The Duck Pond Incident

by Charlie Humphries

“Dépêchez-vous!” The guard, shielded behind an opaque visor and scaled uniform, waved a dormant cattle prod in Sophia’s face.

  “I don’t understand!” she cried, holding out her shaking, frozen hands. The guard tutted and flicked the prod on, waved it in her face where the thin line of electricity promised pain. She turned on her heel and stumbled down the corridor where doors were whispering open and people were being marched out by more of the same faceless guards. Sophia gulped in massive breaths, trying to keep calm, trying to remember the last thing that had happened before waking up. Nothing. She stumbled on, falling in line behind a black woman with tiny pinprick scars across the back of her neck.

  The corridor opened onto a large, empty hall with the long side looked out into the oblivion of space. Sophia stared into that oblivion, jostled by the other people who were whispering to one another.

  “Ça va?” The black woman nodded at Sophia.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No French? Well, that’ll be interesting for you.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Nothing to be sorry for, just keep your mouth shut and you’ll be fine.” The black woman had a French accent, the sort of accent Sophia hadn’t heard in a very long time. She stared out the window, kept catching her reflection’s eye.

  “I’m really lost. Where are we?”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “Nothing. Only coming round on the floor.”

  “You must have been on the suspension ship, then. I don’t know how to say this, but you’re on Le Republique, the flagship of His Holiness’ Left Hand. English, you’re on a French ship.” Sophia shut her eyes and rested her forehead on the glass.

  The holding hall began to rumble, warning klaxons sounding and the bulkhead was locked down with a clatter and thunk that rattled the chest. A murmur of panic swept the crowd as the rumbling stopped and there was a swaying, almost sea-like movement as the hall detached from the main ship.

  “We’re on a transport,” whispered Sophia.

  “If we are lucky, they won’t vent us,” said her companion with a tightening of her mouth. Sophia had read the rumours about prisoners being vented into space if there was no use for them, but they’d only been rumours and nothing had ever come of any investigations into the claims, only reiterations that it would be considered a war crime.

  Sophia held out a hand, introduced herself.

  “I go by Chou,” replied the woman, shaking hands with a firm grip. “It’s cabbage,” she added at Sophia’s blank look.

  “Why cabbage?”

  “My better half started calling me Chou one day and it stuck. I just kept using it because it made her smile.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Taken at the blockade of Calais.”

  “That was six months ago.”

  “Yes, six months, a week and three days to be exact.” Chou frowned out into space.

  Sophia looked at her feet and tried to wiggle her purple toes, crouched and took her left foot - like an ice block - between her hands and tried to get a little warmth back into it.

  There was a hiss and crackle from the ceiling and a whine of static. A stream of French babbled from hidden speakers and Chou translated.

  “We’re being taken to a labour station and may be split up from friends and family so we’re encouraged to say goodbye.”

  “A labour station?” Sophia’s heart tripped over itself. The murmuring of the other prisoners grew louder and there was crying, shouting, pleading. Chou, however, was studying Sophia.

  “What did you say you did?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Well, try. You do anything useful? More useful than menial labour and we might get through this alive.”

  “We? Why, what do you do?”

  “That doesn’t matter, but I can translate for you.”

  “And what do you get out of this?”

  “Help me find something, anything on mon bijou so I can track her down.”

  Sophia took a moment to look into Chou’s round face, her green eyes, weighed up her limited options and then nodded.

  “Fine, we have a deal.” They shook hands, took a moment to survey the crowd of huddled people. Sophia patted the pockets of her shorts, pulled out an ident-chip. It was palm-sized, grey with her black and white photograph and her travel details.

  “I’m a terraform engineer on the way to Colony Eighty-Three for a twelve-year stint. Also says I’m allergic to peanuts. Good to know. Wait, yes, it’s coming back to me. I’m a senior engineer, part of the team who helped adjust Jupiter’s chemistry enough to put Mining Platform Hercules into orbit.”

  “That’ll be enough to go on for now. Just stick with me and we’ll be okay.”

  “Chou, I know this will hurt and I’m sorry, but what your bijou’s name? If I’m going to help track her down, I need to know.”

  “Masami Otsuka,” Chou whispered, breathed out on the window and traced several characters into the fog. Sophia said nothing, only placed a hand on Chou’s shoulder.

  The docking procedure with the station was bumpy and threw a lot of the prisoners to the metal floor. As the hiss and rumble of the station seeped through the transport, the warning klaxons screamed again and the whole wall opposite the long window began to retract into the ceiling to reveal a multitude of armed guards hefting cattle prods and batons. Ballistics would not do on a space station. The guards, dressed in grey uniforms piped in red, with pips and epaulettes to denote rank and seniority, began to disperse into the huddled, cowering masses and issued orders in swift French. Sophia felt a creeping nausea rising in her stomach, could almost taste the bile. Goose flesh pricked her arms and legs.

  “What are they saying, Chou?” she whispered. The klaxon was beginning to give her a headache.

  “They’re separating out people based on their ages. Just hang tight. Don’t speak unless I ask you a question and follow my lead, okay?” Chou took a moment to check her reflection in the window, patted her cornrows and slicked down an eyebrow. Satisfied, she took a deep breath and squared up against the nearest guard.

  “Monsieur, cette femme est une ingénieure britannique en terraformation qui affirme que la ventilation d’oxygène peut être à réparer. Elle dit aussi que si cela continue à ce rythme, la prochaine distribution d’oxygène sera nécessaire six mois plus tôt que prévu.” Chou sounded urgent and was doing a lot of pointing at Sophia. The Englishwoman tried to make herself smaller, looked at her feet.

  “Et comment le savez-vous?” The guard placed the tip of his baton under Sophia’s chin and raised it a little so she would look him in the eye.

  “Elle ne vous comprend pas. Elle a remarqué la ventilation en entrant avant que nous nous amarrions.”

  The guard - he must have been only a little over eighteen - held Sophia’s gaze before letting it slip, noted her thin vest and shorts, her bare feet.

  “Vous avez de la chance d’avoir une traductrice.” He smirked and removed the baton, began to walk away. “Venez. Voyons ce que vous pensez savoir sur le fonctionnement d’une station spatiale.”

  “We might be in luck. Can you fix a space station?” Chou took Sophia’s arm and began to pull her along after the guard.

  “I can try,” Sophia whispered and then vomited all over her bare feet and the floor. They were split off from the other prisoners, caroled down a siding and into a service lift. As they rattled upwards, Sophia could feel the guard’s eyes roaming over her and it sent shudders racking through her body. She felt like vomiting again, the smell rising from her feet burning the back of her throat.

  And then the guard traced a line from the nape of her neck down to her buttocks, cupped her. She froze, didn’t breathe as her mind whirled, dizzy, not knowing how to react.

  “Enlevez vos mains.” Chou slapped him away, snarled. The guard placed the tip of his baton against Chou’s throat and looked her dead in the eye. He pressed against her windpipe.

  “Si jama
is tu me dis quoi faire à nouveau, je te jette dans l’espace comme la merde que tu es. Suis-je clair?” He took the baton away a beat before the lift doors shuddered open and barked at them. Sophia took Chou’s hand and squeezed it, looking for something to focus on that wasn’t her spine afire or the cold vomit between her toes. Chou didn’t squeeze back, but she didn’t let go either.

  Sophia was directed to a vis-cube showing the atmospheric readouts of the station. She glanced about the room, at the tiers of vis-cubes and their non-smiling blue and red uniformed guards. The air was warm, enough to take the chill out of her. The smell of vomit - clinging to her hair and toes - made a few people wrinkle their noses but Sophia was left alone with Chou sat beside her.

  “What exactly am I supposed to be doing?” whispered Sophia.

  “I made up some crap about oxygen deliveries being pulled forward by six months due to venting.”

  “No, that isn’t crap. There’s always leaks to be minimised. How do I make this into English?” Sophia started poking the vis-cube gel interface, found a tiny French flag at the bottom of the display and tapping it, saw that she could change the language.

  “Listen, I don’t know how much time we have, but stall, okay? I’m going to do some digging.” Chou began to dip her fingers into the gel interface of her own vis-cube, flicking between screens quicker than Sophia could keep up. The Englishwoman returned to her own interface, wishing she could have a sip of water. Her head was throbbing, making her queasy. She had never been so uncomfortable in her life. Even taking deep, measured breaths through her nose wasn’t helping.

  “Merde,” Chou hissed and rubbed the back of her neck, at the tiny pinprick scars like constellations.

  “Have you found her? Your bijou, I mean.”

  “Non. The people files are encrypted and need a Level Three security clearance.” Chou wiped her fingers on her jumper, chewed her lip in thought.

  “What does a Level Three security clearance look like?” Sophia continued looking at columns of figures and readouts.

  “That asshole in the lift had a Level Three clearance. We’d need either his thumb or ident and an extra minute with a vis-cube.”

  “This station is huge; chances are we won’t find him again.” Sophia prayed this to be true, didn’t want to be anywhere near him again and his searching, groping hands.

  “He’s watching the back of your head by the lift. No, don’t look. Listen, we’re too open here to try anything now, but we can’t just wait for an opportunity. We’ll have to make one.”

  “Please, Chou, I don’t know how much more I can take of this.”

  “Listen to me, English. Do you remember those other innocent people we came in with? They’re being processed, they are being stolen away from their families and may never see them again. You are in the best position possible right now, even with that asshole taking advantage in the lift.”

  Sophia nodded, sucked in a breath and held back the tears forming in her eyes. She was torn between pity for herself and pity for those other people. She’d always lived her life in her tiny, comfortable bubble being told to worry about other people, but not too much because her life mattered too. Only she was starting to realise that she’d stopped caring for other people altogether.

  “What’s your plan if you find Masami in this database? What are the chances of that?”

  “Very small, but I have it on good authority that she came through this French sector and so she’ll have left a trace on their system. I find that trace and we escape, you carry on with your journey and I carry on finding mon bijou.”

  “Fine. Follow my lead.”

  “What are you planning, English?”

  “To throw up on that asshole. Be ready.”

  Sophia lurched to her feet, slapped a hand over her mouth and toppled-swayed the short distance to the lift. He had clocked her as soon as she’d pushed away from the vis-cube.

  “Arrêtez!” he called, raising his baton. The console room was poised, statuesque, watching the Englishwoman pause before the guard.

  “Please, I’m going to-” Sophia was quite pleased with herself as the thin bile splashed dead centre onto his pristine tunic. Only it was short lived as the baton connected with the side of her head and her vision flickered. She could feel the cold floor along the length of her body, the smell of boot polish, vomit and blood twisting inside her lungs and Chou shouting. The air erupted from Sophia’s lungs as the guard kicked her full in the ribs and something moved that shouldn’t have.

  The console room was a mass of movement and more shouting. Sophia hoped that if she lay still enough, she would pass into oblivion. Her throbbing head was developing into a migraine and now somebody was grabbing hold of her ankles and wrists, turning her onto her back. Something moved in her side and she cried out, screwing her eyes closed.

  “S’il te plaît, laissez-moi aller avec elle. Elle ne parle pas du tout Francais.”

  “Ces anglais sont si peu éduqués. D’accord, aller avec elle mais je vous surveillerai de près!”

  “Bien sûr. Merci Monsieur.”

  Sophia opened her eyes a crack, was blinded by the ceiling lights but for a moment Chou came into view as the unknown hands lifted the Englishwoman onto a stretcher. Sophia tried to follow the conversation as she was jolted back into the lift, but she couldn’t guess what the three of them were saying. Instead, she focused on keeping the asshole’s ident tucked into her knickers waistband.

  The universe was catching up with Chou; so far she’d been playing up the ‘black woman supporting white woman through the real uncomfortable truths of Life’ but time was running short for her. She had four hours before she needed to check in.

  She now sat on the cold, greasy floor of Processing Hub A’s medical bay. Sophia was lifted onto a fraying camp bed, still unconscious, still streaked in cold vomit, sweat and tears. A doctor had examined Sophia in absolute silence, had frowned when examining her side, proclaimed a floating rib, but no internal bleeding. With Chou’s help, they had wrapped Sophia’s chest in thick bandages for support. But then the doctor had disappeared, muttering something about coming back soon.

  Chou didn’t quite believe her, watching the chaos of the medical bay. It was short on beds, for one thing, with only the seriously injured given a bed and the rest left to sit on the floor or stand. The staff were all hollow-eyed, exhausted, working in near silence, some looking as if they hadn’t had a clean set of clothes for three or four days or enough food. Chou pulled her knees up, under her chin and settled in to watch, counting numbers of people, trying to gauge how many of those brought in on the shuttle had already been examined and were further down processing.

  She moved her hands into her long sleeves with as little fuss as possible, still counting, still putting together patterns. With the smallest of clicks, she activated the pictma concealed in the lining of her sleeve and began to tease it away from its cocoon. She tucked it between her fingers and laid her hands flat against her shin, working at looking terrified. She couldn’t remember how long its memory was, but the tricky bit would be tucking the pictma back into its cocoon with as little fuss as possible.

  Of the three-hundred and nineteen souls taken by Le Republique, fifty-two were still here, older people who might still be put to work. Chou was trying to remember how many younger people had been present, but Sophia was stirring. The Englishwoman groaned and put a hand over her eyes, the other reached into the band of her shorts.

  “Are we alone?” she muttered.

  “Non. But nobody’s watching.” Sophia pulled out the stolen ident and palmed it off to Chou.

  “Very good, English. I didn’t think you had it in you. Now we just need to find a suitable terminal and maybe we get lucky.” Chou tucked both the ident and pictma into her sleeve and turned her attention back to the maelstrom of the medical bay.

  It was a long hall, screened off from both ends by double doors. There were no windows and two long drains ran parallel down the length of
the hall. The smell from them almost had a mouth-feel, and the water trickling down them was equal parts blood, sweat and urine. There were chrome-brushed sinks every few feet or so, but most of the taps didn’t seem to be working.

  And there, nestled by the out-door like a quiet box of salvation was a half-working terminal, an old-fashion touch screen job, the casing scratched and dull from who-knew-what.

  “Sophia, you made us an opportunity and now I’m going to use it. Don’t move, speak to no-one. I’ll be as quick as possible.”

  “Chou, what are you doing? Don’t leave me!”

  But Chou was on the move, grabbing an abandoned, dented mug from under the camp bed, making her way like a wraith down the hall, away from the main hubbub of patients and staff. She was curious to see so many people injured in so short a space of time between docking on the station and now. Had the people resisted? Fought back? She paused at a sink and tried the tap, filled the cup with cold water that looked clear, but she was risking it being suitable for drinking. She approached a group of four women huddling together on the floor, pressing against the wall as if it could swallow them, take them any place else. Their eyes were hard, mouths set into thin lines. They met Chou’s eye as she approached and accepted her mug offering in silence, nodded when they had all taken a sip. Chou continued down the line, offering it to each group, each person. Some ducked down and ignored her, others, like the women, stared her in the eye. All the time, Chou was counting down her internal clock, trying to stay calm despite feeling eyes on the back of her neck.

  As she reached the last group of people, twins and a guardian, she offered them the cup and paused, tracking her progress with a slow eye. Nobody was watching her, the staff were dead on their feet and Chou only had to tap her arm against the scratched, dented ident reader and half her battle was done.

  The terminal blinked into a monotone semblance of life, had a touchscreen that needed some heavy tapping before it would panic-inducingly load the next screen. Intake: Personnel and the screen went near-black with lists of names, real breathing people captured in this sector, and their fates. Chou double tapped, feeling like she would break the screen, one set of names that were all marked as ‘Disposed’.