Lament for the Fallen (19 page)

He pushes up and down, up and down, flexing himself against the two walls. He continues for hours, pausing only when the food slot opens to eat from the sachets.

Another day passes, but Symon reports that no more random openings have happened.

On the third day of exercising, the entire face of one panel slides back and away to the left. The passageway outside is in darkness. Samara carefully sticks his head out.

The glow in his eyes vanishes as he adapts his skin to match the bare-metal walls of the tunnel. As he moves – floating in the middle of the corridor, and pulling or pushing as he propels himself – he appears invisible, transparent, reflecting the surface under him around his body.

Symon has built up a reasonable map of the nearby tunnels, and determined which way faces towards the outside, but he has only a limited idea of how the overall system is structured. He needs to find a maintenance and engineering warehouse that he assumes will be close to the elevator entrance. Maintenance must have been planned for during the life of the prison?

He is aware of temperature and movement sensors embedded in the walls. They do not trouble him. He reflects only ambient heat.

He sees the rounded metal ball of a Fury flying past a junction up ahead, its magnetic thrusters keeping it centred in the tunnel. Samara ignores it, turning in the opposite direction.

It is a warren of interleaving tunnels, a grid of columns and rows of seemingly random intervals. He goes slowly, making no sound.

[Fury.]

He stands still, bracing himself, leaving space for it to pass, as the Fury turns into his tunnel and floats alongside him. It is almost spherical, with a grotesque lion-like face.

[I thought they were supposed to look like hags? With snakes for hair? This is disappointing.]

Samara grabs it, propelling a bullet of silver into its guts. Systems are adjusted, sensors confused. Now it is his. He holds it, maintaining control over it, ensuring it reports correctly back to Athena.

[It has a map. I’m translating it.]

There are scorch marks in this section of the tunnels. Inmates who ran the gauntlet and were slaughtered. Dried blood floats in the stillness of the air.

[Calculated. The map is not complete. Look. Notice that huge central shaft? Almost like a funnel to the outside?]

‘Strange. It doubles the size of the prison. Can you see what it might be?’

[No. It seems protected from the Furies. Although it seems to share a common control room, they have no access, so no need to know the interior.]

‘Fair enough.’

[I have calculated a path to the stores.]

Hours pass and he makes it into a different tunnel. This one is lit. He follows it to an ordinary-looking hatchway door. It is unlocked.

Inside, there is gravity, and he drops silently to the floor.

[They waste the energy here, where there is no one to appreciate it?]

It is a large space, about the size of an aircraft hangar. Boxes are piled up on pallets. Sheets of metal, aluminium rebar and baskets of thermoplastic packing pellets. There is more than enough material for him to build an escape pod.

There is a sound, as of quiet conversation.

[Three. Behind the boxes to the rear.]

He creeps silently between the box stacks, pushing the Fury ahead of him.

‘I raise you four packets,’ says a voice.

‘He has you now, Seymour,’ chuckles another softly.

Past a crate of mechanical components, three men are seated on stools around a small table. They must have once been big men, but now they are skeletal. They are of varying ages. One looks very old. Sheets of fabric are wrapped around their bodies. It matches the fabric of the cell padding. Empty sachets are piled between them, cards in their hands and on the table.

Samara shifts colour, returning to his normal matt titanium. He does his best to hide the Fury behind his back. He clears his throat, gently.

The men jump, swearing, trying to hide. One spots him.

‘Fuck’s sakes, it’s a man!’ he shouts. They relax but remain wary, and then one spots the Fury.

‘It’s a Fury! Fuck!’

‘It is mine,’ says Samara, clearly. He pulls the Fury in front of him and pushes it to face the floor. ‘I control it.’

Their jaws gape. The one called Seymour walks over to Samara. He is hunched, bent, his ribs protrude and his stomach is hollow. He prods the Fury.

‘How you do that?’

‘I am Achenian. I am able to control such devices.’ He warns them, ‘Do not attempt to remove it from me as I will lose control of it again. It will then call Athena for help.’

Seymour stares aghast.

‘If you wait a moment, I will reprogram it.’

The others watch as he crouches over the black, evil-looking device. He is silent for a few moments, then releases it. The others jump, but Samara motions at them to stay calm.

The Fury hovers above them then begins to patrol the warehouse. Every few hours, it will plug itself into a wall socket to recharge.

‘What you do to it?’

‘I’ve programmed it to send out a response to Athena that it is patrolling well and that there is no trouble. It won’t call for help. I have also set it to protect us. Its enemies are now other Furies.’

The men guffaw. Exchange disbelieving but happy looks. This may be the first hopeful experience in years.

Remembering his manners, Seymour wipes his right hand on the sheet around his waist and proffers it.

‘I’m Seymour, that’s Henry, and the old guy is Sancho.’

They shake, awkwardly and self-consciously.

‘We ain’t got much food. Exist off what’s left in the empty packets as they collect down here. But you survived. That’s a big deal. We’ll find a way,’ says Seymour.

The others nod. It must have been terrifying, and unspeakably lucky, to survive and find this place without any of Samara’s abilities. How many tried and failed?

‘Thank you for your hospitality, but I don’t intend staying long,’ says Samara.

‘Well, those are brave words, friend. I been saying ’em for thirty years,’ says Sancho. All his teeth have fallen out.

‘We ain’ got much to do. We can show you what we got?’

In most Earth-bound prisons, any new arrival would never receive such a fulsome greeting. Tartarus is no ordinary place. These men have been isolated so long, starved for novelty and weakened through continuous hunger. Their conversation spoken as if dragged from them, exhausted; individual words lost along the way, leaving their speech oddly stilted. They still have their sanity, and life has become fragile and precious.

The men abandon their card game. A well-thumbed deck left behind by some ancient building party.

At the end of the warehouse is a packing system. Every six hours, a net filled with empty food sachets is released from a pipe and deposited into an empty box on a conveyer belt below. The net must be where the empties are collected after each feeding.

A stack of thin sheets of cardboard alongside the spout, and an elaborate folding mechanism to convert each into a box, sits beside the top end of the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt deposits the large boxes on to a mobile pallet at the other end.

‘The pallet holds twenty-eight boxes. A week’s worth of food waste. We go through each box – almost one hundred fifty thousand – squeezing out the last of the packets. There ain’t much,’ says Seymour, scratching his ribs. ‘We get by.

‘When the pallet is full, it rolls through that door. That’s a pressure-sealed environment, ’cos, on the other side, that’s the entry bay where the new convicts arrive. It ain’t guarded there, but it’s a vacuum. No escape.

‘And that’s our lives. We sleep through here. Each of us done make a room for ourselves.’

Amongst the wide, bolted racks, each man has hung sheets of cloth to create small rooms. Neatly folded sheets make up a bed, and a few personal items are packed in small boxes. The rooms are even smaller than the cells, but they do have the warehouse to live in.

‘We fool around with the equipment, we play cards, we squeeze packets,’ says Seymour.

The men stand there, skin and bone, their eyes sunken, large against their skulls, haunted.

‘Where your wee-wee?’ asks Henry.

Samara drops his penis out of its protective sheath, then retracts it again. Henry whistles.

‘That’s a neat trick.’

Samara shrugs. ‘If you show me where you keep the cloth, I can make myself something to wear,’ he says.

‘Sure,’ says Sancho, and leads him to a great roll of coarse fabric.

Samara unrolls a length and then slides the cutter across. He fashions it into an impromptu cloak.

‘That will do for now. Are there any fabricators?’

Henry shakes his head.

[The old-fashioned way, then.]

The men stare at Samara expectantly.

‘How you planning on getting out, fellow?’ asks Henry.

Samara looks at them carefully.

‘I’m going to build a small escape pod and fly down the navigation channel.’

The men look pleased. If one, why not more?

[Best tell them early.]

‘I need to explain something. Please be patient with me.’ The men look worried again. ‘You cannot escape with me. You will not survive the journey.’

‘What? We can’t stay here?’ Seymour looks angry, but they lack the energy to do much more than sigh.

‘I agree with you. This place is a crime. My people will not permit it. I will ensure that.’

They do not look as if they believe him, either that he can escape or that he would return.

‘My journey, in any case, is dangerous. I cannot travel direct from here to Achenia. There is too much debris in orbit. I would be torn apart. I go to the surface only to have to find another way back up. I will need to stay outside the connect once I’m into the atmosphere and will cut across and head for Africa.’

‘Mister, there ain’ no propulsion systems here. We looked,’ says Sancho.

[That could be a problem. I will review the station plans.]

‘I will have to look into that,’ says Samara. ‘I will not disturb you and, while I am here, I will help you as best I can.’

He works non-stop. He scans the boxes for parts, components. He will need more food: he has to bulk up.

[Food distribution will happen from somewhere.]

‘Yes, but first let’s check around here. It will be easier if I don’t have to spend too much time in the tunnels.’

The men lack the strength to climb more than a body length and have no idea what is in the boxes above that. In a distant part of the warehouse, free-climbing high up in the stacks, he finds a massive box of ancient food sachets. These are flavoured and appear to have been intended for work crews.

Samara flings the box from the top. It falls and bursts where it hits the ground, a deluge of silver-foiled sachets filling the narrow space along the floor. The Fury comes to inspect, then returns to its rounds.

The men walk slowly over. They are excited, start tearing open packets and sucking down the contents.

‘This one tastes like chicken!’ crows Henry.

‘Gentlemen. You are welcome, but I will need to eat about half of this if I am to survive the fall. The rest should last you a few months. Time enough for me to return and close Tartarus down.’

Henry shakes his head. ‘I almost believe you, fellow.’

The others occasionally follow him around, but they lack his energy or strength. Even with the additional rations it will be some time before they recover.

Samara, looking at the mountain of stores, asks Sancho, ‘Have you ever seen any work crews since you’ve been here?’

‘Last time was maybe ten years ago,’ he says. Pointing up at the sachet outflow pipe, ‘It wan’t easy, but I climbed up there, hid in the space on the other side of the pipe till they left. That way I could still eat.’ He grins toothlessly. ‘But that were before these fellows done join me. And none of us are strong enough to try that again any more.’ He looks sadly at his emaciated arms.

‘Before that, they used to come every year,’ he says. ‘You think they done forget about us?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Samara, ‘but I won’t.’

Samara sets up an improvised metal-works close to the conveyor belt. The men can see him there from their endless card game, shouting encouragement as they return to their regular routine.

Showers of sparks and piercing whines as he cuts the metal.

When they settle to eat, he joins them. They talk after the fashion of men unused to long conversations.

‘I were angry,’ says Sancho. ‘Spent more of my life inside than out. Me an’ a friend tried to ransom a hitchhiker. He were only a boy, shouldn’ even have been out on his own. We picked him up near the Guatemala border.’

He stops, his voice husky, clutching at his knees, looking down.

‘We didn’ know what we were doin’ neither. Couldn’ let him go, so I done strangle him. Got caught. My friend got killed. I got in fights inside. They sent me here,’ says Sancho.

He sighs, a long drawn-out breath filled with sorrow.

‘Stuck in that cell. Long time. Floatin’. All I can see is that boy’s face. I don’ even remember his name.’ Sancho looks up at Samara, his eyes bloodshot. ‘I would find his family. Tell them sorry.

‘I don’ have much life left, but I realize. You can’ spend it angry or hatin’.

‘I hope you can get us home, Mister.’ Sancho finishes speaking, rocking himself gently.

Henry killed his wife in an argument. Pushed her in a moment of fury and she fell, striking her head on an end table. Seymour was a gang member. There was one of those periodic anti-crime crusades, and he was made an example of.

‘I got a son back there,’ says Henry. ‘He was a baby when I was sent here. He’d be seventeen now, I guess.’ Samara told them the date. They are still coming to terms with how long they have been imprisoned. ‘I was wrong. I don’t expect him to welcome me, but I hope he’ll let me try.’

Seymour nods. ‘I got a wife still, I think. I hope she gives me a chance.’

Conversation lags, comes to a halt, and the men go alone to their small rooms. Haunted by hope and regret.