Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer (7 page)

There was no escaping their labour, though. When the others took their turn on the diggers, Jac worked at polishing his lump of glass. It was slow work, and after several days it all came to
nothing: a carelessly too-forceful thrust to try and erase a small protuberance caused the whole piece to crack into three pieces. Jac breathed deeply, and breathed out. Then he bundled the pieces
together, gathered some more miniature marbles, and spent a portion of his next session at the digger pressing them into a new lump. Davide saw what he was doing, and for a while the whole group
– Gordius amongst them – gathered around Jac to mock him for his self-appointed Sisyphean task. But Jac was placid, and non-confrontational, and eventually they grew bored and left him
to it. After a good deal of careful effort, he managed to produce a slightly larger, flatter lump.

Then, after his stint on the diggers: back to scraping and abrading.

‘You’re just doing that to pass the time,’ said Davide, dismissively.

‘Just to pass the time,’ agreed Jac . ‘Though I suppose time will pass, in any case, regardless of what I do.’

Work continued. The three diggers were diversely employed, each excavating a chamber. Lwon himself struck lucky one day, discovering a second vein of ice, bigger than the first. He turned the
extractor off, and used the drill to whack chunks of it out. The others stopped whatever they were doing, or not doing, to grab these and pass them back. ‘We can grow a lot more of that
delicious ghunk now,’ cried Davide. ‘Can any man boast a greater joy in his heart than I?’

‘I’m so sick of your voice,’ said Marit. Then, looking around, and to make clear that he wasn’t picking a fight with Davide, he added, ‘I’m so sick of
all
your voices.’

‘Well,’ said Lwon. ‘We’ve got eleven years. You’d better get used to them.’

‘How can it still be
eleven
years?’ Marit growled. ‘Surely we’ve been here a year already!’

This, of course, was a real issue. How were they going to keep track of time, in the longer term? Should they even bother trying? Lwon finished pulling the ice from its seam, or all the ice he
could reach. This left an overhang of rock that was easily broken and chipped away by the digger. It felt like a day on which something had been achieved, actual structure added to the interior
space; so everybody stopped work and ate some ghunk and drank a little, and lay about the walls or the ceiling. ‘Ice is easier to mine than rock,’ said Davide, as if uttering a profound
and original truth. ‘A few more veins like that, and we’ll very soon have a room each.’

E-d-C broke wind, and everybody yelled in mock-protest and spoke disrespectfully of his fundament.

‘You know what?’ said Mo. ‘I think it is a little warmer.’

‘Barely,’ said Marit, shivering. But it was true: the worst of the arctic chill had gone out of the air. ‘We should hold on to the memory of this cold,’ said Lwon.
‘Soon enough, it’ll get
hot
in here, and then our problem will be finding a way of disposing of the heat. Then we’ll look back on these days with fondness.’

‘Better be too hot than too cold,’ said Mo, earnestly.

The thought that they would one day look back on these times – that there might actually be a future for them – mellowed the group as a whole. It made them meditative. ‘There
must be ways to dump the excess heat,’ said E-d-C. ‘Thousands of prisoners survive their term. The majority, I reckon. They find a way, and so will we. There’s no problem this
rock can throw at us that we won’t be able to solve.’

Jac held his peace.

Mo started speaking about his time on Earth, working hauling luggage for a wealthy fretman. ‘That full gravity,’ he said, ‘it’s tiring, sure, like they say. It tires you
because it’s there even when you’re sleeping, so you never sleep quite right. But my god and lord how it tones your musculature! It was just hauling bags, not even specially big ones,
but my arm muscles got big as boulders.’ He displayed his arms. ‘Not so bulky now,’ he conceded, sadly.

Gordius farted. ‘Hey!’ Davide objected, loudly; and then, as the stench penetrated even over and above the foul smells in which they habitually lived, everybody groaned and spoke
threatening words. Gordius started giggling. ‘Sorry, guys,’ he said, but he didn’t stop giggling. The giggles made the folds and curtain-drapes of his flesh wriggle and flap like
a flag in a strong wind. His laughter acquired that hysterical edge, that grating edge. ‘Sorry! Sorry!’

Marit roused himself, and floated over to Gordius. He reached out and slapped him in the face. The sound of a wet cloth on a riverside stone. Gordius’s head turned quickly to the right,
but the laughter didn’t stop. Marit drew back his arm again, folded his open hand into a fist. Then he thrust it hard against Gordius’s cheek. The giggling stopped. The sound of a bat
hitting a ball. The sound of butcher’s cosh hitting flesh. Marit’s arm was back out, and down again: punch, punch, again in the face. Gordius was making a high-pitched warbling noise,
and wriggling to get free; his own arms stretching and trying to push Marit off. Another wet thwacking sound, this one right in the eye. Marit had hold of Gordius’s long hair with his left
hand, and was holding it tight. Again, another blow, on the nose, and an adder-shaped strand of dark fluid leapt out into the air. Gordius’s struggles meant that the two of them were
rotating, their feet coming up to where their heads had been a moment before, but all of Marit’s attention was on where his blows handed: his fist sank into cheek, his fist hammered into the
eye socket a second time, Gordius’s cries increased in volume. Finally Marit’s fist made a booming noise as it cracked against forehead bone, and Marit released his grip. He floated
back, nursing his right hand. ‘You hurt my fist!’ he snarled. ‘You’ve done something to my knuckles – you bag of blubber.’

Gordius was foetally clutching himself, sobbing, his great bulk rotating slowly. Trails of sticky-looking bloody mucus extended and curled oddly in the zerogravity.

Lwon said, ‘are you OK, god-boy?’ But got no reply.

Marit came back over to the new bundle of ice, where it floated, and tried to apply some to his reddened knuckles. ‘You
smelt
what he did?’ he demanded, of nobody in
particular. ‘We got to breathe all that? No way. Not me.’

Jac went over to the big fellow and tried to soothe him. It took a long time before he could coax him to take his hands from his face, and when he did he saw what a mess it was. Seaweedy
extrusions of blackened blood hung from his nose and his left eye was swollen and sealed shut. There were many contusions, and the bruises were already showing, knuckle-shaped fairy stepping stones
across the expanse of white cheek. Jac fetched some of the new ice, made Gordius suck on a piece to try and reduce swelling inside the mouth, and scraped the worst of the blood away.
‘It’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘Though your eye is going to be swelled shut for a few days.’

‘Why didn’t Lwon stop it?’ Gordius sobbed, indistinctly, his mouth full of ice. ‘Marit just went on and on. Why didn’t Lwon intervene, and stop it?’

‘Why would he risk antagonising Marit? For you? Not worth it. On the contrary,’ said Jac. ‘He’d rather Marit blew off steam thwacking you than – you know. Attacking
him.’

Gordius’s battered face acquired a sulky look. ‘Isn’t he supposed to be in charge? He ought to act like he is.’

‘I’m not sure you grasp what being in charge in this place, with these people, means,’ said Jac. ‘Anyway, I don’t think your nose is broken.’

For some reason, this news made Gordius start to weep. ‘Here,’ said Jac, uncertainly. ‘Have some more ice.’

‘We’re never going to survive here, you and I!’ Gord said, through his sobs. ‘They’re picking on me now, but it’ll be you tomorrow. Every time they get a
little annoyed, they’ll take it out on us two. We’ll be beaten to death. Literally to death. And the worst thing is – there’s nothing we can
do
!’

‘We need to get off the rock,’ said Jac, looking over his shoulder.

Behind him the sound of the drills had started up, in their respective chambers. Davide, E-d-C and Mo had resumed digging; Lwon was watching them, Marit was nursing his hand.

‘There’s no way off this rock,’ moaned Gordius. But he peered at Jac with his one good eye. ‘Is there?’

‘You tell me, god-boy,’ returned Jac.

‘You’re planning something. What? What will you do?’

‘To begin with,’ said Jac, wiping his bloodied hands on Gordius’s tunic. ‘I’m going to finish making my piece of glass.’

‘Is that the key to it?’ He explored his own bashed face, gingerly, with his fingers-ends, wincing. ‘
Is
that it? But your window would only be the size of a hand –
maybe smaller – what good is that?’

‘Nothing,’ agreed Jac. ‘No good at all.’

He was about to push off, when Gordius grabbed his elbow. ‘Take me with you.’

Jac looked over at Marit again. Then he looked back at the big fellow.

‘I’ll keep it to myself!’ Gordius said. ‘I promise! I won’t tell them. And anyway, I can’t give away what you’re planning, because I don’t
know
what you’re planning. I just know you’re planning
something
. And when you do it, whatever it is. And when you,’ He coughed on the blood coming down his throat
from the inside of his nose. He gulped. ‘And when you do – take me with you. If you don’t, I’ll die here. The others, they can simply serve their time. They won’t miss
us.’

‘They’ll tear themselves apart,’ said Jac.

Gordius chuckled, but it turned into another cough. ‘Look,’ he said, when he regained his breath. ‘It’s true I’m no longer a god, but my people are rich –
they pay tax at 22%! The Ulanovs classify them as a special contributory community! It would be to your profit, helping me. And – and – and anyway, to leave me behind would be
murder.’ Gordius turned his now-misshapen, bruised head from side to side. ‘What
are
you going to do, though? What are you planning? Why do you need a window?’

Jac looked at him. ‘I would like,’ he said, enunciating clearly in a low voice, ‘to be able to see outside.’

‘You’re going to summon a ship,’ said Gordius, in an excited-little-boy voice. He put up his hand. ‘It’s OK! I won’t tell them! Globe,
I
don’t
even
know
how you’re going to do it! There
are
no ships out here, and a window the size of a button isn’t going to enable you to – no, never mind. I don’t need
to know how. I just need to know that you’ll take me with you.’

Jac directed a steady gaze at him.

‘Jac,’ Gordius pleaded, whisperingly. ‘Look what Marit did to me! For no reason! These are violent men. These are murderous men. We’re not – I’m here on
account of my piety, and you’re a political.
We’re
different. But these men are like – tigers. We can’t stay here for very much longer. Not if we want to stay
alive.’

‘Tigers,’ said Jac, meditatively. It was as if the word reminded him of something. Then, returning from some distant realm of thought, he said: ‘you should have some more
ice.’

‘This ice is all dusty,’ said Gordius, sulkily. Then he hissed: ‘
say
you’ll take me with you. Please! Please! My people will make you rich. Just say you’ll
take me with you! Promise it!’

Jac held his thumb up, and pressed it lightly against Gordius’s bruised lips. ‘I promise,’ he said. ‘I will take you with me.’ There was something in his voice that
sounded like tenderness. And maybe it was.

Jac did his best to work on the lump of glass when nobody was paying him any attention, but in such close quarters it wasn’t easy. He was grinding with a more careful,
laborious motion, taking pains not to crack the piece. It took a long time.

The first chamber having been completed, there was a general agreement that the digger in question would best be used in carving out a corridor into the heart of the stroid. New chambers could
be budded off this central line. And so the interminable labour continued.

Jac finished his turn with the digger, excavating this new tunnel. He was sweating, and floated to the spigot. ‘Yours,’ he gasped to Marit.

‘My hand is still sore where Buddha-boy there hurt it,’ said Marit. ‘You take another turn.’

Jac was far too tired to do anything but sleep. He made his way over to the scrubber. He didn’t say anything; all he did was shake his head, wearily. But then as he bent to put his lips to
the spigot he felt a sharp pressure on the back of his head. His mouth slammed against the tap, and his front tooth clicked back like a switch. The circulation inside his head made a sudden loud
noise and he pulled his head back in. His vision had become ruddy with pure fury. He looked around. Pain sang its terrible song inside his mouth and at the back of his head simultaneously.
Everybody was laughing at him, although the cacophony of his own pulse sprinting round his veins and arteries dampened all other sound. Marit had thrown a large chunk of stone at the back of
Jac’s head: the impact had smashed his mouth onto the unyielding substance of the spigot. He put a hand to the place where the skull overhangs the back of the neck. His hair was stickily wet.
He looked from face to face. The lightpole was gleaming Hadean rouge; the faces looked demonic and red as sunset. He took a deep breath. Now?

He released the breath. No, no, no.

The colour drained from his vision, and the sound returned to normal. He breathed in. Breathed out.

‘Your
expression
!’ laughed Marit, seemingly well-pleased by what he had done. ‘You should have seen it.’

Looking left. Jac felt his front tooth; it had been knocked more than forty-five degrees from true; and the gum raged with a resentful pain. Looking right – there was the missile, still
rotating and moving slowly away from its own recoil; a chunk almost as big as Jac’s own skull.

‘It’s OK, little legless man,’ said Marit. ‘You know what? I’m feeling the chill. I’ll work after all, to spare you the labour. No, to warm
myself
.’ He went through to the barely-started new tunnel and, still chuckling to himself, started up the drill.