sound.
“Shit!” The mud smelled; now she was filthy. She sank a little deeper, her white shift riding up around her waist on the black mire. Lightly, she pressed a hand on its surface. It was no use trying to push her way out; she would only force her arms down into the cold bog. She turned and tried to catch hold of the duckboards, but they were too far away. This was embarrassing. She was going to have to ask for help. She gave a sigh and reached for her console.
It wasn’t there.
“Are you all right, Peter?” Judy asked.
“Yes.” But he wasn’t. Helen could feel the sudden stab of panic that he had felt when he realized the console was missing. He was gasping for breath, one hand to his heart.
Judy lowered her head for a moment, pondering. She came to a decision.
“This isn’t one of the violent scenarios, you know, Peter. It is more of a…a connoisseur’s choice, you might say. They used to run…well, let us call them competitions, with the various PCs. Helen here was used in what you might call the first-division categories.”
“What?” Helen said. Judy waved at her, did something to calm her down.
“Oh, yes,” Judy continued, “Helen has a strong personality. To break it requires some skill. To break it without resorting to the stock properties-”
“The stock properties?” Helen said. There was rage inside her. She could feel Judy was pushing it down, somehow.
“Oh, yes, stock properties: rape, murder, mutilation. The products of a limited mind, an average intelligence. It takes some skill to bring about a mental breakdown without resort to the clichés.”
Helen snarled.
“Calm down please, Helen,” Judy said, mildly. “This is about Peter, not you.”
Her console was gone. She forced her hands into the mud, feeling for the belt around her waist that was her console’s usual form. It wasn’t there. The shock of its absence was so unsettling that she found herself panting, gasping out little breaths while her heart pounded. Keep calm. If she began to panic now, she would never stop. Concentrate on being calm. She could see the grey sky high above, feel the soft grip of the mud. She could move in it, slide her legs up and down, wriggle her body. She just couldn’t press down with her arms to force her way up. Newton’s Law: action and reaction. Everyone knew that if you were sinking in mud, you should relax. Don’t fight it, just relax and wait for the natural buoyancy of your body to float you up. But that was easily said when you were sitting safe on firm ground. Not so easy to imagine when you could feel yourself slipping deeper and deeper down. Feel the mud pressing up on your breasts, each precious breath filled with that rich earthy smell. Still, relax, lay your arms out on the mud and relax…
“I’m frightened,” Peter said. He was gasping for breath. He looked at Helen. “Helen, I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry. Make her stop. I get the point. What you said was true, Judy. I can see that now. I never wanted to know what they did to them in the processing spaces.”
“To them? Don’t depersonalize it, Peter.”
“To Helen,” he cried. “I admit it. Just stop it now. Please.”
“Stop what?” Judy said.
“Stop making me feel what Helen must have felt when she drowned. I understand the lesson.”
“What lesson?”
“Of how awful it must be to die in that way.”
“That isn’t the lesson,” Judy said.
“It should be,” Helen whispered, eyes filling with cold hatred.
She couldn’t relax. She was sinking down, her legs slipping forward in slow motion as if she had slid on ice and was falling backwards, her arms flung wide. Her head rolled back, resting itself on the mud behind her like a pillow. She wondered if she could feel her legs rising up from the sucking earth. She was doing what she was supposed to, wasn’t she? Cold wind on her face. Now she was beginning to panic. Then she saw someone coming along the duckboards. A man in a red-and-white candy-striped jacket. He carried an umbrella in one hand.
“Help,” Helen called. “Over here! Help!” Her whole body was held in a soft, cold grip. Her left hand clenched cold mud, uselessly.
The man heard her cry and came towards her.
“I’m drowning,” sobbed Helen. “Use your console. Get help.”
The man stopped on the walkway, leaning on his umbrella, and looked down at her. When he spoke it was in a puzzled voice. His words chilled her fear and replaced it with a sudden pang of sadness so deep she felt like crying.
“Why should I?” he asked.
Peter gave a whimper. “That’s horrible.”
“How do you feel on hearing that?”
“Alone. Abandoned. That someone has so little humanity…Didn’t he understand how she felt?”
“All too well.”
Mud was forming a circle around Helen’s face. She was looking out into the world of life from a cold, sucking grave.
“Please!” she said. She was looking up at a tall man with brushed- back hair, and she could hear the sluggish rhythm of the mud as it sucked her down. The man placed the tip of the umbrella on her forehead, and a dribble of muddy water ran into her mouth. She coughed and spat, but more water ran into her mouth straightaway. She tried to say “No” and choked on yet more water. And then there was just pressure on her forehead as the umbrella tip pushed her down. She saw mud all around her, curling down towards her in a slow wave. She closed her mouth and felt mud slide over her nose. She took a last despairing breath and registered the man on the duckboards gazing at her, then the soft brown wave folded down over her, then that was it. Buried alive. Sinking deeper into the darkness. Her chest was starting to hurt. She so wanted to breathe…
“…slipping down into the earth, oh it’s so bright up there and so dark here below and there is no breath holding holding not breathing dragged away from the light…” Peter was rambling. He opened his eyes and, with some surprise, seemed to see where he was. He was gasping for air.
“Okay, stop,” he panted. “Stop! I get it now.” He couldn’t catch his breath. Nor could Helen. She found that she was rubbing her face, rubbing her nose, clearing it of imaginary mud. She wanted to spit, to wash her mouth out.
Peter was hyperventilating. “I never saw it before,” he gulped. “That was the reality, wasn’t it? That’s what it was all about. That was what I was doing. All the time on the ship, and I never realized.”
He wouldn’t look at Helen. Instead, he gazed at Judy, looked at the floor, did anything but look at Helen.
“I never knew.”
“You never wanted to know.”
“I never did.” He looked around his apartment, studiously avoiding Helen. He looked at the pictures and sculptures that decorated his room. “All of this, art and comfort, I wrapped myself up in it. I never allowed myself to see what suffering was like. I retreated from the real world-”
And, for the first time that day, Judy really lost her temper. It was genuine, Helen was convinced. She could feel that anger, focused by the effect of the pill. Judy’s voice was so cold and disparaging that Helen cringed.
“The real world? You…you wanker. You’ve always lived
