by Stephen Cole
‘Frog, you’re mad, you’re sick,’ Polly told her. ‘Stop that now, or I’ll –’
‘You’ll burst into tears, sweetie?’ Frog’s face crumpled in mock-sympathy. ‘Look, just turn around and gaze into Shadow’s dreamy green eyes or something, OK?’
Polly’s resolve hardened. ‘Give me the knife.’
‘Or you’ll do what? Kill me? Go right ahead, honey.’
‘Frog!’ Shade’s husky voice behind her made Polly jump. She supposed it wasn’t a surprise he’d woken up. If the first scream hadn’t got to him, the second one would’ve done the trick.
He advanced on her, a little shakily.
‘Great, I got an audience,’ Frog said. She kept her red-rimmed eyes open. Slid the knifepoint easily into the sticky skin on her stomach.
She slipped the blade along.
The eyes shut, the mouth opened.
Joiks screamed.
Ben saw that two of the stone angels had gripped the soldier by the arms. They fluttered just above him, dwarfing him as he ran in panic through the searing blue light that swirled and buffeted all about. Then they lifted him off the invisible ground.
‘Concentrate your fire on those ones!’ shouted Tovel. Creben and Roba did as they were told. Bolt after white-hot bolt shot through the sizzling air. But the huge, squat bodies of the other cherubim spinning in the whirling sky got in the way. None of them seemed to feel the fire in any case. Joiks was carried further and further up into the blue haze.
One of the giants swooped and landed close to Ben. He fired the pistol into its placid sculpted eyes, its pitying smile. It trotted towards him, like a puppy wanting to play. ‘Doctor!’ Ben yelled helplessly, still firing.
The Doctor stormed over, a look of helpless outrage on his face. ‘Tovel, help us!’ he cried as the statue bore down on them both.
But Tovel had problems of his own. Two of the hideous, outsized angels were sweeping about him. One kicked out with a huge stone foot, and his rifle went flying through the air. The other kicked him in the ribs. Tovel yelled out as he fell backwards. Creben and Roba fired at his attackers, but the angels didn’t seem to notice.
Ben’s pistol was out of ammo. The statue’s smile became broader.
‘Drop, Ben!’ the Doctor shouted as the creature rushed for them. Ben threw himself down, rolled onto his back. But the squat cherub just sailed lazily over them, beat its great stone wings and took to the air again. Stone, for God’s sake. How could these things be flying like they were light as a feather?
Tovel helped him back up. The angels persecuting him had flown off too. Roba hauled the Doctor back to his feet. Creben stood a few feet away, panting, staring up into the haze.
The stone angels circled slowly. Only the two that clutched on to Joiks’s arms stayed still, hovering like malevolent ghosts, high above the humans. One of them ripped Joiks’s backpack away, and let it tumble to the ground. Ben ran for it, scooped it up. He discarded his pistol in favour of the rifle, and tied what was left of the harness and its gear round his waist. But by the time he was aiming back up at the huge stone creatures, he saw he was too late to make any difference to the fight. They had tugged Joiks, teased him, like two cats playing with a mouse, over towards the glass cylinder.
Joiks screamed again, the noise echoing horribly all around. ‘They’re tearing me apart!’
Ben could see the pain on Joiks’s face. The angels were massive, their arms shaped like a plump baby’s only fifty times bigger. Their huge hands were digging into the skin, blood was soaking the dark grey of his combat suit.
‘Wait!’ shouted the Doctor.
Ben blinked. Everything stopped, even Joiks’s screams. Though the frantic sobs that succeeded them weren’t a lot better.
The cherubim that held Joiks looked down at him, as if suddenly confused.
Frog’s scream died away, and she looked down at the bloody blade embedded in her skin as if puzzled by it. Dark blood pumped from the gash she’d carved into herself. Now her hand trembled on the knife hilt. Polly sensed she was about to thrust down on it, push it right the way in, to finish this for good.
‘Shade, do something!’ hissed Polly.
He stepped forward, uncertainly.
The knife twisted a fraction in Frog’s hand.
Joiks was still dangling helplessly from the huge stone hands of the angels.
‘We can’t help him,’ Roba shouted. ‘Come on!’
Ben saw him and Creben edging for the jutting lip of rock that led on to the tunnel. He glanced at Tovel to see if he would follow suit. But he just stared helplessly up at Joiks.
‘Listen to me,’ the Doctor called up to the huge angels, his voice booming, unafraid. The creatures floated back towards him, still holding Joiks between them, while their fellows circled with disinterest. ‘We mean you no harm. We ask that you release our companion.’
The gruesome cherubim looked blankly at each other. Then they bobbed a little closer to ground level.
‘Thank you,’ the Doctor said. ‘All we wish to do is talk with you in peace.’
*
‘You know her better than me, Shade.’ Polly willed herself not to pass out at the sight of so much blood. ‘Talk to her!’
But Shade only stood and stared in silence, his mouth flapping open and shut.
‘It don’t hurt so bad,’ Frog whispered. She began to shake. Her grip clearly tightened still harder on the knife.
Then a booted foot swung up under Frog’s chin.
Haunt.
Frog’s body slammed back into the force mattress.
Haunt sat up beside her. Saw the knife sticking out of Frog’s stomach like a lever. Plucked it out of the wound and threw it aside.
‘Shade, fetch something to clean this up,’ she snapped impatiently. ‘Move.’
Shade turned and practically fled for the much-depleted medical kit.
Polly just gaped. She could see new strength in Haunt’s eyes. An almost wild look.
Haunt must’ve noticed her staring. ‘Frog will be all right,’ she said. ‘I give the orders. No one dies round here without my say-so.’
Joiks shrieked one final time as the two stone angels tore his arms from his sockets.
‘No!’ Tovel yelled.
Ben saw the rest of the creatures swoop down on Joiks’s body. They tore the corpse to pieces in mid-air, all seven of them in a silent frenzy. Joiks’s blood sprayed over their beatific stone faces, soaked the sharp fingers.
The Doctor stared on, appalled. ‘You are intelligent creatures,’ he cried. ‘Why this senseless killing!’
‘Move out!’ Tovel yelled.
Ben turned his back on the scene. He took the Doctor by his elbow and steered him away, back across the shifting blue landscape towards the way out, urging him on as fast as he could.
The Doctor was still mumbling to himself, shaking his head, shell-shocked. All prepossession gone. He looked about him nervously, not with the usual air of the brilliant academic, but as a bewildered, frightened old man. Ben practically had to drag the old boy along to where Tovel was waiting grimly on the jagged slate promontory. Behind him, in the shadows, stood Roba and Creben.
Creben’s face was white as dust. ‘We have to get back to control.’
‘Please, a moment, please,’ the Doctor muttered hoarsely, trying to catch his breath.
‘It’s all right, Doctor,’ Ben told him, with a hesitant backwards glance over his shoulder. ‘It’s all right, they’re not coming after us.’
‘But if they choose to do so, my boy,’ the Doctor whispered, ‘as inevitably they shall… How will we fight them?’ He gripped Ben’s wrist, stared chillingly into his eyes. ‘How can we resist such evil?’
II
‘So,’ said Haunt stiffly. ‘You lost Joiks.’
Tovel, standing rigidly to attention before her, nodded once – though to Polly, from the story he’d told, it hardly sounded like he was responsible. ‘For a few moments I thought the Doctor was gettin
g through to them, that they were going to let Joiks go…’
‘They were like ruddy great kids,’ Ben chipped in, slumped between Creben and Roba against the barricade. ‘Just playing about.’
‘Not kids,’ said Roba, scratching his neck furiously. ‘Animals.’
The Doctor tapped his chin. Polly saw he was looking a little more his old self now, and shuddered to think what they all must’ve been through in the blue cave. ‘The wielders of any kind of power are animals, seeking to dominate animals less fierce.’
Haunt didn’t look impressed. She fiddled uncomfortably with the bandage around her waist. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Power flourishes because people respond to talk of freedom but prefer not to be really free,’ the Doctor informed her. ‘They seek the comfort of acceptable strictures in their societies, of a ruler to govern them, of set territorial boundaries that enable a tribal identity to exist.’
Ben grimaced. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘And so the people with power in these tribes, these factions, seek to extend their territories.’ He jabbed a finger at Haunt. ‘Your kind sought, for example, to assimilate the Schirr into your culture. To assert your power over them.’
‘A pacifist,’ Haunt said with all the disgust she could muster.
‘So we are the animals,’ said Creben, yawning midway through. ‘Is that the banal point you’re making?’
‘No, sir, it is not.’ Polly was glad to see the gleam in the Doctor’s eyes had returned. ‘I am merely observing that the Morphieans are acting in a similar regard. Wielding superior strength, attempting to assimilate us since they consider us less fierce. Ergo, they are animal also, for all this unhelpful talk of disembodied mysticism and magic – and therefore they are fallible. They can be beaten.’
‘Yeah, but how?’ said Shade gloomily. He was stronger now since his illness, but all the act of the perfect soldier had gone out of him. He stood beside Polly, glanced at her now and then, perhaps hoping she would return Lindey’s computer to him. She hadn’t told him she’d accidentally wiped the incriminating evidence on his behalf. She didn’t like to just yet.
‘Well, we must give the matter some thought,’ said the Doctor. He gave Polly a comforting smile.
‘Great,’ Roba said. ‘We’ve got so much time to sit around thinking.’
‘The websets we found may tell us something useful,’ said Tovel.
‘Shade, you take one,’ said Haunt. He nodded, and retired back to his couch, almost gratefully, it seemed.
Haunt paused, then handed the other set to Polly. ‘Give this to Frog.’
‘Frog?’ Roba scowled. ‘She ain’t one of us now, she’s one of them.’
‘She remains a part of this team,’ Haunt said icily, quashing all other possible resistance to the idea. ‘She is currently incapacitated but will contribute to our war effort for as long as she is able.’
That might not be long at all, thought Polly fearfully as she approached Frog’s makeshift bed, dragged into a gloomy corner of the pentagonal room. The blood had stopped flowing from her stomach, but it still looked a dreadful mess. Shade had covered the gashes in some sort of plastic skin; it sat like white custard on the tacky raw pink beneath. The alien flesh now covered her chest and neck, and was creeping under her chin.
Polly noticed Frog’s black voice-disc had fallen from her neck and rolled away across the floor. She retrieved it, and studied it blankly. It had been embedded in Frog’s skin, but the Schirr flesh had rejected it.
Polly felt in a bit of a spot. What use was it, Frog viewing something back if she could no longer tell them about it?
The woman stared helplessly up at her. The scars on her face seemed less livid in the gloom. She looked younger. More vulnerable.
‘Hey. I can’t feel a thing from the neck down…’
Frog’s voice died away in her throat. Her big eyes grew huge.
Her voice.
‘What… the… hell…?’ Frog whispered each hoarse word carefully, a proper whisper. Her natural voice. She had a soft American accent. ‘Is this me talking?’ Her face split open into the biggest smile Polly had ever seen.
‘She can talk!’ squealed Polly in excitement. ‘Frog can talk!’
Everyone turned to stare at her, bewildered.
‘Of course she can talk,’ said Haunt patiently, ‘which is why she can give us a full analysis of the experiential report on that headset.’
Polly shook her head. ‘No, you don’t…’ She broke off as she felt a hand clamp round her leg.
Frog was shaking her head, urging her to keep quiet.
‘Sorry,’ she concluded lamely, and crouched back down to see Frog.
‘What you telling them I can talk for?’ she whispered huskily. ‘I can tell them myself, now, when the time comes. Right?’
‘Of course,’ said Polly.
‘But they won’t trust this,’ Frog said urgently. ‘The old Frog couldn’t speak.’ She closed her eyes, a blissful expression on her face. ‘Speak, speak, speak.’ She stretched the word out, enjoying it like chocolate. ‘Speak. It’s this stuff, this stuff inside me, putting me right, putting me back together again.’ Her eyes blinked back open. ‘If Haunt knew, she wouldn’t trust me. Understand?’
Polly nodded uncertainly.
Frog took the webset. ‘Wait till I have a report ready for Haunt. Then I’ll tell her. Then they’ll all hear me.’ She gave her habitual chuckle, but now it was a warm, playful sound and not an electronic belch. ‘I’ll yell it at them. I’ll sing it at them! What a blast.’ She laughed again.
Polly felt uneasy.
Frog was like a child at Christmas with a longed-for gift as she eagerly put on the headset and closed her eyes, ‘This is the only place I ever belonged,’ she murmured, as she put her fingers to her temples. Polly wasn’t sure if she meant with Haunt – in the army – or inside her head.
She walked briskly back to the others, in time to catch Creben calling out a new set of numbers from the navigational display.
Tovel and the Doctor looked gravely at each other. ‘We have moved several parsecs through space since our last reading,’ the Doctor reported.
‘Into the heart of the Quadrant,’ muttered Tovel.
Haunt chewed her lip, said nothing.
‘She all right?’ Ben noticed Polly standing with a troubled look on her face. He got up and walked over.
‘As she can be,’ said Polly neutrally. She felt like official confidante to the unit with the number of secrets she was keeping. What about the others? Tovel seemed pretty straightforward, and Haunt seemed fairly cut and dried, but Creben seemed far too much a cat sort of person to ever seek the camaraderie of the army. Too smart, too independent. Polly wondered what secrets he might have to tell. Her glance moved to Roba, who was sweating and scratching in a heap against the barricade. She decided she wasn’t in a hurry to learn his particular story. She sighed, she’d had too much time to think. She longed to actually do something.
The Doctor seemed pleased. ‘The local knowledge these websets can provide could be very valuable. But what of the bigger picture…?’ He pottered off towards the wrecked stasis console, and peered inside it. ‘I do wish my eyesight was better,’ Polly heard him mutter.
‘Let’s consider the facts,’ said Creben. He sauntered over to join the main party, leaving Roba slumped alone against the barricade. ‘Three of us are dead,’ he said coldly. ‘Shel is missing, and presumably the one responsible. Pallemar was dead, we all saw him outside of the stasis – and three Schirr, including DeCaster, are missing too, presumably chopped up and thrown in that power drive.’
‘Quite so,’ said the Doctor. ‘And for Shel to have been placed here, we know our enemies must be working with a human collaborator, and one in a position of quite considerable authority. But collaborating with the Schirr, or with Morphiea, I wonder?’
‘Does it matter?’ Haunt said. ‘They’re all scum.’
‘Of course it matt
ers,’ the Doctor snapped, ‘if we are truly to understand our predicament. The Morphieans may have taken control… But what did the Schirr need us for?’
‘All right,’ Haunt said. ‘Enough talk. While we’re waiting for Shade and Frog, I suggest we hold an examination.’
Ben yawned. ‘Multiple choice, is it?’
‘A physical examination,’ said Haunt. ‘Something’s attacking our bodies. If Frog’s body is changing into Schirr it can happen to any of us.’
Now Roba got groggily to his feet. ‘What, you don’t trust your own squad now, is that it?’
‘I trusted Shel,’ she said simply. ‘Now come on. We pair off, examine each other for any sign of the changes.’
Polly fingered her long hair. It felt soft and luxuriant, like she’d just stepped out of a salon. Her skin, too, felt soft and well-moisturised. She thought of Frog’s voice box healing, of Haunt’s tumour, Shade’s face… her stomach churned. They were like turkeys, being fattened up for Christmas.
‘This is most demeaning,’ fussed the Doctor.
‘Just get on with it,’ Haunt said. ‘You and Tovel. Creben, take the boy. Roba, you’re with Shade when he’s finished his movie show.’
Polly glanced over at Shade. He was lying on the force mattress, oblivious to all. His body was rigid, limbs twitching like a cat’s when dreaming.
Roba crossed his massive arms. ‘I ain’t doing it.’
‘You have a problem, Roba?’
Roba pulled out his gun. ‘You’re damned right I do.’
For a single sickening second, through the tear in his suit, Polly glimpsed a patch of mottled pink against the dark skin of his wrist, peeping above the dressing.
‘He’s changing!’ she yelled, and pointed.
Roba fired three warning shots at the ceiling. Pieces of the mirrored glass lodged in the rock shattered, rained crystal dust over them.
‘That cut of his,’ Ben said, grimacing. ‘He reckoned his suit wasn’t working. I should’ve worked it out!’
‘Roba,’ Haunt thundered. ‘Just put the gun down.’
‘So you can have me put down? Huh?’ Roba was breathing quickly, sweating more than ever. ‘No way.’