‘Holy shit, Boss,’ said Rocko in a breathless voice. He still wore last night’s flight-suit, Lina saw. His dark face was slack and incredulous. ‘You saying we have to turn in all our food or, or. . . what? Ella Kown’s going to shoot us? Really? Ella?’ He turned from side to side, palms spread and face questioning, garnering support. ‘Really?’ he repeated in amazement. Ella didn’t appear to contradict him. Fionne, standing next to him, pulled him close to her, quietening him, whispering into his ear.
‘We’ll redistribute accordingly,’ said Halman calmly. ‘And fairly. And we’ll eat rations until either this year’s shuttle or next year’s shuttle arrives.’ A ventilation fan in the wall above the stairwell began to cycle up with a noise that rapidly grew to be intrusive, bringing Halman to a stumbling halt. ‘We. . . er, we. . .’ He turned and frowned at it. ‘Can somebody shut that off?’ he asked Amy Stone, leaning down to her level. Amy frowned, too, and gave an answer that Lina couldn’t hear, shaking her head. ‘Nik?’ Halman asked, looking for Sudowski and finding him at the back of the crowd. Faces turned expectantly to the chief of maintenance, who simply shook his head, too. He looked extremely pale, his eyes red-rimmed and his hair unkempt.
‘Whole air system’s screwed anyway!’ somebody shouted. Lina thought it was Jayce again, one of the sec-team Halman would be relying on to enforce his new rules.
This comment had a disturbing effect on the assembly: a cacophony of voices rose, some berating the speaker, some agreeing, others shouting questions. Marco’s hand tightened even further on Lina’s, painfully, his nails digging into her palm. She squeezed back nonetheless. Eli was silent beside her.
‘The air system,’ said Halman in a loud but steady voice, pitched to override the racket from the fan, ‘is working fine. Nik’s team had to change a processor, but it’s currently running at almost full capacity.’
‘Almost?!’ yelled a woman’s voice, high-pitched with indignation.
‘Yes, this is another thing I know a lot of you have been talking about,’ said Halman diplomatically. Lina, from her vantage point near the front, could see a small vein pulsing in his temple, contradicting the aura of calm that he was clearly trying to project. ‘We have had a problem with the scrubbers this last week. Nik’s team have found an ingenious workaround for the issue. But the smoking ban will continue for the foreseeable future, to reduce the load on the system. Maintenance replaced the dead component with a processor from the comms array.’ More uproar. Halman waved the crowd to silence again. ‘This means that we have lost the ability, for now, to talk to Platini, or the way stations.’
‘Like they were any fucking help anyway!’ shouted a deep male voice from somewhere on Lina’s left.
‘This has been a difficult time for us,’ said Halman, ignoring this comment. The fan was droning away louder than ever, now, and seemed to have settled on this new and deafening frequency. Lina thought that a bad smell was coming from it, but she couldn’t be sure. If it was, then nobody else seemed to have noticed. ‘It is going to be a difficult time for us, until we are resupplied. We are all going to behave in an adult manner, though. We will focus on the priorities. That means we’re going to operate — co-operate — as a family, as a team.’ Everybody was silent now, straining to hear him over the noise. ‘Number one: another tragedy like the one that affected Sal Newman must not happen. That means nobody flies until further notice. Number two: we’re going to centralise food resources, and ration them out, against the contingency that this year’s shuttle doesn’t make it. I want all food items delivered to the canteen by three this afternoon. Then the sec-team will check to make sure nothing has been forgotten. Number three: we’re going to remain calm. That’s the most important thing of all.’ He scanned the faces before him, daring any of them to resist this last directive. Nobody spoke. ‘And we will get through this. We’re no strangers to adversity here on Macao, and this is just the way it has to be. This is why we are well paid. We are bigger than this, we can get through this. As long as we work together. That is all.’ He didn’t offer to field any questions, as Lina had thought he might, and this was probably wise judging by the mood of the group. Instead, with one last emphatic glare around the crowd, he turned and strode to the stairwell, where he ascended out of sight, Amy Stone dragging behind him like a ship’s tender.
There was subdued murmuring all around her as Lina stood gripping Marco’s hand and wondering what to do next. Eli puffed out his cheeks, catching her eye. He arched one eyebrow. What needed to be said, really?
‘Let’s go,’ suggested Lina, looking from Marco to Eli. They made for the stairs. As she went, Lina noticed the gaunt and lanky figure of Murkhoff, the security man injured by a prisoner the week before. He was standing with Theo and Jayce, and he looked particularly glum. A white bandage covered his ruined eye and a large red welt, where his face had been glued back together, ran from under the bandage almost to his chin. Lina guessed he wasn’t going to get his trip to Platini system any time soon.
Lina, Marco and Eli pushed through the remaining crowd and out of the door that led into the rec area. Lina felt shell-shocked. Eli was talking to Marco in a kindly, almost fatherly way, but she couldn’t really hear him. She was lost in her own world, a world in which they sat and waited indefinitely for a shuttle that never came, as the air dried up and equipment fell into disrepair, slowly starving out here in the back of beyond.
She stopped at the large window in the rec area, falling behind the others, hypnotised by the cold monotony of the belt that filled the view like static-snow on a screen. There it is, she thought. The reason we are here. Is it worth it? She thought of what Marco had said about going to Platini, finding another line of work, another place, another life. She was biting her lip again, almost hard enough to draw blood, but she didn’t notice. She reached out one hand to touch the window, as if she could make contact that way with the mineral bloodstream of the Soros system, somehow come to understand it, understand what it was that Sal had really died for. She thought of Jaydenne, wishing that Sal had gone with him to Platini, but knowing that then, maybe, she would have been the one in K6-8, and Marco would have been left behind with no parents at all. She thought of the shadow from her dream — out there somewhere — something dark and hungry and incomprehensible. She knew it was just a metaphor for her own fears, but she couldn’t shake the image from her mind.
When she touched the window, the display suddenly flickered, changing to a zoomed-in view, and at that same moment Eli touched her on the shoulder. She jumped, uttering a little squeak of surprise. ‘Eli. . .’ she said, looking into his eyes. She was alarmed to see the concern there, and wondered how bad she looked. She wasn’t sure if she was hung-over or losing her mind, or maybe some interesting combination of the two.
‘You sure you’re okay?’ he asked her quietly, checking over his shoulder to make certain that Marco was still waiting for them further up the corridor.
‘Yeah,’ she said, her mind running in ten directions at once. And then, slowly, accusingly, she said, ‘You seem to be doing okay.’
Eli stepped back, his thick brows knitting together. ‘What does that mean?’ he asked, puzzled.