“Fine.” She dragged fingers like spikes through her tangled curls. “A quick look.”
She strode over the soft carpet of orange sand; dust clung to her boots and stuck to her ankles like static. Raw stepped aside, allowing Wren to be first to touch the door. She pressed her palm against the reader and it hissed, jerked and slid open half an inch. Then it stopped.
Stale air puffed through the gap and made Wren cough. The door was shuddering, still trying to open. “It’s stuck.”
Raw shook his head. “I don’t think there’s enough power.” He grabbed the door with both hands and winced as he strained his shoulders.
“You don’t have to-” Wren began.
Ignoring her, Raw gave a massive heave. The door groaned as it squeaked sideways. Tendons stood out on Raw’s neck and he threw his head back, his mask tightening across the lower half of his face. As soon as the opening was wide enough to allow them to pass sideways, he dropped his arms. Wren peered past him into the darkness, her ears pricking for the sound of slithering, or the chilling wail of a hunting Creature.
She jumped as electricity hissed and crackled through glow tubes. Suddenly a corridor was illuminated in front of her.
Wren looked down. The sand stopped at the doorway, a line drawn in the encroaching desert. She glanced at Raw, the glow brightening her eyes, then she turned and side-stepped through the door.
Her boot heels clicked on the floor, stifled by layers of dust and a silence so intense that it seemed to absorb all sound. Even the hissing of the single operational glow-tube seemed stifled. A muffled curse told her that Raw was squeezing through behind her. She turned to see his wings caught in the mechanism.
“Stop.” Alarmed she sped back to him and gently pulled them free, stroking the material as it settled back around his legs. “If you rip these you’ll be trapped here.”
Raw nodded and wrapped them tighter around his legs. “Can you see anything - any other rooms?”
“I think there’re stairs.” Wren pointed to a hollow blackness ahead. “Do you want to go down?”
Raw raised his eyebrow. “You want to go back?”
“Well … we’re out of the wind.” Wren fidgeted, but her eyes kept flicking to the staircase.
“Come on.” Raw pushed past her. Wren watched as he reached the corridor’s end. He vanished into the dark as if it had swallowed him whole. Another crackle as power followed him into the glow tubes and the stairwell appeared.
Wren was moving towards it before she had time to consider her actions. Despite her aching legs, she was going down.
When they had gone down a single full flight, glow tubes started to come on below them, illuminating floor after floor.
“The building wasn’t that tall.” She stared.
“They must have built down into the delta, to protect it from dust-storms. Look.” Raw pointed to a number painted on the wall, in faded crimson: 21.
“There are over twenty floors,” Wren gasped. “Which do you want to look at?”
Raw shrugged. “Pick a number.”
“Fifteen.”
“Your age.”
“Yours too,” Wren whispered.
Raw shook his head. “I turned sixteen half-years a week ago.” He too had lowered his voice. The sheer size of the building suppressed sound.
“Sixteen then.” Wren shoved past him and started to descend. The stairs were a kind of gridded metal that bounced slightly as she walked, but had barely corroded with time. Each floor was marked with a closed and numbered door. By the time they had reached the number sixteen, Wren’s thighs were trembling.
“We’re here.” Raw sounded out of breath.
Wren pressed her palm to the reader and this time the door slid open with barely a creak, the mechanism almost as smooth as the last day it had been used.
Wren stepped through with Raw at her heels. Then she stopped. His hands caught her elbows as her knees folded. “By the skies,” she gasped.
"By the Designer,” he echoed and she could feel him trembling against her.
She shook him off and staggered forwards to the guard rail that ran along the platform they had emerged onto.
Ahead of them glow tubes were sputtering into life, dominos of light that had been set off when the door opened. The glow was spreading across a cavernous space, sixteen floors deep, illuminating massive machinery with their faint bluish glow.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” Raw gripped the railing beside her.
Wren stared downwards, her eyes still following the trail of lights as they broke into the darkness, dropping like a Runner from a platform.
The machine looked like a cylinder, with struts protruding from it, floor by floor, like the legs of a Martian bug. It sat silent, but Wren could imagine the vast wall of sound that it would make as it plunged into the rock, breaking it up to create the fluorine based gases that would then be pumped into the atmosphere through giant chimneys that had long ago collapsed.
“How many of these were there?” she muttered. “How did they build them?”
Raw looked surprised. “You don’t know?”
Wren glared at him. “A Runner’s education is different.”
Raw shook his head. “Still, you should know.”
“Why? What use is the information? Did you know how to stop falling when your wings unlocked?”
“I-” Raw fell silent and shook his head.
“Right then.” Wren turned her back on him. The silence drew out.
“There were twenty machines. They built them in orbit then dropped them onto the delta and built the factories around them.”
Wren was quiet for a while, thoughtful. “Did the saboteurs destroy all twenty? This one looks okay.”
“How would you know?” Raw laughed. “Trust me, it's dead, they all are.”
“What if it isn’t? What if we could restart it?” Wren leaned over almost bending double over the railing. The light had reached the ground now, the whole machine illuminated with the faint glow.
Raw laughed. “If it could have been fixed and restarted they would have done it. We don’t have the technology, things keep breaking and without resupply from dead-Earth we can’t train engineers to operate the machinery. Designers, Wren in a few generations even the bioengineers in Elysium will be reduced to traditional farming and breeding methods. We can only hope that the biospheres last long enough for the atmosphere to become breathable and that if they don’t, we have enough equipment to keep making masks.”
“We’re going backwards.” Wren nodded. “That’s why the wings are so precious. When we lose the last of them, we’ll be grounded, just like …”
“Just like you, that’s what you were going to say.”
Wren nodded.
Raw offered a twisted smile that she could just about see inside his mask. “I’m a Runner now.”
“No, you’re not,” Wren sneered. “You’re a wing thief.”
Raw stepped back from her as though she’d hit him. “So are you.” Wren hadn’t noticed that the cruel edge to his voice had vanished from his speech until it reappeared. “You’re a girl. You aren’t a Runner any more than I am. Thief. Blasphemer.”
He stamped back towards the stairs.
Wren lifted a hand as if to call him back, then dropped her arm. He was right. She was only a Runner’s daughter; no more a Runner than he.
She stared down at the glowing behemoth, blackened twists of metal glimmered. Then she heard it: the eerie wail of a Creature. It wound around the machinery, warped by the echoes. She shivered.
They were not alone inside the factory after all.
Chapter seven
Wren sprinted back towards the stairs, her stiffening muscles forgotten. She burst into the stairwell. “They’re here.”
“I heard.” Raw didn’t turn around. He was powering up the stairs, his wings wafting behind him.
Wren’s back prickled and she
jerked and looked behind her, convinced that she was about to be pulled back. There was nothing there. “They’re hunting us.”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing?”
Raw had stopped at the eighteenth floor.
“The machine cavern only went a couple of floors above sixteen. I figure these are the living quarters.”
“Don’t,” Wren called, but Raw was already pressing his palm on the reader, cycling the door open. Wren tensed, half expecting Creatures to boil out like spaghetti from a pan. Nothing but darkness emerged.
This time the light flickered on and off, the power refusing to catch as Raw stepped through. Wren bit her lip as she looked behind her and then back to Raw’s vanishing wings. The keening of the Creatures swirled up the stairwell, reverberated from the walls and shivered inside her head. She looked down, trying to see all the way to the bottom. How had they got inside?
Then she remembered the sand snakes, they could burrow into the smallest gaps. Was there a hole down there under the sand?
Could they climb?
Did she see movement in the shadowy depths, or was it simply just that her eyes were over-strained?
Wren spun around and chased after Raw.
He was waiting for her just beyond the door. As soon as she was through he cycled it closed, muting the terrifying sounds. Darkness wrapped around her; then cold light flashed on again, pushing it away.
Wren stared at him, panting. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I’ve almost died once today already.” Raw shrugged. “Invisible monsters don’t seem so scary right now.”
Wren glared at him, then looked past along the corridor as the light burned, then died. Above her the tubes crackled and hissed like snakes. The light came back on, dimmed, brightened. “Lots of rooms.”
Raw nodded. “If the layout is what I expect, there’ll be a kitchen at the end.”
“A kitchen?” Hope like a spreading fern rose in Wren’s chest. “Food?”
“Food a century old.” Raw warned her.
“Space food,” she reminded him. “Lasts.”
Just the thought of something to eat made Wren’s gut shrink to the size of a stone and before she knew it, she was running through the cycling light and dark.
Doors flashed past until they stood side by side in front of dust covered glass. Wren waited for the glow tubes to brighten once more, wiped it clean and squinted through. “It is a kitchen, there’s a table and stools.”
“There’ll be one on each residential floor.”
This time the door pulled towards Wren instead of sliding sideways. She exhaled shakily as she stepped forward, desperate to search for pouches, but afraid that her hopes would be crushed.
She held her breath as Raw opened cupboard after empty cupboard. Then he froze.
“What is it?” Wren stood on tip-toe and he stepped aside. There, at eye level, was a box half full of unopened retort pouches.
Wren blinked, but then held her eyes closed, as though the box would disappear if she looked again. “Are they real?” she murmured.
In answer Raw took her hand and closed it around something cold and pliable. She opened her eyes. In her palm was a pouch the same colour as her wings.
“Do you think it’ll be all right to eat?” Raw tore open the top of his pouch. “It’s more than a century old.” He looked at it doubtfully.
“I don't care.” Wren pulled open the tab on her own.
Raw lifted his mask then stopped with the pouch halfway to his lips, guilt painted his face. “I almost forgot.” He dropped his mask back into place and gestured towards the ceiling. “Thanks to those who brought us here, who gave their lives so we might live, thanks to He who keeps us safe who had this planet made to give.”
“You observe the rites?” Wren stared, surprised.
Raw paused with the pouch raised. “Everyone observes. Don’t you?”
Wren stepped backwards. “Runners do things differently.”
“I know you have a whole different set of rules. I didn’t know you don’t thank the Designer and Originals,” Raw sneered. “You’re so arrogant.”
“It’s not that we’re not grateful.” Wren squeezed her pouch so hard that the ancient seam burst, wet slime coated her hands. “We have more important-”
“That sounds about right.” Raw turned his back on her.
“We know we’d be dead if we’d stayed on dead-Earth. It’s just we haven’t deified Captain Kiernan like you …”
“What were you going to call me?” Raw spun around. “A Land-crawler, a Grounder, I know your terms for us.”
“And you don’t call Runners names, treat us like-”
“No more than you deserve,” Raw growled and he loomed over her. “You keep flying in families, you cling to your power like a dead-Earth monarchy - no-one else gets a chance to escape Elysium. At least in the biosphere you get the job you’re best suited for.”
“Unless you’re a girl,” Wren yelled.
“The bioengineers tried other methods, only a womb works. It’s plain wrong that Runner girls don’t do their womb-duty to the colony. Women are valued and protected.”
“As long as they do as they’re told and produce the proscribed number of children for exchange.”
“We have families.”
“You have brothers and sisters you’ve never met and never will.”
“So you’re against genetic diversity too!”
“Of course not! I just don’t want the life they say. Can’t you understand that?” Wren sank down onto a metal stool and stared at the slime drying on her fist as the light blinked on and off, making her eyes water. “When it’s time, some Runner friend of my father’s is going to just come and claim me.” She hung her head. “No matter what I think of him, I’ll have to produce sons with life expectancies of sand snakes and daughters to do the same.”
“And you’ve no choice?” Wren jumped as Raw touched her shoulder.
“No more than your Grounder women.”
“There’s some choice.” Raw frowned. “They don’t have to accept the choosing offered them. It’s frowned on, but it does happen.”
“Then what?”
“Baby exchange – they can be impregnated with seed from the stores. Or back into the choosing pool for the year after.”
He moved inside the darkness so it seemed he had simply appeared beside her. “Maybe, it isn’t exactly fair.” He pulled his hand away as the glow tubes shone once more. “But it’s the Original’s decree.”
Wren shivered. “The originals messed up. It’s their fault we’re stuck inside mouldering biospheres when we should already be spread over the surface of the planet.”
“The saboteurs-”
“Were original too, weren’t they?”
“Devils disguised as angels.” Raw said seriously. “The wheel turns and what has happened before will happen again.”
“It’s human nature, not some stupid wheel.” Tears pricked Wren’s eyes. Raw moved away from her and leaned against a cabinet. She looked at him with her hand on her mask. “We should eat.”
Wren pulled her mask up, licked sticky gel from her fingers and dropped her mask back down. She glared at him as she swallowed. “It’s sweet!” Her taste buds sparkled like sun from quartz. “If you’re waiting for me to throw up or something, you’ll be waiting a while.”
Raw lifted his own mask and took a pull from his pouch. His eyes widened. “What’s it made of?”
Wren shrugged. “Dead-Earth stuff. Let me see your packet.”
Raw handed it over.
“It’s a kind of fruit.” She pointed at a small picture on the front. “See? A plant.”
“Edible fruit?” Raw frowned. “Gingko seeds are poisonous.”
“Chayton said they were developing some in Eden, I wondered what it would be like.” She licked her hands again.
“Give mine back.” Ra
w finished his packet and started to pick through the others in the cupboard. “We should have some protein too. Here.” He tossed another pack over. It had a different picture on it.
“That looks like a GM bun-bun pet.” Wren peered closer. “Why would it have a bun-bun pet on it?”
“We didn’t always live on soy and supplements.” Raw shrugged. “Don’t you Runners know anything ?”
“Of course we do. I know a lot. I know how to repair a net, mend wings, read semaphore and the whole theory of flying. I can fix the solar panels at Avalon when they break down, sort out the water pumps when they break, massage an incoming Runner for over an hour, feed my family with soy beans that anyone else would have thrown out. I can-”
“You’ve made your point.”
“But you think I should go to the Grounder Women’s Sector and make babies. You think what I’m doing is blasphemy.”
“I’m … starting to rethink.” His eyes slid away from hers’.
“Why?”
“Like you said, I’m doing just as much wrong.” Raw took another swallow from his pouch. “If I’m caught I’ll be punished.”
“Killed probably.” Wren nodded. “Both of us.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“Then why?” Wren leaned forward. “Why did you follow me? Why risk your life?”
Raw said nothing.
When she realised that she wouldn’t get another word from him, Wren sighed. “We have to talk about what happens when we get to Vaikuntha. You need to pass as a Runner.”
“I’ll just do what you do.”
“You can’t say the Rites before meals, or at bedtime.”
She saw Raw flush. “Fine.”
“You have to be respectful to the Sphere-Mistress. No talking about the Women’s Sector or anything like that. She’ll be responsible for treating your injuries, massaging you, making sure you’re okay to fly again when we set off.”
Windrunner's Daughter Page 8
