Half an hour later, the emergency hatch at the end of the car creaked, popped, and opened. A man and a woman in matching blue security uniforms stepped in.
Hey, folks, the man said. Everyone all right? Sorry about this, but some jackhole broke the vacuum seals. Whole systems going to be down for about six hours, minimum. Some places longer. Weve got service carts out here that can take folks to transport buses. Just line up single file, and well get you where youre going.
Leelee was humming to herself as David drew her into line. He couldnt get her to Innis Shallow and get back home. Not with the tubes down. He bit his lips and they moved forward one at a time, the other passengers vanishing through the emergency hatch and into the temporary airlock beyond it. It took forever to reach the front of the line.
Where are you two headed? the security man asked, consulting his hand terminal. It was working, even though Davids wasnt. The man looked up, concerned. Hermano. Where are you two headed?
Innis Shallows, David said. And then, Shes going to Innis Shallows. I was taking her there, because shes not feeling so good. But Ive got to get to Breach Candy. Im going to miss my labs. Leelee stiffened.
Innis Shallows and Breach Candy. Step on through.
The temporary airlock was made from smooth black Mylar, and walking through it was like going through the inside of a balloon. The pressure wasnt calibrated very well, and when the outer seal opened, Davids ears popped. The hall was wide and low, the dull orange emergency lights filling the passage with shadows and leaching the color out of everything. The air was at least five degrees colder, enough to summon gooseflesh, and Leelee wasnt holding his arm anymore. Her eyebrows were lifted and her mouth was set.
Itll be okay, he said as they came close to the electric carts. Theyll get you home all right.
Yeah, fine, she said.
Im sorry. Ive got to get home. My dad
She turned to him. In the dim light, her dilated eyes didnt seem as out of place. Her sobriety made him wonder how much shed really been feeling it before and how much had been a playful kind of acting.
Dont worry about it, she said. Not the first time Ive been tripping in public, right? I can behave myself. Just thought youd come play and I was wrong. Hard cheese for me and moving on now.
Im sorry. Next time.
You call it, she said with a shrug. Next time.
The driver of the cart for Innis Shallow called out, and Leelee clambered aboard, squeezed between a middle-aged man and a grandmotherly woman, and waved back at David once. The middle-aged man glanced at David, back at Leelee, then down at the girls body. The cart lurched, whined, and lurched again. David stood, watching it pull away. The mixture of shame, regret, and longing felt like an illness. Someone touched his elbow.
Breach Candy?
Yes.
Over here, then. Damn. Youre a big one, arent you? All right, though. Well fit you in.
It was two years almost to the day since David had met Hutch at the lower university. David had been in the commons, the wide, carpeted benches with their soft, organic curves welcoming the students eating lunch. At thirteen, David had already been biochemistry track for two years. His last labs had been in tRNA transport systems, and he was reading through the outline for the carbon complex work that would take up his next six months when one of the seniorsan olive-skinned boy named Alwasihad sat down beside him and said there was someone David should meet.
Hutch had made himself out as more of a scholar back then but still with an edge to him. For months, David had thought the man was an independent tutor; the kind of hired instructor a family might bring on if their children were falling behind. David still had seven rounds of lab to go before his placement, so he hadnt thought too much about Hutch. Hed just become another face in the whirl of the lower university, one more minor character in the cast of thousands. Or hundreds at least.
Looking back, David could sort of see how Hutch had tested him. It had begun with asking innocuous little favorstell someone who shared Davids table that Hutch was looking for her, get Hutch a few grams of some uncontrolled reagent, keep a box for him overnight. They were things that David could do easily, and so he did. Every time, Hutch praised him or paid him back with small favors. David began to notice the people Hutch knewpretty girls and tough-looking men. Several of the low-tier instructors knew Hutch on sight, and if they werent overly friendly to him, they were certainly respectful. There hadnt been any one moment when David had crossed a line from being someone Hutch knew to cooking for him. It all happened so smoothly that hed never felt a bump.
The fact was he would have done the side projects for Hutch without being paid. He couldnt spend the money on anything too extravagant for fear his parents would ask questions, so he used it here and therea little present for Leelee or lunch on him for the other students at his table or the occasional indulgence that he could explain away. For the most part, it just sat in the account, growing slowly over time. The money wasnt precious because it was money. It was precious because it was secret and it was his.
When he had his placement and moved out to student housing in Salton, hed have more freedom. Hutchs money would buy him a top-flight gaming deck or a better wardrobe. He could take Leelee out for fancy dinners without having to explain where hed been or who hed been with. The workload would be harder, especially if he got placed in medical or development. Hed heard stories about first-year placements on the development teams who pulled fifty-six hour shifts without sleep. Carving out another six hours after that for Hutch might be hard, but hed worry about that when he got there. He had more immediate problems.
The transport buses were old, wheezing electrical carts, some of them dating back two generations. The drivetrain clicked under him, and the rubberized foam wheels made a constant sticky ripping noise. David hunched in a seat, trying to pull his elbows close in against his body. Around him, the other travelers looked bored and restless. The system was still locked down, his hand terminal restricted to what it held in local memory. He checked it every few seconds just to feel he had something to do. The wide access corridors passed slowly, the conduits and pipes like the circulatory system of some vast planetary behemoth. It seemed like the corridor would go on forever, even though the distance between Martineztown and Breach Candy wasnt more than forty kilometers.
He was supposed to be in his labs at the lower university. Even if all the public transport was locked down, it wasnt more than a half-hour walk from there to home. David figured he could claim to have been in the middle of something and that it had taken longer than hed expected to finish up the work. Except that was the excuse hed been giving to cover the extra time hed spent cooking for Hutch. His mother had already started wondering in her vague accusation-without-confrontation way whether he was losing focus on his work. If they found out hed been outside the neighborhood, it would be bad. If they found out why, it would be apocalyptic. David cracked his knuckles and willed the bus to go faster.
It was easy to think of Londres Nova as existing only along its tube lines, but the truth was generations of colonists and prototerraformers had made a webwork of tunnels under the airless permafrost of Mars. Whole complexes of the original tunnels had gone fallowsealed off and the atmosphere and heat allowed to flow away into the flesh of the planet. Supply passages linked to electrical maintenance lines. There were shortcuts, and the bus driver knew them. Just when David was about to weep or scream with frustration, he saw the edge of Levantine Park and the northernmost edge of Breach Candy. The bus was going faster than he could walk, but just knowing where he was, being able to map his own way home, made the frustration a little less. And the fear maybe a little more.