‘And the one on Mercury, the same,’ Stef said.
Yuri looked at her. ‘What are we going to do about it?’
She grinned. ‘What do you think?’
Liu backed away, hands raised. ‘Whoa. You’re talking about going into that thing? Count me out.’
The ColU said, ‘I think it is my duty to point out that you are entirely unprepared, Yuri Eden.’
‘That never stopped us before.’
‘True. But there may not even be breathable air on the other side. Consider Mercury—’
‘We’re going anyhow.’ He grinned at Stef, who grinned back. ‘We’re done with Per Ardua, aren’t we? Done with Earth. Especially if they import their war here.’
The ColU stood still, its floods splashing light over the Hatch in its pit. ‘You are determined.’
‘That’s right.’
‘In that case I have a request.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Take me with you.’
Stef laughed briefly, but fell silent again.
For a moment nobody spoke.
Stef said, ‘It’s serious, isn’t it?’
Liu snorted. ‘This is a glorified tractor. A farming machine.’
‘Not just that,’ said the ColU. ‘I am a sentient, curious entity. I too wish to know what lies beyond this latest Hatch. And I have a store of knowledge, data . . . Imagine how useful a companion I could be, Yuri Eden.’
Stef said, ‘But how the hell are you going to get through the Hatch anyhow? You’re not modular, like the modern designs, so you can’t be carried through in pieces, or even climb through yourself. You wouldn’t fit.’
‘I would suggest you detach my central processing core. That would suffice. Interfaces can be arranged later. Even a slate would be enough for that.’
Stef looked at Yuri. ‘We’re going to do this, aren’t we?’
Yuri just grinned. ‘I owe you one for Mister Sticks, ColU. You’d better show us how to take you apart.’
They took a day to prepare, to don layers of clothing, to pack rucksacks, to select weapons.
And to detach the ColU’s processor core, under its own instructions, as if it were supervising its own lobotomy, and to load it gingerly into a pack which Yuri wore on his chest. It was like cradling a baby, he thought, like the papooses he and Mardina had made to carry Beth when she was very small.
Then it was time to go. After a day, for both Stef and Yuri, the immediate impulse to leave that they’d both felt on finding the Hatch stayed strong.
Still Liu hung back. ‘Are you sure about this? I’ve never been through one of these damn things. You could end up anywhere, right?’
‘That’s the fun part,’ Stef said.
Yuri looked at Liu. ‘We’re sure. And you’re sure you want to stay?’
‘Yeah. I’ll take my chances with the UN. And besides, staying on this side of that Hatch is the only way I’ll keep open some remote chance of getting to Thursday October again. But you two – Stef, if you do this you’ll never see your family again. Your twin.’
Stef just laughed. ‘Some loss.’
‘And you, Yuri. Maybe there’s a chance with Beth—’
‘I know Mardina. And I know with stone certainty that I’ll never see Beth again, come what may.’
Liu nodded. ‘So you may as well keep going, right?’
‘Through another door, yeah. And another. What else is there?’
‘I’ll tell them what became of you.’
Yuri grinned. ‘Well, maybe we’ll be back to tell it all ourselves.’
‘You really think so?’
‘No.’ He turned to Stef. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Always.’ She pulled off her mittens, exposing hands, stretched her fingers wide. ‘Let’s do this quickly. It’s so cold.’
‘True enough,’ said Yuri, pulling off his own mittens. ‘Are you ready? Together then. One, two, three—’
Opened up, the Hatch was just like the one between the Hub and Mercury, a pit under the hatch lid, another door on the wall with indentations for their hands, lit up by a sourceless pearly light.
Yuri and Stef climbed down, using a rope held by Liu. Yuri moved carefully, protective of the ColU.
Opening the door in the wall was easy. They walked through into an intermediate chamber, just like in the Mercury Hatch, with doors on either side. It was so warm in here they immediately started pulling open their winter-weather gear.
They looked at each other. The door back to Per Ardua was still open, but Liu was already out of sight, beyond the outer chamber, on the surface.
‘Do it,’ said Stef.
Yuri shut the door. Then they crossed together to the second door, and laid their hands in the cuttings in its surface.
As the door opened they both stumbled. The gravity had shifted again.
Committed, Yuri thought.
CHAPTER 82
As the hot war loomed, it took three days for King to secure Earthshine’s ship.
The Tatania, an untested upgrade of the Ad Astra but one of the UN’s few hulk craft capable of interstellar travel, was diverted to the moon. There Earthshine, or at least a downloaded copy, would be picked up and fired off into deep space as fast as the hulk was capable of driving him. Whether he intended to go as far as the stars was not yet clear.
‘Maybe he’ll just hang around in orbit around Pluto until the fuss dies down,’ Sir Michael King said cynically. King himself, having gathered his family around him, intended to weather the storm in the bunker under the Channel. ‘I’ll soon be a hundred bloody years old,’ he’d said. ‘I’m done running.’
It was a reasonable deal to make, Penny thought. A partial version of Earthshine’s own persona was going to stay behind in the great stores he’d established there, so the refuge would continue to function; why not let King and his family stay too?
For herself, Penny remained determined to flee with Earthshine. Sooner that than huddle in a hole in the ground, cowering from the fire of an interplanetary war. And Earthshine was determined to go. That was what swung it for Penny, in the end. Penny wondered what he knew about this war that she didn’t – what he knew, or feared. Anyhow, staying at his side struck her as a good survival strategy just now.
And she wanted Jiang to come with her. He was as much of a friend to her as anybody. He, however, wasn’t at all sure that it was wise to flee on an experimental ship at a time of interplanetary war. Maybe staying buried in the ground was safer. But his own position was difficult, as a Chinese national in UN territory. Penny, with support from King, had already had to fend off official calls for his internment. If he stayed here, he’d probably lose his liberty – assuming they survived at all. In the end the choice for him was logical enough.
So they prepared to leave. The last Penny saw of the Channel bunker was Sir Michael King’s crumpled, surprisingly tearful face as he said goodbye at the elevator shaft, with his youngest daughter alongside him.
They flew to Kourou, landing in blasting heat despite the Splinter’s Mighty Winter, where they would catch a shuttle to orbit.
They had time to spare. For now this strange, covert, half-declared war seemed to be developing at its own chthonic pace, as the Chinese moved their spacegoing assets into position to make what everybody assumed was going to be a wave of attacks on UN installations on the moon and near-Earth space, or at least to threaten such attacks. Chinese spacecraft were beautiful but slow; it was an armada that moved only a little faster than the pace at which the planets shifted across the sky. Deeper in space, probably, UN ships were similarly closing in on their own targets. Penny imagined a solar system full of huge energies eager to be unleashed – of command chains compromised by the long minutes of lightspeed delays in communications across interplanetary space.
But slow-paced or not war seemed to be on the way, and a new long countdown started in the head of everybody on Earth who followed the news.