A selection from "Usher" by Davin Ireland

Usher

by Davin Ireland

I.

M

oments before the pale white star was due to reach its midday zenith, a faint blemish appeared on the horizon. The blemish was tiny at first, and rippled with heat shimmer that blurred it back into the featureless plain of salt. But as time progressed, the shape coalesced, grew more definite.

An arch. A parabolic limestone arch some five-hundred feet across. Hewn from a single layer of sedimentary rock, it had stood to the sky for what might have been aeons. Cowper had examined it hundreds of times over recent months, and would probably do so again given the opportunity. But for now he was content to admire it from afar, pausing to wipe his face and neck with a filthy rag. The gesture offered little relief. The vast endorheic desert extended from skyline to skyline, the salt crust that covered it so uniformly flat that the planet’s natural curvature revealed itself at every turn. The sun beat relentlessly on the desiccated landscape, the whitened surface reflecting the heat back the way it had come.

Yet for all that, there was an austere beauty about the place that enchanted Cowper. A lack of ozone in the atmosphere meant the heavens sang in tones of indigo and ultra-violet for most of the day. When wet, the salt plains reflected those colours like a burnished mirror, creating an effect that was both pleasing to the eye and nominally disorientating. Right now the season was at its most arid, and the only water present was that which evaporated from Cowper’s own pores. He could live with that. The arch was less than an hour’s walk away, and the sloshing of the canteen at his hip formed a reassuring presence. Checking that no area of skin was exposed, he refastened his photochromatic goggles, took up the handles of the wooden barrow, and resumed his journey. 

II.

How the weathered android had managed to survive this long on its own, Cowper reasoned, was a miracle of both science and spirituality. A diminutive 130 centimetres in height, it patrolled the base of the arch ceaselessly, aging servo motors whirring, graphic-fibre bundles bunching and extending in time to its movements.

Still shrouded in his rags, Cowper rolled the giant barrow to a standstill, the salt crust cracking beneath its great wheel like an ice floe fracturing before the prow of an invading ship. He always stopped to observe the solar-powered droid as it strutted east to west, never ceasing to feel a kind of pity for its meaningless existence and the duties that defined it.

“Usher,” he croaked, cupping his swollen fingers about his mouth. He cleared his parched airways and tried again: “Usher!”

The android continued in sentry mode for a few seconds more, then turned to face the visitor.

“Cowper,” it said, and raised a hand in greeting. “How goes the salvage business?”

“So-so.” He indicated the barrow piled with junk, most of it the wreckage of off-world racing vehicles previously scattered across the plains. “Anybody drop by?”

The android greeted the old joke by miming gently sarcastic applause. “Ever the optimist,” it said. “By the way, I read the instruction manual you left the last time. Not quite as challenging as the railway timetable but interesting in its own right.”

Cowper grunted. “Try living my life for a day and tell me about interesting.”

Usher tipped his head quizzically to the side. “Would the conversation improve?”

This time it was Cowper’s turn to applaud. Unfortunately, he forgot to mime, and the collision of roasted palms sent shockwaves of pain lancing up his wrists. “Dammit,” he whispered, “that’s what you get when you let your guard down.”

“Are you damaged?”

“Damaged?” Cowper shook his head, an act which caused precious droplets of sweat to spatter the inside of his cowl. “I guess I’ll survive,” he said. The statement belied a deeper anxiety. Already a mixture of blood and pus seeped between the wrappings covering his palms. If he didn’t get them seen to soon, infection would result. In bygone times, a sturdy pair of gloves had provided ample protection against heat blisters, ultra-violet radiation, even burning hot metal — of which there was much on this otherwise barren hunk of salt-encrusted stone. But with manufacturing in terminal decline, the only substitutes were filthy strips of canvas torn from sacks stolen off the New Deptford wharves.

Cowper lifted the cowl from his face and squinted at the titanic arch, which loomed above them, midday shadow a narrow stripe on the well-trodden salt.

“Is it ready?”

Usher took a moment to calculate the time differential. “I believe so,” he said. He sounded disappointed. He always sounded that way when Cowper returned to his own world. “Will you bring me something else to read next time?” He handed back the instruction manual, which had once served a mechanism described as an automated dish-washer.

“I only just gave you this one,” Cowper protested, and regretted it immediately. It wasn’t the droid’s fault it was all alone. “Look,” he sighed, “I’ll see what I can do, okay?” As he said this, he tried to forget how he had also promised Usher a thesaurus to go with the dictionary the inquisitive droid had already consumed and stored on his hard drive. The acquisition of that one volume — even on a temporary basis — had saddled him with a debt he was still struggling to pay off, but it had been worth it to establish communication with the portal’s faithful guardian. “Just try not to be too disappointed if it’s another manual,” he added, “deal?”

Usher nodded as a pinprick of darkness opened up at the centre of the arch. The pinprick swelled first to fist-size, then plate-size, then all the way up to man-size. It would continue to expand until it reached the solid rind of calcium carbonate that encapsulated it.

“Time to go.” Cowper gingerly grasped the handles of the barrow and winced. Even this much pressure caused his aching palms to scream.

“Do you hurt?” Usher’s head was tilted to the side again.

Cowper intended his chuckle to be both dry and cynical, but all he could manage was an exasperated wheeze. “There’s an old expression about rubbing salt into wounds,” he said. “I doubt its author ever visited this place.”

The droid was silent for a moment. “I wasn’t talking about your injuries.”

And just like that, they were on the subject of Joshua again. Usher had grasped the principle of physical pain with ease. Damage occurs, a signal travels to the appropriate receptor, action is taken. But emotional pain — grief, bitterness, despair — was a mystery to him, and therefore a source of endless fascination. That was hard to take. Like so many families, the Cowpers had lost their only child at the end of the period known simply as More. They had struggled to survive on their own since, yet Marit still harboured the dream of bringing another child into the world. Usher’s preoccupation with the subject verged on obsessive — and the fact he was not much bigger than Josh when the boy had been taken from them only added to the sorrow.

“Have your fertility levels risen?” the droid asked. “I could perform a scan.”

Cowper stared morosely at the far vista of the horizon. “I’m not sure I’m the one with the problem,” he said, “and I think I’d prefer it if you didn’t ask me that question again.”

III.

Marit was waiting for him — face drawn with concern — when he dragged the giant barrow back into the cellar, salt whispering beneath his soles. It was so full its contents nearly brushed the low ceiling. 

“Clear,” he gasped, and allowed his hands to drop.

Marit threw the switch on the aging junction box and the portal collapsed as quickly and neatly as a deckchair clapping together after a day at the beach. Only there were precious few deckchairs left any more, and most of Earth’s beaches had long been subsumed by desert.

“How long?” He threw off the cowl, ditched the goggles, tore at his finger-wrappings with giddy impatience. It was always the way. Returning from the other side, where there was ostensibly nothing, the darkness and the cramped conditions of home sent him into fits of claustrophobia.

Marit grimaced, her face teetering on collapse as she drew water from an aging rain barrel. “Thirty-six hours,” she said, voice rising with indignation.

“Thirty-six?” He took the proffered bowl, searched her eyes for confirmation. “So long?” He stopped short of asking Marit outright if she was completely certain. He knew how agonising she found his absences, but also how crucial they were for the both of them. Without the salvage income, the Cowpers were destitute. But two nights and a day? After the bowl was empty, she helped him into a sackcloth robe, led the way to a chair by the fire. The stack of firewood — slats and fractured skirting boards mostly — was almost gone.

“The time,” she said, “it’s getting longer, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily.” Cowper leaned forward as she stirred the embers, but stopped short of raising his palms to the feeble flames. In the space of minutes he had gone from the baking furnace of an alien desert to a dank basement in the slums of New Deptford. The contrast could hardly be greater, as was the opportunity for chilblains. But what could he do? His flesh was practically cooked as it was.

“No, not necessarily longer at all,” he repeated, thinking the thing through. “Oscillation is common in older model portals. We’ll just have to hope it regains a shorter frequency sooner rather than later.”

“And if it doesn’t?” She clutched sackcloth to her throat with a white-knuckled fist. “Next time you could be gone for months. Years, even.”

“Not years, my darling, please. Days at best.” He frowned, a mixture of guilt and dread momentarily undermining his confidence. What if Marit was right? What if he returned next time to an armed reception, waiting militia men, an empty shell? Marit wouldn’t be able to survive on her own for more than a week. If he was reported missing, the authorities were bound to come calling. 

“I was so frightened, Joseph,” she was saying, thin form shivering beneath the robe, “so horribly frightened.”

“Well, it’s over now.” There was little else he could say. Both of them knew the reality of the situation. God alone knows, he thought, neither of us is immune to fear. But as the modest fire burned lower, with the satisfying tick of salvage metal cooling in the background, he realised that words were not enough, would never be enough. Not until ...

She was waiting for him to ask, just as they both knew he would. They also both knew the answer to the question. It was merely another of the ways Marit had of beating herself up.

Reluctantly, he draped an arm around her shoulders. This was one chore he could do without. “So how are you feeling, my love?” He did not wish to put it to her any more directly than that.

“I’ve been better,” she said, and instinctively rested a hand on her shrivelled belly.

“That’s thirty-eight months in a row,” he told her. “If I auction the salvaged technology on the black market instead of selling it for scrap, the fertility treatment you so long for could be ours —”

“No.” Voice firm, tone uncompromising, she waved the offer away. “It’s too risky, Joseph. I could never ask you to —”

“You’re not asking me anything,” he interrupted, “I’m offering of my own free will. There’s a difference. Besides, the underground is far more organised now than it was before. There are middle men, financers, networks of reliable informants. The authorities will be none the wiser.”

But she was steadfastly shaking her head.

“I won’t countenance it. What’s the point of another child if it enters the world fatherless? I’ll end up as nothing more than a surrogate for a wealthy couple.”

She was right, of course. Theirs was the last working portal in the city, perhaps the country. If the secret ever got out, public execution would be the best they could hope for. In the background, the cooling heap of metal ticked progressively slower, like a clock running down the days ...