The Rig

by Roger Levy

  ‘About me, or about humans?’ Tallen said. He was aware of himself starting to imitate their inflectionless tone.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lode.

  They continued to reward him, or to maintain him. Every few days he would wake up and find himself on deck again with the sea at his face, and for a while that seemed to restore him.

  Beata and Lode saw him every day. He would direct himself just to Beata, or just to Lode, but whatever he did, they both returned his conversation.

  Tallen said to Beata, ‘Can I talk to just one of you at a time? I don’t like this. You look different, but that isn’t enough.’

  ‘No,’ Beata replied. ‘This doubling is designed to hold your attention and defocus aggression. We will go and take advice, though.’

  Lode said, ‘Tell us, how do you feel, Tallen? Can you describe it?’

  Tallen said to Beata, ‘You monitor me. You should know.’

  Lode said, ‘Tell us anyway.’

  ‘Can the one I speak to be the one who answers me? Is that acceptable?’

  ‘Human contact is important,’ Beata said. ‘It is vital for your psychological wellbeing. And giving voice to your feelings assists the process of self-knowledge. It gives you a sense of engagement.’

  ‘You aren’t human, Beata,’ Tallen said.

  ‘Even though you know this, you respond as though we are.’

  ‘Though not as much as we would like you to,’ added Lode.

  Tallen put his head in his hands and said, ‘I don’t feel right. I feel good on deck, but it doesn’t last. And it isn’t happiness. It isn’t a real feeling.’

  ‘No,’ said Beata.

  Lode said, ‘Can you explain how you don’t feel right?’

  ‘When I’m walking the rig, I know where I am at every moment, I know where I’m headed and where I still have to cover. I know what’s behind every door as I pass it. But I can’t remember where I’ve just been. And now, if I try, I can’t think where anything is.’ He was aware of water in his eyes. ‘All I can think of is the sea.’

  Beata said, ‘You still like the sea, though.’

  ‘Yes. But I can’t concentrate on anything. I could at first, a little, but now I don’t feel connected to anything but this.’

  Beata and Lode looked at each other. They said, ‘Get some sleep, Tallen.’

  After that, they gave him the sea more frequently. He developed a routine of sleeping, waking to the sea and sleeping again. And otherwise, he walked. He found himself thinking of the sea whenever he stopped thinking about the rig. Occasionally he thought of Lookout, but as a distant, indistinct memory. His life settled down to the endless walking, the aches and the pains and the invigoration of the sea. Now and again he had headaches unrelated to the rig, or felt unreasonably angry or euphoric. Sometimes he cried.

  Once he found a knife in his pocket and wondered what it was doing there. He almost threw it away, but for some reason found he couldn’t do that.

  Twenty-six

  ALEF

  SigEv 30 More death

  Drame said, ‘Okay, Alef, open the door with your right hand. I want your body blocking it. Keep your arm high, I’ll be aiming under your armpit. Wait for my word.’

  I waited. Two point two seconds. I felt the sweat gathering in my armpit.

  ‘Go.’

  I pulled the door open. It stuck for a moment, then came sharply wide, slamming loudly against the wall, bang! There was no one there.

  ‘Okay. Drop your arm and start down the stairs. Go steadily and quickly. If you slow or stop, I’ll take it you’re Ligate’s player and Madelene will put you down. Madelene, you hear that?’

  ‘Yes, Ethan.’

  I was already moving. At the top of the stairs I tripped over the edge of a dust sheet and went sprawling. Madelene fired over my head, the sound ringing down the stairwell. I got up and looked at her. Drame said quietly, ‘Mad, I said to kill him, not warn him.’

  ‘I was trying to kill him.’

  ‘Next time don’t miss. Alef, get going. Watch your feet.’

  We took half an hour to get back to the ground. The front door was open a little. Drame said, ‘Alef, did you leave it like that?’

  ‘Yes. Exactly like that.’

  He looked hard at me and said, ‘One thing you’re good for, at least.’ He looked out, left and right. The door to the midlock was down the workmen’s track, about fifty metres away. The track was overlooked by the house all along. Drame looked up and down, taking his time. The hangar’s inner wall was featureless. There was no machinery in this section of the track. The wall of the house was our only threat.

  Drame said, ‘This is how we do it. Alef, you go first. Keep tight to the wall of the house so if there’s anyone, they have to lean out to see you. Whatever happens, don’t stop. Get to the midlock and open it. I’ll cover you all the way. When it’s open, you wave. You ready?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then go.’

  I ran, my arm banging along the wall of Drame’s house, my feet echoing. It seemed like I’d never get there, and then I was outside the midlock and leaning on its seal-bar, pushing the heavy door. As soon as I had it halfway open, I turned and waved. I could feel the cool air at my back. Drame pushed Madelene out into the open corridor and she started running towards me. Her mouth was wide. Her shoes weren’t made for running. She kept her eyes on me, though there was no expression in them. I think she was trying to keep all thought from her head while she was exposed out there. Nothing happened, though. She ran straight past me and into the midlock. I kept my eyes on the track.

  I waved to Drame and he came crouched out of the doorway in a swift, loping run, hugging the wall but changing pace all the time. When he reached me, he stopped by the open door and put the gun to my head again. ‘If I didn’t still need you, Alef, you’d be dead right here. Understand me?’ I nodded. He took my hand and separated my little finger and bent it back, hard, until I squealed. ‘When we get back, I’m cutting this off. Just so you don’t forget.’ He let my finger go. ‘If I didn’t like you, I’d make you eat it.’ He looked at me, making sure I understood he wasn’t joking, and then he stepped into the midlock. Peering into the gloom, his gun suddenly raised waist-high, he said, ‘Madly?’

  It struck me that the midlock lights should have gone on as soon as the seal had been broken. And that the seal-bar hadn’t sounded right as I’d worked it.

  Beside me, squinting into the midlock, Drame stopped. ‘What?’

  The door smashed back at him, throwing him down. The gun was still in his hand and he brought it up as Ligate – I could see him crouching, eyes bright – fired. The long bead of light was swift and brilliant in the darkness.

  I thought instantly that Drame had dropped his gun, but as the midlock lights flared and held, I saw it was his hand that he had let fall, severed at the wrist. He jammed the stump against his waist to stem the stream of blood and went for the dropped gun with his other hand, but Ligate kicked the weapon, still clutched in Drame’s fist, across the floor. Without pausing, Drame stood up and hurled himself at Ligate.

  I was still standing by the door, in shock. Even the numbers had left me, and I was just seeing the whole scene as if overlaid on a threedy grid. I was observing the lines and curves of motion, of the firing, the arcs of blood, the bounce of the hand-and-gun and then their clatter across the floor, of Drame slamming awkwardly into Ligate who stumbled and checked his balance as Drame came at him again.

  Ligate scythed the butt of his gun into Drame’s jaw, rocking him but not stopping him, and then steadied himself to fire at Drame’s knees, first shattering and then pulping them, one after the other, as Drame dropped to the ground.

  Ethan Drame was extraordinarily tenacious. Even at this, he didn’t make a sound. As his legs were ruined, he collapsed in silence, watching Ligate carefully, supporting himself on his good hand, the wrist-stump still pushed into his waist, spreading red. It looked as if he were reaching deep into himself.

>   ‘Hello, Ethan,’ Ligate eventually said. He was breathing heavily, but he was smiling and the corners of his eyes were creased in pleasure. ‘Nothing to say? Aren’t you at least going to say hello to your son?’ He made a gesture with his head, keeping his eyes on Drame.

  I turned, the first move I’d made, and my neck clicked with tension – and there was Pellonhorc standing in the corner of the midlock.

  He was alive!

  Madelene was sprawled unconscious at his feet. As Pellonhorc knelt and lifted her easily, she groaned and her eyelids trembled, and quite abruptly her eyes were wide open. Pellonhorc snaked his arm around her neck and tightened his grip, standing straight.

  I wondered what was happening. I tried to fit this in with the plan. Madelene shouldn’t be here, in the plan.

  She brought her hands up to rip at his forearm but didn’t have any strength. Her mouth opened and closed. I noticed how very red her lipstick was. For the first time, there was sufficient silence for me to hear the aircon hum of the midlock. It was as loud as Madelene’s rasping breath. Her face was pale and growing paler. Her head drooped and her eyes began to close.

  Pellonhorc said, ‘Hello, Father. Alef, you were late. I was getting worried.’

  ‘Madelene –’ I started. Pellonhorc brought up his other hand and I saw the knife in it, the blade dull and blood-smudged. I thought of the bodies in the workers’ quarters.

  ‘Madelene, yes,’ he said. ‘I wondered how we were going to manage that, but you brought her along. Thank you, Alef. It was worth our wait, after all.’ He continued to compress her throat until she fell entirely limp. Her breathing was shallow, but it was there. Pellonhorc was staring at his father.

  Ligate said, mildly, ‘Now. How shall we do this? Pellonhorc, you mentioned you’d like your father to watch Madelene die. Alef, you can relax. You’ve shown your loyalty.’ He adjusted his grip on the gun. I could hear the squeaking, the slipping of the metal in the sweat of his palm. He said, ‘Ethan, I know you won’t beg for yourself, but surely you’ll want to ask your son for the life of your mistress. Who knows? He may be generous.’

  Drame shifted his position as much as he could and scraped the stub of his wrist carefully up his chest until it was cradled firmly in his armpit. It seemed as if he were clothed in blood. He said nothing. His gaze didn’t leave Ligate.

  Pellonhorc was controlling Madelene’s breathing with his forearm, his elbow tensing and relaxing, keeping her at the edge of consciousness. She was awake but without the strength to resist. ‘This is disappointing, Father,’ he said. ‘Madelene, aren’t you disappointed?’

  She began to weep. The expression in her face was awful, her eyes closing and then opening unnaturally wide as he regulated her air, her nostrils flaring, her teeth bared and her tongue starting to push out. Her breath was rattling, and I was sure her windpipe must be cracked. Pellonhorc’s cheek was pressed against hers, his eyes half-closed and dreamy. I’d seen such an expression on the pornosphere when Pellonhorc and I had first explored it. We’d seen it together without understanding it, on the faces of men and women as they’d fucked.

  Ligate held off a moment, perhaps as momentarily startled as I was, and said, ‘Please, Pellonhorc, let’s not be distracted.’

  Pellonhorc opened his mouth slightly, almost delicately, then let the grip of his forearm slacken. Madelene brought her head up, the colour starting to bloom in her cheeks, and she took her weight insecurely on her legs. She looked lost and dazed, and started to shiver. She held onto Pellonhorc’s arm with both hands for support. As she twisted her head to look directly at him, he brought his hand up to her forehead and drew her head back, gently at first and then more firmly until her throat was taut. He was staring into her eyes.

  He was staring straight into them. He seemed to be waiting for something.

  Ligate said, ‘Pellonhorc –’

  Madelene gasped and tried to swallow, the movement stretching her throat even tighter, and at that instant Pellonhorc raised his arm and drew his blade steadily and deeply across her throat and let her fall.

  As the blood looped and descended in a fading parabola, Pellonhorc leaned into the arc and put out his tongue like some insect.

  All this time, I was doing nothing. I do not claim innocence. I cannot explain myself. I had already seen so much.

  I have to. That’s what I was thinking, that I had to do something. That to do nothing was to be nothing. I couldn’t, though. I tried to banish the image of what I had just seen Pellonhorc do from my mind, but it did no more than join all the other things I had seen.

  It came into my head that at the end of it all, at the end, I was simply an animal and no more than that. We were all animals with a thin veneer of evolution.

  I thought of Gehenna, suddenly and with a terrible yearning. It was so simple on Gehenna. It was my childhood. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I wanted to be on my knees before Father Grace and asking him for forgiveness, as if he could give me such a thing. I wanted Madelene to be alive. I wanted myself and Pellonhorc to be children again. Oh, Gehenna!

  ‘Now, Ethan,’ Ligate was saying. ‘Your son wanted to kill you himself. I understood but I said no. That’s to be my pleasure.’

  Pellonhorc was staring at his father. I must have made some small move that caught his attention, and he nodded at me as if I had made a deliberate sign, and then he indicated Ligate. I had no idea what he meant, but I saw that his knife was in a throwing grip. I was horribly aware of my heart thudding. I didn’t understand any of this.

  Ligate brought his gun up and took aim at Drame’s stomach. ‘I’m almost reluctant to kill you, Ethan,’ he said. ‘I’ve waited so long. Let’s see if we can make you talk. Some small gesture of hopelessness at the end.’

  His grip on the gun tightened, and Drame made a small noise. The sound of Ethan Drame whimpering was shocking.

  I almost screamed at Pellonhorc to throw the knife, but he held off.

  Ligate smiled. ‘There –’ he began.

  Shuddering with the effort, Drame drew his stubbed forearm from his armpit and scythed it through the air. The slash of his blood whipped across Ligate’s face and Ligate cried out, startled and blinded. He fired wildly, hitting nothing, as Drame threw himself flat.

  Again I might have moved but I did nothing. I watched as Pellonhorc at last threw the knife in a movement that seemed hardly more than a gesture. The blade buried itself in Ligate’s shoulder and he twisted in pain. Pellonhorc lunged forward, his fist smashing into Ligate’s face. He fell like a stone and didn’t move.

  Ligate’s gun had fallen close to Drame, who was stretching out his arm towards it.

  ‘Wrong hand, Father,’ Pellonhorc said. He picked the weapon up as Drame weakly resheathed his streaming wrist in his armpit. He was looking extremely white now, and shivering. The pool of his blood was extending. Pellonhorc knelt and said, ‘You know, Father, I did all of this for you. I brought Ligate here for you. Everything I ever did was for you. It always was.’

  I could hardly hear Ethan Drame whisper, ‘You killed Madelene.’

  ‘I had to, Father,’ Pellonhorc said. ‘Though you mustn’t mistake that for an apology. It was hard enough to convince Ligate that all this was safe in the first place. When you and Alef were late, he nearly killed me. When you did arrive, I had to reassure him. Madelene was the obvious instrument. You can see that.’ His eyes were wild and shining.

  Shivering convulsively with the loss of blood, Drame murmured, ‘You should, should have just killed him. I’ll finish it.’ Weakly, he stretched out his hand for Pellonhorc to give him the gun. There was no strength in him, but I could see there was no confidence either.

  ‘No, Father. That’s not for you.’ He leaned down and took his father’s good hand, squeezing it, then added, quietly, ‘Just like killing you is not for me, Father. I could never kill you.’

  Drame’s eyes darted away and back. He took a short breath and let out a word in the exhalation, ‘Son –’


  ‘It’s a long time since you called me that. Yes, Father?’ Pellonhorc pulled his father’s hand, as if helping him to his feet, then let him go again. ‘Oh, you can’t stand up, can you? You never will again, I think. You need medical aid, and I’m afraid there’s no one here. Why don’t you wait with Ligate while Alef and I go for help? You’ve lost a lot of blood, so you may not last long enough.’

  Drame wasn’t even trying to speak any more. He pressed his wrist tight into his armpit and put his head down. There was a rasp in his breathing. Pellonhorc said, ‘The trick is not to lose consciousness. Use the pain. Count the seconds. That’s what I always did, Father. I used it. I must have counted millions. Did you ever hear me counting?’

  He took a hank of thin cord and a handful of loops of plastic cable from his pocket and threw them to the ground. They were restraint cables, and for the first time I realised how entirely prepared Pellonhorc had been. He lifted Ligate’s feet and slipped them into one of the loops and pulled it tight at his ankles, the ratchets grating as they closed, then he tied his wrists behind his back. Grunting with the effort, he pulled the limp body across to the wall and used some of the cord to secure the ankle loop to a high bulkhead hook, hauling on it until Ligate’s feet were well clear of the floor.

  Ethan Drame sat in the pooling of his and his mistress’s blood, and suddenly looked up at me. There was nothing I could say to him. I wonder whether he realised that Pellonhorc had fooled me as much as he had fooled everyone else.

  When he was done with Ligate, Pellonhorc hauled his father to the wall where Madelene’s corpse was lying and tied his good wrist to one of hers. He didn’t ask me for help. He seemed sealed away, somehow, as he worked, and Drame didn’t resist or try to speak to him again.

  At last, Pellonhorc stretched his arms wide and opened his mouth in a great yawn. He glanced at me and said, ‘Come on, Alef. Time’s our enemy.’

  Ligate was beginning to stir, rolling and shifting like a pupa. He raised his head, groggily at first and then with an abrupt alertness, discovering the cable’s high tether and trying awkwardly to stand up. I watched him realise he’d never manage it with his feet elevated as they were. I watched the finality of his situation hit him.