The view from infinity b.., p.7
The View From Infinity Beach, page 7
Everyone was talking at once. Harvinder pounded Lawrence on the back, sending them both spinning away from each other. Lizzie caught Lawrence and pulled him in for a kiss before administering her own playful punch.
"Why didn't you tell me before?" she chided.
"I shouldn't really be telling you now," he replied.
Lawrence pulled out a pair of binoculars and handed them to Lizzie. He floated behind her, arms wrapped around hers, guiding her toward points of interest. He told them how, about four years ago, one of Excalibur's survey ships made an unusual find, a huge asteroid with an immense central void. The ship's Japanese captain had logged his find as the Kera because the ancient rock resembled the iron sand ore used to forge traditional Japanese swords. Lawrence told them how the entire end of the Kera had been cut away, and kilotons of water-ice asteroids brought in through the opening. He pointed out the atmosphere processors and the mines and the silos that would one day store grain harvested from the Kera's fields.
They took turns scanning the landscape below. John just floated there, a grin splitting his face from ear to ear.
It was amazing. Like someone had taken a small country and folded it into a tube. There were roads winding between outcrops of black rock and clusters of regular shapes that Kade realised with a flash of clarity were buildings. They looked tiny. The part nearest them looked the most developed with a network of irrigation channels criss-crossing the mottled green and black of the Kera's inner surface. There were fields and villages and a larger group of buildings at about two o'clock that looked like a small town.
Farther away, the terrain turned more rugged. Although it too had been seeded with vegetation, it was broken by knife-like cliffs and towering mesas of the black rock. Kade guessed the whole inside had once looked like that, before Excalibur's mining engineers had civilised it. He hoped that even when it was finished the engineers kept some of that wilderness.
The two halves of the gigantic chamber, the tamed and the untamed, were separated by a glittering band that Kade couldn't quite make out. It looked for all the world like...
"Water!" he said in amazement. "There's water down there!" That glittering band in the middle distance was an all-surrounding, circumferential sea!
"Enough for an entire colony and then some," Lawrence said.
They played in the zero gravity for a while. Lawrence produced four backpacks with complicated arrangements of carbide struts connected by gossamer-thin films of transparent graphene. They extended to form artificial wings and he and his guests flew around the glazed bubble, playing tag like a flock of young raptors.
Kade and John weren't given wings and Kade doubted he'd be able to use them even if he had been. He was content to enjoy the sensation of weightlessness and hung there gazing out at the landscape beyond. He wondered if you could drift weightless along the whole length of the spinning cylinder. Perhaps that was what the dome was for, to stop new arrivals from getting too engrossed and drifting off into the void.
"We'd better get going," Lawrence said eventually. "It's about nine kilometres to Infinity Beach and I want to get there in time for lunch."
They packed the wings away and once again Kade was left to follow along with the luggage. Lawrence led the way through a door in the side of the dome. If the Hackett heir had needed John's help in getting to the Kera, he certainly needed no help once inside. His glyph seemed to give him unlimited access. He led the way down the corridor into a kind of three-dimensional garage where a fleet of balloon-wheeled buggies stood at all angles. His glyph brought one of the vehicles down on a set of hydraulic arms and it was placed in front of them above a shining metal slot in the smooth rock.
Kade loaded the baggage into the buggy's trunk and they strapped in, facing forward down a slot-car road that took a dizzying spiral path down to the floor below.
Driving weightless was a weird sensation and Kade soon understood the reason for the slots in the road. Each buggy had a projection under the chassis that caught in the slot and kept the little vehicle snug against the road. Without them, the buggies would have floated away. It made the driving easier too. They weren't quite hands-free, Lawrence had to squeeze a throttle lever to keep the vehicle moving, but until they reached the more normal roads further down, steering was taken care of.
He looked back the way they had come. The observation dome they had first entered sat at the centre of a huge, three-legged structure that appeared to be equal parts bridge, building and giant light fitting. The cavern tapered toward its ends but was still many hundreds of metres across and the structure spanned its entire width supporting one end of the kilometres-long tube of light and heat that ran down the centre of the Kera, which Lawrence referred to as the Axis.
Two paths led away in opposite directions, the road they were on and a second one opposite. Together they traced twin spirals around the rough hemisphere that formed the end cap of the enormous cavern and eventually fed into the network of roads that criss-crossed the inside of the asteroid.
"We've got the whole place to ourselves," Lawrence said as he drove. "It's practically complete so most of the mining crew have been reassigned and the Axis and atmosphere processors are self-sufficient. My mom was planning to reveal it as the big finale of the Crossover celebrations and so she brought all the crew back to Excalibur for the announcement. This is the last time the Kera will be empty. Mom's planning on having a lottery for the first colonists as early as next month."
The gravity built as they descended the spiral to the floor of the cavern and the bare rock started to grow a thin covering of vegetation: first lichens and moss, then as they descended farther, grasses and small shrubs and great forests of bamboo that stood metres above them, lining the road until they were driving through a tunnel of green and yellow.
"We weren't sure how people would react to being able to see the whole inside of the Kera," Lawrence said. "On the station the space is broken up into rooms and corridors, so the curvature isn't so noticeable. But here we had to give a lot of thought to landscaping. We've used bamboo at first because it grows so fast, but one day we'll have pine forests with giant redwoods. Every habitat you can imagine!"
It took them about ten minutes to descend the spiral roadway. The buggy disengaged smoothly from its slot like a train passing over a set of points and then they were driving through stands of tall bamboo and fields with rocky outcrops that breached the green pastures like huge, stone whales coming up for air.
The buggies weren't the only vehicles in the Kera. Huge mining rigs lay dormant in bays at the side of the road. There were things that looked like normal dump trucks, but also contraptions that Kade had never seen before: spider-like rigs with pressurised cabins that looked like they should be crawling over the outer surface of the asteroid and dozers equipped with giant, rock-ripping circular saws on articulated arms that looked capable of cutting their way through a medium sized mountain. All of them looked hard-used, their hulls dented and their yellow paint chipped and heat-blackened around their exhaust ports.
Lizzie seemed fascinated by the mining rigs. While the others gazed out at the landscape, Lizzie studied each rig as they passed, craning her neck out of the speeding vehicle to see every last detail.
They drove past a marshalling yard where a dozen of the huge vehicles stood in ranks including something Lizzie described as a "Fifth-gen waldo" and she made Lawrence stop the buggy and back up for a closer look. To Kade it looked like someone had tried to make a centaur out of bulldozer parts. A vaguely humanoid torso with two gorilla sized arms sat on top of a four-legged frame. But the legs were more crab-like than equine with pincers of toughened tool steel made for clinging to the iron-hard rock. Eventually the protests from Nikki and Harvinder forced them to move on, but Lizzie hung out of the buggy watching the waldo until the curve of the road took it out of sight.
"This is the town of Concord," Lawrence said, continuing his tour guide act, as they drove through a collection of prefabricated huts and low one and two-storey buildings of dark concrete. "It doesn't look like much now. Most of these buildings used to be site offices and workers' accommodation during the initial phase. Now they're going to be converted into apartments for the first colonists. It's prime real-estate: beachfront property with perfect weather all year round!"
"It's so quiet," Nikki said. "Eerie... like a disaster movie or something."
She sat up on the backrest of the speeding vehicle and let her long hair flow in the breeze.
She was right. With all the workers back on Excalibur, there was no traffic, no people walking on the sidewalks or hanging out on the street corners. But it went further than that. Apart from their voices and the background hum of the buggy's electric motor, there was no sound at all, not even the buzz of an insect.
"What did you expect?" Lawrence said. "There's no wind, no people, not even any animals bigger than the worms in the soil. But that will change. Soon we'll have birds and insects, fish in the sea, a whole ecosystem."
"Will people have pets?" Nikki asked. "I've always wanted a cat."
"Sure, why not. Try to imagine this place with people walking their dogs, flocks of birds flying overhead..."
"And crashing into the buildings because of the Coriolis effect," said John wryly.
"They'll learn. They won't know anything different."
Suddenly, there it was, the Circle Sea. They were out of Concord's suburbs now and the land sloped gently down toward the immense band of water. The shore was a beach of black sand that stretched away in both directions as far as the eye could see. Above them the sea continued in a glittering band: the shores parallel and laser straight as they scored around the inner surface of the Kera. At roughly ten and two o'clock in the impossibly canted stream of water, two islands broke the perfect symmetry and nearer, just a couple of hundred metres away on the northern bank, an iron hard rocky promontory jutted into the sea and supported a slender tower of perfectly white concrete that seemed to flow upward like an extension of the rock.
It looked like a modern-day lighthouse, but although the sharp rocks of the promontory looked formidable enough, there were no ships on the Circle Sea for it to warn. A glittering ring around the top of the tower circled it like a crystal crown and gave a clue to its function. This was the Kera's version of the Spire. Kade guessed that the ring around the top was some kind of control centre.
Lawrence brought the buggy to a skidding halt in the sand a few hundred metres from the promontory.
"Infinity Beach!" Lawrence announced. Despite its dark colour, the sand was as fine as talc. It squeaked under their feet as they jumped out.
Lawrence immediately stripped off his shirt and shoes.
"It's a bit cold for a swim, isn't it?" Nikki said.
Lawrence grabbed his slate. He tapped a few strokes and the Axis above them brightened like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Immediately it was as warm as a summer afternoon.
Nikki squealed with delight. Harvinder and Lizzie turned their faces to the sky like sunflowers. Kade had to admit it did feel good. You were never really cold on the station, but you were never warm either.
Kade and John were left to unload the picnic hamper but after that they were told to make themselves scarce for a couple of hours. Although they had managed to tag along with Lawrence's little clique, he and John were left in no doubt they were the hired help, and the help do not party with the guests.
Nevertheless, Kade was glad he had come along. He set the hamper down; John was already gone, walking off along the black sand.
Kade’s dad had always said humanity's future was in space. Standing there, enjoying the warmth and taking in the view from Infinity Beach, he was starting to believe that was true. Kade had always thought he had been born too late. He’d imagined living in an earlier time, climbing mountains and exploring dense forests. Now looking out across the interior of the Kera, perhaps he hadn't been born too late at all.
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John walked along Infinity Beach. To his left was the black mirror of the Circle Sea, its surface as still as glass. To his right, the edge of the beach was lined with geometric shapes like giant jacks cast from dark concrete: erosion control, he figured, although he wasn’t quite sure what would cause the erosion. Perhaps one day, the Kera's engineers would fit undersea wave generators to produce some shore break and shatter the eerie stillness of the place.
The black sand was sapping to walk on and some of it had found its way into his shoes. He felt grit between his toes and his calves burned with the unaccustomed effort of walking on the shifting surface.
He had found the secret and he had to admit that the Kera was an astonishing feat. Yet despite that, his thoughts were conflicted. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting: a part of him had hoped it was evidence of alien life; his mercenary heart had wanted information he could trade. He was not yet sure what to do with his newly-won knowledge and that uncertainty at the end of his long-running quest left a void inside him. He would have to find a new project to occupy himself, but what?
He looked back to where Larry and the others were lying on the beach, bathing in the too-warm light from the Axis and laughing. Meanwhile, John sweltered under his jacket. He was sweating! He had forgotten what that felt like and his reintroduction to that lost bodily function was not pleasant. The strange slickness under his armpits was at least as uncomfortable as the black grit inside his socks. And then there was the smell of the place: like salad day at the food hall when all he wanted was a cheeseburger.
He had found the Kera, and found it was not for him.
John walked toward the lighthouse on its rocky promontory jutting out into the sea. With its smooth, white bone exterior and black bands of tinted windows in its upper levels it looked somehow alien—very different from the rock-strewn greenery of the Kera. He liked that.
There was movement in the fields: a buggy, not unlike the one Lawrence had commandeered although this one was larger with big balloon tyres built for handling rough, off-road terrain. John stared at it for several seconds before really noticing it. After all, movement wasn't unusual was it? It was the preternatural stillness of the Kera that was unusual. Then he remembered they were supposed to have the giant asteroid to themselves.
So who was driving the buggy?
It drove quickly across the fields, bouncing on its big tyres and soft suspension. Had someone else decided the empty Kera would be a good place for a joyride?
John hunkered down behind a concrete erosion barrier; he figured he might as well see who was driving before he announced himself. This was not really self-preservation, John was rarely afraid, even when he probably should be. Hiding was just his natural preference for counter-punching rather than making the first move.
The buggy was open-topped, and he could make out several large figures seated in the cabin behind the windshield. It charged along a dead straight line toward the white tower. Then something unusual happened: without slowing, one of the figures jumped out with a tremendous leap like a human flea. It landed, already running, and kept pace with the speeding buggy for a few seconds, running at an impossible speed before peeling away and tearing off across the fields away from John.
What the hell?
Two realisations hit John almost simultaneously: firstly, no human could have done that unless they were wearing powered armour; and secondly, there was no such armour anywhere on Excalibur. That was military technology—Earth military.
John hunkered down a little lower, thankful for his black jacket that allowed him to blend in with the dark concrete.
His camouflage seemed to work: the buggy continued on its course and skidded to a halt in front of the tower. Its two remaining occupants jumped out and wasted no time in forcing open the main doors and heading inside. John looked back in the direction the other soldier had taken. He was at least a kilometre away and moving fast but still visible, the only moving thing on the Kera's great, still oil painting of a landscape. John couldn't quite make out where the soldier was headed although there were a few likely targets. The route would take them near one of the big atmosphere generators as well as several other structures the purpose of which John could only guess at.
They were taking control. They probably already had a ship in the airlock and now they were taking possession of the other key buildings around the Kera. It was an invasion, or at least the start of one.
John jumped back down into the soft black sand, landed awkwardly and fell to all fours, right in front of a pair of armoured boots.
He looked up the soldier’s legs which were sheathed in a black, ceramic exoskeleton and his eyes came to rest on the muzzle of a stubby carbine aimed right at him. For a moment he was amazed at the soldier's stealth. How could something so big and powerful be so quiet?
Slowly, careful to make no sudden movements, John got to his feet and brushed the black sand from his knees. The muzzle of the rifle followed him up as smoothly as if the man's shoulders were made from phosphor bronze bearings instead of bone and cartilage.
John stared into the soldier's smoked glass faceplate.
"As a representative of Excalibur Engineering," he began, "—it is my duty to inform you that you are trespassing on company property. I will now accept your surrender."
At that, the soldier's head actually cocked to one side like a confused dog's.
John smiled. Games could be played anywhere, and little victories still counted.
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Kade swam out into the Circle Sea with easy, powerful strokes. Unlike the others, he hadn't been told to bring swimwear and was making do with his underwear. Not trusting Lawrence not to pull some kind of a prank, he had hidden his clothes under a rock. The water was cold enough to raise goose bumps all over his body, but the light from the Axis was warm against his back and he picked up his pace, trying to warm his muscles with exercise.
