Passage

by Thorby Rudbek

  “I know.” She looked down at the long row of fountains on the floor below for a moment before continuing. “When I was eleven, my body started to change. Sometimes my stepfather joked about me becoming a real lady. I liked that. Then one day he took me on a hike in the mountains, we went with an old friend of his, from school or something. He had brought several cans of beer with him, and his friend brought something a lot stronger. They both got intoxicated. My stepfather tried to get me to drink some, but I didn’t like the taste. He ended up drinking almost the lot on the way up. His friend seemed to think it was a contest. He gave me the strong stuff, but I just pretended to drink it – the smell was too much for me. I poured it out when he was looking a different direction. After about an hour we all laid down in a high meadow and watched the eagles – there were two – as they seemed to float effortlessly above us. It was wonderful,” she said bitterly. “I just loved the clarity of the air and the peaceful sounds of the breeze in the trees.” She stopped again and stared at the water splashing below, as if she felt it might still be possible to wash away the pain and humiliation, the betrayal, she had felt for so many years. “My stepfather fell asleep.”

  Latt listened with a growing coldness in his chest, as she haltingly explained the nature of her stepfather’s friend’s betrayal.

  “He just rolled over. Pinned me down. Talked about ‘my education.’ I struggled with him – remember, he was really drunk – and he tried to hold me and started grabbing at my clothes. I should have screamed. Somehow I couldn’t make a sound. I remember the smell of the alcohol. His big leering grin. I was so frightened. He fumbled at my tee-shirt. Grabbed at my jeans. My knee must have hit him as I tried to push him off. He fell sideways. I wriggled free. Got away. Hid. Watched him from the thickets at the edge of the meadow until my stepfather eventually woke up.”

  There was silence for several minutes, once she had finished. Then Judy shivered, and Latt found he had put his arm around her shoulders.

  She looked into his eyes, and managed a microsmile. “I walked about twenty yards behind him, the rest of the day.”

  “My stepfather never knew. He still had his friend around quite often. For a long time after that incident, I managed to avoid him; it wasn’t too hard, as either one of them was often away on business. But one day, two years later, my stepfather finally persuaded my Mom to get a job at the supermarket to bring in a little extra money. I dreaded the first night she had to go, as my stepfather’s friend was coming around for a big game on T.V., with the inevitable drinks. I tried to avoid the problem by staying upstairs until Mom came home, but they had another of their binges, and drank all the cans in the house and everything the friend brought, too. It finally went quiet downstairs. I crept down and looked into the room with the T.V. It was still on, but I thought that they had both gone to sleep. So I went to bed. I laid there for a long time, and I was just starting to feel relaxed and sleepy, thinking that I was safe from a repeat of his actions, when I heard him stumbling on the stair.”

  Judy was sweating at this point, and Latt was quite worried about her emotional state, not having had any experience of such trauma.

  Latt listened as she slowly detailed her second living nightmare. He felt an anger start to burn within him as he watched the tears start to roll down her cheeks. He wanted to stop her, but knew somehow that she needed to tell him this, that she had never told anyone else about it.

  Latt held her against him as they stood above the fountains in the deserted Mall, feeling her shake through the thin dress, where she was pressed against him.

  Judy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Someone at the store had given Mom a wrong schedule by mistake; she didn’t have to start until the next night. She decided to do a little shopping, enjoying a free evening out, I suppose, then came home about ten thirty. I had just started crying – he said I wouldn’t get away this time – so he didn’t hear Mom come into the house. She heard the noise – saw my door open – came to check on me. She turned on my bedroom light.”

  Judy sighed, the worst part of her story over. “She pulled him away. Saw the scratches where he had tried to get my pyjamas off. Shouted at him. He left. Mom said he must never come near me, or our house again. If he did, we would take him to court. I wish we had anyway. My stepfather slept through the whole thing, just like the other time. Mom and my stepfather argued about it for days afterwards. He refused to believe her. He finally went on one of his ‘business trips’ a few months later, and never came back. Sometimes, in the years that followed, I looked at Mom and wondered if she secretly blamed me; if she thought I was the reason why her husband didn’t love her anymore, why he left.”

  There was a long period of silence. Then, by unspoken consent, they started walking forwards again.

  “I thought that a world without the Controllers would be a world without fear,” Latt started to explain how her story had affected him as they neared the open space ahead. “When we arrived on Earth and all the armies and navies and air forces were revealed, I didn’t understand what they were for. Terry got me a movie about the Second World War. It didn’t make much sense. I read a couple of books that Ruth recommended, and I started to understand. Now I find that there are wars going on between adults and children, as well as countries.”

  “It’s not all bad,” Judy tried to reassure him. “I’ve come to realise that most men are not like that. They don’t just try and take what they want. And there are many good fathers out there, fathers that do nothing but protect their children from those kind of dangers. Not like mine – I can’t even remember what he looked like – he left when I was very young, and Mom never mentioned him. And I don’t think there was ever any real concern for me from my stepfather. He wasn’t like his friend; he just didn’t really care much about anyone except himself, I think. I-I spent most of my life from age thirteen-up hating all men. A few of them may even have deserved it. Now, I realise I was wrong to do that in most cases. I wish I could have gotten over it, carried on unmarked. But most of all, I wish I had reported him, because he might have gone on to try something with another girl who didn’t have a mother who would arrive in the nick of time, like the cavalry.”

  “Can’t you still do that?”

  Judy considered this for a while. “I’m the only witness, now my Mom is dead.”

  “Perhaps you will be ‘the cavalry’ this time,” he suggested, unsure of the exact meaning of the term, but aware of the context in which she had used it.

  “Okay, I’ll look into it,” she agreed. “If you will support me when it gets too much for me, like you have tonight.”

  “I will be here for you,” he said simply, but with conviction.

  Judy smiled and relaxed, aware of a great load which seemed to have evaporated from her shoulders, despite, or perhaps even because of the pressure of Latt’s arm, resting comfortingly there. “Now, let me show you the reason why this Mall is world-famous.” With that comment, she led him past the water park, out into the huge hall before them, walking above the old submarines and the sea lion pool, and heading towards the Spanish Galleon which was perpetually sailing, just beyond the sea lions.

  Chapter Eighteen

  There is a fine line between self-confidence and arrogance – Antoinette

  The movement of Richard’s head was enough to attract Karen’s attention away from the point where the terrifying figure had disappeared from view, leaving his laser rifle on the floor as evidence of his aborted attack. She dropped the less sophisticated but equally effective Earth-technology projectile weapon and ran over to her fiancé. As she crouched down and held him gently by both shoulders – one finger touching bare flesh through a rip in his tee-shirt – she drew off the pain of the shrapnel wounds to his eye, face and neck until they faded to a more endurable intensity.

  No words were uttered, but Karen communicated her intention with fierce emotions as she left him and walked purposefully towards the Pool Room. There, half floating, half s
ubmerged on its back in the water, was the alien’s body. She mentally reprogrammed the pool so that a slab formed under the invader, and then raised it until the space-suited form was level with the flooring. She stepped closer. Lifeless yellow eyes stared up at her out of a face that was a ghastly grey colour and much too wide for any human. Even the separation of the eyes was about twice that typical of mankind, making the face look like a poorly constructed Halloween mask.

  She crouched down and looked at the orange stain spreading over the fluffy material of the space suit. Deciding that she should see what had been the result of her desperate use of Ed Baynes’ gun, and just what manner of creature this was, she reached out and grasped the strange fabric with both hands. It came apart at the front very easily, exposing a broad expanse of grey, well-muscled skin stretched over evenly-spaced rib-like bones that ran continuously from one side of the chest to the other. There were three small holes in a neat line across the upper part of the torso; it was from these that the brightly coloured blood still oozed.

  Karen leaned closer, simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by the alien form. As she did so, diagonally-oriented eyelids closed briefly once – the long, double-jointed arms reached up – and incredibly strong hands grasped Karen’s neck in a vice-like grip. She struggled to breathe as the invader used her as leverage to pull himself into a strange crouch, and stared at her with his cold, unfeeling eyes. Karen tugged futilely at the hands in an attempt to break the deadly grip, then reached out with her mind and tried to contact the alien, but his grip tightened, his face grew blurred and finally everything went rapidly through grey to black.

  The invader released the limp pale form and watched as it collapsed backwards; Karen’s head contacted the floor with an audible crack. He gasped as his wounds seared with the pain of several red-hot pokers within him, but managed to force himself fully into an upright position. He staggered back through the wall into the Moss Room to seek out and destroy the other repulsive lifeform, leaving Karen’s body on the edge of the pool.

  Richard heard the movement and glanced up from his position, propped up against the wall, expecting to see his fiancée returning. His heart pounded and he looked around in panic for the weapon Karen had dropped, as the alien lurched towards him, long arms outstretched before him. Where’s that gun? What did he do to Karen? Richard scrambled across the floor once he spotted the weapon, but as he reached for the dull metal of the barrel, the invader collapsed into a crumpled heap about four feet in front of him. Picking up the semi-automatic M9 pistol, he got up and walked unsteadily around the now prostrate form, making towards the Pool Room while keeping the business end of the gun pointed at the alien. As he did so, Karen shimmered into the room, one hand at her neck, where a series of parallel red welts had already appeared.

  “Is it dead now?” she asked hoarsely as they fell into each other’s arms.

  “I don’t think so, not yet anyway.” Richard pulled away from her, aimed carefully at the back of the wide, flattened shape of the invader’s skull and started to squeeze the trigger. His arm dropped to his side several seconds later as he found he just could not carry through with his initial intention.

  “Watch it carefully,” he began as he gave the weapon back to Karen and picked up the alien’s laser rifle from a point near the entrance to the Pool Room. “I’m going to make sure all the others are dead.” Richard glanced down and figured out how to hold the strangely shaped trigger, then stepped forward, the weapon stretched out in front of him like a rapier, and mentally pictured the Control Centre once more.

  An instant later, he found himself inside a dimly lit space with pieces of control equipment and partly melted panels scattered randomly around him. It took him a moment to realise that this was in fact the remains of the Control Centre. To the right, where the second pilot’s chair had once been, the floor ended in a jagged edge that curled up slightly. Beyond it was the dull green light that illuminated the interior of the bubble-shaped boarding craft. Richard stepped forward cautiously. At the interface between the two areas he saw a layer of translucent, saggy material like partly melted plastic. Crouching down he touched it tentatively and found it was smooth and hard. He stepped over it and entered the alien vessel. To his right he saw a wavy line of translucent material covering what he deduced was one of the gouges he had made with the laser through the thin walls of the boarding capsule. It seemed that the vessel was self-sealing, as well as self-attaching.

  There, before him, lay another of the invaders, his hands still grasping the life-saving mouth-piece of his air-supply. His face was a deeper grey, and the eyes were stained a dirty brown colour by the broken blood vessels that were the characteristic result of explosive decompression. The surface beneath him was tinged with the distinctive orange blood, and as Richard looked closer he saw the reason why this alien had not managed to protect himself with the full security of his vacuum equipment; a large portion of the alien’s torso was missing, vaporised or sucked into the unforgiving vacuum of space as a result of the laser’s blast, just seconds before the safety of their destination had been reached.

  Richard rapidly checked the six other bodies, his painful wounds almost forgotten as he experienced the gradual reduction in gravity resulting from his increased distance from the Scout Craft’s interior, and found that they, too, had been asphyxiated or perforated when the laser he wielded so desperately had punctured the boarding vessel. None of them were fully dressed in their vacuum suits; he found a neat row of round air tanks and masks on hooks against the far wall, tantalisingly close by, but far enough from the over-confident invaders to prevent them from reaching and using them. The turbulence of the escaping air must have thrown the would-be invaders roughly around before allowing them to fall gradually to the floor, to rest there for eternity. Or until I get rid of them.

  Richard ran his eyes quickly over the controls of the boarding vessel; he found that several of the displays were dead; their workings presumably vaporised or short-circuited by his frantic last-minute attack. Several more laser rifles were still clipped to a rack by the open end of the strange vessel. Around the opening was an iris-like arrangement of flexible panels that must have been moved back by the surviving attacker after the seal with Scout Craft Seven had been completed. Richard stepped back over the curved joint and examined the controls before the captain’s chair and the first pilot’s seat, grimacing as he returned to Citadel’s full gravity effects. Almost all of the displays were blank. One, giving an indication of the ship’s velocity, reminded him of their original predicament. He staggered slightly due to the after-effects of shock as he stepped towards the rear door, and reformed before Karen. She stood by the crumpled body, Ed Baynes’ weapon held loosely in her right hand.

  “The others are all dead,” Richard said somewhat unnecessarily as he walked up to her. “What about this one?”

  “It moved a little a few moments ago, and there have been a few low growls, or perhaps moans.”

  Richard dropped the awkward laser rifle with relief, and kicked it away. The black shape slid across the floor and settled a reassuring distance from the alien. He bent down and heaved the body over on its back. The unfeeling eyes were covered this time by the alien’s eyelids. A pool of the orange blood had formed below the invader. Richard picked up one of the hands. It was limp, but heavily muscled, and he could see that the grey-skinned appendage was equipped with only four digits. Two appeared to be fully opposing, resulting in the powerful grip that had almost been the end of Karen. Richard noticed that the arm was bent in two places; at first he concluded that it must have been broken in the fall, but then he noticed the other arm was similarly equipped with an extra elbow-like joint. Quite the design; it must make these arms into formidable weapons,

  Karen rubbed her neck again. It does.

  He grinned at her wryly, allowed the hand to drop to the floor, then he stood up. “We need to decide what to do with it; it still looks dangerous to me.”

  “
Let’s tie it up.” Karen looked down at the weird figure with repulsion. “If it lives we can try to question it.”

  Richard nodded. “We must try to fix the Drive, and the controls, too.” He swayed. “There’s nothing left of the Control Centre that works except… a couple of sensing instruments.” He leaned against the wall as his head started to swim.

  “Sit down, I’ll activate the Medic system and mend your wounds.”

  Richard collapsed to the floor in a heap. “No time,” he gasped. “We’ve got to get the Drive back on line; we’ll overshoot the Outpost, or maybe even crash into the planet if we don’t regain control and start decelerating again soon.”

  Karen bent over him, then reached out and activated another of the terminals. She accessed the automated Medic system and attempted to initiate a body scan, but the system failed to respond. Richard crawled over to the terminal and pushed her gently away from it.

  “I’ll try and find the problems with the Drive; you can fix them,” he suggested in a rather feeble voice.

  Karen looked as though she might object, then nodded in reluctant agreement.

  “You got the Drive back on line just in time,” Richard whispered as he started to perform a system check. “These aliens had a ship a lot bigger than this Scout Craft, and shaped like an arrowhead. They must have thought we were completely helpless, our power being off when they arrived. Then they used some kind of weapon that could blow right through the S P Field, and knock a chunk right out of Citadel!”

  Karen sat down beside him and laid a hand on his bare knee. Richard felt the energy surge into him, and his blurred eyesight improved a little.

  “I saw a kind of picture of most of it,” Karen explained. “As your plea for power reached me, I got some of your mental messages, too, when you were more controlled or less excited!”