The morning was an agonised parade of last-second glances.
Placing the muzzle swiftly and correctly required unbreakable concentration. The sound of breached crania and pressure-shocked brain tissue was blotted out by the noise of the bolt gun. Its air supply hose looped up behind Shanti like a black viper draped from the ceiling. The pneumatic snake fired its pointed tongue every time Shanti touched its trigger. Its bite was deadly.
‘Ice Pick! Chain speed, please!’
Shanti could hear the delight in Torrance’s voice. It was because Torrance knew that Ice Pick Rick Shanti was annihilating the Chosen like a machine.
‘One thirty-one, sir.’
‘Outstanding, Rick. You know how to make an old stockman very happy. No one’s going hungry in Abyrne when you’re on the stun. And, hey, don’t let this conversation slow you down.’
He didn’t.
At the same time he knew that sooner or later he would slow down and that it had nothing to do with anything Bob Torrance said.
Snatches of their language had come to him. He didn’t understand how exactly, only that it must have been the same way he picked up language from his own family as he grew up – because he needed to know it.
In front of him the access panel slid open and he shared a split second of eye contact with the Chosen before him.
‘God is supreme. The flesh is sacred.’
He placed the bolt gun to the centre of its forehead, pulled the trigger.
Hiss, clunk. The light in the eyes of the Chosen went out. He hit the completion button. The access panel slid shut.
It was intuitive perhaps that the beginning of each message would be some kind of greeting or possibly the name of the Chosen ‘speaking’ and that the end of each communication would be some kind of farewell. That wasn’t enough of an explanation for how he’d picked it up so easily, though. Shanti thought he knew the meaning of taps and breaths because they were so familiar.
On a subliminal level he heard the sounds every day. All the stockmen did. Therefore, in some way, the sounds the Chosen made must have become, at the very least, a ubiquitous part of MMP life. Such sounds would have been prevalent in every part of the factory, penetrating the unconscious mind of every worker. Shanti surmised that it would only take a little extra effort to begin interpreting the sounds and rhythms the Chosen made, translating them into the language of the townsfolk. He had worked there for ten years. It was no wonder that, once he’d decided it was language the Chosen were using and not just random noise, he’d come to understand it so quickly.
The panel opened. New eyes. The same eyes. Eyes he’d seen a hundred thousand times. Their colours differed, their bloodlines varied. He knew them all. He loved the Chosen in a way he could not communicate.
‘God is supreme. The flesh is sacred.’
Hiss, clunk.
Hit the button.
He thought about the language all the time, trying hard in his waking hours to make connections between groups and types of taps and the accompanying hisses and sighs. It was at night, however, that the real leaps came to him. He would dream that BLUE-792 was signalling to him and then speaking the meaning of each phrase. In the morning Shanti would remember every nuance and he would run harder to work, keen to test his new knowledge.
Eyes. Beautiful eyes.
‘…supreme… sacred.’
Hiss, clunk.
Red button.
It took only a few days of this for his excitement to turn to a deeper dread of the plant than before. He could not unlearn what the Chosen were saying to each other. The meanings of many pattered exchanges became clearer and Shanti found himself heartsick over what he heard. Manning the bolt gun, what everyone loved him for, had become a new nightmare. Far worse than before.
‘…supreme.’
Hiss, clunk.
‘…sacred.’
Hiss, clunk.
Sacred.
Hiss, clunk.
One by one he dropped the Chosen, sent them to the bleeding station knowing none would recover consciousness on his shift. His part was done and done well. But he heard them now in every part of the plant. There was very little he no longer understood about the nature of the Chosen. They were noble in a way that few in Abyrne could ever understand. Except John Collins and his followers.
In the crowd pens that led to the restrainer they spoke a prayer to each other. Shanti now heard the prayer hundreds of times a day:
Hhaah, Ssuuh. Your time comes. Surely it comes. May you go forward into your time with great dignity. May you hold your head up before the deft ones and welcome their shining points and blades. May your nightfall be complete before they take what you go to give. We who give, we who are certain to follow, salute you. On a far tomorrow we will see you with new eyes. We will see you in a land where pain is not even a memory, where what we go to give will not be asked for again. Hah, suh. Surely your time comes. Give what you have to give, give it freely. We who give salute you for we are certain to follow. Haah, suuh. For all our times come.
Looking into their eyes, pulling the trigger of the bolt gun became harder and harder to do. The gun itself seemed heavier than before, a gun made of lead. He believed he’d been a man of peace all these years. Doling out the inevitable with true compassion and skill. Never allowing a morsel of meat to pass his lips. But here he was, performing his duty still and fully conscious now of what it meant. Here he was listening to the gentle Chosen prepare for their premature, violent deaths with the grace of saints. No Parson of the Welfare could come close to their purity of heart. The townsfolk did not begin to understand the manner of evil that ruled Abyrne. The town was rotten, and everyone in it, save just a few, were the worms that fed on its foulness.
Shanti knew he was the rottenest worm of them all. He was the stun man, the bolt gunner, the stockman every MMP worker respected for his death-dealing talent. Shanti was the killer that made the way the town worked possible.
Everything began and ended with him.
Ten
‘What else have you filled their heads with?’
‘I haven’t bothered with their heads. It’s their spirits I’ve communicated with. The townsfolk are hungry, Magnus, but not for the tainted meat you provide. They’re hungry for truth and righteousness. They want their spirits to overflow with joy. They want freedom. Not a line of products you’ll ever be able to supply.’
‘The more shit you talk to me, the more pleasure I’m going to take in dismembering you, son. You have to be the cheekiest bastard I’ve ever met, but it’s not your bollocks talking. I could respect a man with some bollocks. No, you’re talking this way to me because you’re not right in the head. No freak is going to ruin my business. No psycho is going to twist the minds of the people in this town. But I’m curious about what I’ve been hearing from my people. They’ve been telling me stranger stuff than you’ve told me. Maybe you’re too scared to tell me your secrets. Maybe you think I’ll steal them.’
Collins laughed. Raucous, delighted guffaws. Laughter too big for a man of his diminutive frame.
‘Shut up, Collins or I’ll cancel this fight you want and we’ll start taking you apart right now.’
Collins blinked the tears of laughter away as best he could and said, ‘You’ve got all the power, Magnus. You start on me whenever you want. I’ll miss knocking your teeth down your throat, though.’
Shit, thought Magnus, I’m going to start thinking that people talking to me like this is normal if I’m not careful. The sooner we get this over with the better. This bloke’s doing my fucking brain in and we can’t have that. No, no, no.