Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [82]
“That’s what the beast that keeps Jeffree said right before it poked his eye out for trying to escape.” When I said this out loud, I realized how I had rationalized Jeffree’s maiming: I had decided to believe that he had been disfigured because he was obnoxious. Because he was prone to clichés, garish behavior, and meaningless grand gestures. Not because he had tried to run for his freedom but because he could be a dick. But trying to break free had not been simply a grand gesture, or even a heroic one, although it was both of those things. It had also been a rational response. They were going to kill us one by one, I became certain. That had been their plan all along. That was what the rally was for: our genocide.
“They’re not trying to kill us. Look at them, they look like an army.” Nathaniel gestured with the ski pole he was using as a cane. “Do you really think they’d need an army to kill us off?”
“I think they’re going to kill me next, Nathaniel. They’re starving me,” I explained. Suddenly, my hunger made complete sense: they were experimenting, trying out different ways to kill each of us. Just for sport. By the time they came for Garth they’d be ready to attempt burning him on the stove like a luau pig.
“Don’t you get it?” Nathaniel was shaking me now. His pole fell to the floor, but with a firm grip on each of my shoulders he was at no risk of tumbling. “They’re not trying to kill us, because we are commodities. I’m a businessman, Christopher. I know what I am seeing here. They don’t hate us, or at least they didn’t when this started. They just want us to do their work for them, to get a return on their investment. That’s why they didn’t just kill Jeffree; they didn’t want the capital loss. They’re not starving you, they’re just keeping their expenditures low. My captors didn’t hate me, they just declared me a loss and had me liquidated. It’s not personal.”
“It’s personal to me: I’m starving. I take that very personally.”
“And my ankle feels like an elephant’s standing on it. But if you asked them, they’d probably tell you that my ankle’s hurting them more than it’s hurting me. And if they had a balance sheet, they could prove it. That’s why I’m learning the language, get it? Life is all about improving your assets,” Nathaniel told me, then added a series of growling syllables I took to be a Tekelian translation of the same sentiment.
Regardless of his plans for the future, it seemed that, in addition to suffering his sprain, Nathaniel was not doing much better on food than I was. I had little hope that I would be able to remedy the situation, but out of pity I asked him to travel with me on my quest to find something to eat. When I pulled Nathaniel’s arm around my neck, through the frigid air I received a good whiff of him. His musk was pretty bad, but it couldn’t have been much worse than mine, it having been weeks since either of us had had the supreme pleasure of a hot shower. As he limped and I dragged, we made our way through the midday village traffic, past pale stares, their hostility obvious regardless of their alien, simian nature.
Fortunately, the location I had in mind was not far along the path. This was good because I don’t believe that I could have carried Nathaniel much farther, and it was only the guilt of sleeping with his wife (albeit only literally) that let me heave his burden as far as I did. The spot was an ice cave like most in the main center, carved into a wall away from the village’s primary action. What set this one ice cave apart was that a long window had been cut out of the wall separating the room from the outside, and the open rectangle was a bar for those Tekelians inclined to consume its liquids, served in thick goblets of opaque ice whose blue tint turned dark yellow when filled up. I didn