by Sam Smith
My unspoken question was almost answered by the entrance of another of the crew to the canteen. By way of a greeting he said,
"They still making the most of the cargo?" To which another of the crew tiredly nodded. That left me wondering to the nature of the cargo — drink? drugs? No further enlightenment came my way; and I wondered at the function of the crew, for none seemed particularly qualified, nor indeed capable of anything other than obscenities and brutality. From what I had seen, the ship had a more than adequate complement of minders, valets and domestics; so of what use were the crew?
No sooner had I put the last spoonful of breakfast in my mouth than Zapper said that we were leaving. I followed him to the forward lower part of the ship. He opened a door, said,
"Fix that."
It was a large gun enclosed in a transparent sphere. The barrel penetrated the sphere on the outside; on the inside was a door. Zapper opened the door. I hesitated before entering,
"I know nothing about guns.”
“The gun works well enough," Zapper said. Did I, I wondered, detect a certain bitterness in his allusion to the gun? "It's the mounting that's stuck in the same position."
“Even so,” I said, “I've not come across a set up like this before. This isn't the only gun is it? Can I see how another one works? Give me some idea.”
Zapper studied me suspiciously,
"No tricks boy. I don't want to have to kill you."
"Do you want the gun fixed or not?"
He looked hard at my impertinent response; then, without a word, turned and led me across the ship to its only other gun. Opening the door of the sphere he gestured me to enter.
"I don't know how it works," I said, "You show me."
He studied me again, made a decision, and, bending his tall frame almost double, he climbed through the sphere's door, shutting it after him. Sitting in the seat behind the gun he donned the headphones, spoke into the mike; then, listening, nodded.
I had expected the whole sphere to move. Instead, when Zapper released the brake, it was the seat and the gun which moved inside the sphere. By leaning to one side or the other, and, by pressing on the pedals, the seat and the gun moved around within the sphere.
Having completely revolved around the interior Zapper looked to me. I nodded. He spoke once more into the mike before removing the headphones; then, putting the brake on, he clambered out of the seat and back through the door.
"See how it works?” he asked me. I told him that I had expected the sphere to move, asked him why, if it was only the end of the barrel that moved, it was necessary to enclose the gun within a sphere.
"So if the gun's hit," Zapper said, "the blast goes out from the ship and not into it." Such considerations had not entered my technical training.
Back at the jammed gun I entered the sphere and sat on the seat. On either side of the barrel were two screens, which I assumed would display images relayed from the command room when the gun was in action.
Sitting there I realised that this jammed gun had been responsible for saving our lives. Boss must have waited until he had seen the smoke from Malamud’s clifftop fire before he had blasted the shuttle. If both guns had been working he would have blasted our cave and the shuttle at one and the same time. The delay, while the ship had gained height so that the gunner could see the new target, had given us the chance to retreat into the caves towards the sanctuary. Luck.
I wondered if by leaving this gun jammed I could save other lives; or would I, by failing to repair it, merely forfeit my own life.
Zapper opened the door behind me, "What's the matter?"
"Just getting the feel of it," I said. And I realised that I had no option: for the theoretical possibility of saving another life, I should give up my own?
I released the brake. Nothing happened. Despite rocking myself back and forth and from side to side the mounting remained stuck fast.
Climbing off the seat, I got on my hands and knees to examine the workings. First I checked that the brake was indeed disengaged. It was. The rest of the device was a simple but ingenious system of counterbalanced pulleys and cables, all finely pivoted about a central point of inertia.
I stood and opened the door.
"I'm going to have to go back and look at the other one," I told Zapper. “This is really the province of an engineer."
"Can it be fixed?"
"There is no problem," I quoted Dag, "that cannot be solved."
For the first time I saw a smile alight on Zapper's bleak features. It made him immediately approachable. I did not, however, press home my advantage by asking any questions, merely proceeded ahead of him to the other gun. For, in that moment, I saw that, if I was to escape, I would need to establish a modicum of trust between us.
That was one of many trips I made between the two guns that morning. Zapper even once left me within the sphere of the working gun while he went to fetch paper and pen — in order that I could make sketches to compare with the jammed gun. Though I doubted that the working gun was at that moment capable of being fired — Zapper having earlier spoken to the command room — but trust of a sort was being established between us
At lunchtime in the canteen there were twelve crewmen. Again, from a distance, they taunted me. Again Zapper ignored them.
In the afternoon I noticed that the ship was slowing. I also discovered the fault, showed it to Zapper. A spring had broken and the pulley attached to it had recoiled. The gun being balanced solely by tension, pulleys had consequently ensnared one another, the fault having been further compounded by someone having attempted to free it by brute force. A minder would not have room to work inside the sphere: any repairs, therefore, would have to be made manually. The ship had, by this time, almost come to a standstill.
From the stores Zapper and I collected a new spring and the tools we would need to fit it; and, following my sketches, I began disentangling the pulleys. The gun seat was hanging lopsidedly within the sphere when I saw that we were closing on another ship.
I stopped working to examine the ship. Zapper rapped with his gun on the sphere. Returning to my repairs I covertly watched as we came closer and closer to the ship. When we were less than two hundred meters from the ship, an intergalactic freighter, I saw the tube come sliding out of our hull. The freighter had a name emblazoned on it, the Junua. This then was one of their links with civilisation. Was this my opportunity?
As the soft fabric on the tube's end closed around an open airlock on the Junua, I could not help but admire Boss's skill as a pilot in executing this difficult manoeuver. Although I had already had previous evidence of his skills when he had kept this large craft hovering over the mountainside while, at the same time, lowering the ramp. How had such an accomplished pilot come to be such a rogue? Another question I would doubtless fail to have answered.
Setting down my tools I opened the sphere door, told Zapper that I needed some cable and cutters from the stores. The way to the stores lay past the tube airlock. Following the custom I had established during the day, I went first.
At the tube airlock were three valets. Two moving belts ran the length of the tube. Two of the valets unloaded boxes and bags of supplies from the incoming belt. The third valet was loading small wrapped ingots onto the outgoing belt. Ingots of that size, I surmised, could only be of one of the inert metals. There were no guards.
Zapper must have noticed my slight hesitation, have guessed at the direction of my thoughts. From behind me he said,
"The crew are all locked up at the other end or the ship. But, believe me, if you manage to leave this ship without my killing you, they'll kill you when you reach the other end.” I said nothing, and walked on.
My silence was due in main to the containment of my fresh outrage and in trying to decide who was the worse — those who clandestinely consorted with rogues such as these in the deep darks of space, while enjoying the liberties conferred on them by civilisation; or these outlaws, in their nameless ship, who held li
fe in such low regard. By the time I had returned to the gun sphere I had decided that both were equally culpable: all profited from crime.
If the gun had been working, such was my anger, I may well have been tempted to blast the Junua to smithereens and damn the consequences. However, by the time the Junua left the gun was still hanging lopsidedly above me. In fact I did not have it back in working order until we were accelerating onto a new course.
The job being near completion and, despite the purpose of the machine I was tending, pleased with myself for having been able to mend it, I had put off going to eat when Zapper had suggested.
The repairs completed, I invited Zapper to test it, watched him volley about within the sphere. When it settled to centre he spoke into the mike. He then span around inside the sphere while the black of space before us was perforated with arcing lights.
When Zapper stepped out of the sphere he said, “Boss is pleased with you. Said there's a drink for you in the canteen.”
"No thank you,” I said, making clear that I had done the work because I had had no choice, not for any reward that might be bestowed upon me by some criminal. Again I thought I detected amusement in Zapper's eyes.
It was readily apparent in the canteen that the rest of the crew had been drinking. The Junua must have brought a fresh supply of drink. They were rowdy. Zapper and I again sat apart from them and ate. The remainder of the crew, as usual, were gathered at the far end by the gaming machines. One crewman, egged on by the other crewmen, detached himself from the crowd and came lurching drunkenly up the canteen towards us. He stopped, red-eyed and swaying, before our table.
"You!” he pointed at me, uttered a stream of abuse, then proceeded to accuse me of having told Boss that he was no good at his job. I gathered from his almost incoherent ranting that he was the ship's incompetent technician.
"We'll soon see who's the better man," he fumbled for the gun in his holster. There was a flash. A hole appeared in his chest. He fell back dead, landing crookedly against a table leg.
Stunned I turned, with food still in my mouth, to stare at the gun in Zapper's hand. There was no anger about him — he looked as if he'd just reached for a glass of water, had found instead a gun in his hand. A poor trick someone had played on him. He sighed,
"Boss said he wasn't to be touched,” he laconically looked over to the rest of the crew. “Anyone else?"
None spoke. Two of the crew went on tip-toe to look avidly over the shoulders of those before them.
"Zapper zapped," someone sniggered from the back of the crowd. The rest grinned. Zapper returned the gun to the back at his belt. I knew now that he had well and truly earned his sobriquet Zapper.
The dead man lay where he had fallen before our table. No-one made any attempt to move him. I swallowed the food in my mouth, laid down my fork. The crew gabbled excitedly. Several made remarks intended for my hearing, in short that I was Zapper's concubine.
"Can I be locked in now?" I asked Zapper, who had resumed eating as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He nodded, pushed his plate from him.
When we reached the door to my room I turned to face him.
"I want you to understand," I said, "that I will kill myself rather than become your concubine."
He stared at me, his eyes as dead as the man he had a few moments before slain. Then he smiled. The smile was without humour.
"Don't bother about killing yourself boy. Plenty round here be only too glad to do it for you." He stood waiting for me to enter my room. I felt that he hadn’t grasped what I was trying to tell him.
"I will work for you," I said, "because I have no choice. But that is the limit of my co-operation."
"It's their own warped minds speaking boy. You'd think they'd get enough of it with the cargo." He checked the anger in his voice, "Don't worry. It's not in my nature. You won't come to any harm from me. So long as you're sensible. Now I've got things to do." And, so saying, he pushed me into the room, locked the door behind me.
My impetus carried me to the centre to the room, where I stood looking wildly about me. For what I do not know. Then I vomited into the basin.
Chapter Twenty-One
Just when I thought that my degradation was complete, my impotence — in face of their ever-increasing inhumanity — is brought home to me; and my shame deepens beyond my powers of description.
For the next five days I was kept busy making good my deceased predecessor's negligence. The repairs were of little note, elementary faults of no intrinsic interest to me as a technician: they required little expertise, only application and patience — virtues which my unlamented predecessor had lamentably lacked.
In those five days I made myself think often of that poor technician — in order, primarily, to convince myself that he had truly died, that I had truly been witness to his death, and that the man leaning against a nearby wall, my guardian and my warden, was truly the selfsame man who had so casually slain him. I was on a ship of destroyers; surrounded by, and among, men who would destroy other men with as little thought as they had destroyed the shuttle — over which I had laboured so long to make spaceworthy. Life or possessions, they had little regard for either.
Yet still I consciously endeavoured to make myself trusted by them. I asked not one question of my dubious bodyguard that was not pertinent to the task in hand. Even though the nature of the cargo we were carrying had me greatly intrigued. Every reference made to it by the crew contained ambiguities: that some could get pleasure from it, while others like Zapper referred to it with contempt, had me puzzled the long nights through.
For my own sanity, locked alone in my room, I would abandon the puzzle, for I could not understand such men. Not one of them seemed to resent my having been the cause, albeit indirect, of their comrade's death. If anything they appeared to dislike me less, to have accepted my presence aboard the ship. Although that was more likely due to my having fixed several of their gaming machines. One of the psychotics even slapped me on the back. A blow from which I flinched, much to Zapper's grim amusement.
In those five days I also, of necessity in tracing faults, found myself often in the command room. One day there Boss had some music playing and was listening to it with evident enjoyment. Another puzzle: how could a man who thought so little of the destruction he wreaked relish such a beautiful creation as music?
I did not, however, — in furtherance of my intention to make myself trusted — let that particular puzzle prevent me ingratiating myself with him. When the music came to its conclusion I named the piece. So did Boss (ridiculous name!) examine me anew, and engage me in conversation; where, up to that moment, he had paid no more attention to my presence than if I had been a machine. I informed him that I had been going to play in my university orchestra, of my mother; and he detained me to listen to some of his collection, played me his favourite pieces. I noticed that they were all sentimentally melodious. Yet, thereafter, the moment I appeared in the command room he invited me to listen to some music, and then asked my opinion on it. Not wanting to insult his taste, I confined myself to criticism or praise of the instrumentalists. After one such session Zapper, having divined my suppressed contempt, warned me not to bait Boss.
“I've seen him kill a man with one blow of his fist. Don’t think you're not expendable. He managed without you before.”
In my confusion I tended to forget that these criminals came from civilisation, that they could understand me, if not I them. Consequently I was constantly being surprised to discover that they talked of the same topics in the same language and enjoyed the same everyday ordinary pleasures that law-abiding people innocently enjoyed. They were from civilisation and yet they were its criminals. And it was because they were its criminals, because they had betrayed the civilisation which I held in such reverence that I so abhorred them.
Or I thought that I abhorred them. I was soon to discover that there were degrees of abhorrence. For, on the sixth day we landed upon a red barren planet.
Zapper, a minder and I were examining the triggering system for the lavatory valves when the radio in Zapper's belt bleeped.
“We’ve got to go to the ramp,” he grudgingly prised himself away from the wall where he had been leaning. Telling the minder to hold, I followed him to the ramp.
At that precise moment I was pleased that I was about to discover what our mysterious cargo was, and why we should be unloading it on the inhospitable planet that I had glimpsed from the command room earlier in the day.
Zapper paused at the top of the ramp. At the bottom, standing in a line, were ten of the crew. The land beyond, so far as I could see, consisted of low round red hills.
Zapper gestured me ahead of him down the ramp. Without a word we took our place at the far end of the line, Zapper standing behind me and to one side. The dry soil of the planet crumbled under my feet.
I knew not what to expect, nor why we were there. The air of the planet was barely breathable. Fifteen meters to the left of the ramp, in the side of one of the round red hills, was a large hole.
The crew seemed oddly constrained. All, except I, wore their guns.
The appearance of the cargo was presaged by two of the crew carrying long white sticks.
Then the first of the ‘cargo’ came shuffling onto the ramp. Men, women and children. They shuffled because they had light chains clasped to their ankles. All wore short ill-fitting tunics. All had had their heads shaved.
Those are the bare facts.
To this day, though, I still find myself incapable of relating the full horror of that moment, as those people, that ‘cargo’, came shuffling slowly down the ramp towards me. Nor can I adequately render the extent of my shame when I realised that those people were slaves. My mind, of its own accord, made the assumption that, from their lowly stature, they had been abducted from some primitive planet to work in Boss's mine. My mind realised too that this was not a single venture but a regular practise, knew now the purpose of that long room in which I had first been incarcerated...