Earth and Air

by Janet Edwards

  I slept in the store room that night. There weren’t any spare beds in there, but I was comfortable enough with a mattress on the floor, so my sleep was only disturbed by an odd dream about the off-worlder woman in Europe Transit 3.

  Somewhere in the middle of the dream, the woman’s shiny clothes changed into an impact suit, and then her head vanished, but she still kept asking to see the birthmark on my arm. I told her I didn’t have a birthmark, but then a doctor came up and said that he’d removed it when I was a baby, and this impact suit really was my mother.

  My lookup’s alarm went off at that point, dragging me awake, but I was confused by ominous, red lighting, and the large box labelled “DANGER EXPLOSIVES” that was only a hand’s breadth away from my nose.

  For a second, I thought I was still dreaming, but then I remembered giving up my room to Wren. The red lighting was because the store room glows couldn’t be set to low, but only turned off completely. I hadn’t been able to sleep with the glows on full power, and daren’t try groping my way past the teetering equipment shelves in the pitch dark, so I was using a dig site hazard warning light as a night light.

  Despite its alarming label, the most dangerous things in the box at my bedside were my socks. Explosives were sometimes used on the dig site for jobs like breaking up particularly stubborn building foundations, but for obvious safety reasons they were never stored inside an accommodation dome. Crozier had given me an old empty box to store my personal belongings.

  I checked the time on my lookup, reluctantly crawled out of the snug warmth of my sleep sack, threw on a robe, and headed to the nearest bathroom to wash. There wasn’t a queue outside, which was encouraging, but then I heard the distinctive whine of a shower set to laundry cycle. I pounded on the door.

  “Hey! I don’t know who’s in there, but we’ve only got three bathrooms in this dome. You can’t tie up one of them washing clothes when everyone wants to shower before breakfast.”

  The door opened a crack, and Radley’s head peeped cautiously round it. “If I don’t do some clothes washing now, Jarra, I’ll be half naked today.”

  I remembered he’d forgotten to pack something, wondered which half of him would be naked, and giggled.

  Radley groaned. “It’s not funny. I called a friend at Next Step, and he sent me my things fast delivery yesterday evening, but the parcel hasn’t arrived yet.”

  I tried to hold back another outbreak of giggles but failed. Radley gave me a wounded look and closed the door.

  I leaned against the wall for the next ten minutes. By the time the laundry sounds ended, there was a queue of three of us waiting. When Radley opened the door again and slunk out, I left the other two complaining at him while I showered as fast as possible, then hurried back to the store room to dress and clear my things away.

  When I went back out into the corridor again, I was nearly run over by a hover trolley that was piled high with flexiplas crates.

  “Sorry,” said the owner of the trolley. “Ah, it’s ... Jarra, isn’t it?”

  “Felipe!” I gave a puzzled look at the overalls he was wearing. “What are you doing here? I thought you worked in reception.”

  “I help out wherever I’m needed. Yesterday was the first day of the school summer break in Earth Europe, and reception was swamped with school parties arriving, so I was working there. Now all those school parties are complaining about minor faults with their domes, so I’m doing some maintenance jobs. I understand you have a toasted wafer crisis, and the universe will end if you don’t have it fixed before breakfast.”

  I nodded eagerly, and gestured at the hover trolley. “Are all those crates full of food cartridges?”

  “Some of them hold food cartridges, but there are replacement power cells, sleep sacks, and other oddments as well. I’ve got a dozen different jobs to do this morning.”

  I walked beside Felipe as he went on down the corridor. The hover trolley skimmed along in midair after us, banked sharply to follow us into the hall, and one of the flexiplas crates fell off. Felipe gave a long-suffering sigh, and stopped to pick it up.

  “This job would be easier with one of the larger size hover trolleys,” he said, “but the accommodation dome corridors are too narrow for them.”

  Most of the club members were already in the hall. They all turned to watch hopefully as Felipe parked his hover trolley and vanished behind the food dispensers.

  There was a clank of metal, followed by a scraping sound and a loud bang. I got down on my knees and peered round the side of the food dispensers to see what was happening. Felipe had taken part of the back off the end food dispenser, and was peering into the hole.

  “I thought so,” he said. “You’ve got several toasted wafer cartridges here, but the top one hasn’t been locked into position properly. I just adjust the blue lever, and ... Try it now.”

  I got back to my feet and checked the food dispensers’ menu display. All the options were back now, and the dispensers obediently delivered me a whole plate of toasted wafers and syrup.

  I held the plate up in triumph. “We have toasted wafers again!”

  Everyone in the hall cheered wildly. There was more clanking that had to be Felipe putting the cover back on the end food dispenser, and then he crawled out. He’d just got to his feet, and was taking a mock bow while we applauded, when there was a sudden squawking sound.

  Felipe reached for his lookup, checked the screen, and frowned. “Oh chaos. We spent most of yesterday evening working on the drains at dome 7, but they’ve blocked up again. I hate drains. In fact, I hate every kind of underground pipe after that accident last autumn.”

  “What happened last autumn?” I asked.

  “Our class were working on Paris Coeur Main Dig Site when the tag leader for our team 2 got caught in a big cave in and was buried. Team 1 were working a few buildings away, so we headed over to help rescue him.”

  “You were on your degree class team 1 then?”

  “Yes. I was tag leader for team 1.”

  “Amaz!” Felipe had been the team 1 tag leader for his degree class! I looked at him in awe. Everyone fought to get that key spot.

  I’d be starting my Pre-history Foundation course at the beginning of next year, and I dreamed of getting the key spot in my class the same way Felipe had done. I daren’t count on it though. My dig site experience couldn’t be beaten, so I was surely guaranteed at least the team 2 tag leader spot for my class, but I could find myself competing for the key spot with someone equally well qualified.

  “When we arrived, we had a shock,” said Felipe. “The team 2 tag leader, Morgan, wasn’t just buried, he’d dropped into some sort of vertical pipe and got stuck halfway down. We tried to pull Morgan out, but he was wedged solidly in there.”

  Felipe shrugged. “Since we couldn’t get Morgan out of the pipe, we decided we’d have to get the pipe out of there too. Our sensor sled displays showed there was loose rubble around most of the pipe, but the bottom end was surrounded by massive concrete foundations. That made it impossible to dig the whole thing out, so we’d have to clear a big hole round the pipe, and cut loose the section where Morgan was stuck.”

  By now, everyone else in the hall had come to listen to Felipe’s story as well. He smiled at his audience before continuing.

  “So we dug a nice wide hole all round the pipe. At least, it looked like a wide hole when I was standing next to it. Once I was being lowered into the gap between the pipe and the surrounding rubble, it seemed far narrower.”

  I pictured the scene. The sides of the freshly excavated hole would have been dangerously unstable. Felipe would have known they could collapse on top of him at any moment, but he’d still gone down there to help his friend.

  “My first job was to cut across the pipe just above Morgan’s head. I was dangling in midair, with a laser cutter in one hand and a sensor in the other.” Felipe groaned. “We were getting advice from Paris Coeur Dig Site Command of course, and they didn’t like me breakin
g safety rules by working like that. I’d no choice though. I needed to cut off as much of the pipe as I could, but I had to keep checking Morgan’s exact position with the sensor so I didn’t cut off his head as well.”

  Dezi made a squeaking sound of alarm, and I bit my lip. I knew Felipe wasn’t exaggerating the dangers of using a laser cutter in that situation. I’d never used a laser gun myself, let alone one of the bigger, more lethal laser cutters, but I’d watched Crozier using one. They could cut through concrete, concraz, and even super-hard diamene with appalling ease.

  “That part went smoothly enough,” said Felipe, “and our heavy lift sleds moved the top section out of the way. It was when I was lowered down to the bottom of the hole that I discovered the really bad news. Our hole wasn’t deep enough. I couldn’t cut through the bottom of the pipe without cutting Morgan in half.”

  Several people made noises as if they were about to be sick. I was one of them.

  “Morgan was screaming at us to get him out, but it seemed impossible,” said Felipe. “We couldn’t make the hole any deeper, because we’d shifted the rubble right down to the concrete foundations already. We obviously couldn’t use explosives to break up those concrete foundations when Morgan was trapped down there.”

  I stared down at my clenched fists, picturing myself in that desperate position, so close to a trapped classmate but unable to reach him.

  “That was when I had my bright idea,” said Felipe. “If I got my team to pull me out of the hole and lower me down again head first, I could hold the laser at arm’s length below me, and carve away chunks of the concrete foundations.”

  He grimaced at his rapt audience. “Dig Site Command hated that idea. They kept jabbering about it being suicidally dangerous, but they couldn’t suggest any other options. Excavating the whole area, so we could use lasers safely, would take at least a week. After that long, we wouldn’t be saving Morgan’s life. We’d be retrieving his dead body.”

  There was an anxious murmur from the others, but I was totally silent. Felipe must be unbelievably brave to have suggested this plan. Respect!

  “So I was lowered head-first down the hole,” said Felipe. “It was a nightmare using the laser cutter while I was hanging upside down. I kept swaying around, and the glare of the laser beam was blinding me. I was terrified I’d either cut myself with the laser, or accidentally slash through the pipe and into Morgan.”

  I had a painfully vivid image of what it must have been like down there for Felipe, swaying upside down while holding an active laser that could kill either himself or Morgan. I’d been in plenty of difficult situations on dig sites over the years, but nothing as horrific as this.

  “When I’d done as much cutting as I could,” continued Felipe, “my team had to pull me out so we could shift the blocks of concrete. The hole still wasn’t deep enough, so I had to repeat the whole hideous exercise again.”

  He shrugged. “Finally, the hole was deep enough for me to cut through the pipe without hurting Morgan. It took two heavy lift sleds working together to pull the section of pipe out of the hole. Once we had it lying on the ground, we could use a small laser to trim the pipe enough for us to reach in and get Morgan’s suit hood off, but we still couldn’t get him out of the pipe.”

  Felipe shocked us by laughing. “We sent Morgan through the nearest emergency evac portal to a Hospital Earth Europe casualty unit while he was still stuck inside the pipe and complaining at us. Evac portals are made in a much smaller size than a standard portal to keep their costs down, so we were afraid the pipe wouldn’t go through, but it did.”

  Felipe laughed again. “The staff at the casualty unit got Morgan free, and he was back with our class the next day. A few weeks after that, the leader of Earth 28 research team heard about the story, and offered me a place on his team. So everything worked out well in the end, but you see why I was left with a hatred of pipes.”

  I nodded solemnly. So that was how Felipe had got a place on Earth 28 research team. He’d impressed the team leader with a staggering display of skill and courage. For years, I’d been dreaming of a future where I was a professional tag leader for one of University Earth’s research teams, but now I felt I had no chance of achieving that ambition. I was a good tag leader by the standards of our school history club, but nothing like the heroic Felipe.

  Crozier’s voice came from behind me. “That was a very thrilling story, Felipe.”

  I’d been so enthralled by the story, and so busy worrying that I could never match Felipe’s skill and courage, that I hadn’t noticed Crozier arrive. The icy tone of his voice startled me. Felipe seemed unnerved by it too.

  “Perhaps I’d better be going now,” he said.

  “Yes, I think it’s definitely time for you to leave.” Crozier’s voice seemed even colder than before.

  Felipe grabbed the control unit of his hover trolley, and hurried out of the hall with the trolley chasing after him. Crozier trailed after him, an oddly grim expression on his face, as if he wanted to make sure that Felipe actually left our dome.

  I watched them go in bewilderment. I didn’t understand Crozier’s reaction at all, but I forgot that mystery as I returned to worrying about how inadequate I was compared to Felipe.

  “Is something wrong, Jarra?” asked Meiling.

  I pulled a face. “I was just thinking about that rescue story and imagining myself in that situation. I don’t think I could have coped nearly as well as Felipe did.”

  Meiling sighed and spoke in pitying tones. “Felipe is five years older than us, Jarra. If he’s got a place on an archaeological research team, then he must have done a degree course that concentrates on practical archaeology. That means he’s spent four years working on the main dig sites on a daily basis, and been trained to deal with all kinds of dangerous hazards. Naturally Felipe will be able to cope with a rescue better than someone who is still at school.”

  I gave her a grazzed look. Meiling had a reputation for common sense and being right about things. She was right about this. Felipe had five years more experience than me. I shouldn’t be intimidated by his skill and heroism, but see him as an inspiring example of what I could achieve in the next five years.

  Felipe had been the team 1 tag leader for his degree class. He would have played the central role in any number of demanding dig site excavations over the last few years, and he was about to join one of University Earth’s archaeological research teams. I was going to match every one of those achievements.

  No, I eagerly corrected myself. I wouldn’t just match all Felipe’s achievements. I’d do even better, because I’d be a qualified pilot as well!

  Crozier came back into the hall. “Jarra, can I speak to you please?”

  I went across to him. “Yes?”

  “I assume you’ll be starting your flying lessons this morning?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When you’re having your lessons, I’ll be taking the rest of the club to work on the dig site. The three newcomers will just be sitting and watching the excavation work for the first week or two. I was thinking you could help me by giving them some basic training on your free afternoons. Having more teaching experience will make you look a well-rounded candidate when you apply to do your Pre-history Foundation course with University Earth.”

  Crozier looked expectantly at me. Chaos, I might not be an official tag leader any longer, but I’d still expected to help with the excavation work on my free afternoons. The last thing I wanted was to spend that time teaching the new club members, particularly Wren, but it wasn’t her fault that she reminded me too much of my younger self.

  I shouldn’t be brooding on Wren as a symbol of my past anyway. I should be focusing on my dreams for the future instead. If I was going to follow Felipe’s example, then my first step had to be getting the team 1 tag leader position for my degree class. Crozier was right that teaching experience would look good on my application to University Earth. It could make the crucial difference tha
t gave me the key spot. I lifted my head and smiled at him.

  “I’ll be glad to teach the new club members.”

  Chapter Six

  Half an hour later, Gradin and I were airborne in his survey plane. Since this was my first flying lesson of the summer break, Gradin was flying the plane using his pilot controls, while I was sitting next to him with my co-pilot controls locked off.

  “Look at the dreadful mess down there,” said Gradin gloomily.

  I dutifully looked down at the ground. We’d only just taken off, and were currently circling New York Fringe Command Centre to gain height. The Command Centre was a cluster of large grey domes connected by a network of corridors. On one side of it were the flat expanse of the landing area and the aircraft storage dome. On the other side were several hover sled storage domes. In front of one of them, a group of ant-sized people were climbing on to what looked like a tiny toy transport sled.

  I didn’t think even Gradin would describe any of those things as a dreadful mess, so he had to be referring to the ruins that surrounded the New York Fringe Command Centre, stretching off into the distance in all directions.

  “The city of New York was abandoned four centuries ago,” continued Gradin.

  I wanted to interrupt and tell Gradin precisely when New York was officially declared abandoned, but I made myself keep quiet. Gradin’s job was to fly survey flights over New York Main and New York Fringe, pinpointing hazards for the dig teams, but he’d no interest in either excavation work or history. In fact, Gradin had only agreed to teach me to fly on the condition I promised not to bore him with any historical facts. He’d said that he heard more than enough about history from the people he worked with, and didn’t want me yapping about it as well.

  “Now New York is just a vast expanse of malevolent ruins.” Gradin groaned. “Ruined buildings that have collapsed into giant heaps of debris. Ruined buildings on the verge of collapsing. Ruined buildings that stubbornly refuse to collapse because they enjoy dropping rocks on the head of anyone who comes near them. Chaos knows why people insist on coming here to root around looking for rubbish.”