Walking to the Stars (26 page)

Samuel looked at the stone in his hands, and smiled at the memory of his first ride in Nick's van, and Nick using his own stone.

"Thank you, Talgerit. I feel safer already, knowing I have a stone."

Marsia walked over, stethoscope around her neck, and said, “Thank you all so much for visiting, I hope you have enjoyed your breakfast."

The clever men all made pleased noises, and Marsia said, “And while you're here, who would like some free medical care?"

The men all shook their heads, not meeting Marsia's gaze, and Nick said, “Ed needs a kidney x-ray, and Jake needs his feet looked at."

"I'll arrange that,” Marsia said. “And I'm sure lunch will be delicious."

Samuel solemnly shook hands with each of the Noongar men, then Talgerit and Nick stood outside the bedroom door while Samuel packed a spare shirt and a toothbrush in with the sapphire and the drives.

The ride down to the port was made in silence, and Samuel kept his gaze firmly out of the windscreen at the town as they made their way down the hills, past rows of houses, to the town center and the port.

Talgerit parked the truck near the port, where a jetty curved out into the bay, three ocean-going ships moored along its length. Two of the ships looked like fishing vessels, but the closest ship, with extra decks and two masts, had the look of the passenger freighters that Samuel had seen before.

The three of them walked down the jetty, to where the gangway to the freighter rocked in the swell, and the canvas sails slapped in the damp rain, ropes twanging and humming as the crew adjusted the rigging and cleaned the solar panels.

Samuel tightened the jacket Marsia had given him around his chest and hitched his bag holding the sapphire and the drives more securely onto his shoulder.

A crew member, on the upper deck, called down, “Is one of you Samuel Narine?” and Samuel waved back at him.

"Ten minutes,” he called back. “We're finishing loading supplies."

Talgerit leaned over the edge of the dock, the rain spotting on his T-shirt, and inspected the ship.

"How far to your country?” Talgerit asked.

"Other side of the world,” Samuel said. “Several weeks sailing."

Talgerit shrugged. “Or you could stay here."

Seagulls swooped around them, crying in the cold wind blowing up from the Antarctic, and Samuel felt cold, right down to his bones.

"I have to take the stone,” Samuel said.

"Then come back,” Talgerit said.

Nick's shoulders were hunched against the cold, and he was shivering when Samuel hugged him.

"I don't know what to say,” Samuel said, stepping back.

Nick shook his head.

Samuel stepped onto the gangway, grabbing onto the rope to steady himself, the fibers of the rope catching the skin of his palm and stinging, like the cold rain on his face.

"Wait!” Nick said, behind Samuel, and Samuel turned around, the gangway shifting and sliding as he stepped back onto the dock.

"This is ridiculous,” Nick said, and Samuel nodded.

"But I have to go,” Samuel said.

The freighter's boatswain swung down from the foredeck, to where the gangway swayed, and waved at the crewmember pushing a trolley laden with crates of vegetables down the jetty.

"Do you have a ship's doctor?” Nick called out to the boatswain.

"You are joking, right?” she replied in an accent Samuel thought was European, holding the gangway steady for the trolley of food. “Do we look like the Old American Navy?"

"Could a doctor work passage?” Nick asked, and Samuel had to remind himself to breathe.

"Do you have a spare doctor?” the boatswain asked.

"Yes,” Nick said.

"Then get onboard,” the boatswain said.

Nick turned to Talgerit, and said, “Tell Josh I'll be back, but I have to go to South America."

"I already told him,” Talgerit said. “He knows."

Nick followed Samuel across the gangway, onto the ship, and the pair of them turned to wave to Talgerit as the gangway was pulled up on ropes and lashed into place.

When Samuel looked back, at Nick's face, Nick's smile was creasing his cheeks, and Samuel had to smile, too.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Waves of sound washed into the room, and over Nick. People called out in the street, their voices loud through the open window. Music played nearby, perhaps in the bar two buildings away from the room the university had allocated them.

Nick rolled off the bed and put the tablet he was reading from on the shelf. He still wasn't over the thrill of having new books to read again, and he'd only stopped reading then because he hadn't adjusted to his new contact lenses properly yet.

Leaning out of the open window, Nick caught the whisper of the cool breeze blowing up from the ocean, shifting the humidity of the day. He couldn't see the ocean from the house, just rows of buildings covered in shimmering solar collectors, with palm trees crowding the sides of the streets, and creepers and vines sprawling up the walls and fences, encroaching on the solar collectors.

Across the city, the spires and towers of the World Government buildings gleamed in the afternoon sun, and Nick couldn't tell if ultralight gliders or birds were slowly looping around the tallest towers.

He'd been debriefed twice, along with Samuel. The first time had been in a meeting room at the Georgetown University, but Nick suspected the microphone had mostly picked up the clink of wine bottles and the clatter of forks on plates, because the catering had been excellent. The second debriefing had been in a sealed room in a building without a name. The woman who'd interviewed him had been older than Nick, with glossy gray hair, and had spoken English with Received Pronunciation. She hadn't taken her gaze off Nick once, hadn't changed facial expressions when he'd talked about diprotodons, trains carrying uranium, magic or the Wagyl. She'd just listened to him talk for hours.

He'd had a thorough medical examination, and discovered that his PSA levels were elevated. He needed dental work, had nutritional deficiencies, couldn't see adequately, and he was told he had a heart valve noise he already knew about. What he didn't have were detectable radiation contamination levels, despite everything that had happened to him. Samuel's result had been the same, and Nick had been even happier about Samuel's radiation results than his own.

A scooter whizzed through the pedestrians and bikes on the street below, and the rider waved an arm up at Nick, so Nick waved back.

Samuel was home, from the university.

Footsteps clattered up the stairs, echoing through the building, then the door to the room burst open and Samuel breezed in, tossing his bike helmet on the chair and grinning broadly.

"Good day?” Nick asked, watching Samuel peel his shirt over his hear and toss it into the corner.

"Great day,” Samuel said, reaching for a clean T-shirt, from the pile on the shelf beside the door. “Want to go out for a beer? To celebrate?"

Nick reached for a T-shirt for himself, from the same pile. “Sure. What are we celebrating?"

Samuel waited until Nick had tucked the T-shirt into his shorts, and then slung an arm around Nick's shoulders.

"We've been invited out to the Installation, to be there when the clock is formally transferred to the development team."

"The Installation? Out in the jungle, where they're building the ships?” Nick asked.

Samuel nodded. “Where the elevator is, where everything is happening."

Nick grinned, too. “When do we go?"

"Tomorrow,” Samuel said. “There are seats on the heliships for us."

Nick hugged Samuel. “Beer, and then you can order me food I can't identify, again."

Samuel's grin grew wider. “Eventually I'll find something you won't eat."

Nick thought of roast mutton, plain vegetables and chewy bread, year after year.

"I doubt it,” he said.

The heliship swayed unpleasantly, going over the hills behind Georgetown, but Samuel didn't seem to notice, and Nick didn't comment on the buffeting, in case it sounded ungracious. Once the heliship had inflated its helium bladders and risen higher, the rocking stopped, and the urban sprawl beneath them turned to farmland, in deep green squares of crops that clung to valleys and hillsides.

The heliship swung inland, leaving the silver streak of the Atlantic Ocean on the horizon behind, and lifted higher, over hills that were probably mountains, far below.

Samuel, who was pressed up against the same window, said, “We've got a couple of hours, I think. I suppose we should sit down properly."

"Are you kidding?” Nick asked. “When am I ever going to see equatorial rainforest from a heliship again?"

Samuel laughed, over the hum of the rotors. “When we fly back?"

Below them, a river snaked through a ravine, a tiny silver line, then fell over a cliff, sending water misting across a valley.

"Not bored yet,” Nick said.

"Not like the freighter,” Samuel said. “The plateau is a kilometer above sea level, that's why we're so high."

"I didn't know Guyana had a plateau,” Nick said.

"It's not Guyana's. Old Brazil leased it to the World Government. Presumably someone still collects the rent on it, though I've never asked who."

"We're going to Brazil?"

"I've already made them promise to take us out to the Amazon."

When Nick turned from the window to look at Samuel, Samuel was cradling the stone Talgerit had given him, studying it.

"Making sure he's here?” Nick asked, and Samuel nodded.

"Also, hoping the stone will stop things from eating us,” Samuel added. “Starting with mosquitoes."

"You survived Australia, and the snakes and spiders. You'll be fine in the Amazon rainforest. Besides, aren't you from here?"

"I'm an electrical engineer,” Samuel said with dignity. “I ride a scooter and drink beer, though not at the same time. I don't go to scary places."

Nick shook his head, and went back to watching the rainforest far below.

The Installation site was a cross between a military camp and a factory, all surrounded by towering jungle. The team from the university, including Nick and Samuel, were issued with locator bands and security passes, strapped securely to their wrists. Then Samuel got to push the trolley of equipment, including the sapphire, the final meters across rough bitumen and between huge silos through drizzling rain, with the university team following and Nick watching from the side.

A silo door stood open, and a crowd of technicians and construction workers, wearing clean room suits, jeans and T-shirts, and sometimes just grubby shorts, waited inside the huge building.

Samuel paused, looked over his shoulder, and called out, “Nick! You, too."

Nick pushed his way past someone with a camera and grabbed hold of the trolley handle, taking care not to bump Talgerit's stone off the equipment, and the two of them pushed the trolley across the threshold and into the silo, where huge arc lights hung from the roof high above, brighter than the overcast day outside.

People cheered, and Samuel hugged Nick, Talgerit's stone in his hand, while the silo team took the trolley from them and trundled it across the factory floor, to an enormous silver and black machine.

"Is that it?” Nick asked, when Samuel let go of him.

The pair of them looked up at the machine, as large as Nick's house and covered in scaffolding, still very much under construction.

"That's the main unit,” someone said, from behind them. “It'll be sent up the elevator in modules and assembled in orbit."

"What happens now?” Nick asked.

"I want a beer,” Samuel said. “Then an honorary doctorate and a comfortable job in the physics department at the university, doing the dusting and washing the coffee mugs, for the rest of my life."

Nick waved down a technician and said, “Is there anywhere we can get a beer?"

"Sure,” the technician said, wiping the sweat out of her eyes. “Once the techs here have stopped petting the clock, there will be lots of beer, at the end of the silo in the offices. Just head that way, toward the people with clean hands."

When the technician had pointed and walked away, Nick said, “Right, that's the beer sorted. I'll see what I can do about a fake degree and tenure for you tomorrow."

After beers and truly toxic drinks that seemed to be made from home-brewed rum, smashed limes, ice and brown sugar, Nick let a giggling Samuel lead him out of the offices and the silo, into the equatorial dusk.

Outside the silo, someone on a scooter halted and said, “Hey, do you want to be taken to the accommodation units?"

Nick went to answer, then noticed that Samuel was staring upward, into the fading sky.

Above them, glittering and flashing, hung a new constellation, with flashing lights spiraling down below it, to a point off in the jungle.

Samuel made a sighing noise, and Nick had to agree.

"So, that's the elevator?” Nick asked.

The woman on the scooter said, “The flashing lights are navigation lights, to stop heliships flying into it. The steady light, there, above the horizon, will be a capsule in transit. The bright lights at the top are the solar collectors. There's a permanent occupancy up there now, too."

A mosquito smacked into Nick's face, and he swatted it away.

"The clock is going up there,” Samuel said. “Then it's going out, somewhere else."

Something in the room chimed, a gentle and persistent sound. Nick had found his underwear and staggered to the door, and the blinking light beside it, when someone started tapping on the door.

Nick pulled on a T-shirt and opened the door to the hallway, blinking in the bright light.

A balding man, probably as old and tired as Nick, and wearing camouflage fatigues, was muttering into a headset and looking apologetic.

"...really, I'm sorry, but I've not been there for decades... Yes, it is a recognized dialect..."

The man shrugged at Nick and said, “Sorry about that. I'm Paul Denson, and they sent me to wake you up because apparently you're Australian, too, and there's someone on the radio to Head Office, trying to talk to them in Ablish, which, while I might have been able to speak it once, I'm a little rusty at."