Since I started Stivik's section I've been suffering, not from writer's block, but just from not knowing
what to write. I know where I'm going but not how to get there. I don't want to rush this section because it wouldn't work. However, I think I'm about on track after this new one. I won't promise anything though, partly because it would just be silly judging by my recent record, and also because in a week from now I'm going to be starting my gap year and will have a
lot less free time from that point onwards.
Chapter 26
“Hey! Do you have permission to be here?”
Doctor Mehler turned around to see a slig hurrying towards him. “Do I look dangerous?” He asked bluntly.
“Sorry to be suspicious sir, but Director Bescher has made a lot of enemies over the years. I recognise the vykkers here, so I knew you weren’t one of ‘em, and thought I should check.”
Mehler looked annoyed; this slig was either very stupid or unusually clever. “I have Bescher’s permission to be here. I have work to do here.”
“What work? If I may ask.”
“I am here to check up on Dionysia,” He replied pointedly.
“Huh? Oh, the black mud! You one of the vykkers who made her?”
“Yes I am. Now if-”
“Hey, what’s the point of making a mudokon for security work? I mean what can a mud do that a slig can’t?”
Mehler was beginning to dislike the slig. “She is intended for espionage against the mudokons.” He said bluntly. With any luck the slig would be too stupid to know what ‘espionage’ meant, and so he’d shut his mouth and leave.
“Huh, weird idea.” The slig said thoughtfully.
Mehler decided to fight back. “And what is that?” He asked, pointing to a flat box attached to the slig’s pants.
“Huh? Oh, it’s some sensor thing; some other vykkers pay me a little to carry it around; I think it’s for some long experiment they’re doing.”
Mehler looked up as a door opened down the corridor. “Ah, Director Bescher!” Mehler called as the glukkon emerged from the door. Bescher glanced to his side as if looking for an escape route, but then (evidently spotting none) approached the vykker.
“Good morning Dr Mehler,” He said stiffly.
Mehler inclined his head to him, “This slig was just giving me an interrogation.”
Bescher looked at the slig with a surprised expression. The slig decided to explain, “I didn’t know who he was sir, so I was just making sure he had your permission to be here. He was just explaining to me that he owned the black mudokon.”
Bescher nodded to the slig, evidently a little surprised by his efficiency. “You’re new here?”
“Yes sir; this is my third week.”
Bescher nodded again, and then turned to Mehler, instantly forgetting that the slig was there. “Mehler, I’d like to have a word with you about Dionysia.”
Mehler smiled, not exactly pleasantly. “Has she been causing trouble?”
“She has been bothering my sligs!”
Mehler made an odd noise in the back of his throat and went on politely. “She is meant to be part of the security force of a factory; if she is successful it may one day be that there are many mudokons such as her in factories across Mudos; I suggest you tell your sligs to be more… open minded.”
“Open minded? She’s nothing but a trouble-maker!”
The slig left them arguing and slipped off down the corridor. Rounding a corner he bumped into Dionysia herself.
“Oh, it’s you.” She said bluntly.
He leant back, “You seem to have made an impact; the boss is back there arguing with some vykker about you bothering the sligs.”
Her face lit up and she hurried past him and into the corridor beyond, but when she saw the vykker her enthusiasm seemed to dampen. However, she shot him a sly look and marched out into the open. Stivik watched from the corner, smoking a cigarette.
“Dionysia,” Cried Mehler, spotting her first. Bescher grimaced, “How are you? Director Bescher’s just been telling me something rather interesting.”
“Oh? What’s that?” She asked, sounding impressively guiltless.
“Apparently you’ve been bothering his sligs, or so he tells me!” Exclaimed Mehler.
“What? I hardly talk to the sligs! They just ignore me!”
Bescher looked like he was about to begin his accusations, but Mehler spoke over him, “See Bescher, probably the sligs making up stories; I imagine they resent having a mudokon working for security, even one such as Dionysia! That slig I met just now for example seemed unable to understand the concept.”
Mehler turned around, looking for the slig who had accosted him in the corridor, but he ducked round the corner out of sight. If Mehler spotted him and drew him into the argument he would have to choose between his interest in Dionysia and his real job watching Bescher, and if that became the case he would have to stay loyal to the Organisation. He hurried away, catching the first few traces of Bescher’s angry retort.
“Just made contact with Director Bescher for the first time; I think I made a fair impression, though I won’t try and press myself to his attention too soon. From what I hear, he’s more likely to be compliant if I let him come to me.” He touched the button on the side of his recorder to turn it off and returned to his patrol. A few minutes later he caught sight of the vykker and Dionysia walking off in the general direction of the factory’s tiny laboratory. She glanced over her shoulder and spotted him, grinned slyly and mouthed something he couldn’t make out.
* * *
Stivik’s real job at Bescher’s Cuisine Chemical Plant had slowed down. Having spoken to more than half of the sligs and learnt all he could expect to learn through employee interviews (which was that the rumours about Bescher’s dirty dealings were almost certainly nothing more than rumours), his next tactic was to keep his head down and his ears open, work hard and get into Bescher’s trust and see where that got him.
Stivik got on fairly well with the other sligs, but he didn’t get close to any of them; they were simply too different from him, brought up in a different world. It was as if he as a separate species. He focussed a little more attention on Dionysia, watching her from a distance.
About a week after the first vykker had come he saw her with another one. A couple of weeks after that he spotted the boss speaking to a third one morning. Bescher sounded stressed and angry, “Krik, it is your mudokon; I suggest you find it yourself.”
“We placed it under your care,” The vykker answered unpleasantly.
Bescher, however, didn’t seem to care. He muttered something about being busy and hopped off.
The vykker glowered at him, before leaving the corridor, walking past Stivik, apparently without noticing the slig at all.
Curiosity piqued, Stivik followed the vykker from a distance as it prowled the factory’s corridors, until they were both surprised by a yell, “Krik!”
A moment later Dionysia came running down an adjoining corridor, “Where have you been? I expected you the last time Mehler was here!”
“Weighed down by work,” The vykker said with a laugh in his voice that to Stivik sounded incredibly unconvincing. Stivik had ducked round a corner, thinking Dionysia would be more likely to notice him that her vykker, but he spared a glance now and saw her excited eyes; she clearly thought more of this one than she did of the last two. “Decrough’s got us working hard on the Project, preparing for the next stage.”
Dionysia rolled her eyes and tutted as Stivik slunk away; undoubtedly, he thought, the next stage of their project would be to create a new, likely more subtle prototype, which would probably spell the end for Dionysia, though she seemed oblivious of the fact.
An hour later his shift changed and he moved to patrol a different section of the factory. This move led his passed the small medical lab near the middle of the building, and passing nearby he heard a low moaning coming from the ajar door. He approached cautiously, until he was close enough to peer through. Dionysia and the vykker were inside; she was lying on a table, curled up, apparently barely conscious, moaning and writhing. The vykker sat nearby, seemingly oblivious to her pain, writing busily in a notebook.
Stivik was surprised to find himself half tempted to march in there and ask the
bzstrk what he thought he was doing. Since when had he started caring about the mud? At that thought his senses returned and he took a step back. He glanced to his right and noticed Gash, the slig who had first met him and the other new employees at the station, hurrying towards him from the end of the corridor. “What are you doing?” The higher ranking slig demanded quietly, so as not to attract the vykker’s attention.
Stivik smirked and started walking towards Gash, “Heard the moaning and thought I should check it out. Looks like the High Queen is being tortured by one of her precious vykkers.”
Gash gave a snort to say that Stivik shouldn’t be listening at doors in pursuit of cheap laughs and left.
Gash’s opinion of Stivik dropped then, though it was restored later on when Stivik never bragged about what he had seen.
As far as Stivik was concerned it was nothing to brag about. He made up his mind to talk to the mud again the next time he could.
* * *
Night shift was drawing to an end and Stivik was looking forward to having the morning in bed. The muds wouldn’t be awakened until the morning shift began, and as Stivik had reached the end of his patrol he was lounging near the kitchen, hoping to grab something to eat when the slig on duty that morning came to reheat breakfast.
A big-bro Stivik didn’t know by name turned up shortly after him, evidently with the same plan, and after exchanging grunts they both settled back, smoking and lounging.
“Wow, good to see two sligs working hard on keeping the factory safe out here,” Said a voice and Stivik turned and saw Dionysia observing them from the other end of the corridor. She was swaggering slowly towards them.
Stivik didn’t change his relaxed posture; “Finished the patrol; got nothing else to do for the rest of the shift.”
“Hmm, how about do it again? Odd; the muds are better workers than you idiots.”
“Uhuh, but the muds haven’t been awake for 26 hours.”
Stivik was suddenly interrupted by the big-bro who snorted and demanded, “And what are you doing sneaking down here before wake-up, mud?”
“Apparently I’m doing what
you get paid for,” She bit back icily. Stivik noted how she called the other mudokons ‘muds’, but didn’t like the word applied to herself, but then hypocrisy was hardly a foreign concept on Mudos.
Dionysia, evidently having had her fill of this conversation, began to swagger away.
“Hey,” Yelled the big-bro, who apparently wasn’t a morning person, “I didn’t say you could go, mud.”
She glanced back at him and gave him the look that all vykkers everywhere reserved for anyone who crossed the final line. “And do I need a slurg’s permission to do my job?”
He snorted and ran at her, raising his gun to smack her, but before he had a chance to swing it, she stepped back and swung at him herself.
She certainly had a mud’s strength; her slap didn’t topple the big-bro like it surely would have done a normal slig, but he stumbled sideways into a wall. Steadying himself, he ran at her and swung again. She dodged beneath his blow and swung her leg up in a kick that caught his chin, throwing his head up. He let out a yell, motored his pants back and brought his gun to bear on her.
“Die, bitch!” He roared but before he could squeeze his trigger a bullet ricocheted off of the side of his gun, throwing off his aim.
He slig turned on Stivik, who had fired the shot, “Mud-lover! What do you think you’re doing?”
Stivik ignored the insult, keeping his cool with the experience of a hundred battles with animals considerably smarter than the big-bro before him. “Saving your job, and likely your life. You kill the mud; who do you think you’ll be more upset? Our paranoid boss or her crazy vykkers?”
The slig glared at him, but knew he was beaten; he’d apparently missed the flicker of doubt and fear in the mud-girl’s face when he’d pointed his gun at her head. He spat at Stivik and lumbered off.
“You certainly have a way with people,” Stivik said sardonically, letting his gun point back down towards the floor. He’d kept it raised until the big-bro was safely round the corner.
Dionysia snorted, leaning back against the wall.
“Where did you learn to fight like that?” He asked.
“I pick things up. Sligs are slow – usually, I mean,” (Stivik recognised the thinly disguised compliment but said nothing), “And big-bros doubly so.”
“A gun’s only as powerful as the finger on the trigger, huh,” He remarked, using an old phrase Dekas had once told them, long ago.
Both of them had their defences up, he recognised. He never spoke to muds, and she’d probably never had a conversation with a slig in her life that didn’t involve swearing.
“Where did you learn to shoot? You never started as a factory slig,” She informed him.
He smiled blithely. “I started as a scout, tracking down animals, muds and recourses out in the wild, but that’s got nothing to do with it. Shooting a gut-hungry animal is as simple as raising the gun and pulling the trigger. I taught myself to shoot like this because it’s the difference between the instinct to swing and the skill to step back.”
She looked at him oddly, genuinely looking at him for the first time. He turned away.
When a couple of sligs arrived and opened up the kitchen he helped himself to a scrabcake and then went to his bunk.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
'Everybody was kung-fu fighting...' (sorry)
We're currently in Part 5 of this story; there are going to be nine parts in total, after this one two set more or less during the W@RF RPG and then two set afterwards. (And who will feature in those last two parts?
)
Yesterday I wrote the very last chapter of this story; it was just something I'd had planned out carefully in my mind and I thought, stop thinknig about it and get it down. It's helped me finish this chapter up, as well as givinbg me some ideas for the later section. The last word of this story, as it currently stands (and it may get revised between now and when I post it) is
'feathers'.
Mwahahaha.
Now Stivik and Dionysia are getting a little closer, it should get easier to write, so hopefully I
might get the next chapter done in less than a month.
When Part 5 is done I'll need to take a break anyway to sort out the sections in W@RF, take notes of the events in the RPG, work out what's significant enough to include, add some Oddworld Realism to the more Mary-Suey parts of the RPG, balance characters, iron out the many, many plot holes and so on.
So enjoy it while it lasts!
Once I get those notes sorted on paper and in my head we should progress quickly through parts 6 and 7 anyway, so it'll be worth the wait I'm sure.
How long before you all know the faits of Stivik, Krik, Anni and Dionysia? How many will survive till the end of the story?
(Reply! Now!)