by Eric Brown
The officer spoke in Malagasy, and the man nodded and slipped away. Hendrick watched him hurry down the alley and turn right along the main street.
The officer said, “ID, Mr Hendrick.”
He produced his faked ID-pin, and the officer inserted it into his wristcom. He read the screen, his lips moving.
“So, you are an officer with the Dutch police,” he said almost incredulously. “Tell me, Mr Hendrick, what are you doing on Avoeli?”
Hendrick gave him the tourist-enjoying-your-beautiful-world line, and the officer bought it.
“And why might an Avoelian citizen wish to follow you, Captain?”
Hendrick smiled. “I’m sure you don’t need to be told that, officer. You do have crime in Allay, no?”
The officer passed him his pin. “I suggest you return to your hotel and take care during your remaining time here, Captain.”
Hendrick gave a sardonic salute. “I’ll certainly do that.”
The officer nodded to Hendrick, gestured to his men, and led the way back to the police van.
As the vehicle drove away, Hendrick raised his wrist-com and got through to Tiana.
“Matt!” she sounded relieved. “Where are you? What happened?”
“I’m fine and I know who was following us. Where are you?”
“Just booked us into a great room next to the river.” She gave him directions and said, “But who . . . ?”
He gave a brief resume of his encounter with the well-dressed local and described the man’s ID card. “And it bore an embossed cross of the Church of the Ultimate Redemption.”
“Well done,” Tiana laughed. “Listen, there’s a great restaurant in the hotel, and the beer’s wonderful. Get yourself over here and I’ll buy the next round.”
He left the alley and took a circuitous route to the waterfront, just in case the little man in the pay of the Church was fool enough to consider following him again.
So much for the reasonable Father Jacobius . . .
As he approached the hotel, the swollen orb of Fomalhaut was going down slowly beyond the distant jungle.
• • •
He’s fast asleep in the moonlight. I’ve worn him out. The odd thing is, he’s so grateful, as if me making love to him is such a big deal. Well, I suppose it is, to him.
I wonder why he’s following Maatje?
He’s a good man, a very good man. When I find Lalla, I’ll tell her, of course. I’ll suffer her rage, her jealousy. If I said nothing . . . that would only make my guilt all the worse. Better to weather the initial storm of Lalla’s jealousy than to suffer the slow corrosion of guilt.
And it looks as if Lalla was right, all along—looks like the Church is mixed up in something odd. That prick following Matt tonight . . .
Wonder what we’ll find out tomorrow?
SIX
THEY SET OFF BEFORE FIRST LIGHT, WHILE the town was still asleep, and Tiana drove the half-track truck along a metalled road for a couple of kilometres and then turned off along a rutted track through the overhanging jungle. Last night over dinner Tiana had told him that when the representative of the truck hire company had asked to see her permit, she’d offered him a cash bribe instead. Hendrick hoped they’d be spared the attention of the local police.
They bucketed along at high speed, the windows wound down to admit a cooling breeze. Fomalhaut was beginning its long, slow climb towards another hot day, and already the temperature was in the eighties. Fortunately, the track was mainly in the shade, with just the occasional ruddy flicker of sunlight penetrating the canopy.
Tiana kept up a steady stream of small talk, telling Hendrick about her childhood and her first meeting with Lalla Vaugines. “We were six,” she said, “and just starting school. We were friends from the very first day.”
Hendrick smiled. “Love at first sight?”
Tiana laughed. “Well, attraction at first sight. There was something special between us.”
“Not wanting to appear prurient, when did you realise . . . ?”
“That I was attracted to Lalla? I was thirteen. We were on holiday, fifty kilometres along the escarpment at the Falls. We’d slip away from our families and go swimming in one of the lagoons. One morning, Lalla undressed and swam naked, and I just watched her . . .” She fell silent, gripping the steering wheel and staring ahead. “She was beautiful and I knew then . . .” She flicked a glance at Hendrick. “Lalla knew what she was doing, of course. She told me later that she’d been attracted to me for months. The following day, she suggested I swim naked, and one thing led to another . . .”
“And you’ve been together ever since?”
“Well . . . not so much together. We’ve gone through periods of seeing other people. But we always get back together.”
He shook his head. She stared at him. “What?”
“No jealousy, recriminations?”
“Not at all, at least on my part.”
“Ah . . . But on Lalla’s?”
Tiana shrugged, gripping the wheel. “She resents that I find men attractive. It’s caused more than a few rows in the past. There was a time when she wanted us to live together, see no one else.” She shook her head. “As much as I love Lalla, I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not? Surely, if you love someone properly—”
“What does that mean, Matt? Define ‘love someone properly’. It’s ridiculous. We’re not meant to love anyone solely and exclusively. Heterosexual society might try to impose that on its citizens as a means of ensuring a stable family environment in which to bring up kids, but for the rest of us . . .”
“You’re right, Tiana. But it comes hard as a paid-up member of that heterosexual society.”
She glanced at him. “You’re a sad man, Matt Hendrick—travelling light years to win back your wife. Why can’t you just give in, accept . . . ?”
“I told you, it’s my daughter I want back,” he said, attempting to keep the irritation from her voice.
She nodded. “And doesn’t a small part of you desire to get your wife back too?”
He stared through the windshield at the rough track between the overhanging trees. “You’re right, of course. Christ, you’re wise beyond your years. And apologies for sounding patronising. Of course in an ideal world I’d like Maatje to come back to me. But I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
“You wouldn’t trust her?”
“It’s not that.” He tried to articulate his thoughts. “I’m not sure you can love someone without hating them as well. You . . . You’ve got to understand and accept the whole person, and as no person is perfect, then there is always something to dislike, even hate, in that person. When you come to understand that, and to accept another’s faults, and can still bring yourself to feel love—that’s what I mean by love.” He shrugged. “But . . . But there are some things that you just can’t tolerate. And . . . while a part of me does want Maatje back, another part wonders how I could accept the person who did what she did to me. I thought I knew her, knew all her faults, and then she takes my daughter away like that.” He looked across at Tiana and shrugged. “And how could I want someone back who did such a thing?”
She was silent for a time, before saying, “Matt . . . I’ve been thinking. When I saw your wife at the station the day she arrived with her lover . . .”
He glanced at her. “What about it?”
“Well, she wasn’t with her daughter. It was just her and the guy. They were alone.”
He sighed and shook his head. “Samantha was with them.”
She looked confused. “No, Matt. I’m telling the truth. They didn’t have a child with them.”
He looked at her, wanting to tell her the truth but knowing how painful that would be.
Then he recalled her intimacy last night, her gentleness, and said, “That’s because Samantha is dead, Tiana.”
She stared at him. “Dead?”
He sighed and stared out into the jungle.
Tiana said, “I don’t understand.”
So he told her how Samantha had fallen victim to a virulent alien pathogen six years ago while he, Maatje, and Samantha had been living on the colony world of Landsdowne, Beta Hydra X. There was no known cure for the disease, so rather than give in and accept their daughter’s death, he and Maatje had elected to have her body stored in suspension, in the hope that one day a cure might be found. Technically, she was dead—her bodily functions were quiescent—though if a cure could be found . . .
In the aftermath of the trauma, his relationship with Maatje—always stormy at the best of times—had deteriorated. In her search for someone who might be able to help Samantha, Maatje had met a surgeon called Emanuel Hovarth.
“Is that who . . . ?” Tiana asked.
Hendrick nodded. “They began an affair. She left me and with Hovarth took Samantha’s suspension casket and fled.”
“But if Hovarth can help—” she began.
“He can’t!” Hendrick interrupted. “I know what killed my daughter, and I know that there’s no known cure at the moment. I’ve done research, spent hours trawling the Web, talked to experts in various fields.” He gestured. “I want to track Maatje, bring Samantha back to Earth so that I know where she is, so that maybe one day . . .”
She nodded, then asked, “But what are they doing here on Avoeli, Matt?”
He stared ahead through the windscreen. “That’s what I’d like to find out.”
• • •
They drove in silence, Hendrick absorbed in his thoughts. At last Tiana said, “So . . . what do you think is happening here with Jacobius? You’ve had a night to sleep on it. Why did he have us followed?”
She’d asked the same questions over dinner last night, and he’d said he was trying to work it out.
“I’m still no closer. I never was a deductive cop. I was more the hard worker who beavered away at a problem. Slow but sure, unimaginative but reliable.”
She grinned. “A little like how you make love.”
“Thank you for that,Tiana.”
“Sorry. Anyway . . .”
He shook his head. “It’s my guess, and a guess is all it is, that the Church has discovered something about the Avoel—something to do with this famadihana ritual that Lalla was onto. They want it kept quiet, for reasons I can’t even begin to imagine.”
“And Lalla’s mother’s disappearance?”
“Well, we don’t know that they’re linked.”
“A bit of a coincidence if they’re not.”
“But coincidences do happen,” he said.
“Which leaves us precisely nowhere,” she said, grimacing as the truck bumped over a pothole.
“Until we track down Lalla.”
They drove on for another hour until Tiana suggested they stop for a break and eat. Hendrick agreed willingly. They’d grabbed a quick breakfast of fruit and juice in their room before setting off, and he was hungry.
Tiana nodded towards the screen set into the dashboard. A satellite map showed a thin line through a field of green. “See that square symbol? It’s an abandoned timber mill, about half a kay ahead.”
Minutes later the track widened and a clearing appeared to their right. There was not much to be seen of the old mill—just a skeleton of girders overgrown with creepers and vines. Hendrick might have missed it altogether had he not been looking for the structure.
They climbed out and stretched their legs. Tiana stepped into the shade, found a fallen log, and sat down. She opened a rucksack and pulled out a plastic container she’d had the foresight to stock with wraps and fruit. She passed him a bulb of juice and he remained standing, staring into the alien jungle.
“What did the Avoel think about us coming in here and chopping down their trees?”
“They came to an agreement with our founders,” she said. “There was a strict quota; only so many hectares could be felled a year.” She shrugged. “In the end, when Telemass replaced starship travel, it became more costeffective to import building material from nearby colony worlds, and the industry collapsed.”
“Is there any industry at all on Avoeli?”
“Practically none. The planet exists on tourism.”
“Thank the Fates for Telemass,” he said.
She looked reflective. “Yes . . . I dread to think how Avoeli might survive without it. No starship line would find it profitable to service the planet.”
“You’d be reduced to a hunter-gatherer existence, like the Avoel,” he said.
“‘Reduced’ is a loaded term, Matt. The Avoel do rather well . . .”
“Point taken.”
He chewed on a wrap and turned a full three-sixty degrees, taking in crimson trumpet blooms and sprays of purple fern twice as tall as a man. He saw not a single animal, but their proximity was evident in a series of strident whistles and a strange, prolonged bass note.
He turned to Tiana. “What’s that low, deep sound?”
“The Avoel call it a shum. It’s a bit like a big toad, only bright blue and blind, apparently. They consider it a delicacy.”
She was about to say something else but stopped and stared at a point directly behind him.
Hendrick froze. “What?” he whispered.
“Move very slowly, Matt, and turn around.”
“What . . . ?” His back prickled and his first instinct was to dive for the cab.
“It’s an Avoel,” she whispered. “Directly behind you, about ten metres away.”
He turned as instructed, and when he was facing away from Tiana he said, “Where? I don’t see . . .”
Then he saw it.
He hadn’t expected the Avoel in the flesh to appear so reptilian or so etiolated. He was reminded of an elongated albino frog, upright and bipedal, with black staring eyes and a wide mouth. The mouth was open, showing a nasty array of curved needle teeth.
The creature was watching them, half concealed behind a bush, only its upper half showing. A second later it was gone, and Hendrick jumped in surprise at its rapid motion. One second it was there, and the next it had vanished.
He was aware that his heart was thumping. He crossed to Tiana and sat down next to her.
“That was . . . some experience,” he said.
“They’re so unlike us,” she said, “and yet it’s what we have in common with the aliens—our bipedalism and analogous facial features—that points up their alienness.” She laughed. “Not an original observation. I’m quoting Lalla.”
“She’s right.” He looked around. “I wonder how many others are watching us?”
“According to Lalla, this deep in the jungle a human is under observation all the time by at least six of the Avoel.”
He echoed the number. “Amazing . . . And you say they’re peaceful?”
“As babies, Matt. There’s nothing to fear.”
They finished the meal and climbed back into the truck, Hendrick taking the wheel for this leg of the journey. According to the satellite map on the dash, they’d covered over half the distance to the temple complex. Estimated arrival was in a little over four hours.
Despite Tiana’s reassurances as to the passivity of the aliens, it felt good to be on the move again.
“Have you thought of what we’ll do if Lalla isn’t at the temple complex?”
Tiana kicked off her plimsolls and lodged her bare feet on the dashboard. “There’s another, smaller complex deeper in the jungle, about another ten kay to the north. We could try there. Only trouble is, it’s not navigable by truck.”
“Great. How long would it take to hack our way through the undergrowth?”
“According to Lalla, there’s a small track,”Tiana said. “But it’d still be a bit of a trek.”
“Let’s just hope she’s at the temple.”
The sun rose over the jungle, its full, immense orb taking up a quarter of the sky. The temperature increased. Tiana turned up the air conditioning.
At one point she gestured through the side window at something in the forest. “Avoel
, Matt. I counted a dozen of them. It appears we have an escort.”
• • •
Hendrick had expected the Avoel temple to be as overgrown as the timber mill—a victim, over the centuries, of nature’s inexorable encroachment. He was surprised, when they left the truck on the track and pushed their way through the jungle, to come across a rearing ziggurat in a vast clearing. The temple was clear of creepers and vines, and its ivory-coloured stone was lambent in the bright noon light.
There was no sign of Lalla or her colleagues.
Hendrick glanced around at the enclosing forest, thinking of what Tiana had said about humans being under observation by six Avoel at all times. She moved off towards the ziggurat and he hurried after her.
As they made a slow circuit, he said, “I thought it’d be covered in creepers like the mill back there.”
Tiana shook her head. “Lalla and her team cleared it over the years.”
“Not the Avoel?”
“The temple is no longer used by the Avoel.”
Hendrick paused and craned his neck to take in the full height of the building. “Are they a devolved race? The level of expertise needed to construct something like this suggests a pretty complex society.”
“According to Lalla, the Avoel turned their backs on the ways of . . . materialism, let’s say. But she says that they’ve lost none of their cultural morality in doing so. They’re still, despite being hunter-gatherers, a civilised people.”
He approached the basal stones of the ziggurat and traced the patterns carved into the rock. He made out complex swirls and interlocking spirals, the work of gifted stonemasons. Further along, Tiana pointed out a procession of figures which, despite being obviously Avoelian, put Hendrick in mind of Egyptian carvings.
When they had made a complete circuit of the temple, Hendrick said, “So, no Lalla.”
“I was hoping we’d find her truck in the clearing. She often works in the labyrinth of the temple itself, but even if her colleagues had left with the truck, there’d be some evidence of their presence.” She looked at him. “I’d call out, but for some reason it doesn’t seem quite right to do so.”
He peered into a recess in the stones, a narrow passage retreating into shadows. He was about to suggest they return to the truck for a flashlight when Tiana stiffened. “What was that?”