Habitat

By Vanda Denton

A tale speculating on where the science of synthetic biology might take us. Outer Shell Engineer Buchanan has good reason for his belligerence. The task of maintaining the integrity of the habitat involves walling off areas which have become contaminated. His job will herald an early, agonising death. The rules maintain a happy, productive and satisfying life, for the majority. The Keepers enforce the rules. Keeper Dominic falls in love with a woman his parents discover to be religious. Her entire village is secretly taken to the cells. Knowing Buchanan will provide his best method of vengeance Dominic agrees to trust him in the inclusion of whatever plan the OSE has devised for his revenge. Buchanan and Dominic survive what they had expected to be certain death only to be captured and sold on in an auction. Here they find themselves in a world of chimeras and humans with blended genes. They discover the reason for assassination attempts on them as well as the true purpose of the habitat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781326484910

Book preview

Habitat

Habitat

Vanda M Denton

© 2015 Vanda M Denton

All rights reserved by the author. No part of this publication can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers and/or authors.

This book is published by and available from:

VinctalinBooks

www.vinctalin.com

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-326-42507-4

ISBN eBook: 978-1-326-48491-0

Prologue

He sat rigid, fixated on his hands with their palms down and fingers spread on the table. Rhol Sud had no experience of this side of the law. Interaction with Keepers had only ever been amicable. He had always regarded them as the friendly front line of a caring administration. This arrest, this unfounded accusation, had him floundering in shock. When he read out the warrant the Grey Coat had been courteous, as all Keepers were. No one he knew had ever been issued with the mildest sanction so he tried calming himself. Obviously there’d been a mistake. He had accompanied the Keeper to the custodial suites willingly, expecting to explain… Explain what? He couldn’t understand the rule he was accused of infringing so what did he think he would be able to explain?

Renewed efforts to still his mind had some effect. He trusted the Keepers and he was innocent. Soon he would be on the long trek home, mocking his own foolish apprehension no doubt.

He’d lost track of time and judged it now by tiredness and aching muscles. Held fast to the chair as he was, Rhol yearned for the freedom and security of his home. It was a half-day walk from Rhol’s farm to the custody suites. He hadn’t known that until the Keeper told him. During that interminable walk Rhol had tried asking questions but the Keeper would not be engaged in conversation. The farmer was obliged to maintain the sedate pace set by the Keeper who felt no need to flout the rule on walking speed. He took heart from that memory. Surely if that Grey Coat had believed there was any truth in the warrant he would have proceeded with greater haste.

His eyes shifted the short distance to other hands on the table, and the jacket at their wrists. It was made of the same grey fabric as the Grey Coat’s and sporting two narrow blue stripes at the end of each sleeve. It seemed an age since the Grey Coat had handed him over to the Blue Coats. That was when fear began to clutch at his chest but not yet so deep inside that he felt unable to make his case.

The face across the table, the face he was now unable to lift his eyes to, was the face of the Blue Coat who had taken charge of him at the reception area. There had been a brief conversation between the Grey Coat who brought him here and this Keeper who had other Blue Coats bring him to this interview room, this chair and this table.

Rhol’s eyes turned slowly back to his spread fingers and the little hoops that held them to the table. For each digit there was a restraint between the first and second knuckles and another above the large knuckle except for the thumb with one band above the only joint there. He’d used those hands for all but five years of the fifty-one years of his life. Farmers’ children began helping out with chores in their sixth year and from that time on scrapes and knocks left life-long signs.

Rhol tried to imagine the purpose of the hammer resting at the edge of the table. He didn’t recognise it. Surely he hadn’t been accused of theft! While he strove for a means of defending himself against that possibility he studied the sore knuckle of the index finger of his left hand. Only lately had he laughed, as his family did at the time of the injury, for having been so inept at his age as to hit it with a hammer, missing the nail the blow was intended for. The plastic half-circles either side of that knuckle were on tiny hinges. Rhol relived the confusion when he had offered no resistance to the two Blue Coats who had pushed him into the chair, pulled his hands to the table and manacled them there. First the wide bands for his wrists were turned on their hinges and the tab screwed down, then this finger and one by one, each of the others. He’d tried to ask why but their only response was that Keeper Huxley would be conducting this interrogation.

His pulse rate surged alarmingly as the blue-trimmed sleeve moved towards him, pushing the illegal flyer between his hands and under his eyes. He heard the machine he’d only half noticed on entering the room, beep rapidly in unison with his increased cardio-vascular activity, understanding now the purpose of the strap around his chest. The reflex to pull back was immediately curtailed by restraints holding him to the chair at seven points.

Keeper Huxley was in no hurry. ‘You requisitioned ten sheets of this quality of paper three hundred and seventy-two days ago.’

Rhol’s mind spun back a year. He had little use for paper. Mostly he used it to educate his son in farming techniques and then let the boy draw on it until it was so shredded it was useful only for bulking out compost.

He stared at the paper in bafflement. ‘Yes.’

‘The writing is not in the ink of the calligraphers or any art material utilised in Bohemia. It has not been produced by an engineer’s graphite pencil or by the plastic crayon used by a child. What is that paint, Mr. Sud?’

He recognised it, sure enough, as the words swam and the nature of the case against him began to make horrible sense.

He swallowed. ‘Clay.’

‘Speak up please.’

‘It looks like the clay we use for slip but I swear this is nothing to do with me. Gardeners use slip…’

‘We’ll come to that. Which hand do you write with?’

‘My right.’

When Keeper Huxley stood with relaxed ease, casually picking up the hammer, Rhol’s eyes at last followed upward motion but only as far as the blue lapels on the jacket of the grey uniform. His mouth widened in disbelief as without warning the instrument slammed into the small knuckle of his smallest finger.

‘You were denounced,’ Keeper Huxley informed him quietly.

His hands grazed and bruised on the manacles as they strained for the need to cradle the fractured joint while the sight of crushed, bloody flesh driven off the bone receded into the darkness of pure shock. ‘But I didn’t…’

The hammer fell on the second knuckle of his little finger causing him to cry out in pain and disbelief.

‘You’re not here for a confession, Mr. Sud.’

Gruelling labour had resulted in severe and unexpected damage during the course of his work but he’d never once in all of his life experienced an attack on his body by another person. This blow had detached shards of bone. They sailed in a pool of pulp and blood. The sight of it, along with the aching, swirled in the turmoil of his mind, ‘But I had nothing to do…’

The hammer smashed down grinding into the smaller knuckle of his ring finger and he cried out his denial of any knowledge concerning the appalling, defamatory pink clay words on the leaflet.

A dispassionate voice told him, ‘This is not a trial. This is an investigation. The level of your cooperation will dictate the severity of your sentence.’

‘I’ve never seen, I swear, I can’t tell you what I don’t know, I always keep the rules, I’ve never…’

When the hammer crunched into the large knuckle of the ring finger Rhol’s mouth twisted in physical suffering and anguish. There seemed nothing he could say to halt this unfair assault but desperation made a beggar of him all the same.

‘I don’t understand. Please stop and let me…’

Trembling wildly now, Rhol wrestled growing awareness of physical distress with incredulity in a desperate search for respite. There must be something he could say to make the Keeper understand the absurdity of these accusations. Almost anyone could have requested that type of paper when he did. In any case he’d had only ten sheets. That wasn’t even being questioned. Surely the people behind this had made more than ten leaflets. And the clay slip: anyone could have taken a pot of slip out of a hundred possible sheds. It was blatantly ludicrous…

The hammer landed on the large knuckle of his middle finger shattering the bone, dislodging flesh and gristle and sending blood upwards to splatter the table.

‘This interrogation will be over when you give me the names of your accomplices.’

The farmer’s dry mouth worked to find words but only incoherent moaning and keening emerged from it.

‘This is not the only method of questioning available to me, Mr. Sud. This you surely do understand. We cannot allow you and your associates to incite mass suicide. In comparison you can comprehend, no doubt, that broken fingers would be insufficient recompense. We want only to terminate the activities of an illegal cell bent on harming law-abiding citizens. Give me one name and you will be allowed to go home on a conditional discharge.’

Air raked in and out of the farmer’s lungs as he struggled to find an acceptable response, realising at last there was little time to waste between the hammer strikes. But the seconds disappeared in a fog of panic as the hammer was driven down on to the small knuckle of his index finger, causing him to jerk violently against all restraints, adding to his torment. Pathetic wailing seeped along with bubbles of spittle through his twisted lips.

‘You seem remarkably slow even for a farmer, Mr. Sud. I’m willing to accept you may have been talked into plotting with these terrorists by a person with a sharper mind. Give me the name of that person.’

Rhol searched his simple mind for a name he could give. Certainly there’d been gossip amongst the farmers, of possible dissidents. Usually they centred around gardeners who seemed to be ridiculously arrogant for the no greater talent required in their work. Sometimes the animosity rumbled viciously beneath the surface of the seemingly smooth and soothing life under the Rules. He was considering that maybe it was a gardener who had denounced him when heavy metal hammered down on the large knuckle of his index finger making him scream out in agony. His voice was lost to him amid the turbulent pounding of his heart, dribbling and dripping perspiration.

‘With your thumb intact, Mr. Sud, you may still manage to grip something less precise than a brush for painting clay letters, in your right hand. Save your thumb and give me a name.’

‘The gardeners,’ he sobbed. ‘It must have been a gardener.’

‘Which one?’

‘I can’t know who. How could I…’

The realisation of the imminent destruction of his thumb was expressed in howling denials from the depths of his disbelieving soul. Shaking from head to toe and with frightening palpitations Rhol fought to find a trail through his chaotic head that could lead him to the explanation which would save him from an even more horrific ordeal.

Keeper Huxley moved calmly round the table. ‘With one hand you will manage much of your work. You won’t need a great deal of help with your personal hygiene while your left hand is whole. How well will you cope without either hand, Mr. Sud?’

‘Walter Knox. I think it’s possible Walter Knox has something to do with…’

‘Thankyou, Mr. Sud. Your discharge will be downloaded to a hand device. Collect it on your way out. Be sure to abide by the conditions therein.’

Rhol again studied the words on the illegal, rough paper that had been thrust across the table prior to the onslaught of this torture and that had brought him to this terrible place. Shocked by the misery and desperation of sending another innocent man to this fate, he read the large, pink clay-painted words on the flyer with its criminal message, and that he had been falsely accused of writing: YOU DON’T NEED TO BE IN HERE.

Part 1

Chapter 1

Bchanan sat a metre from the open door of his home pod, balancing the board under the sheet of paper on his knee. This was the most relaxing time in his day and this his favoured position, out of sight of the security cameras, resting his back against the wall of his pod. There was only absentminded satisfaction in his scrutiny of his sketch.

He had no need to look up to know someone had crept close, watching him. Solitude had honed his senses. It was rare for anyone to venture this far into this remote corner of the habitat.

The footfalls were light: possibly a woman’s. This was probably a daring woman. Or maybe it was a desperate one. Whatever, they were not the confident steps of a woman who had a right, or who had applied for permission, to be here. He considered the reasons a woman might approach a character such as himself or risk the chance of being caught on camera in this Restricted Area. The rules allowed him one visitor at a time for up to two hours in his leisure time. As he hadn’t invited anyone there and he’d received nothing from Administration to inform him that a woman had applied to meet with him he could think of no likely reason for her presence. Frankly, as much as he’d have enjoyed believing this was a fantasy about to be realised, no one living in the habitat could be unaware of the rules regarding a Restricted Area.

When she stepped a little closer Buchanan inhaled the distinctive scent of an adult female. Her breathing was soft, low but faster than a relaxed pace yet slower than the nervousness a sensible woman would feel, in the circumstances. She wasn’t shivering. Either she knew to dress warmly for this extremity or she had approached quickly, her body not yet losing its warmth.

He continued to feign ignorance of her presence as he noted four more steps bringing her closer. There was a little doubt now. A falter in the tread of her feet. Buchanan added some shading to the image on the rough sheet of paper he held against a board. She cleared her throat. A light voice box. A young woman.

Buchanan smudged the shading with his thumb as he tested her mettle with his quiet, deep and warning tones, ‘You are out of bounds.’

Isla steadied herself. When she had suggested they come here with their request, her grandfather had dismissed the idea as the last thing they could try. All Outer Shell Engineers, he had warned the brethren at that meeting, were unpredictable. Rhys Buchanan was notoriously several degrees beyond that. As cold as the Prohibited Zone he had made his home next to.

Her attention was drawn to his small home pod. He had added no personal touches to the exterior of it. She gave a little consideration to her own home pod, bigger than this because she shared it with her mother, and a pleasant shade of pink. Pastels were the colours of variously sized pods in her village, with each one a personal choice. The pastel theme had been agreed many generations ago and there wasn’t even an oral tradition telling the story of the community choice. She knew only that when her parents married and were allocated a family pod they had it changed from pastel green to pink. Buchanan’s was uncoloured, raw grey, the same as it had emerged from the factory.

She guessed he chose to do his art outside because the light was better. Her people did their writing outside for the same reason. Her people were organised though. They had chairs with desks in tidy rows in order to maintain easy discipline and neat calligraphy. They also had something this Outer Shell Engineer would never guess at any more than he’d have need of it: well-rehearsed deceptions. Should an outsider visit their community all they would observe was the production of children’s books and scripts for drama.

Isla took her time assessing the man she knew only by reputation. From what she could see he lived up to expectations, if toughness could be measured by a man wearing only a vest and the ubiquitous drawstring trousers, in the cold air of this distant location. Like all fully qualified and active Outer Shell Engineers he was relatively young, very strong and male. She had come into contact with some who had finished their stint in that post. None was younger than twenty-five and none older than thirty-five. On average they had a decade of communal life following retirement. Quite a few people remembered the job they did and took care of them as a reward for that and just as many made their last decade of life as satisfying as possible because of the knowledge they would not do the job properly without some kind of recompense. Mostly the initial coercion of getting them to take the job was in the form of making sure they married young and had children of their own to protect, along with all the other inhabitants here. The wife and children were not obliged to stay with the engineer once he began to change. Without that rule there’d be no wives for the Outer Shell Engineers and no OSEs and no habitat.

This engineer was about thirty. He was still in excellent health, physically. Buchanan was tall, broad, lean and powerful. He was also single. So far no one had tempted him into marriage, yet as far as anyone could tell he did his job properly.

He sighed, ‘You know the risk so what are you doing here?’

Isla wanted to get the obvious out of the way. On the other hand she wasn’t good at brevity.

She produced a steady voice. ‘I know you’re not married and I know you get plenty of offers and that you probably think that’s why…’

He looked up. His penetrating gaze startled her.

Buchanan noted a face he could stand seeing at regular intervals. A pretty, light and innocent face with as far as he could tell, or cared, a good enough figure inside the warm, baggy clothes. So far she hadn’t been caught breaking the rules. He considered sending her away to await an official invitation from him; one sanctioned by the Administration. She’d been here only a few moments and it wasn’t long since the last Keeper visited to check security so he calculated he could work on this illicit meeting for a few minutes longer without incurring what to most would be unpleasant interrogation and to him just another aggravation.

He made his first point clear. ‘I’m not interested in marriage.’

Isla’s voice grew stronger, ‘That’s not why I’m here.’

Buchanan’s expression almost stood on the edge of interest. In that case his hopeful surmising looked sure to come to fruition. It had been a long time since a woman had come to offer him comfort. On the other hand this was unusual. Usual was women who tried to be faithful to their engineers in the few years remaining to them following retirement but who sometimes needed the feel of a body that was like her husband’s used to be. This most certainly was not the sort of woman to be wed to an Outer Shell Engineer. Families only ever allowed their most robust daughters to volunteer for that position. There were women sent to him surreptitiously by minor rule-breakers who didn’t want even one Outer Shell Engineer to forget he was valued. He’d even known husbands to ask their wives to oblige ‘just this once’ for the sake of their child. Then there were the women who thought an OSE must have something special to offer, either in goods or in entertainment. The women of Bohemia were known for this but he had lived a very long way from Bohemia for a long time. With it being more than a day’s walk here and another back he supposed his growing notoriety just might appeal well enough to spur one of his old Bohemian friends into making that journey. Until he looked at her face he had hoped that was the case. Such women were prone to act on impulse, failing to go through the correct procedures. Such women would wait for the patrolling Keeper to leave and then sneak in. They knew to stay for a fabulous hour of passion, inside the pod, and to leave quietly, keeping clear of the cameras. This was not one such woman, even then he made no quick judgements.

He said, ‘I don’t have much to offer but I’m willing to consider trying to get you what you want in exchange for a single tumble.’

‘What!’ She was aghast.

Buchanan spent a couple of minutes of his short life expectancy contemplating the notion of what looked like a virgin, and then faced reality. Even if someone had managed to raise a girl as darling as this but was low enough to sacrifice her, was he, Rhys Buchanan, actually interested in corrupting her? There was no fooling himself there could ever be more than that on his part. He would offer her no marriage and no children. One tumble with an OSE would leave her with no home in the type of community that had raised someone as sweet as this.

He glanced at the girl staring into his face with no real idea what was on her mind. It wasn’t even close to what he imagined. In fact she was comparing his appearance to that of another man of a similar age. Olav’s neat beard was framed by dense, wavy hair curling down to his shoulders while Buchanan’s light bristled head and beard were uniformly clipped to a utilitarian half centimetre. She was thinking also of how Olav was the nearest thing she had to a brother. He was a good man. A man who worked hard and always found time for writing, yet Isla had the abrupt realisation that his life was soft and easy compared to Rhys Buchanan’s.

He seemed bored, ‘Well?’

‘What?’

‘Flipping heck!’ Buchanan swore fiercely for having his free time interrupted as much as for the frustration of promises going nowhere to say nothing of the growing danger. If a dutiful inhabitant had mentioned to a Keeper that he or she had seen a woman enter the tunnels to the Restricted Area it was possible that Keeper would check with Administration and on finding this to be a rule-breaking encounter would come here giving him grief whilst arresting the stupid girl.

He dropped the drawing. ‘Make an offer or crawl away before I frighten you.’

She’d been shocked by the use of illegal language and manners. And there was no mistaking the menace in his expression but she recognised some added theatre there too. There was lust as well. And she found herself to not be entirely immune to that so she changed the dynamic.

‘I’m not offering you anything in the concrete sense.’

‘Damn it!’ Buchanan glanced up to the chronometer. Even if he did decide to try persuading her to get this moving, the most he’d get with her was half an hour and he hated that. Opportunities were rare. Half an hour was grabbed when it turned up, normally. But half an hour with this one would leave him longing for more and that was a sentiment he never allowed himself. But then again, he wasn’t getting any younger. Or healthier.

By way of showing no reaction to what looked like pity in her eyes he picked up his drawing and continued to express disinterest in the uninvited guest. If he’d been sure she believed he was in need of her sympathy he’d have been angry. The fact was then, had he been telepathic he’d have been furious because Isla was thinking of the time when she’d worked with disturbed children and she’d felt very sorry for them. Often those children were the product of the marriage between an Outer Shell Engineer and a woman who had been persuaded to take him on. She felt to understand a great deal about Buchanan as a generic OSE from her experience of the fathers of those children. Their emotions were impaired. Isla’s theory was that they were at least a little that way before they accepted the work and that the loneliness of that work along with the unavoidable health problems and the conditions of the marriages was bound to result in children who were not truly loved by their fathers. The custom of marrying them off and allowing them a child worked on a different level in keeping that standard of work high. They protected their offspring so that a part of them could live on, not because they loved them. That seemed like a devilish trade-off to Isla.

Buchanan reckoned this foolish child had reached the conclusion she had some understanding of him as she chose to sit on the floor, crossing her legs, only a couple of metres away from him. He couldn’t know that was how she positioned herself for talking to troubled children. He sensed enough of it though to oscillate between vexation and amusement.

She spoke boldly, ‘I am not here to trade.’

That was an interesting way of looking at things. ‘Trade?’

She was brimming with blind confidence, ‘I am not here to make a deal.’

Buchanan studied the face of innocence and laughed in it. ‘You believe I can do mercy?’

To Buchanan’s surprise those words animated her. ‘Yes I do! My name is Isla Randolph and I am here to humbly request a gift.’

‘I’ll be damned. I thought today was going to be as boring as every other.’

‘It’s a big ask.’

Buchanan’s curling lip smoothed out a little as he sensed an imminent contradiction of the ‘not here to make a deal’ assertion. He recalled her specific words. She had suggested there could be a trade but for her part not of a commodity.

‘Do I look like the kind of man who gives a Bohemian’s toss for the small needs of small people?’

‘You have something that we need.’

‘We?’

‘My friends and I.’

Buchanan thought of a couple of possibilities but he wasn’t into guessing. He rose easily to his feet. His leisure time was almost over. Again he resisted the temptation of imagining coming back to her after a stint in the Prohibited Zone for the next five years. ‘Unless you’re offering sex I’m not interested.’

Isla remained on the floor looking up. Looking fresh and clean. ‘We need something you could get for us. I believe you might give it to us because the purpose of the request is, like you,’ she met the dark eyes openly, feeling as though she were putting her life on the line with the words she was about to utter to this particular man, ‘a little against the rules.’

He gave serious thought as to whether or not this was working up to some kind of threat and decided that even this simple girl couldn’t be that stupid. A dull yet novel thought hovered in his mind. It felt like the first time in fifteen years that anyone had grabbed Rhys Buchanan’s interest.

He said, ‘OK. Spit it out.’

She seemed finally to realise her best chance was to ditch her habitual verbosity. ‘Paper.’

‘Paper?’

‘Yes.’

His curiosity took a dive. If this was an elaborate trick devised by a Keeper he would not be playing their inane game although he couldn’t ignore another possibility. They might have sent her here to discover what they could of his dealings with illegal paper but they would happily throw in an interrogation concerning his failure to report an illegal visitor if they decided it was time to slap him down a bit.

He tried to evaluate her purpose afresh as he told her, ‘Anyone can get paper.’

‘Lots of it.’

‘You’re wasting my time.’

‘Enough to write a book.’

He spent long minutes assessing the wide, clear blue eyes until finally deciding she hadn’t remotely enough guile to be a Keeper. She was only what she appeared to be: an artless member of a half-baked fringe group unwittingly hurtling towards a punishment she didn’t believe existed. If she was telling the truth about rule-breaking she couldn’t put in a requisition for the quantity of paper they wanted. He knew of a number of secret organisations, one or two of which might send an appeal in this form. None of them would achieve their aims because none would be around for long.

‘It’s a very big book and we would like to make several copies. We…’

‘Don’t give me details. I don’t want to be implicated in your madness.’

‘Alright. Will you give me an answer to a straight question? Can you get large quantities of paper?’

‘Maybe.’

Isla stood to face him, smiling, ‘This is my idea. No one sent me here. I know that Outer Shell Engineers are lonely. I doubt your work offers much opportunity to gather brothers around you and I know you have no desire to marry otherwise you’d have a wife already. I’m also aware that you have a shortage of willing women to…’ she blushed lightly. ‘Well anyway, I believe there is probably nothing I can or will offer in trade that would interest you, except I think that you would like to have a friend.’

Laughter erupted spontaneously from a mouth that rarely formed any expression. ‘Go home to your father.’

She stood firm.

‘Before someone with enough energy grabs and ravishes you.’

‘We could talk.’

‘And that’s the best scenario I can paint.’

‘I’ll bring you little treats and you can share your art and your views because…’

‘One more basic warning is all you’ll get from me. Go home Isla Randolph.’

‘Because you also know that this place is not perfect.’

The risky confession had no impact. His eyes developed a glint as he returned them to his drawing, angry now to have his warning ignored to say nothing of the frustration.

She was silly enough to speak again. ‘What kind of food do you like?’

Suddenly, when he savagely flared his fury from his eyes into hers, Isla grasped a partial concept of the danger her naivety could land her in.

‘I could pull you into my home and do anything I want to you and nobody,’ he stressed, ‘nobody would question it. You have come beyond the bounds. I would be no worse than I am expected to be. The only one who would be punished for infringing the rules is you, Isla. Do you understand that? For as long as you stand there with that dumb face you’re asking for whatever I choose to do to you. Do you understand me now?’

‘I hoped…’

‘And then, if I should choose to vex Administration I could send for a Keeper to come and take you away so why don’t you, for flip sake, creep home to your cosy little kitchen!’

Buchanan turned to check the chronometer while Isla’s feet glued themselves to the floor. Olav and her family had told her not to come here. Now she cursed her tendency to think she knew better. At last, as he turned his back and entered his home pod she could breathe.

In spite of those dire threats and her own trepidatious doubts, she waited. It was only a few minutes before he came back out wearing the protective clothing for his work: a stained dull green suit in what looked like a rough weave, with a thigh-length jacket, grimy black boots and gloves and a close-fitting dull, smudged helmet. The visor was up while he set the lock on his door.

Isla said, ‘I’m going to try again in a few days.’

Buchanan took two big strides towards the heavy barrier which protected the Restricted Area and thus the atmosphere of the habitat, from the Prohibited Zone, and stopped. Isla stepped forward hopefully but he didn’t turn.

He said, ‘You need to step away. If the cameras pick you up in this Restricted Area within viewing distance of my opening the door to the Prohibited Zone, you’ll not see those friends of yours for six months at least.’

She stepped back, looking at the security cameras, noting they pointed only at that door and the interface further along the bulkhead: the wall that protected the habitat from the poisons seeping into the Prohibited Zone.

Buchanan lifted his arm to lower his visor, speaking with his back to her. ‘You have no idea how lucky you’ve been here today.’

He did not look around to check that she’d left either from a general security point of view or for her own good but she was smart enough to make a hasty retreat before anyone could know she’d even been there.

Chapter 2

She was sitting exactly where she sat the first time he saw her. In the quiet, still and tranquil atmosphere, Dominic watched her. The pretty russet waves of her hair were beginning to escape a loose binding and his hand itched to gently pull away the cord that was close to falling without his help. Curling wisps did not spoil his view of that lovely profile. He fancied she had the delicate complexion of the wild roses in the park, yet so much warmer and sweeter. He longed to stroke the soft skin there and kiss the plump pink lips parted in concentration.

She sat in the midst of twenty colleagues, relentlessly dipping her quill and precisely forming characters. He was mesmerised by her graceful movements; the decisive pressure of the precise, practised skills of a slender hand he yearned to hold.

He became aware of getting the attention of one or two of her associates. Years of experience in the low-profile daily routine of a Keeper had him automatically turn side on to an apparently long-distance inspection of this region of the habitat. The averted, deepening grey eyes gazed into thin air while his mind examined the pictures printed there. Isla in the azure shift that did nothing to disguise her perfect figure whilst accentuating the colour of her eyes. A shift that reached to just below her knees leaving him a tantalising desire to see her thighs. The teacher strolling to work with her soft hair neatly tied high, emphasising a slender neck and lovely, softly rounded jaw line.

He could legitimately wander over to her, showing an interest in her work as part of the ‘hearts and minds’ side of his job. He could even, though he had no doubts if he did she’d ever see anything more of him than his grey coat for the rest of his life, stride over to examine the legality of her work. Frustrating though it was he knew he must subdue his desires and proceed with at least the appearance of cool composure for fear of scaring her off with his notably robust self-assurance.

He was invisible. To people who lived in law-abiding communities, Keepers of the Rules were like part of the environment. People like Isla never broke the rules. They lived a contented life, doing their share of the work and enjoyed quiet, harmless leisure time. He’d contrived to be on duty in this area often enough to know she worked longer hours than the rules required if you counted calligraphy as work, which she did. Learning to read and write was not a requirement in the rules on education although one way and another most inhabitants chose to pass the skills on to their children. This unofficial curriculum carried on in people’s homes, was known to be a necessary capability for the young to progress in their careers. Thus, communities such as Isla’s viewed the hours spent in handwriting after their daily shift, as important work for the good of all.

Dominic had employed his talent for covert surveillance of the populace to this single woman for several weeks now, leaving his natural ability to sniff out dissent on auto-drive. In that time he had noted her suitability with satisfaction. Should he establish the relationship he desired with her and should it develop into the long-term commitment his heart seemed set on, she would meet the approval of his parents and his peers.

He had noted how thoroughly she was devoted to her official job of educating children and that because her time in that pursuit made up a relatively short working day, she took on this voluntary scriptwriting.

Her quota of hours could be seen as long by comparison to say, an Outer Shell Engineer whose hours and longevity were very short. Or they could be seen as short compared to the life expectancy and long working days of farmers. Well aware of the exceptional intensity of Isla’s type of work the Administration had long-since established a routine that provided teachers with little contact time and plenty of personal time. Getting children to learn to interface with the technology was a vital, painstaking task that would aggravate the life out of the wrong personality-type. Few were born with an innate comprehension of it, Dominic could tell. He could tell because he had an innate instinct to push his spoken language on to written language even though, like his friends from his home locality, he found the formal education of the habitat dull. As he matured, Dominic found that he wanted to read and write, so he read the literature available from the calligraphers and he wrote.

Paper was a serious problem. The Rules didn’t say you couldn’t have paper for personal use only that all paper produced must be made according to a quota and that quota was allocated. Low grade paper was produced in reasonable quantities when the recycling units experienced a lull in their normal routine and distributed according to the chronological order of requests that had been posted to them electronically. It was unusual to wait more than a week if you were modest enough to ask for one or two sheets of paper. High grade paper, constantly in production, was used mostly by licensed writers such as Isla’s people, although a request for it could also be successful when posted by those who had licences to put on dramas and musicals. Usually they wanted only to copy a few worn-out scripts for their performers to take home and rehearse. With everything so precisely tabulated not so much as one sheet of paper would be unaccounted for.

Dominic was a Keeper of known proficiencies. He had some standing in the community housing the majority of the Keepers of the Rules. Confidence came naturally to him and he accepted with ease the sound grounding his parents had provided. He had been in the top half of the children who could reach the highest levels of what was colloquially known as ‘alien technology’ which dominated the education system. In his youth he’d been convinced that those who didn’t at least make the basic grades were lazy, indolent or the product of subversive parenting. As a child he thought that because he was willing to work harder than most to learn the difficult processes of interfacing he deserved better rewards than they got. It was one of the few things Dominic questioned with regard to the Rules.

As an adult he noted how he, along with the other Keepers, could efficiently keep a check on everyone from the farmers and gardeners to the internal engineers because he had a solid grounding in the technology of the habitat. More than once he personally had tracked down individuals with inadequate knowledge that resulted in food shortages, contaminated water or allowed uncomfortable temperatures to develop while the majority of the population moaned in ignorance.

The self-reliance of his childhood had developed into a pleasantly sanguine personality in a man who had no difficulty approaching women he found attractive. Conversation came easily to him and because he knew also to listen, they enjoyed his company. He had walked long distances to meet a lady in her living area in order to accompany her to one of the better theatres or concerts, and reversed the journey at the end of the evening. Law-breaking was almost unheard of but he wouldn’t take the chance of allowing someone he had dated to have so much as an unpleasant confrontation with an awkward individual or to risk losing their way in unfamiliar territory. On a number of occasions he’d had cause to escort citizens home when finding themselves frantically searching for the right path after dusk. Always he’d distinguished with ease between the careless, the adventurous, the stupid and the unlucky. For the last, he invariably furnished them with what he regarded as a friendly lecture concerning better planning and timing of their travels.

However, in spite of, or perhaps because of his solid character this Keeper struggled to understand how the intensity of his feelings for Isla could virtually cripple him. He had imagined everything from the most extreme love-making with her to a future where they had their own pod in his district and not just one, but two children. There was hardly a better offer of marriage she could receive than from a Keeper of the Rules with known prospects so why did he fear she might not agree even to attend the theatre with him? His mother would probably say that fear of being thwarted always accompanies desperate desire. His father would tell him that fear was worse than pointless. His father, in whose steps Dominic followed, had told him stories of people breaking the rules through fear and that by so doing embroiled themselves in their greatest fear of all: a life spent almost constantly suffering one sanction or another.

Dominic recalled one tale in particular, probably because it was of a peer; a girl who he occasionally crossed paths with in their early training. He had mentioned to his father that Tania had been sanctioned for failing a basic test for the third time.

He had been handing out his snotty thirteen year-old spiel over dinner, judging her to be too lazy to practise for the test, ‘Anyone can interface well enough to just be a gardener. She wasn’t trying hard enough even to do that.’

His mother’s cold comment had been, ‘Some children are afraid of those tests.’

His father’s was, ‘If that’s the case she’d better get over it otherwise she’ll build up a cycle of fear.’

Dominic, never fearful and ever curious, asked what that meant.

‘Tania will fear failing the tests because she’ll fear the sanctions and you can’t pass a test with racing heart and sweating palms. The girl’s fear will bring her a miserable as well as a useless life.’

As he strolled across to the area behind the living pods belonging to Isla and her people, checking basic hygiene, humidity and temperature gauges, Dominic found himself checking his personal meters to find that his palms were dry and the racing of his heart was not of the kind experienced by Tania. There was far too much pleasure in it. This was anticipation mixed with hope because he had timed his work to be in this area when he knew they would soon be packing away their pens and paper.

Sure enough as he emerged from the rear of the village of home pods the writers were quietly chatting as they stacked their sheets of paper, sealed the pots of ink and carefully placed quills in ancient little boxes. He noted the quiet and sober nature of this community. Unlike other villages, their outdoor activity couldn’t be labelled ‘entertainment’. These people were in no danger of receiving warnings over excessive noise or of pushing the boundaries, literally, of how far a ball could be thrown. He’d never seen anyone here enjoying even a table-top game, or sitting outside their pods drinking tea, waiting for company and quiet conversation.

Casually, unfazed by knowing they disliked this part of his job, Dominic walked over to hold out his hand to the nearest calligrapher. She frowned in irritation but made no comment as she handed over her two neat sheets of writing. Dominic took no chances; not even amongst these honest, placid people. He read every word, checking for hidden messages. He found only an extract of a play he recognised as an old classic: The Merry Wives of Windsor. As always he was courteous. He handed it back with a smile and a thankyou before moving on to the man next to Isla who seemed to be hastening his clearing away. Again when he held out his hand he was greeted with a frown and reluctance with handing over the script. Once more Dominic studied the text with care. These were words he hadn’t read before, including in the latest briefing for new literature passed for publication.

‘What is this?’

The man took a breath, ‘It’s a simple story for children struggling with their reading.’

Dominic glanced around. One or two had stopped to watch, a couple nudged others to keep their attention away from the scene but most were supremely unaware of the drama as they continued to pack their work and materials away.

‘Stop,’ he called to all in a voice pitched at a volume regulated not to carry beyond the bounds of this village to disturb passers-by. ‘Put all papers on your desks and stand by them.’

Gleaming eyes surveying the scene told all the writers that this Keeper would be missing no infringements and that included the mildest disobedience right now.

Dominic read the new words. It was a brief story about a sower of seeds and how they will set down roots and flourish only in good, well-prepared soil.

His posture demanded eye-contact with the writer of those words. ‘This has not been passed for publication.’

The man seemed to be struggling for an explanation but it was Isla who spoke up. ‘The fault is mine.’

Dominic’s eyes softened as he turned to her. ‘How is that?’

‘I forgot to hand in the original for approval. I haven’t got an excuse.’

Dominic kept the sheets he’d been reading and took the three paces to Isla’s desk. When he stood close to her, revealing nothing of the pounding of his heart through his cool exterior he found that she’d been writing up one of the old texts designed to encourage children to understand the need for interfacing. He felt massively relieved.

‘Offering no excuse is admirable but I do want to know your reasons all the same.’

She looked embarrassed and his heart went from thudding to mush.

‘Tell me,’ he ordered kindly.

Dominic had no way of knowing that everything she told him was true, except for the only part that mattered. ‘I was worried about a child who is destined to be a farmer, like his parents. He is never going to be able to interface and he is becoming very fearful. I was planning my speech for the Commissioner.’

‘Speech?’

She reddened. ‘I find it difficult to bring cases to the Commissioner.’

Dominic’s eyebrow rose in question.

Isla blinked rapidly, uneasy over being forced to admit a weakness. ‘I feel intimidated by Commissioner Salazar and I wanted to get my words right, to make the case as succinctly as possible.’ She paused, clearly ashamed to make an admission this Keeper couldn’t understand and yet possibly exploiting the sympathy that was, no doubt, written all over his face. ‘Some children get caught in a cycle of fear and I have a duty to make a case for them. That is…’ she stumbled over her words. ‘I care about them. I don’t want them to be forced to suffer like that but I was afraid of trying to persuade Commissioner Salazar to let them take a different route to a useful life. My main purpose was to ask him to take just a few children out of the interface classes. I wanted to practise words I could use so that I could get the ordeal over with as quickly as possible and if I’m honest I suppose I forgot to include this story to help the children with their reading. It went out of my mind entirely because of my anxiety over the meeting with the Commissioner.’

Dominic was not so green as to give away his feelings completely but he couldn’t hide the smile. Apart from anything else she’d just solved his most pressing personal problem.

‘I can make a minor detour to pass the Commissioner’s office on my rounds. Would you like me to drop it in for you?’

‘I’d be grateful. Thankyou.’

She should be. She should be grateful enough to offer something in return but Dominic didn’t want that; not from this girl. Isla waited for a hint of that and was relieved to see only a genuine act of kindness.

‘How did it go?’

She jumped. ‘Sorry?’

‘Your appeal to take some of the children out of the education programme. Was it successful?’

‘Oh yes,’ at last she smiled. ‘Well, he made concessions we can work with. It’s only a start really.’

Dominic would be receiving Commissioner Salazar’s report concerning an amendment to the rules on education which no doubt Isla was fully aware of but he needed to manipulate this conversation in order to set the groundwork for asking her for a date in the next day or two. He told the others they could continue packing away.

‘I’m interested in your views. Tell me more.’

Isla seemed pleased for the opportunity to make her case to him even though his responsibility for the keeping of the rules didn’t stretch to amending them.

‘Our system undermines the confidence of children who really can’t learn to interface.’

Dominic’s eyes narrowed, ‘Be careful.’

Isla gasped. Impulsiveness was born from a long-held judgement and she should know not to be drawn into expressing it to a Keeper of all people.

‘My words were poorly chosen, Keeper Dominic. I have no excuse for that.’

Dominic’s eyes slid to either side, thankfully confirming what he’d expected. No one had heard her criticism of the system. Not issuing her with a warrant could be seen as a weakness by her alone though. On the other hand, arresting her would ensure no chance of a date, ever. Then again, had he misjudged her character if she would so easily and blatantly break the rules? A rule, he reminded himself. If she were a careless or rebellious person there’d be another infringement soon enough. To continue working at getting a date with her wouldn’t jeopardise his future career prospects. He could arrest her another time, if necessary.

Isla straightened her back, ‘I meant to say that children could be encouraged to serve the community better. And I did receive a positive response. Commissioner Salazar has finally agreed to withhold punishment from the children who fail the simplest tests on condition that a teacher vouches for their willingness to work hard in their attempts to apply the interface to basic, single functions.’

‘That puts a lot of responsibility on you and your colleagues.’

They exchanged knowing looks. He would be making a report, and though she could relax over the infringement, all Keepers would be assessing the teachers who were assessing the children who claimed to be unable to achieve even low levels of interfacing.

‘We know when a child has been punished enough, I can assure you Keeper Dominic. It will be a relief not a burden to be able to tell some children that they can carry their weight in our society in simple ways. Besides, we’ll all benefit: they won’t take up unnecessary time and space in the cells, they will break fewer, if any, rules as their lives progress and they will be better workers for having contented dispositions.’

‘And in so doing, the work they carry out will be of the best quality they can manage, for the good of all,’ Dominic smiled in a distant and professional manner. He held up the unpublished work. ‘I’ll post this for you this evening.’

Keeper Dominic Huxley, with too much of his attention taken up with the concern that this gorgeous woman could be heading for trouble, failed to notice the expressions of anxiety on the faces he left behind.

Chapter 3

Agnetha Maumoon set out to follow the navigation programme in her palm computer to an area of the habitat she’d never previously had cause to visit. With most communications automated the types of instructions she was to deliver would normally be sent to the engineers electronically but on this occasion it was felt a personal assessment was due. Having no access to a car for such a short journey she was obliged to walk the four miles. Being of a cheerful disposition she anticipated an agreeable stroll along a route that would take her through one of the beautiful garden areas.

She left the Administrative Centre with its large bright yellow pods and fifteen minutes later passed through her own village of comfortable pale yellow home pods in their varying sizes. She glanced towards hers, one of the smallest because she lived alone, noting with satisfaction the healthy pot plants either side of the door. Most people here grew flowers in containers that took their fancy but few could keep them as successfully as Agnetha. Those glorious blood-red chrysanthemums had been a gift from her last boyfriend. They’d been poor weakly little things trying to push up sprouts from their roots and he’d been embarrassed to present them to her when the time came. But with fertiliser begged from a gardener and her tender care, they’d finally come to flourish, showing off their huge blooms for nine months of the year.

Once past her village she followed the imperceptible curve of the outer shell looking all around, noting the spotless light coral blush of the lightly yielding plastic floor. Her eyes were drawn to where the floor seamlessly joined the grey wall with its tint of peridot that she found so restful when out and about in her leisure time. She stopped for a moment to look up to the pale glow of the almost clear aquamarine roof half a kilometre above where she could just make out the Outer Shell Engineers on pulleys repairing one of the scanning machines that continually, systematically made their way across the roof checking the integrity of the shell. Recalling with satisfaction, the latest report on the excellent condition of the shell roof, Agnetha happily returned her attention to the path ahead of her. She could see the gardens of this sector on the horizon and relished the route she would be taking through them.

There being nothing yet to occupy her mind it took its own course by way of memories and the reason for the small home pod and the chrysanthemums. Up until a year ago she’d lived with her mother and had plans to marry. For a while now she’d been able to remember her darling Mama with the joy of her childhood instead of seeing the corn-coloured hair so much like her own, lose its golden sheen. She’d loved plaiting that hair long before she realised hers was just as appealing to men. She’d inherited the hazel eyes she’d found men admired too. They were the eyes Ewan had gazed into adoringly when she’d realised she’d been leaning on him, not loving him. He’d been there for her, keeping her going from one day to the next during her Mama’s long illness and again while she was mourning. He’d listened to her complaints about the medical care that had been withheld, never once so much as thinking about reporting her for slandering the Administration even though he too was an Administrator. He didn’t deserve to be hurt by her but she couldn’t live the rest of her life with a man she felt nothing special for. That was three months ago and as much as he tried to hide his disappointment behind polite greetings she hid her relief behind a show of friendship.

Any guilt she might have felt was blithely cast aside as she checked her navigator and walked towards the path indicated in the map. It would take her through the first low beds in the gardens. She could actually see the outer shell wall of this promontory curving gently inwards on either side.

Agnetha had made a special effort to visit the warm gardens with the pretty peach and fig trees and the rows of grape vines but she never had visited these temperate ones. She tapped up the schematics on her hand device and noted a grid formation beginning with narrow beds one hundred metres long and two metres wide divided by half-metre wide paths in the same material as all the habitat flooring. Half a kilometre in, the beds of soil still a hundred metres long and two metres wide, were divided by two metre wide paths. And the outer shell walls, though still some distance apart, continued to curve ever inwards, forming the promontory.

The final section, where the promontory was only four hundred metres wide at one kilometre from the near edge, was indicated as an area of green with red dots: the orchards. Thrilled now, Agnetha wondered how many beds, shrubs and trees would be in flower, how many in fruit and which trees would be in their autumn break. Apples probably. She hadn’t been able to get apples for weeks.

She recognised the first beds when she came to them. These herb gardens brought back the aroma of her mother’s cooking. She always had enjoyed it so much more than her own. That was true also of Ewan’s. When it came to making meals he took more care than she did.

The few gardeners here looked up and smiled as she passed. They were cutting the results of their daily labour and tying small bunches according to the orders on their tablets, knowing they’d be adding to the ambience of evening kitchens throughout the habitat. They seemed to