Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer (10 page)

He opened his eyes. The other five were floating, applauding him. That’s what the noise was. ‘Bra
vo
, leggy,’ said Marit, his face one big beaming smile. ‘I thought
you were a casualty there, but you showed . . .’ he flourished his right hand, rolling it over and over like an antique courtier underlining a point, ‘commendable
resourcefulness.’

‘That
was
entertaining,’ agreed Davide. ‘Maybe we should get you guys to fight on a regular basis. Break up the tedium.’

E-d-C chuckled. ‘Like Ancient Greek Gladiators!’ he said.

‘Roman,’ said Lwon.

‘Whatever! It passed the time.’

Jac took three deep breaths to try and settle his scorched lungs, and pulled himself over the wall towards Gordius. The big fellow’s screeches had shrunk a little, and he had hidden his
face entirely in his hands. When Jac touched his shoulder he flinched. ‘Let me see your eye.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he squealed.

‘Come along, Gord,’ Jac said, taking his large hands and moving them gently aside. ‘Let me see the damage.’

‘I don’t know what came over me! I’m so sorry – you’re my only friend! I’m sorry!’

‘There there,’ said Jac. Gordius had scrunched his good eye closed; but his left eye was a mess. ‘Come over to the scrubber,’ he said. ‘I need to wash this at the
spigot.’

‘It’s just I’ve been so cold – so long, so cold—’ Gordius let Jac bring him over to the scrubber, and only flinched a little as he rubbed myriad little
ball-bearings of water over the wound. The others were still watching. ‘Give him a kiss,’ called Marit. ‘Kiss it better.’ He laughed harshly. Jac glanced up and then back.
His worry was that he might have done more than crush the eyeball; he might have cut open the skin around it, gashed the cheek or the brow. It wasn’t the cut as such that worried him –
a simple cut would scar over quickly enough. But the environment was not healthy; hygiene was very difficult to maintain in such a place, there was so much crap and crud, so many bits and pieces
floating through the air, that a cut might very easily become infected. And once infection took hold, who knows where it might go – it could suppurate, whole patches of skin could become open
sores. Gordius might die in agony. Jac didn’t want that. The cut to the forehead had been bad enough, but luckily it seemed to have healed cleanly. He might not be lucky again.

Prising the eyelids apart made Gordius whimper, but nothing more: the pupil had been pushed into the body of the ball, and a rip opened that had let out the scrambled pale jelly inside. But Jac
assumed that was a sterile matter and would – he didn’t know; set, or scar, or something. He closed the eyelid and washed it some more. ‘Don’t touch it,’ he instructed
Gordius. ‘Leave it alone to heal. In a day or two it will stop hurting.’

Gordius’s emotions had now cycled from rage to remorse to indignation again. ‘My
eye
!’ he cried. ‘You’ve blinded my eye!’

‘You’ve still got another one,’ called E-d-C. ‘Count your blessings, you sack of ghee.’ This made the five of them laugh heartily, and Mo started doing an
impression, pitching his voice high and effeminate: ‘my eye! Oo my eye!’

‘You didn’t have to
blind
me,’ Gordius wailed. ‘What have you done? I’ll never get an artificial eye in
here
!’

That made the other five laugh even louder.

‘I thought you were my
friend
!’ Gordius wailed. ‘Why did you
blind
me?’

‘You
were
trying to throttle me,’ Jac pointed out, mildly.

This was too much for Gordius. He started crying. ‘You’d think with only one eye you’d cry half as much,’ said Marit. ‘But
listen
to him!’ This was
pitched to the others as a comic observation, but nevertheless the general laughter grew less. E-d-C, Lwon and Davide floated back into the central tunnel and started up the diggers again. Gordius
curled into a ball and sobbed to himself. Mo went back to sleep, and Marit went back to toc-toc-tocking shards at the far wall.

Jac took himself into the corner, and got out his piece of glass. Smoothing it, working it, grinding over its surface in a circular motion; it was calming. He contemplated his own body as he
worked: his throat was very sore, and his bronchial tubes rasped and wheezed as he drew breath. That wasn’t pleasant, but it would improve. There were specks in his vision. That, in a way,
was more worrying. If the violence of assault had detached a portion of Jac’s retina it would be very bad. Probably it was only a matter of some broken blood vessels. Hopefully it would
improve.

He put his mind from his own pain, and concentrated on working the glass.

Later, the three alphas came out of the tunnel, dusty and panting. It was Gordius’s shift now, but although Jac felt weak, still in pain and little inclined to the work,
he took the god-boy’s place. He was worried that working at the digger might send bits of grit into Gordius’s still raw eye socket. An infection could be fatal. It was not as if they
had medical facilities, where they were.

So Jac worked his shift. The tunnel was now fifteen metres long, stretching deep into the heart of the stroid. Marit had decided, unilaterally, that it was long enough; he had turned his digger
and was starting to excavate a room of his own. Mo followed suit, and Jac didn’t see any reason to do differently. The way things were in the group at the moment, they really needed at least
the semblance of some time apart from one another, or they were going to detonate. So the diggers were working their way, slowly, into three separate chambers. If there were six rooms then Gordius
would be the one left in the main space.

Not that it mattered. Each room was a box within the box. What’s in the box?

The voice was in the box. Still inside.

Much later, after Jac had finished his shift, and as he settled himself in the corner to sleep, Gordius came over to him. He was due to work on the drills. Though he complained, and whinged,
there was no shirking his turn now; but before he slipped into the tunnel he put his wounded head close to Jac’s. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said, in a pitiable voice.
‘It was a crazy madness. I should never have done it. You were right to take my eye.’

‘That’s alright,’ Jac told him, embarrassed by his fawning. ‘But I am very weary, now, after everything. I must sleep now.’

‘I just wanted to say I’m sorry! You were
right
to take my eye! I acted abominably! Will you forgive me for attacking you? You’re my only friend in this hellish place!
Will you—’

‘Come on, god-boy,’ yelled Lwon, from the tunnel. ‘Time to work. Come along
now
.’

‘Will you,’ he dropped his voice, and spoke with a pitiful urgency, ‘will you still take me with you? When you go?’

‘I promised, didn’t I?’ replied Jac.

‘It’s just that – I should never have grabbed your neck. I’m so sorry I did. You haven’t . . . changed your mind?’

‘When I go,’ said Jac, closing his eyes, ‘I shan’t leave you behind, Gord.’

The big man was weeping again, but tears of joy, and from one eye only. ‘Thank you, my friend. I won’t forget it. We’re in this together, you and I. It’s crazy for us to
fight.’

‘Come on, god-boy,’ bawled E-d-C, ‘or I’ll have your other eye.’

Gordius went into the tunnel. Jac felt sleep flood up around his consciousness, like the warm water in a station bath. He was gone, or almost, when he felt a hand on his arm.

His eyes opened with an almost audible snap. There, right in front of him, was Marit’s grinning face.

‘What do you want, Marit? Sex, is it? I’m pretty tired. Let me sleep first, and I’ll be able to do more for you.’

‘I heard what you told god-boy,’ said Marit.

Jac processed this. He ran through the various possibilities, selected a reply. ‘So much hair growing in your earholes, it’s a wonder you can hear anything at all. Really it’s
like toothbrush bristles in there.’ But he said this with a half-musical lilt, as if feeling his way.

‘Hah,’ said Marit, mirthlessly. ‘I heard you plain enough. He thinks you got a way out of this rock?’

‘That’s what he thinks,’ said Jac, carefully.

‘He’s weak in the head. His will is weak, and he’s none too bright. How can any of us get away from here?’

‘There’s no way,’ agreed Jac.

‘Unless that somebody come get us. And only the Gongsi know we’re here.’

‘Only them,’ Jac said, nodding. For this was true enough.

‘And they won’t be back for a decade or more. Right?’

‘Right.’

Marit leant in closer. His breath was a thing of sulphur and decay. ‘So why does god-boy think different, eh? What have you been telling him?’

‘I haven’t been telling him anything,’ said Jac, choosing his words with care. ‘But he’s clinging on to his sanity by a fingernail’s width. Let’s say
this: if he has gotten it into his head that I have a magic road out of this box – well, I certainly haven’t directly contradicted him. Let him hope.’

‘Hope grows,’ noted Marit. ‘Kill it young and it’ll hurt him. Kill it old and it’ll end him.’ He floated away.

Jac shut his eyes again. Nothing could keep him from sleep. But as his consciousness did the slow dissolve of the cheaper bitFlicks, he heard Marit’s harsh little voice coming, as if from
a long way away: ‘I’m watching you, Leggy. Always watching.’

Time passed. They dug and dug, and soon enough three new rooms were ready. Then the alphas discussed amongst themselves and decided that the tunnel should be extended five
metres, and then a second large chamber cut out. ‘We can break the lightpole in two, and have two separate lit spaces. Grow twice as much ghunk!’ said Lwon. Jac didn’t want to
contradict him with the obvious – that with half as much light, the spores would grow half as quickly. Making a second chamber seemed as good a use of their time as anything else.

Gordius’s eye healed, more or less. There wasn’t any infection, although the top and bottom eyelids on that side were, he reported, ‘glued shut’. Jac wanted to test to
see whether they were actually sealed together, or whether Gord only didn’t open them because it was uncomfortable for them to move over the deformed, whited-out surface of the dead eyeball.
But he couldn’t think of a way of doing it.

So instead he worked at his glass. The piece was nearly complete. The thing to do after that would be: to make a second piece. Every now and again, his time at the drill threw up little pieces
of new glass. It was never anything substantial, and he didn’t bother trying to build a larger lump. But he took a few likely looking shards: two handsome sicklemoons in brown-green (once the
crap was scraped and polished off them). A straight piece like a miniature sword, or a cocktail stick. A few tiny little D-shaped chips, such as would have delighted the heart of Neanderthal
men.

He was nearly ready.

Then two fairly serious problems presented themselves to the whole group in quick succession. The first was something of which they all became only gradually aware, but which shook them into
desperate action. It became incrementally clear that the air pressure was lessening, very slowly. That was worrying enough, but even more alarming was the fact that the air was growing less
wholesome. Everybody grew breathless with the slightest exertion. They checked the scrubber, and it was working fine; but of course it could only recycle what was there, and the excavation was
continually making the interior space larger. More ice was needful, to generate more oxygen. There wasn’t enough in their drinking supply. ‘Feed in what we’ve got,’ said
Davide, with an anger that did little to disguise his anxiety. The thought of slowly suffocating, Jac thought, was a larger terror to his mind than the thought of dying of thirst. ‘And drink
what?’ countered Lwon. ‘Our own piss? No, we need to
excavate a whole lot
more ice.’

The practical upshot was that they started the second chamber sooner than they anticipated, as they swept the diggers round in a wider arc looking for another seam of ice.

This precipitated the second problem. The waste schutes, attached to the rear of the diggers, had been near full extension for a while. This new direction pulled them taut. That was alright;
when E-d-C pulled his schute from the socket it had burrowed through the rock wall, the hole sealed itself. Looking at the tapering point, it seemed that it was designed to fill its own tapering
hole with rubble. At any rate, it proved easy enough to reposition the schute. E-d-C set the mouth of it against the rock, inside the tunnel itself; and over the course of about an hour and a half
it dug through to the outside again. The same thing was true of the second drill’s waste schute. The problem came with the third digger, the one whose schute had been pushed through the
artificial barrier of the seal laid down by
Marooner
at the very beginning of their stay. Putting the waste schute through
this
material proved, in retrospect, to have been a bad
idea. When the schute was extracted it did not seal the hole, and with a horrifying rushing sound the air in the cavity began to gush into space.

Lwon, Davide and Marit gawped in horror. Mo began shouting incoherently. Everything in the main space was being drawn towards the leak point.

Even Jac found it harder than usual to remove himself from his own somatic responses (pounding heart, adrenalised bloodstream) and find his calm place. He managed it, though. He selected a
likely looking rock and placed it over the hole. This slowed the leak but did not stop it, for air was still seeping round the edge. So he retrieved some of the abject matter from the hole in which
they stored toilet waste, and worked it with some water from the spigot to make a clay, and with this he made a seal around the rock and the stuff of the ceiling.

The leak was stemmed. ‘Nobody,’ Jac gasped, ‘nobody knock this stone.’

This eventuality had not improved matters, though. The air pressure had been lowered even further, which made everybody yet more breathless. Even the simplest action had become massively
laborious and exhausting. For Gordius and Jac there was a single, wan upside, insofar as none of the alpha or beta males had the energy for sex. But the situation was desperate. If they failed to
find ice, they would all die soon. It was as simple as that.