The Rig

by Levy, Roger

  I found myself whispering. ‘What are the questions?’

  ‘Okay. Let’s start. Where will they go, Alef?’ He shook his head, ‘No. That isn’t the first question.’

  The knife was in his hand. He opened it and closed it again and started tossing it into the air and catching it as he spoke. ‘They’re in pain.’ He was speaking a little quickly, but otherwise almost conversationally, the red-cased knife rising and falling. ‘They’re in a lot of pain, but is it enough? That’s the first question. Is the pain enough?’

  He slipped the knife back into a pocket and waited for me.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand this at all.’

  ‘Death, Alef,’ he said impatiently. ‘It’s all about death.’ Unconsciously, Pellonhorc touched his stomach, and I realised that this was all about his own death.

  I said, ‘Are you in pain? There are painkillers, drugs –’

  ‘No!’

  I stepped back. I’d never seen him like this before.

  ‘I’m talking about their pain. Listen to me, Alef. I need you to concentrate.’ He opened his hands and stared into them for a few moments. I saw clusters of pinprick scars in the palms, livid white. I’d never seen them before.

  He said, ‘I’ve tried to see what happens at death, but I haven’t found it yet.’ Making a gesture back towards the main medical area, he went on, ‘He won’t let me see. I get to the edge, but He always takes them from me just as I –’ The brief calm was fading. ‘I need a moment, just a single moment longer. I need to let them reach the gates of where they’re bound and then bring them back to me. I’m so close. I need Him to give me a moment more.’

  On the wall, lights flashed.

  ‘In here, this is quite different. I know where they’re going. This is to save them, Alef.’

  I was quite lost, and terrified too, and desperate to say the right thing, although I had no idea what it might be. ‘They need surgery, then. Have you –?’

  His voice rose out of control. ‘You aren’t listening to me. To save them. To save them!’

  Gehenna. We were back in Gehenna.

  Calm once more, and as if to himself, he was saying, ‘If they suffer enough now, will it cancel out the things they’ve done? Suffering atones; I know that. How much suffering, though? How do I know, Alef?’

  He was staring at me and waiting, and I suddenly realised he wanted an answer from me. A logical answer. The calibration of a dose of agony.

  ‘I – I’ll have to think about it.’

  ‘Good. Yes. I knew you were the one. You always are.’ He clasped my hands in his. His grip was cold and damp, making me feel even more nauseous. ‘Listen to my thoughts and tell me if I’m wrong. What I need to know, Alef, is whether I can save them from hell.’

  Was he telling me he cared about them? I couldn’t believe that. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I really don’t understand.’

  He was clutching his stomach again. ‘If I save them from hell, I’m doing a good thing, aren’t I? Is it enough, though?’

  ‘Enough for what?’

  A sigh. ‘It’s easy, Alef.’ As if I were a child. One moment he was pleading with me, the next he was almost shouting. ‘What will it take to cancel what I’ve done?’

  At last I saw it. Of course he didn’t care about them. All he cared about – all he had ever cared about – was himself. I said, ‘There is no hell. You aren’t being punished. You must see that.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ His voice was rising.

  ‘Hell makes no sense, Pellonhorc. We die.’

  ‘Everyone on Gehenna is wrong?’

  I suddenly realised he was screaming at me.

  ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘Of course not.’

  Again, as if a switch had been flicked, he was settled once more. ‘Exactly. Let me show you something curious.’ He put himself in the small space between the two units so that he faced his father, and glanced at the console. On one of the screenery, a seismic line levelled, and as it did, Ethan Drame’s face slackened and his breathing eased.

  ‘That feels better, Father, doesn’t it.’

  Drame nodded as much as he could. Saliva slid from the corners of his mouth. His eyes half closed.

  Pellonhorc said to me, ‘He wouldn’t talk to me for months. He still won’t accept that this is for his own eternal good. I give him a choice, every time I see him. I give Ligate the same choice, in fact. Listen, Alef.’ He faced his father again. ‘You can have the pain taken away forever, Father. You’d like that. I will let you die, and I know how much you want to die. You ask me for it all the time. All you have to do in exchange is to tell me to release Ligate. He walks from this room – it will take a moment – and you can die. You just have to say. You just have to watch him go.’

  Pellonhorc turned to face Ligate, whose pain clearly remained. Ligate gritted his teeth and said a word. It took me a moment to recognise it as, ‘Please.’

  Pellonhorc turned back to his father and said, ‘He’s asked you nicely.’ There was no response, and he slapped the unit with the flat of his hand. ‘Father!’

  ‘No.’ Drame licked his lips and said, ‘Kill both of us. Please do that, Pellonhorc.’

  Pellonhorc hissed, ‘No. That isn’t an option.’

  And then, to my horror, Drame whispered, ‘Alef? Is that you?’

  My breath ebbed away.

  ‘Yes,’ Pellonhorc said with a glance at me. ‘He’s here.’

  My throat had closed up. I knew Drame couldn’t even see me, but I was terrified.

  Pellonhorc shifted something on the console, and, on the wall, the screenery suddenly exchanged their displays. The pain seemed to leap, like something physical, from Ligate’s face to Drame’s. Drame released a tiny, gagging cluck and said nothing more, and I breathed again. Pellonhorc turned round to face the other unit.

  ‘Ligate. What about you? You begged my father to be merciful. Will you be merciful to him?’

  Ligate’s head shook fractionally. His cheeks were so thin and pale that I could make out the shadow of his skull. He gathered himself and murmured, ‘I will not, not… will not see him leave.’

  ‘Think about it. If you say yes, you’ll be dead a moment later.’ Pellonhorc glanced at me, raising his eyebrows, and said to Ligate, ‘You don’t believe in God, do you? I know you don’t. So what does it matter to you? Your pain will be gone and you’ll be nothing.’ He leaned forward and examined Ligate closely. ‘Let my father go. Say it and you can have peace.’

  ‘I. Will. Not. Watch. Him. Leave.’ A long, shivering breath, and, ‘He will watch me walk out of this room.’

  As if to a child, just as he had spoken to me, Pellonhorc told Ligate, ‘My father won’t give up before you. You know that.’

  Ligate’s face sagged even more, then hardened again, and he hissed, ‘I will never see him leave.’

  Pellonhorc adjusted the controls, allowing both men to rest, free of pain. Neither said anything. The scar across Drame’s head was so dark in this light that it seemed his skull was split.

  ‘You see?’ Pellonhorc said to me, stepping away from the narrow space so that the two imprisoned men had to stare at each other.

  It took me a moment to be able to speak. I was afraid Drame would try to talk to me again. I said, ‘See what?’

  ‘Nobody believes in nothing.’

  He tapped the console and, as one, both men hollowed their mouths in terrible, shuddering screams. It seemed to take an eternity for the descending visors to close their heads away, until all I could hear were the faint beeps of the screenery, the hum of the aircon and the rasp of my own breathing as the sealed units began their gentle return journeys down to stillness.

  ‘There,’ Pellonhorc said, eventually.

  I watched the screenery, where there was no stillness at all.

  As we left the room, Pellonhorc told me, ‘The thing is, He won’t let me see what I can do to absolve myself. He won’t cooperate and He won’t
back down.’ Pellonhorc gestured towards the room behind us, the door whispering closed. ‘I’ve tried everything reasonable. You’ve seen that. He hasn’t listened.’

  ‘You said you’ve seeded…’

  ‘I have, Alef. Of course, you understand that I can’t tell you quite what I’ve set in place. You’re His agent, after all.’

  ‘I?’ What was this? Maybe I’d misheard him. ‘But He knows everything, anyway, doesn’t He?’

  ‘He doesn’t know me at all, Alef.’ His voice hardened. ‘If He knew me, He wouldn’t be doing this to me, would He?’

  Thirty-three

  TALLEN

  Lode said, ‘We have had a comms request for you. You are aware that all external contacts are vetted. Rigs are, of course, vulnerable to electronic attack, but your welfare is important to us.’

  ‘And you have rights,’ Beata added. ‘Human rights. Under specified conditions, you are permitted contact. The contact has to be on the basis of your anonymity. While you have been rigorously checked, you may nevertheless be contaminated.’

  Tallen felt dizzy, staring from one humech to the other. Their features were firm, but their expressions didn’t match their words. Lode said, ‘Since you have a statutory right to AfterLife, you are permitted free access to its secure ParaSites. Controlled free access, of course.’

  Tallen had also noticed that, in conversation, both mechs paused where a human might pause, reflecting or considering a point, but their pauses were always of precisely the same duration.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Beata said, as if surprised. ‘You have a StarHearts contact. Congratulations.’

  Tallen had to think. It was such a long time ago. Eventually it came back to him. ‘I registered just before… before I was attacked.’

  Lode said, ‘We know.’ He began to speak a little more quickly, his voice drained of modulation. ‘Your StarHearts registration is at preliminary status and anonymised. We will censor any revelation of restricted information or information that might help to identify you. You may not solicit or provide any information that might directly or indirectly affect your situation, such as political or commercial information. We will censor any suspicious incoming questions. We will examine all exchanges for any effect on your psychological stability. If we are concerned, we will terminate the contact without warning. You do not have to formally acknowledge this information, as it is in your contract. This is merely a reminder and a courtesy.’

  Tallen said, ‘Is that it?’ He looked at the humechs, unable, as always, to tell which was about to answer.

  It was Beata. ‘Only to say how severely enthused we are for you. This is an opportunity to benefit from valuable human contact under controlled conditions.’

  Tallen felt queasy. The rig needed constant supervision, and its metabolic signals to him were draining his energy. His left arm ached now, and there was itching in his gut. He started to walk towards the problems, the mechs at his side.

  Lode said, ‘The restrictions might seem impossible, but your original statement is there, and you can communicate on the basis of that, as if your situation were unchanged from that point.’

  Tallen wondered what time it was. There was no daylight here. He wondered whether he needed sleep. Everything felt wrong. His sensations were all of the body, but none of them were about his body. He said to Lode, ‘But that wouldn’t be true.’

  Beata answered, ‘No human communication is true.’

  * * *

  Razer

  Razer said, ‘I thought you were getting me through to Tallen. What’s wrong, Cynth?’

  I AM ANALYSING OUR OPTIONS. PERHAPS IT IS YOUR PROFILE.

  ‘Perhaps it’s his.’

  She went back to Tallen’s profile, trying to connect it to the man she’d seen in the hospital bed, the man she’d spoken to for those few minutes in the red bar a few days before he’d been attacked, and who Bale had told her just wanted to die.

  No one would ever reply to this. Cynth had sent her Tallen’s drafts and subscriber advice, too. He’d even been advised to change it, and hadn’t. The man was hopeless. He used unadvised language and had no chance of anyone responding. But even so, there was something about the way he expressed himself that appealed to her. That articulate melancholy.

  Yes, she wanted to know him, and not simply for his story.

  * * *

  Delta

  Delta stood in the doorway of Navid’s office. He was surrounded by screenery and folders of paper files, and the room stank of his shave oil. There was a comms murmur in the background, the odd word heightened as it came through. Incident. Suspect. Detain. Support. Urgent.

  Without looking up, Navid said, ‘What is it, Officer Kerlew?’

  She closed the door behind her. ‘It’s about Bale.’

  He looked at her now. ‘Let’s have some peace, shall we?’ He nilled the comms, then settled in his chair and said, ‘So. Bale.’

  ‘After he died, you took the writer’s statement yourself at the Chute. I wondered why you did that.’

  Navid frowned. ‘Bale was one of us. If there was anything suspicious, I wanted personally to be sure it came out.’

  ‘And was there?’

  ‘No. It was simply an accident. I hope you aren’t taking over from him. It’s finished now. Was that all you wanted?’ He glanced at his desk screenery as if she were leaving.

  ‘It’s just that she came to see me with some story.’

  He looked up again. ‘She’s a writer.’ He added, a bit more sharply, ‘Why come to you? What story?’

  ‘She came to me because I was Bale’s friend. She said it wasn’t an accident at all.’

  Navid said, ‘No?’

  There was nothing to read in his face. Delta said, ‘She told me there was someone else in the Chute.’

  ‘Ah.’ Openly irritated now, Navid said, ‘This Millasco. Officer Kerlew –’

  Delta went on quickly, ‘I think she could have killed Bale, sir.’

  Navid sat back hard. His chair creaked. ‘Ohhh. Really?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I know we have it endfiled Accident Query Suicide, but the way she was talking made me think she was involved.’

  Navid drummed the table with his fingers. ‘I know how close you were to him, Officer. And for all his faults, Bale was one of us. When he was sober he was one of the very best.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Let me tell you what happened. Bale went into the Chute with the writer. I don’t know why, but there was a struggle. We know they’d had some form of sexual relationship that ended sourly. She had marks on her exo and a bruise pattern you don’t see with scree-strike. Bale died and she was hauled out of the Chute barely alive. There was no indication of anyone else being involved. No third party.’ He toyed with the buttons on his desk-comms unit and said, ‘It is possible that she killed him, as you suggest, but there’s not enough to make a case of it. Bale was a very good rider and she wasn’t.’

  He glanced at Delta as he went on, ‘For what it’s worth, I think her suit got damaged and he was trying to help her. She panicked and lashed out, destabilised him. Wouldn’t be the first time someone died trying to help.’ Navid shrugged. ‘She told me about Millasco. I remember him: borderline psycho, left Pax under a disciplinary cloud – somewhat like Bale – but he hasn’t been on Bleak for years. I checked. And there were no convincing forensics of another body in the Chute, though of course there was little enough of Bale. Nothing on any of the cams, though the Chute cams haven’t been functioning for months.’ He closed his eyes a moment, sighed and added, ‘Which means nothing.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Navid went on, ‘Bale’s conspiracy theory appealed to her imagination. When he died, she came out in shock and guilt and blamed it on this Millasco that Bale had told her about. She’s a writer; writers have imaginations.’ He ran his tongue over his lip. ‘She may even believe it. Let it go, Officer. It’s a tragedy, not a crime. Bale was always going to slam into some wall, somewhere.’
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  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘A quick end. Lucky man.’ Navid stood up slowly and went to the window. ‘Come over here, Officer,’ he said.

  The street below was busy. Make-n-Take kiosks were doling out printmass and touts were dealing hardpharma. A tattoo booth beckoned passers-by with lurid come-ons. Delta stared down at it all for a few moments, and then Navid opaqued the glass with a flick of his palm. The whole of Lookout etched itself in miniature where the street had been, mapped and scanned.

  Navid made another gesture, bringing up the shore. He ran the display along the promenade. As it tracked, the view stuttered between the monochrome of live image and the sepia of stored. Navid brought up percentages. The figure fluctuated between eighty-five and ninety per cent.

  Navid murmured, sadly, ‘You see that? We have almost ninety per cent cam coverage, but what do we actually see? We can’t see intention. We can’t see innocence.’ And after another small silence, he said, ‘Now. Is that all?’

  ‘Almost, sir. A small thing, nothing to do with Bale. As you know, I was on the desk during the Fleschik event. I understand the audit report is complete –’

  Now his face cleared. ‘And they’ve given us a ten-star rating. Yes. We can all feel very pleased. And relieved. We can go back to normal.’ He cleared the window of its data and the room lightened.

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s just that the report contains individual feedback, and I wondered if I could have a glance at the records, to review my own actions.’

  Navid drummed a finger on the glass. ‘You know, Officer Kerlew, you’re one of the sharpest operations supervisors I’ve had.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘This has been a hard time for us all. We should get some peace for a while. Statistically, at least.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I’ll tell you something about our role here on Bleak. Pax isn’t always the pure, clean blade of justice. It’s a compromise. What we can achieve is not –’ He paused. ‘Not absolute.’