Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

are mapped out. But it needn’t be so. There is much I for one can offer. So many alternatives. Lives, Ivan, lives that are to be lived; not one like of old, but a great branching tree of existences. And for such a small price.’

  With that he left, leaving a hollowness in his wake that had always been there, an emptiness in Ivan’s chest he’d done his best to ignore.

  On the screen the picture had changed to reveal a fiery red sunset.

  Harry appeared, wiped his brow and spread his palms in a gesture of resignation. ‘I don’t give a fuck,’ he stated. ‘Okay? I just don’t give a fuck.’

  Zonda followed, glowing. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it was tough, but I managed it. What do you think?’

  She was purple.

  Ivan didn’t believe in fate and neither did Harry. Issac Waters and Daniel, the latter wearing a tutu and the former a ball-gown much too small for him, entered the cabin next.

  Only his partner looked embarrassed.

  ‘I think it’s time we got serious,’ he told them.

  Schroeder nodded. ‘That’s a relief.’

  ‘So,’ continued Ivan, putting the hand-held aside. ‘Who wants to be first?’

  iii

  Schilling peered up at a lightless sky. He stood on the edge of a massive crater that stretched to the horizon and beyond. It was cold. Invisible snow fell, freezing his worn cheeks. Whether by such negative illumination or other means, everything was laid open to him. The world was created, had been created, would be created again, and his place in it, however tenuous, was sound.

  We invent out own dreams, he reflected.

  He began his descent thinking of Ekland, of their many adventures, of those to come. Recalling the sand-packed city and the dusty arena he wondered if it were past or future over which his memory stalked.

  Placing feet, entering darkness, he tried to block the totality from his mind and concentrate on certain facts, needs and objectives. There was no way round the crater. It was too big. Any detour would simply cancel his direction, his road south turned east or west. There was no choice but to venture in and down.

  Rubbing the palms of his hands together generated heat, but also soreness, reminding his palms of an axe. Schilling had murdered with it, abandoned it...yet might they be reunited, rejoined like the issue and their severed heads? Like Schilling and Franky, he dared hope. The path he followed proved less steep than he’d imagined, falling away from him gently. He walked deeper and deeper, refusing the children of sleep who dogged his heels, hanging about his ankles like chains. The morning sun explored his features. The air was dewy, turgid, distorting perspective. Having walked all night it was impossible to gauge how far he’d descended. The crater wall rose behind him like a mountain. More weary than exhausted, he paused to drink. The wintry environment at the crater’s lip had softened and food appeared plentiful, both mobile and static. Water flowed like translucent blood over rocks. Sunlight jewelled the languid surface while magnifying the stream’s bottom to reveal curious fish, and speckled pebbles like birds’ eggs. He ate handfuls of succulent fruit, swallowed rodents live and whole, washing them down with spring-water. Such a diet, while horrific to an older, more fastidious self, made him grin like a badly behaved child. His stomach was happy at least.

  ‘Are you ready to listen, Runner Schilling?’

  Demoted? The burly trooper felt sick.

  ‘You’re so gullible,’ Ruby said.

  Hubert stared at the fluorescent strip in the ceiling, its bleaching white light.

  ‘And you’ve missed a payment,’ his tormentor, the man he’d bought his promotion off, added. ‘That’s not good. You know better than that.’

  He did?

  ‘Open your ears, Schilling, there might be music.’

  He gritted his teeth. His whole body ached.

  Hangover?

  Had he seen Franky last night?

  God, what had he done...

  Joplinski was obscured behind a wall of plants. ‘There might be laughter. There might be life. But take this into consideration: for every life you can imagine there are any number of deaths.’

  Schilling rolled to one side and puked.

  ‘Enjoy.’ Ruby left.

  He dozed a while, hoping it was a dream, but eventually the stink of his own vomit forced him out of bed.

  He showered and dressed without cleaning it up.

  Punching coffee from the wall, tamping the shaving cuts on his face, he strolled the infinite corridors, the exits always too far off. After frustrated minutes he made it outside, a fresh breeze stinging sore cheeks, sore throat, sore head. Candy Mountain hunkered beneath him like a weightlifter in squat, meaning to rise yet in acute danger of collapse. The uneasy feeling emanated from wobbly knees. He decided on a haircut. But wait a minute, didn’t he have a haircut yesterday? His skull was less than smooth, not quite rough. Ascending, men and women in company uniform ran about flying kites, wings that in the bright air offered facets, constructing a fractured rainbow...

  The barber’s chair was empty.

  GONE TO LUNCH, a sign read.

  There was a woman at the summit he at first mistook for Franky Heidelberg. They had the same dark hair and eyes. He staggered and pressed his temples.

  ‘You can see the world from here,’ she said.

  Schilling gazed outward. ‘Enough of it.’

  The woman turned to regard him. ‘You sound bitter.’

  ‘I feel terrible.’

  She smiled. ‘Serves you right.’

  He nodded agreement, although his memory was blank.

  There was a moment’s silence, then she asked, ‘What do you make of it? The planet, I mean.’

  ‘The planet?’ Schilling was baffled. He elected to take the question at face value. ‘I...’ He was going to say he hated it, only the words stuck in his throat.

  Her gaze again, quizzical.

  He shrugged.

  ‘You’re indifferent. That’s unusual.’

  ‘No,’ he said; ‘not indifferent. It’s just...’ Once more his sentence failed.

  ‘Yes?’

  He moved to stand next to her, to see the world as she saw it, brash Oriel.

  ‘It has potential.’

  ‘More than that.’

  ‘Okay. It has promise.’

  ‘Promise. How do you mean?’

  ‘There are raw materials here,’ he commented, the hesitation gone from his voice. ‘Possibilities for human development. I see an indigenous industrial base.’

  ‘Manufacturing what?’

  He paused deliberately. Then, ‘Wealth.’

  The woman put her arms round his neck. As they kissed his sensed her vulnerability, her tenuous grip. Such an embrace offered a choice. He could thwart her, crush her, or he could ally himself to her, become one with her and raise her up.

  Schilling hurt.

  Hurting spoke.

  iv

  The Ologists sat in a tight group and swapped stories, told dirty jokes. Zonda, leaning over the fryer, popped her gum. She couldn’t decide whether to encourage or reject the sexual advances of Pete Trebinek.

  This was the least of her problems as time went by.

  What happened next? Such thoughts careered through her mind as she watched the receding whalelike bulk of the submarine.

  How could it float?

  Ah, Zon, cut it out! Stamping her foot helped. It made a vague splash in the sand, raising eyebrows among her fellow castaways, each of whom, in contemplative mood, looked to her for an explanation they’d gladly miss.

  Zonda obliged, saying nothing.

  They’d taken a vote.

  The robot had disappeared.

  Seymour Niaan, with untypical zest, had enlightened them to its nature, even going so far as to reveal its moniker, its true company zenith-occupying epithet.

  Imar Madruk. Desperate Dan. You had to laugh. They were all fools. Of course Zonda had heard of neither, but smi
rked anyway. She’d seen more than her fair share of wizardry.

  Issac wasn’t impressed.

  Harry and Ivan exchanged whispers that annoyed her, leaning together like thinkers not doers.

  Zonda MacIntyre wanted action.

  ‘This is a circus!’

  Issac laughed.

  ‘I don’t believe this!’

  ‘What don’t you believe,’ Ivan chipped in, straight-backed, his side of the secret dialogue satisfactorily concluded. It was a moment before Harry righted himself too, distracted as he was by fitful smoke.

  Zonda crossed her arms. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We go our separate ways.’ And nodding sarcastically, ‘Backward...’

  ‘So the man tells us,’ confirmed Harry.

  ‘Then?’ She refused the obvious.

  Harry hunched his shoulders. ‘For me and Ivan, another beach, quite different to this one; gunshot wounds to the head. What was yours again?’

  Zonda capitulated. ‘Smothered with a pillow.’

  They were all murdered.

  But who was to blame?

  As an excuse for existence, for coming into being, it was peculiar, if adequate.

  It happened - or so they’d learned, in conversations private and public, on shores stranger than this, in restricted spaces and on open seas. The pain was easily washed away. The knowledge, unacceptable as it was, fundamentally flawed, might be negotiated by the least mentally adroit. It happened, yes, but it was too big to explain.

  You had to be yourself, Zonda realized. You had to fit your clothes, or change your wardrobe. No pretending otherwise; Oriel was a world of themes.

  The detectives, feigning apology, sloped toward their wheels magically parked nearby.

  Issac waded into the sea.

  Not a backward glance from him.

  And Zonda?

  And...

  Fuck this. Fuck Pete? Not a second time. Death was an appointment