‘I don’t want to disturb the established order. I don’t want ripples in the water. And I most especially don’t want a woman walking around giving them ideas and stirring up memories which they have conveniently managed to bury in their respective pasts.’
‘Yes,’ Ripley agreed. ‘Obviously, as you’ve said, for my own personal safety. In addition to which, despite what you seem to think, I’m not entirely oblivious to the potential problems my temporary presence here creates for you.’
‘Exactly.’ Andrews was clearly pleased by her apparent desire to cooperate. Or in other words, to make life as easy as possible for him. He glanced back at the med tech. ‘I will leave the details of the cremation to you, Mr. Clemens.’ He turned to leave.
‘Just one thing, Superintendent.’
Andrews halted. ‘Yes?’
‘When I’m done, will you be wanting a time and circumstances report? For the official log, of course.’
Andrews pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘That won’t be necessary, Mr. Clemens. Just ’com me. I’ll take care of the rest.’
‘As you say, Superintendent.’ Clemens grinned thinly.
IV
Meat. Some of it familiar, some not. Dull rust red struck through with flashes of bright crimson. Small carcasses dangling from old hooks. Huge slabs tipped with protuberant suggestions of amputated limbs, outlined in frozen fat.
Nearby, chickens and cattle, oblivious to their eventual fate. A lone sheep. Live meat.
Most of the abattoir was empty. It had been built to handle the daily needs of hundreds of technicians, miners, and refining personnel. It was far larger than the caretaker prisoners required. They could have left more space between supplies, but the vast rear of the huge chamber, with its echoes of draining blood and slicing and chopping, was a place they preferred to avoid. Too many animate ghosts lingered there, seeking form among milling molecules of tainted air.
The two men wrestled with the cart between them, on which rested the unwieldy carcass of a dead ox. Frank tried to guide it while Murphy goosed forward motion out of the rechargeable electric motor. The motor sputtered and sparked complainingly. When it finally burned out they would simply activate another cart. There were no repair techs among the prison population.
Frank wore the look of the permanently doomed. His much younger companion was not nearly so devastated of aspect. Only Murphy’s eyes revealed the furtive nature of someone who’d been on the run and on the wrong side of the law since he’d been old enough to contemplate the notion of working without sticking to a regular job. Much easier to appropriate the earnings of others, preferably but not necessarily without their knowledge. Sometimes he’d been caught, other times not.
The last time had been one too many, and he’d been sent to serve out his sentence on welcoming, exotic Fiorina.
Murphy touched a switch and the cart dumped the clumsy bulk onto the deeply stained floor. Frank was ready with the chains. Together they fastened them around the dead animal’s hind legs and began to winch it off the tiles. It went up slowly, in quivering, uneven jerks. The thin but surprisingly strong alloyed links rattled under the load.
‘Well, at least Christmas came early.’ Frank struggled with the load, breathing hard.
‘How’s that?’ Murphy asked him.
‘Any dead ox is a good ox.’
‘God, ain’t it right. Smelly bastards, all covered with lice. Rather eat ’em than clean ’em.’
Frank looked towards the stalls. ‘Only three more of the buggers left, then we’re done with the pillocks. God, I hate hosing these brutes down. Always get shit on my boots.’
Murphy was sucking on his lower lip, his thoughts elsewhere. ‘Speakin’ of hosing down, Frank…’
‘Yeah?’
Memories glistened in the other man’s voice, haunted his face. They were less than pleasant. ‘I mean, if you got a chance… just supposing… what would you say to her?’
His companion frowned. ‘What do you mean, if I got a chance?’
‘You know. If you got a chance.’ Murphy was breathing harder now.
Frank considered. ‘Just casual, you mean?’
‘Yeah. If she just came along by herself, like, without Andrews or Clemens hangin’ with her. How would you put it to her? You know, if you ran into her in the mess hall or something.’
The other man’s eyes glittered. ‘No problem. Never had any problem with the ladies. I’d say, “Good day, my dear, how’s it going? Anything I could do to be of service?” Then I’d give her the look. You know—up and down. Give her a wink, nasty smile, she’d get the picture.’
‘Right,’ said Murphy sarcastically. ‘And she’d smile back and say, “Kiss my ass, you horny old fucker.”’
‘I’d be happy to kiss her ass. Be happy to kiss her anywhere she wants.’
‘Yeah.’ Murphy’s expression darkened unpleasantly. ‘But treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen… right, Frank?’
The older man nodded knowingly. ‘Treat the queens like whores and the whores like queens. Can’t go wrong.’
Together they heaved on the chains until the carcass was properly positioned. Frank locked the hoist and they stepped back, letting the dead animal swing in its harness.
Contemplative silence separated the two men for a long moment. Then Murphy uttered a casual obscenity. ‘Frank?’
‘Yeah?’
‘What do you think killed Babe?’ He nodded at the carcass.
Frank shrugged. ‘Beats me. Just keeled over. Heart attack, maybe.’
Murphy spoke from the other side. ‘How could it have been a heart attack? How old was she?’
‘Charts say eleven. In the prime. Tough luck for her, good for us. You know the super won’t let us kill any of the animals for meat except on special occasions. So me, I look on this as a bonus for work well done. Chop her up. Later we’ll throw her in the stew. Animal this size ought to last for a while. Make the dehys taste like real food.’
‘Yeah!’ Murphy could taste it now, ladled over hot loaves of the self-rising, self-cooking bread from the stores.
Something on the cart caught his attention. Whatever it was, it had been pancaked, flattened beneath the massive bulk of the dead animal. Still discernible was a small, disclike body, a thick, flexible tail, and multiple spidery arms, now crushed and broken. A look of distaste on his face, he picked it up by the tail, the splintered arms dangling towards the floor.
‘What’s this?’
Frank leaned over for a look, shrugged indifferently. ‘Dunno. What am I, a xenologist? Looks like some jellyfish from the beach.’
The other man sniffed. The thing had no odour. ‘Right.’
He tossed it casually aside.
* * *
The leadworks was a kind of liquid hell, a place of fire and simmering heat waves, where both vision and objects wavered as if uncertain of outline. Like much of the rest of the mining facility it had been abandoned largely intact. The difference was that it gave the prisoners something to do, leadworking being considerably less complex than, say, platinum wire production or heavy machinery maintenance. Fiorina’s inhabitants were encouraged to make use of the facility, not only to occupy and amuse themselves but also to replace certain equipment as it broke down.
Presently the automatic extruders were drawing molten lead from the glowing cauldron into thin tubes which would be used to replace those in an older part of the facility’s plant.
The prisoners on duty watched, alternately fascinated and bored by the largely automated procedure. Not only was the leadworks a popular place to work because it offered opportunities for reaction, but also because it was one of the consistently warmest spots in the complex.
‘You goin’?’ The man who spoke checked two of the simple readouts on the monitoring console. As always, they were well within allowable parameters.
His companion frowned. ‘Haven’t decided. It’s nothing to do with us.’
‘Be a break in routine, though.’
A third man turned from the searing cauldron and pushed his protective goggles up onto his forehead. ‘Dillon gonna be there?’
Even as he ventured the query the towering prisoner in question appeared, striding down the metal catwalk towards them.
‘Shut it down,’ he said simply when he reached them. The first prisoner obediently flipped a switch and the cauldron immediately began to cool.
‘What’s the story, man?’ asked the man with the goggles, blinking particles from his eyes.
‘Yeah,’ said the prisoner in the middle. ‘We been talkin’ about it, but we ain’t been able to decide.’
‘It’s been decided,’ Dillon informed him. He let his gaze rest on each of them in turn. ‘We’re all goin’. Maybe we didn’t know these people, but we show our respect. They wanna burn bodies, that’s fine by us, long as it isn’t one of us.’ Having imparted this information, he turned to leave.
The three men followed, the one with the goggles slipping them down around his neck. ‘Ain’t had a funeral in a long time.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed his companion soberly. ‘I’ve been kind of missing the service. It’s so much like a passage, you know? Off this place.’
‘Amen to that, brother,’ said the first man, increasing his stride to keep pace with the taller Dillon.
The old smelter creaked and groaned as it was juiced to life. The immense chamber had been cut and blasted out of the solid rock directly above the ore body, then lined where necessary with heat-reflective shielding. Monitors and controls lined the walkways and railings. Cranes and other heavy tracked equipment rested silently where they had been parked by the departing miners. In the shadows thrown by the reduced lighting they resembled Mesozoic fossils escaped from some distant museum.
Flames began to flicker around the bevelled edges of the holding pit. They heightened the stark figures of the two prisoners who stood on a crane suspended over the abyss. A pair of nylon sacks hung between them. Their limp contents caused them to sag noticeably in the middle.
Ripley gazed up at the men and their burden, her hands tightening on the rail that separated her from the artificial hell below. Clemens stood next to her, wanting to say something and, as always, failing to find the right words. Having used up all the consolation in his body a number of years ago, he now discovered there was none left for the single forlorn woman standing beside him.
Aaron was there too, and Dillon, and a number of the other prisoners. Despite the fact that the dead man had in fact been something of a government enforcer, none of them smiled or ventured sarcastic remarks. Death was too familiar a companion to all of them, and had been too much of a daily presence in their lives, to be treated with disrespect.
Andrews harrumphed importantly and opened the thin book he carried. ‘We commit this child and this man to your keeping, O Lord. Their bodies have been taken from the shadows of our nights. They have been released from all darkness and pain. Do not let their souls wander the void, but take them into the company of those who have preceded them.’
In the control centre below, the prisoner called Troy listened via ’com to the proceedings on the catwalk overhead. When Andrews reached the designated place in the eulogy the prisoner tech began adjusting controls. Telltales shifted from yellow to green. A deep whine sounded behind him, rose to complaining pitch, and died. Other lights flashed ready.
Below the catwalk white-hot flame filled the smelting pit. It roared efficiently, impressively in the semi-darkness. No mountain of ore waited to greet the fire, no crowd of technicians stood ready to fine-tune the process of reducing tons of rubble to slag. The flames seared the sides of the pit and nothing more.
Tears ran slowly down Ripley’s cheeks as she stared at the controlled conflagration. She was silent in her sorrow and remembrance, making no noise, issuing no sounds. There were only the tears. Clemens looked on sympathetically. He wanted to take her in his arms, hold her, comfort her. But there were others present, Andrews among them. He stayed where he was.
‘The child and the man have gone beyond our world,’ Andrews droned on. ‘Their bodies may lie broken, but their souls are forever eternal and everlasting.’
‘We who suffer ask the question: Why?’ Eyes shifted from the superintendent to Dillon. ‘Why are the innocent punished? Why the sacrifice? Why the pain? There are no promises,’ the big prisoner intoned solemnly. ‘There is no certainty. Only that some will be called. That some will be saved.’
Up on the crane the rising heat from the furnace finally became too much for the men stationed there. They rocked several times and heaved their burden into the pit, beating a hasty retreat for cooler climes. The sacks fell, tumbling a few times, before being swallowed by the inferno. There was a brief, slightly higher flicker of flame near the edge of the pit as the bags and their contents were instantly incinerated.
Ripley staggered slightly and clutched at Clemens’s arm. He was startled but held his ground, giving her the support she needed. The rest of the men looked on. There was no envy in their expressions; only sympathy. Dillon took no notice. He was still reciting.
‘But these departed spirits will never know the hardships, the grief and pain which lie ahead for those of us who remain. So we commit these bodies to the void with a glad heart. For within each seed there is the promise of a flower, and within each death, no matter how small, there is always a new life. A new beginning.’
* * *
There was movement in the abattoir, a stirring amid the dangling carcasses and balletic wraiths of frozen air. The massive corpse of the ox twitched, then began to dance crazily in its chains.
There was no one to witness the gut swelling and expanding until the dead skin was taut as that of a crazed dirigible. No one to see it burst under the pressure, sending bits of flesh and fat flying. Internal organs, liver and stomach, coils of ropy intestines tumbled to the floor. And something else.
A head lifted, struggling upward with spasmodic, instinctive confidence. The compact nightmare turned a slow circle, scanning its surroundings. Hunting. Awkwardly at first but with astonishingly rapid assurance it began to move, searching. It found the air duct and inspected it briefly before vanishing within.
From the time it had emerged from the belly of the ox until its studied disappearance, less than a minute had elapsed.
* * *
Upon concluding his speech Dillon bowed his head. The other prisoners did likewise. Ripley glanced at them, then back to the pit where the fires were being electronically banked. She reached up and scratched at her hair, then one ear. A moment later again. This time she looked down at her fingers.
They were coated with what looked like dark, motile dust.
Disgusted, she frantically wiped them clean against her borrowed jumpsuit, looked up to find Clemens eyeing her knowingly.
‘I warned you.’
‘Okay, I’m convinced. Now what do I do about it?’
‘You can live with it,’ he told her, ‘or…’ He rubbed his naked pate and smiled regretfully.
Her expression twisted. ‘There’s no other way?’
He shook his head. ‘If there was we’d have found it by now. Not that there’s been much impetus to do so. Vanity’s one of the first casualties of assignment to Fiorina. You might as well be comfortable. It’ll grow back after you leave, and if you don’t do anything in the meantime the bugs’ll eat the stuff right down to the roots anyway. They may be tiny, but they have large appetites and lousy table manners. Believe me, you’ll look worse if you try to ignore it, and you’ll scratch yourself silly.’
She slumped. ‘All right. Which way to the beauty parlour?’
The tech was apologetic. ‘I’m afraid you’re talking to it.’
The line of shower stalls was stark and sterile, pale white beneath the overheads. Presently all were deserted save one. As the hot, chemically treated water cascaded down her body, Ripley studied herself in the mirror that formed pa
rt of one wall.
Strange to be without hair. It was such a slight, ephemeral part of one’s body. The only aspect of one’s appearance that could be altered easily and at will. She felt herself physically diminished somehow, a queen suddenly bereft of her crown. Yet it would grow back. Clemens had assured her of that. The prisoners had to shave themselves regularly. There was nothing about the bugs or the air that rendered the condition permanent.
She soaped her bare scalp. It was a strange sensation and she felt chilled despite the roaring hot water. The old mining and smelting facility might be short of many things, but water wasn’t one of them. The big desalinization plant down on the bay had been built to provide water for all installation functions and its full complement of personnel as well. Even at minimal operational levels it provided more than enough water for the prisoners to waste.
She shut her eyes and stepped back under the full force of the heavy spray. As far as she was concerned the past ten thousand years of human civilization had produced three really important inventions: speech, writing, and indoor plumbing.
Outside the stalls, old death and new problems awaited, though the latter seemed insignificant compared to what she’d already been through. Clemens and Andrews and the rest didn’t, couldn’t, understand that, nor did she feel it incumbent upon herself to elaborate for them.
After what she’d endured, the prospect of being forced to spend a few weeks in the company of some hardened criminals was about as daunting as a walk in the park.
* * *
The prisoners had their meals in what had been the supervisors’ mess when the mine had been in operation. The room still exceeded their modest requirements. But while the facility was impressive despite having been stripped of its original expensive decor, the food was something else again. Still, complaints were infrequent and mild. If not precisely of gourmet quality, at least there was plenty of it. While not wishing to pamper its indentured caretakers, neither did the Company wish them to starve.
Within certain prescribed and well known temporal parameters the men could eat when they wished. Thanks to the extra space they tended to cluster in small groups. A few chose to eat alone. Their solitude was always respected. In Fiorina’s restricted environment enforced conversation was threatening conversation.
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