The Rig Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  THE RIG

  ROGER LEVY

  TITAN BOOKS

  The Rig

  Paperback edition ISBN: 9781785655630

  Electronic edition ISBN: 9781785655647

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: May 2018

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 Roger Levy. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  For Tina, Georgia, Alex

  One

  ALEF

  Welcome to AfterLife

  You have selected subject [xx] (restricted access)

  Subject name: Alef Selsior Subject condition: Unspecified. Physical state – rigor vitae. Nil significant trauma. Nil significant disease. Conscious state – hypersomnia.

  Special Note: This subject is ineligible for ballot. This Life is unfinalised and available for research only. It is not currently accessible via AfterLife random search programs.

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  Thank you for selecting Alef Selsior’s Life, Significant Events in Chronological Order With Insights.

  * * *

  SigEv 1 The arkestra

  My name is Alef Selsior. I am an only child.

  I was born and brought up in a village in the restricted community of the planet Gehenna. The village was called JerSalem. My father, Saul, was a statistician with a small binary consultancy. Marita, my mother, sang in the church choir and baked cookies.

  I struggle to remember much of my life before the arrival of Pellonhorc and his mother. Perhaps it was my age – he arrived when I was eight – but I think it was really that he came to us like a wheelstorm, changing everything and casting the time before himself into deep shade.

  One thing I remember from the time before Pellonhorc is when the arkestra came to Gehenna. I’ve looked back at the event so many times that I feel young and old, wise and naïve, together – though, on reflection, this is how I have always felt.

  We travelled to the city cathedral, a day’s long journey, to hear the arkestra play. Other than lullabaloos, there wasn’t much in the way of music on Gehenna except for hymns and carols, and of course the planet shielded itself from the Song, which it called the pornoverse, so arkestra music was a novelty. The arkestra were only licensed to play godly music while they were on Gehenna, naturally. Hymns and carols.

  We travelled to the city by bus. I was so excited that I found it hard to concentrate on the prayers at take-off, mouthing them without heart. Because of this I remember feeling responsible when we hit turbulence, and I also remember a priest in the capsule accusing me with his gaze. I knew it would be my fault if we crashed, but he said nothing, and I spent the rest of the trip praying desperately.

  In the city, we went on a flycykle down the river. I’d never been on a flycykle before, or a river, but all I remember was praying that the canopy would hold against the swirling gas, and that we wouldn’t sink to hell under the mud.

  The cathedral was a vast stadium. Elsewhere in the System, such places were used for sports. I’d seen the cathedral on our screenery at home and in church, of course, but to sit in the stands among the tens of thousands of congregants was like being raised to heaven. Our small church in JerSalem would have sat on the huge central pitch beneath us with a margin of grass so wide that I couldn’t have thrown a ball to reach it. This great stadium was open to heaven, and the sky peeled past above us, clouds unscrolling their terrible shapes, the devil tempting us to imagine the worst. As I’d been taught, I kept my eyes down. I could make out where the stakes normally set around the oval pitch had been removed; the circles of scorched earth were clearly visible. While we waited for the arkestra, historic confessions were shown on the pitchside screenery. Confessions of apostasy, idolatry, heresy, and the occasional plain law crime.

  I think of that day now and can’t quite believe it. It’s strange. I think of my early childhood – before Pellonhorc – as a time of innocence. Gehenna called itself an innocent planet, and its priests defended that innocence with rigour.

  But what is innocence? Can one hold one’s eyes open against the world and remain innocent? Can one close one’s eyes against life and call oneself innocent?

  Looking back at all that I have seen and done, can I? And who can judge me? No one can judge who cannot understand.

  The atmosphere in the cathedral was wonderful. There was an extraordinary sense of comradeship. I sat between my parents in the high stands, holding their hands. My mother’s face was rosy. My father’s eyes shone. I stared at the pitch, enthralled. It was odd to see anyone other than groups of the condemned on the grass. Notes of music pricked the air as the musicians prepared their instruments. I can, even now, remember the perfect randomness of that sound, the absence of order in the notes and chords. The freedom.

  The preacher’s stand at one end of the pitch was so far from our seats that we cricked our necks to see him better on the high screenery. Father Sh
eol was the day’s preacher. He stood there and spread his arms.

  Father Sheol was legendary, an old man almost in his fifties yet still abrim with hellfire. His voice was separated from the movement of his mouth on the screenery, as if he were calling to us from heaven.

  ‘Welcome,’ he boomed.

  We roared back, a wave of joy stirring the stadium.

  ‘And welcome, Arkestra of Amadeus.’

  He pronounced their name carefully. On Gehenna, names carried great weight, and the similarity of Amadeus to Asmodeus had been debated for a considerable time before the arkestra had been permitted descent rights. The members of the arkestra stopped their preparations to bow to the congregation and acknowledge the priest’s greeting.

  He announced, ‘We are all here to share in the glory of godfear. We are here to be reminded of the temptation above, the retribution below, the suffering here and now, and the reward beyond. We of Gehenna welcome the Arkestra of Amadeus, and we remind them of godfear.’

  A few of the arkestra had gone back to prepare their instruments. But they froze as the screenery around them cleared and went hellblack.

  Father Sheol continued. ‘Today Gehenna welcomes not only the Amadeus Arkestra, but the eyes of the Upper Worlds too.’

  I could tell by the reaction around me that this was unexpected. I’ve since gone back to see the records of the event, such as exist. Father Sheol looks small and his voice is tinny. Each time he repeats the arkestra’s name, it seems to sound closer to Asmodeus. Asmodeus, one of the devil’s names.

  Why would Father Sheol and his Ministry have permitted the Upper Worlds (as we referred to the rest of the System) to peer at us? The Upper Worlds were the devil’s agents; yet we were allowing Gehenna to be seen on the pornoverse. What sin, and by whom, was being committed here?

  There was murmuring all around the cathedral. Everyone was thinking the same thing. Why would the pornosphere be allowed into the godliest of godlys?

  The hellblack of the screenery slowly faded, and new scenes appeared. These were not the usual confessions, though. These images were of retributions.

  Odder and odder. These were not the usual burnings at stake of lone sinners, but mass sentencings to the pit. There on the screenery were crowds of shivering men, women and children standing on the pitch over the pits, waiting for them to open beneath their feet.

  I thought how off-putting it must be for the arkestra to be sitting on a platform built there. But the images on the screenery only showed the moments before the pits opened, and I now realise that the musicians had no way of understanding the significance of the images, of what came next. All they knew of Gehenna was the opportunity it presented to play before an immense new audience on one of the two closed planets – the other being the obsessively secretive (even to the point of protecting its name) unsaid planet – and simultaneously throughout the System.

  On the preacher’s stand, a small box was visible, a lead chest edge-laced in gold, and Father Sheol stood tall behind it and paused a moment. Everyone knew what it held. It was opened once a year, and today was not that day.

  He bowed his head, briefly put his palms together in prayer, then flexed his fingers and slid a pair of stiff, black gauntlets onto his hands, pulling the long, lead-mailed cuffs up beyond his elbows, and then he leaned forward to rest his hands on the domed lid of the chest. He took a long breath and closed his eyes.

  We were silent.

  In a single smooth motion of ritual, Father Sheol opened the chest, reached inside, withdrew his hand and let the lid fall closed again.

  We cheered as he brandished the book high in both hands. The cathedral trembled with our ecstatic approval. It was the godly Babbel, and Father Sheol was holding the Authorised Version. It shone in his gloved hands, radiating awe. Father Sheol stood in its fierce glow, and as the roar settled, long, deafening seconds later, everyone in the cathedral shrank back in their seats and held their breath. Only the arkestra failed to understand the significance of what they were seeing.

  I could hear people murmuring, chanting the seconds just as I did, although for me, to count was as natural as to breathe.

  Three, four…

  Even I knew that the light of the godly Babbel was lethal.

  ‘On Gehenna, we believe,’ Father Sheol roared.

  The arkestra were quite still. Now they sensed that something special was happening here. They could see the Babbel’s fierce glow reflected on the high priest’s cheeks.

  Seven, eight, nine…

  And still Father Sheol held the book up. The eyes of the pornosphere were on it, and he was preaching with fire. He was showing the Upper Worlds the unquenchable power of our belief.

  He lowered the Babbel, and we breathed out. But then, before shutting the book away in its leaded chest, he suddenly brought it to his mouth and kissed it hard with his bare lips, holding it there for a long moment. Only then did he close the book away. He touched a finger to his mouth and blew a silent kiss towards the arkestra. There was a wisp of smoke at his lips. They were already blistering.

  What did this mean? On Gehenna, everything had meaning and was to be interpreted. But there was no time now, for the arkestra launched into their music.

  I forgot Father Sheol instantly. I thought I was in heaven. The soaring, swooping, gliding of the music enfolded me. The fading and regathering of melody, the subtleties of variation, the – I can’t describe it. I’d heard everything they played before, a thousand times, Sinday after Sinday as long as I could remember. But this was more. It was wonderful and terrible. I sat there and tried to hold it in my mind, the simplicity and complexity of it, and then I gave up, closed my eyes and let it bear me away.

  As it continued, filling me with something I’d never known before, I found myself staring up, up into the sky. Without thinking what I was doing, I stared at the clouds and saw them as great, beautiful beasts, bounding majestically along, shot through with distant light.

  The music filled me and I stared, I don’t know for how long, until I was brought to my senses by a violent cuff to the head from behind. It dizzied me for a few seconds. I turned round, startled and hurt. My eyes regained their focus as the man who had struck me hissed, ‘Devil-watcher! Keep your eyes down.’

  As if the slap had flicked a switch inside me, the music fell flat in my ears. I still listened, but in a different way. I don’t think I’d ever been hit before that moment. My parents had never struck me. But they didn’t say anything to the man who had just done so. There was a moment when they glanced at each other, but they did nothing else.

  Strange. I thought I was accessing a memory of simple life prior to Pellonhorc’s arrival, a time without pain and confusion, and yet I find myself disturbed.

  The music ended. As we waited for Father Sheol to conclude the service, my mother asked if I’d enjoyed it, and I said yes. My voice sounded new. We locked eyes. Looking back, I realise that my mother had seen that something had changed in me.

  My father didn’t notice anything. He smiled at the two of us and said, ‘Good!’ And as Father Sheol returned to his stand, my father added, ‘Interesting. The string section made up seventeen point eight per cent of the arkestra.’

  That was the type of comment he always made. It was the way his mind worked. Whenever he came out with such a thing, my mother would always glance at me and roll her eyes. He was not like us, she meant, but this was the first time I fully understood that. At other times, of course, it would be my father and me sharing a similar glance aimed at my mother who was unlike my father and me.

  I answered my father, correctly, ‘Did you notice that the string section was responsible for thirty-eight point two five per cent of the notes played?’

  My father blinked and said, ‘Yes,’ in mild surprise. And then his attention, and that of everyone in the cathedral, turned to Father Sheol.

  The preacher was saying, ‘This is a day we shall all remember. Gehenna will remain strong, a beacon of faith unsullied
by the polluting gaze of the Upper Worlds.’

  It was clear that the arkestra had not expected this. They had been putting their instruments into cases, chattering to each other, but now they hesitated.

  ‘The Arkestra of Asmodeus –’ it was certainly not Amadeus that he articulated so precisely, this time, ‘– has taught us a lesson today. It is a lesson that the Upper Worlds shall do well not to forget.’

  Father Sheol held something high. It was not the Babbel this time; the screens closed in on the black orb in his fist. He was holding the Pull.

  In the congregation, people began to moan. My mother gasped. The musicians stopped what they were doing, sensing that something was happening that they didn’t at all comprehend.

  In my head, I made calculations, percentages based on the different manners in which they displayed their panic, approximating my figures to the nearest one per cent. Eighteen per cent were screaming, thirty one per cent were clutching each other, twelve per cent were falling to the ground. No one prayed. Zero per cent.

  When I analyse it now, the way the music had freed my mind to think, to imagine, and then the way that logic allowed me to escape my imagination, the way it let me withdraw into numbers; all this was an insight into my father’s mind. But now I had the beginnings of my mother’s perception too, or at least an early foresight of it.

  I was not grateful for that.

  Holding the Pull high, Father Sheol walked from his stand towards the pits, to stand at their edge. I wondered whether the pit directly beneath the arkestra was broad enough. I’d seen condemnations on the screenery at home, the calm resignation of the repented sinners as they murmured their prayers before the ground opened. They were always in groups of twenty-five, the largest of the traps five metres in diameter. Father Sheol would stand at their side on solid ground as he operated the Pull. There was a dignity to their going.

  There was little dignity here.

  Father Sheol smiled at the musicians. They plainly couldn’t tell what was going on. Their panic began to subside, but about forty per cent were still wailing. He made a signal and the screenery closed on his face. His Babbel-burnt lips couldn’t control his words and we struggled to understand him.