‘They need you to travel halfway round the world just to sit in on some dumb meeting?’

  ‘If I’m not there. If I don’t make that little effort to be there in person and our competitors do? You know how that’ll look.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I know.’

  ‘And it’s not halfway round the world.’ Shui-Lin sniffed, rubbed her nose, and put the navy blue rucksack back in the wardrobe. ‘It’s barely a quarter. Anyway, the distance is irrelevant. It’s the same however far you go. You know—the lightning principle, and all that.’ She unfastened a pouch on the mauve rucksack and checked the readout within.

  Trisha craned to look. ‘Is it charged? I hope it’s properly charged. What if it suddenly loses power?’

  ‘It’s got plenty. And it doesn’t use much anyway. Not these days.’

  Trisha rolled onto her back. She stared at the ceiling. She listened to the sound of rain on the rooftop. ‘Well, I don’t understand it. Seems like it would need an awful lot of power. You know, for something like that.’

  ‘No. Not really. Not any more.’ Shui-Lin sounded vague. She was looking for something, checking the drawers of her bedside table, checking under the bed itself. ‘It’s—a different sort of coding. Different sort of scan. It gets used to you. It, uh—utilises stored data. Monitors microchanges, fluctuations, etc. Then it only needs to—’ She straightened. ‘Look, I don’t really understand it either. But it works. That’s all that actually matters in the—’ She squinted towards the bed. ‘Trisha, have you seen my pen?’

  Trisha sat up, then reached over to her own side of the bed and rummaged among the items on the table there. Turning back she held out a pen. It was smooth and white, with a strange ergonomic design that curved in the middle and bulbed outward at one end. From some angles it looked like a piece of plastic cutlery.

  Shui-Lin took it from her.

  ‘Have you been using this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Trisha, these are very expensive.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So—’ Shui-Lin put it into her bag. ‘There are plenty of other pens you could use.’

  Trisha flopped back pettishly onto the bed.

  ‘Oh yes, don’t be forgetting your regulation pen, and regulation notebook, and regulation calculator, and regulation lunchbox. Gotta get all the accessories. Gotta collect the whole set. God knows what might happen if you travelled with something in your pockets that wasn’t manufactured by, and purchased directly from, our wise and propitious overlords.’

  Shui-Lin ignored her and went to stand by the window, glancing out at the rain. From her pocket she once again took out the slim black box and ran her thumb over a notched wheel, scrolling through her list of saved destinations.

  The voice that came from behind her was suddenly very soft.

  ‘Shui-Lin?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t you miss having long hair?’

  Shui-Lin didn’t answer. Rainwater was falling in a long broken curtain from the guttering. She could see a little patch of blue sky far out over the forest.

  ‘I preferred you with long hair. It was so—you.’

  ‘You know why I have it short.’

  ‘I know. But your eyelashes must stick out beyond the hood too, occasionally, maybe, and they don’t get chopped off. In any case, do you think that would actually happen to your hair? I mean, really?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think that’s the reason anyhow. It’s just more—convenient.’

  ‘But don’t you miss it?’

  ‘Everybody has short hair.’ She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s easier that way.’

  ‘Shui-Lin?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you resent me being here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because I do. Every day. When you’re not here. I feel guilty.’

  ‘I know you do. It’s alright.’

  ‘Because I don’t contribute. Not financially.’

  ‘You don’t need to. I make more than enough.’

  ‘And I’m sorry. Sorry for how I whinge on sometimes. I really am.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘I just get really scared.’

  ‘It’s okay. I understand. It did sound pretty horrible, your dream. I didn’t mean to make light of it. I’m—just a little rushed. You know how it is.’

  Trisha didn’t reply.

  The blue of the sky was spreading. The hazy sheets of rain were thinning. Shui-Lin put on the mauve rucksack and plugged it in to the rest of her suit. There was a fine high-pitched tone, barely audible, and her skin prickled beneath the clingy inner fabric. On her tiny display four amber lights now showed, but the two reds were still blinking.

  Shui-Lin drew the tight black sock of the hood up over her head. It covered her ears and mouth and nose like a balaclava, leaving only a slit for her eyes. Over her hands she slipped two gloves of that same smooth material. She sat down on the edge of the bed. Trisha was facing away from her.

  Shui-Lin leaned forward and kissed Trisha’s mess of soft red hair, the hood’s dark film holding back the brief press of her lips. There was a fine beeping from inside the green jacket.

  Trisha turned about as Shui-Lin slid the black box from her pocket. They looked at it together. Now all the lights were amber. They were blinking in unison.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘About five minutes. Probably a little more.’

  ‘And that’s what you get for the premium package? Five minutes?’

  Shui-Lin nodded.

  ‘Not exactly instant service.’

  Within the hood’s narrow window Shui-Lin’s eyes creased a little at their corners.

  ‘Best not to be too hasty with these things.’

  She withdrew from the room and went downstairs.

  ¶

  Outside the rain was still falling, though thinned now to near nothing.

  Over the black balaclava Shui-Lin pulled a second hood, the jacket’s own dark green hood. It hung stiffly forward, shading her eyes. As with the body of the jacket it was mostly decorative, though it did help keep off the last light drops of rain. The weather itself made no difference to travelling. Shui-Lin simply preferred not to get too wet.

  A narrow path of decking led over the lawn and into the bamboo grove. At the end was a small clearing, into which Shui-Lin now stepped.

  She positioned herself at the very centre. She looked up through the bamboo stems. They swayed gently, their long lines converging, all pointing towards a narrow circle of sky.

  On the display of the black box the blinking amber lights had each turned to a steady green. The box beeped once more.

  Shui-Lin took a deep breath. She closed her eyes—and waited.

  11. Further, More

  FROM WHERE the two men were sitting, high on the side of the bluestone mountain, the desert plain looked empty and flat. It looked like it stretched all the way to the far horizon, as though there was nothing but that flatness continuing right over the rest of the world. Except, if they strained their eyes through the distant haze, what they had at first taken for a long smooth curve showed very faintly to be a jagged grey ridge, marking where the ring of mountains once again began.

  It wasn’t much of a camp, they’d merely stopped for a breather. They’d shucked off their heavy packs and unfolded a couple of lightweight collapsible chairs. From a chilled inner pocket one man now drew two bottles of beer. He cracked off the caps, letting them fall to the blue-grey dust at his feet, then passed an open bottle to his companion.

  The two men sat back contentedly. They gazed out over the plain. There wasn’t much to look at but the vastness of that empty space of air, pressing the desert flat. There wasn’t much to hear but the non-stop chirping and buzzing of insects, or the occasional unseen scuttle of a lizard. And yet, every so often, they thought they could discern voices, faint, thin, floating up on the breeze from the desert floor. Voices like workmen calling over a loudhailer. They couldn’t make out any words, the distance must have been too great, the signal of those voices getting broken by the wind and arriving in patches.

  The light, when they saw it, wasn’t all that spectacular. Just a gleam out on the plain. A mere spot of brightness that lifted, slowly at first, then gradually faster, up into the thickness of the air, past the ragged line of the horizon, and on into the clear blue of the sky. By then of course they’d heard it: the muffled rumble of powerful thruster engines, rolling and booming up from the middle of the plain, and then from the air itself, a giant ripping sound, as though the very sky was being torn open, not quickly, but consistently, definitively, leaving a long grey seam of vapour where the rip had formed.

  They saw too the dust spreading out from the launch point, and a short while later felt a gentle wave of warm moist air waft up and over them, carrying on it the tang of something metallic, an iron bite that caught in the back of the throat.

  The two men sipped from their bottles. One of them began nodding enthusiastically.

  ‘Man! I mean, whew! Now, Jake, that sure is something special, ain’t it? I love seeing them do that. All that power. That muscle. Makes you kinda shivery to think about it.’

  ‘Sure does, Pete.’ The other man nodded as well, but more slowly. ‘Makes you proud too though, don’t it? Like, how far we’ve come? How far we’ve still to go?’

  ‘Whew!’ Pete sipped from his bottle then pointed the neck out at the rocket, now little more than a fine white dot arcing out into the blue. ‘And them getting another satellite up there? Yup, that makes good sense. I mean, sure, some folks would say as you don’t need it. Like it’s a waste or something. But I reckon you can’t have too many, right? Makes the whole process more accurate. Like, say the whole sky was full of them? Like a giant intricate web, dotted all over the sky? That’d be kinda magnificent. That’d be better for everyone.’

  ‘Not sure that’s actually possible, Pete. But yeah, I get what you mean.’

  They gazed at the sky a while, the air still full of a gentle grumbling, like departing thunderclouds.

  Pete closed one eye and held his bottle out at arm’s length, its base to the middle of the plain, then: ‘Ptcheeeoow!’ And the bottle lifted off slowly into the sky in a gentle arc back towards Pete’s lips, where it was duly tipped upwards.

  Jake smiled. ‘Not that this one’s a satellite, mind. This one’s going all the way. This one’s headed right to the moon.’

  ‘Whoa! Really? How can you tell?’

  Jake shrugged. ‘Oh, you get to hearing things. You know. People talk.’

  ‘Oh, right. Sure.’ Pete squinted up into the sky. He could still see the rocket, but not the moon. ‘I wonder what they want with that old rock anyway. I was always told there ain’t nothing on the moon now but faded flags and footprints.’

  ‘Not on it, no. Not at the surface. But under it.’ Jake grinned. ‘The moon’s rich, Pete. Didn’t you know? It’s got all the minerals we’ll ever need, just up there, forever floating above our heads. And no worries about digging them out, either. No compulsory purchase orders. No stubborn old lady refusing to budge over her tiny postage stamp of land.’

  Pete nodded. ‘Whoa—rich, huh? That makes you think.’ He continued nodding for a moment, then he lifted his beer bottle close to his eye and looked through its curved sides at the departing rocket. He could only just see the glimmer of the engines through the distortion of brown glass, and only then if he held himself very still. He lowered the bottle. ‘How do you suppose they’re gonna bring all that stuff back? That’s gotta be real heavy. Sure would be expensive too. You’d think it’d be a helluva lot easier digging it out down here than all the way up there.’

  ‘They ain’t carting it back by the rocket-load, Pete! No, no. They’ll be setting up one of those transporter stations. Up there on the moon. That’s where they’re off to now.’ He tipped his own bottle in the general direction of the rocket. ‘They’re gonna go build a real big one. Then they just whizz back the goods as and when they’ve got a full bucket. No great problem. No extra expense.’

  Pete rocked back on his chair. ‘Oh man, now that’s clever. That’s real genius right there.’ He looked doubtful for a moment. ‘How do you come to know all this, Jake? I ain’t heard it on the news. And you’d think they’d mention a thing like that. If it was official, like.’

  ‘Been rumours for a while. And rumours don’t come out of nowhere. But you know how it is—they gotta at least try and keep it secret.’

  ‘Right, right. In case someone steals their ideas.’ Pete smiled again. ‘But once it’s up and running, then—bam! Just like that. All those riches will start pouring in. It’s gonna make the world wealthy all over again.’ He nodded. ‘Yeah, that does sound pretty sensible.’

  ‘Sure is. And it’s the same with the workers, too. Cos, you know, it ain’t much fun being on the moon for so long. You go all flaky. Wobbly. Your body kinda gives up on you. Your bones turn to mush.’

  ‘Right, right. So—they’ll be using like robots or something?’

  ‘What? No. Well—yeah, maybe they’ll use machines and that, of course, for digging out the stuff itself. But no, it’ll be guys like you and me who’ll do the steering, the actual operating of those machines.’

  ‘Right, like until just before their bones turn to mush, and then they come back. Whew! That’s tough. I mean, I wouldn’t wanna be those guys. I sure hope the job pays well.’

  ‘No, Pete. That’s not what—’ Jake took off his cap, rubbing at his brow with the heel of his palm. ‘They’ll be sending the workers up in shifts, see? You know, via the transporter? So, each one spends just a short while up on the moon, does a bit of digging, comes back to recuperate, and then after a few weeks when they’ve got their strength back, up they go again for another stint. And sure, I guess they’ll be paid a good amount for it. Or a half-decent wage, in any case.’

  Pete sat forward in his seat, staring out over the plain. He rolled his bottle between his hands then tipped it slowly onto its side, watching the shape of the liquid change within. He tried to get that slowly stretching surface as close as he could to the lip without spilling it. He tilted the bottle with great care. But because of the neck’s narrowing, the liquid gave a sudden surge and a measure glugged out and splashed into the dust before Pete could right the bottle again. Only a small amount was lost. Nothing to be concerned about. Not in proportion to how much the bottle had held.

  Pete sniffed. ‘Well, even so, I guess I sure wouldn’t like to be the first guy that tries that trip. You know, after they get the big transporter up and running.’

  Jake nodded. ‘True enough, true enough. That’s a mighty long way to the moon. And it won’t be good thick air they’ll be zipping through. Sending minerals is one thing, sure, but a person? Well—’

  ‘You’d think they’d test it. You know, before sending up the rocket? Before building the whole thing. You’d think they’d wanna make sure first.’

  ‘Oh, they did. Well, kind of. As close as they could anyhow. They sent a guy right round the world. They hopped him from satellite to satellite. They had to rig it up all special. But there was that guy. They did it.’

  ‘Whoa—that had to be some trip! Poor guy musta felt real dizzy.’

  ‘Sure he musta been dizzy. They had to send him round like a dozen times, all in one go. You know, to simulate the full distance to the moon? And I think they were pretty worried too, cos of all that curving. Cos he’d’ve been going at quite a lick, see, so they were worried some of his particles might like fling off into space? At least going to the moon’ll be more or less direct. But in any case—things seemed to work out alright.’

  ‘So, how long did it take him, end to end?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Jake shrugged. ‘Say, like—five minutes or something?’

  ‘Sheesh, that’s kinda pretty slow, actually. Don’t you reckon? That’s a long time to be on the move like that. A long time to be, you know, not altogether yourself.’

  ‘Yeah, musta been all those junctions on the way. Probably slowed things down a fair bit. I’m guessing the moon trip will be a lot smoother.’

  Pete tried tipping his bottle again. The level was lower this time and the angle seemed to change more rapidly, so Pete took extra care, watching as the liquid neared the neck. But the level was now so low that the bottle was past horizontal before there was that sudden surge and another big glug was lost, swallowed quickly by the dry earth.

  Pete winced as he righted the bottle. It felt like he’d lost just as much on the second go as the first. He looked up at the sky. He couldn’t see any sign of the rocket’s engines any more, only the long curve of its vapour trail, still hanging in the air.

  ‘Do you think they’ll manage it?’

  ‘Sure they will. They wouldn’t be trying if they didn’t think it was possible. Look at all of what they’ve achieved so far.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Pete bobbed. ‘But I was just thinking. Like, maybe they should’ve waited a while longer? You know, just to be sure.’

  ‘What?’

  Pete stared at the ground between his feet. ‘Well, just seems like all through history someone’s always got to be the first to do this, or the first to discover that, or the first to get to some hard-to-reach place, and get all the way back home again. And they take all these fantastic risks? Just so as it’s them that can be the first? And often people die along the way, because they’re all trying too hard, or else not hard enough, or they don’t have the right sort of kit. But like, whenever I heard such stories I always used to think, well, why didn’t they just wait a little while longer? Like why not get it all worked out first, make sure it’s all real safe, make sure you got kit that won’t give up of a sudden. You know, why not make it easy for yourself? Because it’s like they’re always in such a rush, and so they always make mistakes, things they hadn’t thought of till they happen. So I always thought, like, if they just waited a while, whoever was first then, well, they’d still be first. Just a bit later on. And I don’t suppose it matters much who that person is, right?’