Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1) (28 page)

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s okay.”  Her face was flushed as she pulled idly at a loose thread on her sleeve.

Knile tried to think of something to say that would put her at ease again.

“Listen, you need to make your story a bit more bulletproof if you’re going to convince them you’re a psycher,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Her embarrassment swiftly turned to irritation.  “Why not?”

“A psycher has special mind powers, right?  They’re supposed to be able to control things.  Control people.”

“In a way.”

“So if you were a psycher, you wouldn’t need me to guide you up the Reach.  You’d just trick the Enforcers who were guarding the elevators and make them take you straight up to the Atrium.”

“It doesn’t work that way.  Psychers can’t just mesmerise an entire crowd of people.  They can’t control a dozen guards all at once.  They’re not gods.  Their powers really work better one on one.”

“Wow, the psychers have really had a downgrade in recent years,” Knile muttered facetiously.  “They were the flavour of the month maybe five or six years ago.  Stories were going around about them, that they could do all sorts of things, that they shouldn’t be messed with, but then they went out of style.”  He waggled a finger at her playfully.  “You should have chosen something more contemporary.  Maybe a shapeshifter.”

“Fuck you.”

“Hey, come on,” Knile laughed.  “Take it easy.”

“You’re mocking me.”

“This is my way of telling you that you need to be careful what you say to people.  You think you’re giving yourself a buffer but you may be doing more harm than good.”

Ursie scowled, clearly not impressed with his schooling.

“Are we leaving yet?”

“Soon.  Make sure you’ve had plenty to drink.  I’m just trying to scan a few of the networks around here before we go, see what’s changed.  Did you get any sleep?”

“A bit.”

“You won’t get another chance.”

“I’m fine.”

Knile ceased his manipulations of the holophone and looked up at her.

“What’s in the case?” he said suddenly.

Ursie jutted out her chin and gave him a steely glare.

“I guess you’ll find out at the Wire, if the buyer decides to show you.”

Knile gave her a knowing smile.  “Playing your cards close to your chest.”

She smiled with mock sweetness.  “Uh-huh.”

“Tell me at least how you hooked up with this ‘buyer’,
then.  I can’t imagine you’d have your pick of off-world connections to arrange the deal.”

“I didn’t just crawl out of the swamps yesterday, y’know?  I’ve been around for a while now.  I’ve met people.”

“So who was it?”

“One of my fences was big on art pieces.  Him and his crew would travel all over the place digging up old relics to sell to collectors out in the habitats.  Statues and coins, all that stuff.  I worked with him a few times.  We had a pretty good thing going on before he left.”

“Left?  Left where?”

Ursie pointed up.  “Where do you think?  He made a lot of money over the years selling that shit, enough to buy himself a Sponsor.”  She shrugged.  “He still kept in contact here and there when he wanted something.  He’s the one who arranged the deal.”

Knile studied her carefully.  “It’s lucky you had somewhere to offload it, I guess.”

“Not luck.  I worked hard for this for a long time.  I deserve everything that’s coming to me.”

She spoke with quiet vehemence, and Knile had to admit that he admired her spirit.  He sensed that much of her demeanour was false bravado, the mask she wore to project an air of confidence and independence.  He figured that underneath she was still a scared kid who was just trying to survive, a small player in a world that was owned by those who were older, wiser and stronger than she was.  Still, she was out there trying to do things on her own terms, and that was worthy of appreciation.

“I respect that,” he said, his previously flippant tone replaced by sincerity.  Ursie stiffened in response to the praise as if she were surprised to hear it.  “Now we–”

Knile stopped and looked down at the holophone in his hand, which beeped once softly and began to flash.  It was the proximity sensor.

Someone was out in the corridor.

24

Knile retracted the sensor from under the door and then snatched his backpack from the floor.

“Find some cover!” he said in a low, urgent voice.  “We’ve got company!”

Ursie responded with the instincts of one who had spent her life running and hiding at the shortest notice, dropping and pressing herself flat to the floor and then slipping neatly into a tiny gap under a bench.  A hand snaked out and yanked the satchel under cover as well.

She had already made herself invisible before Knile even found an appropriate place to conceal himself.

He wedged himself behind a low stack of fertiliser bags, not entirely happy with the amount of protection they afforded but unable to do anything about it in such a limited timeframe.  As he hunkered down he poked his head out to the side so that he could observe the door.

There was no sound of any movement outside, but he could see a faint light dance across the crack in the door and then move away again.  After that, there was nothing for a few seconds, and he began to wonder if perhaps the newcomer had gone away, but then the light appeared again, more intense this time.

Now he could hear footsteps.  Whoever was out there, they were moving around quietly, although Knile decided that they weren’t sneaking either.  Many years of hiding in dark places and listening to people passing by had honed his ability to distinguish between different kinds of traffic.  As they drew nearer, he thought it sounded distinctly like someone walking on soft-soled shoes in a normal manner.  The crack under
the door became a glowing white-hot strip, making the interior of the room uncomfortably bright.

Knile began to shrink back behind the fertiliser, his fingers curling into fists as he prepared for what was about to happen.  He wondered about who would be out there at this hour.  If it was a harmless-looking gardener who came through that door, just a guy working late, Knile decided he would spring out and try to take him down before he could sound the alarm.  Tying him up and gagging him would prevent him from notifying anyone else about Knile and Ursie’s presence.  By the time he was found they would hopefully be long gone.

If it was someone who could handle themselves, however, that would require a somewhat different approach.

Suddenly the glow lessened and almost disappeared, the footsteps never slowing as whoever it was in the corridor made their way past.  Knile waited as the sounds of their passage slowly disappeared.  It must have been a good minute before Knile decided the time was right for him to get moving.  He struggled out from his hiding place and crouched on the vinyl.

“All right, we’re clear,” he said, turning his flashlight on again.  Ursie’s face poked out from under the bench.  “I think we’ve overstayed our welcome here.  We should get moving.”

“Okay.”

They gathered their things and left the storeroom, continuing on their way.  They kept a
close eye out for any more late-night visitors who might come their way, and Ursie continually glanced behind as if she were expecting them to return at any second.

“Who do you think that was?” she said.

“I’m not sure.  Probably some hard worker putting in extra hours.”

“What about an Enforcer on patrol?”

“I doubt it.  They don’t generally go much further than the entrances.  I’ve never seen them move this deep inside the Greenhouse before.”

Knile stopped in front of a yellow platform staircase that led upwards to a broad glass door.  The paintwork on the steps was worn and chipped, and the handrails had been scratched so badly that they had been stripped back almost to bare metal.  Knile could imagine the workers carelessly lugging tools and equipment and up down the steps over the years and gradually whittling away the yellow coating as they went.

“This is an entrance to one of the Greenhouse compartments,” he said.

“Where they keep the plants?”

“Yeah.  The vegetation is located toward the outer walls so that it can catch some natural sunlight.  Further inward you’ll find the collection warehouses and the sorting and distribution facilities.  We’ll be sticking to the vegetation where possible.  There’s more cover there.”

“Okay.”

“Wait here while I go take a look around.”

He handed her the flashlight and made his way carefully up the staircase, stopping at the glass door to peer through.  His scrutiny was thorough, and he took almost a full minute to survey the gloomy room beyond before signalling for Ursie to follow.

When she reached him, Knile took the flashlight from her and clicked it off. 
She brushed his shirt as she reached out unsteadily for the railing, obviously disoriented by the
sudden and complete darkness.  Then s
he stumbled and banged her boots noisily on the walkway.

“Try a bit louder,” Knile muttered.  “I don’t think they heard that over in the slums.”

“Give me a break,” Ursie said, her arm now linked through the railing.  “You might want to give me some notice next time.”  She
slid her hand along the railing
.  “How are we supposed to find our way now?”

“Wait,” Knile said.

She did as he instructed.  At first there was nothing, just the unrelenting darkness pressing in from all sides.  She could not make out anything at all – not the steps under her feet or the railing in front of her nose.  Then after a while she saw the faint outline of Knile crouched in front of her, and beyond that the silhouette of leaves and branches out in the room beyond the glass door.

“Ready?” Knile said.

“As long as you’re leading the way.”

Knile reached out and gripped the edge of the door, easing it open.  It whined softly as it swung but Knile did not stop.  He gripped Ursie’s shoulder and guided her up and through the entrance.

Even before she’d ascended to the top step, Ursie was confronted
by the smell wafting in from the greenhouse.  Fresh produce was something she did not see much of, let alone living trees and shrubs, and certainly not in this quantity.  There was a certain freshness in the air that was almost indescribable and alien to her, like the glass door had in fact been a portal to another world.

“Keep moving,” Knile whispered behind her.

She edged to the side and allowed him room to pass.  Knile guided the glass door shut again and then got moving, keeping low as he hustled forward.

More details came to Ursie as her eyes adjusted.  The ceilings were higher in here than in normal levels, and in places there hung dim yellow bulbs suspended from the roof.  There were
rows upon rows of waist-high raised gardens, and in places she could also see the larger bulk of trees that stood several metres tall, their leaves glinting greeny-yellow in the dim light.

Further to the edge of the enclosure she could also see tall windows that looked out into the night, where the crescent moon hung like an amber sickle in the sky.

“Keep low at all times,” Knile said.  “The gardens will provide some protection for us.  Like I said, there never used to be much action here at night, but if there’s someone moving around in the storerooms, there might be someone out here too.”

They progressed across the first level without incident, moving between the garden rows and under trees as Knile unerringly found a stairwell on the other side.  They ascended several flights before the stairwell ended and they were forced to cross back into another level.

“This level looks just like the last one,” Ursie said.

“The layout is pretty similar across all levels in the Greenhouse.  It gets pretty monotonous.”

“How many levels are there?”

“A lot.  Do you know how many people they have to feed in this place?”

“I don’t get it,” Ursie said.  “How do all these plants get enough sunlight to stay alive?”

“That’s not how it works.  They use grow lights in here to provide most of the energy during the day.  At night they turn them off.  The windows merely help to raise the temperature to the desired level.”

“You really do know everything about this place,” she said, shaking her head.

“Not everything.  Just enough to help.”

They continued on this pattern for the next few hours, weaving through gardens and across levels and then making their way upward where they could.  Ursie had ticked off twelve levels before she stopped counting.  During this time they did not see a lot of human activity.  From time to
time there were a couple of late-night workers hauling supplies around on trolleys, but these were noisy and easily avoided.

They came to another level that looked just like the ones that had preceded it, but on this one Knile stopped abruptly and held out his hand, ordering Ursie to do the same.  He turned to her and placed his finger to his lips to indicate silence.