Colony Read online

  Eddie forces his face towards the rupture. Bizarrely, it's beginning to shrink in size.

  Perhaps his vision is being distorted by the tears in his eyes, partly caused by the savage rush of air, mostly by hysterical fear. He blinks. No, the hole is definitely getting smaller. And as the fissure diminishes to non-life-threatening dimensions, the sound of escaping oxygen decreases, and Eddie can hear the material in the wall knitting itself back together, and by the time the hole has dwindled to basketball size, he can actually see the discrete sections of the fabric melding with each other energetically.

  In less than ninety seconds after the gunshot, the rupture has repaired itself, and no evidence of any damage remains.

  Eddie is still curled over, like a Lowry hunchback, with one hand on the floor. The other occupants of the hoist are calmly smoothing back their hair and unruffling their clothes.

  'Spectacular demonstration, eh, Charles?' The Captain drags an expensive comb through his steely locks, and briskly fluffs up his beard.

  Eddie can manage no response beyond a passable impression of a freshly landed gagging halibut.

  The Captain slips his comb into a top pocket. 'The material from which this beauty is constructed is organic.'

  Eddie tries not to plan murder.

  'SR2OM. It's organic, yet it's synthesized. A synthetic living fabric. Airtight, stronger than steel and self-repairing, which is the part you're probably grateful for.' The Captain nods a chuckly kind of nod, and Eddie's murder plans can no longer be resisted. 'The ship is constructed from the same material.'

  There is a jolt, and everyone staggers as the upward motion ceases. Then a series of clicks and whirrs as machinery negotiates with machinery. The hoist has reached its destination. They are docking.

  They are aboard the Willflower.

  Eddie feels a small pang of disappointment. 'We don't get to see the ship? From the outside?'

  Section Leader Peck looks at him with something approaching repugnance from the wrong direction. 'What for? It's a ship. It's a big ship. It's dark. It's a big dark ship.' Eddie suddenly feels like he's in nursery school again. 'There's nothing to see.'

  'It's where I'll be spending the rest of my life. I'd have liked to see it, that's all.'

  Peck shakes her head and turns away, like he's a battlefield casualty with a stupidly inoperable number of bullets in his brain, and she has more promising wounded to attend to. She's a brutal, intolerant, unromantic woman, and probably casually cruel to boot. Eddie is starting to feel incredibly horny.

  The hoist is plunged into temporary darkness. Eddie tries to use its cover to shuffle over towards Section Leader Peck and stand very close to her. Not to touch her or fondle her or anything crude like that. Just to stand close. Perhaps even close enough to breathe in her perfume. But the darkness is too complete, and he can't be sure whose body he's pointing his nostrils at. He breathes in hopefully, anyway. He's at the wrong party. The person he's sniffing smells very strongly of carbolic soap.

  Then a bright green light burrs across the floor and starts passing over them like a giant luminous hula hoop. As it reaches their faces, Eddie is astonished to find he is indeed standing close to Peck. For reasons probably best left unconsidered, his heart balloons at the thought that this woman scrubs herself with carbolic soap. In the passing green glow, she looks at him with a perfect combination of confusion and disgust, and by the time the light has hit the ceiling and expired, Eddie is in love.

  In the small ensuing darkness he senses her moving away, but he doesn't try to follow. Instead, he directs a wonderful, short, erotic mind-movie of Officer Peck curled over in a small tin bath, scrubbing away at some stain, perhaps some imaginary sinful stain that can never be removed, with a bar of the stern-scented soap that will never lather, no matter how brutally she rubs. No pornographically graphic body parts, not so much as the suggestive swell of a breast. Just the relentless scrubbing of the wet bare flesh, and a rogue strand of hair dangling from the otherwise ruthless bob. The soundtrack: utter silence, punctuated only by a handful of resilient, breathy, slightly desperate grunts. It goes straight to number one in Eddie's mental movie chart.

  He's still replaying it when the lights flicker back on. He blinks and looks around for the real, flesh-and-blood Peck. She's a long, long way from him. She must have been sprinting in the dark to have made it that far away in that space of time. Eddie's getting more aroused by the minute. He barely notices the hoist doors haul themselves apart.

  It is, perhaps, a sad indictment of the male mind that Eddie should be thus distracted at what is undeniably a momentous event in his life. This is his first sight of the ship on which he will spend the rest of his existence, on which he will eventually die. But he has to drag his attention round and slap its face like a Gestapo interrogator before he can take it in.

  He feels only a mild sense of disappointment.

  It's a corridor on a spaceship.

  It's larger than he expected but, apart from that, unremarkable. There are people using the corridor, who look quite a lot like the rest of the people in the hoist. He feels as if he's just arrived at a happily anticipated holiday destination, only to realize as soon as he steps off the plane he's going to hate it in about three days.

  The Captain sweeps him into the corridor. 'Naturally, Charles, you'll be wanting to see how your models have been practicablized.'

  Practicablized?

  'Why don't you slope off to your quarters, shine up your bits and have a wander. We'll meet up for a bite of supper in, say, an hour or so? You'll have a million questions for me doubtless. I certainly have several millions for you.'

  Eddie grins and tries to say 'Great!' and think 'Bugger' and manages not to get them the wrong way round. Millions of questions. Not just one or two. Way beyond the bluff zone. Eddie has some serious cramming to do if he wants to avoid being shot out into deep space in a garbage canister.

  Gwent strides off, leaving Eddie lost and a little confused. Presumably, he's meant to know the way to his rooms. After all, he is supposed to be responsible for planning the layout here.

  Thankfully, the Captain stops, wheels round and bellows back at him: 'Oh! Room's been re-allocated, Charles. Haven't been fiddling with your blueprints, but something came up. Somebody can show you up.' He looks around and spots Peck walking away as fast as she can without breaking into a trot. 'Jezebel!' She stops instantly, like a bolas has been hurled around her legs. 'You can do the honours.'

  She hangs her head slightly and barks, 'Fine.' Without looking back, she says, 'This way, Gordon' -- Savage. Not even Mr Gordon -- and hurtles off.

  Jezebel, eh? Cruel. Eddie likes that.

  It takes him three twists of the corridor to catch her up, even though he's calling 'Whoa' and 'Slow down' most of the time. His legs have still not recovered from the taximan's tender attentions, not to mention the brutal kick on the shin and the possible insect sting or potential reptile bite. He's breathless and in quite a bit of pain by the time he intercepts Peck at the doors of an internal transway stop.

  She's looking up at the transway's readout, trying to will it down faster.

  Eddie's still summoning up the courage to attempt a conciliatory advance, an I-can't-help-feeling-we-got-off-on-the-wrong-foot kind of approach, but Peck kills it stone dead. 'I can't help feeling we got off on exactly the right foot, Gordon. You've made it perfectly clear what kind of man you are, and precisely how far you're prepared to go to ingratiate yourself with the community leader. You are slime, you are filth, you are insectoidal excrement, and I want as little to do with you as humanly possible. Now and for the rest of the mission.'

  The rest of the mission? Isn't the mission supposed to last for the rest of their lives, and beyond?

  Now, what is this all about? Eddie got lost halfway through her diatribe, there. He started out thinking she was ticking him off for standing too close to her in the hoist. Which would have been understandable. Although it was a small and relatively inoff
ensive thing to do, he feels guilty about it anyway -- probably because of those insanely lurid erotic bath imaginings. But then she seemed to veer off on some bizarre tack about him sucking up to the Captain.

  'Whoa, slow down.' Is Eddie going to spend the rest of his life repeating that phrase? 'If this is about what happened in the hoist

  'What? What happened in the hoist?'

  'Nothing. Nothing happened in the hoist. That's exactly what I'm saying.'

  There is an excruciating silence. She's looking at him now. A narrow-eyed snake stare. 'I've met your kind before. You try and conceal your scheming with this clumsy patina of social stupidity and buffoonery. Well, you're not fooling me. And, believe me, you will not dupe Captain Gwent for long, either.'

  Eddie shakes his head. This isn't a clumsy patina of social stupidity and buffoonery: this is really Eddie. 'I honestly don't understand what I've done to distress you, Jezebel.' As soon as her name escapes from his lips, he knows he was wrong to invoke it. Her eyes get narrower and she leans in closer. Eddie tries not to smell the carbolic, but he can't help himself.

  'Really? Then you've forgotten that little stunt you pulled at the shuttle station? Well I haven't. You chose the wrong person as your whipping boy. I don't like being the source of amusement. And you can be sure my response will be... positive.'

  She raises her upper right lip in a feline sneer smile and wheels round into the waiting transway carriage.

  The shuttle station? It must have been something Eddie said when he answered that question he hadn't heard. Incredible. He's managed to offend this paragon of desirability beyond the possibility of redemption without even trying. How's that for bad luck?

  He steps into the carriage, just escaping the doors as they slice shut in response to Peck's prodding. Eddie can't think of anything to say that might dispel this bizarre misunderstanding, so the journey is elongated by the uncomfortable silence. He actually feels as if the ambient temperature has dropped by a measurable ten degrees Celsius by the time his floor arrives. He's on the verge of shivering.

  She's out in the corridor and round the first bend before Eddie can gather his wits and follow. He catches a glimpse of her at the end of the next section of corridor. Her legs are long and lithe, they carry her along swiftly without her ever seeming to hurry. Eddie can't help thinking they must take a lot of scrubbing, those legs. You'd better stop this, Eddie. You're booking yourself a lifetime season ticket to frustration stadium.

  He rounds the next bend to find she's stopped. She's standing halfway along the corridor, arms folded, foot tapping, apparently interested only in the number above a door. Eddie's quarters, he guesses correctly.

  She doesn't look down at him, just nods at the door. 'This is your pen, Gordon.' And that sneer again.

  Eddie tries levity, even though he knows it won't work. It's the only tool at his disposal. 'Great. Now you'll know where to come when you're overwhelmed by passion.'

  This woman is capable of the most astonishingly accomplished smiles. She shoots him one of her best. Eddie can almost hear his testicles crack off his body, roll down his trouser legs and clunk to the floor. Without closing her incredibly non-kissable purple lips, she spins on her heels and is history.

  Eddie places his palm on his door sensor. The door sighs like a lovesick twelve-year-old, and Eddie steps into his new world.

  11

  His quarters are fine. Luxurious, even. Far better than you could reasonably expect. But, realistically, there isn't a room in the universe you can walk into and feel you'll be happy there for the rest of your life. The furnishings are tasteful, but it's Gordon's taste. There's a South American flavour. Too many primary colours screaming out for Eddie's liking. Red and yellow scatter cushions on an otherwise comfy-looking sofa. A rug that looks as if it might be nice to make love on, in the unlikely event, only it's yellow and bright blue, and thrusting up and down, towards and away from it at pace would be likely to induce some kind of vertiginous nausea. And here, on the mantelpiece over a fake ionic fire, two crouched skeletons with grinning skulls, from the Mexican Day of the Dead festival. Marvellous.

  Eddie deflates himself into an armchair, which surprises him by moulding its seat to the precise contours of his ass. Some semi-organic achievement in soft furnishings, probably. Disturbing, definitely.

  He'd like to sleep for about a century. He'd also like to shower for a day and a half and scrape away all the caked-on bloodstains the slapdash wash at the infirmary didn't get close to removing. He'd like a month in a bubble bath, too, so he could soak away the sticky stench-of-fear sweat that's built up all over his body over the course of the past few hours. But he can't afford these luxuries just yet. There's a lot of work to be done if he's going to stand even a remote chance of passing himself off as Charles Perry Gordon in the face of the Captain's upcoming question and answer session.

  He selects a wad of papers at random from Gordon's file. He thinks about removing his boots, which are Project issue, Gordon size. Which is to say a size and a half too small for Eddie. He'll have to order new ones, as soon as he feels that won't arouse suspicion. Lord knows when that might be. Over what time period is it acceptable for a grown man's feet to swell, suddenly, by two full sizes? And simultaneously gain an inch around the neck, shirt collar wise? And two and a half inches around the waist, all at the same time? How soon will he be able to acquire wearable clothing without giving the game away? On the other hand, how long can he get away with wearing these trousers without the crotch exploding, or the butt seam bursting?

  He elects not to remove the boots until he finally gets to bed. There's a good chance he won't be able to get them on again. Plus, there is the additional threat that his stockinged feet, in their current condition, might well set off the smoke alarm.

  He focuses on the first page. It's some kind of paper, penned by the real Charles Gordon. Its title almost sends Eddie into an instant stupor: 'Ethical, Moral and Psychological Considerations of the Successful Implementation of Adequate Gene Strand Distribution in Closed Systems over Multiple Generations'.

  Wow. Catchy. Could be a best seller.

  A wave of nausea washes over him. On this ship, that may well be true. It would probably fly off the shelves. And he's trapped here, for ever, in the company of Intellectuals, with a capital T. By which he means brainy people who think being brainy is the most wonderful thing anyone could possibly be. Who flash their intellects like body-builders flash their muscles. Who kick intellectual sand in the faces of puny mental six-stone weaklings like Eddie. Who imagine they have a superior, highly developed sense of humour, even though almost all their jokes involve word play and have exclamation marks on the end of them.

  Eddie feels his will to live draining down his legs and bubbling away out of the top of his boots. He sighs like a dirigible that's been punctured by a howitzer shell and leans back in the chair. This is a mistake. The chair back moulds itself around his shoulders and starts thrumming a gentle massage that melts his aching muscles. His eyes begin to close. The sound of water lapping at a lake shore...

  Eddie snaps bolt upright. He can't afford to rest. Not quite yet. He has a great deal of cramming to do. He focuses again on the document. '... Considerations of the Successful Implement...'

  But his attention has already wandered. Come on, Eddie. You're used to working through dull documents. You're an accountant, for crying out loud. You can at least assimilate the damned title of this thing.

  '... essful Implementation of Adequate Gene Strand Distribut...'

  A buzzer sounds, and the Captain's face appears in what Eddie had assumed to be a genuine fish tank.

  'DFI on the Q and A session, Charles.' Gwent's voice distorts either his own microphone or Eddie's speaker. Eddie has no idea what the acronym 'DFI' means, but it sounds urgent. 'Something's come up. Be in Planning Committee Room One, in five.' And his image splinters into a dozen koi carp before the howlaround has finished echoing.

  No! Eddie raises his ha
nd to his lip. Warm, dried sputum. He's been sleeping. He looks down at Gordon's crumpled treatise on the floor.

  He's out of the door and round three twists of corridor, desperately scanning Gordon's notes without focusing on them in the stupid hope that clusters of vital facts just might register with his subconscious mind, before he realizes he doesn't have a clue where Planning Committee Room One is.

  He stops and looks around, as if there might be a sign on one of the walls, or maybe even a 'You Are Here' machine with buttons and lights. No such luck. Suddenly inspired, he shuffles through Gordon's file, and digs out a plan of the ship. But it's a big ship, and the plan is small, with tiny print. Worse still, it's been folded by a consortium of world-class origami experts. Still he scrabbles through it, unfolding, re-folding, flapping, shaking and swearing and finally tracks down an index. His relief is only momentary. The index is non-alphabetical. There is an eighteen-paragraph tutorial at the top of it, headed 'How to Use this Index'. Eddie scans the first few lines. Apparently, the index is organized along the Chinese model of categorization. Eddie reorganizes it along the frustration model of torn to shreds.

  He employs his last resort. He asks someone for directions. The human race is divided into two kinds of people: those who think nothing of asking others for directions, and those who would rather remain hopelessly lost for all eternity and starve to death, albeit only millimetres away from their intended destination, than stop another human being and enquire of the way. Eddie conquers his fear. He asks. He ignores the expression that seems to suggest he's enquired for the route to his own head. He commits the first paragraph of the ludicrously complicated itinerary to memory, offers ridiculously copious gratitude and scoots off, becoming hopelessly lost within moments.

  By the time Eddie finally achieves his destination, he's past caring. He feels quite prepared to be shot out into deep space in a garbage canister. He's looking forward to it.