Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

‘There you go again.’

  He hadn’t been aware. Jenny had crept up on him. Rocard’s heart pounded. She’d scared him.

  The day was short on Oriel. Already the planet was getting his goat. He hadn’t felt this agitated in years.

  ‘She was wearing perfume,’ said Jenny.

  Rocard scuffed his feet and straightened. ‘She was wearing nothing of the kind!’

  ‘Are you angry, Darcy? Will you beat me?’

  ‘Leave me be a while,’ he ordered.

  But the mould-woman lingered.

  Defiance?

  ‘She was wearing perfume,’ affirmed the company toy. ‘I recognized the brand.’

  iv

  Harry the dredger.

  A normally inquisitive man, he remained in his seat until they told him it was safe to leave.

  ‘Down the aisle on the left.’

  ‘Thank-you.’

  The first thing he saw, sailing along the exit ramp toward a rendezvous with his luggage, the old town much as it had been for centuries, was the cathedral, Norman and under glass. They’d extended the dome, he noticed, to cover the railway viaduct. The castle’s replica was less than satisfying, the original dismantled and put to alternative use, afloat on Saturn’s boisterous gas. He wondered grimly what the Prince Bishops would make of that. Walking through the arrivals hall below a ceiling of green lights, he reckoned it was a miracle the city managed to hold on to its university. Owned and run by the company, there was no absolute reason for it to remain. Earth based students were vulnerable to attack from any of a growing number of terrorist and neo-revolutionary groups, and the campus offered an easy target. Luggage to heel, he hailed a taxi, an upright as the city was overcrowded. He hoped the trip was worth it; journeys depressed him. But this was Angelo, he reminded himself. Durham, too. If the former disappointed then the latter, its satellites and surrounding landscapes would adequately compensate - until the return leg, his office in Lima with the central-heating on. Maybe he’d stay here for good. Harry didn’t care what anyone said, the world was too big.

  Grounding at the correct address he straightened his tie and pressed the button. A face appeared, smiled, and the door opened. He walked up the stairs to the first floor flat, luggage left at the foot.

  Angelo stood waiting. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said.

  Harry slumped in the offered char and relaxed.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Coffee for now.’ His stomach still a little upset. ‘How’s Martha?’

  Angelo made noises in the kitchenette.

  How long had it been? Four years? Six? Then a call. Important I see you right away. Something amiss?

  ‘Sugar, Harry?’

  ‘No - I had a card from you.’ He clicked his fingers, summoning the name.

  ‘Mauritius.’

  ‘Martinique.’

  Harry accepted the mug and sipped.

  ‘She left,’ Angelo said. ‘Took the kid.’

  He peered through steam, his old friend occupying one half of a two seat sofa. ‘When?’ Was this it? All the way from Lima for this?

  ‘It’s not important,’ replied the taller man, his face measuring, judging, his lips licked. ‘I have a proposition for you. Or rather, I have a case to put.’

  Harry sat upright. There was an uneasy sensation working its way up from his shoes, tying the hairs on his legs in knots.

  Angelo reached under the sofa and pulled out a brown paper envelope. Leaning forward, he offered the limp package to Harry. ‘Here, take a look.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A company internal report.’

  ‘Released?’

  ‘What do you think? Take it.’

  He kept tight hold of his mug. Scanning the room for cameras, needing to piss, he wondered what he had walked into, what options, if any, he had left.

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Just drop it on the floor,’ he said.

  Angelo complied. ‘I’m sorry. I’m pressuring you. You need more time.’

  Time? thought Harry, reaching in his jacket pocket for cigarettes. Time for what?

  Agitated, he grabbed the pack Angelo wafted.

  Safer than the envelope.

  Lighting up he queried, ‘What are you involved in?’ And do I want any part of it? he added to himself.

  The tall friend laced his fingers, waited.

  ‘What’s in the report?’

  ‘A synopsis. Incomplete.’

  ‘Concerning?’

  ‘Oriel.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘This is why.’

  He considered his position, the drab walls of the flat, the cigarette smoke, the coffee, the ash.

  ‘You used to talk about the big one, Harry.’

  ‘Yes; but that was a long time ago. I was idealistic.’

  Angelo shook his head. ‘No, no - romantic, Harry, remember? You and me, those front page scholarships; we didn’t possess an ideal between us. Ideals were for lifers, company thralls. We shared a different map.’

  Harry adjusted his sitting position, mumbled, ‘Maybe so.’ Then louder,

  ‘That doesn’t give you the right to manipulate our friendship, to manipulate me.’ He said it with conviction, although he was no longer sure how much conviction he felt.

  Again, Angelo was silent.

  His fear was of fear, Harry realized, a deep disappointment within himself.

  ‘I’ll look it over later,’ he said.

  v

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Harry repeated, peeling the back off a beer mat. ‘And frankly, I don’t care. Nine tenths of what you’ve told me is supposition, the one tenth second-hand.’

  ‘From the company direct,’ qualified Angelo. ‘You agree the report is genuine?’

  ‘Yes.’ He frowned. ‘It’s too elaborate a hoax.’ Directed at whom? The frown deepened.

  ‘Then one chance in ten ought to suffice.’

  They occupied a central table in the pub. Business slow this summer, the few customers grouped round a bar aglow with fittings. Harry had filled the jukebox. They were contained by sound and windows.

  Angelo turned his glass between his palms, light tumbling from it like a chandelier. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘That I’m a dead man one way or the other,’ Harry answered bluntly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Harry. I didn’t...’

  ‘Facts!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Give me facts, something I can get a handle on. No more lying, understand? Fuck your motives. What’s your organisation? Cellular? Anarchic? This is no news story. Even if it was the networks would never carry it. Angelo, we both know that. No unsanctioned story is in the company’s interests, and it practically runs the globals. So what’s really behind Oriel? What makes this planet special? Why do you need me to go there? Me, Angelo, your old friend. Is that it? You trust me? God in Heaven...’

  Each man gazed over the other’s shoulder, neither speaking, the people moving about the bar and the people outside in the street as conscious then of the moon as Harry and Angelo were of yesterday and tomorrow. The lecturer’s thoughts were with his students, his betrayal and their miseducation. He had yet to be called upon to plant a bomb in a dorm, but that day might not be far off. As measures grew desperate his position was made vulnerable. To date his role in the university had proved valuable, not to be risked on so blatant a gesture. But it couldn’t last. The company’s grip on the establishment was total. There were no legitimate means of loosening it. He was expendable, or soon would be. Idealistic? Angelo smiled wanly. Maybe.

  The journalist, his cynical nature undermined by some primal shout, finally had to admit he’d lost control over his destiny. The future, his future, a Peruvian river valley stuffed with comforts, had been snatched from him, the dream of it insubstantial, broken, dispersed as easily as smoke. Freshly peeled, shiveringly naked, he gazed out the window at the bobbing heads, the multi
hued taxis jostling like stars, tastes and smells hovering round them like planets, worlds he had cared nothing for that morning, held in a different light now, the window as if cleaned, made emphatically real, his vision attaining real depth through its interaction, a reality of metal, flesh and glass he discovered to be at once wondrous and appalling. Either that or he was drunk. The contents of the envelope had shaken him. Enticed him. Made him think.

  Woken him? When had the excitement turned to fear?

  Angelo broke the reverie. ‘The company is overextended,’ he said. ‘One man in the right place...’

  ‘A decapitating stroke.’

  The tall friend regarded him strangely, as if he’d attempted some witticism.

  ‘Corny,’ said Harry, clinking glasses; ‘but I’ll go.’

  seven - wire walking

  The company managed 349 worlds of which 216 were category A, meaning they held a more or less fixed orbit about a given star. Moons were excluded for practical purposes. Counted separately. Likewise, asteroids and other bodies whose mass fell below half that of Earth.

  Mother’s target for worlds was 365, one for each day of the year. A leapyear was equivalent to 364 lightyears, the standard for measuring subspace excursions.

  i

  Harry woke with tears in the bowls of his eyes. He’d dreamed of endless corridors, countless rooms whose doors had been broken off their hinges, dusty spaces crammed with worm-eaten furniture. In one room he’d clambered laboriously up a stack of tables and sideboards to sit in a creaking armchair at the summit, fighting back a sneeze as he tottered amid cobwebs and paint flakes. He could see the whole room from here, the walls at crazy angles to the ceiling, the floor hidden under layers of mouldy carpet.

  It was hopeless. Harry couldn’t hold it any longer. He sneezed and the