Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

arms folded. Seemingly convinced of Johnson’s ability to operate the hover he offered to take no part in the manoeuvring. The engines whined, more by luck than design, the steeply angled horseshoe window deblanking as externally mounted lamps blossomed to uncover the natural cave, its rugged mouth framing perhaps three metres of clearance. Edging the throttle forward, he felt the skirt inflate, and they slipped from the stiffly bobbing wharf, advancing like a turtle.

  Ten metres long and five wide, the hover fitted the gap neatly to enter the blue-grey gloaming. Some Ologist’s toy, presumed Johnson, its controls simple once you separated them from the peripheral buttons and metres. A study vehicle, one that had sampled the ocean and catalogued its idiosyncrasies in a dozen computer languages, cross-referenced and hard-copied to Mother. The tiller was the throttle. There were no foot pedals. Schilling unfolded his arms to a satisfied humming.

  The pilot watched the compass and noted the kilometres, 270 north by northwest to where Courtney had vanished. Bumping over the surface he engaged auto, wondering briefly whether it were capable of steering the hover round obstructions. But the green sea had recently been violently mobile, making the likelihood of a collision small. The heaviest crusting would be broken and they could probably plough through any verticals. He sat back and took things easy.

  iii

  Night enveloped, the stars hidden behind dense clouds and the air charged, the pilot staring in disbelief as Schilling undressed, his skin taut and his feet arched as he prepared to go over the side.

  He had no choice. Franky was down there.

  Refusing the line Johnson wanted to tie round him, in defiance of sea and sky, he secured a flat-tank to his back and sealed his gonads between his legs with reels of red elastic tape. Goggles in place, Schilling considered the axe. Reluctantly, he left it.

  He nodded at Johnson, who raised the hatch. The atmosphere was close and primed on deck, the ocean invisible. Blackness lay everywhere. It served to emphasize the luminous tape, the goggle’s prismatic lenses, the tank. Schilling twinkled like a firefly as he went over the side, signals diminishing as he disappeared below Oriel’s native variety, its proximate life. Senses inhibited, he forced himself to sink, the ocean’s natural suction aiding him on this leg of his journey. A safety line would have been of similar use on returning, especially with someone pulling, but there was too great a chance of it becoming snagged. What had made the island special were its conglomerates of trees. From what the trooper understood they existed nowhere else on the planetary surface, being composites, rubberlike strands pressed upward by the grating action of Courtney as it shuffled west and north across the seabed. With luck he would fall among their branches. He tried to form a picture in his mind, piecing together details he had never seen firsthand, the orientation of trees and buildings. Johnson had managed to glean some information from the onboard computer in regard to their position over the structures set unknowably deep. Had they more expertise they might have pinpointed each individual conglomerate and prefab. As it was he had to make do with the barely tangible caress of the upper canopy and the infrequent, undirected messages from the woman he loved.

  six - undercurrents

  Light swelled to brightness, but what it illuminated had changed, not least the mechanic who’d spent the intervening hours locked underground in a cell two metres by six. A hastily converted storage room, they’d put him in here barely an hour after he’d reached Base 1. Then the walls had shaken. Issac was bruised and hungry. The fluorescence hurt his eyes, its watery yellow fastened to a sagging roof. Dust covered everything. They’d taken his shoes. He knew nothing of conditions on the surface, had only his imagination and the violence of shockwaves to go on. In a sense he was lucky to be where he was. Why he was there remained a mystery. But it was the silence worrying him now.

  He scratched his name on the warped stone floor with a piece of forced concrete from the ruptured ceiling.

  The door creaked several times before bursting open.

  ‘What took you?’

  The man chose a wry smile. The alternative, briefly glimpsed, a threatening sneer. ‘On your feet,’ he instructed.

  ‘Help me up...’

  He stepped back. Wary? ‘You can manage. Come on; no time.’

  Issac raised an arm, wrist lazy, the hours of wasted air having left him weak. Dizzy, he pulled on the door jamb and staggered upright into the passage where a second man, armed with a pump-gun, waited.

  ‘Jesus, he stinks!’

  The first man pushed him forward. ‘Any chance of a bath?’ he joked, straightening with some effort. His skin itched unbearably.

  ‘Just keep moving.’

  He walked between the two men the twenty metre length of the passage. Debris littered its floor. There was an open hatch to duck through, then the lead man turned, gesturing with gun and head for him to enter a room much like the one he’d vacated. Only clean, he thought, feeling dirtier, its freshness clinical, as if disinfected, not stinking of faeces. There was a single chair and no further ornament. The door closed behind him.

  Issac sat with his arms folded, dozing until another man arrived, and a woman.

  Asked his name he replied, ‘Issac Waters.’

  The newcomers exchanged glances. The woman had the look of a medic. Senior, perhaps a surgeon; a specialist, she drew circles on her palm with a finger.

  ‘According to your papers, Issac, you arrived on Oriel thirteen days ago,’ stated the man. ‘You requested a transfer...’

  ‘De-requested.’ he corrected.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  He squinted, struggling to concentrate. Ologists? Had to be. ‘I made the transfer request aboard ship,’ he explained, wearily patient. ‘But I cancelled it.’

  Was that what this was all about?

  ‘What was your ship?’ questioned the woman. She leant against the wall opposite.

  Issac hesitated. Smoothing his brow he asked for a drink of water.

  ‘What was your ship?’ the woman repeated, fingers dancing, head to one side.

  ‘I don’t recall,’ he admitted, surprised by the apparent gap in his memory. It had all been there, hadn’t it?

  ‘How does that strike you?’ she continued, the sole of one foot pressing her shoulders from the wall. ‘Don’t you find it strange, even disconcerting?’

  ‘Peculiar,’ Issac said. ‘That must have been quite a snowstorm, eh?’

  He felt complicated.

  She had a syringe.

  ‘You’ve run the tests?’

  ‘If you’re asking “is he human?”, the answer is a definite yes.’

  Who was she?

  Issac sat up in bed. The walls had changed colour and the sheets smelled of antiseptic chewing-gum.

  ‘A short time ago a man with your prints boarded a flyer here headed for Central. It crashed. There was only one survivor.’ He paused to light a cigarette. Issac scratched his chest. ‘Are you listening? Do I have your attention?’

  He looked the man over. Short. Nothing else registered.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘I just told you.’

  The short man gazed at the tall woman with her right foot against the green wall.

  She’d moved, he thought. She levered gently back and forth, rocking.

  Who was the man?

  ‘Give it another hour,’ the woman said.

  Issac dribbled.

  ‘And you, Waters, go to sleep.’

  The pillow hit his head.

  ‘What next?’

  ‘Write it down.’

  Fumbling with a pencil he licked his lips. They’d given him a notebook. The short man wanted him to record his memories of the outward voyage, his time on Oriel until his arrest. What he wrote now was a poem about ice.

  They couldn’t read it.

  ‘What language is this, Issac?’

  ‘One Gunther taught me,’ he answered.

  ‘Gunther?’<
br />
  ‘Gunther Gruman, lost in the ducts. He had the bunk above mine and talked in his sleep.’

  His visitors frowned in near unison.

  ‘Go on,’ encouraged the man.

  ‘That’s it.’

  The woman covered a smile behind her confederate’s back.

  He inhaled slowly, obviously irritated. ‘And the poem? Read it for us.’

  Issac stared at the offered page. ‘It’s melted,’ he said.

  i

  ‘Stewart, will you calm down.’

  ‘He’s making fools of us! Can’t you see that?’ Ash floated to the scuffedtiles, their edges raised, exposing the pressed earth beneath.

  ‘That may be,’ Ula conceded. ‘But he’s not doing it on purpose. Listen, you know the situation as well as I do. We need to keep some kind of perspective.’

  He nodded angrily. The captains’ interest and subsequent exploitation of their studies had turned the world inside out.

  She waited for his breathing to settle. ‘Okay, everything’s a mess - the storm’s made sure of that. But it’s not over yet, not by a long way.’

  Stewart relaxed. ‘We can’t afford to start over,’ he said grimly. ‘You know Smith wants us to carve him up? The direct approach, he calls it. Right now I think Waters deserves it.’

  Ula let her hands fall to her sides, composing herself. ‘What if we were to let him go?’

  He folded a lip. ‘And?’

  ‘Think of it as field research. Are we dealing with a wholly sympathetic psychosis or not? How close are they mentally? Have they actually met? This is one way to find out. Let this one loose and maybe he’ll lead us to his doppleganger, human or not.’

  Smith