by Ruth Morgan
Water droplets were hitting the window more and more frequently, little silvery magnifications of the black world that lay outside like a sleeping monster. No rainbows. It was nothing like I’d been imagining or looking forward to.
‘Rain,’ Nisien said. ‘Our first rain.’
As though his words had broken a spell, the rain stopped abruptly, the last few drops running diagonally across the glass in the direction the wind was blowing.
Halley sat down and began fiddling with an empty food wrapper. ‘Just think, it’s down in the lab right now,’ he said.
‘What are you talking about?’ I snapped.
‘The dragomansk.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Nisien.
‘I overheard Cole Huxtable saying they were taking it to one of the labs in the basement for dissection.’ Halley had scrunched the wrapper into a ball and was tossing it into the air and catching it between two fingers.
‘Surely not much point in that,’ said Nisien. ‘Its DNA became encrypted the very moment it was shot dead.’
Halley jumped to his feet as though charged with a bolt of energy. He tossed the food wrapper over his shoulder then kicked it into the corner. ‘I’d love to take another look at it.’
‘It wasn’t exactly a pretty sight, all mangled on that roof,’ sighed Nisien.
I pictured the flopping wing outside the window. When the vehicle had brushed up against some bushes, the bottom of the wing had torn off, making it swing about even more, which curiously made it seem more dead than ever. It sickened me to think of that dead, waving wing.
‘Who’ll come with me?’ Although Halley’s voice dropped to a whisper, he still sounded like a commander rousing his troops to battle. ‘Who’ll take another look at it later when everyone’s asleep? Come on, let’s do it.’
‘Count me out,’ said Nisien. ‘I’m not going looking for trouble as soon as we’ve arrived.’
‘It’s not about getting into trouble, it’s about learning,’ Halley urged. ‘This thirst for knowledge we’re all supposed to have. That’s why we were chosen to come here in the first place, surely?’
His comment made me feel uncomfortable again.
‘It’s just a dead insect.’ Robeen was standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. ‘What do you think you’re going to learn from gawping at it?’
‘How a mangled insect looks with its legs all screwed up?’ said Nisien. ‘Kind of like this…?’ He curled up his arms and legs and screwed his face into an extraordinary grimace. Robeen laughed. It had a mocking edge and although he’d been trying to console me, Nisien laughed back. For the first time he and Robeen laughed together, as though they were the only ones getting the joke.
‘Nice one, Nisien,’ said Halley, frowning. ‘Of course I wasn’t being serious. All I’ll be doing tonight is falling asleep, soon as my head hits the bed.’
‘Bree? Bree.’
I woke from a deep and dreamless sleep to find Halley crouching beside me, shaking me gently but insistently.
‘What?’ I could have been on Mars, Earth, anywhere or nowhere in between.
‘Shhhh!’
We both turned towards Robeen whose bed was the other side of mine. Fortunately, she hadn’t stirred.
I started to remember where I was, but I was more desperate for sleep than anything else.
‘What is it? I’m asleep.’ I squeezed my eyes shut and wished myself back into oblivion.
‘Come into the corridor.’ Halley shook me again and beckoned. Admitting defeat, I rose up, rubbing my eyes, and padded after him. Thanks to the ancient technology, the door swished open then closed softly behind us.
Tiny pairs of blue emergency lights were set at intervals along the ceiling but a much stronger light was pouring through the window at the end. I thought some vehicle must be outside, pointing its headlights at the building.
‘Come and see the moon. It’s completely round, a full moon!’ Halley drew a circle in the air. ‘How lucky is that?’
I blinked myself awake. Of course I wanted to see the moon, especially a completely round, full moon. It was on our real, no-joking-around list of things we absolutely had to see while we were on Earth, number four, I think. Smiling blearily and brushing my hair from my eyes, I let him lead me to the window.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Oh yes, thank you.’
The smothering clouds had cleared in one patch of the sky directly above us. Right in the middle shone a huge pearl set in a radiant halo. The light of the full moon revealed treasures in the landscape below, silvering the wet marshland and the ruins as far as the skyline, throwing long shadows down before them as though the buildings were bowing to us, welcoming us. It was my first view of the old Cardiff.
‘I think I can see craters,’ said Halley. ‘Can you believe that we’re here, seeing the Earth moon? It’s so much better than Phobos.’
Overwhelmed, I rested my head on his shoulder. We had stood like this looking out into space so many times on the Byd’s viewing deck, now here we were doing the same on Earth. It staggered me every time I thought about it, like a looping miracle.
‘Let’s go outside, out there,’ Halley whispered. ‘Let’s really see the moon when there’s nothing between us and it.’
‘It’s not safe. There’s dragomansk everywhere. They even sleep on the wing, remember?’
Halley half-pulled the sauroter from his pocket by way of reply.
We agreed to meet back in the corridor once we were dressed. We only had to tiptoe down one set of stairs and when we reached the front door, which you had to open manually as in ancient times, we found it unlocked. Out we stepped, beaming at each another. We too were bathed in moonlight. Straight ahead stood a tumbledown wall and the remains of other buildings below us marked what would once have been the street, their line broken by trees and mounds of rubble smothered in plant life. I’d never been any place like it, a place of such silent malevolence, its violent past obvious everywhere. The tall, solitary ruins reminded me of arms, rising up to shake their fists at the sky. The area around the CEB, like the service roads, was raised above the level of the marsh so we were looking down upon the nearby land. The devastation was also strangely beautiful and it was right in front of us; we weren’t being protected from it by a man-made dome. That made me feel grown-up, responsible for myself for perhaps the first time ever. A shiver ran down my spine.
We were wearing our hoods and visors, of course, and the early warning system on our tiles would alert us of any large flying objects in the immediate vicinity.
‘It’s so beautiful.’ Halley shook his head. ‘So incredibly beautiful. Can you believe we’re here?’
‘It’s extraordinary. And we’re breathing air that’s just … all around us!’ Everything I said sounded ridiculous but I didn’t care. Anyone who would have leapt to judge me was fast asleep upstairs anyway. I didn’t have to worry about them.
‘The flies are a bit annoying but – yes. Air. Air you can breathe in and out. Air our lungs were designed for, more or less. Perhaps less oxygen than we’re used to but… And what’s that around the moon? An atmosphere?’ He meant the halo.
‘No, it doesn’t have an atmosphere to speak of. You know, the moon might even have been a part of Earth once, no one’s sure. And you never see the other side of it from Earth, did you know that? It’s in synchronous rotation.’
‘You know a lot, don’t you?’ said Halley, after a pause.
‘Don’t sound so surprised!’
‘I didn’t mean anything by that.’
I laughed. ‘I know a few facts. It’s all those hours I’ve spent at our Museum. That’s where I intend going as soon as we get some time off: the real one, here on Earth.’ In all honesty, I wanted to go right there and then.
‘Right.’ He looked puzzled. ‘And … do you want me to go with you?’
‘If you want.’
I would sooner have gone alone, but we’d already been told that none of us were allowed to wander off o
n our own. Still, it was kind of Halley to offer and perhaps he wouldn’t think me boring or weird for wanting to spend time there, now we’d had this conversation. Perhaps I’d underestimated him.
‘You shouldn’t mind Robeen.’
‘Oh, why go and mention her?’
I’d got used to Halley’s tendency to change direction in his conversation all the time, but Robeen was the last person I wanted to talk about.
‘No, listen,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to say, I know she’s got to you but she’s not that much of a genius, I reckon. She just knows how to play it at school, chasing the marks and pleasing the professors, but she hasn’t really got it in here.’ He tapped his chest. ‘You have, Bree. You’ve got it.’
I squirmed and laughed at the same time. ‘Why are you being so nice to me?’
Halley stuck out his tongue and pulled a stupid face. ‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s the moon’s fault.’
I swallowed and looked up at it again. Minutes passed.
‘When I first got chosen,’ I said, my eyes fixed on the silvery ball, ‘I couldn’t help wondering why? Why me rather than … say … Teyra?’
‘She’s just another Robeen,’ said Halley. ‘It’s like they came out of the same mould. Su-per bo-ring.’
‘Yes, but I’m sure other people at school were wondering too. You know, sometimes I do find the work at school hard.’ I whispered this, feeling my heartbeat quicken. It was the first time I had put my fears into words since that talk on the bus with Catti but I trusted Halley and the moment seemed right somehow. It was a relief.
‘Sometimes we all do.’
‘Empathy, yes, I can do that but it doesn’t even begin to make up for the bad marks I get in other subjects. That’s why I couldn’t believe I’d got picked. I was worried it might be some mistake or … or … I don’t know. Every time Robeen says something like she said earlier, it brings back those feelings.’
‘Oh, Empathy?’ said Halley. ‘You’re brilliant at it. I’d do anything to get out of writing poems.’
‘It’s actually what I do in my spare time, write poems. I can’t believe I’m telling you this. While you’re running round and round the athletics track breaking records, I’m sitting in the Museum all by myself, dreaming and scribbling away. That’s my favourite place in the world. I’d love to find a way of basing my project at the Museum, whatever my project turns out to be.’
As well as assisting on archaeological digs, each student had to undertake a project. All I really wanted to do was write poems about the ancient rocks and fossils. I didn’t know how many exhibits remained in the Earth’s Museum but researching them would give me a great excuse to spend time there. As I stood next to Halley in the moonlight, this thought sent a delicious shiver right through me.
‘But that’s amazing,’ said Halley. ‘Your poems are like my running.’
‘Don’t judge them till you’ve read them!’
‘I just know they’re great. That’s what I mean, you choose to write poems but not because anyone’s giving you marks for it.’ It might have been the moonlight but for a moment Halley’s eyes looked extra shiny. ‘And you’re here! And we’re here! Can you believe this even one little bit?’
He took me by the shoulders and we began jumping round and round excitedly, then I shushed him and he shushed me and we had an out-shushing each other competition, laughing like idiots in between.
‘We’ll wake them up,’ I said. ‘Halley, thanks. You always make me feel better. I’m not going to worry about Robeen anymore.’ At the time I really meant it.
Calmer now, he looked up at the moon then back at me. ‘I want to take another look at that dragomansk. Are you coming?’
‘You must be joking,’ I said. ‘We’ll get into so much trouble, Halley.’
‘But everyone else is asleep. No one’s noticed we’re out here, have they? This is probably the only chance we’re ever going to get. Come on, come with me?’ He took both my hands in his.
‘Why do you want to see it so much?’
‘My project.’ Suddenly he looked serious. ‘I’ve decided I’m going to do my project on insects and their connection with human history.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since I saw the dragomansk. I want to take a close-up look at those eyes. They’re … compartmentalised. What would it be like to see the world through eyes like that? Look.’
Halley scrolled about on his tile and held up a picture of an insect’s head.
‘This is a dragonfly,’ he said. ‘Beautiful. But in its natural state it’s only about as long as my finger. Imagine how it’s been altered to become what it is now: the perfect weapon.’
‘So perfect it can’t be destroyed.’
‘At the moment,’ he said. ‘I know the dragomansk is scary but it’s beautiful and amazing too and there is so much we don’t know about it. It’s as though something’s being kept from us.’
I stared at him, like he’d gone mad.
‘I’m serious! Put it this way: I want to see that dragomansk as much as you want to go to the Museum, and if we do succeed in wiping them out, there won’t be many chances to see them.’
‘We’re nowhere near wiping them out.’
‘Maybe we’re not … or maybe … we are.’
‘All right,’ I said slowly. His answer seemed odd. ‘I’ll come but only for a few minutes. They’ve probably got it locked up.’
‘Nothing’s locked round here, hadn’t you noticed?’ He flashed me a smile, holding the ancient door handle, which belonged in some kind of museum itself. ‘There’s no need with no one around.’
Rough stone steps led down to the basement. The blue emergency lights overhead weren’t enough to see by and we turned on our tilelights. There were several doors along the narrow corridor but the first ones only led to storerooms. At the end of the corridor, we found a set of double doors. They shooshed apart to admit us to a large lab. By this time our eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, but as we roamed around the rows of shiny steel tables, it was obvious that what we were searching for wasn’t there. I listened for noises overhead or footsteps on the stairs, but all was perfectly still. We left the lab and I followed Halley down a second corridor identical to the first. This time he made straight for the glass double doors at the end.
‘There it is,’ he whispered. ‘Damn it, this door is locked!’ He waved his hand over the recognition pad. In theory all members of the SSO mission had equal access to all areas at the Base.
Peering through the circular glass windows, we could see the dragomansk lying on its back, stretched out across three tables put end to end. Its enormous, bulbous head was staring straight at us, upside down, but it was impossible to make out details. Its stiff, spindly legs were bent and splayed. With disgust, I saw that its wings, or what were left of them, had been broken off. They were hanging over the edge of another table, bent at odd angles but still reflecting flecks of turquoise light. Somewhere a draft must have been blowing, because the flecks of light swapped round and back again. I wondered if, being so light and fragile, the wings had simply snapped off. I remembered my initial impression that the one we’d seen hovering on the edge of the wood was some kind of toy.
‘Why lock the door?’ Halley was annoyed.
‘Because it’s hazardous. You saw the horrible stuff that came out of it.’
‘Meaning they don’t trust us.’
‘And you really think they should?’
He went in the adjoining cupboard to see if it had a side door into the lab but it didn’t. I couldn’t understand the attraction the dead creature held for him but I accepted it. If he did come with me to the Museum, wouldn’t I expect him to put up with my interest in the fossils and rocks?
In the end Halley sighed, defeated. ‘Let’s go, then,’ he said.
After a morning spent painstakingly cleaning and sorting partly decayed items which had been dug out of a muddy pit, few of which I recognised, the four of us were
more than ready for a break. Pico had already half-excavated the site on a previous mission. It had once been part of something called a shopping centre. It had yielded up enough of its secrets to keep Pico happy and now he was keen to move on to a new site along the coast.
‘I’ll drive you back,’ Lana Leoni called over her shoulder as she led the way to one of the amphibicals. ‘I have to pick some equipment up from Base. Let’s go via a more scenic route this time, shall we?’
Lana was the other archaeologist and as one of the younger astronauts, she’d been happy enough to join in with our clowning around on the Byd. This was her first visit to Earth. She had a pin-sharp mind and I was shocked to learn that in all her time at Pioneer School she hadn’t once been picked for an Earth mission.
There was nothing very scenic about the site: a sterilised white brick temporary lab on anonymous rubbly marshland. The air was warm, sticky and thick with droning flies. You could almost imagine that these insects were curious to see what was going on, so intent were they upon plaguing us. Fortunately, if an insect did find its way into our suits, the skin-seal we sprayed all over ourselves each morning would stop any bites and diseases.
Low clouds had been blanketing the skies all morning but I was still amazed to have all that open sky above me. Yet I couldn’t stand staring at it for long while there was work to be done. There’d been four major dragomansk alerts that morning but no attacks and we’d witnessed another metamansk formation, really close-up this time, over twenty individual creatures. It was hugely impressive to see them flying in synch with one another, flitting up and down, backwards and forwards, like one gargantuan insect. Impressive and terrifying. We’d seen what a single dragomansk could do; it was horrific to imagine what damage a host of them might inflict. We watched and waited inside the lab until the metamansk broke up, the individuals peeling away from the main group and heading off in different directions. Pico told us this was typical. No one knew why they gathered together but some sort of information sharing was suspected. I remembered the way our first dragomansk had seemed to look at us so intelligently when we’d taken cover beneath the trees.
