Janice dried her eyes. Fascination, and a faint sense of hope, were breaking through her despair. Rita, meanwhile, looked like she had reached the terminal stage of confusion and was just taking things one second at a time. It wasn’t a bad philosophy. They both stared at the TV, squinting at the street plan of the station the two women knew so well.
‘Alma, love,’ said Freda, winking back into the room momentarily.
‘Yes?’
‘I want you to find the right control and open the engine hatch.’
‘But…’
‘I need you to trust me. Just do it.’
Freda disappeared again.
Alma winced >;-S and a giant metallic fart vibrated through the bowels of Discovery. There was a rush of air and a wind picked up in the salon, blowing strands of stray hair and sponge rollers across the room.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ said Ida, her emoji :-[] rigid with fear. ‘That’s a hull breach. We’re losing air.’
Janice thought of the cleaners below. It would take a long time for a ship of Discovery’s size to depressurise. More time than they had if the bomb hit them.
They watched on the TV as a hole appeared in the fabric of Discovery. The air rushing through the gap flushed a vortex of dust and rubbish into space. Then Freda steered the Armaggedakam back around, aiming its camera directly at the nose cone of the approaching missile.
It loomed larger in the lens with each passing second.
Ida’s hands, which hadn’t moved more than a couple of inches in nearly eight hundred years, juddered up her body and traced a cross-shape on her chest, drawing (¬_¬) glances from Alma and Ada.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s worth a try.’
The clock crept down to 00:00:30. The ladies joined hands. Janice held her breath.
‘Come on!’ said Freda.
Down to 00:00:20. Too late, even for a cavalry charge. Janice clutched at Rita and buried her head until all she could see were the withered legs of the ladies. She remembered her own childhood, playing on the floor of the salon. Now, when she was facing her death, how could something like that feel so distant and yet so vivid?
On the TV the nose cone of the missile opened and sprayed six pill-shaped objects and… a human. It was moving too fast for Janice to make out, but it was short and dark and wearing a familiar-looking oxygen cap.
‘Darren?’ she said.
The Armaggedakam tore after Darren as he freewheeled through the vacuum.
Freda gripped so tightly that the arms of her chair shattered.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she screamed. ‘Start the engine.’
00:00:10
Alma :-| grimaced again. Underneath the rush of air sounded the scream of an enormous motor.
00:00:08
‘Full throttle!’ Freda yelled.
(K)url Up and Dy(e) shook. Janice grabbed the back of Freda’s chair to balance herself.
00:00:07
On the TV the Armaggedakam was moving so fast it smeared the stars across the sky. It was moving towards Darren, whose mouth was a perfect ‘O’. But this was space. No one could hear him scream.
00:00:06
Freda span the Armaggedakam 180 degrees. There was the missile, heading straight for the hole Alma had just opened in the end of Discovery.
00:00:05
The Armaggedakam span back again. Janice’s world dissolved into a blur, but one where…
00:00:04
…was printed on her retinas.
00:00:03
There was a bang. Strong enough to shake the ship and unscrew the bolts that attached the chairs in (K)url Up and Dy(e) to the floor. Freda’s dryer skidded across the salon, with Janice in her wake.
That wasn’t an explosion, Janice thought as she slid around behind Freda like it was senior citizens’ day at the ice rink. The wind seemed to have dropped too. But if it wasn’t a bang, what was it?
00:00:02
It hit her as her own head hit the far wall.
That was it.
It sounded like a cork being rammed into a bottle.
00:00:01
The floor lurched beneath her, and if felt like she was being stretched. As though the world wanted to be in two places at once.
00:00:00
Everything felt heavy. So very heavy.
-00:00:01
But the last thing Janice felt before she gave in to the bump on her skull and lost consciousness was lightness. The lightness of knowing she had more time than she thought.
And the lightness that comes of knowing that you’re moving somewhere at great speed.
Chapter 40
There was a saying among machines that weapons of mass destruction like missiles were doomed to have either very short or very long lives: they either sat in silos for centuries or had a brief moment of fulfilment, with nothing in between.
They said that because robot civilisation was fundamentally unimaginative. It never occurred to them a missile could be something else. Just like a paper shredder could become a juicer with the right components. Yet as Polari found as he rammed himself into the Discovery’s vacant booster slot, there was always another option. A missile can collide with something at great speed, or it can persuade it to move with it. Had Polari crashed into any of the other Dolestars they would have disintegrated. But Discovery’s frame was built of sterner stuff. It had the strength and the structural integrity to travel.
Polari’s engines pressed on. But instead of pushing against the fabric of the station itself, however, they pushed against its orbit.
With an inaudible moan and a creak – because in space no one can hear you sigh as you rise from your comfortable chair – Discovery broke free of the Earth’s orbit and began its long-delayed journey into outer space.
Chapter 41
‘Pitch!’
The screech broke through a nightmare. Darren dreamed he was swirling through darkness, feeling himself being absorbed with each turn like he was sugar dissolving into hot tea. He gasped, clutched about him and gasped with relief. He was in a bed.
‘Who are you calling a bytch?’
The voice was unmistakable: female, tetchy and artificially amplified from a whisper by the helmet of a hairdryer. It was Ida.
He sat up and pushed aside a duvet covered in a faded pattern of unicorns playing with power tools. The four ladies were there in their familiar bank in the salon, but hidden from the chest down by a hedge of cables.
Ada took a deep breath and smiled :-D. ‘Not bytch,’ she said. ‘Pitch. Up the gain in your hearing aid, love?’
Alma took up from where Ada left off. There was something different about her manner, Darren noticed. The dirty auntie persona she’d affected had changed into something more practical. As though jokes had been a displacement activity and now she had something more important to do. ‘See, there’s three directions when you’re flying,’ she said. ‘You’ve got pitch, yaw and roll.’
‘Oh,’ replied Ida. And then, because no Ida is ever wholly in the wrong, ‘Well, you should have said.’
Ada, Alma and Freda all stole the same glance at their unrepentant friend.
(¬_¬) (¬_¬) (¬_¬) _(‘_’)_/
Darren stifled a giggle, and, as he did so, tried to remember the last time he’d laughed.
Hearing this, the four ladies’ emoji screens snapped into :-D.
‘Well, hello, sleepyhead,’ said Freda. Then, calibrating her voice upwards, she shouted, ‘He’s awake, Janice.’
Darren tried to stand, but saw both his hands and feet were swollen and red. An effect, he presumed, of wheeling through the dark in nothing but an oxygen cap. He closed his eyes and the memory of the vortex returned: those spinning stars, the shining grey-whiteness of the machine-Earth.
Feet pattered in the distance.
The next thing he felt was something soft and warm envelop his face. When he opened his eyes again, he realised he was pressed into the bosom of Janice’s housecoat. Her a
rms were wrapped around his neck. She was crying.
Darren stayed where he was until he needed to breathe again, then extricated himself from Janice’s grip. She looked tired and her ornate hairstyle was gone, tied up underneath a headscarf of pixelated roses. Yet, like Alma, there was a determined set to her expression that Darren found both reassuring and scary. Janice had lost her daughter, but she had decided to get on with it.
‘Hello, Janice,’ he croaked. Then, in the absence of anything better to say, ‘I’m so sorry.’
Janice didn’t reply.
‘There was nothing I could do to save Kelly,’ he muttered. ‘You trusted me with her and I let you down.’
Janice clutched Darren tighter. ‘No,’ she said, after a while, ‘you didn’t, Darren. Come with me.’
She hauled Darren up by his armpit and, with one arm over his shoulder, she led him step by step out of the salon.
Outside was a vast cylindrical space bathed in a warm, pink light. The floor beneath his swollen feet was brushed metal and extended as far as he could see in either direction. Low metal walls divided the space into regular subsections. Everywhere he looked there were people. People to his left, others to his right – one group was even, owing to the tricky way in which this space bent gravity, directly above him and upside down, their feet planted on the far side of the cylinder.
They all had one thing in common. They were cleaning. But not in the blank-eyed, automatic way he’d seen humans cleaning since he was a tiny child. They all wore the same expression as Janice. They had purpose.
Janice hugged Darren again. ‘If you hadn’t done what you did out there,’ she said, ‘all these people would be dead. There’s millions more out on the surface who’d be dead too. So don’t you ever tell me you let me down, Darren. Because you didn’t.’
A group of men passed by Darren and Janice. They were hard-looking characters – the kind you saw behind nightclubs polishing their knuckledusters on someone’s face. Yet when they passed, their leader nodded respectfully at Janice, before thrusting a hand out to Darren.
‘Just wanted to say cheers, mate,’ he said. His grip was crushing. Darren answered with a weak smile and the men went on.
‘Welcome to Discovery,’ said Janice, gesturing around her. ‘The original Discovery anyway.’
‘It was meant to be a spaceship, wasn’t it?’ said Darren. ‘I saw the plans in… in the missile.’
‘Yep,’ said Janice. They passed another group of people who were pitching tents in the middle of one of the rectangular enclosures. One, a tallish woman with a head of well-styled dark hair, waved at Janice and smiled. She was holding a broom handle from which hung a flag saying ‘Freedom for Fleshies’.
Janice waved back and Darren noticed that something happened to her expression when she did so. It softened, in a way he’d never seen before. Not even with Kelly. Especially not with Kelly.
‘We’re going to start moving the people from up top down here as soon as we’ve got the place straight,’ explained Janice. ‘It’s safe enough up there for the moment, but if anything attacks us again they’re sitting ducks out there.’
The rest of the campers waved their hellos at Janice and Darren. A few whistled in their direction.
‘You’re quite the hero,’ said Janice.
Darren shook his head. Every molecule in his body vibrated with the word ‘fraud’. He wanted to rest. Every time his feet touched the ground it sent a burning pain right through his body. ‘How can I be?’ he said. ‘This was all my fault. I started it.’
Janice looked sideways at him, hard. ‘Maybe you did,’ she said, ‘but you finished it as well.’
They stopped fifty metres or so away from the end of the cylinder, which stretched away to a dizzying height. Their destination was a small hole in the end wall, through which peeked a few scraps of mangled metal.
‘I think you two have met before,’ said Janice.
Darren’s puzzlement gave way to recognition when he saw the paint colour on those crumpled sheets of metal. They were the remains of the missile’s nose cone. He stuck his head through the gap.
‘Polari?’ he said.
The dashboard inside lit up at the sound of Darren’s voice. ‘Hello there!’ said the missile. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’
‘So did I,’ admitted Darren. ‘Actually…’ he turned back to Janice, ‘how did I get back?’
‘Freda brought you back on that camera drone they had following the missile. Your oxygen cap was almost spent. That’s how you got those burns on your hands and feet.’
‘Oh.’ Darren stared down at his hands, thinking again of how close he had come to losing himself. And how lucky he was.
‘That stunt you pulled with the warheads was genius,’ said Janice. ‘It meant that when Polari here did crash into the ship, all it did was give us the push we needed to break orbit.’
She patted the edges of the wrecked nose cone. ‘You did a grand job, love.’
Polari’s dashboard glowed deep green. ‘I’m just happy to be out of that silo, making a difference,’ he said.
Darren held up his hand. The conversation was moving too quickly. ‘You mean we’re not orbiting Earth any more?’
‘No,’ said Janice. ‘Discovery here is doing what she was always meant to. Mind you, not that I’m sure Discovery’s quite the right name for it any more.’ She patted the wall affectionately. ‘I mean, is a spaceship with eight million people living in it a vehicle, or is it a town?’
‘Well, it’s more of a suburb,’ replied Darren.
Janice snorted. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.’
‘I thought,’ said Darren, feeling his way gingerly through the words. ‘Well, I did think that instead of heading away from Earth we’d be going back there. To get Kelly.’
Janice’s face darkened. ‘Don’t think I don’t want to, love, but there’s more to think about than one person. Eight million in fact. All on here and looking to us for the next move.’ She stared at the floor. ‘Goodness knows how that happened.’
‘Well, I’m glad you feel as much of a fraud as I do,’ replied Darren. He squeezed Janice’s shoulder. ‘That means we can muddle through together, Captain Janice.’
‘Ahem. Do you mind?’
Darren and Janice both peered through the gap into Polari. Inside, something had opened up the missile’s dashboard and was ferreting around in its innards.
Darren would have recognised those coat-hanger limbs anywhere.
‘Oi,’ he said.
The drone’s head snapped round and, seeing Darren, froze.
‘You!’ said Darren. ‘Get out here now.’
The drone shrugged and crawled out of Polari and into Darren’s hands. Only when he dropped into his palm did Darren remember how light the little thing was – and how many repairs it needed. The broken wings were the least of its worries now. A whole day of hard use had bent an arm and a leg out of shape, while the flat sheet of its body was battered in several places.
Janice flinched at the sight of an unexpected machine. ‘What’s this?’
‘My lockpick,’ replied Darren. He bent the drone’s useless leg into a shape that would balance on his shoulder. ‘Weren’t you? Got me into all kinds of places.’
‘That spindly little thing did?’
‘It is quite spindly, isn’t it?’ Darren peered at the drone, which squeaked at the insult. ‘You know, I think I might call you Chubb.’
Chubb shrugged again and dropped off Darren’s shoulder to hassle a nearby cleaner into giving it the metal scraps from his dustpan.
‘Come on,’ said Janice, ‘we’d better be getting you back to the salon. You look done in.’
They started off again, arm in arm. As they walked by, people stopped mid-cleaning to look at them. Some said hello, others just nodded, but the way they looked at him made the hairs on the back of Darren’s neck stand on end. He realised then that until now no one had ever looked at him with respect. Disdain he had plenty of ex
perience with – surprise sometimes if he was lucky. But respect was new to him.
‘So where are we going then,’ he asked Janice.
‘I wish I knew,’ she replied. ‘Far enough to be out of weapons range of Earth, I guess. Farther if they follow. Freda and Pam wrong-footed them beautifully with their Internet bomb, but it can’t last. They’ll be back. And we’ll be ready.’
(K)url Up and Dy(e) loomed ahead in the perpetual pink dusk inside of the spaceship. Darren wondered how it was possible that the salon could look like home already. And Janice – she should be a stranger to him still. Yet he’d rarely felt closer to anyone. The past few days – how could all this have happened in such a short space of time – had been terrifying. But they had also been meaningful.
Was it right, he wondered, to find what you had always been looking for in the middle of such misfortune?
‘Pam’s still down there on Earth as well, isn’t she?’ he asked. ‘As well as Kelly.’
Janice nodded. ‘If I could, I’d go back for them both.’
‘Maybe we can. One day.’
And Janice turned away, her face closed to Darren and her shoulders set against any number of questions.
The ladies were still bickering when Janice and Darren crossed the threshold into the salon. Their conversation was full of the shared barbs and memories that were a result of spending whole millennia in the company of others. Darren found that he could push it down in his mind till it became a comfortable background chatter. He imagined the same scene replaying itself down the centuries, back to the time when Kurl Up and Dye had lived on the surface of a brand-new council planet and Ida, Ada, Alma and Freda came in for their weekly shampoo and set.
He sat down on one of the salon chairs and looked at himself in the mirror. It wasn’t the same Darren who had walked through the same door frightened and confused. He was bruised and burned, there were still even traces of make-up from two disguises on his face. He was a wreck. But nevertheless he found himself liking what he saw.
Freda broke off from conversation among the ladies to address Janice and Darren with a :-).
‘We’re clear,’ she said. Her skeletal finger pointed towards the TV on the wall. It showed a rectangle of black sky, in the centre of which was what looked like a large star.
Battlestar Suburbia Page 26
