At the Edge of the Game (9 page)

I disembark into
the sharp coldness of this clear blue day. An improvement on Friday anyway.
This is the sort of weather they have in the winter in civilised countries.
Wonder if it’s weather that gives nations their character. Scandinavian
countries: Predictable, orderly winters suitable for enjoyable activities such
as skiing, but requiring forward planning to survive. Ireland: Chaotic,
changeable, uncomfortable winters when no matter what you do, it’s going to be
crap.

Through the
mailroom double doors.

‘Morning,’ I
say, aiming for cheerfulness.

Len is back.
Neither he nor Al answer my greeting.

Candy looks
serious. ‘George. Over here.’

I take off my
coat and go over to her cublcle.

‘We got a call
from PeopleFirst this morning about you.’

‘Yes?’

‘They got your
time card on Saturday. They say you franked it.’

‘Ah, yeah.’

‘Why did you
frank it?’

‘Al told me to.’

‘Right, well
that’s considered theft from the company, so we’re going to have to let you go.’

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry. You
were doing well here.’

‘But he told me
to do it.’ I see Al glancing over sneakily.

‘I’m sorry,
George. We already have someone coming in to replace you.’

‘Come on, Candy.
This is my life you’re messing with here. I have a pregnant wife.’

‘Well you
shouldn’t have franked your time card then, should you?’

‘Jesus Christ.
This is ridiculous.’

‘To be quite
honest, George, you were on thin ice anyway after that security alert you
called.’

‘I did not call
that alert. You did.’

‘Goodbye,
George. You’ll be paid for last week.’

‘See ya, George,’
says Al.

God, this is
going to hit Helen hard. I can’t believe it’s happening. I’ve let her down
again. How am I going to be able to face her?

As I pass
through the main Avatan security gate, I pass the fella who stole my old bike
in Talbot Street. He’s heading the other way.

I stand at the
side of the wretched road, vans and battered cars tearing past. Against the
noise of these I press the phone against my ear.

‘Helen,’ I say
when she picks up.

She knows
immediately, just from this single word.

‘Oh George,’ she
says, and I know tears are already pricking in her eyes. They are in mine too.

‘I’m sorry. I’m
so sorry. I’ll be home as soon as I can.’

‘Okay,’ she says
like a child.

She hangs up.

So I begin my
last journey from this place.

I’ve got back
what I wanted to lose, then longed for again. I’m free, free from the torment
of paid labour. Free to fling away the hours of my life in idleness. Free to
engage in another thorough contemplation of the agony of being who and what I
am.

‘Follow me,’
said Dexter. ‘If you get a slight odour inside, well… The air has been recycled
on board for a very long time. But I’m sure there won’t be a problem. I don't
notice anything myself.’

The Unquiet
Spirit was the first manned interstellar craft ever to have left the Solar
System. Its recycling systems were primitive, inadequate by the standards of my
time. As soon as I stepped into the gloom I could feel a foul, sticky coating
of fine particles begin to form on the inside of my mouth. I struggled to
accustom myself to the vileness of it. In the end I had to step back to the
doorway to fill my lungs with clean air.

A similar
foulness must have filled the ship of the dead. Helen and the others in the
hold had little food, and only the clothes on their backs to keep them warm. The
ship was not designed to accommodate so many.

They want me to give the baby to the
sailors to throw overboard. They talk about disease but I don’t care. We’ll all
[
die anyway
(?)], so what can they do to me?

When I had
recovered sufficiently to endure the stench, Dexter led me down a short
corridor on the Unquiet Spirit, into a dark chamber where the rumble of the
ship's works came through the walls loudly. He switched on a light. Every
surface in the room shone with condensation. Through a thickly paned window set
in a door in the wall I beheld the bald head of an elderly woman. I took an
involuntary step back. It was recognisably the Brinnilla Innes I had seen in
old video footage and in photographs. She had been one of the beauties of her
era, but now her appearance was horrifying, like a macabre waxwork, and not a
particularly lifelike one. But unlike Helen, another woman now a corruption of
beauty (I imagine that Helen was beautiful), at least Brinnilla had eyes that
were open and, as far as I could judge, seeing. Dexter leaned forward so that
his breath fogged the glass. ‘Yes, her colour is coming up. She's ready to come
out.’

He shambled
outside to do something. I could not bring myself to look again at Brinnilla's
gaunt, empty face. Instead I looked about the room, taking in its grotty,
depressing unpleasantness.  

A movement
at the door brought my gaze around. A dark shape darted away, something like a
dog. I stared, not sure if I had imagined it. A small head peered around the
doorframe, and it certainly was not that of any dog. In fact, I did not know
what it was. Its circular, reflective eyes dominated its face. It was hairless,
black flesh seeming to fold over itself in several stages, giving its
countenance a layered look. It had large, vertically straight ears that came to
sharp points. It looked around the doorframe again and regarded me, concluding
that I was not an enemy. I was astonished at its legs, quite unlike those of
any terrestrial creature. There was one slender limb at the front with two
pairs of fingerlike appendages opposing each other like pincers. This did not
appear to play a big part in the creature's motion, resting lightly on the
floor when it walked. Then there were two stouter legs at either side midway
down its abdomen, tipped with claws like those of a cat. In fact, now that I
looked again I realised that the forelimb extended from a curved, elongated
neck that began just ahead of the middle limbs. The claws clicked on the hard
floor when it moved. At the back was the stoutest limb of all. It was similarly
clawed with a wide, footlike pad, and provided most of the creature's forward
momentum. The overall effect was one of a sightly overbalanced tripod. Its body
was long and smooth, like that of an otter, but it had no tail.

I squatted
down and extended a hand towards it. It leaned forward on its front paw and
sniffed. It made several high-pitched tooting sounds through its small,
toothless mouth. Then it padded out of the room. Some moments later Dexter
returned, wheeling a hospital-style trolley into the room. I judged from the
look on his face that it would not be a good moment to ask him about the
creature.

‘Your wife,’
I said, ‘is she in cryostasis?’

‘The
accepted term is suspension. It was in my day, anyway. Now, I wish to say a
short prayer.’

‘Certainly,’
I said, uncertainly. For several minutes Dexter mumbled to himself, and I tried
to look contemplative. All the while lights winked on and off at the console,
throwing strangely coloured shadows about the dank room.

‘All right,’
he said at last. He pressed a button, and a loud, sharp hissing emanated
through vents close to the floor. I staggered backwards, gasping and choking. Dexter
glanced at me impatiently, apparently unaffected by the spreading gases. He
stepped forward to support his wife. She was wrapped tightly in white dressing
from her feet up to her neck. Her head, completely bare, lolled from side to
side. I recovered enough strength to assist him. ‘Oh, Brinnilla,’ he said
quietly as we lifted her immobile body onto the trolley. Then in a different
tone: ‘Thank you, Mr. Xian. I will have further use of you in a little while. Now
I need to free my wife of these restrictive wrappings.’

‘Of course.’
I made my way outside as quickly as possible and filled my lungs with the fresh
ocean breeze. I leaned over the rail at the top of the metal stairs and closed
my eyes. But the nausea was intensifying, not going away. Courses of blood
pounded through my brain, and I could not hold my mind together, hard though I
gripped the rail of the stairway.

When my
senses returned, I was on the warm sand. Brinnilla lay on a blanket a short
distance from me, a light translucent canopy shielding her body from the full
glare of the sun. Dexter sat beside her. I saw that the alien creature sat at
the other side of Brinnilla, leaning against her. ‘Ah, you're back.’

‘What
happened?’ I said. The dryness of my throat made me cough.

‘I was
hoping that you could tell me.’

‘Is she all
right?’

‘Brinnilla
is ill. Terminally ill. But I promised her she would see the Earth again, and I
have kept my word. When she awakens she will feel the sun's rays on her face
and the breeze in her hair. She'll see how green the trees are.’

‘How long
was she in suspension?’

‘This last
time, two thousand years.’

‘You also?’

‘Yes. Our
voyage lasted ninety eight thousand years from the point of view of the Earth.’

‘And in
shipboard time?’

‘On board,
twelve thousand years. Brinnilla and I were awake for thirty five of those
years. Whenever the ship reached a target location, we roused. It revived me
four days ago when the ship attained lunar orbit. It alerted me to your signal
and I came to investigate. I expected to find more than this.’

‘That was
not a signal. I had no intention of attracting anyone's attention.’

‘So what
were you doing?’

‘Scanning
the moon's surface.’

‘Why?’

‘Curiosity.
I couldn’t fly there. My ship is destroyed.’

‘So what do
you think happened on the moon? It’s so different.’

‘God alone
knows.’

‘My ship
recorded no direct evidence of civilisation anywhere in the Solar System. I
can't believe it's all just gone. Haven't you seen anything?’

‘I'm afraid
not.’

‘Nothing!’

‘Ninety-eight
thousand years is plenty of time to erase everything.’

‘Is it? I
wouldn't have thought so.

‘There’s
been an ice age, remember.’

‘You've seen
nothing at all here in a year? No ruins? Not the smallest piece of plastic in
the dirt?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Have we
come back, then, to nothing?’

‘I feel at
home here. It still feels like Earth, don't you think?’

‘Look, do
you see over there? There's some creature watching us.’ He pointed to the verge
of the trees up the rocky slope.

I smiled. ‘That's
just Cat. He lives with me in the habitat. I noticed that you have an animal
companion of your own.’

‘He's
Brinnilla's. She adopted him on an Earth-like planet about halfway to Betelgeuse.
We spent two months there.  I didn’t expect him to survive the suspension
process.’

‘Has he got
a name?’

‘We call
him the Triped. He seems to have spotted your friend. Those noises he's making
are friendly ones.’

I called to
Cat, but he would not budge from his safe vantage point. He seemed unable to
take his eyes off the alien. I got to my feet unsteadily and climbed towards
him. He was obviously uneasy about my approach, but did not retreat. I picked
him up. The little four-fingered hand-like paws clutched my shirt tightly as I
carried him down to the black sand. Stepping into the shadow of the Unquiet
Spirit's dark bulk, away from the glare of the sun, I saw that Brinnilla was
awake. She was still lying flat on the ground, but her arms were moving. Dexter
was talking to her. Cat took fright when we were a few metres from the
newcomers and dived out of my arms. He beat an undignified retreat back to the
habitat. I called him a couple of times, but he didn't stop running until he
got to the entrance of the dome.

‘Brinnilla's
awake,’ Dexter said. The old woman did not seem to be aware that I was there. Her
eyes rolled around in their sockets unfocused. ‘Brin, I want to introduce a
friend. Xian Chu.’

‘Hello,’ I
said.

She gasped
and gripped Dexter's sleeve.

‘It's okay,
Brin. He's a friend.’ He looked up at me. ‘She's blind, I'm afraid,’ he said. ‘Perhaps
a temporary effect of the suspension. And she's not yet in her right mind. Brin,
dear, we're back on Earth. We're home.’ Then he turned to me again. ‘See how
she perspires? She's very sick. I had to give her one of these a few moments
ago for the pain.’ He showed me an empty syringe.

‘It still
hurts,’ she said weakly.

‘Don't you
feel the sun on your face, Brin? You're on a beautiful beach on Earth.’

‘It's dark.’

‘Brin,
we're on Earth. You made it.’

She began
to cry.

‘Xian,’
Dexter said, ‘please pass me a syringe from that bag. Thank you.’ He injected
his wife with some of the clear substance within. ‘She will sleep again. But
she's too fragile to be getting these injections. I must be steadfast in the
future.’

‘Can I help
you take her back inside?’

‘No. She
will derive strength from the sun. I would like her to live out her remaining
time in the natural world. Help me secure this canopy so it won't blow down.’

Dexter
would not come to the habitat to see my home for fear of leaving his wife for
even a few minutes. All the while she slept. As evening drew in I built a fire
for him close to Brinnilla and brought him some meat and fresh fruit. He
accepted them with a look of wonder on his face. He had been subsisting for
years on a variety of amorphous pastes synthesised and recycled by his ship. I
left him at about midnight sitting in silent melancholy beside the fire.

In the
morning I wasn't quite sure that I had not dreamt the previous day's events. I
looked through the window and saw the Unquiet Spirit, exactly as it had been
the night before. Dexter was standing close to the water's edge, gazing out to
sea. He turned and saw me watching him. I waved. He raised an arm in response.

A while
later he appeared at my door.

‘Come in,’
I said.

‘Not now,’
he said. ‘My wife has died. I thought I should come and tell you.’

I was at a
loss. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

‘I'll let
you know. Thank you.’

Dexter
decided to bury Brinnilla on the ridge, on a spot that commanded views of both
the inland forest and the blue expanse of the sea. ‘She never knew she had made
it home,’ he said as he drove the crudely fashioned cross into the earth. ‘At
least I do.’

I left him
then. I was glad of the innocent company of Cat that day. In my year alone I
had never felt lonely. Now I felt profoundly so.

Being on the
dole means you can steal a march on a decent fraction of the huddled masses in
the ration queue. And huddled they really are against this harshly whipping
wind that penetrates the cracked glass of the shopping centre doors in this
cavernous, glass-topped retail space.

Can it really be
just a few weeks since summer ended? Last week’s snow has frozen solid and now
there’s another layer on top of it. Feels like the country has been picked up
out of the Atlantic and dropped in the circumpolar regions.

We’ve had
everything lately, every kind of weather, and every kind of weather-related
disaster. Burst river banks, monster hail driven by gales, sudden snow cutting
off towns and villages. A surprise after that when there was a thaw. Then the
snow melted and the floods were back… until they froze as things went glacial. Fresh
snow covered the ice, then froze, and was itself buried.

Gardai walking
up and down the line, ready for trouble. Well armed. Combat-ready. The Unity
IRA has been taking advantage of the current crisis to get out and about,
gouging small footholds for themselves about the city and the country at large.
In all counties the army is on the streets, helicopters in the air. Skirmishes
are common.