Back at the stairwell, frustration gnaws at me. I want to hurt whoever’s hurting me, punish whoever's made me feel this way. So I continue on, try to concentrate on the problem at hand, and not think about how many bullets I need to shoot into Rachel and Lohengrin.
The third level takes days to reach. Or hours. Or weeks. I completely lose track. The room at the end of this corridor is full of red sand. It’s populated with gigs and glowsuited buggos. The boys and girls are standing in a line that snakes from side to side in front of the central gig. They’re each waiting for their turn to hit someone, one of three buggos standing against the wall. Barely standing. Bleeding, in fact.
Sarazzin lords it over the whole sick scene. He struts on top of the wall, pumps a fist whenever a blow is struck. Dances a gruesome jig whenever he hears a scream. First Rachel cries out, then Lys. Lohengrin takes a punch to the face that spins him round, leaves him swaying on wobbly legs. The emperor does a handstand in celebration, kicks his feet up in the air like he’s riding a bike.
That evil sonofa—
Before I know it I’m flying straight at Sarazzin, fists clenched, ready to pulverize him. But he just stands on one hand and, upside down, wags his finger at me. The other buggos leap to his defence. I try to burst my way through but there are too many. They close ranks. I hurl a blizzard of furious punches, inflicting all sorts of damage. But the more hate I dish out, the more buggos pile in. Soon I can’t move my arms or legs, no matter how hard I try. I’m in a fifty-person strait-jacket. Rachel and Lys cry out, the emperor dances on his wall. I’m so helpless I could scream! I hate, I hate, I hate...
But this isn’t the way it went down.
No kidding. This is way worse.
Then what are you going to do about it? I’m sick of telling you this.
Use my head?
Do it, genius.
I slither out from under the buggo pile-on and, fuming, back away from the Hex. That’s three rooms in a row I’d pay good money to never have to visit again. Wherever this never-ending staircase is leading me, it sure as hell isn’t good. But it’s too far to climb up.
What, then? What would Thorpe-Campbell do?
Use his head. Duh.
Yeah, yeah, I get it. That was the last thing he said to me. That's what he's been saying to me all along: USE YOUR HEAD. But this is all part of their simulation, and there’s nothing I can—
You forgot something.
What?
You're walking down a never-ending staircase.
Yeah, thanks for reminding me.
Um, you're walking, genius. So what happened to your wound?
And just like that, none of this makes any sense at all. How could I be wandering around like this without any pain, unless…
I’m...dreaming?
A light zonks out somewhere in my skull. The afterglow spreads outside me, mushrooms. It wakes everything up like a dewy bubble of warm summer air that pops.
This isn’t a simulation. It’s a dream. I’ve been dreaming since...when? The zoo? New York? After glimpsing Mum?
I don't know if the nanobugs have put me under or if I just blacked out. But it's clear they’re trying to imprison me here on this never-ending staircase of emotions, for their amusement. To keep them stimulated. So they can re-enact my dreams out there in the crater, like they’ve done with Mum’s all this time…
But now I’m awake inside my dream, just like I used to be for those few minutes every night in the Hex. As awake as awake can be. Like Jiminy, it’s time to take control—no more nightmares. No more feeling bitter and helpless. If the nanobugs are watching this, I’m going to show them something they've never seen before. Mum has it, but she might be too weak to let it soar. So I’m going let it soar for her, show these parasites what they’ve been missing. What dreaming big is all about. They want stimulus, they ain’t seen nothing yet!
This is how I communicate.
It’s all about the Binder. I think it always was. Our captors are afraid of it, mortally afraid—a trauma from long ago. Many died here because they were stuck for too long with no master and no way out. That fear has marooned them. But they’re curious machines, maybe some kind of hive mind, and all curious machines, whether organic or mechanical, crave stimulus. They’ve attached themselves to Mum’s dreams like junkies because the human brain is the most wondrous and complex mechanism ever to exist.
That was, until we discovered the Star Binder.
I need to show them that they’re as trapped as Mum and me. If all they can do is feed off our cycles of dreams and nightmares, then this never-ending staircase is their prison as much as it is mine. One day they’ll stop learning, they’ll stop being fascinated, and they’ll run out of stimulus because we’ll fade away and die. Jiminy has been trying to tell them that—Mum is fading. She’s been trapped in her cycle of dreams for too long and her mind’s struggling to hold on. That’s what triggered Jiminy’s defection. An unconscious part of her cried out to be free, and that emotion was so strong it triggered something in Jiminy and others like him. It awoke a spark of compassion, maybe the first spark of a new awareness in the nanobugs.
But the majority refused to listen. They clung to their addiction and reacted angrily to the defectors. And this is what they’ve become—dream junkies who’ll go to any lengths to keep hold of their supplier.
This is my mum we’re talking about. She never asked for this. They never gave her a choice. But I’m going to give them one. I’m going to show them what brought her here in the first place, and what brought me here.
It’s all about the Binder. It always was.
FIRST YOUR FEET, THEN THE STARS
I start by shedding my spacesuit. Who needs to breathe in a dream, right? Underneath, my trusty old glowsuit isn’t shining like I know it can. It needs a little...stimulus.
I float up off the stairs and keep on rising. O’see Hendron said it’s difficult to master lucid dreaming without training; but I’m not here to master anything, I’m just passing through. Right through. One direction only. None-refundable. Either this works or nothing will.
Every story begins with a blank page. Mine is dark and infinite. The staircase is now so far beneath me I can hide it behind the thickness of my fingernail. I scratch an opening in the darkness and slide through, so I can fly...
...out from the shadow of the petrified wave, across the crater and over the sea of shells. I follow the rover tracks. My passage is a little less bumpy than the rover's was—more like a whisper through a bed sheet. Sergei and the others are all asleep in the oxygen tent. Dreaming. I’ll not disturb them. Are you listening, nanobugs? Dreams are private. They should never be touched.
I fly straight up through the Binder portal. No fear. It’s exciting, seeing what’s out there, what’s waiting to be explored. Our pod hovers in the Binder’s gentle embrace. There’s no one inside it now, but there has been, and there will be again. People with a lot more to lose than I have journey in pods just like this without thinking twice. They’re safer than you’d think. Taxicabs through the cosmos.
I pick a destination—the next Binder station. In dream time it takes me no time at all. I gather speed quickly, and my glowsuit bats out a few more watts. I pass a pod going the other way, though it happens so fast it’s over in a flicker. See, there’s nothing to be frightened of in here. On the contrary, it’s all possible in here. You can go wherever your curiosity takes you. Seek out infinite new stimuli.
But aren’t you running from a war?
Sort of, yeah.
So there is something to be frightened of. Don’t sugar-coat it.
Listen, there’s always something to be frightened of! Don’t tell me about frightened. Sergei and I saw nothing but red sky at morning for years, okay? We had to fend for ourselves in a world where the air outside kills you in minutes. And we made it, we got off-world. So don’t talk to me about being afraid.
Are you going somewhere with this?
Yes, I’m facing t
he unknown head-on, zipping through the Binder at dream-speed mph. Whenever I pass through a sun, I shiver with hope. I want to know which planets orbit it, and how many. Do any of them have life? If so, what kind of life? Life like mine, organic, carbon-based, or life like the nanobugs, whatever that is? Do the life-forms on these worlds dream? If so, what do they dream? Will they build machines and craft to help them follow those dreams, like humans have? If so, maybe we’ll meet them someday, somewhere along the Binder.
Each star linked to the Binder has its own satellite station. Ours was on Mars, near the North Pole. The nanobugs’ planet was selected as the port for its own system. The island of rings was another. And the temple world. What other weird planets and moons will we discover on our travels? Who will get to discover them? We've colonized quite a few already. How many will Sergei get to explore? And Rachel? Lys? Lohengrin? The point is: we’re not just choosing to travel the Binder, we’re destined to travel it.
All curious life-forms are, if they don’t mess it up for themselves first. Holding people captive and jiving to their same-old, same-old dream patterns is so petty it’s almost a joke. Almost—because it sure ain’t funny for the prisoners. Look what they could be doing. Look what you could be doing, if only you’d kick out of your tired routine and give the unknown a shot. Unknown should never be a word we settle for, not while we have the power to know.
Got that?
If you’ve followed me this far, you’ll know that I’m never going to stop. There’s too much to know out there. That’s what the Binder is—knowledge. The dark sea has me in its pull now. It shows me things I could never have imagined: tree-planets, alive as individual living organisms, floating as forests through space. Jovian worlds harnessed and used as fuel sources by ever-migrating empires. Black hole surfers who’ve ridden the same event horizon waves for millions of years. Life-forms of pure energy who live inside a sun and have never ventured outside, that is...until they find the Binder.
I pass beyond the farthest station of the farthest star. There’s no light out here. My glowsuit is everything I am, everything Mum and Dad gave me and a lot more besides. It’s my pals, who help to keep me brave. It’s the hope that burns inside me.
I keep going, faster than light, faster than time, as fast as only dreams can fly. I see other blue glows in the distance. They gather and multiply like the stars of a giant new constellation. They form lines and curves and ever-more-complex shapes. A face emerges. A woman’s. She’s beautiful—a sleeping beauty. Celestial hair cascades down a heavenly cheek. Her eyes are closed, but the stars forming them flicker. At first I think it’s Rachel, but this woman is older than Rachel, maybe twenty years older...
A trillion light-years out of body, my heart stirs. The dark sea carries those old emotions like the bittersweet tones of whale-song.
Mum.
She sleeps in the stars. I’ve found her here, on the far shore of my imagination. She dreams inside my dream. More than that, she called to me, I know now, through Jiminy. I can feel it in the tidal pull that draws me closer and closer to her. It’s our connection, our binder—a gravity beyond gravity.
If you’re still following me, you’ve felt at least a part of what I’m feeling. You know those feelings are important. They’re everything that matters out here. And if you’re still with me, you know it’s all about the Binder. It always was.
Now you know.
Her starry eyes flick open. I drift into one, my glowsuit burning bright, lighting the way. Inside, I’m not alone. I’m not the only flier.
No. I see dragonflies.
CHAPTER 28
The Far Shore
I wake up to the taste of mouthwash. A really strong one. The fluid isn’t in my mouth, though, it’s all around me. I’m floating in it. It’s cool and orange-ish and a bit thicker than water. It doesn’t sting my eyes, but I can’t see very far. It’s like trying to look through orange Jell-O. The outside world could be a few feet or a few miles away. There are voices out there, but it seems as though everyone’s talking through twenty thousand leagues of bathwater.
I take a deep breath. There’s resistance, like trying to inflate a fully inflated inner tube in my chest. It shoots a shivery tingle to my fingers and toes, and I realise...
I’m breathing fluid.
For some reason I think of Rachel climbing out of the pool. Then I slip out of consciousness.
A melody from a song that used to play over and over during one of our old oasis jobs guides me through a stubborn sleep-wake fog. The fog pushes back. How Deep Is Your Love by The Bee Gees was one of Flo Guerin’s favourite songs. Flo was the sweet old proprietor of a sandwich bar way out in the desert, near where the first manned shuttle landed on Mars—a pretty popular tourist spot. She was about ninety years old when she hired Sergei and me for a season, to clean up the café, and also to amuse the younger kids while their parents went round the museum. We did that by holding wrestling matches (starring Sergei) and stunt-jump contests (starring me, though the Minsk Machine would disagree) in the plastic ball pool. It was the only job we stayed in for longer than a month—we hardly ever skimmed because we liked Flo so much—and I lost count of the number of times we asked each other, “Are we really getting paid for this?”
It seems a lifetime ago.
Something heavy and brassy hits the deck nearby. The ear-splitting pwang and the following clatter snaps me to. Angry voices are silenced by a sshh! There’s still music playing, a song I don’t know. The lights are dim in my room, all except for a dazzling red glow in the far corner. It appears to be a light from outside, stealing in past the edge of the window blinds. I want it to be a sunset.
The room’s pokey, one bed, a few chairs and a bedside cabinet. It’s not very cosy-looking either. The walls are dented, unfinished metal, and there are a stack of shrink-wrapped crates in one corner. An I.V. unit hanging from the wall beside me drips saline solution and bips my vital signs.
I try to sit up but I can’t. I’m too weak, and my body aches all over. The attempt knocks me sick but I don’t quite throw up. Lying still and watching the sunset’s glow helps. It feels a little like bedtime on Mars.
Someone yawns from across the room. There’s a figure lying across the three chairs, curled up, with a jacket draped over him. My attempt to say hey falls short of a dry wheeze. It makes me cough. The coughs chafe against a brick-dry throat and scorch my lungs for good measure. Chrissakes, is there any part of me that is working? That doesn’t hurt?
Eyes closed, I wish myself back to sleep, to escape the aches and the pain. But I sense the red glow disappear. The eclipse is too sudden, so I open my eyes again to see what’s happened.
“For real? You’d better not be kidding.”
I’d know that voice anywhere. And the silhouette too. Not sure about the hair-bomb, but the big guy has been sleeping rough.
Hey, Sergei.
No sound accompanies the words but it doesn’t matter. He acknowledges my attempt with a skyward glance and a sigh of relief that tell me how much he’s missed me.
Same here, big guy. Same here. However long I was out.
He crouches at my bedside, leans on his elbows. “The doc was pretty sure you’d come round this weekend. Don’t ask me how. I told him you always lie in as long as you can get away with, you lazy grid-licker, but I guess you picked up some decent habits from the Hex.”
I point a weak finger at myself, then at him, as if to say, If I’m lazy, what the hell are you?
He laughs. “Yep, that’s you alright. Good to have you back, Trillion.”
Good to be back. But where am I?
“This is Alpha Medical, in case you’re wondering. Not much to look at, but they can do anything here, even keep you quiet. That’s a miracle right there.”
He activates a sensor at my bedside, probably to call for the doctors, to let them know I’m awake.
I make an erect right-angle with my thumb and forefinger, then move my thumb slowly up to the vertic
al, signifying the hands of a clock: How long was I out?
“Sixteen days. Can you believe that? This is the end of day sixteen. After the blood transfusion, they had you in liquid stasis for a whole week so they could figure out the coma. Apparently your brain overloaded. I told ’em that’s nothing new; anytime a thought goes through your head...”
I flip him off.
He snickers. “What else? Oh yeah, the others are all here: Lys, Rachel, Lohengrin. They all made it back safe. Lys and Hendron used their thruster rigs to fly way above, you know, what happened to New York. How awesome is that? The bad news is Hendron might be up for a court-martial, and Thorpe-Campbell’s in deep crap. When you’re up and about, looks like we might have to testify. So there’s that to look forward to. And—aw, crap, I can’t believe I didn’t say this first—your mum’s here as well. She’s in some kind of deep sleep, but she’s alive, here in Medical!”
I hear what he’s saying, but my mind’s sponge is full. The tiredness weighs heavy. Sergei’s voice becomes a distant echo as I hear the words, Mum’s here. The shapes of several more people gather round the bed, but I’m more aware of the soft green light shining in through the open door behind them. Mum’s here. Like a green snooker ball bouncing off the cushions of an all-green table, the idea quickly fades.
I’m out of hospital now, but not by much. Doc Spillett says the back porch is my limit. I don’t mind that; it’s comfy out here on the swing bench, surrounded by 3-D paintings of animals for the kids who come out here to convalesce. There aren’t any of those at the moment, and I’m a little too old for Old McDonald’s. But I like how simple it feels out of everyone’s way, with a great view of an untamed region of Alpha moon.
The sky here’s a deep blue, almost bruised purple colour. Alpha has quite a thin atmosphere, with a surface air pressure similar to that which climbers experience at an altitude of about 15,000 feet on Earth. So all newcomers have to acclimate, which means no rigorous exercise for a while. Not that that’s a problem for me. Better still, the air’s breathable. After decades of growing forests and oxygen-giving plants, the Alpha terraformers have reduced the carbon-dioxide to a safe level.
Star Binder Page 35
