Titus halted near one of the small shuttles. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we’re going outside. I think it’s time you saw things the way they really are.’
‘What things?’
But by way of answer Titus only elevated the cuff of his uniform and spoke quietly into his bracelet. ‘Enable excursion vehicle 15.’
There was no hesitation; no querying of his authority. The taxi answered him instantly, lights flicking on across its wedge-shaped hull, its cockpit door craning open on smooth pistons and the pallet on which it was mounted rotating to bring the door closer and align the vehicle with its departure track. Steam started to vent from ports spaced along the vehicle’s side and Sky could hear the growing whine of turbines somewhere inside the machine’s angular hull. A few seconds ago the thing had been a piece of sleek, dead metal, but now there were awesome energies at its disposal; barely contained.
He hesitated at the door, until his father beckoned that he lead.
‘After you, Sky. Go forward and take the seat on the left of the instrument column. Don’t touch anything while you’re about it.’
Sky hopped into the spacecraft, feeling the floor vibrating beneath his feet. The taxi was considerably more cramped inside than it had looked — the hull was thickly plated and armoured — and he had to duck and dive to reach the forward seats, brushing his head against a gristle-like tangle of internal pipework. He found his seat and fiddled with the blue-steel buckle until he had it tight across his chest. In front of him was a cool turquoise-green display — constantly changing numbers and intricate diagrams — beneath a curved, gold-tinted window. To his left was a control column inset with neat levers and switches and a single black joystick.
His father settled into the rightmost seat. The door had closed on them now and suddenly it was quieter, save for the continuous rasp of the taxi’s air-circulation. His father touched the green display with his finger, making it change, studying the results with narrow-eyed concentration.
‘Word of advice, Sky. Never trust these damned things to tell you that they’re safe. Make sure for yourself.’
‘You don’t trust machines to tell you for yourself?’
‘I used to, once.’ His father eased the joystick forward and the taxi commenced gliding along its departure track, sliding past the parked ranks of other vehicles. ‘But machines aren’t infallible. We used to kid ourselves that they were because it was the only way to stay sane in a place like this, where we depend on them for our every breath. Unfortunately, it was never true.’
‘What happened to change your mind?’
‘You’ll see, shortly.’
Sky spoke into his own bracelet — it offered a limited subset of the capabilities of his father’s unit — and asked the ship to connect him to Constanza. ‘You’ll never guess where I’m calling from,’ he said when her face had appeared, tiny and bright. ‘I’m going outside. ’
‘With Titus?’
‘Yes, my father’s here.’
Constanza was thirteen now, although — like Sky — she was often taken to be older. In neither case had the assumption much to do with their looks, for while Constanza at least looked no older than her true age, Sky looked substantially younger than his: small and pale and difficult to imagine being afflicted by adolescence in anything like the near future. But both were still intellectually precocious; Constanza was now working more or less fulltime within Titus’s security organisation. As was naturally the case aboard a ship with such a small living crew, her duties generally had little to do with enforcement of rules and much more to do with the overseeing of intricate safety procedures and the studying and simulating of operational scenarios. And while it was demanding work — the Santiago was a phenomenally complex thing to understand as a single entity — it was almost certainly work that had never required Constanza to leave the confines of the ship. Since she had begun working for his father, their friendship had become more tenuous — she had responsibilities Sky lacked, and moved in the adult world — but now he was about to do something that could not help but impress her; something that would elevate him in her eyes.
He waited for her answer, but when it came it was not quite what he had been expecting. ‘I’m sorry for you, Sky. I know it won’t be easy, but you have to see it, I think.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘What Titus is about to show you.’ She paused. ‘I’ve always known, Sky. Ever since it happened, the day we got back from the dolphins. But it was never something it was right to talk about. When you come back inside, you can talk to me about it, if you want.’
He seethed; the way she spoke was less like a friend than what he imagined a condescending older sister might be like. And now his father compounded it by placing a comforting hand on his forearm. ‘She’s right, Sky. I wondered if I should forewarn you, then in the end decided not to — but what Constanza has said is true. It won’t be pleasant, but the truth seldom is. And I think you’re ready for it now.’
‘Ready for what?’ he said, and then realised the link to Constanza was still open. He addressed her: ‘You knew this trip was going ahead, didn’t you?’
‘She had some idea that I’d be taking you outside,’ his father said, before the girl could defend herself. ‘That’s all. You mustn’t — can’t — blame her for that. It’s a flight outside the ship; everyone in security has to know about it, and — since we’re not crossing over to one of the other ships — the reason for it.’
‘Which is?’
‘To learn what happened to your mother.’
All the while they had been moving, but now they reached the freight bay’s sheer metal wall. A circular door in the wall whisked open to admit them, the taxi sliding off its pallet into a long, red-lit chamber not much wider than the machine itself. They waited there for a minute or so while the chamber’s air was sucked out, then the taxi moved downwards abruptly, sinking into a shaft. Sky’s father took the opportunity to lean over to adjust Sky’s belt, and then they were outside the ship — blackness below, and the gentle curve of the hull above their heads. The feeling of vertigo was quite intense, even though there was nothing below to suggest height.
They dropped. It was only for an instant, but it was nauseating enough; like the feeling Sky remembered from the rare times when he had been near the ship’s centre, where gravity dwindled almost to zero. Then the taxi’s engines kicked in, and something like weight returned. Expertly his father vectored the taxi away from the looming grey bulk of the massive ship, adjusting their course with taps of steering thrust, his fingers as delicate on the controls as a concert pianist’s.
‘I feel sick,’ Sky said.
‘Close your eyes. You’ll be fine in a moment.’
Despite the disquiet he felt about his mother’s death — and the fact that this trip had something to do with it — Sky could not completely suppress a thrill of excitement at the thought of being outside. He released the safety buckle and started clambering all around the taxi to get a better view. His father scolded him gently and told him to get back in his seat, but not with any great conviction. Then he yawed the taxi around and smiled as the great ship they had just left came into sight.