The Telemass Quartet

by Eric Brown

  “Mercury?” he whispered.

  “We have company.”

  “What?” He stared through the window. “Who?”

  The moons had shifted; they were now on the far side of the sky. He’d slept for more than just a few minutes.

  She said, “Vhey.”

  Something turned in his stomach. Mercury was on her feet and moving around the bed. He sat up, grabbed his trousers, and pulled them on. He found his shoes and joined her at the floor-to-ceiling window.

  She eased it further open and stepped out. He followed her into an area of decking above the jungle. A few metres away, the lake lapped with a calming susurrus.

  “Mercury?”

  She put a finger to her lips.

  He stared into the inky jungle, but made out nothing untoward.

  Then something slipped from the undergrowth, a sliver of darkness that detached itself and seemed to flow onto the verandah. Hendrick stared at the creature that stood before them.

  Ralph Cartwright had described the Vhey as resembling tree frogs, but that had conjured an image of something almost cute, a vision from childhood of a cartoon character and therefore harmless.

  The alien looked nothing like a frog. Its proportions were all wrong. Its torso was squat, compacted, perhaps half a metre square, while its arms and legs were long, its legs jointed lower than where the human knee would be. It appeared black in the moonlight, not red, and it stared across the patio at them with unblinking eyes that were like obsidian jellyfish.

  Hendrick backed off, as if repulsed by palpable waves of alienness.

  He whispered, “You still reading?”

  “Christ, not now. A three-second burst was enough.”

  The Vhey reached out, grasped something invisible, and seemed to drag itself towards them. The strange, meaningless movement put Hendrick in mind of the precise, silent choreography of a mime artist. The alien paused, staring at them, then reached out again and pulled itself along as if on some invisible wire; it halted a metre away, bobbing.

  Its head was oblate, sloping to a prognathous jaw. Its lips were not froglike but shaped in a vicious, inverted V.

  Hendrick wanted to turn and run. He found Mercury’s hand and held on tight.

  What happened then was sudden and unexpected, and consequently shocking. Without warning, the alien leapt. Before Hendrick had time to react, the Vhey hit him in the chest and clung to him. He staggered backwards, moaning aloud, came up against the wall of the villa and slid into a sitting position. The alien lifted a small, splayed hand and applied it to his face, pressing. Hendrick gagged as the alien’s cold soft fingers spanned his brow, and he felt a sudden, intense heat pass through his head.

  Then the Vhey was no longer squatting on his chest; it jumped from him and in a single leap hit Mercury and sent her sprawling to the ground. She called out in shock. As he watched, transfixed, the alien clung to her chest, reached out and covered her face with its right hand.

  Hendrick rolled towards Mercury, but before he reached her the alien leapt backward and away, and stood upright on its bobbing legs, facing them.

  Hendrick reached Mercury and hauled her to her feet.

  “I’m fine . . .” she gasped. “Just a little . . . shocked. You?”

  “I’m okay. What the hell . . . ?”

  The alien faced them, blinking.

  Its inverted V-shaped mouth moved, and it spoke.

  “No watch, now . . .”

  No what, nah . . .

  It went on, its words mere breaths. “Your cameras, defunct . . .”

  Yo camrah, defun . . .

  Mercury said, “It’s . . . It’s somehow disabled the nanoware—”

  “How? How’s that possible?”

  Mercury shook her head, staring at the Vhey. “I’ve no idea.”

  She said, addressing the alien, “You’ve disabled our cameras?” To Hendrick she said, “I’m trying to read . . .” She winced. “It’s no good. All I feel is pain . . .”

  The alien retreated with the graceful, retarded movements of a tae chi exponent; it seemed to flow away from them, bobbing low, ducking, squatting . . . and then it was in the jungle, returned to the darkness, and it was as if it had taken with it the overwhelming atmosphere of dread that had accompanied the creature for the duration of its presence on the patio.

  Hendrick turned to Mercury and pulled her to him, shivering. “Christ . . . Christ, I know what Pascal means now.”

  She took his hand and drew him back into the bedroom, sliding the window shut and locking it behind them. She turned on the lamp and they sat on the bed, staring at each other.

  “It . . . the Vhey, they obviously don’t want us filming them.”

  Hendrick interrupted. “But how the hell did it know about the nanoware? And how was it able to . . . ?”

  “What did Ralph say? That they have the ability to affect change on a molecular level?”

  They lay down, and held each other, but sleep was a long time coming.

  At breakfast next morning, Mercury told Pascal that they’d had a visitor in the night.

  He stared at them, appalled. “A Vhey?”

  “It came onto the deck outside our room, and we . . .”

  “Confronted it,” Hendrick finished.

  Pascal stared from Mercury to Hendrick. “What happened?”

  She said, “I’ll be honest with you. We’re working for your government—we need to apprehend the couple we mentioned last night, Maatje van der Muellen and Edmund Hovarth. To that end . . . we were equipped with nano-surveillance.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Pascal said, raising a hand. “The alien disabled it, right?”

  “It leapt at me,” Hendrick said, “clung to my chest and covered my face with its hand.” He smiled, without humour. “Then it did the same to Mercury.”

  “Then it spoke,” she said. “No watch, now . . . Your cameras defunct . . .” She shrugged. “Unfortunately we have no way of checking.”

  Pascal said, “If it said that the nanoware’s kaput, then I don’t doubt that it is.”

  “But how are they able . . . ?” Hendrick asked.

  “Between you and me, there’s an undercover team of scientists on the other side of the planet right now, attempting to solve just that conundrum. Can you imagine the benefits to the human race, if we could understand how the Vhey achieve this . . . this manipulation of matter?”

  Hendrick nodded grimly. “I can imagine, also, the terrible uses the ability might be put to.”

  Mercury finished her fruit juice. “When we reach the artists’ commune and locate Maatje van der Muellen and Edmund Hovarth . . . it would help if we were armed.” She touched the connected-minds symbol at her temple, and went on, “Forgive me, but when you discarded your shield last night, I couldn’t help reading that you have two pulsers.”

  Pascal smiled. “I’ll loan you the spare, if you promise that, before you leave Beltran, you’ll dine with me and fill me in on everything that happened.”

  Mercury inclined her head. “It’s a deal.”

  After breakfast Pascal fetched the pulser from his study and handed it to Mercury, a sleek silver handgun which she slipped into her case. Pascal led them out to a deck beside the villa where a bulky flier waited.

  He kept them chatting before they lifted off, repeating the operating instructions to Mercury as if reluctant to let them go. Hendrick called out that they would be back within days, and the small, portly diplomat smiled eagerly at this and waved as they ascended.

  The villa dwindled rapidly, an architect’s scale model set beside a shimmering lake.

  “Poor Pascal,” Mercury murmured. “Something else I read last night, Matt . . . He was engaged to a women called Sabine, six years ago, but she was killed in a flier accident in Paris. That’s why he applied for a posting off-planet.”

  “And look where he ended up,” Hendrick said.

  Ahead, the mountains rose, hazily verdant and saw-toothed. Far below, a dozen lake
s scintillated in the sunlight. Hendrick stared down at the rolling kilometres of unspoilt jungle, imagining the terrain teeming with Vhey.

  The commune was five hundred kilometres to the north, beyond the closest mountain range and nestled high on the next. He looked ahead, wondering what they might find at the commune, and felt relieved that Mercury was armed.

  She set the flier on autopilot and opened her bag. He watched as she applied mocha foundation cream to her right cheek, obscuring her connected-minds symbol.

  “If I did this on Earth or anywhere else,” she said, “the authorities would hit me with one hell of a fine. But as we’re here . . .”

  They flew on, over the mountains, towards the artists’ commune.

  FIVE

  THREE HOURS LATER MERCURY INSTRUCTED HER WRIST-com to establish a link with Sylvie Cartwright, then sat back and waited.

  “Hello?”

  “Sylvie. Mercury Velasquez. I hope you don’t mind, but we’d like to take you up on that offer of hospitality. We’re about an hour away.”

  “Great. It’s always open house here. See you in an hour.”

  Mercury cut the connection and looked across at Hendrick. “You’re quiet.”

  “Just thinking about the commune, and about what Maatje and Hovarth want here. Edward Lincoln might know, but as he’s a friend of Hovarth’s . . . is he likely to be forthcoming?”

  Mercury tapped her obscured connected-minds symbol. “This’ll help.”

  “But Sylvie and Ralph know that you’re a telepath. If Sylvie’s warned Lincoln about you . . .”

  She shrugged. “Then he’ll avoid us, if he’s got something to hide, and it’ll be up to us to find out what it might be.”

  He watched the passing jungle far below.

  “And there’s always the possibility,” Mercury said a little later, “that Maatje and Hovarth are still at the commune. They only arrived yesterday.”

  “But if Sylvie or Ralph mentioned us,” he said, “Maatje might have decided to move on.”

  “Then I’ll soon find out where they went.”

  Fifty minutes later Mercury’s wrist-com chimed. It was Sylvie. “Hey, we can see your flier. We’re about a kay away, on the sloping meadow to the northwest.”

  “I’ve programmed the flier to home in on your signal, Sylvie. See you soon.”

  Hendrick pointed. “There.”

  Nestled in a wide green valley slung between two rearing mountain peaks, Hendrick made out a sloping greensward dotted with a variety of living domes, prefab A-frames, and timber long houses. He counted around twenty habitats; the commune was larger than he’d expected.

  “Looks as if they don’t get many visitors,” Mercury said, peering down. “That’s quite a welcoming committee.”

  A crowd of artists had gathered at the lower end of the meadow, where a couple of old fliers were parked. A woman waved at them as they came down; Hendrick saw Sylvie standing beside Ralph.

  “Great to see you again!” Sylvie said as they climbed out. The rest of the crowd hung back, men and women of all ages, with a handful of small children.

  Sylvie hugged them as if they were great friends, and Ralph shook their hands warmly.

  “You’ve found out that there’s not much to see and do on Beltran, after you’ve paid your respects to Pascal and swum in the lake?” Sylvie laughed.

  “Actually we’ve yet to take a swim,” Mercury said.

  “Well, there’s a wonderful waterfall and small lake nearby, so maybe later . . .”

  Hendrick looked up the slope. Beyond the habitats, a margin of tree cover cloaked the upper mountainside—not quite dense jungle, but a tangle of alien growth, spiky trees like cacti threaded with vines that sprouted huge multi-coloured blooms.

  “This way,” Sylvie said. “I’ll take you to your room. Then we’ll have a drink before dinner, and I’ll show you some of our work.”

  “That’d be great,” Hendrick said.

  He noticed the woman glance at Mercury’s cheek, where her connected-minds symbol had been; but if she thought it odd that the telepath should have hidden the tattoo, she gave no sign.

  They followed Sylvie and Ralph up the slope to a small A-frame. “This is yours for as long as you want. Freshen up, then come over to our place,” Sylvie said, pointing across the slope to a timber long house, then departed.

  Hendrick led the way into the A-frame and dropped his bag beside a chair. The room consisted of a small lounge and kitchen, with a wooden staircase leading to a sleeping area in the triangular attic space.

  “Were you reading?” he asked.

  Mercury nodded, her lips pulled into a frown.

  “And? Do they know anything about Maatje and Hovarth?”

  “Only that Edward Lincoln mentioned, in passing, that he’d had guests.”

  “Had guests? Did Lincoln say where they might be now?”

  She shook her head. “All they know is that they left last night.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Sylvie and Ralph were genuinely pleased to see us. They were concentrating on their work, their minds principally concerned with problems surrounding their latest projects.”

  “I sense a ‘but’ on the way.”

  She smiled. “But . . . Ralph did wonder why we were here, and why I’d concealed the symbol. Also . . . I read something about his, and the commune’s, relations with the Vhey. It’s almost as if they . . . venerate the aliens.”

  “Venerate?”

  “I didn’t get much, just fleeting impressions. It’s more than just that the artists are grateful to the Vhey for allowing them to remain here. There’s something more. The artists want . . . or rather hope . . . for something from the Vhey.”

  “Something?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t get a grip on it.”

  They climbed the stairs to the sleeping area and Mercury splashed her face with cold water at a basin. “And I read from Sylvie that we’ll meet Edward Lincoln at dinner. I think I’ll learn more when we’ve made his acquaintance.”

  Hendrick took his turn at the basin while Mercury opened a door leading onto a small balcony. “Hey, come here, Matt.”

  He dried his face and joined her.

  “See anything?”

  He looked up the slope. Their habitat was the highest on the meadow and therefore closest to the tree line; ten metres away, the alien tangle began. At this distance, they were assailed by a sickly-sweet scent from the fulsome trumpet blooms, as overpowering as rotting carrion.

  “I certainly smell something,” he began.

  She pointed. “Look. There, there, and there . . .”

  Once he saw the first one, it was as if his brain became attuned to their silent presence and he saw more and more, perhaps a dozen, of the Vhey: they perched on the spines of the trees, for all the world like Terran bush babies, staring down at the commune in eerie silence.

  The aliens’ enigmatic attention, along with the stench, drove them back inside.

  Mercury removed the pulser from her luggage, slipped it into the inside pocket of her bolero jacket, and nodded at Hendrick. “Okay, let’s go.”

  They crossed the meadow to Sylvie and Ralph’s long house.

  “What intrigues me,” Hendrick said, “is your relationship with the Vhey.”

  They sat on the verandah, drinks in hand, looking out across the sloping meadow. The jungle began a few kilometres below the commune. Beyond, cradled in the foothills of the opposite mountain, was another of the ubiquitous, brilliant-blue lakes. The moons, as insubstantial as lace doilies, hung above a mountain peak to the west. To the east, the huge hemisphere of Bellatrix was sinking gradually over the serrated horizon.

  Sylvie glanced quickly across at Ralph, then said, “They give us everything, Matt. Permission to live and work here, inspiration . . .”

  “Inspiration?” Mercury said.

  Ralph explained. “The Vhey are an ancient race. They were travelling among the stars man
y thousands of years ago, when humankind was still grubbing about in Africa. The assumption we made, when we came to Beltran and discovered the Vhey, was that they had devolved into the passive, non-technological creatures they are now.” He smiled and sipped his beer. “Nothing could be further from the truth. They have, in fact, evolved.”

  Hendrick repeated the word. “In what way?”

  “Philosophically,” Ralph said, “They understand the universe. They understand how to live with it, not against it. They don’t use the universe, but are almost symbiotically linked to its most elemental functions.”

  Hendrick glanced across at Mercury; she had no doubt read his scepticism, and confirmed this with a humorous quirk of her lips.

  Sylvie said, “We’ll have another drink, and then we’ll show you what we’re working on now. Perhaps this might explain something that is almost incommunicable with words.” She looked over her shoulder, seeing the young man who had served their drink. “Akio, be a darling and refill these, would you?”

  Hendrick watched the slight, dark youth fetch a tray of beers from the kitchen. Mercury was watching him, and Hendrick could see from her expression that she was reading.

  The young man seemed subdued, almost cowed, and found it hard to establish eye contact with either Hendrick or Mercury as he set their drinks on the small tables beside them, then hurried back inside.

  Hendrick changed the subject. “You had other guests yesterday, a man and a woman. Friends of Edward Lincoln, I understand? It’s just that Pascal mentioned them, and asked me to enquire if they’d be staying with him on their return journey.”

  Sylvie smiled. “Edward’s guests left last night, apparently.”

  “He didn’t mention where they had gone on to, or when the might return?”

  Ralph said, “Perhaps if you asked Edward that yourself, at

  dinner?”

  Hendrick smiled. “I’ll do that.”

  They finished their drinks. Sylvie said, “There’s just time, before we eat, to show you our work in progress.”

  They left the verandah and moved through the long house to an open, airy space with a plate-glass window looking out across the meadow. The room was occupied by sculptures in varying stages of completion, and a dozen crystal-mobiles hanging from the rafters like scintillating chandeliers.