toward them.
‘Shut it down,’ he said simply when he reached them. The first prisoner obediently flipped a switch and the cauldron immediately began to cool.
‘What’s the story, man?’ asked the man with the goggles, blinking particles from his eyes.
‘Yeah,’ said the prisoner in the middle. ‘We been talkin’
about it, but we ain’t been able to decide.’
‘It’s been decided,’ Dillon informed him. He let his gaze rest on each of them in turn. ‘We’re all goin’. Maybe we didn’t know these people, but we show our respect. They wanna burn bodies, that’s fine by us, long as it isn’t one of us.’ Having imparted this information, he turned to leave.
The three men followed, the one with the goggles slipping them down around his neck. ‘Ain’t had a funeral in a long time.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed his companion sombrely. ‘I’ve been kind of missing the service. It’s so much like a passage, you know?
Off this place.’
‘Amen to that, brother,’ said the first man, increasing his stride to keep pace with the taller Dillon.
The old smelter creaked and groaned as it was juiced to life.
The immense chamber had been cut and blasted out of the solid rock directly above the ore body, then lined where necessary with heat-reflective shielding. Monitors and controls lined the walkways and railings. Cranes and other heavy tracked equipment rested silently where they had been parked by the departing miners. In the shadows thrown by the reduced lighting they resembled Mesozoic fossils escaped from some distant museum.
Flames began to flicker around the beveled edges of the holding pit. They heightened the stark figures of the two prisoners who stood on a crane suspended over the abyss. A pair of nylon sacks hung between them. Their limp contents caused them to sag noticeably in the middle.
Ripley gazed up at the men and their burden, her hands tightening on the rail that separated her from the artificial hell below. Clemens stood next to her, wanting to say something and, as always, failing to find the right words. Having used up all the consolation in his body a number of years ago, he now discovered there was none left for the single forlorn woman standing beside him.
Aaron was there too, and Dillon, and a number of the other prisoners. Despite the fact that the dead man had in fact been something of a government enforcer, none of them smiled or ventured sarcastic remarks. Death was too familiar a companion to all of them, and had been too much of a daily presence in their lives, to be treated with disrespect.
Andrews harrumphed importantly and opened the thin book he carried. ‘We commit this child and this man to your keeping, O Lord. Their bodies have been taken from the shadow of our nights. They have been released from all darkness and pain. Do not let their souls wander the void, but take them into the company of those who have preceded them.’
In the control centre below, the prisoner called Troy listened via ‘com to the proceedings on the catwalk overhead. When Andrews reached the designated place in the eulogy the prisoner tech began adjusting controls. Telltales shifted from yellow to green. A deep whine sounded behind him, rose to complaining pitch, and died. Other lights flashed ready.
Below the catwalk white-hot flame filled the smelting pit. It roared efficiently, impressively in the semi- darkness. No mountain of ore waited to greet the fire, no crowd of technicians stood ready to fine-tune the process of reducing tons of rubble to slag. The flames seared the sides of the pit and nothing more.
Tears ran slowly down Ripley’s cheeks as she stared at the controlled conflagration. She was silent in her sorrow and remembrance, making no noise, issuing no sounds. There were only the tears. Clemens looked on sympathetically. He wanted to take her in his arms, hold her, comfort her. But there were others present, Andrews among them. He stayed where he was.
‘The child and the man have gone beyond our world,’
Andrews droned on. ‘Their bodies may lie broken, but their souls are forever eternal and everlasting.’
‘We who suffer ask the question: Why?’ Eyes shifted from the superintendent to Dillon. ‘Why are the innocent punished?
Why the sacrifice? Why the pain?’ ‘There are no promises,’the big prisoner intoned solemnly. ‘There is no certainty. Only that some will be called. That some will be saved.’
Up on the crane the rising heat from the furnace finally became too much for the men stationed there. They rocked several times and heaved their burden into the pit, beating a hasty retreat for cooler climes. The sacks fell, tumbling a few times, before being swallowed by the inferno. There was a brief, slightly higher flicker of flame near the edge of the pit as the bags and their contents were instantly incinerated.
Ripley staggered slightly and clutched at Clemens’s arm. He was startled but held his ground, giving her the support she needed. The rest of the men looked on. There was no envy in their expressions; only sympathy. Dillon took no notice. He was still reciting.
‘But these departed spirits will never know the hardships, the grief and pain which lie ahead for those of us who remain.
So we commit these bodies to the void with a glad heart. For within each seed there is the promise of a flower, and within each death, no matter how small, there is always a new life. A new beginning.?
There was movement in the abattoir, a stirring amid the dangling carcasses and balletic wraiths of frozen air. The massive corpse of the ox twitched, then began to dance crazily in its chains.
There was no one to witness the gut swelling and expanding until the dead skin was taut as that of a crazed dirigible. No one to see it burst under the pressure, sending bits of flesh and fat flying. Internal organs, liver and stomach, coils of ropy intestines tumbled to the floor. And something else.
A head lifted, struggling upward with spasmodic, instinctive confidence. The compact nightmare turned a slow circle, scanning its surroundings. Hunting. Awkwardly at first but with astonishingly rapid assurance it began to move, searching.
It found the air duct and inspected it briefly before vanishing within.
From the time it had emerged from the belly of the ox until its studied disappearance, less than a minute had elapsed.
Upon concluding his speech Dillon bowed his head. The other prisoners did likewise. Ripley glanced at them, then back to the pit where the fires were being electronically banked. She reached up and scratched at her hair, then one ear. A moment later again. This time she looked down at her fingers.
They were coated with what looked like dark, motile dust.
Disgusted, she frantically wiped them clean against her borrowed jumpsuit, looked up to find Clemens eying her knowingly.
‘I warned you.’
‘Okay, I’m convinced. Now what do I do about it?’
‘You can live with it,’ he told her, ‘or. .’ He rubbed his naked pate and smiled regretfully.
Her expression twisted. ‘There’s no other way?’
He shook his head. ‘If there was we’d have found it by now.
Not that there’s been much impetus to do so. Vanity’s one of the first casualties of assignment to Fiorina. You might as well be comfortable. It’ll grow back after you leave, and if you don’t do anything in the meantime the bugs’ll eat the stuff right down to the roots anyway. They may be tiny, but they have large appetites and lousy table manners. Believe me, you’ll look worse if you try to ignore it, and you’ll scratch yourself silly.’
She slumped. ‘All right. Which way to the beauty parlor?’
The tech was apologetic. ‘I’m afraid you’re talking to it.’
The line of shower stalls was stark and sterile, pale white beneath the overheads. Presently all were deserted save one.
As the hot, chemically treated water cascaded down her body, Ripley studied herself in the mirror that formed part of one wall.
Strange to be without hair. It was such a slight, ephemeral part of one’s body. The only aspect of one’s appearance that could be altered easily and at will. She felt herself physically diminished somehow, a queen suddenly bereft of her crown.
