Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

‘What do you suppose that means?’

  ‘Quarter lights,’ instructed Purvis, advancing toward the string.

  The others watched.

  He touched it, pulled back, touched it again, firmer this time. The thread warped as if elasticated. Purvis smiled, bending the fluid round his hand, rolling it between his fingers. It was a crystal green, the colour of fairytale waterfalls.

  Oreo joined him while Holy circled.

  ‘Feel.’

  His companion tugged the glowing strand, twisting it, gazing at the tight stream so obviously falling from the top of the dome.

  ‘What temperature would you say that is?’

  Oreo let go. The thread wobbled straight.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Body temperature,’ he conceded.

  Purvis slapped him on the shoulder.

  v

  ‘Sir...’

  ‘What is it, Curtis?’

  ‘Two of my brothers, sir; with the maintenance triangle.’

  He nodded, waved the mould-man away. They had made good time, he thought. He’d chosen well, Runners nobody would miss. None of his own people had been able to get anywhere near the blockage. He was not sure he wanted them to. Profit did not come from loss.

  Then again...

  Returning to the surface via the space wagon Niaan drove recklessly, the replacement vehicle’s containment field swinging like a water filled balloon. The sun rose stealthily, prizing open the sky, long claws of bloody radiance to tickle the grumbling steel clouds. Daybreak, and yet no time had seemed to pass. Stasis ruled the lodes, the carbon seams of biotic putty he would later mine, the raw stuff of life. It was a characteristic of the planet’s magnetic contrariness, this temporal flow, a freezing of moments into one long sigh, looping circuits of electricity in the mind. Here water did not exist as water, but as hydrogen and oxygen, constituents which failed to bind.

  After two days of searching Niaan was ready to quit. He could not trust the indicators. There were numerous trails; only one might be true. He pulled on a spacesuit intended for medical use and went out on foot, squeezing through the screen barrier with a tip of his guts and breathing unfiltered air. The metal atmosphere was harmless in itself. He hoped the suit would offer some protection from lightning strikes and the unknown. He risked his life, a fact which struck him as bizarre, a foolhardy rescue on a fool’s world.

  The rocks were mostly smooth, as if poured, their molten shapes long since fixed and with no rain to wear them down. Leaving the truck made it possible to explore the intimate places, the dents and niches whose interior shadows were destroyed by the wide beam from his helmet, slipping back to conceal their mystery as he passed. Lobo adopted a different aspect up close. Revealed were details previously unseen, pores and crevices, the crust resembling skin painted with a thick coat of tar. Here and there were ruptures, flues like craters in reverse, glassy chimneys out of whose raised mouths gases streamed, charged particles rising in prelude to the witnessed explosions. Was there a pattern to their distribution? Had Genie fallen? It was ludicrous but he wanted to climb in and down, to lower himself to some invisible floor.

  vi

  The duct wound on, a metre wide, an indented tube. It narrowed in places as if stretched lengthways, widened in others like a funnel, becoming increasingly mazy in its turns. The map didn’t indicate any drop in level, but the subsection rose and fell at random, discrepancies not accounted for by displaced strata, intricate staircases that contradicted the proximity of the blockage. The maintenance triangle were forced back on themselves, the enclosed space muffling, the duct separated from itself by thin walls of black rock, dry and dustless. It was on one such staircase Holy stumbled. Purvis froze in surprise. Oreo cried out, his voice lost in the sudden gloom as the robot’s lights dimmed and he clattered down. But the gaffer quickly came round, silencing Oreo as he went to the machine’s aid, flexing its limbs and testing its joints in a buzz of confused reflexes. Holy appeared baffled, his face delineated by the soft luminescence of their surrounds, the metallic glow Purvis thought artificial, as if sprayed on, applied in the form of a lubricant during excavation, an archaeology whose practice circumvented death.

  Living beings were hewn from these veins. Yet how were they alive, and in whose image? He had seen only the male derivative, but understood the female to be the mainstay of this peculiar enterprise. And nine-tenths of what he did know was hearsay and supposition.

  ‘Myth,’ Purvis whispered.

  ‘How’s that?’ queried Oreo, beside him.

  ‘Myth,’ he repeated. Standing, his head brushed the ceiling. ‘I was thinking out loud,’ he added. Then, ‘System system.’

  No response.

  Oreo gulped stupidly. ‘Is he dead? What’s the problem? He just collapsed...’

  ‘Yes,’ the gaffer acknowledged. ‘I saw - or rather didn’t see. There’s nothing you or me can do about it.’

  ‘What? He looked from one to the other, from robot to man. ‘What are you saying? Are you crazy?’

  ‘System system, Holy. Answer.’

  Inactive.

  ‘Maybe this was one pipe too many.’ Oreo hunted around in his pockets for a cigar, knowing he couldn’t smoke but needing to fidget. ‘Maybe we ought to get out of here, off this world.’

  ‘Negative.’

  ‘Holy?’

  ‘System...negative.’

  Purvis and Oreo crouched.

  ‘What happened?’ questioned the gaffer.

  ‘Blood clot,’ the machine said, grinning. ‘Highly ironic.’ He blinked slowly. ‘The metal god has a sense of humour after all.’

  ‘Can you get to your feet? Walk?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you move at all?’

  ‘My left arm.’ He raised it. ‘Speech centres seem okay. Vision limited.’

  ‘Oh, great,’ mumbled Oreo.

  ‘May I suggest you continue without me. It appears our host was correct in predicting breakdowns. Unscrew the arm; it may prove useful. You can come back for me later.’

  Oreo shook his head.

  Purvis, however, was in agreement.

  Oreo coughed, spitting crystal green phlegm balls.

  Purvis continued alone.

  Never let it be said he dumped a commission.

  02.01

  He’d stared at the colour for maybe five minutes before realizing it was crimson. The duct had ended, the blockage an innocent plug of fabric.

  Strange how such mundane items could choke the workings of a planet.

  Like a speck of sand trapped in the gears of a finely wrought clock, this simple obstruction exerted an influence far outweighing its mass. He tried to imagine what would happen when he cleared the subsection by releasing the puckered sphincter. The walls had seized on the object, closing round it. Did they offer antipathy or protection? He fixed a grip, three arms extended, eyes wide as they drank of the dimness.

  The fabric tore. Predictable. He would have to dig it out.

  Lying on his belly, the light from Holy’s limb illuminating, he noticed something he had missed before, the gleaming heel of a shoe.

  Removing the shoe he noted the paleness of toes and saw the easy curve of a heel. He anticipated a sense of profound shock on discovering the flesh to be warm, which it was. But he felt listless and cold, twisting onto his back in an effort to gauge the extent of visible calf.

  It was a gown she was wearing. He grabbed her delicate ankle and pulled.

  vii

  Niaan waited the hour it took Curtis to confirm the news in his favourite Queen Anne chair.

  Dozing, he imagined the footsteps ticking to be Genie’s high-heels.

  But he’d lost her years ago.

  And now?

  On Lobo...

  Business as usual: six or seven dark-haired incarnations a week, a workforce sufficiently dumb to be cowed, a personal fortune, an executive position and the power to subvert life that he m
ight throw it away.

  Afraid, in truth, of loving the bitch, of finding that love intact. Afraid of the plumbers’ success.

  twenty - in extremis

  Saturn turned like a diseased orange. Uplifted on dizzy plumes, surfing majestically the gas giant’s perfidious atmosphere, was the governor’s castle.

  Woken from a dream of alternatives, a thick residue of ideas swam in front of Irving Courtney’s eyes as he peered at the flat ceiling. His wife was gone from his side. Gone to check on their son, he supposed, the boy only recently recovered.

  The governor would have liked to have slept longer, but it was impossible. Today saw the arrival of the first of his guests, his rival, Markus Lydon.

  And trouble.

  The ceiling was bare, undecorated. Images swirled outside the blur of his lashes. As he watched the shapes grew more complicated, more organized, complex designs interrelating like a society of overlapping individuals, creatures of light and liquid: their homes themselves, themselves their neighbours. There were floating platforms and barges filled with cheerful passengers watched by cheerful passers-by, illuminating the paths they constituted. They talked, words drifting between parties, a piece of one becoming a piece of another, an exchange of gossip and organs...

  ‘Hey - time to get up,’ said Cleo.

  He rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Breakfast in ten minutes,’ added his wife, smiling with just the corners of her mouth.

  He rubbed his head. ‘Don’t wait.’

  She sailed away.

  Lydon’s elaborate shuttle docked shortly before noon. He boomed after his silent fashion, quietly intimidating the staff prior to his reception. They were the same age, yet somehow Lydon contrived