Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

Franky smiled, toying with her pony-tails.

  ‘Lost your appetite?’

  Red, green, yellow, blue.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Alice’s expression was grave. ‘Is it contagious? Ought I to stop breathing? File my nails?’

  Franky laughed and poured cereal.

  Alice grabbed the milk before her daughter, holding it hostage. ‘I suppose you’ll need some money for today, eh? A little something for postcards and souvenirs.’

  She shook her head.

  Alice was immediately suspicious. ‘How come?’

  Franky ate her cereal dry, munching loudly, painstakingly swallowing her cornflakes as if they were bathed in an opaque white fluid secreted by cows.

  ‘Stubborn,’ commented her mother; ‘just like your old man.’

  She arrived at school with minutes to spare, waltzing off the bus into a crowd of girls in summer dresses toting huge canvas bags, her own bobbing on her shoulder as she pressed through the chattering throng. The bell sounded and she danced up the stairs. Kath and Gloria were reading the same magazine, an article about unfeminine hair, both worried and puzzled as Franky took her seat and leaned on her elbows. Their teacher, Helen, yawned. It was, Franky Heidelberg decided, going to be one of those days.

  ‘Okay, okay. Cut it out. That’s enough, Jocine, give Molly back her pencils. Thank-you. Now...’

  Today’s schedule, Franky thought as Helen shuffled papers, glasses perched on nose.

  ‘Today’s schedule, as I’m sure you’re all aware...’ She trailed off again. Then, ‘Is - where was I? Oh, yes: the trip inside.’

  Commenced promptly at ten, a bus to Muirspoint that was stuck in traffic half an hour due to the burgeoning celebrations, the preparations for music and fireworks. Bulky out-system containers were parked everywhere, their shapes at odds with the surrounding geometry of a suburban landscape composed of riotous curves. No straight lines here. Straight lines were for stagnant surfaces, planes of zero energy. In Outer Space things were said to flow. Not that the traffic flowed, she mused, one of twenty soft faces pressed against the bus windows.

  The traffic was sluggish, the air turgid, the bus yellow and quiet. She was lucky, Franky told herself, to be spending a day on the inside.

  From Muirspoint the bus followed a transit tunnel down through industrial strata, an eerie underworld of dim illumination, the girls imagining the distant pinpoint flashes to be eyes, laughing as they rainbowed, spreading coronae of gas. Everything bubbled up from here. It was like an archaeological exploration into not only the past, literally speaking, but also the source of many everyday items taken for granted on the surface, the blue and green world above. Soap-cakes and sausages, as Helen put it, what turned out to be the title of a pamphlet she was keeping to herself, occasionally reading passages aloud.

  There’d be a test.

  ‘The first priority, of course, was the sustainable manufacture of air. Gravity came much later, after the establishment of water and electrical reservoirs.’

  It was warm on the bus, increasingly humid. The girls fanned each other with jotters.

  ‘Listen. Listen,’ insisted Helen. ‘When we arrive I want you all to pay close attention to what the archivist has to say. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to examine history at close quarters.’

  It snowed underground. Franky was amazed. Refrigeration, Helen explained.

  ‘Pipes run in a labyrinth of cooling ducts, some up to eight metres wide.’

  She’d heard of these. Her mother had told her of monsters lurking in the shadows, an idea which made her smile. It was a fantasy, a dream she cherished, that some day she would meet such creatures face to face; nose to tentacle, as it were, to shake quivering pseudopods and engage in conversation with demons and banshees.

  ‘Okay,’ whispered Helen, shoving glasses to brow, ‘we’re almost there. Remember to switch on your nematodes.’

  Oops, thought Heidelberg, forgot already.

  ‘Now, quietly, in pairs.’

  Hand in hand she walked alone. Lost or escaped, Franky couldn’t decide which. Both, maybe. There was a cold draught blowing round her knees, an almost feral nature to the dark. Not the black of space, she was familiar with that, but the weighty black of invisible presences, lurking potentials, stalking, hiding, a multiplicity of limbs arrayed in gestures of confusion, for as yet these shapes had no purpose, no reality beyond that of the stygian aisles they haunted. Franky brought them freedom. It surprised her to think in such terms, yet it was true. And she knew no fear. They were no threat to her. They were creatures sprung from the unknown.

  Ghosts, they could be anything, go anywhere, travel with her, venture forth, scrutinize and explore. They need not be fixed in one place. No rules bound them. Franky encouraged them to go. She too was an adventurer. She was twelve years old. And now? After her mother had died, killed in a car accident, she joined the company, stepping onto the lowest rung. She could climb, but the rungs got farther apart. She met Zonda MacIntyre, Zonda whose cynicism warned of rungs sawn and brittle, whose advice was to lay low and give nothing away - at least not for free. And Schilling, big dumb Hubert

  Schilling, a little boy floating, an infuriating balloon. She loved him. Odd, she realized, floating herself over trees and lagoons, to admit what she had long known, that, take it or leave it, Schilling was Franky’s umbilical. She had real need of him. Zonda too.

  Helen folded her arms. ‘Gather round. Gather round.’

  The archivist had a long white beard. He leered inside his pool of light, amused and mischievous. Franky liked him immediately. He had the look of a person honest yet cryptic. His glinting eyes roved. She stuck her tongue out and he pretended not to notice.

  ‘This place where we’re standing,’ the archivist began, fingers linked across his chest and visuals activated, broad sweeps of colour blinking on and off like cheap neon, his voice encapsulating each student, Franky imagined, in their own pool of education, ‘is - or was - at the centre of every action, personal and commercial, to do with the day to day running...’

  Running. The word nailed her, snatched her breath. She was aware of its different meanings, its possible interpretations, was fully cognizant of the archivist’s gaze as it fell upon her, blessed in isolation at the very centre, the middle, alone in a web of ancient, redundant girders, the underpinnings of a world grown apathetic, unconcerned by the thinness of its manmade environment. But then how did a megalith like Outer Space differ from a planet?

  A planet’s core was molten, she answered, fluid.

  Like hers. Yes...as Franky sailed between her bored classmates, their expressions blank yet attentive, switched on and listening while Helen beamed approval. But the archivist, she understood, was watching her, watching Heidelberg.

  ii

  Languishing in his cabin, the portable screen balanced on his knees, Ivan determined the interference he was experiencing was due to the depth of the submarine. Harry was elsewhere, perhaps sampling their rescuer’s excellent brandy or playing darts with Issac and the robot. Zonda had the cabin next to his. She’d locked herself in, refusing food and any comfort. Occasionally he heard screams and the crash of furniture not bolted down flung against metal walls. Resounding, thunderous cannonades. Peculiar woman, he thought, distracted momentarily from the progress of giant snails...

  Bristling with guns, the huge machines turned lazily scant metres above the earth, bringing arms to bear, targets likewise manoeuvring, a slow dance of spiral-shelled military molluscs. They fired, scored direct hits, knocking their enemy off balance and forcing them each time to reorient in a clumsy race of overburdened hardware. Neither suffered much damage. They would fight till they ran out of ammunition. Then what? At least nobody got hurt, Ivan intuited facetiously. His guts rumbled and he swallowed the ball-point he’d been chewing, thinking once more of the robot encased in all that delicious chromium. No wonder he’d been kee
n to effect Dan’s escape.

  There was a knock at the door. Seymour Niaan, whose boat this was, entered. Ivan disliked the squat submariner, though his knowledge of him was flimsy, his memory frustrated as regards captains, castles, conspiracies and such, regurgitating images in which he had little faith. Polished silver teapots stood out; but the background was hazy. Too many other lives in the way, smudges on the lens of his past.

  ‘Comfortable?’ Niaan inquired, leading up to something.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, shuffling, covering the screen. The man’s features reminded him of a flatulent sheep.

  Niaan closed the oval door surreptitiously. ‘I see you have an artefact,’ he said, twiddling his fingers.

  Ivan dragged his knees to his chest.

  ‘Might I look?’ His eyes were large pools of supplication.

  ‘No.’

  The captain folded his arms. ‘A trade then,’ he offered. ‘I have knowledge that will interest you, answers to questions you’ve probably not dared ask.’

  ‘Give me an example.’

  The man nodded, tongue poised on lips.

  Ivan knew he could trust neither those eyes or that mouth. Very likely they were responsible for his predicament.

  ‘You’re no fool, Runner Evangela. Not now at least! But what have you learned on Oriel? Why do you suppose you’re here? Why are any of us? Oriel has a purpose for you, your past and future. Harry also. As agency hirelings your fates