the kitchen doorway, making her jump a little.

  ‘Yes?’ she answered, turning to face him, spatula in one hand, flight suit speckled with cooking-oil spots.

  ‘I heard at school that the air scrubbers were wearing out, and that if they fail then we’ll all die.’ Although the tone was nonchalant, Lina couldn’t fail to detect the note of worry hidden underneath.

  She smiled reassuringly, uncertain of who she was really trying to reassure. ‘You know Sudowski’s guys won’t let that happen, honey. The station’s always been like this, since long before you were here. Before Nik Sudowski, it was his uncle. And the maintenance teams have always kept this place together. Always. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ he replied, nodding. He sounded a little unsure, although he looked happier.

  Lina turned to the cooker again and flipped one of the burgers to check its readiness. Satisfied, she dumped both of them onto the hunks of bread that she had laid out ready on two plates, salad piled alongside.

  ‘The shuttle is due any day now, anyway, and it should be carrying the part for the scrubbers. The maintenance team have known it was going for ages. Even if the old one fails before that — which it won’t — then they’ll find some way of keeping the system running. Dinner’s up.’

  ‘Yeah!’ Marco enthused, his stomach overriding any concerns his mind may have had. He hungrily accepted the proffered plate and they headed to the metal table in the living room. Metals were about the only things that were in genuine plenty at Macao, and one kind of got used to seeing them everywhere, usually in their bare, untreated forms. Pretty much the whole of the station was furnished with whatever functional metal happened to be in abundance at the time.

  Lina killed the holo and turned on the overhead light, which was set to so-called ‘environmental mode’ and accordingly emitted a ruddy evening-hue. They both tucked in, equally famished.

  �
��How was school, Son?’ asked Lina around a mouthful of burger. She wiped a smear of tomato ketchup from her chin.

  ‘Mmm, okay,’ he answered. ‘We’re learning chemistry, but Miss Greene says all chemistry is just stamp collecting, and we should remember that all science is physics really.’ He shrugged and took another bite.

  Lina laughed. ‘She did, did she? She should tell that to the chemists at the refinery — they’d like that!’

  Marco took a swig from his water glass. ‘Ella told me one of her guards was attacked by a prisoner,’ he said conversationally.

  Ella was Ella Kown, security chief and mother of Marco’s best friend, Clay. Lina didn’t really appreciate her telling Marco about the prison attack, but she had never knowingly lied to him and she wasn’t going to start now. ‘Yeah, ’fraid so. He’s gonna be okay, though, the guy who was attacked. Murkhoff, it was. I think Ella’s team just need a little more experience in handling the prisoners. It’s still a bit new to them.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ he said, seemingly dismissing the matter. ‘Is Eli still gonna take me to the game?’

  ‘The soccer? Yeah, I should think so — he hasn’t said otherwise.’

  He nodded. ‘Good. I like Eli.’

  Lina nodded, too. ‘So do I. He’s one of the good guys. Even though he works us half to death sometimes.’

  ‘Keeps us spinning, right, Mum?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she agreed, picking up a piece of salad with her fingers, grinning to hear him say those words. ‘That’s the line.’

  Chapter Seven

  Darkness, cold, an echoing icy tomb without air. The man moved slowly, suited and clumsy, floating down the tunnel.

  ‘Are you there?’

  Nothing. . .

  ‘Hello?’

  Nothing. . .

  He moved further down the tunnel, gloved hands trailing over slick, unseen surfaces, assuring himself of his bearings. He gave a little kick of thrust from the jet in the suit’s arm, being careful not to hit the wall. This was the right place, wasn’t it? Suddenly he was afraid. Maybe he was lost — a man could lose the way, run out of air or power, suffocate, freeze and die in here.