Гарднер Дозуа - City Under the Stars

All this, all these years, Hanson thought in numb horror, because I once broke Oristano’s nose in a tavern brawl, in front of the men of the factory.

Nothing ever ended. Five minutes of his past had birthed all the rest of his life.

Hanson shifted the weight of the shovel and stepped up onto the lip. He walked past Oristano without looking at him and continued steadily on across the platform to the fire door. Oristano laughed again, an ugly clotted sound, and followed Hanson with his eyes, although he disdained to turn his head.

Fifteen years of shuffling around the giant factory, going from one section to another, from job to job, always falling lower, but always hanging on to one more hope—fifteen years, and now it was all over. He was finished. The New Man would be shift-leader tomorrow, although he didn’t know it yet. Hanson would not come back. Oristano had known that he wouldn’t. And without a job in Orange, barred from work by quitting the factory, Hanson was a dead man. He might as well lie down now and wait for the scavengers. It was all over with him.

Without saying a word, Hanson collected his shift and led them out through the fire doors, through the guts of the factory toward the washroom. He did not look back.

Behind him, Oristano smiled.

Hanson washed up slowly, working the tarnished brass pump, watching the hypnotically rhythmical spurts of rusty water fill the basin. His face was expressionless, and he ignored the other men in his shift. Relk, as usual, had merely changed into his civilian clothes and left, without bothering to wash, without bothering to say goodbye. Tic and Tac splashed noisily at the far basin, talking in a rapid stream of gutturals and fricatives. Gossard wallowed in armfuls of water, blowing like a whale. The New Man washed quietly, dressed, and then hesitated by Hanson’s basin on the way out, feeling obliged to say something to the older man but afraid to speak. Hanson did not look up. After several moments, the New Man shrugged, shook his head, and left. Hanson continued to wash, stolidly, turning his arms over and over under the pump.

Moving with deliberation, he soaped the salty patches of dried sweat from his body, lifted the heavy ceramic basin, and poured the brackish water over his head, carefully pumped the basin full, and rinsed himself again. While he was doing this, Tic and Tac went out, each staring at him as they went by—Tac looking at him with morbid, insolent curiosity, as if he was examining a particularly interesting corpse, and Tic rolling his eyes in a quick sideways motion, as if he was afraid to look at Hanson directly, as if Hanson was the carrier of a disease so virulent it could be contracted by a glance. Hanson stood like a statue, holding the basin over his head, letting the water flatten his thinning black hair, cascade over his shoulders, pour in runnels down his legs. His eyes were fixed and unblinking. Tic and Tac hurried out, and didn’t look back.

When the basin was empty, Hanson put it down and picked up a coarse towel, moving no more than necessary. He heard Gossard come up behind him, hesitating as the New Man had, a few steps away. Hanson rubbed himself down methodically, not turning around. Gossard shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot, unconsciously sighing and massaging his stomach. Hanson could hear him breath: labored, wheezing, strangled by fat. He wouldn’t last much longer, Hanson thought again. His heart, one day on the shift. Or a stroke. Or the dust. The thought made Hanson sad and almost pierced the wall that humiliation and the loss of status were building around him—he felt a momentary desire to talk to the fat man, to confess the shame and agony. To share his friendship while he’s still alive, Hanson realized, in a wave of black fury. Before the job kills him. Like it will kill all of us eventually, one by one, until only old Relk is left. Or until we all become like him: dead, but still walking. Hanson snapped the towel viciously against his calf, relishing the sting, and began to rub himself down again. Anger had rebuilt the walls of his shame, and he pointedly ignored Gossard, keeping his back turned. Why should one corpse talk to another? About what? Gossard cleared his throat obstreperously without eliciting any response, walked suddenly to the door, paused, and came slowly back.

“Carl?”

“Yes?” Hanson replied, without turning his head.

“Are you all right?”

Hanson’s cheeks flamed. Half a lifetime leaped in his throat, tangled itself hopelessly in his tongue, refused to pass his lips. What he said was: “Yes.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

Silence, Hanson standing motionless with the towel clutched in his hands like a snake, and then Gossard said, “Is there—” and Hanson said, “No,” almost simultaneously.

Gossard tried again: “If there’s anything I can do—”

“No.”

Then, forcing himself to speak:

“No. Thank you, John, but no. Nothing.”

Then:

“There is nothing that can be done.”

There was a long silence and Hanson did not move at all. Gossard didn’t speak again. After a while, he went away, closing the door gently behind him. The sound of his heavy footsteps dwindled into distance, was gone.

Hanson was alone.

The fading gurgle of water down sunken drains, the slow drip-drip of a faulty pump. The single carbon lamp flared and dimmed regularly with the beat of hidden dynamos, a brassy illumination washing across the stone walls and floor, ebbing from a beach of shadows. The air was heavy with old sweat. The room was full of ghosts.

Hanson was still for a moment longer, then, like a statue coming to life, he crushed the towel into a ball and hurled it viciously away, shuddering with disgust. He took a staggering step to a basin, braced his arms against it, and took three deep breaths, his backbone rising and falling with the effort. Gradually his breathing slowed. He became a statue again.

He had been sure he was going to be sick, but he couldn’t: the sickness clogged somewhere in the very back of his throat, too deep ever to be regurgitated.

He pushed himself away from the basin, walked rapidly and violently to the center of the washroom, and stopped, looking around uncertainly, shaking his head, baffled. He started out again with great vigor, stopped after two steps, casting quick, frightened glances around him, seeing through the walls to the labyrinth of factory corridors, the maze of his life. He grimaced, rubbed his hands along his ribs, forced himself into motion, his steps dragging as if he were wading into quicksand, four steps, five, and he was halted again—stopped dead by inertia. He could feel the factory above him, below him, holding him in its belly, crushing down against his shoulders, anchoring his feet deep in its alien earth.

There was no place to go.

There was nothing to do.

There were no options left open to him.

Appalled, he allowed himself to drift back into the washroom, away from the door, along the row of basins, along the row of urinals. The stone under his feet was stained and porous, slightly damp—it felt like flesh. The air was delicately webbed with ancient piss, the light was spiky and hurtful against Hanson’s eyes, his shadow drifted listlessly with him, across the grimy walls—the ghost of a ghost. He fetched up against the far wall, turned restlessly, and pushed into a wooden commode stall. The commode was old—stone-lipped, and earthen-breathed from the huge sump beneath the factory. It was now considered a luxury, and the use of it an incentive to work; the factory had been built in somewhat more prosperous times—the interlude between the Third Plague and the disastrous Campaign Against the South—when the State had been able to afford spending money and materials on such things, and when artisans sufficiently talented to build such a system were common enough to waste on nonessentials. Hanson had been raised with outhouses and nightjars at best, slit trenches or hand-scooped holes at worst, and still found the big stone commode alien and faintly menacing, in spite of years at the factory. He stared at it dumbly, as if expecting it to speak in a septic voice of decay.