‘You might want to check on Rye.’
‘Any reason?’
‘No. But it’s that dog-whistle thing. Sometimes people don’t have to say or do anything weird. They just sit there, quietly sipping tea, all the while putting out an ultrasonic scream like they are dying inside.’
‘I’ll swing by. Not much I can do until she asks for help.’
Nobody knew much about Rye. She stayed in her room most of the time. There was a photograph tacked above her bunk. A baby boy. The picture looked old. Plenty of creases, plenty of pin holes.
Jane sat in Rawlins’s office and checked Rye’s personnel file. She quit general practice and took a job on a rig three years later. No explanation for the three-year hiatus.
Jane headed for Rye’s room. She would fake a migraine. Ask for painkillers.
The door was ajar. Rye sat on the bed. She had stripped down to underwear. She dug a knife into her thigh, scratched her name with the tip of the blade. She drew little beads of blood.
Jane coughed to announce her presence.
‘Before you ask,’ said Rye, ‘no, I don’t want to talk about it.’
The crew held a toga party. They turned up the heat until the accommodation block was sweltering hot.
Ghost led a raid on Hyperion. They battled their way to the Ocean Bar and loaded a cart with booze. Smash and grab. Jane told Ghost it was a stupid idea, risking his life for a few bottles.
‘It’s vital,’ he said. ‘If the guys don’t let off some steam they’ll go nuts.’
They dressed in bed sheets. They switched on the jukebox and selected Random Play. Punch was bartender. He mixed margaritas. Jane licked salt from the rim of her glass.
‘Salut.’
Jane enjoyed the party. A few months ago, when she was superobese, she would have stayed in her room. She couldn’t wear a toga. The sheets weren’t big enough.
Punch laid out canapйs. Tube-cheese squeezed on to Ritz crackers. Sausage rolls.
A couple of guys took off their togas and danced in shorts.
Ghost passed round a couple of joints. He won a press-up contest with Gus and Mal.
Sian sat behind a table to stop guys staring at her legs.
Rye joined the party. She didn’t wear a toga. She sat near the door and watched the action. She sipped tequila from a paper cup. Jane brought her a plate of food.
‘Margarita?’
‘I don’t like the salt.’
‘But you’re holding up okay?’
‘You know,’ said Rye, ‘everyone else on this rig may be desperate to explain themselves, to be understood, but I deal with my own shit.’
Rye crouched behind a snowdrift. She hunted by moonlight. She watched dim shadow-shapes of Hyperion passengers standing motionless on the ice. She used infrared binoculars. Distance- to-target calibrations, like a sniper-scope. The landscape in negative. Pale, luminescent figures on a black landscape. Body temperature was way down. The figures had barely any heat signature. Rye couldn’t understand how they were still walking around. They should be frozen. They should be starved. There were a dozen different ways they should be dead.
She circled a crowd of passengers gathered at the waterline, mesmerised by the installation lights of the rig. She stalked a man in a dark suit who seemed to have strayed from the herd
She stepped from behind a snowdrift.
‘Hey,’ she called. ‘Wanna buy a Rolex?’
The man turned. He took a couple of stumbling steps towards her, arms outstretched. She zapped him with the Taser. He fell in an epileptic spasm.
Rye threw a sleeping bag over the prostrate man and bound him with rope.
She gave the guy another jolt of current. She lashed him tight to a stepladder and dragged him to the zodiac.
She laid him in the boat. She pulled back the sleeping bag and shone a flashlight in the man’s face. Metal erupting from flesh. A dog-collar. The man was a priest.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ asked Jane. Rye had been spending a lot of time on C deck. Jane had tracked her to a vacant storeroom.
‘These freaks rule the world now. They are the dominant species. We better find out exactly what makes them tick.’
Four tables. Four passengers strapped down.
‘There are dozens of them out there on the ice,’ said Rye. She was wearing a lab coat, gloves and a heavy rubber apron. ‘They’ve been there a while. Minus forty and they are walking around in ball gowns and tuxedos. The average guy would succumb to hypothermia in a couple of minutes. These folks have lasted days. Something pretty fundamental has happened to their metabolism.’
‘You brought these fuckers on board without telling anyone? I’ll help you put them over the side. We’ll do it now, do it quick. If the guys in the canteen find out about this they’ll break your fucking legs.’
‘These creatures were adrift aboard Hyperion for weeks,’ said Rye. ‘No sign that they ate or drank. What the hell makes these things tick? Aren’t you curious? Do they run on air, or what?’
‘Damn. This guy’s a priest.’
The priest’s eyeballs were black. He stared up at her. He didn’t blink.
A Bible on a nearby chair.
‘It was in his pocket,’ said Rye.
‘King James. Good choice.’
An inscription on the flyleaf.
‘David. Is that you? You used to be David.’
Jane recited the Lord’s Prayer.
‘Our Father, who art in heaven…’
The priest slowly lowered his head and closed his eyes.
‘Doc, have you any idea how bad it smells down here? It smells like ammonia. My eyes are watering.’
‘Let me show you something.’
Rye put on goggles and a mouth mask. She picked up a scalpel.
‘Hey,’ said Jane. ‘This guy’s still alive, all right? He’s still breathing.’
Rye paid no attention. She stabbed Father David in the shoulder. She twisted the blade, dug it in.
‘Whoa. Hold the fuck on.’
The priest lay, unconcerned, as the knife ground bone.
‘Is he even alive?’ asked Rye, talking to herself. ‘Undead? Nosferatu? Is that what we are dealing with? I think he still has sensation. He can feel the knife. He just doesn’t care.’
Rye twisted the knife some more.
‘Less blood than I would expect,’ she said. ‘Look at his face. See his skin? Frost damage. His skin cells are turning to putty. He’s slowly rotting. Those Hyperion passengers out on the ice aren’t immortal. The cold is killing them sure enough. But it’s taking a long while.’
Rye leaned over the priest’s chest, leaving the scalpel imbedded in the man’s shoulder.
‘He seems to take a breath every couple of minutes. Can’t get close enough to hear his heartbeat, but it must be way down. Basically, he’s a vehicle. A chassis. A lump of meat steered left and right. Core body temperature doesn’t seem to matter.’
She stood back and contemplated the priest.
‘Is this what waits for us when we get home? Cities full of walking dead?’
Jane crossed the room. A table draped with a sheet.
‘What’s this?’
Rye pulled back the sheet.
‘Fucking hell,’ said Jane, covering her mouth.
A flayed body. Jane couldn’t tell if it had been male or female. Skin and muscle stripped away. A skeletal frame of bone and sinew. The body was still strapped to the table. Hands grasped. It twisted and squirmed like it
