by Майк Берри
This seemed to please the man, who smiled, nodded and turned back to the window.
‘So,’ said Carver, pausing to bite the silver packet open, having failed to tear it along the suggested line, ‘how many other inmates are there on this station of yours?’
The man turned back to him slowly, looking distant, his eyes unfocused. ‘Hmm?’ he asked.
‘How many others are there on the station?’ asked Carver again. He tried the substance from the packet. It seemed to be basically just textured sugar, but that was fine with him.
‘Well,’ said the man, ‘there’s a hundred and eleven — no, a hundred and ten–’ he corrected himself, ‘and then there are fifteen prisoners at the moment. Why?’
Carver shrugged. ‘Just wondered,’ he said.
‘You’re thinking about getting them out, aren’t you?’ he asked. He wagged a finger at Carver — You’re a naughty boy! — but he didn’t actually look pissed.
Carver shrugged again. Maybe this guy wasn’t a complete fuckhead after all. Crazy, yes, but maybe not actually bad all the way through. Probably not actually stupid, either. Maybe just misunderstood, like Carver himself. Maybe he could be reasoned with. Carver wondered passingly what the dragon-man’s eyes would taste like. He imagined biting down on one of them, maybe bursting it. ‘I just wondered,’ he repeated.
‘It’s all right,’ the man said. ‘The dragon told me you would.’
And there it was again. Just when Carver had thought he might be able to make some progress with the guy, there it was again. The bloody dragon. How could you reason with a man who listened, first and foremost, to the voices in his head? And what if — when — they dug as far as they could into this fucking rock, and the man found nothing there? What then? He sounded polite and almost human at times, but Carver didn’t kid himself that there wasn’t something badly wrong with the crazy dragon-man. Even if he could be reasoned with, he surely couldn’t be trusted. Would he try to murder Carver when his little dig turned up nothing at all? Carver, despite having mercilessly butchered innocent people himself, feared his own demise as much as anybody.
‘This. . . dragon. . .’ Carver began cautiously, watching the man’s face for any change in expression at the broaching of this touchy subject. ‘. . . You really think we’re gonna find it? Like, buried in this asteroid?’ He tipped more chemically-flavoured sugar onto his tongue and washed it down with the warm water.
‘I know you think I’m insane,’ said the man earnestly. ‘But it is here.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Carver, knowing that he was edging increasingly further out onto thin ice.
‘It told me,’ said the man simply, as if this constituted undeniable evidence.
Carver nodded, trying to look understanding. ‘What, exactly, is it?’ he asked, not really wanting to hear the answer but unable to stop himself.
‘I’m not sure,’ said the man thoughtfully. ‘Maybe it’s some ancient alien that was buried here; maybe some sort of sentinel to guard the belt; maybe. . .’ he trailed off, turning to look out of the window again. ‘It doesn’t really like to be asked,’ he said at last.
‘Why can only you hear it, do you think?’ Carver asked. When the man turned back to him his face was trembling and twitching, as if tears were threatening to overcome him. Carver realised that he had pushed it too far. That was, if anything, his major character flaw. That had been the problem with the woman on Aitama — he’d just gone a little too far. And now he’d done it again. Never question the delusions of a madman, he scolded himself.
‘What does it matter?’ the man asked emotionally. ‘What does it matter when you don’t even believe me?’ His mood had switched again, and now he sounded like a sulky three-year-old, full of indignant anger. He stared at Carver for a moment, trembling, then looked down at his knees. He shook his head once, smartly, as if to clear it.
‘Sorry,’ said Carver experimentally. It was a word he had little experience with, but he’d noticed that it could be effective with people sometimes.
There was a long and uncomfortable silence while the man sat that way, head bowed and hands squeezed together in his lap. When he looked up again, though, his face wore its previous expression of indulgent good humour. ‘Oh, it’s okay,’ he said. ‘You’ll see, I suppose. In time.’
‘Maybe I will,’ Carver agreed diplomatically. Crisis averted, he thought, grateful that he apparently wouldn’t be getting shocked again. He looked around the cockpit, trying to think of a way to change the subject. At last, his mind snagged on something, and the question was out of his mouth before he could stop it: ‘So where’s the pilot, then?’
The man grinned in a slightly embarrassed way. ‘Ah. . .’ he said, holding up one finger as if to say Now that’s the question! He released himself from the pilot’s seat, pushed off, and floated across the room to the navigator’s station. Carver watched him, hypnotised. The man braced himself against the far wall and spun the seat around.
In the navigator’s seat sat the shattered wreckage of what had once, undeniably, been a human being. It was dressed in a one-piece flight suit, the original colour of which had probably been blue, but which was now slathered almost entirely in dried blood. The person’s skull (it was impossible to tell if it had been a man or a woman) was not just caved in but almost completely obliterated, and a large spanner lay across the figure’s lap, matted with clumps of flesh and hair. This tool had clearly been utilised in an excessive manner: the pilot had been not just killed, but deliberately destroyed. Carver felt a lump in his throat. He imagined this gently-smiling madman beating the already-dead pilot again and again and again — as many times as the voice in his head instructed, Carver supposed. He sat, staring and stunned. Contradictory emotions bloomed within him: awe; shock; excitement; sick pleasure; fear for his own safety. Mainly the latter.
The man’s sheepish grin extended slowly into something more sharklike — predatory and primal — and he turned the seat away again as if suggesting that maybe they should just forget about it. Carver sat staring, his mouth open and a thin trail of food particles drifting out of it like exhaled smoke.
‘Yeah,’ said the man, as if Carver had asked him a question. His eyes looked as if they were focused on something on the distant horizon. ‘About that. . .’
Chapter Twenty-One
The man worked hard, as was expected of him. The dragon had never claimed that his work as its emissary would be easy. In fact, it had warned him that sometimes he might find his tasks difficult, even unsavoury to carry out. And hadn’t that been the case already? It would be worth it in the end, though, he knew. Good medicine always tasted bad, right? He mentally shrugged and released one of his rock pins, holding the cutter by one handle behind his back, out of the way. He moved the pin to a new position, moved the other one, then fired up the cutter again.
‘You are doing well,’ said the dragon suddenly. This was the first time it had spoken to him for some hours now. Oddly, despite the noise of the cutter, he didn’t have any trouble hearing it. In fact, he thought its voice was a little louder than it had been before. He supposed that now that there was less material between him and it. He might have been imagining it — maybe it was just wishful thinking — but he certainly thought it was louder. And that must mean that he was making progress.
‘Thank you,’ replied the man quietly, concentrating on inscribing a cone shape with the plasma beam. It occurred to him how easy it would be to have an accident with the thing, an accident that could be as tragic as Sal’s accident had been. Yeah, a little voice in his head told him, but that wasn’t exactly an accident, was it? He ignored the voice — after all, you were crazy if you listened to voices in your head, right? — and applied himself anew to the task at hand.
‘I know you are unsure about the prisoner, Emissary,’ said the dragon.
The man paused, releasing the trigger of the cutter, head cocked. How does the dragon know these things? he wondered in amazement. He was
awed by the depth of its empathy. It really seemed to be the only one who understood him these days. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted. ‘I suppose he just seems so. . .’ He trailed off, knowing the dragon understood.
‘I know,’ it said sagely. He could feel it breathing all around him, filling the cold, rocky womb-space with its warming life-essence. He longed to see it — touch it — marvel at its beauty in the flesh. He wondered, not for the first time, what it looked like. ‘He is something of an unlikeable character,’ confessed the dragon. ‘But he has his uses. He is required to work here while you fulfil other duties for me on the station. I could hardly have him do those other tasks, could I? It is you who are my emissary.’
The man felt his frozen face flush with pride. He involuntarily took a deep breath, puffing out his chest. ‘Well, I, I. . .’ he blustered, overcome by the flattery. The shadows loomed large around him, layers of living velvet that crowded round like eavesdroppers.
‘Do you trust me?’ asked the dragon, a sharp edge concealed within its voice.
It was testing him again — it tested him often, probing him for any doubts. But if it knew his mind so well, why was the testing necessary? The man’s brow furrowed in confusion. It may understand him, but he was starting to think he would never understand it.
‘Well, of course,’ said the man. ‘Of course I do.’
‘Good,’ said the dragon. ‘Because you know I want to help. My methods may seem strange at times, but you must retain your trust in me. You are my emissary, and you must believe that I have your best interests at heart, although some of your tasks may be difficult at times. The man, Carver, is a violent and savage oaf, but he has a purpose. His purpose is to dig. Your purpose is to oversee him, to be in charge of my — our — operations here. That means that when he has rested, he will dig again, and you will have another task.’
‘Task?’ asked the man, re-positioning the cutter against the rock-face. He flexed his fingers on the handle of the machine — they were beginning to seize up in the cold.
‘Yes,’ said the dragon. ‘There is something else that needs to be addressed back at the station. You must not be missed there yet. Not yet.’
‘Addressed,’ parroted the man. He felt strangely detached, fuzzy-headed, as happened when the dragon spoke to him. ‘Not be missed. . .’
‘That’s right,’ said the dragon encouragingly, as if to a child who had understood a tricky maths problem. ‘When he awakes, the prisoner will dig. And you will return to the station.’
‘Return to the station,’ repeated the man.
‘Where you will do something for me.’
‘Will this be another. . . difficult task?’
The dragon sighed sadly. The man felt the weight of its emotion, pushing down on him. He wished he could help it more, somehow. The dragon had a very great burden to shoulder. ‘I fear it may be,’ said the dragon. ‘I fear it may be.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lina woke up early, her internal clock scrambled by the unexpected change from late-shifts to no-shifts. Even on non-work days, such as this was, she usually stayed as close as possible to her work-day schedule. But she had crashed out on the night of Sal’s accident some three or four hours earlier than usual, and now she felt both tired and restless at the same time, completely unfulfilled by her sleep.
She tried to remain in bed, reading an ebook on one of her datasheets, but it was a particularly dreary tale about abused children in the slums of Old Earth, and it only served to depress her. She cast the datasheet aside around seven in the morning and got up, trying to make as little noise as possible.
She dressed, in a full set of clean, non-work clothes, and made a fair effort at dragging a brush through her hair. One minute she was looking at herself in the mirror, feeling dreamy with tiredness, disassociated from the reflection of her own face, and the next minute she found that she was standing in front of the window and staring instead into that.
Had she really seen a ship heading out into the belt last night? No, surely that was impossible. All the ships were grounded, right? And somebody must be keeping an eye on them, to make sure they stayed that way. Right?
She gazed out at the asteroid field: an ugly mass of matter; rocks that wore bright patches of ore like skin infections; trailing away, as always, to the very edge of sight. ‘Maybe,’ she said to herself in a whisper. ‘Maybe not.’ She thought of the shadow from her dream, chasing her implacably through the airless dark — a streamer of nightmarish, hungry intent. She thought of Sal, whose remains had had to be vacuumed up. She remembered the sound of Sal’s tooth ricocheting off the front of her Kay and she shivered, shaking her head to dispel the image, and turned the window off again.
By the time Marco woke up, Lina had washed herself, brushed her teeth, and begun to feel a bit more sprightly. The bad taste of the air was more pronounced than ever, though, and somehow the added flavour of the toothpaste made it even worse. She wondered when Marco would notice it. And when everybody else would notice it, for that matter.
She was re-organising her wardrobe when Marco appeared, blinking, at her door. His opening line was a casual, ‘What’s that smell?’
Lina looked up from the pile of clothes that surrounded her on the floor, feeling absurdly guilty, as if it was her fault. ‘Nasty, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘Is it the air system?’ he asked bluntly, drawing his dressing gown tighter around himself.
‘I suppose so,’ she said quietly, half expecting this to have a terrifying effect on the boy. She felt her own pulse quicken, as if on his behalf.
‘Mmm,’ he grunted, the matter seemingly settled, then wandered off to the small bathroom.
Lina breathed a sigh of relief and began to replace items into the metal wardrobe in almost exactly the same order they had originally been in. She knew she was just finding herself a distraction, but she didn’t care — it seemed like what she needed. When she finished this task she went to find Marco in his room.
He was lying on his bed with earphones in and eyes shut. Lina didn’t know what he was listening to. Marco seemed to procure a surprisingly large volume of new music from his school friends. His tastes seemed to favour no particular genre, and Lina tried hard not to influence him, although some of the sub-scream and hexno artists from Platini were, honestly, terrible.
She tapped him on the knee and he looked up, removing one of the earphones. ‘Yeah?’ he asked.
‘I’m gonna go to the canteen and grab us some breakfast, okay?’
‘Yeah, cool,’ he said, replacing the earphone and shutting her out again.
It occurred to Lina how like a teenager he was already becoming, and a pang of nostalgia went through her as she gazed at his uncommunicative form. His amazement in the micro gravity of the station’s hub had made him briefly childlike again last night, but now the effect seemed to have worn off. The two of them had always been good friends, and she dreaded the possibility that he might become a surly teen in the near future. Who, she thought, will I have then? She wondered about Platini, and the life they might be able to make for themselves if they could ever get there. She let herself out, and headed to the canteen in a strange mood of contented sadness.
When she got there she found that she had missed the worst of the rush, and she didn’t have long to stand in line. She chatted idly to Si Davis as she waited, exchanging small talk, deliberately skirting the big issues. Si was as rude and ebullient as ever, and he fell into a general and obscenity-littered rant about The Company — a favourite subject of his. Lina let him run, smiling and nodding at sympathetic intervals, until he reached the front of the queue.
Amy Stone, sitting behind one of the grimy canteen tables with a datasheet in front of her, smiled a thin, efficient little smile that was virtually devoid of actual warmth, and said, ‘Good morning, Simon.’
‘Hey, er, Amy,’ replied Si in his usual, inappropriately booming voice. ‘What’s for brekkie?’ Lina knew as well as he did what was for breakf
ast, having waited while a small stream of hungry prospectors all received identical rations from the glum-looking Jayce, who stood behind Amy’s left shoulder.
‘Bread, de-hy eggs, coffee, powdered milk,’ recited Amy robotically.
‘Mmm!’ enthused Si falsely, rubbing his stomach. ‘Thanks, Farsight!’
Amy stared at him levelly. It was a stare that Lina thought could probably have wilted a flower, and indeed it had this effect on Si, whose grin faltered and then slid clean off his face. ‘My name is Amy,’ she said. ‘Not Farsight. And we’re all in this together, Simon.’
‘Er, sure. . .’ he answered, trying to avoid her eye. Lina suppressed the urge to giggle. Amy was pure battleaxe, but Lina rather liked that about her. She took no prisoners.
‘Jayce,’ Amy said over her shoulder, and Jayce stepped forwards, looking apologetic, holding Si’s meagre breakfast rations in a single shrink-wrapped bundle. Si took the parcel without further comment then squeezed past Lina and out of the canteen, looking somewhat crestfallen.
Lina received her own parcel and took it back to her quarters, finding Marco in exactly the posture and position she had left him. She busied herself reconstituting eggs and toasting bread (burning bread, in the case of the first slice) then called Marco through to the table. Surprisingly, he heard her and came happily enough, presumably propelled by his stomach despite the unexciting promise of the new rationing regime. He seemed to be in fair spirits as he ate, wolfing his own food and then finishing Lina’s, which she pretended not to want so that he wouldn’t feel bad about it. She wondered how long the station’s supplies were going to last, dished out in these conservative increments. Presumably someone had calculated that they would be okay until the next shuttle. Her mind kept trying to ask her what if that one didn’t come, but she drowned out thought with small talk.