Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

She’d been with the company three years; she owed it nothing, least of all loyalty. Technically, she had another three years before her contract expired, then a one-way ticket to the world of her choice. But Zonda had kidded herself with the brochures. One or two worlds looked okay. Realistically, her chances of securing any kind of future on an upmarket globe were limited. As a Runner she had the options of a whore. Zonda was nineteen, the same age as Franky whom she’d met en route, both women juggling waffles, teaching dance and playing soldier, spreading their legs for no man, a pact Zonda had broken three times to Franky’s once - that she knew of. She had her suspicions. Schilling was a fourth she’d get around to, if Franky hadn’t already. No use spoiling him, she reckoned.

  Day-dreaming. They’d taken Franky away.

  She flipped eggs. The percolator groaned. Spaghetti clung to the ceiling.

  This was Candy Mountain. The old order had fallen. There was a rumour the orbital was down. It that were true, and the recruitment posters genuine, there’d be no ships parked over Oriel for some time.

  ii

  Perched on a rise two kilometres from Central, the Ologists Christian and Irdad exchanged worried glances. Their truck was stalled and their lives in danger. Both were aware of the coup. In the back of the truck was their equipment.

  Christian folded his arms, one foot on a boulder. Irdad stood with his hands in his pockets, a blue cap on his head.

  ‘Joplinski.’

  ‘Who else? Mother gave him too much rope; so much he slipped the noose.’

  ‘I think we need to save our skins,’ said Irdad. ‘Any suggestions?’

  Christian spat. ‘I’d like to know what started the panic,’ he commented bitterly.

  ‘Mother,’ whispered his counterpart. ‘Strange, we measure a planet’s every twitch yet the really big upheavals escape us.’

  It was a joke Christian didn’t appreciate. They were seismologists, woken in the dead of night by crazy numbers, instruments squawking, engine gunned, half the four hundred kilometres to Central covered before they realized this was no quake. The perturbations were neutral, inexplicable, and not centred in any one place. As if, hypothesized Irdad, a sizeable mass had passed close to the surface. Over not under.

  Christian refused to believe that. He knew what Irdad was suggesting, but no way could he accept it.

  The radio was dead. White noise. The atmosphere had carried tales of arrival and departure, change at the top, before the signal tied itself in knots.

  The air smelled burnt. As if, implied notional bluecap, it had been squeezed through a ship’s drive.

  But that was madness, contended his fellow. It would be impossible to land a yawbus planetside.

  Rubbing his brow Christian turned his back on the mountain and went to sit in the cab. Irdad joined him a few minutes later. ‘There must be one hell of a whole somewhere.’ His partner’s hands gripped the wheel. ‘Feel that wind? The weather’s really going to hit us out here. My guess is they punched through on the blind side and braked southward; that would explain the ozone. The storm when it comes will arrive from the northwest and ought to be spectacular.’

  ‘All right,’ said Christian, leaning against the door as if to put distance between them. ‘Spare me the apocalyptic details. I know what’s over the horizon, and I know we’re in deep shit if we don’t find some cover. But what if Joplinski stands us against a wall? It might be in his best interests. No Weekender is going to topple him.’

  Irdad shook his head. ‘Forget the politics. Joplinski’s no fool. He can use a specialist’s knowledge. He wouldn’t throw that away. Give the man some credit. Besides, he’ll welcome us with open arms if we offer our unconditional support.’ Christian scowled disgustedly. ‘I know, I know - but what choice do we have? Right now we can bargain, and survive. Leave the heroics to someone better suited. Let's just get inside. We can always turn coats again later.’

  Christian slapped the dash with the heel of his hand. As if squashing a fly, thought Irdad, wondering at the buzzing in his ears.

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

  ‘What?’ Bluecap unconsciously scratched his nose.

  ‘The truck’s going nowhere.’

  ‘So we’ll walk. It’s not far.’

  ‘And the equipment?’ He stared at Irdad contemptuously, blaming him for their troubles. ‘Do we carry it?’

  A squall shook the vehicle.

  ‘Forget the equipment; I’m out of here.’

  Christian remained seated.

  Irdad cursed the man’s pride, his stubbornness, his refusal to accept the situation. Christian’s was an old family, once powerful, reduced to merely privileged daughters and sons. Climbing into the back of the truck he decided there and then to go on alone. Most of the sensitive measuring equipment was junk now anyway. He filled his pockets with infomats and stuffed a roll of printout under one arm. Well, you didn’t get the chance to make such a radical career decision every day, he contemplated, jumping down. Something stung his cheek. A rubbery hailstone struck his boot. Others lodged in the folds of his clothing. He walked to the front of the truck and banged on the driver’s door.

  Christian stuck his head out the window.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’ said Irdad.

  The other man shrugged. His face was composed, set in its fate. ‘Me too.’

  ‘I hope it’s quick.’

  ‘Right, no pain.’

  Cracks appeared in the sky.

  ‘You’d better get going,’ Christian advised. ‘The base is farther than you imagine, despite what the meter says.’

  ‘Right...’

  ‘Good luck.’

  Irdad set off briskly southeast, the storm building behind, crossing distant seas, rolling that greenness between forefinger and thumb and filling the air with marbles. It must have reached Base 1 already, a hideous broad cape of elements thrown over everything.

  There was movement to his right. ‘Oliver?’ But no, his partner remained true to his ideals, his past, awaiting death in the manner dictated by his forefathers, a proud martyrdom no-one would remember.

  iii

  The rationalization of so many convergent events came easy to Ruby Joplinski. He lit a cigarette.

  Sitting in one of eight chairs about an oval table, head tilted back, storm booming, felt through the chairs legs, he breathed smoke the hue of city pavements, shaped rings with tongue and lips while the world called Oriel exhausted its temper on the mountain above. Deep in his bunker, collecting his thoughts, he waited.

  The cigarette was from a fresh pack of fifty. He planned to smoke one an hour. That ought to be long enough. He was alone in this, Mother’s room, its walls bare of ornament. One thought concerned Hubert Schilling. Ruby was sorry to lose him, as Schilling had had the kind of guts he personally found laudable. With a bit more direction, a degree more application and a little less trust, Schilling might have proved a credible threat. As it was he’d disappeared with the rest of them, dropped from sight down a deep dark hole. Whatever had transpired at the mine, he hadn’t known of it in advance. He would have kept the trooper closer to hand otherwise. But Ruby wasn’t the sort of man to let timing interfere with ambition. He was always prepared. Presumably those captains who had launched this episode, throwing the company’s operations on the planet, and Oriel itself, into confusion, had their reasons. He couldn’t be sure and thought it unwise to speculate as to what those reasons were, content for the moment to leave that mystery unsolved. There were more tangible puzzles to work on. The captains’ departure he viewed with approval. Ruby even saw the storm as a boon. It served to disorganize and isolate any opposition. It would pass, breaking bones, disrupting routines, allowing him free roam among the many pieces.

  He stubbed his first cigarette out on the chair next to him, watching as the ash danced. Calm in his assessment, he listened attentively, ears wired direct through levels A to G, constantly reappraising his own elev
ated persona in respect to the new deal. His takeover, in effect.

  No, he didn’t mind the chaos.

  One thing worried him, however. Was this what Mother had planned from the beginning? And if so, what did that make him? A user, or just one of the used?

  iv

  Eyes strained through the murky windscreen, chin resting on the black plastic wheel, Christian studied Irdad’s dwindling silhouette. His contempt for his associate had lessened considerably since the world had darkened, growing colder as the first sizeable chunks deposited themselves on the changing landscape. Fantastic structures were erected. Alien habitats. He fingered the starter button, playing with the idea that if he pressed it and the engine were to start, he could yet make it in time, even give Irdad a ride. He’d continue his life on a different track, but he’d be alive. The truck had stalled unexpectantly. The problem could be minor. A mechanic would no doubt be able to fix it in minutes. But there was no mechanic. There was the possibility the fault was only temporary, long since rectified. Although the odds were against it, Christian had one sure way of finding out.

  He could press the button or not press the button, which he was doing now. He could gamble. It was his last chance. Recognizing it as such he had also to recognize how a future thus secured might unfold. He could not gamble, not risk the ultimate humiliation of reaching for that slimmest of hopes only to have it dashed. And die where he was, in the cab.

  Irdad experienced no such qualms of conscience. Seeing the exit clearly marked he’d taken it. The wind pushed him along, accelerating his pace while simultaneously overtaking the gasping man whose streaming vision was fixed, negotiating abstract pillars of debris, semi-translucent edifices of a scintillating blue-white impermanence, shapes redefining the local topography.

  The people upstairs were having a party.

  Irdad cursed his luck. He wished he was in orbit, the music loud and the hors d'oeuvres piled high on trays. His arm round a girl he’d taste salmon and smiles, drop inferences and pick up loose company change.

  But it was not to be. Bluecap was forced instead to contend with the abutment of death, its cathedral supports surrounding, falling across his shoulders like felled telegraph poles, the road to Candy strewn with automobile wrecks, screaming mothers and children, fathers splashed over the foreshortened bonnets of cars, puking glass. He was struck repeatedly, blows that deadened his arms, causing him to drop the printout, drawing a curtain of black plain through his skull and disrupting his breathing. And each time the curtain lifted the sky was darker, the road increasingly cluttered, wild dogs at his heels and shrieking birds at his fingers. He had to keep going, was terrified of falling, knowing he’d be trampled by those behind...

  The wind screamed in his ears and strangled his eyes, the blue whirling speck before him his cap, that which tugged him after, a kite and its string, the filling stations and fast-food outlets on either side busy with ketchup-stained casualties.

  He thought he saw the truck swing past and ducked instinctively, imagining Christian with his nose pressed to the window and his thumbs in his ears, listening to the static on the radio.

  His feet were sinking. Base Central squatted like a mushroom, green mould on its chin, the landing field stretching to Irdad’s right naked of planes and cover, a shimmering patch between mountain and sea. Wisps of smoke appeared to rise from the mushroom’s crown, like feathers.

  Everything turned upside-down and purple.

  The bergs began to roll...

  Faintly luminescent, a wheel of ice cut through the dark, yellow and red demons cavorting on its diaphanous flank, dragging its broken axle stalk like a snatched umbrella or hexagonal die spun on a cocktail stick.

  Cut flowers to every side.

  On the mountain’s eastern slope was a stepped building of nine levels decreasing in area like the tiers of a ziggurat. It housed maintenance crews, the bottom two levels given over to hangar space and workshops, modules implanted whole into the gradient. Irdad viewed its shutters with a single-mindedness uncommon among Ologists, their privileged stratum practically inaccessible from beneath and therefore immune from ladder-climbers. It was not essential to be so focused when your super-ego was compounded of presumption and wealth. A single-mindedness latent in his genes, then, as in matters of survival no hierarchy remained intact for long.

  Irdad was willing to forgo it all. His power base was a family rich in duplicity and fraud, his blue cap a uniform that scampered now between sugarcubes and suburban porches. Yet he felt compelled to chase it. It was headed in the right direction. The base was obscured, the mountain barely visible over jagged rooftops, demolition and construction in equal measure ensuring the cityscape was in constant motion. A window illuminated the sky. The temperature had dropped sufficiently for his breath to gauze. Irdad hailed a taxi, but none of the circling snowmobiles chanced his kerb.

  Flattened by an invisible hand he lay bleeding, sliding, scared for the first time, the jokes he’d used to sustain himself squeezed from his mind, burs like bubble-wrap. A giant berg keeled over in front of him, exposing his torment and goal. Irdad peered at the base, tears distorting perspective. Wind-jostled snowmen chased around like opposing football teams, his blue cap the ball, signed by each player prior to a post match charity auction. His vision halved; his right eye brutally closed. The left tried to compensate, straining to focus as movement below his waist brought his legs back under him and, hooked on a gale, he made it to safety largely intact.

  Surfacing behind a truck, half expecting to meet Christian there, Irdad stood panting. Able to feel his exhaustion, he vowed to smoke no more cigarettes. He slipped to the concrete, tugged at his collar, his throat having swelled since entering the flapping door with its warning sign swinging.

  Somebody laughed.

  Irdad gazed up at a round face and a gun barrel, his good eye squirming.

  ‘I honestly didn’t think you’d make it,’ the man shouted over the storm-induced racket. ‘Lousy weather, eh?’ He laughed again.

  Irdad was suddenly very conscious of the tattoo centring his bald head. He couldn’t move. A berg the size of two Reachin ogres burst through a set of timpani shutters, crushing a trailer and fusing the lights in the workshop.

  Reachin was Irdad’s homeworld. Circumstances alone caused him to miss it.

  The volume increased. The man bellowed, enjoying his words, a lackey of Joplinski’s who raised him without effort. ‘I was watching you out there,’ he said, voice defying the elements. ‘First time an Ologist’s impressed me! You should be flattered. I had my rifle trained on you; killed your partner second shot.’

  Ogres hunted land-whales. This giant leading him by one dead arm could have been among their offspring.

  He let his feet drag. The man guided him up a short flight of steps onto a concrete platform, through a buckled exit into an unlit corridor smelling of ammonia. A torch-beam danced ahead.

  ‘Why did he come alone?’ Ekland inquired of himself, the Ologist limp at his side. ‘Engine trouble, I suppose. Too lazy to walk.’

  Irdad gasped at a pain in his chest.

  ‘Christian, right?’ Ekland pointed the torch at Irdad’s bloody nose. ‘So you must be...’

  ‘You killed him from here?’

  ‘Second shot.’

  He smiled, missing his headgear less, swivelling his good eye round in the yellowness. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ said Ekland. ‘Not often I get the chance. A seagull deflected the first round, but I was more patient with the next. Saw the windscreen haze and that was that. The truck vanished soon after.’

  Irdad nodded appreciatively, saliva dripping from his mouth.

  Clouds sailed like buffalo across the sky, hooves indenting, steam from nostrils like jets.

  v

  Johnson discovered his passenger sitting atop a stack of red and green crates in a fenced yard behind the mine.

  ‘I hope there’s something
worth looking at,’ commented the pilot. ‘I’d hate to have climbed up here for nothing.’

  Schilling acknowledged him but did not reply. Words to him were a blur.

  ‘Well.’ Johnson folded his arms. ‘There’s mist. More to see in the other direction.’ He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘Some impressive thermals massing. No way we can fly.’

  ‘Courtney,’ mumbled Schilling. ‘You have to get me there.’

  ‘The island? Not today, my friend. Not in this weather. Smells like a rough one.’ He clicked his fingers behind the Weekender’s head. No response.

  ‘There’s someone I have to see.’

  ‘Sure...’

  Schilling turned slowly, fixing the pilot’s crazy eyes.

  ‘Tomorrow, if we’re lucky,’ said Johnson. There was a hollowness to the trooper’s stare that both excited and terrified him.

  Schilling turned away, apparently satisfied.

  ‘I took a look inside the mine but found only a few fires; not even any bodies. Doesn’t make any sense at all. A company party? A private war? Your arrival certainly seems to have sparked some shit. What are you, some kind of bad omen? Not that it worries me, you know.’ Johnson rambled, his brain unhinged. ‘But I like to keep score: them and me. A personal thing.’

  The sun brightened deceptively, hinting at shadows. The breeze sifted through the lifeless facility and emerged glutted with souls, odours taint and sharp.

  ‘Come on.’ Johnson pulled on Schilling’s arm. ‘Give me a hand to get the flyer under cover before this storm hits. I looted whiskey, so we can get smashed afterward.’ He grinned stupidly, jumping down. A stone in his boot proved to be a tiger’s eye, its brilliant lustre buffed by his foot. He tossed it at Schilling, who caught it easily. ‘For luck.’

  There was limited hangar space at the mine, room for only three small wings the two men had to move outside before they could manoeuvre the plane in.

  Johnson had gone through the flyers abandoned on the field, spinning their radios for clues. The atmosphere was clogged with random waves and there was no fix-signal from the orbiting station, so he’d given up, the mystery amplified. A corporate game, had to be. The flyers carried no supplies, the clips of their weapons’ racks dangling.

  He’d salvaged anything he thought might prove useful from the mine while searching for survivors; anybody; but as it turned out, only the big man.

  ‘Try a kumquat,’ he offered. ‘Delicious.’

  Schilling though, was armwrestling a dead Runner in his sleep, face twitching, mouth contorted, his whole right side knotted under the fat controller’s scruffy umber jacket, padded at elbow and shoulder, sleeves too short and pockets dusted in rich tobacco.

  Johnson watched him with his feet up, the hangar doors bolted, wondering what he’d witnessed. And his fixation on Courtney? Did he intend a rendezvous? With whom? There was more to the trooper