Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

down his arm blue and brown. He stepped over twitching limbs, mind numb, balance off-centre, staggered from the wrecked tavern with his fingers creasing the back of his neck. His toes felt inflamed in his boots. The corridor sloped, a new gradient. He retraced his steps as far as the crossroads, ghost lights shining from his orbits. The passages looked the same in every direction. Stumbling forward he brushed dwarf trees fallen into arches, resting precariously on one another’s shoulders, so as he had to duck under their featherlike keystones.

  Lost. The mine shook, toppling him. He could hear nothing save a toneless ringing in his ears. The walls carried messages he translated as explosions, shells of air and noise buffeting the mine’s elastic structure with the design of incapacitating its occupants while causing minimal structural damage. But as with insects shaken in a can, a number of fatalities were inevitable.

  On his belly, Schilling knew this wasn’t snow; the buffeting of snow wasn’t rhythmic.

  He crawled an impossible distance.

  On hands and knees a member of the original survey had searched the coarse ground hereabouts for souvenirs, picking blue and green veined stones from the powdery surface where the mine now stood, his purpose the manufacture of jewellery for daughters eleven and six back home, gaudy beads strung on rubber bands. That surface had been scraped away. Engineers had sunk a pilot shaft, Weekenders following the pencil lines of Ologists’ down through vague strata, forcing the soft layers apart rather than excavating. Like a fist through dough, the landscape altered for as much as thirty kilometres in radius. The mine was flown in. Runners set to work, gouging tunnels and displacing mass.

  When the flora arrived they knew the project to be long-term. Many died. Many disappeared. Ologists shrugged and reached for their terminals, spinning yarns to the workforce and reassuring their superiors, mining fictions as well as lanthanide’s.

  Schilling crawled in darkness, unseen by running feet. The snub barrels of hand-held cannon passed him by. In his mind he still wrestled the dead man, the stocky Runner whose name he did not know. He could feel the print of his palm, hard and sweaty. The trooper’s right arm from the shoulder down ached with effort...

  That the mine had been attacked by company soldiers was evident, but whereas the objective was clear - the facility’s seizure - the motive remained obscure. Was there dissent among the captains? The company body was possessed of many heads, and while news of conflict was discouraged it was probable the higher echelons were engaged in a near constant struggle. Power was no great unifier, its sources manifold and uses various. An installation like the mine might offer a point of leverage for one party against another.

  Yet, thought Schilling, oddly rational, an attack this blatant had either to be doomed to failure, the product of desperation, or else signify a deeper division, a grander scale of aggression; a massive upheaval, for despite Oriel’s remoteness, this was no covert operation.

  Exhausted, bleeding, it was Saturday morning, the sun honey in porridge when he emerged.

  Schilling...

  The sky deceived him, however; it was evening, the ruddy sun dripping beyond the silent landscape. The chimneys were buckled, facets multiplied like a dented shield wall. Lances and helmets sprouted, points rusted and plumes flattened. Doors had blown, draped on hinges, the safety valves in this pressure system, what Schilling had need of in his ears. A fallen cavalryman, he lay on his back in the rubble, victim to politics and broken stirrups.

  He still had his carrier, his few belongings. The fat controller had kept his papers, the pull-string bag minus those grams of identity, detail, orders. The wind rustled, its sound imagined, smelling of mustard. Apples grew in the mine. Maybe pineapples. Whether or not he slept, the night passed without further pummelling detonations. Flashing lights sucked life white and yellow from generators untended, sporadic, the circus closed as life pink and brown and bipedal had been herded, silver-toothed and compliant, below-ground. Noiseless, the Weekender was left for dead on a west facing hillside composed of pretty rocks and compacted mica. Driven, the Runners had felt obliged to vanish, leaving the complex empty save for a dusting of corpses.

  Blood tears dried and cracked round his eyes. The world lightened. He shivered despite the growing warmth. Sitting up, he peered at the landing field and the swarm of flyers there, sensing their abandonment, piecing together a sequence of events whose conclusion was not only unfathomable but ludicrous.

  Truth crashed into his brain, albeit encoded.

  Schilling hurt.

  He hurt all over. His head cleared slowly as the sun rose, but that only made the pain worse.

  Standing, he fully appreciated his deafness; he might scream and not hear. He recalled the men and women of the tavern, their white foam and dead features. He’d judged them harshly, he realized. They’d been easy targets. It was the captains Schilling despised, their dumb manoeuvring that had led to carnage. Even Ruby Joplinski was furnished with greater understanding. His motives were purer, cognizant, deliberate, whereas the captains trampled blindly across every landscape, oblivious of individual streams and rivers, intent on harnessing the lakes and reservoirs, thwarting each other with the building and blowing of dams. Their actions were senseless. Approaching the field, he thought they must know something didn’t.

  The controller’s hut was empty. Plants drooped and boxes had imploded. There were crude bullet holes in the structure. He rummaged inside for a medikit and comestibles. There was the quiet droning of a plane circling, unrecognized by Schilling as he pressed cream to skin and plucked shards from flesh, improvised bandages.

  So it was bug-eyed Johnson found him, sat naked on a green container, mouth stuffed and body patiently repairing.

  ‘You make bad friends,’ said the pilot, grinning. ‘Didn’t I say?’

  But Schilling couldn’t hear.

  ‘What the fuck happened?’

  Then, recognizing his former passenger’s blank gaze, he switched his attention to the crowded field, his own vehicle anonymous, one among many. Whistling, scratching his head, he went to look around.

  vi

  Franky Heidelberg wasn’t suffering. Attuned to the world of transparent faces, she let it wash over her, the bow wave, the fallout from this human invasion, what it meant in terms of people, what it represented in regard to Oriel. She would never have a better opportunity. Cut off from the rest of mankind she floated impassively, watching, reading, Mason’s hockey game extant in her skull. Her mind separate from her body, she tried to picture what she looked like, the ones about her probing, testing, keeping that body alive while she sojourned in the realms of fancy.

  Who controlled them?

  Her visitor, the stranger? He was right, she could see in the dark. It was quiet, a little frightening. Her own self looked fragile.

  four - stampede

  Ruby pounced. He took his orders from Mother and Mother had disappeared. Under such circumstances, he believed, were captains made, constellations favouring the brave.

  Ekland opened the door, shoulders brushing the frame as he entered.

  ‘How many?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘Thirty,’ said Ekland, ‘with another two accounted for.’

  ‘Good - any trouble?’

  ‘A little.’

  Ruby smiled. ‘Who’s missing?’

  Ekland unfolded a piece of paper. ‘Ologists Christian and Irdad.’

  ‘Which leaves?’ He swung his feet up on the table.

  ‘Peterson,’ Ekland said; ‘but we had to kill him.’

  i

  Zonda MacIntyre wasn’t happy. Her head throbbed. Her tongue was swollen and dry. She had a hangover. It wasn’t her first, but she’d not experienced one like it for a while. And who could blame her?

  That’s right, Zon, make excuses for yourself; nobody else to.

  BOOM! KRANG! ZAPPOW!

  ‘Oh...shit.’

  ‘Will you get off my leg,’ said Pete Trebinek. ‘Move! Zonda, shift, I need
to get up.’

  She rolled over. ‘What’s your rush?’

  ‘I’m late.’

  ‘Late for what? You’re always boasting you set your own timetable.’

  He dressed hurriedly. ‘You look a mess.’

  If only she’d had somewhere of her own, Zonda thought, and not been kicked out. They wouldn’t let her in to see Franky. Told her to get lost.

  Dutifully, she had.

  ‘Where are you going so early?’

  ‘None of your business.’ He was churlish. ‘Just don’t be here when I get back.’

  That’s right, Zon, not another drop.

  Slipping from his narrow bed, a bit wobbly, hand to temple, she stepped into the bathroom and locked herself inside. She’d left her clothes on the floor. ‘Forward planning,’ she said.

  Pete hammered on the door. ‘Hey!’

  Zonda ignored his protests. Searching among his belongings she found a stalk of asphodel and chewed it, grateful to the immortal flower as it blossomed in her skull. Now she had only to water her brain and her breath would smell of lilies.

  ‘Zonda!’

  Pete was angry. She could tell. She flushed what remained of his toilet-paper and made him wait.

  Later, shuffling breakfasts on plates, neglecting the coffee, cigarette smoke in her eyes and a pain in her side, Zonda came to a decision. It had only taken a few minutes, the time it took ersatz bacon to fry. There were no broadcasts, but recruitment posters everywhere, one clinging wetly to Pete’s grey-blue door.