Lina turned to the cooker again and flipped one of the burgers to check its readiness. Satisfied, she dumped both of them onto the hunks of bread that she had laid out ready on two plates, salad piled alongside.
‘The shuttle is due any day now, anyway, and it should be carrying the part for the scrubbers. The maintenance team have known it was going for ages. Even if the old one fails before that — which it won’t — then they’ll find some way of keeping the system running. Dinner’s up.’
‘Yeah!’ Marco enthused, his stomach overriding any concerns his mind may have had. He hungrily accepted the proffered plate and they headed to the metal table in the living room. Metals were about the only things that were in genuine plenty at Macao, and one kind of got used to seeing them everywhere, usually in their bare, untreated forms. Pretty much the whole of the station was furnished with whatever functional metal happened to be in abundance at the time.
Lina killed the holo and turned on the overhead light, which was set to so-called ‘environmental mode’ and accordingly emitted a ruddy evening-hue. They both tucked in, equally famished.
‘How was school, Son?’ asked Lina around a mouthful of burger. She wiped a smear of tomato ketchup from her chin.
‘Mmm, okay,’ he answered. ‘We’re learning chemistry, but Miss Greene says all chemistry is just stamp collecting, and we should remember that all science is physics really.’ He shrugged and took another bite.
Lina laughed. ‘She did, did she? She should tell that to the chemists at the refinery — they’d like that!’
Marco took a swig from his water glass. ‘Ella told me one of her guards was attacked by a prisoner,’ he said conversationally.
Ella was Ella Kown, security chief and mother of Marco’s best friend, Clay. Lina didn’t really appreciate her telling Marco about the prison attack, but she had never knowingly lied to him and she wasn’t going to start now. ‘Yeah, ’fraid so. He’s gonna be okay, though, the guy who was attacked. Murkhoff, it was. I think Ella’s team just need a little more experience in handling the prisoners. It’s still a bit new to them.’
‘Oh, right,’ he said, seemingly dismissing the matter. ‘Is Eli still gonna take me to the game?’
‘The soccer? Yeah, I should think so — he hasn’t said otherwise.’
He nodded. ‘Good. I like Eli.’
Lina nodded, too. ‘So do I. He’s one of the good guys. Even though he works us half to death sometimes.’
‘Keeps us spinning, right, Mum?’
‘Yeah,’ she agreed, picking up a piece of salad with her fingers, grinning to hear him say those words. ‘That’s the line.’
Chapter Seven
Darkness, cold, an echoing icy tomb without air. The man moved slowly, suited and clumsy, floating down the tunnel.
‘Are you there?’
Nothing. . .
‘Hello?’
Nothing. . .
He moved further down the tunnel, gloved hands trailing over slick, unseen surfaces, assuring himself of his bearings. He gave a little kick of thrust from the jet in the suit’s arm, being careful not to hit the wall. This was the right place, wasn’t it? Suddenly he was afraid. Maybe he was lost — a man could lose the way, run out of air or power, suffocate, freeze and die in here.
‘Hello?’ More fearfully this time, hearing the note of tension in his own voice, struggling to subdue it. ‘Are you there?’
‘I am here.’
Relief, then. He heard his own breathing, heavy in the stillness, emphasised by the hissing of the suit’s respiration system. Sensing the possible beginnings of hyperventilation, the suit restricted his oxygen intake slightly.
‘I thought perhaps you had left me.’ He laughed to hear himself say this — a short cough of laughter, an exorcism of worry more than anything. Now that it had spoken, he could feel its presence — it was like a crackling in the air, a latent electrical charge that prickled the skin even through his suit. But there was something else, too — a sort of hunger — the sort of feral tang that a person might experience when they felt the breath of a wild animal close upon their skin. ‘Or perhaps that you were never here.’
‘I am here. And I will never leave you.’
‘Good.’
‘You have done the small tasks I asked of you?’
‘Yes.’ He waited for a reply, but there was only silence. Silence and his own breathing. ‘You said that you would answer some questions for me.’ He waited again. ‘Will you do that?’
‘What would you know?’ The voice sounded a little cagey, thought the man. Suspicious.
‘What are you?’ he asked. Suddenly, he was afraid. Had it been foolish of him to return here?
‘I am a living thing,’ said the voice. ‘I am a hungry, trapped, living thing. You might think of me as a sort of. . . dragon. And I am your friend.’
‘My friend?’ repeated the man. Friend. . . That word carried with it a soothing, calming association. It was good. Everybody needed friends. The fear dissipated like water boiling off into steam. ‘A dragon?’
‘Do not misunderstand me,’ added the voice — the dragon. ‘For I can be a dangerous friend.’
‘Yes,’ whispered the man, awed. His head felt fuzzy, stuffed with cotton wool. He shook it, trying to clear it, but the fuzziness persisted. Never mind. . . It was a pleasant fuzziness really.
‘Fear not, though,’ said the dragon. ‘It was you who sought me out. You who came to me, showed your fealty with the tasks I set for you. You have returned. You are my emissary. The chosen one. And we will be good friends, you and I. I have no cause to hurt you.’
‘I am your emissary,’ repeated the man, entranced. He floated like a wisp of smoke, a shade of himself, the merest mote in that maw of darkness. His suit-light was a single interior star.
‘So,’ said the dragon in a lighter tone, ‘how are you today? You sound a little. . . tense.’ The man failed to detect the slight hint of amusement that floated just below the surface of these words.
‘I’m okay. I just. . . I thought you might have gone for a moment, or that I might be lost. I’m okay. A little tired. . . we work hard. . . but otherwise. . .’ And he did feel okay, now that he was here.
‘Did you not enjoy the tasks I set for you?’
‘Oh no, no,’ stammered the man, concerned that he had been misunderstood. ‘It isn’t that. I did enjoy them. . . It’s good to have a purpose.’
‘You do not have a purpose without me?’ It sounded like a question, but the man thought it might be a statement.
‘I suppose not,’ he admitted. His suit-light played across ice-slicked rock, trickling through the darkness, the smallest living spark.
‘Was it not easy to do these things? To evade detection? Did it not excite you?’
‘It was kind of fun,’ said the man thoughtfully, struggling to extract the right words from his uncooperative brain. ‘But you said, that if I did these things, then you would tell me more about yourself.’
‘I have told you already. What more would you know?’
‘I don’t know. . .’ said the man stupidly. Somehow, his proximity to the dragon seemed to reduce his own intelligence. It made him feel childish and slightly confused. It was a shame, because when he had been away from it he had thought of many questions to ask, but floating here in its very court, its temple, its home, he could not remember what they were.
‘Well?’ asked the dragon.
The man thought deeply, his brow wrinkling. ‘You have told me you are a dragon,’ he began cautiously. ‘But what are you? I mean, really? How did you come to be here?’