She, too, had begun as a parentless child, seconded to the cause. They were orphans, he thought. Waifs. Monstrous ones certainly. But still…
She took his hand and held it between her breasts.
He appreciated that.
37
ACID DROP
Vanqua watched the big woman winched up. She hung suspended, feet just off the ground. The improvised rope harness cut into her bulbous thighs. She looked lewd trussed like this — stripped to inner field garments and bound.
This was the climactic act. The culmination of years. Obscene, but it had to be done.
Zuiden, the only other person in the gloomy space, stood holding the chain hoist’s control stalk. He wore the attendant’s protective clothing — overalls, helmet, acid-resistant boots.
Fitting, Vanqua thought. Just the two of them. The act, too intimate to be a spectacle, was like a sacrament in a crypt. He stared again at the gone-to-seed body that once had pressed against his sister… corrupted her flesh, provoked her death.
‘So, finally,’ he said, ‘you know why. Now you’ll feel how.’
Rhonda’s face remained a sneer, her voice a satirical lilt. ‘I could forgive you for being a one-dimensional bourgeois twit — except you’re so bloody boring.’
His whole body trembled. He suspected his hands were shaking. The effect of the moment was like wind chill blowing from his core. She hadn’t given an inch. He was reluctantly impressed.
He signalled Zuiden to begin. The chain hoist whirred and dragged her up. Zuiden ran it along the overhead rail until she dangled above the vat.
Interesting that both ‘department heads’ were here to witness the dissolving, one intimately.
Unfortunately the alloy lip of the vat obscured his view, but he knew her swollen feet were only inches above the acid.
He called, ‘You’re about to suffer terribly. How do you feel?’
‘Clad in the beauty of a thousand suns.’
‘I don’t take your meaning.’
‘You’re too dreary to understand.’
His shaking was embarrassing. He disliked Zuiden seeing him like this. It made him feel exposed. Disassociation, essential to killing technique, was part of Department S philosophy.
Zuiden said tonelessly, ‘Your call,’ his face death-mask sober.
This was the moment, the culmination of revenge.
The shaking. My God. He grabbed one of the metal chairs, turned it so he could prop a knee on it, then held the back with both hands. That was better. He took two deep breaths, called, ‘Very slow. Begin.’
Zuiden prodded a button. The perverted bitch dropped 3 inches and stopped, her mass slightly bouncing on the rope. But she’d lifted her legs.
He motioned to Zuiden again. Her body dropped more. No matter how she writhed, her toes would soon be dissolving.
He waited for the agonised bellows.
They never came.
Her face contorted. Her legs dropped. Steam rose from the vat.
Cyanide!
He howled with rage and smashed the chair against the wall.
38
JOHN
The next morning the showers were on. They waited in queues to get clean. The naked Hunt was so stunning that no one in the bathroom, male or female, could drag away their eyes.
As they dressed, he said, ‘You’ve got an amazing body.’
‘And EXIT’s fully exploited it, I assure you.’
They queued again for breakfast, then joined the crowd in the lounge while lists were posted on the board. Everyone had been allocated times when they were authorised to leave the building. Their time was 3 pm.
Cain said, ‘Bugger this. Let’s try and get out of here.’
They followed the first batch to the alcove for kitting up. Each person was ticked off at the door by two over-large young surgeons.
‘Must be cadets,’ Hunt murmured.
‘Just shows how stretched they are.’
When they reached for their hanging outer suits, one of the youths confronted them. ‘You two aren’t scheduled till afternoon.’ The thickness of his neck, the sloping set of his shoulders, everything about him was hostile. The second cadet closed ranks behind the first.
Young punks, Cain thought — super-sensitive to hierarchy, measuring personal success by the degree of intimidation. He said, ‘Stop strutting. I’m not impressed.’
‘What are you on about?’
‘Ever killed anyone, son?’ He doubted they had. He knew that Hunt was probably wired enough to take them single-handed — chopping throats and poking eyes without them seeing it coming. But he could no longer trust his damaged body in a fight against young animal fitness.
Then Zuiden entered the porch, eyebrows encrusted, breathing vapour. The apprentice thugs snapped to attention.
Zuiden said, ‘Two against the world, huh? Don’t try it, Cain. You’ll lose.’
‘Been monitoring us, have you?’
‘Yes, God knows why. You’re an invalid and you’ve lost it. Without a gun you’re stuffed. So what’s your beef?’
‘I want to see John.’
‘Your wants don’t count.’
Cain knew the surgeon had expected him to say Rhonda and that the request had surprised him. He also knew they didn’t want fuss and were barely coping as it was. And that despite Zuiden’s blustering, a dentist Grade Four was the biggest threat in the base. ‘I want to see him, or I’ll make things very difficult for you here.’
Zuiden weighed it up, then turned to the two thugs. ‘Let him through. Not her.’
Cain flashed a glance at the savage-eyed Hunt that said, ‘Hold your fire. I’ll be back.’
He walked with Zuiden across the cold vault beneath the domes, his felt-lined rubber-soled boots slipping on the overtrodden ice.
‘If you took the cadets,’ Zuiden said, ‘there’s still the guardhouse. And if you got past that we’d come after you. And even if we didn’t, where the hell would you go?’
Cain knew he was right. Sixteen countries operated over thirty permanent bases in Antarctica and all kinds of expeditions shared the ice. For an uninhabitable wilderness it was becoming rather densely populated. Even tourism was becoming a problem. But Alpha was as isolated as Vostok, 800 kilometres from anywhere, with the only workable egress by a full-scale traverse or a Herc. And two fleeing people couldn’t organise either. He turned to Zuiden. ‘If reincarnation exists, I bet you come back as a bird.’
‘I’ll bite.’ Zuiden drawled. ‘Why?’
‘So you can shit on people.’
Zuiden chuckled. ‘I’ll piss on your grave before I go.’ He walked up steps into the cold porch of a red-painted building and told the two cadets inside the entrance, ‘This piece of Paki shit has clearance to see number three. He gets an hour in there. Any fuss, buzz me.’
The pope had a cabin-like room with a desk and a bed. He wore polar clothes too big for him and was correcting a typed manuscript. As Cain entered, he looked around, astonished. ‘Ray!’ He lurched up from his chair to embrace him, knocking papers flying.
Cain said, ‘Thank God you’re all right.’
‘They said you were almost killed.’
‘They’ve patched me up. But I’m not good.’
‘How wonderful to see you.’ He sat down again a little breathless, beaming with delight.
Cain helped gather up the papers. ‘I think they’re going to kill us. I don’t trust things here.’
‘No. But events don’t matter. Only what we are.’
‘But I’m afraid for you.’
John smiled. ‘Leave what happens to God. Why complain? What we are now is all there ever is.’
‘I know that theoretically but…’ He sat on the bunk. There wasn’t a second chair.
John leaned forward and held Cain’s hand in both of his, his face full of kindness. ‘Relax. Come back inside.’