At the Edge

by Lee Murray

  He couldn’t just hover here, losing his bearings. The Baron, his friend, was relying on him. He ignored the taste and kept on choppily swimming.

  The deeper water was kept still and silent by the buildings buried in the muck, rearing up sudden when he approached them. A chunk of city drowned in shadows. Rey hung in the water in front of it, staring around. Did Welltown look like this, under the sea?

  He touched a wall and kicked forward, using it to guide him. He came to a door and smiled at how it was sideways, rearing at an angle from the River mud. Rey kicked closer.

  Something lunged at him, slimy and scaled, and he reared back at the touch of it and screamed. All the air left his lungs in big thick bubbles, and he clawed up after it as though he could get it back. He looked from his vanishing air to the doorway, and wanted to scream again in frustration. It wasn’t a dead body or ghostie or monster, just a big fish, a koi. It dipped its fat head out around the edge of the door, regarding him, then with a swish of its tail was out of its hiding place and away, sending great puffs of mud when it touched its legs to the riverbed.

  Rey’s lungs burned worse than the rest of him now, and the edges of the River were thickening at the edges of his eyes like swarming black dots. He had to get treasures. He kicked forward again, shoving through the door, but it was dark as dark inside. He groped around, and touched something sliming and dead, useless. Reaching out, he couldn’t feel or see anything else. He had failed, and it felt like exhaustion, like the last of him giving up.

  No. He had to be happy, all the time. He had to, or they’d catch up.

  Desperately Rey towed himself through the water, using his arms because his legs felt weak and exhausted. His lungs more than hurt now. There were bands squeezing at him, wracking his lungs so his body shook, wanting him to breathe in. He shut his eyes and opened them. There was a dead body watching him from one side of the door, long hair drifting limp in the water.

  Rey pulled himself past, through a swirl of hair, and out, struggling, his limbs hard to move. His chest squeezed, and without meaning to, he glugged in a breath that was water. The taste of it was foul as a memory. Rey spun, desperately moving, then stopped. He hung in the water.

  She stared at him. Who are you? she seemed to say. He felt the words like a crushing inwards of his ears. Where do you come from?

  I don’t know, he whispered, I don’t know. I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember my mother.

  The pressure pushed against his ears, hungry like anger, and he knew it was a lie. Rey did remember. He tried not to, but he did. He remembered his mother lying beside him, protecting him, and he knew what was wrong with the memory. She was cold.

  There was more that was wrong. There was all that was wrong.

  To eat your ancestors is the worst desecration, the dead woman said, and Rey cringed.

  I had to, Rey whispered. His mind was fuzzing now and shutting down. I was so hungry. There was nothing else to eat…

  In front of him something flashed and trailed away.

  He wanted to move, to get out, but the water felt solid around him, like it was holding him there. Like it knew his guilt. He closed his eyes.

  Something rushed up beneath him, pushing him up, up, something cold and rough under his dim fingers.

  Rey woke on the riverbank, and stared up with eyes that burned. The sky’s red grey was the best thing he’d seen.

  He turned over and was sick. He remembered what he had been trying not to remember and vomited again, his whole body shaking with it, bringing up nothing more than acid and a taste of mud. Rey wanted to roll away from the sick, but he could barely move. He flopped back in the mud.

  He was able to raise his head, just. In the water something moved, fast and sharp. The creature’s back pushed up massive through the water, with great cracks in its skin where pale flesh showed through and pale fish gripped and fed. There had been taniwha in this River once, he remembered. That was what the saying was.

  This thing was huge, bigger than a log, bigger than three logs together. The fin on its back, cutting through the water, was a shape he remembered from stories.

  Squelching footsteps and toneless cursing came from somewhere near him, and he craned his head. The Baron walked past, dragging one of the squashy plastic bags behind her, slippery through the muck. She stopped by the riverbank, then pulled, heaved, and with one great effort tossed it out into the water. She slipped on the mud, but got up again. The shark slid at it, barely two metres from the bank, its great mouth lunging up and tugging the bag soundlessly beneath. There was tearing and thrashing, flailing. Shreds of plastic floated up, and bits of the body.

  The Baron did the same with the other bag, then walked back and sat, fell, on the ground near Rey. He blinked at her. Her suit was a mess. ‘Whenever I call him I have to feed him, and there isn’t anything else,’ she said. She looked more human like this, all covered in mud so he couldn’t see the blue stuff in her blood. ‘One of these days I’ll be eaten instead of being helped.’ She shrugged, as though to say it was what it was.

  Rey struggled into sitting up. The shark fed, then nosed at the bits of bag in case anything was left. Tears pushed up behind Rey’s eyes, and then he was crying, sobbing, his lungs feeling like they were being squeezed again and pushing the tears out, water coming from his eyes and nose, shoulders shaking. The Baron sat stiffly beside him.

  ‘I hate this world,’ Rey whispered, ‘I hate it, I hate it.’ It was true, mostly.

  After, he felt better. He wiped his face with his sleeve. The water was smooth now.

  ‘You made me use my flare,’ the Baron said.

  Rey ducked his head. And he hadn’t even found anything. ‘Sorry.’

  She said, ‘No.’ He glanced at her in surprise.

  She frowned a little. ‘I was using you, of course,’ the Baron said tonelessly. ‘It’s dangerous to swim in that.’ She brushed some mud off one sleeve, and she wiped her hand on the ground, but the ground was just as dirty. ‘I still don’t care, not like I should. In the old world I would’ve been a monster. I’m actually suited better to this one.’

  Rey didn’t know what to say. ‘I like you,’ he said.

  ‘You’re insane,’ the Baron said. Rey bobbed his head. That was probably true.

  Using his fingers, he combed the worst of the mud out of his hair. He’d need to put more dyes in it. When he couldn’t find proper dyes, he would crush flowers and rub them in, and those had all washed off now.

  His hair was thick and knotted, and he didn’t remember it growing this long. He doubted, now, that he was sixteen or anything close to it.

  Rey glanced at the Baron and dug at the mud with one hand. ‘Those travellers,’ he said, and she turned her head slowly to stare at him. ‘They probably have more flares.’

  The Baron sat with her arms laid over her knees.

  Rey scratched his nose. ‘They won’t be far. And there’s plenty of them,’ he said, not quite meeting her eyes. He looked over her shoulder instead, at the bridge, upriver, then focused somewhere around her chin. ‘They could use the shelter, and the food in an emergency, and we can all fight together when ghosties come. All together. Whānau. I know that word.’ And if families didn’t exist the same way anymore, well, they could just try to make new ones.

  The Baron turned to look at the water. Had he failed? She said, ‘Ugh,’ not a throat-sound, actually saying it. Then she said, ‘If we must.’

  Rey smiled, not broad enough to hurt. They should go back, but he didn’t feel like moving yet, and the Baron just sat there. She was quite slow moving, with her addiction. She’d still come after him.

  Rey lay flat on his back, arms beneath his head, and looked, rusty, into the future, which he had not thought of in a long time. They could all work together. He could hunt, and ride, and scout. He would get the Baron off pickle-juice and everything wou
ld be fine. Or it wouldn’t be fine. But his mother would be … proud.

  ‘My mother’s name was Maia,’ Rey whispered to the sky like a prized secret, like getting rid of something heavy. He closed his eyes. ‘And this river, this used to be the Waikato.’

  The Architect

  Phillip Mann

  PART 2

  Let it be said, there was no love lost between the Architect and the administrators who managed the mining operation on Meredith. While the Architect had built his city, he had watched the crews come and go. To the enlisted men, Meredith-duty was synonymous with banishment. It was five years of thumb-twiddling; five years away from family and friends; five years of synthetic air and hydroponics food. For the most part, the commanders of the Meredith torus were professional officers coming to the end of their careers. Some just wanted a quiet life and time to build up their pensions. Others took pride in what, to the Architect’s way of thinking, was mindless efficiency. Such a one was Commander Aaron Shelley.

  From the moment of Commander Shelley’s arrival several months earlier, there had been friction between him and the Architect. Their two styles of thinking rubbed against one another. This instinctive antipathy had reached its climax in a fierce row during which the Architect, never a politic man in his negotiations, had told Commander Shelley that he would have been better employed managing the garbage chute of a prison moon! To which Commander Shelley, an Australian by birth and no stranger to verbal debate, responded with remarkable restraint by telling the Architect that he and his city were ‘a quaint and costly hobby’.

  That did it. That one word: ‘quaint’. No single word could have taunted him worse, not even ‘hobby’. The Architect had made a rude noise in reply and switched off the communicator. He had not switched it on since, and hence had missed the occasions when Commander Shelley had tried to make amends. Instead, the Architect had worked. Worked harder than ever before, and in that time he had completed his city. Quaint indeed! He would show them.

  The result of his anger was that the completion of the city had come upon him almost unexpectedly. Intellectually, he had always known just where he was in the overall plan, but emotionally he was not ready. He had not faced the question of what he might do after the city was made. Now the reality was upon him. In a few hours the last piece, the final small chamber with its flashing light, would be finished and sliding down the delivery chute, thence to be guided to its final resting place by one of the construction monitors.

  Before opening contact with the world above, the Architect gave himself a shot of his Aqua Mirabilis. He knew that he would have to contact Commander Aaron Shelley soon of course and tell him the news. But not just yet, eh? Time for a bit of a party first. Very private. Exclusive. ‘Here’s to me. Here’s to the City. Here’s to all who will live here.’ He awarded himself an extra dose of Aqua Mirabilis. In the olden days, the Architect was in the habit of drinking when he needed to. His favourite tipple had been whisky. Once, he had managed to stay drunk for several days. That was when the inspiration deserted him. Sometimes he didn’t know whether he was drunk or sober. That was when the inspiration was on him. But now, the Aqua was all he ever craved.

  The warm flush made him shiver, but not with cold. The Aqua mellowed him. Perhaps he had been a bit hasty in his dealings with Aaron Shelley. The man did have a certain crass sense of humour. In any case, the Architect needed to tell someone that the work was done … and then of course he would have to contact those who had commissioned the City in the first place. They would need to come to see it. And … and … The Architect felt a deep and sudden sadness well up inside him. ‘And then? What will I do then?’ Unbidden, verses he had known when he was a student came to him.

  Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

  Nor the furious winter’s rages

  Thou thy worldly task hast done,

  Home art done, and ta’en thy wages:

  Golden lads and girls all must,

  As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

  He sighed, blew his nose and approached the communication console again.

  Much to his surprise, the machine chattered the moment he switched it on. A long paper message snaked from the printer. This was unusual. Most exchanges were verbal. Paper messages were more formal. The Architect guessed that the present message had been stored in the memory for some time. He ripped off the paper flimsy and read.

  CCSED-RR-3/l 1717-a

  Attn. Cdr Shelley.

  By order of the Central Council for Space Exploration and Development, all activities connected with the colonisation of Planet Meredith are terminated as from receipt-date of this order. Construction of surface habitat to cease immediately. Standard closedown and evacuation procedures apply. All CCSED personnel will be reassigned upon return to HQ.

  Closedown time-frame to follow. Confirm.

  An indecipherable signature was appended.

  The Architect read the message twice and it still did not make sense. What did ‘Construction of surface habitat to cease immediately’ mean? Did that mean his City? And what was this about the colonisation being terminated? None of it made sense.

  He looked at the date and saw that the communication had been dispatched some six standard days earlier. That meant…

  The Architect did not bother to complete his thought. He slammed home the relays he had removed to stop the machine plaguing him and pressed his automatic call sign. Within seconds the call was answered by a young man in a smart uniform, whom he did not recognise.

  ‘Where’s Aaron Shelley?’ asked the Architect without preamble.

  ‘And who are you?’ asked the young man, staring at him with cold eyes. He then glanced to one side and checked the origin of the call. ‘Ah. The Architect. The one who won’t answer calls. Well, I hope you got the message. I hope you’ve nearly completed your clear-out. You should only bring absolute essentials. Too costly to bring out the big gear.’

  ‘There isn’t going to be a clear-out,’ said the Architect, mustering his anger but feeling himself strangely unimpressive before the young man with the cold eyes.

  ‘Wanna bet?’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the Architect.

  ‘Lieutenant Samuelson. Security and Intelligence. I’m here to see the Meredith enterprise closed down smoothly.’

  ‘Where’s Commander Shelley?’

  The young man took a few moments before answering. ‘Well now, I thought he was with you. He’s on his way down to see you with the decommissioning crew at this very moment. When you didn’t reply, we had no option but to take action on your behalf. Anyway, his team should be with you shortly. You’ll be off planet in two days. Only bring essentials.’

  He reached forward to break the communication.

  ‘But…’ The Architect looked at the young man as though he were speaking a foreign language. ‘But what does it mean?’ he asked finally.

  ‘Mean? What do you mean, “What does it mean?” Can’t you read? You’re being closed down, old man. The whole operation. I’m surprised that you seem surprised. It’s been on the agenda for years. They’ve found a better planet. Better climate. Just as rich. Less overheads. Meredith will be mothballed. It’s a good and sound decision.’

  ‘But they can’t just…’

  ‘Wanna bet?’

  ‘What about the people?’

  ‘What people?’

  ‘The ones who are going to live in my city?’

  Samuelson looked at him, and shook his head. ‘You don’t get it, do you? The project’s over. There won’t be any people coming to see it. Finished or not.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Tell Commander Shelley to contact me as soon as he is ready to close the main generators down. Okay?’

  The young man reached forward again, and this time he did break communication. The screen died.

  *


  The Architect staggered back until he was sitting on his bed. None of it made sense. He felt a sharp pain in his heart and he beat his chest with his fist – pain killing pain. ‘But they can’t do this,’ was all he could say.

  The communication machine chimed again, and the Architect opened contact cautiously.

  Was it all a joke or a misunderstanding or…

  In front of him appeared the face of Commander Shelley. ‘So, there you are. Good to see you’re still alive. Just to let you know, there’s been a slight delay. We’ll be with you in about twenty minutes. We’re just clearing the elevator now. Have all your personal effects ready. Okay?’ The Architect did not reply. ‘I have an electronics expert with me and she’ll be closing the machines down, so please have the manuals all ready.’ Still the Architect did not reply. There was a pause. ‘I guess you’re pretty upset, eh? But I did send you warning as soon as I knew.’ Still no response. The Architect just stared. ‘Okay. Well anyway … And I have a photographer with me who wants to take pictures for an article he’s writing. So … okay. See you soon, I guess.’

  And there the communication ended. Twenty minutes! After forty years! Twenty minutes! Well, he would make it as hard as he could for them.

  He hurried from his room, past the design consul where lights were blinking, calling for attention, and into the corridor which led to the wide doors of the supply elevator. The elevator was up aloft somewhere, in use no doubt, and the access doors were closed.

  Attached to the wall beside the elevator was a cabinet containing a first aid kit, a fire extinguisher and an axe. The Architect picked up the axe and used it to destroy the electronic door controls. Now they would have to smash their way into his quarters. He jammed the blade of the axe under the door and kicked it into place. Then he retreated into his control room and locked the door behind him. For good measure, he opened the main control cabinet and snipped some of the wires which controlled other doors.