The Road to Mars: A Post-Modem Novel (1999) (13 page)

He returned from the bathroom still gagging. His instinct was to run away as far as he could. Only minutes ago he’d been fantasizing about her. For God’s sake, she was still warm. Dunphy was downstairs. He’d know what to do. Don’t touch anything, that was the way. He’d read about this stuff. Pretend it’s a movie. Walk out of the door and keep going.

He looked for the Ganesha on the remains of her desk. It was nowhere to be seen. Computer smashed, Ganesha gone, it didn’t take a genius to figure out Sammy had accidentally alerted someone. Someone who was so desperate to stop something getting out they would kill without mercy. He’d get Dunphy up and he’d call the police. They could pick up Katy Wallace. She had some explaining to do.

He ran out of the elevator, across the lobby, and outside to the street. The cab was gone. He looked both ways in disbelief. There was no sign of it. What the fuck was going on? Why would Dunphy leave? He owed him a ton of money.

“Looking for someone?” said a voice behind him.

Two men in grey suits stepped forward. They had hats. They might have carried a big sign saying DETECTIVES if they’d wanted to be really obvious.

“My cab,” said Alex, trying to remember he was innocent.

“My name’s Rogers,” said the shorter of the two. “This here’s Kyle,” he said, indicating the large African by his side. The African stared at him but said nothing.

“Perhaps you’d better come with us,” said Rogers.

“Why?” asked Alex, his mouth going suddenly dry on him.

“You’re under suspicion,” said Rogers.

“For what?” said Alex.

“For murder.”

They took him downtown, only five minutes away, and shoved him into a small interrogation room. Rogers and the African followed him in. Somewhere a bell was insistently ringing.

Rogers sat down and looked him over. He was tanned and healthy-looking. His manner wasn’t hurried, but he had shrewd eyes, like he was used to being lied to and didn’t much care for it. His partner was powerfully built. Short, stubbly beard, close-cropped hair. You definitely wouldn’t want to mess with him.

“For the record this is Detective Kyle and I’m Detective Superintendent Rogers and we’re questioning Alex Muscroft and this is being recorded.” He leaned back in his chair and looked at Alex. “So, why don’t you tell us what happened?”

“Did you kill her?” asked the African.

Rogers shrugged apologetically.

“Kyle gets a little impatient.”

Kyle looked like he got more than impatient. He looked like he was doing violence to his suit just breathing.

“Did you kill Sammy Weiss?” asked Rogers in an even voice.

“Of course I didn’t. You know I didn’t.”

“How do we know that?” asked Kyle.

“Because you knew Sammy was dead when I came downstairs.”

“Got you there, Kyle,” said Rogers, enjoying his partner’s discomfort.

“He might have come back,” said Kyle, not enjoying the role of straight man.

“What, to check if she was still dead?” asked Alex.

This time Rogers laughed out loud. “You’re a comedian,” he said.

Kyle stared at Alex like he had some things he would like to do later. Suddenly his face cleared. “Oh, that’s right,” he said, brightening, “he was on the Brenda Woolley thing.”

“Kyle loves Brenda Woolley.”

“Yeah. Well she’d love Kyle.”

Kyle looked flattered.

“What I don’t understand,” said Rogers, “is how come you never called the police when you found her?”

“I was coming downstairs to get Dunphy. He said he was an ex-cop.”

“Who’s this Dunphy again?”

“A cabdriver.”

“He told you he’s an ex-cop.”

“Yes.”

Kyle hit a few keys on the computer and showed Rogers the screen. Rogers turned back to Alex and said, “Would it surprise you to learn there are no licensed cabs in this colony driven by ex-cops called Dunphy?”

It did. They registered his surprise.

A young man came into the room and whispered urgently in Rogers’s ear. He frowned and rose.

“Excuse me a minute.” His chair squeaked as he pushed it back. “Come with me, Kyle, we got a problem.”

In the distance more bells were ringing.

After a couple of minutes Rogers put his head round the door.

“Okay, Mr. Muscroft, you can go. We got an emergency here.”

The lamp above his head was swinging wildly.

“You’d better make it back to your ship and get the hell out of here.”

“What about Sammy?”

“I’m sorry about your friend, but we got a major catastrophe on our hands. The dome’s punctured, we’re leaking, and it’s growing every minute.”

Something had pierced the thin membrane of their artificial sky. Their precious atmosphere was leaking away into space. If they could caulk the hole, well and good. If not, things looked pretty bleak. The whole place would collapse.

The station was in chaos. Emergency bells ringing everywhere. “Ninety percent atmosphere,” yelled an emergency worker. “We got time.” He raced out of the door.

“Two percent leaking every five minutes. Sure, we’ve got bags of time,” said a sharp brunette working a bank of screens. “Let’s do lunch.”

Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.

—
Last Words Of Oscar Wilde

Lewis shuddered, suddenly cold. A wicked wind had sprung up. Spirals of air were being siphoned up towards the hole in the sky. Inside the park, trees were being shaken as if by invisible dinosaurs. The whole park swirled with leaves and scattered debris. He tried to lean into the wind to get to Tay, but making progress was not easy. Ahead of him he could see she was being yanked off her feet by the wind.

“Hang on to the streetlamp, Tay!” he yelled. He wasn’t sure she heard; the noise was terrifying.

The Frisbee was snatched out of her hand and sailed off into the sky.

“Daddy, my Friskee,” she wailed.

“Hold on, kiddo, I’m coming.”

When he reached the streetlamp, she was clutching on for dear life with white knuckles.

“It’s okay, I got you.” He swept her into his arms and staggered like a drunken man against the ferocious wind. It tugged at the cuffs of his trousers and whipped at his shirt, trying to pull it loose. He squinted against the trails of dust and dirt swirling everywhere, and dodged flowers and roots and old newspapers as they came at him. A hot dog stand was blown over just ahead of him and a cloud of wrappers whizzed past. It was like being inside a rapidly deflating balloon.

By the edge of the park an official in a yellow emergency uniform was yelling and beckoning kids to leave the playground.

“Get below,” he yelled, “get below now.”

He shepherded the stragglers down the steps which led to the underworld of the colony. Lewis hoped the trains and people movers were still running. If this was as bad as it seemed, the power might go out at any time. It would be terrifying to be below ground in the dark on a leaking space colony.

“What’s happening, Daddy?”

“The dome’s cracked, honey, so we have to get below. But it’s going to be all right. See, they’re working on it.”

It was true. Little emergency boats were already hovering around the hole in the dome trying to caulk the leak with a huge sail of shiny material. They weren’t having much luck. It was like trying to spread a sheet in a gale. The boats bucked and tossed and bounced around while the little yellow figures held on for dear life. He watched in horror as the great flap of material broke free and wrapped itself round one of the emergency boats. He saw three tiny figures tumble from the boat and then watched helplessly as they were sucked through the gap into space.

“
Are
they going to be all right, Daddy?”

“I expect so. They’ll probably be okay on the other side.” Sure, minus 204 degrees centigrade. “Quick frozen peas” flashed through his mind.

“We have to make the stairs, Tay,” he said above the roaring of the wind. “We’ll be safe down there.” He was about a hundred yards shy of where the yellow-suited attendant was shouting and yelling at people. He gritted his teeth. God, she was a weight for her age.

The wind was increasing in intensity. Whole bushes were being uprooted, and leaves and twigs stung his face as he staggered forward one step at a time. He cradled Tay, turning her head into his collarbone to protect her from the debris which hurtled past them. The sound of breaking glass came from all sides, and in the playground the swings creaked wildly on their chains.

The whole park was filled with wild spirals of swirling wind, loaded with deadly uprooted material. Great trails of detritus were being yanked up towards the dome above them where they battered against the thin fabric of the ceiling, further weakening the structure. The widening hole was sucking out their lifeblood, vacuuming the atmosphere into space like some gigantic vampire. The whole thing could go any moment. Evacuation bells combined with the sirens of emergency vehicles echoed horribly down the canyons of high-rises. The air made an eerie sound, a
bouff-bouff-bouff
as of someone blowing in his ears.

It was getting harder to walk. He almost went down, and grabbed wildly for Tay.

“Daddee,” she wailed. “I got you, kiddo,” he said.

Ahead of him a pram broke free from a terrified young girl. It came billowing along towards him in the wind. He dropped Tay and made a grab for it. The handle struck him nastily across the wrist. He grabbed the tiny bundle from inside it before the wind whipped the pram out of his hands and tore it away. The baby started to wail. He cradled it with one hand and reached for Tay with the other. She was shivering with fear.

“It’s gonna be okay, honey. Daddy’s got you.”

With a tremendous effort he lifted her into his arms. The final steps were agony as he dragged his feet towards the shelter of the stairwell. The young girl was in hysterics. He handed her the child and sort of patted her.

“C’mon,” he said, “down here before they seal the gates.” Because they’d have to do that, he realized. They’d have to seal off the surface and hope to maintain some kind of life below ground until they could rebuild the dome. The place was leaking so fast and the hole growing visibly bigger by the minute.

It was a maelstrom in the park. Huge trees were being ripped up by their roots and tossed about like twigs. The streets were covered in shattered glass. Bits of debris bowled down the wide boulevards. Time to get out of there. He pushed Tay through the heavy doors and they were suddenly in calm. The young girl had started to cry again.

“It’s gonna be fine. It’s just reaction.” She looked up at him through black mascara tear-stained eyes. “You got to stay calm and look after your baby. You think you can do that?”

“I think so,” she whispered.

“Good for you,” said Lewis.

“You still here?” Rogers was surprised to find Alex still inside the precinct. “This is a Code Red. It means get the hell out of here. Emergency crews only. It’s a total evacuation.”

Alex seemed confused. He kept seeing Sammy lying there quietly, her head on the keyboard. Rogers was yelling at him, concerned. “You okay? Hey, I’m talking to you.”

Kyle came over and put a friendly hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, man, you in shock?”

He had tried to contact Carlton on the vidphone, but all the lines were either down or busy. He had been horrified to see what was happening out there on the streets. Whole cars were flying through the air like plastic toys. The noise was deafening. A terrible tearing sound. Parts of the pavement were being wrenched up and hurled about. He had ducked back inside.

“Do you understand me?” said Rogers, concerned. Alex nodded.

“Where you parked?”

“In the docks.”

“Come with us then,” said Rogers. “We’re going that way.” The three of them headed for the door. As they stepped outside, another dull rumble shook the colony. Looking up to the cracked dome above, they could see the caulking material flapping around madly like the tail of a dragon. It seemed in danger of taking more of the emergency crews out into space.

“Jesus,” said Rogers at the chaos that raged. “C’mon Kyle, no point in taking a vehicle, we’d better run for it.”

The subway entrance was only half a block away, but it was all against the wind. They ran, stumbling blindly, dodging the flying debris. They had almost reached the subway steps when Alex heard Kyle grunt and turned to see him fall.

“Come on, Kyle, this is no time for a nap,” Rogers yelled gruffly at him. He was bleeding heavily from the temples. They grabbed him and hauled him the ten yards to the subway entrance and dragged him down the stairs. A huge oak tree crashed behind them and wedged itself in the subway stairs. Alex looked at Rogers.

“Nice work, thanks,” said Rogers. “Officer down, I need a medic now,” he yelled into his chest mike. “Come on, Kyle,” he said, “don’t let me down now.”

“Is it safe down here?” asked Alex.

Rogers looked at him like he was nuts. “Are you out of your mind? This whole place could collapse any minute.”

“Implosion?”

“You bet. We gotta get to the docks.”

A young man with an emergency armband came racing towards them.

“Hey, I called for a medic, not a boy scout.” The boy looked terrified.

They popped Kyle onto a stretcher and dropped him off at an emergency handling center.

“Stop his brains leaking and then send him down to me,” yelled Rogers at the medic. “Don’t let him die on me now or I’ll…”

“Sir, I’m just a premed,” said the youth.

“Kids,” said Rogers, “in men’s pants.” He turned to Alex. “C’mon, I’ll drop you off at the docks. Lucky for you I’m handling the exodus.”

Alex didn’t feel that lucky. Rogers flashed his badge and they pushed forward through anxious crowds onto the next express people mover. It shuttled them smoothly along the brightly lit interior tunnels of the colony. Nobody spoke much. Rogers fished out a portable vidphone and was patched through to the Keppler cruiser.

A white-uniformed British officer was telling him that Keppler was unavailable.

“Fuck unavailable,” said Roger. “This is an Emergency Code 437. By the powers invested in me I am now officially commandeering your craft.”