The Platform

by J Noah Summerfield

  She didn’t want to think about the dead child. She didn’t want to think about the empty space that was the boy’s eye sockets. And she didn’t want to think about Davie, or any of the carnage from earlier. She wanted to sit and watch the sunset. That was it.

  Only, today, the wreckage from the morning’s explosion interrupted her view. Black fumes rose from the main derrick.

  Sycamore Johnston entrusted the platform's safety and sanity to her. Her orders shifted back and forth over the last few days, from traffic cop to food distributor to detective. Maybe there was no one else that Sycamore trusted. He absolutely trusted Buckminster Jackhammer with the physical rig itself. But the people within it were a different matter. Buckminster was really good at barking orders and riling people up. Keeping them calm and orderly was apparently her specialty. Sycamore was convinced that if the situation escalated, the platform would tear itself apart from within, that humanity would do to itself what the Earth could not.

  She would do anything to ensure that nothing interfered with the life she built for herself. She would destroy anyone that tried to rob her of her sunsets.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WALTER “THE WALRUS” TURPENTINE

  Melia almost crashed into Walter as she raced through the corridors.

  “Walter,” she pleaded. “You must come with me to see Makrigga. He is delirious. Please.”

  “Shouldn’t he be with the doctor after what happened to his leg?”

  “Yes. I tried, but the doctor is too busy with the dead boy. She asked if he was still alive, and when I said ‘yes,’ she said ‘good.’ Then she turned back to her books.”

  So, Sycamore even has the one doctor on this forsaken facility focusing on the dead boy. No regard for the living. Everyone has to know that he is doing everything he can to find out who is responsible.

  “I’m not a doctor, Melia. I don’t know what I can do. My hands are already full with dead and missing children.”

  “You must come. No one else on this platform will help. He is locked in our crate. I can’t go back in there by myself. He has been wandering around screaming obscenities ever since he came back missing part of his thigh.”

  Walter hesitated. He’d already stuck his neck out for these two, and all he got in exchange was grief from his wife and a night without sleep. Whatever happened to Makrigga was only going to drag him deeper into something he didn’t understand. But then again, he wasn’t making any progress. It wouldn’t do any good to work the situation halfway.

  Walter gestured to Melia to lead the way. His head throbbed, like a rubber-band stretched too thin. He had been up over twenty-four hours at this point. It had to be near dawn, maybe even later. In the dregs of the platform, he wouldn’t know the difference. Melia lived in a retrofitted corrugated steel shipping container on the surface. He would find out soon enough if it was daytime. It certainly didn’t help that she was a sudden distraction. He didn’t have the energy for distractions. It was hard enough to avoid the riots while figuring out what happened to the missing boy. Never mind that he had barely made any progress. So far, his efforts consisted of wandering back and forth in the corridors in the hope of stumbling upon some clue. And still, all he had were questions. Was there a relationship between the explosion on the main derrick and the incident with the boy? It seemed unlikely, but it would account for the close proximity of the events. Could these be a precursor to something else? This problem with Makrigga wasn’t the answer he was looking for. It seemed more like a distraction concerning two people that he thought could handle themselves. Then again, it could be part of a trend towards hysteria and fear leading to chaos and death. Awake twenty-four hours and he was still at square one. Except for Hani fleeing from the main derrick before the boy was killed, he didn’t have much of anything to go on. If it wasn’t Hani, then who did it? There were hundreds of people on the platform. Someone must have seen something. It was a simple systematic matter of questioning each person on the platform, however tedious that sounded. Of course, that is precisely the type off methodical work that he could leave to Sycamore and his people, lacking any of the intuition or insight that he wanted to bring to the problem. Perhaps he should speak to Beatrice and let her handle the investigation. Sycamore trusted her. Maybe she could do the job. He hoped.

  Fine. He would leave this to Beatrice. That was the thing to do. The platform functioned for years without his meddling. It could push through this current crisis without his attention. Walter resolved to find Beatrice to relay what he knew, however paltry.

  But first, time to see Makrigga. Melia looked nervous. He never knew her to be the nervous type. She took everything in stride in a way that Makrigga's temper never allowed. The two balanced each other out for sure.

  Makrigga’s crate was off the ledge on the Western face. It looked like it floated over the ocean, attached to the platform only by a cantilevered stretch of steel. He could immediately see how this type of living situation could affect someone. Twenty seconds and he already felt a dizzying vertigo.

  One thing Walter did notice immediately was that he couldn’t discern the metallic hum that came from the air vents. Since the crate was on the surface, Makrigga apparently didn’t need air vents, and if the vents were installed, the ambient sound from the ocean and the wind drowned it out.

  Melia slowly pulled on the crate’s door so it was slightly ajar.

  “Makrigga?”

  No response. She tried to peak in, flinched even though nothing happened as though she was afraid that something was thrown at her face. Then she pulled the steel door wide open.

  “He is sleeping.” She was visibly relieved.

  “What?”

  “He is asleep in bed.”

  “So everything is fine.”

  “Ten minutes ago, everything was not fine.”

  Walter peered through the crack in the doorway to see Makrigga sleeping soundly in bed, though somewhat lopsided. He was lying face down. His head faced the foot of the bed, his legs dangled off the side, and he was still wearing his whaling gear. This was the first time that Walter saw the wrapping around the gash in Makrigga’s leg. Blood seeped through and left a trail of blood streaming down his leg. Blood condensed on the floor in a thick pool.

  Makrigga seemed peaceful enough, gently covered with a few thin blankets, though that might have been because he was dead.

  Melia and Walter walked into the crate.

  Walter never took Melia to be an irrational person. He didn’t doubt that Makrigga was in the middle some sort of hysterical fit not ten minutes ago. But that was obviously not the case now. The area around the crate was relatively quiet. Most of the commotion was on the Eastern end, and even that was part of the usual morning routine. The sun was just rising above the horizon. He knew now for sure that he had been up for over twenty-four hours. His headache grew worse with each clang from steel against steel, and he rubbed his eyes with his fingers in a vain attempt to ease the pain. His body felt weak under his weight. He actually agreed with Naamah’s opinion of himself at that moment. He did have too much weight to carry. At least the sun felt good. The bright light and faint warmth calmed his sleep-deprived senses.

  “I must apologize for troubling you, Walter. But I didn’t imagine this. I don’t think I did. Makrigga had gone mad, like something took control of his mind.”

  “I believe you. Tell me what happened.” However difficult it is to imagine Makrigga as a screaming lunatic, I believe you.

  Melia led Walter inside the crate to sit down on a bare wooden stool. The morning sunlight let a faint glow through the open door, but the crate was otherwise sealed. The only other light came from a stretch of bioluminescent algae that emitted the same green glow that illuminated the rest of the platform. Walter didn’t want to bother Makrigga. He appeared to be sleeping soundly. But Walter was also exhausted. His age was catching up to him. That, and his drinking. He was very grateful for the opportunity to sit down and stop scurrying around t
he platform like some detective hedgehog.

  Then Walter noticed something else. The inside of the crate was sparse and clean, everything in its place. It didn’t look at all like a space where someone just went through a frenzied panic. Maybe Melia did imagine the whole thing. After all, she had been up just as long as he had, and she had the added burden of Sycamore’s hard labor. Between a definite lack of sleep and exposure to the chemicals on the main derrick, Walter wouldn’t put delirium past even Melia. Maybe both of them were just cranky.

  Melia, for her part, looked as though she was ready to pass out. She sat on the floor facing Makrigga, her back pressed against the crate’s wall. To Walter, Makrigga’s clothes looked ragged. No, not ragged. Burnt. It looked as though Makrigga was on fire. Walter couldn’t believe that he just noticed. Whether or not Melia was involved, Makrigga was definitely having a terrible time of it. Leg torn to shreds. Possibly drugged. Crazed. And on fire?

  Even with a maimed leg, handling Makrigga would be like handling a swordfish. But all of this together may be too much even for him.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Walter asked.

  “Fine enough,” Melia answered. Her breathing was steady. She looked as though she didn’t even realize that Walter was in the crate with her.

  “Perhaps I should leave.”

  “No. Please. I’m not sure what is happening right now. I want someone else here when he wakes up.” Melia slouched further against the wall, her heavy clothes bunched up around her neck and shoulders.

  “What happened earlier?”

  “Makrigga. Something happened to Makrigga. He was shouting about something. I couldn’t understand what. I think someone did something to him. It’s not just his leg. It’s something else.”

  Walter struggled to keep his eyes open. He abruptly sat upright to try to stay awake.

  “What about before that? What happened before he lost control of himself? No, wait, not immediately before, but last night, after the encounter in the fields?”

  “We were working the derrick yesterday, to help with the repairs.”

  “Both of you?”

  “Yes, Sycamore had both of us on the main derrick.”

  “When did you stop working?”

  “When everyone else did. When Crane fell.”

  “Against orders?”

  Melia looked at Walter with some skepticism. “There was no order up there.”

  “What time? Approximately?”

  “I don’t know. It was before sunrise. I couldn’t keep track of the time up there. No one could. But it was early. The next shift wasn’t even waiting for deployment to the surface,” Melia answered, seemingly dismissing the question as irrelevant. “I wanted something hot to drink. So did Makrigga. I wanted hot chocolate, even though we don’t have hot chocolate here. I wanted to come here first thing to get rid of this burnt gear, but instead we went to find some tea.”

  “You don’t have any tea here for yourselves?” Walter realized it was a stupid question the moment the words spilled out of his mouth. Most of the people on the platform didn’t have the same access to supplies that he did as the former Chief Administrator.

  Makrigga groaned.

  “We can’t keep anything here for more than a week before it’s gone. If we don’t eat it, it gets wet,” Melia said, visibly annoyed.

  “So where did you get the tea?”

  “A lady below the surface, the one that cultivates the hanging gardens.”

  “I know her. She wears clogs. Did you speak to anyone when you went for tea?”

  “Just Hani.”

  Walter perked up a little with that one. “Hani Katharda? You spoke to Hani?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time?”

  “I don’t know. I think it was still before midnight, but I don’t know. It was before people started yelling about the dead boy.”

  “How much longer before?”

  “Long enough. About the time it takes to boil a kettle of water.”

  “What did you do after tea? How much time did you spend speaking to Hani? Do you know what Hani did after he finished his tea?” Walter made a mental note to speak to the tea lady before he dozed off again. “What did you do after the tea?”

  “After that?” Melia sat up a little, slightly more rigid, more serious. She looked straight at Walter. “By then Makrigga saw everything that he hates about this place: the chemical burns, the stale food, the bad weather. We scrambled to avoid that riot over food scraps. Makrigga couldn’t fight through that, not with his leg mangled the way it is. People were doing unspeakable things to each other.” Melia spit. “Why do we do this? Why should he? Makrigga has the ocean. That gives us something. But Sycamore gives me nothing. He sticks me on the main derrick when fire falls from the sky. So many people in this place serve no purpose. I would love to help, but the only thing I am allowed to do is something that I can’t do. Why does Sycamore do these things?”

  “So Makrigga snapped after the food riots.”

  “In a way, but there was more than just frustration. I lost track of him for awhile, in the confusion after the news spread about the dead boy. He just disappeared. I came back here, but he wasn’t in the crate. I thought that maybe he went searching for me, so I went back inside.” Melia tensed her fists into a tight ball and glared at Walter. “Did you know that they are trying to blame Hani for the boy’s death? He wasn’t anywhere near that mess! Is Sycamore Johnston so weak that he will obey anything that Buckminster demands? Is this Sycamore’s platform, or is it Buckminster’s?”

  Walter made another mental note to speak to Sage. She was one of the Whalers. She might know something about what happened to Makrigga and Hani. Maybe she would know whether Sycamore was hunting down the wrong person. And Feret. He might have something to offer. “Buckminster keeps this place running, and his Roughnecks are loyal,” he said, a meaningless reply.

  “So what is Sycamore but a messenger?”

  “Sometimes, his job is simply to know what to do with the message. He doesn’t need the entire population thinking that someone is going to gouge out their eyes.” Walter hoped to placate Melia’s frustration, but his eyes again started to shut. He desperately needed some sleep. A breeze of salty ocean air buzzed through the open door, cooling his face.

  “Is it Sycamore’s job to justify the death of those that live on this platform? Once Hani is gone, he cannot come back. But the people can see through Sycamore’s spit.” It was a lament, as though Hani was already dead. But Hani wasn’t dead. Sage and Feret could keep him alive. Beatrice was still in the middle of her investigation. Nothing was decided yet.

  “A rumor can be enough to keep the place intact.”

  “A rumor can also destroy it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is there anything you can do to help Hani? Sycamore doesn’t care if he killed that boy or if he didn’t kill that boy. All that matters is that he finds someone to blame. He can blame him. But there is more at stake here than just finding the right target, more than whether Hani did or did not kill a child, or even if someone else killed a child. Something is driving the people on this platform out of their skins. Maybe the place. Maybe the time. That is what we need to stop. Can you stop that? Can you tell Makrigga that you can stop that? Will you speak to Sycamore Johnston about what he is doing to Hani? I don’t expect everything to come from you. I know that you are not one of Sycamore’s people. You are not as limited by this broken place. But please, speak to Makrigga when he awakes, and see what he has to say. I don’t know what he was talking about, but you might. Maybe it will help you when you talk to Sycamore.”

  Walter, through his exhaustion, vaguely realized that Makrigga didn’t lose his mind. More likely, he panicked because he discovered that Sycamore was going to let Buckminster kill Hani, one of his own Whalers. And he was probably frustrated because he couldn’t do a thing about it, or maybe he did and it didn’t work out. Hani worked with Makrigga on the boats. They must have bee
n friends. Even Melia must have been Hani’s friend. Was there more to it than that?

  “We are used to many Second Plagues on this platform, Mr. Walter. I have seen men choke on their own lungs from the chemicals we keep on the surface. I have seen bodies crushed by falling steel. Each day, I speak to someone that will die of weakness by sundown, and others that will die because they drank too much ocean water. I have seen the monsters from the deep rip men in half, and I have seen men rip out their own eyes from fear. But still. There are things that I have not seen in this place. Makrigga says he has seen these things, that he has lived through them.”

  What did she know? What did Makrigga know? “What things?”

  Melia continued to ramble until she resorted to indecipherable babble, caught between moments of clear aggression and dozed mumbling. Walter could see that she was overwhelmed by what happened to Makrigga.

  Walter hunched over while he was on the stool. He wondered. If everyone wanted Hani dead, then why hadn’t Sycamore already had him killed? And why would this send Makrigga into a frenzy? Hani was obviously taking the fall for something he didn’t do. Should Melia be upset? Definitely. But so should Makrigga. And so should Walter. Makrigga must know something else.

  Melia suddenly stood up and threw her burnt clothing onto the floor. The charred and wet material collapsed into a pile at his feet. She nudged Makrigga to move over. He didn’t respond. He must have been in too deep a sleep to respond to a simple nudging. She tried harder, tried to push him right over the side. Walter heard her say something, but he was too exhausted to really process it. He should probably force himself out of this stool. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. He would never get a decent stretch of sleep sitting half-upright, nearly falling over.