by James Bow
“Sorry,” I said.
He took a breath, held it, then let it go. “Whether it’s malfunctions, or sabotage, I stand accused, Simon.” He glared. He wasn’t angry at me, but still, the strength of it made me lean back. “To stand accused with tampering with the pneumatics is to stand accused of treason.”
He glowered. “Did you know that, on Old Mother Earth, it was a serious offense to tamper with the mail? A separate offence with its own punishment? It’s illegal here, too, but it’s rolled in with other acts of sabotage, like breaking a lever off a machine. And that’s appropriate, because in this day and age, with so few of us, and the environment so hostile, every breakdown is a potential catastrophe. Sabotaging the pneumatics risks destroying this city, and I will not stand accused for someone else’s crime, especially when it threatens me and all I hold dear.”
Destroying this city. At the time I thought it was hyperbole, but I said nothing.
The elevator slowed to a stop. We jerked as it switched direction, going to the right instead of up.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why I brought you on board, Simon.”
“Yes. I am.”
“I need you to conduct an audit of the pneumatic tubes.”
“A … physical audit?” Involuntarily, I looked at the ceiling above us, though there were none of the translucent tubes that ran along the corridors throughout Iapyx. It would mean following every tube, throughout the city. A massive job. Plus, it would mean going into the service tunnels, in cramped and steamy spaces. Had Rachel known this was what Gabriel had wanted? Had Michael? I couldn’t see either of them signing off on this. I wasn’t sure that I — with my clumsy body, my vulnerability to heat — could do such a thing. “But … why me, sir?”
“Because Rachel trusts you, and I trust Rachel. And since these failures started, you have been the only person on my staff who hasn’t been here. The people I’ve already sent out haven’t found anything, but they don’t know what to look for.” He leaned forward. “There aren’t many of us who are Grounders, Simon. They’re good people here, but I haven’t confided in any of them. And if these failures are acts of sabotage designed to implicate the Grounders, then I don’t know who to trust. I need somebody from outside my department. I need you.”
That was a lot to put on my shoulders, but it moved me. After nine months doing nothing but being in a coma and then going through rehab, it felt good to be useful. “Thank you, sir.” My voice cracked a little. “I’ll do my best.”
“Good. We need to find the source of these failures soon. People are laughing now — or, were before the steam-burst — but it’s about to get more serious. I had the Power Superintendent at my office door yesterday. He wasn’t happy.”
I was shocked. The head of the battery boys wasn’t often seen outside the recharging rooms. “Why, sir?”
“The mis-deliveries are sending batteries all over the place. Retrieving them is cutting into the battery boys’ time.”
So this was why the lights were flickering. Why hadn’t people figured this out before?
It was one of the first problems we had to confront after crashing here. Yes, we had all the solar power we could want: a column of super-heated salt stuck into the sunlight above each city’s semaphore tower. The heat drove steam turbines. But with the electromagnetic wash making a central power system impossible, how could we move that energy without wires?
In sixty-two years, we’d become very good at batteries.
The battery boys, some of whom were not male, and most of whom were not children, ran those batteries from the distribution points to everywhere. Every light bulb, every monitor, every elevator motor, every ornithopter depended on them. Our cities could not work without them.
But the batteries were delivered by pneumatic tube.
If things went wrong, if batteries didn’t get to their distribution points, or if fully charged and depleted batteries got mixed up …
A faulty battery. Was this what had killed Isaac? But the gauge had said full power …
“A quarter of the lights in the upper levels are now without power,” Gabriel continued. “The Power Superintendent told me it’s faster to run boys up to the stores and bring back the batteries by hand. If these failures keep getting worse …” He shuddered. “All we need is something to happen with the elevators, and whole levels will go dark.”
Just then the elevator braked, hard. I pitched against a wall, and instinctively, but clumsily, caught Gabriel as he stumbled into me. The press of deceleration ebbed, and we straightened up. We’d stopped. But the doors didn’t open.
“What happened?” I said.
Gabriel yanked open a panel in the side of the elevator. It opened to the outside, but showed another panel of wood, like our own. He rapped at it. “Hey!”
The other panel slid open. A woman scowled back. “What?”
“What’s going on?” said Gabriel, sharp. “Why are you blocking our way?”
She huffed. “Because somebody else is blocking our way, and somebody is blocking him.” She sighed. The frustration eased, and she looked worried. “The signals are out. Apparently, maintenance has been notified. They’re sending somebody up to move the elevators manually.”
Gabriel looked at me. His expression was grim.
* * *
Thanks to the elevator delay, it wasn’t until after lunch that I found myself in the service tunnels above the Communications Hub, flashlight in one hand, clipboard in the other, trying to follow the pneumatic tubes along the ceiling without burning myself on the steam pipes. Around me, the workings of Iapyx hissed, gurgled and stank. I hoped my first day at my job wouldn’t end with me sounding my emergency locator siren and getting dragged out of some hole by my new colleagues.
On the other hand, that would take care of their hero worship pretty quick.
I did well enough for the first hour. The service tunnels here were bigger than most, which helped me — but more complicated, too, which didn’t. I marked the tubes with chalk to keep track of them as they braided and wove. It was hot and humid. I should have been sweating like a cold pipe but I wasn’t — I couldn’t. Michael had warned me about this: scar tissue doesn’t sweat, and without the ability to sweat, I would overheat. I could get heatstroke. I could die.
I could drop the damn chalk again. Which I did.
As I moved into a narrower service tunnels, I was dropping the chalk regularly, and seeing spots. Was clumsiness a sign of heatstroke? Or just one of my body’s routine betrayals? It was hard to tell, as I juggled clipboard and flashlight. My fingers cramped as I tried to force them into pincers to reach under a steam pipe and grab the chalk.
The pipe, with no respect for my status as a hero, burned me.
I swore.
I was the worst person in the city to be doing this. Why was I doing this?
Because I’d been asked. And I was, above all things, a good follower. Besides, I wanted to believe I could help my city. And I wanted to believe my body was strong enough to serve me.
But I was exhausted, and I could see nothing out of the ordinary from the lines of tubes. Finding a glitch in a pipe among all of the pipes of Iapyx was worse than finding a needle in a haystack. They needed a haystack expert down here, and not a crippled one.
But as I pressed my body flat against the hot floor, I felt a brush of cool air. I frowned, and struggled to sit up. At my knees was one of the master pneumatics, thick as a man’s waist, entwined with its neighbour. I ran my hand along its surface. There was a crack in the plastic tubing.
I couldn’t look further, the whole thing was covered by a WARNING: STEAM VENT placard, the paint peeling off the canvas. If there was one sign to take seriously on Iapyx —
But there were no steam pipes in that tangle. Just pneumatics.
Bracing myself for a messy death, I pulled the placard aside.
No steam vent was hiding under the clear tubes of the pneumatic network. Just those two big master tubes, twistin
g around each other. I nudged one of them and …
Smooth as clockwork, the pipes twisted out of alignment.
I gaped at them. The pipes were on a pivot. They’d been tampered with to swing so that, with a push of a hand, one pipe could be made to connect with the other, and then back again.
But there was more. Something pushed back as I pushed the pipes forward. I heard the whirr of gears. I shone my flashlight into the gap and looked inside.
The pivot that turned the two pipes was attached to a rope, and the rope to a wheel attached to a squat device that was bolted to one of the steam pipes.
“What the—”
The device hissed, let out a jet of steam, and the wheel turned. Startled, I grabbed the tubes, and managed to stop the section before it swung halfway. Too late, though. A canister shot out of an exposed pipe and skittered across the floor before banging up against a support.
I let the pipes go. The valve vented again and the pneumatics swung back into alignment.
I lurched over and picked up the canister that had almost been sent off in a random new direction, but was now stuck with me. I fumbled with the hatch and pulled out the paper inside.
URGENT. CLOSE VALVE 13B IMMEDIATELY. PRESSURE OVERLOAD.
It was addressed to the power centre. The turbines.
My breathing quickened. The air felt like mud in my lungs. I didn’t need to be a power worker to know that I was looking at the next steam burst. This was it: clear evidence of sabotage. But from who? This was a restricted area. There’d be records of who was through here, surely? They could find out who did this, easy.
But first I had to get this message to the CommController so it could be delivered. Lives were at stake. The city itself was at stake.
It was hot in here, and it felt like it was getting hotter. I should have been sweating, but I wasn’t. Nausea gripped me. Spots swelled in time with my pulse as I looked around, struggling to find my bearings. What were the symptoms of heatstroke again?
I picked a direction in the gaps between the master pneumatics and staggered for the exit. I hoped I was right.
The spots in my vision got bigger each time my heart beat. My head pounded green and purple. But I couldn’t pass out. I’d be dead before anybody thought to look for me, and more people would die because of my failure.
I staggered, dizzy, then shouted when I burned myself on a pipe. But the flash of pain gave me a burst of adrenaline that cleared my head. I used that. I turned a corner and saw the exit to the service ducts. Almost there! I staggered forward, muscles cramping
The spots were overtaking my vision again. My ears started to ring. But I was so close to the cool of the Communications Hub that I started to run. My breath came in gasps. I fumbled with the doorknob for several seconds before I realized it was a crash bar. I shoved it and stumbled through.
The ringing in my ears intensified. I saw the Communications Hub in chaos, people running for the doors. I held up the mis-sent canister. “Hey! Somebody! This has got to go—”
Nobody was listening. People were shouting. And the stupid ringing in my ears just wouldn’t let up. Why was I still hot? The nausea and the spots in my eyes were getting worse. “Hey!” I groaned. “Hey! Somebody!”
Ethan stumbled to a stop when he saw me. Sweat was streaming down his face. “Simon! We’ve got to get out of here!”
“Wait!” I thrust the rogue canister at him. “I found it! Somebody sabotaged the pneumatics. This has to be re-sent to the power centre, or there’ll be another burst!”
Ethan bobbled the canister, shoved it under his arm, and grabbed me. “Simon, listen to me! We’ve got to go!”
Why wasn’t Ethan listening to me? Why wasn’t anybody listening to me? “There’s a pivot!” I gasped. “A machine twists the tubes out of alignment. That’s what caused the mis-deliveries. That’s why people couldn’t trace it. Somebody sabotaged the pneumatics!”
“Marni!” Ethan shouted. “Help!”
Marni ran up, looking horrified. Something wasn’t right. Why was I still hot? Why couldn’t I breathe? Why wouldn’t the ringing in my ears go away?
Then I realized that the ringing wasn’t in my ears.
Ethan and Marni grabbed a shoulder each and hauled me forward. “What’s going on?” I mumbled. I tried to walk, but my legs weren’t working right.
“Heat alert,” Marni gasped. “Something’s wrong. They’re ordering all personnel on our level to the cold shelters.”
We passed an alarm. The clapper blurred as it struck the bell. The flip-display showed the temperature in red numbers.
“Fifty-seven degrees Celsius?” I gasped. It was hotter here than in the steam tunnels. And as I said it, the display flipped to fifty-eight.
“Move! Move!” Marni yelled. “We have to move!”
People shoved through the emergency exits, but they were bottlenecks becoming traffic jams of sweating, panicking, shoving people. And when we managed to stagger through, there were crowds in the corridors to deal with. More bells ringing.
“Stairs?” Ethan breathed.
“Too far,” Marni gasped. “We don’t know how many levels are affected.”
And they were right. Everyone was doing as they’d been drilled to do: make for the nearest cold shelter. You could collapse in the heat if you took too long to find a way out. The elevators wouldn’t carry enough people to safety.
Marni and Ethan struggled. I’m not a big man, but I was dead weight, and it was hot. The air was stale, and the two were flagging. Beside us, an old woman struggled — the same one I’d seen at the window when I started work that day. She glared at us when she saw our insignias. “What did you forget to send?” she shouted. “What did you do!”
Her voice was slurring, her eyes losing focus. As she finished her sentence, she pitched forward.
Marni glanced at Ethan, horrified. A message passed through their gaze. Ethan hauled up more of my weight, and Marni let go to pick up the old woman. Now, two exhausted communications workers were hauling two dead weights through the sweltering corridors.
With what remaining strength I could muster, I took some weight off Ethan’s shoulder. We stumbled forward faster. I could see the cold shelter ahead, marked by a flashing light, and the people running toward it. A security officer stood by the door, a clicker in his hand, counting everyone who entered. He put his hand on the doorknob.
These things could only hold so many people. And to work, they had to be closed. The last ones were filing in.
“Wait!” Marni screamed.
The security officer looked up, his hand on the doorknob. We were a hundred metres away. One group of dozens in the corridor shouting for help. Ethan tried to pick up the pace.
I’ll never forget the look on the officer’s face as he shut the door.
We stood, lost, as claxons rang and it got stifling. Marni teetered as she clutched the old woman. Then she looked past Ethan, and pointed. “Washroom!”
My vision was tunnelling. I sensed Ethan lifting me up, and the four of us turning to a wall — not a wall, a door. The women’s washroom. Marni shoved open the door with her body. I could hear water running.
There were others here, leaning against each other in the shower stalls, the water running. The air felt cooler. Marni and Ethan dragged us to the last empty stall. They leaned us against the wall. She fumbled with the tap. Cool water sluiced over me as I hit the tiled floor and passed out.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AARON’S STAR
I woke, feeling cooler but still dizzy. I didn’t move. I just listened. The water pattered on us, as I imagine rain did on Old Mother Earth. I opened my eyes slightly.
They’d rolled me onto my side. In front of me, I could see that I’d been sick. Today’s breakfast was adding its colour to a stream of water running down the drain. Marni and Ethan sat close together against the shower wall, drenched. Marni clutched her knees to her chest.
“You heard the officer,” Ethan was saying. “T
he problem’s been repaired. We just have to wait for the temperature to come down a little more, then we can get out of here. The infirmary staff are already here to take the injured.”
“But why did she say that?” Marni looked on the verge of tears. She was staring at the old woman, who still lay unconscious. “We didn’t do anything wrong. Why did she blame us?”
“She’s scared,” Ethan replied. “We all are.”
“But why us?”
Ethan sighed. “Because Iapyx depends on us. And we’re letting them down.”
Marni shook her head. Her voice quivered. “But if it’s sabotage, like Simon said—”
Ethan clasped her hand. “It’s still our canisters getting sent to the wrong places. It’s still our tubes that got messed with. From the batteries that got mixed up, to the messages that never arrived, to the records that were lost. If people can’t trust the pneumatics—”
Marni shuddered. “But what would cause the fans to fail?”
The fans, I thought. So that’s what happened. Without the huge wood and canvas mechanisms that drove air through the heat exchangers, Iapyx would have become an oven.
But wait — the ventilation?
“The fans?” I mumbled. “The fans failed?”
Ethan and Marni looked at me.
“Simon?” said Marni.
“It’s okay,” said Ethan. “Relax. Help is on its way.”
But the fans had failed. No pneumatic tube gone astray could have caused that. No matter what message they got or didn’t get, no one would shut off the fans accidentally. No one would shut off the fans at all. They were independent. Automatic. Whoever the saboteurs were, they weren’t just diverting messages and waiting for things to go wrong anymore. They were attacking the city directly.
Creator save us. The fans. The fans, the cables, the anchors, the salt plant, the hydroponics … Iapyx was a web of weak points. If it came to active sabotage, the city couldn’t possibly defend itself.
I don’t know what showed on my face as I worked my way through this. Something. It must have looked like pain. Ethan and Marni called for help. Someone wearing a nurse’s uniform came with a sedative. And I was gone.
