Armwrestling the Dead

envisaging ways by which his plan might be implemented. The hill was as good a place as any. The soil was light, a deep woody loam. He made easy work of the excavation. Arranging the support apparatus was another matter. With no tools available he had to use all his considerable strength to bend and lace a system of branches, testing and refining the design until satisfied it would adequately function.

  The morning was just reward to his limbs. He sweated profusely, heaving great lungfuls of frigid air. The clouds were thin and coloured a pale furnace red. The sun was more orange than yellow, an image recalled from when its radiance was filtered by an icy roof. Was the sun weaker now, or did other factors govern its output, as they governed his? He shook his head and continued, licking the dewy moisture off his wrists. The excavation was roughly square, longer than wide, the dirt piled on a series of boards, pieces of advertisement hoarding found stacked against the fence, among them an invitation to try a new brand of coffee, its merits pronounced in letters a metre tall.

  Too late now, he thought, climbing with Jenny into the hole. Not quite the statutory six feet, it made a passable grave. There was to be no marker other than the faded boards.

  WAKE UP DREAMING, the legend read.

  Well, here goes...

  Taking a deep breath he yanked the torn and knotted blanket, loosened the wooden braces, unleashed the bent-double saplings and dropped the counterweight of tyres, collapsed the network of branches and hoarding and deposited upward of three hundred kilos of soil and rock on top of himself and his love, a dull thump spreading a damp echo through the new day.

  And suffocated, Luther Canning, putting his faith in worms, his trust in the strangest places, green flesh and dead flesh locked away from the sky.

  fifteen - colony

  Lucky Ivan. He stepped off the bus in a robust fourth decade male, unfamiliar muscles lithe if not yet agile, dressed in a colony two-piece uniform. The body was Earth-approximate, externally compatible, the nose a little too sharp, the eyes milky whirlpools that passed unnoticed under normal social conditions. His stomach was novel, a kind of organic waste-disposal disseminating pangs for chromium. It had rumbled noisily on the bus, Ivan feeding it slivers of metal peeled from the seat rail. To discern the full range of his physical parameters he would have to experiment.

  Harry had been right about the offworld connection. The difficulty lay in finding a suitable donor. The overwhelming majority of remodelled company personnel exhibited their adaptations in ways visually antagonistic to a basically conservative populace, those fresh-faced indigena common to Moss City and its environs. Now, on the eve of world war, Ivan Evangela walked toward the steel and razorwire gates of the colony; part zoo, part institution.

  ‘Good morning, Dr Stewart. May I see your pass?’

  Ivan smiled pleasantly, the reflex inbuilt, while he searched the many pockets of the two-piece. His uniform differed from the guard’s in that Stewart was less a member of staff as a trustee.

  The guard waited patiently while he located the plastic, took it from him and pressed it flat against a hand-screen similar to the one he himself carried. Ivan was curious to know how much information was held on the card, and of what specific nature. The technology here was beyond anything in the city.

  ‘Looks like you had quite a trip,’ the man commented, handing the plastic back. ‘I hope it didn’t take too much out of you.’

  Ivan held the smile. The gates buzzed and he passed under a cross-meshed portcullis.

  So far so good. He’d encountered Stewart out near the park where Harry and himself had landed, walking, lost in thought. The perfect victim. Of the pod only a dent in the turf remained. The day was cold, the two men blowing misty spectres, ghostly submarines. The uniform had intrigued him. No giveaway, but unusual inasmuch as the few genuine city dwellers Stewart came across shied away from him in a fashion seemingly more instinctive than rude, as if refusing on a primal level his obvious existence. Ivan generated no such reaction. It had to be the uniform. Then why wear it? He followed,

  Stewart pausing intermittently to peer at an object in his hands. A book? He glimpsed an image and his curiosity was further aroused, the dark slab a pocket monitor. Not a TV. The man’s features were intelligent, educated, his lips moving as he talked quietly to himself, perhaps mulling over a problem or reconciling a dilemma.

  Well, they had that in common. Ivan approached.

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  The man hesitated briefly. ‘Good afternoon. I’m sorry, do I know you?’

  ‘Let’s say we have mutual friends,’ replied Ivan, deliberately vague, eager to learn more about his intended victim. The man had concealed the screen rather hurriedly and it fascinated him.

  Stewart licked his lips nervously, his apprehension made visible as he regarded the stranger.

  ‘Why don’t we walk?’ Ivan suggested.

  Stewart agreed, relaxing. ‘Do you live in the city?’

  ‘No, just visiting. Like yourself, yes?’

  ‘Yes...’

  They talked for some minutes, the subjects varied, Ivan at his most receptive, Stewart increasingly furtive. His nervousness appeared to shift toward that generated by expectation, Ivan noted, steering him toward a rank of mulberry bushes. A disturbing sexual tension. But it made things easier, he reasoned...less public.

  He took possession.

  The screen, when activated, displayed scenes of dim forest alleys, looming trees blurred with moisture, grasses parting. The perspective was low down, swamped in a haze resembling steam, the quick-fire exhalations of a living creature. Like his own these spun diaphanous wraiths up into the firmament. Unlike his, the shapes were indescribable. Ivan experienced fear, the emotion a hangover he was keen to explore, seating himself on the very bench he and Harry had occupied two days earlier.

  The sense of foreboding grew. He closed his eyes and fought to separate Stewart’s residual consciousness from his transplanted own, a ravenous cuckoo examining the legitimate chick it had usurped. This wasn’t something he’d attempted before. It unnerved him to imagine a body’s past self squashed flat on the inside. But there was undeniably a presence.

  ‘Hey, Stewart!’

  He stopped in his tracks, low buildings surrounding, a zig-zag of steps winding up the escarpment. The pallor of age hung, suspended like a fine mist, a feeling that the colony had led a varied existence.

  He recognized the face and nodded.

  ‘You look a bit shaken,’ said Dormund, bouncing, hands in pockets.

  Ivan thought him retarded. There was a scattering of other faces, outwardly normal. ‘It’s a long bus ride,’ he explained. ‘And the road’s bumpy. Gets worse the farther west you travel.’

  It was the truth. The bus was a charter and he its sole passenger. Ivan; the driver; the driver’s radio.

  Dormund smirked foolishly. Leaning forward he inquired, ‘See any shows?’

  Ivan put a finger to his lips. ‘Can’t talk now. Business. Catch you later.’

  Seconds passed. Dormund shuffled off.

  He contemplated the steps. Began climbing, the rail cold under his palm. A series of levels were cut into the rock, each with its door locked from the outside, the inmates hidden behind the exterior colony facade. The Rock of Gibraltar, he fancied, Barbary apes and Neanderthals. It seemed likely their keepers were company also, brave lieutenants whose loyal hearts - suitably refurbished - saw them installed in high political office. Stewart’s faded being offered up such impressions, a disordered legacy hinting at nascent war, a conflict internecine, where rivalries and fantasies were to be enacted on the surface of an innocent world. As a theatre the planet had much to offer. Ivan was privy to these ideas, a mass of information accreted in a visual format held together by that now personal fear.

  It all added to the mystery. His priority, however, was revenge, a quality equally veiled, as Ivan was uncertain on whose behalf it should be taken.

  Craftsman or tool? the ri
ddle questioned. Tool or material? Material or craftsman?

  It was a circle. But then the universe was round.

  i

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Smith told his sponsor, communicating via a telephone line.

  ‘He can’t hurt you,’ came the reply, the voice nasal. ‘We have him. The bait was successful.’

  ‘Yes, but what if he’s suspicious? He came straight here; straight inside. He’s acting too natural.’

  The sponsor laughed. Smith held the phone away from his ear.

  Silence. Then, ‘He’s trapped. We have him. Just do as you’re told.’

  Smith replaced the receiver. He still didn’t like it, felt the situation unnecessarily dangerous, the Runner too great an unknown. This was no Issac Waters primed by him to explode. Mother had tampered with Evangela. Mother wanted him unharmed. Smith licked his gums and opened the heavy security door. Others Mother had tampered with, indirectly, lined the passage, a collection of motley dependants who looked to Smith for guidance, protection, leadership. Quietly they smouldered, his loyal hounds. They were hideous, he thought. But he was ugliest of all.

  ii

  Ivan viewed the turbulent, white-capped ocean. He was aware of a door having opened behind him. The screen, held close, pictured a maze of brown ferns and mottled boulders. The image jumped and shook, pitched and rolled between sparse trees and a sky of lazy blue.

  ‘If you press your thumb against the