definition of despair. She saw that same look on the crew’s faces as they looked out on the altered earth.
Skinny hands gripping the bars, holding the door shut…
She paced the room, trying to leave the vision behind. This time we don’t refuse. It’s a fresh start. A new earth. From what the preserve inhabitants had said so far it was also an exceedingly
strange
earth. Not what we expected—but when have the Rom ever gotten what they expected?
At last she turned off the lightbulb and lay back down, seeing the afterimage of the stark bulb, looking like a crystal world, lit from within.
Zoya regarded the plate of food before her. The platter held a fine approximation of sausage and hash browns, except that everything was an alarming shade of brownish green. The young man who’d brought her the breakfast smiled and gestured for her to eat. He was young to be missing so many teeth. His attire was drab and dirty, like her quarters—and like the rest of the preserve she had seen so far: a patchwork assemblage of spare parts, a dreary, gadget-filled warren, festooned with cables carrying the circuitry of the habitat. The place stank. Vents exuded smells of cooked algae one moment, followed by a blast of fecal odors. No one seemed to notice but her. It was remarkable to think that this warren was all that remained of the once great city of Vancouver. But Ship assured her that below the preserve were the remains of that city
She picked up her fork and spoon, connected together by a wire. Using the fork, she broke off a piece of the green mass, and chewed. It tasted like chicken feed. She smiled at him. “Good.”
After her server left, she abandoned the food and unpacked her radio unit. It was past time to be in contact with the ship.
Star Road greeted her hail with relief and scolding. Where had she been? Why had she not reported in? “I’m reporting now.” They would
begin with why the rules had been broken. “Bring Captain Razo, please,” she said.
Anatolly’s worried voice soon greeted her. With the captain was Janos Bertak, carping on her failure to report, hovering around Anatolly like a bad case of the flu.
“There was the storm, Janos. It disrupted our communications. And we took great pains to avoid drawing the attention of the rats.”
“Rats? There are rats?”
Anatolly asked.
“Yes, indeed, rats. So something does live on the surface.”
“What do they subsist on?”
Zoya hesitated to say
travelers.
No need to alarm Anatolly or give Janos fuel for intervention. “For one thing, they raid the agricultural patches. The preserves grow some food—an algaebased staple.” She went on to fill in the details of her report, telling of the geography, the lights of the crystal stacks, and the surprising revival of the man presumed dead. Then she proceeded to tell of her odd encounter with the dwellers there.
Last night, though she would have been glad of his support, Wolf had disappeared into the nether regions of the place, leaving her among a group that seemed curious as to what she might be. They had offered her a simple hospitality of perfectly acceptable tea and perfectly awful pellets of green. She suspected that for the duration of her stay she would become all too familiar with the culinary repertoire of algae.
As she ate, she noted the ingenious mixture of wall and flooring materials: asymmetrical chunks and slabs of what might be plastic, asphalt, laminates—and even a large section of fine pink marble. Bonding it all together were thick seams of clear adhesive. Tubes and pipes twisted over the walls in tight arrays, affixed to the surface by more bonding agent. Zoya judged that glue was a critical resource in this habitat, literally holding the place together.
Her hosts waited for her to finish her meal, staring unabashedly at her clothes and gear. But they were friendlyenough, sitting on boxes and items of decrepit machinery, while according her the lone real chair among them.
As she
Skinny hands gripping the bars, holding the door shut…
She paced the room, trying to leave the vision behind. This time we don’t refuse. It’s a fresh start. A new earth. From what the preserve inhabitants had said so far it was also an exceedingly
strange
earth. Not what we expected—but when have the Rom ever gotten what they expected?
At last she turned off the lightbulb and lay back down, seeing the afterimage of the stark bulb, looking like a crystal world, lit from within.
Zoya regarded the plate of food before her. The platter held a fine approximation of sausage and hash browns, except that everything was an alarming shade of brownish green. The young man who’d brought her the breakfast smiled and gestured for her to eat. He was young to be missing so many teeth. His attire was drab and dirty, like her quarters—and like the rest of the preserve she had seen so far: a patchwork assemblage of spare parts, a dreary, gadget-filled warren, festooned with cables carrying the circuitry of the habitat. The place stank. Vents exuded smells of cooked algae one moment, followed by a blast of fecal odors. No one seemed to notice but her. It was remarkable to think that this warren was all that remained of the once great city of Vancouver. But Ship assured her that below the preserve were the remains of that city
She picked up her fork and spoon, connected together by a wire. Using the fork, she broke off a piece of the green mass, and chewed. It tasted like chicken feed. She smiled at him. “Good.”
After her server left, she abandoned the food and unpacked her radio unit. It was past time to be in contact with the ship.
Star Road greeted her hail with relief and scolding. Where had she been? Why had she not reported in? “I’m reporting now.” They would
begin with why the rules had been broken. “Bring Captain Razo, please,” she said.
Anatolly’s worried voice soon greeted her. With the captain was Janos Bertak, carping on her failure to report, hovering around Anatolly like a bad case of the flu.
“There was the storm, Janos. It disrupted our communications. And we took great pains to avoid drawing the attention of the rats.”
“Rats? There are rats?”
Anatolly asked.
“Yes, indeed, rats. So something does live on the surface.”
“What do they subsist on?”
Zoya hesitated to say
travelers.
No need to alarm Anatolly or give Janos fuel for intervention. “For one thing, they raid the agricultural patches. The preserves grow some food—an algaebased staple.” She went on to fill in the details of her report, telling of the geography, the lights of the crystal stacks, and the surprising revival of the man presumed dead. Then she proceeded to tell of her odd encounter with the dwellers there.
Last night, though she would have been glad of his support, Wolf had disappeared into the nether regions of the place, leaving her among a group that seemed curious as to what she might be. They had offered her a simple hospitality of perfectly acceptable tea and perfectly awful pellets of green. She suspected that for the duration of her stay she would become all too familiar with the culinary repertoire of algae.
As she ate, she noted the ingenious mixture of wall and flooring materials: asymmetrical chunks and slabs of what might be plastic, asphalt, laminates—and even a large section of fine pink marble. Bonding it all together were thick seams of clear adhesive. Tubes and pipes twisted over the walls in tight arrays, affixed to the surface by more bonding agent. Zoya judged that glue was a critical resource in this habitat, literally holding the place together.
Her hosts waited for her to finish her meal, staring unabashedly at her clothes and gear. But they were friendlyenough, sitting on boxes and items of decrepit machinery, while according her the lone real chair among them.
As she
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