She led him along the tracks between the longhouses, most of which seemed to have gullies of steaming water running alongside them. The gullies branched frequently, taking the water through low arches into individual longhouses. They’d only just started off when he realized that Nafor was following him, along with everybody else, all of them keeping a respectful distance. “I am not the messiah,” he grumbled under his breath.
Foluwakemi opened a door (made from sections of yellow barrel), and they walked into a longhouse. The air inside was thick with strong scents, and hot. The humidity was almost tropical. Hot water flowed down a shallow stone channel running the length of the building.
Callum checked that Apollo was still recording everything he was seeing. Sandy soil was banked up between the water and the walls, with densely planted crops growing out of it. The majority of vegetation was maize, but he recognized tomato plants and avocados, eggplants, breadfruit, dwarf bananas, as well as several varieties he couldn’t place. None of them looked particularly vigorous, as if they were suffering from a universal blight. When he looked up, he saw the polythene was coated in condensation that dribbled steadily toward the walls.
“How long is a day here?” he asked, looking at the sickly leaves.
“Nineteen hours thirty-two minutes,” Foluwakemi said. “It messes with us and the plants, along with the minerals we can’t filter out of the water. Nafor putting his Stone-Age axe through your skull can lower your life expectancy, as well.”
“Is he in charge?”
“He’ll tell you he is. This month, anyway. Someone as big and stupid will go for him soon, if we’re still here. It’s the worst kind of primitive. Frankly, I’m surprised we’ve lasted this long. Each new group that arrives brings their own set of opinions—with a capital O.”
Pens of close-spaced yellow plastic poles marked the end of the vegetation. Scrawny chickens pecked at the rough ground inside; Callum held his breath against the smell. Beyond the pens was a curtain of polythene. Foluwakemi pushed it aside.
Inside was a sickbay with a row of ten cots, all of them occupied. The smell of vomit and feces and diseased breath was a miasma worse than anything the chickens produced. Callum nearly gagged as he scanned along the figures wrapped in blankets. Apollo sent out a ping for her grains, but there was no answer.
Savi’s face was wrapped in crude gauze bandages, heavily stained with old blood and yellow suppurations. More bandages covered her arms. A leg was splinted. Her breathing was shallow.
The sight of her in this state was terrifying. “Wife?” he whispered.
She inhaled, coughing. “Cal?”
“Yes.” He smiled through his tears. “Yes, it’s me.”
Her head turned, and through the apertures in the bandage mask he saw her eyes open. One of them was a milky white orb. “How can you be here?” she asked.
“Better or worse, remember? I said I will follow you to the ends of the Earth—and beyond. I would never break that promise. Not to you.”
—
Kohei stood inside the Brixton facility’s Monitoring and Coordination Center, staring around at the wallscreens with their high-resolution images of potential ecological doom. He’d never really paid attention to the ancient industrial sites that human companies had abandoned all across the planet. Threats of midlevel disaster were a constant background buzz in his life, like taxes and online crime; you just lived with it. But now he was actually watching an unending parade of dilapidated tanks and pipes and storage bunkers flowing across the screens, with associated symbology highlighting impending problems.
“How much crap is out there?” he asked in dismay.
Fitz Adamova gave him a knowing grin. “Haumea station dumps about a quarter million tons a week. That’s mostly low-level contaminants and their secure containers.” He pointed to an Iraqi nuclear store. “And then there’s the containment vessels themselves, along with the buildings and local soil. It adds up, volume-wise.”
“Jesus, why do we do it?”
“War and profit, mainly.”
Kohei shook his head, focusing on the job. “Okay, I need you to run an equipment audit.”
Fitz’s eyebrows shot up. “You are kidding? Our teams burn through equipment faster than a solar flare. We’re lucky if we get half of it back from an operation.”
“I’m not particularly bothered about the engineering junk. I want to know if all your portal doors are accounted for.”
“Well, that’s easy enough: yes.”
“No,” Kohei said firmly. “It’s not easy. We suspect someone with inside access has manipulated your network. I need you to check. Go down to the storage bays and physically confirm they’re all there if you have to.”
Fitz blew out his cheeks. “Seriously?”