51

Caroline Caldwell was brought up to believe in the second law of thermodynamics. In a closed system, entropy must increase. No ifs or ands or buts. No time off for good behaviour, since time’s arrow always points in the same direction. Through the gift shop to the exit, with no stamp on your hand, nothing that would let you come round and have another ride.

It’s twenty years now since Charlie and Rosie went off the grid. Twenty years since they launched – without her – and lost their way in a disintegrating world. And now here’s Rosie staring Caroline Caldwell in the eye, as demure as you please.

Rosie is a refutation of entropy just by being here. So long as she’s still virgo intacta, not looted or torched.

“Door’s locked,” Sergeant Parks says. “And nobody’s answering.”

“Look at the dust,” Justineau offers. “This thing hasn’t moved in a long, long time.”

“Okay, I think we should take a look inside.”

“No!” Caldwell yelps. “Don’t! Don’t force the door!”

They all turn to look at her, surprised by her vehemence. Even test subject number one stares, her blue-grey eyes solemn and unblinking. “It’s a laboratory!” Caldwell says. “A mobile research facility. If we break the seals, we could compromise whatever’s inside. Samples. Experiments in progress. Anything.”

Sergeant Parks doesn’t look impressed. “You really think that’s an issue right now, Doctor?”

“I don’t know!” Caldwell says, anguished. “But I don’t want to take the chance. Sergeant, this vehicle was sent here to research the pathogen, and it was crewed by some of the finest scientific minds in the world. There’s no telling what they found or what they learned. If you smash your way in, you could do untold damage!”

She physically interposes herself between Parks and the vehicle. But she doesn’t need to. He’s not making any move towards the door.

“Yeah,” he says dourly. “Well, I don’t think it’s going to be an issue. That’s some serious plate on that thing. We’re not getting in there any time soon. Maybe if we found a crowbar, but even then…”

Caldwell thinks hard for a moment, sieving her memory. “You don’t need a crowbar,” she says.

She shows him where the emergency external access crank is hidden, cradled in two brackets underneath Rosie’s left flank, right beside the midsection door. Then, with the crank held awkwardly in her bandaged left hand, she goes down on her knees and gropes under the body of the vehicle, close to the forward wheel arch. She remembers – she thinks she remembers – the position of the socket into which the crank will fit, but it’s not where she expects it to be. After a few minutes of blind rummaging, watched in bemused silence by the others, she finally locates the slot and is able to insert the end of the crank into it. There’s an override control, but it was only meant to be engaged in conditions of actual siege. The vehicle’s designers anticipated a range of situations in which it would be necessary to enter Rosie from the outside without compromising her interior spaces by blasting or forcing a way in.

“How do you know about all this?” Justineau asks her.

“I was attached to the project,” Caldwell reminds her tersely. She’s lying by omission, but she doesn’t blush. The pain of these memories runs much deeper than the embarrassment, and nothing would induce her to explain further.

To reveal that she came out twenty-seventh on the list of possible crew members for Charlie and Rosie. Trained for five months in the operation of the on-board systems, only to be told that she wouldn’t, after all, be required. Twenty-six other biologists and epidemiologists had placed higher up the list – had seemed, to the mission’s managers and overseers, to possess more desirable skills and experience than those Caldwell had to offer. Since the full complement of scientists for both labs was twelve, that didn’t even put her on the list of first alternatives. Charlie and Rosie sailed without her.

Until now, she’d assumed that they’d gone down with all hands – lost in some inner-city fastness, unable to advance or retreat, overwhelmed by hungries or ambushed by junker scavengers. That thought had consoled her a little – not to think that those who’d beaten her had then died for their lèse majesté, but because her placing so low on the list had kept her alive.

Of course, that’s only a conceptual stone’s throw from the thought that her survival is a side effect of mediocrity.

Which is nonsense, and will be seen to be nonsense, when she finds the cure. The story of her failing to gain a berth on Charlie or Rosie will be an ironic footnote to history, like Einstein’s alleged bad grades in high-school maths exams.

Only now, the footnote gains an added piquancy. They made this lab for her all along, and they didn’t know it. They sent it here to intercept her journey.

Parks and Gallagher are working the crank, which was too stiff and unyielding to move when Caldwell tried it. The door is sliding back, a half-inch at a time. Stale air leaks out, making Caldwell’s heart beat fast in her chest. The seal is good. Whatever happened here, whatever may have become of Rosie’s crew, her interior environment appears to be sound.

As soon as the gap is wide enough for her to get through, Caldwell steps forward.

Right into Sergeant Parks, who refuses to stand out of her way. “I’m going in first,” he tells her. “Sorry, Doc. I know you’re keen to take a look at this thing, and you will. Just as soon as I check if anyone’s home.”

Caldwell starts to state her reasons for believing that Rosie will be empty, but the sergeant isn’t listening. He’s already gone inside. Private Gallagher stands by the door and watches her warily, clearly afraid that she’ll try to barge past him.

But she doesn’t. If she’s right, there’s no risk, but for the same reason no real need for hurry. And if she’s wrong, if the vehicle has been breached somehow, then the sergeant will certainly deal more effectively with anything that’s inside than she could hope to do. Common sense dictates that she wait for him to complete his search.

But she almost convulses with impatience. This gift is intended for her, and for no one else. There’s nobody else who can use what’s in there. What might be in there, she corrects herself. After so many years, there’s no telling what could have happened to the precious equipment in Rosie’s labs. After all, what conceivable disaster would have taken out the crew without harming anything around them? The most likely explanation for the sealed door and undamaged exterior is that one or more of the crew became infected while on board. She imagines them running amok through the lab, in a feeding frenzy, toppling delicate imaging frames and centrifuges, trampling on Petri dishes full of carefully incubated samples.

Sergeant Parks emerges, shaking his head. Caldwell is so wrapped up in these disaster scenarios that she takes that for a verdict. She cries out and runs for the door, where Parks steadies her with a hand on her shoulder. “It’s fine, Doc. All clear. Only body is in the driving seat, and he seems to have shot himself. But before we go in there, tell me something – because this thing is way outside of my experience. Is there anything in there I should know about? Anything that could be dangerous?”

“Nothing,” Caldwell says, but then – the punctilious scientist – she amends that. “Nothing I’m aware of. Let me look around, and I’ll give you a definitive answer.”

Parks steps aside and she goes in, feeling herself trembling, trying to hide it.

The lab has everything. Everything.

At the far end, facing her, is something she’s only ever seen in photographs, but she knows what it is, and what it does, and how it does it.

It’s an ATLUM. An automated lathe ultramicrotome.

It’s the holy grail.