Rigel Prime

Yeah, Prime was wasted - his eyeballs whirred liked clockwork toys,
and he kicked the side of a fortune teller's stall. Wasted. It was
empty. The whole place was empty as a looted tomb - the walls scorched
in places like a black tongue had lapped at them, the high glass roof
whipped with cracks, so that the interior looked lit with the webs of
two spiders whose fishing lines had tangled in the darkness. Corrugated
steel shutters sank into rusty pools, uttering death rattles here and
there, when some ghost wind caught them like skirts.

Prime looked sadly at the dent in his boot. Wasted. The kick didn't
echo for long - and it left him with a fuzzy tombre. He looked about
him, found that the tombre belonged to two giant mechanical bears,
their fur a crusty leaf where it remained, who bowed to each other and
unfolded their paws in a mundane cycle of dance as they sang lullabies
to the empty network of hangars. Their voice boxes damaged; where they
might once have possessed cloying, girlsome voices, they now managed
only to drone. They were sound activated, and Prime's kick had
activated them.

He tongued the rotten daisy of a mouth ulcer he'd been given, footling
in his inner pocket for a bottle of mineral water. He splashed some in
his eyes, thumbed grease out of them, and then drank with great trout
gulps. Now, he imagined, there's nothing here, let alone anything I
might be looking for. He'd had enough of the leaching shadows that
dripped from his shoulders, and he decided that was that. Time to go.
So he stalked off. Wasted.

-

About a half hour later:
The tram carriage, though near empty, was flooded with crazed heat,
the air steely with oil and vodka clear. The ride matched it by measure
- vodka smooth, vodka rough. Prime butted the brim of his stetson
gently with a thumb and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead,
smearing the sweat. His partner, Pears, crunched on a stick of
raspberry rock opposite him. They both gazed up at the grid of power
lines, criss-cross slashes dividing the sky, passing slowly, fanning
out , closing in and knitting together. A living organ, a network of
charred nerves. And the sky beyond was white.

"You look ill, Rigel," Pears addressed his friend - as the tram met a
curve and buckled slightly.

"Just tired."

"Find anything?"

"Nah," Prime shook his head. "The Trafford Centre's just a burnt out
oven. City looks like a grey desert."

Pears fought to unglue his fingers from the plastic wrapper.

"Same with all the outer districts I've visited. Think the trains are
still running?"

"No. Not automated. Nowhere near as safe as one of these chattering
caterpillars," Prime replied, patting the window of the tram.

"So?back to the car?"

"Not yet. Let's stay on board until we get to the station. Then we'll
have a look around."

"Azyoo wish."

Pears resumed sucking on his stick of rock, and Prime returned to his
watch, tracking the crossings and partings of the electricity lines. A
moment later, he saw a bird - maybe a swift - pirouette on a lance of
wind, and wondered where that wind was coming from.

-

They dismounted at the stop outside the station, coats in hand, slung
like corpses over their backs. Pears immediately put a John Player
Special between his teeth and cupped his hands around his lighter. A
shot split the air cleanly - like an axe parting dry wood. Pears froze,
and a moment later his knuckles started to smart.

"Thank you for not smoking on the platform."

The voice was muffled - robotic. Pears lowered his lighter and
inspected the graze lashing the back of his hand - a neat, scorched
strip.

"Sting?" asked Rigel.

He nodded towards the metal box mounted on the platform's solitary
lamp post. It was caked in feathers of rust, and crumped in at the
side. Smoke wafted like perfume from a protruding barrel.

"Tin bitch," muttered Pears, taking the cigarette out of his
mouth.

Rigel approached the aged machine.

"The automate epoch has not been kind to its children," he
commented.

Pears lingered for a moment, smoldering, but when he looked up and saw
Rigel moving on at a pace towards Manchester Piccadilly, he abandoned
his revenge and followed. Rigel had his fists in his pockets; Pears
caught up quickly, kicking up gravel, and waited til the tram platform
was way behind them - sandwich-sized. Then he relit his cigarette and
puffed cheerfully.

"You still haven't clued me in about the purpose of our visit."

"Do I have to?" Rigel asked.

"Yeah. Supposing I find what we're looking for before you. I'd walk
right past it. It could have happened any amount of times so
far."

Pears ejected smoke from the far side of his mouth.

"How do you know we're looking for something?" Rigel persisted. "How do
you know I've not just been paid to take you somewhere I can bump you
off?"

"Because you could have picked anywhere we've been today, or anywhere
else in the fuckin' country," Pears paused to tap the end of his fag.
"Don't tell me this would be your destination of choice. And you'd have
said no anyway."

"Oh?"

"I would. If it were you being bumped off. And I say would?. - of
course, I mean, have. Several times."

"How very kind of you."

The station had aged more elegantly than the Trafford Centre. The glass
walls and roof were honeyed - golden - the steel joinery still
displaced sunlight, and the trains looked like beautifully preserved
insect carapaces, moist and black. The floor was dusty, but not painted
with muck, and not disintegrating. There wasn't much in the way of
graffiti. Something had probably guarded it from vandalism.

Pears wiped the skin of dust from a timetable, and found the paper
beneath warped with damp, but not unreadable:

Virgin Rail. Manchester Piccadilly - Sheffield. Monday to Friday. 0630
0730 0830?

"Anything?" he called out.

His voice had a tinny echo.

"I want to follow the track," Rigel called back. "Maybe we can get
something up and running."

"I wouldn't know anything about that."

Rigel looked again at the treacle-dark exoskeletons of diesel
engines.

"Me neither. If necessary, we'll walk."

"How far?"

"However far we need to go."

His mouth ulcer felt sore again. It had started playing up on the last
leg of the tram ride - now it was spinning like a coin, and his teeth
occasionally snagged it. The ulcer had no compassion, he inwardly
moaned - it did not care if he was so good an African citizen, so light
a human being that his bladder was aroused not by running water but the
ring of a tiny china bell. It did not care for his plight.
And he ached. His clouds of muscle had been hardening against the
fevers and diseases of the West for weeks now, and still they were
hardening, weighing him down. He'd known it was going to happen from
the moment the needles slipped out.

-

Immunisation. Blood ran down both his shoulders, making him look - he
imagined - like a kind of mixed up Christ figure. The soft wool
approved - sucked it up like a mozzie - and the stink of witch-hazel
filled the room. A wet, scented fox. Rigel felt his eyes begin to water
as dressing was applied to the wounds.

"That's it. Done," said the nurse. "Now, since you can't pay at this
moment, we'll have to hold onto your certificate. You can go to
reception at any time and pay for it, but don't leave the country
without it, whatever you do."

"Sure," said Rigel, rising from the chair and burying himself in his
coat.

"Are you going to see the sunken city while you're out there?"

"The what?"

"Part of the country's underwater, including what used to be the
capital city. I thought you might be researching it."

Rigel shook his head.

"I'm not going for the culture."

"No? Well," the nurse's eyes flickered in puzzlement. "What are you
going out there for?"

"Business matters. Don't worry," he added. "It's nothing
nefarious."

"Oh, I'm sure it isn't. Do watch out for the pro-lifers on your way out
- they're pretty rabid today."

Rigel thanked her, and left. His shoulders felt like they were afire,
and he seemed to be far too light and airy beneath the knees. These
were effects he had been warned of.

He had been warned too - just then - about the pro-lifers. There was
some bill being bandied about in Parliament that had to do with cutting
funds for abortion clinics in the third world, and this had brought
them out like a summer rash anywhere where GP's gave advice on the
matter. And there they were with their fetus balloons and signs made
from cereal packets, fandangoing in the sun, partly in protest, partly
crazed by the bloody smell of victory. Soon, maybe, they hoped, their
African dollars would no longer pay for doctors in the US to kill
children. Loose American women would be forced into abstinence, or into
the back streets. Or they'd do it themselves with wire.

Hot shouts rained on him. And the sky beyond was white.

-

"If I didn't know better, Rigel," said Pears, breaking the silence that
had hung between them for nearly an hour, "I'd say you were on the run.
You've had a decidedly hunted look to you all the way through this
expedition."

"If I didn't know better, Pears," said Rigel. "I'd say you were
prying."

"I am prying."

"Shows what I know."

They strolled across the sleepers one by one, skipping the limestone
gravel in between, as the city suburbs thinned out and gave way to
increasingly deep folds of country. Pears stayed a few feet behind
Rigel for fear of him suddenly stopping, or turning back. The lack of
information was like grit in his eye. Rigel, ever unhelpful, had
started out simply by stalling, saying it didn't matter until they
arrived. Since then he'd turned the question into a game, deftly
evading his partner's increasingly direct demands.

"Well, since I know your orders came from the right place, and since we
booked the trip two months in advance, I'm pretty sure you can't just
have bolted."

"If I had, why would I bring you along?"

"Exactly. So why can't you just tell me what in fuck's name we're doing
here?"

Rigel slowed to an idler pace, and it seemed to Pears he was
debilitating. The crunch of his steps also perhaps carried more weight,
and marked out the seconds passing by as he remained dumb. Carrunch?
carrunch?carrunch?cah?runch.

"I will tell you, Pears," he said at last. "But not yet. When we're
done."

"Promise?"

"As soon as we're done, yes. Promise."

"Even if we fail?"

"We can't fail."

This was an odd idea. Was Rigel just being arrogant? It wasn't like
him. Yet, if they were looking for something - and Pears assumed from
Rigel's earlier duck-and-cover response that they were - why was he so
sure of finding it? Pears elected to stop all thought of the matter -
since it was just about driving him crazy.

"OK?" then, trying to keep the conversation flowing: "You sure you
aren't ill? I only ask as I'm concerned."

"I'm just drowsy. Give me a week or two after this and I'll be up &;
atom."

"What is it? The tablets?"

"Everything. The tablets, the weather, the injections. The whole
country."

"Wh - " Pears began, but Rigel cut him off: "Hold on."

They had come upon a part of the railway that bridged a nestled narrow
road. Rigel's path diverted from that of the sleepers as he approached
it, his pace increasing again. Pears stopped, utterly foxed - watched
him head for the grassy border of the track, scramble down onto the
road through a waist-high crop of dandelions and nettles and disappear
from view. After taking a moment to tut, Pears started after him.

"What's got you so excited?"

"Nothing," Rigel had already slipped under the bridge, and his voice
carried an echo: "Do I look excited to you?"

"I suppose not."

Pears hopped down to the road and peered in. The tunnel wasn't very
long, and not dark enough for anything sizeable to hide in, but still
he thought it worthwhile to light a cigarette, and give the area a
quick scan as he lit up.

"(Puff, puff) Nothing," he said.

"Nothing," Rigel agreed.

Then he turned round and headed back up the slope to the railway
track.

-

Elica Prime chopped cucumber. First into hunks, then into slithers.
She'd hit her stride when Rigel billowed through the door, and didn't
look up from the knife and her umbrella of raven hair.

"Everything go OK?"

Rigel halted at the entrance to the kitchen, his coat swaying.

"Yeah."

"You know, it's been ages since we've had a salad."

A different tone, one of vague realisation: "Yeah."

"Are you feeling hungry?"

"Yeah."

Elica stopped chopping, pulled her hair behind her ears and looked at
Rigel with understated concern.

"Are you OK? You sound very moody."

"I'm fine. Just a little weak?. It's a temporary side effect - nothing
to worry about."

"Well, sit down," Elica abandoned the worktop completely in order to
usher Rigel into a chair. He resisted at first, gripping the door
frame, but after prising his fingers away, and amid burbled protests,
she managed to make him sit.

"Stay there while I finish making tea. Do you want a drink of
something? Apple juice?"

"Apple juice!?" Rigel frowned. "Since when did we drink apple
juice?"

"It's good for you."

Rigel kneaded his right shoulder thoughtfully.

"Coffee'll be fine."

Elica smiled and said, "I'll get you a glass of apple juice," then fled
to the kitchen. Rigel let himself slip further back into the canyons of
the chair, and tried to ponder. The apparent heaviness of his eyeballs
made it difficult for him - he felt as if he were trying to hold two
glass marbles in his sockets.

"Hard-boiled eggs alright for you?" Elica called from the
kitchen.

"Fine," he called back.

Incredible. She wasn't usually this?insistant. And to come back and
find her preparing food?well, it was like he'd walked into the wrong
marriage. Any other day, they'd have sat around watching the box for a
hours before she posed the question, "Any thoughts on tea?" Then they'd
rush to catch the convenience stores before they shut, and buy
something easy to prepare, like pasta. If they missed the stores,
they'd order a takeaway. It had been the same since their eldest and
only daughter had left to study in Zanzibar - the preparation and
civility of a family life had been tossed out the window. They were
flatmates again, this time awaiting the great softening of the body and
brittling of the mind that middle age brought on.

Now Elica was practically mothering him!

"I've been thinking, Rigel?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't mind you going on this trip, but it is a one off,
right?"

"Never done anything like it before."

"But you won't, say, start taking up more and more cases along these
lines?"

"I dunno. Depends how this one goes, I guess. I don't expect I'll be
asked to do this kind of thing much."

"No?"

"Nope."

"Good."

-

"This is the fifth fucking tunnel, Rigel. What is it with these fucking
tunnels?"

Pears had miscounted. In fact, they were only inspecting their forth
tunnel at the time of speaking; four too many dank, dirty holes for him
to bear without explanation. Rigel sighed, deeply and wearily. Then
started once more the steep climb back up to the track.

"We'll make it the last one then. Let's go back."

"Go back?!"

Pears stood frozen in the middle of the road, looking distraught.

"Yeah. Back to the car," said Rigel, "like you wanted."

"But we haven't found anything!"

"We don't have to."

"What the fuck! What the fucking fuck? Why the fuck are we out here
then? Why do you want to spend the day gazing into a bunch of fucking
tunnels?"

Rigel stopped half way up the slope and half-turned, worming his hands
into his pockets.

"The brief was to make sure nothing's here. Or, to be more specific, no
one."

"No people?"

"Right. Not a soul."

"And if there had been?"

"We do nothing? Report back."

Pears skipped with his tongue for a while, his anger all but quashed.
He scraped his boot along the road, struck a thoughtful pose, let his
brow sink a little. Then he said, "And the tunnels?"

"Shelter."

"?For survivors."

"Right."

Rigel turned back into the incline and began trudging again. Pears
pulled out his cigarette packet. Flicked it open. Tapped it closed. Put
it away and followed Rigel. They started walking back across the
sleepers, towards Manchester, more slowly than they had travelled
outward. After a long time, Pears said, quietly, "I really wish you
hadn't told me that."

Rigel said nothing. The sky beyond was white.

-

Elica's wine had a tannic backbone. This disturbed Rigel's
senses.

"How much did this stuff cost?"

"How should I know? It's just something from the cupboard under the
stairs."

Thus saying, Elica twizzled laces of spaghetti onto her fork and
dragged it into her mouth in one bite, all the time following the
progress Rigel was making with his own meal. Not wanting to appear
ungrateful, Rigel abandoned his nervous hesitance and began eating more
speedily. Elica smiled. It was the third day of mothering. The side
effects of his immunisation had yet to wear off.

"Taste good?"

"Very tasty. Thank you."

She smiled again, and grabbed another mouthful. Rigel sipped more of
his wine and sloshed it around in his mouth - definitely a pricey
bottle. Definitely something saved.

"Why?" he stopped, took his eyes off the glass and locked them onto
hers - started again. "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?"

She seemed genuinely bemused by the question.

"All?this. Why're you taking it upon yourself to feed me?"

"No grand plan. I just thought it was time I started acting like a
wife."

Rigel raised an eyebrow, remained unconvinced. Elica had never been
much of a tory.

"Well, alright," she relented, "a bit of a grand plan. Just a little
one."

"Just a little one?"

She nodded.

"A little one. With little feet and little hands. You know. It's been a
while. And we need to get ourselves up to the peak of health before we
go down that particular road. Don't you agree?"

He felt a flush of heat splash across his back and sink into his skin.
His headache redoubled its efforts.