Turnball decided to go easy on Vishby; there would be plenty of time for discipline later when he was killing the water elf. The ultimate punishment.
“It’s only natural,” he said magnanimously. “First day back in the pilot’s chair. Then there’s this mysterious probe, plus you have to transport all of us dangerous prisoners.”
Vishby seemed even more nervous. “Exactly. Well, the thing is . . . I don’t want to do this, Turnball, but . . .”
“But you have to cuff me,” finished Turnball. “Of course. I understand completely.” He thrust out his hands with wrists upturned. “It’s not as if you have to fasten the cuffs, is it?”
Vishby blinked and touched his neck. “No. Why would I fasten them? That would be barbaric.”
The water elf laid a set of standard ultralight plastic polymer cuffs across Turnball’s wrist.
“Comfy?” he asked.
Again, Turnball was feeling generous. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me. You concentrate on the shuttle.”
“Thanks, Captain. This is a big day for me.”
As Vishby dissolved the door, Turnball was struck by how the guard’s subconscious dealt with betraying all that he believed in. Vishby simply pretended that everything was as it should be, until the moment when it was not. The water elf somehow managed to keep two lives running simultaneously side by side.
Amazing what a person will do to avoid guilt, thought Turnball, following Vishby through the doorway and taking his first breath of free recycled air in years.
Atlantis was a small city by human standards. With barely ten thousand residents, it wouldn’t even qualify as a city to the Mud Men, but to the fairies it was their second center of government and culture, the first being the capital, Haven City. There was a growing lobby to demolish Atlantis altogether, as the upkeep cost a fortune in taxpayers’ money and it was only a matter of time before the humans sank one of their submarine drones in the right spot and got a shot of the dome. But the budget for such a massive relocation and demolition project was so huge that continued maintenance always seemed the more attractive option to the politicians. It was more expensive in the long term, but the politicians reasoned that by the time the long term came around, somebody else would be in office.
Vishby led Turnball Root along a corridor tube with Perspex walling through which he could see dozens of crafts lining up at the various dome pressure-lock tollgates, waiting to swipe their credit chips for exit. There didn’t seem to be any panic. And why would there be? The Atlanteans had been preparing for a dome breach ever since the last one, more than eight thousand years ago, when an asteroid had superheated a two-mile-long tube of ocean before spending its last gasp of energy knocking a crunchball-sized chunk out of the dome, which in those days had not been shatterproof. In less than an hour the entire city had been submerged with more than five thousand casualties. It had taken a hundred years or so to build the new Atlantis on top of the foundations supplied by the ruins of the old Atlantis, and this time an evacuation strategy had featured large in the city blueprints. All of which meant that in case of emergency, every male, female, and child fairy could be out of the city in less than an hour. Drills were held every week, and in nursery school the first rhyme every student learned was:
The blue dome
Protects our home;
If it should crack,
Prepare for evac.
Turnball Root recalled this ditty as he followed Vishby along the corridor.
Crack, evac? What kind of rhyme was that? Evac wasn’t even a real word, just a military contraction. Exactly the kind of word Julius might have used.
I am so glad Leonor never had to endure meeting my boorish brother. If she had, no amount of magical persuasion could have enticed her to marry me.
A part of Turnball knew that he kept Leonor away from the People in general because a ten-minute conversation with any fairy under the world would have shown Leonor that her husband was not quite the noble revolutionary that he pretended to be. Luckily, this was a part of himself that Turnball had become quite adept at ignoring.
Other prisoners were shambling from their cells across narrow bridges onto the main walkway. Each was shackled and dressed in a lime green Deeps prison jumpsuit. Most were laying on the bravado, rolling swaggers and obvious sneers, but Turnball knew from experience that it was the ones with the placid gazes you had to worry about. Those ones were beyond caring.
“Come on now, convicts,” called a particularly Cro-Magnon-looking jumbo pixie, a breed that sometimes popped up in Atlantis due to the pressurized environment. “Keep moving there. Don’t make me buzz you.”
At least I am wearing my full dress uniform, thought Turnball, ignoring the guard, but he did not feel much consoled. Uniform or no, he was being paraded down this walkway like a common prisoner. He soothed himself with the decision that he would definitely kill Vishby as soon as possible and maybe send an e-mail to Leeta, congratulating Vishby’s sweetheart on her new single status. She would probably be delighted.
Vishby raised a fist, bringing the procession to a halt at an intersection. The prisoners were forced to wait like cattle while a large metal cube, secured with titanium bands, was floated past them on a hover trolley.
“Opal Koboi,” explained Vishby. “She’s so dangerous they’re not even letting her out of her cell.”
Turnball bristled. Opal Koboi. People down here spent their days gossiping about Opal Koboi. The current rumor was that there was another Opal Koboi around somewhere who had come out of the past to rescue herself in the present. People might get more done if they stopped obsessing over Opal-blooming-Koboi. If anyone should be concerned about Koboi, it was Turnball. After all, she had murdered his little brother. Then again, better not. Dwelling on the past could cause his ulcer to return.
It took the cube an age to float by, and Turnball counted three doors on the side.
Three doors. My cell has a single door. Why does Koboi need a cell so big that it has three doors?
It didn’t matter. He would be out of here soon enough and then he could treat himself like royalty.
Leonor and I shall return to the island where we first met so dramatically.
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As soon as the intersection was clear, Vishby led them on toward their shuttle bay. Through the clear plastic, Turnball noticed crowds of civilians walking briskly but without apparent panic toward their own rescue pods. On the upper levels, groups of Atlantis’s more affluent citizens strolled to private evacuation shuttles that probably cost more than Turnball could steal in a week.
Ruffles are back in, Turnball noted with some pleasure. I knew it.
The corridor opened out into a loading bay, where groups of prisoners were waiting impatiently by air locks that opened directly on to the sea.
“This is all so unnecessary,” said Vishby. “The water cannons are going to blast this probe thing to smithereens.
We’ll all be back here in a few minutes.” Not all of us, thought Turnball, not bothering to conceal a smile. Some of us are never coming back.
And he knew in that instant that it was true. Even if his plan failed, he was never coming back here. One way or another, Turnball Root would be free.
Vishby beeped the shuttle door with his keys, and the manacled prisoners filed inside. Once they were seated, Vishby activated carnival-ride-style safety bars, which also acted as very effective restraints. The convicts were pinned to their seats, still cuffed. Totally helpless.
“You got ’em, Fishby?” asked the Cro-Magnon pixie.
“Yes, I got ’em. And the name’s Vishby!”
Turnball smirked. Office bullying; another reason he had been able to turn Vishby so easily.
“That’s what I said, Frisbee. Now, why don’t you pilot this bucket out of here and let me keep watch on these scary convicts?”
Vishby bristled. “Just you wait a minute . . .”
Turnball Root did not have time for a showdown. “That’s an excellent idea, Mr. Vishby. You put that pilot’s licence to good use and let your colleague here watch over us scary convicts.”
Vishby touched his neck. “Sure. Why not? I should get us out of here like I’m supposed to.”
“Exactly. You know it makes sense.”
“Go on, Fishboy,” scoffed the big guard, whose name tag had been altered to read k-max. “Do what the convict tells you.”