Living Hell Read online

  ‘They’re not here!’ he cried. ‘Mum and Dad! They’re not here! Oh no! Oh no!’

  ‘Shh. Shh.’ I didn’t even know what I was saying. An almighty thump made me turn around. It was Zennor.

  Arkwright and Tuddor had lost their grip, and he’d hit the floor.

  They had rushed him into BioLab.

  ‘Oh my God . . .’ someone breathed. Everybody was inside now: Mum and Dad, Lais, Arkwright – even Zennor. Only Haido had been left in the street. The door had snapped shut. Lais was in hysterics, screaming at the top of her lungs. Mum was crouching over Zennor, blocking my view. (I’m so grateful that she blocked my view.) She was slicing through his suit with something – something Ottilie had given her. The smell was appalling.

  Zennor’s hand was twitching.

  ‘DA-AD!’ Dygall screeched.

  With one huge, convulsive movement he jerked out of Firminus’s grasp. He launched himself at his father. I was in his way, though, and I grabbed him. I grabbed his collar.

  His fist shot out. It hit my nose.

  I saw flashes of light.

  ‘Cheney!

  ’ Dad’s voice cut through all the commotion. He was there suddenly; I felt his bulk at my side. He lifted me up. We moved. He sat me down somewhere.

  ‘Are you all right? Cheney?’

  ‘Ow . . . ow . . .’

  ‘Show me. Let me look.’

  I uncovered my nose. He turned my head this way and that, as my vision cleared. Close up, his face was a shock. He looked wild. There were angry red spots on his jaw. His eyes stared. I realised that I was moaning.

  ‘It’s not broken,’ he wheezed. ‘Quenby? It’s not broken. It’s not even bleeding.’

  ‘Dygall . . .’ I tried to look around Dad but he wouldn’t let me. I heard someone say, ‘Get those kids out of here.’

  ‘Yes.’ That was Ottilie. ‘In there. Take them into the Pen.’

  The Pen was where Sustainable Services kept all the germinators: the rats, the guinea pigs, the plankton, the racks and racks of moulds and lichen and algae and mosses. The germinator tanks were built into the walls, on all sides.

  It was one of my favourite rooms on board Plexus, because it was full of birdseed and hamster wheels and other fun things. Beyond it – through a small door with a First Level clearance lock – lay the Gene Banks. The Gene Banks contained DNA samples from every species on Earth.

  There was also a small collection of large living animals (apes, sheep and so forth) but they weren’t kept in BioLab. They were in the Stasis Banks, with B Crew. Animals could be kept in cytopic suspension indefinitely, because it didn’t matter what happened to their brains. They were only needed for breeding purposes.

  ‘What was it?’ I quavered, allowing myself to be led from the laboratory into the Pen. A sampler flashed past, and I winced. ‘Dad? What happened to Zennor?’

  ‘Shh.’

  ‘Tell me! What did that? Tell me, Dad!’

  ‘It was a sampler.’

  ‘A sampler?’

  ‘It’s all right -’ ‘There are samplers in here!’

  ‘We’ll catch them. We’ll get rid of them.’

  ‘We haven’t had any problems with the samplers,’ said Ottilie, sounding dazed. ‘Not a thing . . .’

  ‘It’s all right. Cheney, it’s all right.’

  We hugged each other, Dad and I, rocking back and forth. I couldn’t seem to let him go. We were sitting on the floor of the Pen, surrounded by tanks. The glass in these tanks was no longer transparent; it had turned into a cloudy sort of membrane. I could hear someone wailing – Dygall, it was – and I tried to bury my head in my father’s chest. But I couldn’t block out that terrible sound.

  ‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Shh.’

  ‘Oh no . . . oh no . . .’

  ‘We’re okay. We’re okay, now.’

  ‘Zennor.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Dygall . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What happened?’ It was Sloan’s voice. Sloan was nearby.

  I pulled away from my father. Something about the sound of that gentle question made me feel that I shouldn’t be cringing on the floor. I didn’t want Sloan to see me in such a state.

  Looking up, I saw that he was standing over us.

  ‘What happened?’ he repeated. ‘Zennor was attacked?’

  ‘It was a sampler,’ Dad replied.

  ‘A sampler?’

  ‘Out of the blue.’ There was no strength in Dad’s tone. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. ‘It just – sprayed him. This little thing. Litres of the stuff.’

  ‘What stuff, Tuddor?’

  ‘I – I don’t know . . .’ Dad looked towards the door of the Pen. Ottilie was bringing Yestin through it. She sat him on a stool (a stool that was still a stool, rather than a fleshy nub) and gave him a cup of water. A cup of water and a pill.

  ‘You take this,’ she murmured. ‘Go on. Take it.’

  But Yestin couldn’t take it. He was shaking too much to hold a pill. Ottilie had to pop it into his mouth, and press the cup to his lips. He nearly choked on its contents.

  ‘Water?’ Dad croaked.

  ‘We’ve tested it,’ Ottilie replied.

  ‘You mean your instruments are working?’

  Ottilie looked up. Wisps of grey hair framed her face.

  ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘Most of them aren’t. We had to use germinators.’

  Suddenly, the air was split by an unearthly cry. It was so awful, I had to put my hands over my ears. Ottilie shut her eyes, and Yestin whimpered. Even Sloan bit his lip.

  Dygall had been told that his father was dead.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Mum didn’t give Dygall a sedative pill. She gave him a sedative gel, which she dabbed under his nose. Within minutes he was quiet – almost groggy – despite the fact that he wiped off most of the gel as soon as Mum’s back was turned.

  Her back was turned because she was trying to work out what should be done with Zennor’s body. I could hear her discussing it in the other room. None of the Shifters was allowed in the other room while Zennor was there. Mum didn’t even want any adults going near the remains. (That was what she called his body.) She wanted to isolate Zennor, just in case.

  ‘This stuff on his face might be unstable. The fumes might be dangerous,’ she said.

  ‘We could analyse it,’ Ottilie responded. ‘We can’t use the spectrometer, and the ion-channel biosensors are out, but we’ve got one or two portables, and all our solutions are intact . . .’

  ‘Fine,’ said Mum. ‘You can take a sample, but I still want him isolated. Now.’

  ‘But where?’ I didn’t recognise the voice. It was a man’s voice. ‘The germinator tanks aren’t big enough.’

  ‘Outside? In the street?’ someone else suggested.

  ‘Not an option.’ It was Firminus speaking. He sounded very tired. ‘We can’t get through the door any more.’

  ‘What?’ said Mum.

  ‘The door’s in lockdown mode. We just disabled the pressure pad.’

  ‘Why – how -?’

  ‘I stuck a magnetron pole through it.’

  ‘We can’t afford to let any more samplers in,’ Arkwright declared. Everyone accepted that. There was a brief pause.

  ‘Could we put Zennor in another pressure suit?’ Ottilie finally suggested. ‘And seal it up?’

  ‘You saw what happened to the last pressure suit,’ Mum replied. ‘Anyway, it would require too much handling. I don’t want anyone touching that stuff.’

  ‘Air duct?’ said someone.

  ‘Contaminate an air duct? Are you kidding?’

  ‘Precision pipe.’ It was Sloan’s voice. Looking around, I saw that he wasn’t anywhere near me, and realised that he must have slipped back into the lab. ‘What about the precision pipe?’ he suggested. ‘That was built to hold a vacuum – it belongs to the particle accelerator module -’

  ‘Good ide
a,’ Ottilie cut in. ‘We’ll put him in there.

  Jehanne? Castus? You do it.’

  ‘No,’ said Dad. ‘I’ll do it.’ He had been very quiet. Like Firminus, he sounded exhausted. ‘You people have your own jobs to do. We need to know what we’re dealing with. We need more analysis.’

  ‘We need CAIP,’ Arkwright stated flatly.

  ‘Right. So you’d better access it somehow.’

  ‘I’ll need help for that,’ said Arkwright. ‘If I’m dealing with a central nervous system, instead of a CPU -’ ‘I can help you,’ Mum interjected. ‘I’ve been thinking: when a nerve wants to pass a signal to another nerve, it releases acetylcholine – a neurotransmitter. If we can start with that, and – I don’t know – work out a kind of chemical signal code, to get your message through -’

  ‘Without a projection program?’ someone said. ‘Without any kind of molecular models? How are we going to design it?’

  ‘As best we can,’ Mum snapped.

  ‘All right,’ said Dad, wearily. ‘I’ll take care of Zennor. You and Arkwright start on CAIP. You may need Ottilie’s input -’

  ‘No problem.’ Ottilie had a soft, precise little voice, but it seemed curiously strong and firm compared to a lot of the others. Even Firminus was beginning to sound shaky. ‘We already have some data,’ she said. ‘Jehanne’s our tissue expert. Sloan – you can take care of that toxin analysis.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What about the rodog?’ Arkwright was speaking. ‘He might be the best chance we have. What if he’s the ship in miniature?’

  There was a brief silence. I glanced at Yestin, who was sitting right next to me. We were still in the Pen, of course; no one would let us out. Lais was with us, huddled beside Yestin. She had her arm around his shoulders. We were all three slumped against a bench unit which, because it was on wheels, had not been transformed. It remained an ordinary bench, complete with drawers full of pipettes and Petri dishes.

  I knew that, occasionally, Ottilie had performed dissections on top of this bench. And I also knew that Yestin would never allow Bam to be dissected.

  The rodog was now sprawled near Yestin’s feet. Its glistening flanks rose and fell as it breathed. The very fact that it was sitting there finally convinced me: Bam was alive. No robot dog should ever need to rest. Yet there was Bam, resting.

  His master was also resting. Poor Yestin looked really sick. His colour (or lack of it) was awful. He kept sighing and sniffing. He stared dully across the room, without actually focusing on anything much. Beside him, Lais didn’t look any better.

  She, too, had been given a sedative.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Sloan was squeezing past our feet.

  Glancing up, I saw that he was carrying a piece of equipment. ‘Could I put this down here? Thanks.’

  ‘What is it?’ I inquired, as he placed the instrument on top of the bench.

  ‘Portable biosensor.’

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘Check a sample.’ Sloan glanced over at Dygall, who had dozed off in one corner. Then he turned back to me, and lowered his voice. ‘Toxin sample,’ he added. ‘From Zennor’s face.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I got up, then. I was feeling a bit calmer, despite the samplers that were crawling around overhead. Every few seconds I would glance at the ceiling, just to keep track of where they were.

  Sloan followed my gaze.

  ‘They haven’t been giving us any trouble,’ he assured me.

  ‘Doesn’t mean they won’t.’

  ‘Possibly.’ Sloan transferred his toxin sample, inserted the slide into its slot, and powered up. ‘I’d certainly like to know what’s going on with those samplers,’ he mused. ‘They’re just overblown biosensors – or they used to be. Protein-based ion channels inside lipid membranes, with a metalloy/bacteriorhodopsin composite coating. So how come they’ve started squirting people with organic acid?’

  ‘Maybe we ought to catch one,’ I murmured, my eyes still fixed on the ceiling.

  ‘Maybe. I wouldn’t like to try, though. Suppose they start defending themselves?’

  ‘We need guns,’ someone mumbled.

  It was Dygall. He was awake again. Sloan and I both looked over at where he was curled up, near a plankton tank.

  He gazed back at us blearily.

  ‘We need guns,’ he repeated, with some effort.

  ‘Weapons . . .’

  ‘Take it easy, Dygall,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Charge guns!’

  ‘We can’t go letting off bursts of electromagnetic radiation,’ Sloan pointed out. His tone was distracted, because his attention was once more focused on the work in front of him. ‘It wouldn’t be safe.’

  ‘Safe?’ squawked Dygall, and coughed. ‘Safe? What are you talking about, you idiot? This whole ship’s probably going to collapse any minute!’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘We’re in space! Living things can’t survive in space!’

  ‘This one was designed to.’ Sloan adjusted something on his biosensor, speaking gently. ‘Anyway, there are some pretty tough organisms around, remember. We’ve used them ourselves.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Dygall protested. ‘Are you crazy? Can’t you see what’s happened? People are dying!’

  ‘Hey.’ I went over to Dygall. He was my Little Brother, after all. ‘Do you want a bite to eat?’ I asked, crouching next to him. ‘We can still use the food dispenser. Peanuts and things – Ottilie’s tested them out on the germinators.’

  ‘Cheney . . .’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘My dad’s dead,’ he whispered.

  ‘I know.’ What could I do? I squeezed his arm. ‘I’m so sorry, Dygall.’

  ‘We’re all dead.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’re all going to die,’ he insisted, and laughed. It was a terrible laugh. Like something breaking.

  ‘Dygall, we’re still alive,’ I said. ‘We won’t be if we lose it. You know? We can’t afford to lose it. We just can’t.’

  He blinked at me, and swallowed. I think he might have nodded. I’m not sure, though, because at that moment I was distracted by Mum and Arkwright, who had entered the room to look for Yestin’s rodog.

  ‘There it is,’ said Arkwright – but he hesitated. So did Mum. They were studying Yestin.

  He didn’t seem to notice them, until Mum hunkered down in front of him.

  ‘Yestin?’ she murmured. ‘Honey? We need to do something.’

  My teeth were clenched; I was waiting for the explosion. Yestin was obsessed with that rodog. I was sure that he would never allow anyone to harm it.

  But I was wrong. The explosion didn’t come. Yestin just gazed blankly, nodding and shrugging, as Mum explained what had to be done. I was wondering if he even understood – if the news was even sinking in – when Dad reappeared.

  He began to search through the drawers in the bench.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked Sloan, pulling out a long, flexible tube.

  Sloan flicked a glance at him. ‘Spare pipe for the hydroliser.’

  ‘And these?’

  ‘I think that’s a set of electrodes for plasma arcing.’

  ‘What about this?’

  ‘Vacuum valve seal.’

  ‘What are you doing, Dad?’ I couldn’t understand the point of his questions.

  It took him a moment to find me, down on the floor. When he did, he said, ‘We need to get hold of a sampler. Firminus and I are trying to devise some sort of trap.’

  ‘Oh.’ That made sense, I suppose. Then Dygall stirred beside me.

  ‘You shouldn’t be building traps,’ he hoarsely remarked.

  ‘You should be building weapons.’

  Dad dropped something, at that point, and it broke when it bounced off the bench-leg; I heard the tinkling noise. Dad cursed, and stooped to pick up the pieces. It was Sloan who answered Dygall.

  ‘Stop and think,’ he said quietly, turning his smooth, vivid face tow
ards my Little Brother. ‘If we damage this ship, we’ll damage ourselves. We can’t treat Plexus as an enemy.

  We have to help it, not hurt it. Or we haven’t got a chance.’

  ‘But -’

  ‘He’s right, Dygall.’ Dad had straightened. ‘I know it’s hard, but we can’t let our emotions get the better of us.’

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ Dygall spat. ‘You’re still – you didn’t – my Dad’s dead . . .’ If he hadn’t been sedated, he probably would have screamed these words. As it was, he muttered them, and moved away from Lais when she tried to hug him.

  Meanwhile, Arkwright had picked up Bam. He said, ‘You might want to do the examination in here, Quenby.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mum. She rose, pulling Yestin up with her. ‘You kids, could you go back into the other room, now? It’s . . . um . . .’

  ‘Clear,’ Arkwright finished.

  ‘Yes. It’s clear, in there.’ She meant, I suppose, that Zennor’s body had been hidden away. In the precision pipe, or whatever it was. Before we could move, however, Sloan suddenly said, ‘There’s a high concentration of nitric acid in this toxin sample.’

  Everyone stared at him. He pointed at a glowing panel on top of his biosensor.

  ‘Check for yourselves,’ he continued. ‘It’s not the nastiest component, by any means, but it’s the largest.’ When no one had any comment to make, he added, ‘Which suggests that there might be rather a lot of nitric oxide floating around on this ship, somewhere. Unfortunately.’

  ‘Nitric oxide?’ Mum echoed.

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ said Dad, ‘but isn’t nitric acid highly corrosive?’ He waved a small metal drum. ‘I mean, even if we built some sort of suction pump, and trapped one of those samplers in this filter canister -’

  ‘It might work its way out,’ Sloan finished. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘But there should be some way of neutralising the acid,’ Sloan went on thoughtfully. ‘I mean, we can use the fact that those things are alive. We could start at the molecular level, with something that will inhibit protein synthesis or dissolve peptide bonds. Like interferon, for example. Though we haven’t got CAIP to do the cytanalysis, of course -’