Red Sky: Chapter 14
Cyclops was staring at me with his one good eye.
The cart was off the rails, half the dirt spilled out. I bent down and started to push the cart to get it back onto the track. I struggled and pulled and pushed, but it was too heavy. Cyclops watched from the other side of the overturned cart without moving. I cursed him under my breath and kept struggling and struggling. I called over to Max for help. Cyclops spit on the ground. This signaled he had seen enough. Only then did he move. He bent down beside me, and together we pushed. It took our combined strength to get the cart back on the track, wheels clicking into place.
I looked to Cyclops hoping for some acknowledgment, maybe a nod. Nothing. He turned his back and started hauling the cart with his partner. Tunneling duty is the hardest I have ever worked in my life. And hauling duty is harder than tunneling duty. I was now on hauling duty.
There’s skill involved with mining and even tunneling, but hauling, any two-legged or four-legged beast could do it. In fact, it would be an advantage to have four legs. We were no different than the horses or donkeys that worked the fields long ago. Three different teams ran the race from the tunnelers to the pit, where the dirt was deposited. The mine was alternately damp and hot on our leg of the relay. When mining, the body can adjust to the temperature and humidity. With hauling, as we walk through different patches of cold and hot air, the body doesn’t know how to regulate. It’s a strange sensation to perspire while simultaneously shivering from the damp cold.
Max was quieter than usual on hauling duty, which meant he only talked most of the time. On this day he talked about the window in his cell. How he could see the waves of the ocean rippling into warm sand, palm trees partially obscuring his view. He created this window by scratching a thin square on his back wall. Talk of that window continued for most of the day while he still had energy. But the hauling took an even greater toll on Max than it did on me. After a dozen hours, his body sagged. I could feel the cart getting heavier on my side as I had to bear more of the weight.
*
“Do that again and I’m going to smack you a good one.” The handoff of pouring dirt from their cart into ours was completed before I heard his partner’s response. This was still early in the day, before I had spilled the cart.
“I wonder what that was about?”
Max was concentrating on pulling the cart so he didn’t say anything back. The start is always the most difficult part of hauling. It takes time to get the proper grip on the rope and traction with your feet. Max didn’t like to talk during the starts. I learned to fill in those silences.
“I had the wedding dream again last night,” I shouted over to him.
“Did you get to dance with her this time?”
“No. I don’t even get to talk to her in these dreams.”
I described the ballroom and the crowd as we built up momentum, eventually letting the weight of the cart do most of the work.
“Was he there?”
“Of course. She only danced with him. She always only dances with him.”
“Bastard.”
“I know.”
There was always a lot talk of taking the guards hostage when they came down to supervise the tunneling and the hauling. This usually stayed as talk. Only once did an inmate try to do something. He didn’t get within two steps of the guard before he was paralyzed by his collar. I thought Goodwell would kill him, we all did. But he let him live. That inmate, 23, spent the rest of the month in and out of the box. Hades would take him out to whip him and then put him right back in. After a couple of more days in the box they would take him out and let him work in the mine for a few days, enough to regain his strength, then it would be another whipping and back in the box for another three days. By the end of that month, when he was finally let out for good, 23 was so afraid, he became the model inmate, the hardest worker in the mine. He doesn’t create trouble, doesn’t speak in the cafeteria, not even to his partner. He sits off by himself staring down into his food every night.
“I’ve been warning you all day. Stop doing that or you’re going to get it.” The bickering hadn’t stopped. It was getting worse as the day progressed. The one on my side of the track looked like a stork, long and lean. The Stork’s partner was getting on his nerves.
“I’m not a newt anymore. You need to show me some respect.” It was the partner’s turn to spit invective. I was glad they were separated by the track. I didn’t have the energy to break up a fight.
“Respect. Respect? I’ll show you the end of a pickaxe.” I heard the Stork say as the two walked away and Max and I struggled with another load of dirt.
“What is it with those two?” I asked Max.
“55 and 12. They’ve always hated each other.” Max grunted as he strained with the rope. “Hauling increases the tension.”
*
We reached the elevators earlier than usual. The pit was full of inmates milling around like idle chickens in a coop. That was another reason I hated hauling. When mining we could stay away until the very end of the day and didn’t have to wait with the rest of the chickens.
Com and Ray were blissfully away from this crush of dirt-soaked inmates. Max and I decided to wait by the far wall. “I never finished my story,” I said.
“What story?”
“The one about my dream.”
“It always ends the same way.”
“It didn't this time. I was standing on the dance floor all by myself, everyone had abandoned me.”
“That sounds the same.”
“There was a disembodied voice, like a voice from God.”
“Or Goodwell.”
“It said, ‘please remain calm.”
“Were you calm?”
“That’s what they said to me when I was arrested.”
“Interesting.”
Max was watching Big Shoes as he lanced a newt by the tool shed. “Poor sap.”
“Then two guards appeared," I continued. “They had their helmets on.”
“Were they protecting her?”
“No. She was gone. He was gone. Everyone was gone. I was the only one left. A spotlight was on me. I was standing on the dance floor. The spotlight blinded me, but I could still see the two guards as they walked on to the stage.”
“They had their lances out. I knelt down and wrapped myself in a ball bringing my limbs inside of my body like this.” I showed him how I had balled up in my dream.
“I could feel the dull pain of the first lance in my back. Then the second one hit me. I kept receiving the charges, one after the other. Instead of wearing me down, they built me up. I was using the energy, storing up the jolts until finally I turned around and grabbed both the lances by their tips, one in each hand.”
“I didn’t kill her,’ I shouted at them and pulled the lances away. I dropped one to the floor and held the other wielding it like a club.”
“One of the guards reached out and I struck him on first movement. ‘I didn’t kill her,’ I screamed again crushing his face, shards of helmet flying over the dance floor. I looked down at those shards, then back up to the guard. There was no head, only an empty shell. The helmet had been hollow inside. "
“I turned to the other guard who backed up, frightened. I was on the attack. ‘I didn’t kill her,’ I said and swung as hard as I could, shattering his helmet like the first one. My rage woke me up. I was so angry I didn't sleep for the rest of the night. I was exhausted but felt vindicated, too. It felt good to say those words.”
Max let out a loud burst of laughter.
I stepped back. Why was he laughing at my dream? Upset, I turned away and walked over to get in line for the elevator.
“Don’t you understand?” Max said, trailing behind me.
I didn’t respond.
We waited in silence. He kept trying to get my attention. I kept waving him away.
“What?” I said sharply.
“You didn’t kill her.”
“What?”
“None of us did the things we’re accused of. Your subconscious was telling you that. They can alter our memories, but they can’t change our subconscious. Even though they’ve implanted these crimes in us, deep down, way deep down, we know the truth.”
“Look at what we’re doing down here. Do you think they could pay people to do this? To mine ore billions of miles from home on a god-forsaken moon. The memories aren’t real. They’re implanted. The Federation needs people to do this so they can fight their wars. They implant crimes in our brains to make us feel guilty, so when they send us down these shafts to our deaths we won’t put up a fight. We’re slaves for them.”
Was this just another one of Max’s elaborate theories? The technology to implant memories had been around for a long time and certainly there was a need for people to mine the ore.
“Do you remember the crime in detail? You might remember the trial.”
“There was no trial.”
“But the actual crime is hazy, right? No different than a dream."
"I don’t remember that night at all.”
“They say it’s because of the space-time jump. I know the truth. If you’re a threat to the government or cross the wrong person they implant crimes and ship you off. You think the Federation’s justice system is fair, you think they wouldn’t do that to their citizens. That’s a fantasy. I bet you pissed off someone and that’s how you ended up here. It’s not because you killed her. You couldn’t harm a fly.”
“Was my arrest real? Was any of it real?”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s part of the implant. The bigger picture. You need to see the bigger picture. They’re capable of doing it, they have the incentive to do it, and you were vulnerable enough to have it done to you. Do you see any sons of admirals or industry titans here?” Max shook his head at my ignorance.
I stared at him not knowing what to say. He couldn’t be right, could he? There are real criminals in the world. Why would they need to invent them? I was one of those criminals and so was he. This was the same as Ray’s excuses and rationalizations.
But I did upset someone important back on Earth, Max was right about that. Aya’s fiancé wasn’t only in the Interstellar Fleet, his entire family was, and his father was an admiral. I think Aya had even told me his uncle was in charge of Epsilon sector. Could they really get rid of me for an affair? Was that possible? Maybe Max was right. Maybe I didn’t kill Aya. But if I didn’t, where was she?
Finally, it was our turn to enter the elevator. The door closed and Max turned to me with a crazy sort of confidence, “no one here believes me, but you will. You didn’t kill her. He killed her because of your affair and pinned it on you. You’re the scapegoat. We’re not the criminals, they are.”
Max’s crooked smile returned. “You’ll believe me. I know you will.”
The elevator lifted us to the surface.