Six Days

by Philip Webb

  “So whoever was here – looks like they ain’t around no more. And even if they’re lying low, there ain’t no use in us pretending we ain’t here – it’s too late for that.”

  “You reckon it was your gramps that ransacked the library?” goes Erin.

  “I don’t know – I can’t see how he’d have got here before us. It don’t make sense … Anyhow, we need to rest and get some chow down us pretty soon or we’re gonna fall asleep in our boots here.”

  “No,” mumbles Peyto. “We’ve got to keep looking.”

  “Hey, sunshine – remember your one and only day’s scavving, how you practically crashed before lunchtime? There ain’t nothing more important right now than sorting out a camp and some grub; otherwise we’re gonna be too knackered to do anything.”

  “We haven’t got time!” cries Peyto, holding his countdown cuff up to me.

  As he says it, I get another little nip from mine, like a fleabite – and it’s like the ship egging us on. Another hour lost …

  “Let’s not panic. Look, we done well. We’re onto something here, I reckon. But it’s getting dark now – we’ll have to call it a day.” I trace the bands on my cuff. “We still got five and a bit days.”

  Peyto sighs, fed up from arguing.

  “We have to rest sometime,” says Erin gently.

  “What about food and water?” he mumbles. “We didn’t bring much.”

  “There’s always water in these places,” I go. “Check out the gift shop – the plastic bottles last forever. And food – well, that’s everywhere, running around on four legs.”

  “Eh?”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard to catch a couple of cats …,” I add, trying to chivy everyone along.

  They both look at me like I’ve just gobbed on the good book.

  THE GAZE OF THE LAMASSU

  Terrific. Two kids from outer space and my little brother with his fear of death. Not exactly what you need for hunting duty.

  “If you’re hunting, I suppose I should do that with you,” pipes up Peyto.

  “You sure? It could get messy.”

  “I want to learn,” he goes. “If we get all the sleepers down here, we won’t have the ship giving us food anymore, will we?”

  Erin’s gawping at him big-time. “But killing is –”

  “It’s different now. We’ve got no choice.”

  “So you’re planning to butcher a living animal?” She looks at Peyto. “We can choose not to.”

  “And we can choose to do it, too. We’ll go hungry otherwise,” says Peyto.

  For a moment she looks like she’s gonna lose her rag, but then she stares up at the glass roof and takes a deep breath.

  “I can’t stop you,” she goes. “But I’m not eating it.”

  She heads off toward the library alone, leaving the rest of us standing there.

  “Hunting ain’t murder,” I go.

  “It is, where we come from,” Peyto mumbles.

  “God, you’re as bad as Wilbur. Look, it’s probably best I do this alone.”

  “No,” he says firmly. “I said I want to learn. Show me.”

  I send Wilbur off to set up camp and get fuel for a fire. And seeing as Peyto’s so keen, I take him with me to look for a weapon. I settle for a piece of polished stone from one of the museum displays. I got no idea what it is, but it’s just right for a throwing club.

  I set myself up at the corner of one of the exhibit rooms and wait for Peyto to flush the cats out. About ten of them come haring into the main chamber. I take aim and let fly with the club. It smacks one fat tom square in the bonce and whips out the hind legs of another. I snatch up the club, run up to the injured one and finish it off, then wring both their necks to make sure.

  Peyto watches me as I wipe the stone with a rag, and it’s impossible to know what he’s thinking. After about half an hour, we’ve racked up three full-growns and four little ‘uns.

  We take the kills into the gift shop and I show Peyto how to do the skinning and gutting. He’s so careful with the carcasses, as if the cats are just asleep and he don’t want to wake them, but he takes it all on, asking the odd question as I prep them up.

  “So I take it, back at Homefleet, animals just die of old age,” I go at last.

  “There’s so few of us, so few native creatures,” he says. “Everything’s … so precious – water, food, people, animals. We don’t kill to eat meat. It wouldn’t make sense because it’s so hard to keep things alive.”

  “But that ship of yours is alive, ain’t it? It don’t seem to have that much trouble surviving.”

  “That’s different. It’s artificial – it would never have existed without the ancients designing it to thrive in deep space. Real creatures need a natural environment – gravity, light, the right food. That’s why we study them, nurture them.”

  “Bit different to here, then.”

  “You’ve got a whole planet to roam around.”

  “It’s your planet, too, now,” I remind him. “I mean, this is what you was looking for all that time, eh?”

  “True, but I didn’t imagine it would be like this.”

  He looks at the blood on his fingers.

  “But you must’ve come from a planet like this once?”

  “That was thousands of years before we left Homefleet. There’s nothing left of that world.”

  “So how come you ended up being a sleeper on the ship?”

  “You take a test – to see if you’re a good match for a flinder. I passed, just.”

  “So you had to take the test?”

  “Yes, everyone does. Most people want to go, to breathe real air, to walk on real ground. But in any case, if you pass the flinder test, then you don’t get a choice, because a strong match is so rare. It usually runs in the blood, so there’s a good chance families get to stay together. Well, it was always just me and my mother … Anyway, she was a near perfect match for her flinder.”

  “What was the test?”

  “If a flinder can project your dreams while you sleep, then you’re a match. When we sleep, especially in the deep sleep of stasis, we catch scraps of each other’s dreams.”

  “How do you know they’re other people’s dreams, not your own?”

  He smiles. “You just do. It’s like … you go somewhere to dream in the same place.”

  The idea of this is so lovely I don’t speak for a bit. Sharing dreams …

  “But you wanted to come, right?” I go at last. “On the ship, I mean, as a sleeper?”

  He shakes his head. “That’s just it, Cass. I wanted to stay, on Homefleet. I’m not a pioneer, I guess. I was interested in other things – the ancients, all their technology, what’s left of it, their libraries and history. Homefleet is the last link with that age.”

  “So you’d’ve spent time in museums like this, then, if you’d stayed home?”

  He smiles at that. “I suppose. Well, I ended up a pioneer, and this is my home now.”

  And I can see how bittersweet this is for him. He’s made it to a new world, but he’s lost his mum. He’s busy breathing that real air, walking on that real ground, but his people are stranded on a doomed ship. I want to ask him loads more, but I figure he’s had enough of talking cos he gently gathers up all the cat meat and heads back to the others.

  Wilbur and Erin have been busy setting up camp in Ancient Civilizations. There are robes for our beds, and a roaring fire stoked with books and carvings. Wilbur’s even rigged up a spit out of bits of old armor and a sword.

  While the cats are cooking, Erin walks to the edge of the main hall. I watch her tossing a pebble into the air and trying to catch it. She’s rubbish, like a nipper, snatching at it too late. I go over to her with some biscuits from my pack.

  “Hey, let’s not fall out,” I go.

  She tilts her head to look at me, puzzled almost. “I’m not falling out with you. I’m just not going to eat those animals, that’s all.”

  She nods toward the edge
of the firelight where some cats are straining forward, drawn by the smell of meat. “It’s so strange for us down here. Even walking is new. But then you see the things that live here and they’re so balanced.”

  She turns to me again. “We’re strangers, Cass.” Her voice wobbles. “My parents are on that ship, my brothers, all my friends. And they don’t even know we’ve arrived. They might not ever see this.”

  “Don’t say that. They will.”

  “But don’t you see? Even if they do, this might never be home.”

  And as she nibbles at the biscuits, trying to catch the crumbs in her mouth, I do see. Cos she’s a lubber to this life, but there ain’t no going back for her, not now.

  The rest of us eat in silence. Even though the meat’s a bit stringy and sour, it’s heaven to get some hot food down our necks. Afterward, Erin joins us and we all get togged up in the robes round the fire.

  Light from the flames throws shadows against the great statue towering above us. It’s a right mishmash of creatures, as daft as a kid’s doodle, but somehow it manages to be all dignified and mysterious. It’s got a man’s head with a square-cut beard, the body and legs of a giant bull, and the fanned wings of a bird. Wilbur catches me looking at it.

  “It’s from Nineveh, a city in Assyria.”

  He closes his eyes as he speaks, remembering the words he’s read. And that amazes me cos he’s spent all afternoon reading. He’s probably leafed through them books on the fire for all I know.

  “Go on, then, clever clogs, what is it?” I go.

  “It’s a lamassu, like a spirit. They put them up to guard doorways and temples.”

  “So it’ll guard over us tonight,” says Erin.

  “Well, just in case it’s forgotten how, we’d better take turns to keep watch,” I go. “Nobody’ll see the fire from outside, but still, we can’t be too careful.”

  Peyto and me take the first stint. We nudge up next to each other, and for a long while we just watch the fire eat up another carving. The elephant god goes slowly, burning first at the ears and trunk, splitting in the heat and sending sprays of sparks over our heads. Wilbur’s crashed out next to Erin, both of them dead to the world. And she’s got one arm cradled over him, holding him close.

  “Tell me some more about Homefleet, then,” I go at last, to break the silence.

  And so he does. He tells me about the coil habitats, miles-long strips of crops and water, all tethered up to each other, fanning out into space, turning to face whatever sun they’re sailing past. He tells me about what animals they saved from their home planet and how they’re different to ours, but not that different, so you got things like horses and rabbits and dogs. But they don’t do so good in the weightless stakes, cos they’ve got to live pampered lives all trussed up, ready to breed when they find a new home.

  Then I ask about the people.

  And he tells me about how his ancestors, the first ancients, had to leave their worlds cos of war and how they set out to live their lives without killing. Homefleet got built along the way as they went from star to star, but they couldn’t find the right kinds of planets to settle down on, which is how come they sent off ships like the Aeolus in all different directions, hoping that’d stack up their chances of surviving. There’s another nine ships out there somewhere with sleepers and flinders inside, searching for planets. And who knows, maybe they got lucky.

  It gives me a strange tingling, to know that there’s all these men and women on the other side of the universe having adventures and seeing all kinds of stuff I can’t even imagine.

  We don’t speak for a while after that, cos my head’s spinning with all these stories.

  Another flea nip, another hour gone. I’ve got used to these little reminders – when they’re gone, we’ll either have saved the ship or not. I stare at my watch and countdown cuff together – one ticking, one pulsing.

  “That time when you held up your flinder and summoned the shuttle. What was you saying?”

  “I wasn’t saying anything, I was singing – no words. It’s something we learn before we leave Homefleet. Actually, it’s not the sound the shuttle picks up – you have to send it through the flinder as a thought, but it’s hard to do unless you sing it at the same time.”

  He hums the tune, teaching it to me. Seven notes, lilting and hanging, like the start of a hymn.

  “We ain’t gonna bring the shuttle here now, are we?”

  He grins. “No, we’re too far away. Anyway, I’m not projecting the song as a thought. I’m just singing it. There’s a difference.”

  He sees me gazing again at the chink of light at his throat, then he hands me his flinder. Echoes again. I shiver, but just at the beauty of them. Cos there ain’t nothing bad about the flinder. I know it. And I wonder if it’d send my dreams off to them sleepers in the sky, if I’d be a true match for it. I hand it back, and feel its voices slip away into silence.

  At last Peyto goes, “Cass, can I ask you something?”

  “Fire away.”

  “Your mother – you don’t talk about her. What was she like?”

  I look at him, not answering straightaway. There was a time when I would bite back if anyone ever asked me about my mum. I didn’t want no one stirring up my memories of her, forcing me to put them into words. But I can tell he’s only thinking about his own mum, trying to make sense of what’s happened to her.

  “I don’t talk about her much,” I go at last. “Sometimes to Wilbur. He don’t remember a lot about her, so I try and fill in the gaps. She died five years ago.”

  He don’t say sorry, which is what most people say, like it’s their fault. A picture of her jumps into my head then – I see her laughing at Wilbur toddling along the floor of our hut, and she reaches down to scoop him up and bury her long red hair into his face.

  “She was … strong. She made scavving, anything, like a game for us. She made out like our life was fine, that we was lucky somehow. Well, it wasn’t no bed of roses, but she made a joke out of stuff that went wrong, you know? Nothing was ever that bad with her around. Leaks in the roof, flies in the summer, same food for days on end. She’d make it a laugh.”

  “You do that.”

  “What?”

  “Making the best of it, turning it into a game.”

  I don’t say nothing to that cos it seems to me I don’t crack jokes in the same way. Mum really was happy-go-lucky. I just pretend most of the time.

  “She never came back from this one scav shift. A chimney stack fell in as she was chipping away at it. Things just dropped down a hole after that. Wilbur’s too young to remember her, but still, she ain’t there for him. Dad, well, he never got over it. Days are black for him now. No amount of chivying will ever snap him out of it.”

  “What about you?”

  “I don’t know. I try and remember her, try and be like her, look out for everyone. Being like that, it makes me feel she ain’t that far away somehow.”

  That’s more than I’ve ever told anyone about how I feel, and for now there ain’t nothing left to say. After a little while, he takes my hand and holds it. Which sends my ticker galloping off into the sunset. My face has got to be on red alert. I look at him, all flustered, but he don’t look back, and I can see him mulling over what I’ve told him, keeping it to himself. I like that, the way he listens without pushing it, the way he don’t just talk for the sake of it. And slowly my face goes back to normal – well, pink alert, probably. But by now the old elephant god is just a glowing ember, and the scent of the burning wood makes me ache for sleep. Which is just when my resident spiders decide to get all lively, running up and down the inside of my collar and abseiling off my hair, like they’re trying to keep me awake. But I’m all in and pretty soon my eyes keep drooping. And I don’t know how Peyto’s keeping going, but he’s still wide awake, gazing at the fire …

  And it only seems like I’ve dropped off for five minutes when someone rocks my shoulder. It’s Wilbur. The others are up and about,
yawning and stretching, and from the main chamber comes the milky light of a new dawn.

  Five days to go.

  ARBOR LOW WOMAN

  We clear up the camp, and I stuff the throwing club in my belt, just in case. It ain’t the safest option, but I figure it’s best if we split up to save time. Me and Wilbur start with Egypt. Erin and Peyto take Africa.

  And so the search begins. I take it in at first – all the great carved faces, and lion hunts, and eagle gods, and gold beetles, and long-dead kings. The cats watch us, all jittery, cowering from my flashlight beam. Sometimes whole loads of them make a break for it into another room, weaving about the exhibits like floods of dark water. It gives you the shivers to think how old everything is – Wilbur reads bits out to me, and some of the stuff goes back five thousand years, before London even, scavved from some faraway desert city. It makes my head spin with all the millions of lives what’s been and gone since these things was made. Folks in a different age, yakking to each other in another language, with different worries running through their heads … I like the shapes of the Egypt stuff – it’s all so royal and powerful, with all them bird-headed gods looming over you, staring out with their all-seeing eyes …

  All the same, there ain’t nothing that looks like a flinder.

  Just the dark weight of it all – statues and headdresses and fancy daggers – it wears me out. But Wilbur, he’s just lapping it up. He’s still wiping the dust off plaques long after we leave Ancient Civilizations to head upstairs.

  And what with all this wandering from room to room, my brain starts wandering, too. And it ain’t just the question of Gramps that’s getting to me. It’s something about the fact that we’re in a museum …

  At last I haul Wilbur up.

  “Look, if this was such a hot lead, how come it’s gone all cold again? We could be here for weeks.”

  “I know it’s here, Cass.”

  “Don’t get all miffed – we followed you here, didn’t we? It’s just you said you got a tingling feeling when you was on the right track with them comics – but you ain’t getting that now?”