by Alex Thomson
Jolly says nothing. Jays are always good at knowing when to shoot their mouth off and when to shut up.
I pick a tunnel at random: the far-left mineshaft, hacked deep into the heart of Mizushima-00109. Somehow the silence is more eerie in the tunnels than outside. Soon I’m crouching, then I have to lie down on the trolley and pull myself along. The trolley rattles along the ruts, and my bones rattle too. How do the Ays put up with this, cycle after cycle?
After a few minutes pulling, I can see the end of the shaft, with temporary struts holding up the roof. I turn around, squeezing up against the walls, and a haze of dust and swag crumbs rains down on me. I pull myself back the way I’ve come; there’s already a dull ache in my arms, and everything seems to be happening in slow motion. I choose another branch, and on I go.
On the fourth and final branch of the tunnel set, I spot that the trolley is missing. I hunker down on my knees, and shuffle forwards. I try the Ays’ channels, and this time there is a signal. Andrew answers back, suspicious: “Leila?”
“Andrew! Have you seen Lily?”
“What, down here? You serious?”
“We can’t find her anywhere, Andrew. I’m getting worried.”
“Hold on.”
After a minute’s wait, I make out Andrew on the trolley, paddling forwards, quicker and more fluid than I could ever manage. He reaches me and the two of us leave the mineshaft together, Andrew having to crouch nearly until the end. He asks me questions, but I can tell he’s impatient, confident there’s a simple explanation, that the Rota is being mucked about for no reason (not to mention his quota). He makes a cursory examination of the other shafts, as though I might have brushed past her by accident—and we go out onto the open plains of Hell.
And then I see her.
Forty feet away, by a dune that allows access to several tunnels, Jolly is next to her prostrate body, standing helplessly. He’s holding her hood, and I can see my sister’s face turned towards me. Her lips are blue, and her eyes are bulging slightly. There is something obscene about the sight, human flesh exposed on the surface of Hell for the first time.
Lily. My sister. My last sister.
And as I make my way towards them, with giant leaps, all I can think of is that now I’m just a one, Leila all alone, and it’s as though a part of me has just died.
4
MARPLE
I LIE ON my cot, legs akimbo, and ponder the question, ‘What would Miss Marple do?’ She would not go trampling in, interrogating suspects and getting everyone’s back up. No, the Marple technique is to casually engage suspects in conversation, and in a meandering way, get them to reveal facts they didn’t intend to. And she would come up with some insights into human psychology, based on her knowledge of village life—a butcher who overcharged his customers, a vicar who fell out with his rector, etcetera.
I can’t exactly fall back on that skill, but I can still take the subtle Marple approach to my investigation into Lily’s murder.
And contrary to the mutterings I heard back at the base, it was murder, not a terrible accident (or suicide, an even more preposterous suggestion). I saw the bruises on her neck, the small tears in the material where Lily and her killer struggled for control of the hood’s clasp.
And then? Did the killer turn away or stand and watch? It’d take a cold, cold bastard to watch while she ran out of oxygen and choked to death, scrabbling around in the dust of Hell. Jolly found her at the end of a tunnel, and the back of her suit was coated in black dust, suggesting the killer dragged her inside the warren of tunnels, before pushing her to the end on a trolley. It would have been a risk—they could have easily been seen—but it seems the gamble paid off.
The journey back to the base has a strange, dream-like quality to it. It’s a squash, I remember, because we bring back the two Ays as well as Lily’s body. But I can’t picture who’s driving, or what anyone says, all I remember is sitting at one side, with my sister’s head lolling in my lap, and Mr Lee next to me, squeezing my glove in his. Lily’s startled expression, a reflection on my own. And I can’t look away, can’t drag my eyes away from my sister’s. I won’t let go of her when we get back to the base. Gentle gloves support me as I carry her back to our cabin.
They buried Avery deep in the ore, submerged in the swag that he spent his life excavating. I don’t think that’s what Lily would want, but what else can we do with her?
One thing: at least I don’t have to worry about forgetting Lily’s face or voice, like I did with Overseer Fedorchuk. I can look in a mirror whenever I want—even pretend I’m having a conversation with her.
“Would that be weird, Lil?” I glance up at her body—top bunk, under a sheet, face decorously turned to face a wall.
“You’re right, it would be weird.”
I think back to our last conversation—Lily sleepy and cranky; I obsess for some time about her exact last words to me, trying to imbue them with some significance. Then I give up and conclude it was something humdrum. I do remember her talking about our four sisters though, and how we have to look out for each other, and I know I have to do this, have to do a Marple.
There will be objections, of course there will. For most of the citizens of Hell, the slightest change in their precious routines causes existential panic. But they can’t stop me. What exactly would they do to me? Particularly since, as the last remaining Ell on the asteroid, I hold a small degree of bargaining power.
The first thing to ascertain is whether Lily has left behind any sign of what she was up to, that might have triggered her murder. I bound up from my cot like a spring and start to hunt, digging my fingers under the spare mattress. I poke around every corner and gap, hoping to find something abnormal. I climb the ladder to where her body is, and with an embarrassed laugh-slash-gulp start to delve in her suit pockets. My finger brushes against the sole of her foot, and it is as cold and hard as a piece of swag. It doesn’t take long to do a proper search of the cabin, and it is when I’m on my knees, peering underneath the cot, that I see the marks.
I pull the cot away from the wall—a terrible, shrill squeal of metal. I sit cross-legged on the cot and stare down at the scratches that have been gouged out of the floor. Next to them is the offending instrument, a chunk of swag that is glistening but dull and razed down at one end. The marks look like this:
IIII
II
II
IIII I
I blink at them several times, trying to fix them in my brain, then push the cot back in case anyone comes in. Lily must have done this, alone in our cabin, arm stretched down behind the cot, working hurriedly in case anyone disturbed her.
“Okay,” I say out loud. “Interesting. I didn’t know you had secrets from me, Lil.”
I imagine I’m Lily, lying on my cot, ankles crossed the way we both do, bringing out that piece of swag she’d smuggled in. This had been planned, it wasn’t some sudden, vandalistic scrawl. What was she trying to create? A message? A reminder? A tally?
I am considering this for some time, when Ashton enters and surveys me cautiously. “Are you coming with us on shift?” he says.
He’s not wearing his glasses. Ashton always wears his glasses. “Where are your glasses?” I say.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I woke up one cycle and they were gone. Are you coming with us on shift?”
“You’ll have to get started without me,” I say. “I need to… thrash out a few things first.”
He seems about to say something, but stops himself.
“Okay,” he says and leaves the cabin. I decide it’s time to pay Mr Ortiz a visit.
MR ORTIZ IS a man who weighs out every movement and gesture carefully. He stands on the threshold of his cabin, not inviting me in, listening to me without interrupting or shifting around impatiently like Mr Reynolds would do. He has the same brown skin as the Ays, but in the glare of the light, I notice how rough he looks—face covered in stubble and dust, a rash of pockmarks on his cheeks.
“It’s more by whom, not if,” I say. “There can’t really be any doubt it was murder. And I’m happy to be the one who investigates it. She was my sister, after all.”
He smiles tightly. It’s like he’s deciding whether to shout at me or put a comforting arm round my shoulder. Mr Ortiz’s great problem is that he can’t decide whether he wants to be liked, respected or feared.
“Here’s the problem, Leila,” he says. “Putting aside the question of how and when you’d do this ‘investigation’—”
“I’d do it during my Leisure shifts,” I say.
“Putting that aside,” he presses on, “what authority are you operating under exactly? By which I mean, let’s say you ask all your ‘questions,’ and at the end announce that it was—”
He breaks off and looks theatrically up at the ceiling.
“Jolly,” he says. “It was Jolly who must have killed her, you’re sure of it.”
“So…”
“But Jolly says it wasn’t him, and his word counts just as much as your conjectures.”
“But—”
“What I’m trying to say, darling, is we have no police force here. No forensic analyst, no murder squad. We’re a self-policing community—which means we, the Overseers, enforce discipline and keep the peace.”
“I’ll find proof,” I say. “I’ll find who did it, and bring you proof.”
“And then what?” he says, spreading his arms wide. “We hold a trial? Who’s going to be the judge—you? What, we’re going to have a little jury of Ays and Bees and Jays?”
“Look,” I say. “Just listen.”
He peers round. “And where’s the prison? Because we’re a bit cramped in here, in case you hadn’t noticed. Are you going to shut the murderer up in your cabin, and be the jailer as well?”
I clench my teeth to stop myself speaking. Mr Ortiz is an intelligent man, a different type of intelligence to Mr Lee—but he can also be a poisonous twat sometimes.
“I’m going to do this,” I say. “I wasn’t asking for permission.”
He sighs. “Look, when the Collection Ship comes, there’ll be some other Ells, I guarantee you. Is that not…?”
“What, we’re all the same, so what does it matter?”
“Ah, get off your high horse, I was just trying to help. Do what you want—I honestly don’t care.”
“I will.”
“But if you start disrupting the work here, or irritating any of my boys, you’ll have to answer for it.”
He moves to close the door, but I say, “Hang on—I’ve got some questions for you.”
He smirks. “What am I, a suspect?”
I ignore this. This never happened to Miss Marple—her technique is more difficult than I thought, mainly because I don’t know how to engage Mr Ortiz in casual, meandering conversation.
“Will you please just do this for me?” I say. “I’m trying to figure out Lily’s last movements. When did you see her last?”
He looks away sourly. “I don’t know. A few cycles ago? I haven’t seen either of you lately, I’ve been busy on the new South site. You need to check with whoever was last on shift with her.”
“Andrew spoke to me recently, he told me to tell Lily to back off, stop sticking her nose into the Ays’ business. What’s that about?”
“How should I know? I’m not their nanny. Ask one of them.”
“Right,” I say, deflated.
“Are we finished?”
“Who do you think could have killed her?”
“Assuming she was killed, which nobody’s proved… you really want my opinion? In my experience, when people get killed, it’s usually something to do with sex. So, your best bet has to be one of the Jays.”
“But she wasn’t with any of the Jays,” I say.
“You sure about that?” he says, eyebrows raised.
A half-memory flits out my grasp, a fuzzy picture of a single bare leg and a burst packet of powdered milk. For a second I can smell the malty tang of the powder. There’s something more there, something else that I wish I could remember… and it’s gone. I realise I’ve closed my eyes—and when I open them, the door is shut and Mr Ortiz has vanished.
HOURS PASS. A check of the Rota reveals that I’m on shift again soon, taking Tomato out to East 3 with Mr Reynolds and a couple of Bees. Part of me considers not going, cracking on instead with my detective work. But quizzing Mr Reynolds will be easier out on the asteroid. Inside, the Overseers are in pressurised, oxygenated cabins, in control, and they know it. Bearding Mr Ortiz (and there’s a good verb, to beard—you don’t hear anyone use that out here) on the threshold of his cabin was a bad idea. But outside, the power dynamic is rather different. We’re more comfortable there than the Overseers—we belong.
After a short spell of daydreaming in my cabin, still in the company of my sister’s corpse, I make my way to the porch to suit up. Bess and Becci are already there, putting on their suits with elegant efficiency. They don’t say anything to me, but Bess leans over and squeezes my hand, which I like. I realise it’s the first skin-on-skin contact I’ve had for cycles and cycles. Who’s going to tickle my back and stroke my feet now Lily’s gone? And whose back am I going to tickle, whose feet will I stroke? Dark, dark times.
I pick a suit, patch in my channel, and start to get ready. I take the hood in my hands and stare at it in grim fascination. One heck of a murder weapon, a hood—or to be precise, hood removal. It feels like a rushed, spontaneous murder, but with a bit of planning, this could have been one of those perfect crimes. I get side-tracked thinking how I would commit a murder, but I can’t think of anyone I’d want to kill and I give up.
The hood locks on with a barely perceptible click. Mr Reynolds stalks in, glances at me, nods. He looks morose, with dark rings under his dull blue eyes. He’s lost the cockiness on display just a cycle ago, when we were right here with Mr Lee, hunting for Lily.
“You okay?” he says, not looking at me directly, awkward as a boy.
I nod, and soon we are ready—we load up Tomato, and we head out to East 3, Mr Reynolds at the wheel.
When we arrive, Aaron and two Jays are already on site, dragging a large drill towards one of the tunnel entrances. The Bees start climbing a dune, and Mr Reynolds moves to follow them, but I patch into his channel: “Mr Reynolds? Can I ask you something?”
He stops and turns. “Sure. Shoot.”
I mentally pat myself on the back. Bearding him outside was an inspired decision. On base, in the flesh, he can’t help but be reminded of the us-and-them scenario. What does he see when he looks at me? A pesky, barely-human human—an L4. But on the surface of Hell, in our anonymous suits, we’re both just animals trying to stay alive in the toxic atmosphere.
“I want to know who you think killed my sister,” I say. There’s no need to go blazing in, interrogating Mr Reynolds. For all his bluster, I know there’s a sentimental soul there, far more so than Mr Ortiz, and I know he’s dying to play the big hero. All I have to do is play the helpless little girl.
After a slight pause, the channel crackles with his gruff breathing, and he says, “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll never know. Don’t you think it’d be best to forget about it? Move on?”
“But I really need to know, Mr Reynolds,” I say. “Can’t you help me?”
A sigh. “Look, I’ll have a word with the other Overseers. I’ll see what we can do.”
“I’m just worried, if they killed Lily, they might want to kill me too. And what if they go after one of your Bees?”
He scoffs. “Yeah, well, let’s be honest, if it was anyone, it’s going to be one of the Ays or the Jays. But don’t you worry. I can handle them.”
“They might be working together, though. Two or three Ays, or even all five. They’re going to stick up for each other, aren’t they?”
Mr Reynolds turned towards the tunnels wher
e the Ays were working. “We’ll see,” he said. “We’ve got a good thing going here, everyone’s happy. If the Ays or Jays want to bring a war to Hell, we’ll be ready for them.”
“Listen,” I said, changing track, “how do the Ays work it with the Bees, with just five of them and six Bees? Who goes with who?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Lily, she was asking the Ays a load of questions before she got killed. I’m just wondering if it had to do with that.”
“It was Barbara who was with Avery,” he says. “But they’ve all swapped partners a dozen times since then, it’s like bloody musical chairs.” I can hear the smirk in his voice.
“Seriously?”
“Oh, yes. And it’s the Bees who pull all the strings, believe me. Dirty little hussies.” He chuckles. “They decide who goes with who, and I daresay they sometimes swap without the Ays knowing, the big dumb apes.”
“But don’t the Ays mind all this? They’re pretty proud, aren’t they?”
“Whether the girls let them think they’re in charge, or whether the Ays just pretend to themselves, to save face, I don’t know. But the Bees have them wrapped around their little fingers, don’t you doubt it.”
Another throaty chuckle; then his voice suddenly seems to curdle. “Anyway. We should get back to work. Don’t go spreading round what I said there, understand?”
“Sure.”
It’s the longest conversation I can ever recall having with Mr Reynolds. And now it’s finished: him striding off after the Bees, and little Leila left thinking, thinking, thinking, not twenty feet away from where sister Lily choked to death as the oxygen fled her lungs.
