The dog’s nose needed a little more liquid. It needed that wetness, that slippery shine that makes dog people want to cup their hands round the hairy muzzle and let it slobber them with its dripping pinky-wink tongue. I dipped my brush in Titanium White, dotted it on the Mars Black, and stepped back to evaluate the effect, template on then off. Not bad, considering it was my first time on the dog. Not bad at all. If this goes well, I thought, I might get a good long stint in Animals.
I was still dabbing at the dog’s nose when they brought him in. The door clanged and I heard the hard tackety hammer-step of the guards’ feet. I knew the guys and girls in Abstract would be feeling the damp breath of winter on the backs of their necks. And I knew that none of those necks would turn to look at the new arrival. It was a mistake most of us make only once.
The clop of the guards’ feet took him past Abstract - that’s unusual - and right up to Mountains. That means 80 or above in Admissions Processing. Decent talent, then. I kept right on painting, but spent a little longer than I normally would mixing the colour then squinting at the canvas, listening to the movement behind me. I could tell everyone else was doing the same thing. There hadn't been a new arrival for well over six months. A good painter, straight into Mountains, could bring a nice little boost in revenue, and when revenue was up the Governor was happy, and when the Governor was happy the guards were happy, and when the guards were happy things were just that little bit easier all round.
They settled him into the station that had been Mackie’s. Poor old Mackie. When his eyesight started going, it was only a matter of time before he got sent down the coast to Pharmaceuticals. Where we all end up, one way or another.
When the whistle blew for lunch, I rolled my shoulders a little bit, covered my paints and brushes, and flicked off the template. I saw the dog’s paw was at a strange angle. I’d have to fix that before the Director walked the floor in the afternoon. Sometimes the transforms that set the template for your optics get off-skew and you have to correct by naked eye. The ability to do that can be the difference between a long career and a short one. Whatever you do, you have to take care of your eyes.
I saw the new guy then, looking around kind of scared and hazy as we trooped out to the mess hall. Tall bloke, that stretched-out kind of tall you get with Martians, and sort of Asian-looking. I caught up with him in the queue for lunch trays.
“Frankie,” I said, holding out my hand. It took him a moment to respond. He stared at my hand like he wasn’t sure what to do with it, then he grabbed it and pumped it like he was trying to get an A+ in hand-shaking.
“Aquilla,” he said, and his voice sounded like he was only half-awake. “O’Neill. Call me Quill.”
“Take it easy,” I said, nudging him along the line. “You’ll still be half-full of Somnizol.”
He nodded. I could tell he was trying hard to focus.
“It’ll wear off in a day or two,” I said. I grabbed a tray and gave it to him. “We’ve all been there. You’ll be fine.”
He shuffled forward. The padded trousers were too big for him, and I realised all of a sudden that they had been Mackie’s. I recognised that smear of yellow paint on the outside of the left leg.
“So… we don’t… get drugged here?” His words were slow, like tar.
“Oh, we do,” I said. “Flake, mostly. Keeps us churning out the art, you know?”
“Oh,” he said, and I could see him trying to make sense of that.
“Don’t worry,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. He jumped and backed away, holding the plastic tray like a shield. I put my hands up. “Chill, I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
“None of us are going to hurt you,” said Astrid from ahead of him in the queue. “Frankie, hold off the explainers. Give him a couple of days.”
It took more than a couple of days for him to find his feet, of course. He never said what had happened to him in between remand and getting to the Artworks, and we never asked. None of us wants to relive these things. We’d an idea of what his crime was though. You’ve probably heard of him. Harald, who was next to me in Animals, had only been in Justice a couple of years and he'd heard of the Leifr and the attempt on the Europa colony before he got nicked.
I was a wee bit surprised that they’d allowed the Governor to take such a high-profile terrorist for the Artworks. But who am I to grasp the greasy cogs and wheels of corruption that power the sparkling Justice System of our beloved FSS?
Not that the Artworks is a picnic by any stretch of the imagination. Everyone who leaves here is either in a cardboard box or on their way, blind or mad, to Pharma. That’s what it does to you, day after day cranking out the same stag on the same bloody mountain, or the beach scene with the glamorous couple dancing, or bloody Haakon X in all his poses. Before the wet-nosed dog, I’d been on Highland Glen with Rainbow for about eight months and after fifteen copies it was getting to the point where I was fantasizing about painting something rude on those Yellow Ochre cliffs to the left of the scene. Highland Glen with Rainbow is a top seller though. Fifty thousand crowns for a good one, I hear. Of course your standard Munch-KI artwork is good enough for most folk, but some people want human hands to have applied the paint to the canvas, warts and all, and they’re willing to pay the crowns for that. Status symbol, I suppose. What I don’t get is that they don’t bump into each other at fancy parties and realise there’s more than one of the wet-nosed dog in the world, or the Highland Glen with Rainbow or whatever. I mean, the templates are a teensy bit different every time - like, the lady’s frock has a different neckline or the tree in the foreground is a bit different. But basically we’re just cranking out hundreds of copies of the same old masters, all Certified Hand-Created by the International Human Intelligence Alliance and stuck in fancy frames so that the bankers and the helium barons can show their mates they only buy real art.
Still, the Artworks is vastly preferable to anywhere else in Justice. Not many mines worked by hand these days — drones can get more done for less, usually. The ones there are, though, too tight or deep or radioactive for drones? You don’t last long there. The farms are better, the fruit-picking, but the quotas break your back and once the season’s over it’s back to General Pop. And then of course there’s Pharmaceuticals. Drones and bots can do a lot of things, but they can’t quite replace real flesh and blood for clinical trials and all that jazz. So, all told, I’ll hang onto my spot in the Artworks until I collapse at my easel.
I explained all this to Quilly in little bits, when we were eating or in the grey zone between cleanup and lights out. Some of the guards, the chicklet dictators, are ready to zap us if we so much as fart. DiMartino’s the worst: the chief chicklet. Others are decent guys just trying to make a living, little as it is, and they let us talk a bit. Old Eric even hangs around and chats if none of the other guards are around.
It takes most new lags weeks, months, to get their heads round their new reality. Most, like you, they’ve been sentenced to five years or ten or fifteen and they think that at the end of that, they’ll go back to Bergen, Putingrad, Aberdeen, wherever. I know it took me a long time to accept that Justice would never let me go. We could see Quilly going through the stages, same as we all had. His eyes would swim from stone-cold to frantic as a fish in a net, to figuring out some fanciful scheme and then seeing that crushed as he realised it would never work, then back to blank as ice. We’re not a bad crew in the Artworks. We try and help each other out mostly, and we all tried to help him through — a squeeze of the shoulder in the lunch line, an extra scrap of fruit, a cup of the kvass Harald brews under his bed. Astrid even offered him her own special favours. She was mightily offended when he backed away like she was a rabid dog, though later he did manage to smooth things over.
Quilly had talent, though. I caught a glimpse of his Alpine Valley with Gentians when he’d been there about a week, and I was impressed. I could tell the Director was too, when he walked the floor, the way his footsteps lingered at Quilly’s station. Then in the second week, when Quilly was about finished that painting, he brought the Governor in to look at it. Quilly had flair. They don’t want too much flair, of course, but a little bit will elevate an artwork into a higher price bracket. I could have done with a bit more flair myself but beggars can’t be choosers. I’m good enough to reproduce with decent quality but that’s about it. It took me years to work up from Abstract. I asked Quilly if he’d had training but he said no, but his mother had been an artist and his brother I think is an art teacher. But I could see how painful it was for him to think of them, so I didn’t ask any more.
By Beltane, Quilly had painted a dozen Alpine Valley with Gentians and been moved on to Highland Glen with Rainbow. He knew I’d worked on that one for a while, and at breakfast one morning asked for tips on getting the light right in the rainbow. Because it was Old Eric on patrol and I could get away with it, I told Quilly how I’d been so scunnered with that scene I’d wanted to sneak a grass-mud-horse in there. He got that thoughtful look he used to get. He swallowed a bit of the cardboard they call toast, and asked me real quiet whether anyone had ever smuggled out a message in the artwork.
I froze and glanced over to see whether we were in earshot of Eric.
“Don’t,” I said. I rattled my tray hard on the metal table, hoping the noise would cover my words. “Don’t ever say stuff like that.” Even though our optics and aurals have been cut off from the outside world and from each other, you can bet your ass they’re still feeding into the Justice ai. I got up and marched my tray to the rack then went straight to the workroom. If the ai was watching, I needed to show that I had nothing to do with what he said.
Thankfully, I don’t think anyone did pick up on that. I kept an eye on Quilly’s work when I could, in case he was trying to do the crazy thing and hide some cry for help in the Highland Glen with Rainbow, but I don’t think he did. When the Director came to pick out people for the IHIA recert, though, I reckoned I’d have to keep an eye on him.
The International Human Intelligence Alliance is, as far as I know, the oldest of these well-meaning humanist fandangos. The FSS doesn’t go in too much for that kind of thing, but in other parts of the world — I’m thinking especially of the SASA states — IHIA certification will get you access to some very exclusive markets. Hence the annual recertification charade.
I’ve been carted along to the recert five or six times now. I look the part — strapping, healthy blond Norsker with blue eyes that can wink just the right way at the lady inspectors and some of the men. They put me in a nice arty-looking linen shirt and old-timey tight blue jeans and plonk me there in front of an easel, and I can say the right things in the right way in Norsk or Spanish or even a bit of English when the inspectors speak to me. Some of the inspectors are brokers on the side, so it’s doubly important to make a good impression.
It makes a nice holiday from the Artworks. The IHIA party makes sure to choose the height of summer, so there’s often a bit of a break from the rain, and the pre-Midsummer rush is over. The place is gorgeous. Old Highland estate, a Baronial castle straight from the Highland Glen with Rainbow. Big modern studio out the side, light streaming in until ten o’clock at night. The beds are soft and warm. The food is all fresh, grown on the estate I think. There’s real coffee. The rest of the year it might actually be a real artists’ retreat. They take us off the flake a week or so before the recert, clean us out, so that when we’re there we’re clothed and in our right minds, so to speak. The boat trip from this rock is a spewfest, but once that’s over it’s the highlight of my year and I’d do an awful lot to make sure I keep getting picked. I was nervous both in case Quilly was chosen to supplant me, and in case we both went and he tried to run or smuggle a message to the inspectors or some other crazy stunt that could get us all sent to Pharma.
They sent six of us in the end. Me and him and Astrid — she was on the Haakon X series and they always need someone from there — and a couple from Impressionism and Willina from Van Gogh who never talks to anyone, but she fits the Tortured Artist vibe and paints like a demoniac.
I think Quilly was still hoping there might be some chance of escape. I made sure to tell him what they would do to the rest of us if anyone tried anything. Even after that, the first day we were sat on the big veranda, and I saw him looking down the glen and into the forest. I caught his eye and held it till he looked away, shaking his head.
The inspectors came the morning of the second day. It was raining, chilly, and the tops of the hills were sodden with cloud. We’d spent the first day sketching and now they gave us full templates of the scenes we were supposed to paint, all represenations in different styles of views around the castle. I saw Quilly scowling as he marked out the lines of what would essentially be another variation on Highland Glen with Rainbow. He kept looking out the south wall of the studio, where it’s floor-to-ceiling glass. I was trying to block colours in the piece I’d been set, a stag in the style of Landseer with the castle in the background, so I didn’t notice exactly when he did it. But when DiMartino came in with coffee, dressed as a waiter, and told us to look sharp, I saw that Quilly had covered his entire canvas with a wash of Davy’s Gray.
“What are you doing?” I muttered into his ear as we queued for our coffee.
“Painting,” he said, his voice carrying like a free man’s into the air of the studio. “Painting what I see. With my eyes.” He pointed to the scarlet-streaked bone-white and chestnut-brown of his right eye. “Not with…” He pointed to the left side of his skull where I knew his chip would be.
Everybody else looked at the floor, or into their coffee, or shuffled off to the other end of the room. DiMartino set the jug of coffee carefully down on its stand and reached into the pocket of his striped apron. Quilly shrugged defiantly and started walking back to his easel.
“O’Neill!” DiMartino had puffed himself up like a bantam cockerel.
There was a bustle in the corridor, voices. The studio door swung open and Old Eric walked in, backwards, holding the door. He was playing Retreat Manager as usual.
“I’m delighted, ladies and gentlemen,” he was saying, “to introduce you to this year’s Haakon Fellows!”
We all stood like we’d been told and shook hands with the inspectors. Two women and a man this time. A Ghanaian (I think), a Nigerian and a Peruvian. I remembered the Peruvian lady from last time. We went back to our easels while the guests were served coffee and Old Eric walked them round the studio, pointing out the features that made it such an excellent artists’ workspace. I was always impressed by how knowledgeable he sounded on these occasions. I’ve heard he was once a student at the Glasgow School of Art.
I tried to focus on mixing colours for my stag. Burnt Sienna, a splotch of Raw Umber. Quilly was just in the corner of my eye. He was pacing, stopping to stare out at the wet glen and clouds, then scooping up great clumps of colour and smearing it on his canvas. Blue Black and Charcoal Grey and Burnt Umber. Slashing daubs of Iridescent White. I tried not to look.
The three inspectors, with Eric gabbling nervously in their ear, drifted closer. Eric tried to draw them towards Astrid. She was working on a patriotic scene of Haakon X rescuing a boy from drowning in the loch below the castle, Social Realist style. But something about Quill’s wild movements, his intense focus, caught their eye.
“This is a bit different from the usual FSS catalogue,” said the Ghanaian lady, in fluent Norsk.
“Yes,” said Eric. He was glaring at Quill. “We’re trying out…” He trailed off. The inspectors weren’t listening to him anyway.
“I didn’t see you here last year,” said the Peruvian lady. Those of us who were in earshot held our breaths. I swear I could see Eric and DiMartino holding theirs too.
Quilly didn’t respond immediately, but focused on the ragged curve of what I took to be a massy grey nimbus of cloud.
“No,” he said, stepping back and wiping his brush on a rag.
“You’re not FSS,” said the Peruvian. She suddenly switched to Spanish. Quilly shook his head. Auto-translate on our aurals is turned off when we enter Justice, and at these recertification beanos, we’re supposed to pretend we’re all eschewing chip functionality to focus on the art. The Peruvian woman switched to Mandarin, and now I was sweating because I knew Quilly could speak a bit of that.
He just smiled sweetly and replied in English. “No, from Mars,” he said. “Ransom City.”
“Why pursue your art here?” asked the Nigerian man.
I saw Quilly’s mouth open like a fish in a tank. I stabbed at the paint on my palette. For a fraction of a second I thought about knocking something over, distracting them, before I decided that would just skewer me too.
Quilly waved out the window at the rain falling in dense gobbets from that iron-grey cloud.
“We don’t get weather like this on Mars.”
The Nigerian man laughed, a deep warm roll of sound. “That’s true. I went to Olympus once, oh Lord! Give me Lagos any day.”
“This is almost Turner-esque,” said the Ghanaian woman, who had been paying more attention to the painting than the conversation. “It gives me that kind of feeling.”
“This is very preliminary,” said Quilly. “Only a rough sketch.”
“I know,” said the woman. “But I shall look forward to seeing how it progresses.” She turned to Eric. His face had turned a dilute shade of Verona Green. “You know, I can see a stronger market for this kind of raw emotional work than there is for some of the more.. traditional.. FSS offerings.”
“Right,” said Eric stiffly. DiMartino looked like he’d impale Quill with his tickle-stick if the inspectors weren’t watching.
The Ghanaian woman started talking about the neo-Romantic revival movement and they moved on to look at Willina’s Van Gogh-style heathery hills.
Quilly paid for his boldness when we got back to the Artworks two weeks later. The early hours of the first night back in barracks, two of DiMartino’s chicklet dictator minions stormed in and started zapping him before dragging him off to the Infirmary. The rest of us kept our eyes closed tight and the fake snores going.
He was returned to the barracks just before breakfast. His cheeks were puffy, a light Rose Madder pink. He spat blood into the washbasin, and when he took his pyjama top off we could see the burn marks from the tickle-sticks. As usual, they left his eyes and hands alone. Whatever you do, it mustn’t damage the output.
The Director gave him a sharp look when he walked the floor that afternoon, but said nothing. Quilly was back on Highland Glen with Rainbow. His painting from the recert had sold for a hundred thousand crowns, Old Eric told me later, more than even a ten-foot Haakon X on Horseback brings in, and pretty much guaranteed the IHIA seal for another year. But we all know it must have been sold on the QT, because if it’s not on the Approved Subjects List, it can’t be in the System.
Quilly started to fall into low spirits after that. His painting started getting slower and sloppier. At first the guards didn’t do anything — I assume they’d been told to give him some slack, seeing as how he was shaping up as a top earner. Besides, most people go through this up-down-up in the first year or so of their sentence. But then towards Midwinter, we were all called into the open yard after supper. The security floodlights dazzled us, Zinc White. We stood shivering while the Director gave us a little pep talk and reminded us that Yule family visitation was a privilege, not a right. And if one person wasn’t pulling their weight, visitation would be cancelled for everyone in their barracks room and everyone in their section.
“Quilly,” I said to him when we were back in the barracks, “mate, pull your socks up. You have to. I know it maybe isn’t going to make much difference to you, but for me and Astrid and Harald here…”
I could tell he was trying, after that. The Highland Glen with Rainbow started to look sharper again, the colours matched the template better. The Director was satisfied enough to give us our Yule visitation. I had a precious day with my Mary. I don’t know what Quilly did. He didn’t have a visitor - you wouldn’t really expect it, would you, all the way from Mars?
It was almost Beltane again when we started to notice Astrid wasn’t quite right. Looking back, I think it started just after that Yule. I think maybe she got some bad news from her lad Ole. She and Quilly and I had all been picked to work on the Royal Family at Midsummer series that spring. Got to have a good stock of these built up for the summer season, and because the princes and princesses are always growing, it changes every year. I was on a Colourist-style scene of the Royal Family in a hay meadow wearing cornflower-and-poppy crowns. Quilly was on Haakon X and Crown Prince Hengist Hunting in Svalbard. This is a popular one for the business community — bare-chested Haakon covering the Prince with his rifle while Hengist approaches a rearing polar bear with his sword. Astrid was on the formal Garden Party Portrait, seeing as she had most experience.
I thought we were all enjoying the change from our usual assignments, but Astrid was getting quieter and quieter and then she stopped talking altogether. Then she stopped washing. Astrid had always been one to keep herself as smart and put-together as possible. We all tried talking to her. She ignored us. I even spoke to Old Eric and said she maybe needed a doctor, maybe needed to cut down her flake or who knows, maybe she needed some other meds. Old Eric shook his head kind of sympathetic, and said he’d talk to the Director after the rush for the midsummer paintings was over.
She must have done it that Thursday evening. She went back to the studio after supper. Not unusual if you’re trying to gain a little bonus credit with the powers-that-be. I knew she was almost finished the copy she’d been working on, and reckoned she wanted to get it done before bed. There were probably a few others in there as well. But nobody noticed what she’d done until the following morning.
I saw it first. Quilly and I walked in together after breakfast. There was no sign of Astrid. I stopped at her easel and looked at the Royal Family at the Garden Party, and for a second my vision went fuzzy. I could hear a high-pitched kind of tingling.
“What is it?” Quilly came over and saw, and I saw him turn pale — like a light shade of Naples — though his lips smiled a little bit. But for all that, he acted faster than I did. He grabbed the palette from where Astrid had left it in its slot, and a clean brush, and started mixing up some Jaune Brilliant and Pale Rose Blush. I saw what he was going to do.
I admit I hesitated. Getting more of us involved in this mess wasn’t going to help anyone. But as he started dabbing at Haakon’s face, I picked up another brush. Unfortunately, that was the moment the chicklet dictator prowled past.
Things moved quickly then. DiMartino blew his whistle, pulling out his tickle-stick at the same time. I jumped back to my own easel and started mixing Cadmium Scarlet for my poppies. My hands were shaking.
Quilly was unconscious on the floor by the time the Director arrived. Even he blenched, not so much at Quilly as at the Royal portrait. King Haakon and Queen Margaret and the princes and princesses, all with Alizarin Crimson dripping from Titanium White fangs and forked tongues.
They found Astrid passed out in the bathroom. She’d drunk a bottle of turps, thinking it would kill her. It didn’t, not quite. They took her to the Infirmary and patched her up, and the next day they took all three of us to the Director.
“It was me,” said Quilly, straight off. His face was paler than I’d ever seen him, but his eyes were steady.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said the Director sharply. He looked at Astrid. She could barely stand. Two of the chicklet dictator minions had to hold her up. “We have access to your optics, you know.”
“She’s not in her right mind,” said Quilly. He was trembling, and he bounced a little bit on the balls of his feet like an athlete limbering up. “I am in my right mind,” he went on. “And I declare in front of you all today that I do believe that painting is a better representation of the FSS today than any of these floral meadows or Highland glens.”
The Director cursed and got to his feet. DiMartino grabbed Quilly by the throat and forced him to his knees.
Quilly was still talking, almost shouting. “Haakon X is a bloodsucking snake! And if you punish Astrid, instead of giving her the medical care she needs, I am never going to paint another stroke for you again.”
There was no way out of that, not for Quilly. They took him away before lunch. They let Astrid stay, which surprised me, but I suppose they couldn’t afford to lose two artists from the Midsummer series at that stage. And the Director was always kind of sweet on her. They drugged her up with enough stuff to stabilise her, and after the rush was over they took her to Aberdeen for specialist surgery to fix her kidneys, and a myco-patch to fix her brain, and when she got back she was almost normal again.
That’s her over there. She’s taken to sitting like that after supper, meditating with these beads that Quilly left behind. She knows she owes him her life, such as it is. The chicklet dictator watches her like a hawk, and she does what she has to to keep him off her back. She’s been moved out of the Haakon section, down to Mountains. Hopefully that’s safe and serene enough to keep her productive another few years.
Anyway, that all happened about six months before you got here. I do hope Quilly’s not suffering too much in Pharma. Terrorist or not, he was a good bloke in the end. But you just keep your head down and your nose clean, and you can stay away from there for a good long time. Who knows, you might get onto Animals yourself one day. Or even Haakon X on Horseback.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story, let me know with a like, comment or share!
If you liked this story, you might also enjoy:
All These Things Will I Give You
This short story was inspired by one of the prompts in this season’s Lunar Awards Prompt Quest. I’ve included the full prompt at the bottom for anyone who’s curious!
Absolutely amazing! It's a great twist on dystopian prison work. And, oddly, hopeful. I can't explain how it's hopeful, but it is.
You always deliver, Caitriana, always surprisingly imaginative.