‘God, what a nightmare. Trust me to land on a place like this.’
‘And there is more.’ The AI sounded apprehensive.
‘More? Such as?’
The AI hesitated for a moment. ‘There is something watching.’
‘Watching who?’
‘Us. Everybody. This entire planet. Something is watching the planet.’
‘Who? What? Is it human, like us in any way?’
‘Definitely not human.’
Chapter 24
‘Where am I?’
She opened her eyes, surprised by the warm glow of her surroundings. It felt like spring back home. She had become accustomed to a bleak Charon landscape, punctuated by occasional visits to Pluto, equally bleak, followed by a visit to the even bleaker Eris and Triton.
Except that, Eris and Triton had never happened. She looked out at shimmering summer blue, at strange shapes shifting through a light spectrum seeming to represent something she knew – like flowers, or trees with blossoms, and rich green and gold pastures stretching into a happy sky. Somehow none of that came to anything either. Everything fell apart just as it started, and then started up again. She tried to get up, but fell back.
‘It’s the drug. It’ll wear off.’
‘Who …?’ She looked around. Everything was vague and smudgy. She blinked, but that hurt her head. Her eyes were smarting, her limbs tingling. Overall, she felt dreadful.
Best not to move for a while, she thought. Best to stay still and let reality assert itself. She tried to remember what had happened. She had been with Laic-La. The ship had been approaching Eris and she was going on the early shuttle. They would do a round trip of the dwarf planet before landing. She had been excited to be at a frontier of astronomical history. She would write a paper, make a documentary. But something had been wrong; she had not been behaving normally. She had not linked up with Lex; something she always did. It was as if she were in a dream.
Then she felt something, like an earth tremor. At first, she thought it was an artificial gravity malfunction – it would not be the first time – but before she could recover it happened again, and she lost consciousness.
Now she was here. And she had no idea where “here” was.
‘Are we at a party of some sort? Have I been drugged – again?’
‘No party, at least in the usual sense. Drugged though, but it should wear off. It is English, your first language?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
It was a man’s voice, but she couldn’t see him. She looked around, but could only see shifting colours. Everything was difficult to grasp. She felt as if she was floating in clouds, maybe descending, maybe ascending, or moving sideways. In a way, it was nice, but it should not be happening.
‘Where am I?’
She lay silently for a long time, drifted off into sleep, dreaming of Charon, Pluto, and the methane skies of Eris and Triton. She thought of Earth and green fields, and climbing hills, camping in forests, roaming across glaciers; fine, but she was not at these places.
‘Where am I?’
Did someone answer? She slept again, then woke, more clear-headed, but weak. A dark young man of similar age to herself sat crossed legged beside her. His mouth curled in an ironic smile. Why ironic, she thought, what was there in the situation that warranted irony? It was not encouraging.
‘Hi, my name is Jalaal.’ He spoke English with an Arabic or Middle Eastern accent. ‘Don’t ask where we are. We don’t really know. Not entirely.’
‘We?’ She tried sitting up, failed, and fell back helplessly. ‘We?’
‘Yes … us.’ A deep female voice came from further away. She became aware of a dark figure behind the man.
‘My name is Venetia. You said your name was Jalaal? Are you from the Middle East, from Afghanistan maybe?’
‘Yes. That is correct.’
Venetia managed to sit up. Jalaal rose and leant over and helped her to her feet. The woman handed her a glass of water. ‘Here, drink this.’ She spoke slowly with a thick accent.
She looked about her. They seemed to be in an elongated chamber with green and gold hued walls and a ceiling that merged with the walls, creating the impression of a tunnel. It was not uncomfortable or intimidating, but unusual. In the centre of the room was a light brown table with chairs. Vases of water and bowls filled with fruit type objects ran the length of the table. Along the walls were seats, cupboards, and shelves, and something that may have been a freezer or refrigerator. At both ends of the chamber were open doorways beyond which Venetia could sense variable bands of light.
She turned and surveyed her companions. Jalaal was tall, lean, with black hair that ran down his back. He had striking features, with a pleasant smile and eyes that gleamed with understanding; nevertheless, he looked tired and apprehensive.
The woman was dark skinned, beautiful, and foreign in a manner she found difficult to pinpoint. There was something unsettling about her, as if she could see people’s thoughts, and she had a feeling of immense power. Venetia could almost feel her in her head.
‘My name is Astral-La,’ the woman said. ‘Basically, we are prisoners, but we have the freedom of several chambers and a garden. And we are not badly treated, at least in the usual sense.’
‘What do you mean by “the usual sense?”?’
‘What she means,’ Jalaal said, ‘is that we are not being subjected to physical or psychological violence, or cruelly treated.’
‘I should hope not,’ Venetia replied. Suddenly she began to cry. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Steady on.’ Astral-La took her hand and led her to the table. ‘You must eat.’
‘I don’t want to eat,’ Venetia sobbed.
‘It will help ground you, and the food here is good. We are not in danger, at least in the usual sense.’
‘You keep saying “the usual sense.” It is most upsetting.’
‘Sorry. You must be hungry. You were sleeping for days.’
Astral-La helped Venetia to one of the seats. Somehow, a plate of bean-type substances materialized. It smelt good and Venetia realized she was hungry. Still sobbing, she took a few tentative bites, and then began to eat more enthusiastically.
‘Where are we?’
Astral-la cleared her throat, as if about to speak, and then looked to Jalaal.
‘We are in another galaxy. On Earth, we call it the Triangulum galaxy. Astral-La is from the Large Magellanic Cloud.’
Venetia stopped eating and looked with amazement at Astral-La. If she had been wondering how irony could find a place in these extraordinary circumstances, it now swamped her. ‘I always wanted to meet someone from there. These circumstances are not exactly what I had in mind, however.’ She laughed. ‘But why the Triangulum, the NGC 598? It is the third largest galaxy in our local galactic group, about 3 million light years from Earth, 835,000 parsecs, and a similar distance from the Large Magellanic Cloud. I know all about it because astral-physics is one of my subjects of expertise.’
‘That’s it!’ Astral-La uttered.
Venetia looked startled. What?’
‘Nothing. Go on?’
‘Go on? You people need to go on. Tell me, why are we here?’
‘We know we are in the Triangulum galaxy, what some of my people nickname The Great Wheel. Exactly where in this galaxy, we don’t know. It seems we have been abducted, or kidnapped.’
‘Why?’
‘We have not been told,’ Astral-La spoke in broken English. ‘We have theories. We could be exhibits, like in a zoo, or menagerie, owned by extremely alien personages, just for fun, or some alien reason beyond our comprehension.’
‘Or that we are here for them to study,’ Jalaal added.
‘One thing is clear,’ Astral-La said. ‘Both Jalaal and I are exceptional. We both have outstanding talent, once in a generation talent. I have special abilities. Jalaal is a musician of monumental capability. The abductees even transported his instrument with him.’
‘And you must be too.’ Jalaal looked pointedly at Venetia.
‘I guess, yes. Physics, mathematics, astronomy. I am a genius, I suppose, although I never thought of myself in that way.’
‘You wouldn’t. That is the point. But all three of us are exceptional. We could be part of an alien study, or experiment. They want to observe us, or use us in some manner.’
‘The being who abducted me was a sort of reptilian bounty hunter,’ Astral-La said. ‘Unlike you two, I was conscious for some of my abduction. I got to know it over a period and we communicated. That’s how I know where we are, broadly. It was hired to procure me, as it were. It was working for a group called the Pulse, I think that is how you say it in English, which is outsourced by a race called the Unseen, something like that. Now we have Keeper, but more about that later. But there may have been intermediaries of some sort, a chain of weird getting weirder. Frankly, we are at a loss as to why we are here and who the beneficiaries of us being here are.’
‘We must try to escape,’ Venetia said.
‘Well, there is a small matter of 3 billion light years,’ Jalaal said.
‘Yes, but something got us here, so a return pathway must exist.’
‘Back home, I have a close friend called Flower-of-Sands,’ Astral-La said. ‘She was planning to visit this galaxy, just for adventure. She was about to obtain special intergalactic valves that could make it happen, but the being that abducted me stole those valves while it abducted me, so she can’t follow.’
‘Great! Venetia whispered.
‘Except,’ Astral-La whispered almost to herself, ‘knowing Sands, she won’t rest until she finds a way.’
‘Meanwhile, we must observe,’ Venetia said slowly. ‘Why are we here? What do they want from us? And who are they?’ A look of scientific enquiry and determination came over her. ‘Why are we here?’ she echoed softly before returning to her meal. ‘Why?’
Chapter 25
How could she have been so stupid? That was her question.
Correction: How could she have been so completely and utterly stupid?
It got worse. She had care of Daff, a vulnerable child, whom she had vowed to protect. So, she could add the word irresponsible to her question. How could she have been so completely and utterly stupid and irresponsible?
She was in semi-darkness, shackled to a slimy wet wall, and naked. Well, that was a cliché, she thought. Nearby, Daff had been in similar circumstances, but they had come and taken him away, screaming.
She was in tears – dry tears, as she was so dehydrated. She could not connect to the escape pod. She had no smart-skin. She had no idea where she was or what had happened to Daff, or if he was alive. She wept, cursed her stupidity, wept more, and cursed her stupidity again.
In some ways, her stupidity, inexcusable although it was, was explainable. Despite her experiences on Earth, she had been born into a civilization in which war, strife, and crime were obsolete. Jeopardy did not exist – at least on the level of things happening to people, except occasionally in deep space travel. Pseudo-jeopardy existed in holo games for children and teenagers. When she was a pre-to-early teen, a game called Barbarian Horde, played mostly by girls, raised the eyebrows of many parents and educators. Other games such as Apostle and Teenage Ninjas (copied from Earth) had enjoyed equal notoriety. But they were not real. It was just gaming – virtual, cyber fun, and innocent. For a few moments, she escaped into memories of a past that was bright, promising, and free from fear.
About thirty days ago, she had started moving the pod to random locations, in search of food, water, and shelter. With the pod in stealth, she could stay ahead of military activity. During this period, she had made considerable progress in Daff’s language and a bond of trust between them had been established. At all times, she was careful to stay hidden, only venturing from the pod for short intervals after the AI had given the all clear.
A few days ago, they had found a small valley that appeared free of military activity. The day after she stepped out into the early morning. The air was warm and clear with a pale blue sky and fair-weather clouds. She walked a hundred metres from the pod where she discovered a small lake. It was idyllic and she felt safe.
She ran back to the pod, which she had taken out of stealth to conserve energy but which was camouflaged by the shadows of a cave. She wanted to give Daff a treat and clean him and herself up. She wanted to see his happy face as he splashed around in the water. She had not admitted it to herself, but hitherto dormant maternal hormones were running riot through her system. She took Daff’s hand and ran with him towards the water. They peeled off their skins and plunged happily into the chilled, invigorating water.
Daff left the pool before her, leaping onto the dry, mossy bank. When Flower-of-Sands reached the water’s edge and made ready to hoist herself onto the bank, she saw Daff frozen like a statue.
Two heavily armed soldiers stood silently watching him.
‘Don’t move, I’m coming,’ she whispered forcibly to the immobile Daff.
She pulled herself up onto the bank and stepped close to him as he stood shivering above their discarded skins. She reached down to grab the skins but the soldiers noisily released the safety on their firearms. She was not a soldier, but she knew the sound from her experiences on Earth. Slowly, she straightened out and stepped in front of Daff; she would have to fight the men – she assumed they were men – without the aid of her skin.
The soldiers approached and she readied herself. Somehow, the soldiers sensed her as a possible combatant. They could easily have shot her and Daff, or shot one of them and kept the other for sport. But they did not. Instead, they attempted to move around her to get a better view of Daff and weaken her position, sensing she was protecting him, seeing that as a weakness. She would have to be fast.
A background drone that she had only half registered intensified, and within minutes helicopter-type aircraft, tanks, and infantry surrounded them. There must have been at least a hundred soldiers, ready to fire, visors pulled down, all on extreme combat alert. The situation, already bad, had changed dramatically for the worse.
The two original soldiers, obeying an order from somewhere, came forward and grabbed her and Daff. Another came forward and picked up the smart-skins, which to the untrained eye looked like the discarded skins of a snake or some other reptile. The soldier threw the skins to what must have been the equivalent of a sergeant who examined them contemptuously before discarding them onto the ground.
They were marched towards one of the helicopters. Flower-of-Sands noticed that the pod was invisible, which meant that the AI had read the situation and moved into stealth. No doubt it would retrieve the skins and track them. Or would it? She had little idea of the extent of the pod’s ability to act independently. She tried making contact through her plant-net, but the pod did not respond. Possibly, it sensed that the militia had equipment that could pick up such a communication, thereby complicating an already tricky situation.
Returning to the present, she considered her circumstances. Hopeless and serious, she thought, as she tried to adjust her chains to ease the aching of her body. Nothing helped. To make matters worse, her captors had placed a bucket of foul-smelling substance close to her. Every breath made her want to vomit. She and Daff were doomed. Her body hurt everywhere; she was thirsty, hungry, naked, cold, and stinking. The only thing she had was her wits – and those were slowly giving way to blind panic. She also had her implant, and that was something of which her captors were unaware. So far.
The soldiers had questioned, manhandled, beaten, and questioned her again. They wore masks and seemed to possess no individual characteristics. They spoke a language like Daff’s, but with enough variations to make communication impossible. Without her smart-skin and AI’s help, she had to rely exclusively on her implant. She insisted she was not a spy; she was neutral, a non-combatant. It did not help. Nothing did.
The soldiers were unaware of anything beyond their world, and the
y hit her every time she tried to tell them that she was from another planet. They were also unaware of any way of life that did not involve war. War was all they did, all they knew, all they aspired to. War, all-out war, was life. Nothing else existed.
Her only hope was a possible link to the pod through her implant. She had already made a few tentative attempts, but the pod seemed to have gone into hibernation. Maybe there were surveillance systems on the planet that could detect the pod, causing it to be cautious. Maybe it was malfunctioning. Maybe it was not sophisticated enough to see the relevance of contacting her now that she was no longer in direct contact. That, she thought, was the most likely explanation.
Time was running out. With their distorted thinking, her captors believed that she was a spy. When they eventually realized that she was not and had no information about enemy movements and plans, they would probably kill her, or sell her into slavery.
It was simple. She and Daff were done for, unless she did something quickly. She must connect to the pod. But how would that help? The pod was not ultra A class as was Ninthe – God, how she missed her – but an escape pod with a standard AI system – probably some form of Beta class. Nevertheless, it was her only option. She linked in to her implants communication systems and began to project. If she could reach it through her implant, she could programme it to look for her. Her implant could then act as a beacon, a GPS, and guide it to her. It was a desperate plan. Even if the pod made it here, how would it affect a rescue?
She heard a door creaking. Keys and chains rattled, accompanied by drunken voices, and shadowy figures slouched through the dank air towards her. Was another questioning session about to take place? She retched as a chilly wind from the open door blew another whiff of stench from the bucket. By the time her tormentors had reached her she had fainted.
When she came to, they were dragging her down a semi-lit corridor towards a light that was not the least bit welcoming.
Flower-of-Sands_The Extraordinary Adventures of a Female Astronaut Page 24