Janus

by John Park

  “I remember your arm,” said Elinda. “I could feel the scars. And when you were asleep, you woke me up. You were holding your wrist and trying to say something. I thought you were crying at first, but it was something else.”

  “So we’re still scared,” he muttered. “Whatever’s changed now, we haven’t solved that, so where does this leave us?”

  “Right here,” she whispered. “Together.”

  SIX

  Her fingers were tracing the length of his body, drawing lines as sharp and piercing as the scars on his arm. . . .

  An arc light blazed through the side window and Grebbel wrenched himself back into the present and parked the truck. He took his lunch and swung down from the cab.

  Menzies walked over to him, hooded against the wind. “Want to bring your lunch and come over into the galleries?” he called. “They’re installing the new generators today, and one of the winches needs repairing. Another pair of hands and eyes would be welcome.”

  Guessing that Menzies might want to talk about memory loss again, Grebbel agreed. Icy spray stung his face as they walked over the metal mesh bridge from the coffer dam. The gallery entrance was carved into the rock. They walked into a cellar-like space lit by a row of bluish ceiling lights. Grebbel’s skin prickled.

  “Keep hold of the handrail,” Menzies said. “Down here.”

  Grebbel hesitated. Stairs, his mind told him. A dull roaring grew to fill his ears. He shook his head and went forward. Down. Step. Down.

  “We’re alongside the sluiceway here,” Menzies called over his shoulder. “When everything’s finished, this will be part of the bypass around the turbines.” He slapped the rock wall. “Security’s not as tight down here as it might be. That’s one reason I like to walk around here as often as I can.” He looked at his watch. “They should almost be finished running tests now. In five minutes we can go and work on the winch without getting in their way. It’s in the next chamber—actually in the hillside.”

  The gallery continued, with alcoves cut into its side every ten metres or so. One or two of these had been fitted with doors. Menzies peered into each one, flashing the beam of his light over stacks of tools or spare helmets. “Been here for weeks,” he muttered at one point. “Look at the dust on them. This job needs twenty percent more personnel.”

  A couple of workers came past, and Menzies moved away to talk to them. Grebbel heard a name repeated with some urgency—Strickland, he thought, and tried to recall where he had heard the name—but could not hear any more. Heads were shaken; then Menzies came back. Grebbel wondered what Menzies was not telling him. He said: “You were asking about someone in particular just then. You wanted to know if he’d been seen here.”

  Menzies did not reply before they reached the end of the gallery. “I’m just making a routine check,” he said. “It’s time to get back to the turbine room.”

  They retraced their steps, Menzies still peering into crannies. “Looks clean enough,” he said finally. “Let’s see if we can get at that winch.”

  The air blazed in front of Grebbel’s eyes. The ground heaved up and slapped him.

  He was alone, sprawled on his back, peering into a fog and wondering at the quiet. After a while, he tried to sit up.

  The silence ruptured. The air was full of shouts and screams. It smelled of smoke and something worse. He lurched to his feet and staggered into the chamber he had been about to enter.

  Purple sparks crackled through the haze, throwing up silhouettes of jagged black machinery. The sound of voices rose like a tide, an animal noise, barely controlled. Light flickered. At the foot of the wall lay a man, his thigh impossibly bent, a gleam of white at the angle.

  Awareness came and went for Grebbel. A hunched, monstrous shape fumbled towards him, then became Menzies with a man across his shoulders. “Use the truck—fetch help from the hospital.”

  He was in the icy dark again, pulling the truck off the causeway, and trying to remember what was so urgent. Lightning forked across a void of cloud high above him. Then he was back at the hospital, unsure of what he had told them, ears and mind buffeted by the clamour of a siren. And back in the chaos: the smell more obvious now, emergency lighting showing red pulp where hands and limbs had been. His mind had stopped working. He found he had taken one end of a stretcher and was heading back to the truck. The siren still screamed in his skull.

  This time, when he reached the hospital, his head was clearing. Another truck was following with the medical orderlies. That must mean all the injured were out. He went inside.

  The emergency room had overflowed into the lobby. It stank of smoke, burned flesh, shit and antiseptic. Under its lights, white, shocked eyes met his gaze, faces the colour of old paper, or blackened with soot. Flesh that had been seared to oozing brown pulp. Blood.

  His pulse hammered, the lights seemed to brighten above him. He watched, fascinated, as steel sliced away burned cloth and flesh, as mouths opened to cry out. He watched human beings reduced to creatures of pain and reflex.

  The door opened behind him. More of the injured were being brought in on stretchers. He hurried outside to the last truck and helped carry a stretcher into the hospital. The man on it was covered by a blanket almost to the eyes, but as they went through the doorway, he seemed to rouse and the blanket shifted. Under a film of instant bandage, the lower part of his face was a crimson and white ruin. The man’s head strained back and choking sounds came from where his mouth had been. Grebbel realised the man was trying to cry out. He heard the scream in his head.

  When they got inside, there was nowhere to put the man but the floor. A nurse with bloodstains on her bare arms lifted the blanket, examined the man quickly, then gave him an analgesic shot and hurried on to the next. Grebbel was left alone with the man he had helped carry. He looked down at him. The man was choking.

  Grebbel turned to call a doctor from one of the other casualties, but suddenly his own hands knew what to do. There was a tray of instruments on a roller table in the middle of the room. He took a scalpel and sprayed it with antiseptic, then knelt by the injured man. He supported the man’s head with one hand, and with the other he first sprayed the man’s throat then slit the skin and muscle over the lower half of the trachea. When he could see the hoops of cartilage, he sliced between two of them. Pink foam appeared in the cut, and the man’s breathing steadied a little. Grebbel sterilised a catheter and taped it into the incision as a breathing tube. When he had finished, the man was breathing steadily again.

  Carefully, walking some internal tightrope, Grebbel took the scalpel back to the table and then picked his way back to the stretcher. He sank down beside it and stared at what he had done. Every muscle in his body seemed to be trembling.

  Around him the chaos started to become quieter.

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Numbly Grebbel looked up. The worst of the casualties had been moved out. Carlo was staring down at him.

  Grebbel indicated the tracheotomy he had performed. “He was choking. I was right, wasn’t I?”

  Carlo’s expression softened. “It looks as though you were. There’s nothing more for you to do now, though. Take a walk outside. We’ll be able to give you a checkup for shock and concussion in ten minutes, but I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about.”

  Grebbel nodded and stepped around the man on the stretcher and went to the door. The trucks had gone. When he looked back, the man was being wheeled towards the operating room. Grebbel locked his fingers together and failed to stop their trembling.

  “A bomb went off at the powerhouse,” Chris said. He had just come in after lunch, while Elinda and Larsen were trying to assemble work plans for the following week.

  Larsen sat up, his fists clenched in his lap. “Why ever did we go to the trouble of installing a datanet, when simpler methods are so much faster?” He failed to keep the strain out of his voice.

  “The powerhouse?” Elinda asked. “The far side of the dam?”
>
  “They were talking about it in the line-up,” Chris said, almost apologetically. “Someone saw the trucks carrying them to the clinic. They were coming across the bridge. The word’ll be everywhere soon”

  “Some version will,” Larsen muttered. “Myself, I’d prefer to know what really happened.”

  “Who was hurt?” Elinda asked quickly. “How many?”

  “Couple of dozen, maybe more, from what they were saying,” Chris said, giving her a questioning look. “Mostly construction workers, and one or two of the engineers. I didn’t get any names.”

  “Discount fifty percent for observer error,” Larsen interjected. “A bomb, you said. Was that a piece of hyperbole, or does this appear to be sabotage?”

  Chris shrugged. “Someone heard the bang; and there was a cloud of smoke still there, a good ten minutes after. I saw it. And they’re not supposed to be doing any more blasting this year.”

  “Do you think,” Elinda said slowly, “there could be any connection with those leaflets?”

  Larsen had turned to the computer. “You mean, they plant pieces of paper that have no effect, so two days later they switch to explosives? It seems a devious course to take for anyone with concrete goals in mind. Don’t you think?”

  “We don’t know what their goals might be,” she replied, “whether they’re concrete at all, or even rational. The whole point of the leaflet was that there might be people who didn’t care what they did. What about that interruption to newsfeed-night the other day? I think we can guess—”

  “We do too much guessing.” Larsen’s fingers tripped over themselves on the keys. He inhaled sharply, paused, then carefully reentered the command. “What does your vox populi have to say about motives, Chris?”

  Chris looked uncomfortable. “You hear all sorts of rumours. People believe the craziest things at times.”

  “In other words this could be serious. I hope we’re not priming ourselves to turn into a lynch mob. If we develop a vigilante mentality here, we’re doomed.” The strain in his voice was obvious now. His head jerked as the screen flickered. “The voice of authority is speaking.”

  The other two looked over his shoulder as the announcement scrolled up the screen.

  A public meeting was called for that evening, to discuss the recent events and their implications for the security of the settlement.

  “That’s very fast,” Larsen muttered. “Here are the casualties. Serious, they’re serious. No names.”

  He pushed himself upright and fumbled for his coat. “I need some air,” he said. “You might too. Lock up if you both leave the office.”

  Elinda stayed at her desk. Her hands were trembling. She hadn’t really believed Grebbel could have got himself caught in the blast, had she? “Straight after dinner, they want this meeting,” she said to Chris. “I hope they’ve actually got something to say.” So he was that far under her skin already. And with Barbara left to rot in the mental ward.

  “He was right,” she said. “I need some air.”

  She found Grebbel in the lobby of the clinic, moving a gas cylinder on a kind of wheelbarrow. He moved stiffly, as though pulled by wires, and his eyes were vacant. But when she stepped into his path, he saw her and stopped. She went and held him. His arms closed rigidly around her.

  “What are you doing here?” she whispered into his chest. “I didn’t know where you were.” Her voice was threatening to break up.

  He answered hesitantly. “We’re clearing a storage room. Extra bed space. They’re doubled up in the wards. . . . I found I couldn’t leave here. I brought them over in the truck, and then I had to stay.”

  “You were at the dam when the explosion happened?”

  “I was over there, just outside the generator room. The blast hit me.”

  “My god. You might be hurt. Did they look at you?”

  “Yes, when the worst was over. They gave me a check-up. Told me to go and lie down.” There was more animation in his voice. “Let me finish with these cylinders.”

  For the first time, she noticed a partly cleaned brown smear on the wall, scrapes and wheel marks on the doorframe and floor. She helped him move two more cylinders of oxygen, and then he found his coat and they stepped into the chill sunlight. The wind surged and began to suck away the heat they had brought with them from the building. His expression was turning distant again. She found herself thinking of Barbara’s total withdrawal, and flinched.

  He seemed to make an effort to rouse himself and began speaking. “Something happened to me. I’ve only been here a matter of days, and things keep changing on me.” His voice was beginning to rise, and he broke off and fell silent. They walked slowly, staying close together. She was wondering if she should prompt him with a question, when he said, “I cut a man’s throat in there.”

  She stared at him, and carefully, dispassionately, he explained about the tracheotomy.

  She looked away at the mountains then turned to him again. There was an expression on his face she could not interpret. “You think you’ve done it before?”

  “I must have, mustn’t I?” he said.

  “What then? Maybe they teach that in first-aid courses, for people going into the jungle somewhere.”

  “Then maybe I got my arm savaged by a Bengal tiger.”

  “Do you know why you felt you couldn’t leave the clinic?”

  He frowned. “Watching all the pain . . . I felt I belonged there somehow.”

  “To help.” She pictured him in a smoke-filled space, pulling the injured away from machines and sparking cables. “I wonder if you were in a lab accident before you came here.”

  “My arm, you mean? Broken glass?”

  “It could be, couldn’t it? Christ, it’s all guesswork though. Do you think it was sabotage this morning?”

  “I think it must have been,” he said. “Nobody seemed to believe anything like that could happen by accident. I saw someone in a brown uniform shirt talking to some of the victims.”

  “Security. In the clinic.” Suddenly, her mind raced. “It’s too close to those leaflets, they’ll be looking for a connection. They’ll think Barbara was in on this.”

  “Because she can’t defend herself?”

  “The cop I went to for help—I didn’t realise at the time, but he could have had orders to delay looking for her.” She stopped and peered up at him. “I’m paranoid, aren’t I? Of course I am. I don’t care. Do something for me, please?”

  “If I can.”

  “Get to Schneider’s lab again, as soon as you can—let’s walk back now. Make copies of all Barbara’s computer files. Don’t ask me what I expect to find; if I knew, I wouldn’t need to ask. I want to know what evidence there is, if someone starts to frame her. You may not be able to open the files without a password, but the system will let you make backups if no one’s put double locks on.”

  She left Grebbel at the clinic and returned to the office. Towards the end of the day, Larsen returned. He still seemed shaken. He said he had been at the labs to review the design of the next batch of experiments, and had seen some of the casualties.

  The distress in his manner disturbed her. “It’s been a bad day,” she said. “Let’s quit; let’s get something to eat and then go to this meeting.”

  Chris said he would finish his simulation, and maybe see them in the Hall. Larsen seemed about to refuse, then looked grateful and nodded. He walked to the cafeteria with Elinda and they ate slowly, saying little, until it was time to go to the meeting.

  The doors were open, but despite the cold, people were gathering outside. A tall red-haired woman with a pair of toddlers told them, “The choir’s finishing rehearsal. The show must go on, you know. They’ll let you go in if you promise them to be quiet. Of course there’s no way I can take these two in.”

  “Should we wait, too?” Larsen asked Elinda.

  One of the children was chasing the other in circles round them. The victim screamed happily and then tripped and fell against Elind
a’s leg. She looked a little like the child that had fallen in the fishpond earlier. “Let’s go in,” Elinda said.

  Inside, the stage was cleared and the choir stood in rows facing the conductor. A few seats were occupied. Voices rose and fell like the waves of the sea. Only the stage was lit, and great veils of shadow seemed to loom over the empty seats. Elinda felt she was in a dank underwater cavern, filled with the moans of the dead. She wished she had stayed outside.

  “A modern piece of hymn-making,” Larsen muttered to her when the conductor lowered her baton to talk to the performers. “I admit I would rather have stood in the wind.”

  “You should have said so. Shall we go back out?”

  “It must be nearly over by now. We may as well stay warm. I believe this was the kind of music I lived with as a child. It has a lot of obscure associations for me now—both joyous and wretched. The combination can be almost unbearable, but I hope I can learn to come to terms with the bad and still value the good. It may be salutary to listen.”

  The conductor lifted her arms again. The voices rose, from the throats of men in shirtsleeves, women in boiler suits—an elemental cry, an appalling, inhuman sound uttered from the mouths of people she passed every day in the street. The music bypassed her mind and worked within her muscles, her guts. She closed her eyes and waited for it to end.

  Finally it did, and she realised she had been gnawing her fingers throughout.

  Larsen shifted in his seat. “And now the more mundane problems of the world.”

  Within a few moments, the choir had been hurried away and chairs and a long table were being set up on the stage. She looked around, waiting for Grebbel to arrive. The Hall was filling up: two or three hundred people, she guessed. A hand microphone had been put on the table, and Dr. Henry and some of the other council members were talking quietly at the side of the stage. Henry looked at his watch, then shooed the group toward the table and went to the microphone.

  “First of all,” he began, “thank you all for coming. We have a serious matter to deal with tonight, and I’d appreciate it if, as soon as you can, you would pass on what happens here to your friends who haven’t been able to make it or see this on the net.