by Alex Thomson
Leila: What about me?
Mr Ortiz: What about you?
Leila: Who’s going to guard me when I sleep?
Mr Ortiz: The other families can take turns. And it’ll be a hostage scenario—if Betty is on guard, and someone kills Leila on her watch, she’s responsible, and one of Betty’s sisters pays with her life. Same with me, same with Mr Lee. When we sleep, we’ll have a guard outside our doors.
Jeremy: What? Seriously?
Mr Lee: Is this really—?
Mr Ortiz: It’s the only way. Good incentive to stop these murders happening.
Jeremy: You expect us to take turns sitting outside your locked doors, six, seven hours? Are you that scared?
Judas: With a taser, let’s not forget that. You’re the only ones here with weapons.
Brenda: Mr Reynolds had a taser, didn’t stop him getting stabbed in the neck.
Mr Ortiz: Exactly. And it’s nothing to do with being scared, it’s reasonable precautions. There’s one of me, six of you, and excuse my French, but you’re a devious bunch of fucks.
Joseph: Devious enough to walk through a locked door?
Mr Ortiz: As you well know, Mr Reynolds had a skeleton key that fitted all the Overseers’ doors. When you killed him—sorry, when the killer killed him—they took the skeleton key. So our locked doors are worse than useless.
Ashton: Worse than useless?
Mr Ortiz: Worse, because it gives the false impression of safety.
Mr Lee: Rather than go down this road, how about this—we have an amnesty.
Ashton: What’s an amnesty?
Mr Lee: We leave a cabin open and empty for a few hours—Mr Fedorchuk’s would be best. Mr Ortiz and I will both be out on shift. During that time, anyone is free to anonymously return the skeleton key to the cabin—along with the taser that went missing. If they are returned—no recriminations, no witch-hunt—things go back to normal for all of us in the community.
Leila: Except for Lily and Mr Reynolds.
Mr Lee: Of course. Except for them. But what’s done is done. I’m trying to give us a chance to move on, to survive the next orbit.
Leila: What about justice? What about paying for your crimes?
Mr Lee: What about forgiveness?
Leila: It’s not your place to forgive—it’s my sister. And they’re not even asking for forgiveness. Why don’t you step forward now, whoever you are? Admit to killing Lily and Mr Reynolds, and we’ll all forgive and forget.
(Silence)
Leila: Thought not.
Beatrice: But we can’t carry on like this, Leila. Not with all the suspicion, all the arguments—
Aaron: And let’s face it—the moment’s passed. Maybe you could have caught the killer right after Lily died, but a dozen cycles later? It’s too late, you’re not going to find the answer now.
Leila: Five Little Pigs. Poirot solved that one sixteen years later.
Aaron: What?
Mr Lee: It’s a book, on my reader… look, I don’t think we’re going about this the right way. The priority here is that we call a truce. In private, Leila may have her own opinions, as may Mr Ortiz, as may all of us. But for the sake of the community, I want a truce. And an amnesty for the key. Do you agree, Mr Ortiz?
Mr Ortiz: Fine.
Mr Lee: So, is there anything else we need to discuss at this emergency meeting?
Mr Ortiz: How about the Bees? They’ve got no Overseer now.
Bess: I’m sure we’ll manage. The Jays have managed for orbits.
Mr Ortiz: Hardly a ringing endorsement. I’ll help out. The Ays can get on with things pretty well without me.
Joseph: And what about the fact we’ve lost half of our Overseers? Are we going to be in trouble when the Collection Ship finally gets here? Or rather—are you going to be in trouble when the Collection Ship finally gets here?
Mr Ortiz: Don’t you worry about Mr Lee and me. We’ll be fine, thank you. I’ll be giving them a full report of what went down on Mizushima during my watch.
Joseph: Well, that’s super. We’ll have our say too.
Judas: Hang on, though, brothers. This is important. When the Collection Ship gets here, it will be our word against his. And who do you think they’re going to believe? An Overseer, or six Jays? He can say any rubbish he wants, andthe Ays will back him up.
Andy: We’ll only be telling the truth, little brothers.
Mr Ortiz: You’ve got that right. Like I told one of you punks, there’ll be a day of reckoning, all right.
Judas: We want assurances, then. Someone needs to write down an account of what happened, and you can sign it. So there’s no argument when the Collection Ship comes.
Mr Lee: Nobody’s going to go telling tales, there’s no need for writing anything down. Listen, this is the story we all stick to: Mr Fedorchuk had an accident, and died. Avery had an accident, and died. Lily had an accident, and died.
Becci: Mr Reynolds had an accident… and died?
Mr Lee: Good, you’ve got it. Mr Ortiz, are we in agreement?
(Silence)
Mr Ortiz: This stinks. But I can see I’m outnumbered.
Mr Lee: The bodies are all under the ground now. No one is going to disturb them. Anyone has any unfinished business, they can settle it back on Earth.
Joseph: Very well. And what about Mr Reynolds’ cabin?
Mr Ortiz: What about it?
Joseph: What are we going to do with it? It may have escaped your notice, but space is at something of a premium for some of us. We can’t just let a whole cabin go to waste.
Mr Ortiz: You must be kidding. If you think you can kill him, then a cycle later take over his cabin—
Joseph: So we’re going to leave it empty, just on principle?
Beatrice: Come on, Joseph. Would you really want to sleep in there? All those sheets covered in blood?
Bess: Or is one of you Jays planning on scrubbing it out?
Mr Lee: I think it’s best if Mr Reynolds’ cabin stays out of bounds for the short-term, at least until the Collection Ship arrives, and we find out if more Overseers are joining us.
Leila: And how about Mr Reynolds? Is someone going to bury him?
Mr Lee: Yes—perhaps some of the Ays could arrange it?
Andrew: I’m not going in that cabin again.
Alistair: Me neither. I didn’t mind burying my brother, or Lily—but I’m not cleaning up the mess of whichever sick bastard spiked Mr Reynolds.
Joseph: We’re not doing it.
Beatrice: He’s going to start to smell, though.
Mr Ortiz: Well, can I suggest that someone buries the fat fuck before he stinks out the whole fucking base? Otherwise, I’ll dump him outside the airlock myself. Any more questions? No? Good—now, back to work!
16
PATIENCE
THE BASE IS still. No throbbing hum, no chatter. I pace up and down the spine, and fora moment I can believe I’m the only person left in Hell. That they’ve all gone, abandoned the asteroid, and got on board the Collection Ship. Leila all alone, with four corpses.
But I’m very much not alone. If it’s quiet, it’s a frosty, passive-aggressive sort of silence. Despite the grand talk of amnesties and truces, the peace that prevails in Mizushima is barely even surface-deep. Mr Ortiz and the Ays have colonised the Community cabin; the Jays have taken the Leisure cabin. Mr Lee is not seen outside his cabin, except to go on shift. The Bees are the only Family to move freely, neutrals passing messages between the two camps.
The Rota, meanwhile, is in a mess. The loss of Lily and Mr Reynolds, the attempts to provide cover for the depots, and the vague plans to make everyone stay in pairs, have caused havoc with the immaculate grid. Mr Ortiz has tried to adjust it, but it’s all too much, with the pages covered in scrawls and arrows, and a holocaust of dots. It looks like the fevered scribbling of a madman. The Ays continue to go on shifts, taking their cue from Mr Ortiz, and the Bees seem to be going too. But the Jays and I, we go when we please, to stave off the
boredom, always separate from the Ays and Mr Ortiz. Often, you’ll see jeeps with just two brothers or sisters, or you’ll get to the airlock and find there’s no jeeps left. It’s a shambles.
Our community has started to crumble. What is it that Yeats poem says? The centre cannot hold. I never understood that, but I feel like maybe I do now. I realise I haven’t read anything on Mr Lee’s reader for cycles and cycles. I’ve been so busy with my investigation. It must be the longest I’ve ever gone without reading, but strangely enough, I don’t miss it, not when I’ve been dragged into my own private drama.
ASHTON STILL BOTHERS me. I sat facing him during the Emergency Meeting, and stared into his teardrop eyes. It’s like a spy has come among us, an outsider, and there’s nothing I can do about it. The Ays and Mr Ortiz prefer to close their eyes to the truth—I’ve no doubt the Bees would too. The Jays… I’ve considered telling the Jays, but it might break the fragile peace, and for what? What can the Jays do about it?
So instead, they sit in the Leisure cabin, and play game after game of bloody chess. They’ve got more time on their hands now, so you might see two or three brothers facing the Holder of the Board at the same time, muttering and conferring. I neither know nor care who gets the board, when two or three of them beat the Holder. It is a deeply boring question I can’t bring myself to ask. I wish Lily was here. Even Jeremy is less attentive than before, focussing on the chess and the seditious rumblings of his brothers.
I reach the top of the spine, and there is Mr Reynolds’ cabin, still locked, and starting to smell. Nobody wants to touch the rancid body. Or at least, nobody sees why they should have to be the ones to cart his body outside and bury it. It’s become an unsavoury battle of wills. Mr Ortiz, despite his big talk in the Emergency Meeting, has lost interest. I wonder if anyone will mourn Mr Reynolds, back on Earth?
It’s a strange, coppery smell. Like the hydrochloric acid I use, but not so bitter. I swallow my bile and turn around.
Then I hear a soft scraping sound, coming from Mr Ortiz’s cabin. I move closer, something rustles; somehow I know he’s there, just the other side of the locked door, waiting. The two times I’ve seen him since the Meeting, he’s had the look of a hunted man—heavy rings around his eyes, which were constantly darting around. He thinks he’s next, and maybe he’s right. No-one’s tried to kill me lately, anyway, which is a plus.
Mr Lee’s amnesty was a failure. He didn’t say anything, but Joseph was hanging around when the two Overseers went to Mr Fedorchuk’s cabin, and saw their thunderous expressions when they came out. Mr Lee needs to step up, give us some leadership, but we’ve had nothing from him.
Silence from Mr Ortiz’s cabin. I think he’s holding his breath, like I am. Slowly, I breathe out, turn around, and continue my pacing.
I PACE ONE final length of the spine. I’ve given her long enough to wake up. I turn off to the right, walk up the connecting tunnel and reach the Bees’ cabin.
I knock on the door. Brenda answers, not groggy, but crisp: “Yes?”
“It’s Leila here. Can I come in?”
Brenda opens the door and looks at me blandly. “Can I help you?”
“I just wanted to talk to you about Mr Reynolds,” I say, squeezing under her arm where she’s propped against the wall.
She shuts the door behind us. “Starting to smell a bit, isn’t he?”
“Mmm. But I wanted to talk to you about his death.”
“Still playing the detective, Leila?”
“See, I always thought he died because he saw Lily die. It all added up. Find Lily’s killer, and you’ve found Mr Reynolds’ killer. But what if it wasn’t as straightforward as that? What if Mr Ortiz was right?”
“What indeed?”
“What’s the best way to hide a murder?” I say. Brenda doesn’t answer, but that’s okay because it was a rhetorical flourish, I’m going to answer my own question. “You disguise it as the consequence of another murder. Lily’s death didn’t cause Mr Reynolds’ death, did it, Brenda? But it certainly made it possible.”
Brenda still says nothing.
“How long did you wait, Brenda? How long were you sharpening that spike, waiting for your moment? You couldn’t possibly have killed him before: it would have ruined your precious chance of getting to Earth. They would never let you get away with killing an Overseer. So you waited… and waited… and waited. Must have needed extraordinary patience.
“And then Lily was murdered. And where I saw a tragedy, you saw… an opportunity. Am I right, Brenda?”
Silence still. Brenda watches me with a curious expression, head half-cocked to the side.
“And so you laid the groundwork, claiming Reynolds had wandered off for an hour when Lily died. Then Becci, the very cycle he was killed, peddling that rubbish about how he said he’d seen Lily die. Of course he hadn’t seen anything. But she fed me the bait, so that afterwards I’d jump to the conclusions I did: that he was murdered before he could reveal Lily’s killer.
“And meanwhile, maybe even at the same time as Becci is making her announcement to as many people as possible, you’re in Mr Reynolds’ cabin, stabbing him through the neck, letting him bleed to death like a porker in an abattoir. Then you lock the door, and off you go to work. And Mr Reynolds rots in his cabin until Mr Ortiz and the Ays break his door down.”
Brenda smiles. “It’s an interesting theory. And why would we kill our beloved Overseer?”
“I think he was raping you. Just like he did all those women back on Earth. Only this time, there was no police to catch him and put him in prison. He was the police. So you took it into your own hands. I don’t know how long or how often he was doing it—”
“For as long as we can remember. In rotation.”
There’s a long silence.
“All six of you?”
“Yes. Always in a certain order. He was very strict about that. Usually it’d happen to each of us every few months, though it was getting more frequent.”
“And the Ays never knew?”
She shrugs. “Why should they? It was always in his cabin, the door locked. And we never said anything. We couldn’t. He always said, if I told anyone, he wouldn’t hurt me, he’d hurt one of my sisters. I knew he was saying that to all six of us, of course, but still, you know? I couldn’t be the one.”
She’s not crying—I’ve never seen a Bee cry—but her lip is definitely trembling, and she’s fighting to stay in control. I stay quiet.
“And you’re right—partly we were waiting for the right moment, but also we were just scared of him. He was strong, Leila. Violent. We knew we’d only get one chance.”
“So all this time, you’ve been waiting for your moment, sharpening your spike.”
“All this time, sharpening our spike,” Brenda says, so tonelessly that for a second I wonder if that lip-tremor was a performance. “Must have taken more than an orbit. I can’t remember. All six of us, taking turns in our cabin, rubbing and filing away. It’s been ready to kill for the last few hundred cycles, but we kept going.
“And then our chance came. We were ready. We all played our parts. Becci spread the rumour. Bess and Betty went to his cabin on a pretext, and one hid the spike under his cot while the other distracted him. Barbara made him some food with pills ground up in it, so he was all sluggish. And then my turn. As I climbed on top of him, I reached under the cot, I pulled up the spike, and I stabbed him in the neck, Leila. Once, twice, three times.”
She mimes stabbing, and gives a throaty laugh. “You should have seen his face. You really should. Good Earth, that was funny.”
We can hear footsteps down the spine, and we both turn to listen, but they recede into the distance. “Of course,” she says, “you’ve got no proof of this to show the Overseers. Or do you? How did you guess it was us?”
“In the Emergency Meeting,” I say, “you talked about him being stabbed in the neck, and Beatrice mentioned all the blood on the sheets. But nobody had mentioned those details
in the meeting. The two of you had gone straight from the South site to the room, and I didn’t see you talking to Mr Ortiz or the Ays. You shouldn’t have known about how he was killed, about the blood. Ergo you, or your sisters, killed Mr Reynolds.”
“Ah. That was foolish. I should have kept my mouth shut.”
It wasn’t just that, though. It was Beatrice, feline, saying there’s weapons everywhere; it was Jeremy and his insinuations about the Bees and Mr Reynolds; it was the photographs and what they meant. Those devious little Bees, they played me like a fool.
“But it’s hardly proof,” Brenda is saying. “And Leila, you must understand why we had to do it?”
“I understand. But I wish you hadn’t used Lily’s death like that.”
“Lily wouldn’t have minded. We’re all victims here. You’ve got to fight back any way you can.”
A pause. I realise how close we’re standing, how tense my body is.
“So,” Brenda says. “What now? You’re not going to tell the Overseers and cause us a lot of grief, are you?”
What was it Mr Ortiz said? There are times in life when you have to learn to look the other way.
“The key,” I say. “Give me the master key, and I’ll forget all about it.”
“The master key?” Brenda says.
“Don’t play dumb. You took it, after you killed him. And I want it. I might not have proof, but you don’t want the hassle of me going to the Overseers.”
Silently, Brenda retreats to a cot and pulls out a key from under her mattress. “Quits?”
“Quits.” I make to leave, but she calls me back.
“Leila.”
“Yes?”
“The cycle your sister died—Mr Reynolds never left my or Bess’s sight. We were together the whole time.”
“So he definitely wasn’t Lily’s killer?”
“Definitely wasn’t. It’s Ortiz or Lee. Perhaps a Jay, though I doubt it.”
