Macao Station

Chapter Six

Lina found Marco lying asleep on the sofa in the living room with a piece of half-eaten toast balanced on a plate on his chest. He had been watching the holo, which was still showing the final scenes of a Farsight film about the Corp Wars called The Bitter Frontier. It was a favourite of his, and one that she disapproved of. The holo was the only light source in the room, and shadows lurched across the walls in time to its hectic strobing. The fridge-freezer, which was slowly dying, could be heard even over the crashing sounds of interstellar warfare.

Lina sighed and cautiously approached the prone form of her son. Her suspicions were confirmed — he was sleeping.

She smiled to herself, wanting to reach out and touch him, maybe brush his tangled blond hair away from his eyes. That hair — an unruly shock that resisted all attempts at styling — was the perfect image of her own. She contented herself by simply standing and regarding his expressionless, slumbering face for a moment. He was a good boy, and a wave of simple love — an ache, almost — washed over her. How he could have turned out so well with a mother who was always at work and a father in Platini system, she couldn’t imagine. But there it was — somehow it had happened anyway.

Suddenly, he started, some deep part of his brain alerting him to her presence, and sat up. The plate slid slowly off his chest and clattered onto the floor. The toast, of course, fell butter-side-down. Lina vaguely remembered hearing some scientific explanation as to why that usually happened — something to do with aerodynamics, she thought. Never mind.

‘Mum,’ he said, sleep-slurred, blinking up at her.

‘Hi, kiddo,’ she answered, gently forcing herself onto the sofa beside him. His face was endearingly confused. He craned to see the fallen toast, then relaxed against her.

‘I was watching the holo,’ he said unnecessarily.

‘You know I don’t like you watching that Farsight propaganda film,’ she said, putting an arm round his shoulders.

‘No, Mum, I know.’ He sounded like he was coming more fully to his senses now. ‘I just like it. I know nobody really won the Corp Wars. Farsight was no better than anyone else, right?’

Lina nodded, looking into his face. That face was still a little cute around the edges, but soon it would be a handsome face, she reckoned. The flickering red and green that pulsed from the holo in alternating waves cast him in a surreal light, making him look like some sort of alien visitor from a more perfect universe. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘But now, they’re better than they were, and the Corp Wars were a long time ago. The company provide us a living, right? But I still don’t like you watching that film, on principle.’

‘Okay,’ he agreed. He paused for a moment, then changed the subject: ‘I’m hungry, Mum. I didn’t eat my toast.’

‘No,’ she answered. ‘I reckon the floor ate your toast. Holo — change, random.’ The holo obediently flicked to a scientific documentary about Predecessor ruins. There wasn’t really that much to say on the subject, in Lina’s opinion. Everyone knew they hadn’t actually left anything behind. Except, of course, for the hard core of idiots who insisted that the drug fader had come from DSH-3. ‘I’ll fix you some proper dinner.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’ He snuggled against her appreciatively.

‘No worries. I’ll see what we’ve got.’ Reluctantly (in truth, she was tired enough to fall asleep next to him) Lina forced herself to stand up and go into the kitchen.

‘Maybe we could have those burgers?’ Marco called from the other room.

Lina rearranged the jumble of brooms, pipe-offcuts and shoes around herself so that she could actually access the fridge-freezer. She managed to get into such a position that she could open the door and extract the burgers — real meat burgers saved from the last shuttle — and some salad grown in the aeroponics room. ‘Yeah,’ she called back. ‘Burgers it is.’

She managed to wriggle her way free from the clutches of a broken vacuum cleaner that she had never quite managed to fix, snagging a half-loaf of bread as she went. She picked her way to the stove and began to cook dinner.

‘Mum?’ said Marco from the kitchen doorway, making her jump a little.

‘Yes?’ she answered, turning to face him, spatula in one hand, flight suit speckled with cooking-oil spots.

‘I heard at school that the air scrubbers were wearing out, and that if they fail then we’ll all die.’ Although the tone was nonchalant, Lina couldn’t fail to detect the note of worry hidden underneath.

She smiled reassuringly, uncertain of who she was really trying to reassure. ‘You know Sudowski’s guys won’t let that happen, honey. The station’s always been like this, since long before you were here. Before Nik Sudowski, it was his uncle. And the maintenance teams have always kept this place together. Always. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ he replied, nodding. He sounded a little unsure, although he looked happier.

Lina turned to the cooker again and flipped one of the burgers to check its readiness. Satisfied, she dumped both of them onto the hunks of bread that she had laid out ready on two plates, salad piled alongside.

‘The shuttle is due any day now, anyway, and it should be carrying the part for the scrubbers. The maintenance team have known it was going for ages. Even if the old one fails before that — which it won’t — then they’ll find some way of keeping the system running. Dinner’s up.’

‘Yeah!’ Marco enthused, his stomach overriding any concerns his mind may have had. He hungrily accepted the proffered plate and they headed to the metal table in the living room. Metals were about the only things that were in genuine plenty at Macao, and one kind of got used to seeing them everywhere, usually in their bare, untreated forms. Pretty much the whole of the station was furnished with whatever functional metal happened to be in abundance at the time.

Lina killed the holo and turned on the overhead light, which was set to so-called ‘environmental mode’ and accordingly emitted a ruddy evening-hue. They both tucked in, equally famished.

‘How was school, Son?’ asked Lina around a mouthful of burger. She wiped a smear of tomato ketchup from her chin.

‘Mmm, okay,’ he answered. ‘We’re learning chemistry, but Miss Greene says all chemistry is just stamp collecting, and we should remember that all science is physics really.’ He shrugged and took another bite.

Lina laughed. ‘She did, did she? She should tell that to the chemists at the refinery — they’d like that!’

Marco took a swig from his water glass. ‘Ella told me one of her guards was attacked by a prisoner,’ he said conversationally.

Ella was Ella Kown, security chief and mother of Marco’s best friend, Clay. Lina didn’t really appreciate her telling Marco about the prison attack, but she had never knowingly lied to him and she wasn’t going to start now. ‘Yeah, ’fraid so. He’s gonna be okay, though, the guy who was attacked. Murkhoff, it was. I think Ella’s team just need a little more experience in handling the prisoners. It’s still a bit new to them.’

‘Oh, right,’ he said, seemingly dismissing the matter. ‘Is Eli still gonna take me to the game?’

‘The soccer? Yeah, I should think so — he hasn’t said otherwise.’

He nodded. ‘Good. I like Eli.’

Lina nodded, too. ‘So do I. He’s one of the good guys. Even though he works us half to death sometimes.’

‘Keeps us spinning, right, Mum?’

‘Yeah,’ she agreed, picking up a piece of salad with her fingers, grinning to hear him say those words. ‘That’s the line.’