DEAD CHILL

1563 4D

They took Andrew out of the mine to a huge storage building. A powerful, icy winter storm came; when the vast space had chilled, Andrew huddled in the center of the stone floor, away from the heat-draining bitterness of the metal walls. Hour by hour, he held Leil‘s face in his mind and counted the flecks in her eyes, as the wind slammed and shook the building; crystals of ice, nearly fine as dust, built tiny drifts in one corner, where light leaked in until the drifts outside choked it off.

The door opened, letting in the chill air and snow. A broad man with a fleshy face entered the shed, kicking whiteness aside, swearing. Andrew, free to move but weakened by repeated druggings, stood, wobbling, to face him.

The man came directly to Andrew as if he were nothing more than an object to be moved. “My name’s Grant,” the man said, and the torments began again.

It went on for months. There were no more questions. There was no stand to be made, no resistance to be rallied; they all seemed utterly indifferent to his suffering. Others came to watch, make a suggestion here and there, laugh, discuss their officers, their women, their weapons, or their vehicles.

Strangely, the pain receded from Andrew‘s mind. One day, as his head lolled and he sank into dullness, Grant threw down a electric probe and said to another guard, “This bastard doesn’t respond any more. I stuck him full of blockers, and shocked him, and it was just like I hit him with neroine. He’s going to sleep!”

Grant‘s breath had a sour sting to it, a chemically-pointed sweetness that roiled Andrew‘s stomach. At the end of each eternal day he put his face near Andrew‘s and said, “See you tomorrow.”

Some tomorrows, usually during the snowstorms, Grant did not keep his word. During those times, sick and shivering on the stone flags with mucus running from his nose and congealing on his sparse and scraggly beard, Andrew found himself looking forward to the warmth of a beating.