The Rig

by Roger Levy

  Mackel was the foreman. He always came to greet us in the midlock chamber.

  ‘We’re late,’ I said. ‘He’s probably busy.’ It struck me that I had no idea how Pellonhorc was going to manage this.

  Madelene said, ‘Where’s my surprise? It’s filthy here.’

  Drame said, ‘What’s got into you, Alef? You really are irritating me. You need a piss or something?’

  ‘I don’t like being late. You know that.’

  While Drame went to the comms panel and spoke into it, Madelene stood by, her lips tight. She was wearing a long coat, solar red, and her boots shone like someone had just licked them. She said, ‘Don’t look at me like that, Alef. It’s creepy. You have any idea how creepy you are?’

  ‘Hell with it,’ Drame said. ‘Must be a work break.’ He overrode the control and the door opened.

  No one was there. We were nearly an hour later than I’d promised Pellonhorc. He and Ligate had probably gone, given up. No matter how much Ligate trusted Pellonhorc, he was a long way from home.

  Madelene gasped. ‘What is this?’

  Drame instantly cheered up. I stood back in the shadows of the midlock as they went forward to the brightness within.

  ‘It’s our house, Madly,’ he whispered.

  Taken by her excitement, he’d forgotten I was there. She went over to him and leant close and took his hand, and though I could only see the back of them, I could tell she was grinding his hand against her fork. They moved forward awkwardly together. Through the brief spaces between them I could see her clutching at his groin, tugging him along by it. Once she glanced swiftly back and saw me and smiled. She, at least, hadn’t forgotten I was there. It was not a pleasant smile she gave me.

  There was a wide corridor between the walls of the house and the shell of the containing hangar. Small cranes and mixers and other construction machinery sat there, waiting, along with bags of precatalysed qualcrete and slabs of unpolished marble. A few floormechs skimmed around, but no building work was allowed while Drame and I visited, so that we could examine the house in peace. Even so, there were usually workers sitting around, waiting for us to leave. Today there seemed to be no one. There were just the mouldy smells of building materials and the fine dust drifting in the air. Drame and Madelene had vanished.

  I wasn’t sure what to do now. I’d assumed that Pellonhorc would be there as soon as the flycykle landed in the midlock, that what needed to be done would be done there and then, but here we were, late, and Madelene was with us. And there was no one else.

  ‘Alef!’

  I shrieked. I couldn’t help it. I looked around in panic but couldn’t see anyone.

  ‘Up here!’

  I craned my neck. Ethan Drame was leaning out of a window on the first level. His jacket was off, his hair rumpled. He yelled down, ‘When I get back, people are going to get their legs broken. You think this happens every time we leave? No wonder this site’s taking so damngod long.’

  He turned round at something and vanished from the window. Silence, then a long, low groan of pleasure. Madelene was calming him down.

  Maybe Drame was right. Maybe the workers were slacking. They had no idea who they were working for. Even Mackel thought I was the client and Drame some fixer who worked for me. I started to walk round the building, looking for anyone.

  The house was on four levels, with sloped outer walls and cantilevered roofs, and balconies and turrets and arches. There were false and true windows, false and true doors, false and true walls. There were hidden chambers that only I and Drame and the building’s designer knew about. There was already the beginning of a tunnel beneath the building. There was to be a thrummer landing-pad, military defence systems and secure chambers.

  At the far end of the hangar were the workers’ quarters. The standard routine was that they were ferried here in closed ships from elsewhere in the System, so that they saw nothing between the hiring station and the inside of the hangar here. None of them worked for longer than a month. They arrived with a set of clothes that were burnt on arrival, and they were given a new set of clothes to leave in when they were ferried away again. I wondered what rumours might be circulating around the System, but I suspected that the secrecy they were sworn to was maintained. Drame had once told me that as the ferry arrived back at its original departure point, one worker was selected at random and executed in front of the others as a warning.

  The door to the workers’ quarters was closed, but not locked. I pushed it open and went through to a long, narrow corridor.

  This was no more than provisional housing, harshly lit and roughly put up. Somewhere ahead, I could hear water running. There was a swingdoor to a canteen, scratchy music surging and dying as I pushed the door and let it close again behind me. Inside there was no one, just the long tables and their benches. A few plates were still sitting on the tables. There was a stench of burnt food and cheap spices. A drink had been spilled; there was a puddle of it on a table by a broken bottle, and a further puddle on the floor. I was shaking, almost afraid to move for the sound my feet would make on the floor. All this made no sense.

  Leaving the canteen, I forced myself to carry on exploring. Every part of the workers’ quarters seemed to be off this single corridor. The sound of running water was still ahead of me, but I was hesitant about continuing too far from the relative safety of the hangar.

  Stepping as lightly as I could and feeling slightly faint, I went to the next door, took a breath and slowly pushed the door open.

  A blade of light from behind me shot across the floor and into the chamber. It was a dormitory, and it was quite dark. Realising that I was silhouetted against the light, I pulled the door closed again and stood outside, undecided. I thought I’d seen shapes on the beds, sleeping bodies. Maybe they were asleep. Maybe it was no more than that. In the hangar, there was no day or night, only work and rest. Perhaps the workers were just taking their breaks. Some must be in the showers I could hear sluicing up ahead, just before or after their sleep, and the rest were in here. Yes, I told myself. It was only that.

  I pushed the dormitory door open again and this time I slipped inside, closing the door quickly behind me. I stood with my back against the door, aware of my thumping heart, letting my eyes become accustomed to the gloom.

  There were shapes in almost every bed, and I breathed more easily. Here they all were, simply sleeping. It was a long room, with a row of beds along each wall, a chair and cabinet beside each one. It reminded me of the church in Gehenna, the beds as rows of pews, and the grave silence. I looked to the far end, almost expecting to see a pulpit, but of course there was nothing.

  As I adjusted my weight, the floor creaked, and on one of the furthest beds someone moved and made a noise. I almost laughed with relief. It was a snore.

  I could see a little more, now. The sleeping shapes were still, and I wondered ridiculously whether they were too still. Were they drugged? The snoring sleeper was turning restlessly, and I knew I would have to look, but first I went to the nearest bed. The woman there was curled up on her side, the sheet pulled to her chin. I could make out the contours of her face in the shadows. There was nothing obviously wrong, but she didn’t seem quite right, somehow. I didn’t touch her.

  They had to be drugged. Pellonhorc had done it to clear the field for his coup.

  I went down the centre of the aisle, feeling very anxious. I had an extreme urge to shout them all awake, and at the same time, I wanted to creep away. Instead of doing either, I counted my breaths. As I came closer to the restless sleeper, he turned slowly towards me and murmured something in that almost-language of the sleep-talker. Without thought, I stopped counting and said, ‘What?’

  He rolled his head and muttered something more. I still couldn’t make it out. I put a hand gently on his shoulder to rouse him, hoping to find out what was going on here, and brought my hand abruptly away.

  My palm was soaking wet and my fingers were sticky. He turned, jerkily, and blood
bubbled up at his neck, and then he sighed, a heavy frothy breath that seemed never to end.

  I sprawled backwards and fell, barely holding back a scream. His throat was cut all the way across.

  I crawled out of the dormitory on my hands and knees and stumbled, puking, to crash blindly through the door and down the corridor to the last chamber. The washroom.

  The noise of water was deafening, and hot wreaths of steam filled the air. I was retching and thinking only of the mutilated man. I puked into a sink and washed the blood from my hands and sluiced my face, then wiped a palm across a fogged mirror and stared at myself. There was no more blood on me, but through the mists I saw thick trails of blood smeared on the walls, and there were wadded bloody towels thrown all over the floor.

  Someone else had done as I had just done. Someone else had washed blood away, and washed and washed and washed.

  Ligate had done this, I told myself. Only Ligate could have done it. Not Pellonhorc. I turned and ran back down the corridor and out of the workers’ quarters, and let the door fall closed behind me, and then I slid to the ground, sobbing.

  I was remembering the deaths of my parents. My throat was closed so that I could hardly breathe. I tried to make a whisper, but couldn’t even do that. The brilliant, shadowless glare of the hangar was almost unbearable after the darkness of the dormitory, and the silence was terrifying.

  Eventually I got to my feet and calculated the number of bricks in the house, and worked out the quantities of mortar and marble that would be needed, and the weight of it all, and then I headed slowly back.

  ‘Alef! Where were you? I’ve been calling.’

  I stifled a scream. It was Drame, just as before, leaning out of the window as if no time had passed. For an instant I thought that I had imagined what I’d seen in the workers’ quarters. Over Drame’s shoulder another face suddenly appeared, but it was only Madelene grinning smugly at me.

  ‘Come up,’ Drame told me, and disappeared.

  I hesitated, wondering what had gone wrong with the plan. Everyone dead, but was it over? I had a terrible feeling that I had brought Ethan Drame and myself to our deaths. Maybe Ligate had realised that this was a trap for him. He would have killed Pellonhorc before leaving and left the body for Drame to find, just like he had left the workers’ corpses. Maybe Pellonhorc’s corpse had been among those of the workers, back in the dormitory.

  Maybe Ligate was still here.

  I went as if in a dream to the door of the house and crossed the threshold. To my left and right were the housings for beam sensors that would detect certain types of weapon and comms devices. The sensors hadn’t been installed yet.

  The hall was wide and long. Dustsheets lay on the floor, and my feet made no sound. There were doors to left and right, half open, the dustsheets lying rippled at the heels of the doors. I went to the wide swirl of stairs and started to climb, my feet scuffing the sheets where they were roughly tacked at each riser. I looked back as I ascended the long, shallow curve, but there was no one, and my feet were soundless on the material.

  On the first floor I headed along the gallery towards the master suite where, I hoped, Drame had finished fucking Madelene. The door was closed, so I knocked. The sound was muffled. My knuckle was spotted with dust, and I rubbed it away on my trousers. My trousers were very faintly speckled with blood.

  ‘Come in, Alef.’

  I pushed the door open nervously, wondering what I could read from Drame’s voice.

  ‘She likes it,’ Drame said, hitching up his trousers. ‘Don’t you, Madly?’

  Madelene smiled.

  He touched her arm. ‘Now, let’s have a proper tour of the place.’ He grinned and whispered to her, as if I weren’t there, ‘And thank you, Madly, for my own little tour.’

  She put on a cheap voice. ‘I think you’ve seen everything, sir. If there’s anything you’d like to see again…’

  They weren’t ignoring me at all. They needed me to watch their flirting. It struck me very clearly that I was reading the subtlety of their expressions and tones without any effort, reading their every glance and gesture. I felt an alertness that I’d never known before; what I saw was sharper, brighter, and time was turning more slowly.

  ‘Lead on, Alef,’ Drame said.

  I turned and left the room, saying, ‘We can start up here.’ I was working out the most efficient way to cover the house. From here, we’d go to the roof and work our way back down. I went to the next flight of stairs. Madelene and Drame made no noise behind me and I glanced back. They were on the gallery, looking down. My heart thudded. I called, as soon as I could gather my voice, ‘What is it?’

  Drame looked slowly up at me and then looked down again. ‘Madelene thinks it needs to be in pale green.’ He took her hand and they came up the stairs. I breathed again. No one was here but us. No one alive, at least. Surely Ligate wouldn’t wait so long. I couldn’t convince myself of that, though.

  I went fast, now, up the stairs to the roof, and I pushed open the door to the flycykle deck. Nothing was there but a carpet of dust. I waited, and when Drame and Madelene came out onto the deck, I showed them the space with a wave of my arm and said, ‘We should go now. We’ve been longer than I intended. We have to get back.’

  Drame said, sharply, ‘Alef?’ He squinted at me and pulled Madelene away from the door and slammed it with a kick, leaving us in the open. ‘You’ve been acting spooked all morning. I thought it was just your normal shit, but it isn’t. What the hell is it?’

  ‘We’ve been here fifty-eight minutes,’ I said. ‘A tour will take at least another forty-five, even if we don’t stop. There’s twenty-three rooms, stairs and corridors –’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, Alef. Something’s wrong when you start mumbling numbers, every time. What’s going on?’ He had a gun in his hand. He punched the barrel into my temple and held it there, grinding it into the skin. ‘Tell me right now.’

  Madelene said, ‘Wait, Ethan. How’s he going to tell you anything if you kill him?’

  ‘It’s a surprise,’ I said. My head was juddering against the gun barrel. I couldn’t hold it still. Drame wrapped his other hand around my skull, cradling my head tightly between the gun and his palm. I said, ‘Pellonhorc should have been here. He was supposed to lure Ligate here so you could kill him. It was a present for you. But we got here late. Ligate must have gone.’ I licked my dry lips. It didn’t help. ‘Everyone’s dead here. He’s killed them all.’

  ‘Shit.’ Drame kicked the door. ‘And Pellonhorc? Where’s he?’

  ‘I think Ligate must have killed him too.’

  ‘Shit,’ Drame said again. He threw me down and dropped to his knees, crawling to the edge of the deck and peering out. Madelene fell flat and swore. Drame took a moment to scan the floor below and pushed himself away from the edge. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’re leaving. Alef, you’re only still alive because you’re somehow too stupid to have thought what was wrong with this.’ He checked his gun. ‘Madelene, what are you carrying?’

  ‘You know what I’m carrying, Ethan.’ She tried a smile but her voice was trembling.

  ‘Well, get it out and point it at the fucking door. You can make jokes when we’re back home, if we make it. If Ligate was stupid enough to get himself here, he’s not about to leave without something bigger than my fool of a son’s death. Alef, you carrying any sort of a weapon?’

  ‘No.’

  He shook his head. ‘And we’re on the fucking roof. No way down from here but the door.’

  We all stared at the door.

  Twenty-five

  BALE

  The Chute stores were clustered between the rigyards and the spaceport. There were fly-suit stalls, repair booths, suitcomms specialists, suit and fin designers, and then, beyond the stores, in a long line set directly at the edge of the shield, there were the tanks.

  Bale had learnt to ride the Chute in these tanks. They were ranked in order of size, from the chambers where you learnt to hang and
turn, to the half-kil tubes where you could get a brief sense – almost – of the joy and terror of the real thing.

  The tanks were fronted with hardglass and walled with cerock. The edge of Lookout’s shield sat right along the tank roofs so that Bleak’s wind could be streamed through them.

  Bale was headed for the stores, but he couldn’t resist a look at the tanks first. A group of formation riders were in one of the half-kils, looking blurred and ragged through the thick glass, arrowing left to right and flipping back again, the tank’s wind switching direction for them as they approached the ends. The riders were perfectly synchronised, seemingly strung together. The crowd gathered along the tank nodded and sighed. Bale stood and watched the display for a few moments, this shoal of fish in thick water, swimming mindlessly from end to end.

  Bale didn’t get the idea of being part of a pattern. What was the point in that? He went back to the stores until he found the one he wanted. The name flashed over the door, printing on his retina and only readable when he closed his eyes:

  Faster!

  The front of the store was a mockup of a tank. It looked good, but it was no more than stage wind in a tryout box. A rider was in there trying out a lightsuit. The glitter and flash of the suit’s lights made the rider look no better than he was. He thumped from side to side, spinning off the glass.

  Faster! serviced the rich and their kids. It was a store for the look-at-mes who rode the tanks a few times a year and kept to the node when they did. Bale wore a cheap suit. He maintained it himself and rigged its comms too. He went inside as the window rider exited unsteadily, peeled the suit, confirmed a flight fee with the woman at the counter and limped from the shop. She watched him leave, then met Bale’s eye without expression.

  ‘You get a lot of window riders?’ Bale said.

  ‘You could be one. Except you look a bit old.’

  ‘I’m not one.’

  ‘Shame. I make more out of the window than anything else. So, you just wishing the wind?’