Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [21]
‘Your tia Marchella has helped me. I am returning the favour because you are one of her familia.’
Tia Marchella Pellegrini? Trin’s interest sharpened. What had his loco tia done for this young woman? And why did she think she could speak so baldly to him of it?
He mustered some hauteur. ‘I am still the Principe’s son and I find your forthright speech insulting.’
‘Insulting? What would you do about it? What sway do you hold with the Principe on this day, Trin Pellegrini, that I should be frightened of it?’
He absorbed her blunt point as though swallowing a lump of Araldis ore.
Rantha stopped abruptly and turned to him. ‘You need not feel humiliated. You have been sent out to work—what is so bad in that? I would take your problems this instant to be rid of mine.’
Trin’s laugh was tinged with bitterness. ‘Your problems, little Cabone. How great could they be?’
In a deliberate gesture she flattened her fellala across her belly. The mound of a growing bambino was unmistakable. ‘My . . . man pledged to me that if we were intimate he would remain infertile. He lied and left me like this. Now I am unwed. When the Malocchis find out I will be without means.’
‘You will still have your gratis.’
‘There is no gratis for one such as I. The only person on Araldis who would look to my future is Marchella Pellegrini,’ she replied.
The bitterness and regret on Rantha Cabone’s face made Trin feel guilty. He pushed the feeling away. After all, it was not he who had fathered her child. ‘Perhaps you should not have gambled so?’ he said.
‘Yes, you are right. I should not have trusted a familia man.’
Thankfully the conversation faltered as they were forced to stoop under a bulge in the ceiling. In a bent-over fashion they continued on down an ill-formed narrow corridor.
At the end they found a small windowless room where the polymer-grown building had rooted itself to the side of Mount Pell.
Trin stared in disbelief. ‘I cannot be here.’
Rantha sniffed the air and looked around. ‘Industrial Services will activate your film. This one looks old. And your environmentals will need servicing. I can smell mould.’
A buckled deskfilm hung over a large lump of ore on a desk littered with shrivelled data-sponges. A single chair and some uneven wall shelving comprised the only other furniture.
Rantha gave him a single direct look. ‘I apologise for my . . . manner. I am easily angered these days.’ She turned and left.
Trin slumped into the chair. What to do now? His welling self-pity was tempered by annoyance. Jus Malocchi will pay for this. And so will Franco.
He reached for the deskfilm. He laid it flat and stabbed his finger at the thin, scratched screen. It switched itself on and tried to straighten, flickering for a while before the picture resolved. He used the administration menu to find the climate controls, which he boosted.
Dust stirred all around him and the environmentals rattled into life trying to filter it. Aggravated by the clutter on the desk, Trin collected the sponges and shoved them onto the sagging shelves. The force of his action knocked other precarious piles to the floor.
In the space behind them Trin glimpsed a bubble—a result of the catoplasma malformations. As a ragazzo he had burst similar bubbles in the AiV hangars at the Palazzo. He lifted the shelving aside to have a better look and on impulse he jabbed a finger into it. The polymer coating punctured as he expected, but then the wall around it crumbled. Immediately he felt a draught of hot outside air.
Trin scrambled back to the deskfilm to boost the climate controls to cover the temperature change and quickly locked the door. Then he returned to the hole and carefully felt around the inside. The crumbling of the wall appeared to have left a gap between rock and building.
How far along does it go?
He slipped his head through the hole. In one direction was solid seam. The other way was a crevice with hot daylight flooding down it. He guessed it might come out near the upper AiV pads.
Widening the hole enough for his body, Trin squeezed through and