Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  "You know an awful lot about lichen for someone who's allegedly not a loony lichen cultist," Hopewell said, giving her a mock-suspicious look.

  "Not really. Lichen isn't my area of expertise - if you want a lecture, ask me about pineapples sometime - but it's tangentially related, I guess. I'm a botanist."

  "Bet that's come in real handy on this dustbowl of a planet. Anyway, the place looks deserted. Want to roll down there, Commander?"

  The farm looked abandoned, but his Hyrrokkin's targeting sensors detected two heat signals. Rivka's pale flutter, and another, cowering in the dark glass bramble.

  "That's where the entrance to the train station is," Joy said, when he indicated the position.

  "All right. Hopewell, stay up here and cover us with the Epona. Rhys, Lucklaw, grab your gear and let's go."

  Cassimer took point, leading the team down the dune. The layer of dust was thin, brittle glass cracking and snapping under his boots. Gun at the ready, he approached the well, hesitating briefly before stepping inside the lichen circle.

  Rivka groaned, unseeing eyes rolling in their sockets, and from the shadows of the fulgurite grove, Natham stepped out into the light.

  Cassimer trained his gun on the farmer, who stopped and fell to his knees, arms raised high.

  Natham had never seemed like much of a man, but now he seemed to have left even the order of vertebrates. Pitiful and riddled with impurities. A target for demons if ever there was one, and Cassimer quietly alerted the team. Had to stay on their toes here. Could not drop their guard for anything or anyone.

  "Natham?" The sudden sound of Joy's voice made his nerves twinge with tension. Cato had a special kind of silence, a hollow deadness so complete it almost hummed. Any sound - particularly if it was pleasant - seemed a disturbance.

  "Stay back." He raised his hand and Joy obeyed, though he could sense her presence close behind, warm with light and curiosity.

  "I'm sorry." Natham's voice poured as thick as porridge through tear-swollen lips. "Sorry, sorry. It was not our doing, we did not want it."

  "The assault on our base?" Cassimer hadn't yet decided what to do with the man, or his dying daughter for that matter. The crawling sensation of fresh tissue integrating itself into his face was not in their favour, nor were Joy's fading bruises. His fingers tensed, ready to pull the trigger, ready to be done with it.

  Natham cringed. "Yes. Yes. We did not do that, not my people. It was all Rivka's doing, all Rivka's needling words and arrogance."

  "Punishing her will do little to appease us."

  "Punishing?" Natham looked blank for a moment. "No. Not punishing. Saving. The red will save her. You must understand, she is my daughter. I can't abandon her. She will never bother you again. Just leave us alone."

  Infection, gangrene, massive haemorrhaging. She'll be dead within the hour. Rhys's laconic opinion was passed along to Cassimer in text format.

  "Stand aside." Cassimer motioned for Natham to move from the subway station entrance - a wide set of stairs obscured by dark glass formations. The farmer scurried away, hunched with terror. Though Cassimer could see little merit in the farmer's life, Natham seemed to wish to cling onto it. "Where's the rest of your people? Down in the subway?"

  Natham shook his head. "The drifters returned last night. Swept through the camp, took what they wanted; took who they wanted, took them deep into the tunnels. Those who still lived left at sunrise. Some slunk off to Nexus, to hide with the weak and wretched." Natham spat three times over his shoulder, lips curled with contempt. "The others packed up our wagons and made for the winter settlement. It's far. Too far in storm season. Far too far, but better the dust and the glass than the whispers that never cease."

  Cassimer sent a quiet order to Rhys and Lucklaw to secure the subway station, then glanced over his shoulder at Joy. Though his visor was down, she understood his meaning.

  "I've no idea what he's on about. I never heard any whispers."

  "Not yet." Natham smiled. "First they must take root. You are fresh, but soon you'll hear and you'll be told, and if you are lucky, you'll only have to be told once."

  "Quiet." Cassimer didn't care to hear any more mad ramblings. He already knew all he needed to. Natham was impure, and so was the whole cursed planet. Every decaying building, every gnarled fulgurite tree. Every grain of dust; even the air itself.

  Everything except for Joy.

  "Go to your daughter. When she is gone, leave. I don't want to see your face again, is that clear?"

  Yes, it was clear, very clear, and the apologetically muttering Natham shuffled to kneel below the iron scaffold. Rivka moaned, quietly at first, but soon her head lolled backwards and a guttural rasp rose from her stained lips. It was the sound of death unmitigated by stims and automatically administered anaesthetics. There would be no drug-addled giggling to herald Rivka's death, nor lullabies to sing her to sleep.

  "Should we help her?" Joy's eyes were wide and dark, and she'd turned as wan as the surroundings. The chains of her manacles jangled between trembling wrists.

  "There's nothing we can do," he said, though the Morrigan in his hands told him differently. "The subway platform is clear. Go down there and wait."

  The data Lucklaw had sent through matched Joy's description of the station fairly well - one train tunnel and one platform, contained within a large hall. An office on one side and a short corridor on the other, leading to what had once been a shop and two restrooms. The tunnel itself had, within scanner range, half a dozen offshoots in the form of maintenance tunnels.

  "All good, Commander?" Hopewell asked.

  "So far. Remain in position until we've boarded the train. Stay inside the Epona, and you're free to engage at any sign of trouble. Once back at base, you and Florey are to maintain the perimeter. Anybody comes within three kilometres, neutralise them."

  "Affirmative." Hopewell sounded pleased, and he understood. It wasn't that she was bloodthirsty - even when she'd ranted and raved about Natham and the locals, it had mostly been to blow off steam - but rather that he'd given her a small measure of control. Her fate was fully in her own capable hands.

  He cast a final look at Natham and the dying Rivka, wondering if he shouldn't give the woman the only mercy that remained for her. For her sake he should - but for the father's sake, he refrained.

  19. Joy

  The top of the stairs was dim with pale sunlight, the bottom illuminated by bright suit lights, but the midsection was dark and narrow and tacky underneath her feet, each step littered with signs of frenzy. Smashed jars of pickled greets, sour milk dripping from tipped-over tin cans. Scattered tools, a smattering of bullet casings, and among the trash, hints that Natham had been telling the truth. She tried not to look - the tang of iron was enough to turn her stomach. Drifters had been through here and they had not been kind, the vengeful wrath meant for the Primaterre soldiers expended on their own kind.

  Rhys had stationed himself at the western end of the platform, and she hurried into the illusory safety of his lights. Lucklaw was on the tracks at the eastern end of the platform, mounting some kind of clamps to the rails.

  "You really travel these tunnels all by yourself?" Rhys' visor was open and there was something comfortingly human about the craggy lines around his eyes. "Hard to believe a botanist would survive long down here."

  Both platform and tracks were smeared with blood, and Rhys's suit lights revealed a pattern of wild scratching on the tiled tunnel wall. Half-formed letters swirled in a tapestry of madness, continuing beyond the lights' reach.

  "Being quiet and careful is well within a botanist's purview. Unless you don't believe my story? Lucklaw doesn't seem to."

  "Doesn't take much more than a look at you to know it's true. The commander sees it too. Doubt he'd have given you the time of day if he thought you were just another local. Certainly wouldn't have invited you to base." Rhys pulled a cigarette from his belt pouch. "You want one?"

  She gave him an arched look, tapping h
er med-bracelet.

  "Oh, right. I forgot about that. Suppose you're going to ask me to refrain from smoking too."

  "I could go across the platform, leave you to it."

  "No, no." He stuck the cigarette back into the pouch and pulled out a couple of ration bars instead. "I'd rather have the company than the cig. Ploughman's lunch or shepherd's pie?"

  She smiled at the names, selecting the ploughman's. "Considering how advanced your tech is, you Primaterrans sure like food of the ye olde traditional variety."

  "Primaterre," he corrected her and handed her the ration bar. "You'll want to get that right. Primaterrans sounds uneducated - no offense, you've got as good an excuse for that as they come - Primes is borderline offensive, and Primos? Now you're talking the sort of slur that'd get even me a reprimand if the commander overheard."

  "Is he really that strict?"

  "Out of necessity. Only order can combat chaos, or so they say." Rhys shrugged. "Purity is security, and security is paramount."

  "I've noticed." Joy raised her manacles.

  "The commander's still got you wearing those things? Seems impractical for the journey."

  "You don't think they're necessary?"

  The medic, with his open visor and easy conversational tone, clearly took a more relaxed approach, but Cassimer had sounded so utterly convinced of the threat of demonic possession that she had the impression it was not only real, but imminent.

  "They are if the commander says they are," he responded curtly, but a bite of his ration bar later, he seemed to have a change of heart. "Ah, look - let me be honest with you. It's no good having you scared out of your wits about demons on top of everything else. No, I don't think the cuffs are necessary."

  "You don't believe in demons?"

  "One of my first assignments was clean up duty after a demonic outbreak. It was a nightmare of a job, bad enough that it should've been outright criminal to give it to a kid fresh out of the academy." Rhys balled up his ration bar wrapper. His fingers quivered around the silver foil. "But you'll know what that's like, little miss lab assistant."

  "First week on the job, they had me give the manure tanks a manual scrubbing," she said, grimacing at the memory.

  "I'd rather lick clean a thousand manure tanks than witness the aftermath of possession again. But that was damn near twenty-six years ago and I've not smelled a whiff of sulphur since."

  "Sulphur?" Images of horned beasts swarming from hell portals swirled in her mind, all fang and flame, death and damnation.

  "Figure of speech. There's no smell, although... I'm not one for fanciful thinking, but when I think back..." He took out his cigarette again; didn't light it, but rolled it between his fingers, flakes of tobacco drizzling to the floor. "I do remember a smell. Singed hair. Putrefied flesh. Faecal matter. Every damn nasty smell a body can produce, blended and fermented into one hell of a stench. So yeah - sulphur. Why not. Fits the old Earth canon, doesn't it?"

  None of this gelled with the universe as Joy had once known it, but she couldn't help but look at the shadowed corners every now and then, staring hard to make sure no tendrils reached from the dark.

  "But, like I said, that was well over twenty years ago. There have only been three confirmed outbreaks across the galaxy since. One in the last ten years, and that was on a Primaterre bio-research station in orbit around Neptune - a far more tempting target for demons than one little botanist on the edge of nowhere."

  "And before that, the Hecate?"

  Rhys made a funny face at that, quickly swallowing the piece of ration bar he was chewing, and coughed to clear his throat. "How do you know about the Hecate?"

  "The commander told me."

  "Cassimer told you about the Hecate?" The scepticism slowly drained from his face as he gave her a long, evaluating look. "That's about the most interesting thing I've heard since we got to this rock. Do yourself a favour though and don't mention it to anyone else. The commander's a private man, and I reckon he'd like it kept in confidence."

  His heart had beaten so hard she could see his pulse leap. Of course Cassimer had meant that moment only for her. "I'm such an idiot." Might as well confess to it.

  "Don't worry. Unlike some, I know how to keep a secret." Rhys gave her a sly wink. "In any case, that's why I reckon the manacles are pointless. Don't see what interest demons would have in you. It's Earth they want, and we're about as far from Earth as you can get these days."

  "So why does the commander insist on the chains?"

  "You wash your hands before dinner?"

  "Back when dinner didn't amount to spider guts eaten with my bare hands in a filthy old sewer? Yes, of course. I was taught good manners."

  "There's more to it than just manners, though. Some people don't bother, because they're lazy or filthy, or don't believe in the benefits of hand washing. Others quickly rinse their hands as a token gesture, to pass the inspection of another's watchful eye. Then there's people like you and me, who wash our hands properly because we understand the importance of basic hygiene - and yes, the importance of manners, too.

  "But then, at the very top of this hierarchy of hand-washers, you've got the people who wash their hands with soap in scalding hot water. Then they use a hand-sanitizer, and maybe they'll even wash their hands a second time, repeating the whole process, and maybe they'll fastidiously scrub the sink and the taps and the soap dispensers and mop the bathroom floor while they're at it. And then, of course, they'll wash their hands again. They're obsessive compulsives and, concerning matters of possession, so is our commander."

  "Because of what happened on the, um, thing I'm not supposed to mention?"

  Rhys shrugged. "Who can say? But I can't imagine that it helped."

  ◆◆◆

  The floor vibrated with the rumble of the approaching train. Cassimer had come down the stairs and directed her and Lucklaw to the ticket office, while he and Rhys waited on the platform.

  Through the dirty wired glass of the office door, Joy could barely see a thing. Especially not with Lucklaw hogging most of the space in front of it.

  "Excuse me, could you move just a tiny bit?" A reasonable enough request, but Lucklaw shot her what she was sure to be a withering glance behind his visor.

  "Step back, civilian. Further - I can still smell you."

  Smell her. Nonsense; he couldn't smell anything through that suit of his, and besides, she smelled just like the rest of them. Citrus and chemicals, sunk deep into her every pore. Lucklaw was just a bully, and she'd met plenty worse.

  "This your first mission?"

  Lucklaw didn't acknowledge her, but there was a sudden stiffness to his back. Oh, she had his attention, all right, and had found a soft spot - one of many, if he was anything like most bullies.

  "Shut up," he hissed, barely audible over the rumbling. The train was close, about to pull into the station.

  "I mean no offense. It's just that Cassimer and Rhys, they might think they remember what it was like to be new and untested, but remembering it isn't the same as living it. You and I, we are living it, and if you want to talk..."

  "We are nothing alike." He turned, handgun aimed squarely at her face, and the black void of the muzzle seemed to grow until it was all she could see. "You're nothing at all."

  "But you're something?"

  "That's right, and you'd better remember your place." He lowered his gun and she saw that his finger had never been close to the trigger. Corporal Lucklaw might be something, but without his commander's say-so, he was one of the very few people on Cato who wouldn't hurt her.

  At least he had moved slightly to the left. On purpose or by accident? Maybe she had reached him on some level, though his churlish personality would never allow him to admit it.

  Or maybe she really did smell.

  The train pulled into the station, clamouring and squealing like an old dragon. It didn't have much life left in it. One day, it would cough to a stop in a dark tunnel and then there would be no more train r
ides on Cato. The last remnant of civilisation gone, cause of death: old age and lost knowledge. If she was still stuck on Cato then... the thought was unbearable and she pushed it deep into the recesses of her mind. Best not to borrow trouble.

  Besides, maybe the train driver knew how to repair the train.

  Oh - the driver. Cold with dread, Joy reached for the door handle.

  "Don't touch that."

  "But I have to warn them." Cassimer and Rhys were on the platform - somewhere. Their suits had adapted to the colour and texture of the surroundings, and though it was far from perfect stealth, it was good enough camouflage that she couldn't see them. "The train driver - I forgot to tell them about him."

  "I've got them on the comms, you idiot. You don't need to go out there to relay information."

  "Then tell them about the driver. Tell them that he's dangerous and that violence on the platform is not allowed. Please, Lucklaw."

  "Done." There was a touch of amusement in Lucklaw's voice, and she thought about asking him about it, but the train doors were opening.

  Three locals shuffled past the conductor. Scavengers, by the look of their equipment, likely coming from Nexus. The mayor was always looking for tech, especially if it could aid maintenance of the force field. It, like the train, was on its way out.

  Cassimer and Rhys switched their suit lights on. The locals blinked and cowered in the sudden brightness - far brighter than any source of light Cato had to offer. Behind them, more passengers huddled, their faces pale smudges behind the dust-caked train windows.

  "This train is now under Primaterre control. All passengers are to disembark, calmly." Cassimer's voice, amplified by his suit, boomed across the platform. She knew what the locals were seeing, remembered well the shock and awe of seeing the Primaterre soldiers for the first time. It was no surprise that two of them had fallen to their knees.

  But seizing the train was madness. It was the lifeblood of the planet, the one viable method of traversing the lightning-seared continent. The train couldn't be taken - not without violence on the platform.