Macao Station

Chapter Twenty

‘You’ve exceeded my expectations,’ said the crazy dragon-man. He was floating just inside the mouth of the boarding tube that clamped the asteroid to the shuttle. The restraining device had been magnetted onto the rim of the tube, tauntingly reminding Carver as he worked that he was Prisoner Carver — Prisoner Carver, and not Freeman Carver any more. It didn’t occur to him once that this was maybe his own fault, the ultimate outcome of the crimes he had committed back on Aitama. No — he blamed the crazy dragon-loving son-of-a-bitch who had now returned to make his life, he supposed, that little bit worse again.

Carver shot a hate-filled glare at both the device and the man floated next to it, then fired up the cutter again to exclude the possibility of the bastard talking to him any more. The cutter actually created a fair amount of heat and humidity when it was in operation, but as soon as it stopped the cold began to creep back and the cave rapidly became unbearably cold again.

Before the man had left to return to the station he had shown Carver how to bore the rock pin into the face and attach his harness to it. This prevented him from simply floating backwards away from the face as he applied the plasma cutter — a massive and ungainly piece of equipment that filled the cavern with ringing, echoing peals of sound that overlayed each other into one deafening collage. The noise didn’t seem to be a product of the actual cutting, the melting of plasma through rock, but rather was generated inside the machine itself, which seemed a bit fucking unnecessary to Carver, but there you were. He was almost getting used to it.

He agreed with the crazy dragon-man on one point though: he had made good progress into the face, especially considering how laborious the process was. First, holding the cutter’s muzzle some few inches from the rock, he had to inscribe a circle for each cut, angling the beam inwards to create a cone-shape. This was not always altogether simple, though. Sometimes, the cut didn’t meet up properly and he had to repeat it, sometimes more than once. Or the cut piece wouldn’t release easily from the face and he had to insert another rock pin, then use this as a handle to yank the chunk out.

He had started off with big pieces, figuring this the least work, propelling them overhand into a distant corner of the cavern. However, when one of these, launched a little too hard, came bouncing back towards him as he worked and almost took his head off, he began to cut smaller pieces, of about a hand’s breadth at the wide end. And as the face gradually shifted and retreated, he had to adjust his harness-point, which could take several minutes each time.

Once or twice, he had stopped, floating dazedly in the darkness. It was all just too surreal. Was he really doing this? Really? He’d considered just turning the cutter on the crazy dragon-man when — if — he returned, imagining the thrill he would feel as the bright plasma scythed through his body, vapourising blood and tissue as it went. He’d imagined the way the crazy dragon-man would scream, and how satisfying that would be to hear. But then he had imagined starving to death in this nightmarish tomb of cold stone, his fingers burning with frostbite, the shadows that danced in his suit-light his only companions as he slowly succumbed to madness and death, and had thought better of it. He’d wondered if he could torture the code out of the man, but somehow he knew the man would die before giving it to him. He’s insane, after all, Carver had reminded himself glumly. And anyway, the crazy dragon-man usually held onto the restraining device when he was around, making it impossible to actually approach him.

So he’d worked. And he’d hoped that the crazy dragon-man would return, after whatever business he had to attend to on the station was completed. And the bastard might as well be pleased with what I’ve done when he gets back, he’d thought. So Carver hadn’t just worked; for the first time in his life of crime he’d actually worked hard, worked until he’d thought he might pass out, then continued anyway, pushing through the barrier of darkness that threatened to descend across his vision.

And now the crazy dragon-man was back. Well, whoopee. Be careful what you wish for, he warned himself.

The man landed near to Carver, braking his flight against the surface of the rock with one hand. He waited patiently, clinging to the rock like a white bat, staring at the side of Carver’s head.

With a sigh, Carver released the trigger turned towards the crazy dragon-man, his pinkish face contorted with barely-restrained anger. ‘What?’ he asked coldly.

‘You should eat something,’ said the man. ‘And sleep. I can dig for a bit.’

Carver wanted to bite him, maybe headbutt him in his smug, happily insane face, but of course he didn’t. ‘Okay,’ he said, holding out the cutter to the man.

The man shook his head. ‘Bring it with you,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you into the shuttle, with the restraining device. We’ll find you some food, then I’ll leave the device by the co-pilot’s seat and you can get some sleep there.’

Carver was instinctively reluctant to agree to anything this man had to say, but he had to admit that food and sleep sounded better than more interminable hours of cutting through rock in this icy hole. He nodded, not dignifying the man with a verbal response.

The man pushed off from the rock-face towards the tube that led back into the service deck of the shuttle, fishlike and surprisingly agile in the micro-gee. He unclipped the restraining device from the tube and checked its little screen as he went. Carver followed a little more clumsily, encumbered by the cutter, which he had made sure was in safe mode. He missed the tube and had to grope, one-handed, across the rock, dragging himself into it while holding the cutter in the other hand. He spilled through in a disorderly landslide of limbs.

The man was already at the other end of the tube, silhouetted against the light from the shuttle, his breath pluming in the cold, waiting for Carver to catch up. They made their way into the machine rooms, where ribbed tanks of compressed gases lined the walls. The man led the way down a long ladder to the bridge, dragging himself along on handlines attached to the walls for that purpose. It was almost unbearably hot in here, especially after the the freezing cold of the asteroid.

Although the man was quiet for the moment, Carver could sense that irritating contentedness exuding from him in waves. He was humming gently under his breath, like a man happy in his work, content that he was doing his best in a tough job.

They entered the shuttle’s bridge, squeezing themselves through the narrow doorway, and the man bade Carver magnet the cutter onto an equipment rack that held an assortment of battered hand-tools.

Carver looked around the bridge: it was dark and stark and oddly-angled; the surfaces and equipment well-worn; the pilot’s couch stained with what looked like coffee or chocolate. A second chair sat beside the pilot’s, clearly a subordinate position from the relative simplicity of the control desk in front of it — the co-pilot’s chair. Carver was pretty sure these shuttles usually flew with only a single pilot, though. A third seat was positioned on the other side of the room, this one turned away from them. The large cockpit windows, actually screens arrayed across the banded expanse of the shuttle’s deuterium-shielded hull, showed a grey and uninviting vista of endless, suspended rock. Soros looked impossibly distant and unreal — a dispassionate eye watching them from another dimension.

The man told Carver to sit on the co-pilot’s seat, then went to a locker under the flight console and produced a handful of rustling plastic packets. He clambered back across a tangle of discarded clothing, presumably the pilot’s, that was rising snakelike from the floor in response to some disruption of the air. He became caught-up, briefly, and Carver thought what an excellent moment it would be to rush the bastard. His fingers clenched, as if already seizing on the crazy dragon-man’s throat. But his gaze fell unavoidably on the restraining device and he inwardly sighed, forcing himself to relax. Patience, he told himself. Wait for the moment. Just chill.

‘Ship’s rations, I’m afraid,’ said the man, floating in front of Carver, as if the poor menu choice was the worst injustice he was inflicting on his prisoner. ‘There’s water here somewhere, too.’

‘Whatever,’ Carver answered, trying to sound as disinterested as possible, even though his stomach betrayed him with a treacherously loud growl.

The man threw Carver the packets, which felt like they were filled with sand and were stamped with such uninspiring legends as CHICKEN-STYLE DINNER and SWEET DESSERT, then dragged himself off to retrieve the water he had spoken of. He stuck the restraining device onto the console opposite Carver, where he had no choice but to look at the bloody thing. The legend ONE PRISONER — IN RANGE glowed on its little screen. When the man came back he was grinning sheepishly and holding a metal water bottle.

‘It’s a bit warm,’ he said apologetically, offering it to Carver.

The bottle was, indeed, almost too hot to touch when Carver unscrewed it clumsily with his gloved hand and raised it to his mouth. ‘Shit!’ he cried, whipping it away from his face and rubbing at his lips. ‘Where’ve you been keeping this thing?’

‘See?’ said the man brightly, pushing over to the pilot’s chair, where he strapped himself down and sat watching Carver eat, the asteroid belt an eerie backdrop behind him.

Carver was initially disturbed by that piercing, relentless stare, but he was so hungry that he soon forgot the man was even there. He ate CHICKEN-STYLE DINNER, followed it with MEAT AND POTATOES, then sat gulping warm water, trying to wash the lumps down his gullet and into his stomach. The contents were actually not as hot as the bottle itself, which was good because he was seriously thirsty. He drank deeply and sighed with satisfaction, leaning back against the head-rest of the co-pilot’s seat, eyes closed. He ached all over now that he had stopped moving. He arched his back and stretched, as far as the chair would allow him to. When he looked up, the crazy dragon-man was still staring at him, looking particularly pleased with himself.

‘Needed that, eh?’ he asked Carver with a grin.

Carver thought he could actually see the madness, capering behind the man’s eyes like a dancing jester. Despite this, though, he couldn’t help but feel a little happier now that he had eaten. The endless hours of cutting in the asteroid seemed like a distant dream, something he could almost laugh about now. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed, trying not to smile himself. ‘Guess so.’

The man nodded agreeably, then turned to look out into the belt. He sat this way in silence for a while, and then he turned back to Carver and said suddenly, ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

Carver considered this while he opened SWEET DESSERT. It proved awkward, so he took his gloves off, just casting them aside to float dreamily away into a corner of the bridge. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘In a way I guess it is.’

This seemed to please the man, who smiled, nodded and turned back to the window.

‘So,’ said Carver, pausing to bite the silver packet open, having failed to tear it along the suggested line, ‘how many other inmates are there on this station of yours?’

The man turned back to him slowly, looking distant, his eyes unfocused. ‘Hmm?’ he asked.

‘How many others are there on the station?’ asked Carver again. He tried the substance from the packet. It seemed to be basically just textured sugar, but that was fine with him.

‘Well,’ said the man, ‘there’s a hundred and eleven — no, a hundred and ten–’ he corrected himself, ‘and then there are fifteen prisoners at the moment. Why?’

Carver shrugged. ‘Just wondered,’ he said.

‘You’re thinking about getting them out, aren’t you?’ he asked. He wagged a finger at Carver — You’re a naughty boy! — but he didn’t actually look pissed.

Carver shrugged again. Maybe this guy wasn’t a complete fuckhead after all. Crazy, yes, but maybe not actually bad all the way through. Probably not actually stupid, either. Maybe just misunderstood, like Carver himself. Maybe he could be reasoned with. Carver wondered passingly what the dragon-man’s eyes would taste like. He imagined biting down on one of them, maybe bursting it. ‘I just wondered,’ he repeated.

‘It’s all right,’ the man said. ‘The dragon told me you would.’

And there it was again. Just when Carver had thought he might be able to make some progress with the guy, there it was again. The bloody dragon. How could you reason with a man who listened, first and foremost, to the voices in his head? And what if — when — they dug as far as they could into this fucking rock, and the man found nothing there? What then? He sounded polite and almost human at times, but Carver didn’t kid himself that there wasn’t something badly wrong with the crazy dragon-man. Even if he could be reasoned with, he surely couldn’t be trusted. Would he try to murder Carver when his little dig turned up nothing at all? Carver, despite having mercilessly butchered innocent people himself, feared his own demise as much as anybody.

‘This. . . dragon. . .’ Carver began cautiously, watching the man’s face for any change in expression at the broaching of this touchy subject. ‘. . . You really think we’re gonna find it? Like, buried in this asteroid?’ He tipped more chemically-flavoured sugar onto his tongue and washed it down with the warm water.

‘I know you think I’m insane,’ said the man earnestly. ‘But it is here.’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Carver, knowing that he was edging increasingly further out onto thin ice.

‘It told me,’ said the man simply, as if this constituted undeniable evidence.

Carver nodded, trying to look understanding. ‘What, exactly, is it?’ he asked, not really wanting to hear the answer but unable to stop himself.

‘I’m not sure,’ said the man thoughtfully. ‘Maybe it’s some ancient alien that was buried here; maybe some sort of sentinel to guard the belt; maybe. . .’ he trailed off, turning to look out of the window again. ‘It doesn’t really like to be asked,’ he said at last.

‘Why can only you hear it, do you think?’ Carver asked. When the man turned back to him his face was trembling and twitching, as if tears were threatening to overcome him. Carver realised that he had pushed it too far. That was, if anything, his major character flaw. That had been the problem with the woman on Aitama — he’d just gone a little too far. And now he’d done it again. Never question the delusions of a madman, he scolded himself.

‘What does it matter?’ the man asked emotionally. ‘What does it matter when you don’t even believe me?’ His mood had switched again, and now he sounded like a sulky three-year-old, full of indignant anger. He stared at Carver for a moment, trembling, then looked down at his knees. He shook his head once, smartly, as if to clear it.

‘Sorry,’ said Carver experimentally. It was a word he had little experience with, but he’d noticed that it could be effective with people sometimes.

There was a long and uncomfortable silence while the man sat that way, head bowed and hands squeezed together in his lap. When he looked up again, though, his face wore its previous expression of indulgent good humour. ‘Oh, it’s okay,’ he said. ‘You’ll see, I suppose. In time.’

‘Maybe I will,’ Carver agreed diplomatically. Crisis averted, he thought, grateful that he apparently wouldn’t be getting shocked again. He looked around the cockpit, trying to think of a way to change the subject. At last, his mind snagged on something, and the question was out of his mouth before he could stop it: ‘So where’s the pilot, then?’

The man grinned in a slightly embarrassed way. ‘Ah. . .’ he said, holding up one finger as if to say Now that’s the question! He released himself from the pilot’s seat, pushed off, and floated across the room to the navigator’s station. Carver watched him, hypnotised. The man braced himself against the far wall and spun the seat around.

In the navigator’s seat sat the shattered wreckage of what had once, undeniably, been a human being. It was dressed in a one-piece flight suit, the original colour of which had probably been blue, but which was now slathered almost entirely in dried blood. The person’s skull (it was impossible to tell if it had been a man or a woman) was not just caved in but almost completely obliterated, and a large spanner lay across the figure’s lap, matted with clumps of flesh and hair. This tool had clearly been utilised in an excessive manner: the pilot had been not just killed, but deliberately destroyed. Carver felt a lump in his throat. He imagined this gently-smiling madman beating the already-dead pilot again and again and again — as many times as the voice in his head instructed, Carver supposed. He sat, staring and stunned. Contradictory emotions bloomed within him: awe; shock; excitement; sick pleasure; fear for his own safety. Mainly the latter.

The man’s sheepish grin extended slowly into something more sharklike — predatory and primal — and he turned the seat away again as if suggesting that maybe they should just forget about it. Carver sat staring, his mouth open and a thin trail of food particles drifting out of it like exhaled smoke.

‘Yeah,’ said the man, as if Carver had asked him a question. His eyes looked as if they were focused on something on the distant horizon. ‘About that. . .’