The Girl With All the Gifts(109)

She finds what she expected to find. The null hypothesis is shot to pieces. She knows what the children are, and where they came from, their past and their future, the nature of their partial immunity, and the extent (close to a hundred per cent) to which her own labours over these past seven years have been a waste of time.

She feels a moment of pure happiness. If she’d died yesterday, she would have died blind. This discovery redeems everything, even if what she’s found is so bleak and absolute.

A sound from close by dynamites her train of thought and brings her instantly to her feet. It’s an innocuous enough sound–just a few clicks and whispers–but it’s coming from inside Rosie!

Dr Caldwell is not given to excessive flights of imagination. She knows that Rosie’s doors are sealed, and that anything powerful enough to open them would have been loud and protracted, alerting her long before this. But she’s still trembling a little as she follows the sound forwards, through the crew quarters to the cockpit.

There’s a lit-up section of the console, off to the right-hand side, and that’s where the sound is coming from. From the radio. She slips into the seat and leans her head forward to listen.

There’s not much to hear. Mostly static, pops and hisses and whoops of sound, like the chaos between stations on an ancient analogue wireless set. But a few words stand clear of the aural swamp. “… days out from Beacon… saw your… identify…” The voice is hollow, inhuman, warped by echo and distortion.

The beam of an electric torch moves quickly across the cockpit’s forward shield, and then it’s gone again. No sounds penetrate from outside, but she sees movement. Just a shadow, thrown down momentarily by the torch’s moving beam. A figure moving briskly down Rosie’s left flank.

“… just a wreck… think there’s any…”

Caldwell heads quickly for the midsection door. Halfway there, she realises she could have gone out through the cockpit. She stops, turns around. But she knows the midsection door’s mechanism better. The sounds from the cockpit radio fizzle and die. With a yelp of alarm, Caldwell runs back to the console and replies on the same channel on which the voice came through.

“Hello?” she cries. “Who’s there? This is Caroline Caldwell of base Hotel Echo, in region 6. Who’s there?”

Just static.

She tries the other channels in turn, and gets the same response.

She runs through to the midsection again. But when she gets there, she’s irresolute. She hasn’t applied any e-blocker since the day before, and she can smell her own sweat. If she opens that door, she might bring the hungries down on herself and her would-be rescuers.

The cupboard next to the airlock contains six biohazard suits. Caldwell was trained in their use back when she was still on the expedition list, and although it takes her ten minutes to put one on, she’s confident that she’s done it correctly. Her scent is completely masked, and her body heat at least temporarily contained.

When she pushes the door open, she sees nothing moving outside. “Hello?” she calls. She steps out into the street. Nobody. But the light is at Rosie’s aft end now, and it’s still moving, flicking to left and right.

“Hello?” Caldwell says again. Perhaps the suit’s helmet is muffling her voice. She walks on shaky legs down the flank of the vehicle, the skin of her neck prickling. She rounds the aft end. The light is in her eyes for a moment. She speaks to whoever is behind it. “My name is Caroline Caldwell. I’m a scientist attached to base Hotel Echo in region 6. I’m here with…”

The light turns away from her, and Caldwell runs out of words. Nobody is carrying the torch. It’s just been attached by its strap to a metal rail on Rosie’s rear. It’s moving in the wind, not in someone’s hands.

Fury at the childish trick gives way to the pure terror of realisation. This is an ambush. And since nobody is attacking her, the target must be Rosie. The doctor takes to her heels and runs back the way she came, sprinting for the midsection door, expecting a cadre of junkers, or perhaps Sergeant Parks, to burst out from hiding (except where would they hide?) and race her for the prize.

Nothing moves. She gets inside and slams the door, engages the lock and the failsafes. Then the airlock, for good measure. And then the bulkhead door that seals off the weapons station.

Finally she stops shaking. There’s no sound, no sign of anyone. She’s safe. Whoever was outside went away and just left the torch. Perhaps it really was a search-and-rescue team from Beacon. Perhaps they got eaten. Caldwell has no idea, but whatever happens, she’s not leaving Rosie again. Not for the siren song of a voice on the radio, not for actual humans showing their actual faces, not for marching bands and ticker-tape parades. She walks through into the lab, loosening the seals on the environment suit’s helmet as she goes.

Melanie is sitting in her chair, in front of the microscope, reading her notes. She looks up. “Hello, Dr Caldwell,” she says politely.

Caldwell has stopped dead in the doorway. Her first thought is: Is she alone, or did the others arrive with her? Her second: What can I use as a weapon? The cylinder of phosgene gas is still screwed into place in the airlock’s feed chamber. Since she’s still wearing the environment suit, she’d be immune to its effects. If she could get to that…

“I’ll stop you,” Melanie says, in the same courteous and level tone, “if you move. I’ll stop you if you pick up a gun or anything that’s sharp, or if you try to run away, or if you try to shut me in the cage again. Or if you do anything else that I think might be meant to hurt me.”