I stared downcast. From the crappy ceiling light, a sickly red glow percolated weakly into the surrounds, diffused off the top of my head and cast an eerie, ephemeral pink shadow upon the slipnot floor. I got a grip of my sorrow and listened to the swish of silence in the runnels of my ears. After a while I perceived a faint knocking coming from the cell next door. The sequence of taps emerged into a pattern I could discern. Moving to the wall, I answered in the same way. I presumed it was somebody trying to say hello, at least I hoped so. In any case I felt somewhat comforted.
I received an official Skree visit about half an hour after my patter-cake conversation with the occupant in the cell next door. The heavy door swung inward on the weight of its own momentum, creaking as it did so, with what sounded akin to how I felt. A man dressed like a doctor, carrying a bag, came in first followed by the bully Skree. He didn’t introduce himself but sniffed the air with contempt. He set about examining me without preamble and took special attention to moving my jaw up and down, left to right. It spiked with pain. “It’s going to hurt like hell for a couple of days,” he said, as if I didn’t know already. “Take your clothes off.”
I did so with a slowness that wasn’t deliberate but born of legitimate suffering, unlike the time I’d tried to get a sick day, back when I was working the factory. The doc studied various colours purple, mainly knuckle and boot shaped. After drumming two fingers over the bones of my rib cage, whilst at the same time holding my scrotum and getting me to cough, the doctor turned to my gaoler who stood in the doorway. I was doubled over riding the spasms of pain he’d added to; deadpan he says, “He might have the odd hairline crack, nothing major. I’m told he’s a scheduled worker. Let him rest and give him the A-class diet. Anti-inflammatories for two days and pain-killers.” The Skree appeared disinterested. “Make sure he gets the course of Mebendazole and Enterobius I’m going to prescribe, we need him clear of all parasites.”
“Eh!” my gaoler said vaguely.
“Never mind, just make sure he takes the tablets.” The doc picked up my clothes with the toe of his polished shoe, “Get him something proper to wear.”
I was left alone, thinking about parasites and pain. My thoughts inevitably turning toward Bill, and then Maureen as I envisioned her waiting in vain for her man to return, before traipsing home having given up hope. Over the coming weeks, and knowing Maureen as well as I did, I expected that her sorrow would turn to anger and then to vengeance. Good!
James, young, idealistic, hadn’t even had a chance at life, for what that was worth. Connor, all hell and no notion; he was probably the best to have been caught alive. He was brave and would, maybe, stay strong to the end. At least I hoped he would. He might even be elevated, like me, to ‘scheduled worker,’ albeit of a penal servitude battalion. He was strong and the Skree needed hard labourers.
I drifted again into a world of my own making. One that included trees and green and space. I was cold, my body numb. A door slammed. I had no idea what time it was. Unable to make an informed guess, I was much relieved when further clanking noises began at the far end of the cell corridor. I heard metal viewing hatches open and then door grills sliding. There were voices, muted at first but louder as they progressed. The hatch in my door, about the size of a shoebox, opened. Clothing was squeezed through in stages, falling to the floor.
Shivering, I hobbled three feet to the door and gratefully pulled on a black body-warmer and jacket, the material of which I’d never seen or felt before. It was like a hybrid of foam acrylic, something between wool and silicone, and moulded into tight squares. The fabric as it began to warm, shrank to fit the contours of my sore body. I zipped the jacket all the way up to a large collar that stopped just short of the ears. I felt warm almost immediately. The trousers were made to the same design and once again hugged the curves and sharp angles of my spindly legs. I didn’t worry that they made my legs look ridiculous, as I might later – shit I had enough things to worry about.
The next treat in store was a meal presented on a metal tray that was not only hot, but of a quality hitherto untasted, at least by me. It consisted of some sort of meat and what I think were some newly invented vegetables, the kind synthesised from algae. Whatever they were, they proved a salivating torture when passed through inflamed lips to my eager mouth, only to be excruciatingly masticated by my swollen jaw. There were five pills I found under the rim of the plate, one small pile, either side of the tray. I crunched and swallowed them without a second thought, ignoring the bitter taste. They had to be pain killers, anti-inflammatory’s and those anti-parasite drugs the doc mentioned. It wouldn’t surprise me if I wasn’t riddled with worms, my bum hole perpetually itched and Mrs Donald, my neighbour from my last legitimate address, had said this was a sign. We had no effectual treatment for such inconvenient ailments, barring mountebank remedies that would as like kill you as cure you. I then tried to guzzle the food as fast as I could, afraid the Skree might have made a mistake and would be returning to take it from me. Once done, I sipped the beaker of juice. In Dark City we had a cordial drink we called orange that was mixed with water. The drink set below my nose smelt similar, but once tasted, turned out to be something out of this world. It probably was. There was even a gooey biscuit for pudding, and though full of black ugly things I couldn’t identify, it tasted divine.
I’d barely finished when a Skree voice bellowed, “Lights out.” I waited for things to go dark, but nothing changed, at least not in my cell. I then spent a good two or three hours stumbling back and forth to the toilet with diarrhoea. My stomach was unaccustomed to such rich food and the worms in my gut – if that is what they were – had just run out of luck. I don’t think I shat out the painkillers, because after my body had evacuated everything, barring my own intestines, I settled down to sleep and slept hard.
Chapter Seven. Clothes Make the Man.
I awoke, disorientated, aching, with a sticky mucous that glued my mouth together. My jaw had set itself at a curious angle, one that was most resistant to pain. When I moved it, the dull ache quickly bloomed into a full-on scream. I sucked in air and tried to get a handle on the agony, concentrating on using my other senses as a distraction. I could hear strange, clanking noises, stifled by many walls. The insipid red hue still hung about the room.
I swung my legs onto the floor - whoa - my clammy head swam. Placing it between my legs to prevent a faint, my floundering brain eventually paddled to the shore. Yesterday’s memories came flooding back, each one juddering and jolting my heart with a fresh misery and anguish. I might have shrieked under different circumstance, instead I tried to control my breathing. I pushed open my tacky lips with the slug of my tongue and tried not the think about the boys. Breathe in for the count of five and out for the count of ten. At least my asshole has stopped itching.
I didn’t have long to practise my wheezing. Breakfast was being served at the end of the cell corridor. My viewing hatch opened after a time and a metal tray placed itself upon the shelf it created. “Get a hold of this,” was my morning greeting from an unseen face. I did so. A tray of glorious breakfast presented itself: bread bakes, eggs and Nutricon. There was even coffee and two more of my lifesaving painkillers. I have lived too long in Dark City to lose my appetite over lost friends and walloped the food down as best I could.
Five minutes or so elapsed and my door swung open with its incalcitrant, teeth-grinding squawk. “Out,” barked a Skree. I didn’t move as fast as he wanted it seemed, so he frog-marched my stiff-legged, hunched frame, to the furthest end of the corridor at double time. We stopped, and I stood upright. A wet floor suggested a shower room beyond a closet door. “Two minutes… get clean Scrit.” I was still bewildered, wide eyed, or I was; the Skree roared in my ear, “Come on you filthy bastard, begin!” He threw me bodily forward and I bounced into the door which opened a fraction. I pushed it open in a hurry.
I expected my new clothes to be a devil to peel off, but once the vacuum of air between body and fabri
c was breached, they fell away easily. Just as well, because I don’t think I could have removed ordinary clothing from my damaged carcase. I stooped under the shower head and pressed the red topped nipple on the wall. Water blasted forth. A brief ecstasy of freezing jet was quickly replaced by a warm flow. I found a grimy, pitted bar of soap, lathered and washed myself, especially the smelly bits. (I checked my hand to see if any dead worms had evacuated my bowels, but found nothing recognisable.) After longer than two minutes the Skree shouted at me to get finished up. He then walked my mincing bare arse back to my cell, whilst I clasped hold of my new clothes as a mother would her baby. I drip dried behind the locked door and got dressed; my body becoming a warm prickly glow.
As I sat awaiting developments it became clear that the other prisoners on my wing were taking their turns with the shower. After the clanging of doors and the slap of bare feet had stopped, I waited some more, and then all at once was ushered out of my cell. I took the rear end of a queue of five other people. We all wore the same clothing and looked, to within an inch or two, the same height, with the same tell-tale skinny build that belonged to our breed, the Skrits. The only difference was that the others had a silver necklace that clung fast above a dewlap of skin around their necks, and pulsed continuously with a worry bead of red light. They looked uncomfortable to wear. “STAND STILL,” the head guard yelled, “shut the fuck up and follow me.” Nobody had said a word.
Walking in the opposite direction from the showers we entered the large reception area similar to the one where I’d previously been given my new name, R303. We were driven up a hard floor staircase without rails. The cold that penetrated the soles of my bare feet made me feel vulnerable.
At the top of three flights was an entrance to our left. Double doors activated by a floor pressure pad and swished aside to a reveal a stark and mainly bare space. Some aluminium lockers stood to one side. A full-length mirror and a large rectangular table took up the centre ground. Chairs were set around the table and faced a large screen above a raised dais. An electronic device on the table was set out. Its insect eyes, similar to those used by drones, watched on, placidly. I’d seen many of them operating above Dark City. I shuddered and clasped an involuntary hand to the back of my neck.
A man on the dais was dressed in the same garb as us Scrits and yet he stood with an air of authority that was neither Vanguard, Skree, nor Scrit. For one thing, he had a beard. This was out of keeping with the bald-faced Skree. He motioned with large hands for us to sit at the table and then introduced himself for my benefit, I think.
“Now, ladies, I am R300, team leader of you roughnecks. Unlike the rest of you shits, (I’m sure he said this in place of Scrits) I have only twenty years to serve. I am deemed trustworthy enough to lead you when we get to the planet Burgesses. We will make a success of whatever task we are assigned because I want to come home to my family. Failure means death.” The man had a gravelly voice reminiscent of Bill’s heavily smoked vocal cords. He also had a pair of piercing brown eyes, black holes really, which stared for long periods as he talked, often without blinking. During his lecture my eyes watered for him.
“The good news, dickwads,” he began again, using the term as an endearment, “is that the fourteen years it takes to get there and then the fourteen it takes to get back, will all be taken into consideration against our sentences. Since we’ll be in hibernation, cryosleep, hypersleep, or whatever you want to call it, our judges will cut our terms by a third, mine by half. It’s a gesture of good will, courtesy of the Vanguard.” R300 raised his eyebrows, or tried to; he had a uni-brow that made him look like he was wearing half rimmed spectacles. He was peculiar, prehistoric even. I guessed his age to be late 30s, though the drawn, dark lines upon his forehead suggested he’d lived more. He didn’t give me the impression he suffered fools overly much.
“When we get set, dipshits, we will use our first names. To that end I introduce myself as Bram.” There was a gasp from my fellow listeners. “Everybody here knows each other by their numbers, except our newcomer, R303. He replaces that sorry fucker executed yesterday.”
The gasp turned to a groan. “Those tests we took last week were essentially lie detector tests. The previous R303 was deemed too much of a liar to carry out the mission.” Ominously he looked at me. “Paul, I hope you’re a better liar.” He left the one-liner trailing the air.
While Bram talked, I took a fearful inventory of my two closest colleagues from the peripheral view afforded me. R302 to my left was bald. She had bruises all over, but they looked like they had been healing and were fading. Her scalp was of a number of different colours. I wasn’t sure if they were head tattoos or just scars and I didn’t want to stare long enough to find out. She later introduced herself as Jenna. To my right sat R304, a woman with a red face, her skin freckled from overexposure to sun or a perpetual hangover. She definitely wasn’t from around here, but I had heard the island to the west had a large number of people with red hair. Aside from an abundance of ginger hair, she had a squat nose, squinty eyes, a prominent chin and was one scary looking chick. In fact, as I got to know her by her real name, Jonti, I was tempted to change it to Chinger.
When everybody had absorbed the knowledge that the original R303 was now deceased, Bram resumed his lecture, this time using some notes he’d picked up off the table. The class was silent, like those I remembered from my municipal days after a kid had gotten a particularly vicious caning. “Apart from our new R303, whom we can now call Paul, you cheesedicks have heard this already. Have another listen though, you probably missed chunks of it the first time round.” He used his particular insulting phraseology without regard to gender.
Bram began to describe where we were going, including me, if I passed this lie detector test, sometime in the near future. He flipped a page and began reading. “There are roughly two thousand stars, at a distance of up to fifty light-years from our Solar System, sixty-four of them are yellow-orange G stars like our Sun; as many as fifteen percent of them have Earth-sized planets in habitable zones.”
Bram got off his platform to switch on the drone-like camera. I was amazed to see an unfamiliar solar system begin circling in 3-D right by the table. Bram stood in the middle of it. I wondered at the technology the Vanguard had and why they refused to use it to ease the Scrits’ condition. Bram holding a small black box, along with his notes pressed a button with a deliberate action, as if he somehow had to put physical effort into the process of shifting the swirling images.
“This star system here,” he jabbed a finger toward a circling pattern of 3-D planets and a central, red glowing blob, “has a planet that's kind of like ours.” His finger swirled at the blue-green ball as though it were a solid object he might bump out of orbit. With an outstretched arm he married it with the red sun. “It has an elliptical cycle with this star designated M00M553. Call it Mum for short. I don’t know if that was by design or not. Anyhow, the planet called Burgesses is warm enough for liquid water. It’s rocky, terrestrial, and has - at the moment - a thin atmosphere. At just 6.2 light years away, this planet is close enough to colonize. People are being transported there to begin a new life, free from bondage and serfdom.” Bram raised his brow, perhaps a sign of disbelief?
Talk like this would in normal circumstances get you arrested. It didn’t ring true. I didn’t buy into Bram’s enthusiasm. The Vanguard weren’t to be trusted, they provided no empirical evidence - not nearly enough to hang a neck upon. My wandering thoughts were interrupted… “Burgesses is roughly thirty percent larger than Earth, and closely - much closer than the Earth to our sun - orbits Mum, a star far cooler and smaller than our own. Its mass, Burgesses’ that is, is comprised primarily of silicate rocks and metals in similar quantities to that of the earth. It has a molten centre which creates polar opposites. Best of all it has water, at least water in the form of ice, locked up at the poles.” Bram threw his hand in an arc along a crest of spinning orbs, “These other planets can be discounted for th
e time being.” He took a sip of water from a glass on the table then eyeballed each one of us in turn with his deliberate glassy brown stare, as if we might like to challenge his authoritative narrative. None of us did. He continued using his notes.
“The surface gravity on Burgesses is 123% of that on Earth. It is going to be heavy going down there, especially after a long hyper-sleep. Bones will need time to recalcify and muscles, although constantly toned throughout stasis will take time to recover full potential.” Bram turned a page and kept reading, heedless that anyone might be confused. I was, but hey, so what!
“It’s atmosphere is roughly forty-eight percent the pressure of the Earth's at sea level. It is estimated that there is sufficient CO2 in the ice at the polar caps to quickly form a 90% kilopascal atmosphere if it is released by planetary warming.” Bram looked up, “You get that, pindicks? It’s not yet breathable.” Once again, he searched our faces far longer than was necessary. My eyes watered on a reflex.
“This process of warming is ongoing as we speak. The reappearance of liquid water on the surface will add to the warming effects created by our thermal detonations and orbiting mirrors. Our astrologer geeks estimate that within forty years the planet will achieve an air-mass sufficient to obtain the optimum one hundred KPA pressure at the surface, whatever that means.” Bram’s eyes flicked down the page, “Blah de blah blah blah… Ah, here we go. Additional volatiles to increase the atmosphere's density must be supplied from an external source, such as redirecting several massive asteroids containing ammonia and nitrogen. I don’t think they will expect us to do that.”
Bram took a breather and checked to ensure his audience hadn’t nodded off. He need not have worried. The thought of following my predecessor on his way to dusty death focused all our attention completely, not that I understood half of what he was saying.
Beyond the Rubicon Page 4