by Barry Kirwan
"Why stealing?"
Micah shrugged. "I didn’t have your permission." And you belong to Katrina. Patches of his recently-aired anger from his debrief with Vince hung like flotsam around him. It wouldn’t take much to set them off again.
"Why did you follow me?" he said. He still had a faint thread of hope, though his rational mind said he was wasting his time.
Her face flushed, her hands wrestling each other. "I came here to find out something."
He didn’t want to get angry with her – or did he? He wasn’t sure. So he let his analyst sense emerge, trumping his emotions, taking in the events so far, and her body language. He calculated what she must already know. She worked in comms as an analyst, and had access to the outgoing data-streams. Her job was checking their integrity, but that meant that there were few checks after she handled the data, so she had the perfect vantage point to find and then delete hidden messages. His assessment conclusion had negligible uncertainty.
"You came to ask me about the simulacra in the landscapes," he said.
"How did…? Wait – Vince doesn’t know, does he?" Her voice betrayed more than a hint of concern.
"Not about yours. Though he’ll figure it out soon enough."
She looked crestfallen. Micah was feeling fed up, anger at being rejected welled up inside him, heading for the surface. He went on the offensive.
"I saw Katrina’s simulacrum in Rudi’s landscape, and yours in mine. Rudi’s world is pretty ravaged. The Katrina simulacrum wasn’t in good shape." He noticed how she became increasingly motionless, holding herself together, barely breathing, not meeting his gaze. He had to be sure. "To be honest," he said, "I don’t think she will survive – "
"Stop! Stop it," she said, not yelling, which made it worse. "You’re hurting me!"
Micah recoiled. The words cut through him, snapping off his breath. The booster and Lucidium-fuelled angst deserted him, leaving him suspended like a surfer whose wave had just vanished into thin air. His bravado freefell. What the hell was I thinking! Now is no time to behave like a bastard; like my father.
She bit her lip, eyes swimming in salt water, but held his gaze, not caring.
"Micah, you have to help her. The real Kat, I mean. I keep having these terrible… She and I …" she choked off. He closed towards her cautiously, like a child who had hurt his sibling when playing rough, not meaning to cause real pain. He reached out and touched her arm, gesturing to some uncomfortable-looking fixed seats plastered with seedy holo-graffiti. He hoped they hadn’t been desecrated by the tramps who slept there. They sat down on the gaudy, unyielding plastic.
She sniffed tears away and stared at the swirling incandescent ads on the opposite wall. "We met at an international dignitaries’ function nine months ago – my uncle is the Slovakian ambassador – I’m not usually into girls, but she was so funny, in a dark sort of way. She stole a kiss from me. It changed my world."
Micah felt hollow. But he said nothing, accepting his retribution for how he’d just acted.
"Ever since, we’ve been seeing each other secretly, up until the launch. We signed a three-year pax agreement before she left orbit." She glanced at him sideways. "You’re okay, aren’t you, I mean with girl-girl… Oh, never mind. Anyway, about a week before we lost contact, the messages she’d been sending me via the simulacra stopped. But my simulacrum warned me that something was wrong, that someone was tracking them down. I didn’t know if it was you or Rudi. I was going to talk to Mr Kane. When he was murdered, I was desperate. I knew the danger had penetrated the Eden Mission staff. I didn’t know who to trust.?"
"Did you tell Vince or Louise?" Micah’s voice sounded croaky, even to him.
She spat a mirthless laugh. "The Chorazin? They’re probably involved. And that Louise isn’t what she appears to be."
He cleared his throat. "Antonia, I’ll do my best to help you get back in contact with Katrina –"
"Kat, if you don’t mind."
"Okay, Kat – and I don’t mind at all," he lied, because this was hell. "But I’ll need your help tomorrow finding the simulacra, if they’re not already decompiled."
"Gladly, I want to do something!" Her face lit up. She pressed her hand on top of his. "I hoped you’d help. It means a lot to me." She retracted her hand. He stared at his own hand, making sure it didn’t follow hers. Commuters began clogging up the platform.
"One more thing, Antonia. Who made the simulacra? They’re not IVS are they?"
"God no! That would be a sackable offence, maybe even treason. Kat brought them in, actually. They’re MI9, believe it or not." She smiled. "I’m not meant to know of course, let alone tell anyone. To be honest I think it was that God-awful Uncle of hers, Lord Beornwulf – he wanted an independent way to keep tabs on her."
The first wisps of air ruffled her blouse as a bubble thrashed its way down the tube, its braking screech getting louder. He stood up. "Tomorrow, then."
She stayed seated as he turned towards the platform’s edge. He struggled not to look back. The bubble arrived, a popping sound as its doors opened. Boarding it, engulfed by the sweaty throng of other passengers, Micah caught a last glimpse of her, head hung down, as the bubble vomited out of the station.
He wondered how his father would have handled it. He’d probably have somehow seduced her away from Katrina – Kat – seeing their Lesbian affair as a challenge. Seduction had been his father’s other forte, so he’d heard. But it wouldn’t be his path. He recalled his mother sobbing alone at night, when he was too young to understand, but not too young to make the connection. Every hero has a dark side, Vince had said.
His stop arrived. As he and the anonymous crowd flooded out of the station into the constant warm breeze of Kaymar cavern, a flower-seller, who his mom always complained was ridiculously over-priced, called out to him and other passers-by. His father had always brought home red roses for Micah’s mom – afterwards. Micah bought white.
He paused on the moving walkways criss-crossing the underground habitat towers like an Escher sketch, the fake scarlet sunset putting him in a pensive mood. Vince had said Micah wanted to be a hero. He’d never admitted it before, because he hated his father’s hero status so much. But maybe he could be a different sort.
He’d been in close proximity to four people who had died in the space of two days. Something big was happening, involving the Ulysses, Alicians, and IVS, the last surviving Titan Corporation. Some very powerful forces didn’t want people to find out what was on Eden. Micah knew he didn’t fit the bill of being Chorazin agent or astronaut, but he had a talent for solving puzzles; and that was what this situation needed most – intelligence – rather than brawn or the normal brand of heroism.
When Vince had mentioned IVS finding a ship, Micah’s analyst sense had rung alarm bells. He’d been too preoccupied at the time to react, but now he realized it was a key piece of the jigsaw. He quickened his pace to get home to see the news.
He knew the four astronauts were in mortal danger, and if Eden failed, then Earth’s future was bleak at best. Suddenly it was all so shockingly real, like falling into ice cold water – the Prometheus, the Heracles, the Alicians, Kane, Rudi, Ben and the Cleanser. He shoved away all thoughts about his father, and wanting to be any kind of hero. This was much bigger than his petty baggage. He needed to help the Eden astronauts, and only someone on Earth could save them. He had to help unlock this puzzle before it was too late. The ship that had been found – that was the key – his intuition screamed it at him. He stopped dead when he saw a vidcast playing on a wall. Others had paused to read it too: Space ship found by IVS; fast-track mass transport to Eden awaits…
Micah didn’t hear the excited conversations around him. He tried to join up the pieces, but there was still not enough information. He’d need to study the nets, do some research at home. Yet he had the feeling things were accelerating, that there wasn’t much time left to solve this enigma. He walked faster and faster through the thinning rush hour crowds, his
mind churning over the information he had, trying to make sense of it. By the time he reached home he was running.
Chapter 25
Sighting
Kat listened to Blake and Rashid trade information while the three of them sat inside the cramped, dimly lit remains of Rashid’s ship. Rashid was burning ylang-ylang incense, and though Kat couldn’t smell it because of her helmet, she followed the tendrils of smoke as they spiraled and congregated beneath the ceiling.
Rashid explained how he had survived there in terms of food and water. The latter was apparently safe to drink, and some of the bushes produced edible, bitter fruit, though it had taken several weeks of diarrhea for him to adapt. His ship had carried seeds, and he had got some basic vegetables growing by the time his ship supplies had run out. Everything here tasted slightly metallic, though, he said.
‘No grain, no wheat?’ Blake asked. Kat knew the Ulysses carried a range of basic grains to ensure that Eden could produce wheat or rice or astrasa.
‘No. It does not take, it will not grow here. It will need genetic adaptation I believe, if it will ever work at all.’
Not good, an Eden where Earth food doesn’t grow. She sized up Rashid’s meager, fat-free frame. And what does grow barely sustains.
In return, Blake filled Rashid in on the small advances made in terms of space travel in the intervening two years since Rashid had left Earth.
"It is something of a miracle that these technological discoveries have all been made so quickly," Rashid said, "almost as if God is helping us out, after a period of seemingly ignoring us."
Kat noted that Blake refused to be drawn into an ideological debate, though she suspected he had strong religious convictions. It was reasonable to talk about all of this, but it was also small talk, circling around the real issues, the threatening ones. She presumed Blake was gaining the measure of the man, letting Rashid relax, listening carefully to the answers, deciding how much to trust him, before he embarked on the really difficult subjects. To her, though, Rashid seemed eminently trustworthy.
Glancing at her air monitor on her wrist, she saw that she had a little over three hours left in the re-breather system, before recycling air would start to get problematic. It was close to two hours journey back to Ulysses, where she hoped Pierre had made some progress.
Blake noticed her glance, and changed tack. "Rashid. The message – I assume from you – told us not to land here. Why?"
Rashid clasped his hands together. For a moment he seemed agitated. His eyes darted around and seemed not to want to look at Blake or Kat, instead fixing on the faded painting of the Taj Mahal. Kat found it odd that Rashid found solace in a structure which had been wiped off the face of the planet over a decade ago.
"Yes, yes. It is indeed my message." His smile faltered. Kat’s instincts snapped online: something was wrong. Blake clearly detected it too; his posture shifting, more alert.
Rashid continued. "But now you are here, yes?"
Blake’s face hardened. "That’s not the point. You implied danger. Are we in danger? If the people of Earth come here, are they in danger, Rashid?"
Rashid got up and walked over to the airlock door, his back facing them. Kat and Blake glanced at each other. Blake’s hand was already moving toward his holster when Rashid whirled around, far quicker than Kat would have given him credit for, a pulse pistol in his hand.
"I’m so very sorry. We must wait. It… it will be here very soon."
She couldn’t believe it. She started to rise, but a throbbing in her head began, as if someone was banging a gong inside her brain. Her hands clamped to her helmet. She winced as the pounding escalated to a hammering. Through groggy eyes she saw Blake’s consternation, but there was nothing he could do, except get shot. She looked towards Rashid through watering eyes from the pain, but he paid her no attention, his pistol trained on Blake.
It felt like small volcanoes were erupting in the centre of her brain, then she heard a noise like a train, getting louder and louder. She cried out, not even hearing her own voice drowned in the relentless, increasing din ricocheting around her skull. She caught a last glimpse through wet, strained eyes, of Rashid and Blake facing each other, and then she keeled over. Lying shaking on the floor, jaw clenched in agony, her eyes fell on the porthole. Through a gap in its curtain, she saw a blood-red flash streak across the twilight sky – an emergency flare from Zack and Pierre. Her brain did the only sensible thing, and crashed into unconsciousness.
***
Pierre stood on the top of a hillock, a kilometer from the ship, still in its line of sight, though the light was fading. He surveyed the landscape. He could see maybe ten miles of greyish greenery on one side like fields of lavender, and a vast expanse of desert on the other. It was good to be out of the spaceship after all those endless days cooped up in three small compartments. He altered the spectral filters on his helmet visor to detect anything unusual, something perhaps sticking out against the background. Nothing. He switched to infrared – too bright for the desert – and then ultraviolet. Zero – nul, he thought, in French – just unbroken landscape, bushes and trees. The quiet was disconcerting, as if the land itself was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. The lack of sound and activity reminded him of when he’d visited the now-petrified forest of Clamart, just outside Paris, where he’d played as a child before the War. Like most people, he had only returned there once, and not for long either.
He heard static on his com-link. "… can see something."
He’d forgotten Zack was seeing on a screen what he himself could see, remotely via the micro-camera mounted on his helmet.
"Say again, Zack?"
"Wait a sec; I’m replaying it here in the cockpit. There we go. Try UV again. It was right on the periphery, maybe why you didn’t see it. Your current nine o’clock."
Pierre turned to the left, scanning in that direction. He modified the filters again. There it was. A tall, thin object, a hundred meters away. He raised his binoculars but could see nothing through them. He squinted into the hazy distance, without glasses. The object was gone.
"Shit, Pierre. It was there and now it’s gone. What does that tell you?"
He didn’t like it either. But at the moment it told him very little: too many possibilities, too little data. However, he predicted exactly what it would mean to Zack.
Zack said it for both of them. "We’ve got company."
Pierre hadn’t got a good image of it. He looked again toward the spot and a few large bushes nearby. It had been close to one small tree, but taller than it by a third. He estimated it was three meters high. He hadn’t noticed head or limbs and the silhouette was dark, so it could have been mechanical.
"Pierre, get back here. But before you go, launch a red flare. I want Blake and Kat back here, a.s.a.p!"
"Zack, it – if it is indeed an it – will see the flare too."
"Damned right it will!"
Pierre didn’t see the logic in that, but agreed to alert the Captain at once. He knelt down and took off his backpack, laying his rifle on the floor. He hunted through the main compartment for the flare gun. He found it, but just as he was about to get up he noticed a long shadow on the ground in front of him.
"Pierre! Look out!" Zack yelled, but Pierre had already leapt sideways away from the shadow and rolled, coming up in a kneeling position with the flare gun pointing exactly at where the shadow must have come from. There was nothing there. His combat training cut in and he swiveled three-sixty degrees; his breath rasping inside his helmet. After a few half turns, he heard Zack’s voice again.
"Pierre – listen to me. It’s still around there, I’ve been watching with the viewer, but it moves so fast it’s difficult to get a fix on it. Fire the flare now, then pick up your rifle and head back toward the ship. And if I say run, run like hell."
Pierre did one more visual sweep. He still hadn’t got a good view of the thing, but it was twice his size, and could move very fast. Yet it was very qu
iet. Given its speed and apparently effortless movement, he guessed his chances of out-running it were minimal. He raised his arm and fired the flare, all the time circling, looking over his shoulder. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, each one like an attentive, nervous soldier.
For the next few minutes, Pierre half-walked, half-skidded down the escarpment, the ship still seven hundred meters away. He hadn’t turned around once; Zack was scouting for him. Pierre had left the larger bushes behind him, which meant that if the creature came out it would be easily seen. It also meant he had no cover. He’d been on safari in Tanzania once as a kid, and watched cheetahs hunt in the Ngorongoro Crater. They waited in the tall grass and rocks on the edge of open savannah, and right now he felt just like a Thomson’s gazelle cut off from the herd, alone and vulnerable.
Suddenly he felt a rush of blood to the back of his neck. He turned and saw a tall black shadow charging down the hill towards him. Without hesitation he raised his rifle and fired three shots at it. It didn’t even slow down.
Zack yelled down the comms: "RUN!"
Pierre discarded the pulse rifle and his backpack, and sprinted for the ship. His arms pumped fast as he tried to control his breathing, the way he’d learned at school, to stretch out the dash to the ship. Within a few seconds, he saw Zack limping at the Ulysses Lander entrance, hoisting a heavy weapon onto his shoulder and aiming towards him. He heard a sharp clicking noise behind him, then a bizarre, heavy-footed galloping noise, gaining steadily on him. Pierre lost control of his breathing, and ran faster than he ever thought possible
***
Blake sat, the pistol trained on him, but his weight was on his thighs, ready to spring up if Rashid took his eyes off him even for a moment. He didn’t. Blake didn’t know who he was angrier with – Rashid for betraying them or himself for being too slow to react at the critical moment. He regarded Kat’s crumpled body. At least she was alive. He’d also seen the flare, so he knew Zack and Pierre were in trouble. He had confidence in Zack’s abilities to deal with it in the short term.