strangely… flat. Ruby raised an eyebrow.
'Whatever I was expecting, this isn't it. Anyone you know?'
'I don't think so. Why would Shub send us a dead man? And a carefully preserved one, at that?'
'And why arrange him like that? Why not just use a bigger crate?' She reached in and grabbed a handful of the dead man's hair. She tried to pull him out, but the body barely budged, stuck with cold and frost to the interior walls. The frozen tissues gave up loud cracking sounds as they reluctantly stretched. The long abdominal cut opened slowly like a mouth, and it was only then that Random and Ruby realized the body had been completely gutted. Everything inside the chest and abdomen had been removed.
'The cut's so precise it might have been made with a scalpel,' Random said thoughtfully, and Ruby released her handful of hair. The head fell back against the crate wall with a loud thud. Ruby examined her hand. It was already covered with frost. She sniffed, untouched by the cold, and looked back at the hollow man.
'They really emptied him out, Jack. They didn't just take his guts; the bones are gone too. No rib cage, no sternum, even the collarbones are gone. But why send us an eviscerated dead man? Is this supposed to frighten us?'
'Maybe it's a warning of what they mean to do to us all,' said Random doubtfully. 'Kill us, empty us out, and make us into Ghost Warriors. Let's look in the other crate. Perhaps the answer's in there.'
Ruby opened the second crate, waving aside the cold air that steamed up from inside, impatient to see what the crate contained. And then she wrinkled her nose and looked at Random. 'This is really disgusting.'
Random leaned over the second crate. A set of human organs had been arranged neatly on the floor of the crate, pale pink and gray and covered with shining frost. Carefully laid human bones kept them separate. The heart had been wrapped in a pretty pink ribbon, tied in a bow.
'The last time I saw anything like this, I was still a clone-legger,' said Ruby, staring in fascination at the human remains. 'What the hell is the point of this?'
'There's another note,' said Random. 'Under the heart.' He reached in and carefully slid the paper out from under the solid organ. He studied the envelope carefully.
'Interesting. It's addressed to us. Shub knows we're here.'
'Open the damned thing,' said Ruby impatiently.
Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper with a set of printed instructions on it. Random unfolded it carefully, not wanting the brittle paper to crack apart in his hands. He studied the message in silence for some moments. Ruby pushed in beside him.
'Well? What is it? What does it say?'
'It appears to be a set of instructions, on how to put together a human in kit form. According to this, if you put the bones and organs back in the right order, close him up, and thaw him out, the human should start functioning again.'
'Now, that is just too sick,' said Ruby. 'Even for me.'
'Strange too,' said Random. 'I never knew Shub to show a sense of humor before.'
Ruby shook her head. 'It doesn't make any sense. Did they think this would frighten us?'
Random shrugged. 'Let's see what the Councillors have to say.'
He beckoned them over, and they returned to the crates, somewhat emboldened now that the crates hadn't exploded after all. Then they looked inside the crates. One just made it to the door before being sick. Two others retreated to the far end of the room again and refused to come back. Bentley and de Lisle stood their ground, though visibly upset.
'I know this man,' Bentley said finally. 'He volunteered to go alone and unarmed to try to negotiate a settlement with the rebel leaders. He used to be a friend and colleague of Terrence Jacks, the ex-Mayor. He thought that friendship would guarantee his safety. He should have known better. I tried to warn him, but he believed some kind of deal was still possible with goodwill on both sides.'
'The rebels did this?' said Ruby. 'What the hell for?'
'To send us a message,' said de Lisle. 'That they're not interested in negotiating. You can see now the nature of the foe we're dealing with. Shub is bad enough, but the rebels here are animals. We have to keep this quiet. It mustn't go beyond this room. Do you agree, sir Random?'
'Yeah. The people don't need to know about this. We'll just say the crates contained severed heads from the outer settlements. That's nasty enough to motivate them, without sickening them too much. Dispose of all this secretly. Incinerate it.'
'I just had a thought,' said Ruby, smiling wickedly. 'What if we followed the instructions and put the human together? Do you think he'd work? I mean, Shub know a lot of things. He just might get up and start functioning again.'
The Councillor at the door lost what was left of his breakfast. The other Councillors looked at her with open revulsion. Random shook his head.
'I don't think that's a road we should go down. Whatever we ended up with, you can be sure it wouldn't be human. Burn it, de Lisle. Burn it all. And then scatter the ashes just in case.'
Things were relatively quiet after that. The rebels headed for Vidar in one great force, human and Shub, destroying all settlements in their path. The storm winds kept blowing, but everyone knew the lull was coming. Random and Ruby spent all their time struggling to turn Vidar's volunteer force into something like an army. There was no shortage of volunteers, but most had never fired a gun in anger in their life. They were tough enough, and brave, but turning even the most willing volunteer into a trained soldier takes time, and everyone knew that time was running out.
So it came as somewhat of a surprise to everyone when Random excused himself from the training exercise on the second afternoon, left Ruby in charge, and disappeared on a mission of his own. Wrapped in a long cloak, with the hood pulled down to conceal his features, Jack Random made his way through increasingly narrow and dirty streets into the really scummy part of Vidar. Every city has a part of town where the mostly respectable can come in secret in search of the pleasures that may not have a name, but certainly have a price. A few locals thought to intercept Random on his way and relieve him of any valuables he might be burdened with, but a glimpse of energy gun was usually all it took to make them back down.
Random had to kill one man, but he didn't seem the sort that anyone would miss.
Random finally reached his destination in the late afternoon: a broken-down drinking establishment that had probably looked sleazy and disreputable from the moment it opened. Random stood in the shadows on the other side of the street for a while, making sure he hadn't been followed. He didn't think anyone could sneak up on him anymore, but old habits died hard. Nobody looked up when he finally walked into the gloomy bar. It was the kind of place where everyone was careful to mind their own business.
There were no windows, and the lights were kept low to encourage confidentiality. There was an atmosphere of illegal smoke, cheap perfume, and general paranoia. Customers sat at cheap tables in twos and threes, talking business in lowered voices, pushing anonymous packages back and forth, or just sitting and staring into drinks they didn't touch while they waited for their contacts to show up. There was no sawdust on the floor. Probably someone had stolen it. Random had spent a lot of time in the past meeting people in places like this, searching for the kind of answers that could be found only in such company. He spotted his contact, sitting well back in the shadows, and moved over to join him.
'There had better be a damned good reason for bringing me here,' said Random as he polished the seat of his chair with a handkerchief before sitting down. 'I've been in some dives in my time, and this is definitely one of them. God alone knows what the booze is like here.'
'Actually, it's pretty good,' said Peter Savage. 'For the price. And we're meeting here to talk because it's one of the few places where de Lisle's informers wouldn't dare follow me. I've been digging into those computer files.'
'All right, what have you found?'
'It's worse than we thought. de Lisle and his cronies were sent here deliberately to wreck Loki's economy. Once they'd done their job and left, their bosses on Golgotha would have moved in and bought everything up at rock-bottom prices. Including the colonists. To pay off their debts they'd have had to take lifetime indentures. Slaves in all but name.'
'Can they do that?' said Random. 'I had Parliament pass a whole bunch of laws just to prevent things like
