Colony

by Rob Grant

  The drones look at each other, then get out of the kart and approach the offending wall. They tap it gently. They look at each other. They each put an ear to the wall and tap all around it. They look at each other again. They start thumping the wall with the side of their fists. They join in with their boots. They start headbutting the wall with increasing violence. Simultaneously, they give up, turn and march back to the cart.

  The D drone stands erect, bleeding from his nose and ears, salutes Eddie and barks: 'Sir, security report: that wall is definitely there, sir!'

  Eddie offers him a sickly smile. 'Thank you, Mr Styx.' The drone maintains his stiff salute stance, clearly waiting for something else from Eddie.

  Lewis bales him out. 'Very good, Darion. You cleared that one up nicely. Carry on.'

  The drone nods, satisfied, and gets back in the kart. As soon as he's seated, the kart starts up and reverses towards the last intersection.

  'Was that true?' Lewis asks Eddie. 'The corridors all joined up in your time?'

  'Absolutely. Why wouldn't they? And why would anyone change that?'

  'There are dead ends all over the place now.'

  Eddie recalls the convoluted route the transway took, doubling back on itself and so on. 'The thing is... I mean, fine, for whatever reason, somebody altered the ship's layout, but the computer system should be aware of the alterations, shouldn't it? I mean, the kart is computer controlled. It should know where the dead ends are. It should avoid them, shouldn't it?'

  'Actually, that is curious, yes.' Lewis's eyes betray a fierce intelligence at work behind them. 'That should have occurred to me.' Because he thinks he's smarter than Eddie? He catches Eddie's look, and his intensity fades. 'No two ways about it,' he grins, 'I'll have to go to my room and beat myself mercilessly with a cruel flail.'

  But the conundrum has clearly set his mind racing. He is silent for the rest of the short journey, leaving Eddie with nothing to distract him from the sight of the Styx drone playing Cowboys and Indians with a military-class assault weapon, dribbles of blood slowly coagulating on his thick neck.

  The cold chamber, when they finally reach it, seems overloaded with security precautions, in Eddie's humble opinion. He wonders what can possibly be in the room to warrant such an overabundance of intrusion-prevention systems. Or perhaps he's putting the wrong spin on it. Perhaps the measures are in place to prevent whatever's in the room from getting out.

  The D drone has to offer his palm print, look into an eyepiece for a retina scan, and even surrender a few flakes of skin for a DNA check before they're even allowed to access the control centre keypad.

  He taps in a very long number -- Eddie loses count after thirteen, but it's a lot of digits.

  Nothing happens.

  The D drone sighs and taps the number in again. And again, the door doesn't move. He tries a third time, with the same non-result.

  Father Lewis closes his eyes. 'I'm going right out on a limb here, Darion, but is it vaguely possible you're tapping in the wrong number?'

  'Father, sir, I doubt that, Father, sir. However, I will double check.' The drone takes out some kind of electronic organizer, double checks the number and taps it in again. Still no response from the door.

  'Damn. Somebody must have changed the code. Stand back.' The drone swings its laser rifle up to aim at the security panel.

  Lewis yells, 'Styx! No!'

  'I said "back off ", Father, sir. I know what I'm doing.'

  'You've got the...'

  Styx's finger tightens on the trigger, and Lewis dives behind Eddie, almost flooring him as the rifle fires a massive bolt of light energy, blasting the control panel out of existence, and taking the drone along with it.

  Eddie collects yet another horror movie to intrude on his erotic fantasies, as Styx's body is blasted apart, splattering his component parts all over the narrow corridor, leaving only his legs below the knees, still planted in the same spot.

  There is a terrible wet silence. Something pink that should never be seen detaches itself from the ceiling and slaps messily to the floor by Eddie's feet.

  Father Lewis stands and smooths down his clothes, picking odd bits of smoking gristle from his jacket. 'As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted: the laser was set slightly too high.'

  'Really?' The remaining Styx drone contorts his gore-splattered features into a grimace of enlightenment and examines his own weapon. 'You think so?'

  'Dr Morton? Are you OK?'

  Eddie raises a claw and removes part of a smouldering digestive system from his visor. 'Well, apart from being entirely covered in entrailly splatter, I'm having a splendid day, thank you.'

  'Excellent. Shall we?' Lewis indicates a large molten hole in the security door and beckons Eddie towards it.

  'What?'

  'Let's go.'

  'Pardon me, but am I the only one who's slightly put out that a crewmate just got blasted to smithereens here? All over us?'

  'Oh, come on, Doctor. Look on the bright side: at least he got the door open.'

  'He was a living person, Lewis. A human being.'

  'Oh, don't you think the sobriquet "human being" is overstating his case just a little? He was just a drone. We'll grow another one. Isn't that right, Jebediah?'

  'Father, sir, we're already on it, Father, sir. He's in the tube as we speak.' And the surviving drone steps into the chamber without even looking back.

  The room is cold, and empty, at first glance. A dense mist almost a metre thick covers the floor. Lewis pulls his jacket tightly around him. 'It's a little chilly in here. I hope your suit's well oiled.'

  Eddie tries not to dwell on the image of human internal organs freezing to his metal back and follows Lewis and Styx towards a far wall. Styx taps yet another code into another keypad and a breach appears in the otherwise smooth wall.

  A long drawer slides out of the breach, slow-motion mist tumbling ominously from the top of it. As the lazy fog clears, Eddie can make out a human shape through the haze: an oldish man, perhaps in his mid-sixties. His body, well proportioned but slightly on the frail side, is wrapped in some kind of thermal suit. His skin has a blue tinge, understandably. Less understandably, he is harnessed very firmly in place with a large number of excessively sturdy straps. Overkill for his physique. A roll of cheap Sellotape would be more than ample restraint.

  Lewis pulls some kind of face mask out of a compartment beside the drawer and places it over the man's nose and mouth. 'Finger on the trigger, Jebediah.'

  The drone hoists up his rifle and trains the red spot of the laser sight in the dead centre of the helpless man's forehead.

  Satisfied, Lewis tugs on the tube attached to the mask, Eddie hears the hiss of gas, and the frozen man stirs.

  At the first sign of movement, Lewis hastily lifts off the mask, and steps back to a more than safe distance. 'Professors?'

  The man's eyes open wide, blink a few times, then he turns his head in Lewis's direction and squints. 'Is that you, Raybold?'

  'No, no. Raybold Lewis was my predecessor's predecessor.'

  'You look like Raybold.'

  'Yes,' Lewis smiles. 'Well, that might possibly have something to do with the crew being more inbred than an Arkansas pig-farmers' family reunion. I'd like you to meet someone.'

  'Raybold Lewis was an utter bastard.'

  'Yes. Good old gramps. This is Dr Morton...'

  Then a very strange thing happens. The professor's face contorts into a new expression -- so new, he takes on the look of a completely different person -- and another voice, younger yet crabbier, emerges from the mouth.

  'Hey, some of us are trying to sleep in here.'

  And with no perceptible effort, the face morphs back again, and the original voice returns. 'Always with you, it's a complaint. Can't you just

  'Just keep the noise down, that's all I'm...'

  'Bitch bitch moan bitch bitch...'

  'Oh, grow up, you juvenile...'

  'I'm trying to have an adul
t conversation here...'

  'Oh, really? An adult conversation, yet? That should tax your mental energies to the absolute maximum...'

  'Just for thirteen seconds could you try not screaming hysterical insults? Just so I could listen to a sane person once for a change?'

  'Yes, yes: you listen to a sane person. Learn by example.'

  These exchanges take place rapidly and seamlessly. Eddie wonders how this poor creature manages to find time to breathe.

  Lewis tries to step in. 'Professors. If I could just intrude on your squabbling time...'

  The professors raise their head against the restraints, affronted. 'Squabbling? Who's squabbling?'

  'You. You are squabbling.'

  'I am a respected scientific genius, my argumentative friend. I do not squabble.'

  'Squabble, squabble, squabble.'

  'Squabbling is petty. I rise above it.'

  'You? You're a professional squabbler. You could squabble at international level and bring back the bronze, silver and gold before lunch.'

  Through the gritted teeth of a smile that's about to blow, Lewis says gently: 'Shut up, or I'll have you shot.'

  The professors pause. The face contorts several times. There is clearly a monumental struggle going on for possession of the vocal system. Finally, the first voice wins through. 'Oh, magnificent. Now your squabbling is going to get us shot.'

  'Yes, fine, good plan. Shoot me, so I can be rid of this loony. Please, here, shoot me in the head. I'll paint a target.'

  The creature struggles magnificently against the bonds, trying to free one of its hands. Eddie has utterly revised his opinion about the sturdiness of the restraints. He thinks perhaps some chain work might be appropriate. Since Lewis is failing to achieve any kind of communication, Eddie thinks he might as well try. 'Listen, professors. This is important. The ship has sustained some kind of collision damage and we're down to one engine...'

  But if his words are heard, they are not acknowledged. The creature simply carries on arguing between itself with rabid vigour.

  'Pardon me? Shoot the head? I beg your pardon, but you cannot have this head shot. This is my head, you're just a guest in here...'

  'Believe me, I'd move out in a flash if I had the choice. Of all the heads I could have been grafted into this has got to be the...'

  'And while you're in my head, I expect you to behave with a little more decorum, thank you so very much.'

  'Decorum, yet?'

  'Certainly, decorum. Do you need me to look that up for you? Didn't they teach that word at Idiot University?'

  Eddie tries carrying on. Maybe something will go in. 'Listen: there's a planet close by, but we can't generate enough thrust to achieve orbit

  Suddenly the professors' exertions cease. The head turns towards Eddie. 'Wait a minute. Did you say "collision damage"? You're not in danger. It's something I predicted once. Engineereal evolution...'

  'You predicted engineereal evolution? You!? Predicted schmedicted, my friend. You couldn't predict a fart from a tin of beans. Engineereal evolution was my little--'

  'Yours?! It was yours, was it? Well now, once again you manage to devise an original concept barely weeks after I first thought of it. You sad, scuddy little scumbrain. Someone should strangle you.'

  'Good plan. Only I'm going to strangle you first.'

  'Yeah? You're going to steal that idea, too?'

  'Why not? It's the first good idea you ever had!'

  'Here! Free my hand, somebody. Just one hand. That's all it'll take. I'll choke the son of a bitch till he's purple!'

  The professors' struggle against the bonds intensifies, the head flailing wildly, thick, purple veins bulging dangerously on the temples, threats and curses barked in alternating voices. Eddie hears a rip. One of the chest straps is beginning to tear.

  Lewis reaches over to the keypad. 'I think it's time for another nap, chaps.'

  The freezing mist starts to gurgle up from the base of the drawer.

  'Now look what you did, you cheese dick. He's putting us back in the box.'

  'What I did? That is so you all over. You couldn't just keep your filthy mouth shut long enough for us to draw a breath of real air, and now we're back in the frozen-food compartment for another decade. Congratulations, genius.'

  'Yeah? Well a few dozen years of glacial oblivion is a blessing compared to a single second of your rabid ranting. I'm looking forward to it.'

  As the drawer slides back into the wall, the verbal brawl carries on, unabated. Eddie can even hear them after the compartment has retracted completely.

  Slowly, the altercation subsides as the cryogenic process works its soothing remedy.

  Still, they wait in silence, Eddie, Lewis and the drone, with Styx's rifle trained on the drawer, for several minutes, just to make sure. Finally, Styx clicks on the safety, lowers his weapon, and the three of them exhale, long and hard.

  'Wow,' Eddie says.

  'Wow, indeed,' Lewis concurs.

  They start back towards the corridor, each of them keeping one eye on the sealed drawer.

  'And they're always like that?'

  'I've seen them worse. Once, they almost broke free and tried to beat themselves to death with a plastic squeezy bottle. We had to tranquillize them with an elephant dart.'

  'But they must have been friends at one time.'

  Lewis shakes his head. 'As far as we can tell, they were always deadly rivals; at each other's throats all the time. Everyone was surprised when Walters suggested the graft. They thought perhaps the bickering had been the professors' way of expressing some kind of repressed affection. They thought perhaps wrong. After the operation, it got worse. They had to mount a round-the-clock suicide watch. Eventually, that wasn't enough. The professors kept on finding ever more ingenious means of attempting self-destruction, and had to be restrained. Even then, the perpetual abusive screaming was unbearable. They were placed in deep freeze for the sake of everyone else's mental health, as much as their own.'

  'There must be some way... I mean, there's genius in there. Couldn't you try and... un-meld their minds?'

  'Oh, yes. We've a surfeit of surgical skill on board. No doubt Jebediah here could pull off a minor brain operation like that blindfold using only a chisel and some frozen gefilte fish.'

  Eddie looks round at the drone, who is vainly trying to push together the edges of the hole melted in the door. 'Good point. It would be nice, that's all, if we could find some way of picking those brains. They might just help us out of this mess.'

  'The only way we'll be picking those brains, Dr Morton, is off the floor, after they've been splattered thither by my shotgun.'

  Lewis orders Styx to leave the door alone, and they climb into the corridor kart. Eddie feels badly about the whole interlude, about wasting their most precious and dwindling commodity, time. But he's wrong to feel that way. In truth, the professors have already helped. If Eddie had time to think it over, he might even work out how. But there is no time. There is something rather more immediate and urgent to deal with.

  A gigantic shipquake.

  32

  The ship is rocked to its belly by an enormous tremor, a monster this time. There is a terrible, slow creaking rumble; a low moan of distorting metal. The lights begin to flicker madly. Eddie looks to his side as the wall of the corridor warps and buckles along its entire length like a cracking bull whip. Then a sudden violent crash lifts up the kart and tosses it effortlessly towards the far wall. It hurtles through the roaring air like a toy car hurled from the hand of a tantruming child.

  Eddie is thrown from the kart, tumbling end over end, his badly controlled limbs flailing randomly, so the flickering emergency lights create a disturbing, disorienting strobe effect. He has to stop somehow. He has to get out of the way of the hurtling kart before it lands on him and crushes the life out of what's left of him. Desperately, he tries to concentrate; to will his arms out and find some kind of purchase for his pincers, but it's almost impossible. His s
ense of touch is almost non-existent, and the crashing of crushed machinery cannoning all around him prevents him from hearing if he's making contact with anything sturdy. In desperation he tries clicking his claws open and closed at random, and finds something.

  He can't see what it is he's grabbed, but it arrests his motion, and jerks him over to the side with a sudden, sickening lurch. He thumps into some protesting metal and lodges there, upside down. He thinks he's screaming, but the voice is too distant and unelectronic to be his.

  He's wedged in place, helpless, as the tremor throbs unabated. There is some mucoid liquid drooling down his vibrating visor. Is there a crack in his suit? Is his life-giving gloop leaking away? He raises his arm towards his helmet, and realizes he's still clutching something in his claw. He holds it up in the juddering, strobing light.

  It's an arm.

  A human arm.

  His pincer has severed it at the elbow.

  An astonishing amount of blood is geysering from its wound. And, worse, its fingers are still twitching.

  And now, it really is Eddie screaming.

  He's still screaming after the quake has stopped and the lights have kicked back in.

  He doesn't stop screaming until the Padre's face appears in front of him, upside down. Lewis crouches, smoothing down his hair, which is the only part of him that appears even slightly ruffled. 'Are you all right, Dr Morton?'

  'I've been better. You?'

  'I'm fine. I used the drone as a shield.' Lewis reaches up and tugs on Eddie's torso. 'You're pretty firmly wedged in there.' He turns and calls: 'Jebediah!'

  Eddie cricks his neck forward. He's lodged in a snack dispenser.

  Lewis stands and tries tugging Eddie free, but the machine has folded in around his body suit. 'I think we're going to need some kind of jemmy or something.' He turns and calls again, exasperated now. 'Jebediah! Will you stop footling about and get over here?'

  The drone appears, bruised and bloody, in the periphery of Eddie's vision. 'Father, sir! Regret inability to salute, as I have temporarily misplaced my arm, Father, sir!' He holds up his stump, by way of offering proof. A thick pulse of blood spouts from the wound, dousing Lewis's entire face.