by David Coy
“Good bet,” Habershaw said. “I think they’ve been here for a while already.”
“Doin’ what?”
“Got me! Doctor stuff, I guess.”
“On who? Nobody else’s here yet.”
“How the hell should I know?” Habershaw asked vacantly, sucking at his teeth.
From their high vantage, they could see most of the activity below. There hadn’t been a lot. Looking westward, they could see the flat, nearly motionless ocean stretching to the horizon. It wasn’t like any ocean Habershaw had ever seen. It was as flat as a sheet of glass; and when the sun set, the impression of uniform smoothness was enhanced by the red light that reflected from it as if from a mirror.
The ocean usually looked dull and dead; but the evening before last, just at sunset, Habershaw saw something break the surface far, far out. It was something large enough to send ripples expanding for what seemed like kilometers in all directions. Habershaw’s bored mind found the sight pretty interesting, and he asked Lavachek if he’d seen it, too. Lavachek said he hadn’t and seemed about as interested in it as a speck of dirt on his filthy boots. He looked where Habershaw pointed with a trace of courtesy, but smacked his lips in mild disinterest. “Aw, well, shit. It was there,” Habershaw said.
“I believe you,” Lavachek yawned.
The rig’s cab was big and had sleeping quarters in the back with two bunks. There was a cooler and a heater for food and a fold-down table at which to sit and eat. There was a toilet and a little shower. It wasn’t as nice as a shelter, but it would do in a pinch. They’d been in the rig for three nights now waiting for their next orders from Chief Engineer Patel. The last thing he’d told them was to “relax for a while and enjoy the view, high away from most of the bugs.”
They hadn’t heard a word from him since. Once or twice Lavachek had suggested they work their way back and smooth out a couple of sections of road he thought were too rough, just for something to do. “Hell with it,” Habershaw had said. “Wait ‘til the little prick tells us to.”
Habershaw talked to Joan a couple of times a day by phone to see what was going on. She was grumbling, moaning, bitching and loading trucks and told him that the first load was coming over in two days. She couldn’t understand what was going on, that was her problem. She was an expert in logistics, and what they wanted to get done and the way she’d been told to do it made no sense to her. She’d been instructed to move the settlement as quickly as possible but hadn’t been allowed to plan what to do with the material when it arrived. The only plan they had to work from was a simple priority list from the Council. That was all.
Most of the home shelters would be left behind. A good part of them were empty now anyway since the residents, former contractors whose work was done, had been sent back to Earth just prior to, what was now referred to as, The Collapse. The remaining science labs would go first, which Joan thought was strange. The trucks were big enough to carry ten complete shelters or labs at a time, stacked on them. That part wasn’t too tough. Then the warehouse contents would go. Next would be the Bondsmen’s personal stuff—the tons and tons of furniture, art, fixtures, china, knickknacks, bric-a-brac, baubles and whatnots they’d had shipped out with them.
She’d been too short-handed to meet the schedule and had asked for permission to recruit resources from other trades. Working nearly day and night, almost all that shit had been crated and sealed and marked by Joan and her crew of nearly one hundred workers. The occupants of the cloister were left with a minimum of possessions. Living in near-empty apartments, they sat patiently on bare floors, waiting for the big pilgrimage to begin. It made her sick, she said, how they just smiled and blindly went along with any goddamned thing Jacob told them. “Damned dummies," she called them in one breath and “fuckin' sheep” in the next.
Her biggest complaint was that she hadn’t been allowed to create a storage system at the destination. There would be a pile of crated stuff fifty meters high by the time she was done shipping it. There wasn’t a chance in Hell anything could be found in that massive heap until it was all distributed back to the owners. To top it off, the structure, from what she could gather, was some kind of organic thing with no goddamned markings on it, or in it—no order to the layout at all. It was going to be a damned maze inside. She’d have to think of some way to distribute the material other than conventional methods. They hadn’t built any platforms for the material, and Joan hoped they could get it disbursed quickly. The rain, bugs, mud and mold would get to anything left outside for long, even if it were in sealed crates and containers.
The whole thing was making her sick. She was exhausted and could barely deal with it any longer. She threatened again to run away into the jungle. He had told her that wouldn’t be a good idea.
She cried over the phone. He tried to put her fears to rest gently but couldn’t quite do it in the end. Finally, he told her that if she caved in, if she gave up, they’d kill her for it. They were that ruthless, and it was that simple. He didn’t have to tell her that because she knew it already—that’s why she was crying. He told her to finish her job; to knuckle down and finish it. “Work is what we do," he told her. “Fuck ‘em,” she said. “I hate them all.”
Lavachek had been spending a good part of his wasted time looking at the structure, puzzling over it and staring or squinting at it top to bottom. Sometimes, he’d just look and shake his head. Sometimes he’d idly squirt spit in its direction.
“Are we gonna live in that goddamned thing?” Lavachek asked.
“Christ, you keep asking me that. I don’t know. Don’t ask me,” Habershaw replied.
“Just askin’.”
Habershaw laughed at him. “Well, don’t! I don’t know shit anymore!”
“Okay, fine. You don’t have to be pissy about it.” Lavachek was leaning on the railing looking down at the entrance when he saw two men bring the thing outside. At first he thought it was some kind of flesh-colored garbage, some bundle of strange meat they were throwing away. He was high and far away, and Lavachek had always been proud of his good vision—“Runs in the family,” he’d say. But the distance strained even his good eyesight. The two men, dressed in dun-colored fatigues, were carrying the object between them. He could see that it hung down, bowed in the middle and that the men were carrying it by what looked like its legs and arms. The problem in Lavachek’s mind, the thing that puzzled Lavachek, was why the thing seemed to have so many legs and arms. Some of the limbs were flailing aimlessly, others barely moved or just waved in the air. He could swear he saw two things like heads attached to the pink and brown mottled trunk.
“Hey! Hey, Habershaw! Look at this goddamned thing!”
“What is it?” Habershaw asked from the cab.
“Look, goddamnit!” he pointed. “What is that?”
Now it was Habershaw’s turn to be disinterested. All things needed balance. “What?” he said. “I can’t see that goddamned far.”
“There! What the hell is that?”
“Two guys carrying something. I said I can’t see that far.” Lavachek shook his head in disgust at him. “Go get the scope out of my locker. Hurry up!”
Habershaw didn’t mind doing a little step-and-fetch-it for Lavachek since over the years Lavachek had done plenty of it for him, but what he couldn’t do was hurry up about it. Lavachek understood that and dashed past him as Habershaw ambled toward the lockers.
“Never mind! I’ll get the goddamned thing!”
“Okay.” Habershaw muttered and returned to the railing. In seconds, Lavachek was back at the railing with the scope trained on the activity below. Now he could see it all close up. As the men carried the thing across the freshly graded ground, Lavachek’s mouth formed into a tight scowl. His deep breathing hissed and whistled through his nose. Habershaw noticed it. “What is it? Let me see,” Habershaw said.
“Hey . . . uh . . . Habershaw . . .”
“What?”
“You’d better take a look at t
his . . .” Lavachek said, handing the scope to him.
“That’s what I said, goddamn it,” Habershaw barked. “Gimme that thing.”
“I hope you haven’t had breakfast yet,” Lavachek added. Habershaw put the scope to his face and looked. “Breakfast is my favorite meal of the . . . day . . .” His voice trailed off.
The men were carrying the body directly across his field of view, one guard walking backwards, so Habershaw had a perfect, unobstructed view of it.
The thing was human. At least the parts were human. The heads, bald and mottled, rolled around on their necks as if the thing or things were semi-conscious. It looked to be two or perhaps three bodies or parts of bodies fused into one. One of the arms, attached at some point near a hip region, was flailing and slapping at random. One of its multiple legs dragged a bent foot in the dirt as if trying to stop or slow down. Another kicked at the air in slow motion.
He couldn’t hear from that distance, but he could see that one of the heads was trying to talk, the mouth working slowly, repetitively, like some dumb thing. It was large and heavy, and the men were struggling with its weight, shifting their hands from time to time to get a better grip. They stopped, finally, and put it down. One of the men grinned and shook his wrists as if he’d been carrying a sofa.
“What the fuck is that?” Habershaw asked weakly.
The thing tried to crawl away, the arms and legs pawing at the dirt slowly in hopeless, opposite directions. One of the men put his foot down on a crawling arm to hold it still. When they had rested, they picked it up and continued, lugging it across the field, walking almost sideways now.
Habershaw handed the scope to Lavachek. Lavachek shook his head, then took another look through the scope.
“Where in Hell did they find that goddamned thing?” Habershaw asked.
“Damned if I know.”
Habershaw leaned on the railing with a deep frown on his face and watched Lavachek watch. He wasn’t very interested in seeing it anymore.
“What are they doing now?” he asked Lavachek, then turned to look for himself.
Lavachek shook his head. “Hang on,” he said.
The men carried the thing to the very edge of the jungle. Lavachek could see what looked like a pit dug into the ground there. The pit was large, perhaps five meters square. The thing seemed to sense the pit’s closeness and started to struggle even more violently, its arms and legs waving or clawing at the ground.
The men stood there for a second, swung the creature once and tried to heave it into the pit. It went no distance at all. It fell hard on the edge of the pit with a jolt Lavachek could almost feel. When it rolled in, Lavachek could swear he heard it hit with a heavy thud and a sick groan.
One of the men pulled a pistol out of its holster, aimed and fired down into the pit three times. The shots went off silently in the scope, reaching their ears a second later.
“They killed it, didn’t they?” Habershaw asked, turned in the opposite direction.
“Yeah, they killed it. Hey, uh, move back,” Lavachek said taking Habershaw by the arm. “Move back inside.”
When they were safely out of sight, Lavachek turned to Habershaw, his face ashen.
“I’ve seen some strange bullshit over the years . . .” Lavachek began.
“But nothing like that.” Habershaw finished. “That goddamned thing was human, I don’t care what you say.”
“More or less human,” Lavachek replied.
They stood there silently for a moment, staring at nothing. Habershaw shook his head. Lavachek raised up on his toes and stretched his neck to peek over the railing. “They’re going inside,” he said. “I don’t think they saw us.”
“Now what?” Lavachek asked.
Habershaw stared, his lips pursed. Thoughts were racing through his head. Some of them ran face first into brick walls. Others hurled themselves off cliffs. None of them survived long enough to give his confused mind any direction whatsoever. “I have no idea,” he said
“Did they find that goddamned thing in there?” Lavachek asked. “They must have, Bill. Or no, maybe it was a Siamese twin thing that they brought with them. Yeah, that’s got to be it. They must have brought the thing with them from Earth and somebody, probably that Jacob fuck, decided to kill it. That’s got to be it,” he said with his hands. “It was a mercy killing. That’s probably all it was.”
“Why in hell didn’t they just kill it back at the settlement?” Habershaw asked. “Why drag it out here to kill it? Why put the goddamned thing in a pit you could park a truck in?” Lavachek thought it over. His thoughts were bumping and falling and crashing like Habershaw’s. He craned up and took another peek at the ground below.
“This is bad.” he said.
“What is it?” Habershaw said, craning up, too.
They could see the two soldiers carrying another multi-limbed creature toward the pit. This one hung limp and, still, perhaps already dead.
Lavachek looked through the scope. He didn’t want to. “Another one?” Habershaw asked.
“And just as ugly,” Lavachek replied. He put the scope down and moved toward the rear wall. When he got to it, he leaned there for a second, then slid slowly down onto his butt. “We’d better stay out of sight.”
Over the next hour, they watched as the two men made over a dozen trips to the pit carrying some appalling humanoid amalgam. Sometimes, they’d shoot into the pit or wave the effort away with a tired hand. Fatigue and the morning’s hot, red sun ultimately took its toll. Finally done, they lumbered back into the structure a last time and did not come back out.
“This is some very strange doings, Lavachek,” Habershaw said, peeking up over the rail.
“We should tell somebody what the hell’s going on.”
“Who? Who in Hell would we tell?” Habershaw blurted out, “and what in Hell would we tell them? We don’t know what’s going on.”
Lavachek shrugged.
“Right,” Habershaw agreed. “I don’t know, either. I say we just go blind and deaf and go about our business and forget about this. Those goons’ll kill us if we make any trouble.”
Habershaw rubbed his face with both hands. Bill Habershaw wasn’t one to ask the big questions. One awoke each morning at the break of day, went to work and paid down one’s debt. Life was simple—hard but simple. There were no questions to be asked, the answers of which weren’t already known. You did your job, and the big questions took care of themselves.
Until now.
Now this—this weird bullshit below. Something was far out of whack—torqued way over and twisted farther than he could have ever imagined. This was the damnedest thing he’d ever seen. It was probably the damnedest thing anyone had ever seen.
One group had all the goods, and all the weapons, and all the food, and all the tools of survival. Without those tools and without the power, the contractors were quite literally, slaves. A new world had arrived far worse than any he could have constructed in his worst nightmare.
And one twisted bastard owned all of that—in fact, he owned the whole damned planet.
“Goddamned bastard,” he said.
“I agree with that. They are indeed bastards.”
“No, I’m talking about one in particular—Jacob. This whole damned thing is his doing. And you can bet that whatever it is they’re doing inside, he’s got something to do with it.”
He stood up and leaned on the railing as if he were going to vault over it and charge the fortress single-handedly.
“I’ve had it,” Habershaw said. “We have to do something. This shit cannot go on. I have no contract with the Sacred Bond or their goddamned Council. In fact, I’ve got no contract at all.”
“We ain’t got shit,” Lavachek said. “Without a contract, they’ve got it all.”
“All that could change,” Habershaw said over his shoulder.
“How?”
“Because right now they don’t have it.”
“Sure they do.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Who’s got it?”
“Joan—every piece of it—all neat and bundled up.”
He took out his phone and called Joan’s office. She’d just be getting in, probably pouring her first cup of coffee if she had the time.
8
Peter knew something about weapons. He had read a lot about them. His father had spent many years in the military and when he passed away, he left Peter a sizable library on the subject.
The Council’s police had no shortage of weaponry. They’d been bringing their toys down from the transport, without assistance from Joan, for the last few days. Everybody knew they could slaughter them at will. They didn’t have to shove it down their throats.
Stored in the back of warehouse Number Two was an array of light- to medium-weight projectile weapons, mostly multipurpose, rapid-fire rifles. There were some shoulder-fired rockets, as well, and a container or two of mortars. There were two e-beam weapons, but those had arrived in parts and needed special assembly. Using focused microwave energy, e-beam guns were seething destruction on living flesh and left most other material intact. They had been officially outlawed for thirty years. It was no surprise that a band of hired renegades would have a couple of the most terrible portable weapons ever devised at their disposal.
The real prize was way in the back of Warehouse Three. Peter knew right where it was because he saw them bring it in and stash it. They’d waited until night to bring this one down. Peter had been working late and was shuffling some of the lighter crates near the front of the warehouse when the crewman drove right past him with the container perched on the front of the lift. Peter told her about it right away.
At first Joan was furious. But that was yesterday. Now she was glad the goddamned thing was there. The reason was simple: she was going to steal it.
* * *
“Once you get your hands on that thing, there’s no turning back,” Habershaw told her on the phone. “When they find out it’s gone, they’ll kill every last one us to get it back.”
