London Wild

by V. E. Shearman

  Every three hundred yards or so on the outer most wall was a locked door that led to an airlock. Or, more accurately, it led to a room where someone could put on a space suit before passing through the airlock. These airlocks were used to get outside the colony and were reserved for use only by those performing the necessary maintenance on the structure. It was considered far too dangerous and, probably more important to those in charge of the colony, far too expensive to supply space suits for everyone who might just happen to feel like a walk on the natural surface of the planet.

  Every fifty to one hundred yards there were branch corridors, leading in towards the center of the colony. Each branch had its own small plaque that declared the name of the corridor in much the same way that different streets were named on Earth. Well, it was obvious there wasn’t much to see here. It seemed that the whole ring had been built just for access to the airlocks and the windows. She would no doubt have better luck if she took one of the branch corridors and ventured closer towards the middle of the colony.

  The rooms she now started to pass were small and squalid looking, even from the outside. The doors and the walls were covered in graffiti, and no one seemed to have enough pride in where they lived to clean it off. One of the large overhead lights here seemed to be faulty and was flickering wildly, and if anything, this added to the feeling of dinginess that she felt. It didn’t take Khosi long to find yet another corridor and head down it, moving even closer to the center of the colony.

  The closer Khosi got to the center of the colony, the nicer the rooms seemed to be. The doors ranged slightly further apart each time, suggesting bigger, better, and more luxurious rooms. Every corridor seemed to have some graffiti, but it wasn’t so bad the further from the rim she went. Everything was residential, though, and it was quickly becoming obvious to her that the entire lower level of the colony, in the English section at least, was dedicated to housing.

  Finding a way up wasn’t too difficult. Although there wasn’t a way up between the corridors on every ring, they were frequent enough that no one would have to travel too far from their home to find one. This was probably just as well, because since her arrival on the planet she hadn’t seen anyone using transport more technologically advanced than a bicycle, and most people she had seen had been walking. Then again, the colony was only a small place; at its widest point on the outer rim of the English section, it could be no more than about four miles from end to end.

  The way up was a wide ramp that climbed at a gentle gradient and doubled back on itself in order to take up as little room as possible. There was a thick metal pole held at waist height for the length of the ramp to help demark those climbing to the next level from those descending to the level below. The walls alongside the ramp were covered in posters advertising the services of the various establishments that might be found nearby. Khosi wasn’t good with the written word, but she was able to make out the gist of what most of the posters were advertising. She was pretty sure that she was entering the part of the colony which contained most of the shops. Near the top of the ramp someone had covered virtually every one of the official posters with small notepad-sized handbills, and they had placed more handbills in between the posters. The handbills had no pictures, just words, and Khosi couldn’t be bothered to decipher their meaning. They were unlikely to be telling her where the laboratories were.

  The second level of the colony was, as she had expected, filled with shops. In most cases the shops looked much like the residences on the level below, but they had been converted to retail. For the most part they had large windows that looked out onto the thoroughfares and through which people could see the delights inside. Every shop doorway had a large sign over it and in most cases over the window as well. Most of the shops had posters on the windows advertising what special delights might be found inside. The corridors that ran between the shops were nearly twice as wide as they had been on the floor below, but they were crowded and Khosi found herself having to struggle at times to get through the masses.

  In much the same way that she didn’t expect to find the laboratory amidst the residences below, she was sure the goal of her search wouldn’t be here among the shops either. She knew she needed to find another ramp leading upwards, and soon, before she got crushed by the overzealous shoppers.

  Then she hesitated for a moment just outside a sandwich bar. It had been a while since she had eaten, and she ought to keep her strength up.

  Her vision of what was actually in the shop was partially blocked by the large posters covering the windows. Between the posters she could see large groups of customers sitting at the tables. Two women sat at one table, three men at another, a couple alone, a couple with children, and a group of eight near the back, most of whom were children that seemed to be having a birthday party.

  Maybe she had been staring too long. She seemed to have unnerved one of the two women at that first table. The woman now seemed to be staring unnervingly right back at her. Then she turned her attention to her partner and started chatting to her.

  Then the children at the back of the sandwich bar started singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to one of their number, and Khosi finally decided she would pass on breakfast for now. She would wait until she got home.

  Levels three and four seemed to contain more residences, similar in style to but much nicer than those on the first level. There was a noticeable lack of graffiti in the corridors, so it was clear that if any graffiti did exist here it was most probably removed very shortly after appearing. These were quite likely the best residences in the colony. Level four was definitely for the highest class of Martian resident, even though the rooms available here were nowhere near as luxurious as those that might be found on Earth.

  There were few ramps leading up to level five. This seemed to be the administration area of the colony, where all the work that kept the colony itself running was performed. Khosi skipped past quickly, looking for the next ramp up.

  Level six was a lot less crowded than any of the previous levels had been. Most of the corridors here were deserted. It was on level six that she finally found the goal of her search. The level was filled with laboratories of various types, but only one of them had a large number seven painted on the wall leading to it with a large black arrow directing the way, and only one of them had a soldier standing at attention right outside the door.

  As soon as Khosi saw the soldier, there was no doubt in her mind that the soldier had seen her. To turn around and head away would not only look suspicious, but it might also make her job here a lot more difficult, as she would have trouble approaching the soldier again and not have her be fully on her guard.

  Suddenly she felt self-conscious, getting a strong feeling that someone was following her, but when she turned round there was no sign of anyone.

  Khosi reached into her handbag. The sudden movement was obviously alarming to the soldier, who tensed, turning her full attention on the newcomer while at the same time preparing her weapon in case she should need it. It must have been hard for the solider; in a similar situation on Earth the soldier would probably have shot first, but Mars was such an enclosed area, and she obviously didn’t want to cause an incident when Khosi might simply have wandered up here by accident and might even now be approaching her merely to ask a question.

  Slowly Khosi pulled the small pen from the bag and allowed the soldier to see that there was nothing to be alarmed about. The soldier relaxed visibly and then moved so subtly as she returned her weapon to its resting place that Khosi might have doubted that the soldier had made any threatening movement at all.

  Khosi’s pen weapon was an interesting thing. The further back from the target she used it, the less powerful it was, but the bigger the circumference of the target it destroyed. When she used it on the soldier from the very end of the corridor, the soldier vanished into a pile of ash, leaving behind only her left boot and part of the foot that it had contained.

  Khosi looked around her once mor
e, sure that someone was following her, but there was no sign of anyone. She shook her head. Paranoia had to be getting to her.

  She tried to open the door to the laboratory, but it was locked. That was no problem. She leveled the weapon on the lock and handle of the door and removed it from existence, making a nice rounded hole, the edges of which were so smooth they might have been professionally sanded. She opened the door and entered, closing it lightly behind her. There were four humans here in white lab coats, and as the door closed they turned almost as a body to see what the noise was.

  ‘You can’t come in…’ started a male whose voice seemed filled with authority.

  Khosi used her pen on him in mid-sentence and turned him into a little pile of ash. Then without pausing she turned the weapon on the nearest of the other three, a woman who was so still, so surprised by what had happened to her boss, that she didn’t seem to realize she was in danger until it was too late and she too was little more than a pile of ash on the floor.

  The other two began to panic. They started looking for places to hide, but there was nowhere that Khosi couldn’t find them in such a small room, and they couldn’t get out the door while Khosi was blocking the route.

  The other girl in the laboratory was killed quickly when she poked her head over the top of a counter to see if Khosi was still there, and Khosi removed it for her, as well as a small part of the desk.

  The second man in the laboratory seemed to think that his only chance of escape would be to attack. While Khosi was occupied with finishing the last of his three companions, the man leapt towards her. She moved her arm to meet him, cutting him down in mid-air, and it was a corpse with a hole in its midriff that actually collided with her.

  If Khosi had felt any nerves as she cut down the four scientists, she didn’t show them as she walked calmly over to a series of controls positioned before a large wall. There was also a door there, obviously locked because none of the scientists had even attempted to escape from her through it. She didn’t know for sure, but she had a strong feeling that Myajes was somewhere behind that door. She was pretty sure that the control to open that door must be on this control panel somewhere. Of course she could just shoot the door, but the pen’s charge was limited and she wouldn’t want to use it unless she had to.

  She flipped a switch randomly, and a large wall next to the door suddenly burst into color. It showed the image of a Herbaht lying on a bed in some sort of cell just beyond the wall. It was Myajes; it had to be him. She glanced about herself quickly for a microphone.

  ‘Hello, Myajes,’ she said. There was no reply, and she wondered if the microphone she had found was even on… Perhaps one of these other controls would activate it. The button right next to the microphone was probably the most likely.

  ‘Hello, Myajes,’ she said again. This time her voice seemed to echo back at her from an overhead speaker at several times the volume at which she had spoken. She looked at the door and the walls of this laboratory and hoped they were soundproof.

  The figure on the bed rolled over to face her and, apparently looking straight at her, said, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m your savior,’ Khosi replied. ‘I’ve come all this way to free you from your prison. I’m going to take you home with me, and we’re going to get together, you and I, and together we’re going to ponder some of life’s little mysteries.’

  ‘Did the Matriarch send you?’ Myajes’ expression could only be described as hopeful.

  Khosi would have loved to have said yes, but how could she ask him where the Matriarch was if the Matriarch had sent her? Instead Khosi replied, ‘Not exactly. I heard through the grapevine that you needed help, and I thought I was just the girl to do it. Maybe we can report back to the Matriarch together.’

  ‘You look human,’ Myajes commented suspiciously. ‘And locked away in this small cell, I’m not picking up your scent.’

  ‘You of all people should know better than that,’ Khosi told him. ‘I’m wearing a disguise.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Myajes replied. After just a few days here, he had learnt to take nothing at face value. ‘How do I know you aren’t part of another of Doctor Foster’s experiments on me?’

  ‘Doctor Foster?’ Khosi commented coldly. ‘I assume he was one of these white coats I cut down when I entered this place.’ Khosi had had a hard day. She had spent hours fighting her way through crowds just trying to find this place, and she was fast losing her temper with him. ‘Now I really don’t care whether you believe me or not. I will get the information I want from you one way or another before the day is through.’

  ‘Aha, now you show your true colors,’ he commented, thinking that perhaps he sounded a little childish as he said it.

  ‘My true colors?’ Khosi responded. She didn’t recognize the phrase and decided not to pursue it. Instead she showed him the pen. ‘This is the weapon I used this to wipe out the lab staff here, and it could cut through you just as easily if you refuse to cooperate.’

  ‘If you do that, I’ll tell you nothing,’ Myajes replied calmly. ‘Besides, how are you going to get me to a shuttle? I tend to stand out slightly, what with my stripes and everything.’

  ‘That’s very easy,’ Khosi replied. She reached into the handbag and brought out the frame, which she then began to unfold. ‘Actually, I’d better set this up before I let you out anyway. It’d be hard to keep an eye on you and do this at the same time.’

  Myajes’ eyes went wide; it was obvious he recognized the item in question, and a single word left his lips: ‘Eschiff.’

  Khosi gave Myajes a wink and then left the screen for a minute.

  Myajes’ voice could be heard as she walked away from the screen, and there was panic in his voice. ‘No, you can’t be. You don’t look anything like the Eschiff that I was taught about.’

  Khosi ignored him, more interested in finding a place to put the frame than in anything he might have to say about her lineage. Virtually every wall was covered in shelving, shelves carrying everything from test tubes, retorts, and Bunsen burners to cuddly toys, pot plants and note pads. She considered ripping some of the shelving down, but the brackets were too close together and would poke out from beyond the front of the frame, preventing it from functioning properly. In the end she decided that the best place to set the frame up was on the large screen wall itself.

  She placed the frame and turned it on so that the image of her room could be seen clearly beyond the frame. She then returned to what she could still see of the screen, happy to find an astonished Myajes staring back at her. This was the first time since she’d come to this benighted planet that something had worked exactly as she had planned.

  ‘It’s not possible!’ Myajes screamed at her face. ‘You can’t be Eschiff. You look nothing like Eschiff!’

  ‘What?’ Khosi commented back calmly, ‘Missing my horns?’

  ‘Missing your stripes,’ Myajes replied sternly.

  ‘It’s a disguise,’ Khosi re-affirmed simply. ‘Now, all I need to do is find the control that opens your cell, and then we’ll be on our way.’ She started going through the controls one at a time until with a satisfying click, the outer door to Myajes’ cell unlocked.

  38

  Breadcrumbs

  February was missing her old bed, her bedroom, even her entire house. Her bed here on Mars was a lot harder, not quite as long, and it was considerably narrower than the double bed she had had all to herself back on Earth. Likewise, on Earth she hadn’t had to share an inconceivably small room with Kitty. It was so small that the gap that was left between their beds wasn’t even big enough for either of them to stand properly. Indeed, the whole apartment was far too small for the five people that were expected to be living here. But that seemed to be par for the course here on Mars, where after water, the main concern seemed to be the conservation of space.

  ‘So much for them designing it before building it,’ she had muttered to herself. ‘So much for space not being an issue here!’
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br />   She got up and made her way to the shower room. February didn’t like the way the shower room worked, and yet it made perfect sense to her, considering water conservation. The sonic shower, using sound rather than water, was very unpopular amidst even the herd. The one good thing about using a sonic shower was that she didn’t have to dry herself off with a towel afterwards. On the other hand, she just never felt as clean as she did after showering with water, and just where did all the dirt that was shaken off of her body end up?

  She dressed quickly and emerged from the shower room to find Kitty standing just outside waiting patiently. ‘Did I wake you?’

  Kitty greeted her friend with a smile and said, ‘You did. It’s a very small room, hard for someone to move without disturbing the other. It’s already nine thirty, though, and I really need to be up by now anyway. I’m surprised the others aren’t up yet.’

  ‘Don’t suppose they’ll be long,’ February replied, and she held the door open for Kitty as the other entered the shower.

  Another bad thing about a sonic shower, thought February to herself as she returned to their shared bedroom, was that it didn’t wake her up quite like a water shower did. She had heard a rumor that somewhere on level two of the colony was a shop that offered showers with water. Obviously they had to have some arrangement with the colony’s officials to make it all legal and above board. The customer was supposed to take a shower on the premises and would pay depending on the length of shower they purchased, which could be anything from two minutes to thirty minutes. She had also heard another rumor that somewhere in the American section of the colony, conveniently located next door to the English section, there was a full-length swimming pool that could be used for a price. The problem with either of these was that she would have to get undressed in public, and this, of course, would show off parts of her body that she didn’t normally bother to cover in makeup. And even if she did go to the trouble of covering every last stripe on her body with a makeup that wouldn’t wash off so easily with water, there was still her tail to think of, and that would be very hard to hide in a flimsy swimming costume. Chances were there was no way she could get away with a visit to the swimming pool, but it might be worth investigating the shower shop, if it existed, to find out what the situation was there. Somehow she felt she would be wasting her time. Even if the showers themselves weren’t communal, the changing rooms probably were, but it was worth looking into. The Goddess knew there wasn’t anything to do if she stayed in the apartment.