The voice continued, becoming audible again when Holly stopped talking: “… completely lost you six days ago. What’s your status?”
“Wait for their first reply,” Rusev said, urging Holly to release her finger from the outgoing speech button. Unlike the crew on the station, whose radio module was fully and properly connected to the broader console, Rusev and Holly would not have recordings of whatever replies came back. They had to pay attention to every word.
The next 93-second wait wasn’t quite as dread-filled as the first given that the most likely point of failure had been safely navigated, but there was still room for uncertainty over whether the outgoing voice communications would be safely received and automatically decrypted at the station. The Karrier’s radio module was designed to retain its core functions in the event of a broader console failure — which was effectively what the absence of the rest of the console amounted to — but this had never previously been relied upon in a real emergency.
Bo, who knew nothing of this final potential stumbling block, was giddy with delight. “It worked!” he yelled. “It actually worked!”
The flood of relief that hit Holly when the familiar voice returned with confirmation that her message had been received was, to her surprise, even stronger than the first. It really had worked. She covered her mouth with her hand and tried not to cry tears of joy. When she turned away from the radio to see Bo, he pounced towards her like a kitten and threw his arms around her neck.
Rusev laughed at the outpouring of emotion and then moved forward towards the radio module to take control of the all-important communications. She responded to the request for details of their situation by stating it as plainly as she could.
Holly almost couldn’t believe how crazy it all sounded: they were stranded on an invisible planet-like body not merely controlled but built by Roger Morrison. Without going into the horrific choice the group would face if they weren’t rescued within the next five days, Rusev gave the explicit order for the remaining Karrier to be urgently dispatched towards the origin of their radio signal.
The next reply from the station asked for clarification of what Rusev meant about a man-made planet and sought absolute confirmation that the Karrier was to be readied for a rescue mission.
“We need to tell V that we got through to the station,” Bo said, facing Holly. “And Grav and Yury. And my dad, if he’s awake.”
Holly nodded in full agreement; the others did deserve to be kept in the loop.
“Is it okay if we pop back to the lander?” Bo asked Rusev.
“By all means. I’m not leaving this radio until the Karrier is here, so it would be good if you could bring more coffee and some of my things when you come back.”
“Definitely,” Holly said.
“Can I drive the rover back?” Bo asked.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t care as long as we made contact?” Holly laughed.
“I know, but…”
“Fine, you can drive.”
Bo literally jumped with joy and punched the air. “See you later,” he said to Rusev before dashing to the door.
Rusev, her finger hovering over the button to reply, looked at Holly. “We couldn’t have done this without you,” she said.
“Everyone has done their part,” Holly said. “And it was my job to get these people to that station. I don’t think the description said anything about all of this, but…”
Rusev laughed and turned back to the radio before commencing her reply.
Holly exited the bunker and joined Bo in the rover. “Not too fast,” she said. Within thirty seconds she had to add “I didn’t mean this slow” as Bo drove ultra-conservatively. “At this rate, they’ll see the rescue Karrier arriving before we get back to tell them about it,” she joked.
Bo sped up slightly, but by the time he parked outside the lander Holly still felt that she could probably have gotten there faster on foot.
Before Holly stepped out of the rover, Bo was already past the lander’s external security lock and halfway up the ladder.
“We got through,” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “They’re coming to get us!”
Day Eight
sixty-eight
A fresh air of positivity filled the lander in the minutes and hours following the news that contact had been made with the Venus station.
Predictably, Viola was most full-hearted in her celebratory cheers while the adults were slightly more reserved.
Out of the children’s earshot, Grav qualified his joy with the words: “I will celebrate properly when we are on board the rescue Karrier.” He then paused. “In fact, I will celebrate properly when we are on the station.”
He said the words with a degree of jest, so Holly joined him in smiling.
One person who didn’t smile was Yury. “I’ll celebrate when Morrison is exposed to the world for what he is,” he said flatly.
Grav and Viola made a trip to the bunker to bring Rusev some supplies for her encampment and to enjoy the novelty of communicating with the station. On their return, they informed Holly and the others that everything was in place for the rescue Karrier to set off within hours.
The evening had passed quickly. Robert, becoming more like himself again but still extremely drowsy, slept in the lander in the bed that had been Dante’s while Bo slept in Rusev’s. Holly, Viola and Grav slept in the extension as usual.
With Robert unable to do so, Viola had administered Bo’s evening injection.
Fortunately, by the time Holly and Viola entered the lander the following morning, Robert was sitting fully upright and insisting that he felt fine.
Robert was evidently still hopped up on Grav’s super-strength painkillers, but he seemed lucid enough and was full of questions about precisely how long the Karrier would take to arrive.
“I already told you this,” Yury impatiently answered from his seat at the table. “Around 72 hours. We will have a more specific time soon.”
Holly walked over to Yury and saw that he was poring over the large map they had taken from the bunker’s wall. Viola joined her.
“I still think the prime landing site is the valley where the other Karrier settled,” he said, pointing to the area which was by now very familiar to both Holly and Viola. “It’s well clear of any major zonal lines, and landing near the other Karrier offers the natural advantage of making it far easier to transfer important cargo.”
While Holly focused on the circle Yury was tracing with his finger, Viola moved around the table and tapped the area to the map’s extreme top left. This area was dominated by a series of intriguing, irregular and unexplored structures.
“What about New Eden?” the girl asked, referring to the zone by the name she’d gleaned from the bunker’s emergency backup binder. “We have some time…”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” Yury said. He didn’t address the second part of Viola’s comment — her implicit suggestion to visit the site.
Too intrigued not to, Holly voiced her own opinion: “I think I should go. Not for curiosity’s sake, but because we’re the only people who can ever find out the whole story about this place. We’re the only people who can tell it, but before we tell it we need to know what it is.”
“I’m coming with you if you go,” Viola said.
Holly knew what Robert would have to say about that, and likely Grav and Rusev, too.
“I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do,” the girl continued. “Please?”
“Ask your dad,” Holly said, slightly caught off-guard by how quickly the general discussion of visiting the site had morphed into a negotiation over who would be going.
“But he’ll say no.”
Holly couldn’t help but smile at the girl’s straightforwardness and decided to accompany her as she asked. On their way — all of ten or fifteen paces — Viola whispered a request for Holly to do the asking. She agreed.
“I’m going to check out the New Eden site to document
what’s there,” she said, standing over Robert’s bed. “Viola wants to come with me.”
“We’ll be careful and safe and back before you know it,” Viola strived to add.
Robert looked at Viola for a few seconds, then at Holly, and then back to Viola. “Stay with Holly at all times and do exactly what she says,” he said.
Viola hesitated for a moment, as though mentally making sure that he really had said yes. When it clicked, she leaned and hugged him in thanks until he winced from the contact. “Sorry,” she whispered.
“Do you think you’ll be able to look after your dad for us?” Holly asked Bo, crouching to his level. Knowing how difficult it would be to keep an eye on his inevitably energetic exploration techniques, she hoped the boy wouldn’t ask to come along.
He nodded. “But if you find anything cool, bring it back.”
Holly ruffled his hair before returning to Yury at the table. She was surprised to see him standing and packing a small bag. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Coming with you,” the old man replied. “I want to see what Morrison was doing on Terradox while Terradox is still here. I want to see exactly what we’re taking down.”
sixty-nine
Though Grav had no desire to join the unlikely trio on their expedition to New Eden, of which he had no strong opinion either way, he was happy to share their ride to the bunker.
Having expected an argument with Rusev — known for her conservative approach to just about everything — Holly and Yury were as glad as they were surprised to hear her agree with their view of the trip’s inherent merit.
Grav ended up being the most sober voice, insisting that they wait the necessary hour for a backup rover battery to fully charge. He had already drawn up a checklist before they left for the bunker, which included EVA suits, an emergency shelter, blankets, and what Holly considered a needlessly large contingent of water containers. She saw no real risks to the journey, which covered a distance she could comfortably traverse on foot fairly quickly should their rover — the only real point of failure — run into any problems. Holly hadn’t considered the potential reward of the trip in any great detail; but given the countless wonders they had discovered on Terradox before its horrific context emerged, an area called New Eden promised much.
In the hour while the backup rover battery charged, Rusev explained that she was now in direct contact with the crew of the Karrier en route to Terradox. The changeover had carried an element of necessary risk, she said; the radio module’s connection with the station had to be terminated so that the radio on the rescue Karrier could seek to establish its connection to Rusev. None of this would have been a problem if the core radio module had still been surrounded by the rest of the Karrier’s complex control console, but in the end the potential difficulties never materialised.
The rescue Karrier remained in full contact with the station as well as with Rusev. This was infinitely preferable to the alternative option of maintaining the direct Terradox-to-station connection and relying on the station to pass messages to the Karrier, since the potential difficulty of timing the Karrier’s entry through Terradox’s physical cloak would require a level of precision that would have been impossible with a time lag of more than a few seconds. With Rusev talking directly to the Karrier as it drew near, there would be no meaningful lag at all.
Yury enjoyed a brief chat with the Karrier’s crew, who were all delighted to hear his voice, but the slowly shrinking time lag made back-and-forth conversation difficult.
When the backup battery was fully charged, Holly’s trio departed. Grav stayed with Rusev, happily catching up with the rescue Karrier’s security officer who he’d known for a long time.
With a detailed map, a straight line of travel and a rover which could tackle all terrain before it with no trouble, the drive to New Eden could hardly have been simpler.
The journey was quick and comfortable, with the rover showing no reaction when it crossed even the most visible zonal thresholds.
“Has your pacemaker been alright since that day when it wasn’t?” Viola asked, leaning forward to talk to Yury.
Amidst everything else that had been going on, Holly felt guilty to have completely forgotten about Yury’s difficulty that day. Even today, before taking him out in a rover across more than a handful of zones, it hadn’t crossed her mind.
“That line is thicker than the others,” he said, pointing to the folded map that lay on his knee. “The fallen drones you found were all along offshoots of the same line. I’ve crossed between plenty of zones with no ill effects and the ones we’re crossing today are all shown as regular lines on the map. We have nothing to worry about on that front.”
Holly wished she could share his confidence, but now that the issue was in her head she couldn’t get it out. She stayed largely silent while Viola and Yury talked amongst themselves for the rest of the way. It was their first real long conversation, with questions going both ways and seemingly nothing off the table. Yury flat-out asked Viola what she knew about her late mother’s work and, after answering honestly that she’d never paid much attention, Viola asked Yury if he and Rusev were “just friends, or what?”
The old man laughed heartily. “Friends and colleagues,” he said.
A narrow but very long rock formation, almost resembling a great wall, passed on the right and informed the trio that they were extremely close to their destination.
The landscape around the rover was now lush; by far the lushest they had encountered. The trees looked familiar, resembling Earth-like palms. The ground was covered in short grass reminiscent of the modified kind which graced the gardens of the rich on Earth, hardily engineered to require extremely low amounts of water and to cease growing at its ideal length.
“We’re in the same zone as New Eden,” Yury said.
“I think we might already be in New Eden,” Viola said, looking out at the perfect vistas. “The buildings might just be one part of it.”
Holly continued forward, her anticipation building. She soon saw a vague shape come into view up ahead; before long, the clear outline of a large white building emerged.
Utterly isolated and nowhere near as large or oddly-shaped as the map suggested, the still-imposing white house looked like something from an antebellum plantation.
Holly drove to the point where the grass ended and the paving began, within a stone’s throw of the grand building.
There was no question whether or not they were going inside, but there were plenty of questions over what they might find.
“Well,” Yury said, opening his door and stretching his stiff legs. “Welcome to New Eden.”
seventy
The sound of birdsong and chirping crickets greeted Holly as she stepped out of the rover and towards the house.
There were no birds and no crickets.
Impressive water features flanked the building, with the sound of the fountains adding to the ambience. The faux-natural sounds of New Eden had a subconscious soothing effect. Prior to this, the only sounds Holly had ever heard outdoors on Terradox were gentle waves lapping on the sand at the beach in one of the so-called Tourist Zones and the occasional breeze rushing past her ear.
“How did they build it?” Viola asked, staring up at the perfectly painted house, complete with a rocker on the porch and an opulent balcony above it. “Like, I know the general idea of embryonic romotech… with the self-replicating romobots and the intricate designs pre-programmed to every tiny detail and all that stuff; we covered it twice in school. And I’ve seen the videos of stuff being built like that on Earth, but here? Where’s the material coming from? The actual matter?”
Holly was glad Viola was looking at Yury when she asked these questions.
“There may well have been some boots on the ground before ours,” Yury said, “so we can’t say for sure that certain materials weren’t brought after the initial expansion. But even then, the sheer mass of Terradox — the rocky ground, the water, the
peaks — it’s all so far beyond what I would have thought possible.”
Viola shrugged and stepped towards the door. If the movement of her hand was anything to go by, her first instinct was to knock. She stopped herself and tried the door. It opened.
Having half-expected the building to be an empty shell, Holly stood open-mouthed in the doorway as her eyes took in every opulent inch. A grand staircase, richly carpeted in the centre, led up to the second floor.
Yury and Viola, apparently less awed, hurried inside and tried every door they could see. Yury walked more freely than Holly had seen for a while. Every door he tried was locked. Viola’s doors were no kinder but, undeterred, they both ventured upstairs. Holly followed, and by the time she reached the top they had both stopped beside the same door. Holly saw the engraving on its golden plaque: R. MORRISON.
“If this one’s locked, we’re breaking it down,” Viola said.
No one disagreed.
seventy-one
Viola almost fell forward as the knob turned and the door unexpectedly opened. Holly and Yury stood beside her at the threshold.
The word eerie could not begin to describe the room before them.
A large mahogany desk dominated the floor, filling much of the space between the door and a broad window which looked out towards the landscaped rear gardens. Despite the aged-looking carpet and the power of the sun shining through the window, the room contained absolutely no smell; it didn’t smell like an old room and it didn’t smell sterile. It smelled like nothing.
The surface of the desk was uncluttered; clear but for a nameplate, a silver letter-opener and a large paperweight.
“Did he grow up in a house like this?” Yury asked, his tone suggesting that he didn’t really expect Holly to know but thought it was worth asking anyway.
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 29
