The Iron Swamp

by J V Wordsworth

  No one said a word to me as I walked back to the elevator, not even a nod. They all just watched vacantly, like masks on a wall. I wanted to tell them to frak themselves, but I didn't. I could feel Vins' eyes on my back holding me rigid with his will.

  Finished for the day, and every day to come, I made my way back to Elvedeer intent on drinking myself to death.

  I collapsed on the sofa without even patting Lola on the head and cogitated on my options. I could either continue lying on the sofa, or I could get a drink. Both had attractive and unattractive attributes, but I decided there was plenty of time to lie on the sofa, so I got up to inspect the sparsity of my wares.

  I didn't even want to jack-in. The knowledge that I had once again been the agent of my own demise made the image of the Pirate Captain stretch and bend until it formed a noose. If I went into the ether now, I would never come out again. Captain Dae Daniel Sun and human garbage Simon Nidess would die together.

  I was now in my second basement, subject to the same slow rot as my exiled father. Perhaps he would be proud, but what good would that do me? His sacrifice and mine meant nothing, because they achieved nothing. In rejecting his philosophy, I had hoped to save myself his fate, but all I had done was fail in spite of it. I had not changed enough. To survive, I needed to feed Fache to the dogs, but there were some weights a conscience couldn't bear without breaking.

  Far from correcting the issue, downing the remnants of a 50cl bottle of Jack's Evil Eye only worsened the feeling of internal rot. As I Inserted my tongue into the bottle to get the last dregs, the only solution appeared to be to order more.

  I ran down the list of beers, spirits, ciders, and wines on sale at Kaeromar and selected as many of them as I thought a man could carry in one journey. Interacting with a person once was bad enough. I had no wish to see the same person twice.

  While I was waiting for the arrival of enough booze to drown a kraaken, I found a suitably comfortable pair of trousers – basically thick pajamas covered in the super heroes from my Hotary comics – and sank back into the sofa. I considered reading a comic, but short words above large pictures sounded exhausting. Watching the network was less involving.

  For a while I watched Klios Pane, a film about a man with the ability to read minds who used his power to bring down the corrupt government regime. It was banned in The Kaerosh as the ruler was based on President Granian, previously thought to be the worst dictator we'd ever had. I turned it off half way through when Klios had the chance to kill Garman – supposed to be Clazran – and chose to let him live. It seemed selfish to consider his honor above that of the welfare of an entire nation, and yet in the film the character wasn't execrated for his poor judgment but lauded for his morality.

  I found a show about a family living in Picto whose house sank into the swamp as they slept. It wasn't exactly clear on how they managed to stay asleep while all the house's supports and flotation devices broke and burst, but what was made abundantly clear was how much they'd suffered. Seeing as I didn't care about that, I looked for something else.

  My collection of drink soon to arrive, I realized that there was not a single item of sustenance on the list aside from Lola's chum. The cupboards contained nothing but igueenie pasta, which tasted like normal pasta covered in wax, and maybe there was some rice. What in Cythuria the first human settlers were thinking when they invented igueenie pasta was one of the universe's greatest mysteries. Having brought wheat with them, there seemed little need to start farming the rancid Cos vegetables for substitutes. The worst were gexes which tasted like fermented cardboard, or cranberries which tasted like vomiting up gexes. A millennium distant, I wasn't totally sure they were Cos produce, but as a general rule, if they tasted worse than eating the soil beneath the plant they grew on, then they came from Cos.

  Watching some program about horny teenagers instigated my first coherent thought about suicide. It was the notion that if I wasn't there, then they could continue whining in the privacy of my living room. Saved by the buzzer indicating the arrival of my alcohol, I raised myself from the sofa to go to the door. A fat man held out his tablet for my thumb print, two crates stacked full of drink in front of his legs.

  "Planning a party?" he said, smiling.

  "No," I said, handing him back his tablet.

  His smile vanished as I pulled the two crates in and shut the door. I lifted the top crate off with some difficulty to survey my selection. There were tall bottles with colored liquid, small bottles with brown liquid, and colored bottles with mystery liquids; pretty much every type of bottle a man could want. I grabbed one at random and ripped the top off.

  Chapter 7

  14/09/2256 FC

  It must have been a cycle since the crates arrived, and my insides twisted and contracted as if I'd eaten Kenrey's raw remains. Only when I made the mistake of adding orange liqueur to the igueenie pasta did I consider ordering some more food and facing another human being.

  A second look had revealed there wasn't any rice, forcing me to extract what energy I could from pasta and booze. I had little of it left, but as the intoxication made standing for more than a few minutes at a time literally impossible, I rarely noticed.

  I almost didn't recognize the sound of the buzzer against the chatter from the network screen. The room was in a fairly constant spin which made it difficult to identify the origin of specific noises. I ignored it the first few times, but after four or five rings it seemed that peace would return faster if I told whoever was outside to go frak a swamp badger.

  I was unsteady on my feet, pushing myself off the wall a couple of times before I made it to the door. I stepped on a few of my figures which I'd thrown around the room at some point or other, as well as the screen of my booklet which crunched beneath my weight. I didn't care. I'd done the last of my comic reading.

  It took me a few moments to locate the handle before flinging the door open in a semi-fluid motion. The five or six figures, all wearing black cloaks and hoods, were SP.

  Oh frak!

  Suddenly aware that I was wearing nothing but a rib vest and pants, I briefly considered running. But even if I hadn't spent the last cycle sitting on a sofa, I stood little chance of outmaneuvering six SP in a single exit flat. Instead, I fixed them with an eye. I could probably take them if they came any closer. At school I'd hit someone once, and he didn't seem to like it.

  "Mr. Nidess? Will you come with us?"

  I staggered sideways a bit, but no one noticed. On recalculation, I could probably take one or two of them, but the whole lot seemed unlikely. I needed an escape plan. I had to convince them they were at the wrong flat. "You know," I said, "I'm not entirely sure I am Mr. Nidess."

  I squinted to gauge their reactions, but they were spinning too fast.

  One of them stepped forward. "You need to come with us, sir."

  "He's wasted," one of them added.

  I stepped away from him and sat down on the ground. "I find that infensive." I pointed at the one I thought said it. "I'm perfectly sober. You're looking for Nidess; my name is Nediss. I can see why you'd make the mistake." I got up, narrowly avoiding tumbling over the other way, but none of them seemed to notice. "It's a very common name, Nidess; lots of people called it round here."

  The nearest one grabbed me by the arm. I pulled away, slamming into the wall. "I need to go to the toilet."

  One of them laughed as the nearest one was about to grab me again, but another one stopped him, nodding at the bathroom behind me. His consent was sufficiently surprising that I was still thinking up arguments why he should let me go as I stood in front of the bowl.

  I emptied my bladder over pretty much everything within a fairly wide radius, which by this stage was nothing new, and seeing as I wasn't coming back there didn't seem much point in flushing it. I donned a pair of trousers, grabbed my coat and gloves so that I didn't die of cold, and went back to the agents.

  Lola barked, finally exiting the hiding place she used under the hall tab
le when anyone except me was at the door. "Who'll feed my dog?" I said, feeling a rush of sadness.

  "We'll put someone on that," said one of them. "You need to come with us now."

  I patted her on the head. "Good girl, Lola. Everything will be alright. I'm just going for a walk with these men." I could feel the water welling up behind my eyes, but I wouldn't let her see. It would only scare her.

  "Maybe we could give her to a neighbor to look after?" I suggested, but the nearest of them shook his head. "Could I just leave her in the corridor then?"

  Again the hood shook his head. Lola barked a few more times as the door closed, and I vomited on the floor.

  Someone might find her. She would bark when she was hungry and someone would come. I wiped the gobbets of drool from my mouth and spat out the last of the acid. Perhaps when someone came to clean it up they would hear Lola's distress. Not even the residents of Elvedeer tolerated piles of vomit in the corridor for long.

  The motion of the elevator made me feel dizzy. One of the hoods put his hand on my shoulder as I began to sway too much to one side, a fresh nausea rising in me with every floor we descended. The puddle of vomit that trickled down the doors as they reopened could have been avoided only by choking myself on my own stomach acid.

  I sat in the back of a slider-van with four of the six SP. There was only one window, partially obscured by a hood. When they stood, I was short enough to see their faces, but sitting down all I could see was the occasional chin.

  I knew exactly what would happen next. Firstly, the buildings would be replaced by trees. Then the trees would get shorter and fatter and be replaced by swamps. Then we would stop. I would be taken out, knelt down, and shot once in the back of the head. My corpse would then be shot one more time in the head to ensure I was dead, and I would be thrown in the swamp. They didn't have to be discrete. No one was going to do anything about it.

  It wouldn't take long to reach the nearest swamp. Even Abaconsaye and the Ring of Six couldn't escape the smell of dank rot. Someone told me that kaerosh actually meant swamp in old Rathjarin. The last vestiges of the language used by the race that once ruled Cos before the advent of humanity.

  I was past fear, or possibly too drunk. It was regret that tugged at me. The thought of what I could have been. The things I could have done. I never even went to see Sariah in prison.

  We started to slow. My heart began to race. I wasn't ready to die.

  I should have been thinking of an escape plan. It was only ever too late when you gave up. Maybe I could dive into a pool, find a reed, and stay under until they got bored of waiting. Maybe I could steal one of their guns. They wouldn't be expecting it, not from me. I wasn't even sure I knew how to fire it. Pull the trigger. I would have to kill all six of them quickly.

  I looked down as slyly as I could to see if the one next to me had a holstered gun. He did, but my best chance was still to run and hide. Kaeroshi swamps weren't safe even if you were an armed SP agent. Even the smaller ones contained dangers. If I could stay alive for long enough, they might be forced to retreat.

  The slider stopped gently in a place still obscured from view by a hood.

  I wasn't ready.

  I needed more time to think. My legs were shaking uncontrollably with adrenaline. I was about to go for the gun when the one with the darkest stubble moved his head forward so I could see where we were. This wasn't a swamp. We hadn't even left Las Hek. We were at window security with lines of sliders either side. The van moved forward slightly as someone was let through.

  It didn't make any sense. There were plenty of swamps near the city large enough for them to bury my corpse. There was no need to take the risk of transporting me through a security checkpoint.

  The van moved forward another few mets. No one spoke. They all just sat there facing forwards as if the doors were about to open on the front lines of a battle.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Classified," said the bald chin.

  "Can you tell me anything?"

  "We're moving you to a safe location."

  I shook my head. It was all lies anyway.

  The window we were heading for was a huge square frame of thick metal reinforced with the transparent blue calamite strong enough to survive a nuclear explosion. It was filled with a purple mist that disseminated from the worm hole mechanism allowing us to go anywhere in Cos as if it were a footstep away.

  Passage took less than an instant. No sooner had the purple mist covered the van than I could see the window security station the other side. The scenery looked much the same, though the hood was sitting straight again and my view was largely obstructed. At a guess it seemed like we were still in The Kaerosh. There was no queue at the exit side, so we picked up speed quickly, and my heart began to race, wondering how and why I was still alive.

  "Lisidia Vins wants you dead," said a hood.

  "That isn't news."

  "Because they found Vos Peti," said another.

  "What's that got to do with me? I'm not even a policeman anymore."

  The hood looked at one of the others. "He's been dead for over a cycle."

  I shrugged. "I've been drunk for over a cycle."

  "You lost your job three weeks ago."

  The implication was like lightning down the spine. "He couldn't have killed Kenrey then. Vins is worried people might use my report against him, so I have to die."

  The hood nodded. "He's under house arrest, but we know he sent people to kill you. We found one of them on the way up to get you. If we were a few minutes later, you wouldn't be sitting here right now."

  That was more confusing. "What do you mean he's under house arrest?"

  "Clazran's orders. Vins is wanted for murder."

  I had no idea what was going on, but the alcohol made me bold. "So you're here to protect me from Vins?"

  He nodded.

  I sputtered nervous laughter. "I have as much reason to trust you as the houthar queen to trust her mad brother."

  "We don't care if you trust us as long as you don't do something stupid like run away." He lent towards me so that his hood almost touched my nose. "But if we wanted you dead, you wouldn't still be sitting here."

  I said nothing. My abduction was sobering me faster than I liked. If I was about to die, then it seemed preferable to do it drunk.

  "President Clazran wants to see you," said a hood.

  "Frak off!" I almost smiled. "I'm not near drunk enough to believe that."

  The nearest one sounded angry. "You're not nearly informed enough to disbelieve anything we say."

  "What does he want to see me for?"

  "You'll be given new clothes and some time to sober up," said another.

  "And shower," added another, as if this had paramount importance.

  There was no further elaboration. When the van finally stopped again I was relieved to see that we were not in a swamp but a village. Like most populated zones in The Kaerosh, it was adjacent to a swamp, and the cold, wet air cut to the bone. Despite this, the quaint line of houses had a feeling of tranquility, bunched together like a line of candy houses in a diorama. The road and all the buildings were elevated above the ground to survive the expansion of the swamp during the wet season. The nicer houses even had flotation devices above their supports for the more severe cycles.

  The hoods walked me up the pathway of wooden slats to the front door of one of the houses without flotation devices and gestured me inside.

  Tree houses were better furnished, and I was just about drunk enough to care. The living room contained a chair and a table, the kitchen a single microwave, and the bedroom was exactly as the name described. I turned on the light, pleasantly surprised to find it working, and sat in the provided chair. A quick lie on the bed, and I would have done everything there was to do.

  One of the hoods with a bald chin and gentle face walked into the room and laid a pile of clothes on the table. "There should be something here that fits. All the adult stuff is the small
est size it came in. There's also some children's stuff if that doesn't work."

  Despite the fact that none of the adult stuff would fit, the sight of the clothes was still a relief. It was evidence that I was not going to be murdered by these men. After being walked into a shower and watched as I stripped, the hood took my clothes and left, satisfied that I wasn't going to make a naked escape. Though I considered it, the hot water was too tempting, and the stench of booze and vomit was beginning to make me nauseous. I only realized how long I'd spent beneath the falling water when a hood came to check I hadn't squeezed through the window.

  I tried on the adult stuff first, but as expected the legs of the trousers went well past the end of my shoes. The rib vest was far too large, and my hands ended before the elbow in the dry-tops.

  My clothes were specially made. Store bought stuff, except socks, never worked, though the children's stuff was better. A few of the kids' dry-tops and coats fit ok. I didn't bother asking for privacy after the shower, trying everything on in front of the bald hood who seemed to find it hilarious. I was used to being laughed at, and his guilty chuckle wasn't overly sadistic. Far from making me uncomfortable, it added to the feeling that I wasn't about to be tortured or murdered.

  By the time one of them brought me some food, it was dark. Another one handed me some hangover pills to take when I went to sleep. Outside, lamps were alight between the houses, and several rooms shone yellow light out into the dark lane. The view was quite pretty from the window once the heating had got going. The village seemed reassuringly alive; not some ghost town used to stash people in witness protection.

  My head was throbbing as if someone had been using it to beat a drum, so I ate my microwaved meal and went to bed. There was no question my body needed rest. My eyes were full of gravel, and my eye lids were lifting bags of flour, but the idea of meeting Clazran was enough to keep me awake for a century. I turned from back to side to front like a spin dryer. Every time I was close to sleep I pictured him accusing me of treason or getting lost in his palace which became a prison. Clazran was the monster on the hill, and tomorrow I was going to meet him.