‘Mmm. . .’ grunted Halman. ‘A dragon, yeah.’ He was silent for a moment, then he turned to Lina. His primitive face was lined in thought. ‘Maybe he passed the delusion on to Carver in some way. Carver sounds like a pretty messed-up individual — the sort of freak who might believe any old shit. Maybe he’s on the same drugs. I can just imagine the two of them sitting in that damned asteroid, smashed out of their tiny brains, talking about dragons and emissaries.’ He paused, then added, ‘Bastards!’ in a vicious snarl, so heartfelt that Lina almost laughed.
‘Yeah, I thought that. Everyone knows that fader causes mass hallucinations. Or maybe just Eli suggesting it was enough to make Carver believe in this dragon, too.’
‘You don’t sound sure, though,’ said Halman, looking at her with his brows raised in question.
Lina sighed, rubbing at her knee. She couldn’t remember hurting it, but it ached deep inside the bone nonetheless. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, looking away uncertainly. She could make out the spindly silhouette of a dining chair through one of the doorways opposite. It had been upset in the evacuation and now lay with its legs in the air like a dead thing, shiny with ice. ‘I know it sounds pretty tenuous, but I’ve been feeling as if there is something out there. Something. . .’ She searched for the right word at some length, then settled for, ‘. . . else.’
‘Something else?’ repeated Halman. ‘A dragon?’ He laughed, but it sounded a rather bitter laugh. ‘As in here there be dragons?’
Lina was struck by a sudden pang of sadness, so sour that it burned inside her like acid. She remembered Sal joking about that, out in the belt, what seemed like a million years ago. Here there be dragons, right? That’s what they used to write on the uncharted parts of the map in times of old. It seemed like ancient history, but Lina remembered the words exactly. Sal. Sal Newman. The woman who had almost stolen her husband, long after he’d been worth keeping. The woman who had earned Lina’s trust and friendship over the years since, and who had then died in a cloud of shredded guts. She remembered that tooth hitting the glasspex canopy of her Kay and shivered.
‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘Something like that.’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Halman in a slow and measured voice. ‘I don’t know. There could be any number of things out there that we aren’t aware of. But I do know that if this dragon is a real thing — be it some Predecessor relic, or an evil spirit from another dimension, or some fucking military experiment gone wrong — then it has our shuttle. Without those parts and those supplies, we die. So we’re gonna go out there, and if it is real. . . well. . .’ He made a noise that was probably supposed to be a laugh. ‘. . . Then I guess we’ll find out.’
‘Maybe we can kill it,’ said Lina. ‘If it is real.’
Halman shrugged. A reply formed on his lips, but was forestalled by a voice from the radio — Ella’s voice.
‘You still there, guys?’
Halman sat up straighter, looking around himself. ‘Yeah, still here.’
‘Si’s team have headed back. We’re on our way to you. Everything all right there?’
‘Yeah, fine here,’ answered Halman. ‘You know Tryka? We’re right outside his place.’
‘Okay,’ said Ella. ‘Ten minutes max.’
‘Fine. We ain’t going anywhere.’
‘Out,’ concluded Ella simply.
‘Maybe it’s a bit of both. . .’ said Lina, mainly to herself.
‘What is?’ asked Halman, turning a bemused expression on her.
‘The dragon,’ she explained. ‘Maybe it’s both real and a product of the fader.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Maybe it is something real, something left by the Predecessors. And fader acts as a sort of tuning device, that allows the user to listen on its frequency. Nobody ever noticed before because this thing exists only here, in the belt. Or this is the only one people have ever found. Maybe the Predecessors left fader for us to find, for just this purpose. Everyone knows the urban myth about it coming from one of their worlds. You and I can’t hear this dragon’s voice, or see it, because we haven’t taken the necessary drug.’ Halman’s puzzled expression exaggerated into a caricature. ‘Unless you want to confess something to Doctor McLough, that is?’
‘Me?’ he asked, his eyes widening. ‘I never so much as smoked a joint, Lina. I’m still a military man at heart, I guess.’
‘Well, maybe something really is out there in the belt, maybe physically inside that rock. I’ve had a bad feeling in the belt recently. Even looking at it. I know that’s hardly submissible evidence, but still. . .’ She realised just how painfully stupid and unlikely this all sounded, but she needed to say it. ‘And Carver has also been taking fader, hence that horrendous sculpture he made for us. Maybe Eli started him on the drug, or maybe he already had an addiction. I don’t know — I haven’t seen his record.’
‘Hmm,’ grunted Halman, who had seen his record but couldn’t remember if Carver had a drug addiction or not, truth be told. ‘Maybe. But I have to say, Lina, I don’t like where all this is going.’
Lina realised that he had essentially shut the question out of his mind. He didn’t really have the right sort of brain for such abstract considerations, she knew. She didn’t think he cared, really. He was concerned with the practical problems of getting the shuttle back and repairing the station before it was too late. Fair enough, she thought. That does seem like a reasonable prioritisation.
They waited in silence for a while, each lost in their own thoughts. Suddenly, something glimmered in Lina’s mind — something she had shelved for later consideration. She brought the thought forwards and examined it. She had to ask. She took a deep breath and said, ‘What was it that Ella didn’t want to tell you in front of me?’
Halman gave her a sideways look. She could see that he was debating whether he should tell her or not. And that was enough to confirm that she was right. It was something about her. Halman sighed, the expelled air boiling around him, cloaking him.
‘Shit, Lina,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to tell you this. But I almost did anyway. . .’
‘Dan,’ she said, turning what she hoped was an imploring expression on him, ‘we might not have long to live. I don’t know if you’ve done the maths but I have. We still have to get that shuttle. And now there are sixteen nut-cases out there, assuming they are going back to the shuttle. Maybe eighteen if Eli and the pilot are still alive, although I honestly doubt that very much. Carver trashed four of the Kays when he came in. That means we can, at most, get ten people out there. Those aren’t great odds in my mind. I’d never accuse you of genius, Dan,’ she continued, offering him a smile, ‘but I reckon you’ve done that sum yourself by now. If we’re gonna die, I think you might as well tell me. I know it’s something that concerns me, so. . .’ She spread her hands and let this filter through to him for a moment.
After what seemed like a long pause Halman said, ‘Ella went to Eli’s quarters after he was supposedly confined in medical. Before he killed Jayce and Tamzin.’ Halman was staring intently at the corridor floor now. His voice was flat and robotic. ‘She found a lock of hair in Eli’s bedside drawer.’
‘What?’ asked Lina, genuinely puzzled. ‘Is that what she told you?’