Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1) (9 page)

Giroux narrowed his eyes playfully.  “This doesn’t sound good.  What is it you need?”

“I’m going back to the Reach.”

Giroux considered that, rubbing at his large broad chin as he did so.  “That’s not a good idea, Knile.  Not a good idea at all.”

“A day ago, I would have agreed with you, but since then everything’s changed.  There’s a passkey waiting for me, Giroux.”

Giroux glanced at Talia doubtfully.  “For real?” he said.

Knile nodded.  “Yes.  Word came from Jon Hanker himself.”

Giroux turned and dug his hands into the soil, massaging it between his fingers.

“They’ll be looking for you, Knile.  The Enforcers, I mean.  You know that, don’t you?”

“I can handle them, once I’m inside.  I just need someone to get me in the front door.”

“And that’s where I come in.”

“Yes.  I figure you’re my best bet, Giroux.”

“You’re asking a lot, Knile.  Do you know what they could do to me if they knew I was helping you out?  They could march five hundred men over here and wipe me out.  Not even my security crew could stand up to that.”

“I know, but you don’t have to vouch for me in any way.  I’ll make it look as though I was acting alone.”

“So what’s your plan?” Giroux said, taking a scoop of soil and placing it carefully in a clay pot.

“Do you still make daily supply runs into the Reach?”

“Of course.”

“So what if I dressed as one of your gardeners and went along with the convoy?  If I was caught, I could say that I stole the uniform without your knowledge.  You’d be blameless.”

“Maybe,” Giroux said.  “It’s an awful risk, though.  There’s a lot of eyes watching over at the gate.”

“Like I said, I just need a foot in the door,” Knile
said.  “Once I’m inside, they’v
e no hope of finding me.”

“That’s what you said last time,” Giroux said, winking at Talia.

“They didn’t find me last time.”

“Oh?  So how did the plan unravel?”

Knile simply shook his head.  “There’s no time to go into that.  Your supply runs always leave in the morning, right?”

“There’s one headed out in less than an hour,” Giroux said.

“So can you help me?”

Giroux sighed.  “You did a lot for me in the past, Knile.  I can’t deny that.  Your ability to acquire useful items was… unparalleled.”  He chuckled.  “I still haven’t found someone who can do the things you did.”  He looked at Knile soberly.  “But this is huge.  This is a one-off.  I could jeopardise my whole operation if this went bad.  You know that.”

“It won’t,” Knile assured him.  “If I go down, it will be alone.  I wouldn’t put you and Hildi and the others in danger like that.”

Giroux nodded.  “Then all right.  I agree to it.”  He pushed away from the edge of the plot.  “Come with me and I’ll get your gear sorted out.”

“Thank you.”

Giroux began to lumber away and Talia and Knile followed.

“I still don’t know why you’re in such a damn hurry to leave this place,” Giroux said.  “It’s not so bad at times.”

“What about you, Giroux?” Talia said.  “Surely you must have made a fortune selling stuff to the Reach all these years.  This produce is incredible.  It always has been.  Surely you could buy yourself a Sponsor by now.”

Giroux stopped abruptly and turned to face them.

“Hah, creds.  I don’t see many of those for too long.”  He looked around him.  “Grove has gotten too big.  Too unwieldy.  It’s costing me more creds to keep it running than what I make from the sale of the produce.  Look at all these workers.  Their wages add up.  Then there’s security.  There’s maintenance.”  He pointed up at a worker on a cherry picker spraying something onto the interior of the domed roof.  “That polymer coating is driving me broke, but it’s absolutely necessary.  Prevents tears in the outer membrane.”

“Hildi said you had a mishap recently,” Knile said.  “A leak in the roof?”

“I’ve had more than one.  It’s a constant battle.”  He shrugged and then resumed walking.  “Then there’s supplies from off-world, fertiliser and equipment and the like.  It all adds up.  I should really scale Grove back, make it a more manageable size, but I can’t bring myself to rip anything out.  Not for the life of me.  But the day is coming when I won’t be able to sustain it anymore, and that’ll be the end of it.  It will all fall apart around me.”

There was a great sadness in his voice, and Knile knew that it must have been hard for Giroux to admit this to anyone, let alone himself.

“I built this place from the first brick,” Giroux went on.  “Did you know it started in something the size of a shed?  It fit in my backyard.  The whole damn thing.  It wasn’t even called Grove back then.  It was just a little box where I made a few plants grow.  Pretty soon after that I knocked down my house and started living inside the habitat, and sold enough to buy the house next door to me.  I knocked that place down too, levelled it and started expanding the garden.  Built the first dome with the money I made, just a small thing, but it was a start.  To see it now, what it’s become… it fills my heart with pride.  With joy.”  He looked at them each in turn.  “I could never leave here.  This place is everything I ever wanted.  While it thrives, I thrive.  And when it dies, so will I.”

Giroux led them through a couple of other habitats before reaching a long and narrow enclosure that was darker than the rest.  Judging by the clutter of tools on walls and on benches, this was a storage area of some kind.  Giroux waited for the only worker present to leave, then sealed the entrance behind them.

“One of my workers passed on last month,” Giroux said, rummaging under a bench and producing a neatly folded stack of clothes.  “Cancer, I think.  Took him too young.  He spent too many years breathing and eating toxins outside before he came to me.  He was a good man.”  Giroux sighed and patted the garments fondly, then shrugged.  “Anyway, I haven’t registered his passing yet.  His ID will still be in the system.  It won’t stand up to close scrutiny, since you don’t look much like him, but if you’re lucky they’ll let you through with the rest of my men.”

Giroux dug into one of the pockets and pulled out a clear slip of plastic with a tiny golden chip inside.

“You kept his chip?” Knile said, mildly surprised.

Giroux shrugged with a hint of embarrassment.  “Sometimes they come in handy.”  He gestured to Knile.  “For times like this.  But I don’t know how you’re going to embed it under your skin.  We don’t really have the equipment here for that.”

“No need.  I can transfer the data without physically implanting the chip.  All I need is a holophone and ten minutes to do it.”

“Simple as that?” Giroux said, smiling.

Knile nodded.  Changing identity was as simple as changing clothes for someone with skills such as Knile
’s, now that he had the chip in his possession.

“Thanks, Giroux,” Knile said, taking the overalls and slipping them on over his regular clothes.

“I have to say that I don’t like it,” Giroux said, his smile fading.  “That ID is only good for a small zone inside the Reach.  They’ll figure it out pretty quickly.  You won’t be safe.”

“Don’t worry, Giroux.  This won’t come back on you.  I promise.”

Giroux rattled through another box and handed Knile a battered holophone.

“I take it you could use one of these, then?” Giroux said.

Knile took the holophone and turned it over in his hands.  “Sure.  I was going to see if I could get hold of one on the way, but this will save me the trouble.”  He ran his fingers over the cracked screen and it began to shine dully.  “Does it even work?”

“Hold on,” Talia said, grabbing her own holophone and holding it up.  “What’s the number?”

She fidgeted with the settings on Knile’s holophone and found the information she sought, then punched the details into her own phone.  The connection went through and Knile’s phone began to ring.

“Seems fine,” Knile said.  He pocketed the phone and finished shrugging into his new clothes.

“You’d better hurry if you want to leave with the shipment,” Giroux said.  “That’s assuming you don’t want to change your mind and stay?  Like I always said, there’s a place for you here.”  He turned to Talia.  “For both of you.”

They shook their heads sadly, and Giroux gave them a faint smile.  “I thought you’d say that.”

Knile began to walk away, but stopped at the sound of Talia’s voice.

“Knile,” she said.  “Don’t forget Roman.  We need to go see him before you leave.”

“The kid?” Giroux said.  “Of course, let me take you to him.”

Knile took a deep breath as Giroux led the way, struggling with the thought of what he was going to say to the boy after all these years.

8

Giroux led them to another enclosure,
where smaller plants and saplings were being nurtured by a dozen or more workers.  He pointed at a skinny youth carrying a large potted basil plant not far away.

“There he is,” Giroux said.  “You have a few minutes before you need to be out front for that convoy, Knile.  Don’t be late.  Good luck to you both.”

He shook each of their hands in turn and then left the enclosure, pulling the zipper closed behind him.  Talia looked at Knile helplessly.

“I have no idea what to say to Roman,” she said.  “What do we tell him?”

“I’ve been thinking about that myself,” Knile said.  “I’ve got nothing.”

“Do we apologise, or just go straight past that and try to ignore it?”

Knile grimaced.  “I don’t think–”

“Hey.”  Knile turned, his mouth hanging open mid-sentence, to see Roman standing there, a basket of herbs clutched in his arms.  The boy regarded them ca
lmly between strands of thick black hair that hung across his face.

“Uh… Roman,” Knile said.  “Hi.”

Talia stepped forward and linked her arms around Roman’s shoulders, attempting an awkward hug.

“So good to see you,” she said.  “You’ve grown so big.”

“What are you guys doing here?” Roman said, making no attempt to return Talia’s gesture.  His voice carried not an ounce of warmth.

“Just passing through,” Knile said.  “We thought we’d drop in to see how you’re doing.”

Roman looked Knile up and down.  “Why are you in that get-up?” he said in reference to Knile’s gardener garb.  “Are you working here now?”

“No,” Knile said.  “I guess it’s a long story.”

“Well, I don’t have time to hear it,” Roman said, pushing past them.  “I’m on the convoy this morning and I’m running late.”

“Oh, me too,” Knile said, moving in front of the boy and fumbling with the zipper on the wall.  “I’ll go with you.”

“Whatever,” Roman said, ducking through with his load.

Knile held the opening for Talia and she gave him a disconcerted look, obviously not liking where this was going.  Knile followed her through, and together they jogged to catch up to the boy, who was evidently not waiting around for them.

“So it looks like you’ve settled in here nicely,” Talia said.

“Yeah.  Not that I had much choice, Talia,” Roman said.  “Since you and the others dumped me and left.”

“Roman, I’m sorry about that,” Talia said.  “Believe me, I am.”

Roman kept his eyes intent on the path before him.

“So sorry that you never even once came to visit me,” he said.

“Well, about that,” Knile began, but Roman cut him off.

“Hey,
Tee, I’m on convoy today,” he called out loudly to another worker, an older man with a beard who was pruning a lemon tree nearby.  “Do you need me to talk to that customs guy on Level Four?”

“I spoke to him last week,” the man called back.  “He keeps screwing up the ammonium nitrate order.  You can talk to him if you want, but…”  He shrugged.  “Probably won’t do any good.”

“I’ll have a word to him,” Roman called, and the man saluted him with his snips before returning to his work.  Roman got moving again.

“Roman,” Knile went on, close on the boy’s heels, “I’ve been in a lot of trouble.  I’m not welcome around here, and I haven’t shown my face for a long time.  I’m sorry I didn’t try to contact you before now.”

“Yeah.  I heard from someone that you were dead.  And then, someone else said you got off-world.”

“Neither is true, as it turns out.”

They proceeded into the next enclosure, but Roman did not reduce his rapid pace, making no effort to continue the conversation.

“And I kinda got busy,” Talia said, attempting to fill the silence.  “I know that sounds lame–”

“It
is
lame,” Roman said.  “Whichever way you dress it up, both of you are lame.”

“Can’t say I don’t deserve that,” Knile said.

“Listen,” Roman said, “I’m grateful to you guys for what you did for me.  You
found me on
the streets when I was a starving little kid with no one to look after me.  You let me run with your gang and you showed me how to survive
in the city
.  I’d probably be dead without you.”