Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

farther removed countryside on alternate weekends...’

  The young man listened earnestly. Warmed by the herbal infusion, he supposed the old man crazy.

  ‘Sound familiar?’

  ‘My father wants me to follow in his footsteps,’ Jakob confided.

  ‘Yes,’ said his host; ‘mine did too.’ He leaned on one cushioned arm and retched noisily. ‘But that was a long time ago. The events of today are more immediate.’ Spitting into a tarnished brass planter. ‘There are people looking for me, Jake. People I brought here, to this world. Your world.’ He coughed, hunching like a rolled up carpet stood on its end. His face was barely visible in the dim room.

  ‘Are you okay? Can I get you anything?’ Jakob was on his feet, wondering at his motives, fascinated by the man and the books whose presence hung beyond the door. Yet he wanted to escape, to flee as if from an uncomfortable truth.

  ‘No, no,’ the old gentleman was saying, apparently recovered. ‘It’s an effort to talk, is all...’

  Jakob eyed the exit. He sat again on the couch, cup still in hand.

  ‘Not to worry, lad, we’ve managed to slow things down. Arranged for difficulties to arise. Placed obstacles. Your father, for example.’

  ‘My...’

  ‘I created him, in a manner of speaking. He was one of the first. A representative strand of my subconscious, as I have rather a sweet tooth.’

  ‘You created my father?’ Jakob was less incredulous than amused. He tucked his feet under him and leaned forward, enjoying this story. ‘What for?’

  ‘I just told you: too slow things down.’

  Jakob finished his tea. He glimpsed the girl’s features in the leaves at the bottom of the cup. ‘Did you create Outer Space?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said the man. ‘Somebody else did that.’

  ‘Thought so.’ He put the cup down on a low table. ‘I have to be leaving now. I’m expected somewhere.’

  His nameless host creaked erect, his robe loose about him as if draped over bones. Only the skull was given flesh. Skeletal hands flicked to a brass-inlaid cabinet, opened a drawer and removed a book. He held it flat against his chest a moment, a much coveted object, then, with no more ado, passed it Jakob, who accepted in silence, unable to think of anything to say.

  ‘Read it when you feel ready,’ he was instructed. ‘Think of it as a work of fiction, only true.’

  The door swung open. The shop beyond was empty of people yet thick with anticipation. He gazed upon the book, turning to the sketch and the name. It was a gift. He ran his fingers over the lettering, smelled them, a perfumed Braille.

  A Short History Of The World, by H.G. Wells.

  iii

  Rocard hadn’t believed in resurrection and was in some doubt as to the facts concerning his fatal meeting with Courtney. His eyes had been peeled open by a woman, a captain. Of Jenny there was no trace. Her young flesh was lost to him.

  The special investigator wasn’t perturbed. He served the same master. Mother was here on Oriel. This was Mother’s world and surrogate home. The company, threatened, had taken leave of old Earth, instigating, directing the rapid transmutation of an entire planet, a new Earth whose growing pains, while expected, were proving as difficult to predict as the random break up of Oriel’s quondam ceiling, the crusting and deliquescing of her former oceans. And while Rocard failed to comprehend the process responsible, the reality manifested was beyond question. The company symbolized power. That power, godlike, had transcended. The company had achieved the impossible, advanced not only the bounds of science but the definition, reinterpreting the fundamentals of nature. But there were problems. Candy was just one of many first-tier individuals into whose nascent minds had been introduced themes of self and constancy. They’d become sapient in a way that surprised Mother, fomenting an array of cause and effect perturbations; hopes, desires, ambitions out of kilter with their superficial environment. Secretly, Rocard wondered if there was not a worm in the apple. Mindful of the dangers of his position, however, he dismissed the idea, placing his trust, as always, in the greater intellect of his moral and blood superiors. Let them dance with stars, he thought. It was their vision of ascendancy. Rocard’s was a beer and a girl.

  Having forgone the comfort of his sleek limousine and walked through swelling masses to a bar, he sat with suited elbows on the mahogany counter and appraised the patrons with the aid of a long, decorative mirror. Bottles fronted it; a host of familiar labels. Overall, the detail was impressive. There were no cocktail-sticks in evidence and the gherkins were a sickly yellow, but you might pick faults with anything. It was early afternoon and the lunch crowd was thinning, leaving a skinny waitress to clear and buff tables. From her age - late teens - he guessed she was second-tier, the quickened progeny of those initial dwellers magicked from loam and sand. He toyed with the image of her accelerated growth, her fleeting childhood and pubescence. If events hadn’t slowed dramatically in the past few days she may have been dead by tomorrow afternoon, her own children fast-forwarding to middle age. The city had existed as a blur, a conglomerate of buildings without precise form, streets widening as if at an intake of breath, transport systems vague, residents, workers lacking pasts and names. With the brakes applied though, structures, lives, businesses demanded singularity in order to glue together their previously scattered parts, a degree of consistency, purpose, design, else they waver and fall. Rocard felt certain that if he sat here another hour the gherkins would darken to a ripe green and the cocktail-sticks arrive.

  Prematurely. He reckoned the captains were aiming for nothing less than 23rd Century technology, goods and services, a threshold of military aptitude necessary if they were to realize their goal of revisiting older celestial haunts, Earth included. That was the reach of Mother’s ambition. The company had yearned for a distinctly alien opponent. Ironically, they had opted to fashion one, become it themselves, crawling from one shell to another, determined next to purge and reclaim the three hundred plus worlds abandoned to whatever government rushed to fill the void.

  Did they fight among themselves? Was their function, their premise, essentially internecine? He drained his glass and banged it down. The waitress slid behind the bar, wiped her hands on her apron and quickly poured him another. He hadn’t said anything. Had he need to? Maybe Rocard had more in common with the girl than he appreciated...

  He gulped the frothy beer. He grabbed the twig-thin wrist. The waitress wasn’t Jenny, wasn’t his mould-woman, and probably lacked that girl’s resistance. But he was driven, pulling her violently over the counter, tearing at her white blouse, a wild hunger in him as he snatched at her puny breasts and throat. The bar had emptied, he knew. Unconsciously, he’d watched the last customer leave. Her cries would go unheard. Her warmth suffused him as he wrestled her narrow frame to the tiles. He yanked up her skirt, unbelted his trousers. A bag of sticks, not a person, mud and wattle, a dressed dummy, a product, a pitiful mannequin whose fear was token, the plaything beneath him shedding mock tears, choking under the weight of his braced elbow, a pretend victim he could use and toss away...

  The bullet in his brain confusing.

  iv

  They ate in silence, each cosseted with their thoughts. The meal was lamb chops and mint sauce. Overly sweet, yet Jakob made no mention. His mother and father sat either side of him at the table ends, his baby sister opposite, smeared and dribbling, a more appropriate heir to Solomon’s confectionery empire.

  Jakob’s mind was full of Greeks and Romans, his introduction to history a revelation, the previous gap in his knowledge one of many disturbing holes he dared himself peer in. Worst was thinking he might only be a few weeks old when upcoming was his 18th birthday.

  Who could he talk to? What could he say? He felt at once farther removed and closer to his parents. Their unspoken resentment of his failures was suddenly of little or no importance.

  Did he love them? Did they care?

  He dropped his fork, went
unchastised, which led him to believe he was not alone in experiencing disturbances; his mother and father and baby sister were quietly involved in their own manufactured worlds.

  So much of life went on in the background. He left the table and raced upstairs, opening the book to the page he had marked earlier.

  Minutes later, he slammed the door behind him.

  v

  Jenny erased the hurt. By morning, she knew, it would no longer be possible to so easily effect change in the Orielean mind. But that was good; as it should be. They’d stand alone, stable in time. Courtney and the others would be forced permanently underground.

  That suited Courtney. He knew the inside better than any. The captains, however, weren’t far behind.

  The pathologist’s illness was morbid, wasting. She worried that at times he lost sight of his principles and flirted with the other side.

  Luther had been charged with disposing of Rocard’s corpse.

  Eagerly, Jenny awaited her new love’s return.

  vi

  Life on Oriel was threefold. There were the offworlders, the company émigrés; there were the onworlders, the wakened indigenia; and there were the second-generation ghosts and dopplegangers whose paths and number she had most difficulty tracing, wraiths who crossed between.

  Franky Heidelberg was undecided where to