Graft (16 page)

Groundside, there was movement and banging. A fire had taken hold of a storage caravan, lighted up the odd contractor running past. Others were trying to clamber up the gantry. Roy couldn't see their faces, of course. Instead he pictured them: parched mouths under the rims of their hard hats. Some corrupt liquid running in the creases of their luminous clothes.

Roy opened the cabin door. He called out, wiping fresh blood from his eyes. The site was ravaged, locust-riven. Deep welts ran from the basepad to the site's orange-ribboned edges. Plastic piping was scattered, mini-diggers turned on their sides. He saw discarded hi-vis vests and boots. Avian remains dripping from doorframes like sodden garlands. The sun was lost –

Again Roy called out for Kerry to wake up. Numb, he got the feeling Kerry was dead. And there was something else, too. A clanging.

Roy looked west. The bird-wave, a colossal V, was rushing away from the city.

He looked down. There. Someone on the ladder.

Roy called down the tube. A yellow helmet bounced towards him, but there were no signs of comprehension. He called out again. “Mate!” His voice kept breaking. “We're up here!”

Sirens blared in the distance. Roy felt sure there was another noise now, too. He turned – confirmed it to himself. The crane's overload switch had started bleeping – and he could see the meter needles were running circles.

Roy dived back inside. He put his hands on the window frame, cold air in his face, and felt paralyzed by the realization. Through the smoke, he could see a handful of men with their arms and legs tangled round the crane's hook.

Roy stared at it. That scene. Risen horror met fascination and mixed; a pang of revulsion. It was almost funny. Almost slapstick. The man in the middle had somehow – Christ,
somehow
– slipped onto the hook's point. It went in at his belly; up into his chest cavity. And there the man's shirt was open around it; he looked half dressed – disturbed mid-sleep.

Roy understood what they'd done. A cabin burned beneath them; the ground around it blazing, billowing dense black smoke. Hemmed by fire, they'd jumped from the cabin's roof to the dangling crane hook.

Roy felt desperate, felt stuck. In mere minutes, reality had fully unwound.

The hooked man barely moved, his head tilted down towards the cable coming out of him. His boots were melting, dripping, in the heat – one of the memories that would come to bother Roy most. The others clung on around this man, their faces contorted by fear. He gunned the winch and pulled them closer to the mast.

As he did, smoke started to curl from the slewing unit. The whole tower was locking up, juddering. He looked along the arm and saw the vanishing point warping. Roy being Roy had listened to Kerry – knew the arm would buckle, maybe tear, if this carried on. If the tower lost integrity at the base, the crane might even collapse. It was in the training videos. It was in his notes.

Tracking the load towards the mast wasn't working. As the hook moved closer, the jib continued to twist. Roy didn't understand; found it harder and harder to reconcile why the contractors writhed on the hook like bees round a nest. Roy squinted at them, thought he saw the rigger's face among them. And even though he knew these men were screaming, he couldn't hear a thing.

Roy started to lower the men. The crane locked up again. This time the lever stuck. Roy swore, made a fist, smashed it down. The grinding deepened. The motor popped. And in one terrible instant, the lever went slack, and the whole load fell out.

T
o Sol
the woman's language sounds like tutting. At first he thinks she's sucking her tongue against her palate, or against the back of her teeth – but then realizes the sound comes from somewhere deeper, from down in her throat. It seems to accelerate and slow with her breathing: a rolling rhythm with no discernible shape or meter.

Transfixed by her mouth, Sol finds himself shrinking away. “
English
?” he whispers, pathetic.

The woman drones at him; her voice of sticky noises, sore lips locked in goldfish Os.

Sol tries to say more. A lump in the way. He covers his ears, initial relief now wholly displaced. “What do I do?” he says. “Tell me. Tell me something.”

The woman takes the mug and drinks what's left of the saline solution.

Sol flings out a hand. “Don't!” he says. “You'll puke.” He skitters out to the filter. “There's fresh stuff in here,” he calls through. “And no – no, don't touch the holes – we need to get… No,
don't
. They won't get better that way…”

The woman wipes her chin and points to her mouth.

Sol puts a hand on his forehead. Clammy. “Food? Food…”

She nods.

Sol rifles the cupboards for meat cartridges, protein powder. He still hasn't got the stomach for anything, and feels bilious and full as he pulls stuff out – mostly labelless tins traded for smaller jobs, favours. He runs another mug of water, opens a can of peach slices, and goes back to her. She glugs the water in one motion and starts on the peace slices, sore mouth sucking them in, juice everywhere, her eyes ablaze.

“Slow down, slow down,” he says. She's beaming, slurping the peach halves straight from the can. “You'll give yourself bloody indigestion,” he says. “Or cut yourself. Let me see what else there is.”

Kidney beans. Lentils. Another can of peaches. He leans round to her from the cupboard and says: “More of them? And a shower? God, course you'll want a shower. There's a towel warming up by there.”

The woman clicks and squawks and quacks. He sits with her while she demolishes another can of peaches.

“Who are you?” he asks. “I told you I'm Sol, right? And you're…”

She turns to him, licking juice from her hands.

Sol prods himself in the chest. “S-O-L. Solomon. Like the king.”

The woman clicks twice.

“Can you say it?”

She points to her throat. Under the naked bulb, the dashed tattoo appears raised.

“No, say it. Your name.” He's pointing to his heart. “I'm Sol. Now you.”

The woman looks pensive, like she's weighing it. The room is peaceful. A vibrant smell of peach.

Now she pulls a single knee to her front. The sheets ruffle around her. With two hands she frames her face, purses her lips, and she blows, blows, blows – the oval of her mouth expanding out from a tight circle. The sound that follows is breathed, not spoken, not whispered, but formed and inflated with such effort it almost
crawls
from her lips, deformed and suffering.

“
Why
.”

She smiles at him.

Sol begins to cry.

“Why,” she rasps again, suddenly pained and confused. “
Why.”

“Why,” he mimics, snotty, voice bunged. And then it clicks. Sol draws the shape in the air with both forefingers. “Y? Like that? The letter?”

The woman nods. “Y…”

“Y.”

And even though Sol's instinct is to hug her, to celebrate this tiny event, this understanding, his head is adamant he should run.

I
n the crane cabin
, the smell was burning hair.

Roy was hysterical. He knew what he'd done. The men on the hook had gone. The line was all the way out.

And from the ladder tube came a man with part of his face hanging off.

The man took one look at Roy, striped with blood from his head wound, and Kerry unconscious in the corner, and came straight at Roy, shrieking.

Roy reeled away and dodged the first swing, caught the second full-handed – surprised himself – and pushed back. “It's me,” he shouted. “It's me – it's Noodles!”

It didn't penetrate. The man was a frothing dog, and Roy didn't know why. He came again, and Roy found the reflexes to sidestep him and use the man's momentum to push him towards the door, out onto the gantry. Roy said
stop
, or
wait
, or
sorry
– more likely a garbled mixture of all three – and the man screamed and came once more. There was so little space, and the man's hands went round Roy's neck and squeezed.

Then the pressure eased. Kerry standing behind, pulling at the man by his ears. Roy felt himself freed. He put all his weight through his front foot and shoved.

One thing led to another. Roy hadn't seen how Kerry and the man were knotted. Roy watched as they silently tumbled onto the gantry and vanished – straight down the ladder tube.

A
fter a few klicks down
, perhaps when she felt warm enough, the woman in front introduced herself to Y as Karens – their expedition leader.

Karens had a fierce voice, accent unplaceable, and Y was unnerved by the way she kept her face turned against the weather, even despite her armour.

The rest of the trolley team trudged along at Karens' beck and call, chuntering in militarized jargon. Y listened as they encoded and decoded simple observations; struggled to comprehend their clipped phrases, acronyms, status updates. Mainly, though, Y focused on what might've been another squad disappearing and reappearing from microclimates further down the Slope. She wondered if there was another team setting out behind them. And she wondered what waited at the bottom –

Behind Y came a tall photographer, mercenary looking, with shoulders like masonry. He didn't speak much and clearly didn't intend to: the black temper on his face said it all. She hadn't caught his name. Then there were Babar and Shazad. Glorified thermometers and security, really – stacked-out, fat-necked techies swaddled in wire and light alloy. At the back was Fi, the team's medic, who, as she'd told Y with slow, deliberate gestures, was also tethered to the mansion's silent sentinel: a sort of first-aid pod in geosynchronous orbit. This miniature balloon-launched satellite would keep tabs on Y's vitals from afar. While no one acknowledged its overwatch, its hidden presence was solid and insidious. It told Y exactly how much she was worth.

The group walked. And walked. And walked. And occasionally, they rested. In a circle, they sucked on sweetened oatmeal that stuck to the roofs of their mouths, and chased it down with a silky gel. And then they carried on.

They'd been going downslope for five hours or so when Karens stopped them with a single hand movement. It was testament to their concentration levels that they all saw it.

“Zones,” Karens said over the link. The filter was labouring in her mask. Babar stepped out of line, took a defensive stance and scanned their surroundings.

Fi, who'd moved instinctively to Y's side, asked, “What's going on?”

“Something pinging the echobox,” Karens said. “I want Shaz to process it before we go on.”

Shazad joined Babar and pulled up his sleeve. He started fiddling on his wrist, narrowing down to the signal.

Y swallowed and tasted blood – likely her gums. The suits kept them hydrated, the synthetics wicked the sweat, but nothing kept her mouth from going dry. She thought of the faucet back on the lawns; imagined in her own throat a crimson froth.

Shazad's wrist instrument blipped and spat a slice of waterproofed data. He said something too quiet for his mic to catch, and Karens asked him to repeat himself.

“I said, it's lying flat.”

“What is?” Karens asked. “What's lying flat?”

“Corpse,” Shazad said indifferently. “About half of one.”

Y got the sense the trolley squad were glancing between themselves. Only Fi was staring right at her, and her faceplate had started to steam. Karens motioned downslope, and the squad fell about her, well-rehearsed, so that every angle of sight was covered. Y was suddenly contained by them, a baby elephant folded into the herd. She realized Fi had a hand on her wrist.

“Don't have time for this shit,” Babar said, sighting on the edge of the visible Slope.

Karens looked at Y, then down at Fi's glove. “Radio it through, Shaz,” she said. “Get them to send a closing team down here. If it's a slip and it's still running we could lose someone easy in this weather. Pull the body's last signal, too – we might have to switch vectors.”

Y strained to see down the hill. The ceaseless mist obscured everything beyond ten metres, despite her eyes being well optimized for low visibility. It was the strangest thing to know uncountable miles stretched away in all directions.

“Just get the pod down to scoop it,” Babar said. “I want my bonus.”

“Karens,” Fi said. “You better tell him or I will.”

The photographer docked a cold film and started snapping the squad.

Karens nodded and opened a palm towards Y. “Pod's for her, Babar. You know that. And there's still time. We're reporting it.” Her look softened. “Now tuck in behind me, young lady.”

The squad trekked on down the Slope towards the body, Shazad's echobox drilling faster as they drew near.

Y saw it first. She stopped in shock. The photographer was walking too close and nearly knocked her over.

“Moron,” he said.

But Y didn't hear him. She was too busy looking at the body. It was a man lopped in two lengthways – open side cauterized to a glossy black. He looked like refuse; a thing simply tossed away to biodegrade in the silt of the Slope.

“Don't,” Fi said.

Y edged closer. The man wore a slick-looking black suit whose burnt edges had curled into his flesh. Whatever had happened here, violence had given over to an abiding neatness.

Next to him was a yellow crate on skids. It was stencilled ORGANS.

“Second this week,” Karens said to no one in particular. Y heard her sigh into her mask. “Gate their side must be faulty.”

Nobody answered. Y couldn't stop gawping.

“Pass me an M-kit,” Karens said. “One of you.”

Fi stepped up and unracked a disc from her belt. She passed it to Karens, who flicked it, nonchalantly but accurate, towards the body.

It landed with a soft note, and Y felt a tension swell.

“OK,” Karens said. “Inert. Any volunteers for skin checks? We'll need his tag.”

Y looked round at all of them.

Shazad registered Y's confusion. “Poor bastard's come through a dodgy slip,” he told her. “Always problematic.” He pointed at the crate. “And them – they're damaged goods now.”

Babar snorted. Fi shot them both a glance.

“Control, it's Karens,” the squad leader said. “We've got a body – most of a body – about five hours down.”

Static. Something spoken back.

“Inbound, yes,” Karens said. “Looks that way. Cloak-suit, full trans-crate.”

More static.

“No, it's O-marked.”

Inside her gear, Y thought she could feel something moving over her skin. The sensation rose and centred behind the tooth against her sternum. She held a hand there, as if to counter its weight.

“Fi,” Karens said. “Can you check his ID? Control's saying the gate filed a bad slip yesterday.”

Fi went and knelt by the body. She was looking for dogtags, so had to peel back the edges of the man's suit. Through the gap beneath Fi's armpit, Y saw the man's bruised skin, then an expanse of untouched white.

The photographer took a few shots of the scene.

“Nothing on him,” Fi said.

“Fucking great,” Karens said. “Must be in the pockets on the missing side. That'll make the paperwork interesting. Shaz, can you upload the co-ords anyway? I'll handle the beacon. They'll want the crate if nothing else.”

The big man nodded and played with his gear.

Something bleeped in all their earpieces, and Karens checked her watch again.

“Shit,” Fi said suddenly. Then she yelped and twisted awkwardly, her legs tangling.

The group saw Fi fall backwards, land heavily on her pack. “Shit,” she said again, and this time fear was in her voice.

The group quickly saw why. A thin line was spreading across the Slope under her boots, a rupture in the ground that started next to the man's half-body. Silt vibrated either side of it.

“Away!” Karens shouted, her arm out to shield Y. “Fi, for the love of God get back here–”

A rumble cut her off. Fi flopped over, stumbled towards the group. Y was shocked to see Fi's left glove smoking, fingertips of material gone. Fi fell and drove her hand into the Slope's ashen surface like she'd somehow mistaken it for snow. Y couldn't see Fi's eyes, and in the earpiece there was an inhuman gravelly sound – Fi's filter working beyond capacity.

Next came a pop. The man's half-body seemed to jerk, then writhe on the spot.

“Babar, pull her away,” Karens screamed. “Jesus. Someone!” Then: “Shaz – how fucking big is it?”

Both men stood wide-eyed, fixed. The air was visibly thickening, and there was a distinct smell in their masks the trolley team knew well – the tang of ozone.

“It's big,” Shazad said.

Karens gripped Y by the shoulder and the group paced back from Fi – three, five, ten, fifteen metres. The remains were in spasm now, and Fi was crawling as fast as her elbows and knees could shift her. Several times she seemed overbalanced, close to falling straight on her chin and stuffing her filter unit with silt. Above the whine, Y heard Fi whimpering in her helmet. Her too-fast breathing cut against the mute panic of the others.

From deep brown, the sky turned another colour – greyer, even more opaque – and the Slope was flooded with an eerie light. Then the crate burst open, spilling red bags, coolant blocks and dark liquid.

Y tugged on Karens' arm – pleading with her eyes to help Fi, who was clearly struggling. But Karens simply watched. Finally, Fi's elbows buckled and her chin drooped in exhaustion. Her head, now fully slack, described a terrible arc, and her face went into the silt.

Fi's collapse was too much for Y. In one smooth, assured movement she pushed Karens away and sprinted straight over, protesting voices distant. She dragged Fi up from the silt, faltering slightly under the woman's weight, then leaned deeply into her mass. Slope material fell away from Fi's mouthgrate, from the seals around her visor, and her head hung loose. Y crackled and hissed, and the two of them staggered upwards until they buckled at Karens' feet.

Fi came round spluttering. She looked at Y, who was almost wrapped around her. Y saw that her eyes were brimming hot.

“It's opening!” Karens called out, clamping Y's shoulder and dragging her off. The ground around the dead man tore apart. The air clapped and a deep gouge appeared in the fabric of all things. Through this they saw the inside of a cavernous black space filled with wooden crates, a damp floor. Just as quickly, the vision cut to smeared green, and a huge tree crashed clean through the gap. There was a roar, and a sheaf of leaves and twigs followed. A shower of waxy brown nuts bounced away down the Slope, flickering as they went.

“
Allāhu akbar
…” Babar whispered.

Now the tree, too, seemed to flicker, caught as it was between two worlds, its branches torn in the binary, a duality, pulled with equal force from two opposite poles. And in the middle of this, the dead man's half-body was scooped up, remaining leg and arm seething on its joints, only to be creased and divided with a bloodless snap. Each segment was sent pinwheeling across the Slope in different directions.

The shattered trans-crate hopped in a circle, its red innards splashing on the white.

Y screamed a soundless scream. The others shielded their eyes, reflexively squatting before the frantic tree as it disintegrated in the slip's tangle.

The noise was immeasurable.

“
Allāhu akbar!
” Babar shouted.

“Go,” Karens said, pushing on her squad mates' shoulders. “Go!”

So they went, big Babar dragging Fi now, Fi's eyes glazed and her glove still trailing smoke. They left the torn Slope behind, the man there in tatters, the recovery beacon still clipped to Karens' belt, and kept going until they felt sure the violence had petered out.

“Six more hours,” Karens told them, dour.

“Never approach a lit firework,” the photographer said to Y. He stopped briefly and took more shots upslope. The shutter rang out like a bell over a village in mourning. He caught Y looking. “Pay that man no mind. He knew the risks, as we all do. A slip goes wrong from time to time – it's what happens when you don't fully understand things. And if it's your turn…”

Y felt revulsed by the photographer, the contrast between here and back there, but wanted to know more. Somehow, however, she knew it was all the explanation she was going to get. And Fi – Fi in her shuddering shock, hobbling behind with a raggedy pulse – had exited reality entirely.