Bringer of Light (15 page)

The lingua repeated her promise to tell him as soon as she had any news.

Vy jumped up and started pacing, and Taro, seeing Jarek’s imploring look, suggested to the boy that they leave the others to their talk and go explore the hab. He was glad to get away too; being around Nual and not being allowed to touch her was doing his head in.

Vy agreed only after the lingua promised – and repeated her promise – to com Taro immediately she got a response to his request.

The way the lingua had described it, the gardens took up nearly half the hab. The living space comprised a single layer of rooms, in the other half, and inside that was a central core containing the tech that ran the place, plus Ain’s living area. They weren’t allowed in there, though the core had a passage out to a second airlock; when Jarek had been orbiting the hab, they’d spotted it, looking subtly different in shape and size to a standard airlock. The lingua had told Jarek she was alone in the core, though several patrons had wanted to send in their own avatars. Taro was glad that particular idea had been voted down in their Consensus. He already felt like he was living in a zoo.

The trick with Vy was to keep him distracted, so Taro took him back to the garden and they explored the paths, grottoes and streams (actually just one stream, cleverly looping around and back on itself). The place reminded Taro a bit of the Gardens in Khesh City, except where they were designed for the tourist hordes; this garden had been made specially for the four of them. Some of the plants were pretty weird. The miniature meadow of delicate bell-shaped flowers in purples, pinks and blues was nice enough but he wasn’t sure about the clearing next door, full of knee-high mats of dense multi-coloured fibres; they were soft as a bed if you pressed down on them, but if they touched bare skin they set it tingling in a way that was just a little bit freaky – though not unpleasant. Then there was the hammock of living vines strung between two fruit trees that moulded itself around you as you lay in it, and the bush with spiral orange leaves that shivered and retracted if you touched them. Even the grass wasn’t quite right: it looked like normal grass, even felt and smelled like it if you picked some, but when you looked closely, every leaf was the same shape and size, and it grew in a regular, repeating pattern.

Vy liked all the new stuff to see and do, but as soon as he’d had a go at something – climbed a tree, swung in the hammock, eaten some fruit, had a dip in a sandy-bottomed pool – he was off again, looking for new experiences. Taro would’ve liked to hang around in each place a bit longer . . . but they weren’t here for fun. He couldn’t forget that this whole set-up was meant to take their minds off being stuck in a box and spied on. Not that Taro minded the enclosed environment as such; open skies still did his head in, and some deep part of him felt happier inside an artificial world. What bugged him was that they had to stay here until the ‘patrons’ let them out.

Still, they were probably safer sealed in the hab than they’d be outside. When Jarek had asked Ain how the males were reacting to having visitors after being isolated for so long she’d admitted there were mixed views: some didn’t care, some were curious and some (just a few, she claimed) were hostile to the visit – although, she assured them, all patrons respected the decision to welcome them. Taro hoped they’d keep respecting it.

Other than the core, the lingua hadn’t said there was anywhere they couldn’t go, so Taro decided to try a little experiment – not only would it entertain Vy for a bit, but it’d be useful to see what they could get away with. He led the way back to a glade they’d passed earlier, and once they were clear of the trees, Taro pointed at the ‘sky’. ‘So,’ he said to Vy, ‘what d’you reckon’s up there then?’

Vy looked up, shading his eyes. ‘Fusion ball,’ he said.

Taro noted this useful piece of info, then said, ‘No, I mean on the walls – the ones that separate this half of the sphere from the core.’

Vy shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

‘How about I go find out?’

‘If you like.’

Taro kicked off and hovered about ten metres up, checking out the view. It was certainly pretty, but he didn’t spot anything new or unexpected. Vy was staring up at him; at least he’d got the boy’s attention. Knowing the ‘sun’ really could burn him made him cautious, but he wasn’t interested in that. Instead he flew across to the blue-painted wall that divided the gardens from the forbidden half of the sphere. Close to, it was just that: a wall, with no markings or openings or anything else of interest. He’d expected that, but he gave it a good once-over anyway, just in case. He was half-expecting a call from the lingua, telling him to stop arsing around, but his com stayed silent, so it looked like a certain amount of arsing around was allowed. He took one last look at the gardens – which were a pretty freaky sight, not so much
below
him as wrapped
around
him – then he flew back down.

‘Did you find anything?’ asked Vy as he landed.

‘Nice view, but other than that, fuck-all.’

Vy looked up again, as though expecting Taro to be proved wrong at any moment. Then he looked down and asked wistfully, ‘Can you really remember nothing from the Heart of the City?’

Taro answered cautiously, ‘Nothing I could put into words.’

Vy knew he and Nual were pretending not to be lovers, so talking about that here might not be so clever. Their experience of – temporarily – taking over from Khesh’s consciousness was one of the things that’d brought them together. ‘Look Vy,’ Taro tried, ‘I know you’re not happy, but maybe if you told me what the problem is—’

‘You
know
what it is!’ the boy cried. ‘I’m
alone.
I can’t— It’s just
me.
You can’t imagine what that’s like!’

‘No,’ said Taro evenly, ‘I can’t. And I’m sorry.’ Watchers be damned, Taro wanted to know what was really going on. ‘I know it’s shitty being cut off from the rest of your consciousness, but that wasn’t what I meant. Something else’s eating you.’

Vy shrugged, and Taro recognised the gesture; he wondered if people found it as irritating when he did it.

‘You wanted a private chat with the locals, didn’t you? Why?’

Vy shrugged again.

‘I thought we were friends,’ Taro said, sounding hurt. ‘Friends tell each other what’s bothering them.’

‘Can’t tell you,’ he said sulkily.

‘’course you can, if you want too. I won’t tell. Even if you just gave me some idea—’

‘I
can’t
tell you, all right?’ Vy shouted, and with that, he stormed off.

Taro hesitated, then followed. He found Vy standing in front of a tree, banging his fists into the gnarled wood. Taro called his name gently, and when Vy turned Taro saw he was crying, and there were spots of blood on his knuckles where he’d been hitting the tree.

Taro raised his arms, and Vy rushed into them. Taro hugged him, patting his head and letting him cry until he was done. Finally Vy pulled back and said, ‘I want to go play some games now.’ He turned, expecting Taro to follow.

Perhaps this was what having a younger brother would be like
, thought Taro as he trailed along after Vy.
You want to slap him, but you end up helping and protecting the little fucker, even if he doesn’t notice.

They’d only been gaming for a few minutes – Vy was beating Taro as usual – when Taro’s stomach cramped. He’d had a snack with Jarek earlier, but it was ages since he’d had a proper meal. The fact that Vy had gone so long without food was further proof, if Taro needed it, that something was fucking up the boy beyond just being apart from Khesh.

He persuaded Vy that they needed to eat, then commed Jarek. Nual was already in the diner with Jarek when he got there. Between them they prepared dinner from an odd mix of foods – Taro didn’t recognise any of them, but they all tasted better than ship’s rations. While they ate they chatted about nothing in particular, conscious that every word was being overheard. Jarek did tell them he’d gone back to the
Heart of Glass
, and it looked ‘just like we left it’, which was good.

Taro spent most of the meal trying not to look at Nual, though she didn’t seem to have any trouble ignoring him. He found himself getting irritated, and that made him annoyed at himself for being unreasonable. He caught her eye and thought at her,

She managed to reply without apparently paying any attention to him.

he thought back grumpily, and went back to his meal.

Vy returned to the gaming room once they’d eaten. Taro sighed and followed him, though he was pretty tired. At least Vy was losing interest in ‘amusing’ practical jokes – although he had tipped Taro out of a hammock earlier. But then he’d actually apologised; Taro got the impression the boy was growing up.

After a couple more hours of gaming, Taro needed to crash out. Vy looked at him earnestly and said, ‘I will try to hold myself together. But it’s so hard. I need your help. Please.’

‘All right,’ said Taro, ‘but I gotta sleep, even if you don’t.’

‘Most of these games run in minimal mode. We can take headsets to your room, then you can sleep when you have to. I just . . . I don’t want to be alone.’

‘I understand – better not use my room, though; we don’t want to keep Jarek up all night. There’s a nice-looking bedroom a few rooms back; why don’t we take the gaming gear in there?’

They found when they left the gaming room that the lights outside had dimmed; Taro guessed the others had already turned in, so Ain, or whoever controlled the hab, had decided it was ‘night’.

They played together until Taro really couldn’t keep his eyes open. ‘I really can’t stay awake any longer, Vy,’ he said, and yawned.

Vy nodded uneasily, saying nothing, and Taro wondered how long the boy could manage without sleep. The
Heart of Glass
’s medbay had a prime selection of drugs to keep a normal human up and active but he had no idea what they’d do to Vy.

As he lay down he had another thought: when did Ain sleep? If she adjusted her night to fit in with theirs, then perhaps night-time might be the right time to have a bit more of a poke around. They obviously didn’t mind, or they’d have got Ain to bawl him out for flying up the wall in the garden. Tomorrow he’d get his shimmer-cloak from the ship so’s he could creep around without being seen. Maybe he’d see if he could find one of the doors into the core. But not tonight.

‘You must awake now!’

Taro started at the voice. As he opened his eyes, he realised it wasn’t Vy, but the lingua Ain. She was leaning over him, gesturing urgently. ‘It is vital that you get up and come with me. Now.’

‘Wh— Why?’ he croaked. It was still dark, but he thought he saw another figure behind her. Vy?

‘You are in danger!’ the lingua whispered.

‘Danger? Y’said we’re safe here,’ he mumbled, panic cutting through his confusion.

‘The situation has changed. Time is short. We must hurry.’

‘The others—’

‘Gone ahead to your ship. Come on, please!’

Taro sat up and began to struggle off the bed. Good job he’d been too tired to undress properly. When he looked round for his jacket he noticed Vy staring back at him from the doorway. He turned to Ain. ‘Why didn’t you just com me?’

‘Coms are down. All will be explained in due course. First, escape.’

No coms? That sounded serious. As he followed the lingua out, Taro checked the com on the back of his hand. She was right, no network.
What the fuck was going on?
Should he try and contact Nual? He needed to sit still and concentrate to get in touch mentally when they were apart; stumbling through dim, unfamiliar rooms while his heart was going like the slug-autopistol from last night’s game wasn’t going to make it easy. And if Ain was right, she was already on the
Heart of Glass.
It made sense that the others had gone ahead; their rooms were nearer the ’lock.

Taro didn’t complain when Ain upped the pace. The sooner they were all together on the ship and safely out of here, the better. Then Ain could explain what the fuck was happening.

Even before they reached the airlock Taro felt uneasy – more uneasy than just being woken up and told to run away in the middle of the night made him feel. But he was still too befuddled by sleep and panic to work out what the problem was. It was only as they stepped into the ’lock that he realised what was bothering him: his com should have worked even if the local net was down, because it was routed through the
Heart of Glass.
He was turning to say that to Ain when the inner ’lock door opened.

‘Hey wait!’ he started, ‘this ain’t—’

Nual woke suddenly to the hot aftertaste of ginger and foreboding. Even as she gulped against the burning in her throat, the sensation faded. She tried to hold onto it, repulsed yet desperate; that taste always accompanied a prescient flash, a packet of possibilities from time not yet experienced. She
needed
this—

But it was gone. And so was sleep.

She couldn’t relax here. She had been brought up to despise the males of her kind, but though she might no longer feel that mindless hatred – these days she was an enemy of the Sidhe females herself – she was still deeply uncomfortable. All her life she had believed the males were dead. Finding out about Khesh and his two City-state brothers was one thing; discovering that thousands of independent males were living in their own system was something else entirely . . .