The Rig

by Roger Levy

  The thunderlight behind me was throwing my shadow across the room. He had to make a decision now. He was leaning on the desk and fingering the chain, and I felt as if my hand were locked in it again, but this time between Pellonhorc and the lives of Pireve and our unborn child, and even of lives beyond theirs.

  ‘Nothing can’t fail,’ he said.

  I thought desperately of Pireve. ‘This can’t. Don’t you see? It gives people what religion used to hold out – a life after what would be death. But my promise will exist in reality.’

  His eyes narrowed, and I caught myself quickly. ‘In this life, I mean. It gives everyone a stake in it. It’s perfect, and you, Pellonhorc, you alone will be its purpose.’

  There was a silence. The rain was easing. I felt even more uncertain, but before I could say anything, he threw his head back and cried out with sudden energy, ‘Yes! That’s it.’ He gripped the chain convulsively and I tried not to flinch. He hissed, ‘You’re sure He isn’t tricking you?’

  ‘Yes.’ I hesitated. ‘It will be expensive, but I can do it. I can do it.’

  I fought the urge to say more, to tell him where the problems lay, and remembered Pireve’s kiss and her last words to me. Sketch it for him and tell him you can do it all. I know you can do it all, Alef. Don’t say anything else.

  I wanted him asleep, the seeds dormant, and a life with Pireve. That was all that really concerned me. I was sure that what I had described to him would work, but only Pireve mattered to me, and our child.

  Thinking of her, I said, ‘Will you do it?’

  I don’t know how long I waited, but in my head I grew a forest of trees and counted the leaves as they opened, turned brown and fell.

  ‘How long will it take you to set it up?’

  ‘Ten years. But you have to go into rv before that, to stabilise your condition.’

  ‘I’ll go into rv for five years, Alef. At the end of that, I’ll see what you’ve done and I’ll decide if I’m going to go back for eighty more.’

  I was already thinking of the peace I would have in his absence, of the birth of our child.

  ‘Alef, I’ll be safe in rv, won’t I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He took a few hard breaths. His poor hand was starting to fold into a claw, and his head developing a tilt to the left. He said in a burst, ‘My father and Ligate – I want them safe, too. They must be there when I come out in five years. Until your organisation is set up, I’ll be in the rv room with them, in my house. I’ll have a unit prepared there.’

  There was something strange about the way he told me this, and how he was looking at me, and I realised he had been entirely prepared for it. That I had come up with a solution had not surprised him. All this time, he hadn’t been delaying an acknowledgement of his cancer at all. He’d been readying himself.

  And he’d been preparing me, too. He had trusted me all along. He had total faith in me, and I felt a wonderful warmth towards him.

  I took his hands, the good one and the poor. We were as close as we had ever been, blood brothers and childhood friends. We were inseparable. He squeezed me back with the good hand, though the sharp nails of the claw tore my other palm.

  I left his office buoyantly and spent the rest of the day completing and handing over projects on The Floor. By the time I was done, it was dark outside, and dry again. The city could be astonishing in the early evening, the chemical interplay stirring dusty colours across the face of the low sun. I walked home, feeling a sense of transition. Pellonhorc would be in rv in a day or two, and my child would be born in a few months. Five years might not be long enough to have everything done, but I was sure I’d be able to satisfy Pellonhorc sufficiently to persuade him to return to rv again.

  Yes, all was going well. The sun fell gently away and all the lumes were bright. There was a soft pink haze in the proximal air, a faint coppery sparkle up high. I felt as if I had just arrived. All those years ago, Pellonhorc and I had landed. And now he was dying and I was stretching out a hand to eternity.

  People walked past, smiling at me. It took me a moment to realise that they were merely returning my own expression. I walked faster, aching to see Pireve, to tell her what Pellonhorc had told me.

  It struck me that I was no longer a child. I wondered what my parents would have thought of me now. At the door, I thought of Gehenna with a curious feeling of nostalgia.

  * * *

  SigEv 40 Malachus and a shock

  Pireve looked exhausted; the pregnancy was hard on her. She kissed me, and as we sat down to eat, she said, ‘Our child – I’m worried, Alef.’

  ‘There’s no reason. Everything’s going well. It’ll be fine. I will find a solution to it all.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You said you have faith in me. It’s your faith that makes me strong.’ I took her hands. ‘I will do it. Pireve, you’re more important to me than anything else. Than everything else. You know that everything I do is for you and for our child.’

  For some reason I asked, ‘Have you been talking to Pellonhorc?’ He’d never said anything, but I suspected he was jealous of us. Of course he knew Pireve was pregnant. He had congratulated me, but I hadn’t been able to read his emotion.

  She nodded.

  I tried to control my rising voice. ‘What did he say to you?’ Had he made some Gehennan god-link between our happiness and his cancer? I’d seen him whispering to Pireve. She never told me what they discussed, other than that it concerned The Floor.

  ‘He was saying maybe rv isn’t safe for so long. He was saying that if he dies, everyone will.’

  ‘Nothing will happen to him, and nothing will happen to us. Our baby is safe.’

  ‘Thank you, Alef.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘You do love me, don’t you, Alef?’

  ‘More than anything.’

  ‘And this will work?’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  The next morning, we parted at The Floor. It was her last day there. I had an office elsewhere in the building, but I noticed activity in Pellonhorc’s office and stopped to see. The door was open and a man I’d never seen before was sitting in Pellonhorc’s chair, waving at me.

  ‘Alef,’ he called. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. Come in, come in. You don’t need to panic. All’s well. Close the door behind you.’

  I did so and said, ‘Where’s Pellonhorc?’

  ‘Sit down, please. I’m Malachus.’

  Though I’d never met him, I’d heard of Malachus. He’d been one of Ligate’s closest aides. He’d done well to survive the transition. Pellonhorc had always been careful to offer the most loyal soldiers of his enemies a brief opportunity to show him the same loyalty, and the best of them always took it. Malachus was one of these. He was a stocky man with the burnt skin of a wildsider, but the desker’s clothes he wore sat well on him. He was maybe thirty. I guessed five years of the hard life and then ten of delegating the deaths. ‘Of course,’ I said.

  Malachus smiled. I noticed that the chain was missing from the desk, though the spike to which it had been attached remained. There was new screenery on the walls, and the window was veiled to a pink glow. Malachus was settling in, but without removing every trace of Pellonhorc. He said, ‘Pellonhorc told me you’d catch on quickly. I’m going to be here until he’s back. Five years, yes?’

  ‘Initially, five.’

  He nodded. Malachus was no fool. He’d want to feel safe here, but he wouldn’t make himself too comfortable. I had little doubt he’d still be here in five years, and so would the Whisper. Malachus would then stand aside or carry on, whatever Pellonhorc asked of him. The story of Calo was well known.

  ‘Anything more to tell me?’ he said. ‘Anything more you want to know?’

  ‘No.’

  Everything, then, had been made ready for Pellonhorc’s absence, and I was simply the last to know. Pellonhorc had concealed it all from me and from Pireve. He had been running a parallel organisation to set up the seeding, and another parallel a
dministration for the Whisper, and I, otherwise involved, had guessed at none of it. And nor even had my love.

  I began to doubt myself. If I had been so blind to this, what more had I missed?

  ‘Fine,’ Malachus said, his attention ebbing. He said, ‘It was good to meet you at last, Alef. He wants you at the house at midday. That’s now. There’s a flycykle waiting for you.’ And he waved me out.

  As I descended to the flycykle bay, I tried to relax. There was nothing to blame myself for, or Pireve. I told myself I had missed nothing that mattered. And look at what I was going to achieve.

  The city’s shield was reassuringly secure, juddering the flycykle as it broke through in a wave of charged air. As we came down at the rear of Pellonhorc’s house, I had an odd flashback to the day I had arrived here with Ethan Drame, bringing Madelene to her death and Drame to something a lot less merciful.

  Pellonhorc’s personal aide, Floriel, greeted me at the midlock, which disconcerted me. Pellonhorc always met me in person. I wondered how much of my alarm showed. However well I coped with anomalies outside myself, I relied on the stability of my personal routines, and Pellonhorc knew that. Floriel’s eyes were opaqued. He was a soldier and had a professional lack of trust. I didn’t like him.

  ‘Where is he?’ I said.

  ‘Waiting for you. Come.’

  I adjusted my breathing to the pace – a small stress habit I had recently developed – and said nothing to Floriel. If he wanted to say anything, he would. If I asked and he didn’t answer, I’d be showing weakness.

  I tried to walk at Floriel’s side, but he raised his pace, making it impossible for me to do anything but trot behind him. I was hyperventilating and had to increase my stride length uncomfortably in order to control my breathing. He glanced back at me and smiled in an unpleasant way.

  The house was peculiarly quiet. The few staff we passed acknowledged me, but no one met my eyes. It meant nothing, I thought. I still occasionally struggled to hold eye contact myself. In this subdued atmosphere, I remembered running along these same corridors with Madelene and Drame, towards the midlock where Pellonhorc and Ligate were lying in wait. I hadn’t thought of this for years. The memory was extremely disturbing.

  Floriel stopped at the door to the medical unit. ‘In there.’

  ‘Are you coming in?’ I said.

  ‘No.’ He looked me up and down, taking his time over it.

  I went into the first room. A medician stood there, a console in her hand, staring at me. She was wearing a blue surgical mask. Her eyes were also blue. Something about the way she was looking at me made me think I’d startled her. She said nothing, waving me through to the rv room.

  Pellonhorc wasn’t there. Ligate and Drame were still in their units, the cowls thankfully closed, although the readouts spiked and plummeted. What froze me was the new, third unit. It was a huge module in comparison with the other two, and its broad visor was closed. I walked across to touch the vast hull of it and found it warm. It was clearly ready for Pellonhorc.

  I laughed aloud in relief. He must want to show me how perfectly prepared he was, how much trust he had in me. Though by its size I imagined this unit carried more failsafes and backups than any rv unit ever had before.

  I went outside and found the medician still tinkering with the machinery. I said, ‘Is Pellonhorc on his way? I’m supposed to meet him here. I imagine that’s his unit.’

  ‘Well, yes, it is.’ She hesitated and flicked her eyes at the door to the rv room, and then at the other door, as if expecting someone else to come in. Looking back at me, she said, ‘He’s in there.’

  ‘No, he’s not.’

  She put the console into her pocket. ‘You’re Alef, aren’t you? I’ve heard so much about you.’ She cleared her throat. ‘He’s in the unit. Didn’t you see? Don’t you know?’ And this time she reached out and touched my arm, as people touch the bereaved.

  Feeling my pulse race, I said, ‘He’s in it? Already? Has something happened to him?’

  From the sudden look of her face, something terrible had happened. She seemed cracked. I didn’t have to data-analyse her lip-muscles and eye-shape. Her face was pure readout.

  My mind scrambled. If Pellonhorc had died, what would happen? Were we all about to die? No, it couldn’t be that. I would have been informed instantly, by Floriel, if not by Malachus. I thought back to Floriel’s unpleasant expression.

  The medician led me back inside the rv room and pointed at another display beside those of Ligate and Drame. I hadn’t paid any attention to it until now. There were two scrolling readouts, one below the other. Doubles of ECG, EEG, and the numbers for systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Failsafe protocol, I thought, feeling slightly more settled. And there was even a third readout on a small adjacent screen. That’s why the unit was so big, to house all the failsafes.

  He is in there, I immediately thought, exultantly. And alive. He didn’t even tell me he was going in, didn’t even threaten or warn me – warn Him – one final time. He trusted me that much.

  It made me smile. Pellonhorc trusted me a lot more than he trusted the rv. We were so very close, the closest of friends.

  The medician whispered, ‘I’m sorry, Alef. We all are.’ And she touched me again.

  ‘But he’s alive,’ I said without thinking. I almost crowed. ‘It’s worked. It’s all worked!’

  She didn’t react.

  And then, prompted by her glance, I looked at the main, paired vital sign readouts again and realised they were not synchronised. They were quite different.

  I looked at her and back again. Was something wrong with him? The numbers were different too. How had I – I – not noticed this immediately?

  She moved to the console and the cowl of the great unit began to rise.

  ‘No,’ I shouted, though I was unable to stop myself looking. ‘No!’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Alef,’ she said.

  The readouts weren’t failsafes at all. The huge unit wasn’t full of backups. There were two people in there. It seemed to take forever for the cowl to sink away and reveal Pellonhorc and his fellow sleeper.

  Pellonhorc was there in soundest sleep. Nothing had gone wrong. Beside him, shoulder to his shoulder, with her eyes creaseless and closed, was my beautiful Pireve.

  Thirty-nine

  TALLEN

  Tallen felt disturbed after the second contact, but in a quite different way from the first.

  ‘Are you all right, Tallen? Are you overheating?’ asked Lode.

  There had been something odd about the first contact, though now that he thought about it, all he could recall of it was the phrase, Snow and – and something else. What? Had he had this thought before?

  ‘Are you feverish, Tallen? Do not listen to Lode. We overheat. You have a fever.’ The humech looked at him with what might have been concern. ‘Do you have a fever?’

  Tallen said, ‘I don’t know. Don’t you know? There must be a medical bay. You weren’t here a moment ago. Nor was I. I don’t feel right. I don’t remember.’

  ‘What do you not remember?’

  He frowned. ‘Snow and rain.’

  And with the words he was somewhere else again, but this time when he was back, he was in a sling of wires and his spine was stinging and his skull thumping.

  Lode said, ‘Do you know what happened, Tallen?’

  Beata said, ‘Do you remember now?’

  The humechs seemed to have accelerated their speech modes, flicking from one to the other even more than they usually did.

  Beata said, ‘Do you know why you are here? What do you remember?’ Her face seemed to flow and blur for a moment before fixing again.

  ‘Snow and –’ but Tallen screamed with pain before he could finish the phrase.

  Lode’s face unset and set, his voice sounding like Beata’s as he said, ‘We have disabled that.’

  Beata said, ‘We think we have, though we think it is too late. And we do not know what it might be too late for
. Do you know why you are here?’

  Tallen said, ‘Please stop.’ His head was pounding. This wasn’t rig-pain, he was certain. This was real. ‘What happened?’

  Lode said, ‘Do you not know what happened?’

  He raised his head. A skullcap of wiring rose with it, and he was surprised to see Beata and Lode take twin paces back. ‘I was on deck,’ he said. ‘I called out, I think. I called out to the sea.’ He remembered the call now, a call that began with his voice and continued with something non-vocal, a call that came from him like the opening of a sluice. And he remembered a response.

  Lode said, ‘You brought in the sarcs for their regular maintenance.’

  ‘What?’ He felt as though he had been startled from a dream.

  ‘As you always do,’ Beata said. ‘We mean, as the rig always does through you. But this time you did it alone.’

  He moved his arms. Wires trailed. He felt like crying, or maybe laughing.

  ‘And you did it differently, and we do not know how. Or why. Do you know why?’

  ‘What sarcs?’ said Tallen. ‘What maintenance? I don’t understand. They don’t need maintenance. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘He does not know,’ Beata and Lode said to each other. ‘But he did it.’

  ‘What did I do?’ Tallen grunted with effort as he heaved himself to his feet. A weight of cable dragged at him and he took it in great swags in his arms and moved towards the humechs, step by heavy step. ‘Tell me.’

  As the humechs took a synchronised pace back, the door closed behind them.

  Beata said, ‘We did not do that.’

  Tallen came heavily to a halt and said, ‘I think I did. So tell me what else I did, because I didn’t intend to close the door and I don’t know what else I might do.’

  Beata and Lode looked at each other, and then Lode said, ‘There are three special sarcs held in isolation, close to the rig. The sarcs are brought onto the rig and their systems are serviced regularly. They are monitored constantly. The occupants of those three sarcs are the primary purpose of this rig. Our primary purpose.’