No Life But This (15 page)

‘
Nanos stay active through gravitational shifts,’
I told her.
‘Quin loves the grav courts at school.
Remember, he needs them for his heart, too.’

That reassured her a little.She still felt ill, but it felt good to have my arms around her, to hear my heart within my chest, still beating.
‘Strong heart,’
she thought.

I pressed my lips to the top of her head.
‘It has to be.’

‘So how long have you two been dating?’ Moriko asked suddenly.

It was an obvious assumption, and it sent both our minds
reeling. We pulled away from each other. ‘We’re not,’ Rose said quickly.

I kept very still, mostly to cover up the terrible crashing feeling that was creeping over me at her words.

‘Could have fooled me,’ Kenji said with contempt.

Rose’s face was red, but she eyed him with cool composure. ‘Well, frankly,’ she said, with that polite but powerful flint in her voice again, ‘such a thing really
isn’t anyone’s business but ours.’ She turned away with a look so pointed and final neither of the twins would dare to ask any more personal questions. Rose looked out of the NeoGlass window, watching the glistening ice as we descended into the darkness.

Burn them! Why did they have to get their stupid fingers into this relationship which frankly had enough problems without them? Rose was apart
from me now. Not just physically, but emotionally, feeling too awkward to come back into my embrace.

I wanted to scream. The sullen silence which then descended over the observation dome continued unabated for a good twenty minutes. I rubbed my eyes as I realized my headache was coming back. Burn it all. I wished Rose would come back to me.

There was a sudden shift in the momentum of our descent.
Rose went white and gripped the arm of her seat, and I shifted my attention to her. ‘
You okay?’
I asked, grabbing her hand.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ she said, gritting her teeth. But she gripped my hand tightly. She felt very nauseated, but there wasn’t anything in her stomach. All she could do was keep her jaw tight and endure.

Soon the blackness of the ice began to turn grey, and then with great
suddenness we found ourselves in another hangar. This one was smaller, no room to turn the shuttle and nowhere for it to go if one did. With a slight judder the lift settled, and we had arrived at our destination.

Moriko and Kenji grabbed their satchels and jackets and slid down the hatch, disdaining the ladder. A sign lit up, warning that outside the bubble the gravity had been reduced to Europa
standard – roughly thirteen per cent of our normal body weight. The shaft was at quite an angle now. The twins knew the gravity, and jumped without hesitation. Quin scrambled down without even looking at me. Rose followed, much more subdued. I looked out of the dome at the yawning gap above us. There was no light visible from above. It was too far away. Taking a deep breath I went to the edge
of the hatchway and took the plunge.

I landed as lightly as a cat, my bones hardly feeling the impact. I felt strangely free in this gravity; strong, invincible. I grinned. I rather liked Europa.

We joined Xavier and Dr Zellwegger and headed for the exit, following the small collection of passengers down the gangway. There were some people there holding sign screens, and some others waiting
to greet their passengers. It looked like any ordinary flightport, save for the shuttle we were exiting and the cage of tracks that held the floor of the lift. From this end I could see the great engines on their eight tracks, ready to lift the shuttle back to the surface.

It was cold. Not deathly, alien ice-moon cold, but the cold of a deep winter. Or more like a freezer, really. Bright lights
seemingly screwed directly into the ice turned the blue ice walls to white in shiny patches. We were loaded onto a decorative tram that led us through more ice tunnels, and finally into a vast chamber, like a roofed stadium. The lights on the icy ceiling were too bright to look at directly. Five tiny suns shone on – it was hard to say what it was. At first glimpse, the place was like a crystal
shop, a massive, glittering diamond. When you blinked the dazzle from your eyes, you could see it was a village. A tiny paradise, with buildings formed – or at least decorated – by bricks of ice. Statues of sculpted ice graced every corner, and everything glittered and shone. It was stunningly beautiful, but something disturbed me. Everything looked false and carefully arranged.

Rose shut her
eyes and grunted at the glare. I knew it was too bright for her.

‘This is the Crystal Village,’ Moriko told us. ‘We’ll only be here for a day or two, until the next icebreaker makes it up through from the
Minos
. We’ve got rooms in the Norway Chalet.’

The little train turned in a picturesque circle through the village, showing off all the amenities – an ice rink; a wall of recreational slides,
twisting and turning where children in coats screamed joyfully; a demonstration of ice sculpting – finally stopping at a crystal clear building which was almost a fairy-tale palace. This was the ‘train station’ which served only as a focal point for the train to stop at. An inspector stopped each of us as we got off the tram and made us open our bags. I wished I knew what the security was worried
about. What kind of things were contraband in a low-technology ice village?

By this time, Rose was shuddering with cold. She had almost no body fat, and she got cold very easily. We had not brought adequate clothing for this refrigerated paradise. Xavier took off his suit jacket and draped it round Rose’s shoulders, but it wasn’t going to be enough.

‘We’d best get to the chalet as soon as possible,’
he said as he held Rose’s shivering shoulders.

‘Sorry,’ Moriko said. ‘We should have thought about coats.’

‘Or anything at all,’ Quin said without a blink.

‘Let’s just go,’ Xavier said before either of the twins could react. I could tell he was regretting bringing Quin. I couldn’t blame him.

The Norway Chalet was ice-white and blue, like everything else in this village. It was formed like
a Norwegian stave church, only much bigger. When we got inside, everything changed. The gravity returned to normal, the gravity pads in the floor exerting Earth force. The walls went from ice to wood, and the decor was that of a ski chalet. It was much warmer.

‘We should show you around,’ Moriko said. ‘Meet us in the lobby in an hour and we’ll go ice-skating.’ She was clearly excited.

‘I think
I’ll do something more fun,’ Quin said. ‘Like drive icicles into my eyes.’

‘Don’t mind Quin,’ Rose said. ‘He’s always like that.’

‘You know, kids,’ Dr Zellwegger said to them. ‘They’ve just had a long trip. Remember how long it took us to recover from the stass journey?’

‘Yeah, but they’re okay,’ Kenji said.

‘One of them is very sick,’ said Dr Zellwegger, glancing at me. ‘Rose is still fragile,
and your grandfather needs to rest. Since young Mr Essential here doesn’t seem interested …’

Quin made a sound of scorn somewhere between a bark and a groan.

Dr Zellwegger’s mouth twitched. I wondered if he was trying not to laugh. ‘Why don’t you two go out alone?’ he said. ‘We’ll be here until tomorrow when the icebreaker gets here. Maybe you can show them around in the morning.’

‘But I wanted
to show them … around … uh, now,’ Moriko said again.

‘You wanted to show them off,’ said Dr Zellwegger. Clearly he wasn’t as oblivious as his children. ‘They don’t want the media attention. Go on.’

The twins headed off, looking disgruntled. ‘Thanks, Ted,’ said Xavier. His son only nodded at him.

We were shown into small but luxurious separate rooms, and left to our own devices. My room was
beautifully decorated, with thick carpeting and plush draperies. The windows were iced over and cloudy. In fact, at closer examination, the windows were actually thick ice, which softened the harsh artificial light from the ceiling globes outside. Everything was panelled in wood and there was a subtle scent to the whole place – a kind of musty, crisp scent that seemed to soak into my pores. I went
up to the roaring fire against the wall and held my cold hands to it. The heat felt wrong. I realized the fire was actually a tiny holovid, just an illusion, and the heat was coming from a small vent behind it. I supposed it wasn’t safe to really burn anything here, with the oxygen levels variable. I snorted and pulled away. Did these mock memories of a distant planet really make anyone feel at
home? But the chalet obviously did well for itself. Clearly, it worked.

I wasn’t on my own for long. I barely had time to take a shower and wash all the residual stasis smell out of my hair before a heavy banging on my door drew me out of the bathroom. I peered through the peephole and saw Quin, fidgeting in the hallway. I let him in.

‘Otto! Come on, I want to show you something.’

I shook my
head and retreated back into my room. Quin followed me, agitated. ‘Come on!’ he repeated. ‘You’ve always wanted to see Europa, and now you’re just going to sit here in your room? What’s that about?’

‘
I’m sick!’
I signed, exasperated. ‘
If you wanted to go with the twins, you should have just said.’

‘I have no intention of following the moronic wunderkinds on a sight-seeing tour through their
own bloated egos. I want to see
Europa
, not some Europa-themed tourist park.’

‘
Quin,
’ I signed. ‘
I’m not feeling well.’

‘You’re standing,’ Quin said.

I sighed. My head was in a painful whirl, and the idea of running around that bright, echoing cathedral of an ice palace did not appeal. ‘
You go on and on at me about taking care of myself,’
I told him. ‘
Now I am, and you’re annoyed.’

‘I don’t
want you being stupid,’ Quin said. ‘But this is important.’

‘
No!’
I signed, with a snap of my fingers to illustrate the point.

‘What do you mean, no? How many chances like this are you going to have?’ Contempt spread across his face. ‘You’re going to go play with your princess, aren’t you,’ he snarled. ‘You come all this way, and you’re still mooning over that ice witch!’

‘
She’s not an ice
witch, and she’s not mine,’
I signed at him.

‘Well, that was your choice,’ Quin said. ‘And it was a coiting idiotic one.’

‘
What have you got against Rose suddenly?’
I asked him.

He sighed, and I could tell he was trying not to shout at me. ‘She’s fine,’ he said. ‘But she’s just a girl, and she’s making you
crazy!’
He signed the word at me to illustrate
his
 point.

‘
You’re the one with the mental
diagnosis you’re so proud of, Belligerent Development Disorder,’
I signed back. ‘
I wish you’d never come.’

Quin stared at me, and his dark face went a shade paler. No one could have seen it but one of us. His jaw was trembling as he said, ‘You know what? I wish it too.’ He turned on his heel and left me alone.

I grabbed the side of my face after he was gone, pressing sense into my head. Why
was I fighting with Quin? It wasn’t really my nature, even though Quin was remarkably easy to fight with. Then I realized the truth. I’d lost another synapse or ten. Or a thousand. It was probably part of the personality changes I’d been told to expect when Dr Svarog told me my brain was slowly dying.

What else could that do to me? Could my code of ethics go completely out the window? What with
what had happened with Rose, I wondered if it already had. A sudden terror of what kind of monster I’d be if it vanished shot a frisson up my spine.

I needed to go see Rose. She always made me feel better.

I went up to the wall in my room, where an infoscreen glowed a UniCorp logo of a charging Unicorn. Every once in a while its head would shake or legs would stomp. When I touched the screen
the unicorn ran away, and I was rewarded with an information panel. Which was Rose’s room? I was about to look it up when my eyes caught on the wooden walls. I looked more closely. The pattern wasn’t irregular enough to be actual wood. I touched it. The material it was formed from did not feel synthetic, like plastic or metal. I scratched my nail on it, and a tiny portion came away. I sniffed it.
It smelled of … I couldn’t recognize it. Something musty and organic. I looked around. All the furniture was made of this mock wood, I realized. I wondered what they made it from.

I found the number of Rose’s room and went up to find her. She answered the door at my knock and threw her arms around me, tightly. I was surprised. ‘Hey,’ I whispered in her ear. ‘Everything okay?’

‘I don’t like this
place,’ Rose said, pulling away from me. ‘It makes me itch, it’s all cordoned off and beautiful.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s false. Very UniCorp.’ She swallowed. ‘It reminds me of my mother.’

I wanted to say something, but there was nothing I could do that would have comforted her. There was something I knew which could, though. ‘
Where’s your sketchbook?’
I signed.

Rose looked uncomfortable.
‘Um … I didn’t bring it.’

I blinked. Rose without her sketchbook was unfathomable.

‘The weight restrictions were terrible, and paper books cost extra. Something about tariffs. They only allow up to two kilos of personal space, and I didn’t want to bother Xavier with it. We were jumping through hours of red tape as it was. They said I could get paper here … though I’m not sure where.’ I moved
my hand, and she interpreted the sign. ‘No paints, either. There are tariffs on those, too.’

‘
But there’s plenty of room for a sketchbook or two.’
I couldn’t imagine Rose choosing to bring clothes over a sketchbook. For myself, I hadn’t brought anything but some socks and underwear, and my screen, mostly because I hadn’t needed anything else, though Dr Svarog had packed my medications for me.

Rose looked embarrassed. ‘I … didn’t use it.’

‘
Why not?’

‘Well …’ she swallowed. ‘Your … your medicines weighed almost four kilos, and you were already over limit. I brought only light silk underclothes and managed to squeeze some more in. You had the weight for your daily stuff, but there were emergency items, IVs and things … and … there’s no way we could buy them up here …’