Once in the narrow cave, Diocletian started moving again in the dark, making no commentary or even acknowledgement that something had happened, and I followed. He slid feet-first down a tunnel that had been dug almost vertically, just wide enough to crawl through, like a service hatch. I followed. Beads of sweat had formed on my forehead, I noticed, annoyingly out of reach. The tunnel opened onto a spherical chamber, lit by a handful of white lights. All of them combined had less power than Anaxagoras’s head-mounted light, and compared to Anaxagoras’s cave, it was almost dark. At the center of the room, a pile of empty suits lay on the ground, taller than either of us.
In the darkness, I made out a small figure, floating in space with a blade in hand, swinging and twisting, landing with both legs on one vertical surface to leap off again into another. It was a woman, so petite her suit seemed a couple of sizes too large, the excess tied up in makeshift loops of tape. She noticed us, turning her head to us even when she was upside down, at the midst of a complex twist. Her eyes were a deep, cold blue; her face was flushed, the blood clearly visible under a skin that was pale even by Ceres’s standards.
What was she doing? I could have thought that she was training, but training implied anticipation of something, and time.
She absorbed the next impact and brought herself to a halt against the wall, then kicked herself downward in a seemingly effortless somersault. As she descended gracefully, her eyes went over my suit for a moment, likely taking in the fact that the model was not government issued. She turned to her Second and nodded, still floating.
“A visitor from the inside,” he said. “He seems to have lost his way back.”
She raised an eyebrow, her face otherwise expressionless, but her eyes twinkled with fascination. “As in lost a vehicle or got turned around?”
“My skipper isn’t responding,” I said. I couldn’t afford to be shocked anymore. I needed to use what I had. “I’ll get you oxygen, if you get me another ride. Even a rocket.”
Her boots landed softly on the floor of the cave. “What happened to it?” She looked at Second, who by then placed himself behind me, blocking the exit.
“I saw a flash of light up north,” he answered. “Possibly an explosion.”
“But who would do such a thing?” Her voice had a peculiar quality to it—not the tranquil acceptance that had resonated in Anaxagoras’s last words, but a confidence that reminded me of a large cat, particularly in that pale lighting. Her suit, I noticed, was marked with a streak of dark red at the chest, just like Second.
“Listen, it really doesn’t matter. You do want more oxygen, don’t you? I could you get you a couple of days’ worth, for starters, and Anaxagoras has at least three rockets—”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get to that,” she said as she floated towards me from the far side of the cave, perfectly coordinated, her gaze still scanning me even as her eyes narrowed in concertation. “Let’s see—who would have both the means and the heart to blow up The Visitor’s skipper?” I couldn’t understand how this could come before oxygen. Had she lost her mind? “Anaxagoras would have the means, but not the heart. They’re too righteous to leave someone to die out here, even a visitor. We, Diocletian, would have the heart but not the means. Also I’d know if we did. Right, Second, you didn’t go around my back and blow up an entire skipper, did you?” He didn’t even smile at her joke, and she continued, amused. “Pythia would have neither the heart nor the means, and Ctesibius would have both, but they’d space themselves before letting a resource like an entire skipper go to waste. Who, then, did it?”
I didn’t understand most of what she had said. “I really don’t care who did it. What’s the point of this? I don’t want to die here. You don’t want to die here. Let’s figure a deal out.”
“She said that we’ll get to that,” Second said, articulating every word as if I was hard of hearing.
She swaggered closer, the blade in her hand, and stopped just close enough to put me in its range. “Please don’t be annoying,” she said, deadpan. “Second and I saw a lot of people die in the short time we spent here, and let’s say we don’t get as worked up about it as we used to. Tell me, why did you come here?”
Insisting obviously wasn’t going to get me very far. I decided to indulge her until I realized how to get out. “I needed to find out if the rumor was true. To see what was happening out here.”
“An immortal visiting the land of the dying, taking notes,” she laughed. “Is it anything like you expected?”
Since I’d gotten the message that Bar Kochva was being thrown out, I was in a rush to reach Last Day Town as soon as I could. I didn’t have time to wonder what would people do when they found out that they had only one day to live. What I would have done, in their place. “No,” I said finally, “I thought either people would kill each other for oxygen, or they’d sit in a circle and console each other in their last moments. I didn’t expect to find this… order.”
“Is this order?” She still held the blade in her hand, tapping the blunt side absentmindedly against her boot.
“Everybody seem to know where they’re supposed to be. Almost everybody.”
She raised her eyes to me at that. “The airlock spits out about twelve per standard day, each with a little more than twenty-four hours of oxygen on them. We assign them into one of four lines, each with its different name and role, each made of a First, Second, and Third. Someone thought it was a good idea, and people have been doing that ever since. It’s been three weeks; an eternity in this place’s scale.”
Three weeks. I realized I had already heard it, but I’d been too… preoccupied to register. “Wait, I thought they were throwing people out for more than a month now.” That’s what Arik’s report had said.
Something in her smile changed, as if she was going to scold me for interrupting but decided to leave it. “Maybe they were. But it wasn’t Last Day Town, but a formless, chaotic mess. There were no traditions, no lines taking on a name and passing it from Firsts to Seconds to Thirds and so on. Perhaps it was like you imagined, just people supporting each other, but the only thing we know for sure is that people were stealing oxygen at some point.”
“How could you know that?” My intention was to get her talking to soften her up, but it wasn’t that I wasn’t glad to get the information on camera.
“How do I know that it had been three weeks?” Her tone was educational, as if she expected me to get it wrong so she could teach me something.
“I guess… the Firsts told their Second, and so on?”
She clasped her blade at her hip, perhaps as a sign she wasn’t going to use it just yet. It really didn’t matter, though: They were two, and armed.
“Obviously, but that’s not enough. My predecessor could have told me it was three weeks, even if Last Day Town was only formed yesterday, and how would I have known? That’s what recitation is for. Sad that you just missed it. While each line can tell their own whatever they want, when all of the lines meet for Recitation it makes sure that everyone is on the same page on two things. One of which is the time.”
“What’s the second thing?”
“The most important law in this place. You’ll see.” Her leisure was an extreme contrast to Anaxagoras’ non-stop motion, or Diocletian’s Second’s laconic answers. She was the first one to take the time to explain these things to me, but she was taking her time and I couldn’t, for the literal life of me, understand why. I looked back at Second, who still held the blade in his hand in a thinly veiled threat—but what were they threatening me for? It’s not like I could do anything to them. Was there a point to this, or was I at the mercy of people who have gone truly mad?
“That’s truly amazing, if you ask me,” I said. “That there are laws at all. That there is order at all.”
“You find it amusing that people spend their dying breaths telling others what to do?” She cocked her head, clearly enjoying herself.
“I didn’t say amusing. I said amazing, and it’s not about telling others what to do, it’s about finding a reason…” My voice died as I failed to put the concept into words.
“Me? I find it amusing. That the sum of short-lived parts is something… A little more long-lived. Here’s a riddle—What’s born in nothing, lives off nothing, constantly dies without ceasing to exist? That’s Last Day Town. That’s the lines, going about their work.”
“That’s the part I don’t understand, though,” I tried, hoping that questions would antagonize her less than opinions. “What are the lines doing?”
“Oh, poor thing; no one even gave you the basic rundown?” She laughed as she walked over to her Second, and patted some of the dust off his suit. I was no longer wedged between them, but they still managed to make it very clear what kind of pressure I was under.
“No, only bits and pieces. Granted,” I said, sounding calmer than I felt, “Everyone is, understandably, very busy.”
“Well, it won’t do to let you write your story when you aren’t familiar with its characters. So. Anaxagoras journey. They venture out into the dumpsters and bring back whatever they find useful—metal, plastic, machines. Not big talkers, as you probably noticed. Ctesibius spend their day trying to build technology from the trash, tinkering with the stuff Anaxagoras find. Pythia sit in a dark chamber and listen to people talk about their lives. Weird thing, but I guess people consider it a worthy service.”
Everything she said just prompted more questions, and I doubted we had enough oxygen between the three of us to answer all of them. I started with something simple. “And what do you do?”
“Diocletian keep things in order. We welcome the new ones, and we send them to become a part of their line, be it Anaxagoras, Ctesibius, or Pythia.”
“Or Diocletian,” Second added.
“Yes, of course: or they become a part of Diocletian.” She smiled, as if intentionally drawing my attention to something, though I didn’t understand what. “You could say we take care of the ugly stuff. When the newcomers arrive, we make it clear we’re going to cut them open if they so much as speak the wrong word, make sure they’re that much more grateful when their line finally comes to pick them up. Sometimes we actually do, but most of the time the threat is enough; the thought that if they misbehave, we’ll be there to take them out. And if they do reach the end of their day with no offences, and they’d rather breath vacuum than choke on their own CO2, we’re there. Everyone does.”
There was a pretense there. “Anaxagoras don’t,” I said, driven by instinct to pry at that opening. “At least not with your help. I saw them cut their own First out of her suit.”
She grimaced at that. “They forfeited Diocletian’s… services, as did Ctesibius. Demoted us to undertakers. We take the bodies, we pray for them, we dispose of them. But we don’t get to kill them.”
“And you’re upset about this.” I said, as flatly as I could.
“Of course we’re upset about it! There is an honor in being an executioner, but it isn’t just that. Last Day Town came into being because Line Diocletian, the first line, carved order out of the chaos, with these very blades we still carry today. And they just decided to go back on that order.”
“So why did you let them?”
“The two lines came out together with their announcement. We voted on it, and with Pythia abstaining they won two to one. There wasn’t much we could do. We’re supposed to kill individuals, not lines.”
I looked at the display at the side of my visor, counting down the time. I didn’t know how it was for them, to look at a similar clock and know that when it reached zero, their time was up. Not hard to imagine that they hated me for the fact that I might still enter Ceres and live the rest of my life.
Diocletian raised a hand like a caricature of a Shakespearean actor, and recited:
The toil of Diocletian,
Most proud and ancient line,
has passed through generations,
And now is yours, and mine.
The blade we bear is heavy,
But it has served to keep,
The schemers and the madmen
From plunging to the deep.
Take pride, my Diocletian,
If not the scorn you face,
This Last Day Town of ours,
Was gone without a trace.
For a moment, I was dumbfounded, like I had been after hearing the prayer for the dead. Someone had composed that here, and they had kept it going ever since, passing it on from one to the other. How long ago had it been written? How many people had to memorize it just to pass it on? The fact of its existence was, in itself, a triumph.
I had to focus. “Listen, I really appreciate that you’re telling me all of this, but I don’t have that much time in this suit. If you have any way to get me back inside, I need to know. I’m sure we can strike some sort of deal.”
“I’m sure we can,” she said flatly, then paused, waiting in silence which I, for the life of me, still couldn’t get the reason for. She stood as if she were waiting for a train. Second pursed his lips and flared his nostrils, looking bored.
“What, then?” I sounded urgent, even to my own ears, but not panicked. “I need some kind of jet if I want to make it back to one of the civilian airlocks. I could give you whatever you want once I’ve returned. Oxygen tanks? Torches? New jets? Just tell me what you need.”
“The civilian airlock? Why not the governmental one at the heart of Last Day Town? It’s walking distance. You must have passed it on the way here.” Her smile grew even more sardonic. “If I went there, it’d burn me alive. But you can ask politely and it will recognize you as a citizen of Ceres still; open up to you.”
It was becoming clear she was wasting my time on purpose, I thought as I looked at the ticking numbers on my display. I would have started hating her at that point, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was dying, too. If this was her last chance to feel power over someone, could I really judge her for taking advantage of it?
Second nodded, his eyes dim, as if he didn’t care for this thing one way or another. I hoped that he thought, like me, that all of this was vicious and unnecessary. She was wasting his time, too, but he didn’t protest. Was it loyalty that kept him quiet, or fear?
“Because,” I answered finally, “as you may have noticed, we’re in the middle of a large-scale political cull. That’s the real reason they throw people out here, and they only need the faintest excuse to stick you with something. If I go to that airlock they’ll eventually let me in, but the Shadow Man will know I’ve been here, and will find something to stick me with and throw me back out. Which I’m sure you’re aware of…” Because something similar must have just happened to you, I wanted to add, but I was afraid of… what? Insulting her?
“Oh, so that’s why you need my help? How unfortunate…”
“How many hours do you have left?” I snapped at her. “You’re so comfortable with us just chatting.”
“Rude!” she exclaimed, and turned so her face was momentarily hidden in shadow. “You don’t just ask a lady how many hours she has left to live.” The lightness of her words was still staggering. I’d never thought people could be so brave, albeit obnoxious.
“Listen, I get it: you’re the one in power here. I’m at your mercy, ok? I think that’s pretty obvious—I’m unarmed, and I’ve got the most to lose. You don’t need to drag it out any further.”
“You have the most to lose?” She mock–pouted, but there was a note of honest indignation in her voice. She let the question hang in the space between us.
“Because I can still go back. The airlock won’t blow me up.”
She took a step forward, making her eyes as big and childlike as she could, rolling her lower lip out in a mock-pout, an impression of a child about to burst into tears. “I want to return, too. Don’t I deserve it just as much as you do? Won’t you help me?” The fact that I was a full head taller than her only made it clearer how perfectly in control of the situation she was, playing with me.
I felt the flare of heat known well to every man who had ever thrown the first punch, the fluttering of the eyes just as you were about to lose it. Not necessarily a bad thing, if I needed to change strategy. I raised my voice. “Ok, What the hell is your problem? Do you want to die today or what?”
“What a brain-fucking!” a loud, female voice declared, but Diocletian’s lips weren’t moving. Disoriented, I turned back and spotted a figure sliding down from the entrance of the cave. I could have recognized Diocletian’s Third by her defiant body language alone. “There are going to be some changes around here,” she declared, the anger in her flushed face clear even in the weak light. She unclasped the blade from her hip and held it in front of her with both hands. “I’m going to say some things,” she said. “If you’re going to kill me for it then I’d like to see you fucking try.”
The rest of them didn’t reach for their blades. Second didn’t so much as change his expression.
First smiled at Third. “Welcome back, Third. What kind of changes do you have in mind, exactly?” she asked, her tone unchanged.
Third seemed surprised by the lack of resistance, taking a moment to regain her balance. “This is insane. I have twenty hours, and you must have less, and we’re wasting it over some ritual crap. We should be doing everything we can to return. We have this visitor here, and even if his ride blew up there must be something useful we could take from him, at the very least his oxygen. And if we can’t, well, why not fuck around with the time we have here? I mean, seriously? Are you really going to spend your last hours following these made up rules? We should be out there, dancing and singing, sharing stories about the loves we had and our tragedies or some shit. Maybe crack someone’s skull open, because why the hell not? I bet you’re tired of pretending any of the shit we do actually matters.” She stood by the entrance, knees bent, ready to jump into action at any moment. I was slowly coming to terms with the fact that my chances of seeing tomorrow was dependent on what decision this group would come to.
Their expressions unchanged, First’s eyes moved from Third to Second and back to Third; a slow, deliberate gesture. “Did you tell the lines anything like this?” she asked.
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Third almost flinched, and her eyes widened. “No, of course not.”
“And did you perform your duties?”
“Yeah, I made sure the baby Anaxagoras got home, even gave him a little briefing,” she answered with a raised chin.
“Good,” First assured Third. “Good. You see, every single Diocletian’s Third has a moment like that. It’s only natural, only logical that you have doubts. Second, do you think it’s time we told her?” She grinned with an intensity that made her previous expression seem like a pale mask. Her eyes twinkled.
“Fine,” Second answered. “But if we tell her, he also knows.” That’s good, I noted. That implies they want me alive.
“That’s alright with me. Come here, Third,” she said as she reached both of her hands forward. Third remained standing, blade in hand, confused. “It’s alright,” First tilted her head, closing her eyes, a beckoning, motherlike gesture.
She walked towards them, suddenly shy. I started moving to make room for her, taking half a step away from them. A rough shove from Second pushed me back forward. Nothing that put me in a better position to escape was allowed.
Third put one hand in one of First, still holding on to the blade in the other. First didn’t seem to be at all nervous by the proximity.
Third smiled shyly. “This isn’t how I thought you guys would react. Like, at all. What’s going on?” She looked back at Second, ignoring me completely, and First quickly pulled her attention back to her.
“You’re right. It really doesn’t make any sense to toil away at janitorial tasks when there’s so much to be done. You think to yourself, the only thing that matters is staying alive, then why isn’t anyone doing anything about it?”
“Yes! Fucking exactly!”
“And the reason is that by the time people get it together from the smack in the face they got coming in, they see that no one else is trying to save their own lives. And that’s enough for them not to try—just to see that no one else is trying. So that leaves two options: Either Second and I are fools like all the rest, or…” She let the silence hang; her head cocked.
Third’s eyes widened even further; her mouth opened in awe. “You whore-children,” she whispered. “You have a plan.”
First smiled and nodded graciously. Then looked at the blade in Third’s hand. “If you’re going to space me, do it right now, or put the blade away. Either way you need to stop wasting everyone’s time.”
Third looked at the blade, as if confused that it was still in her grip, and clasped it at her side, the edge of the blade passing between the both of them. She placed her hands in First’s, and smiled, excited. “What’s the pla-“
First’s boot rose upward like a snake, sinking into Third’s lower abdomen so quickly she barely made a sound, as she folded forward.
Not missing a beat, Second caught me by the oxygen balloon and sent me flying backwards, throwing himself at the women. He drew the blade at the height of his leap, holding it with one hand as the other reached around Third’s helmet, grabbing it as a counter hold. First placed both boots against Third’s chest, and pulled, legs straight, as if she was trying to tear her arms off; making sure she couldn’t reach her blade. Third screamed; a short, breathless sound more of frustration than fear, cut short as Second smashed the blunt handle of the blade into the base of her neck. Her body relaxed in an instant; the once decisive limbs now flailing like seaweed.
He struck her again and again, one hand still around her helmet. The only sounds on comm were the bone-breaking strikes and the background of quick, frantic breathing.
I was afloat in space, flailing and trying to twist until my helmet hit the wall behind me. The exit was even further away now. I slumped against the wall, dizzy, and struggled to stop myself from hyperventilating.
Second must have let go of Third’s body because he was above me before I managed to get on my feet. He caught me with one hand by some clasp on my suit, the other holding the blade to my chest. I was all too aware of the shape of the blade, the broken-glass-like sharpness of the hyper-cooled metal. It would not require much effort to slice my thin suit open. “Stay put and you don’t die,” he said, his tone hardly harsher than before. His face was so close I could see every fold on his skin under the violet light of his visor, the dark circles under his black eyes, every hair in the stubble under his long, sharp nose. Big pores. Behind him, Third’s head hung at an awkward angle as First hauled her body to the center of the room.
I couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. I nodded.
“Come on!” First urged him. In haste, she sounded like a real person. She sent her blade floating towards Second, and I felt a measure of cowardly relief as he let go of me to join her, kicking from the wall just above my head and catching the blade by the way. She cleared some of the suits that were lying on the floor, revealing a bubble made of many suits cut open and glued together with the same type of tape First had used to tighten her suit. I watched, paralyzed, as she lifted it into space. The bubble was semi-rigid; the suit material, usually soft and flexible, turned hard in the cold.
She found an opening made by the hermetic zipper of one of the suits, and crawled inside. With the help of Second, who still kept me in view, she drew in the limp body of Third. The tent was so small it didn’t seem like they’d both fit, but they managed it somehow.
“Done,” Second said as he zipped the tent shut from the outside.
I could see First moving against the elastic sheet, stretching it, and Third’s limp body as it shifted, helmets and elbows making distinct bulges through the gray material. There was a fumbling inside, a frantic movement, as if First was scrabbling for some latch or hold, and the tent swelled up like a balloon. My breath stuck in my throat.
For a moment, a human face, relaxed and expressionless, pressed against the sheet, warming it enough for it to bend and stretch. Then another face appeared—this one the epitome of struggle, teeth clenched, eyes shut hard. The bodies pushed and writhed against the stretching suits, so hard that I feared the entire contraption would snap open, but it held, with only the faint sound of teeth chattering and quick, shallow breathing, the sounds one makes when enduring an unbearable cold.
Second stood watching me, his hand resting weightlessly on the handle of one of the three blades that were now clasped at his side. His gaze pinned me with an almost physical weight. I managed to articulate one clear thought—I’ve never met a murderer in the wild before; only in captivity. I had not noticed that my legs were starting to freeze over—the suit wasn’t made for direct contact. Frozen with terror as well as physical cold, my limbs were reluctant, shaky, but somehow, I managed to get my body into a crouch.
The bubble of the tent descended slowly to touch the rock. From within, something pushed back to drive the whole structure back into a float.
“Stand up straight,” Second said.
“What?” First said, confused, and the writhing within the tent halted.
“Not you, The Visitor. Slowly. Tippy toes. Don’t crouch.”
I realized his intention as soon as I stood; crouching made it easier to leap in any direction, while standing tall meant that I had to fall if I wanted to move, and falling would take a long time in near-zero G. Effectively, this was the similar as lying on the ground in full G, with your hands behind your head.
My panting had subsided to shallow breaths by the time the tent finally opened. The bubble lost its tension as oxygen escaped and First’s helmeted face peeked through the zipper, checking the room for safety, like a worm crawling out of a carcass. The rest of her body followed. The suit she was wearing was closer to her size now, without the need for tape to tighten it to her tiny frame. It bore no bloody marks.
Second moved to hold the tent, one eye still on me, and First pulled the body from its depths. To my surprise, Third’s body was in a suit, a trail of red-black blood marking its chest. I looked at her face through the helmet and saw the softness of her cheeks, un-mummified. I would have suspected that she was still alive if it hadn’t been for the way her head moved, unrestrained, and the way one of her eyes stayed open. She seemed nothing like Anaxagoras.
Did the blow kill her, or did she die later, when First screwed off her helmet? Did it matter? She had died the moment she had entered Last Day Town, and I was starting to suspect I had too.
They kept moving, orderly, completing the endlessly complex ceremony. Second sent a blade towards First, who snatched it out of space and floated the body his way, driving herself back with the counterforce. He caught the limp Third with both hands, holding the body’s back, hiding behind it, not exposing his fingers to First, who kicked off the wall and charged at the body, swinging the blade with the same grace that I had seen as I first entered the cave. What the hell was this for?
She slashed broadly, hitting the body’s chest, just above the heart, cutting deeply through suit and flesh. A spray of red droplets erupted, flying through space and staining First’s clean suit with a blurry red-black blot, just like the one she had before. Oh.
Second grabbed the body by the arm and swung it over to the cave’s entrance. She flew in a shallow arc, revolving around herself, her limbs spread, as the skin and flesh inside the depressurized suit dry and shrink.
First laughed, evidently relieved, her hands on her knees. “Very well done,” she said to Second. Her eyes scanned the display on her visor, absently taking a sip from the straw at the side of the helmet. “Everything looks good. Another perfect execution.” She laughed again.
“Good,” he said, now watching me again. “I am now First.” I heard a collision on comm as Third’s body struck the rock wall by the entrance, but didn’t turn to look.
“I am now Second,” the other Diocletian answered, and turned to me. “Oh, relax, and get off your toes. Nothing bad’s gonna happen to you.” Her smile returned, but the expression wasn’t as perfectly frozen as before. Beads of sweat had accumulated on her forehead.
I descended to my heels, my legs still shaking. The exit was just at the edge of my vision to my left. Could I dive for it, crawl inside, kick myself out of the tunnel? Not without one of them getting to me first. It was clear by then how small my chances of escape were. “Listen, First -” I managed to say, barely.
“Aren’t you following? I’m Second now.”
“Ok, Second –”
He cut in this time. “You refer to her as Diocletian.”
What the hell did they want with these games, now? “Diocletian, I—”
“Do you understand what you just saw?” she asked.
“You killed her?” I said, and she nodded slowly, urging me on. “Because of the law—"
“Nah, we would have killed her anyway. The oxygen I had in my bag was about to run out,” she pronounced every word very clearly. “While Third, as she professed so loudly, had quite a lot of time in hers. Bags like these need a very specific wrench in order to unplug the oxygen balloon, a wrench which I don’t have. So, instead, I took Third’s body into a hermetically sealed chamber, where I could take off her bag, and put it on myself so I can use her oxygen. Do you follow so far?”
“Yes,” I said. But why put her own suit on third, and cut her open?
“Don’t look at her, look at me,” she said, and I hurriedly turned my head back. “The other lines are constantly watching, so there are appearances to keep. Traditionally, Third cuts open First when her time is up, thus earning her mark,” she gestured towards the thick line of dark red sprayed on her chest. “So if someone sees me once with a marked suit, and then with an unmarked one, they might deduce correctly that I’ve been switching bags. If someone talks to First here once while he’s Second, and then eight hours later sees that he is still called Second by his Third, they might suspect. Do you still follow?” As if to punctuate, Third’s body finished its descent and collided with the floor, settling in an unnatural position.
I swallowed hard. “I think so.”
“Then that brings us to the first law of Last Day Town, called Vampire law. Stupid name, but it drives the point across—no one is allowed to achieve immortality by taking life from others, you get it? And that’s exactly what we’re doing here. With three new Diocletian Thirds coming in every twenty-four hours, each of them with twenty-four hours of oxygen in their suit, we have enough to survive with a little bit of extra. Any questions? I know this part can get a little technical.” She smiled, her blue eyes shining with cold pride.
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
“I want you to know that we have all of the time in the world, out here.”
“Why?”
She took a step closer. “Because we are going to send you back inside Ceres, and we are going to need you to do something for us. And when you can breathe in lungful after lungful without giving it a second thought, you might forget about Diocletian, and the deals we made, and you might try to convince yourself that we will have already died off.” She waved a finger as she spoke, like a teacher warning a child. “This demonstration should serve as proof of the lengths we’d go to, to avoid dying. As you so concisely mentioned earlier, all it would take would be sending the authorities the message that you were here, and you’d be thrown out. And when you are, we’ll still be here, waiting.”
The words rang in the silence of the chamber. She stood only a couple of steps away, between me and the center of the almost empty room. Did she just say that they are going to send me back inside? I wanted to believe it, to let out a big sigh of relief. But she was too confident for someone wearing a suit just taken off a dead body, swinging a blade of broken steel. I didn’t cross out the option I was being told what I needed to hear to play along. So I did. “What,” I said finally, “do you need me to do?”
They looked at each other. “There’s still a chance Ctesibius can hear us, here,” First said flatly.
“Let them hear,” Second answered. “By the time he’s in the sky, they won’t be able to shoot him down.”
“Why the hell would anyone want to shoot me down?” I asked, and Second turned to me.
“I just said that they won’t. Focus on getting back inside. First?”
He nodded, and went to rummage in the pile of abandoned suits, throwing up a cloud of clutter behind him while She spoke. “When you get back inside, you will submit a legal appeal in my name, as well as my colleague’s, here. My identity number is 2046849316. And his is…”
“3,” he answered, hidden in the glacially shifting cloud of suits. “846513517.”
“Do you expect me to remember-“
“There are probably more than a hundred people named Lev Shalem on the inside,” First said, still hidden, and the way Second’s eyebrow twitched made me think that she’d never heard his name before. “It is useless as an identifier.”
“Don’t worry,” Second picked up the thread. “We’ll make sure you remember. You will appeal for us, or at the very least contact our families and make sure they appeal, even if you have to threaten them to do so. Once the appeal is complete, which should not be so difficult, considering that Shadow Man, or whoever it is that chooses who gets thrown out, thinks we’re already dead, you will send a proof to us, via drone, or by your-fucking-self if need be, and let us know we can return. If the airlock recognizes us as Ceresians, well, we can re-enter and carry on with our lives inside.”
A silence stood in the air. That’s absolutely insane. No use telling her that, though. “Ok, I understand. But how do I return?”
First finally emerged from the cascade of suits that were falling slowly around him, holding something that I had learned to recognize as a rocket. Not the same as Anaxagoras’s exactly—it was a simpler design, with rectangular handles and a bulky outline. He floated slowly towards us, holding the rocket as he had Anaxagoras’s body.
“With that,” Second continued, “you should have just enough delta V to get back to a civilian airlock.” First landed in front of me and presented the device, as if inspecting it would somehow affect my decision.
No tracking, no collision detection, not even so much as any shielding, against either meteorites or radiation. “You can’t expect me to ride that,” I said, sounding cowardly to my own ears.
“Don’t worry,” Second said, “Ctesibius wouldn’t sell us faulty merchandise. The lines remember, and they keep their promises, even to Line Diocletian. Do we have a deal? You promise to get us back in, we give you transportation. You fail, we fuck your life up.”
I took the device with both hands before answering. It was heavier than it looked, and tipped me off balance. I inspected it. Makeshift, yes, but built with care, glued conservatively in places and welded neatly in others, the hyper-cooled steel changing colors where it had been touched by the welder from silver to blue. What had the person building this thought, as they were spending their last hours on it? Not one person, probably, but a chain, passing the work from one generation to another; making an effort to build this as a part of a deal made by someone they hadn’t even known the day before. Could I trust them?
I shook my head, forcing myself to focus. There was no point in speculating when I had no better choice. “We have a deal. I’ll go back in, and I’ll do whatever I can to get you back inside as well. Contact your families or sign an appeal. How long do I have?”
“We expect you to bring proof of submitting the appeal within a week,” she said.
“A week? You’ll keep doing this for an entire week?” Three times a day, Third’s just like this one will come here to die at the hands of people they trusted.
“Don’t worry, we’ll handle it,” she answered, misunderstanding. “We have our routine already, the rituals and everything, letting Third run around and make an impression. Whatever it takes, we’ll figure it out. Even if we have to wait here so long that Last Day Town revolves back to the sunny side, we will find a way to survive that too.” Her smile was even colder, even prouder.
“You’re rambling,” First cut in, and for an instant, her smile faltered. “You. A week should be enough for you, but remember,” He unclasped one of his blades as he walked over to me and grabbed me by the suit with his free hand, making sure I wouldn’t get away. “You tell anyone anything they shouldn’t know, outside or inside, and we make sure you regret it. You might think a broken spine is bad, but there are worse ways to die.” He brought the blade against my visor and tapped the glass twice, as if to check its toughness. The bluish metal was close enough to my face that one of its edges was faintly lit with the violet glow of my oxygen timer.
I looked away, trying to make myself as small as possible, and he drew my attention back with the edge of the blade as it scratched the glass.
“Do you understand me?” he said, speaking slowly.
In a feat of self-control I couldn’t even guess the source of, I returned his stare. There was no malice in his expression, no joy at terrorizing me. He seemed to be completing a chore, acting out of necessity. “Yes,” I answered, my voice still weak.
“Good.” He smiled, the first smile I’d seen from him. A pained, joyless expression.
#
Estimated oxygen time: 22:26:47
First took a couple of patient minutes to make thoroughly sure that I remembered both of their identity numbers, presenting me with a series of mnemonics and testing me on them, while Second watched. Motionless, her predatory presence was intensified, unblurred, like a hawk perching. I decided not to tell them I’d been recording all of it through my helmet-camera—I wasn’t sure how they’d react to the knowledge that I’d documented the murder, but I couldn’t believe they staked their lives on an old man’s long-term memory, either. When First was done, Second stepped forward, and presented a steel rectangle smaller than her palm—two ten digit numbers were scratched on it, and by now I’d learned to recognize them. Coming very close to me, she opened a pocket in my thigh suit and slid it inside while I watched.
My memory was only a backup, I realized. They really had planned this thoroughly.
After that, they escorted me outside, instructing me how to climb through the narrow tunnel and out of the chasm, twisting uncomfortably and looking for handholds in the dark.
I finally managed to get myself to the edge of the chasm, where I stood beneath the open sky with the rocket in my hand. I took a moment to reorient myself, taking in how every little bright star, burning to its fullest, lightened the darkness, mixing into a color that could have seemed, at a glance, like gray, but wasn’t gray at all.
A large, egg-shaped asteroid emerged from Ceres’ shadow, twisting around a complex axis, surrounded by smaller asteroids. A rare and beautiful pattern; probably the result of a collision. I stared as the chaperones around the larger asteroid drifted further and further away, making the walls of rock dance with the shifting light patterns.
I’m going to live, I thought. I wasn’t quite out the thick of it, yet, but I had a way to return. Soon I could put this all behind me. Even Arik, I realized. I had forgotten about him, and now I was about to leave him behind as well. Maybe he’d died already. Maybe he too was already insane, just like all of these people. Maybe I just had to admit that I wasn’t in control of this situation, that I couldn’t help anyone but myself and even that was in doubt.
Someone shoved me forward. “You’ll have enough time to be in shock when you’re inside,” he said. “Now listen.”
I managed to find my footing, using the rocket as a counterweight to balance myself. I looked back, at First’s frozen expression and Second’s predatory grin. “This rocket is weak, but it can get you far enough if you use it wisely. Are you familiar with the Oberth effect?”
There was a hint of recognition, something I must have studied and tested upon. I could probably come up with the formula, given enough time.
She rolled her eyes. “In essence, it means that you —are more efficient using one big burst of thrust at the beginning of your flight, and another one at the end, when you decelerate. Don’t do a series of bursts—try to reach top speed in the first couple of minutes, and then cruise. You should reach about fifty meters per second. Understand?”
I once again noticed the glaring lack of any indicators on the rocket’s interface. “How do I know how fast I’m going?”
“Good, you’re paying attention. See that cliff over there?” She pointed straight east, to the edge of the other side of the crater. “That protrusion? You should point the rocket in a vertical 45 degrees, and pass just above it. Then count how long it takes you to go over the next large crater. If it’s more than one thousand four hundred and fifty seconds, that means you’re too slow and you gotta pump it some more,” she said.
“One thousand four hundred and fifty,” I repeated. “How do you—“
“We had a lot of time to prepare. Anyway, it’s easy to get confused when counting, so use your visor for that. When you start, jump as high as you can. Take to the sky first, at least until you learn how to control it. There’s only one button, for thrust, and the rest is done by pointing the nozzle in the direction you don’t want to be in.”
I sat the rocket on the ground, getting a feel for how jumping with it was going to be. “Now?” I asked.
“Yeah, fucking now,” she scoffed, clapping her hands soundlessly.
Swinging the rocket as a counterweight, kicking the ground with both legs, I shoved Last Day Town away from me as hard as I could. I floated three meters, six, and kept rising while I mounted the rocket, pointing the nozzle down, and pressed the only button. The thrust was so weak I wasn’t even sure it was working, but second after second, meter after meter, I gained speed, upwards and forward, pointing right above the cliff in the distance. Before I knew it, Diocletian were tiny and far below me, on the edge of the abyss. I squinted. Are they dancing?
#
Diocletian’s bless their luck. Some time ago, in the past that they could not afford to remember, they got their hands on one of these Ctesibius-made rockets. Now this rocket is the crux of their plan to return to the interior, to stop being Diocletian entirely. But Diocletian are uneasy. Something just doesn’t sit right, with the way things keep falling into place. The Visitor said that his vehicle was sabotaged, and if someone went through the trouble of doing that, they must have expected to reap some gains.
Perhaps Diocletian should have gone and killed Ctesibius, the obvious suspect, outright, and taken their rockets—they weren’t so certain in their own rocket’s ability to reach the airlock as they had The Visitor believe. But if they did, Anaxagoras would retaliate, perhaps Pythia as well, and Diocletian weren’t counting on their chances to kill three lines without taking any losses. No, they will wait for now, and if any complications arise, they will take care of them then.
Diocletian keep their cool, stay focused. Competent Killers always do.