Jack Glass

by Adam Roberts

  Jac put his thumb to the middle of his chin, and pressed hard. He drew himself, inwardly, and readied his spirit. ‘One of the two, certainly’ he replied.

  Marit wasn’t really interested in that, of course. ‘E-d-C’s been watching you work on your glass, you know. Watching you! He told me he’s going to take it, when you finish it. What for, I said? But that doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want it for anything. He just wants it. He’s a bully.’

  Jac cocked his head. ‘You planning something?’

  Marit’s eyes shimmered, left-right, left-right. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Things can’t go on the way they have. We almost choked to death! E-d-C is a liability, man. Surely you see it? It’s a matter of self-preservation. Davide understands that. And I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re canny enough to see it too.’

  ‘So, my support and loyalty to – you, Marit? And in return?’

  Marit stretched a ghastly smile out of his blue lips. ‘You get straight to the point, don’t you Leggy? That’s good. I like that. OK, straight to the point. Davide and Mo are with me. You saw how Lwon feels about his so-called deputy. E-d-C is isolated, out on a limb. What do you get in return for your support? You get a better situation inside our little prison. You move up in the world.’ His eyes shimmered, left-right, left-right. Jac almost chuckled: he could do the maths, as well as anybody. Not that it mattered.

  ‘How?’ Jac asked. ‘E-d-C is a big man, a strong man. Hit him with a rock, you might not kill him.’

  ‘I’ve something denser than rock,’ said Marit, with another disagreeable smile. ‘Don’t you worry about that. I’m not asking you to – get your hands dirty. All I’m asking for is: your support. And . . . talk to him. Davide won’t, and he doesn’t trust Mo or myself. Talk to him, distract him.’

  Jac almost laughed. ‘And?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘What about Gordius?’

  This, clearly, had not factored into Marit’s calculations at all. He glanced at the fat man, and back again. ‘What about him?’

  ‘You don’t think . . .’ Jac began, but Marit spoke over him.

  ‘He’s neither here nor there. Him?’

  ‘He’s losing it,’ said Jac. ‘His mind – you see the way he’s muttering to himself, over and over?’

  Marit curled has lip, scornfully. ‘So?’

  ‘You don’t know which way he might jump. He was sentenced for killing a man, after all. He’s killed before. What if he does it again? What if the violence freaks him out?’

  Marit nodded, slowly. ‘You think he might freak-freak out? You know him better than me. OK, OK. I’ll have Davide watch him. Good! You see! – when we work together, things get sorted. Don’t they? Don’t they, though?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Jac. Maybe there was more oxygen in the air. He was starting to feel the tightness and misery go out of his soul a little.

  Jac observed. He marvelled that E-d-C couldn’t tell that Marit and Davide were plotting something, so theatrically obvious did their behaviour seem. But maybe it was the still-too-thin air, or maybe the tipping point had been reached and E-d-C was giving up, on a subconscious level. Giving up was a worry for all of them. Jac couldn’t stay in this stone box for eleven years. He couldn’t stay in it for much longer. It didn’t matter, except that it mattered. It was important, it was unimportant.

  In the end, he didn’t need to engage E-d-C in conversation. E-d-C engaged him. Presumably he could sense that something was up, without necessarily being able to put his finger on what it was.

  ‘I was talking to Lwon,’ he said, out of the blue one day. ‘And we had a disagreement. He said, because you’ve less blood in your body – because you don’t have the legs – you feel the cold more, since it’s our warm blood keeps us warm. But I said, less; since you don’t lose heat through the extremities, the legs I mean, the way the rest of us do. Which is it?’

  ‘Having no-one else’s experience to compare mine to,’ Jac replied, ‘I couldn’t say.’

  E-d-C nodded at this, as if it were wise. But his attention was not on this. Then he said: ‘the new seam of ice looks like it’ll give us both water and air for years. Really years! I was chatting with Mo. I said to him: you really think the Gongsi would maroon us on a rock without surveying it first? Of course they checked to make sure it had the necessaries to support life. He said he wouldn’t put it past them. But they’re not psychopaths! Maybe they are cruel, yes. Inhumane, all that. But not insane. Now that we’ve unlocked this seam, we are guaranteed water, air and food for years. We can concentrate on making this place a nicer environment to live in. Am I right? A room for everybody! Warmed throughout!’

  ‘Sure,’ said Jac, distractedly.

  ‘I’m not trying to gloss over the hardships we’ve suffered. I’ve suffered them too! It has been hard, hasn’t it?’

  ‘On balance I’d have to agree,’ said Jac.

  E-d-C sucked his teeth for a while. ‘We’ve only one chance, you know.’

  Behind him, Jac could see Marit putting his hand inside his tunic. ‘Only one chance?’ he repeated.

  ‘Good order. It’s our only chance. If we keep a lid on our tempers, and keep good order, then we can last the time – last all eleven years, and come out of the other end free men, with our dignity intact. But if we give way to anarchy we’ll all be dead in a week. Die like beasts, or survive as men? Is that really even a choice?’

  ‘Die like beasts,’ repeated Jac. ‘Or?’ He kept flicking his glance over to where Marit floated, on the other side of the main space. He had removed his hand from his tunic, empty. As if he had been scratching an itch. But he hadn’t. Jac knew he had the meteorite-iron cosh in there. He was readying himself, psychologically, to use it. He was checking where everybody else was. Davide was in the tunnel, digging, and so were Lwon and Mo. Should he go fetch his ally? Should he wait until the shift ended? It was as if his inward thoughts were projected across the screen of his face for all to read.

  Do it now?

  Jac forced his eyes back to E-d-C’s face, met his gaze. He was listening to what the man was saying, but all the time he kept thinking: eyeballs are very fragile, the skull can be so easily cracked open. Blood yearns to free itself from the body. ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘Shall I tell you how I ended up here?’

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘I killed a man.’

  ‘Really?’ said Jac.

  ‘Oh I know what you’re thinking: there must have been mitigation, or they would have done worse than just lock me in a box for eleven years. And, yes, there was. There was mitigation. But – do you know what I used to do?’

  ‘What?’ He glanced over E-d-C’s shoulder again. Marit had his hand inside his tunic again; and his eyes had narrowed. Jac could see that his breathing had become more shallow. From the other end of the tunnel, the sound of the diggers, working the seam of ice, buzzing and purring.

  Cold, cold, cold.

  ‘You know how Lwon said he knew me from before – you know how he knew me?’

  ‘No,’ said Jac.

  ‘I used to be in the Civvies. I wasn’t some low-grade grunt, either. I was a marshal in the civilian-military force. When the Ulanovs took over, all those years ago, they kept the structure of the Civvies pretty much as it had been. New top brass, or course; and some new rules. But basically the same. And I was a marshal! I say that, so that you can understand. You can understand that I know small-group dynamics. I have a lot of experience in running them, keeping them going, keeping order. I know that without good order we have nothing.’

  Jac nodded. Behind E-d-C, Marit had half-brought-out the black phallus of the iron club from his tunic. But then he stopped, spooked by some real or imaginary danger, and tucked it hurriedly away again.

  They were all losing their minds. Jac realised it, then. Paranoia and anger and self-pity and suffering and the toxic proximity of other human beings.

  ‘One of my duties,’ said E-d-C, ‘was to carry out execu
tions. I didn’t like doing it; but it had to be done. Follow orders, that was my world. There was this one cadet, and he assaulted a senior officer. The officer had had sex with his girl, or something – or made a pass at her, it didn’t matter what. The cadet had no business attacking him. No matter what the provocation, a junior officer cannot just punch a senior officer! They went drinking together. Cadet got the lieutenant drunk, and then broke his legs with a tungsten spar. Afterwards the officer was full of remorse – believe that? Said he’d been wrong to go after the other boy’s girl. But it didn’t matter. The cadet had to be punished. He took it well, too; he knew the rules. And that’s what I mean! We don’t have to like one another, or to like the situation here. But we do have to endure it, and that means we got to have a code. Lwon understands that. Davide too, though his temper is awkward. But he understands it at least. Marit – is a more difficult problem.’

  ‘So,’ said Jac. ‘You didn’t say how you ended up here.’

  E-d-C smiled thinly. ‘I executed the cadet,’ he said. ‘He struck a superior officer. Broke his legs! The rules were clear, so I OK’d the order, and he was executed. Only afterwards did it turn out he’d previously applied for discharge from the Civvies. His discharge had been granted, too, although the notification had got delayed in a spamstorm. I didn’t know! How could I know? That didn’t save me. I’d been the one who killed him, thinking him subject to civilian-military discipline. But it turned out that at the time I performed the execution he wasn’t civilian-military, he was an ordinary civilian. I pled ignorance. The court said it took my plea under advisement, but the fact remained. I killed a citizen. So here I am.’

  The drills stopped their noise, one after the other. In a moment, Davide, Mo and Lwon would come through. Then, Jac thought, it would happen.

  ‘Jac,’ E-d-C was saying. ‘I think you’re hearing what I’m saying. Am I right? I was talking with Gordius a while back, and he told me you were sentenced for political crimes. That’s what we all thought, of course. Yes? So – I just want to say: I understand the urge to oppose the Ulanovs. Of course I do! I respect the desire to oppose authority. All I’m saying is, not here. Yeah? Not now. I know Marit’s been stirring things up, but you need to listen to me. Survive this, get back out into the wider System, then you can carry on with your political, er, agitation to your heart’s content – yeah?’

  ‘Get back out into the wider System,’ echoed Jac. ‘I hope to.’

  E-d-C was about to say something encouraging, when he finally saw that Jac’s eyeline was not on him, but over his shoulder. He turned. Lwon was emerging from the entrance to the tunnel. Davide was just behind him. E-d-C looked straight at Marit, with his hand down inside his tunic. The latter froze.

  Jac read the situation. He reached out with both hands, touched the two walls, and drew himself closer into the corner of the space.

  There was a hitch in the passage of time. Time held the second for a moment. Then it let it go.

  It was Davide who acted. He saw at once that Marit had frozen, and that there was panic evident on his face. Davide’s own face distorted with anger and frustration. He roared. It was a shattering sound in the enclosed space, a great bellowing bull-like noise. Because he was still half in the tunnel, Jac didn’t see Davide bring out the second chunk of iron. But it was in his hand, and it struck Lwon audibly across the back of his skull.

  E-d-C called ‘no!’ and launched himself through the intervening space. Lwon’s head had gone floppy, and his body was moving towards the far wall. As E-d-C hurtled towards him, Davide just had time to bring the black cosh up and sweep it down a second time. A baseball professional could not have timed the blow better. It caught E-d-C in the centre of his forehead, whipped his head back and to the side, and sent a spur of blood out into the air, a tumble of beads and slugs of red. E-d-C’s momentum carried his body forward, colliding with Davide, and the two men tumbled against the wall together.

  With an eerie chimpanzee screech, Marit leapt at Lwon’s unconscious body. He brought his own metal club down twice in quick succession, on the side and the back of his head. Then, clumsily, but with increasing regularity, he began pounding Lwon’s responseless form. Some of the blows missed, or glanced away, but others dinted the skullbone or pulled divots of flesh from the scalp. Very quickly a debris cloud of red dabs and dots and droplets filled the air around his head.

  ‘Marit!’ Davide cried. ‘Enough!’

  And, as abruptly as he had begun it, Marit broke off his assault. Jac caught a glimpse of his face as he pulled away. It was acned and spattered with myriad red dots. The features were drawn up in an expression of pure ecstasy.

  The coup was effected as simply as that. For a while nobody said anything. Gordius was no longer muttering to himself and was instead staring open-mouthed at the mess: two corpses floating, trailing blood from their wounds in myriad beads and lumps and dots. Indeed, as their prison itself slowly rotated the blood-field was slowly folded over on itself, wrapping into incrementally appearing patterns of twist and helix.

  In the immediate aftermath, Davide and Marit brandished their iron clubs, and Mo whooped and cheered and applauded them. Gordius and Jac were silent.

  Eventually Davide made a speech: ‘re-birth,’ he said. Then, more loudly: ‘renaissance! Things are going to be better from now on. Nobody elected Lwon boss! Nobody voted for him! He was a tyrant and a bully. We’re all in this together.’

  They weren’t, though. As the adrenaline from the attack faded from their bloodstreams, the two assassins became grumpy and peevish. ‘You two!’ Marit ordered Gordius and Jac. ‘Clear this mess up!’ Gordius didn’t respond at first, but when Marit rushed at him brandishing his club the fat man squealed and scrambled to the side.

  ‘I said clear up the mess,’ bellowed Marit. And Mo, eager not to find himself falling on the wrong side of the divide in this new dispensation, added his support to Marit’s new authority: ‘you two do as you’re told, or I’ll break your bones!’

  ‘How do you suggest we clean it?’ asked Jac, mildly enough. Mo snatched a smallish rock from the air and threw it at his head. It was slowed by passing through the sticky matter in the way and Jac was able to duck out of the way.

  ‘Strip the bodies,’ said Davide, in a deep voice. ‘Use the clothing to net some of this stuff out of the air – and wipe the walls down with some crushed ice.’

  Jac and Gordius did as they were told. ‘O brave new world,’ whispered Gordius as they worked, the first thing Jac had heard him say in a long while. ‘We’ll be next, you know,’ he told Jac. It won’t be long now.’

  Jac thought: it won’t be long now.

  Gordius got E-d-C’s tunic off first; it had less blood on it than the other, and he wrapped it around his own torso like a cape – it had been a long time since he had had his own upper body clothing. Then he and Jac got E-d-C’s trousers off, and then Lwon’s tunic and trows. Then Gordius took Lwon’s corpse, and Jac took E-d-C’s; they crammed them into one of the rooms off the corridor. It was a waste of one of the rooms, but better that than have to live in the open space with two dead bodies.

  When they came back through they were covered in blood; but then so were the other three – there was no way to avoid it in that confined space.

  It was a tricky business sweeping the blood out of the air, and wiping the walls just tended to smear the stuff about. After a great deal of labour they had cleared some of the air, and they went back into the corridor, and stuffed the bloodied clothes in at the mouth of the chamber, packing the bodies in.

  Back in the main chamber, Davide and Marit still looked a little stunned by their victory. ‘This rock will support five more easily than it could ever have supported seven,’ said Mo. ‘I’m not sure seven could have lived here the full eleven years anyway.’ This wasn’t true, of course, but nobody challenged him. ‘It was, it was a long-term solution to the, to the, the problem,’ he said.

  ‘It’ll certainly be less crowded around
here now,’ said Marit.

  That wasn’t right, though. Though there were fewer people now, the space felt paradoxically more crowded. It was impossible to put out of one’s mind the fact that two human corpses were stuffed into the chamber on the left as you passed down the tunnel. They loomed larger in death than they had done in life. But there was nothing anybody could do about that. Worse, the spectre of murderous violence had been summoned from its interstitial reality; and that’s a ghost that makes very uncomfortable cohabitation.

  Over the next few days, Davide instructed Gordius and Jac that they, now, would do all the digging – that, indeed, he and his two friends were sick of digging. But it didn’t take long for that to change. The truth was, digging, though tiresome, was at least a distraction. Within two days, everyone was taking turns at the diggers again, as before.

  Davide took Jac’s piece of glass too. ‘I deserve some kind of medal,’ he said. ‘And this will have to do.’ Jac surrendered it without protest. It hardly mattered. ‘You were never going to fit it as a window, were you,’ sneered Marit. ‘You won’t miss it. You can make yourself another one!’

  Jac didn’t reply. He had no new lump of unworked glass; all he had were the various chips and shards he had picked up along the way, and which he kept about his body tangled in with his body hair. When he had an unobserved moment, he might bring one of these out and polish it. But he was content not to work any more on the larger lump.

  The shift in the power seemed to bring little satisfaction to the top three. Conversation was sparse. The seam of ice was excavated, ghunk grown, and work begun making the three alpha chambers bigger. The truth of their circumstance was: waiting. There was, in essence, nothing else for them to do. Davide in particular sank into what looked very like depression.

  ‘What will you tell the rescue crew when they come in a decade?’ Jac asked Davide one day. ‘We’ll tell them you killed them!’ crowed Marit, overhearing. ‘You and fat-boy! Or – we’ll say, they killed one another! Who’ll contradict