The Rig

One

ALEF

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Subject name: Alef Selsior Subject condition: Unspecified. Physical state – rigor vitae. Nil significant trauma. Nil significant disease. Conscious state – hypersomnia.

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Thank you for selecting Alef Selsior’s Life, Significant Events in Chronological Order With Insights.

* * *

SigEv 1 The arkestra

My name is Alef Selsior. I am an only child.

I was born and brought up in a village in the restricted community of the planet Gehenna. The village was called JerSalem. My father, Saul, was a statistician with a small binary consultancy. Marita, my mother, sang in the church choir and baked cookies.

I struggle to remember much of my life before the arrival of Pellonhorc and his mother. Perhaps it was my age – he arrived when I was eight – but I think it was really that he came to us like a wheelstorm, changing everything and casting the time before himself into deep shade.

One thing I remember from the time before Pellonhorc is when the arkestra came to Gehenna. I’ve looked back at the event so many times that I feel young and old, wise and naïve, together – though, on reflection, this is how I have always felt.

We travelled to the city cathedral, a day’s long journey, to hear the arkestra play. Other than lullabaloos, there wasn’t much in the way of music on Gehenna except for hymns and carols, and of course the planet shielded itself from the Song, which it called the pornoverse, so arkestra music was a novelty. The arkestra were only licensed to play godly music while they were on Gehenna, naturally. Hymns and carols.

We travelled to the city by bus. I was so excited that I found it hard to concentrate on the prayers at take-off, mouthing them without heart. Because of this I remember feeling responsible when we hit turbulence, and I also remember a priest in the capsule accusing me with his gaze. I knew it would be my fault if we crashed, but he said nothing, and I spent the rest of the trip praying desperately.

In the city, we went on a flycykle down the river. I’d never been on a flycykle before, or a river, but all I remember was praying that the canopy would hold against the swirling gas, and that we wouldn’t sink to hell under the mud.

The cathedral was a vast stadium. Elsewhere in the System, such places were used for sports. I’d seen the cathedral on our screenery at home and in church, of course, but to sit in the stands among the tens of thousands of congregants was like being raised to heaven. Our small church in JerSalem would have sat on the huge central pitch beneath us with a margin of grass so wide that I couldn’t have thrown a ball to reach it. This great stadium was open to heaven, and the sky peeled past above us, clouds unscrolling their terrible shapes, the devil tempting us to imagine the worst. As I’d been taught, I kept my eyes down. I could make out where the stakes normally set around the oval pitch had been removed; the circles of scorched earth were clearly visible. While we waited for the arkestra, historic confessions were shown on the pitchside screenery. Confessions of apostasy, idolatry, heresy, and the occasional plain law crime.

I think of that day now and can’t quite believe it. It’s strange. I think of my early childhood – before Pellonhorc – as a time of innocence. Gehenna called itself an innocent planet, and its priests defended that innocence with rigour.

But what is innocence? Can one hold one’s eyes open against the world and remain innocent? Can one close one’s eyes against life and call oneself innocent?

Looking back at all that I have seen and done, can I? And who can judge me? No one can judge who cannot understand.

The atmosphere in the cathedral was wonderful. There was an extraordinary sense of comradeship. I sat between my parents in the high stands, holding their hands. My mother’s face was rosy. My father’s eyes shone. I stared at the pitch, enthralled. It was odd to see anyone other than groups of the condemned on the grass. Notes of music pricked the air as the musicians prepared their instruments. I can, even now, remember the perfect randomness of that sound, the absence of order in the notes and chords. The freedom.

The preacher’s stand at one end of the pitch was so far from our seats that we cricked our necks to see him better on the high screenery. Father Sheol was the day’s preacher. He stood there and spread his arms.

Father Sheol was legendary, an old man almost in his fifties yet still abrim with hellfire. His voice was separated from the movement of his mouth on the screenery, as if he were calling to us from heaven.

‘Welcome,’ he boomed.

We roared back, a wave of joy stirring the stadium.

‘And welcome, Arkestra of Amadeus.’

He pronounced their name carefully. On Gehenna, names carried great weight, and the similarity of Amadeus to Asmodeus had been debated for a considerable time before the arkestra had been permitted descent rights. The members of the arkestra stopped their preparations to bow to the congregation and acknowledge the priest’s greeting.

He announced, ‘We are all here to share in the glory of godfear. We are here to be reminded of the temptation above, the retribution below, the suffering here and now, and the reward beyond. We of Gehenna welcome the Arkestra of Amadeus, and we remind them of godfear.’

A few of the arkestra had gone back to prepare their instruments. But they froze as the screenery around them cleared and went hellblack.

Father Sheol continued. ‘Today Gehenna welcomes not only the Amadeus Arkestra, but the eyes of the Upper Worlds too.’

I could tell by the reaction around me that this was unexpected. I’ve since gone back to see the records of the event, such as exist. Father Sheol looks small and his voice is tinny. Each time he repeats the arkestra’s name, it seems to sound closer to Asmodeus. Asmodeus, one of the devil’s names.

Why would Father Sheol and his Ministry have permitted the Upper Worlds (as we referred to the rest of the System) to peer at us? The Upper Worlds were the devil’s agents; yet we were allowing Gehenna to be seen on the pornoverse. What sin, and by whom, was being committed here?

There was murmuring all around the cathedral. Everyone was thinking the same thing. Why would the pornosphere be allowed into the godliest of godlys?

The hellblack of the screenery slowly faded, and new scenes appeared. These were not the usual confessions, though. These images were of retributions.

Odder and odder. These were not the usual burnings at stake of lone sinners, but mass sentencings to the pit. There on the screenery were crowds of shivering men, women and children standing on the pitch over the pits, waiting for them to open beneath their feet.

I thought how off-putting it must be for the arkestra to be sitting on a platform built there. But the images on the screenery only showed the moments before the pits opened, and I now realise that the musicians had no way of understanding the significance of the images, of what came next. All they knew of Gehenna was the opportunity it presented to play before an immense new audience on one of the two closed planets – the other being the obsessively secretive (even to the point of protecting its name) unsaid planet – and simultaneously throughout the System.

On the preacher’s stand, a small box was visible, a lead chest edge-laced in gold, and Father Sheol stood tall behind it and paused a moment. Everyone knew what it held. It was opened once a year, and today was not that day.

He bowed his head, briefly put his palms together in prayer, then flexed his fingers and slid a pair of stiff, black gauntlets onto his hands, pulling the long, lead-mailed cuffs up beyond his elbows, and then he leaned forward to rest his hands on the domed lid of the chest. He took a long breath and closed his eyes.

We were silent.

In a single smooth motion of ritual, Father Sheol opened the chest, reached inside, withdrew his hand and let the lid fall closed again.

We cheered as he brandished the book high in both hands. The cathedral trembled with our ecstatic approval. It was the godly Babbel, and Father Sheol was holding the Authorised Version. It shone in his gloved hands, radiating awe. Father Sheol stood in its fierce glow, and as the roar settled, long, deafening seconds later, everyone in the cathedral shrank back in their seats and held their breath. Only the arkestra failed to understand the significance of what they were seeing.

I could hear people murmuring, chanting the seconds just as I did, although for me, to count was as natural as to breathe.

Three, four…

Even I knew that the light of the godly Babbel was lethal.

‘On Gehenna, we believe,’ Father Sheol roared.

The arkestra were quite still. Now they sensed that something special was happening here. They could see the Babbel’s fierce glow reflected on the high priest’s cheeks.

Seven, eight, nine…

And still Father Sheol held the book up. The eyes of the pornosphere were on it, and he was preaching with fire. He was showing the Upper Worlds the unquenchable power of our belief.

He lowered the Babbel, and we breathed out. But then, before shutting the book away in its leaded chest, he suddenly brought it to his mouth and kissed it hard with his bare lips, holding it there for a long moment. Only then did he close the book away. He touched a finger to his mouth and blew a silent kiss towards the arkestra. There was a wisp of smoke at his lips. They were already blistering.

What did this mean? On Gehenna, everything had meaning and was to be interpreted. But there was no time now, for the arkestra launched into their music.

I forgot Father Sheol instantly. I thought I was in heaven. The soaring, swooping, gliding of the music enfolded me. The fading and regathering of melody, the subtleties of variation, the – I can’t describe it. I’d heard everything they played before, a thousand times, Sinday after Sinday as long as I could remember. But this was more. It was wonderful and terrible. I sat there and tried to hold it in my mind, the simplicity and complexity of it, and then I gave up, closed my eyes and let it bear me away.

As it continued, filling me with something I’d never known before, I found myself staring up, up into the sky. Without thinking what I was doing, I stared at the clouds and saw them as great, beautiful beasts, bounding majestically along, shot through with distant light.

The music filled me and I stared, I don’t know for how long, until I was brought to my senses by a violent cuff to the head from behind. It dizzied me for a few seconds. I turned round, startled and hurt. My eyes regained their focus as the man who had struck me hissed, ‘Devil-watcher! Keep your eyes down.’

As if the slap had flicked a switch inside me, the music fell flat in my ears. I still listened, but in a different way. I don’t think I’d ever been hit before that moment. My parents had never struck me. But they didn’t say anything to the man who had just done so. There was a moment when they glanced at each other, but they did nothing else.

Strange. I thought I was accessing a memory of simple life prior to Pellonhorc’s arrival, a time without pain and confusion, and yet I find myself disturbed.

The music ended. As we waited for Father Sheol to conclude the service, my mother asked if I’d enjoyed it, and I said yes. My voice sounded new. We locked eyes. Looking back, I realise that my mother had seen that something had changed in me.

My father didn’t notice anything. He smiled at the two of us and said, ‘Good!’ And as Father Sheol returned to his stand, my father added, ‘Interesting. The string section made up seventeen point eight per cent of the arkestra.’

That was the type of comment he always made. It was the way his mind worked. Whenever he came out with such a thing, my mother would always glance at me and roll her eyes. He was not like us, she meant, but this was the first time I fully understood that. At other times, of course, it would be my father and me sharing a similar glance aimed at my mother who was unlike my father and me.

I answered my father, correctly, ‘Did you notice that the string section was responsible for thirty-eight point two five per cent of the notes played?’

My father blinked and said, ‘Yes,’ in mild surprise. And then his attention, and that of everyone in the cathedral, turned to Father Sheol.

The preacher was saying, ‘This is a day we shall all remember. Gehenna will remain strong, a beacon of faith unsullied by the polluting gaze of the Upper Worlds.’

It was clear that the arkestra had not expected this. They had been putting their instruments into cases, chattering to each other, but now they hesitated.

‘The Arkestra of Asmodeus –’ it was certainly not Amadeus that he articulated so precisely, this time, ‘– has taught us a lesson today. It is a lesson that the Upper Worlds shall do well not to forget.’

Father Sheol held something high. It was not the Babbel this time; the screens closed in on the black orb in his fist. He was holding the Pull.

In the congregation, people began to moan. My mother gasped. The musicians stopped what they were doing, sensing that something was happening that they didn’t at all comprehend.

In my head, I made calculations, percentages based on the different manners in which they displayed their panic, approximating my figures to the nearest one per cent. Eighteen per cent were screaming, thirty one per cent were clutching each other, twelve per cent were falling to the ground. No one prayed. Zero per cent.

When I analyse it now, the way the music had freed my mind to think, to imagine, and then the way that logic allowed me to escape my imagination, the way it let me withdraw into numbers; all this was an insight into my father’s mind. But now I had the beginnings of my mother’s perception too, or at least an early foresight of it.

I was not grateful for that.

Holding the Pull high, Father Sheol walked from his stand towards the pits, to stand at their edge. I wondered whether the pit directly beneath the arkestra was broad enough. I’d seen condemnations on the screenery at home, the calm resignation of the repented sinners as they murmured their prayers before the ground opened. They were always in groups of twenty-five, the largest of the traps five metres in diameter. Father Sheol would stand at their side on solid ground as he operated the Pull. There was a dignity to their going.

There was little dignity here.

Father Sheol smiled at the musicians. They plainly couldn’t tell what was going on. Their panic began to subside, but about forty per cent were still wailing. He made a signal and the screenery closed on his face. His Babbel-burnt lips couldn’t control his words and we struggled to understand him.

‘Here is the lesson.’ He could hardly say his esses. His gums were shrouded in blood. He spat blood. ‘Let it be seen.’ A gob of bloody spittle landed on the Pull. ‘Let it be shown.’ He stopped to wipe the Pull on his red robe. ‘Let it be known through every world!’

He held the Pull high, his thumb ready on the black orb. A violinist broke away from the arkestra and launched herself at him, screaming, her instrument making a discordant sound that reminded me of the earlier tuning of instruments, but Father Sheol threw her off. The violin bounced on the orange grass.

‘We are all of us sinners. All of us, above and below and between. Our only freedom lies beyond.’

His thumb twitched on the Pull, and he drew back his arm and hurled the orb high in the air. As he hurled it clear, he stepped forward and joined the arkestra over the pit.

Now every member of the arkestra screamed and the sound was louder than the sound of their music had been. It drowned even its memory, I’m sure, for most of the congregation, as Father Sheol must have intended.

The air rushed from the cathedral towards the pit as it groaned and gave way, and the air swirled back, swollen with heat. There were flames and a roaring, a sudden rush of air and light that left me gasping and dizzied, and then the pit closed and there was silence.

On the pitch, beside the pit, all that remained were the Pull and a broken violin. Father Sheol was gone too. He had sacrificed himself.

The congregation screamed, whooped and yelled for seventeen minutes as the exits were opened, and the great censers swung across the pitch, trailing ropes of sweet incense. Hymns played us out of the cathedral; ‘Heav’n o’erwhelms Hell’s awful thunder’ and ‘We march with fear to Thee our Lord’.

My mother said nothing all the way back. My father muttered to himself. I pretended I was a puter, challenging myself to calculations.

How had such a thing been allowed to happen? Had the Upper Worlds not considered the possible consequences of sending an arkestra to Gehenna?

Now, from a distance of time, it’s quite obvious to me. The arkestra were a sacrifice, of course, but they were not merely a sacrifice by Father Sheol.

The System – all but Gehenna and the unsaid planet – was rigorously godless. While the unsaid planet had withdrawn entirely from the System, maintaining its privacy to the point where it monitored and obliterated all reference to itself, Gehenna was a sanctioned aberration. It had suited Gehenna to invite the arkestra. Father Sheol had thought to teach the Upper Worlds a lesson, but the Upper Worlds had known exactly what to expect from him. They had offered up the Amadeus Arkestra as a sacrifice. It was a perfect opportunity for the Upper Worlds to demonstrate what they saw as the insanity of godfear.

In the end, it was a lesson in the ways of humanity. In a secular system, the existence of Gehenna was vital.

But on a day-to-day level, Gehenna wasn’t a place of torment. The small community in which we lived was peaceful. There was no crime to speak of. We lived far from the deletium mines. All I knew of the mines was that sinners from the Upper Worlds were sent to work in them.

There was tax, though. As much in Gehenna as elsewhere in the System, tax was a complex burden. Every planet had its own Infratax codes, and System Administration exerted several codes of Ultratax on top of that.

Gehenna was the only haven in the entire System for a tax exemption on grounds, technically, of mental incompetence. As long as you lived there, submitting to godly writ, rejecting the pornosphere and all other trappings of secular confusion, and contributing to the export of deletium, which was unique to Gehenna, you would pay little Ultratax.

Most people employed specialists to calculate their taxes, but my father didn’t. He loved the complexity of taxation just as he loved putery with its systems and processes and its promises of certainty. Even on Gehenna, he was unusual. He loved the tax system and the Babbel equally and without question, loved how they pervaded every aspect of human existence, entirely impervious to common sense. Sitting with his friends while he fixed their putery, he would explain how they were taxed. He would advise them to avoid tax by claiming this exemption or that, and advise them how to avoid the wrath of God by this act of kindness or that.

I look back and wonder how someone as logical as he was could accept godly writ. Why was I not able to believe? When did I first realise how strange it was? Was it that slap on the head in the cathedral? Was it the look on my mother’s face as she saw me register her failure to defend me? Was it the irresistible tide of her genes? Did she ever believe? Or did she simply keep quiet about her disbelief?

Two

TALLEN

It’s a border planet, Bleak, and Lookout, the town where I live, is its last outpost. That’s if you don’t count the rigs, of course. Here in Lookout, people hunch their shoulders and keep their heads down, do their jobs and then take their breaks off-planet. They say monotony causes madness, but we have three seasons, so it can’t be monotony that sends people crazy here. Most people think it’s the wind that does it. The seasons in Lookout are as eventful as you’d expect considering Bleak was crash-terraformed from methane to nitroxygen inside three centuries.

Our longest season is between winter and summer, when the wind comes in hard off the sea, heading for the mountains, slapping thunder and rolling silverblack cloud in its wake. Anywhere else, they’d call it spring. We call it flux, and it’s one grand hell of a sight. Squinting out to sea, you can make out tumbling shapes in those vortices of cloud. Sometimes the shapes remind you of animals you might have seen pictures of, or dreams or faces or maps of worlds, but sometimes it’s the shape of a rig, and if it is, no matter how godless you are, you ask that the cloud doesn’t drop what’s left of it on your head. Lookout’s only once seen a falling rig, and that was well before my time, but they still talk of it when the wind’s beginning to build and they’re drinking brush brandy in Bar/red. Mostly the rigs are well anchored, though – what the riggers call semi-submerged – and they’re far enough out to sea to be unlikely to fall here if they do get torn away.

Everything in Lookout is geared around the rigs. There’s pretty well nothing here but the rigyards and their support systems.

No, that’s not quite true – there’s the sarcs, of course, and everybody in the System knows about them, but the sarcs are dropped into the sea a long way from Lookout. They’re big enough news elsewhere, but no one here pays them any attention unless once in a while one of them slips the shield and gets itself beached. Oh, there’s the Chute, too, but I’m not crazy enough to spend my time there.

During flux, Lookout shuts down so you can’t hear a thing outside the complex, and you don’t go beyond the shield until the summer, when it’s a different story. The wind drops and at the shoreline the sea is easier, smearing itself over the beach. I take my break in the summer. The weather’s relatively gentle then, and I find the brief hope it raises too hard to bear, so I pack up and head for the snows of Colder. Colder’s a few days away by slowship. I don’t sleep on the journey, I just watch Lookout fade away, or else I stare out at the stars. I used to see a woman in Colder, but she got attached to someone and I don’t see her any more. Now I take a hut high in the white hills and go walking by myself.

I come back to Lookout in the winter. Bleak has no fall to speak of. Our winter is the wind flipped around and returning to sea with a freight of rock torn from the mountains. The terraforming of Bleak hasn’t taken properly, but it doesn’t matter – like I said, the town only exists for the rigs, and they only matter as long as there’s core to be drilled, and I guess the core will be exhausted by the time Bleak falls back to shit again.

But I’ll be long dead by that time, so what the hell.

Tallen looked over what he’d set down, closed his eyes a moment, then sighed and rechecked the prompt for the third time, looking for the catch.

FINAL REMINDER. YOUR FREE [StarHearts] WELCOME-BACK OFFER IS ONLY VALID FOR TWELVE HOURS. YOU HAVE ONE HOUR REMAINING. TO REDEEM THIS OFFER, PLEASE REGISTER YOUR [HeartStar] PROFILE NOW. THIS OFFER WILL NOT BE REPEATED.

For a month they’d been sending him better and better deals, and he’d ignored them all, but a free offer was unheard of.

He hated the idea of being manipulated, even though he knew everyone was. It was impossible to participate in the Song without losing part of your spirit in the process. This, though, was almost impossible to refuse, even if he wasn’t in the mood for company. StarHearts didn’t come cheap.

He felt a brief rush of the usual melancholy, and wiped the whole thing from the screen. StarHearts had never done him any good before.

And then he sighed to himself and brought back most of the text he had written, letting it end after the hut in the white hills. He closed his eyes and remembered Lena telling him goodbye, her open hand rising to the screenery, and him, stupidly, touching the glassy interface.

After Lena he’d sworn never to use StarHearts again, and yet here he was, drawn back once more. They knew how he thought. They knew him inside out.

Fine. When they started charging him, as they would soon enough, he’d cancel. They should know that about him too.

There had been no future with her anyway. They’d both known it. It wasn’t the fault of the program. He was never going to leave Lookout for anyone and she’d never live anywhere but Colder, and that was all there was to it.

The message to no one glittered on the screen. He restored the whole thing, all the way to ‘what the hell’. What the hell, he thought, and yessed it.

The screen glowed instantly.

—Welcome back to [StarHearts], Mr Tallen. [StarHearts] is a ParaSite of AfterLife.

—Subscriber advice follows. You are not being charged for this advice.

—You have not explained your employment. Detailing well-remunerated and/or socially respectable employment statistically raises your chance of a response.

—You have used words or phrases that may be off-putting to some [StarHearts] subscribers. Some of these words or phrases are: Monotony; Madness; Slapping; God(suffix); Hard to bear; Don’t sleep; Drinking; Used to see a woman; Got attached; Exhausted; Torn; Shit; Hell.

—Words or phrases that you may find more effective include: Love; Companionship; Warm; Kind; Sense of humour; Funny; Wealth (only in connection with yourself); Genetically stable (only in connection with yourself); Healthy (only in connection with yourself); Home-loving; Good-looking (only in connection with yourself).

—Do you wish to edit your [HeartStar]?

Tallen chose No.

—Your [HeartStar] has been posted to all subscribers for a period of one hundred charge-free hours. After this time your [StarHearts] account will achieve positive charge-status of fifteen dolors per (local calendar) month.

—You will be informed of any responses.

He tried to close the screen, but it wasn’t ready to let him do that.

—Please complete this Opportunity String before exiting AfterLife. Failure to do so will clear all details of this session and invalidate the current offer.

—Thank you for agreeing.

—Many [StarHearts] subscribers combine [StarHearts] access with main database access and access to TruTales and other payment-positive ParaSites. Do you wish to take this opportunity now or later?

Later.

—You have not accessed the main AfterLife database for twenty-nine hours and fourteen minutes. You currently have a cache of eighteen votes to cast, of which five expire in nine hours and fourteen minutes. Do you wish to vote now or later?

Later.

—Thank you. This Opportunity String is complete. You may now close –

He closed it. Leaving the screen to itself, and feeling restless and oddly guilty at having yessed the HeartSearch, Tallen shrugged on a jacket and took to the street.

He was regretting it already. What was he doing? It always made him think too much, writing or talking about himself like that. How the hell had he got to a place like this – the woman he’d met the other night in the red bar, the writer, she’d said Lookout was full of sound and fury, saying it like she’d heard the description herself somewhere. Now he had it lodged in his head, along with the way she’d said it. There had been something unusual about her, a sense of life and curiosity, and he’d wanted to carry on talking to her. He’d thought maybe she was interested in him too, but she’d turned away from him as soon as the big Paxer had come in, and that had been the end of that. Razer, that was her name. Maybe he’d see her again. Razer and the Paxer had still been there, drinking hard, when Tallen had left the bar. Most people, even non-crimers, were nervous around law officers, but Razer wasn’t.

No, Tallen shouldn’t have let himself be suckered into another HeartSearch. Look at the subscriber advice. What did he have to offer anyone? Lena had been right, and the woman before her, and all the others. And look at the insanity of where he lived. Who would live here by choice?

He walked beside the buildings, his thoughts for once extraordinarily clear. At night, Lookout was almost shadowless. The days here were strange enough, but it had taken him a year to get used to how the town was at night. Under the odd glare of the shield, the air gave no sense of depth or distance, everything seeming not distant or near, but just big or small. Your brain had to learn a new visual judgement. The buildings were no problem, but door grips were awkward, and eye-parallax was more important than focus. Getting around Lookout after sundown was like walking through a kids’ flicbook.

And there was the shield. During flux, the shield protecting the complex was a booming weave of magnetism and electricity. Tallen thought of it as smoke and mirrors. He believed in the shield’s existence, though, unlike the dozen or more drunks and crazies every year who took it into their heads to run through it and were swept away like that girl in the Oz flicbook his mother had read him as a child. Except that they were never seen again.

During the day, the shield was almost invisible, a troubling blur you could briefly squint at. You’d plant your feet firmly and focus on a wall, the ground, something solid. Nothing could resist that wind, but the soft, graduated shield could deal with it. At its outer edge, it was hardly there at all, merely taking the wind’s measure. A few metres in, it was rolling with the punches but starting to blunt and spread them, while a few metres deeper, it was soaking up the assault and making enough energy of it to power the complex and the shield together. The surplus stored energy was sufficient to run Lookout for the rest of the year. Bleak’s wind was an inexhaustible source of power and catastrophe.

Tallen wandered on, unable to dispel an odd feeling of being shadowed through the streets. It was just this absurd place, though. Nothing on Bleak made sense.

It was cool now and well past midnight, and the shield hummed. As always, Tallen headed down to the beach, descending close enough to the water that it lapped at his feet. The surf hissed through the stones underfoot. He preferred the shingle at night, when the brilliant sea-washed colours of day were muted to purples and scarlets.

Tonight the calm of the sea didn’t dispel his vague feeling of desolation. It was a mistake to have come out. These nightly walks were a bad habit. He should have taken a capsule and at least got himself some chemical rest.

Rocking gently from foot to foot to avoid sinking through the shingle, he wondered where his life was headed. There were more of the nearly-dead here than the living. They say you come to Lookout if you’re tired of life, and you go to the rigs when you are ready for death. The bars of Lookout were full of such end-of-everything talk. The trouble was, Tallen was starting to come out with it himself.

He thought of the woman in the bar again. Razer. What was she doing here? Most people let you know what it was that had brought them here after the first drink. Not her, though. There had been a life to her.

He reached down and stirred a finger in the slow water, watching the ripples go out to join the spiking sea beyond the shield and out of sight. Further out, he could see the shield forcing coronas from the wind, reds and blues and iridescent purples, shards of colour hard as rock and gone in an instant. Beyond that there was nothing to see. Space had its stars but the sea had nothing at all. Nothing but the sarcs and the rigs, anyway.

Maybe he’d feel better when he got back to work in a couple of days. Time off in Lookout wasn’t a good thing.

He let his thoughts drift, wondering what it was like to be on a rig out there. Crazy and lonely, he guessed, with the machinery thumping day and night, and the wind and the sea. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine the thunder of the drills and the fury of the elements working relentlessly to rip you away.

And then he forgot about the rigs and tipped his head, listening. Something wasn’t right. There had been a sound, and there it was again, sharper. He pulled himself upright and started heading for home at a brisk walk.

There were definitely footsteps behind him. Tallen looked quickly back, stumbled, then began awkwardly to run.

Three

RAZER

Razer sat with Bale at a small table under a dead light in a corner of the bar, the pair of them drinking steadily. The late evening was quiet, only a few others around the place, some talking but most of them sitting and screening alone. Looking around, Razer counted fifteen screeners, which meant that, statistically, eight or nine would be on AfterLife or one of its ParaSites. She used to wonder why they didn’t stay home and screen from there, until someone had told her that AfterLife’s screentime restrictions didn’t apply to public-area screenery. It kept people social, gave them a reason to go out. It kept AfterLife popular with bar owners, that was for sure, and it kept the System’s Administrata happy.

The screeners here seemed content enough too, nodding to themselves, muttering intently, tapping the air. At least, judging by their demeanours, none of them were on porn sites. Mostly, though not invariably, they stayed home for that. Razer wondered whether any of them were linked to TruTales.

There was something nagging at her, had been since she’d got here, and it took her a moment to work it out: Tallen wasn’t in tonight. Not that it mattered, now she had Bale, but even so, there had been a sense of curiosity about him that she seldom found. She was sure he’d have made a good story. She’d thrown out that line from Macbeth and he’d jumped on it. And the way he’d described the rigyards, there was definitely something to him. Odd, too, for Cynth to appear undecided, giving her both men at first as material for Razer to tell a TruTale. Bale was way out of the ordinary, of course, and Cynth, with her AI logic, had been right to bring her here, but yes, if it hadn’t been for Bale…

She turned her full attention back to the Paxer. Something was off with him tonight, but she couldn’t fix the reason. Usually it took a few drinks, a story or two for her to catalogue later, maybe a smile to be raised from him, and the evening was done. But not tonight. Tonight Bale had drunk steadily without showing anything of the alcohol except an unusual reflectiveness. There was nothing relaxed about him, though.

He said, ‘You like it here on Bleak, Razer?’ Saying it like an accusation.

She made a non-committal gesture.

‘Don’t just do that. Tell me. What do you like about it?’

‘It’s peaceful,’ she said.

‘I’m not in the mood for jokes. What do you like here?’

‘Usually I like drinking with you.’

For an instant she could clearly see Bale in a cell with someone who’d given a wrong answer. It made her shiver. She said, ‘I like the sea. I like the wind and the noise. It’s a good place to think.’

‘The eye of a storm. That’s what you told me the first time we met.’

She said, ‘Did I?’ though she remembered it perfectly. ‘Has something happened, Bale? You’re in an even fouler mood than normal.’

As he stared past her, she noticed how the non-screeners in the bar fell silent at his gaze. The same thing had happened that first night when he’d pushed through the door and let her catch his eye. He’d interviewed her like a suspect for an hour, drinking soft while she drank hard, as much as telling her no one comes to Bleak without a very big reason, and then he’d given up the questioning and started drinking vavodka with her, catching up and then overtaking her within fifteen minutes.

She’d never met anyone like Bale before, anywhere in the System. They’d slept together three times, the second time to see whether the first time was just because they’d been too drunk, and the third time to see if being sober the second time had put too much pressure on them. Razer had known it was never going to work after the first time, but she’d become fond enough of Bale to want to let him work it out for himself. She had to see if he was strong enough to let some kind of friendship surface from the wreckage of their sex. It had taken him a few weeks, but it seemed like he’d made it, though you could never tell with men.

It was an odd sort of friendship. She made sure Bale knew he was being mined for stories, but it didn’t seem to bother him. It was obvious to her that he had few other friends on Bleak. And – though it was a pity – he was professional enough to give her nothing identifiable or sensitive. He was good at his job, she was certain. She just wondered why he did it here. He wasn’t fit for anything else except soldiery, but there were thousands of better places to live in the System than Bleak. Cynth had sent Razer to most of them and she’d never found anywhere worse.

Thanks to Bale, though, she knew a little more about the rigs than could be trawled from the Song, and about life on Bleak. Cynth had chosen him well.

‘You ever think about life?’ Bale said now, a faint slur to his voice.

She bit back a flippant answer. One of the few personal things she knew about Bale was that he didn’t think much about anything outside his work. That was one of the things that usually let her relax so well with him. That perfect focus would make him good at his job, but it made him vulnerable too. If everything was black or white to you, you’d be blind to grey. For Razer, everything was a shade of grey.

‘I think about life,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘I’ve been thinking. The Administrata, the Corps, Pax, it’s like they’re all in an airlock with a single inrush of air. Too many people, just one source of oxygen from a high corner.’

She nodded, glancing idly round the bar. Still no sign of Tallen.

‘By the air, the Generals and the Presidents are standing on everyone else, breathing just fine, pissing and shitting down.’ Bale was almost all the way drunk, squinting at the damp rings on the table. ‘Below them there’s a little piss and shit, but the air’s still pretty good. A few bodies lower, the air doesn’t taste so fine. Near the bottom, it’s all shit, the air’s foul, they can’t move for the pressure from above, but they’re alive.’

Razer started to say something, but Bale held up a hand.

‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘the people at the top need the ones at the bottom in order to get their mouths to the best air, and the ones a bit lower down have their eyes fixed on the breathable air. They don’t care about the top, never will, and they don’t care about the bottom, never will.’

He dealt himself another drink. One of the barstaff came and scooped a few of their empty glasses away and wiped the table in a single smooth move. Razer tried to acknowledge the service, but the staffer kept his gaze to himself.

She wondered what to say, not sure how to gauge this mood of Bale’s. In the end, she said, ‘It’s simple, but it’s a fair metaphor. Most people die at the same level they’re born on. Is this your philosophy of life?’

‘It’s how it is.’

She tried a small laugh. ‘Where are you, then?’

Bale blew a long breath of scummy air and said, ‘In a goddamn bar with you, as usual. You need another drink and so do I.’ He drained his glass and slapped it down on the refill pad, and swore at the sudden bloodcheck warning shining on the pad.

Razer had never seen him quite like this before. As lightly as she could, she said, ‘Well. It looks like we’re both walking.’

‘Hell to that. I look drunk to you?’

‘No, Bale. A drunk never looks drunk to a drunk.’

Bale slid his index finger into the table’s blood slot, watching the screen light up and reading the result.

MACHINERY PRIVILEGES WITHDRAWN. PLEASE RETEST IN FOUR HOURS IF CEASING ALCOHOL INTAKE NOW. HAVE A GOOD EVENING, OFFICER BALE.

‘Hell to that, too,’ Bale said. He held his glass at eye level for a count of ten and then drained it evenly. ‘Is that fine motor control or what?’

Razer gave up and grinned. ‘It looked fine to me.’

He pulled a new drink and drained it, the empty glass hitting the bar before the bloodcheck display had flicked from four hours to four fifty.

‘Maybe we should slow down just a little,’ Razer said.

‘Doesn’t matter to me. I’m not working tomorrow.’

The tone of his voice had changed again. She said, ‘No?’ Bale stared at the empty glass until she said, ‘Day off? When did you last have one of those?’

‘Suspended.’

‘What?’ Razer put her own glass down, suddenly halfway back to sober. Had she missed something? ‘Why?’

‘Insubordination.’

She relaxed a little. ‘So, what? A week? You just have to take it easy, Bale. Didn’t you say this happens to you every month, sure as night?’

‘Yeah. Maybe I’ll go home. Sleep.’

She caught his look and laughed aloud, breaking the mood. ‘No. That won’t help either of us. Go. Sleep. I’ll be seeing you, Bale.’

He stood up and she watched him leave, walking a little too steadily, his thick frame momentarily silhouetted in the watery shimmer of the doorway. Razer counted a few minutes away, then followed him out.

He wasn’t waiting for her. She was surprised to find herself vaguely disappointed.

She started to walk home, the alcohol mellowing Lookout’s disturbing streets. She was just sober enough to skirt the alleys of the Rut. Every town, city and port had its own version of Lookout’s Rut; an enclave of monitored illegality, permitted to exist on the unwritten understanding that the crimers inhabiting it didn’t draw too much attention to themselves. The Rut’s inhabitants were minor crimers who dealt in drugs but didn’t brew anything serious, who only emerged to commit street crime and small theft. Its existence suited Pax perfectly. Razer knew how they all operated, these crime valves. On Spindrift she’d spent a week in the alleys of Darknode for a TruTale, learning to skin IDs and to travel unseen, to misdirect and conceal, to look clean and fight dirty.

It was about time for her to leave Bleak. Bale and the stories she’d work from him were the best things about it. There was little else of real interest to her except, maybe, for the Chute.

Whatever else there might be for her in this place, she’d probably got by now. It all turned around the rigs and the bars. Everything was designed to keep the rig-constructors fit to work and on the edge of sober. The money brought them here, the work kept them busy and the bars kept them quiet. Pax kept them reasonably safe and straight. Ronen, the corporation running the rigs, conducted their industrial espionage in secret, never exercising Pax.

Razer knew a little about the rigs too, now. She’d talked to drinkers who had told her they’d been on the rigs, and she’d taken their stories, and she’d also been told they were liars, that no one who’d ever been on the rigs talked about it. One man she’d certainly believed, but the story had mostly been in his eyes and his silences. She’d offered to pay him, but the only return he’d accepted was a tale in exchange. So she’d told him a story she’d been given by a crimer who claimed to have survived the deletium swamps of Gehenna. Telling that helltale to a dead-eyed rigworker in the sweat of the Neverie bar, Razer had felt like a lost child.

She felt odd at the thought. A story for a story, the rigworker had said, and it had sounded like her kind of transaction. Like her life, even. Some kind of a life.

* * *

Back in her room, she fell onto her bed, closed her eyes and tried to sleep. When that failed, as it often did these days, she opened her screenery to AfterLife Live!

Holoman had just started. She left him chattering and made herself caffé, came back to the bed, pulled the covers to her chin and sipped the tasse in front of the display.

‘Hi, Razer. Good to see you again. Today’s show is a very special two-parter. First, an amazing AfterLife Past Tale, and then, on the Vote-Slot, a brand-new ballot. Hold on while I run quickly through the legal blahdery, and then I’ll show you the Past Tale – this one’s a real eye-opener.’

Holoman stepped off-screen as words began to scroll.

AFTERLIFE RESPONDS TO ALL ATTEMPTS TO INTERFERE WITH ANY PART OF ITS ARENA AND ASSOCIATED SYSTEMS WITHOUT NOTICE AND WITH ALL MEASURES IT MAY CONSIDER APPROPRIATE…

Eventually Holoman walked back on, smiled and wiped his creaseless brow. ‘Nearly done, Razer. Don’t go anywhere.’

‘Sure,’ she murmured. She was a registered worker for one of the ParaSites, and that was about as good as working for AfterLife itself, so couldn’t they give her a rest on the legals? She yawned. Maybe she shouldn’t have had the caffé. It was bound to kick in just as she was about to doze off in front of the screen. She needed to sleep.

Holoman indicated an image of a brain behind him and said, ‘Somewhere in here is the secret of AfterLife. The neurid. It’s quite undetectable. It is impossible to locate by knife, scan or scope…’

Razer half-closed her eyes and mouthed the litany along with him. ‘… Any attempt, or investigation considered by AfterLife to constitute an attempt, to detect the neurid will be subject to immediate response. This