Meridian Days (2 page)

"What have you been doing with yourself recently?" Abe asked. "How's work?"

I shrugged, suddenly defensive. When asked to account for my own activities, I found myself for once viewing my life with some degree of objectivity, and I was never enamoured with what I saw.

"Nothing much. Business is bad — I haven't had any work in months."

Before becoming a pilot in my early twenties, I had overhauled fliers and shuttles for the Javelin Line. When I arrived on Meridian, I fell back on this skill and set myself up in business as a mechanic. For a few months I'd been patronised by rich artists and their friends — the one-time smallship pilot, down on his luck — but the sympathy had soon dried up and with it the supply of fliers in need of repair.

Abe listened, hands clasped behind his head. "If there's anything I can do, Bob..." He trailed off, then peered at me. "If you don't mind me saying so, you look terrible. You sure you're okay?"

I laughed, but it rang hollow in my ears. "I'm okay, Abe. I'm just run down, that's all. I haven't been sleeping."

Abe knew about the accident. Months ago I'd given him the story — the sanitised, emotion-free version, that is. As far as he was aware, I was just a blameless pawn in a smallship blow-out. He knew nothing about my guilt and the need to suppress it, and what I did to do so. He knew nothing about my dependency.

There were times when I wanted to tell him everything, as if to absolve myself from blame, but I feared his censure and valued his occasional company too much to risk losing it.

The pterosaur regarded me accusingly. The staple diet of these birds was the flower of the thorned cacti which grew on Brightside and which they consumed without any side-effects.

"Bob, how would you like to go to a party tonight?"

"Well, to be honest..."

"I've been invited to an 'event' down the archipelago. I wasn't going to go, but it might be interesting... You do need to get out, you know."

I tried to think of an excuse, but came up with nothing. I temporised. "What is this 'event', exactly?" I disliked the way every novice artisan and ambitious technician graced their shows and exhibitions with the soubriquet of
event
.

Abe tried not to smile. "It's a combined poetry recital and film show. It might be good. And anyway, even if it isn't, the fact remains that you need a change of scenery. The guests won't all be Altereds and Augmenteds. There'll be a whole crowd of techs from the Telemass station, along for the free drinks."

I was still casting about for an excuse not to attend. "Who's the artist?" I asked.

"Have you heard of the sculptress and poet Tamara Trevellion?"

"Wasn't she...?"

Abe nodded. "You probably saw her on the news last year, when she lost her husband. She's an Altered fish-woman."

I watched little news — most of it was from Earth, and that planet held bad memories for me — but I had caught the news-flash reporting the Telemass accident. Three citizens had been mistranslated and lost somewhere along the Earth-Meridian vector, with little hope of recovery.

The tragedy became even more sensational when it was announced that Maximilian Trevellion, the famous crystal artist, was one of the missing persons. Tamara Trevellion was interviewed, and she turned the performance into an 'event' worthy of her finest creative endeavour. Few who watched her could fail to be moved by the poise and valour of the mer-woman as she told the world that now, after three days, she acknowledged that her husband was lost but that his spirit and his work would live on, both in her heart and in the minds of those who appreciated true art.

Later, the tragedy was compounded when it was disclosed that the trip to Earth taken by her husband, to represent Tamara Trevellion at a reading of one of her prose-poems, was to have been made by her daughter, Fire. At the last moment, Fire Trevellion had fallen ill, and Maximilian had taken the fateful trip instead.

"Well?" Abe asked now. "I was told to bring someone. You're more than welcome to come along."

"Do you know Tamara Trevellion?" I tried to conceal my surprise that the artist should wish to socialise with a lowly conservationist.

"I've supplied her with a number of exotic pets over the years," Abe said. "Well?"

I recalled again the tragic mask of beauty and her brave soliloquy at the loss of a loved one, and I wondered how the passage of time had treated Tamara Trevellion. This, and the fact that I knew Abe was right when he said that I needed to get out more, overcame my resistance.

I nodded. "Why not?"

Abe smiled, poured more whisky and began a speech to the effect that the best scotch was still made on Earth. We chatted about our homeplanet for a time. "By the way," Abe said, "the last time we met you were talking of going back."

I shrugged. "The thought does cross my mind from time to time, I must admit. I like it here, but—"

"But Earth is home, right? So what's stopping you? The fact that Earth still has smallships?"

I looked up. Abe was casually stroking the bill of his pterosaur. He knew he'd scored a hit.

"Okay, maybe that does have something to do with it."

Earth still used smallships on all the in-system runs, and I knew that the sight of one would release a whole slew of unwelcome memories and associations. At the same time, the reason I told people that I intended to return to Earth one day was so that I might build a psychological momentum and eventually match my words with the deed, escape from what was keeping me on Meridian.

Still regarding the bird, Abe said, "Bob, you remind me a lot of Terror, here. I saw him being driven from his flock one day and found him down on the beach, injured and forlorn. I've no idea what he did to get himself ostracized like that. He's fit now and perfectly able to leave here — but, as you see, he won't... Perhaps he's too scared to return and face his past."

"So you think my talk of going back is no more than just that — talk?"

Abe shrugged. "I think you'd be a damned sight better off if you returned to where you really belonged."

I was saved from having to reply — if I could have found a suitable response — by the sound of Abe's vid-screen chiming in the lounge. He excused himself, entered the dome and activated the wall-screen. The picture showed an expanse of sand, clearly Brightside, shimmering in a vaporous heat haze. I made out a cage in the foreground, containing an animal.

I turned my attention to the view of the island chain and contemplated Abe's words. I had assumed until now that I had kept my feelings concerning the accident pretty well concealed — but Abe was more astute a judge of human nature than I had given him credit for. Perhaps I should have felt gladdened at his concern, but instead I felt almost threatened.

Abe returned a minute later. "That was a remote sensor I have monitoring a cage. I've just trapped the female of a species I hope to breed in captivity." He glanced at his watch. "I really must go and collect it. There'll be time to get there and back before the party starts."

"Is the cage on Brightside?"

"Fifty kilometres in. It'll be a hot trip."

I tried to sound casual. "Any chance of a ride?"

He looked surprised, then pleased. I was not known to exhibit such camaraderie. "I don't see why not. I could use a hand with the cage. Ever been Brightside before?"

"No," I lied. "I'd like the experience."

He nodded. "I've a spare silversuit somewhere."

~

As we kitted-up in the solar-reflective silversuits, water-cooled but light and flexible, I felt a twinge of guilt at deceiving him like this. I salved my conscience with the resolve that this would be the start of a closer friendship with Abe Cunningham.

Abe's flier was a sleek, silver tear-drop, at rest on the harbour wall but pointing as if in readiness towards Brightside. He opened the wing hatches and we dropped inside. The padded, insulated interior, darkened by the tinted viewscreen and fitted out with hi-tec instruments, brought to mind the pilot's nacelle of a smallship.

Abe gunned the engine; the jets caught and we streaked away from the island, a metre above the calm surface of the sea.

A computer screen embedded in the dashboard showed a circular view of the Brightside hemisphere. It was divided into three zones, like a target. Abe explained, "The outer margin is zone blue, the coolest area, suitable for human habitation. The second ring, extending for a couple of hundred kilometres, is zone orange, where you go only if you have good reason. The inner core, zone red, is strictly a no-go area. We're here—" He indicated a small, flashing light moving towards the outer circle. "And the cage is here—" A second point of light well within zone orange.

We would be venturing further into the zone of fire than ever I had before.

Ahead, on the horizon, Brightside appeared as a low line just above sea level, shimmering in the convection currents. The sky above the distant landmass was white hot, leached of colour by the incessant and merciless radiation of the sun. Few people, other than the occasional research team, ventured far into this sunward facing hemisphere; no-one had yet made a Brightside crossing. On the equator, the mantle of rock over an area of a thousand square kilometres had formed a hellish lagoon of molten lava. Even the most hardy of the planet's fauna dwelled within the safety margin of zone blue, beside the meridional ocean.

One hour later we were still kilometres from the ochreous foreshore of the Brightside, and the thermometer on the dash indicated that the temperature outside was one hundred and ten fahrenheit. Every breath of air, seemingly devoid of oxygen, parched my throat. I took frequent drinks from Abe's canteen.

He leaned forward and peered through the viewscreen, then pointed. "Look..."

I followed his gesture. To our left, high in the blue sky above the ocean, a falling bolt of white light appeared suddenly as if by magic. The first bolt, to which Abe had alerted me, had already found its target, the great arched column reducing in length as it hit the Telemass reception pad. The second bolt followed instantly, then a third, all landing on the largest island of the chain some two hundred kilometres south of our present position. Each pulse, from its first appearance in the stratosphere to the time it hit destination, lasted for barely a second, and as ever I found it hard to believe that I had witnessed the medium which transported the constituent molecules of human beings and supplies more than twenty light years through space from Earth to Meridian. I found it even more difficult to accept that I too had undergone the same process of reduction, transmission and reconstitution.

"The sight always gives me one hell of a thrill."

Abe smiled. "You're not alone. I think everyone feels the same. I know I do. And it's not just our intellect trying to come to terms with the technological wonder of it."

I was staring to my left, imagining the sensation of dislocation and relief that the travellers would be experiencing as they were reformed on the deck of the station.

"We always feel awe at that which we don't understand," Abe was saying. "But it's more than that. When we see the bolts, we're reminded of the connection to Earth. It's the life-line to the one place we all have in common. The sight of the bolts reassures us that mother Earth still cares, that we're still connected by the techno-umbilical that gave us our new life here."

"Hence the massive news coverage when something goes wrong, like the mistranslation last year?"

He nodded. A thousand droplets of sweat stood out on his face. "And hence the concern over recent rumours concerning the station."

There were times when my isolation and indifference to what was happening outside the confines of my head put me at a serious disadvantage. "What rumours?"

"You haven't heard?" Abe glanced quickly from the viewscreen to me. "There's been a reduction of staffing levels at the station over the past couple of months. The Director's leaving soon for a more prestigious posting. Rumour is that both incoming and outgoing shots will be cut to one a month."

"But it's just that, I take it? A rumour?" At present, there were three shots to and from Earth every month.

"It's a rumour Director Steiner hasn't bothered to deny, Bob. On a broadcast last week he was non-committal. If it is true, it'll probably mean a waiting list and one hell of a price increase. I'm glad I don't send that much to Earth, but some of the artists will not be pleased." I thought I detected a slight note of irony in his tone.

"Meridian isn't that popular anymore," I commented.

"Tourism's down fifty percent since last year, after the quake scare. A dozen big hotels on Main have shut up shop over the past six months. Also, Consolidated Mining has got what it can from the margins of Brightside and Darkside — they reckon increased investment to go further in wouldn't be a sound proposition. Earth is looking to other, bigger colonies for investment, hence the rumours of scale-down." Abe laughed. "We'll soon be a backwater, Bob. Here we go."

We had reached the parched plains of Brightside. Abe accelerated and we rocketed at great speed across the wastes of the comparatively safe zone blue. In three directions, for as far as the eye could see, the land ran flat and featureless, but for the occasional rock the size of a fist and even smaller ground-hugging plants. The seared air above the distant horizon wavered like a film projected onto a corrugated screen.

We followed a rough track inland, a slight linear depression made by the vehicles which had passed this way before us. I was thankful for the flier's sun-roof and our silversuits. On my previous trips to Brightside, quick sorties to get what I wanted with not a second wasted, my launch had been uncovered and I had foregone the luxury of a cooled suit — and I had returned every time exhausted and dehydrated.

As we advanced across zone blue, an area about as hospitable as the Sahara in mid-summer, the temperature hit 130°. Even in the shade of the cab the heat parched my skin, and each breath seared my throat.

We raced over extensive rafts of cacti-like flora; I recognised the bright pink blooms, and wished we could stop so I could gather the flowers and return. Then we travelled for kilometres without seeing any sign of vegetation, and I began to despair that we had passed the last of the growth, that the trip would be wasted. We bore remorselessly on, speeding towards the great, incandescent orb of the sun burning relentlessly fifteen degrees above the horizon, as if intent on immolating ourselves.