Armwrestling the Dead Read online

was no dangling, soporific hand. No talking. Gunther always talked in his sleep. He chatted neverendingly to a variety of characters with names like Soapy Farfriender and Knox Hog, their inaudible - to Issac - replies often provoking bouts of intoxicated laughter.

  So where was Gruman?

  Issac got up, glanced sidelong at the clock. Thirty minutes till his shift began, which meant Gunther’s ought to have finished six hours past. He pressed the talkswitch and waited.

  viii

  The trees are real; they possess a dual reality. They sway with rhythmic precision, sweeping fey wisps of glittering fog, spores frosting their limbs and beading their roots. Between limb and root there is no difference. Clouds drift through this forest, a sojourning of happy souls upon the breeze. The spores attach themselves like pollen grains to the legs and wings of gaseous insects. Branches fan the cyclic procession, casting eddies, trawling for the shapeless forms, the living nebulae that dance in passing, headed nowhere, like deaf, blind, aerial worms. They fish out revellers whose costumes shimmer and toss them back. And dance themselves in turn. Until newer currents scythe the wispy trunks, seeding the quiet milieu with a loud disorder, crushing the patterns and impressing the forest with exterior meanings, crude predatorial devices that bring a rapid, ugly decay.

  They are slaughtered, the Orieleans...

  The yawbus Vulcana 6. Locked inside his head, young Mason sketched its passage, troubled by waves of consciousness that swept over him like a salt-laden wind, nibbling at his flesh. Sweat glued the sleeves and leggings of his hockey gear to his limbs. The compartment into which he’d sneaked rang with the echo of distant battery-fed motors. Like a cramped berth on some ancient steamboat, the engine’s note rattling china in the adjoining galley while exhaust fumes pumped from the twin stacks above.

  ‘What the fuck! Mason?’

  ‘Did I wake you, Franky? Sorry.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? Mason, what are you doing here? I just got to sleep.’

  ‘I needed to talk. I couldn’t think of anyone else. I was going to wait; just sit here, you know...’

  She rubbed her eyes, bewildered. ‘No, I don’t know.’ The boy sat with his arms round his knees on the chair he’d dragged clear of her desk. He looked pathetic. ‘Okay, talk.’

  ‘You won’t laugh?’ He sounded strange, desperate. ‘Promise.’

  ‘Mason, say what you came to say. I won’t laugh.’ And leave, Franky added. Her head throbbed. She avoided the clock’s luminous gaze, afraid of what it might read. After a double stint in the Weekender canteen rest was all she cared to think about.

  Mason shuffled, silhouetted against the blank cabin wall, dark and edgy in the wan light off the console, its numerals yellow and turquoise.

  He was wearing his hockey suit, she realized.

  ‘Mason?’

  ‘It’s me, Franky. Listen, we can’t land on Oriel. There are living things there and we’re killing them. We have to turn the ship around before it’s too late. The planet has to be evacuated.’

  ‘Mason, I’m tired. What are you talking about?’

  ‘Alien life,’ he said.

  Franky giggled. ‘Aliens? Come on, where’ve you been? You spend too much time wired into that screen for your own good.’ She sat up, hugging the cover. ‘Have you been drinking? No, no - you don’t, I forgot. Been talking to some drunken Ologist then? And what’s with the hockey...shit!’ Her head struck the pillow and her lungs emptied, a stream of warm air from her nostrils as his left hand clamped tightly over her mouth, his right balled in a shaky fist above, hovering menacingly between Mason’s shadowed expression and the mellow blue ceiling.

  ‘You have to listen,’ he said. ‘There isn’t time. You have to listen. You’re the only one, Franky, the only one I can trust.’

  He took his hand from her mouth.

  A heavy tear, oddly dense, as if muddled, splashed on her reddened chin and slid languidly round her throat to the mattress beneath.

  She steadied her breathing. ‘Hey, Mason, don’t cry. I’m listening, okay? Whatever you want to tell me.’

  ‘I’ve seen them,’ he confided, hands finding the thick gloves joined by a string about his neck. ‘I’ve seen their many faces, Franky, and they’re beautiful.’

  She waited for him to continue, her heart slowing in her chest, but he was silent, straddling her, a big silver 59, padded and immovable, his hair lank and greasy, glued to his skull as if by oil, or sweat. She glanced toward the door’s lit outline. His stick leant against it, his helmet on the floor, stuffed with rolls of printout.

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ she said.

  The grip of his knees loosened. He relaxed. Avoiding her eyes he moved away, slid off the cot and retreated to his previous position on the chair.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, mumbling. ‘I didn’t mean...I’m sorry...’ He seemed embarrassed. ‘I’ve been busy, Franky. All the screens in my section died, you know? Some fluctuation thing...more...’

  ‘Strange shit happening?’

  ‘Yeah. And my project...’ He was smiling now. ‘It’s here, the bones of it at least. I thought you might read it and tell me what you think.’

  Franky was speechless. The project, as he called it, was Mason’s big thing. She didn’t even know what it was about. Probably no-one other than Mason did. And he wanted her, Franky Heidelberg, Runner, canteen assistant, sometime croupier and dance instructor, to read it, offer an actual opinion?

  ‘Eh, Mason, I’m honoured.’

  His smile vanished. He got to his feet, crossed to the door. Using his hockey stick young Mason then carefully guided the paper-stuffed helmet over toward Franky, a look of pure concentration warping his dim, hardened features.

  ‘That’s it?’ she asked. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

  It wasn’t intended as criticism, and she couldn’t be sure he took it as such, but Mason, eyes part closed, crouching, slipped from the room without another word.

  Franky stared disbelievingly at the helmet, frightened to move, scared not to. The way he’d treated it, the latex and plastic. The way he’d pushed it over, she thought, as if it was something precious, or terrible. She started to shake, a meek trembling that annoyed her. She stared at the helmet, which stared back, challenging her to examine its contents, those masses of curious folds...

  ix

  ‘They had no choice,’ Issac said, ‘is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘There was nothing else for it,’ she said. ‘You know how it is; the duct had become unstable.’

  The air moved delicately, stroking his chin as somewhere a door opened or closed. Like a pubic beard, he couldn’t help thinking.

  ‘Hey, Issac, it’s not like you were friends...’

  He shook his head. ‘Friends?’

  The shift supervisor refilled their cups. They sat in the Weekender canteen drinking rich dark coffee.

  ‘I’ll miss old Gunther.’

  ‘Old? He was twenty years your junior.’

  Issac cracked his knuckles.

  ‘What are you worried about? I thought he drove you crazy. Hadn't you requested another billet or something?’

  He had to laugh at that. ‘I needed some sleep. They used to keep me awake, uncle Gunther’s bedtime stories.’

  ‘Well, you got your wish...’

  Yes. The decision had been taken to void the duct. Like the super said, there was nothing else for it. It was strange though, this feeling he had.

  The storekeep, Vector Dud, stirred at the fringe of his introspection, beckoning with the promise of overtime.

  A joke, he thought, surely.

  ‘Looks like there’s work to do.’

  ‘They have to be kidding.’

  ‘Come on, Issac, you can mope later. Didn’t you catch the signal?’

  Yes, his wrist was tickling.

  three - bow
wave

  Schilling was in trouble. Ruby was after him. Ruby was the Weekender he’d bought his promotion off - illegally.

  Franky didn’t know that.

  She sat next to him on a hard bench overlooking the mess in section nine, watching the soldiers below, commenting on their movements between the tables, shrouded in conversation and casting reflexive glances at the large mechanical clock suspended over the entrance. Like a station, she mused, everybody milling around, checking tickets and luggage and platforms.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be down there, eating?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ he replied. ‘Besides, I’m still officially quarantined.’

  ‘The bow wave?’

  ‘Exactly. How many deaths now, seven?’

  ‘Nine. Two more yesterday.’

  ‘What about this morning?’

  ‘I haven’t been to the infirmary,’ she admitted.

  Schilling’s eyes widened. ‘I thought you went every day, to see your friend Mason...’

  ‘Yeah; I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’s okay,’ Franky said dismissively. ‘What about you?’

  Her face was blank, strangely vacant. ‘I need a friend, is all,’ he said, wondering if he could trust that expression. Was she listening? Would she be interested? This was hard enough already...but this was Franky, if he couldn’t talk to her who could he talk to?

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Nothing, I...’

  ‘Go on, Hubert. What’s on your mind?’

  He told her.

  She blanched further.

  ‘Well?’

  He looked hopeful. She hated to spoil it. ‘Hubert,’ she began, ‘you have to turn him in.’

  ‘He’d kill me.’

  ‘They wouldn’t let him near you.’

  ‘Right - I’d be locked up.’ He stood, leaned on the rail. Below, the mess had emptied. The giant clock could be heard, a stoic witness.

  ‘Well you can’t go on letting him bleed you dry.’

  ‘You think it’s just me? Franky, half the Weekender posts are filled illegitimately!’

  ‘Okay. Calm down.’ She shuffled on the bench, not knowing what to say, having enough problems of her own: a sense of guilt, of failing Mason, of denying him the assurance of her understanding, her appreciation of the existence of life on this bleakest of worlds. ‘You should have seen it coming.’

  He frowned. Self-mocking? ‘Sure, it’s easy to say that now. But it changes nothing. This goes higher than Ruby - you realize that?’

  Franky nodded.

  ‘The fact remains,’ Schilling continued. ‘He’s got me over a barrel. What would you do?’

  ‘Expose him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know, Hubert. Set him up somehow. We can think of something.’

  That pleased him, that we. That was uplifting. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘How about tonight?’

  Franky shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  He waved his hands resignedly. ‘No moves; business. I’ll meet you in the caverns. You know Zinger?’

  ‘I know Zinger.’

  ‘Good. Twenty-hundred. I’ll be cleared by then. It’s all routine, low risk stuff.’ And he was off, a bounce in his stride as he headed back to his unit.

  i

  Franky Heidelberg, thought young Mason, standing over my bed like an angel, in khaki.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘What day is it?’ There were no days where he was, but he remained curious.

  ‘Thursday local.’

  ‘Oriel...’

  She glanced aside momentarily. ‘How are you feeling? I see you got your stick back.’

  ‘It was in my locker,’ he explained. ‘I’d only misplaced it. It wasn’t stolen.’

  ‘You look better.’

  He yawned.

  ‘Sleepy? I can come another time.’

  Itching to get away? ‘The stuff they feed me,’ Mason told her, craning his neck. ‘Sedatives. Blinders. The whole trolley.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Franky said. There were tears in her eyes, tiny glistening baubles. ‘I’ve wanted to tell you, Mason; you have to believe that. It’s just hard keeping it in some sort of perspective. What you sprang on me; your project. That was pretty heavy material, eh?’ A form of resigned laughter leaked from her mouth in the wake of the words, as if held at back by the combined weights of doubt and uncertainty, now lifted.

  ‘You read it.’

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t tell you earlier...’

  Young Mason closed his eyes and saw her through the lenses of countless nebulous bodies, jumbled shapes crowding the space between them, turning in the sterile light. Faces juxtaposed with his own and Franky’s. And hers was talking, sighing. She’d come to comfort him. But he was already dead.

  ii

  She didn’t turn the light on. Her visitor shifted nervously in the dark.

  She folded her arms and tapped her foot.

  His voice was soft, out of breath. ‘You knew I was here,’ he stated. ‘Can you see in the dark?’

  She wondered about that, too.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or why I’m here?’

  ‘I can guess...’

  There was a smile, an audible breath, air squeezed from nostrils as facial muscles clenched. ‘I’m no criminal, Runner Heidelberg. However this might appear, I’m here for no violent purpose.’

  She didn’t care for his slowness. There was unnatural effort to his speech, like he were unused to it, out of practice. He’d been waiting, a fact which should have frightened her, as only herself and her roomy Zonda had keys. But it didn’t.

  She was curious.

  iii

  If ever a Weekender had influence it was Ruby Joplinski. Schilling had no idea who his backers were, but they countenanced his petty tyrannies so their ends must have been served. Schilling’s impotence in the face of what was happening was obvious. Franky not keeping their date hadn’t improved his mood; yet publicly insulting Ruby had been a mistake of his own design. Somehow irresistible. Guard duty at the mine was about as low as he could go and still retain his much coveted Weekender tag. And the Runners, he knew, the Runners would give him shit.

  Packing was easy as most of his personal belongings were still on the bus. He had a few clothes, a toothbrush, a flatpack with the label missing (maybe liquorice, maybe shoelaces), his backgammon set and the usual papers in a string-pull bag. That was it: his three kilos. Once more he deliberated over contacting Franky. All his previous attempts had failed, her room-mate Zonda repeating some half-baked excuse regarding Mason.

  ‘Ah, come on, Zonda, don’t give me that. Put her on if she’s there. I need to talk to her.’ He couldn’t understand why she was upset with him. He was the one having problems, and those problems had worsened dramatically. Zonda’s reticence wasn’t helping.

  ‘Hubert, she’s out, she’s busy - I don’t know. I’m sorry you’re leaving Central, but I can’t help the way she is right now...’

  He pressed his forehead against the booth wall. He didn’t have all day.

  ‘Tell her thanks, Zon. I appreciate it. I’ll send her a postcard.’

  ‘Hubert!’

  Schilling felt bitter. He’d get a haircut, he decided. He had a few minutes. Leaving the Weekender district he walked directly topside, the open air busy with mountain games and side-shows. There was a barber’s pitch at the summit, he recalled, from there a short glide down to the field and its wing to wing transports. He’d noted the barber’s pole on the overflight four days ago. Oriel days, they slotted together too closely. The red and white striped pole was a fitting symbol, rising five metres from the northern continent’s highest point, the mountain some Ologist had dubbed Candy, its mass gutted and reinforced, the base at its foot manufactured largely from its harvested core, blocks hardened to a d
usty cement finish by the liberal application of offworld bacteria. Paint cans still littered the greensward. Schilling laughed to himself. We bring everything, he thought, ourselves and our lawns and our garbage and our false colours. The base didn’t need to be that rusty orange to stand out, it only needed its clumsy angles. And the grass? Its green was turquoise from a height, unlike the true green of the stiff ocean beyond the creams and yellows in the sky-grey louring distance. Only shadows were immune to human interference, it seemed; the roof grille dictated those.

  The leather of the barber’s chair creaked under him. The barber, a Weekender with a moustache and bars on his shoulder, turned his face into the wan sun.

  ‘Looks like snow.’

  Schilling folded his arms impatiently. ‘Short,’ he said.

  It never rained on Oriel. Gases leaked into the atmosphere and came down as chunks.

  ‘You’re the third cue-ball this morning,’ the barber remarked.

  Schilling was quiet. The razor hummed. He arched out of the chair and paid.

  ‘Hey, no tip?’

  Their eyes locked.

  ‘Okay, muscles, have it your own way.’

  It wasn’t all gases, he knew, heavier particles rose in magnetic vortices from the poles. ‘Does the name Joplinski mean anything to you?’

  ‘Ruby Joplinski? Sure, everybody knows Ruby...’

  ‘Could you get a message to him?’

  The barber scraped a nail between his front teeth. ‘Excuse me, sir, but I’ve another customer.’

  Schilling though, wouldn’t be dissuaded. ‘I want him to know he hasn’t seen the last of me,’ he shouted, drawing glances. ‘That I don’t give a fuck and I’ll be back.’

  Many eyes turned away. He might as well have been alone on the mountain. He was, after a fashion; alone with his foolish bravado. His threats blew on the wind, unanswered. It was downhill. Steeper by the second. He might as well have taken on the company, as this was a company world, Ruby a company flunky. Weekenders in the glider queue stepped aside, suddenly remembering other duties, leaving his way free. He didn’t flatter himself by imagining they were scared of him. No, when you invoke the devil people naturally give you a wide berth. Still, he felt invincible the thirty seconds it took to reach the field and its rusty concrete.

  Racking the glider he glanced across the fissured wall that was Candy, the barber’s pole pin-high at its summit. There were multihued awnings, pitched tents, gaudy umbrellas like cake decorations. It needed only someone to light the candle.

  Head shaking Schilling turned his back on the vision. He checked his flight with the field controller, located the plane and sat watching as it was loaded.

  He’d been stupid, he realized. Again, belatedly.

  He came from a long line of seafarers. His ancestors had navigated oceans. But Schilling was no sailor. Schilling was a company trooper, schooled in attack and defence, attuned to superiors, a follower of orders and a non-complainer. Yet, for as long as he could remember there had been a nascent ambition, its seed frozen in his heart, nagging him through dreams, straining against the inertia of his twenty-five years, a quarter century of discipline he hated but could not escape, which provided his sole frame of reference. His mother had sold him to the company as a baby. Of his father he knew only that there had been salt in his bones. And he yearned for that freedom. As a Runner he’d lacked true stature; was no-one, a boot-wipe. As a Weekender there was the reality of promotion, a future. Ruby