Lament for the Fallen

by Gavin Chait

  ‘The pallet holds twenty-eight boxes. A week’s worth of food waste. We go through each box – almost one hundred fifty thousand – squeezing out the last of the packets. There ain’t much,’ says Seymour, scratching his ribs. ‘We get by.

  ‘When the pallet is full, it rolls through that door. That’s a pressure-sealed environment, ’cos, on the other side, that’s the entry bay where the new convicts arrive. It ain’t guarded there, but it’s a vacuum. No escape.

  ‘And that’s our lives. We sleep through here. Each of us done make a room for ourselves.’

  Amongst the wide, bolted racks, each man has hung sheets of cloth to create small rooms. Neatly folded sheets make up a bed, and a few personal items are packed in small boxes. The rooms are even smaller than the cells, but they do have the warehouse to live in.

  ‘We fool around with the equipment, we play cards, we squeeze packets,’ says Seymour.

  The men stand there, skin and bone, their eyes sunken, large against their skulls, haunted.

  ‘Where your wee-wee?’ asks Henry.

  Samara drops his penis out of its protective sheath, then retracts it again. Henry whistles.

  ‘That’s a neat trick.’

  Samara shrugs. ‘If you show me where you keep the cloth, I can make myself something to wear,’ he says.

  ‘Sure,’ says Sancho, and leads him to a great roll of coarse fabric.

  Samara unrolls a length and then slides the cutter across. He fashions it into an impromptu cloak.

  ‘That will do for now. Are there any fabricators?’

  Henry shakes his head.

  [The old-fashioned way, then.]

  The men stare at Samara expectantly.

  ‘How you planning on getting out, fellow?’ asks Henry.

  Samara looks at them carefully.

  ‘I’m going to build a small escape pod and fly down the navigation channel.’

  The men look pleased. If one, why not more?

  [Best tell them early.]

  ‘I need to explain something. Please be patient with me.’ The men look worried again. ‘You cannot escape with me. You will not survive the journey.’

  ‘What? We can’t stay here?’ Seymour looks angry, but they lack the energy to do much more than sigh.

  ‘I agree with you. This place is a crime. My people will not permit it. I will ensure that.’

  They do not look as if they believe him, either that he can escape or that he would return.

  ‘My journey, in any case, is dangerous. I cannot travel direct from here to Achenia. There is too much debris in orbit. I would be torn apart. I go to the surface only to have to find another way back up. I will need to stay outside the connect once I’m into the atmosphere and will cut across and head for Africa.’

  ‘Mister, there ain’ no propulsion systems here. We looked,’ says Sancho.

  [That could be a problem. I will review the station plans.]

  ‘I will have to look into that,’ says Samara. ‘I will not disturb you and, while I am here, I will help you as best I can.’

  He works non-stop. He scans the boxes for parts, components. He will need more food: he has to bulk up.

  [Food distribution will happen from somewhere.]

  ‘Yes, but first let’s check around here. It will be easier if I don’t have to spend too much time in the tunnels.’

  The men lack the strength to climb more than a body length and have no idea what is in the boxes above that. In a distant part of the warehouse, free-climbing high up in the stacks, he finds a massive box of ancient food sachets. These are flavoured and appear to have been intended for work crews.

  Samara flings the box from the top. It falls and bursts where it hits the ground, a deluge of silver-foiled sachets filling the narrow space along the floor. The Fury comes to inspect, then returns to its rounds.

  The men walk slowly over. They are excited, start tearing open packets and sucking down the contents.

  ‘This one tastes like chicken!’ crows Henry.

  ‘Gentlemen. You are welcome, but I will need to eat about half of this if I am to survive the fall. The rest should last you a few months. Time enough for me to return and close Tartarus down.’

  Henry shakes his head. ‘I almost believe you, fellow.’

  The others occasionally follow him around, but they lack his energy or strength. Even with the additional rations it will be some time before they recover.

  Samara, looking at the mountain of stores, asks Sancho, ‘Have you ever seen any work crews since you’ve been here?’

  ‘Last time was maybe ten years ago,’ he says. Pointing up at the sachet outflow pipe, ‘It wan’t easy, but I climbed up there, hid in the space on the other side of the pipe till they left. That way I could still eat.’ He grins toothlessly. ‘But that were before these fellows done join me. And none of us are strong enough to try that again any more.’ He looks sadly at his emaciated arms.

  ‘Before that, they used to come every year,’ he says. ‘You think they done forget about us?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Samara, ‘but I won’t.’

  Samara sets up an improvised metal-works close to the conveyor belt. The men can see him there from their endless card game, shouting encouragement as they return to their regular routine.

  Showers of sparks and piercing whines as he cuts the metal.

  When they settle to eat, he joins them. They talk after the fashion of men unused to long conversations.

  ‘I were angry,’ says Sancho. ‘Spent more of my life inside than out. Me an’ a friend tried to ransom a hitchhiker. He were only a boy, shouldn’ even have been out on his own. We picked him up near the Guatemala border.’

  He stops, his voice husky, clutching at his knees, looking down.

  ‘We didn’ know what we were doin’ neither. Couldn’ let him go, so I done strangle him. Got caught. My friend got killed. I got in fights inside. They sent me here,’ says Sancho.

  He sighs, a long drawn-out breath filled with sorrow.

  ‘Stuck in that cell. Long time. Floatin’. All I can see is that boy’s face. I don’ even remember his name.’ Sancho looks up at Samara, his eyes bloodshot. ‘I would find his family. Tell them sorry.

  ‘I don’ have much life left, but I realize. You can’ spend it angry or hatin’.

  ‘I hope you can get us home, Mister.’ Sancho finishes speaking, rocking himself gently.

  Henry killed his wife in an argument. Pushed her in a moment of fury and she fell, striking her head on an end table. Seymour was a gang member. There was one of those periodic anti-crime crusades, and he was made an example of.

  ‘I got a son back there,’ says Henry. ‘He was a baby when I was sent here. He’d be seventeen now, I guess.’ Samara told them the date. They are still coming to terms with how long they have been imprisoned. ‘I was wrong. I don’t expect him to welcome me, but I hope he’ll let me try.’

  Seymour nods. ‘I got a wife still, I think. I hope she gives me a chance.’

  Conversation lags, comes to a halt, and the men go alone to their small rooms. Haunted by hope and regret.

  [They are not good men.]

  ‘Perhaps. By the norms of their society, they have been more than punished for it. Redemption comes after release. They won’t repay the balance of their debt unless they’re given the opportunity to return.’

  [They seem to want to. Repay it, I mean.]

  ‘Yes, it seems so. Maybe there is hope, even here?’

  [I have located a potential storage area for rocket fuel.]

  ‘Where is it?’

  [You will not like it.]

  ‘The other end of the station.’

  [Indeed.]

  ‘Very well. Shall we go?’

  Samara disrobes, leaving his cloak inside the door to the tunnels. His skin once again invisible against the dark metal. He adjusts to the lack of gravity, careful not to make any sound that could attract the Furies.

  Once more, the endless
network of grid-like passages and the purring silence broken by howls and madness.

  25

  Farinata Uberti lies prostrate in the dust before his sacred grove.

  His arms and legs are outstretched. Dust blows about his face with each breath where his mouth is downcast close to the ground. His feet and hands are dirty.

  Plaited palm leaves are wrapped around the trees either side of a small, palm-fronded hut. Bowls of water interspersed with rounded brown and white stones are arranged in rows before it. Sharpened sticks, eggshells impaled upon them, stand upright here and there. A pile of human skulls mixed with the bones of fish, goats and chickens is just outside the hut entrance. Seeds and feathers have been scattered over the roof and about the grounds. A python skin hangs between the two trees and above the hut.

  Uberti is naked except for an okuru, a sheet cross-woven from strands of cotton and palm fibre. His body is plump. His hips and thighs – where they protrude from the sheet wrapped about his waist – are riven with stretch marks.

  He is midway through the ceremony of divination.

  A white ceramic bowl lined with a white cloth and filled with clear water is boiling on a tripod over a heap of coals to his right side. He pushes himself upright and sits, cross-legged, and empties a wooden bowl filled with finely scraped woody fibre from a freshly cut sapling into the water. He waits until the liquor becomes cloudy and begins to simmer once more. He gathers up the cloth in the bowl, carefully squeezing the water back into it.

  A dead chicken, its body torn open while still alive, is to his left side. The knife he used is next to it, partly under one half-extended wing. He squeezes a few drops from the lump of cloth into its chest and over its intestines.

  Last, he sits back on his heels, moulding the fabric-covered fibre between his hands. He sits like that for almost an hour, waiting for the ndem of his grove to reveal the future to him.

  He stands, collects the chicken, the two bowls and the tripod, and stows them in the little hut. He removes his okuru, his flabby belly hanging over his scrotum, carefully folds the fabric and places it within the hut as well. He recovers his clothes, and dresses.

  Turning, he follows the path through the trees until his house comes into view. His guards are waiting for him there. One hands him his AK-47. This is not a printed version but a Chinese original acquired at great cost from the Chinese traders who still sometimes visit the city.

  ‘Ciacco!’ he shouts. ‘Ciacco, you worm, run!’

  Uberti never speaks when he can bark.

  Ciacco, a small, wire-faced man, races from the house. ‘Great Awbong, you have returned. What news?’

  The older man sneers. ‘What news, indeed? You tell me.’ Uberti strides towards the house, a guard on either side and his rifle slung across his back, Ciacco hovering on the periphery.

  ‘There is news from the markets. A group arrived from the south. They have sold half a ton of aluminium scrap to the digesters.’

  ‘That is interesting news. When was this?’ Uberti washes his hands in a bowl of water, stumps up the stairs and on to the veranda of his house. He grabs a clean white towel from a slave, throwing it back at her when done.

  ‘Only two hours ago, my Awbong.’ Ciacco knows the news will please.

  ‘Who are they, these outsiders?’

  ‘Your men in the market say they sound as if they come from along the Akwayafe.’

  ‘Aha,’ he says. He leans out over the wall of his veranda. This is the largest house in Henshaw Town and the highest up the ridge. From here he looks down on Beach Town and across the bay towards Ikonitu.

  ‘They’re from Ewuru. Those filthy vagrants owe me a helicopter. D’Este is even less forgiving than I, and I had to part with most of the money from that bauxite to pay him off.’

  Unsaid, that it was too expensive to afford a revenge attack. But now that they have come to him, and have something worth taking –

  He turns to Ciacco. His eyes burn and his jaw bunches where he is grinding his teeth.

  They almost could not find the bauxite because of those peasants’ stupidity when they marked Pazzo’s map. Eventually, they had seen it from the air, but not before one of the pilots had gotten bored and decided to have some fun taking his team to attack the village. That had cost him a helicopter, even though he had beaten d’Este down on the price for those flying scrapheaps.

  ‘Send men. They owe me comey.’

  It does not matter where the aluminium came from. All that matters is his fee.

  Ciacco turns without a word and flees into the house.

  ‘Good,’ says Uberti. ‘They can pay me at least part of what I lost.’

  ‘My Awbong,’ says one of the guards. Uberti grunts at him. ‘My Awbong, the Akan players have arrived for tomorrow night. Can they set up in the back garden?’

  Uberti will throw a festival for his men. Women will not be permitted, as many secret rites will be shared. The Akan are amongst them.

  Many of the other local warlords will be present. They have adopted the old title of ‘Awbong’, king, and divided up the city along its ancient boundaries. They re-established the Egbo secret society, brought back the tortures, mysticism and superstitions. They pretend at being an organizing force, but they are more like a fungus. The moisture they need to thrive is provided by the society itself.

  ‘Last year’s players dropped one of their puppets. Make sure these players are aware of the consequences.’

  Uberti has only one real punishment for those who displease him. He sacrifices them to the trees. He butchered the man who dropped the puppet. The others he sold as slaves to Filippo Argenti, one of the other warlords in the city.

  The warlords do business with each other even as they skirmish for control. They are always looking for an opportunity to erode each other’s power. Murder is frequent, but consolidation unlikely. As one dies, another militiaman steps forward, equally brutal.

  ‘Duruji?’ he says softly to one of the guards. The man leans close. ‘That old woman, the one in the market?’

  Duruji indicates that he remembers her.

  ‘Kill her. The ceremony did not work.’

  Duruji is about to leave.

  ‘And, Duruji,’ Uberti glares at him. ‘Not a word.’

  The militiaman nods and leaves quietly, hurrying around the outside of the house.

  ‘It is good when one is feared, isn’t it?’ he says to another of his guards. He does not expect an answer. No one answers the king.

  Uberti draws in the dust on the veranda wall. His first two fingers trace two arcs in parallel. He erases the second arc at a point off centre, breaking it. He places a dot between them. He studies it for a moment, then rubs it out with his palm. And he laughs.

  26

  ‘No more, please,’ begs Samara, his self-awareness a fragment lost to the inevitable onslaught of his memory.

  [It was a good trap.] ‘Please, not here –’ fading once more.

  ‘Yes, the entire situation at the bar. Someone was waiting for us, expecting us,’ says Samara.

  [To what end?]

  ‘I do not know, but we can assume they have Oktar as well. He could be somewhere amongst the inmates, or he could be being kept down on Earth.’

  [Perhaps they think they can keep us here?]

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Perhaps they think either I or Oktar can assist them in some way?’

  [And the masked section of Tartarus, or the gauntlet of Furies?]

  ‘Maybe it isn’t related? That empty section could be an unfinished part of the jail? Maybe the Furies have been hacked by another group taking bets on how long prisoners survive? Some sort of torturers game show?’

  [One hundred and fifty people a year killed for sport? There are some very messed-up people in your world.]

  ‘Indeed. I wonder if that number is just sufficiently low to escape notice against the death rate of the prison population? No matter, we will confront this when we get back to Achenia.’


  Samara is moving slowly. He is travelling in a wide arc around the central hub controlled by Athena. He is not entirely sure of his ability to fend off a massed Fury attack, and he does not wish to trigger any alarms or leave a trail of disabled Furies that might lead to a complete lockdown of all exits.

  Every few minutes, he must stop and angle himself against the floor as another lion’s-head shaped Fury slides silently past.

  [I love the way the intervals are random.]

  After a few hours, he sees another lit tunnel ending in another unlocked hatchway.

  [They use hydrazine rocket engines to maintain the station attitude. There should be plenty of stores here we can use. I hope.]

  ‘Getting sufficient back will be difficult.’

  [I got us here. I leave the heavy lifting to you.]

  He opens the door. Inside, there is gravitation again. It is dark save for the illumination from the tunnel. He closes the hatchway behind him and lights come on. He is in a short, white-painted interspace, sealed at the end in a thick blast door.

  A green button is flush with the wall at the end. He presses it and the blast door rolls open. There is a tick, gradually increasing in speed, as he steps through. The door will close once the ticks become continuous.

  His skin returns to matt titanium. No need to waste energy here.

  Inside is a large chamber. It is a grid of floor-to-ceiling square containment vessels. He notes, in passing, that each is bigger than any of the prison cells. It is cold here. Red and yellow warning signs are centred on every wall.

  Each containment chamber has a heavy door surmounted by a stainless steel wheel.

  Samara spins open the first one he sees. The door gradually ejects towards him, coming back on two large hinges at the top and bottom. These are on wheels in embedded flanges and run along the inside so that the door slides to the side.

  It is empty, a few containment boxes left lying on the floor alongside high shelves.

  He closes the door and moves on. The fifth one contains a number of boxes. Each box contains a single half-metre rocket engine. The heads are flat, with a small connection plug socket. The pipes are pinched a third of the way from the end, then angling out to a cone the same width as the pipe. A waxy wrapping seals each end.