Death’s Head

by David Gunn

  “And the judges still found you guilty.”

  “Oh no.” She smiles, sourly. “I was found innocent. But I got jailed just the same.”

  She’s the first to be cavity-searched, in front of one friend and fourteen strangers. And she takes it because she has no option. Something is already hardening behind her eyes. I’m second, her friend third. It looks like a hierarchy is being established.

  A thin man is standing naked in the middle of jeering guards. At an order from their corporal he squats until his buttocks almost touch the cold tiles, and then thrusts his arse into the air and kisses the ground as ordered. Fingers force their way inside him and he screams. When they let him climb to his feet he’s crying.

  “It’s barbaric,” says the woman.

  “Intentionally.”

  She stares at me, crossly. As if to say, I realize that.

  “I’m Sven.”

  “The mercenary.”

  “The ex-legion-sergeant…”

  For a moment she’s about to argue. And then she shrugs. “You’re right,” she tells me. “This isn’t the place for semantics.”

  The question must show in my eyes.

  “What words really mean.” She holds out her hand. “I’m Debro Wildeside.”

  “Sven,” I repeat.

  “What’s your second name?”

  I stare at her. It’s a good question. To the best of my knowledge, I don’t have one.

  “Do you know the story of Sven Tveskoeg?”

  We weren’t keen on stories in my family. So I shake my head, wondering what this has to do with me. This woman is odd. Mind you, looking around the holding pen, where a good half of us are scrabbling back into our clothes and the rest stand naked awaiting their turn, I realize that we’re all a little odd.

  Ungainly, occasionally ugly. We’re almost normal in how odd we are.

  “He was a king,” Debro says when she sees she’s got my attention back. “In the old days.”

  “Which planet?”

  Most of the known galaxy is ruled by the United Free. Our dear leader holds much of the rest, or so we’re told. The Enlightened and the Uplifted reckon they hold more, but repeating that is treason. The only worlds that still have kings are the worthless ones. Princes of rubble and rock, my sister used to call them. She had firm opinions on those people, which didn’t stop one of them hiring a legion for six months and reducing three planets in our system to cinder.

  “Which planet?” says Debro. “The original…”

  “Farlight?”

  She sighs. “Earth,” she says, fastening her top.

  I don’t mean to laugh. “Earth’s a myth,” I tell her. “Fairy tales.” I know nothing, and even I know that.

  She shakes her head. “It was real. A lot more real than most of the crap that passes for history these days…”

  “Debro.” The word is a warning.

  “You know it’s true.”

  “I’m Anton,” says her friend. He’s been dressing with his back to her. Unless she was the one who had her back to him.

  We shake.

  “My ex-husband,” she says, almost fondly.

  In his rags he looks like a stick insect wrapped in cheap plastic. Since he doesn’t seem the type to dress like that, someone has obviously stolen his real clothes farther up the line.

  “You were condemned as well?”

  The glance he gives Debro is strange. It’s as if he is asking her permission for something. “We have a daughter,” he says. “Under the age of majority. You know the law.”

  Obviously enough, I don’t.

  “She’s legally still bound to her mother. Since her mother is here Aptitude should also be here…” He hesitates. “My family made overtures to OctoV. The emperor agreed to let me take her place. For old times’ sake.”

  Anton talks of OctoV as if he’s just another man.

  “You’ve met him?”

  “My father and his grandfather were friends.”

  It explains why Debro is still alive. Although, I realize, it could equally well explain why she was dead had that been the case. “Who is looking after your girl?”

  Again that glance.

  “My cousin,” says Debro finally. “Thomassi was the only one who offered.”

  A story is obviously hidden in the looks they give each other and under the silence Debro lets hang at the end of her words.

  “You’ve quarreled with the others?”

  “Hardly,” Anton says. “My mother would have offered. As would my brother. They were too afraid to upset the senator…”

  Who has to be the cousin, I guess. Anything else Anton might say is lost as the last of the new prisoners climbs up from her squat, head held high despite the tears in her eyes. She’s the youngest of the women, and the guards have saved her until last. As she passes the corporal, she mutters something.

  It’s a bad mistake.

  A baton to her gut, an upsweep between her legs, and she’s on the floor again, rolling from side to side in her own piss.

  “You,” the corporal says. “Pick up her clothes.”

  Anton does as he’s ordered.

  “And you,” I’m told. “Take her with you.”

  I come to attention. “Yes, sir.”

  His response is a sour smile. “Strip,” he orders.

  It seems best to do it without question.

  “Turn around.”

  Waiting for the blow, I wait some more, but the man is reexamining the scars on my back.

  “A sjambok?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m surprised you lived.”

  “Yes, sir. Me, too.”

  “Dress,” he tells me. Walking over to the girl, he hooks his boot under her rib cage and rolls her over, scowling at the mess. “And take your garbage with you.”

  CHAPTER 11

  THE ICE is five miles thick, it is ten…it is so thick, no one will ever be able to drill that deep. In fact, ice is all there is, and anyone who imagines real rock somewhere beneath all this frozen water understands nothing about space. Because Paradise is a vast comet trapped by the gravity well of an inconveniently placed star.

  There are as many different opinions as there are prisoners in our group. The guards undoubtedly have their own theories, but they’re hardly about to share them with us.

  Apart from the landing field, which undomes to allow entry to visiting craft, the whole of the complex is underground. This makes it easier to conserve what little warmth there is. Exiles are held on the lowest level, guards on the level above, and the governor above that. The theory is the heat generated by the exiles will rise to heat the guards, who will heat the governor and his family.

  At some point everything probably worked. But the fact that the prison is now run by its inmates means new tunnels are dug and resources diverted, so now the lowest level is like a giant starfish expanding forever.

  Guards and governor still have their quarters above the starfish’s body. Unfortunately its legs are now so far under the sheet ice, the center cannot hold; private kingdoms are created, passing from generation to generation. At the same time, little principalities are built, often hacked directly out of the ice. These tend not to appear on any of the existing maps.

  Debro’s done her research. I wonder if knowing what she does makes things worse or better.

  “Okay, boys…We’ll take it from here.” The words are arrogant, an open challenge to the guards, who scowl but bite their tongues.

  The man facing them laughs.

  Tall and missing one eye, he wears his beard braided and twisted about with copper wire. “I’m Ladro,” he announces. “I run this section. You’ll need to remember that…What happened to her?”

  He’s looking at me.

  “Spoke out of turn.”

  “And him?”

  “The same,” says the rat-faced man, who wears dried blood like a beard of his own.

  “You’ll learn.”

  “I have,�
�� he says.

  Ladro smiles. It’s not a kind smile, and I wonder if the new prisoner realizes he’s just spoken out of turn again. But the rat-faced man’s correct: He does learn. Because whatever he’s been clutching so tightly to his chest is gone and both of his hands are now empty and hanging loosely at his sides.

  “Your ring,” I say to Debro. “Swallow it.”

  She looks shocked.

  “Now,” I hiss. “We’re about to be taxed. You’ll lose it if you don’t.”

  Reluctantly she pulls the signet from her little finger.

  “Do it.”

  While she’s still hesitating, I grab the ring from her hand and swallow it as discreetly as I can. When I glance across, Anton is grinning.

  “Turn out your pockets,” orders the man. “Put your open hands in front of you. I won’t bother strip-searching, because the guards will have done that already.”

  We do what we’re told.

  “Here’s how it’s going to work. You’re going to give me anything you’ve got left. If you refuse, I’ll break the arms of the people standing on either side of you.”

  “You can’t—” one man tries to say; he doesn’t get to finish his sentence.

  “Pick him up.”

  Someone does.

  “All right,” says Ladro. “Turn out your pockets and offer up your hands.”

  Walking down the line, he stops occasionally to thrust his hands into a woman’s jacket or check that the out-turned pockets of a man really are turned out far enough.

  Roughly every third person has something. Wedding rings are plentiful, and one man has a neat little watch that looks like it does an awful lot more than simply tell the time. Ladro stops when he gets to me and gapes at what rests in the palm of my broad hand.

  I think I’ve overdone it, but his amazement stops him from thinking too hard about why I haven’t tried to keep it hidden for longer.

  “Where the fuck did you get that?”

  “Stole it.”

  He picks up the little Death’s Head dagger and turns it over in his hands. It’s short, double-edged, a blade made for slicing rather than stabbing deep. Being Death’s Head, its decoration is minimal and the scabbard almost bare.

  It belongs to Horse, whose real name is Sergeant Hito, my minder back on General Jaxx’s mother ship. I imagine he knows to the second when I took it. He’d put it on the side in a bar, turned away to look at something, and seemed not to notice it was gone when he turned back.

  “You stole this?”

  I nod.

  “Where?”

  “In a bar from a Death’s Head sergeant.”

  Ladro considers that, decides it’s plausible. “And how did you get it past the guards?”

  “Swallowed it.” I look at him. “Just threw it up a little too early.”

  He grins. “Too bad,” he says, pocketing the blade. “You can’t win them all.”

  You should see what else I swallowed.

  And I don’t mean Debro’s ring, either…But I keep my silence and wait for him to pass down the line. When we’re done, he jerks his thumb toward a corridor. “Keep going until you can’t go any farther and you’ve arrived.”

  We’re about to discover where we are going to be living. From the look on the faces of most of the new arrivals they’re shattered enough already at where they find themselves; I doubt if any of them is ready for what will come next.

  “Wait,” says Ladro, suddenly magnanimous. “Anyone stops you, tell them you’ve already been taxed, by me.” It’s obvious he feels this is the clincher. No contraband has been overlooked. We can safely be left in peace.

  “How far?” Debro whispers.

  “A mile,” I say. “Two miles.”

  It could be more, a lot more. I wonder how she expects me to know. A hundred paces beyond Ladro’s turnoff, I make them stop and have two of the women dress the girl, who’s almost in a fit state to walk by now. Debro supervises and puts herself between the girl and a handful of the men who just want a better view.

  “Debro’s going to get herself in trouble,” Anton says.

  He sounds worried.

  “It’s possible.” Debro could be adopted as pack mother or she could be cast out. It’s too early yet to have any sense of which way it’s going to go.

  “Can you protect her?”

  My smile makes him look away.

  “I can pay you,” he says flatly.

  “With what?”

  “Gold,” says Anton. “Furs, dried bush meat, illegal crystals, real estate. You want it, we trade it. You get the reward as soon as we get out of here.”

  “No one gets out of here,” I tell him. “This isn’t the kind of place people leave.” I hold up one hand, stilling him. The injured girl is now dressed and Debro is stroking her face, saying something encouraging. I want to get this said before Debro comes back and we move off again.

  “Looking after her is your job,” I warn Anton. “But I’ll do what I can.” We shake hands on this and when I glance up it’s to find Debro watching us, a strange smile on her face.

  “Come on,” I say. “Keep moving.”

  The tunnel is low and lined with ceramic; it’s cracked in places, and on at least three occasions a hole has been hacked into the lining and a smaller tunnel vanishes into darkness.

  “It’s warmer than I expected,” says Debro.

  “Won’t last,” I tell her, then smile, trying to take the sting from my words. None of them yet understands a word they’ve been told.

  “Keep up with me,” I tell Anton and Debro, and somehow that means I inherit the girl and Rat Face, whose name turns out to be Phibs. He owns a printing press on a planet so primitive, it isn’t even networked. He claims to have produced samizdat pamphlets to order, for money. And doesn’t see why he should end up on Paradise.

  “You’re lucky,” I say.

  He glares at me.

  “Do you have posh contacts, like Debro or Anton?” I ask him. “No, you’re here because the authorities couldn’t be arsed to kill you. And the reason they couldn’t be bothered is you were in it for the money. Being a moneygrubbing little fuck saved your life.”

  “You know,” Phibs says, “you’re not as thick as you look.”

  I punch him, but not very hard.

  The tunnel gets colder and narrower as we push on into the gloom. Strange luminescent strings hang from the ceiling. They look as if they’re fungal, although Debro’s trying to remember if fungus can work at this temperature. She’s also shivering. Probably because she’s given her coat to the girl who walks behind us. Anton keeps darting back to check if she’s okay, but his interest seems fatherly.

  “Here,” I say, giving Debro my own coat.

  She glances at Anton, who smiles.

  “He’s only being kind,” Anton says.

  Debro looks doubtful. “I should probably tell you,” she says. “I’ve been celibate for fifteen years.”

  So loud is my laughter that a boy sticks his head through one of those holes in the tunnel wall to see what the noise is about. He takes one look into my face and disappears.

  “What?” demands Debro, sounding almost offended.

  “It would be like fucking my sister,” I tell her. “And you need to meet my sister to know how bloody scary an idea that would be. She’s more my type…” My nod takes in the girl, all long black hair and features so fine she looks like she’d crumple in the first decent wind.

  “She’s everyone’s type,” says Anton, earning himself a glare from Debro.

  “I mean it,” he says. “She’s going to be trouble.”

  Debro looks at him.

  “You saw the way Ladro looked at her. You’ve seen Sven’s interest. There isn’t a man in this group who hasn’t checked her out with his eyes. It’s going to get worse.”

  “What do you suggest we do?” asks Debro.

  “I don’t know,” Anton says. “What can we do?”

  “Trade her,” I suggest. “No
w, while her value’s high.”

  Debro shakes her head. “We…Are…Not…Trading…Anybody.” She is so upset she can barely bring herself to look in my direction.

  “And if people die?”

  She does face me then.

  I sigh, think about what words I want to use.

  Anton and Debro have had people listen to them for their entire lives. If anyone ever listened to me it was because I had stripes on my arm, and when those went I fell back on silence.

  “People will die trying to protect her,” I say. “And those left will resent her and want what they’re protecting her from. I’ve seen it happen.”

  “All the same.” Anton shrugs. “We can’t just give her up.”

  “We can get food,” I tell him. “Maybe blankets and medicines.”

  “No,” Debro says. “She stays.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” says Debro. “That’s the right thing.”

  I think about Debro’s words as we wander deeper into the tunnel. The rough-cut holes in the walls are becoming more frequent, the light fungus rarer. The temperature drops a degree or so every few hundred paces, and already our breath hangs around our faces like smoke. We have no food, few possessions, and little enough to keep us warm.

  In the legion you protect your own. Debro’s demand is a version of that, but she’s widened the group to include everyone in need of help, including people she’s only just met.

  It is a really dumb idea. I just can’t work out how to tell her so.

  As it gets colder the group behind us become quieter. People are beginning to wonder how much worse the situation can become. They have no idea. Although when the tunnel does change, the change is so spectacular that even Phibs forgets to be miserable. The ceramic wall just stops and we step into a tube of frozen white gauze, with a thousand translucent ribs where bracing struts should be. A primitive backbone skims into the darkness above our heads.

  “Impossible,” says Debro.

  Anton shakes his head. “It’s here,” he says, touching his hand to one of the frozen ribs and wincing, as he has to peel it free.

  “So Paradise does have wildlife,” I say.

  “It would seem so.” Anton’s voice is matter-of-fact, and he begins to walk on before the rest of us have finished staring. He’s a strange man, and it’s hard to tell if he likes Debro or hates her.