Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer (2 page)

‘Find the
light
!’ somebody bellowed, again, his voice distorted. ‘Or else—’

There was light. A strip of yellow-white, and the whole narrow chamber was illuminated with a gritty, cloudy radiance. It stung Jac’s eyes; or else, the still-swirling dust did that.

Jac blinked, and blinked. He was able to make out the shapes of his fellow prisoners, some stationary, some still hurtling. It was Davide who had grasped hold of the light pole and turned it on
– indeed, Jac could see the ingenious way he had used it as a brace to hold himself steady in the swirling air, wedging it between the angle of two walls. The space they were in was really
not very large. A wedge of pitted black-grey rock above and below tapering to a stocky dead-end. And at the formerly open end of the declivity, a new ceiling of red-brown of permaseal, the fabric
of which was wobbling slightly in the gusts. Jac thought exactly what everybody else was thinking:
we must survive here for eleven years. We must take a pole of light, and a bundle of equipment
you could pick up for a couple of thousand credits in any Mart, and with that we must somehow keep seven people alive for four thousand days
. It seemed flatly impossible. Of course Jac knew, as
they all did, that many prisoners did manage to do it – the Gongsi’s business model depended upon this, in fact. But the Gongsi’s business model also accommodated the death of a
proportion of prisoners; for in almost all cases they could retrieve the kit they had supplied, and even in death the fees they took from Ulanov police authority administrations per prisoner more
than covered the costs of portage and sundries. If they survived and turned the asteroid into saleable real estate the Gongsi made a lot
more
money, of course. But there was no incentive for
them to offer a helping hand. The question for Jac was: if they did survive, then in what mental state? On the other hand, such questions were a less pressing concern than imminent death.

Alienated from his bId for the first time in his life, Jac was unable to call up the numbers – how many prisoners, as a whole, died during their sentence? And of that number, how many were
instances where the whole group of seven died? And of that number, how many such deaths occurred within the first few hours of being deposited?

They were all thinking it. Eleven years in the most hostile environment imaginable, entirely dependent on their own resources, with no hope of assistance. A prison made of rock insulated from
the rest of humanity by millions of miles of vacuum in every direction. Eleven years! Their only hope was to endure the full eleven-year term and pray that the Gongsi hadn’t forgotten them by
the end of it, and was still trading, and had the incentive to come collect the hollowed-out globe.

Jac had more to fear from the end of that eleven-year period than from the sentence itself. Of course, he didn’t tell the others that.

‘Now! Quick!’ Davide was shouting, indistinctly, his mouth caked with dust. ‘Locate the scrubber!’

Now that the lightstick was on, those who were still being burlied about by the breeze were able to orient themselves a little better, and brake their velocity against the walls or in at the
thin end of the wedge. In moments, the only things still moving were the items of kit the
Marooner
had unloaded into the cavity. Even in tumbling motion, bashing dust from the walls as they
bounced, it was easy to see which was which: the largest was the fusion cell, knocking ponderously between wall and wall; only slightly smaller, on account of it being three machines strapped
together, was the bundle of excavators – the irregular shape of this package together with its size meant that it had become stuck in the wedge. But the rest of the kit, the tree-trunk-shaped
scrubber, the spore pack, a sealed box of biscuits (Lembas brand) so small a child could hide it under her tunic – these things continued to bash and rattle about the claustric space.

Jac wiped his face with a dusty hand, leaving it no cleaner than before. To his left, the great globe-shape of Gordius was squashed between the walls, his arms waving, and the fat of his flesh
rippling. It was hellishly cold.

To his right, Jac could see the other five. Marit made a swipe at the scrubber as it flew past him, caught it with one hand and tipped it about in mid-air. But before he could make a second
swipe and actually grasp the device, Lwon kicked off with both feet, shot across the space from the far side and scooped the scrubber into his open arms.

‘Hey!’ cried a hoarse-voiced Marit. ‘I had it!’

Indeed, Lwon had put himself at some disadvantage by leaping the way he did. He collided almost at once with the other wall and had to yank his head round to an alarming angle to avoid smashing
his skull. He sprawled on the rebound. The scrubber spun about, and he thrashed to steady himself. Finally Lwon managed to get his heel into a kink in the rock and settle himself. But he had
achieved his aim: he had the scrubber.

‘Listen to me!’ he cried. ‘Heed me! The next few hours are the
most
dangerous. One false step and we
all die
. We can’t afford to fight amongst
ourselves.’

‘Turn the damn scrubber on,’ said Marit, aggrieved. ‘No sermons!’

‘That’s no sermon,’ boomed E-d-C. ‘He’s running for office!’ Somebody else booed, or groaned, or perhaps coughed. Through the dusty air, Lwon called:
‘I’m not saying I should be leader,’ though that was obviously exactly what he was saying. ‘I’m not telling anyone what to do. But if we start fighting amongst
ourselves, we might just as well wreck this scrubber here and now – choke to death in hours, instead of dragging out the agony for years.’

‘I’ll tear your head off,’ growled Davide, although without particular belligerence. After all, he had the light pole.

‘Turn the scrubber on!’ said Mo. ‘Turn it –
on
.’

‘Wait,’ said Lwon, putting his hand up. ‘We don’t even know what model it is.’

‘What’s to know?’ said Marit, slapping his legs to warm them. ‘A scrubber’s a scrubber—’

‘We can’t afford any mistakes,’ said Lwon, turning the bulky device over and over. ‘A single mistake could kill us all.’ But there were no instructions printed on
the machine; and he couldn’t draw out the theatre of his moment for much longer.

So he turned the scrubber on. It made no sound, but the dust near one of its circular apertures stirred and started drawing slowly in.

‘Why don’t we all take charge of a different thing each?’ said Gordius. ‘Then we all got a stake – yeah?’

All faces turned to the far end of the cleft. The light was strong, the shadows it threw black and stark, stretching oddly over the slant surfaces of the walls. ‘What’s you say
there, fat-boy?’ demanded Marit.

‘I’m only saying,’ said Gordius, his voice audibly quivering with retreat, ‘is that – look, there’s seven of us. The fusion cell, the scrubber, the light,
the, uh, the spore pack, the, uh, uh, the biscuits – that’s five items. Divided equally between . . .’

‘Oh, you want the
biscuits
, do you?’ bellowed E-d-C. The effort of shouting caused him to cough violently. ‘Those biscuits got to last us until we get the spores growing
their
slop
. You eat them all up, what we going to eat?’

‘We could eat
him
,’ said Mo, showing thirty-two teeth. ‘He’d last us a while. And as for half-man there,’ Mo gestured towards Jac, ‘I guess you
don’t eat as much as a regular guy?’

‘Hey, don’t misunderstand.
I
don’t want the biscuits,’ insisted Gordius. Even in the bitter cold of that space, he was perspiring. ‘I wasn’t saying
that! I mean – sure, I’d like a biscuit, but, sure. The food should be equally divided, until. Sure. But, look, I
don’t
mind, and I guess Mr No-legs here doesn’t mind
either. Why don’t you five divide the five items between you? And then you could – you could—’

Lwon interrupted him: in a loud, stern-to-be-kind voice. ‘Your best bet, Softbody, is keep your opinions to
yourself
. We got a lot to do just to stop ourselves dying right here and
now.’ He looked in turn at the other four: Davide, Mo, Marit and E-d-C. ‘I know you, Ennemi-du-Concorde, and you know me. I know you are strong, and that you got the willpower. You know
the same of me, I think. I’m not setting to boss you – I’m not setting to boss
any
of you.’ The scrubber in his arms was carving a spectral Doric column out of the
floating dust near his shoulder. ‘I tell you what,’ he said.

‘What?’ boomed Marit, with sarcastic emphasis.

‘I say
when
we get ourselves sorted, and the air and water and food supply is settled, when that’s done I say we excavate seven completely separate chambers, and have one
each. Then we don’t need to be in each other’s hair. Then we can just wait out our time best as we can. But until then . . .’

Davide, evidently, had a practical mind. ‘Break that lightpole into seven,’ he said, ‘and I don’t reckon you’d have enough light to even
grow
the
spores.’

‘They’d grow,’ said Marit. ‘But slow – slow – and small. But you’re right, the better bet is keep the pole in one piece. Or maybe break it in
two.’

‘And there will be time to discuss all these things,’ said Lwon. ‘But not right now! Now, we have more immediate concerns!’

Jac examined the whole space. It didn’t take him long. ‘We could make a window,’ he said.

This was the first time any of the others had heard him speak, for he had kept his peace on the outbound flight. The sound of his voice made all eyes turn towards him. ‘You say –
what
was that, Leggy?’

‘We could make a window,’ Jac repeated. ‘Let sunlight in. I know we’re a long way from the sun, but we’d still ensure a degree of . . .’

Mo started laughing: a curt, barking, aggressive noise that transformed almost at once into coughs. Lwon said, dismissively: ‘sure, half-man. You
do
that. You conjure your magic
window and set it in the side of the rock.’

For some reason, Jac persevered: ‘there must be silicates in this rock. It wouldn’t be hard to run a line from the fusion cell, melt the—’

‘Talking of which!’ boomed E-d-C. ‘I’m cold as the grave.’ He started an ungainly, ill-coordinated crawl over the surface of one wall towards where the fusion cell
was lodged. Lwon followed him with his gaze, but did nothing to stop him. He still had the scrubber, after all.

E-d-C’s large hands grabbed the cell, turned the massy object easily in the microgravity, and dialled up some heat. As soon as he did so, the others began to shuffle, or scramble, over
towards him. The air was horribly, horribly cold; and although the fusion cell put out only faint warmth it was better than nothing.

All except Lwon. ‘Don’t get too cosy,’ he yelled. ‘We need to find
water
before we can get ourselves all warm like a cat on an exhaust plate. We need to find some
ice or we’ll all be dead in days.’

The other four alpha-males ignored him. Gordius was whimpering a little as he tried to extricate his bulk from where he had wedged himself. Jac made his way hand-on-hand over to the big fellow.
‘You’re stuck in there pretty good,’ he observed, bracing his thigh-stumps against the rock and pulling at an arm.

‘I bounced in the dark,’ said Gordius, struggling, ‘and then – wham. It shot me in here, like a . . . like a . . .
ouf
.’ He came loose and floated out.

They gathered their various bits and pieces and tucked them all into the cleft to keep them from moving about. Davide propped the light pole at an angle, wall to wall,
somewhere near the middle. Then they all set about unpacking the three excavators with which they had been supplied. The scrubber would keep the air fresh, but without water they would not last
long. That meant digging through until they found ice. ‘What if we don’t find any?’ asked Gordius. He knew the answer to this question as well as any of them; but that
didn’t stop him asking it aloud. ‘We die,’ Jac told him. ‘What if we find
some
, but not enough to last us eleven years?’ Gordius pressed. ‘What if there
isn’t enough ice in this rock to last seven men eleven years? What then?’

There was no point in answering him.

E-d-C had brought out the first of the excavators, and was examining the device. ‘Anybody here ever worked as a miner?’ he asked.

The scrubber had cleared some of the dust out of the air; and the breeze had settled, running toward the scrubber along one wall and away from it along the other. Jac found that he was able to
cough up and moisten his mouth sufficiently to get most of the grit out of it. ‘I dated a Moon Miner once,’ Mo said. ‘She was tough as a battlebot.’

‘She ever impart the wisdom of her profession
to
you?’ E-d-C enquired.

‘No.’

‘Then press your lips
tight
, idiot,’ E-d-C snapped.

Mo glared at him. Lwon spoke up, to defuse the hostility. ‘By the time we’ve finished our term here,’ he declared, ‘we’ll all be
expert
miners.’ He had
the second excavator and was examining at it. ‘It is a series of problems to be solved,’ he announced. Even with the heat from the fusion cell, their environment was extraordinarily
cold. Breath spumed from his lips with every word Lwon spoke. ‘That’s all it is. If we take each problem in turn and solve it, working together, then we’ll get through it.
It’s a series of problems to solve – all that’s left, after that, is the will to endure our time here.’

All that’s left after that, Jac thinks, is the will.

‘So I’m no expert,’ E-d-C, ‘but these look like utility models. Decades old. Second-hand. I can tell.’

‘You amaze me,’ said Davide, in a perfectly unamazed voice.

‘Eleven years,’ said Gordius, apropos of nothing.

‘There must be a schute,’ said Marit. ‘An schute. Ein schute. I,’ he said, rummaging. ‘This?’ It was a coil of black cable, about as thick as a man’s
wrist. There were three schutes, rolled together: one for each digger.

They unspooled one of them, and found its business end: a pen-nib-shaped bit. ‘All three together,’ said Lwon. ‘E-d-C – and Davide take first shift. We dig until we find
some ice.’