Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

experienced heightened by the minor crisis aboard ship. Rumour spread like a virus in that closed space, gossip and hearsay whose vectors had their common source in the Weekender canteen. For once the Ologists were quiet, a silence interpreted as grim indeed, the raw material for the blackest jokes. Just how close did we come? he wondered.

  Four days later he was strapped into his seat on a rickety flyer en route from Base 1 in the north to Base Central at the foot of Candy Mountain, a round trip the first leg of which began only hours after planet-fall. A peculiar momentum seemed to occupy the passengers, a nervous fidgeting that generated its own static. He felt the hairs on his arms crawl like thousands of tiny feet.

  Maybe it was sitting next to Franky. Maybe it was his imagination, or the light playing tricks. He shut his eyes and pictured a different landscape than that below. Absently, he filled and populated this realm with fantastic data. But his project remained stowed in a locker on board the Vulcana. There were easier routes to promotion, he’d decided.

  i

  There was a football match on the landing field. Schilling was in goal. Before him some forty men and women tussled for a ball improvised out of cardboard and tape, a hotchpotch of Weekenders and Runners; even an Ologist, name of Pearson, who appeared adept with either foot. She studied worms, he understood, a brief conversation the previous evening, hers a lithe shape on the arm of Ruby Joplinski. Molly, that was it, Molly who had softened Ruby’s tongue. He was grateful, but it didn’t change a thing. He still owed too much.

  Franky’s advice was simple: turn him in.

  Hubert couldn’t.

  He’d made up his mind to kill his blackmailer and was sticking by it.

  Yes...but how?

  Murder was a complicated business.

  Schilling let one in through his legs. Molly’s hat-trick.

  Opportunity presented itself in the form of an expedition to the west coast. There the cucumber-dip ocean carved long horizontal tunnels inland, baffling the survey, who wanted the features explored. Ruby, in his capacity as favoured son, was seeking volunteers. Schilling’s name appeared on the list.

  Rendezvous was five AM.

  ‘Okay, soldier, in you get.’

  Four men and four women flew as far as Brackley’s Heap, a monolith the archaeologist Brackley Osbon insisted to be an alien burial site. Standing eighty metres tall and fifteen wide, the powdery rock, little weathered, emerged from the surrounding plain like a giant phallus. One good hit with a chunk of snow, and that would be it, toppled like the tower of Pisa.

  It was rumoured he planned to carve a replica. His money was thick. His family owned much Renaissance art.

  The heap boasted a concrete landing strip. From here they would proceed by truck the remaining two hundred kilometres over increasingly rough terrain. There’d be no respite. Schilling’s discomfort was such that he jumped repeatedly on the spot, raising stares but no dust, the runway swept meticulously clean. A man half his size again, Joplinski’s subordinate, Ekland, led him aside by a sleeve.

  ‘This is just to let you know I’m watching.’

  Schilling nodded obediently. ‘Thanks.’

  Ekland seemed unsure whether or not his reply was sarcastic.

  Schilling repeated the word, adding emphasis. He fancied they were well matched.

  ‘Just to let you know,’ Ekland said.

  Included in the party was the helminthologist, Pearson.

  ‘Smoke?’

  Ekland wandered off.

  ‘Thanks,’ replied Schilling in an entirely different tone; ‘but no.’

  She lit a single cigarette, flame blue and yellow from a genuine Zippo with a naked lady on the front.

  Molly followed his gaze. ‘It was a present. I should pass it on, right?’

  He shrugged. What game was she playing?

  ‘Catch you later. I imagine Ruby wants you to unload the flyer.’

  He confirmed her guess.

  ii

  Peeking through the canvas ties of the lead truck he could see Ruby at the wheel of the vehicle behind. Molly rode alongside, her feet on the dash, knees supporting the clipboard no Ologist seemed without. Ekland drove this truck. Schilling, a cave specialist, Hong, and a surly Runner named Broon absorbed the bumps in the rear. The two other women besides the speleologist Hong were Gunn and Hradek. Vocations unknown, they travelled in the back of the second truck. The unfriendly Broon’s purpose, he supposed, was that he served to humiliate the trooper, who could be made to feel lower than the low in fashionable company hierarchical terms.

  Noon, and the sun was a smear, the world lit by chimerical beams, oddly fluorescent. It was easy to imagine you were on a movie set. The vehicle hummed and knocked. Broon drank from a flask. He licked his lips.

  ‘Two more hours,’ Hong said.

  Schilling went forward, clambering awkwardly into the cab. Ekland made no complaint. Perhaps he expected the visit.

  ‘Should be able to see the ocean from the top of this rise.’

  ‘Will it look any different?’

  ‘No.’

  Schilling grinned. ‘Stiff pea soup.’

  ‘Avocado paste face-pack.’

  ‘Turgid creme de menthe.’

  ‘Money mulch.’

  And there the ocean was. It was an effect of the planet’s crusty roof that made it appear blue from this height.

  The men sat is silence the remainder of the trip, captivated by the unexpected beauty of the sea.

  Evening, Schilling wandered alone the length and breadth of a stony beach, the rock thin and waferlike brittle to the touch. He peered into the black holes and felt a chill. There was a regular line of tunnels stretching for approximately six kilometres. They differed only in elevation, ranging from a few centimetres to twenty metres above the present shelving of practically motionless waves.

  Hong had been speechless.

  Seven had ventured inside leaving one to guard the trucks.

  Against whom?

  They’d chosen a hole at random.

  Night was colossal, despite the false proximity of the steadily flexing roof.

  Listening to canvas flap he counted stars.

  Sixty-three, although he may have counted some twice.

  Whatever it was that woke him withdrew on padded feet.

  Schilling rose, the muscles down his left side stiff.

  Dawn appeared like a broken egg, oozing softly across a frying pan sky.

  ‘Are you here alone?’ a woman asked, quiet.

  He stood in the open air. Searching her features for clues he found nothing. Only the possibility of secrets.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No - there are others.’

  ‘In the flues?’

  He thought of chimneys. Ventilation? ‘Yes,’ he answered; ‘that’s correct.’

  She smiled, sweeping back dark hair. ‘I was passing and saw your light. I’m as curious as a cat.’

  Schilling nodded. What light? It wasn’t important. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Debbie. What’s yours?’

  He told her.

  She frowned. ‘I knew a Hubert once. He died in an accident. But that was years away. What are you doing here, trooper? Do you always sleep in your uniform?’

  He scratched his head, communicating in that language both subtle and confused.

  Debbie replied, creasing her lip.

  Schilling made coffee, drinking quickly. They walked down to the beach, the tunnels solid black discs. The chosen hole was marked with a flag he was convinced had moved.

  Debbie read his face. ‘Don’t look at me.’

  ‘They hadn’t planned to stay overnight.’

  ‘You’re concerned?’ She spoke with narrowed brow, fingers against chest. ‘We’ll go in after. I’ll get my pack.’

  Before he could argue she was off, skipping up the cliff and disappearing into the waxing dawn. He took the opportunity to piss, writing his initials on the stran
d.

  A few minutes passed.

  ‘Okay. Ready?’

  She’d emerged from the shadows. The beam of her torch fractured into a crosshatch of monochromal shades as they advanced, the metres slipping behind at speed. The outside, the tunnel mouth receded to a dot and hung there, increasingly distant, like a dim bulb at the end of a corridor. The rock was bone dry and absorbed most sounds. Placing his thumb against the surface Schilling found it could be impressed, in some places easier than others. The team had no radio. Considered of no practical value, all electrical equipment had been left on the trucks.

  He felt nauseous.

  ‘Don’t be such a baby,’ scolded Debbie. Her features were smeared laterally, like cheese on a griddle.

  The corpse was unrecognizable.

  Schilling was unable to determine what sex it was. Desiccated, it could have lain for months, sapped of moisture by the encircling stone, a vessel from which to drink.

  ‘I wonder what your friends made of this?’

  ‘They should have returned...’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she remarked. ‘It all adds to the mystery. I bet they couldn’t resist going on. I know I would. It explains their change of plan.’

  He rubbed his temples. He’d lost track of his motives for being where he was. There was too much here he needed explaining, and Debbie was no help.

  Two hundred metres on was an even more unrecognizable form.

  ‘It doesn’t look human.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not.’

  The third was large enough to block the way forward.

  ‘This has to be the wrong cave,’ he stated. ‘The flag must have been moved.’

  ‘Let me see.’ Debbie held the torch close, projecting a roller-coaster of shadows through the empty body, curled in death, an inconvenient rictus. ‘We can climb through here.’ She pointed, crouched.