Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

that faded to nothing, was a platform, and on the platform stood a tall building entirely faced in glass.

  The windscreen caught him, wrapped him in a pneumatic ball as he was flung from his seat. The ball rolled a safe distance with Ivan its suspended foetus, any injuries he may have sustained as a result of the accident given immediate attention. The windscreen’s safety sticker displayed his vital signs and medical status, along with insurance endorsements, date, time, speed and legal number of persons in the vehicle. A police flyer arrived within minutes. The police officer took one look at the mess that was the girl and arrested Ivan. Hitch-hiking was illegal in New Mexico. He was charged with manslaughter. Runner Evangela, nineteen years of age.

  ‘That’s your name?’ The man held a card up before his face, his particulars on it.

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Ivan.

  The man’s arm retracted. ‘What made you drive from LA?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Beth was dead. He knew that. She had been driving. She had hit...what? No-one would fill in the blanks.

  ‘You don’t know?’ scoffed the man. ‘That just about sums it up.’

  Ivan tried to sit straight, but it wasn’t easy; the chair wasn’t designed for successful candidates.

  The man breathed deeply. The court had wished to be lenient, but ultimately he was responsible for her death. The fact Ivan had allowed Beth behind the wheel in contradiction of the hire agreement reinforced his guilt. She shouldn’t have been in the car in the first place. They cancelled his original contract. He was to have trained in communications, made the grade in three, gained Weekender privileges, a colony slot, his freedom after six. The price of freedom had quadrupled now, however, and Ivan couldn’t wait. He’d take his chances with the company’s extra-orbital penal system rather than an Earth jail. There was more room in space. He’d walk a different wire, albeit a sharp one.

  eight - deathspoint

  Pointsman had all the answers. Ivan lounged in a comfortable chair and listened.

  ‘They were desperate men with nothing to lose. You, on the other hand, can work your way out of here.’

  Ivan was suspicious. He’d managed to start a fire between two alcohol soaked wads of cloth and the bent open lid of an impacted radiator, but this had produced only thin blue flames and a red light on some operator’s console. Cameras tracked him to the rendezvous. By then Ivan had given up any vague belief he had in David’s plan. But Zeb was more resourceful than he’d imagined, having employed him as a decoy.

  ‘You’re valuable. I’m to look after you.’ Pointsman was enjoying these revelations, stalking about the far side of his desk like a Victorian landowner preparing to enter the confidence of a plucky underling.

  Ivan felt negative. Total apathy.

  But David was betrayed also. Marvin’s ideas were the company’s.

  Marvin was patented.

  The air in the wooden shack tasted sweet, a minty tang that rose from the crushed foliage hereabouts. The prisoners, those who were too old or sick to dig, sat in the open air, leaf hats wide and high, composing potpourri. There were a number of stations on this hospitable island, six continents home to proving grounds designed within the closed system of the world to test both men and machinery. Troopers occasionally outnumbered convicts.

  ‘You’re smiling, Evangela,’ said Pointsman. ‘Good. There are questions to answer.’

  An interior door opened, hinges squealing, and a muscled individual entered. He stood with one hip pressed against the desk and his arms folded. The face last seen by lucky-scar and white-finger. Slack-mouthed, the automaton.

  i

  A low technology threshold, a shallow wastage curve, the weaning of subject peoples and the extraction of young lives as tribute.

  Company policy.

  The penal colony, like countless others, was forced to pay its way. The planet represented an investment of skills forgotten in all but academic circles on Earth. On rainy days hand-stitched umbrellas blossomed, spokes engraved and handles turned. A thousand chess pieces stood ranked with military precision on hardwood shelves, rooks and bishops, kings and porns ready to move through manicured fingers across inlaid boards. Death was a museum, but it worked. Ivan soldered necklaces of fine drawn wire. The prison compound was without any fences save those of forest and the ocean. Neural implants kept the peace, yet even here tolerances were high. Violence was mostly between disciplines and burials did occur. However, induced cretinism was a limiting factor in art.

  Ivan read the situation as bizarre. The picture he’d been given, of an open door, hung over his bunk, forcing a measure of his time. The questions Marvin and the deckmaster seemed intent on asking only confused him further. He began to retreat mentally from any scale of hope, wishing no favours of his captors, desiring only to be left alone.

  From what he understood of solid-state electronics Ivan had constructed a metal-detector, an automatic pencil-sharpener, a radio and a telephone. The radio was able to pick up broadcasts from the landing station 600 kilometres north, courtesy of a longwave antenna reaching nine metres into the pristine air above his barracks. The music attracted large audiences come evening, when reception was best. His planned use for the telephone, a request line to the station, never got off the ground.

  ii

  His spade cut satisfactorily, neat incisions through the fibrous loam. The sun was hot, the river water beautifully clear. Ivan smiled and filled his hopper. Nearby a whistler sustained a tune. Shadows wrapped a score of ankles, washed them of sweat and displaced them from calves below the waterline. Men bunched shoulders, gripped shafts, leant weight and sliced. Yes, satisfactorily. An explosion shook the trees and spun branches through the disturbed air. The sound was deafening. He felt his implant quell the panic, but his legs still wanted to run, in a straight line, out of there, quickly. A trustee with a bleached expression tumbled from sky to water, his bloody splash liberating minds to fear. The second explosion was closer, downstream, the loam it cut ragged like destroyed corpses. Ten broke in different directions, men preoccupied with imminence. Ivan hugged the bank a short way then turned into the dense shade of odiferous blue leaves. Behind him, at the water’s edge, a third explosion lifted his shattered hopper as far as a clearing fifty metres away. Screams registered for the first time, death noises carried on the backs of stark, crunching echoes...four, five, aimed at the prison station now, tossing barracks, smashing his antenna. He ran faster, the trees thinning, heat-soaked, his feet bare and springy, hardly touching the ground.

  Something passed low overhead and he dived for cover. Pressed flat by shockwaves, spine buffeted, he felt the explosions erratically, as if they were detonated at random, to no prescribed attack pattern, to frighten rather than obliterate. In strict military terms, an understated barrage. A similar randomness occupied him, a medley of images, of past explosions, collisions, raw bursts of light. His eyes were leaking when he got to his feet. Wiping his vision he continued, seeing the wreck of buildings ahead, the loss of order, peace, life. Pain slowed him. A thousand men had lived here. A thousand pacified craftsmen, effecting their time and giving attention to objects easily broken. Racks of pots had fallen; copper urns and kettles were holed by bone shrapnel. And he stood in the middle of this, a dumb witness to destruction, as the sounds reverberated and diminished.

  Pointsman wandered over, hands in pockets. ‘Looks like somebody flipped, eh? Mistook us for a big painted X.’

  Ivan said nothing.

  ‘Come on, Marvin’s waiting. We’ve transport; a safe haven eastward.’

  He followed. Pointsman heaved open the tail door and ushered him inside a small reconnaissance vehicle. Marvin patted the seat next to him. Did either man or automaton know what was happening? Ivan was undecided. He let the deckmaster strap him in. They drove to the shore and a waiting boat carried them across the sea.

  A woman pressed behind his ear and he slept. Blue and white ceilings interchanged. Ivan was on
wheels.

  He could still hear the explosions. Remembrance of them brought on the pain and the woman frowned, appearing from nowhere to press behind his ear again.

  Breakfast floated in milk. Ivan recalled pungent leaves on crystal water. His face dropped into the bowl.

  Would they permit him to die? he wondered. Pointsman, he reminded himself, had confessed Ivan’s value; hadn’t elaborated. Marvin was with him now.

  ‘Welcome,’ said the mouth in motion. ‘I hope you’re comfortable.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Runner Evangela. ‘What did I do to deserve this?’

  ‘You assassinated a governor,’ Marvin told him flatly. ‘We’re proud of you.’

  Ivan pushed himself up on sore elbows. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘You won’t remember. Later maybe. But that’s one adventure you won’t overcome reflexively. Give it time.’ The construct paused. ‘Sorry,’ it added, ‘you don’t have any. Me neither. Same goes for the entire organisation.’

  The explosions softened. He got out of bed, pressed his feet to the floor and rocked on his toes. He was thinking. Out loud he asked, ‘What organisation? Is this more company politicking? I’ve had my share of that already. They set me up...’

  ‘To kill a governor,’ finished Marvin. ‘It was easy. We’re your rescuers. Unfortunately...’