Lina pushed the blanket off, swung her feet down and stood up. ‘Come on,’ she said.
Marco frowned but he stood too, bundling the blanket into a pile on the sofa. ‘What is it?’ he asked again.
‘I want to show you something,’ she said cryptically. She felt a smile teasing at the edges of her mouth and went with it. ‘Come on,’ she said again.
‘Er, okay. . .’ Marco replied suspiciously.
Lina killed the holo and went to the door, her son following curiously behind her. She turned off the light and they went out, leaving the door unlocked, as was customary on board.
‘Where are we going?’ Marco asked. Lina answered with a silent grin.
She led him down the corridor, following the little twists inherent to almost all the passageways of Macao. Round the next bend, two of the refinery guys were juggling plastic clubs, throwing them to each other in tight synchronisation, and they had to back-track and take another route to avoid disrupting them.
They reached the stairs near to medical and Lina led Marco up to the hub-most floor, emerging into the machine rooms that housed most of the station’s vital equipment. The artificial g-force was lesser up here — about eighty-six percent of that experienced at the rim — due to the slower rotational velocity of the smaller circle that formed the inner floor. But this was nothing yet. Lina tried not to think about the failing scrubbers, but she couldn’t help glancing down the corridor towards the room where they were housed. Bright light emanated from the doorway there and she could hear voices raised in debate. She didn’t think Marco noticed, though, and she led him quickly away before he could.
Deflecting his questions, she took him on a twisting route through the machine rooms, past the maintenance workshop with its massive lathes and computerised milling machines. Nik Sudowski and Alphe could be seen in there, bent over a terminal together, but neither of them looked up as the two interlopers crept past.
Lina stopped before a vast curved wall that completely blocked their way. She turned around, face scrunched, trying to remember where to go. It had been some years since she’d been up here.
‘What?’ asked Marco for about the millionth time.
‘I’ll show you,’ said Lina. She turned decisively left, skirting the curved wall, and ducked through a narrow doorway behind a massive oxygen tank that reached fully to the high ceiling and was attached to the floor with bolts as thick as Lina’s wrists.
Although she had security clearance to be up here, she was aware that Marco technically didn’t. Even so, she couldn’t imagine anybody stopping them. She’d never seen anybody else come to this forgotten corner. And, more importantly, she was having fun. She felt a little bad about that, but it was Sal who had reminded her of this place. When things had been at their worst with Jaydenne — back when Sal had been new to Macao — Lina had come here sometimes to think. Once, she’d even brought Marco with her, strapped to her chest in a baby-carrier.
Marco followed her through the door, letting it swing to behind him with a creak of long disuse. The room emerged into was almost pitch black. Most of the lights had burned out over the years and never been replaced. The room was small and empty — some old storage space. Sharp metal shavings gritted and crunched beneath their feet.
Another door led out of the room to their right. They went through it and emerged into a surprisingly large, cylindrical room that was almost as badly-lit as the one behind them. Lina was sure that Marco had realised this put them on the other side — the inside — of the curved wall that they had stopped at before.
The floor in here was sturdy diamond-pattern mesh, but through it they could see only blackness that dropped away below them into nothing. Ancient water leaks had left thick mineral deposits slathered onto the concave metal of the walls. Lina heard dripping, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Thick pillars crowded the circular space in a tight, precise configuration, leaving little room to move around them.
Marco stood, turning in place, bemused. ‘Are we inside. . .’ he began slowly.
‘Inside the spoke,’ Lina finished for him. ‘Yes. The other one houses the chutes that take metals from the refinery to dispatch in the hangar, but this one is essentially empty. I don’t think anyone really comes here any more. They access the comms equipment and kinetic defence systems from crawl-ways in the other spoke.’
‘Wow,’ he breathed, still turning in a slow circle, his eyes wide white blanks in the gloom. And then, with a touch of relish, he added, ‘We shouldn’t be in here.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Lina, grinning at his amazement. ‘And that’s nothing. Look up.’ She pointed, as if he couldn’t have discerned up from down by himself.
Above them, the shaft of the spoke soared away into a singularity of perspective, an eye of utter blackness. The pillars were in fact massive cables — caramicarbide tendons, each a metre across. Marco moved towards one, entranced, and put his hand on its ancient, pitted skin, feeling the rumbling of Macao’s perpetual motion that thrummed inside it like a heartbeat.
Lina stared with him, enjoying the power of the sight, relishing the thrill of fear and awe. She thought she could almost feel the immense strains and stresses that the structure was under. It practically groaned with mass, ached with physical forces. This was what they had built — this crude, majestic wheel of steel and carbon. This was the skeleton of their home amongst the stars, the innards of the great machine.
‘Wow. . .’ said Marco again, with real feeling.
Lina began to pace between the cables, trailing her hands across their rough surfaces, squinting into the darkness.
‘What are you looking for?’ Marco asked.
‘This!’ she exclaimed, beckoning him over. His footsteps made tiny, tinny sounds on the meshwork floor, insignificant drops of noise. ‘Look: it’s a lift.’
Marco came and stood beside her. He glanced from her face to the machine in front of them, uncertain. ‘Is it safe?’ he asked.
Lina felt a twinge of sadness at this question. Sal’s death had left him uneasy, and Lina knew he was concerned for her well-being. Maybe his own, too. ‘Sure,’ she said softly.
The lift was basically a simple metal cage, cylindrical, just big enough for two adults to squeeze into. In the low light it looked as if it had once been painted either orange or red, but it was hard to tell for sure. It was mostly rust now. The lift was mounted on a sort of track on one of the outer-most cables of the spoke. The track threaded its way into blackness up there, thin as spider-silk, a parasitic shoot that had clung to the massive trunk of the cable itself. The teeth of the track were caked with thick black grease. There was a small door at the side nearest to them, with a simple latch to keep it closed during operation.
‘Let’s go,’ said Lina.
She struggled to move the latch, which had probably not been used since she’d last been here herself. After a moment, though, it slipped up and Lina pulled open the door. She squeezed through into the little cage and called Marco to join her.
Once they were both inside, Marco re-latched the door and Lina took the hanging control pad in one hand. She half expected that it somehow wouldn’t work, but when she pressed the UP button there was the click of a magnetic clamp releasing and the lift groaned, false-started, then began to rise.
‘Up we go!’ she cried excitedly, feeling like a little girl again. The giant cables rolled along beside them.
‘So up here must be the hub,’ Marco called over the noise of the machine. He was standing in front of Lina with his face pressed to the door of the cage, staring out. Weak LED lights flashed past, patching the darkness with their blueish glow.