The Pedestal (34 page)

And to make things worse, it’s getting too dark to see much.
Is it really nighttime already?

There are few places I prefer to avoid more than the infirmary. Yet here I am, nursing the worst headache of my life. My lungs are sore, but they’re medicated and recovering nicely. No concussion, incidentally, just a bad case of whiplash. Actually, my only real concern is my arm; an area the size of my palm was frostbitten deep into the muscle of my forearm—a little Martian kiss, Rogers calls it. Though it’s heavily bandaged now, I’ve been assured it’ll heal quickly. In fact, the wound isn’t supposed to scar much, thanks to hourly administrations of some acrid stem-cell ointment. Considering the severity of the wound, I find this prognosis a little hard to believe. Drawing from the confidence of my coworkers, though, I’ve become cautiously optimistic. I guess we’ll see what we see.

The least of my long-term concerns—and the one thing I can’t seem to rise above—is the unbearable pounding in my head. Ironically, we can reattach a severed limb here if need be, yet the best we can come up with for a headache is some aspirin.

Skelly’s been hanging around more than I’m comfortable with. My first impression was that he was genuinely concerned for my well-being—probably from a liability standpoint, since my injuries were sustained on his watch—but I realize now that he’s
waiting
. For what, exactly, I can’t say.

Cutterly tells me that once the first pod exploded, a chain reaction ensued and eight others burst in rapid succession. Fortunately, no one else was hurt and—aside from me—everyone walked away no worse for the wear. The seeds, on the other hand, are everywhere; apparently, they’ve even managed to slip into the joints of our atmospheric suits and hitch a ride right past the sanitation blowers, which is no small feat. From what I hear, Skelly washed one out of his hair, and Rogers found one between his toes on the evening of my accident. Obviously, they’re sticky little things.

I know they’re supposed to be harmless, but still—can anyone say
cree-py
?

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, when I’ll be officially released for duty again. Not that I’ve been dreaming of work; the sick bay just doesn’t inspire a lot of peace or confidence, you see. Right now, for instance, I’m lying on the very cot where Winkley died. And I was put here by the same entity that feasted on my friend’s remains—the circle of life has never seemed so perverse.

I don’t remember falling asleep, yet I must have—because if I had been awake, I would surely have seen him. Even in the darkness, which is sparsely weakened by a constellation of subdued LED indicators, I can clearly discern a humanoid shape hovering over me like some deathly chimera. My mouth is gagged by a fist-sized wad of gauze, hands bound snugly to my cot. He’s leaning over me now, blasting me with fetid breath.

“Evening, Wilson,” whispers the indistinct silhouette. “Thought we might have a talk.”

“What’re you doing?” I try to demand, but the sounds that emit from my mouth are muffled and utterly unintelligible.

“Hold your horses, now. Let’s go over the rules first, okay?” His smile is bizarrely pronounced, white teeth floating like disembodied dentures in caricature of shadow. Still, while the dim light has diffused this man’s other features, his voice betrays him. A jolt of recognition surges through my body.

“You ready for rule number one?” Skelly wants to know. Noiselessly, he crosses the room and clicks on a small reading lamp. It provides scant illumination, but it’s enough to see that he’s holding up a finger, preparing to tick off his list. Gagged and restrained, all I can do is nod somberly.

“Good,” he says, voice bouncing whimsically, as if praising a toddler. He returns to my bedside, kneeling into an eclipse with the lamp. “Rule number one: make any effort to scream, I squeeze the life out of you. No second warnings.”
Oh my God, what is this?
Oddly, Skelly plugs his extended finger into his ear and digs around for several seconds; it emerges shiny with a balm of wax. Though nauseated, I manage the decorum to bite back my disgust. I swear, though, if this crank farts right now, I’m gonna lose it.

Skelly unfolds a second finger and brandishes it in my face. “Rule number two: don’t you
dare
lie to me. I’ll know, believe me—and you’ll regret it.” I wish I knew what this was about, because I’d happily give him whatever he wants. This charade—oh God, please let this be a charade—isn’t necessary. If only he’d ungag me, I’d convince him of this.

“Pretty easy to remember, Wilson. Even for a scrap putz like you.” He digs in his ear again.
Gross—somebody has an ear infection; serves him right.

“So, you ready?”

I nod yes, but I’m not. I’m not at all prepared for whatever this crank has in store, because—try as I might—I can’t even imagine what he’s after. Honestly, what could I possibly know that warrants this kind of extreme interrogation?

“Good,” he says, yanking the gauze from my mouth. “Tell me about Arthur.”

With a tongue too parched to swallow, I can only stare at him in dumbfounded silence. A moment ago, I was prepared to be the voice of reason—indeed, my survival seems wholly dependent on it. Now, though—hearing Skelly’s words—I feel hopelessly disorientated as past and present collide, scattering logic like bits of cosmic shrapnel. Despite appearances, I’m sufficiently motivated to obey his every instruction, yet the best I can muster is a whispered, “What?”

Lodged in a lamplit eclipse, Skelly’s floating teeth disappear behind an implied frown. “Don’t make me repeat myself, Wilson. I’m not a patient guy.”

Oh God, how I wish I could give him what he wants! The problem is, my mind is awhirl with fragmented thoughts, and I can’t seem to bring two together. He might as well have said,
Tell me about shoes
. I mean, honestly—where do I begin? What
about
Arthur?

Skelly sighs. “Not real good with instructions, are you?” At once, calloused fingers latch around my trachea like steel cables and begin to squeeze. The discomfort is immense, indescribably terrible; it isn’t only the frightening deprivation of oxygen—which, in addition to paralyzing me with fear, adds a sharp sting to the three-day pounding in my head—but also the sickly sensation of my throat crunching against my spine. Instinctively, my body thrashes and bucks to no avail. The inhuman noises escaping me—wet, primal grunts of a dying animal—horrify me as much as my murder. My eyes ache, bulging in their sockets like champagne corks. From nowhere, brilliant, white light begins to vignette my vision, enveloping me in contradictory heat and cooling numbness. The panic is quickly subsiding, I realize, as is the pain. I’m strangely comforted, at peace. No longer afraid, I cuddle into the welcoming bosom of death to rest.

Goodbye, Mars. Goodbye, Queen. Goodbye, bone-chilling misery.

Dying is easy, I realize—frightening at first, to be sure—but so much easier than living.

And then it’s all over.

Only I’m still alive. The warm light has vanished and my body cries out in pain once again, erupting into a coughing fit. Skelly’s iron grip has released me, freeing his hands to slap my cheeks.

“Wake up, kid,” he snaps. My eyes flutter and his ugly face blurs into view, poised mere inches above my own. Chuckling at the sight of me—gasping and coughing through a throbbing trachea—Skelly probes in his ear again: “You ready to take me seriously now?”

Heaving with uncontrollable sobs, I’ve truly had enough—live or die, I just want this to be over. Tears crawl down my temples and into my ears like wet insects.

I can’t explain why, but my mind chooses this moment to dredge a gem from the vault of my most precious memories. Mitzy’s porcelain face grins nervously at me, glowing gently against a neon backdrop; unaided by the recall of my implant, her features shift in and out of mental focus. She’s just confessed that her spastic dance moves have kept her single; I think this was the moment when I first had an inkling that this girl was special. Because she was a dork, just like me.

I know I’ll never see Mitzy again, that I’m destined to die alone on this planet. But seeing her face has ignited a stubborn flame in me, and it occurs to me that I still want to live. To remember her again, perhaps; certainly because I fear that death will put even more distance between us.

“Last chance, kid. Start talking.”

So I do.

Skelly watches me as I talk, his expression disclosing nothing. Lacking direction, I impart everything I can remember about my friend, from the day I first met him in the prime of my adolescence to the day he died in that pathetic hospital, alone. Skelly nods encouragement, absently plumbing his ear while I revive the details of Arthur’s missing NanoPrint and its baffling reappearance here on Mars. It finally dawns on me that this must be what he’s after, so—with gathering confidence—I tell him all about Art’s MentalNote and his files, sparing no detail.

I’d tell Skelly so much more, if only there was more to tell—after all, every moment I’m talking is a moment I’m still alive—but I’ve said all there is to say. Well, almost. What little I’ve left unspoken is mine alone; it’s nobody else’s business that Arthur meant more to me than my own parents, that he was a greater man than any of us will ever be.

Long after my monologue has tapered into silence, my roommate continues to appraise me, as if to grant me ample time to recant my story, or perhaps to add a guilty postscript. When I do neither, he rises from my bedside and begins to pace the room, pinky corkscrewing into the side of his head.

“So your implant contains copies of Arthur’s files?”

He asks this question with a dazed smile, savoring the feel of the words as if they’re a bit of sweet poetry. “Yes,” I mutter.

“And you can read them? They aren’t encrypted?”

I cough, my throat gritty like a gravel road. “I think they were decrypted by my NanoPrint.” Even as I divulge this small truth, I sense that my eagerness to please has only sealed my fate. As if to prove me right, Skelly produces a knife from his boot and saunters back to my bedside. His black eyes are shiny and giddy, like this is the real payoff—the violence, the gore of what remains to do.

“That’s good, Wilson; very good.” He waves his knife before me, flaunting it like a banner; steel serrations flare in the lamplight like the hypnotic taunting of a metronome. “I’m afraid this may hurt a bit, though.”

The door latch rattles without forewarning, but it’s locked. Skelly swivels toward the sound, smile never fading. Despite my fear—or perhaps because of it—something happens as I numbly consider this crank’s ugly profile: countless threads of disconnected thought mysteriously converge.

And I remember.

My mind travels back through time, where he shadows me at a shopping mall, and then later, chases me across a freight dock. His hair is much shorter now—almost militarily trim—and he’s lost some weight, but there’s no doubt that it’s him. Skelly raises his hand to worry at his ear again and seems to remember at the last second that he’s holding a knife. He chuckles sheepishly. “Dang it, got a crank gnat in there, or something.”

Funny, we don’t have bugs on Mars.

The door latch rattles again, and this time a muffled voice whispers frantically, “It’s me—Grogan. Let me in.”

My heart leaps in my chest.
Grogan—oh, thank God!
I’m not sure that Grogan can take this guy—especially considering Skelly’s armed—but I’ll take absolutely any help I can get. Even if it only buys me a few more seconds of survival. And, though it shames me to admit it, even if it costs Grogan his life.

Skelly approaches the door without an ounce of concern, flipping and slicing his blade through the air with too-practiced ease. Something about his nonchalance seems to contradict common sense, but I can’t spare a second to work out the what or why. He unlocks the door and Grogan spills inside as if he’s been trying to shoulder his way in.

“Watch out!” I bark. “He’s armed!” Unthinkingly, I’ve broken rule number one—
no second warnings
—and I know what comes next. But Skelly doesn’t rush me with his wicked blade. Rather, he rolls his eyes. Again, logic wavers.