Six Days

by Philip Webb

  Erin glances at Peyto, but he just drops his head.

  “There was another,” she says hastily. “But she’s … not on the ship anymore.”

  And then, at last, I twig why this woman might be a touchy subject. She has to be the one with the missing flinder. And if her flinder is the artifact we’ve all been looking for over the last hundred years, then … by now she’s got to be well dead.

  Peyto lifts his head at last. “After … Look, the Aeolus only resuscitated us – we don’t know why. Maybe it can’t wake the others. This was three days ago. When we came out of life support, the ship was in the highest state of emergency.”

  “OK, so the ship’s kaput, but can’t you just try waking everyone else up yourselves?”

  They look at each other all serious, and I start to get an inkling about how desperate they really are.

  “It was the first thing we tried, but the resus system doesn’t respond,” says Peyto. “It would take three weeks to revive people manually.”

  “So? Rustle up some sarnies and knuckle down. It’s only three weeks –”

  “We haven’t got three weeks. We’ve got six days.”

  “Before what?”

  Peyto looks at me helplessly.

  “Before the Aeolus crashes into Earth. It says the only thing that will save it and everyone on board is the missing flinder.”

  THE MISSING SLEEPER

  My first thought is, Right, that’s it. Let’s get off this floating pus ball and get back to Wilbur on the flippin’ double. Then I gaze at the ranks of sleepers – Pey to and Erin’s fellow travelers – the ones who ain’t gonna wake up in time. And they’re probably blood, bound to each other by the journey, as tight as our little scav clan. It makes me see how terrified Peyto and Erin really are, and how well they hid it till now.

  “We need to get back,” I go at last. “To Wilbur.”

  “Yes, he’ll be worried,” says Erin. “I don’t like to think of him alone …” There’s a hint of fear in her voice, and she don’t look me in the eye when she says it.

  “Look, I know you think Wilbur’s special or whatever, that he knows where the missing flinder might be. But he don’t have no more clue where it is than I do. If he did, then he’d be the first one trotting off to claim it.”

  “I know,” she sighs. Then she faces me proper. “It’s just he’s our only chance. The ship sent us to find the clock tower, to find The One to help us. We didn’t even know where it was. We split up to search on different sides of the river. It was a miracle that Peyto found it. And the only one there was Wilbur.”

  Just then I remember Peyto asking Wilbur about his comics, if he’d heard of some character … Helen, was it? Or Eleanor? But Wilbur had never heard of her.

  “Maybe he’ll remember something that will help,” goes Erin, though she don’t sound too hopeful. “But before we head back, we have to reconfigure the shuttle.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “We can’t just fly back to London. Normally the ship would do the resetting for us, but its navigation systems are damaged. The only way to do it now is manually from the bridge on the far side. It means going along the central shaft where the hull breach is.”

  “Where there’s no air?”

  “We’ve got special suits.”

  “There’s only two suits, remember?” mumbles Peyto.

  Erin offers to go and I want to tag along.

  “No, it’s too dangerous. Besides, I’ll be quicker alone.”

  “Yeah, and what if something happens, eh?”

  “She’s right,” Peyto chips in. “It’s safer with two. Let her go. Let her see.”

  Erin ain’t too chuffed, but she beckons me away from the sleeper pods. I glance back at Peyto, and he’s just hanging in midair with his back to me, like someone drowned.

  “Is he all right?” I whisper.

  “Just tired, I think. We’ve been going nonstop for days now. And it’s been hardest on him …”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Let me get you into a suit, then I’ll tell you.”

  She guides me along the main chamber till we reach this big hollow set into the wall. There are twelve slots in it like a clock face, and two of them are took up with these little puppet things with huge heads. They look a bit creepy, like hanging skins with see-through skulls.

  “Take a suit,” urges Erin.

  “They’re a bit small, ain’t they? Like for little kids.”

  “That’s their default state. When you start getting in one, it’ll expand to fit you.”

  “Where’s all the other suits gone, then?”

  “Good question. They’ve just disappeared. The ship said they got lost in the emergency.”

  “How come it ain’t speaking now?”

  “I don’t know. It speaks when you least expect it to. When it’s got something to say, I suppose.”

  I put my arm into one of the suit sleeves and it swallows my hand, all greasy and slick. It bloats up in some places and goes stiff in others, surrounding and supporting me. Erin helps me with the skull helmet. When that hinges down, I get a misty shrimp-shell view, but then it suddenly goes clear and lights flare up from the collar. It smells yeasty inside. I can feel the lining fizzing and bubbling against my skin.

  “Don’t worry about that – it’s just the air supply coming online. It’ll settle down in a minute.” Her voice is all crackly, right with me inside my helmet.

  She kits up, too, and then she touches a button on the wall that’s dark and rough like a scab, then all this skin shoots out from the edge of the hollow and snaps together like a bubble, cutting us off from the main chamber.

  “This is the airlock,” she goes. “Ahead of us on the far side is the hull breach. You OK?”

  I put up my thumbs. The truth is, I’m slightly cacking it. But Erin gives a smile to bolster me up. She looks so different to me then – her face so at home behind the faceplate. Because we don’t weigh nothing, her hair is swaying about inside the helmet, doing loops round the earmuffs like baby snakes, and she ain’t all closed up anymore.

  Up till now, the whole idea that I’m thirteen miles above the ground ain’t sunk in. So I ain’t really ready for when the airlock bubble spits us out the other side. First, the sound dies, then the crisp shadows of space swallow me up.

  When she’d said “hull breach,” I’d figured on a little hole in the wall, not a whopping great crater. The walls of the ship are torn open, layers twisted and shredded into stumps, like shattered bones. A web of loose veins, thin as spider silk, wafts at the edges, and past a cloud of twinkling wreckage all the vastness of the universe sends me into a quiet terror. What strikes me dumb is that there ain’t a thing between the ends of my fingers and the next star. Wilbur says that some stars you look at ain’t even there no more, cos by the time the light gets to us, they’ve died out. Thinking about this, I feel like I’m one stride away from being lost forever.

  And then as I’m gazing at this ocean of black, the Earth wheels into view. A blazing rim of blue fire. The sky and the land and the seas are all swirling inside one arc, shimmering bands and storms all caught up in a plate of pearl, turning in the dark. And it’s all so silent and terrible somehow. Like it’s got a life of its own, nothing to do with the tiny creatures that bumble around on its surface. Cos it’s hard to picture Wilbur down there somewhere, patting Sheba, and the breath steaming out from both their mouths. He’s so out of reach, it gives me the horrors. But, God alive, if he could see me now! This is Wilbur’s dream I’m living out – swanning about in a proper space suit!

  Erin comes alongside, and as I turn, her helmet nudges mine and I see her just smiling sadly at me, like she’s guessed what I’m thinking, that up here, far away, the world is a different thing, a stranger to us.

  She anchors us both up with a tube like a link of sausages, then she presses something that looks like a hairy mole on the forearm of her suit skin, and this cable shoots out. It spool
s clear and catches onto the far wall, then she reels it in, dragging us along, away from the breach.

  “What happened back there?” I ask at last. “The hole, I mean.”

  “No idea. The one person who would know isn’t around anymore.”

  “From the third empty pod?”

  “Yes. Halina – Peyto’s mother.”

  “His mother?”

  My first thought is one I keep to myself – So you ain’t brother and sister, then.

  “All I know is what should have happened. If the Aeolus finds a suitable planet, then we’re meant to terraform it ready for colonization.”

  “Too much boffin talk. Tell me in English.”

  “OK, imagine the ship finds a rock floating in space around a star like the sun – no air, no water, no life. We orbit at a safe distance, start off chemical reactions, make an atmosphere and oceans, and turn the rock into a place where we can grow food and have proper lives. That’s what terraforming means.”

  “Don’t sound that easy.”

  “Well, it takes a long time. That’s why we stay asleep. We don’t know how it works exactly, but we do it through the flinders, through our dreams.”

  “And the ship’s meant to shake you all out of bed when the cake’s baked?”

  Erin gives me a look like she’d rather go back to the boffin talk.

  “That’s right. Except, well, only Halina was woken up.”

  “Then what?”

  “That’s the hazy part. The thing is – if everything had gone to plan, there’d be air and water on this planet, but not life yet, not people.”

  “So your alarm call was a bit late?”

  She sighs as if getting ready to explain something tricky. But right then the ship speaks. And that creeps me out, cos it’s like it’s been listening to us the whole time. Its voice is deep and soft as it comes to me through the helmet, and I know it ain’t even close to being human.

  “This vessel needs all the flinders with their sleepers or it cannot be repaired. Without the forty-nine, this vessel and all those aboard are doomed. If this vessel perishes, its death will devastate the Earth.”

  “Hey, what do you mean, devastate the Earth?” I go.

  Erin flashes me a warning look.

  “The sleepers and their flinders nurture the Earth, they protect it from harm. Without them, a plague of wars such as this world has never seen will sweep across all lands. You must find the missing flinder. You must find Halina.”

  “But how can Halina even be alive now?” says Erin. “The missing flinder has been lost on the planet for a hundred years or more. Why didn’t you speak of this? Why didn’t you resuscitate us earlier?”

  “Only now is it time for you to wake. The flinder is with her. Find Halina and you will find the flinder.”

  “We’re still searching. We came to the tower you spoke of, and there was a boy there. But he doesn’t know anything.”

  “He knows.” The answer comes slowly, from a faraway place.

  “What makes you think that?” I go. Erin gives me daggers, but I ignore her. “I mean, why would he know?”

  “He is the key. His heart is true. Through the sleepers, I see the shape of living minds, his mind. His dreams of this flinder are strong. He can sense where it lies.”

  I tap the side of my helmet at Erin. “Wilbur? I think you’ve got your wires crossed or something. He don’t know squat.” But my voice sounds shaky. And I’m thinking about my little brother’s artifact clues … Erin does a furious hand chop at her neck to get me to zip it and she’s right – it don’t make sense to get the Aeolus riled. ’Specially when it’s clearly as mad as a bag of spanners.

  “The flinders must not be earthbound. They are of the sky, of dreaming. Forty-nine flinders for forty-nine sleepers. Together we will watch over the Earth.” It sounds like it’s been listening in on old Jacob Armitage’s Sunday sermons.

  There’s a silent question in the frown Erin throws at me, then she says, “But the sleepers must wake now, mustn’t they? This planet is terraformed.”

  No answer.

  “You have to tell us what happened to Halina,” she demands. “Why did she leave?”

  But the ship ain’t speaking. Which, to me, is a tad suspect. We wait, but clearly the conversation is over. I take a breath to say something, but Erin shakes her head at me.

  At last we reach the far end of the shaft, where there’s another blast hole, bigger than the first. And it don’t take a rocket boffin to figure out there’s been a struggle here. The bridge itself is a proper maze with loads of tubeways worming past each other, linking up at junctions and bulging with veins.

  Bits of debris hang in drifts that get thicker as we delve onward – lumps of glittery black stuff like coal. They knock against my helmet and shatter into soot.

  “What’s all this?”

  “Frozen flesh – from where the ship was damaged. Some of the navigation equipment has been destroyed. We can’t maintain a safe orbit without it. That’s why it needs the missing flinder, so it can repair properly. Otherwise it’ll burn up in the atmosphere and crash into the Earth.”

  There’s a hairpin bend ahead, and before I know it I’m hanging over this whacking great hole into nowhere, all the stars under my feet, which is like the worst rush of vertigo I’ve ever had.

  “Whoa!”

  “Sorry, I should’ve warned you. That’s the dock for the other shuttle – the one Halina used to get to Earth. There would have been no reason for the Aeolus to seal it up, because all the air in the bridge and the central shaft was already lost to the breach.”

  We squeeze at last into a poky space crusted over with bubble screens all rattling out lines and lines of writing. I can’t read, but even I can see it ain’t alien writing.

  “Hey, it’s all in English,” I go. “It takes you a billion years to get here and you speak English?”

  “The ship says the flinders equipped us with the language we needed for our mission on Earth. When we woke up from stasis, we couldn’t remember any Homefleet words. Your language is the only language we know now.”

  I keep looking round over my shoulder cos I really don’t like that the ship ain’t talking to us no more.

  “So how does the shuttle resetting work?”

  Erin points at a jagged cut below the screens. It looks like someone’s taken an axe to it and there’s all this spongy, tangly gunk inside, like sheep’s guts.

  “All the control centers for the shuttle are severed from the rest of the ship’s nervous system.”

  “And that means what, exactly?”

  She thrusts both hands into the wound. “I have to bridge the gap. Don’t be alarmed – I probably won’t make much sense for a while.”

  “You ain’t making sense right now.”

  But then she closes her eyes and starts shaking.

  “Erin?”

  Her face goes slack.

  “ERIN!”

  I shake her and try to pull her arms out, but they’re jammed in pretty good, all coiled up in the innards … And just as I start to panic, Erin starts calmly reeling off some nonsense, like “geo-sink stable” and “air equal-lies” and “Anglia moment-tum in hold pattern,” all in this flat voice like she’s reading raffle numbers, bored out of her box. And then, all of a sudden, it’s over and she opens her eyes.

  “It’s done. The shuttle’s re-primed. Let’s get back to Peyto.”

  I ain’t sorry. This side of the ship is giving me the creeps – it’s too hemmed in, with too many hidden nooks and turns.

  We head back in silence. The shaft has moved and the hull breach is now facing outward to the bare universe. And the black view is heartless, a place where prayers might get lost. Looking at the emptiness, I’m suddenly desperate for home, and I think about these space travelers, how they set out one day, never really knowing if they’d find a place to settle. Scavving ain’t no picnic, but it’s something at least.

  When we get back to the sleeper sid
e, Peyto’s waiting, but when I get closer I see that his eyes are all red. He looks at us, all quiet and lost, and I know he’s been crying.

  I give him a hug then, cos it’s awful to see him so upset.

  He chokes back his tears. “She’s dead.”

  And there ain’t nothing I can say to that. Cos it has to be true.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” he yells at the Aeolus.

  No answer.

  “Maybe there’s a way she’s still alive,” says Erin gently. “Maybe she’s in stasis or something …”

  “How, Erin? There’s nothing to keep her in stasis on Earth. She’s dead. She died years ago while I slept.”

  “We can’t give up,” she pleads. “The others need us …” She’s on the edge of tears now, too.

  Peyto takes a couple of deep breaths to get himself under control. “I knew she was dead. From the moment I woke up. I felt it.”

  “Oh, Peyto …” Erin takes his hand. “We’ve got to keep going. We’ve got to. It’s not just us anymore, it’s the world down there, too; it’s everyone.”

  He looks at her at last. “What do you mean?”

  “The Aeolus said if the sleepers die, then the whole world will be in terrible danger.”

  PLANS AND LIES

  Seeing Peyto brings it all back to me, about my own mum. I remember the feeling when she died. You suck yourself in, bunch yourself up, but your head goes out wandering into daydreams and memories, searching for that face you know you won’t see again. And when you come back to yourself, you’re a bit older, a bit harder.

  Slowly, a calm settles down on us all. I check my watch cos I’ve lost all sense of time up here, and it don’t seem possible we’ve been on the ship less than an hour. Erin hands me something then. It’s a silky cuff, see-through and frilly at the edges. The solemn way she hands it to me, it’s like sealing a pact.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a …” She pauses, to spare me the boffin term, I think. “It’s like a countdown. You put it on your wrist, like your watch.” She draws up her sleeve to show me hers, close to the skin, and all you can see are marks there like a tattoo. Except the marks are pulsing.