by Rob Grant
Eddie's wearing an interested frown, framing his chin with his thumb and forefinger, and nodding randomly, but he's no longer sure it's appropriate. Is this guy telling him off or what?
Then it comes: 'But what the hell was that bewildering drivel about jokes in dead languages?'
The Captain's looking at him, as if he's actually expecting some kind of sane explanation. Then it hits Eddie, suddenly. It comes to him like a vision of angels. He wants to fall on his knees and weep with joy. The reason he's constantly on the brink of being unmasked as the charlatan he is, and the reason he hasn't been blasted into space through the ship's exhaust are one and the same.
These people all think he's much, much smarter than he actually is.
Even Peck!
There's no telling how long this error in perception can be maintained, but at least Eddie now has an angle to play, a pose to strike. All he has to do is be obscure. The over-excitable minds of the hyper-intelligentsia around him will fill in the gaps as they see fit. It's a dangerous game, but it's a game, at least.
He adopts a cocksure smile, and repeats what he hopes is a correct rendition of the Captain's last Latin quote. 'Ipso dixit, Berwick, ipso dixit.' It isn't, in fact, one hundred per cent accurate, but that's not too important. If Eddie's thinking is correct: any imperfections will be considered word play.
The Captain appears momentarily baffled, then his features relax into a smile of understanding. "Very clever, Charles.' He slaps Eddie on the shoulder. Eddie manages to brace himself in time to avoid being hurled along the length of the conference table. 'Ipso dixit, indeed.'
Eddie smiles in the direction of Peck, who is concealing her disappointment with a counterfeit smile of her own.
'Well, if you'll excuse me, Captain, I've got a lot of ship to see.' There's only one part of the ship Eddie has any intention of examining at the moment: the ceiling above his pillow. And that only for a few brief instants. But the day's ordeals are not yet done.
'I think we both should be there, don't you?'
Be there? Be where? This is the downside of having people think he's possessed of a working mind. 'You think so?'
'Well, I signed the order and, whatever the actuality, it is perceived as your policy recommendation. Unpleasant as it may be, I think it's important we are witnessed witnessing the procedure.'
He wants Eddie to watch the operation with him. The circular saw type operation. With, probably, generous amounts of blood and gore. Eddie's face must be broadcasting his queasiness, because the Captain offers as solace: 'I'm not exactly relishing the prospect myself, Charles. But in crude terms, we're taking a human being and removing his head and spinal column from the rest of his body...' And the rest of the sentence is lost on Eddie.
As words of solace go, these are inordinately ineffective.
Removing his head and spinal column from his body. And that's a painless procedure? What would qualify, then, as a painful procedure? Removing the head and spinal column whilst simultaneously striking the eyeballs with a sharpened glockenspiel hammer?
And this is the fate threatening Eddie?
The Captain's voice fades back up in Eddie's awareness. '... understand if you decline. Though you will be perceived as squeamish, it must be said. Not good.'
'Squeamish? Nooo. It's just, you've seen one head-and-spinal-column-ectomy, you've seen 'em all.' Eddie tries a winning smile. It loses.
'So you'll come?'
'Wouldn't miss it.'
14
Eddie has collected many abominable memories in the past few hours -- probably doubled his entire X-rated collection, in fact -- but the images from the operating theatre are so gruesome and vivid, he fears they will never leave his waking mind.
And the operation hasn't even started yet.
It's not just the prospect of the Tobe Hooper gorefest the operation itself promises to be. Though, in all honesty, watching a human being gutted and boned like a gigantic trout doesn't rank very highly on Eddie's list of top spectator pastimes. No, it's the nightmarish quality of matter-of-factness all around that sharply counterpoints the horror that's about to be performed.
The hi-tech, impersonal cleanliness of the operating theatre, and the overstated comfort of the observation gallery looking down on it, where Eddie is sitting, waiting for the show to begin. Leather seats, with foldaway tables and, incredibly, cup holders on the arms. There is even a vending machine in the corner. Just in case you run out of snacks or soda pop in the middle of some intricate bone sawing.
Eddie hasn't eaten for a considerable while, and he is very, very tempted to vend himself some chicken broth.
But what if they bring in the patient awake? How would he feel to look up and see Eddie in the spectators' gallery sipping away at a cup of steaming soup?
So Eddie just sits there, praying his stomach doesn't rumble, and trying not to look too relaxed, even though the chair is obscenely comfortable, and he is very, very tired.
He keeps having to catch himself, to stop his legs from crossing, which wouldn't look too nice either. Worst of all, he's afraid he'll fall asleep and start snoring at some critically gruesome point. That's the last thing he needs, people having to turn round and shush him while the ribcage is being cracked open.
One small blessing is, he's managed to position himself a good way away from Captain Gwent, who's holding court in what must be the equivalent of the Royal Box. He keeps beckoning for Eddie to come over and join him, but so far he's managed to seem not to notice. It's bad enough having to sit through this, without having to work at maintaining his facade at the same time.
Somebody sits down in the seat next to Eddie, even though there are, unsurprisingly, lots of seats spare.
Eddie glances left. It's the priest. Father Lewis. Eddie smiles tightly and nods a greeting.
The priest doesn't smile back. After a while, he says: 'This is, don't you think, ever so slightly barbaric?'
Of course it is. Eddie wants to agree with Lewis. But as C.P. Gordon, he can't. He has to defend this madness. 'It's the Captain's decision, Padre. If we start arguing with that, we'll have anarchy.'
'You blame the Captain, but you're up here, supporting him. Watching the execution. I'm surprised you didn't bring some knitting.'
Eddie is rescued from this potentially excruciating interchange by a hubbub behind them, from the direction of the Captain's box. Eddie turns to see the source. The security chief with the muscular neck, Styx, is in conversation with an angry-looking Gwent. Eddie strains to try and catch the gist, but he can't make it out. Strangely enough, Gwent must lower his voice when he's angry.
Finally, Gwent gestures with his head and Styx hurries off. 'Ladies and gentlemen.' The Captain's voice has returned to its natural volume. 'The procedure has been... postponed. Our intended subject has made himself temporarily unavailable. He will, of course, be invited back immediately we rediscover his whereabouts.'
Eddie looks over at Lewis. The man's escaped. Good.
'It must be made known, this individual is capable of extreme violence. He accounted for the lives of no fewer than five of Mr Styx's security team in the course of his bid for this temporary taste of unfetteredness.'
Gwent sighs, seeming suddenly tired.
'And he made assertions that he fully intends to kill again. And often. You should all be familiar with his visage.' Gwent nods at the overhead screen. 'And avoid it at all costs.'
Eddie turns his head to look at the image.
Eddie recognizes the face.
It's the face of the man he frivolously thought of as the 'nice' hitman.
Mr Pink Socks himself.
15
Eddie is in one of the ship's many restaurants. He hopes this isn't one of the better examples of culinary provision points on board. It's more like a school canteen, with its long benches and laminated table tops, and its criminally bad food. But it was the nearest one he could find to the spectators' gallery. The only one he could find, in fact. He is sava
gely tired, close to exhaustion even, but he daren't go back to his apartment. He wants to stay in public. In as much public as possible, until he knows for certain Mr Pink Socks is safely back under lock and key.
He ought to be hungry, too. He can't remember the last time he ate. But he's just pushing the food around on his plate.
He'd have liked a drink with his dinner. A very stiff drink, in fact. But the Consumption Director -- that really was the job description on the badge of the waitress -- just laughed when he ordered one. There is no alcohol on the Willflower. No stimulants, no depressants. No narcotics. The only permitted artificially mind-altering activity is a half an hour in the newly designed soothe booths. These are cubicles dotted around the ship which seem to provide a kind of sensory-deprivation experience, with electronic 'soul song' pumped through the speakers 'to naturally induce alpha rhythmic wave patterns in the brain', supposedly. It doesn't sound like much of a high to Eddie, but he was willing to give it a go. Unfortunately, soothe booths have to be booked out in advance. Days in advance. Eddie has fifteen consecutive sessions booked for next Wednesday. If he lives that long.
He's trying to take his mind off his many woes by working through Gordon's papers, but that isn't helping anything.
The more he reads, the more he becomes convinced the man is insane. He's clearly a borderline fascist. And Eddie would say he's on the wrong side of that border. There are, for instance, an enormously complicated number of astonishingly detailed prescriptions for who should be permitted to mate with whom, and when. Shagging laws! And not just now, for this generation: for all future generations, too. People whose parents haven't been born yet have been designated a mating partner who isn't even a twinkle in his grandaddy's eye. This is supposedly to keep the gene pool in good order, and avoid the side effects of inbreeding that might otherwise plague future generations. But it sounds awfully close to ultra right-wing racial purity programmes to Eddie. Awfully close.
And there's worse.
All the positions on board are not merely held for life: they're held down the family line. Children have their jobs allocated before birth. And their children will be born to replace them. And their children will follow. On and on. The idea here: to obviate destructive and wasteful competitiveness, and preserve order. The argument is that a child trained from birth to perform a function will be better at the job, and won't have to waste time acquiring unnecessary skills.
For Eddie's money, that's bad even if your parents hold decent positions, but the ship depends on a lot of menial workers, too. To be born knowing that all you can ever be, and all your children can ever be, is a Consumption Director in a crappy low-class canteen ... It's nothing more or less than an artificially imposed caste system. It beggars belief.
It's clear he can't go on for ever toeing Gordon's line. He'll have to engineer a change of heart, somehow. Maybe C.P. Gordon can get religion or something.
Eddie senses the chair next to him being moved. He's feeling fairly jittery, and he's not in the mood for surprises. He clasps his cutlery, ready to stab. He doesn't know how effective a plastic knife and fork might be against the deadly honed skills of a trained assassin, but he really is prepared to use them.
'Jumpy, are we, Mr Gordon?'
Eddie relaxes. It's Father Lewis again. Eddie looks down at the knife and fork he's brandishing. 'No, no. This is how we hold our cutlery in Rio de Janeiro.' He pats himself mentally on the back for slipping in a piece of his research on Gordon's background.
'I see.'
Lewis is looking at him oddly. He didn't buy it. Eddie looks away. 'I am a little tense, I suppose.'
'Tense? Yes, well. The criminal classes at loose on the ship. It's enough to make any decent man nervous.'
Criminal class and decent men. Jibes at Gordon's superclass theories. Fair enough, Eddie thinks. He shrugs.
'I'm surprised to find you in here.'
Why? 'Really?'
'I'd have thought one of the superior restaurants would have better suited your refined tastes. One of those reserved for committee members, at the very least.'
Really? There are restaurants on board where not everyone's allowed? That makes a kind of horrible sense. 'It's going to be a long trip, Padre. I imagine we'll be trying all the restaurants, eventually.'
'No doubt. Those of us who can. Ah! Admiring your handiwork, I see.' He's nodding at Gordon's papers.
'Just checking them through, Padre.'
'Yes. Wouldn't want any mistakes creeping in, now, would we?'
Go away. 'No.'
'They make fine reading, I must say.'
It's sarcasm, of course, but Eddie says 'Thank you' anyway. He wishes the priest would leave him alone, at least till he can work out what he's going to do about all of this. About trying to impersonate a man he disagrees with on so many fundamentals.
'A blueprint for a perfect society.'
Eddie feels, as Gordon, he really ought to put up some kind of defence. 'It's a very difficult mission we've embarked on, Padre. Obviously there have to be rules
'Yes, there have to be rules. Some of your rules, though, seem a little... extreme.'
'You think so?' This might not be a bad opening. Maybe Eddie can start to backtrack on some of Gordon's excesses. 'Such as?'
'Ooh, I don't know where to start, really. The Sexual Recreation Centre bothers me, for instance.'
Sexual Recreation Centre? 'What about it?' Eddie hasn't got to the bit about the Sexual Recreation Centre yet.
'Well, obviously the Church would object, on the grounds that it's a brothel, plain and simple, under the fancy names and theories.'
Oh dear. 'A brothel? I see.'
'But under your draconian mating regulations, there is, perhaps, an argument for such an establishment.'
'So. You concede that much, at least.'
'Not really. I don't agree with the mating regulations, either. They seem nothing more than a new incarnation of the archaic system of arranged marriages, which were outlawed long ago in most civilized nations. But I'm trying to keep it simple.'
Eddie pushes the food around his plate a little more. 'Go on.'
'As I said, there is an argument for state-controlled whorehouses, theoretically. But the men and women who... perform these services: they've made a choice to do that. It's their decision. I'm a realist. I accept they have that right.'
'Very Christian of you.'
Lewis turns to face him. There are tears welling up in his eyes. 'But how can you... how can any of us commit their children to that life?'
Eddie really doesn't know what to say now. Children are to be born into prostitution? Who could possibly defend that?
'You tell me, Mr Gordon, the difference between that and pure evil.'
Eddie can't. But he has to say something. 'Father Lewis. If you disagree with... with the system here, why did you come?'
'You think a priest plies his trade only among the converted? I'm here to change things. I know it won't be easy. The system you've put together is pretty ruthless on change. But it will change, Mr Gordon.' Lewis stands. 'I don't expect you to think this is anything other than hokum, but what you've done is the Devil's work. And it will be stopped.'
Eddie doesn't watch the priest go. He keeps on staring at his plate, moulding the powdered potatoes around his half-eaten burger steak with his fork.
That bastard Gordon. Where is he now? Probably using his millions to fund compulsory sterilization camps for the short sighted. Or running for World Presidency on the Ku Klux Klan ticket.
Something starts beeping near him. Eddie tolerates the noise for a while, but it starts to get annoying. He looks around, hoping to embarrass the perpetrator into action. Everybody else is looking at him. He's the one who's beeping.
He looks down at his jacket. One of his buttons is flashing. He wonders what it means.
He tries to ignore it, but it refuses to go away.
He folds his arms across his chest, but the beeping can't be muffled.
He tries tapping the button, but it won't stop flashing. He presses it, hard and repeatedly, but it won't stop its damned beeping.
He's about to wrench it off his jacket and stomp it to death underfoot, when someone at the bench behind him leans back and says: 'That's a code orange, pilgrim.'
'Right,' Eddie smiles. 'A code orange, eh?' What the hell is a code orange?
'There's a coms booth over there.'
Eddie looks over to where the man's pointing. There is indeed some kind of booth. He keeps his smile on and hopes for more of a clue.
'You press the orange button. That's all.'
'Yeah, I know,' Eddie lies. 'I was just going to finish my...'
'But it's a code orange.'
'Oh, yes. Right.' Eddie gets up and walks to the booth. A code orange'? Since when did orange mean 'urgent'? A code red, yes. What's the colour, then, for 'not very important'? Code mauve?
He gets to the booth and presses the orange button.
A face appears on an LED screen. Security Chief Styx. The monitor isn't widescreen, so his neck doesn't fit on completely. 'Mr Gordon, sir? Sorry to bother you.'
'That's all right, Mr Styx. Just grabbing a bite here. What's the problem?'
'It's your apartment, sir.'
What could have happened in his apartment to warrant a code orange, for heaven's sake? Did they find his socks or something? 'What about it?'
'It's been trashed, I'm afraid.'
'Trashed?'
'Extremely trashed.'
'I'll be right up.'
Eddie keeps staring at the monitor, waiting for Styx to cut the connection. When it becomes clear he isn't going to, Eddie repeats: 'Right up' and moves away. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Styx watching him go. Clearly, Eddie was supposed to terminate the call at his end.
How many more mistakes before his cover is blown completely?
That bastard Gordon.
As he gets to the restaurant door, a cramp hits his stomach. He really is very hungry, still. He toys with the idea of going back and grabbing his cold burger to finish en route, but decides against it on two counts. He doesn't want to risk responding too casually to a code orange summons. And the burger was disgusting, anyway.