Connor’s reply crackled with adrenaline. “All clear so far. Just hurry the fuck up.”
One of the braver clerks who had taken to sitting on the floor by the far wall began to eyeball me. Since I didn’t care if he saw my face, I eyeballed him back. He was the first to blink.
Bill indicated he was ready. James took up position by the door. I took the middle ground again and watched Bill rise, his Skree jacket weighted down with the bars. He lifted a pile of credits for the hell of it, and stuffed them into a fabric money bag. The brave man started eyeballing me again. Seeing that he was about to rise I said to Bill without a hint of menace, “Shoot that man!”
Bill looked at me in surprise, and then followed my gaze. The brave man sat down again, and Bill raised his eyebrows as if to say, “What the fuck you talkin’ about?”
“You eyeball me again and I’ll take your head off,” I said with a menace, more to appease Bill than the clerk.
Things seemed to go slowly after that, like I was watching a film of myself. Connor over the radio announced, “Two Skree. Just walked into the doorway. Be careful.” There was nothing I could do about it. We were leaving with or without them blocking the entrance to the exchange.
Down the corridor, ominously empty of people, Conner came across the radio again, “Hurry guys. Drones appearing in numbers at the bottom of Longwestgate.” He was saying something else but was drowned out by the sound of an alarm. I wondered what it was for a moment, a howl of high pitched intensity that I thought might indicate the building was on fire.
James, realizing the situation, and thinking on his feet, shouted into his radio, “They’ve gone to the roof. Repeat, they’ve gone to the roof. All units make your way.” It was a stroke of genius. As we turned the corner to the main entrance we saw the back of several Skree running for the stairs, and in so doing, clear the way for our escape.
We ran outside and piled into the back of the hover-cat. I ran my nose straight into the side of the holding cage whereupon a shock of stars detonated, and I fell backwards onto the cobbles. I got to my feet as the cries of Bill, Connor and James urged me back to the pod. I simply couldn’t make my body move. I saw their eyes widen as they fled. Their limbs retracted, and doors slammed shut, leaving me kneeling by the kerb. I felt the muzzle of a blaster under my chin. “Don’t move, asshole!”
Chapter Five. Detention.
I had no time to move, asshole or otherwise. The Skree, having been tricked into a fool’s errand by James’s spurious radio message, emerged onto the square in a wave of breathless black uniforms. Angry from their unnecessary trek to the roof and back, they were now in the mood to extract vengeance upon any deserving head. One of the heads, the only one for the time being, happened to be mine. I felt the blaster hurriedly leave my chin to be replaced by a full-blown kick from what felt like a steel toe cap boot. It was followed up with flurry of rabbit punches along the length of my curled-up torso. Punches to my covered body proved ineffectual. So, my rib cage took a pummelling until I loosened up. I was sure I would be kicked to death.
Abruptly the beating stopped. A great, black clad figure pushed aside those Skree that hadn’t, as yet, got tired of kicking. It blasted, “Don’t kill the cunt! They want him for questioning.”
I was dragged to my feet, blood and snot oozing down my pretend Skree shirt, swung against a cab door and then flung into the cage of an awaiting hover-pod – this time the real McCoy. I landed on a Skipnot metal floor. My mind raced to assess the damage caused to my body. Adding pain as each injury was noted, I felt something hard in my mouth and realised it was a small tooth. I spat it out. With a degree of circumspection, I used my tongue to locate the gap in my gum. The lost tooth had come from the front left, bottom row, the one next to it was also loose. I tried to move my jaw. It felt like a fat lump of frozen meat and throbbed in a disconnected way to the rest of my face. I wished the Skree had kicked me to death. What awaited me was going to be worse. I had impersonated one of their own.
The pod rose into the sky, straight up. After my ears popped for a third time, I knew we must be at a height where only the Skree and higher-ups were allowed. I wished I could have looked out of a window, but there weren’t any. I would have liked to have seen Pangropolis one last time, only with my own eyes, rather than the usual weather drone.
We’d gone up and across the sky for two or three minutes when I heard the engine servo pitch up. We landed softly on what I could only guess was the top of the Ministry for Information building; the dreaded headquarters of the Skree and their pay-masters. The building was predominant against the backdrop of Pangropolis, from any angle viewed by a Scrit. I’d seen it many times from afar.
I stood at the furthest point away from the craft’s doors. The outer skin opened, followed by the cage door that swung with a clang, clapping together with its mate. Two sets of burly arms attached to snarling faces pulled me bodily from inside, ripping the collar of my makeshift uniform in the process. Head pushed down, I saw red lights blink in unison. They formed the symbol of an “H” on the Mac upon which the pod sat, its cooling fans blowing plumes of iridescent exhaust from large aluminium gills. I was hauled across the landing pad to a curious, wedge-shaped door where a man in a suit and tie waited. Hauled down a flight of iron-grill stairs, I was deposited into an elevator alongside the suited man and the two burly Skree. Nobody spoke. I dripped blood. The elevator descended a few floors and opened upon a sterile white corridor. I dripped more blood.
The pain in my jaw was intense and I groaned. What made it worse was the dry cough that caught the back of my throat, a result of pure desiccated air, filtered of impurities for the benefit of the Skree and whoever they answered to. My unaccustomed lungs began to bark. The suited man lifted my chin, which sent sparks of terrific heat through the top of my skull. He wiped his soiled hand on my hair and said, “Bring painkillers - fentanyl if it’s available - to Room 330.” The man had kind eyes, not the sort I would have expected from an interrogator. I slumped forward, caught under the arms by my two Skree minders.
We entered what must have been Room 330, where a similar minimalist approach had inspired the decor. In the white room, a couple of suspicious brown stains splashed up the far wall. The furniture consisted of a couple of fiddle-backed chairs, their antiquity incongruous to their surroundings, a table, a mirror - two-way at a guess - and some metal cupboards. I was seated unceremoniously onto one of the chairs. I dribbled pink ooze onto the wood-effect table where it pooled into an amorphous goo. The man in the suit said to the two goons, rather harshly considering their size, “Get those painkillers now! Bring water and a sponge.”
I didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this, a bullet in the back of the head after a messy interrogation more like. Sitting in a room whilst a middle-aged man with horn-rimmed glasses, receding grey hair, portly, and with a kindly manner stood watching over me seemed surreal. The man knew what I was thinking and by way of explanation said, “This could be your lucky day. Pass this test and you might live to see it through. If you don’t, you’ll be in for some fun with my colleagues.”
As a sinister rejoinder the two Skree returned, bringing with them a bowl of cold water, paper cup, a sponge and a wooden stick with leather knots tied to it. They roughly wiped around my swollen chops and then placed two pills and a cup of water in front of me. I knew what the pills were for and with a sucking slurp swallowed them whole.
The suited man said, “I don’t think it’s broken, your jaw that is. If you get through the next half an hour, we might be able to fix it up.”
Without further ado, as the old saying goes, he opened a folder, took out an A4 size booklet, lifted a pen from his top pocket, and placed them both in front of me. “You have half an hour to complete this test. If you score 120 or more, you can live. Score less than 120, you die. Begin.”
Most Scrits my age had received a rudimentary education from the massive municipal schools, organised by the more charitable of
the Vanguard, back in the day. This had been more in keeping with their need for us to follow written instructions. They had no wish for their massive farms, factories, and warehouses to be blown to smithereens by the pressing of a button that said, “don’t press.” It also increased productivity but didn’t seem - to me at least - much use in decreasing factory fatalities. From the ages of five to ten, whilst also learning a trade, we learned basic Maths, English, and a particular favourite of mine, problem-solving. The rest of my education was self-taught from reading books and the papers I mentioned earlier; oh, and from a few classes the Scrits organised for themselves.
I sniffed up bloodied drool and for want of anything else my baffled brain could think to say or do, I opened the paper. The suited man placed a watch counter in front of me and pressed a button. The second-hand began a race against the slower minute hand. It had travelled thirty clicks before I began to read.
All the questions had a square box for the answer to be written and they were in various groups. Group One was obviously arithmetic.
How many months have thirty days?
How many months are in a decade?
A farmer has one hundred and seventeen cows of which eight die. How many has he left?
What weighs more, a ton of steel, or a ton of feathers?
The questions were easy to start with, but got harder.
What is the square root of eighty-four?
Using elementary geometry determine angle X. There was a triangle split into several smaller triangles and X was the hard bastard in the middle. Using the protractor provided, you were forced to establish the angles of all the other triangles before X became apparent.
I thought I was doing pretty well. Next page popped up an English testing group. These didn’t require a box answer. I had to write sentences.
Did the effect of his injury prevent him from playing scrumball, or was it the affect, of his injury? Explain.
What is the motto of the Vanguards translated from Latin into English? Hodie et cras in aeternum! I knew this one. “Today, tomorrow and forever.”
What is a verb? Explain.
What is a noun? Explain.
Group three was problem-solving, my favourite. It seemed that the test was geared toward what Scrits had been taught in the Municipals. I was really getting into this, despite my pain and circumstance. Maybe the opiates were working too well?
Fit the following shapes in accordance with consecutive numerical ascendancy into the box where they should fit. This had me stumped; I could hardly understand the question. Eventually I realised that the shapes had to be numbered, so that they would fit into the particular shape provided, without overlapping. They had to go in exactly the right order or it wouldn’t work. I think I managed it.
The last question was perhaps a trick one. It simply asked: Is this a question? I thought I might be smart and say, ‘Yes, if this is an answer’, but then bottled it and wrote some drivel about semantics. At the end I did write, ‘Yes, this is a question because I’ve answered it.’ Time was up.
The suited man who had been watching me all the time, picked up the paper, and after less than a quick sift through said, “Well done, you passed.”
“What did I score?” I couldn’t help myself.
“Enough!”
Whilst I’d been feverishly pondering the questions in what must have been a Vanguard’s intelligence test, the suited man produced from his docket information obviously related to me.
“Paul Jarman. Thirty-two years old. Five feet ten inches tall. One hundred fifty-four pounds. Unmarried. Currently a wanted man. Says you are good at problem solving. They were right! Fancy a long journey?”
“I’m not scheduled for extermination?”
“You were. Fortunately for you, a roughneck died this morning. You seem a likely candidate to take his place. I know it’s short notice.”
I goggled.
“You see,” hummed the suit man, “we have rather a significant enterprise ready to go. An Earth-like planet called Burgesses to be exact. It is being terraformed and circumstances have, shall we say, changed. Expedience is called for. Burgesses is too important a project to worry about the likes of your petty criminal past. With the right behavioural inhibitor and some training, we can make do with you.”
I stared at him.
“Oh no,” he laughed, “It’s nearly as good as a death sentence, don’t for a minute imagine the work to be anything less than incredibly dangerous.” He paused and gave me a mock quizzical smile, “So, what’s it to be? Extermination or Burgesses?”
I was non-plussed, unable to say anything. I was unsure what, if anything, I was being offered by way of salvation. Suited man watched me struggle with comprehension and then said through the silence, “We knew all about you Paul. We could have brought you in any time we liked. The Vanguard, it just so happens, need a certain individual, someone like you.” Suit man paused, thinking his words through. He then said rather cryptically, “You give your people hope. After all, even Pandora was left with hope.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if the Scrits had no hope, no plan to usurp our authority and take control of their own destiny, we’d get no work done, would we? Look Paul,” he used my name, “you can leave all that crap behind, do something useful before you die.”
The penny dropped. I knew exactly what he was getting at in his roundabout way. The majority of Scrits did as they were told. But whenever a minor victory was achieved, say by the Fifths over the Skree, spirits rose. Celebrations materialised en masse as word of events circulated the drinking houses. People were happy for a time. The suit kept watching me. After allowing a suitable time to digest his bombshell, he delivered a torpedo to aid my deliberations. “If you’re hesitating, out of loyalty to your friends, there’s no need. Bill and James are quite dead. Connor awaits execution. Pity for him there isn’t another place on the R-list.”
“You’re making a mistake then,” I blurted, “he’s a good man.” Suit man picked up his clipboard and made a note. Afterwards, he looked directly at me. More silence. Grief hovered close by. “What now? What happens to me now?” I said finally.
“I take that as ‘yes’? The trip to Burgesses?”
“Yes,” I hissed. “I know what the other option is.”
Suit man smiled with an expression I took to be genuine bonhomie. “Well, if you pass the medical, you’ve got two days to get well enough to go into cryogenic hibernation. From now on Paul, you are to be known as R303.”
Chapter Six. New life 303.
That was the last I saw of the man in the suit. I was escorted out of the interview room and back to the lift where my two original Skree minders had been replaced by a couple of doppelgangers. The elevator descended many floors and I pondered the fate of my friends, unable as yet, to fully appreciate that they were dead. When the door finally opened with a cool proficient hush, it was onto another corridor that looked exactly the same as the one I had just left. The painkillers were good, and I felt slightly euphoric despite the dreadful news. I wanted to comment on the lack of colour but didn’t. We arrived at a bridewell, indicative by its heavy prison doors, complete with barred windows. They were jammed open with metal weights either corner. Hardly escape proof, my bleary subconscious told me. Inside was a large sterile area, the main feature being a huge desk behind which sat a massive Skree. He was an ugly brute all broken nose and bad teeth, and as I got closer his breath smelt of minted shit. He was holding a pen half way up its shank at an angle that suggested he wasn’t in the habit of writing much. I was pushed toward his stinking mouth. “Number?” he bellowed unnecessarily. I winced and focused on the small silver star embroidered onto his collar denoting he was a corporal. “Number? I won’t ask again.”
I was street wise enough to realize what he meant and said, “R300.”
The big Skree nodded to his mate standing by my side. He stopped his absent-minded jangling of something about his pocket, that weren’t
his balls. I felt a reinforced knuckle wrap into my ribs by way of an aide memoir. “R303, dummy,” the Skree corrected.
“R303,” I breathed out in pained echo.
“That’s better. Don’t forget it Scrit!” The Skree behind the desk mocked me with a vicious smile and wrote the number down as if he hadn’t known it already and hadn’t just had me corrected. He nodded to his mate again, which this time meant he was through with the paperwork.
I was taken down another omnipresent white corridor to a barred gate. This was unlocked with a massive key that hung from a chain, the source of the previous jangling that was held on the Skree’s belt. Three, sound-muffling cell doors with massive turnkeys, faced each other across the passageway. I heard a faint rustling coming from the one nearest to my right and wondered who was there. Nobody spoke. As if to emphasise the point that silence was preferred, the taller of the two Skree shoved my back and propelled me into a cell with the words, “No talking.”
I came to a stop midway into a six by four concrete tomb. Fastened into the far wall was a steel, box-shaped bed, with a thin, green, hessian mattress. One grey-blue blanket crumpled along its length looked like a beaten dog. There was no pillow. In a separate walled cubicle to my right, a stainless-steel toilet was clinging to the wall, as if held there by an unseen magnet. There was no seat. A roll of crusty loo paper lay on the floor, absorbing the bodily fluids of the last occupant. I went and had a piss, relieved that the stream came out yellow, without any tell-tale grains of blood that would suggest internal injury. I pressed the embedded flush button. A feeble eddy swirled the bowl. I bundled my sore body to the bed, sat down and nursed my jaw. Next, I let my fingers walk tentatively across my ribs as if they were playing a delicate flute. They hurt but I couldn’t feel any breaks or cracks. I then cried for the first time since I was ten. My snivels sounded loud in the silence, so I stopped, fearing that a show of weakness could single me out a sissy amongst the other denizens of this awful place. Any unwanted attention, I could well do without.
Beyond the Rubicon Page 3