by Stephen Cole
Roba barely dared to breathe as the monstrous angel plucked the headband away, studied it a moment. Then it smiled serenely, leaned in close to him. Its stone fingers were cold as old bones as it gently fitted the webset around his forehead.
Its blank, wide eyes looked into his own. Roba kept closing his, hoping it would go away, a child’s wish: I can’t see you, you can’t see me. But each time he opened his eyes a fraction it was there still. Maybe it would think he was asleep, or dead. But every time he sneaked the glance the angel hadn’t moved. It was right up close and it was still smiling.
Roba heard dragging footsteps. Something was lurching down the tunnel towards him. He and the angel waited for it to arrive, together.
III
‘Open fire!’ Haunt roared, as the colossal winged creature drifted closer through the smoke and the shadows.
Polly saw the thing lit up in yellow flashes as Tovel, Shade and Creben joined their marshal in firing off blast after blast from their rifles. Its pallid, inhuman face glared emptily at her, as incapable of fear as anything else. It had been built grotesquely from some mysterious flesh that did not seem to feel the gunfire that should’ve charred it to ashes. She willed the rifle-fire to hurt it somehow, to send it flapping round the room like a caged bird looking for release. But it only drew closer and closer, resisting all attempts to drive it back.
The Doctor ducked down so as not to obscure the line of fire and scuttled over to Polly. They clung to each other, looking up helplessly together.
‘Your launcher,’ Tovel shouted at Shade over the fizzing cacophony of the rifle-fire. ‘Use your grenade launcher!’
Polly remembered the way the weapon had brought down the roof when the robot had been chasing her. She felt a sudden surge of hope. ‘Yes, Shade, come on, you can do it!’
But Shade ran past her in the opposite direction, and was swallowed up by the darkness. She stared after him in shocked disbelief.
‘Come back,’ the Doctor demanded, outraged. ‘Come back at once, sir!’
To Polly’s amazement, Shade did – carrying the grenade launcher.
‘I left it back there,’ he explained curtly, and dropped to one knee. He aimed the launcher.
Polly looked up into the elongated, colourless mask of the giant cherub’s face. It began to smile.
Then she clamped her hands over her ears as Shade fired the grenade.
The angel silently exploded into a billion pieces.
A billion insects.
Polly choked as the black, smoky air became thick with fleas. She tried to hold her breath but they were everywhere, falling like hard rain, crawling and hopping in her hair, over her face. She thought she would be sick.
‘What the hell was that’ yelled Frog from a pitch-black corner. ‘I know none of you wants to look at me, but…’
‘The fleas,’ the Doctor called out urgently, cutting her off. He lit a match, and Polly saw his pale face flicker into focus. ‘They are the life from which the Morphieans fashion their constructs! The weed must sustain them when they’re not in use…’
‘They really did turn this place against us,’ said Haunt. ‘Shade, check on Frog and fetch some light. The rest of you, stay wary.’ In the thick gloom Polly watched as Haunt brushed a mass of the insects from her face, spat out a mouthful. ‘Doctor – wherever those things are, they can swarm into angels?’
Yes, I’m afraid so,’ the Doctor told her. He cupped a hand round his match.
‘What’s to stop them reforming right now?’ Polly asked, fingers pulling dozens of the things from her hair.
‘It would seem the creature came here to deliver a message,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now it has done so, it is no longer needed.’
‘Message?’ Ben looked at him like he was raving mad.
The Doctor gestured to the flickering screens with his free hand, right the way around the room.
A single angular symbol, a kind of spiral, was glowing on each.
Then a bright, white glow spread through the control chamber. Polly flinched from the sudden light. Shade had placed some kind of high-tech lantern on the ground between them all.
‘What kind of a message is that?’ Tovel said in a strained voice.
‘It means “life”,’ said Haunt.
Everyone turned to look at her. Polly noted the surprise on the Doctor’s face. He blew out his match.
‘Seen it a thousand times. The symbol denotes a Schirr life on their combat scanners.’ She gave a crooked smile. ‘See one of those wink out, you got another dead. Sweet as blowing out birthday candles.’
‘OK. So what does it mean?’ asked Shade.
‘Life support, maybe,’ Tovel suggested. ‘Those sparks, the lights going out…’
‘Those things have decided to stop mucking about then,’ Ben said.
‘But there are so few of us now,’ said Creben. ‘If they wanted us all dead why not just attack us in force here?’
‘Maybe they knew we had the grenade launcher,’ Tovel said. ‘Seems to be the only thing we’ve got they’re vulnerable to.’
Ben sighed. ‘So they cut off the life-support systems.’
‘Surprised you didn’t recognise the sign yourself, Creben,’ said Haunt. ‘You saw it only a matter of hours ago.’
Creben looked uncomfortable. ‘Marshal?’
‘You and Lindey. I viewed it through her eyes, on her webset.’
‘I didn’t really study the carvings in any detail,’ said Creben. ‘Back then we were looking for Schirr cyphers and droids.’
‘Seem almost cuddly now, them robot things,’ joked Ben to Polly.
‘Then if you’ve seen the carving, you can lead us to it, hmm?’ The Doctor’s gaze flicked between Haunt and Creben.
‘We approached it along a tunnel close to the ship,’ Creben said, ‘but the tunnel caved in when our section separated.’
‘All these tunnels interconnect.’ Haunt looked around at her troops. ‘We’ll just have to find it, that’s all.’
‘That could take us days,’ Ben argued.
‘And we’re getting closer to Morphiea all the time,’ whispered Polly.
Haunt shrugged. ‘We’ll have to split up.’
‘Move through these tunnels alone?’ The Doctor looked sourly at her. ‘With the constructs poised to destroy us?’
Ben agreed. ‘Not to mention Denni roaming about, a Schirr or two and poor old Roba off his rocker.’
‘We’ll cover more ground faster,’ Haunt said flatly. She hesitated. ‘But I have an idea of how we might be able to watch out for each other.’
The Doctor looked at her shrewdly. ‘The websets?’
Haunt nodded. ‘It’s been done before. In the pacification riots on Idaho it saved the lives of our entire squad. Instead of using the websets to record what we saw, we used them to transmit to the other wearers. See and communicate from each other’s perspective.’
Creben raised an eyebrow. ‘How?’
‘Practice,’ said Haunt dryly. ‘But if it’s a technical answer you’re after…’
Polly was almost amused to see Haunt turn hopefully to the Doctor to provide one.
‘May I study a webset, please?’ The Doctor held out his hand, and Haunt gave him Lindey’s. He pulled a jeweller’s glass from his pocket and scrutinised the circuitry in a metal band. If he was aware that all eyes were on him he remained entirely unflustered. ‘Yes… Yes, it’s quite straightforward really. Any receiver can be turned into a transmitter, of course, it’s a simple matter of reversing certain polarities…’ He slid open a compartment in the headband that contained what looked to be tiny tools, and removed one.
‘How would we switch between different viewpoints?’ asked Creben. ‘If you turn our brains into transmitters, we’ve no way of regulating the strength of the signal. Any one person’s perspective could swamp the others.’
‘I imagine it’s more likely the reverse would occur,’ said the Doctor, using the tool to expose the webset’s circuitr
y. ‘We would have to concentrate a great deal to receive any signal from the network thus created.’
‘We have the wrist-comms, too,’ Haunt said. ‘It’s better than nothing.’
The Doctor looked up at her. ‘My dear woman, it’s a most excellent idea. A masterstroke, one might say, yes.’
‘Have we got enough of them?’ asked Tovel, a new urgency in his voice. ‘For everyone, I mean.’
‘There’s Lindey’s and Shel’s spare,’ said Shade. ‘That’s two of you covered.’
‘Joiks’s must’ve been destroyed when the constructs killed him,’ said Creben.
‘I took his backpack, remember? Might it have been in there?’ Ben ran off to look for it. ‘I dumped it round here somewhere…’
Polly bit her lip and crossed her fingers.
‘Could always give him Frog’s,’ said Shade.
Haunt shook her head. ‘She’s helpless. Completely vulnerable. I won’t leave her alone. She can be our eyes here.’
Ben jogged back over into the circle of light, a forlorn expression on his face. Polly’s face started to crumple in dismay when he produced the webset from behind his back. ‘Gotcha!’
The Doctor looked up from his inspection and beamed at him. ‘Well, I believe I can make the necessary conversions to everyone’s equipment. It’s a fairly simple procedure.’
‘Good.’ Haunt looked relieved, actually smiled at him with some warmth. ‘So get on with it. We don’t have long.’
The Doctor gave her a hard stare. Then he returned to his work.
Ben winked at Polly. ‘So, I’ll be able to see the world through your eyes! A rough dog like me always wondered what it would be like to be a pampered puss.’
She pulled a face, trying to jolly herself up. ‘I’m not sure I want to be inside your head, Ben Jackson…’
Shade came and stood beside her. ‘It’ll be like each of us is in eight places at once. A proper, organised force.’ He smiled. He had quite a nice smile, Polly thought.
As the Doctor worked, Haunt called a council of war for her squad. Polly and Ben listened in. Despite the dark, the idiot insects and the urgency of the situation, Polly felt the general atmosphere had taken an upturn. They had something to do. A path forward.
She forced herself to concentrate on Haunt, and told herself she didn’t believe in omens when the monitor screens, still glowing with their alien symbol, flickered and went dead.
IV
‘The adjustments have been made,’ the Doctor assured his little audience. ‘As I said before, the webset is essentially quite a straightforward apparatus. Its processors read and preserve certain information transmitted through the brain. You see, fibres in our skulls transmit light – projecting the images of objects – from the retina along the optic nerves, into the cranial cavity and through the dura mater until they cross at the optic chiasma. As our brains interpret this optical data it triggers an emotional response, which is also read by the webset…’
Polly slowly lost his thread. She was never one for technical explanations. As long as something worked, what did it matter how it worked?
Everyone had gathered solemnly around Frog’s force mattress, in the glare of the lantern, their websets in place. Polly couldn’t help smiling at how the Doctor looked with the little headband stretched over his high forehead. Frog, on the other hand, looked terrifying. She lay there muttering to herself in a world of her own, a dreamy smile on her face as she listened to the stream of words she was making all by herself. Now her forehead had swollen up the webset barely fitted across it.
The Doctor finished his explanation. No one looked much the wiser.
‘Ain’t never used one of these before,’ Ben said with a nervous glance at Polly.
‘Neither have we, in this way,’ said Tovel.
Ben rolled up his eyes like he could see his webset. ‘I feel like a real Nelly in this thing. What do we do?’
‘Close your eyes. Try to clear your mind,’ Haunt instructed, closing her dark eyes. ‘Feel your way into the signals.’
Polly shut her own eyes, tried to get into the swing of it. But the stuff Haunt was saying only reminded her of an idiot she’d met once at a party at Kensington Roof Gardens. He’d told her that modern jazz music could transport her senses to a higher plane, urging her to lose herself in the flow, waving a white hanky to some secret, imaginary rhythm.
It couldn’t work, she felt too stupid, couldn’t relax in this atmosphere, so many strangers. But even as she was trying to stop thinking of the man she heard Ben beside her give a soft chuckle.
‘Who’s that bloke I see you with, Duchess? What’s he waving at you?’
Polly’s eyes snapped open. She stared at him. ‘You can see my memories?’
‘Whoah!’ Ben shouted. ‘That’s me! You’re coming through loud and clear!’ He opened his eyes. ‘This is amazing. If I shut my eyes, I can see meself.’ He did so, and ran his fingers through his short fair hair as if combing it in front of a mirror. Polly looked away, annoyed with herself for not being able to use the webset properly.
‘Think of the person whose eyes you want to see through,’ Haunt told her, her voice surprisingly tender. Was Haunt in her head too?
Polly closed her eyes and saw a bleary image of herself, from half a dozen perspectives. There was a noise like static in her head. Hushed voices. They must be thoughts. Some of them must be Ben’s, so she thought of him as hard as she could. It was amazing; the other voices grew quieter, and his rose in volume through the static. She couldn’t get precise wordings, but the impression of his feelings was clear enough: he was simply excited. She smiled. Ben even thought in a cockney accent.
She winced in a wave of dizziness. She was finding it hard to mix sound and vision. Vision was much stronger.
‘It should grow easier with time,’ she heard the Doctor say in her ear, ‘as you grow used to it.’
She nodded, and tried to think of him. To see what he was seeing.
It was like she’d touched a naked flame –
For a single violent second it felt (terror) to her that her flesh had aged a thousand years. We are (we will not waste a second of our life) still young, vital, but trapped inside this awful, ancient (frustration) corpse of a body –
Then inexplicably, a picture – an old, strange-looking bicycle, a penny-farthing or something – resolved itself from the chaos in her mind. And she heard the Doctor chuckle as the image faded, though this time he spoke in her head. It felt like he’d poked her brain with a stick.
‘No. No, Polly my dear, you may not eavesdrop on me, I’m afraid.’
Polly opened her eyes. She felt confused and sick. She had to fight the urge to rip the webset off and hurl it away.
‘It’s all right, Polly,’ said Shade. He put a hand on her shoulder and smiled. ‘It will get easier.’
‘I can’t seem to get you, Doctor,’ Ben said.
The Doctor smiled knowingly and shook his head. Polly shivered. I don’t get you either, she thought quietly.
‘It’s possible to block your mind to others,’ said Haunt, with a glare at him. ‘But the whole point is that we can all check on where we are. It’s in all our interests to be as open as possible.’
‘Of course, I agree with you.’ The Doctor didn’t seem fazed by her evil eye. ‘But I dare say we all have our secrets.’
‘Well, in any case, we can’t delay,’ Haunt said, rising. ‘So listen to me. All of you.
‘You know what we have to do.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SPIDER’S WEB
WEBSET ONLINE INFORMATION SYSTEM ACTIVATED
To switch between different viewpoints within the neural net, select the relevant section numbers as instructed.
Do not attempt to read all sections in a linear fashion, or the dataflow will not make sense. Go forward or back depending on which viewpoint you wish to access.
Join the neural net by first tuning in to Haunt’s viewpoint. Turn to section 1 on here
1
Haunt
‘ALL RIGHT, LISTEN,’ we say. Best bullying tone, it comes unbidden when we open our mouth. Like we’re back in the field. Going in, taking the fight to the enemy. It’s a good feeling.
Or it always used to be. Now we feel just a little sick as the adrenaline pumps round us.
The unit is scared. None of these people want to go back out there but they know what’ll happen if they don’t. It’s all or nothing now. A shot at life, or certain death.
The hole in our side is killing us. Or more accurately, it was. Now it just hurts like hell.
‘Doctor, your party doesn’t have communicators, so you’ll just have to pair up with those who do. Doctor, with me. Ben, you go with Tovel.’ We look at Tovel, at the filthy Schirr carcass he’s becoming. ‘And watch him.’
‘I’ll watch out for him, if that’s what you mean,’ the boy says, fiercely loyal but hopelessly naïve. Once, he might’ve made a good soldier.
‘Shade, take the girl.’
We can feel Shade respond to this, strongly so. The girl’s less sure. We keep out of all that. Keep distance. Concentrate on what needs to be done.
‘We’ll go out together to what’s left of the bullring. From there we’ll fan out, looking for the symbol you saw before.’ We concentrate, bring it shining into our minds. There’s a wave of fear, apprehension. Seems the neural web is holding together well. But we can’t afford to get cocky.
‘One of us should be able to find our way back to the carving,’ we say.
‘And if we don’t have the tools?’ asks Creben. Practical as ever.
‘I’ll have them.’ We smile. ‘And I’ll come running, believe me.’
They keep watching us, like we’re going to give them some miracle to get out of this. We wonder if the troops we left behind to the Schirr on New Jersey looked at us in that way. Looked up at the missile incoming and understood that miracles only come at a cost.
Do we have to physically herd them out there into the darkness like sheep?
‘Move out,’ we bellow.
To continue in Haunt’s viewpoint, select section 9 on here