Rig

by Jon Wallace

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi

Synopsis

A fast-moving, filmic and violent SF thriller, perfect for fans of Jack Campbell. A meeting of The Road and Rogue Trooper. 'My nanotech is dead. By definition I am no longer Ficial. On the other hand I don't experience your emotions. That makes me inhuman. Like I said: neither one nor the other.' Caught in a world that is too busy destroying itself to care for anything except how to exploit the weak, Kenstibec is the ultimate outsider: he used to be invulnerable but now he's just a killer with no-one to kill for. But when the old world is ending everyone needs a reason to live, someone to live for. Kenstibec is on a quest. A quest that will take him across a freezing ocean and into the cold heart of a new world order.

Release date: June 16, 2016

Publisher: Gollancz

Print pages: 299

Sample

 

A smooth rock bank. Minerals sparkle in the darkness. I listen to the elemental roar.

– What you hear is the rushing of a torrent.

Luminescence from somewhere. A great cave reveals itself around me. Beneath, a white river carves a foamy, booming tunnel through black rock.

I hold up my left hand, see branches of arteries and veins. They were not so visible before. They have swelled. I have changed.

– You have developed.

The Control Signal. Each word is wrapped tight around more complex data.

I turn over this latest hand and lower it into the rushing water, lift a palm to my lips and drink. There is no real taste, or if there is a taste it is the same as any other.

– Pure says the Signal.

I slip a little way down the bank, dip my toes into the water and twist them. Still no sensation. The light grows. There, by the cave mouth, where the river enters. Jagged shapes, black like the stone, are slowly edging into the chamber, hanging above the water.

They rise, converge on a fissure where dust sprays as if from a fractured hourglass. The shapes are attracted to it. They hover around it, splash the surface with brief jets of light. The dust slows to a trickle then ceases altogether and then these shapes descend as if connected, an orderly group, to squat over the river. I push away from them. I watch them, poised over the surface as if drinking. Do they taste? Will I taste? I am out there somewhere. Waiting for myself. Hidden from that vessel so that a hand can grow six thousand days in six hundred.

Where are the others? What do they see, the same? It cannot be, otherwise they would be here, with me. I could see them or hear them, I would know they were there. Where are they? Where are we?

– You are all with us.

I look down, and the water has drained away, leaving a chasm where the shapes still hang, projecting twisting shreds of bright colours over the cave walls, searching for other cracks.

– Caretakers.

But that quieter and quieter voice, the one that was there before the Signal, whispers something else.

And the cave roof opens, and opening overhead is a boundless expanse, space with no end, and that thought rushes away and leaves only the Signal.

Control surges and deafens, returning with the roar of the river, which rolls up the cut in a great white wave that floods the chamber in the clenching of a fist and holds me in its grip. And I remember that this is how existence always has been, or at least part of it, fastened in fluid and receiving information and pawing back at it but having no leverage and finding no understanding of anything but some infinitesimal part of it, the way that it might be reformed and reshaped. And I must learn, I must gain expertise, I must know the way that the fluid packs and gives birth to other forms, like the hands paddling in the white water. A pair of arching constructs of bone and muscle and nerves and skin that are all water all stardust.

The black shapes they are in the water with me, they cluster about me, and I realise their uneven edges lock perfectly together into a skin, a draping that tightens around me, letting me breathe. I thought they were inside me but I am inside them. They are a part of me and I am a part of them. We are both unnatural.

– You are not unnatural. You are augmented.

The words bring deeper meaning.

I almost understand.

 

WHITE BEAR

‘There seems to be something wrong,’ said Marsh, ‘with our bloody ships today.’

She lowered her binoculars and spat. The pirates had crept up in the fog, harpooned our skiff, and boarded it. Our third ship had panicked and fled into the gloom. Now the pirate ship, a tall, rust-red power yacht running under ragged sail, closed. I peered through the twilight fog, glimpsed shadows cut across its deck. Its crew blew horns and chanted a war song. They sounded confident, organised, hungry.

Marsh spun the wheel and hit the gas. The White Bear responded, lifting its bow and surging to windward, chopping through waves. The acceleration tossed me about the pilothouse. Hanging lamps swung overhead, throwing blades of light across the cabin.

The ship was quick all right. Ficial engines. Outside, the pirate song faltered.

‘Sorry you got this first time out,’ said Marsh, hunching her shoulders. ‘It’s actually pretty rare.’

The big man, the one called Wole, appeared on the steps, clinging on tight as the ship accelerated into the turn.

‘Every time I sit down to read,’ he said. ‘It never fails.’

‘They were waiting for us to leave the roadstead,’ said Marsh. She nodded past him. ‘Are they ready?’

‘Aye, sir.’ Wole gave a cheery salute. ‘All present and correct.’

Across the gloomy surf the shadow of the pirate vessel turned, lanterns fizzing in the gloom. Shots popped in the fog. We slapped across the surface, closing fast, the White Bear’s engines barely whispering.

‘We seem to be approaching a little rapidly,’ I said.

Marsh leaned into the wheel.

‘Then brace yourself, shipmate.’

We slapped into the pirate ship’s stern, knocking its crew from their feet. Marsh unclipped the pistol from her belt and whipped open the pilot house door, dropping to the deck and calling orders. She led the boarding party, a roaring mass of salty Reals, her gun spitting charges. I followed. At least, I tried.

A wave broke over me and I fell, gasping salt water, tumbling face first onto the pirate deck. I didn’t dwell on it. I’d been locked up in a laboratory for months, a research subject held in deep quarantine. I’d only been free for a matter of hours. A lab rat like me was bound to be woozy the first time out of the maze.

I rolled onto my chest, choking and snorting salt water. I blinked and looked around. Wole and the others were grappling with pirates astern, a scrum of fizzing charges, blades and fists. Marsh scurried up a corroded ladder, headed for the bridge. I crouched, looked up, saw two pirates waiting for her. One was wearing a high-vis sash. He held a bat aloft, twisting it in the mist. I didn’t have time to warn Marsh. She reached the ladder top. Sash swung his bat. Marsh spat blood, and crumpled.

Wole saw it too. He roared, tossed his opponent into the ocean and raced up the ladder. I pursued, the boat heaving and rolling, reached the bridge. A Real lunged, nearly filleted me with a boat hook. I drew the pistol, fired a charge into his chest, watched him thrash, spark and collapse.

His friend, a face all beard and ski goggles, introduced me to a lead pipe. I bent over, huffed at the air. Beardy lifted the pipe, readying a blow to my head.

‘Ahoy there,’ cried Wole.

Beardy threw up his arms as the charge shook his body, and tumbled down to the deck. Sash lunged at Wole, who nimbly stepped clear, tripped him, sent him flying. I pointed my pistol at the prone pirate. Sash, finding himself at a disadvantage, held up his hands.

‘I surrender.’

‘You sure do.’

I fired. He had the usual convulsions and lay still. Wole helped Marsh to her feet. The last pirate on the bridge backed away.

‘Go on,’ said Marsh, nodding overboard. ‘Sling your hook.’

‘OK,’ he said, ‘OK.’

He stepped out into the fog, dived clear, plunged under the waves. We watched him emerge a little distance away, crawl into the fog.

Marsh removed herself from Wole’s embrace. He smiled at her in a familiar way I didn’t like.

‘You always lose your head around pirates,’ he said.

‘The sooner we start the sooner it’s finished.’ She rolled her jaw. Winced. ‘I think that bugger knocked a tooth out.’

Boatswain and Gunner joined us.

‘Casualties?’ said Marsh.

‘None, sir.’

‘Where’s the Minion?’

‘In the fog. Sorry about them, sir, I’m sure they just got confused.’

‘Post a lookout and secure the ship,’ she said. ‘Usual drill. Quick now, lads.’

Gunner and Boatswain saluted and went about their business. Wole offered Marsh a flask. She raised her eyebrow to it.

‘I’ll drink at home.’

Wole shook the flask.

‘You could use a treat.’

She accepted, swigged and gasped. She prodded it in my direction. I tipped a little down and returned it reluctantly.

‘Well,’ said Marsh, brightening some. ‘What do you make of your first fleet action?’

‘I’ll be honest,’ I said. ‘I’m surprised how well it went.’

‘They’re learning.’ She nodded. ‘Give me a few more weeks and we’ll have this little lot running like clockwork.’

I could believe it. The way the Reals snapped to her orders was enough to show their belief in her.

Wole rooted around the bridge, searched the pockets of the stunned men, found nothing. He tapped the oxidised surfaces.

‘A rust bucket,’ he said.

Outside, voices called over the waves. Our third ship was returning, its crew crying ‘Where?’ in three languages.

Boatswain and Gunner returned, saluted again.

‘Skiff has reported in, sir. They’re safe, but I’m afraid all the boarders were killed.’

‘Nothing to be afraid about, Gunner,’ said Marsh. ‘What of this craft?’

‘Ship secured,’ said Gunner. ‘No cargo, but there are manacles and blankets in the hold. It’s a slave trader, all right.’

Marsh stared hard at Sash. Boatswain stepped forward.

‘Should we . . . deal with the rest of them too?’

‘No,’ said Marsh, sighing. ‘No. Standard departure. Let’s be on our way.’

The stunned pirates were disarmed, laid on their bridge. We cut their vessel loose; let it drift away into the open sea. Marsh reclaimed her position in the pilot house and steered us slowly away. She was quiet, her eyes stony.

‘I suppose you’d like to know where we are?’

I shrugged. I knew where I was. I was due south of that mouth, those eyes, that neck. I followed her star. Where else was there?

She engaged the automatic pilot, rolled a flex out on the chart table.

‘Here,’ she said, pointing. I leaned in close and inhaled her scent. Sweat and fuel. Beautiful.

‘The Gulf of Mexico. While you were . . . otherwise disposed we’ve sailed all around the Atlantic, seeking out survivors, settlements. Relatively slim pickings until now. The Gulf is different, easily the most populous area we’ve surveyed. We’re headed up the eastern coast of Florida. Or what’s left of it. Apparently the biggest town is there. A big slave trading post.’

‘What are we going to do?’ I asked. ‘Burn it down?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘We’re going shopping.’

The White Bear traversed a slow, perilous route, over the cape and great sunken suburbs, crossing the blighted headland where a heavy fog had settled. We passed the great whale shadow of a stadium roof, headed deep into the drowned state, along tight channels that corkscrewed through cooled swamp and the stumps of dead cypress trees. We travelled deeper still, to where the fog parted, and a black, swollen lake emerged, its surface a crust of oil and trash punctured by towers, phone masts and billboards. It was cold. The darkness throbbed.

I went below and passed some time repacking the charge pistols with Gunner. We barely spoke, but he was company. Besides, he made a refreshing change from Darnbar, the Medic Model, whose lab had been my home for all those months. She’d never stopped asking me questions, searching for some advantage over my disease. I had thought I would be locked up with her for ever. Then, suddenly, I’d been released from incarceration. My capsule prison popped open. I’d been led to an elevator, to the surface, to the taste of wind and the sound of the sea, to Marsh. Finding her there, standing on the dock waiting for me with an uncertain gaze, sent my head spinning. I hadn’t been able to make words, too alive, too near death. She’d told me I was joining her on a ‘mission’. I hadn’t asked why.

Now, feeling a little steadier, I was curious. Like many prisoners, I found the world much changed. I figured Marsh must have secured my release. We had both arrived on the Lotus, mother ship to the White Bear, Minion and Godwin, as virtual prisoners. But while I had been pinioned in Darnbar’s lab, Marsh had evidently been given command of a fleet, imposing order on a motley, multilingual pack of Reals who’d been press-ganged into Ficial service.

While Darnbar had tortured me with high-energy X-rays and sickening drugs, Marsh had fiercely drilled her fellow Reals, devised tactics and signalling for the twilight of nuclear winter, built a core of loyal sailors. She could have let her emotions affect her efficiency. She could have refused to cooperate with her Ficial masters. Instead she had made things work.

I finished with the pistols and joined Wole and Boatswain in a game of cards. It was the first leisure time I’d experienced in months, and I was determined to make it count. I won Wole’s rum and Boatswain’s boots. Then they tired of losing and began questioning me instead.

‘I still find it hard to believe,’ said Wole, sitting back in his chair. ‘You look human enough to me.’

‘I am, I suppose.’

‘He’s Ficial, all right,’ said Boatswain. ‘He’s just defective. He sure ain’t a person.’

He was fuming, but I didn’t hold it against him. Most Reals are horrible losers.

‘The truth is,’ I said, ‘I’m neither one thing nor the other. Ficials have nanotech running through their bloodstream. It maintains them, keeps their bodies at the peak of perfection, immune to disease. It can heal a wound in seconds, makes us . . . Makes them invulnerable.

‘I lost that. My nanotech is dead. By definition I am no longer Ficial. On the other hand I don’t experience your emotions. That makes me inhuman. Like I said: neither one nor the other.’

Wole sniffed. He seemed unconvinced.

‘How did you lose this nanotech?’

I unscrewed the cap on Wole’s rum, sniffed the contents, drank. It burned my throat. I liked to feel it burn.

‘A virus,’ I said. ‘Eats up nanotech.’

‘Sounds nasty,’ said Wole. Boatswain leaned back, wary of contagion, watching me with his black little eyes.

‘I rather had the idea you didn’t get sick,’ said Wole.

‘We don’t. It was weaponised. Developed by Leo Pander.’

Boatswain scratched his sore red scalp.

‘Pander? But he invented Ficials.’

I nodded.

‘He was turned against us after the war. Developed the virus as a weapon, intended to make his creation extinct. A fellow Ficial dosed me with the virus, hoping to find a cure.’

Boatswain grinned.

‘Didn’t work out, huh?’

I placed my feet on the bench, showed him the boots he’d lost. He was pretty sick about it, regarding his bare black toes mournfully. Wole pointed.

‘How about the fancy prosthetic? How did you come by that?’

I inspected my left arm, flexed the metallic fingers and their black dome tips. From the elbow down the arm was a filigreed, ash-grey gauntlet: lightweight concrete bones wrapped in artificial muscle and Gronts skin. I could have described how I lost the original arm, and who had replaced it, but thinking about it made me nauseous. I decided to answer a different question.

‘It can punch through a hatch,’ I said. ‘Or pinch a mast in two.’

Boatswain eyed the silvery limb.

‘So all that time you were below you’ve been with Darnbar, looking for a cure to this virus? Why’d she let you go now – did she find it?’

I remembered being strapped in the capsule, Darnbar’s eyes in goggles, a cold needle pressed to my tear duct. I hit Wole’s rum again.

‘You’ll have to ask her.’

‘What’s it like down there?’ asked Wole.

I said nothing, only drank a little more of his rum.

Wole didn’t press the matter. I had the feeling most Reals on the White Bear had complex histories. They were working for Ficials after all.

The bell rang a little after midnight. Wole, Boatswain and I pulled on chemical coats and goggles and rushed onto the deck, joining Gunner and the others at the bow.

The Park rose from the spoiled waters on an artificial island, elevated before the war to shrug off the rising sea. Brilliant electric illuminations blazed on every surface, adorning a great wheel, a looping scaffold, Bavarian towers. Music drifted over the waters, exciting the White Bear’s crew.

The lake traffic grew thicker. Rowing boats, RIBs and scows crowded the waters, queuing up for the harbour. Marsh stepped onto the deck next to me, produced her glow sticks, signalled the Minion and Godwin as we picked through the traffic.

‘Looks busy,’ she said. ‘Maybe they’re having a sale.’

Thousands of rusty automobiles hugged the perimeter, all that was left of the Park’s last customers. They were crushed, bent, fused and stacked into a kind of interlocking, low-rise accommodation, reminding me of Habitat 67. Reals swarmed among them, trading, fighting, cooking, sleeping.

‘Never seen a settlement this big,’ said Wole. ‘Not in a year.’

‘That’s why we brought the whole fleet,’ said Marsh. ‘We’re buying bulk.’

The fleet edged into harbour, the crews standing in mute awe as the music swelled in the night, lights flashing above. The cars thinned out around a long jetty, packed tight with all kinds of ramshackle craft, jostling for position.

Marsh secured a decent berth for the White Bear and the others, paying the harbour master with a roll of waterproof sheeting. The men gathered ashore, a shivering mess of ponchos, chemical coats, goggles and boots. Marsh arranged them under a cluster of creaking signs that pointed into the labyrinth of cars.

‘Remember what we’re here for,’ said Marsh. ‘Don’t get distracted. No rides or booze or drugs. Stick to the mission, keep covered up and your eyes open. You find good stock, you run the tests, and you bring back the best samples. Anyone who’s late back stays for good.’

‘Aye, sir,’ replied the men. A rendezvous was set for four hours, and we split up to begin the search. Wole and Gunner led the Minion’s crew in the direction of Fantasyburg. Boatswain took Godwin’s men towards somewhere named Adventureville. Marsh slung a pack over her shoulder.

‘You’re with me,’ she said, pointing at the sign. ‘We’re off to San An Toonio.’

We joined a steady trickle of excited Reals on a broad path, swerving to avoid stallholders, clowns, balloons and human billboards. The crowd grew thicker as we approached a cluster of warped, cheap-looking structures.

‘So,’ I said. ‘We’re here to invest in slaves, that right?’

Marsh turned towards me. Even in goggles those eyes were set to full beam.

‘We’re here to buy as many as we can and bring them back to the Lotus.’

‘To what end?’

‘You’ll see. Bridget will show you everything.’

Bridget. Another fellow captive I hadn’t seen in months. She was alive.

The crowd slowed, then halted, an immobile mass. Their lowing swelled to match tinny organ music, pumped from hundreds of speakers. Over their heads I saw a broad avenue. Marsh tapped me on the shoulder.

‘Do me a favour,’ she said. ‘Clear us a path with that mitt of yours.’

‘Aye, sir.’

I pinched a route through the stinking mass, Reals howling and jumping aside, until we reached a corroded barrier, overlooking the muddy avenue. A parade was marching past, hundreds of Reals dressed in tatty animal costumes. Mice, dogs and ducks walked in a strange, high-kicking step, one arm raised at the night cloud. The crowd ate it up, cheering, clapping, waving in the neon glow of fairy lights.

The parade passed, and the crowd broke up. We moved up the avenue, peering into stores selling tinned food, drugs and weapons. Reals bartered in English and Spanish, occasionally scuffling over the meagre wares.

I noticed a group of Reals moving through the crowd: two men in white hoods and draped in robes, flanked by guards in masks and body armour. I gripped Marsh by the arm and told her to follow me.

‘Why?’ she said.

‘I think I’ve spotted the competition.’

We followed the train as it snaked into the Park, marched under giant, tottering structures of rusted track and chain. We crossed a landscaped area of dead parks and crumbling bridges. Our competitors were headed for a large, geodesic sphere, lit by a ring of lamps casting bright, multi-coloured spots on its surface. Gathered around it were hundreds of cages.

The slave market was big. Reals moved in packs, inspecting the wares, or corralling their own human resources.

We closed on the nearest cage, peered inside.

‘God, strewth,’ whispered Marsh.

Ten children, aged between nine and thirteen, were scattered about the space, sullen and shivering. Most were dressed in garbage bags, seated or stumbling barefoot around the fouled surface. Real life had become astonishingly cheap, but I guessed that made our mission affordable.

The seller, a tall creature with a missing ear, approached us, flanked by two heavies.

‘Interested?’ he asked. ‘Best you’ll find in the Park. All North American, no southern garbage here.’

Marsh tried to manufacture a smile for him, but the product reeked of contempt.

‘My employers have specific requirements,’ she said. ‘I’d like to inspect them close up.’

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘but they don’t leave the cage.’

He whistled at the children, who ran to the bars, presenting themselves. Marsh knelt, reached for a little boy’s hand. She took it in hers, stroked it, cooed softly at him. He stared hard at her, apparently wise to the friendly approach.

‘What’s your name?’ asked Marsh, holding her thumb to his forehead, checking her bracelet.

The boy said nothing.

Marsh frowned, moved to the next specimen, a girl. She placed her thumb on the child’s forehead, examined her bracelet. The owner watched, curious.

‘What’cha doing there?’

I pushed him back.

‘Like she said, specific requirements.’

Marsh examined all ten, then stood. She took the pack off her shoulder, giving the owner a certain look.

‘You should keep them better if you want to make sales,’ she said.

‘Sure. Right. Do you want one or not?’

Marsh held her forearm over her eyes for a moment, lowered it, sniffed and shook her head.

‘I’ll take three. The tall boy, the redhead and the girl with the bruised eye.’

The owner laughed and spat.

‘Oh, you will, huh? And what’s your trade you have in there, lady? Ice cream?’

Marsh produced a gold carton of cigarettes, smoothing the bent surface, balanced it on the flat of her hand for One-Ear to see. He gasped.

‘The carton for all three,’ said Marsh. ‘Agreed?’

One-Ear was dizzied, but he wasn’t down.

‘What? No way. Carton gets you two. Two. The boy’s strong, worth a carton alone.’

Marsh shrugged and folded the carton back into her pack. That got One-Ear sweating.

‘Wait, wait, wait!’ he said. ‘OK, you got a deal.’

Nice haggling. What a pro.

One-Ear opened the cage, pointed to the children, smacking each head as it passed under his arm. Marsh clenched her fists. I handed the carton to One-Ear. He ripped open a pack right away, sniffed the insides.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, grinning.

Marsh shepherded the redhead and boy away. That left the girl with me. She looked like she had about twelve years on the clock. I offered my hand, keeping the gauntlet out of sight. She took it, her fingers stiff, cold, tiny with fear. What did life plan for her next?

‘Relax, kid,’ I said. ‘You’re in safe hands.’

She still had nothing to say. I could respect that.

‘I guess you’ll believe it when you see it.’

We passed through the heaving perimeter of rusted, teetering wrecks, sidestepping hurrying natives, pans on open fires, scummy latrines.

Two hooded figures, seated atop a blackened trailer, observed our passage to the docks.

 

The land is bright green, trimmed grass and copses and streams, nothing in sight but rolling hills. No cattle or agriculture even.

– Road speaks the Signal.

And as I walk it unfurls beneath me, the road, every pace laying fresh asphalt, and as the land rises I call up fresh data on cuttings and levelling of easements and embankments of sub-base, base and surface, and the land rips up before me, topsoil slapped and packed on the cut hill either side, and the road lies beneath me as I slice a straight, firm path through the wound.

And then the sky booms and cracks, and one great cloud casts a shadow, turning the land black and grey and brown, and the cloud bursts and hammers rain, a deluge I feel but do not feel, rain that I see but do not see, and I try to remember that I am not truly here, but clutched in an amber sack, awaiting birth.

The Signal says nothing.

The storm blows and thunders and the rain blots out the landscape, it pools and floods the road and I suppose this is a lesson about drainage, essential in any road-building project. It rises to my ankles and I make for higher ground, needing the hill I have wounded now, but I do not climb, I only slip and slide in the mud. Something rising inside me, a flood in my chest and my mind, of energy, insistent and steady as the water. I call out for Control but it doesn’t answer.

I remember my strength. I plunge my fist into the mire, and find some purchase, and drag clear of the waters, onto the bank. And I crawl through the filth to the summit, knowing that no force can stop me, that I am too strong for any storm, and still the waters continue to rise. I search this curious, bare hill for materials, thinking I will fashion a raft and I will sit on the waves and wait for the waters to subside, or Control to return and speak a word and restore order in my mind and on the hill and my road. If they are separate things. If they are not the same. And all around me there are birds and pigs and people and rats and chickens floating, drowned, returning to what made them, no longer multiplying, but reaped and sucked below. I wonder if anyone cares what kind of contaminants are in the water and I wonder what it would taste like and I think of dipping my hand in again, and I feel the strength in it.

And then looking down, looking at my feet, I see leeches, bright, green, wriggling leeches, dozens of them smothering my feet, sucking greed. . .