Dumpiter

by David Fletcher

  'Good morning, sir. How may I help you?'

  The greeting was from a smallish man, whose complexion matched his olive-green floral suit. He was the check-in clerk.

  'Oh, hello. Well, I'd like to board my monoflight, which is… errh, monoflight D557. And then I'd like to file a log to go to Crabbsbab.'

  'I'm sure we can arrange that, sir. If I can just have your documentation, we'll do the necessary right away.' He smiled. He had olive-green teeth as well.

  Renton handed over the charter paperwork and his universal passport, and Olive-face smiled once again. Then he studied the documents and proceeded to tap away at his keyboard - in the time-honoured way of all check-in clerks in all spaceports in the cosmos. And then he examined his console screen. And then he frowned.

  Then he inspected the documents again and then repeated the finger exercise on his keyboard. 'Won't keep you a minute, sir.' And he smiled olive-green for a third time.

  His attention was now back with the console monitor and the frown had returned, this time more deeply.

  He sucked at his lips and tapped away again. He waited, watched the console monitor intently, and then slowly swung his gaze back to Renton. 'Sir, you aren't here,' he announced.

  Renton could only respond with a weak sounding 'Oh aren't I?'

  'No sir, you are not in the spaceport.'

  Renton composed himself. 'Uhh, if I'm not here, why are you talking to me?'

  'I'm not talking to you, sir. I'm just telling you you're not here. The BIG system hasn't logged you in. You simply can't be here.'

  'But I am!'

  'I'm sorry, but you're not.' His deference and the use of a “sir” had both disappeared.

  'You can touch me if you want.'

  'I do not want to touch you. And anyway, it would serve no purpose. You see, you cannot trick me. And you certainly cannot trick the BIG computer.'

  'If I'm not here, can I go and get on my monoflight?'

  'No. How can you do anything if you're not here? You must understand. You have not entered this spaceport. And if you haven't entered it, you cannot leave it.'

  'You're mad. Don't your eyes work? Your ears seem OK.'

  'Mr… uh, Mr Tenting, are you telling me you walked into this spaceport and you magically managed to evade a faultless failsafe logging system, the finest in the universe? Is that what you're telling me? Well, is it?'

  'Errh no, not exactly. Errh…' And then Renton improvised. Unconvincingly but commendably - in a way he would never have even considered as an accountant. 'You see, I had a few too many frozen big ones last night. You know, those lime and rumstuck things. And well, I can't quite remember what happened… errh, then or later. I mean, I can't quite remember how I got here.'

  'Ah I see, you drifted in here under the cover of an alcoholic haze. That's how you fooled the infallible system. Well, that's OK then. I mean all you have to do now is tank yourself up again. And you can - in that bar over there. And then you can drift yourself out of here - just like you did coming in. But make sure you're facing your monoflight first, won't you - or you might go and drift the wrong way.'

  'You're really not going to help me, are you? You're just going to stick to what your stupid system's telling you. And that's it.'

  'I cannot do what I cannot do. I'm sorry.'

  'I doubt you are. But let me tell you, two can play at that game.'

  'Meaning what?'

  Renton grinned. He was a little wound up now. Even before this encounter, it had been a bit of a winding up morning. 'Meaning, how do I know you're here? Let's have a look at the monitor when you punch in your passport details.'

  Olive-face's eyes widened. 'That's ridiculous!'

  'Oh yes? No more so than you standing there behind that counter, talking to someone who isn't here.'

  'Oh really!'

  'Oh really, my arse. Come on, let's see your passport. And let's see what happens when you put your own details in.'

  Olive-face's nose twitched. 'I haven't got my passport.'

  'Can you remember its number?'

  'No.'

  'What about just punching your name in?'

  'It's… errh, it's not the way it's set up.'

  'What you mean is that you don't know how to do it. Or maybe you do but you can't. And you can't because you're not here. I think you're a hologram.'

  'Stop it. That's stupid. Of course I'm here. I don't need a machine to prove that.'

  'But I, apparently, do! Well that's so inane… only a badly maintained autocab could come up with that sort of logic. You're not by any chance related to an autocab, are you?'

  'I don't much like your tone.'

  'I don't much like your colour. Have you got a control I can use to change it? You might look better in blue.'

  'Go away.'

  'I'm trying to go away, you blithering idiot holographic cousin of an autocab. But you won't let me.'

  'I can't!'

  'You won't you mean!'

  'I can't! I can't!'

  'Hey, brothers, what's this here rufflin' of the ether I hear?'

  Their conversation, which had now risen to a noisy exchange, had finally attracted the attention of the check-in supervisor who, in contrast to the diminutive humanoid Fergus, was a chunky reptilian. He was approaching them now, an upright crocodile of a creature with a sway in his hips and a swing in his tail. And when he was with them, a disarming smile and a glint in his eye.

  'Hey, Fergus,' he continued. 'Is there a bit of fuss stuff that's buggin' you, man? Yous tell ole Boz all about it. Hell, what's I here for? I'm here to dun cure. Ain't that right, Fergus? And hey, hello to you, sir.'

  He reached a scaly limb in the direction of Renton and amazingly gently shook his hand. 'My tag's Boz. What's yours, my dear sir?'

  'Renton Tenting. Pleased to make your acquaintance.'

  And he was. Reptilians were known for their humour, their imagination and above all their relaxed attitude to absolutely everything in life. Boz seemed to be an extreme example. The omens were good. He couldn't see Boz cow-towing to a computer.

  'I am truly de-lighted to make yours, Renton - if I may call you Renton.'

  'You're welcome, Boz. You're quite welcome.'

  'Well, we seem to have gotten ourselves a quieter conversation, which ain't too bad a start. So where shall we go from here? Hey! I know. Fergus, my friend, why don't you reiterate for the parties here presently gathered what appears to be the problem that you ain't quite yet resolved between yous two people? How 'bout that then, eh?'

  'Well Boz, Mr Tenting… I mean Renton, well, he isn't in the spaceport.'

  'He ain't, ain't he?' Boz's huge green eyes rolled in their sockets and then his long reddish tongue licked round the end of his snout. 'Fergus, my very good friend, when you say Renton isn't here, do you actually mean he ain't here? Only I have to ask this cos I've jus' shaken the man's hand. An' I could swear on my auntie's tail that this here gentleman is standin' right here right now. You see him?'

  Fergus' olive face looked tired and a little resentful. 'I can see him, Boz, but the BIG system hasn't logged him in. He's not in the spaceport. You know, not in for… well, for going out. And he wants to go out. He's got a monoflight and he wants to leave on it.'

  'Wow, Renton, how in heaven's name did you do that? That's neat. That's a boster trick. I ain't never seen that done before. Wow, how did you do it?'

  'I'm afraid I can't remember. I was drunk.'

  'You wuz drunk? Hilly billy, I've been drunk but I've never woken up in the spaceport with ole Mr BIG not knowin' 'bout it. You must ha' been on one hell of a dematerialisin' sort o' bender. You remember the drink?'

  'Frozen big ones.'

  'Oh I see. Heck, I'm surprised you remembered to materialise with your skin the right side out. Wow! Well how 'bout that, Fergus. That damned computer has met its match. The sober ole bastard's been wopped by a soak. Oh pardon me, Renton. No offence meant.'

  'But the computer is infallible, Boz. Dr
unk or not Mr… I mean Renton, he just couldn't get in.'

  'Fergus, my dear Fergus. Mr BIG may be ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine an' a few more nines percent infallible. But who are we to know where that infallibility ends? Maybe it skips a beat with Rentons in the rainy season. Or with ten frozen big ones in the same stomach. Or maybe it's the Fergus factor. It's developed an aversion to you, Fergus. Hey yeah, Fergusophobia no less!'

  Renton smiled. Boz was a gift from heaven.

  'But he can't leave,' Fergus squeaked. 'Whatever's happened, he can't leave.'

  Fergus now looked distressed, and it would have come as no surprise to Renton to see tears streaming down his cheeks.

  'Fergus, Fergus, cool it, cool it. You go through life with that feather held that tight between your arseparts and you stand a good chance of it takin' root there. Take it from me, tails ain't no fun. Now what you gotta do is loosen those cheeks. Ease out. Unsqueeze. Flop a dop. Ree lax. That way we get ourselves ankle deep in s'lutions - an' the problems jus' fade clean away… OK, Fergus? OK?'

  It wasn't clear whether Fergus had loosened his arseparts completely but at least he didn't cry.

  Boz turned to Renton. 'Jus' to clarify, Renton ole son. You are the proud possessor of some sweet monoflight which you wanna be in - in preference to our elegant spaceport here. An' the only thing stoppin' you doin' the aforesaid swap is some rattly old computer game with a positron out o'place. Am I right?'

  'You have it dead in your crosswires, my very dear spaceport official.'

  Boz grinned.

  'In my crosswires. Yessir, I like that. An' now I'm gonna shoot. But first you'll have to excuse me - for jus' a few short minutes. But don't you worry. I don't think we'll lose our aim any.' He gave Renton and Fergus a huge scaly grin and then he walked off.

  The two of them waited about ten minutes, any embarrassment relieved by Fergus having to deal with two customers who were conveniently in the spaceport both physically and as advised by the DULL system. They were just leaving Fergus' counter when Boz re-appeared, pushing a luggage glider - on which there was a single piece of luggage: a very large suitcase.

  As he reached the counter, he reengaged the conversation with a question for Renton.

  'You ain't the clausdrifrobic type are you, my friend?'

  Renton's brain was clocking into progressively higher gears as he answered with a quiet: 'no'.

  'Goody, good, good. In that case, I'm gonna get one up on you, sir, I am. You fooled the BIG thing when you were unconscious drunk. I'm gonna do it wide-eyed sober. It's so easy, it's gonna hurt. Ha!

  'Here it is. Here's what we do. Fergus, tell me, is this Mr Renton in the spaceport - officially like, I mean?'

  'No, Boz. That's the problem.'

  'No, Fergus. That's the solution. If he ain't here, he don't need to go through no fiddlin' computer system to leave, does he? However this here suitcase, which I purchased in the foyer hall outside - I said outside this here spaceport - this here thing has been checked in all official like, for onwards loadin' onto a Mr Tenting's monoflight. The BIG computer will soon be checkin' where it is if I, as its custodian, don't get it onto that there machine.

  'So I will get it on. An' if in its progress to that nice monoflight, it gets i'self like a lill' bit heavier on account of it gets i'self full of Mr Tenting, then the BIG chap won't bother, cos he won't know. I knows he don't weigh things in that there memory o' his.

  'An' when that case is safely on board and all's square with BIG an' his DULL thing, ole Boz here can arrange a lill' bit of flight loggin' n' flight clearance, very easy like, cos he's done that sort o' stuff before. An' hey presto! I think, Fergus old sweet, we then have a right real solution - an' a problem that's pure dog-gone beat.'

  Renton smiled. 'You really think it'll work, Boz?' he asked, knowing full well that something very similar had got him into his present situation in the first place….

  'You bet, Renton, you bet.'

  Fergus looked a bit sheepish, but put up no resistance as his supervisor pushed the glider behind his counter and opened up the cavernous interior of the case.

  It wasn't quite so cavernous when 6'3" of Renton attempted to get inside it, and a little reptilian muscle was required to help the Tenting in. But he was in. He was packed. And a very few minutes later, Boz had deposited the heavy suitcase in the cramped cockpit of the chartered monoflight - and he was unpacked. A little more crumpled, but free at last to begin his pursuit.

  He thanked Boz as profusely as he could without it becoming too embarrassing for them both, and then he offered payment for the suitcase. But Boz refused, with the reasoning that: 'Man, it's the cheapest bucket o' fun I've had myself for some long time. I'd have happily spent fifty times as much to get the better of that BIG bugger. "Boz beats BIG" - sounds good to me!'

  And with that, Boz made his exit. And ten minutes after that, so did Renton - from the spaceport. And it was one of the neatest exits from a spaceport he'd ever managed - despite not having flown a monoflight for more than three years now. He was clearly on a high - and fired up by the thought of adventure…

  23.

  Langail stepped from his hover onto the bare earth of the Gorth plateau.

  How many times had he come here? How many times had he stood at its edge, gazing at the plain below? And at this time of day - as the sun was about to set. He'd lost count - just as he'd lost his true recollections. When he was still a child, had there really been patches of green on that plain? Had his father really pointed out a bird in the sky - or was it just a story about a bird? He wasn't sure. Sixty years of despondency and hopelessness had taken their toll.

  The sun was now sinking below the horizon. In the dimming light he scanned the vista before him. It was an enormous expanse of filth. Everywhere there were mounds of tortured metal, countless heaps of twisted girders and mangled cladding as far as the eye could see. And tangles of pipework. And mountains of cabling. Great drifts of rubbish and acres of junk. Despoilment on a grand scale. And there were “buildings” within this despoilment, ugly little hovels cobbled together from old sheets of plastic and odd bits of scrap, anything that could be pushed into service as some walls and a roof. And these hovels were all grey, as grey as the waste all around - and as grey as the ground all around. That too had soaked up the greyness - the stain of the everywhere trash.

  It was a landscape planned by a madman.

  Langail walked towards the very edge of the plateau.

  As the sun disappeared, a cool breeze began to blow. And as it blew, it whisked the styrene around his feet, the little styrene filler particles that covered the ground everywhere - just like the grains of powdered graphite - and the glass-fibre dust and the greasy strips of plastic film, the ubiquitous thrown confetti of this place, which had been here forever. Or if not forever, then for long enough to be ignored, to be regarded by all but a few as simply part of this most blighted of worlds.

  Langail was one of these few. He noticed this carpet of litter all the time. For him, it was not part of this world at all. And he found it deeply depressing.

  He stopped at the plateau's cliff edge. The breeze plucked at his long coat. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine a green and leafy canopy stretching out across the plain. But he tried in vain. His very thoughts were now grey, his imagination poisoned by his planet's dreadful fate.

  For the filth on the plain below was not its full extent. Not by a long way. No, this abject ruination covered this world's entire land surface, league upon league of dirty, messy, dusty, poisoned waste. Piles of scrap and pools of filth - everywhere. And ramshackle shelters and small squalid shanties dotted between - populated by a grey and weary people: his subjects, his children, his anguish - the folk of his Dumpiter world.

  He felt desperate. His plans were no more than a fool's reveries, his hopes no more than mere dreams. He knew he would die with his world still a giant breaker's yard, the scrap-pile of the universe, a contaminated and polluted sphere. His
people would continue to endure, continue to suffer the poverty and the ugliness of this place, with no promise of a better life.

  How had he been so stupid? How could he have believed Lysaars? How had he not seen him for what he was? How could he ever have thought he could reverse the irreversible?

  And now, to add to his burden of despair, he knew that people were dying. And more would die because of his stupidity and naïveté. Lysaars would never stop now and there would be more of those inevitable “incidents”.

  Langail, Guvner of Dumpiter, the last of an unbroken line of guvners of this world, would stand by and let it happen. He knew he would.

  And how could he not? He was tired, so very, very tired. And he was weak, weaker than ever before. He could not resist. And that meant more lives would be snuffed out. More people would die. People he did not know, people who lived light years from this world. But despite all this, he could do nothing. He was too tired and too weak. He knew this for sure. And so did Lysaars.

  He raised his hands to the gathering gloom and wailed to the sky. His grief given voice, his hands dropped to his sides and his head to his chest, and he started to sob like a child.

  He cried for his people, he cried for himself and he cried for his grey, ruined world. And he cried till the gloom was, at last, kinder black - and around all that grey it had curled…

  24.

  Renton had now been in space for nearly three hours. And having tidied himself up - enough anyway to remove the evidence of his morning's excursion in a paint vat - and having fed and watered himself sufficiently, there was now nothing to do but confront his situation and to get stuck into a bit of planning. After all, he couldn't just walk into this thing without knowing what he was doing. That just wasn't his style - even now, after his divorce from all that accountancy stuff. One might be able to change one's attitudes and one's outlook on life, but one couldn't change one's spots, even if one wanted to…