Neon Sands Read online

  Kirillion had once complained that her trade would be the end of their business with the outside, as there’d “be no-one left to trade with.” But there always was, the same old faces recycling around with tales of the sands, some too tall to be true. “Who can tell truth from fiction with those ghostheads?” claimed Kirillion. “But,” he finished chewing his stew, most of us at the meal table not listening, imagining the food was something different to the previous few days. He pointed his fork at Essa. “So long as we remain a unit and whatever comes through those doors goes towards this place, if that’s all they want then we’ll make as much of it as they can take.”

  He plucked half a potato from his stew and continued. “So long as we don’t all partake, of course.” He carried on eating but they all knew he was talking about Rafe, who kept his head down as a few pairs of eyes glanced his way.

  Calix took an unconscious deep breath as the lift ascended to level three – he wasn’t sure what the ghost was, exactly, but if it was made from the mushrooms growing in level four he didn’t know if it was something that could be breathed in. Essa was always a little crazy, staring him out or whispering things like “Calix panics, that rhymes, you know,” in his ear. When he breathed out, he realised what he had been doing and thought best be safe.

  Level three was the Rec, though that function had long since gone; triple vaulted and spacious – large enough to accommodate a small court that was used for sports such as football, tennis, basketball, badminton, and table tennis – once upon a time. Now all it was good for was meetings. What footballs, tennis balls, basketballs, shuttlecocks and ping-pong balls there had been had served their purpose; kicked or smashed into submission by Ziyad, Jayan and Deven, or any of the others, or any that had been before them. Behind the stacked up chairs in the storehouse lay deflated balls of one kind or other, broken rackets and what nets had not been recommissioned into garden netting. Calix and Annora, on one occasion, had escaped the boring meeting and squeezed and wriggled cat-like through forgotten furniture to the darkness at the back of the storehouse. There they had felt more than looked for salvageable playthings. As the background drone of voices continued – Kirillion’s sombre tone dominating – being there itself had become play. A new den, one that despite the darkness and lack of use, smelled and felt cleaner than many of the spaces they played in together up top. Annora sat one end, Calix the other, legs apart and rolling flattened, threadbare tennis balls to each other’s crotches – when on target. Until Annora had to reach for a stray ball and fell a little too heavily into one pile of stacked chairs, causing the tower to tumble down on her. She cried, Calix cried, both frozen by tears until Efa pulled her out, leaving Calix to calm his own tears and find his own escape.

  They hadn’t been allowed in there again since.

  It took stitches and a few days until Annora was mended.

  His guilt hadn’t mended even now.

  The lift rose and through the bars the darkness of the meeting hall was thick – a dead space until it was needed, and even then the full capacity of lights was rarely on. Only once had Calix seen the white walls all aglow. And that had been an accidental switching on of all the light switches. He had noticed a roughly worn path like an oval going around the edge of the space: “We used to run,” explained Linwood once.

  Darkness vanished with level two’s only slightly lighter living space. Levels one and two were given over to bedrooms, bathrooms and dormitories. Communal space centred around the lift, with the staircase that linked the two levels at the far end. To the south end of Sanctum’s depths was a vertical shaft with five rung-ladders in total. Some of the other kids would play on them sometimes, racing each other to the bottom and back up again – but Calix was forbidden. It could be all too easy to lose his strength and fall.

  After Ziyad’s accident the access doors had all been locked – the key to the padlocks patted into the breast pocket of Linwood’s jacket.

  Calix waved to Annora as he rose towards the ceiling. She waved back from her reclined position on an armchair, watching a wildlife programme on the screen. In addition to Annora, there was also Herm and Delia, two other kids he could say he was almost friends with, but they were four and five years old and he didn’t think of them as real friends. Maybe when they had grown up a bit – for now they still cried too much and wanted too much attention. But Annora was his age – they had both arrived at the orphanage at about the same time when they were still just a year old. Linwood had taken them in, brought here by a wanderer who had taken them from a struggling settlement where they could not cope with another child. When asked if they were brother and sister, Linwood had told them “No. Look in the mirror and see for yourself. One of you’s uglier than a pig’s backside, the other could charm bracelets with your smile. I ain’t saying which is which. No – either an accident fell one or both your parents, or as the wanderer said straight, whatever settlement you came from just couldn’t take on no more kids.”

  “So we could have family out there?” asked Annora.

  “Hard to tell, sweetheart. Word is nowhere else is equipped to take on more people than they already have, but we don’t get many orphans, not anymore. Used to get loads – parents dying, other family dying, no one left to take care of them. So they brought them here. But you never know, maybe one day the next visitor will bring a kid in that’ll look just like you and we’ll go hot sake you got yourself a little brother or sister right there. Or maybe your true parents, if one or both be still alive, will wake up from their little slumber of guilt and come find you. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “No,” said Calix.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want no-one coming to take me away – either one of us,” he said, looking to Annora. “This is home. I don’t wanna go out there just to die.”

  Linwood smiled. He had a cutthroat razor he kept hanging in the breast pocket of his shirt and he used it every morning to dry shave his cheeks down to his neck, leaving a thick black goatee. His skin was red with blood vessels for minutes afterwards, and it was a complexion that never quite faded away from the pockmarked skin. Grey eyes examined Calix as he spoke. “You’re gonna have to learn to get over that fear of yours, little man, if you’re gonna be useful ‘round here. Out there does not equate instant death. Just rough is all. Be thankful there ain’t nothin’ round to bite you.”

  Annora gave a last wave as the lift passed through level two’s ceiling and level one’s floor: once-blue carpet as threadless as the tennis balls now just a pale, dirty empty weave spaced between bedrooms and restrooms. The empty halls were lit by low-powered, white neon lighting that never seemed to fail, only minor sections here and there that weren’t yet worth repairing.

  Before G, or ground, was M, the municipal level that predominantly held offices. Faded white tiles of some sort of plastic lead to closed doors with signs like General, Lieutenant General, Reception, Major, and other ranks, plus the Administrative wing and their offices that were mostly used these days only when there was trouble, or a new wanderer wanted to sign up for rations. Scouting crews were also accrued and instructed from here. And if anyone happened to cross what passed for the law, the brig was waiting.

  Calix had only seen the brig used a few times, mostly for domestic arguments put to bed by putting them both to bed in adjacent cells until they had settled the issue. Occasionally a wanderer stepped out of line and was either thrown out, or, if they insisted, they could spend a few nights in the brig with rations, building up their energy for the return to the sands.

  One quarter of the municipal floor was also taken up by the medical section, with Jacinta the physician on constant call. She kept the place spotless; days would pass with nothing for her and her assistant Efa to do, so they spent that time ensuring it could be a germ-free, clean-air zone whenever called upon. Oxygen from the Agridome could be pumped into the air compressed chamber that was kept in ward one for anyone feeling especially deprived. Calix and Annora, p
laying hide and seek, had caught Efa inside it on more than one occasion. “Gets you buzzed,” she said. “It ain’t like in the Agridome where the air smells of shit. It like, gets into your skin and turns your blood red. Everyone should get a hit every now and then.” Calix nuzzled his head into her bony waist as she stood in the doorway. “Everyone but you, Cal. And you, Annora. Weren’t you playing hide and seek? Damn sake, closest I get to a spa – when I’m left alone,” she hinted.

  Aboveground, the light of day hit Calix; what little light remained after it passed through the outer and inner solarised domes, and the thick wad of cloud and faintly red particles that just never seemed to settle, or were else so light only a brief whisper of current threw them circling back up into the atmosphere. A couple blinks and the faintest squint and Calix was ascending with eyes wide, taking everything in.

  Sanctum was paved – cracked and ripped up in places, mostly in front of the salvage yard – but it was all solid. Calix and Annora enjoyed playing skittles near the entrance and watching as visitors stepped through from the sand and into the dome, legs wobbling and unsure. Some even tripped as though stepping on an invisible stair. Months of wading or surfing the sand dunes wearing boots like the broken tennis rackets in Rec and you got used to walking a certain way, Calix figured. The sand shivers Kirillion was fond of calling it. It was just kinda funny, and it made Annora giggle, which was good. “Skit you bastards,” the newcomers would say if they took offence.

  They hadn’t had any visitors for a few weeks, though.

  Linwood said the going was tough this time of year. From the stories he’d heard, Calix wondered when the going was ever good.

  The lift ascended around an empty courtyard, rising like a rocket from the dead centre of the round dome. The roof of a small square foyer disappeared beneath. Calix could turn three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, rocking the lift as he did so, the cage enough for three or four men, or eight or nine kids. To the south stood the school, all angular grey cement and metallic cladding, the cladding as grey as the cement, only told apart by its reflective surface. The sign on the building said ‘Sanctum School for Achievers.’ There was a space before ‘Sanctum’ where years ago the word ‘New’ had been fixed. ‘New Sanctum’ weren’t so new now, thought Calix.

  Next to the school was the aboveground headquarters. Same style and same spit and polish, as Kirillion would say. It’s where a lot of decisions were made around here. It was also check-in for any visitors. With the entrance at the north visitors had to walk the four-hundred metres through Sanctum to get there. It was like a parade, a purposeful charade to put them on edge as the people of Sanctum checked them out to see exactly what kind of visitor they were dealing with. There weren’t a great deal of new faces, but when there was, it was always good to see if the newcomer held your stare, or looked away and down at their boots.

  Stupid, was Calix’s feelings on the matter. They were too dumbfucked by the hard ground to even look up half the time. In his mind, Annora hit him for the naughty word, but they would laugh together. “Fuckity fuck,” he said with his face pressed up against the bars, so quiet that even someone next to him would barely have heard him.

  To the west was Tansy’s, Sanctum’s main canteen. It was the best prepped kitchen in the dome, the rest were all mock-ups to cook and entertain visitors at guest houses. Calix wondered what it had been called before Tansy ran the shop, and if it would be called something different by the time she cooked it herself. Everyone who lived here ate at Tansy’s – cooking was her role, as well as Orlon’s and Win’s who helped out with prep and serving. It was a lot of work to feed eighty-six people, not counting the visitors who came and went. The front side of Tansy’s was a giant marquee clad with metal and neon lighting. CANTEEN was in bright blue neon, and TANSY’S had been fashioned separately by Mr Harcrow, back before Calix was born. The sign sat skewed on a metal plate before the word CANTEEN.

  Mr Harcrow was one of the oldest here, beard thick and white and head bald with little brown spots that got lost in the shadows. He still helped Rafe out from time to time but liked to spend these days staring across the courtyard from the salvage yard in the north-east. Everyone called him Mr Harcrow, even though no-one else really had, or used, a last name here but him. Some say he don’t even remember his first name.

  What stood him really apart was his avoidance of Kirillion and Linwood. He had a problem with authority, they said, to which he would just nod.

  Above, the underside of the watchtower grew larger.

  The farm was east; distant pink mounds lay in their pens awaiting the slops, with chickens pecking at the ground. The ground had been broken up slightly here and, for all Calix knew, it was the only place on the planet there was proper mud. The entrance to the Agridome was just beyond.

  There were only two important things here, Kirillion had mentioned on more than one occasion. Water... and food. If you weren’t an engineer or a mechanic, or a nurse or cook, or teaching the kids, you worked for the Agridome (part of which meant tending to the animals and crafting items from pigskin and sake-knows what else in the workshop). This was Calix’s destiny if he had any choice in it. But Linwood seemed to have other plans for him.

  His face blackened in the shadow from above, and the lift rattled as it slotted into the square casing at the apex of the inner dome. Immediately, the whirring of the generators and ventilation system shook the bars that Calix held, the cage’s resonant frequency seemingly met. The suddenness of it always frightened Calix; it was a roar in his ears from some age-ago cat that so often appeared at the beginning of some films they were allowed to watch. What made it worse was the darkness. Almost involuntarily Calix fell back to the centre of the platform, pushed on all sides by the blackness punctuated but that undulating roar as air was sucked and exhaled, sucked and exhaled, through the lungs of whatever machinery kept the Agridome alive. He was simultaneously in awe, and afraid. It bellowed its might at him. God-like, he always thought. It gave life. For a while it was just a machine. Damn sake it still was a machine (Efa would be happy)! But he’d listened to a visitor’s story one night about how, whenever she was returning to Sanctum, she would stand outside and watch a while, comforted, she said, by the dome.

  “The dome?” asked Calix, curling his lip.

  “Oh you’ve got a lot to learn kiddo,” the stranger said, taking a sip of something strong smelling that she’d bought from either Barrick’s or Mireille’s. “It’s why I like to come back at night. Make a point of it. You can’t really see it in the day time. But at night, that dome is all lit up against the sky and it’s like a great, giant pimple on the sand. Like a big fuck you; we’re here, we’re still here, we’re fucking still here and there ain’t nothing you can do about it – I’d say sorry for the language but that ain’t my fucking deal. But that ain’t even the best part, you see. ‘Cause, at night with the outer dome all lit up from the inside, I swear it fucking breathes, kiddo. In,” and she took a deep breath. “And out,” and she exhaled. “In. Out. In. Out.” And she moaned and had a look on her face that was all the good things that little Calix could imagine feeling. “We wanderers,” she said, whispering now conspiratorially into his ear, “we just come back for the fucking air. Fuck food and water. Aiiiirrrrrr...” and she trailed off, giddy and coarse.

  So in the heart of the Agridome, in the blackness, in the roar, as he passed from the inner sleeve and out of the outer sleeve, that vision of Sanctum breathing always came back to him. He wouldn’t mind working in the Agridome not because the air was better, or for the satisfaction of growing the food that fed them, but because it was the only thing that didn’t feel dead or dying on its feet. He was just a little boy and he didn’t really understand the whys or hows. He just knew he didn’t want to allow the planet to pop this pimple.

  The roaring faded. The lift passed from the Agridome and out of both domes entirely, shunting mechanically to a sudden stop.

  Darkness.

  Calix hated this
bit the most.

  He squinted in preparation and heard Linwood on the other side grabbing the lever. Light seemed to pour over him as soon as there was the slightest crack, and that really was all it was. It split his face in two.

  And then bathed him.

  “Cal!” said Linwood. “What kept you? Report.” He turned his back on Calix and returned to his station overlooking the southern side.

  Still adjusting to the light, through squinted eyes, Calix stepped forward confidently with the wipeboard in his hands. Reading from it, he said “Six full pigs, one half-pig, two shoulders and a few off-cuts I didn’t know the name of. Maybe some ribs? They’d had all the pig’s heads for jellied ham.”

  Linwood had his jacket on – even though Calix thought it was the warmest place in Sanctum – and was staring at his console. “Might have to ration,” he mumbled, scratching his head. “Gimme that.”

  Calix held out the wipeboard, then moved closer. After a few seconds he took another couple steps so the wipeboard disrupted whatever Linwood was looking at. A hand snatched it from him.

  “Stay here,” said Linwood, putting the board down.

  “Where you going?”

  “I have to check on something. Stay here and mind it. There was movement out south so might be wanderers, keep an eye and let them know below if it’s anything.” Linwood stepped into the lift and drew the bars across. He reached around and pulled the lever.

  Stupid design, thought Calix. “But I ain’t ever been up here alone before,” he said.

  “Cal, you need to get a backbone. We need to talk. I need you to understand and start preparing for life on the outside, whether you like it or not.” The doors began to close and he shouted to be heard. “Take a good look at your future!”

  Calix watched the – no, he was a good man, he’d taken him and Annora in when no-one else would. Calix had a debt to him, but why oh why did he have to go out there? He turned from the bastard – yeah, he thought – towards the sands.