Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

than met the eye. He had that quiet, deranged set to his features, a look Johnson had to practice in the mirror. His own madness was an act. Or so he liked to think. An Ologist had given him the idea - and who knew better than an Ologist what was sham and what merely fake? He opened the green whiskey bottle as the metals doors sang like dropped baking trays and toasted the demented firmament.

  vi

  She stumbled against a wall, heard a light fitting slide to the floor, kicked her bag in front and made it under a lintel. You got used to the shaking after a while, but when the walls narrowed and the floor dipped and the ceiling meandered down a once straight corridor it made your stomach want to escape via your rectum, or vice versa. Zonda had thus far resisted the urge to puke. The barostats worked overtime, but when the pressure shifted your ears popped and your nose bled and anyone fool enough to be on their feet saw the end of the line, a distant black doorway growing steadily larger like the mouth of a tunnel and you the locomotive off the rails and no brakes and WHACK! your head, Zon, just kissed the tiles.

  vii

  Irdad snapped awake in a chair.

  ‘How’s your eye?’

  He stared out of it. ‘Fine.’

  Ruby’s twelfth cigarette smouldered on the table, scarring that wood from Earth.

  ‘Ekland told me about your journey in. He was generous in his assessment.’

  The stiff Ologist shrugged. Bones flexed like rubber, muscles like bricks.

  ‘Now I’d like your account - the truth.’

  ‘You didn’t believe his version?’ Straightening in the chair, Irdad grimaced. There was no blood in his mouth and someone had changed his shirt.

  ‘That’s not the issue. Ekland only reported what he saw through his scope. The sight, not the fact.’

  Irdad feigned distress, fingers creasing his brow. The storm had proved a surmountable obstacle. The Weekender Joplinski and his occupancy of this, Mother’s room, represented a greater threat. It could go either way, he understood, palms now misting the table, never having guessed he would find himself in a captain’s seat.

  ‘Comfortable?’ queried Ruby, his tone sarcastic.

  ‘I doubt it’s all it’s cracked up to be,’ the seismologist came back.

  Ruby inhaled noisily.

  Too late to bite his tongue.

  ‘You’re a pragmatist, Robert. I like that.’

  He squirmed inwardly at the use of his proper name. But what was another pill to swallow?

  ‘I’m whatever life makes me,’ Irdad stated, the pain in his head real, the man opposite calculating, drawing a blunt nail across his chin. ‘There’s no helping that.’

  ‘You think so? That what you are born you stay?’ challenged Ruby. ‘That others higher than yourself make all the important decisions concerning your fate? That each of us has his place?’

  ‘No.’ He breathed deeply. ‘That’s not what I said.’ Peering over the edge, annoyed Joplinski had deliberately misconstrued his somewhat clumsy explanation. ‘No,’ he repeated, thinking the words; ‘I believe we shuffle our own decks.’

  Ruby smiled. ‘Profound,’ he said. ‘Very good. Although for some of us it’s necessary to cheat, eh? To deal off the bottom, so to speak.’

  ‘Whatever it takes.’

  ‘That’s your philosophy? Not one I’d expect from a man born holding the aces.’

  Irdad slumped. ‘Look, we both know the situation - you better than me - so can we drop the pretence? This talking in riddles is childish sophistry.’

  The Weekender stood. ‘You’re the last, the last I’ve interviewed. You’d be surprised by the reactions your contemporaries have given.’

  ‘Wide ranging? Nothing like that surprises me.’

  ‘No? Well, it’s not important. You can forget them.’

  Irdad wet his lips. Dead? He wasn’t unduly affected. It was his own skin he was interested in saving.

  Ruby studied him minutely for several seconds.

  ‘Why didn’t you stay with Christian in the truck?’

  ‘I didn’t like the odds. Your man proved that.’

  ‘Wasn’t it the noble thing to do?’

  Irdad could afford a grin. ‘You must know Ologists are full of shit,’ he said. ‘It’s kind of an inverted paranoia. We don’t all take our roles as seriously. Look at Mother. Look at the captains who not so long ago sat round this table. Do you suppose either me or Christian were part of their machinations? We fell outside the corporate umbrella, just like the rest of you. We’re no different, and I’ve no grand illusions, no company crutches. I can stand on my own two feet.’

  ‘Whatever it takes?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Even if that means siding with a Weekender, Robert? Your conscience isn’t pricked?’

  ‘I left my partner for dead, didn’t I?’

  The room shook, the noise of the storm leaking downward, brash and intrusive.

  Irdad thought over the words he had delivered with such conviction, their effect of Joplinski.

  ‘Yes,’ Ruby conceded, seating himself. ‘But your running might be seen as cowardice.’

  ‘There are no cowards on Oriel,’ pronounced Irdad. ‘Only rational funks.’

  Ruby looked surprised. ‘Among your peers?’ he jibed. ‘You don’t mix socially, Robert? I’m disillusioned. I’d confused respect for authority with respect for those possessed of it. I was mistaken, it seems. But if my tenure is to be lasting I must command that respect for myself; and loyalty is a rare thing, like friendship. What I propose is a compromise. Payment in kind. You follow? Mutual trust. Or, if you prefer, mutual distrust. But a balance; of fear, of greed; of whatever you like.’

  ‘And every man gets his cut?’

  ‘Exactly. Like a pirate ship. Only some cuts are bigger than others.’

  Irdad nodded. ‘Of course.’ He had thrown in his lot with the devil.

  Might there be other devils abroad?

  Ruby leaned across the table. ‘Smoke?’

  He was cheaply bought.

  No use wriggling, that would only tighten the grip. Best to play dead and let Ruby knock him around with his paws. Like he’d told Christian: we can always turn coats again later. First, let’s see what’s in this pirate’s chest.

  viii

  The image converter was Joplinski’s idea, but Ekland had the job of monitoring the flow of information. The screen he carried could be tuned across the spectrum, receptive to X-rays and visible radiation, its definitive range two hundred metres, contextual field from zero to 180 degrees. Irdad’s damaged right eye had been scooped out and a scope similar to that gracing Ekland’s rifle installed in its place, utilizing the original nerve endings and surrounding tissue. The unit was battery powered and serviceable for more years than the Ologist, whose lifespan (usefulness) Ekland judged to be weeks. Long enough for whatever purpose the new boss put him to.

  ix

  The barber’s pole no longer topped the mountain. The mountain itself had shifted. Zonda had a lump on her forehead the size of an egg. Pete was dead. She’d come across his body by chance, forcing open the mess-hall doors to find the clock’s minute hand transfixing a table and Pete impaled on the hour. She had the guilty feeling he’d come looking for her. Not convinced of his motives, however, she believed something worse.

  ‘Sorry, Pete, but the world’s freshly laid and hasn’t much room for sympathy.’

  And are those my tops?

  Spilt from his hand were a dozen or so translucent capsules, what she and Franky had conned out of a nervous doctor. They’d been stashed behind a kitchen locker. Zonda did not recall speaking of them. The nervous doctor had made them promise.

  The mess quivered like an electric accordion, notes from cupboards and shelves and seating, ovens and saucepans and cutlery. Gathering up the capsules, ascending the spiral stair to the mezzanine, Zonda sprawled on a hard bench and tripped on buttons.

  five - islands

  Schill
ing could see his breath. The sun rose blue, violet, orange and yellow. His hands were cold.

  Johnson said, ‘Weird.’ The mine was part flattened under huge chunks of the sky, its chimneys like trampled flower stalks, bent and ruptured, spewing fluid. ‘Anyway,’ the pilot added, ‘isn’t it about time we...’ Cut short by the sight of the economy flyer, one wing visible like the pinion of a trapped bird, fuselage buried. The hanger had collapsed.

  As the storm’s unprecedented ferocity dawned on them the two men had sought refuge in the mine itself, sanctuary beneath the surface, the ultimate safety helmet elastic layers of polymorphic rock.

  The pilot began tearing into the wreckage, heaving aside pieces of airborne material, moving clumsily round the dented flyer while Schilling absorbed the light. Its quality was fascinating. Pure, it slid thickly, cloy and restless, flowing like translucent blood. It tinged the bergs green and blue, softening their fantastic edges until they resembled a single multifaceted form. He walked over to where Johnson busied himself and stood hands on hips.

  Moments later he stepped forward, and having lifted the other man clear, supposing him to be doing more harm than good, raised a large box-section lintel and used it to brace the roof. He worked methodically then, uncovering the craft as Johnson looked on with a mixture of anxiety and excitement twisting his face. The flyer was less critically damaged than either could have hoped. It should hold together at low altitude. Soon the pilot was able to clamber into the cockpit, where he nervously coaxed dials, frightened as yet to start the engines. Meanwhile, the trooper was