I followed him, we climbed over the fence and into the wasteground beside the line. Brambles, unkempt winter grass, weedy sycamores, naked straggling buddleia thickets with dead flower spikes. Rusting cans, rotted litter, slugs and snails, blackened ballast, the view from a train window. A path like a grey snail’s trail, a little boys’ path. Is it true that he came this way, or is the ghost lying to me?
Who brought him here? What happened?
There’s a hut by the track, the roof of tar paper, the slatted walls obliterated by crusted grime. It’s a den, a hideout, it’s somewhere things can happen out of sight. My path is heading towards it. No ghost now…but then suddenly there he is. I don’t understand what I see, then I realise he’s naked. A flash of pitiful white arms and legs, a face blank oval, and in the quivering frozen frame he’s running, brambles whipping his little ribs, rusty cans bruising his bare feet, I can’t hear him but I know he’s crying, terrified and shamed. He’s running and running, crying for help, but there’s someone catching him—
How do you kill a little boy? By accident, is my best hope. You want him to stop screaming, you’re afraid someone will come. You took him to a lonely place but it had to be somewhere nearby and now it isn’t lonely enough. Big adult hands, squeezing the child’s throat, or throwing him down, and his fragile temple crashing against stone. Something like that, in a moment. He was fighting for his life and he didn’t know he was going to lose until he’d lost. He didn’t die helpless, he didn’t die smothered, pinned, held down, knowing the whole world had betrayed him—
I found myself crouched by the snail path, fists in my pockets, head bent, dizzy and nauseous. The vision had gone, but I was seeing in my mind’s eye my baby’s skin darkly marked, printed with the pattern of that black jacket, clear as frost flowers. I’ll tell the police, I thought. They won’t believe me, but they’ll come here and search. They’ll leave no stone unturned. I listened to the distant hum of traffic, and looked at my watch. The ghost had lead me where I wanted to be led. I knew that, really. I stood up and went on down to the track.
I was beside the railway line, walking up and down, looking at my watch, shivering, oh god, how long between these suburban trains, when Eric arrived. I saw him coming, I didn’t try to get away. ‘Come home,’ he said. ‘Hazel, come on home.’
‘How do people kill themselves? I don’t know how to do it. But I’ll find a way.’
He nodded, and took my arm. I didn’t resist. He ought to say please don’t leave me or all we’ve got left is each other, or someday we’ll make a new life. But ideas like those don’t come. There is nothing left, no human need, regret, affection nor pity. Destroyer of Worlds.
‘You know how I felt about Fery,’ I said.
‘I know,’ said my husband, leading me away. He has never reproached me, he has never said it was your fault, you lost him. How could you. Ideas like that don’t come either. Not yet.
‘I loved him too much.’
‘Yes. You loved him too much.’
What a cruel thing to say.
I have committed a grave crime. I have given birth to a child, and made him my whole world, in a society where children are not safe, where little boys can be taken from the street and never seen again. Now there’s another turn of the screw, they are taking away from me my last memories. They are saying he was already lost, before I ever went out to the shops that morning. They are saying he never walked beside me, he never peeped at the greetings cards in the Post Office with that furtive, tender attention which I remember so clearly. No, they destroy that world. He was lost already, he was long gone. Where did I lose him, and when?
In Delauney’s park the mothers-with-children, and occasional fathers-with-children, are in possession until school is over. They talk to each other, they play with their toddlers, they nurse their babies. They sit like cows in the grass, silently ruminating over the weariness of broken nights. Then the schoolchildren appear, first from the nursery then from the primary school classrooms. They yell, they run around, they play with dolls or footballs, they pose and swagger and compare the prices of their trainers; they are cruel to each other. But the light changes and the shadows grow. The mothers-with-buggies all go home, except maybe for one lost soul, smoking a cigarette, naked ankles, skirt too short, her baby grizzling vaguely.
When the light has changed the park has a different clientele. Bloodstained needles, used condoms, teenagers and derelicts: all of them no more than decayed and broken-down kids themselves, that’s why the after-dusk playground is their home. They sell illegal drugs, and they bandy words with the schoolchildren, the bold, inquisitive ones who have lingered. Fery was one of those. Always ready to run, he promised me, at the first sign of trouble. Did he stay out too late one evening and I didn’t notice? Did he fail to come home, and my husband was so wrapped up in his work he didn’t know? Eric tells me they are going to search the park again, because of something I said or something someone remembered. The police will walk through the shrubberies in a line, working like a single machine, picking up every scrap of detritus. They will reach into the dark by that bend in the path, where the laurel bushes make their permanent shade, and they’ll find…I don’t know what. Maybe they’ll find out why it has always felt bad. If a ghost can exist after death then why not before? My son and I used to be sure that spot was haunted.
I won’t watch the search. I think I’ll stay here, in his bedroom, with the soft toys that he’ll never consign to oblivion, the pictures of cartoon animals, the battered childish things that he would have abandoned. I’m lying on his bed, where we used to cuddle together, bedtime, storytime, I’m saying now I have to go and he’s saying, no, stay, stay with me not with daddy; just for once. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, soft arms holding onto me. He’s only a baby. I don’t have to be in the park, this is the foul place, the place that dogs wouldn’t pass. This is where I lost him. This is where he destroyed all the worlds.
THE FULCRUM
In the constellation of Orion, illuminated by the brilliant star N380 Orionis, you will find the reflection nebula NGC 1999, and the “homo sapiens” Bok Globule; famous in astronomical history. This star nursery is the apparent location of the Buonarotti region, to which the 4-space equations give the shape of a notional cross with two-pointed expanding wings, known to Deep Spacers and other romantics as The Fulcrum. To some, this “X marks the spot” is the forbidden gate to Eldorado; to others, it’s the source of our consciousness and an oracle of our future, set like Delphi at the navel of space-time…
The aliens came back to their cabin to find that they’d been turned over again. Last time, they’d lost their drugs. This time it was the bikes. They sat in the wreckage of scattered belongings, letting the spume of violent and futile emotion shed from them, and feeling scared. Losing the fish-oil stash had been serious, but extreme tourists have to accept that they are rich and they will get ripped off. This was different. No one else on the station had any possible use for the exercise bikes. Their fellow prospectors were almost exclusively Deep Space veterans. A few hours a day of simulated mountain racing wouldn’t touch their problem with the gravity well.
In the end, the company of their violated possessions got them down, so they decided to go and see Eddie the Supercargo. They knew he wouldn’t do anything, but it’s always better to report racial harassment. They put their coats on and bounced gently along the drab corridors—two humanoid aliens, about two metres tall, pale skinned and diffident, each with a crest of stiff red hair. Although they were a heterosexual couple, to human eyes they were as identical as identical twins—but unlike human identical twins, they didn’t mind being mistaken for each other. They didn’t meet any one. The Kuiper Belt station did not aspire to the parkland illusions or shopping opportunities of near-earth orbital hotels: unless they were preparing for transit, most of the prospectors never left their cabins except to visit the saloon.
There were plans that the Panhandle would become the hub of a
Deep Space International City, hence all the empty space in the Pan. For the moment it was simply an asymmetric ceramic fibre dumbbell, spinning in a minimal collision orbit-area of the asteroid reach—the Pan full of prospectors and their support staff, the Knob reserved for the government’s business out here; and the Handle an empty, concertina-walled permanent umbilical between. The AIs took care of everything serious. The only actual human authority on board was Eddie. His duties were not onerous. As far as Orlando and Grace could make out, he did nothing when on shift except sit in his office at the Knob end of the Handle; and play Freecell. On his off shift he would come down to the saloon, and schmooze with assorted ruffians. His squeeze-suit and official rank branded him as a dilettante, but he adored the Deep Spacers.
Eddie’s gaff was a step or two up from the standard cabins. It had a double skin to keep the cold at bay, and the chairs, desk and cabinets swelling from the walls and floor were designer-styled, in a drab, corporate sort of way. There were no personal touches and no visible equipment (besides Eddie), except the desktop screen that he used for his endless solitaire. The Supercargo was a skinny fellow, with wispy dark hair that floated around his shoulders, sad eyes and a taste for extravagant dress. Today he was wearing knee high platform boots crusted in silver glitter. The bone-preserving pressure suit was concealed by a spiderweb gold silk shirt and black neoprene biker trousers; a copper and silver filigree scarf swayed airily about his throat. The prisoners of knocked-down gravity favoured drifty accessories, it was a kind of gallows-humour; and Eddie was a shameless wannabe.
He greeted the aliens with enthusiasm, but he didn’t like their complaint.
‘Listen,’ he cut them off, at last, ‘I’m sorry you lost your bikes, but you know the rules. There are no rules. Anything you want, you take, that’s the way we live, and you got to breeze it. You can’t go all holier-than-thou out here in the Deep.’
‘We understand that,’ said Orlando, rolling his eyes.
‘We’d be fine with that,’ drawled Grace, with a shrug. ‘If those deadbeats has anything that we wanted to steal. It’s just unfair that it’s all one way.’
Eddie beamed, relieved that they hadn’t been expecting a police action, and the visit became social. The truth was, passionately as he admired the Deep Spacers, Eddie was frightened of them, and the fact that (theoretically) he could sling them in irons or chuck them off the Panhandle made no difference. It’s personality that counts in these back of beyond situations. The aliens understood this perfectly: they were pretty much in the same boat. Extreme tourists are always trying to look as if they belong, in situations where only insanely hard-ass nutcases have any real business.
‘You know,’ Eddie confided, ‘The last Supercargo was knifed in the saloon, over a menu choice. You shouldn’t take it personally, the guys are just a wild bunch—‘
They knew the story. They thought it was unlikely, and that the prospectors only knifed each other. But they sympathised with Eddie’s need to romanticise a shit job: a career in space-exploration that had obviously hit the dregs.
‘Thanks,’ said Grace. ‘Now we feel much better.’
Eddie broke out alcohol bulbs and chocolate from his waistbelt, and the three of them chatted, talking guiltily about the blue planet far away, the overcrowded and annoying dump to which they would soon return –Eddie at the end of his tour, and Grace and Orlando on the next Slingshot-; which was to the forgotten heroes of the Deep Space saloon an unattainable paradise. Suddenly the Supercargo went quiet, attending to a summons imperceptible to his visitors. They sat politely, while he stared into the middle distance: wondering if he was receiving an update from the AI machines, or maybe a command from far away Houston.
‘Ooops,’ he said, ‘Duty calls. It’s time for the alien to be milked.’
‘You mean the other alien,’ Grace corrected him.
Eddie shook his head, making his hair and his delicate scarf flip about like exotic seaweed in a tank. ‘Hahaha. C’mon, you two aren’t really aliens.’
Eddie gave slavish credence to whatever loony resumés the Deep Spacers cared to invent. Wormhole trips? Sentient rocks, diamonds the size of Texas, wow, he lapped it up…Orlando and Grace declared their elective cultural identity, which was perfectly acceptable at home; and they were jeered at.
‘It’s a state of mind,’ said Orlando.
‘Hey,’ said Eddie shyly. ‘D’you want to come along? It’s against the regs, but I trust you, and you did lose your bikes and all. It’ll be okay. You won’t get fried.’
He stood up, teetering a little because the glitter boots were weighted, and concentrated on stowing his treatpack back on his belt. Grace and Orlando exchanged one swift glance. They knew exactly the terrifying thing that they were going to do.
Eddie did not use keycards, he did not visibly step up to a mark or get bathed in any identifying fields. He simply went up to the blank wall at the end of the umbilical. It opened, and he stood in the gap to let the aliens by. They were through the unbreachable Wall, and inside the Knob—a Deep Space Fort Knox, the strongbox which held, according to rumour, the most fabulous treasure in the known universe.
‘The Knob recognises you?’ said Orlando, suitably impressed. ‘Or do you have a key or an implant on you, that it recognises?’
‘Nah, it’s me. I’ve got an implant.’
‘Yeah. We noticed.’
‘That’s a requirement of the job. But it’s my informational profile that’s written into the Knob, just for my tour of duty. Bios wouldn’t be secure enough.’
They were in a mini-version of the Pan, following a spiral corridor divided by greenish, ceramic fibre bulkheads. They noticed at once how clear the air was, free of the dust, shed cells and general effluvia of many human bodies. It was warmer too, and it didn’t smell bad. The walls opened for Eddie, he stood and let his companions through like a wise cat inviting guests through the magnetised catflap; the walls closed up behind with spooky finality.
‘Is there always air, heat and gravity at this end?’ wondered Grace, offhand.
‘Always,’ said Eddie. ‘Not for the thing, I don’t think it uses air, I don’t think it breathes. It’d be more expensive turning the life support on and off, that’s all. The rad protection is shit,’ he added, ‘Except in my actual cabin. The AIs are shielded, they don’t need it. But half an hour won’t fry your nuts.’
‘What about you?’
Eddie shrugged. ‘I’ve got my cabin, and hey, I’ve finished my family.’
The aliens’ wiry red hair stood up on end. They felt that, briefly, the Kuiper Belt Station was not rotating aimlessly in place but steaming full ahead. They were sailing outwards (the only direction that there is) across the Spanish Main, around Cape Horn, with Franklin to the North West Passage…Finally Eddie ushered them into a little room with the same fungoid fittings as his office: desk, chairs, screen and touchpad. One wall was a window, apparently looking into the cabin next door.
‘There you go,’ said the Supercargo, shivering. ‘Now you can say you’ve seen it. Oh, no pictures, please. You don’t want to get me into trouble.’
‘We wouldn’t dream of it.’
Eddie teetered, patting at his wayward hair. The aliens stood like zoo visitors, looking into a naked and featureless cell where something huddled on the floor: a dark, fibrey, purplish lump like a hundred pound hunk of horsemeat. It was fuzzy in outline, as if not securely fixed in these particular dimensions; and had four blunt extrusions. A convoluted sheet of paler tissue covered some of the main lump, like a skein of fat over a slab of steak.
‘Is it really right next door?’ asked Grace, casually.
‘I suppose,’ said Eddie. ‘I never thought about it.’ His eyes went unfocused as he checked the Knob’s internal architecture, and he nodded. ‘Yeah, actually it is. Shit, I never knew that-’ He was shivering more strongly.
‘It looks as if it’s been skinned alive, filleted, and had its arms and legs and cut off,’ breathed Orl
ando.
‘And that could be its brain,’ whispered Grace. ‘It looks kind of like a cerebral cortex, unfolded out of someone’s skull.’
‘I don’t know why you’re whispering,’ said Eddie. He’d started to pace up and down, flexing his long, delicate hands, as if in nervous impatience. ‘It can’t hear you. Hey, you don’t know what they’re meant to look like. You’re anthropomorphising. It could be a handsome, happy whatsit, for all you know.’
‘We don’t anthropomorphise,’ objected Grace. ‘We’re aliens.’
Eddie groaned a little. ‘Oh, have it your own way, a different word. You’re thinking like it’s a person. It isn’t.’
There’s something in every human heart that delights in horrors: Orlando and Grace were not immune. They pored over the creature in the window, fascinated and seduced. They knew that Eddie was lying for his own comfort. Almost without a doubt, the thing had once been human. Whatever lies the government told, this goose that laid the golden eggs was almost certainly someone who had made a transit, and failed to return intact…But from whence had it fallen, into this pit? From whence? Where had it been, the lone voyager to that land of plenty?
‘I can’t believe they really keep it here,’ muttered Orlando. ‘I thought that was just Spacer bullshit.’
‘Where else?’ inquired Eddie, sarcastically. ‘In the Pentagon basement? Give me a break. It’s incre-credibly weird and unbelievably d…dangerous.’
Now the creature was moving. It had begun to shudder and squirm across the floor of the cell, silently giving every sign of anguish and terror. ‘That’s milking-time behaviour,’ hissed Eddie, ‘Now you’ll see something, watch, this is it-’ But he seemed distracted. A flush had gathered around his eyes and nose, he was smiling strangely and breathing hard.
A section of the cell wall slid aside, revealing a recess set with a pair of waldo rings. Then the government arrived, in the form of two heavy-built robotic hands that reached into the chamber. The alien’s movement was now clearly an attempt to reach those hands. As soon as it was close, one of the big chunky mitts got a lock on a stubby tentacle, while the other, grotesquely, delved and disappeared into a cleft that had opened in the dark raw flesh. The creature jerked and writhed in pain, shuddering in that rough grip with an awful, sexual-seeming submission. The buried hand reappeared, full of something that squeezed between the fingers like a thick silvery goo, like liquid mercury: the robot arm retracted out of the cell, and returned empty to delve again. Orlando and Grace watched this process happen five times, five greedy fistings, (with Eddie’s breath coming in gasps beside them). Then the robot hands vanished, and the cell wall closed up again.
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