Searchers, p.18
Searchers, page 18
“Fluff.”
“Other people have important jobs, too. Everything contributes to society.”
“Except one job, according to you.”
Thomas sighed. “I was just frustrated.”
Miya smiled. “That’s okay. We’ll find what we’re searching for, some day. If not us, then another generation of Searchers will find something growing and alive down on green deck.”
“Green deck?”
“That’s what we call it down here. Black is the bottom deck, closest to the blackness of cold, empty space outside. But far below, where once there were plants living on the surface…”
“Green deck,” Thomas nodded. “I got it.”
“Good,” Miya nodded. “For now, life flows through these pipes, but some day, we won’t need the pipes. There will just be life all over. On green deck again.”
“Someday.”
“Someday. Have you caught your breath now?”
Thomas shook his head. “Is that what you were doing? Waiting for me to adjust?”
Miya nodded, gauging him with a critical eye. “It’s important. Yes, you seem fine.”
“I’m good.”
“Good, but take things slow.” Miya pointed at the pipe she’d just been on. “Now, don’t stand on that. Kasem was right. I was just showing off. This way down to twelve A seven red two. I can already hear Zac’s particular brand of swearing.”
“I’m right behind you.”
“Keep close,” Miya warned, “And watch your head. If you need to stop to rest, stop. I’ll wait. It’s easy to get out of breath. I’m slightly winded myself, and it’s only been two weeks.”
“You don’t look winded.”
“I can feel it. I need to come down here more often.”
“I don’t see why you can’t. If your supervisor can come down sometimes, too, that is.” Thomas put his hand out to steady himself on a pipe as they descended a short flight of steel grid stairs, then quickly pulled his hand back. “Ow! That’s hot.”
Miya shook her head. “My fault. Didn’t give you the full safety briefing. Here, put these gloves on. Watch your head, keep your elbows in, it gets real close here.”
“How close?”
“You’ll need to squat, then lie down and wriggle to get in where Zac is.”
“Wriggle,” Thomas shook his head. “You’re making fun of me. Maybe I’ll just stay up here.”
“Zac will be disappointed.”
“Fine,” Thomas sighed, slipping on the gloves. “How am I supposed to wriggle, exactly?”
Miya put her hands together and twisted them, making fish-lips at the same time. “Like a fish.”
“Like a fish in a tank.”
“Yes. I’m pretty sure you couldn’t pull off the squid thing. They can go anywhere. And that’s what we call the juniors here, because they’re small and can squirm in pretty much anywhere. Adults don’t fit into all the spaces anymore. Low gravity made them too damned tall and spindly. Twig legs and arms. Terrible long-term planning in the design.”
“Fish? Squids? Now I know you’re having me on. Maybe I should go back.”
Miya turned as Thomas ducked under a low pipe. “Now, you’re just being a walrus.”
“Walrus?”
“They lie around barking orders at everyone else. Real pains in the ass.”
“Is … Kasem a walrus?”
Miya shook her head slowly. “Never say that around here. No, he’s not. He’s Poseidon, King of the Sea.” Miya took her gloves off and put two fingers in her mouth, emitting a shrill whistle. “Hey, squid!”
A small head popped up from between the pipes, belonging to a boy of about ten or eleven. “Yes? Oh, hey, it’s Miya! How you doing?”
“Great, thanks, squid. Now can you please wriggle on in and tell Zac we’re here? We’re happy to wait!”
“Sure thing, Miya!” and the head disappeared.
Thomas stared. “You were telling the truth.”
Miya frowned. “Of course I was. The littlest kid in a shift is always the squid.”
The boy called ‘squid’ popped his head up a couple of minutes later. “Zac says he wants you to come to him!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Bastard valve. Gotta bloody wrench?”
“The kids’ got a mouth,” Thomas muttered.
Miya smiled. “Those are Zac’s words. Squids have to repeat verbatim. But yeah, we’re not a good influence on them, I guess.”
“You guess.”
Miya turned and cupped her hands. The clanking sounds from under the big tank were getting louder. “Tell him Miya’s coming! No wrench!”
“Got it! Miya coming, no bloody wrench!” Squid disappeared to deliver the message.
“I thought you said it was verbatim.”
Miya shrugged. “I forgot the extra word. He filled it in. All the valves are bastard valves, all the wrenches are bloody wrenches. It’s like a code. It’s hard to hear down here sometimes, so it’s a double-check for what you heard. One word could get missed. Like pliers versus damned pliers. Easier to hear.”
Thomas shook his head. “You’re a bad influence, Miya. On everybody, it seems.”
“They’re not all swear words, but it’s always two words together. Like rusty sockets, stupid bolts, grease monkey, or monkey grease, either or. We use a lot of that.”
“Whatever you say,” Thomas grinned.
“You stay here. I’ll be back in a little while, hopefully with Zac, but the pipes come first. Here,” she handed him the envelope. “You hold on to that. I’d drop it between the pipes, or mangle it. It’s full fish time, deep wriggle. He’s pretty far in.”
Thomas accepted the envelope and unzipped the front of his one-piece uniform, tucked the envelope inside, then zipped it shut. “What should I do while I’m waiting?”
“You could go back up the ladder and talk to Kasem. He’s a good talker, and he likes to listen. He won’t come down unless the noise gets too loud. But we’ll fix it before it comes to that.”
“You mean go all the way back up there?” he looked back through a maze of pipes at the thirty-six metre ladder.
Miya stuck her head back out from under a cluster of pipes. “Then just stay there, and don’t touch anything. No pipes, and especially no valves.”
“But none of them have handles, just six-sided bits at the top. Why?”
Miya shrugged. “Some twit designer must have been worried about mass, didn’t really think about ease of operations. Although, maybe they did. You can’t accidentally change them by bumping them with an elbow.”
“Then it shouldn’t matter if I touch them. I don’t have a wrench.”
“Don’t touch them, anyway. Sweat mixes with the grease they’re packed with, thins it out and makes them harder to turn later. Just don’t touch any of them. You’ve got no reason to.”
Miya reappeared half an hour later with Zac in tow, both of them grinning from ear to ear. Both were in matching grey, covered from head to toe in grease and grime.
Zac put a hand on her shoulder. “Miya wrestled that bastard valve into submission, and that’s a fact. We miss you down here, Miya.”
Miya put her hand over his. “Thanks, Zac. I kind of miss it too. I’m just glad I could help.”
Zac took a closer look at Miya’s stained and torn uniform. “Oh, jeez, Miya. Squid said you were already dressed for the job. Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked you to wriggle in. And oh, man, it’s got rips in it as well.”
“It looks like the same uniform,” Thomas observed.
“It’s okay, Zac,” Miya shook her head. “It looks kind of the same, but it’s got thinner fabric.”
Thomas sighed. “It’s a good thing you’ve got a few spares, then.”
“I do.” Miya brushed back her hair with a greasy glove. “It’s okay, Zac. I probably look a mess, though. But hey, we brought you a card. I’m sorry about missing your birthday.”
“That’s okay. I know you were busy getting used to your new life.” Zac smiled shyly as Thomas pulled the envelope out of his uniform.
“Thanks,” Zac accepted the card, then tucked it into his own uniform. “I’ll … uh … open it later. Grease.”
“Of course,” Thomas smiled.
“Nice to see you again, Thomas,” Zac grinned, then disappeared back under the pipes.
Thomas looked after him. “You two seem to be okay now.”
“We are. Nothing like working together on a bastard valve with a bloody wrench to set things to rights between two people.” Miya smiled.
“I’ll have to remember that,” Thomas smiled. “Good relationship advice.”
“You know I’m the bloody wrench, right?” Miya elbowed him playfully.
“Yes, I got that part.”
“So now, where are we going?” Thomas complained.
“Down, outwards. I figure that you might never come down this far again, so you might as well get the full tour.” Miya slid down a short section of ladder pipe, then used the rungs for the last ladder down.
This didn’t go unnoticed. “You didn’t slide.”
“No.” Miya panted. “We don’t come down here much. A full G is a bitch. Don’t worry, we won’t stay here for long. Even when I worked in the underworld every weekend and spent all that time on blue deck, black level was still tough. Just make sure you don’t go fainting on me. Take it slow. Real slow.”
“I will.” Thomas felt the strain even more than he had on blue, but he’d slowly adjusted to that while he waited. He followed Miya carefully as she moved from pipe to pipe, ducking under a few as she went.
“Here,” she pointed. “Here it is.”
Thomas came up behind her and stared into a dark space. “I don’t see anything.”
Miya walked into the dark space and picked up a large cloth. “Zac and I had our first proper snog in here. Quiet, private, nobody watching.”
Thomas shuffled his feet. “I don’t know why you’re showing me your make-out spot. I assume this is where you had your full groping session?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for the visual.”
“No,” Miya shook her head. “I brought you here exactly because it’s private. Like your shower. Nobody’s watching or listening, meaning no Oversight sensors. Kasem said so, and I believe him. He knows every square millimetre of the underworld.”
Thomas’s eyes rose as he stepped into the dark space. “Just here, or anywhere on black deck?”
“Just here, I think.”
“Can we go back now? I don’t mean to complain, but I’m getting really tired and I think I might have actually broken my toe.”
“Really?” Miya folded the cloth over her arm. “I’m really sorry about that. Kasem should probably write me up for that. But there’s something else I want to show you.”
“Such as? If you’re expecting another feel-up here, that’s not going to happen.”
“No. Not a feel up. Something interesting. You showed me the stars, up there. Well, I’m going to show you the stars, down here.”
Thomas stared at her. “You’re nuts. The gravity must be getting to you.”
“Wait here.” Miya dropped down on her knees and crawled under the pipes along the curved floor of the hull with the cloth, careful to avoid touching the metal floor with her bare skin.
Thomas shivered. “Is that … ice?”
“Yes. That’s the inner hull, radiation shield ballast tanks behind. Just a minute. Almost … there. Best I can do. Now, wriggle on under the pipes. Come in here and have a look.”
Thomas stared down at the low pipes. He shook his head. “I can’t fit under there.”
“Yes, you can. It’s barely a wriggle. Just get down on the floor and slide your twig body in the gap between the pipes and the hull. The curve helps a little. Then tell me what you see.”
“I don’t know.” Thomas knelt down for a look at the small space he had to go through.
“I threw up twice for you in zero G. You can slide your twig body in here. You won’t even throw up. Probably.”
“Fine,” Thomas got down onto his knees, then lay down on the floor on his back. “Like this?”
“Try not to touch the floor with your skin if you can. You can pull yourself along and under by using the pipes. They’re fine to touch, but you’ve got gloves on, anyway.”
“I think you’re teasing me again, Miya.”
“Just come in here and have a look.”
With a sigh, Thomas slid into the narrow space under the pipes, using his feet and hands to push-pull himself through. “My back is cold.”
“Just a little farther. Now, you can stand up.”
Thomas stood up beside her and shivered.
“Look down.” Miya pointed at the floor. He looked down.
“I see lights.”
“You can bend down for a closer look. You’ve got gloves, so you can put your hands on the hull if you want.” Miya rubbed her arms against the cold.
Thomas knelt down. “You said you saw stars?”
“Yep,” Miya shivered.
“I don’t see that.”
“Well, the Ark is turning. What do you see, then?”
Thomas put his face down close to the glass. “Smudges of white, black and blue, maybe green. I think. The glass isn’t very clear.”
“Where?” Miya dropped to her knees and squeezed in beside him. “Show me!”
“Ow!” Thomas protested as her knee shifted on top of his fingers.
“Sorry.” Miya moved her knee.
Thomas lowered his face to the glass again. “It’s really hard to see. The glass is pretty dirty and scratched. I saw mostly smudges, no detail. But that has to be the Earth. I’ve never seen that much of it, blurred as it is, just tiny slices on the screen in the Searcher room. Don’t get excited about the green though. Must just be a refraction from the sun, prism effect in the scratches. ”
“Oh,” Miya sighed. “Well, it was exciting for five seconds.”
“We’ll find life, Miya. I know we will.”
“Someday. We should probably put the grease back over the glass.”
“Why?”
“To keep the radiation out. No shielding there.”
Thomas began to laugh, which he immediately decided was a bad idea at a full G. “Oh, Miya, you’re hilarious.”
Miya put her hands on her hips. “What’s so funny?”
“Grease to block radiation.”
Miya set her jaw. “That’s what Kasem said.”
“He was joking. Messing with you.”
“He looked out there for days and days, he said. He put the grease over it himself.”
Thomas paused, momentarily lost in thought. “Days and days?”
“That's what he said. And all he saw was misery and despair.”
“Maybe we should talk to him about it some day. But for now, I want to go up, to lower G and to bed. I’m exhausted.”
“People used to live in a full G down below, all the time. It’s possible to get used to it.”
“When we find green,” Thomas sighed. “When we see green down there. Now, I think I’m going to need your help. I don’t know if I can make it back under those low pipes by myself. My muscles are losing the will to live. I might just have to stay here.”
“If you do, you’ll freeze to death.”
Thomas shook his head. “It won’t look good on your first progress report if you let your supervisor freeze to death, even if it happened off-shift.”
“Well, we can’t have that. I’ll help pull while you push, okay?”
“Thanks,” Thomas sighed. “And after that, I’d appreciate your help with the ladders.”
Miya saluted. “Yes, sir, supervisor, sir. But it’ll get easier with each level. And you’ll feel light as a feather when you get back up closer to the concourse. It’s an interesting sensation, but it doesn’t last.”
“C’mon, let’s go home.”
“Okay, and we’ll look at your twiggy toe to see if it’s broken or not.”
A New Chapter
“You must be Harold,” Miya smiled as she opened the door of the apartment. “Hi. I’m Miya.”
A handsome but very uncertain-looking young man stood outside in the corridor, balancing on his toes. “Um … hi.”
“Come on in.” Miya stepped aside to let him inside the apartment.
Harold nodded and quickly stepped inside, his eyes searching. He visibly relaxed when he saw Thomas in the kitchen, but tensed again when he glanced at Miya. “Um…”
“Come on in, I don’t bite.” Miya took his arm and led him into the living room.
Harold looked bewildered as she guided him to sit on the couch, an empty seat beside him. Miya sat on one of the single chairs, still smiling. Harold craned his neck, looking back towards the kitchen. “Uh … Tom?”
“I see you’ve met Miya,” Thomas walked out into the living room carrying a plate of appetisers in one hand and a drink in the other. He handed the drink to Harold and set the plate down on the table in front of the couch. Miya leaned over and picked up a cracker, then sat back in her chair, nibbling at it.
Harold blinked, then set down his drink on the table. Thomas had disappeared back into the kitchen and came back out with two cold drinks. He handed one to Miya, who accepted it with a nod, then Thomas sat down beside Harold on the couch.
Harold coughed. “Um … I wasn’t expecting…”
Thomas patted his leg. “It’s okay. She knows.”
Harold glanced at Miya. “What does she know?”
Thomas took a sip from his glass. “Everything.”
Harold suddenly laughed, and the tension in the room eased. He turned to Miya. “How did you like the shower?”
Miya’s cheeks flushed. “It’s very nice.”
Harold shook his head. “I told Tom that was a bit of overkill, that they’re not really listening that hard. But he insists … and well, there are benefits. Warm water and all. You know.”
Miya smiled at him sweetly, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “No, I don’t know. I only got the massage. It was nice, though. I could hire him out, but I won’t. Private use only.”
