Alien, p.14
Alien, page 14
The transport wasn’t designed for speed, and the trip had taken almost twenty minutes. When he reached the Facilities Management building—where the dock was located—he pulled up to the smaller of two airlocks, called to let them know he was there, and was allowed inside. There were Security guards all over the place, which was weird, and the supervisor he’d spoken to earlier—who seemed surprised that he’d actually shown up—appeared to be nervous. She helped him gather his supplies personally, and even offered to help load them onto the transport. That’s when he knew she was trying to get rid of him as fast as possible. No supervisor he’d ever known would offer to do scut work like that.
During the drive back, Renato had gotten on his comm and reached out to a drinking buddy who worked in the Facilities Management building. The man filled him in on the rumors circulating through the Lodge—that a pair of dockworkers had died under mysterious circumstances. Renato was afraid that Opal might be one of those workers, but his friend couldn’t confirm it. There had been no official word about the deaths, let alone identification of the deceased.
Renato hoped Opal was all right, but he feared the worst.
By the time he approached the proto-colony, the wind had picked up considerably and the sky had grown dark in the west. The colony was small, with only two dozen igloo-shaped habitat domes and two larger storage domes for housing equipment. The habitat design was a smaller version of the Lodge’s domed buildings, but it served the same function: to allow the planet’s often strong winds to flow around the structures more easily.
There were seventy-three colonists, most living in pairs or groups of three. They worked the mountain mines in two shifts—one day, one night—and although the day shift had several hours to go, transports were already trundling back to the colony. Renato figured the mines had closed for the day because of the oncoming storm, and everyone was returning home. Renato and Valda worked the night shift, but the storm was anticipated to last through the next morning, so it looked like they would be staying home.
This prospect didn’t thrill him. Working the mines was the only time the two of them were apart, which meant it was the only time they knew any peace. If they had to stay cooped up in their tiny dome tonight—together—things were bound to get bad.
Gloom settled onto him like a heavy blanket as he pulled the transport up to their dome, Number 16, and parked. He climbed out of the vehicle, stepped toward the outer door, and pressed the control that would open it. The door slid opened several inches, then halted.
Not again. Renato sighed.
One of the most annoying things about testing Venture’s colonization tech was that it still was in the testing stage. That meant glitches—and outright failures—were hardly uncommon. For the most part he and Valda had been lucky. Their dome and its equipment tended to work. Most of the time. The one recurring problem they had was this damn door. The inner airlock door never gave them trouble, thank god, but the outer one had a tendency to stick. Not all the time, but often enough to be a real pain in the ass.
They needed a new one, which he’d requested from the Lodge, but he’d been turned down. The current door did work, more or less, and Venture saw no reason to spend money on a replacement.
He pressed the control to close the door, but nothing happened. Scowling, he pressed it twice more, each time harder than the last, until finally—almost grudgingly, he thought—the door closed. He waited for a count of twenty and pressed the open control. This time the door slid open smoothly, with no difficulty at all.
He unloaded the containers from the wagon and put them into the outer airlock. Then he pressed the control that activated the transport’s self-driving program, and the vehicle slowly headed back to the storage dome where he’d picked it up. Stepping inside the outer airlock, he pressed the control to close the outer door and waited.
Habitat domes had two airlocks—inner and outer—as a safety precaution. It was inconvenient to have to use two airlocks to get inside your own home, but better than a breach occurring and leaking all your O2 into Jericho 3’s atmosphere. A panel next to the inner door had two lights, red and green. Right now the red was glowing. When the inner airlock was ready, the red light on the panel winked out and the green light came on. The inner airlock door then opened automatically, and he stepped into the secondary airlock carrying the first containers of supplies. He repeated this process for the others.
The wait for the second airlock door to open seemed interminable, even though he knew it was exactly the same interval as the first.
When the door opened into the habitat, Renato stepped inside. The first thing he did was turn left and place the first couple supply containers on the counter next to the stove. Then he removed his helmet and drew a deep breath in through his nostrils. The air smelled sterile and overly processed, but it came as a relief after breathing the suit’s O2 for so long.
Living space was at a premium, and the interiors were designed to make the most of what little there was. There were no separate rooms—everything was visible and out in the open, including the toilet. Next to the counter where Renato had deposited the supply containers were the stove and oven, then two desks with chairs and computer terminals—one for him, one for Valda. The vid screen upon which they watched movies or played games, a dresser, the shower, toilet, and sink, and lastly the closet. Outside the dome, directly behind the vid screen, a pair of O2 converters flanked the dome’s power generator.
In the middle of the dome was a circular bed, and Valda lay on it, covers tangled around her, asleep and softly snoring. The inner airlock door always opened with a hiss, but the sound hadn’t so much as caused Valda to stir. That woman would sleep through a planet-wide quake.
Standard procedure was to close the inner airlock door as soon as he entered the dome’s living space, but Renato hated spending any more time in his EVA suit than he had to. So he walked over to the closet, heavy boots clunking on the plasteel floor as he went.
Valda slept on.
When he reached the closet, he opened the door to see his wife’s EVA suit hanging from a pair of rods, one under each arm, her helmet and boots on the floor beneath. He removed his boots and put them and his helmet on the floor next to Valda’s. Then he got out of his suit and hung it on a second pair of rods. Feeling almost reborn, he closed the closet door and returned to get the remaining supply containers, placing these on the counter next to the others. Only then did he return to the airlock door and hit the wall keypad control that closed and sealed it. Without waiting he turned around and stretched. It felt luxurious, almost hedonistic, to move so freely, and he took his time, enjoying the sensation.
The wind picked up outside, a constant backdrop of humming.
He wore a pair of Venture-standard gray coveralls. Each colonist was issued one pair, no more, and they were expected to keep them clean. The dome’s small contingent of multi-drones did their best, but they weren’t washing machines, and like his EVA suit his coveralls never seemed to get fully clean. Renato was a small man, short and thin. Colonists were chosen partially based on how efficient their bodies would be when consuming and processing air, food, and water. Women’s bodies were naturally more efficient than men’s, and because of this two-thirds of the colonists were female.
Padding across the floor in bare feet, he returned to the supply containers and unloaded them, putting the various items away in the refrigerator or the cupboards above the stove. He worked quietly, and when he was finished, he put the empty containers in the closet to be returned to the Lodge.
He was glad that Valda continued to sleep. When one or both of them was sleeping, they weren’t fighting. Working the night shift left him feeling exhausted all the time, and today was no exception. It seemed as if he was perpetually on the verge of nodding off, and he was tired after his trip to the Lodge and back. He considered climbing into bed next to Valda and taking a nap, but he didn’t go through with it. He didn’t want to risk waking her, so he went over to his workstation and sat.
Valda had dimmed the dome’s lights halfway, and since they didn’t have a window, she’d set the vid screen to display a live image of the area to the west. She loved having a view, even if it was simulated. Renato didn’t think there was anything special about Jericho 3’s desolate landscape and its dull-as-dishwater sky, but the psychologist who’d briefed the colonists before they moved into their domes had stressed the importance of having a window, even if it was just a substitute.
“It’ll help prevent cabin fever,” she’d said.
Like hell it will, he thought. The desk chair was too uncomfortable for him to fall asleep in, and not for the first time he wished they had a couch or at least an easy chair. But they didn’t. Might as well wish for a million credits to be downloaded into my account, he thought. That was more likely to come true than getting comfy furniture.
He didn’t really feel like doing any work, but he hadn’t written his weekly report yet, and since he had nothing better to do he logged on to the terminal and began typing. He’d only gotten a quarter of the way through the document when he heard Valda stir. He stopped typing, hoping she’d fall back to sleep, but a moment later he heard her rise from the bed and walk over to the toilet. She peed, flushed, washed her hands, then walked over and sat at her workstation.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Don’t take the bait, he told himself, but despite knowing it was a mistake, he sighed and turned to look at his wife.
“Just trying to get some work done before the storm hits. Looks like—”
He was interrupted by an alert chime coming from his terminal. A message crawled across the screen, officially announcing the closure for the remainder of the day.
“—they’ll close the mines,” he finished.
“Fantastic,” Valda muttered.
He wanted to snap at her, tell her he wasn’t looking forward to it either, spending the entire night alone together. But he kept his mouth shut. It was going to be a long night, and he didn’t want to get into a full-blown fight any sooner than they had to.
Valda had slept in her coveralls, and brown curls had flattened against her head on the right side where she’d been sleeping. She was taller than Renato by several inches and outweighed him by a few pounds, but she was still slender. Just not as thin as he was.
Scarecrow, she sometimes called him, or if she was feeling especially mean, Skeleton. She looked past him to the bleak vista displayed on the vid screen, and he wondered how they had come to this.
While they’d had their ups and downs, like any couple, they’d been married for four relatively happy years before taking jobs with Venture and applying for the company’s proto-colony project. They were both excited by the prospect of living on another planet, and liked the idea that the work they’d do would help refine equipment and techniques actual colonists would one day use. It made them feel as if they were doing more than just drawing a salary. They were making a vital contribution to humanity’s leap into the galaxy.
Besides, it wasn’t as if either of them was especially social. They didn’t have a lot of friends or go out very often. And, of course, they loved each other. They were perfect candidates for off-world colony living.
Or so they’d thought.
The reality proved to be quite different.
The first few months passed uneventfully. Renato and Valda enjoyed their work and, just as importantly, their time with each other. But eventually they began to get on each other’s nerves, becoming short-tempered and verbally abusive. They grew emotionally distant and stopped making love. They began arguing over nothing, their disagreements becoming so heated that they’d end up red-faced and screaming at each other. Only once did one of them become physically violent. Renato had called Valda a particularly loathsome name, and in return she’d punched him. Not all that hard, really, and on the shoulder, but the action had shocked them both.
Ever since they’d done their best to keep some distance between them as much as possible. They might not like each other much these days, but neither wanted to start physically abusing the other.
That had worked for a couple months. They barely spoke and tried not to look at each other. Basically, each acted as if the other person didn’t exist. Over the last several weeks, though, they’d began interacting again, sniping at each other, criticizing and mocking. Renato was as much to blame as Valda, but he didn’t understand why they acted the way they did. Sometimes he wondered if they fought out of a twisted need to entertain themselves. Arguing did give them something to do, after all.
“I got the supplies we needed,” he said.
“Good.” She paused before adding, “Did you see your girlfriend?”
On numerous occasions, Valda had accused him of being attracted to Opal, of flirting with her. Even of having an affair with her, sneaking off to have sex with her during those nights they got to stay in the Lodge. He liked Opal as a person, and sure, she was good-looking, but he felt nothing for her romantically or sexually. He’d never been able to convince Valda of this, though.
He was prepared to snap back at her, to vent his frustration at her insistence that he was cheating, but instead he told her about the two dockworkers that had died. He spoke calmly, even matter-of-factly, and when he was finished he expected her to taunt him about the possibility that one of the dead workers had been Opal. But she didn’t.
“How awful!” she said. “And no one has any idea what happened?”
Up to this point he had avoided looking at her as he spoke, but now he met her gaze.
“If they do, they haven’t made it public yet. It can’t be natural causes, though. Not two people at the same time.”
The wind had continued to pick up, and now it was almost like a rushing waterfall. They looked to the vid screen and saw dust devils swirling across the landscape. They then faced each other once more.
“Could’ve been an accident of some sort,” she offered.
“Yeah.”
“Or it could’ve been something else.”
“Like what?”
She shrugged, and he didn’t think she was going to explain any further, but then she continued speaking.
“Maybe they had an argument, and it turned violent. It’s easy for people to go stir crazy living like we do. Too easy. People can say and do all kinds of things they’ll regret later, and some of those things can’t be undone.”
He looked at her for a long moment before responding.
“You mean like us?”
She nodded, and he saw her eyes glisten with tears.
They were quiet for several moments after that, both thinking about what Valda had said. Then, without pausing to consider whether it was a good idea, he reached out and took her hand. He held it lightly at first, but when she tightened her grip, he did too.
They sat like for that for some time, listening to the wind grow louder.
14
“I’m saying the bitch cheated,” Paolo said.
Saul Caswell walked through a section of the Personnel building which residents called the Mall, Paolo Scoggins on his left, Oralia Bergqvist on his right. The three guards continually swept their gazes back and forth as they passed various small shops and food booths. Off-duty personnel walked up and down the corridor, chatting and laughing, enjoying the day. Saul wondered if any of them would be laughing if they knew about the deaths in the warehouse.
He doubted it—which was why management had ordered that the information be kept quiet for now. Saul understood. The last thing they needed was a facility-wide panic, but he wished management had come up with some pretext to make people go to their quarters and stay there. They had no idea if they were dealing with disease or something else, something potentially far worse. Either way, people would be safer in their quarters than strolling around in the open like this.
But he was just a lowly guard. Management didn’t care what he thought. As far as they were concerned, people like him weren’t much better than synthetics. He was supposed to do as he was told and ask no questions. But Saul had questions this day. Lots.
“How could she have cheated?” Oralia asked. “She lost way more hands than she won.”
“The last hand was the biggest pot,” Paolo said. He sounded to Saul like a whiny little boy.
“We all lost credits on that hand,” Oralia said. “Except Valerie, of course.”
Paolo’s jaw tightened and he pressed his lips together, as if trying to keep from saying something he might regret later.
Oralia continued.
“And even if she did cheat, what’s the big deal? If cheating at cards was illegal in the Lodge, we’d have to lock up most of the population. Our brig isn’t big enough to hold them all. We’d probably have to lower a giant dome-shaped cage over the whole damn facility.”
“Why stop there?” Saul said. “Why not put the entire planet in a cage?”
“That would save us a lot of time,” Oralia agreed.
“Save us a lot of walking, too,” Saul put in. “My feet are killing me.”
“Go ahead,” Paolo said. “Laugh it up, but you both lost as many credits as I did on that hand.”
“True,” Saul said.
“We’re just not obsessing over it,” Oralia added.
“Bigger fish to fry,” Saul said.
“I’m going to get my money back from her, one way or another,” Paolo said. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
Saul did believe that Valerie had cheated, but she was an extremely attractive woman—confident, smart, forceful—and he hoped to see her again, maybe even get her into bed. Who cared if she cheated at cards if she was hot?
The Mall ended at the beginning of the corridor which led to the Bioscience building. The shops here were grungy and rundown: a cheap tattoo parlor called Ink it Over, a hotdog stand with a sign that claimed their dogs were made from “100% Recycled Meat,” and a smoke shop called Gaspers that sold “Nearly Non-Carcinogenic Cigarettes.” As far as Saul was concerned, this was the worst section of the entire Lodge, and that included the morgue in the Med Center, and the human waste processors lying beneath each building.
