Chapter 5

14 YAL

My lessons began to diverge from Zuri’s a year after our first dive in a takamakura. While my sister continued to learn whatever interested her, my sessions increasingly became focussed on urban planning, stellar cartography, environmental stewardship and resource allocation. The more I resisted the flow of information, the more overt the lessons became, like fighting a remorseless current. Eventually, it was easier to give in.

In reward the infinite space within the takamakura began to unfold, revealing endless entertainments and libraries. Contemporary information, drawn from archives near the ship’s surface damaged during the original attack, was badly scrambled and usually irretrievable, but a rich deep vein of history remained for me to wander through.

While my specialisations narrowed, Zuri and I gained increasing physical freedom inside the habitat. Having demonstrated that we could take care of ourselves, our mother regularly left us to attend to her own concerns.

“I find parts of Ship that remain damaged from the war,” she had explained. “In some places it’s completely blind. Sometimes it believes that a part of itself exists when it really doesn’t, like a phantom limb. Ship doesn’t always know the places it’s been hurt. That’s where I try to help.”

It was during one of her absences that we first decided to go on an adventure ourselves.

We were on the ringriver, our lessons over for the day, and terminally bored in the way only teenagers can experience. Zuri was sitting on the blanket, placing her finger constantly in the path of an ant, watching it crawl around her fingertip again and again. The tiny creature, like most animals in the habitat, had been genetically programmed to avoid humans; most larger species, like river dolphins and quokka, would treat us as dominant but unthreatening fellow creatures.

Moved by a thought, Zuri suddenly looked up. “We should go somewhere by ourselves.”

I stopped the population simulation I had been working on. “What do you mean?”

“We’re always waiting for Mom to return from her trips. But there’s no reason we can’t travel while she’s away, meet her someplace new.”

I considered that. I had to admit I was tired of eating the synthetic manna that the factotums produced. The thick nutritious supplement was necessary when we had stripped an area of fruits, berries and tubers, but the paste didn’t make a terribly interesting meal. Zuri’s idea was tempting.

“Where would we go?”

Her eyes went distant with thought. “Amazonia,” she said after a moment. “It’s only a day’s walk, and it’s been forever since we’ve been there. Plus, it has shelter.”

Nodding in agreement, I opened an evoc channel to our mother.

Yes, son. Her voice sounded a little distracted.

Zuri and I have done our work for the day. We’d like to decamp to the rainforest biome. Straight to the point, as she preferred.

There was a long pause. You’re both up to the journey? That’s a long way.

I nodded at Zuri. We are.

Stay safe. Keep me updated. And she was gone.

I smiled at Zuri. “Let’s go.”

Breaking camp took less than a minute. We quickly recycled any organic refuse while the factotums picked up the takamakura, blanket and the few other items we possessed. In moments we were walking antispinward toward the extended streak of low-lying cloud that constantly covered the tropical rainforest biome.

There were no roads in Longshot then. Only the prohibited central city had areas of pavement, visible as strange lines scored in the earth that hung above us; the rest of the habitat remained a wilderness.

Zuri and I automatically fell into the long loping stride that we adopted for treks between far-flung camps, the factotums forming a chevron behind us, matching us pace for pace. In a few hours we’d crossed the great plains of the savannah that defined the outer edge of the summerlands, walking up the inside of the cylinder into the more humid region where a major offshoot of the ringriver curled through dense tropical forest.

It was nearing dusk when we entered the broad valley that contained the rainforest. Low, lone palms on the fringes of the jungle were quickly replaced by a triple canopy of thick forest as we descended, the tallest trees still growing towards their maturity some two hundred years hence. We narrowed into single file, one factotum ahead, two behind as the light dimmed, walking in the clearings provided by the dense foliage above our heads.

Layers of sound washed over us in the thick, humid air: the whirrs and chirps of rainforest crickets, frogs and katydids close by, the whooping booms of howler monkeys in the canopy above warning their tribe of our intrusion, all mingling with the calls of toucan, macaws, yellow-headed caracaras and a dozen other species. Compared to the dusty dun of the savannah biome, the rainforest was a riot of color, a sea of every shade of green flecked with the flaming orange-red flowers of monkey brush vines, the bright pink explosions of bromeliads, and the gently nodding, haloed purple heads of passionfruit flowers.

We stopped for a moment to eat, clambering up a palm to pick blue bananas from a ripe pod, gorging on the sweet vanilla pulp and draining our canteens before descending back to the forest floor and continuing on, the heavy tread of the factotums working to clear the path ahead of us as we moved deeper into the rainforest.

Insects never bothered us, but the creeping vines and sharp-edged leaves scratched and bit at our skin. Placing our feet carefully in the deep leaf litter, we climbed a broken tangle formed by the thick buttress roots of a fallen kapok tree to cross a small stream brown with mud. From here we could see our destination: one of the true giants of the forest, a fully mature ceiba that towered above the treeline, dominating the vegetation condemned to struggle for light and life beneath it. It was just possible to make out the pattern of wooden steps spiralling around its massive trunk, winding their way upwards to a circular platform supporting a pair of small huts seventy meters in the air.