by Marc Everitt
Eli was a big man, over six feet and five inches tall and well-built with it. His skin was the dark brown of the South Africans, his hair cropped short in an arrowhead style which made one feel he was either a man who had a very good relationship with his barber or a very bad one. Only a good friend, or sworn enemy, would dare cut such a radical style into the hair of a man as large as Eli. Eli Jackson was a man who had grown up in the post war torn streets of Johannesburg and, as such, had learned to look after himself from an early age.
When his friends were learning to read, he was learning to fight. His parents had known he would need an edge to survive and prosper in the world he had been brought into, and prosper he did. He did well enough at his studies to earn a scholarship to the Academy of Engineering, but his parents never lived long enough to see him graduate from it. They were killed by a stray blast from a security camera with in-built laser weaponry, which was designed to deter criminals.
Eli’s parents were neither criminals nor deterred, they were merely killed. At the Academy Eli had nearly joined them in the afterlife when he had been attacked by a group of youths that had wanted his belongings. He fought with them but there were a good number of them and they were armed with shock devices, which were very painful when used on a person. He had tried to run when he realised he couldn’t possibly fight them all (despite having disabled two of them with blows to the head) but found himself on the steps of the campus library surrounded: when something extraordinary happened.
An average-looking man had exited the library intently reading his hand-held computer projector and he had noticed the situation in progress. The man had asked the gang of youths to take their business elsewhere and they had not exactly taken kindly to his request. The man had seemed to turn his attention to Eli and he had asked the bigger man if he was badly hurt. As the man turned his head, a youth ran at him, his shock weapon raised and activated. Just as the youth seemed about to strike, the man whirled round and grabbed the youth’s arm with his left hand, stepped forward, wrapped his right arm around the neck of the youth and fell backwards: slamming his would be assailant’s head into the marble steps of the library. The man had then stood up and coolly faced the remaining youths who stood amazed at the speed of it all: and gaping at the nonchalant expression the man wore. The youths had decided that the prospect of fighting two men was unpalatable and had left forthwith. Eli had turned to the man and grabbed his hand, shaking it gratefully.
“You really came by at a good time. I’m Eli, Eli Jackson,” he offered, anxious to make the acquaintance of the man who had been his saviour. The smaller man had merely smiled.
“Taylor West, good to meet you,” he had said, then turned and walked away.
Eli had many more experiences with the man he met on the library steps that day, but never lost the respect and admiration he felt for the aloof, casual individual he had chanced upon. Eli knew, and had known at the time, that the youths could still have overpowered them that day with their sheer numbers and weaponry, but the barefaced gall of West had pulled them through. Elijah Jackson never forgot the action and he and Taylor had been friends ever since. West was a couple of years older than Eli but had seemed genuinely pleased with the bigger man’s company and friendship. Eli had begun to understand that his new friend was a most remarkable individual who possessed a vibrant, emotionally charged personality.
This was the perfect foil for Eli’s more controlled temperament, and the two friends became virtually inseparable. However, it did not take long for Eli to realise that Taylor was also a man of considerable mystery, with no known relatives and a life style that was often secretive and fiercely independent. The two friends eventually graduated and went their separate ways, to assignments all over the world, but kept in touch and were posted to the same engineering plant in Wisconsin, USA. Both men had chosen to turn their engineering knowledge to the field of Nuclear Physics and were highly qualified in their field. The plant they were assigned to was becoming problematic and was about to be closed down when West and Jackson arrived.
They were assigned to work on the plant with special responsibilities for ensuring the titanium rods were safely irradiated, a complicated procedure which demands supreme patience hand-eye co-ordination and nerve. Whilst working together at this plant, Eli had received his first glimpse of the extraordinary deductive powers of his friend and colleague. One day, three weeks after the beginning of the de-radiation process, the managing director of the plant seemed to go insane. He had thrown himself into the core of the plant’s reactor with nothing to protect him from the lethal radiation, except a small blue dress and a large red hat.
Eli had watched in awe as Taylor discovered that the poor man had actually been murdered and that the head of one of the rival nuclear plants had been remote controlling him through a small diode that had been placed in his head by an agent posing as a doctor.
The culprits had been rounded up and Eli had been left astounded by the skill with which his friend had unearthed the criminal before anyone else had any clue that there was foul play involved. After this, now famous, incident West had begun to acquire a reputation for both his skill as an engineer of the highest order and his knack of solving mysteries which others, including the police and the investigative divisions of the Company, had been baffled by. Indeed, such were the abilities he possessed that he had only ever been unable to solve one crime which his attention had been drawn to, and had been offered a lucrative job as a detective with a private investigations agency. West had politely turned down this opportunity as he felt his deductive skill was a mere hobby, which had to remain secondary to his vocation as an engineer of increasing repute.
Eli pushed his reminiscences from his mind and tried to concentrate on his book. Just as the big man began to sink into the shallow depths of the plot, the vid-com unit beside his bed began to hum and vibrate to tell him of an incoming call. These units were, in Eli’s considered opinion at least, one of the most annoying inventions which mankind had yet come up with. Although useful and worthwhile, they cunningly combined the embarrassment of a face to face meeting when you are not looking your best with the amazing ability of the telephone to not ring when you wanted it to and ring when you didn’t. Eli could see very few advantages that came with being able to see someone who was calling him.
He rolled over the large, red button on the side of the unit which patched the call through, then sat upright as he recognised that face of his immediate superior at the Company. The vid-screen crackled into life and a picture of a small, nervous man appeared in front of Eli.
“Ah, Jackson. Excellent. I trust you have received your new posting by now and have found the time to review your travel plans,” mumbled the man. The picture showed him to be around fifty years old with a small, thin moustache and a rapidly receding hairline. His name was Executive Arlen and he was neither the worst boss Eli had worked for, not the best: but he was certainly the quietest. Eli frowned a the man on the screen and, hundreds of miles away in his plush office Arlen saw this and was more than a little annoyed by it.
“Well. Have you…. or…. er…. have you not received your posting, Jackson?” he continued and was mildly aggrieved to find the answer to be in the negative. Eli spoke from the screen in front of the Executive, “Haven’t had any post for the past two weeks, ever since the mail man lost both his legs in a card game with the local crime syndicate.”
This was true enough and was also outlandish enough to disguise the fact that Eli hadn’t been to the sorting room to collect the mail he knew was waiting for him as he should have. This was a fact that had escaped the attention of the Executive and Eli was relieved about that. The last thing he wanted to listen to when wanting to find out how much Zeke Lightstar could haggle the price of his nice new shoes down to was how he was not being a good Company man. This had used to be a status symbol, to be a Company man. But as the Company now owned about everything it was rarer to find a man who was not Company. In any cas
e, instead of chastising him for not collecting his mail the Executive merely squirmed in his big chair and tried to adopt a commanding position.
“Well, here are your posting orders. You are to proceed to shuttle port Rio for the departure on the evening flight to Moon Relay 4, where you will be met by a Company legislator who will brief you on the finer aspects of your new posting. This is…. er…. how can I put it? Due to the…. delicate nature of the place you will be working and the unfortunate events which have transpired there. That’s all,” Executive Arlen turned to break the connection between the two vid-com units when a thought occurred to the diminutive Company man.
His eyes dilated as he became more nervous with the advent of the thought. He began to speak again, stopped, and then leaned towards the Vid-com unit as if he wanted to speak confidentially and was worried someone would overhear, “Jackson. You will attempt to keep West out of trouble, won’t you, just this once?” Eli laughed at the vid-com unit and shook his head slowly, “I wish I could, Executive, I really wish I could,” and with that the communication ceased from the Executive’s terminal. Jackson lay back on his bed and tried to imagine a day when he could keep Taylor West out of trouble.
Meanwhile, Executive Arlen was making and laying contingency plans. He was not a man prepared to be seen to allow West to get up to more of his extra-vocational activities, especially not on the world he was now to be posted to. A member of the Company’s security corps would need to be sent to make sure the only thing West investigated was the mystery of the poorly maintained generators and reactors, and that he left well alone from the unexplained death of Engineer Hanley. Arlen had no idea as to the reasons for the late engineer’s demise but had no intention of allowing West’s curiosity to be piqued. He pressed a button on his desk and spoke into the com-unit, “Marjorie, send in Security Officer Maystone, please.”
After receiving the communication from Executive Arlen, Eli slept, only to wake after a mere hour’s sleep and he found himself keen to pack his belongings for a new posting, despite the dread of the travelling that it would bring. He rose from his bed and strolled over to his wardrobe. Opening the door cautiously so as to not invoke an avalanche of sundry clothes and other items of footwear and headgear) he pulled out the majority of his clothes and accessories and lay them in a case, which he produced from under his bed.
It took Eli only twenty minutes to prepare the necessary belongings for his new assignment and it was about two minutes before he finished when there came a knock at the door. Eli opened the door to find Taylor standing outside looking annoyingly distracted by the décor of his friend’s hallway. Knowing him well, Eli ignored the idiosyncracies of his colleague and invited him inside. West stepped inside the room, “Not ready then, I see,” he mumbled, Jackson replied that he had begun to prepare as soon as he had found out about their impending departure.
West nodded as if it was what he had expected and sat down in the most comfortable chair in the living room. The chair was an old type of recliner from before the days when all the furnishings were fitted with physiotherapy circuits and psychoanalytical capabilities. West found it refreshing to sit on a chair, which didn’t attempt to either rub his back or ask him how he felt about his mother. He felt he was quite justified in preferring furniture to be a little more akin to inanimate objects then a combination or a masseur and the ancient psychologist Siegmond Freud. Yet it was still the case that sales figures for the ‘Snoozy-chat-O-lux’ model 3 were reaching such levels that the company responsible for the production had only the year before, purchased South America.
As West sank himself into the chair, he sighed heavily to himself. From the other side of the room his friend knew what was troubling him. Usually a difficult man to understand, West’s emotions when shown were easily read at a time like this. Jackson knew only one thing could be troubling his friend to make him so forlorn.
“Trouble with the book club again, Tay?” West replied that he had received another demand for payment and sighed again. Eli laughed, he never ceased to be amazed at how often he would see horrific events fail to move Taylor and yet a book club could have such a profound effect upon him. He knew his friend well enough not to believe that the demand would have worried him financially (as someone who did not know West may have thought from his reaction), it was merely the annoyance of repeated postal nonsense aimed at him which frustrated the man looking at his watch and rolling his tongue behind his teeth.
Eli finished his packing and switched off his vid unit with a view to lowering his ludicrous electricity bill. He grabbed his travel pass from the table and programmed his robot cat to let itself out until he could return to collect it. He thought that he would be gone for at least six months, so he programmed the automatic feline that it was to look after the flat and occasionally annoy the neighbours by leaving piles of waste material on the window gardens and scratching at their doors. Eli and his neighbours did not get on.
“Not taking the cat this time?” asked Taylor.
To which Eli shrugged and said, “I’d like to, but you know what happened last time. Stupid thing broke down and cost me nearly a hundred credits to fix. Still don’t know how it managed to get bust. Cheaper to leave it here for this trip.” The robot cat merely curled up in front of the heating unit and entered into a robot sleep which it had no intention of allowing to be delayed by discussions as to whether it would be going to a place it did not want to visit or staying in it’s comfortable home. By the time it awoke, Eli and Taylor were halfway to a shuttleport and discussing their new assignment. The cat neither knew this nor would have cared if it did, it merely ran a metal paw over its simulated fur and waited for the invention of the robot mouse.
***
It is curious to note, as Taylor did, that despite the tremendous marketing value inherent in the robot cat creation, the black and white creature which lay on Eli Jackson’s rug belonged to a group of products which was only the third most profitable in the Colonies. The simulated pet series could not hope to compare with the credits spent on automated furniture. However, this in turn paled in comparison with the single most profitable market leader in history. This being the Combined Colonial Book Club that had somehow made phenomenal amounts of money selling books to fictional people. No one was more painfully aware of this fact then Taylor West, and he winced at the prospect of further bills arriving at his home. ‘Fortunately for me, he thought, I will not be there for the foreseeable future’.
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of the hyper-rail transport that he and Eli had been waiting for. They had already travelled more than half of the eighty kilometres to the shuttle port in Eli’s hover car, but had to continue their journey without the younger man’s prized possession. This was due to the rest of the trip taking them through zones in which private transport had long been banned to ease traffic congestion and prevent a repeat of the infamous summer of 2036. On July the sixth that year, traffic snarl ups in New York City caused such frustration amongst amongst the drivers of the vehicles concerned that they went on a rampage, killing each other and anyone else they could get their hands on before security forces arrived to quell the carnage.
Of the eight hundred and fifty four souls caught in the congestion that fateful evening, only thirty two people survived the attack of their fellow road users and also managed to avoid the over-zealous security forces, keen to surpass their ‘felon-incapacitated’ quota for the week. The killing spree claimed a further seven hundred lives as it spread from the roads to suburbs. As the Nation’s leaders called for calm and the world watched in horror, security forces swept in and incapacitated any individual they felt was in violation of public order statutes.
In the aftermath of the massacre, there were calls for the prohibition of privately owned vehicles and this was put into effect the year after: and remained law in every country in the world until a period of twenty years starting in 2141 when countries began to relax the laws on private ownership of transp
ort. From this developed ‘blue areas’ where it was illegal to use a hover car and it was in such as area that Jackson and West waited for their identification to be verified before being allowed on the hyper-rail transport vehicle. Similar to an old-fashioned train from the twentieth century, the sleek vehicle ran along designated tracks but did not actually touch them. Huge magnetic buffers kept friction to a minimum and allowed enormously high speeds to be achieved with hardly any feeling of movement noticeable inside the compartments.
Once granted clearance to enter the transport by the securi-porters, Eli and Taylor stepped into the sparsely decorated transport and, after waiting for the rest of the passengers to step in, embarked on the journey to shuttle port Rio. Taylor knew that a mystery awaited him on Graves’ World, but did not know that death would be lurking just around the corner with more at stake than he could ever have imagined.
Chapter Two
Travel Sickness
They say that travel broadens the mind, but as far as Eli was concerned all it seemed to do was bore him to tears. They had arrived at the shuttle port more than two hours previously and were currently on the evening shuttle to Moon Relay Four. They were getting very tired of the stewardess who kept asking them if they wanted anything to drink, with no apparent desire to listen to their reply. The captain of the shuttle had just informed the passengers that they were due to arrive at their destination in approximately twenty minutes, but this did little to raise their spirits.
