The Rig

by Roger Levy

  As she started to pull her arm away, he pushed his head at her, trying to survive a moment longer.

  She let him. ‘Who’s paying you, Millasco?’

  He started to speak, but only blood came from his mouth, coiling around the inside of the helmet. His eyes started to bleed.

  ‘Tell me, or I’ll let you go.’

  He opened his mouth in blood. As she waited, she felt an itch at her waist.

  Millasco wasn’t trying to tell her a thing. He was gathering himself for a final rip at her exo-valve.

  She wrenched her arm from the gash at his throat and watched the rest of him flood instantly away, shredding and catching on the billowing remnants of her cutters and streamers.

  She sobbed, even though there was nothing of him to hear it, ‘That, you bastard, is for Bale.’

  She cut it all away and let the suit with what was left of Millasco’s body go, and she tumbled, and tumbled, and tumbled.

  Thirty

  ALEF

  SigEv 33 Illness

  I was shaking when I got back to Pireve. I couldn’t keep what had happened from her. I said, ‘What should I do?’

  She massaged my shoulders, smoothing away the knots. ‘First, you need to find out what he’s doing. There’s something he wants you to know. Surely you’re safe. You’re his oldest friend.’

  ‘No one’s safe from him, Pireve.’

  ‘If that’s right, it’s even more important. Isn’t it?’

  She was right, of course. While she slept, I carried out a search of his putery and found his records of the killings in his house – it wasn’t hard, he didn’t encrypt them with any effort – and I watched them through the night. In the morning I didn’t mention it to Pireve. I told her I’d been in the pornoverse, as usual. Our joke. I went to work, but couldn’t concentrate.

  The next night, and the night after that, I watched more of Pellonhorc’s killings. Towards the end I was able to watch them as I might have watched them before I had met Pireve: without emotion.

  The killings all took place in the same room. I recognised it as the small operating theatre annexed to the medical ward he’d had built and equipped in his house. There were surgical tables, anaesthetic equipment and all the tools. Some of the tools were industrial. Medical staff were present during the killings. I never saw their faces, since they were wearing masks, but I saw their wide eyes behind the plastic visors.

  Despite the environment and the instruments, the killings were not clean. He would let his victims come near to death, then have the medics resuscitate them, and he’d question them. ‘What happened? What did you see? What was it like?’

  Every time, the answers enraged him. If the near-dead were still coherent, they told him nothing he wanted to hear and he would accuse them of lying and use the tools again, until eventually there was no coherence and he’d scream at them and let them die. It was the same, time and again, and it was always terrifying.

  The ward had two exits. One was the entrance from the main medical unit and the other was to a small closed annexe, the house’s rv room, which I assumed had never been used. During lulls in the killings, while he was waiting for the staff to revive his victims, Pellonhorc went into the rv room. He always spent at least half an hour inside, and always emerged relaxed again.

  I explored the records and found that the rv room had no cams. I wondered whether he used the facility himself, banking time, or just sat there in silence. I searched the Song for help, and discovered it to be a common enough fantasy and a rare but not unheard-of activity, and decided he was probably onanising in there.

  It explained the absence of cams as well, especially in view of the fact that every other part of the house was covered. I might have thought no more of it except that once, when he emerged from the rv room, his hands were splashed with blood. I checked back and found he had entered the room clean.

  I checked again, reviewing all the times he had used the room, and saw that there had been specks of blood on his surgical smock more than once on his emergence, on top of the spatterings he had received in the main unit. I counted them.

  I never showed any of the images to Pireve, and I didn’t tell her much of the detail, but eventually we talked about the killings.

  ‘Maybe he’s cutting himself,’ she said, a little shakily. I was surprised at how much it affected her, even though she was well aware of his business techniques.

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  She made a face. ‘He might hate himself. It’s common enough.’

  ‘Not Pellonhorc. He hates everyone else.’

  ‘Everyone but you, Alef. It could be self-hate, though.’

  ‘Or maybe he’s just insane.’

  It was the first time I’d said that. Pireve’s face lost its colour, and I leant across the table to touch her hand. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ I told her. ‘Anyway, don’t worry. There are no cams here. I check regularly. We can say what we like.’

  After that conversation I went back to the archives of the house to look for cam records of the rv room being set up, and found details of the installation of two rv units. There were gaps in the house and flycykle records that I eventually traced back to the emergency dock at the city’s hospital. I opened the hospital’s screenery for that day and found they had been overwritten.

  I was sure I was missing something, but I couldn’t push too hard. I knew that any deep search risked triggering a reverse search that, while I’d been careful enough to be sure it could not lead to me, would let Pellonhorc know he was being spied on.

  The weekly meetings I had with Pellonhorc were increasingly strained. I was convinced my knowledge showed in my face. He was preoccupied and abrupt with me, though, and as soon as we’d finished talking about business, I’d quickly leave.

  For three weeks I escaped like this. At the end of our meeting on the fourth week, he stopped me at the door.

  ‘Alef, come back and sit down. We haven’t finished.’

  I sat. I could hardly hear him for the beating of my heart.

  ‘Something important has happened. It happened a short while ago. I would have told you earlier, but I’ve been taking action and there wasn’t time.’ He frowned at me and said, firmly, ‘I’m not going to die, Alef.’

  I froze. Did he think I was intending to kill him? Was he going to kill me? I didn’t know what to do.

  ‘You don’t seemed concerned, Alef. Aren’t you curious?’

  I wasn’t going to ask him a question. That was what he wanted, for me to lead myself into some trap. I said, ‘Everyone dies. The average age of mortality in the System is approximately fifty-one years and five months. Inhabitants of Spindrift are the longest-lived at fifty –’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about that. I. Me. I’m twenty-five years and three months and I am not going to die. Not me. God won’t have Pellonhorc, nor will Lucifer.’

  Lucifer. I hadn’t heard that name since Gehenna. I couldn’t stop myself saying, ‘What do you mean?’

  He was rubbing his hands hard together. It was as if they were fighting each other, palms scraping, nails scratching. ‘God will find a way, Alef. He’ll have to.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘He made us, didn’t He?’

  ‘Father Grace said that, yes.’ I was picking my way carefully, trying to keep the numbers at bay.

  ‘If I die, Alef, everybody dies. Everybody. He’d never allow that, would He?’ Pellonhorc looked impatiently at me. ‘I’m being logical, aren’t I? He won’t let everyone die, will He.’

  I had to be cautious. ‘When each of us dies, it is as if everyone else is gone to nothing.’

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ he said sharply. ‘He won’t allow it. Everyone to die. Right?’

  He had the knife in his hand now and was opening it. I looked away from the extending blade, into his face, and nodded for my life. ‘He would not,’ I said.

  Pellonhorc crowed, ‘Hah! Yes! I have Him.’

  I’d neve
r seen him so excited. He breathed out, a long, startling sigh, and then his voice dropped back to normal as he said, ‘I just needed you to confirm it. Who else, eh, Alef?’ He spun the knife high in the air, catching it cleanly by its hilt, all the time staring wildly at me. He folded the knife away and went on, ‘It’s arranged. He knows. Everything’s in place, throughout the System. It’s seeded.’

  He stopped sharply and there was silence. There was nothing in the room but that silence and his terrifying smile.

  Merely by saying what I had said, I had done something awful. I was involved. I knew it, though I had no idea what it was. I pulled myself together enough to say, ‘What are you talking about? What’s seeded?’

  He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Only He and I know. He will find a way. He’s trying to kill me, but I’ve trumped Him. He won’t let me die now.’

  ‘God’s trying to kill you?’

  ‘He’s given me the cancer, of course. He couldn’t do it any other way because I’m too clever, so he’s done this.’

  Pellonhorc raised his shirt and I saw it on his stomach, the dark, earthy, almost casual tumescence and the awkward puckering around it. He took it in his hand, as much of it as he could, and squeezed it until his knuckles blanched. The excess swelled out of his hand like dough. I could see the pain seep into his face.

  ‘Oh, Pellonhorc,’ I started, but he waved me down.

  ‘No.’ His eyes were wide and bright. ‘He thinks He can reach me, but He will see, now. Oh, yes. He will find a way to save me. I’m still too clever for Him.’

  ‘Medics –’

  ‘They say it’s untreatable. I’ve had it a long time. I’ve known a long time.’

  ‘How long? Why didn’t you –?’

  ‘I knew I wasn’t going to die. I thought He’d back down.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He let the shirt drop back over the cancer. ‘Don’t be. He will find a way. He must start to take responsibility.’

  * * *

  SigEv 34 Goddery and absolution

  ‘What did he mean?’ Pireve said. ‘Why didn’t you ask him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.’

  She looked at me, not saying what I knew was in her mind – you weren’t thinking. Of all people, you. What she said was, ‘He controls you, Alef. He always has. You do whatever he tells you to.’

  ‘What do I do now? You tell me.’

  She rolled towards me. I could feel her warmth in the bed, in the dark, and I put an arm around her.

  She said, ‘He relies on you, Alef, doesn’t he? For everything.’

  ‘Not everything. Not that.’

  I could hear the aircon labouring above us.

  ‘You mean the killings,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then say it. This has to be accepted.’

  ‘The killings.’ I held her. Her skin was soft and cool and comforting. ‘For everything else, yes, he relies on me,’ I said, seeing what she meant. ‘You mean he’s relying on me for this, too? For his cancer?’

  ‘To find a cure for it, yes. That’s why he’s telling you. Otherwise he’d keep it between himself and this god.’

  ‘God. Not a god, or this god.’

  She sat up. I could only see her in silhouette. ‘You don’t believe, Alef –?’

  ‘No! No, of course I don’t. But he must do.’

  ‘Maybe he sees you as the god’s agent. Or maybe he’s playing safe, giving you a chance as well as the god.’

  ‘Not even the god, Pireve. Just God.’

  She touched my cheek with the warm hollow of her palm. ‘Alef, are you sure you don’t believe?’

  ‘Pireve –’

  ‘I’m joking.’ She kissed me and pulled herself back under the billowing covers, her voice muffled. ‘What’s seeded, then? Not me, that’s for sure. Why don’t we address that now? We’ll address the other thing in the morning.’

  * * *

  SigEv 35 Pellonhorc’s research

  We didn’t have a chance in the morning. Pellonhorc had sent a flycykle for me and I was taken straight to the house. The pilot wouldn’t tell me why.

  I hadn’t been to the house for a long time. There had been a big party to celebrate the day the city’s shield had finally embraced it, but that was as far as it got. The shield had never pushed beyond the side and rear walls. Pellonhorc hadn’t let it. Only the facade of his home was in civilisation. Its rear looked out on wilderness.

  The dock was on the wild side of the house. There was a sort of garden stretching back for a few hundred metres beyond the edge of the blackened and cracked, qualcreted decking of the dock, a garden of fibrous grasses and trees with agonised trunks and rubbery, spatulate leaves. There were smoke-drifted ponds and scarlet boulders and shards of opalescent stone, and while the shield didn’t extend over the garden, there was a dome of fine spidersteel netting to retain the squirlings and blueblands, the ergles and pinsects and mosqueetles that crawled, waddled and flew in constant pursuit of each other. The quality of the netting was such that the garden seemed of another dimension. The yelps and screams occasionally sounded almost human, and from time to time I would arrive to see a pack of creatures fighting over something.

  At this time of the morning, the dock was in the deep shadow of the house. As the driver brought us down, I scanned the other vehicles there. Nothing as big as the Darwin. The garden’s netting billowed in the wash of the settling flycykle, and the garden within blurred and fixed. One of the larger creatures stood and stared directly at me. There was something in its mouth.

  Pellonhorc was at the door, waiting for me, unshaven and agitated. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I want to show you something.’

  ‘Is it so urgent? I haven’t been to The Floor yet.’

  ‘Everything is urgent, Alef.’ He was already walking away. ‘I want to show you my thinking.’

  ‘I have some questions, too.’ I tried to catch up with him, to walk beside him, but he speeded up and held to the centre of the corridors. I soon realised we were heading in the direction of the medical wing.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  He didn’t answer. There were no staff to be seen. I felt sweat break out, my armpits itch. I said, ‘Pellonhorc, I need to tell Pireve where I am.’ My mouth was dry and I licked my lips to speak. ‘If I’m not on The Floor, she’ll worry.’

  ‘You’re with me. Why would she worry?’

  He pushed the door open, and at last waited for me. ‘In you go, Alef.’

  I didn’t expect it to be so bright. There was a great wheel of lights above a central bed, and several fat-tyred trolleys covered by blue plastic sheeting, the sheeting bulging and swollen unevenly. The floor gleamed. Where the floor met the walls, it rolled up in smooth curves. I started to consider the mathematics of the curves. The floor was set with shining metal drains, finely meshed and whistling faintly. I considered the screenery, some of which I recognised. EEG. ECG. There were operating screens for remote surgical rigs, and the rigs themselves with their handles and microscopes and touch-pads and drips and drains and pumps. I noted the dispensers of gloves in five sizes, of antiseptic washes and of substances unmarked other than with symbols indicating poison and acid. Thirty wall-mounted power boxes laid out equidistantly in five banks of six. Coils of tubing in sterile packaging, a surgical laser, ultrasonic disinfectant baths, two large vacuum autoclaves. Boxes of needles in various lengths and calibers, and disposal containers marked CARE! Other signs: DO NOT TOUCH! DO NOT REUSE! ORGANIC WASTE ONLY! INORGANIC WASTE ONLY! DO NOT DISCHARGE UNLESS RED LIGHT IS ON! STERILE – DO NOT CONTAMINATE! LETHAL –

  ‘Alef! Are you listening to me?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Yes.’

  ‘I need you to concentrate. If you don’t concentrate, you’re no use at all to me.’

  I concentrated.

  ‘I’ve been doing some research here. It isn’t important at the moment. What matters is in there.’ He indicated the door to the rv room. ‘Come
.’

  I was sweating even more. The room was far too hot. I didn’t want to know what was in there. I thought of the animal outside with the thing in its jaws.

  ‘I –’ I felt the ground give way, and arms catching me, and then nothing.

  ‘Drink this.’ Pellonhorc’s voice was closing in on me from far away. Without thinking, I sipped. Sweet.

  ‘A little more.’

  I pushed it away. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A sugar drink. You fainted, Alef. Did you have breakfast? I’ll have something brought.’

  I sat up, my head slowly clearing. ‘Where is this?’

  But I knew where I had to be. The room was bare except for two rv units set side by side. This was where Pellonhorc retreated in the midst of torture and murder.

  ‘It’s the rv chamber. In case of emergency. My father intended it for himself and Madelene.’

  ‘Why do you come here?’

  I realised I’d said too much. ‘Why did you bring me here, I mean. You said it’s important.’

  He stared a moment longer, then said, ‘Look. I’ve had them adapted.’ There was a control stick in his hand. ‘See?’

  In unison, the units began to move, the domed heads rising until they were vertical. The units slowly swung round to face each other. The mechanics were astonishing, arms and struts and joints extending from the floor, sliding and tilting beautifully. Eventually the huge units came to a halt like two great guards at salute.

  The last time I’d seen rv units so close had been in the ferry that had brought us from Gehenna to Peco, and for a moment I felt an odd nostalgia.

  It was a curious thing. Even at that moment of fear and unknowing, my memory cut in and took me back to that time, to the end of my innocence. I had absorbed the Song during that time. My education, after my parents, had been with Solaman, but I had grown up in one of those great sealed couches into which one could withdraw from the worlds to sleep, or contemplate, or drift amongst the fantasies of a billion others.

  These two units differed from conventional units in more ways than their facility to stand upright. Most units were as smooth as cocoons, hinged along one side, and made of metal. These were faintly contoured with stylised hips and knees, arms, shoulders and feet. Above the shoulders, the top of the unit was dark and moulded in imitation of a visored helmet.