Rig's Story (A Jupiter's Halo Novella)

by A P Heath

  Rig just wanted people to be nice. He wanted them to be nice to him and nice to each other. Things were so hard down in the tunnels and everyone always talked about how much better it was on the surface, if only they could get up there. Rig reckoned people on the surface were probably much nicer, maybe that’s why things were better up there. He hoped so and he hoped one day he’d go up there and see all the wonderful things he’d heard about for himself. It was a dream he thought would probably never come true, but the dreaming helped him get by.

  THREE

  Rig was lost in his imagination as he trundled along, so much so he nearly walked right into the path of a tram as he crossed the wide entrance to the east tunnel where its tracks entered Henstown. The noise of its approach pulled his thoughts back to the here and now and Rig realised his danger just in time to make a stumbling leap from the edge of the track. The tram rolled by, its wide wheels clipping his abandoned cart and sending it spinning away, its contents spilling out as it tumbled to a stop.

  Rig was lying face down in the dirt. He coughed as he tasted the red sand on his tongue, in his throat and pulled himself to a sitting position. He looked around seeing his cart lying on its side, the small thin wheels at its rear buckled where the tram had smashed it aside. Around it was the debris he’d so carefully collected and for once he was glad of Jay and Champ’s pinching ways. If it weren’t for their laziness he’d have a great deal more to retrieve and put back into his broken cart now.

  He sighed, getting to his feet and dusting off his clothes as best as he could. They were torn and soiled anyway, but the red dust of the floor and the dirt of the foot traffic had worsened their appearance considerably.

  There were people watching him too. He could hear their laughter at his dive from the tram. They were probably sad it hadn’t crushed him. People around here liked it when something like that happened. He ignored them feeling sad inside at their scorn but knowing that looking at them would only make it worse.

  Rig started lifted his cart, setting it down on its buckled wheels and rocking it by the handle to see if it would still roll or not. It was unstable and he could see it was going to make the rest of his shift a great deal harder. Worse than that, when he finished they’d probably dock his credits to pay for the damage. He barely made enough to buy food for himself and his mother and he didn’t know how much they’d take, but it would mean he probably wouldn’t eat again that day.

  He started to pick up the fallen contents of his cart; discarded bits of material, shit that people had left on the road or flung at him as he passed. Broken stones, plastic, rotten food that smelled like someone had eaten it and thrown it up again. There had even been a few pieces of tattered clothing today, stained with what Rig thought looked a lot like blood, but too badly damaged to know for sure what they had been or who they’d come from.

  Some of the clothing had fallen close to his audience and Rig stooped to pick it up, trying to keep his eyes low so as not to bring more attention than his sad little show already had done.

  “What you got there little man?” A voice called out.

  Rig didn’t look up. He’d seen them briefly before he righted his cart. There were three woman, dressed in strange ribbon-like clothes that wrapped around their torsos and legs, but left lines of their flesh visible. They were tattooed with dark inks across their bared arms, necks and even on their faces. Rig knew the tattoos marked them as belonging to a gang, The Branded. They were not nice people. Not people he wanted to talk to.

  “I said what you got there?” The voice repeated. It was deep for a woman, husky and Rig could hear the laughter in it. “Don’t pretend you can’t hear me you li’l scrote. Or are you deaf as well as blind?”

  Rig kept his eyes down but stammered out an answer, “Ju-just some rubbish I picked up.”

  He heard the sound of steps and realised she was walking towards him. She had only been a couple of metres away, leaning against the thin metal wall of someone’s badly built home, maybe hers, but now her feet came squarely into his view of the ground.

  “Gonna look at me at least you li’l shit-picker?” She flicked the toe of her boot at him, sending the light dust up to fill his eyes.

  Rig stumbled back, raising his hands too slowly to keep it from clogging his eyes and fell back as he lost his balance. She laughed again, a loud cackle that made clear how pathetic she thought he was. Rig didn’t like the way it made him feel.

  “So what rubbish you got in your cart shit-picker?” She stepped past him and leaned over to look into his broken cart. She made a face at the smell that greeted her and turned back to him. Rig looked at her through bleary eyes, still trying to rub and blink them clear.

  Her face was sharp, the features crowded together around a nose that stuck out in a point. The left side was inked from her eyebrow down to her chin, the swirling pattern of colours making its way around her eye and across her cheek.

  She tilted her head as he caught her eye, “Like what you see shit-picker? Think maybe you wanna fuck this good stuff?” She slid her hands down her thin body, wiggling her hips briefly from side to side.

  Rig looked away quickly, embarrassed by her words and actions. He knew what ‘fuck’ meant, albeit loosely. The actual mechanics of the act had never been explained to him, but he knew it meant having sex and he knew other people seemed to put a lot of time into doing it.

  “I…I…er…no, it’s…” He stammered again, trying to get to his feet and move away from this strange and frightening woman.

  “You don’t wanna fuck me?” She moved forward as she spoke, following him closely and flicking her hand out to touch him as he tried to flee. Rig could hear the other two laughing from where they still stood.

  “He don’t wanna fuck this girls!” She called to them, “Maybe he wants oner yous instead huh?” More laughter followed him as he circled his cart, trying to put it between himself and her.

  He was panicked, unsure if she was going to turn on him, worried that the other two would join her chase and pin him somewhere he couldn’t run from.

  “Please…” He said quietly. The woman stopped and leaned her hands on the edge of his cart, rocking it slightly with her weight.

  “’Please’, he cries.” She said it in a mocking whiny tone. “Pleeeease!” She threw her arms up. “I’ma just playin’ wit you li’l shit-picker.” She leaned forward, her head on one side, “It’s too boring round here not to have a li’l fun wit a shit-picker like you.”

  Rig didn’t meet her eye. His hands were wringing the tattered material of the clothing he’d picked up. It was rough against his fingers with broken fragments of something hard inside it.

  “Oh for fucks sake!” She exclaimed at him, “I said I wa only playin’, why you lookin’ so fuckin’ glum?” She walked the few steps between them and slapped a hand down on Rig’s shoulder. He flinched at the contact.

  “You a proper scared li’l shit-picker eh?” She said, almost softly. “Go on your way then. Go pick shit for the Mayor’s masses and keep this place beautiful.” She laboured the last word, making it clear that Henstown was anything but.

  Rig nodded and pulled away, scuttling to the handle of his cart and pushing it unsteadily along the road as fast as its bouncing wheels would allow. He still had the cloth clutched in his hand and something inside was digging through into his palm.

  Rig stopped and turned the material over. It looked a bit like it could have been a jacket, but there were no sleeves left and whatever had happened to it had involved burning as the edges were charred and fraying.

  He moved it around in his fingers, trying to find a way to reach the hard shape within. His questing fingers found a broken seam and slipped inside. They pulled out a disc of some soft but thick material. It was dark brown, almost black and felt strangely pleasant to touch. In the middle of the disc was a hexagon of metal, the edge of which must have been what was digging into his hand. There was something written in the centre, but Rig couldn’t make i
t out through the dark soot that covered it. Whatever it was, the edges gleamed in a way that made him think of the richness of the surface. Whatever it was, it was not the usual kind of thing Rig found on the garbage runs.

  He glanced back over his shoulder to where the three women were still standing. The one who had chased him was watching him, a strange look on her face. Rig didn’t know if she could see what he’d found, he doubted it as his body was blocking her view of his hands, but he didn’t want to wait to find out for sure.

  Rig turned away from her scrutiny and, as casually as he could manage, pushed his cart away and around the bend in the road. As soon as he thought he was out of sight he lifted the back wheels off the ground and ran like hell.

  FOUR

  The damage to the cart had cost Rig dearly when it came to finishing his shift and returning to the garbage depot on the east side of Henstown.

  His shift manager, a tall, muscled woman who everyone called ‘Groaner’, had shaken her head as she surveyed the damage and tutted under her breath. She wore loose black overalls that covered her from neck to foot and ended in thick soled boots that added to her already towering height.

  Rig had always found her gruff manner intimidating. She had a tendency to speak more slowly to him than she did everyone else, but her words were few and never friendly where he was concerned.

  “What the fuck happened here?” She demanded of him as she looked down on the bent wheels at the rear of the cart.

  Rig fidgeted nervously and spoke in a quiet voice, “It got hit by a tram.”

  She looked up at him with doubt in her eyes, “A tram. A tram, really?”

  Rig simply nodded. He didn’t know what else to say. Groaner opened her mouth as if to speak but seemed to dismiss the thought. She shrugged her big broad shoulders and pursed her lips in a thoughtful manner.

  “It’s gonna need straightening and prob’ly new wheels here too.” She kicked the cart as she spoke, indicating the broken wheels with her usual rough touch. “Not cheap that, y’know.”

  Rig nodded again, “I know.” He said it meekly. Almost everything he said in the presence of Groaner was spoken meekly.

  She huffed out another sigh, another brief shake of the head.

  “You’re gonna have to pay for the cart Rig,” She said giving him an almost apologetic look. “There’s no way I can send it out like this, I don’t even know how you got it back.”

  The cost of the cart had been more than Rig was due in credits and he’d left the depot empty handed. A full shift of work done and he had nothing to show for it. Well, almost nothing…

  Rig fished the thing he’d found from his pocket as he walked out onto the road that would lead him to the west tunnel and his home. He hadn’t had a proper chance to examine it before, through fear someone else, Jay or Champ or even Groaner would see it and take it from him. He wasn’t sure what it was, but right now it was his and something about it made him feel very strongly that he wanted to keep it that way.

  He held it up as he walked, careful to keep it close to his body so it wouldn’t attract attention. It was caked in soot from a fire, but now he had time to look at it properly he could see there was raised writing around the outer edge of the circle. Rig couldn’t read, he’d never known anyone who could teach him, but he recognised the shapes he saw as writing. Things with writing on were important. The little hard credit chips he was paid in for the garbage runs had writing on them and the Mayoral Hall had some over its wide doors. He didn’t know what those words said either, but those things were definitely important so the words must be too.

  Rig rubbed at the metal hexagon in the middle and saw there was more writing there too. Some of it might be numbers, small ones in a line under the top point. The middle was taken up with another raised rectangle that had two words carved or stamped into it. They looked like strong, important words.

  Where the muck came off Rig saw the metal shone in the dim lights from the shanties he passed. Whatever the metal was it hadn’t been damaged by whatever burned the clothes it was in, just made dirty. Rig didn’t know much but he knew how to clean something that was dirty.

  His walk back to his mother and their lean-to was not as far from the depot as it was from the incinerators. It took him an hour and that was longer than usual due to almost all of his attention being fixed on the strange and fascinating thing he’d found. By the time he reached the little alcove where the few metal spars, empty boxes and plastic sheeting he’d scavenged made up his home, the thing in his hands gleamed from his attentions.

  Rig pulled aside the boarding that served as his door and stepped into the stuffy darkness behind. There was a man there. A big man.

  Rig panicked, had he come for Rig’s find? Was he in trouble? Was his mother in trouble? Rig tucked his shiny new prize back into his pocket as the man turned to face him.

  “Who’re you?” He rumbled and Rig was struck dumb by his sheer size and the harsh look of his face. He was taller and broader than anyone Rig had seen before, much bigger than Jay or Champ or even Groaner. He was massive and Rig could see how he had to bend his neck to stop his head from pressing against the thin boarding that formed their roof.

  “Don’t worry ‘bout him.” His mother’s voice came from the little curtain that shielded her bed and shortly after her body followed it.

  With three of them the confines were incredibly close and Rig tensed as the big man shuffled close to him to make space for Rig’s mother to join them.

  “Tha’s just my son, the idiot.” She said dismissively as she stopped in front of the big man. “He’s got the creds you bein’ after.”

  The big man had turned to face her as she brushed the curtain aside, but now he was moving to face Rig again. As his body turned Rig found himself stepping back to make space and felt the boarding behind him press against his back.

  “Hand em over then.” The big man growled. Rig was lost, what did he want? He looked imploringly at his mother.

  “Give…him…your…creds.” She said with exaggerated slowness. She looked back to the big man, “Soz, I did say he’s a idiot. Never dropped him or nuffin’, he’s just slow. Always has been.”

  She cast Rig a look of disdain and he felt the pain her looks gave him bite inside. Slow as he was, it seemed like she wanted him to give the credits he’d earned on the garbage run to this man. The only problem with that was that he hadn’t earned any credits. Well, he had, but they’d been kept by the depot to fix his cart. He opened his mouth to tell her he didn’t have them.

  “Don’t stand there gawpin’ you little fool. Just give him his creds so I can have my Smoke.” She set her jaw and leaned towards him for emphasis, “I needs my Smoke Rig! How else ama gonna put up with a useless little shit like you?”

  Rig didn’t know what to say. He could feel the tears welling in his eyes, but he knew she’d hit him if he cried. ‘Crying was for posh little girls on the surface’, she’d say as she slapped his face and arms. ‘Your wailin’ was what made your da up and off.’ She’d say as she smacked him across the legs.

  Rig didn’t want to cry, he didn’t want her to hit him at all and especially not in front of this man. He shook his head.

  “What you mean ‘no’?” His mother barked at him. “’No’ what?”

  Rig pulled his hands from his pockets to show he didn’t have any credits to give her. He held them out so she could see his empty palms and tried to force down the lump growing in his throat as he saw the fury in her eyes.

  “Where the fuck are the creds Rig? What have you done with em?” She stepped towards him, forcing the big man to lean back and pointing an accusing finger in his face. “If you’ve spent em on yourself you selfish little cunt…”

  Her fury drove him backwards and Rig stumbled as the boards behind him gave way and he fell hard onto the ground. He could see his mother inside, still glaring at him in disgust as the big man shrugged and made to walk out of the lean-to.

  “Wait, wait, wai
t!” He heard her saying as she placed a hand on the man’s arm. The thickness of his muscles made her fingers look tiny. “Surely there’s somethin’ else I can do that would work…”

  Rig saw her pull at the stained and faded fabric of her clothing, tweaking the neckline aside to reveal the pale flesh beneath. The big man shook his head with a snort of laughter, “What you got ain’t worth the taking.”

  Rig saw her eyes widen in anger and she lunged at him, “I need my Smoke!” She screeched as he tried to shuffle back away from her. The big man followed her out into the street to watch as she swung her arms and battered Rig’s legs in her fury.