by Alex Thomson
We all stop and stare at the scene that greets us. Mr Reynolds is lying on his cot, legs spread wide, arms against his body. He has some long johns on, but nothing on top, and I wince at the sight of his torso, mottled with liver spots, hairy, veiny. He’s a big man, but there’s not much flab there.
Then up to his neck, where a spike of swag is sticking out at a crazy angle. He’s been skewered, and it makes me think of the Jays skewering the opposition king in their chess games. Dark red blood has pooled around his neck and into a circle on the sheets.
I want to be sick. I’ve only ever seen a few drops of blood from cuts, never this much.
His face is in a kind of rictus of comic surprise: not scared, just a sort of look that says what the heck? It’s a grim sight, but I can’t bring myself to look away. Neither can the Ays, they’re transfixed. Mr Ortiz is the first to react. He strides up, puts a cursory hand on his pulse—he’s obviously dead, though—and then, with a sound that can only be described as schlup, he draws the spike out of Mr Reynolds’ neck. A load more blood glugs out his neck, all over the sheets, and continues for a few seconds until there’s a gurgle, then it stops. He holds the spike in his hand and faces us, splatters of blood now on his boiler suit. The spike is an evil thing, tapering to a vicious point—there’s no way this was formed naturally: human hands worked at this to give it a razor-sharp edge.
Mr Ortiz looks cross. I mean, he looks really cross. “They want a war, I’ll give them a fucking war,” he says, more to himself than any of us.
Nobody says anything, waiting for Mr Ortiz to decide what happens next. Eventually he seems to come to a conclusion. “Stay here,” he orders us, “I’m getting my taser.”
He exits the cabin, and the three of us look back at Mr Reynolds. When Lily died, she just looked like a dead body, but Mr Reynolds looks exactly like a murder victim should. Alistair turns away and dry-retches, and his brother gives him a scornful look.
Mr Ortiz returns, holding his taser but not the spike, which is presumably locked away now. He looks at us evenly. “This is it, lads. It’s the Jays, they’re mounting a coup. And you need to decide what side you’re on. Are you with me, or are you with the Jays?”
Alistair stirs. “We’ve no truck with coups. If this is the Jays, we’re with you.”
“Leila?”
But all I can think of is a terrified Mr Reynolds, witness to my sister’s death. And Becci, announcing it to a cabin full of Ays and Jays, so that everyone on the base now knows what Mr Reynolds saw.
One of the central tenets of being a character in a Christie mystery: if you witness a murder, hightail it out of town or report it to the police (they never do, though). Because if you keep quiet about what you saw, or Earth forbid, try and blackmail the murderer, you will wind up as victim number two, as sure as night follows day.
Mr Reynolds, though, had nowhere to run to. And he was the police. Exit Reynolds.
“This isn’t a coup,” I say to Mr Ortiz impatiently. “This is all connected to Lily’s murder. He saw it happen. The murderer killed him to stop him from—”
“Bollocks,” Mr Ortiz interrupts. “Not everything on this asteroid is to do with your fucking sister dying.”
“But ask Becci, she’ll tell you—”
“Enough!” he shouts. “With us or against us, Leila?”
My cheeks are burning. I channel my inner Jay and play the long game. “With you.”
“Good. So, here’s the plan: first, we need to call everyone back, and find if they’ve moved against Mr Lee too.”
He consults a piece of paper with a mini-Rota. “Ays—your three brothers are all working in East 8, with Jupiter and Juan. Mr Reynolds should have been with them all. Joseph and Jolly are with Mr Lee and three Bees, setting up the South site. And Judas, Jeremy and the other Bees are here on base.
“Lads, we’re going to confront Judas and Jeremy in their cabin. This much blood, it’s got to show on the little fuckers somewhere. My money’s on Judas, though I suppose Jupiter or Juan could have done it before going off on that shift.” He turns to me again. “As for you, you can take Cabbage and go get the others. Go south first. If they’ve killed Mr Lee, go straight to East 8, tell the Ays it’s war, and we need them on base.”
“And if not?” I say.
“If not, just summon everyone back for an emergency meeting.”
When Lily was murdered, Mr Ortiz was fuming at the disruption it caused the colony. Mr Reynolds gets himself killed, and it’s all emergency meetings and civil wars.
Mr Ortiz is addressing the Ays, pumping them up, instructing them; I bet he’s loving this, secretly. “After that, we secure the base,” I hear him say. What does that even mean? Are they going to go and stop anyone from stealing the Rota?
“Let’s go, lads,” he says, ushering us out of the cabin.
“What about Mr Reynolds?” I point out. “You’re not just going to leave him there, are you?”
“That’s just a lump of fucking meat now, girlie. There’ll be a time for burying our dead, but it’s not now.”
“But shouldn’t we cover him or something?”
He shrugs. “Be my guest.”
I approach the cot, but he’s lying on the blood-soaked sheets, and it’s impossible to drag them out from under him. I stand over him, and look down at his startled expression. I’m never going to come into this cabin again. But I can’t bear the thought of him lying there, staring out, while he rots in his cot. I lean over and close his eyelids. It’s an improvement, anyway. Mr Ortiz gives me an impatient, long-suffering look, and all four of us leave the cabin.
I DRIVE CABBAGE down the southern plains, alone, in the dusk. The route is less clearly marked than the eastern route—not as many jeeps have passed this way in the last orbit. But I can still see my destination, the hills in the distance. I think of Mr Ortiz and the Ays, off to confront the Jays. I wonder if everyone’s going to be alive when I get back, if it’s all going to kick off with tasers and spikes.
I really don’t think the Jays are staging a coup, and I really don’t think they will have killed Mr Lee. I could believe they’ll revolt one of these cycles, but… somehow this isn’t their style.
I need a sleep. I should be sleeping now, according to the Rota. My last sleep was ruined because I couldn’t stop thinking about the Overseers, and about Lily. My head aches. My head aches. My head aches.
I’VE NEVER BEEN to the South site, but when I arrive, I have the strangest sense of déjà vu. I spot Tomato, parked in the corner where the southern plains meet the hills. The Jays have repaired the damage to the jeep, and apart from a dent in the bodywork and a long scrape where it rolled, there’s no sign of my accident. Out I jump, determined to get this over with, and get everyone back for the Emergency Meeting. I climb up a ridge to get the best view of where they might be. It’s getting dark, and I have to squint to make out the shadows among the black rocks.
The atmosphere is ponderous; I feel like I’m dragging my legs up the slope. At the top, I stop and lie down to catch my breath. Then I survey the area for signs of life. The air is dusty, and I can’t see as far as I thought I would. After maybe fifteen minutes, the cloud of dust clears, and I spy two figures, protected from the wind in an enclave. And a third, signalling to them about a hundred metres away. They’re working with a theodolite; it must be the Bees. But for some reason I feel too shy to approach them, and tell them their Overseer is dead, that they all have to return to base. Where is Mr Lee?
“Leila?” The answer comes on my channel, but instinctively I know he’s behind me. I spin round, and there he is, white stripe down his suit, thirty metres away on the ridge, walking my way. A Jay—Joseph or Jolly, presumably—climbs over the ridge and joins him.
“Mr Lee,” I say, and patch in the Jay.
“What are you doing here?”
“There’s been another accident,” I say. “Mr Reynolds is dead.”
“You what?”
“Someone stabb
ed him with a spike made out of swag. He’s lying dead in his cabin.”
Mr Lee mouths an expletive.
“Mr Ortiz sent me here,” I continue. “I’ve got to summon everyone back to base for an Emergency Meeting.”
“Right. I…” He sounds baffled, and I take command.
“Can you tell the Bees and take them back to base in Cabbage? And I’ll go with the Jays to tell the other group in East 8.”
“Good idea.” He approaches me with big, slow strides, and pats me on the shoulder. “Good work, Leila.”
He continues in the direction of the Bees, and I approach the Jay, who identifies himself as Jolly. This one’s on the fence, I remind myself. Undecided what he thinks about the Ells. We clamber down the ridge in silence, then walk westwards for a while. Eventually, Jolly points out his brother, in a cavern a hundred metres away, on his knees and digging with some kind of oversized drill.
“Mr Ortiz is out for your blood,” I tell him. “You and all your brothers.”
Getting Mr Lee out the way to deal with the Bees was a cunning ruse. I’m not sure who to trust, Mr Lee or the Jays, but the Jays deserve to be forewarned about Mr Ortiz at the very least.
“How so?” Jolly says.
“He thinks that one of you killed Mr Reynolds, that this is a coup. It’s not a coup, right?”
“If it is, my brothers forgot to tell me.”
“You’d better watch out, that’s all I’m saying. Mr Ortiz went off to confront Judas and Jeremy. The Ays were behind him one hundred per cent.”
“Stupid bloody idiots. What do they think is going to happen?”
Joseph sees our approach and turns off the drill. Jolly patches him in and updates him. They talk for a bit, both Jays sounding worried.
“You know the best way to get Mr Ortiz and the Ays off your back?” I say, interrupting them.
“What?” says one of the Jays.
“Show him who the real killer is.”
“And remind me who that is again?”
“It’s whoever killed Lily! Mr Reynolds saw it happen, he was killed to keep his mouth shut.”
“But we don’t know who killed Lily either,” one of them points out.
“Well, you’d better help me crack the case then, hadn’t you?”
JAYS LIKE DRIVING, and I let Joseph take the wheel as we cut across the hills to East 8. The journey is bumpy and unpleasant, and we don’t speak; or at least, I don’t. Who knows whether the Jays are patched in and strategizing together? But Jolly is looking straight ahead, and I can’t see his lips moving.
I sure as heck don’t trust them, but I’d rather be allied with them than Mr Ortiz and the Ays. And how about the Bees, which way will they turn? You’d expect them to follow the Ays, but at the same time they’d do anything to keep the peace and finish our term on Hell. They might be the key to stopping this from descending into civil war.
Joseph brings the jeep to a juddering halt, and we step out into the cleaner air of East 8. The Jays march off towards the caverns, and I follow. Soon we find Jupiter and Juan. The four brothers have a long conversation but do not patch me in, so I stand there like a lemon while they do their business. Then Juan disappears into the tunnels, and the four of us wait, shifting awkwardly, and the nerves become intolerable.
With their helmets on, I lose track of who is who. One of them is Jupiter, Juan’s rival in love for Lily. What does he think of her now—did he grieve like Juan did? What does he think when he sees me?
I wonder whether his anger at Lily’s rejection could have been enough to make him kill her. It seems too pat, too easy. But if Christie has taught me anything, it’s that people kill for love or money, and it doesn’t get much more complicated than that. Jeremy always said a Jay couldn’t kill an Ell, but what if he’s wrong? And if Juan and Jeremy found out their brother had killed her—we might just have to endure a war between the Jays, something only Mr Ortiz would welcome.
EVENTUALLY JUAN RETURNS, with Aaron, Ashton and Andy in tow, all covered in dust. There are too many people there for a proper conversation, so without any delay, the eight of us make our way to the jeeps. Back at the base, two of the Ays are confronting two of the Jays and examining their clothes for signs of Mr Reynolds’ blood. Here, they are walking side by side, not exactly best friends but not enemies either.
At the jeeps, by unspoken agreement, the Jays all get into Banana with me, and the Ays get into Tomato. A Jay takes the wheel. I sit wedged between two other Jays in the back.
“So,” I say, patching into their channels.
“So,” someone replies.
“Has anyone got a plan? This could all get messy. You haven’t seen Mr Ortiz, he’s really mad.”
“Leila,” says a Jay, “give us a bit of credit. You think we can’t handle Ortiz and his five dumb bunnies?”
The problem is, I want to say to them, no matter how cunning you are, it counts for nothing in the end. All that counts is who strikes first, and who strikes hardest. And that’s why Lily ended up dead in a tunnel, choking on Hell’s atmosphere.
But I’m forewarned, and ready to strike—just as soon as I’ve figured out which of these buggers is to blame.
15
ASTEROID EMERGENCY MEETING
Mr Ortiz: Let’s call this to order, please! You all know why we’re here—
Joseph: I don’t know. Why are we here, exactly?
Mr Ortiz: We’re here because this is a state of emergency, we’ve got a killer amongst us. Anyone attacks an Overseer, it’s an attack against all of us, against the whole system—
Judas: Let’s not be coy. You’ve accused us to our faces. You think that one of the Jays killed Mr Reynolds.
Mr Ortiz: I don’t think, sunshine. I know.
Judas: On what grounds? You came to our cabin, with your goons—
Andrew: Oi!
Judas: —looking for Mr Reynolds’ blood, you found nothing. Where’s the evidence?
Mr Ortiz: I don’t need to see the skid marks to tell me when someone’s taken a dump. This has got Jays written all over it.
Juan: And what about Lily? You think it’s a coincidence that a dozen cycles after she’s killed, and Mr Reynolds sees it happen, he’s killed too?
Mr Ortiz: Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t tell me Leila’s got you started on this too.
Leila: Is it so hard to believe that the two deaths are connected? Are Ells so insignificant, would it pain you that much to consider—
Mr Ortiz: Yeah, well maybe they are related, maybe the first was a lover’s tiff.
Juan: I swear, I’m going to…
Judas: For Earth’s sake, none of us killed Lily. Do you really think a Jay could kill an Ell in that way?
Mr Ortiz: Ah—but you’re not saying you couldn’t kill Mr Reynolds.
Judas: I’m not genetically programmed to be attracted to Mr Reynolds, thank Earth. I suppose one of us could kill him—but we didn’t.
Mr Lee: Hang one, hang on. Mr Ortiz—why are you saying they killed him exactly? Some sort of coup?
Mr Ortiz: Exactly. They want to seize control. They’re trying to get rid of the Overseers, one by one. First they let Mr Fedorchuk die, when they could have cured him.
Jeremy: Oh! This gets better and better! Did we kill Avery too?
Mr Ortiz: Then they got rid of Mr Reynolds. You and I are next, chum.
Joseph: If we wanted to seize power, do you know what we’d do? Three simultaneous attacks, on the three of you. No warning. We wouldn’t be stupid enough to put you on your guard.
Mr Ortiz: I’d like to see you try, you little piece of shit.
Mr Lee: Can I make a suggestion? We have to survive nearly a whole other orbit together, sharing this asteroid. We have to find a way to hold it all together.
Mr Ortiz: But we can’t have people getting away with murder, either.
Mr Lee: True. Well, let’s ask the rest of the community. Ays, what do you think about the murders?
Aaron: A Jay killing
Mr Reynolds remains the most… plausible scenario. But there must be proof before we take any action.
Mr Lee: Bees?
Bess: We have no idea. But whoever it is—can they please stop it? If we fight each other, we’ll never clear our quota, we’ll never leave Earth, and what good will that be to any of us?
Mr Lee: Leila?
Leila: You know what I think. It’s a classic double murder. Find Lily’s killer, you find Mr Reynolds’ killer.
Andy: And what’s happened about that? Aren’t you supposed to be playing the policeman and figuring it out?
Leila: I have been, and I’ve discovered some interesting things. Very interesting things.
Jeremy: Do share.
Andy: No, please don’t. The last thing we need is Leila stirring things up with her half-baked theories.
Mr Lee: We’re straying off-topic. Mr Ortiz, do you agree that the community consensus is that we can’t go punishing people on mere suspicion? The killer’s been lucky twice, if he tries it again, he’s sure to run out of luck.
Mr Ortiz: Last time I checked, we’re the Overseers here. We don’t need to vote.
Mr Lee: I’m not sure exactly what you’re proposing we do with the Jays, though.
Joseph: What Mr Lee is too polite to say: are you planning to execute all six of us? And run the community with twelve brothers and sisters?
Mr Ortiz: If the alternative is you lot killing me, then yes, I am.
Mr Lee: I think Bess is talking the most sense—none of us knows who’s doing this, but if any of us want to make it off Mizushima, the murders must stop now. Clear?
Jolly: Fine with us.
Mr Ortiz: That’s all very well, but I want precautions in place.
Brenda: Precautions?
Mr Ortiz: Yeah. Everyone should always move around in pairs from now on. No wandering around by yourself. And when you sleep, you take turns—there should always be someone on guard. We’ll have to completely re-configure the Rota.
