Earth Star(82)

‘Dome 21, Ellen,’ he said.

The woman checked her lookup. ‘You should still have seven students, Playdon.’

‘Two are at their daughter’s nursery evacuation point in Ark.’

‘And five here.’ Ellen nodded. ‘Dome 21 confirmed vacant.’

She gestured at the man next to her, who smiled at Playdon.

‘There are four corridors which lead up to a series of large rooms on the next level.’ The man pointed vaguely upwards. ‘Each large room has a set of twenty smaller rooms leading off them. You don’t need twenty rooms for six of you, so who would you like to share with?’

Playdon gave him one of his evil smiles. ‘I believe Rono Kipkibor and Cassandra 2 are coming.’

The man groaned. ‘Please, Playdon, don’t tell me you brought the drum kit.’

Fian and I exchanged glances. Drum kit?

‘You did, didn’t you?’ said the man. ‘I’ll put you in with Rono Kipkibor’s team then. Follow Alpha corridor over to your left, go all the way to the end and you’re in Area 6. You’ll need this.’

He handed Playdon a black tube, before giving the rest of us a pitying look. ‘My sincere sympathy.’

We were Foundation course students, too much in awe of Dig Site Command to ask what the man meant, so we meekly followed Playdon to a corridor that sloped upwards. The lights were dimmer in here, but it was still easy to find our way.

‘Drum kit?’ asked Fian, finally. ‘You play drums, sir?’

‘Rono and I were students together,’ said Playdon. ‘Four of us formed our own historical music group.’

We passed an opening in the wall. The number one was painted on the rock by the side of it.

‘What sort of music group?’ asked Krath.

‘Rono plays lead guitar, and I’m on drums,’ said Playdon. ‘Have you ever heard of rock and roll bands?’

I shook my head, but Dalmora gave a strange, choking giggle of a noise.

Playdon led us through the opening marked as number 6, and into a chamber that was bigger than our dome hall. There were doorways, covered with makeshift curtains, at regular intervals in its walls.

‘Pick some rooms,’ said Playdon. ‘I’m afraid Jarra and Fian won’t be able to move granite walls.’

The other three laughed at us, while Fian pulled aside a random curtain and stuck his head inside. ‘These are quite big caves anyway. How do we show who …?’

Playdon handed him the black tube. ‘Write on the curtain.’

Fian peered at the tube, and used it to write in large black letters. ‘FIAN AND JARRA.’ Underneath, in smaller letters, he added another line. ‘Krath keep out.’

Krath made a noise of disgust, grabbed the tube, and went to claim a room of his own. ‘Amalie, I don’t suppose you’d like to …?’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she said.

Fian and I carried our belongings into our room and unrolled our sleep sacks. There was plenty of space, but the air had a faint musty smell, and the dark grey stone walls were forbidding under the harsh light of the single glow above the doorway. I tried adjusting its brightness a little, but that just filled the room with ominous dark shadows. I frowned and opened my bag to take out the small cube of a light sculpture. Keon’s agent had been busy. A light art company were making licensed copies of Keon’s sculpture ‘Phoenix Rising’, and when he and Issette visited me in hospital, they’d brought me one of the first manufacturing run as a present.

I put the cube in the corner of the room and turned it on. Coloured lights weaved and shimmered above it, then suddenly fused together for a moment to form a bird with outstretched wings. The grim room was transformed into a place of warmth and colour.

Fian pulled the curtain back into place behind us. ‘I wonder how the designers intended to use this area. It certainly doesn’t look like it could be anyone’s home.’

I sat on my sleep sack and watched the light sculpture. ‘This was supposed to be a self-contained arcology. As well as housing for a billion people, there would be offices, schools, hospitals, hundreds of different things.’

‘If the Eden Dig Site teams get this much space, the size of Ark must be incredible. How in chaos did they manage to carve out all these caverns?’

‘University Earth Australia thinks they used two portals, linked in tandem. The first one never established properly, just pulsed to cut the rock into sections. The second one followed behind, portalling the chunks of rock through a relay system to form the Atlantis reef. They’d literally drive these things through solid granite to make the caverns, and follow behind doing a little tidying up with lasers.’