Memento Mori

by W. R. Gingell

“Ain’t gonna blow it up,” Kez assured him. Sergeant Gormley wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or horrified when she added, “Gonna blow up summink else.”

  He said weakly, “Oh,” and watched Kez trot after Marx with the rather dizzy thought that whatever else happened today, this Fourth World Orbiting Station had narrowly escaped an explosive fate.

  ***

  “Why we muckin’ about in the lockers?”

  “Because you have a sharp voice,” retorted Marx, his voice dangerously quiet. “And because you’ve already said enough around that sergeant.”

  “Wot, that’s it?”

  “No.” Marx grinned. “I’ve got to put this little parcel in a particular locker.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like having delay release bombs in useful places.”

  “Orright,” said Kez. “That makes sense. But wot about the real box? Where we gonna put that, then?”

  “Got an idea about that,” said Marx. “Remember Arabella?”

  “’Course!”

  “I looked her up in the Core.”

  “Did you now?”

  “There’s no need to look at me like that, you pernicious little mucker! I remembered something about her growing up on a WAOFy Fourth World Orbiting Station.”

  “Wait, she’s growin’ up here?”

  “Yeah. Handy, isn’t it?”

  “Ain’t that a bit of a risk?”

  “A bit,” agreed Marx, carefully setting his explosive-laden box into the locker that had previously held the Newlands Box. He arranged the knitted jumper over it and closed the locker just as carefully. In another few minutes it would be entirely safe to drop without worrying, but he didn’t care to wait around until that time; goodness knew when more Seventh Worlders would come through the door with murderous intent. “But at least we know we can get it back when we want to, and there’s no trail to lead it back to us. If anyone does think we’ve got it, they’ll be focusing on the Eighth World incursion. Besides, I’ve get the feeling—”

  “Yeah, me too,” said Kez unexpectedly. “Dunno wot her angle is, but I got the feelin’ she’s on our side.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Orright,” said Kez, scurrying toward the back corner of the room that held Sergeant Gormley. “You do that, then. I got summink else to do.”

  Marx hurried after her. “What else?”

  “Summink.”

  “Is it something to do with Gormley?” demanded Marx, rounding the corner just in time to see Kez grab the Sergeant’s cuff once again.

  Sergeant Gormley looked decidedly apprehensive. When Kez grinned and said, “Yeah,” he looked almost horrified, and that amused Marx enough to make him say, “All right then. See you back on the Upsydaisy?”

  “Yeah,” said Kez, and if her grin had made the sergeant horrified before, now he looked positively sick. “Don’t worry bucko, you’re gonna like this.”

  ***

  Sergeant Gormley flexed his shoulders. “I should arrest you.”

  “Yeah,” said Kez, who had just freed him from the wrap lock and was grinning up at him as if she hadn’t a care in the world, “But if you do that you’ll miss out on the fun.”

  Sergeant Gormley hesitated. “What fun?”

  “See that door?”

  “This one?” Sergeant Gormley pointed at the door a foot in front of his face.

  “Yeah. Wanna know what’s behind there?”

  “That’s my office,” said Sergeant Gormley, with the feeling of seeing an old, familiar place after years of exile.

  “Yeah. Wanna know who’s in there?”

  Sergeant Gormley winced. “Who?”

  “Some Seventh World mucker ’oo’s usin’ your name. You shouldn’t let people get away wiv that sort of thing.”

  “But you—”

  “He’s goin’ through your files and bullyin’ your juniors, too,” Kez informed him. “He’s the one wot told the others to kill you.”

  “He’s doing what?”

  Kez blinked at him, then grinned. “Gave one of ’em a bloody nose,” she said. “Wot you gonna do, bucko?”

  “I’m not having that!” said Sergeant Gormley, squaring his shoulders. “Who told him he could hit my juniors!”

  “That’s it,” Kez said encouragingly, but Sergeant Gormley was already slapping the sensor pad beside the door. It hissed open with something of a rattle, lightweight and cheap, and Sergeant Gormley got the first sight of his office he’d had since he was knocked out that morning.

  His desk was a mess, and that infuriated him. What infuriated him more, however, was the fact that beside the Seventh Worlder pretending to be him was a chubby little officer who must have been his junior, and who was nursing a swollen, bloody nose.

  “What,” said Sergeant Gormley wrathfully, “did you do to my junior?”

  “You’re supposed to be dead,” said the Seventh Worlder. There was a stunner in his hand, but it was a contact type, and Sergeant Gormley was just angry enough to launch himself at the man without caring whether or not it did come into contact with him.

  The junior yelped and leapt for cover as both men slammed into the wall beside him, the stunner crackling dangerously. Sergeant Gormley, his hands busy fending off that stunner, jerked his head forward and head-butted the other man. The stunner fell, bouncing on its cord and cracking against the wall, and Sergeant Gormley took a punch to the stomach that sent him staggering back a few paces. The Seventh Worlder charged him, a lithe streak that was too quick to stop, so Sergeant Gormley didn’t try to stop him. Instead, he fairly picked him up and used that momentum to hurl the man through his office door.

  There was another yelp from Sergeant Gormley’s junior as the Seventh Worlder crashed through the door and into the hall in a shower of fake maxi-plex.

  The door listed drunkenly, jerking back and forth in an effort to open or close itself, and the Seventh Worlder listed almost as drunkenly, struggling to likewise right himself. All along the hall doors popped open, officers spilling out to catch a sight of what had made such a noise in their quiet station.

  The Seventh Worlder looked up and down the hall and, seeing no escape, went for his stunner again. Sergeant Gormley tackled him to the ground before he could lay his hand on it, wrestling him onto his back, and punched downwards with all the ferocity that had, in his youth, saddled him with the nickname of K.O. There was a distinct crack in the bristling silence of the hall, and the Seventh Worlder’s head dropped back onto the floor, his eyes rolling back.

  Sergeant Gormley, puffing rather more heavily than an arresting officer ought to be puffing, waited until there were some signs of life to the man again before he said with difficulty, “You’re under arrest, sir; under section 45-A of the Impersonation Act.”

  His prisoner groaned and said something that sounded more than vaguely impolite in Seventh World dialect, his eyes slit almost shut with a combination of useless malice and swelling.

  “That’s as may be, sir,” said Sergeant Gormley, feeling an unprecedented and entirely unfamiliar feeling well up inside himself. It was that feeling that made him continue in a voice that didn’t sound at all like his own round, kindly one, “And I’ll thank you not to look at my juniors, sir. Did you do that?”

  “I’m all right, sir,” said his junior, pink-faced. “Would you like me to wrap lock him?”

  “Why not?” Sergeant Gormley said. “You can help me walk him to the lockup, too. Now, who’s going to get me a cup of tea?”

  ***

  Sergeant Gormley was having a good day. Before his kidnap, attempted murder, and head trauma, he had just discovered that his new station mates had pinched his lunchbox. It was therefore very pleasant to be sitting down to lunch—his own lunch, somehow back in his office without explanation—after arresting one of the violent offenders of the day in the presence of most of those station mates.

  Sergeant Gormley was aware that he was being stared at. It was because he was aware he was being stared at
that he continued to eat his lunch with his usual stolid placidity, not looking up until he was finished. When he did look up, it was because there was a young officer hovering beside his table.

  “Thought you might like a cuppa, sir,” he said.

  Sergeant Gormley nodded and took the mug. “What’s your name?”

  “Constable Mack, sir.”

  “Thank you, Constable Mack.”

  The constable nodded and scurried away again. In his wake, Sergeant Gormley saw someone else watching him. It was another sergeant, his eyes flicking up and down, but mostly down. That must be the one who had pinched Sergeant Gormley’s lunch. He was fidgeting, as were the other officers at his table, and none other of them were looking directly at Sergeant Gormley, but he knew they were acutely conscious of him despite that. Sergeant Gormley sipped his tea and smiled at the other sergeant, who whitened and looked away swiftly. A murmur began to susurrate around the room.

  Yes. Today was a good day for Sergeant Gormley. It could have been that warmth of feeling that had made him decide not to mention either Kez or Marx in his official report of the day. Of course, it could have been the fact that he would rather not disclose his kidnapping in light of his current status on the station, but Sergeant Gormley had the shrewd idea that if Kez and Marx hadn’t been here today, the day might not have ended as well for him as it had. And Sergeant Gormley felt that he would like to see more good days.

  ***

  “Oi,” said Kez. “That bit’s not in the Possibles anymore, is it?”

  “Nope,” said Marx. It was difficult to say exactly when their next job had passed from Possible to Incident in the Core, but he would have guessed it was at the exact moment they put that explosive-laden lunch box into the evidence locker. “Time Corp’ll know by now.”

  “We goin’ straight away?”

  “Nope,” Marx said again. “We’re going to need something specialised to get through the Grid. Let Time Corp stew for a bit.”

  “Wot, we need more tech?”

  “We need more friends.”

  “Don’t need no one,” muttered Kez.

  Marx, grinning, expanded on his comment. “We need more friends with good tech. Actually, we need the kind of friends with biotech.”

  Kez’s eyes glittered. “Wot, you got a plan?”

  “I’ve got half a plan.”

  “That why we pinched the lunch box an’ turfed it in the locker all explosive like?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Orright,” said Kez. “But I ain’t babysitting this time.”

  WOAF Fourth World Orbiting Station Absent for Duty List

  Constable K Corry (SL)

  Sergeant Rufus Main (SL)

  Sergeant Marcus Solomon (AWOL)

  By the Sea

  TUAN WAS ALMOST CERTAIN that his Aunt Myra was trying to kill him. He’d first suspected it two weeks ago, when his breakfast fruit harboured a strange offworld bacteria that would have stripped bare the stomach of any unfortunate human consuming it; and when his homemade flier blew up a few minutes into its monthly tune-up, his suspicions only grew. If it had been a professionally made model, he would have passed it off as a flaw in the design, but Tuan had built that flyer piece by piece. He knew every component and every paint fleck on it—it was flawless. Aunt Myra was a different kind of machine altogether, and Tuan was never sure exactly what made her work. Perhaps if she was something he had put together bit by bit, he would have understood her better.

  It was because of Aunt Myra that Tuan was down on the beach this morning. He’d left a bit of a mess in the house when he left, and Aunt Myra was very sensitive to mess. When it got to sunset, he might start walking back home, but for now it was wiser to stay on the beach, out of sight. Aunt Myra didn’t like the sea, and Tuan had begun to think of the beach as his own private retreat, safe from distraction and Aunt Myra. So it was something of a surprise to see Aunt Myra striding down the beach toward him when Tuan, paddling serenely in the shallows, turned to follow the flow of the waves.

  Tuan felt the water sucking at his thighs as the wave retreated, and wondered if he had miscalculated. Perhaps the mess he had left in the house was just a little bit too much.

  Aunt Myra didn’t stop at the beach; she continued on, right into the water.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked. She was shaking, but Tuan didn’t know why: it wasn’t cold. He stood where he was and watched her walk toward him through the shallows, her thin brown legs making white-rippled tears in the waves. She came nearer and nearer, first ankle, then calf, then thigh-deep. “It’s too much,” she said. “I could have forgiven everything else, but not that.”

  Tuan’s eyes ran over her face, trying to find some recognisable expression from which he could extrapolate a useful conclusion. Her face was pale, except for two bright spots of red high on her cheeks, and her hands were bunched up in her dress; was that anger or mental distress? He was never sure when it came to emotions.

  “Did I offend you, Aunt?” he asked cautiously.

  Her step faltered, then continued. “Offend?” She laughed, and there was something not right about that laugh. “Did you offend me? No, Tuan, you didn’t offend me. What you did was worse.”

  Tuan had a sudden memory of Aunt Myra hunting cockroaches in the house. She had had that look right before she brought her slipper down on one with a resounding slap.

  He asked, “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Yes,” said Aunt Myra, and now she was only a handbreadth away from of him. “I’m going to kill you.”

  She had her hands around his neck before he could react, and the world tumbled and plunged into water.

  There was foamy, peaceful blue above him, peaceful blue around him. Tuan saw the sky through the water’s surface, and it seemed to him that it was blotted out for a moment. He thought he had died, but then the blue came back.

  And as the blue came back, Tuan began to struggle.

  The world was a blurred, salty tumble of roaring noise and sudden quiet. Now he could breathe and now he couldn’t; now there was salt water in his nose, making him choke; now there was air to breathe. Aunt Myra’s fingers wrapped tightly around his neck, too warm despite the cold water, her face pale and set above him. His own fingers couldn’t quite reach her throat. Tuan kicked instead, his legs heavy with water and fatigue, and the grip around his neck tore apart. He was free, floating; but where was Aunt Myra?

  Tuan struggled to his feet and was promptly knocked over by a wave. There was movement on the beach, but he couldn’t pay attention to it because Aunt Myra was on him again, her thin fingers scratching and snatching. One of her nails caught across his cheek and made a tight line of pain that the salt stung at once, but he avoided the rest of the assault and pushed Aunt Myra away into the sucking waves. They swallowed her whole, but the same surge took Tuan with it, dragging him beneath the surface and dashing him at the seabed in a floating cloud of sand that gritted in his eyes and sparkled along his skin.

  His arms flailing helplessly in the curl of the wave, Tuan felt himself hauled out of the water. Someone’s hand on his collar: was that Aunt Myra? But no; this hand was holding him up, not trying to push him down again. And when he blinked vigorously enough to clear the sand and salt from his eyes, he could just see Aunt Myra beside him, floating on her back. She was being towed along with him, all the way to shore. Was she dead? He thought so. There was pale blood glistening on her forehead. She must have hit her head on the rocks when the wave took them both under.

  Tuan squinted, but between the sun and the glare of that sun on the water, he couldn’t see who was dragging them both along until they got to the shore. The hand that had been holding him up dropped him safely on the wet sand with the plashing of little waves foaming away at his feet, and a blurry figure hurried over to the spot where Aunt Myra was lying on her back.

  “Ain’t no use,” said someone’s voice, sharp and angry. “She’s dead. ’Ow about him?”

  “Alive,” s
aid a second voice. Male; older.

  Tuan rubbed the salt water from his eyes and squinted again. “Who are you?”

  “Flamin’ ’eck! ’Ow come we didn’t get ’ere earlier? We coulda stopped it!”

  “Stopped what?” asked Tuan.

  “I told you,” the male voice said, and Tuan’s sight cleared enough to see that it was a short, sandy-haired man. He was sun browned and leathery-faced, and there was a flatness to his accent that Tuan hadn’t heard before. “It’s a Fixed Point. I came as close as I could. At least we got him out.”

  The young one, the girl, was staring at Tuan. “You look a bit funny. Wot ’appened?”

  “Aunt Myra,” said Tuan, looking at the small girl in fascination. Had that tiny thing dragged Aunt Myra all the way to shore? “Is she dead?”

  “Like a do—ow! Marx! I mean, yeah, she’s dead. Sorry.”

  The one called Marx studied him, the frown between his eyebrows proclaiming concern. “Does anything hurt?”

  “Yes,” said Tuan; and then, “No. Aunt Myra really tried to kill me.”

  “Looks like it,” agreed the small girl. “Oi. My name’s Kez. Wot’s yours?”

  “I’m Tuan.”

  Kez and Marx exchanged glances.

  “Sorry we couldn’t get here earlier,” said Marx.

  “Why would you get here earlier? Who are you? Why are you here?”

  “We’re friends of your parents. We’re here to help. Ish.”

  “That’s not an accurate incremental measure,” said Tuan.

  “We know,” Marx said.

  Kez, who was still watching him, explained, “Ain’t sure ’ow much we wanna help just yet.”

  “Oh,” said Tuan. He wasn’t prepared for visitors. Aunt Myra was one thing; taking visitors back to the house was another. “You can’t come back to the house at the moment.”