Free At the Edge of the Game by Gareth Power Page B

considered theft from the company, so we’re going to have to let you go.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I’m sorry. You
were doing well here.’
    ‘But he told me
to do it.’ I see Al glancing over sneakily.
    ‘I’m sorry,
George. We already have someone coming in to replace you.’
    ‘Come on, Candy.
This is my life you’re messing with here. I have a pregnant wife.’
    ‘Well you
shouldn’t have franked your time card then, should you?’
    ‘Jesus Christ.
This is ridiculous.’
    ‘To be quite
honest, George, you were on thin ice anyway after that security alert you
called.’
    ‘I did not call
that alert. You did.’
    ‘Goodbye,
George. You’ll be paid for last week.’
    ‘See ya, George,’
says Al.
    God, this is
going to hit Helen hard. I can’t believe it’s happening. I’ve let her down
again. How am I going to be able to face her?
    As I pass
through the main Avatan security gate, I pass the fella who stole my old bike
in Talbot Street. He’s heading the other way.
    I stand at the
side of the wretched road, vans and battered cars tearing past. Against the
noise of these I press the phone against my ear.
    ‘Helen,’ I say
when she picks up.
    She knows
immediately, just from this single word.
    ‘Oh George,’ she
says, and I know tears are already pricking in her eyes. They are in mine too.
    ‘I’m sorry. I’m
so sorry. I’ll be home as soon as I can.’
    ‘Okay,’ she says
like a child.
    She hangs up.
    So I begin my
last journey from this place.
    I’ve got back
what I wanted to lose, then longed for again. I’m free, free from the torment
of paid labour. Free to fling away the hours of my life in idleness. Free to
engage in another thorough contemplation of the agony of being who and what I
am.
     
     
     

OUT OF PHASE

 
    ‘Follow me,’
said Dexter. ‘If you get a slight odour inside, well… The air has been recycled
on board for a very long time. But I’m sure there won’t be a problem. I don't
notice anything myself.’
    The Unquiet
Spirit was the first manned interstellar craft ever to have left the Solar
System. Its recycling systems were primitive, inadequate by the standards of my
time. As soon as I stepped into the gloom I could feel a foul, sticky coating
of fine particles begin to form on the inside of my mouth. I struggled to
accustom myself to the vileness of it. In the end I had to step back to the
doorway to fill my lungs with clean air.
    A similar
foulness must have filled the ship of the dead. Helen and the others in the
hold had little food, and only the clothes on their backs to keep them warm. The
ship was not designed to accommodate so many.
     
    They want me to give the baby to the
sailors to throw overboard. They talk about disease but I don’t care. We’ll all
[ die anyway (?)], so what can they do to me?
     
    When I had
recovered sufficiently to endure the stench, Dexter led me down a short
corridor on the Unquiet Spirit, into a dark chamber where the rumble of the
ship's works came through the walls loudly. He switched on a light. Every
surface in the room shone with condensation. Through a thickly paned window set
in a door in the wall I beheld the bald head of an elderly woman. I took an
involuntary step back. It was recognisably the Brinnilla Innes I had seen in
old video footage and in photographs. She had been one of the beauties of her
era, but now her appearance was horrifying, like a macabre waxwork, and not a
particularly lifelike one. But unlike Helen, another woman now a corruption of
beauty (I imagine that Helen was beautiful), at least Brinnilla had eyes that
were open and, as far as I could judge, seeing. Dexter leaned forward so that
his breath fogged the glass. ‘Yes, her colour is coming up. She's ready to come
out.’
    He shambled
outside to do something. I could not bring myself to look again at Brinnilla's
gaunt, empty face. Instead I looked about the room, taking in its grotty,
depressing unpleasantness.  
    A movement
at the door brought my