The Boney was squat and barrel-chested, his head a wrinkled, hairless globe. He was dressed in a crudely cut sheet of surface material. He grinned and Rees saw that his cavernous mouth was totally without teeth. “What’s the matter, boy? Aren’t you going to give old Quid a hand?”
Rees found his fingers tightening about the strands of the net. Jame stood over him with a package of iron. “Come on, lad. Take this stuff and get off the plate. You haven’t any choice, you know. And if you show you’re afraid it will go the worse for you.”
Rees felt a whimper rising in his throat; it was as if all the revolting speculation he had ever heard about the Boneys’ way of life had returned to unman him.
He clamped his lips together. Damn it, he was a Scientist Second Class. He summoned up the steady, tired gaze of Hollerbach. He would come through this. He had to.
He untwined his fingers from the netting and stood up, forcing the rational half of his mind to work. He felt heavy, sluggish; the gravity was perhaps one and a half gee. So the mass of the little planet must have been — what? Thirty tons?
He took the iron and, without hesitation, stepped off the plate and onto the surface. His feet sank a few inches into the stuff. It was soft, like a coarse cloth, and covered with hair strands which scratched his ankles; and, oh, god, it was warm, like the hide of some huge animal—
Or human.
Now, to his horror, his bladder released; dampness slid down his legs.
Quid opened his toothless mouth and roared with laughter.
Jame, from the security of the plate, said: “There’s no shame, lad. Remember that.”
The strange trade was over, and Jamie worked his controls. With a puff of hot steam the plate lifted, leaving four charred craters in the soft surface. Within a few seconds the plate had dwindled into a fist-sized toy in the air.
Rees dropped his eyes. His urine had formed a pool about his feet and was seeping into the surface.
Quid stepped toward him, his footsteps crunching. “You’re a Boney now, lad! Welcome to the arsehole of the Nebula.” He gestured to the puddle at Rees’s feet. “And I wouldn’t worry about that.” He grinned and licked his lips. “You’ll be glad of it when you’re a bit thirstier…”
Foul speculations ran through Rees’s mind; he shuddered, but kept his gaze steady on Quid. “What do I do now?”
Again Quid laughed. “Well, that’s up to you. Stand here and wait for a ride that will never come. Or follow me.” He winked and, the iron under his arm, strode away across the yielding surface.
Rees stood there for a few seconds, reluctant to leave even the faint shadow of his link with the world away from this place. But he really had no option; this grotesque character was his only fixed point.
Shifting the weight of iron in his arms he stepped cautiously across the hot, uneven ground.
They walked about halfway round the worldlet’s circumference. They passed crude shacks scattered in random patterns over the surface; most of the buildings were simple tents of surface material, barely enough to keep out the rain, but others were more substantial, based, Rees saw, on iron frames. Quid laughed. “Impressed, miner? We’re coming up in society, aren’t we? See, they all used to shun us. The Raft, the miners, everybody. Much too proud to associate with the likes of the Boneys, after the ‘crime’ we commit to live… But now the stars are going out. Eh, miner? Suddenly they’re all struggling to survive; and suddenly they’re learning the lessons we learned, all those thousands of shifts ago.” He leaned closer to Rees and winked again. “It’s all trade, you see. For a bit of iron, a few luxuries, we fill the miners’ empty food pods. As long as they get a nicely packaged pod they don’t have to think too hard about what’s in it. Am I right?” And he laughed again, spraying Rees’s face with spittle.
Rees shrank away, unable to speak.
A few children emerged from the huts to stare at Rees, their faces dull, their naked bodies squat and filthy. The adults barely registered his passing; they sat in tight circles in their huts, chanting a low, haunting song. Rees could not make out words but the melody was cyclic and compelling.
Quid said, “So sorry if we seem antisocial. There’s a whale in the Coreward sky, see; soon we’ll be singing him close.” Quid’s eyes grew dreamy and he licked his lips.
Skirting a particularly shabby hut Rees’s foot broke through the surface. He found himself ankle-deep in foul, stinking waste. With a cry he backed away and began rubbing his feet against a cleaner section of surface.
Quid roared with laughter.
From within the hut a voice told him, “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”
Rees glanced up, startled by the voice’s familiarity. Forgetting the filth he stepped closer to the gloom of the hut, peered inside. A man sat alone. He was short and blond, and his frame was gaunt and wrapped in the remnants of a tunic. His face was obscured by a tangle of beard—"Gord. Is it you?”
The man who had once been the Belt’s chief engineer nodded ruefully. “Hello, Rees. I can’t say I expected to see you. I thought you’d stowed away to the Raft.”
Rees glanced around; Quid seemed prepared to wait for him, evidently highly amused. Rees squatted down and briefly outlined his story. Gord nodded sympathetically. His eyes were bloodshot and seemed to loom out of the darkness.
“But what are you doing here?”
Gord shrugged. “One foundry implosion too many. One death too many. Finally they decided it was all my fault and sent me down here… There are quite a few of us Belters here, you know. At least, quite a few have been brought here… Times have worsened since you escaped. A few thousand shifts ago exiling someone down here would have been unthinkable. We barely acknowledged the existence of the place; until we started trading I wasn’t even sure the damn Boneys existed.” He reached for a globe of some liquid; he raised it to his lips, suppressing a shudder as he drank.
Rees, watching him, became abruptly aware of his own powerful thirst.
Gord lowered the globe and wiped his lips. “But I’ll tell you, in a way I was glad when they finally found me guilty.” His eyes were red. “I was so sick of it, you see; the deaths, the stink of burning, the struggle to rebuild walls that couldn’t even support themselves—” He dropped his eyes. “You see, Rees, those of us who are sent here have earned what’s happening to us. It’s a judgment.”
“I’ll never believe that,” Rees murmured.
Gord laughed; it was a ghastly, dry sound. “Well, you’d better.” He held out his globe. “Here. Are you thirsty?”
Rees stared at it with longing, imagining the cool trickle of water over his tongue — but then speculations about the origin of the liquid filled him with disgust, and he pushed it away, shaking his head.
Gord, eyes locked on Rees’s, took another deep draught. “Let me give you some advice,” he said softly. “They’re not killers here. They won’t harm you. But you have a stark choice. You either accept their ways — eat what they eat, drink what they drink — or you’ll finish in the ovens. That’s the way it is.
“You see, in some ways it makes sense. Nothing is wasted.” He laughed, then fell silent.
An eerie, discordant song floated into the hut. “Quid said something about singing to the whales,” Rees said, eyes wide. “Could that be—”
Gord nodded. “The legends are true… and quite a sight to see. Maybe you’ll understand it better than I do. It makes a kind of sense. They need some input of food from outside, don’t they? Something to keep this world from devouring itself to skin and bones — although the native life of the Nebula isn’t all that nutritious, and there are a few interesting bugs you can catch — I suspect that’s the reason the original Boneys weren’t allowed to return to the Raft…”