‘Enjoy your game,’ she answered, releasing him.
And without further ado, the two of them dashed out, Marco dribbling the ball as he went. The door shut behind them, erasing them from reality and leaving her alone in the cool greyness of her quarters. She sat at the table, looking around herself and wishing she had gone with them.
Presently, she found that she was looking at the belt again, her gaze unconsciously and inevitably drawn to it. It made her feel cold inside. And uneasy.
Farsight claimed those rocks had value, but Lina knew the truth. The belt was worthless. In the grand scheme of things it mattered precisely jack shit. It wasn’t worth anybody’s life: not Sal’s; not hers; not anybody’s. She wondered if she would ever be prepared to fly through it again. Well, she thought, hopefully once more. When I’m on my way to Platini with my son.
Darkness reigned out there, cold and infinite. She wondered how many dispersed molecules of Sal Newman still drifted in that hostile void like so much dust on the solar wind.
She busied herself by cleaning the steel-tiled floor of the main living-slash-dining room, stacking the sofa, table and chairs in one corner. She didn’t even care that, despite her work, the floor still remained stubbornly stained and grimy, as if it was made of dirt and all she could do was abrade the layers. When she was done she put everything back and sat for a minute on the sofa, at something of a loss for what to do next. Lacking any better idea for the moment, she flicked the holo on.
For a while she watched a documentary about the new and ambitious engineering works commissioned on Platini Alpha — the Grand Chasm Bridge, the new spaceport terminal, the vast network of irrigation aqueducts — but the longing this induced in her, for solid ground and civilisation, soon became unbearable and she began to flick channels.
She was surprised to find that channel ninety-nine, reserved for in-station broadcasts, was actually running. It showed the dark and cavernous space of Bay Seven, where the game was supposed to have been held today. Clearly the channel had gone live in response to some automated routine, even though the actual game had been cancelled.
And there was Marco, chasing his brightly-coloured football across the bottom left corner of the screen. Devoid of a human operator, the camera wasn’t tracking the ball, and Marco quickly dashed out of shot again. This time Eli came into the picture, looking, to be honest, a little overworked trying to keep up with the boy. To his credit, though, he darted to one side swiftly enough to intercept the ball that Marco had long-bombed towards one of the goals, controlling it and moving off out of shot with it. Lina smiled to herself, ignoring the small twinge of guilt that drifted through her mind attached to the phrase You’re spying on them. She knew they wouldn’t mind.
The ball zoomed across the shot again, away into the shadowed depths of Bay Seven. The two figures — man and boy — chased after it, silent as ghosts, jostling, gone again. Back again. . . gone again. . . back again. . . gone again. . . Blades of darkness towered above them — angular flints of shadow. Two flitting figures in a holo cube. . . seeds of life caught in the dead matrix of this awful outpost at the end of the universe.
Lina reached out and killed the holo, realising as she did so that her hand was shaking. She lifted it to her face and stared at it, unable to believe that her body could betray her thus. Then she put both hands over her face and, her mind entirely blank and void of reason, began to cry.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘You can’t go in there,’ said Ella Kown, appearing as if by magic at Lina’s elbow and making her jump guiltily.
‘Ella!’ she cried, whirling around. Ella’s face looked serious beneath her stubbled crew-cut, neutral and stern, but Lina saw the glint of humour in her eyes. ‘You startled me.’
‘That,’ said Ella seriously, ‘is my job. You know — startling people who’re sneaking around the hangars when they shouldn’t be.’
Absurdly, Lina felt herself blush. Ella was one of those people who could make her feel about six years old. ‘Yeah, I mean no, I was. . .’ She trailed off, unable to justify herself. ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s okay,’ said Ella, smiling now. ‘I was going to shoot you, but you know how much paperwork I’d have if I did.’
Lina leant against the convex slab of the hangar door, putting her head back and closing her eyes. She laughed tiredly.
‘You okay, Li?’ Ella asked, stepping closer.
Lina looked back at her. Although she was solidly-built, tall and strong, Ella looked almost small there, dwarfed beneath the giant rows of pallet-racking. Blueish lights far up in the ceiling cast her in a weak, ethereal glow. ‘Yeah. No. . .’ She faltered, genuinely unable to say for sure. She wished people would stop asking her that.
‘Come with me,’ said Ella decisively. She turned and led the way through a smaller side-door and into the warehouse office, from where the one-man team of Charlie Stenning usually controlled stock and storage in the warehouse. Charlie was absent now, and it took Ella a while to find the manual control for the lights, which had failed to come on when they opened the door. The room was bare and basic — much like the rest of the station — with a simple desk and computer terminal in one corner. There was a not-quite-pornographic poster of two women stuck to the wall above a small rubbish bin, but to Lina it just looked kind of sad in the almost aggressively-soulless surroundings — a desperate attempt to impose some humanity on this bare steel casket.
Ella sat on the desk and kicked the chair out towards Lina, who stopped it, spun it round, and sat.
‘You wanna tell me what you’re doing down here, Lina?’ asked Ella without prelude. Noticing the crease that this question brought to Lina’s brow, she added, ‘As a friend, not a security officer, that is.’
‘Ella, I don’t know if I’m going insane, but. . .’ She found the words reluctant to come, now, here in the cold light of day, speaking to another rational human being, but she forced them: ‘I thought I saw somebody flying into the belt last night.’ She spread her hands, then let them fall into her lap, as if to say, That’s it, that’s all I have.
Ella nodded, considering this possibility, and Lina inwardly thanked her for not simply blowing her off straight away. ‘You thought?’ she asked after a while. ‘Or you did?’
‘Honestly, I thought,’ answered Lina carefully, screwing her eyes up as if she could intensify the memory that way, examine it more closely. ‘I’m not sure, Ella. But I thought I did.’
‘Truthfully, Lina, I doubt it. If you’re not sure yourself, I’d have to say it sounds unlikely. Why would anyone do that?’
Lina exhaled heavily: Now that was the question. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘Why would any of the things that have happened lately happen?’ She wanted to tell Ella about her dream, about the shadow in the belt, but she knew what sort of light this would cast her in. She felt she was barely hanging onto credibility as it was.
‘Crazy times, right?’
‘Yeah. Crazy times.’
‘How are you, really, Lina? I’ve hardly seen you since the Sal thing.’
‘The Sal thing,’ Lina repeated, amazed that it could be summarised so simply. ‘I think I’m all right, Ella. But I want to take Marco to Platini on the next available shuttle.’
Ella smiled kindly, but Lina caught a hint of sympathy in there, and felt an irrational surge of annoyance at that. ‘I think you should,’ said Ella.
‘That’s what Eli said, too.’
‘We all have your best interests at heart, you know. Yours and Marco’s. Clay would miss him, of course — we’d all miss you guys — but it might be best for you. One day, me and Clay might even come and join you there.’