Fourteen - The Engineer
It was ironic,thought Byron as he walked handcuffed between two squat ratings, thatthey should wind up here, on Fury. It was where he'd hoped to escapeto had Sal and himself been successful in capturing the Topicancraft. The dour faces either side of him registered no humour. Heslowed down, wondering what lay at the corridor's farther end. It washis first time actually inside the orbital station, so he didn't knowhis way round. A chill ran through him as he envisaged afiring-squad. The smooth walls were scarred in places, evidence ofthe recent fighting, the battle his side, Upfront, had lost.
A door openedand he was pushed into a circular room with a view of the planet,Bid-2. There were three chairs and three men waiting, two navalofficers and a civilian.
The ratings left...
‘You are Byron Friendly?’asked one officer derisively.
He answered yes, curious.
The civilian folded his arms. Hesat in the middle, suggesting prominence.
Officer two said, ‘Theengine...do you own it?’
He answered no, reticent. Whatwere they getting at?
The civilianslapped his knees impatiently and got up. ‘Some of our men havedisappeared,’ he said flatly, ignoring the agitated soldiers.‘I...’ He smiled. ‘I want you to tell me why.’ The threat wasclean and obvious, forcing Byron to likewise disregard the flankinguniforms and their stifled annoyance as he smiled a smile of his own.
‘You what?’ quizzed Sally,freshly animated.
‘I agreed,’ said the engineer.‘What choice was there? You're being looked after, I'm a POW.’ Hedressed in the clothes the guards had given him. ‘This way I can beof some use, perhaps learn something. Besides,’ he baited, afamiliar game between them.
She sighed. ‘Yes?’
Friendly kissed her. ‘Abdulstole my lighter,’ he said. ‘He left this in its place.’
Sal took the tortoiseshell comb.‘I suppose when my hair grows back...’ Her voice was wistful.
‘That's right,’ Byroncongratulated; ‘think positively.’
He got a kiss in return.
‘Thanks.’ Then the ratingscame for him...
The engine's bleak silhouettecarved a huge lump out of the grey planet's mountainous surface, theinfertile setting for a prolific conflict. Fury orbited, the stationa monument to past successes of diplomacy and co-operation, itsterminal a joint venture seized firstly by Upfront, retaken byTopica.
Shining yellow about thepowerhouse were a host of vessels, greedy birds inspecting someleviathan's carcass. But the colossus was far from dead, or benign.
Byron was ushered into atight-packed transport. He felt his brain was squeezed. The surly menabout him were silent. The craft nudged from Fury and flipped over,booster rockets jolting it toward the now invisible flock. He satdoubled up in a webbed couch, trying not to moan. The pressure in thestation had been to him standard; but soon that too would change. Hewished he was back there, with Sally, peering through windows, slowlyrotting...
Soon his arm was yanked. A facehovered and hands levered him from his captivity. A series of faintlybuzzing fields snapped around him. It was like being repeatedly sawnin half, walking from one world to another, via the locks.
What was it with Topica that ithad to be different?
Finally, lungs aching, Byronemerged into darkness. It took his eyes a few moments to adjust. Amatch ignited, flared, and he was offered a cigarette.
‘You must want to win myconfidence,’ he said lamely.
The man, a second civilian,replied, ‘If you like.’ His manner was relaxed.
Byron inhaled. ‘Well?’
‘There is amystery,’ the man said, smoking. ‘One of our people ?wanderedoff and some others went after him. None have returned.’
The engineer said nothing,waiting. The black was disrupted by glowing orange, marking theirfaces.
‘You'llunderstand our position concerning Earth,’ the civilian went on.‘Relations between Terra and ourselves have come under a degree ofstrain lately; so when this appeared, swallowing a scout ship...’
‘You panicked,’ blurtedFriendly. ‘You're paranoid.’
‘And your life is no longer yourown. Be warned, lest it end!’
‘Nah,not while you need me.’
The man seemed to hesitate. Byronglanced around, but could spot no clues to his whereabouts in thenear total dark. Were they alone? The smell...
‘That remains to be proven. Fornow I suggest you do your best to alleviate a troublesome situation.’
Byron flicked his cigarette away.Mentally he examined the cards he had to play, the bluffs he mightchance, the obvious stakes. A light came on; they were in astoreroom, although he failed to place it within the engine. Cans ofpaint lined the shelves. He reasoned them to be near the lowerportside lock the Topicans had cut through. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Whoand how many? I have a vested interest, right? So you can question melater.’ He reached for the door handle, the man's cagey expressionunmoved by his words, all the proof he required to be confident of atleast a temporary advantage.
He was brought up short. Cans ofpaint? Shelved?
‘My name is Beman,’ the maninformed.
‘Yeah...’
*
‘Droover K?’
‘Yeah...who is it?’
‘When themoon is full. That'sthe time the pink-people come out to play.’
She crouched, wary, sprang over amossy log and sprinted for the large, bushy tree. It heaved withcreatures, ants and spiders that ranged in size from dust motes tofists. The arachnids were her favourite, the boxy orange ones, likesoft-skinned crabs, their number limitless.
She tried tovisualize the machine that produced them. Or did they rain from thesky? Earlier Kate had been caught in a shower of green lizards...
She poked a spider with herthimble, and it jumped. Her hat fell off and she bent to retrieve it,spying midst the tangled forest-floor a wristwatch-cum-radio. Drooverslipped the metal bracelet over her right hand.
‘Stylo?’
‘Here, Mordy. Anything?’
‘I just stepped off the boat andalready there are contrary signals. I think I'm picking upunderground activity; at least that's how it sounds.’
‘Impossible,'his father said, 'there'sbeen no construction at sub-sealevel in the area. Most likely it'syour equipment. Run a test program, see what that comes up with.’
Mordy frowned.‘I did... it shows...’
‘Go on.’
‘Tectonics,’ he reported.
‘On abench?’The disembodied voice was incredulous. ‘You'vegot to be kidding...’
I know, he toldhimself, these are spurious, floatingatolls, islands without foundation.
‘Run it a- ‘But Mordy had closed the channel. Next he unhooked his pack and threwit in the ocean.
The bite-marks across his stomachwrithed, contracted.
The doctor and Lumping Jack leftSarpendon. Morgan wasn't at all convinced by Henry's story, but he'dgo along for now, the dog's liking for the old man persuasive.
He set a course for Luna, thenaltered it.
‘They'd expect you to headthere,’ Frozen Hound explained, a rare sentence. ‘Henry has alogical mind. Do something erratic, that way, when they find himmissing, we'll be more difficult to trace.’
‘The dark side?’
‘No, too risky; make it Earth.’
*
‘Droover S?’
‘Yeah...who is it?’
‘The engineer.’
‘Ernie, get out of my brain.’Sally was engaged in some private thinking. The walls looked morecheerful, she noted, and the food was good.
But she hated not to be working.
It was plain there had been nodepressurization; the engine, its internal conglomerates and networkswere intact, displayed no obvious stresses or fractures. He toyedwith the idea that it had somehow mended itself: a frenetic team ofconscientious dwarfs armed with repair-gear and blow-torches, amultitude of active fingers superintended by the dead engineer.
It had itsappeal, and brought to mind the still unsolved problem of Ern. Notfor the first time Byron was struck by the fact neither Sal nor Kate,or for that matter Captain Jones, had ever offered any explanation asto what befell his artful predecessor. What, if anything, had causedhis demise? It was a puzzle he might never solve.
Beman was ready.
‘Just you andme?’ asked Byron, accepting the challenge. He liked the Topican,admired his departmental stubbornness. The pair of them would get onfine, as long as they had to.
He wondered if his own needs wouldbe met before those of his adversary.
‘Our manfollowed the main service conduit to its branching,’ Beman said,pointing. ‘That's the last he was seen. A group of four, includinga naval officer, went in search. They were in radio contact until...’
He seemedreluctant to say it. Friendly acknowledged and led the way. Therewere stencilled numbers lining the conduit, or tunnel as Byron wouldterm it; also coded lettering. It was like a sewer, only dry, silent,the fitful illumination as yet victim to the engineer's priortampering.
At the nexus they turned northnorth-west. Like mad sailors, thought Byron, always thinking thedirection they'd come from was south, forever ever seeking cooler,windy climes...
The tunnel narrowed and soon theyhad to crawl on their bellies, mimicking rats.
He had no fixed goal in mind: ifpeople wanted to disappear, that was their business.
They climbed over aconverter-housing and down its greasy side. The air was stagnant.Beman sniffed it, said, ‘You mustn't come here too often.’
‘No,’ said Byron, pausing asthe man used his inhaler, its contents protection - in theory -against the unwindings and complications that were retrograde...
Together they swung open a largecircular hatch and entered a chamber where no light penetrated.
Beman raised a flaccid arm, let itdrop.
‘Something hit him hard,’observed Byron, smoking one of the Topican's cigarettes.
‘What?’queried the man. ‘What hit him Who?’ Aggression reshaped hisvoice.
They squatted on a gantry, oilyspace beneath their feet. The engineer said, ‘I don't know.’
Beman produced a gun.
‘You rememberthe way?’ asked Friendly, smiling. ‘You still need me I think.’
‘There aremore ways than one...’ He turned suddenly, unnerved by a movementto his rear. ‘Hunter!’ he shouted. ‘Are you there? It's Beman.Hello!’
The only replyhe got came from Byron. ‘You're imagining things,’ the engineertold him. ‘It's nothing, a spectre, a ghost. There're hundreds.’He'd slipped quietly off the platform, clambered now below the mesh,Beman frantic, shooting, effecting transient blooms of variegatedlight.
‘Where are you?’ demanded thecivilian. ‘You can't get away; not for long. You hear?’
The air shook...
Beman wasfolded, caught in the gantry as it scissored. He screamedincoherently, a last defiance, then was quiet, as with a jerk ofhydraulics the steel mesh neatly cubed him, mixed his parts with themurdered rating's, Byron's eyes to flicker as together they spun intens and twenties, spattering him with lukewarm juices.
The shocktroopsblazed a curtain of fire, blackening walls and blistering flesh.
Upfront had returned with oneintention, to seize the orbital station at whatever cost. Sallypitied the occupants while not counting herself among them; theycouldn't have had much of an opportunity to strengthen theirposition.
Her thoughts drifted briefly toByron, came shrieking back as an explosion rocked the vent in whichshe'd wisely ensconced her person. Cold air was dragged over her,then to be heated in a squall of boiling thermals farther down thetract. It was dim, no fun at all where she was, but secure enough forthe present. At least till the fighting stopped.
She relaxed, breathed steadily,listened to the warped echoes as they stole up from the deep,reverberating through the thin aluminium, dampened by her body andamplified by the invisible juncture that lay a short distance ahead.Maybe, considered Sal, providing a second option...
Slowly, deliberately, she edgedforward, halted when her feet lost purchase, hung in the nothingness.Leaning out she touched and identified another five avenues,projections from the sides of a box, her own the sixth, on which shebalanced, blind and debating. The gravity hinted there was a down;she ruled it out, up for similar reasons. That meant left, right orstraight on. Sal tasted the faint draught, its dying speed, andmanoeuvred gingerly eastward.
*
The sun rose. Rainbows shimmered.Kate Droover drank from a stream of liquid silver, dunked her hat formore.
The wrist radiocrackled. She didn't answer. Who’d be calling her? She shook herhead and hands dry and walked along the bank, leaves and rocksclustered like spectators, an audience of patient stone and temporalfoliage. The wilderness seemed to have grown in depth, swollen indetail under the starry aegis of night, as if Uncle Stylo had takenhis finest brush and a magnifying glass to its melding borders ofgreen, brown, green, blue, green, yellow, green.
A hairy caterpillar said goodmorning, how are you today? And Kate, hungry, asked it the way to thenearest cafe.
Just follow the spiders, itinformed, track with your eyes their longest threads.
And she did.
What she found surprised her.‘Mordy?’ she cried, wiping drops from her nose. ‘Hey!’
He wandered over.
She sat down.
He was gone when she lookedagain...
*
On Earth the threesome sat roundan oval table, steaming mugs ringing its varnished (a sheet hadcovered it) surface. Morgan whisked his cocoa, hating its frothycolour. Dr Grey lifted his mug to his lips and sipped contentedly,while the dog used a straw.
‘This is my first visit toAustralia,’ said Lumping Jack. ‘I always thought it was...red,you know, like Mars.’ He felt stupid, manipulated. Frozen Houndignored his silent pleas.
‘It's a rare citizen of theplanet who ventures far overland these days,’ replied the madscientist. ‘Life is too comfortable, eh? We shouldn't lose sight ofour heritage,’ he added. ‘Not the nice bits anyway...’ herambled, far away. Then, ‘Listen.’
The dog's ears pricked up.
‘What?’ said Morgan, suddenlynervous. He pushed back his chair and stood, peered out the grimywindow at the twilit soil and hills. His guppy rested nearby, swathedin canvas in hue similar to the blackened earth all around. Theramshackle house never possessed a discernible shadow.
‘Nothing,’ the doctor saidfinally, theatrically. ‘This is a dead continent, remember?’
Lumping Jack groaned. ‘Sure, youtold me. And that, over there, was your grandmother'srocking-chair...’
Henry laughedincongruously.His stump flailed the air. ‘If the world were to end tomorrow,’he sang, ‘it would be like any other day, with broken trees andbony knees, the sun to wither away.’
The dog howled, a sound theoutback hadn't heard in decades.
Chorus...
*
Byron felt sick. The drugs they'dpumped him full of on Fury, he now realized, were no substitute fordecontamination, the steady purging of malignant chemicaltraces...only here that process was reversed, like his thinking. Didthey appreciate their mistake? he pondered. Maybe it was deliberate,a poison administered, one to erode his immunity. He shruggedmentally, unable to figure it out, and. continued down the ladder. Atits base he ducked under a blinking console.
And came up facing Abdul. He totedBeman's pistol, a severe expression on his face.
Neither man moved for some time.Then the cook's lineaments hardened further and he keeled over,shattered like a fragile, porcelain statue.
The engineer toed a few shards;they crumbled. The gun simply vanished.
Like another, he reflected. LikeMonica.
From where Friendly stood he couldsee the co-ordinator, her dance suspended in his mind.
The voices drifted like odours,each different, each with a source. They talked of campaigns, losses,destruction. She was above them, exhausted, bathed in theircigar-smoke and tones of gratuitous promiscuity. She knew she wasdying. She poked her aching fingers through the grill and rattled it.
‘Help,’ shesaid, Sally Droover, wanting Amy, wanting Kate,? wanting... ‘Byron- Byron Friendly.’
One of the voices repeated thename.
‘I don't believe it,’ anothersaid. ‘Here?’
They obviously knew him...
‘Get her out of there.’
Thank-you.
He tracked thepale figure, followed the chalk-marks roughly scribed on pipework andequipment lockers. Mostly they were arrows, but every so often acircle or square steered his gaze, and the arrowheads evolved intotriangles, sharp tadpoles whose tails shortened, then disappeared.
The engineerwalked tirelessly, mouth dry, head choked with used imagery. Picturesfrom an earlier time hung before him like promises, leading him on,an exhibition that drew him deeper into the past, toward hisbeginning, a bizarre retrospective of recent, muddled events. Therewas Sally on the hilltop, taking in the sunset. Sally again, jokingin his Upfront residence; and her sister Kate, coughing, inhaling,laughing blue smoke, himself with his face painted, swinging from astair...
Comics. LumpingJack, Frozen Hound, Dr Henry Grey: LastOf The Earth Men. Before. Lucky unlucky, the knock on the door thatnever came. And, ‘Ernie,’ he whispered, unknowing of the action.It straightened his spine. Up ahead the wan figure paused, skin waxy,loose and malformed, as if poured from a height onto shrunken bones,a distorted candle, its wick a plume of black hair. ‘We meet atlast,’ Byron added, grinning, matching his counterpart's twisteddemeanour.
‘You're welcome,’ said theengineer.