The Chromosome Game (29 page)

‘And armed.’

‘Check. Trell. There’s no chance. Not any more.’

‘Don’t say it. Gotta believe something. You’re the philosopher. I always believed in you.’

‘I only had dreams.’

‘Krand, I’m sticking by those dreams.’

‘They’re in shreds.’

Trell’s eyes steeled. ‘They’re not just your property. We shared what we must fight for now.’

But something weirdly calm about Krand. He was limp, drained. His voice went different. Now, just the Report. Final Report. ‘Trell. I’ve secured the two main bulkheads: One between here and the hoist; the other cutting-off the passenger elevator shaft. They won’t hold for long. They’ll shoot out the locks.’

Trell stared at Krand. It was appalling to see absolute defeat. Trell spoke impersonally, matter-of-fact: ‘Is that the last bulkhead between us and them?’

‘You despise me.’

‘
Is
it?’

‘There’s one more. Cass is trying to seal it off but it’s only thin sheet steel. They’ll beat it in and they’ll kill. Us. Then each other. It’s because they cannot believe they exist. There’s no difference between life and death, not now.’

‘Krand. How can I possibly despise you? I’m asking you to do what you no longer believe in. Will you?’

‘What’s the use?’

‘Dammit!
Will
you?’

‘Go on.’

‘Krand. There’s fresh life on the deck below. Fresh life! You understand me? The deck below!’

Krand nodded. ‘And you want me to protect this life? What for? More horror? — Embryos for a reincarnated Sladey regime?’

‘Sladey may not survive. The new batch may learn. Hallow might just re-program the Computer. We can’t know.’

‘And we can’t gamble with two hundred more lives. How do we give them a better deal?’

‘Krand, we have to try! Make their lives better. We
try
!’

‘It’s no use, Trell. Hear that? They’ve reached the bulkheads!’

‘Krand, this is what we do. Very little time, so listen! I’m gonna try to hold the corridor leading to the girls’ quarters, I’m connecting two wires to the electric main, get as many of the bastards as I can by electrocution. See? You do the same outside here, try to stop them rushing us from the Hoist Area once they’ve blown that bulkhead, try to stop them getting down to ZD-Two, they don’t know it exists so don’t make it look like that, okay? I’ll protect Helen, somehow.’

‘Sure.’

‘You have maybe three minutes to rig up those electric wires.’

But there was death in Krand’s acknowledging smile.

Trell tore aft along the corridor, stopped near the electrical outlet by the entrance of the dormitory area, ripped out some cable from the lighting circuit, connected it his end.

*

Over at General Motors the lights had gone dead. The invaders had cut the cable. A solitary candle lighted Customer Relations.

Nembrak knelt at Fulda’s side. He forced himself to look at her head. The wound was terrible.

‘Nembrak?’

‘Fulda?’

‘Why did you lie to Trell? — Saying there’s no cyanide?’

‘Does it matter, now?’

‘It matters.’

‘The knowledge that there really was some cyanide … That would have been taking away something from him.’

‘The will to live.’

‘Yes.’

Fulda’s head dropped back, lifeless.

Nembrak poured himself a stiff gin, went to the window, stared at
Kasiga
.

Like crazed army ants, dark shadows seethed on her hull, fighting to get through the narrow funnels that were the two entrances. As he watched, two of them slid off, careened down the shell of the submarine, smashed themselves in the ravine.

Nembrak picked up the phial of cyanide, tipped it in his drink, finished the carton in one gulp.

*

‘Kelda!
Kelda!
Where
are
you?
’

*

‘Cass! Thank God it’s you!’

‘In here, Trell. Refrigeration Room. Haven’t got long …’ He led the way in, snatched a pencil sketch from his pocket. ‘I’ve managed to close this bulkhead, this one here, it’s between the Recreation Area and the dormitories —’

‘— Bulkhead C.’

‘Right.’

‘What are these pencil marks?’

‘Once they’re through that bulkhead they’ll try and come down via these two routes: along past the gymn … here, that’s one way; and the far end of the Recreation Area … that’s here. I got some guys packed against both doors —’

‘— But the mob will shoot their way through them.’

‘Trell, there’s a chance their guns can be grabbed off them from behind. I’ve got a group headed by Milem waiting in the teaching cubicles. They’ll take them from the rear. See? Like this? Knights. You know their move …’

A scarlet pool began to appear, then enlarge, on Cass’s pencil sketch, till it trickled off the edge and started sploshing onto the deck.

‘— Cass, that your blood? Chrissakes, blood pouring from your chest, you gotta lie down.’

‘Ironic, isn’t it? I did it while I was fixing up that bulkhead, cut it on the steel edge.’

‘Well, lie down, you dope!’

‘Lie down? — It’s a main artery … Stupid part of it is, Trell, there’s no insulin left and I still want to live, beat that!’

Trell ripped the sleeve off his tunic.

Cass managed, ‘Tourniquet? How do you propose to put that around my neck? …’ Abruptly, the incision in a main artery split apart. Blood projectiled from the wound like a gusher on an oil field. Cass was gone.

And somehow, Helen was there. She put out a hand and let Cass’ blood-drenched head rest upon it. Her voice was muted yet controlled. ‘They’ll go after us blacks first.’

‘Except Milem will deal them quite some hand before the cards run out. Where’s Kelda?’

‘Organising the girls. They’ve got one of the loading-trolleys crammed with bed-frames, kind of like a military tank. Idea is to force it along the corridor — up this way.’

‘Can’t work, it’s crazy!’

‘It should delay them, Trell.’

‘Christ! What was that?’ A sudden, snarling tremolo, like flailing piano strings, shivered throughout the ship. It was followed by a thud. Its impact knocked a fluorescent tube from the lighting array overhead. The tube smashed into the floor while the compression-waves from the echo eerily crisscrossed each other throughout the carcass of the submarine.

The faintest of smiles showed on Helen’s tautened lips. ‘The girls planned to cut the hausers of the elevator. Seems like they’ve succeeded.’

Trell said, ‘The girls have been busy.’

Helen’s smile withered. ‘Except it won’t stop them. Listen!’

‘Like animals.’

Helen said, ‘Do animals shoot with guns at their own kind? … Trell, Krand has given up. I knew last night.’

‘Get to his side and he’ll think again.’

‘He told me to get clear and just slammed the computer-room door on me. Trell …
Why
? He’s always been so strong.’

‘And he’s always been so right.’

A clear look passed between them. Nothing more was said about it. From only a few decks up the guns spoke again.

Helen said, ‘What do we do?’

‘We wait. Meanwhile go aft and ask Kelda to scrap the trolley idea. She and the rest will be mown down. They’ll be butterflies hosed-down with insecticide. You, Kelda, the rest … Bolt yourselves in and keep out of the line of fire. Don’t wait.’

‘Kelda will want to be with you.’

Trell’s face contorted: ‘You and Kelda are no use to me if you’re riddled with holes!
Get
moving
!’

*

The waiting.

Silence, now. Yet you could feel them creeping down toward you, grappling with derelict stairs, using ropes where cankers had eaten away those that had rotted away. Insane creatures now, acting from primaeval instincts but activating weapons that would, with such finality, express them.

And Trell seemed to see, in abstract cinema, all that had gone before … Nembrak and Fulda and Triumph and Nicola, laughing from the counter of the Disco Dive and tricking the computer for that extra Special … Eagle, so thoughtful on his horse, Krand immobile in the flight simulator. He saw Sakini and Inikas torturing Hallow into extremes of delight, whilst Cass, patient and tolerant, remained immune at the chessboard … Mendra, slim and magnificent — but human and inarticulate and self-adoring — confronted for the first time with the real-time beauty of her native Provence …

… And Kelda, reaching up to him on the swivelling, treacherous stairs, as the two of them had gone aloft to the Vacuum chamber, there to make love. All this to be erased forever? …

If Krand — wise and poised, profound in natural philosophy — If Krand thought this, how could it not be so?

Yet the anger in Trell did not permit such enlightenment. With a yell, he crashed his fist down on the table-top, so near to where Cass lay dead.

Then he leapt out of the refrigeration room, heaved the heavy door hermetically shut, and rushed down the corridor to his place of duty. There, the cables were ready and connected.

It was fundamental to fight.

*

They converged from four decks.

And they were even laughing, some of them — maniac laughter and slithering blood.

There was coloured tracer.

You could see it kill, actually see it do the job.

It came out of the muzzle of the Thompsons and it made patterns while the people screamed.

Bodies gushed scarlet blood and painted the broken ship.

The dying did not know they were dying and the living did not know that they lived, it was all the same, it didn’t matter, this was real action, wasn’t it, why hadn’t they put this in the movies, it would have been great in the movies.

*

Just as the main lights on ZD-One blew out Milem staggered up to Trell, wounded.

Trell hit the switch for the battery lights.

Milem’s face sweated in their dim glow. ‘Trell, they got Krand, and when they got him he dropped the live cables —’

‘— That’s what blew the lights?’

‘Yeah, but those wires you’re holding, they’re dead. Wouldn’t kill a dormouse! Sorry, pal.’

He fell, writhing.

Scorda saw Trell and tried to fire a Thompson from the hip, but the magazine was empty, so he asked Trell, ‘Say, how do you fill up this thing?’

And Gendabrig ran up to Scorda and showed him how, while Trell dashed toward Kelda’s quarters aft. Kendip tried to shoot Trell in the back but Handem, who was also trying to fire at Trell, he got Kendip instead and Scorda shouted ‘Anyone seen that nigger Milem, I’ll get him right through his ugly great scrotum.’ But Mendra-118, shocked out of her chronic selfishness and narcissism, screamed at him ‘you bastard, you bloody won’t’ and Scorda let rip with half a magazine straight through her.

But Frume, timid little Frume, he stood there with a weak smile on his face and he said, ‘It’s okay, Scorda, I got Milem myself.’

Scorda didn’t hear him. His mind was locked into the firing-pin of his gun. And there was half a magazine left. For whom? Why waste it on people like Trell, who were bound to be slaughtered by the others anyway?

No. Scorda had his own score to settle. Why be humiliated forever by Sladey-555? Hadn’t Sladey hidden himself away with his whores, secured behind a bulkhead door? — while the regular guys had been doing the fighting?

Scorda was supreme. Enraged in a single spasm, he tore up the steel steps that led to the Sladey hidey-hole and shot out the lock.

For an instant he found himself face-to-face with Sladey, who seemed suddenly to be a frail weakling with nothing in the gut. Behind Sladey was a seething mob of sycophants who abruptly became terrified statues. There was a momentary silence broken only by a half-filled glass that smashed on the deck.

Scorda’s lips went dry with anticipation as he saw the whimpering plea forming in Sladey’s eyes.

Tracer illuminated the Sladey Bunker with the brilliance of ignited magnesium. Sladey and his minions fell amid screams of death.

But the gun was too hot. The barrel exploded backward when there was still one round left in the chamber.

Scorda’s head was a gushing blob of spattering blood. An obliterated, headless torso, he crashed down the companionway in which bits of his flesh became embedded.

*

‘Kelda! …’

‘Trell. This!’

‘Watch out. Get inside here, quick.’ He raced for the Refrigeration Room. Cass: a pool of blood on the floor.

Trell slammed the heavy door and engaged the heavy flange-lock.

When Kelda saw Cass dead she could only clutch at Trell’s arm.