Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1) (26 page)

Then her face suddenly went white and she gasped beneath her respirator, her eyes locked onto something over Knile’s shoulder.

Knile spun and saw it immediately, but he couldn’t quite believe what he was witnessing.

Further along the walkway, alone on the ledge without gear or a harness, stood a young boy silently watching them.

22

Knile decided that the chemicals and the toxins in the air that he’d inadvertently consumed over the years were messing with his head.  Those ubiquitous poisons that got into the water, into the food, into
everything
, had finally gotten to him, and now he was hallucinating.  He had become too sick to distinguish fantasy from reality.  What other explanation could there be for this absurd vision before him?  How could he possibly be seeing what he was seeing?

He turned back to Ursie and it was clear that, if this was some kind of trick of the imagination,  she was sharing it.  Her eyes met his and she could only shake her head in response to the unasked question that hung between them.

Knile looked back to the boy, fully expecting him to be gone this time, dissolved into a cloud of dust and blown away by the wind, but this was not the case.  He was still there.  Knile got slowly to his feet.  The boy was grubby and emaciated, naked from the waist up and wearing only rags for pants.  His hair was dark brown and almost shoulder length, clotted with dirt, and he wore no respirator.  His feet were bare.

The boy’s face betrayed no emotion as he regarded Knile and Ursie a short distance away.

“Hello?” Knile called out.  The boy did not move or make any response.  “What are you doing there?”

The boy continued to stare at them, seeming neither threatened nor surprised by their presence out here on the ledge.  Knile turned to Ursie, who shrugged, dumbfounded.

“Are you okay?” Knile persisted.  “Did you get locked outside?”

Knile took a few steps along the ledge and the boy finally made a response of sorts.  He turned calmly and began walking the other way, around a bend in the wall and out of sight.

“Wait!” Knile called.  “I’m not going to hurt you!”  He quickened his pace as he moved along the ledge.

“Knile, what are you doing?” Ursie called after him.

“Just wait there,” Knile said.  He took hold of the rope trailing after him and slung it over his shoulder to prevent himself from inadvertently tripping over it, then slightly quickened his pace.  The edge of the precipice was disconcertingly close, but Knile had never had a problem with heights, and he did not allow it to slow him down.  He made it to the place where the boy had stood moments before, but, finding him gone, continued further around the bend.  Glancing over his shoulder, he discovered that he had lost sight of Ursie, and this caused him to slow his pace and show more caution, knowing that the rope wouldn’t stretch forever.

He came to a narrow cleft that led to a hatch much like the one that he and Ursie had emerged from below, and there he stopped.  His puzzlement grew as he surveyed the area.  There was still no sign of the boy, but something else inside the cleft captured his attention instead.

There was a garden here.

It wasn’t much of a garden, Knile had to admit.  At first glance it had seemed more like a strip of dirt that had accumulated within the cleft, blown in by the wind and neatly trapped as if snared
by a net, but now that he was closer Knile could see small green tips of plant life and some purple-tinted objects protruding from the soil that might have been vegetables.

Is this kid living out here?

The boy was nowhere to be seen.  Since there was no place to hide inside the cleft, Knile could only assume that the boy had continued along the next bend and out of sight again.  That was a fair distance, though.  He would have had to move damn fast to make it that far in such a short amount of time.

Knile was suddenly assaulted by an almost irrational kind of apprehension, a panic that if he didn’t find out more about the boy, his entire quest to climb the Reach might
be jeopardised.  That the boy was somehow more important than he seemed, his secrets vital.

Knile squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head to try to clear it.

Get a grip on yourself,
he thought. 
It doesn’t matter why he’s here or where he went.  Stay focussed.

That was the truth.  There simply wasn’t time to try to unravel the mystery further.  As tantalising as it was, there were more important things at stake.  He had to get back and continue the climb before the light faded completely.

Knile returned along the ledge carefully, gathering in the rope as he went.  As he rounded the bend he could see Ursie still sitting pressed against the wall, scrunched as far away from the edge of the drop as she could manage.

“What did you find?” she called out as he drew near.

“A garden,” Knile said.  “I think the kid might be living here.”

“A garden?  How is that possible?”

“I don’t know.  He was gone by the time I got there.”

“Should we keep looking for him?” Ursie said.  “Maybe he needs our help.”

“There’s no time,” Knile said, casting an eye out toward the horizon.  “We need to get climbing.”

“You’re going to leave him there?” Ursie said, almost pleading with him to change his mind.  “He looked like he was starving.”

“Yes, I’m leaving him there,” Knile said in a matter-of-fact way, reaching down to take the carabiners from her harness.  “He’s obviously survived this long by himself.  I figure if he needed our help he would have asked for it.”

“But–”

“You ready?”

Ursie looked up at him for a moment longer before conceding that she wasn’t going to win the argument.  She reluctantly got to her feet and took the rope.

“This one isn’t quite as high,” Knile said, clipping the last of the carabiners o
nto his harness.  “Shouldn’t take too long.”

“I’m sure it’ll be a breeze,” Ursie said dryly.

Knile smirked and then hoisted himself upward, scaling the ladder quickly and smoothly.  He’d become attuned to the process of placing the carabiners and linking the rope through with one hand, and his movements were now fluid and precise.  There were no breaks in this section of the ladder either, and this helped him to complete the climb in only a matter of minutes.

Once at the top he secured himself to the next handle and signalled for Ursie to follow.

To his great relief, she also moved more quickly than during her first attempt.  Whether she was gaining in confidence or simply eager to have the ordeal over and done with, he couldn’t be sure.  In the end it didn’t matter.  Either way, the result was that she made the climb without much delay, and as the sun dipped below the horizon she reached the ledge beside Knile.

“There we go,” he said cheerily.  “No problems at all.  What did I tell you?”

“Yeah,” Ursie said breathlessly.  “A real walk in the park.”

“You did good,” Knile said encouragingly.  “That’s all the climbing we need to do for now.”

“For now?”  Her eyes widened again.

“Relax,” Knile laughed.

Ursie began to unhook the carabiners from her harness and hand them over to him again.

“What now?” she said.

“Now we find a way back inside and get some rest.  I’m going to need some shut-eye for an hour or so at least.  I haven’t slept in about two days.”

“Do we have time for that?”

“We’re on schedule,” Knile said, checking his watch.  “We have less than twenty-four hours, now, but–”

A loud voice came suddenly from above, startling both of them and causing Ursie to cry out in fear.

“You are trespassing in a restricted zone,”
it boomed. 
“Turn around now or we will be forced to take action.”

Both Ursie and Knile reacted by ducking into a crouch and glancing fearfully above, as if expecting to see a cohort of Enforcers standing above them, ready to pounce, but there was no one there.

“They’ve seen us!” Ursie cried in dismay.  “The Enforcers are onto us!”

Knile continued to scan the walls above them, craning his neck as he peered along the sheer face of the steel and glass, trying to locate who it was that might have spotted them, but he could see no men on any of the other ledges, and no surveillance gear either.

How did they locate us?
he thought desperately.

“What do we do?” Ursie yelled up at him.

Knile thought quickly. 
Turn around now…

“It doesn’t make sense,” Knile said suddenly.  “Why would they want us to turn around?  Why wouldn’t they just come out and arrest us?”

“They’ve seen us!” Ursie said again.  “Who cares what they said?”

Knile turned his back to the wall, looking out across the city.  His eyes locked onto something and he thrust out his arm, pointing.

“Look!” he shouted.

Drifting through the faint orange of twilight not far away, suspended like a giant egg on an unseen thread, a dirigible came floating toward them.  It held steady against the buffeting wind, growing larger by the second as it closed in.

“You are trespassing in restricted airspace,”
came the voice from the Enforcer loudspeaker again, more insistent now. 
“Turn your craft around immediately or we will be forced to take action.”

“Can they hear it?” Ursie said, getting to her feet.  Her alarm was diminishing now that she realised the Enforcers’ target was someone else.  “Why aren’t they turning around?”

Because they don’t want to,
Knile thought.

“I don’t know,” he said.  He could see faces now inside the gondola.

Then the dirigible spoke from a loudspeaker of its own.

“You on the ledge,”
someone from inside the gondola said,
“is there anywhere to land?  Is there anywhere to dock?”

Knile was about to shout a warning, but he knew his words would be lost in the wind.  Instead he began waving them away frantically, hoping those in the dirigible would understand their peril and turn the craft around before it was too late.

“They’re not slowing down,” Ursie said in dismay.  She began to wave her arms as well
in an attempt to gain their attention.

There was a noise from above, a grinding and shuddering sound of a great machine unfurling, and Knile turned to Ursie, stricken.

“They’re bringing out the guns!” he yelled.  “Cover your ears!”

The dirigible came closer, and now the faces of those on board were clearly visible.  Knile tried not to look, not wanting to see these faces of the damned, but it was too late – they had already been indelibly imprinted on his memory.  A woman, two youthful men, an old woman with grey hair.

The dirigible’s pace was gradual and inexorable, its course unerring, as if it were being drawn ever closer to the Reach along invisible rails, as unable to divert its course as a locomotive bound to its track.  Knile clapped his hands over his ears and finally tore his eyes away, getting down on one knee and pulling Ursie in beside him.

When the guns spoke a moment later, they roared as if tearing the very air apart, shaking the walls of the Reach and the ledge under their feet.  They boomed like thunder a dozen times or more, pounding and shuddering the structure with such force that Knile feared they might be shaken off the ledge.  When they finally relented, the ringing in his ears began to fade away and he realised that Ursie was screaming uncontrollably beside him.

Knile clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the noise, hissing at her to be quiet.  When he raised his eyes again he did not see the dirigible floating defiantly onward anymore.  He only saw a deflated and ruined hunk of fabric and machinery spiralling down in the darkness toward oblivion.

23

The access panel on the door turned green and Knile pulled the handle. As before, a strong gust of wind came whistling through and Knile almost lost his balance.  He held the door open while Ursie scampered inside, then followed and allowed the door to slam shut behind him.  The access panel remained green for a moment longer before reverting to its locked state of red.

“Why did they keep coming?” Ursie said from nearby in the gloom, her face ruddy in the glow of the access panel.  Knile could see streaks of tears down her cheek.  “Why didn’t they just turn around?”

“What choice did they have?”  Knile stalked past her and activated his flashlight, keeping it pointed discreetly at the floor.  “Do you think they’re out there on a pleasure cruise, touring the sights of the Reach?”

“How can you be so heartless?”

Knile just shook his head at her.  He removed his harness and threw it in the corner, keeping a couple of the carabiners looped through his belt, then roughly assisted Ursie
in removing
hers.  He opened the inner door and proceeded out into the corridor, holding it open for Ursie.  She remained rooted to the spot.