Dillon picked up his preheated tray and scanned the room. Men were chatting, consuming, pretending they had lives. As always, the superintendent and his assistant ate in the same hall as the prisoners, though off to one side. Wordlessly he homed in on a table occupied by three men displaying particularly absorbed expressions. No, not absorbed, he corrected himself. Sullen.
Well, that was hardly a unique situation on Fiorina. Nevertheless, he was curious.
Golic glanced up as the new arrival’s bulk shadowed the table, looked away quickly. His eyes met those of his friends Boggs and Rains. The three of them concentrated on their bland meals with preternatural intensity as Dillon slid into the empty seat. They did not object to his presence, but neither did they welcome him.
The four ate in silence. Dillon watched them closely, and they were conscious of his watching them, and still no one said anything.
Finally the big man had had enough. Pausing with his spoon halfway to his mouth, he settled on Boggs.
‘Okay. This is eating time, interacting time. Not contemplation seminar. Lotta talk goin’ round that we got some disharmony here. One of you guys want to tell me what the problem is?’
Boggs looked away. Golic concentrated on his mash. Dillon did not raise his voice but his impatience was evident nonetheless.
‘Speak to me, brothers. You all know me and so you know that I can be persistent. I sense that you are troubled and I wish only to help.’ He placed a massive, powerful fist gently on the table next to his tray. ‘Unburden your spirits. Tell me what’s the matter.’
Rains hesitated, then put down his fork and pushed his tray towards the centre of the table. ‘All right, you want to know what’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I’ve learned how to get along here. I never thought that I would but I have. I don’t mind the dark, I don’t mind the bugs, I don’t mind the isolation or all the talk of ghosts in the machinery. But I mind Golic.’ He waved at the individual in question, who blissfully continued scarfing down his food.
Dillon turned to Boggs. ‘That the way you feel about it?’
Boggs continued to stir his food nervously, finally looked up. ‘I ain’t one to start something or cause trouble. I just want to get along and serve my time like everybody else.’
The big man leaned forward and the table creaked slightly beneath his weight. ‘I asked you if that’s the way you feel about it.’
‘All right, yeah. Yeah. Hey, the man is crazy. I don’t care what Clemens or the “official” reports say. He’s nuts. If he wasn’t like this when he got here then he is now. The planet or the place or both have made him like that. He’s running on smoke drive, and he smells bad. I ain’t goin’ outside with him any more. Not to the beach, not to check the shafts, not nowhere. And ain’t nobody can make me,’ he finished belligerently. ‘I know my rights.’
‘Your rights?’ Dillon smiled thinly. ‘Yes, of course. Your rights.’ He glanced to his left. ‘You got anything to say for yourself?’
Golic looked up, particles of food clinging to his thick lips, and grinned idiotically. He essayed an indifferent shrug before returning to his meal.
Dillon regarded the other two steadily. ‘Because Golic doesn’t like to talk doesn’t mean he’s crazy. Just nonverbal. Frankly, from everything I’ve seen he manages to express what he’s feeling as well as anybody else. There are no orators here.’
‘Get to the point,’ Boggs mumbled unhappily.
‘The point is that he’s going with you. He’s part of your work team and until further notice or unless he does something more threatening than keep his mouth shut, that’s the way it stays. You all have a job to do. Take it from me, you will learn not to mind Golic or his little idiosyncrasies. He’s nothing more than another poor, miserable, suffering son-of-a-bitch like you and me. Which means he’s no crazier than any of the rest of us.’
‘Except he smells worse,’ Rains snapped disgustedly.
‘And he’s crazy,’ Boggs added, unrepentant.
Dillon straightened in his seat. ‘Look, you’re making far too much out of this. I’ve seen it before. It happens when there isn’t a whole helluva lot else to do. You start picking on the food, then the bugs, then each other. Golic’s different, that’s all. No better and no worse than the rest of us.’
‘He stinks,’ Rains muttered.
Dillon shot the other man a cautionary look. ‘None of us is a walking bouquet down here. Knock this shit off. You have a job to do. The three of you. It’s a good job.’
‘Didn’t ask for it,’ Boggs muttered.
‘Nobody asks for anything here. You take what’s given to you and make the best of it. That way lies survival. For you and for everybody else. This ain’t like some Earthside prison. You riot here and no citizen media comes runnin’ to listen to your complaints. You just get a lot more uncomfortable. Or you die.’ Boggs shuffled his feet uneasily.
‘Now, listen to me. There’s others who’d be willing to take on foraging duty. But in case you ain’t noticed, Andrews ain’t in a very accommodating mood right now. I wouldn’t be asking him about switching assignments and changing rosters.’ The big man smiled encouragingly. ‘Hey, you get to work at your own speed, and you’re out of sight of the superintendent and his toady. Maybe you’ll get lucky, find some good stuff you can try and keep to yourselves.’
‘Fat chance of that.’ Rains was still bitter, but less so. Dillon had reminded him of possibilities.
‘That’s better,’ said the big man. ‘Just keep your mind on your work and you won’t even notice Golic. You are foragers. You know what that entails. Hunting for overlooked provisions and useful equipment. As we all know from previous scavenging expeditions, Weyland-Yutani’s noble, upstanding miners had the useful habit of appropriating their employers’ supplies and hoarding them in little private storerooms and cubbies they cut out of the rock in the hopes they could smuggle some of the stuff out and sell it on the open market. They were trying to supplement their incomes. We’re interested in supplementing our lives.
‘I don’t want to hear any more objections and I don’t want to discuss it further. There’s tougher duty needs doing if you insist on pressing the matter. You are to do this to help your fellow prisoners. You are to do this to prove your loyalty to me. And I don’t want to hear another word about poor Golic.’
‘Yeah, but—’ Rains started to argue. He broke off before he could get started, staring. Boggs looked up. So did Golic. Dillon turned slowly.
Ripley stood in the doorway, surveying the mess hall, which had gone completely silent at her entrance. Her eyes saw everything, met no one’s. Stepping over to the food line she studied the identical trays distastefully. The prisoner on serving duty gaped at her unashamedly, his manipulator dangling limp from one hand. Taking a chunk of cornbread from a large plastic basket, she turned and let her gaze rove through the room one more time, until it settled on Dillon. Andrews and his assistant were as absorbed in the silent tableau as the prisoners. The superintendent watched thoughtfully as the lieutenant walked over to the big man’s table and stopped. His knowing expression was resigned as he turned back to his food.
‘As I thought, Mr. Aaron. As I thought.’
His second-in-command frowned, still gazing across the room at Ripley. ‘You called it, sir. What now?’
Andrews sighed. ‘Nothing. For now. Eat your food.’ He picked up a fork and dug into the steaming brown mass in the centre of his tray.
Ripley stood opposite Dillon, behind Boggs. The four men picked at their meals, resolutely indifferent to her presence.
‘Thanks for your words at the funeral. They helped. I didn’t think I could react like that any more to anything as futile as words, but I was wrong. I just want you to know that I appreciated it.’
The big man gazed fixedly at his plate, shovelling in food with a single-minded determination that was impressive to behold. When she didn’t move away he finally looked up.
‘You shouldn’t be here. Not
just on Fiorina… you didn’t have much choice about that. But in this room. With us. You ought to stay in the infirmary, where you belong. Out of the way.’
She bit off a piece of cornbread, chewed reflectively. For something with a dehy base it was almost tasty.
‘I got hungry.’
‘Clemens could’ve brought you something.’
‘I got bored.’
Frustrated, he put down his fork and glanced up at her. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing this. There’s worse things than bein’ bored. I don’t know why you’re talking to me. You don’t wanna know me, Lieutenant. I am a murderer and a rapist. Of women.’
‘Really.’ Her eyebrows, which she had thinned but not shaved completely, rose. ‘I guess I must make you nervous.’
Boggs’s fork halted halfway to his mouth. Rains frowned, and Golic just kept eating, ignoring the byplay completely. Dillon hesitated a moment, then a slow smile spread across his hardened face. He nodded and Ripley took the remaining empty chair.
‘Do you have any faith, sister?’
‘In what?’ She gnawed on the cornbread.
‘In anything.’
She didn’t have to pause to consider. ‘Not much.’
He raised a hand and waved, the expansive gesture encompassing the mess hall and its inhabitants. ‘We got lots of faith here. Not much else, it’s true, but that we got. It doesn’t take up much space, the Company and the government can’t take it away from us, and every man watches over his own personal store of the stuff. It’s not only useful in a place like this, it’s damn necessary. Otherwise you despair and in despairing you lose your soul. The government can take away your freedom but not your soul.
‘On Earth, in a place like this, it would be different. But this ain’t Earth. It ain’t even the Sol system. Out here people react differently. Free people and prisoners alike. We’re less than free but more than dead. One of the things that keeps us that way is our faith. We have lots, Lieutenant. Enough even for you.’
‘I got the feeling that women weren’t allowed in your faith.’
‘Why? Because we’re all men here? That’s a consequence of our population, not our philosophy. If women were sent they’d be invited in. Incarceration doesn’t discriminate as to gender. Reason there ain’t no women in the faith is that we never had any sent here. But we tolerate anyone. Not much reason to exclude somebody when they’re already excluded from everything else by the simple fact of being sent here. We even tolerate the intolerable.’ His smile widened.
‘Thank you,’ she replied dryly.
He noted her tone. ‘Hey, that’s just a statement of principle. Nothing personal. We got a good place here to wait. Up to now, no temptation.’
She leaned back in the chair. ‘I guess if you can take this place for longer than a year without going crazy, you can take anybody.’
Dillon was eating again, enjoying the meal. ‘Fiorina’s as good a place to wait as any other. No surprises. More freedom of movement than you’d have on an inhabited world. Andrews doesn’t worry about us going too far from the installation because there’s no place to go. It’s hard out there. Not much to eat, rotten weather. No company. We’re all long-termers here, though not everyone’s a lifer. Everyone knows everyone else, what they’re like, who can be depended on and who needs a little extra help to make it.’ He chewed and swallowed.
‘There’s worse places to serve out your time. I ain’t been there, but I’ve heard of ’em. All things considered, Fiorina suits me just fine. No temptation here.’
Ripley gave him a sideways look. ‘What exactly are you waiting for?’
The big man didn’t miss a beat. Or a forkful. ‘We are waiting,’ he told her in all seriousness, ‘for God to return and raise his servants to redemption.’
She frowned. ‘I think you’re in for a long wait.’
V
Later Clemens showed her the assembly hall, pointing out inconsequentials he thought she might find of interest. Eventually they sat, alone in the spacious room. Prisoner Martin quietly swept up nearby.
‘How much of the story of this place do you know?’
‘What you’ve told me. What Andrews said. A little that I heard from some of the prisoners.’
‘Yeah, I saw you talking to Dillon.’ He poured himself a short whiskey from the metal flask he carried. The distant ceiling loomed above them, four storeys high. ‘It’s pretty interesting, from a psychosocial point of view. Dillon and the rest of them got religion, so to speak, about five years ago.’
‘What kind of religion?’
Clemens sipped at his liquor. ‘I don’t know. Hard to say. Some sort of millenarian apocalyptic Christian fundamentalist brew.’
‘Ummmm.’
‘Exactly. The point is that when the Company wanted to close down this facility, Dillon and the rest of the converts wanted to stay. The Company knows a good thing when it sees it. So they were allowed to remain as custodians, with two minders and a medical officer.’ He gestured at the deserted assembly hall. ‘And here we are.
‘It’s not so bad. Nobody checks on us, nobody bothers us. Regular supply drops from passing ships take care of the essentials. Anything we can scavenge we’re allowed to make use of, and the Company pays the men minimal caretaker wages while they do their time, which is a damn sight better than what a prisoner earns doing prison work Earthside.
‘For comfort the men have view-and-read chips and their private religion. There’s plenty to eat, even if it does tend to get monotonous; the water’s decent, and so long as you shave regular, the bugs don’t bother you. There are few inimical native life-forms and they can’t get into the installation. If the weather was better, it would almost be pleasant.’
She looked thoughtful as she sipped at her drink. ‘What about you? How did you happen to get this great assignment?’
He held his cup between his fingers, twirling it back and forth, side to side. ‘I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but it’s actually much nicer than my previous posting. I like being left alone. I like being ignored. This is a good place for that. Unless somebody needs attention or gets hurt, which happens a lot less than you might think, my time here is pretty much my own. I can sit and read, watch a viewer, explore the complex, or go into a holding room and scream my head off.’ He smiled winningly. ‘It’s a helluva lot better than having some sadistic guard or whiny prisoner always on your case.’ He gestured at her bald pate.
‘How do you like your haircut?’
She ran her fingers delicately across her naked skull. ‘Feels weird. Like the hair’s still there, but when you reach for it, there’s nothing.’
He nodded. ‘Like someone who’s lost a leg and thinks he can still feel his foot. The body’s a funny thing, and the mind’s a heck of a lot funnier.’ He drained his glass, looked into her eyes.
‘Now that I’ve gone out on a limb for you with Andrews over the cremation, damaging my already less than perfect relationship with the good man, and briefed you on the humdrum history of Fury 361, how about you telling me what you were looking for in that dead girl? And why was it necessary to cremate the bodies?’
She started to reply and he raised his hand, palm towards her. ‘Please, no more about nasty germs. Andrews was right. Cold storage would have been enough to render them harmless. But that wasn’t good enough for you. I want to know why.’
She nodded, set her cup aside, and turned back to him. ‘First I have to know something else.’
He shrugged. ‘Name it.’
‘Are you attracted to me?’
His gaze narrowed. As he was wondering how to respond, he heard his own voice answering, as though his lips and tongue had abruptly chosen to operate independently of his brain. Which was not, he reflected in mild astonishment, necessarily a bad thing.
‘In what way?’
‘In that way.’
The universe, it appeared, was still full of wonders, even if Fiorina’s perpetual cloud cover tended to obscure
them. ‘You are rather direct. Speaking to someone afflicted with a penchant for solitude, as I have already mentioned, I find that more than a little disconcerting.’
‘Sorry. It’s the only way I know how to be. I’ve been out here a long time.’
‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘So have I.’
‘I don’t have time for subterfuges. I don’t have time for much of anything except what’s really important. I’ve had to learn that.’
He refilled both cups, picked up his own, and swirled the contents, studying the uninformative eddies which appeared in the liquid.
* * *
The fan blades were each twice the size of a man. They had to be, to suck air from the surface and draw it down into the condensers which scrubbed, cleaned, and purified Fiorina’s dusty atmosphere before pumping the result into shafts and structures. Even so, they were imperfect. Fiorina’s atmosphere was simply too dirty.
There were ten fans, one to a shaft. Eight were silent. The remaining pair roared at half speed, supplying air to the installation’s western quadrant.
Murphy sang through the respiratory mask that covered his nose and mouth, filtering out surface particles before they were drawn off by the fan. Carbon deposits tended to accumulate on the ductway walls. He burned them off with his laser, watched as the fan sucked them away from his feet and into the filters. It wasn’t the best job to have, nor the worst. He took his time and did the best he could. Not because he gave a damn or anticipated the imminent arrival of Company inspectors, but because when he finished with the ducts they’d give him something else to do. Might as well go about the cleaning as thoroughly as possible so it would kill as much time as possible.
He was off tune but enthusiastic.
Abruptly he stopped singing. A large deposit had accumulated in the recess off to his left. Damn storage areas were like that, always catching large debris that the surface filters missed. He knelt and extended the handle of the push broom, winkling the object out. It moved freely, not at all like a clump of mucky carbon.