by Barry Kirwan
"You finished with that thing?"
He nodded.
"Good – so how long have we got?"
***
Vince entered the building just as the explosion shook the floor. He made it inside seconds before the waterfall of glass shards from way above. Panic-stricken people streamed out of every orifice, like termites leaving a collapsing hill. He had to fight against a tide of them to get through the atrium to the central elevators. Of course they’d been inactivated; or rather they would only come down, and not go back up. He knew this bomb must be a diversion. Somebody was still up there.
He came back outside and used his wristcom – "It’s Vince – I need a heli-jet with a high entry boarder, and a heat sensor, ASAP. Eden Mission – just head for the smoking building – I’ll be on the K-level heli-pad." He checked to see if Louise had called back – but there was nothing, no message even. Dammit, Louise! He coded a single word message to Abrahams – Careful. He charged up the stairs two at a time, dodging the bewildered people cascading down the stairwells.
***
Sandy could tell he was close to orgasm, but she herself couldn’t make it. Damn – I thought performance pressure was a man’s problem! But she savored the passion, knowing she would relish the bruises tomorrow, as he consistently slammed her back against the wall, his hands cradling her buttocks, her legs wrapped around his waist. She’d all but given up, was about to focus on his orgasm, when she opened her eyes and saw, over his shoulder, Vince’s slim, sweat-drenched figure dash into the room. Against her better judgment, and without her consent, her body started to wrack itself. Vince lowered his weapon, and perched on Kane’s desk, waiting. Bastard, she thought, but she began to come, as did the assassin. She grabbed his face and pressed her mouth hard on his, wrestling with his tongue as their bodies collided, her contractions squeezing hard around him, before he shuddered and slowed down. He remained inside her as he recovered his breathing, and his black eyes burrowed into hers.
"Thank you," he said.
She saw his eyes focus inwards. He lowered her legs to the floor, her dress dropping back down, supporting her still-trembling body. He snatched the locket from around his neck and placed it in her open hand, sealed her fingers around it. She saw Vince move toward them, pistol raised. And then, without warning, the assassin’s face hardened, and his breathing froze. Eyes wide, he fell backwards, as if in slow motion, and crashed to the floor. She remained at the wall, arms at her chest, clutching the locket, as his rigid body convulsed on the floor. A sickly black and purple bruising erupted around his face, thickened blood dripping from his mouth, nose, eyes and ears. His body shook several more times and then froze. She didn’t look away; but she bit down on her knuckle till it bled.
Vince stood over his body. "Fast-acting toxin. Looks like metracide alpha. It’ll corrode his entire…" He glanced up at Sandy. "Never mind. Nothing I can do."
She remained where she was, as Vince moved over to the cubic bomb.
"Jesus!" He grabbed her wrist and wrenched her away from the scene. Her legs were too weak to run, so he stopped and heaved her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. She didn’t resist. Her body went limp as they hurtled through the corridors. Smashed windows revealed a narrow, five meter long air bridge to the side entrance of the heli-jet, hovering still as a humming bird, six hundred meters above the ground. She closed her eyes as Vince sprinted across it with her still on his shoulder. She opened them again as she was thrown into a seat. Vince yelled at the pilot. "Ditch the bridge, leave now!"
She watched the world fall away from her through the porthole window as the heli-jet plunged in reverse mode. The Eden Mission building shimmered and buckled, a shock wave rippling down its upper glass exterior before thousands of windows shattered, and a colossal burst of flame swallowed the tower. Glass spattered in all directions like hail. The heli-jet reared up and began to spin, dropping like a stone towards the ground, until the pilot regained control and veered away between two other skyscrapers.
She noticed Vince staring at her, concerned, but also glancing at her bloody right fist, where she still held the locket. She drew her knees up to her chest, her feet on her seat edge, and folded her arms around her shins. She wasn’t going to give it to him. He got up, took off his jacket and placed it around her shoulders, then sat back down opposite her, and gazed out of the window. She hadn’t even realized she was shivering; her body felt numb. Her mouth, her constant companion, was silent. She realized something.
Her voice sounded husky, even to her. "What was his name?"
Vince turned back to her, his eyes measuring, judging probably. She didn’t care.
"Gabriel O’Donnell, according to the DNA scan we took last time."
She closed her eyes, one hand drawing the jacket closer around her, the other hand, still clutching the locket, on her belly. From deep inside her, lost in the chopper’s whirring, she whispered to the sky above her. "I hope you find peace, Gabriel O’Donnell." She had the feeling the world around her was unraveling. Say hi to Jake for me. Maybe I’ll see him sooner than planned.
Chapter 34
Eggs
"You think he’s hiding something?"
"That wasn’t what I was saying, Sir." Pierre wished he hadn’t started this.
"But your data show the desert began when Rashid landed. His ship the Phoenix appears to be ground zero." Blake folded his arms.
Pierre had to admit he didn’t have a good explanation – yet. But he could feel he was close to working out the puzzle of the desert, and maybe of Eden itself.
"I need more time, Sir. There may be another cause, or his landing may have –"
"Time’s a luxury we don’t have. He’s hiding something, Pierre. I’m going to question him."
He found himself blocking Blake’s exit. He held his ground. "Let me talk with him first – scientist to scientist." He saw Blake was about to say No. "Fifteen minutes, Sir, that’s all I’ll need."
Blake’s eyes narrowed, then he checked his wristcom and headed back to the cockpit.
Pierre let out a long breath, and then descended the ladder to Eden’s grassy surface. The tide of emerald green light that flooded over the pre-dawn land nearly made him miss the final rung. The jewel-like blaze tumbled over the mountains in the direction they called east, splashed over the desert and the Lander ship before shifting to aquamarine. Just as his eyes adjusted to the soothing color, a blood-orange dawn burst forth.
"Now, that was cool," Kat said, momentarily rising from her lightweight field chair – she’d been studying a pad. "Is that normal?"
"Yes," Rashid said, as if he’d just witnessed a holy apparition. "It lasts only ten seconds, but it takes my breath away every time I see it."
Pierre surveyed the scene. Kat had a pulse rifle next to her, and on her lap a graphite pad the size of a dinner plate serving as a radar monitor with a half-kilometer range. She faced the hill to the North, the direction the Q’Roth guardian had come from before. Rashid sat cross-legged on a cushion from one of the bunks, facing Eden’s sun. Weaponless, he looked serene, a neo-native of Eden. The nearest scrub-like bushes to the ship were fifteen meters away, cadaver-grey in the first kindling of dawn.
The daylight warmed his mood. Dawn occurred faster than on Earth, the night-day cycle being twenty-two hours. There’d been no sighting of the guardian during the night. Kat and Rashid had spent hours late into the evening trying to make the comms system work, but there was a scattering effect on Eden – they could contact the remote link on the Ulysses mother-ship still in orbit, but nothing beyond – the compressed radio pulse simply dispersed, like a drop of oil hitting water, once it left Eden’s neighborhood. They would have to try from space itself, or at least from a high orbit.
That had left the tricky question of whether Ulysses’ life support system would work for five people instead of four. He’d established that Eden’s atmosphere was benign – whatever the additional element in the Eden biosphere, it was inert a
nd could be extracted by Ulysses’ nano-mesh filtration system. But the ghoster attack had wrecked the spare capacity of the air processing system. Blake had pressed him on the matter the previous evening in private.
"Sir, we could take five – but if anything goes wrong or breaks down, the situation will become critical for all of us in a matter of hours."
"What about putting Rashid in stasis? I seem to remember you considered quarantining me in stasis for the return trip."
Pierre swallowed. "I’ve reconsidered that, Sir. Trouble is, the stasis pods have all been configured for our individual physiologies, and the software to adapt to someone new was deleted by the virus."
"So, one of us goes into stasis instead of Rashid. You volunteering?"
Pierre studied the floor.
"I thought not. Find another solution, Lieutenant, that’s an order."
Pierre remembered his current mission – he’d already lost five minutes.
"Rashid," he said, "Good morning – can we recap from last night’s discussion?"
Rashid nodded, but less enthusiastic than a minute ago. Pierre didn’t blame him; they’d got nowhere discussing it into the early hours; he’d felt like they’d been knocking their heads uselessly against a dam. He sensed Blake was right, though, that Rashid had a clue buried inside him, probably not one Rashid consciously recognized – at least he preferred that explanation than that it was outright deception.
Pierre began where they’d left off. "The Q’Roth – let’s assume that’s what they are called – don’t like to set foot in the desert. The desert wasn’t here when you arrived, whereupon it spread fast, and is continuing to do so."
Rashid stared towards the desert.
He continued. "From the samples I took yesterday, the desert is the residue of a wave front that is consuming everything in its path. Furthermore – and this is the difficult part, it appears to devour everything at an equal rate, irrespective of density or molecular construction – rock, grass, bush, soil, leading to a perfectly circular desert."
Rashid nodded slowly. "Yes. Something does not make sense, and I have been unable to work out what, even after all this time."
Pierre recalled how his father, fingering his grey beard, used to set puzzles at the dinner table, testing him. Pierre rarely solved them, and even when he did, there would be some rebuke about how long it had taken. Nevertheless, he considered that this form of mild dinner-time torment might tease out the answer here. He took on his father’s airs and graces, a little unnerved how easily they came to him.
"Rashid – when faced with a conundrum, it is usually because a piece of information is wrong, or missing, or because an assumption is incorrect."
Kat, who had remained disinterested until now, cocked her head, and stared at Pierre. He wasn’t sure, but Pierre thought he detected a wry smile. Rashid maintained his orientation to the desert, washed in ruby light.
"Rashid – I believe that if you can give me the missing information, then I can make the correct inference." He gambled. "Rashid – you’re hiding something from us, aren’t you?"
Rashid rocked himself upwards first into a squatting position, then stood up and bent double, palms on the ground, then flexed upwards, very straight like a soldier on parade, and turned to face Pierre square. He spoke nervously.
"It should not have mattered. Such a small amount."
Pierre kept his face serious, and his mouth shut. He did not meet Kat’s gaze. The dam cracked.
"You see," Rashid said, "we had many months in the craft, and before I had been assigned to the Phoenix, I was working on an important exobiological study." He paced around in a slow circle, hands behind his back, addressing the bushes and rocks as much as Pierre and Kat.
Pierre noticed that Rashid’s hair was looking ragged. He clearly hadn’t slept. Guilt. He cast his mind back to the leading edge of that research field a few years ago. A comet had been intercepted by and they’d found something… Merde!
"Proto-matter," he said, incredulous. "You brought proto-matter here?"
Rashid halted mid-step, nodded once, and then continued his circle, quickening his pace. His hands wrestled behind his back.
Kat piped up, glancing from one to the other. "Dumb question time. Proto-matter?"
Rashid turned to her, eyes suddenly bright, and began gesticulating. "It is the clay, the building blocks, the very stuff of stars! It is the beginning of everything!"
Pierre cut in. "And extremely reactive. And normally never let out of a sealed laboratory environment. How did you get it past IVS bio-screening? I’m assuming they didn’t know you took it on board."
"A space-ship is also a contained environment," Rashid emphasized, using his hands to make the shape of a ball. "And – if you must know – it was in a ceramic capsule in my teapot."
Kat laughed, but Pierre couldn’t believe it; it was so irresponsible. "Rashid – what happened – I don’t believe you let it loose here intentionally."
Rashid squatted on the dusty ground. "That is the problem, the conundrum as you put it. I do not understand it. I finished my experiment five months before we arrived, and I successfully oxidized all of the proto-matter. The lab equipment on the Phoenix was first class, and it was still contained. Until…"
Pierre held onto his patience – though he’d lost track of time. He hoped Blake wouldn’t come out to interrogate Rashid right now, or the information might retreat again.
"… Azil attacked me. When he sent the Phoenix into a spin, many things were loose and the reacted proto-matter container was smashed. But still – it was completely oxidized – an inert dust, it should not have reacted with anything."
Pierre examined him. He knew Rashid was, like himself, an avid scientist, and that his feelings of guilt had blinded him to the obvious. He chose not to corral him towards the answer like his father would have done – he wanted to help him arrive. This was no game or after-dinner lesson now, the stakes were far higher.
"Rashid," he spoke softly, "it didn’t have to react with anything, did it?"
Still Rashid could not cross the inferential chasm which Pierre had already vaulted. Kat chipped in.
"If it wasn’t reactive, Pierre, how could it cause a desert?"
He turned to her. "Where does the desert come from?"
She shrugged.
"Look around you, what do you see?"
Without looking around, she answered matter of fact. "Trees, rocks, grass, bushes, lakes in the distance, and an orange desert. And a side of you I’ve not seen before."
Pierre cleared his throat. "What do you see, Rashid?"
Rashid surveyed the terrain.
"I see a virgin world with no animals – I see a land that looks fertile but is sterile. It should be our new home but it is not – it is alien. It is – a fiction."
How apt, he thought. Rashid had finally accepted what he must have unconsciously suspected for months. But Kat stood up, annoyed, propping the rifle against the chair.
"A fiction? Come on guys. Can I please join the party? What on earth’s that supposed to mean?"
Pierre’s legs felt weak; he’d just discovered what he was standing on, what this planet was. "It means," he said, "that this world has been created – most likely terraformed by the Q’Roth. Made to look like Earth – like Earth was."
Her voice lost its edge. "But why?"
Rashid sagged. "A trap. A beautiful snare. A whole planet used as a lure."
She focused on Pierre. "And the desert? How does that fit in?"
He said nothing, letting Rashid answer – he needed the catharsis after such a long time in denial. Rashid dug his hand into the soil, lifted it up, and spoke as it fell through his fingers. "My proto-matter was inert. It could not cause a reaction. But it could act as a catalyst. When I crashed here, the dust was scattered. One of the first things I did was to bury Azil. His body decaying, with even microscopic amounts of the dust as a catalyst, must have triggered a terraforming reversal or breakdown – a
cascade effect dissolving the terraformed matter back into its original state. It means Eden was a dead world centuries ago, a barren desert planet."
Pierre watched Rashid’s downcast face: he’d lost so much. It was a wonder he’d survived at all. "You shouldn’t feel bad, Rashid. It’s the one piece of hard evidence that must by now be visible all the way back to Hubble IV. People will start questioning this planet’s true nature. After all, little point leaving one desertified planet for another. I’m also betting it saved your life."
Rashid regarded him quizzically, and then his brow broadened, another piece of the puzzle locking into place. "The eggs. Yes! The Q’Roth do not wish to risk contamination. They do not know if it is inert or not, only that it should not be here. Perhaps they are merely guardians, not scientists. They avoid the desert."
Pierre observed the cloud lift from Rashid, not unlike the transformation of the dawn minutes earlier. But the moment was jarred as out of the corner of his eye he saw Blake leap down the steps from the Lander as Zack, behind, tossed the shoulder cannon down to him. Blake mounted the weapon and aimed it at Kat. "Get down!" he bellowed.
Kat froze, but Rashid rugby-tackled her from the side, allowing Blake to fire.
Pierre didn’t bother to check what he knew must be there; instead he dove for Kat’s pulse rifle. He rolled and came up into a kneeling position to see their nemesis – the one that had chased him – at the edge of the scrub. He flicked the rifle into free-flow and held the trigger, squirting a jet of white-hot laser at the guardian, twenty meters away. Another solid pulse burst joined Pierre’s – Zack’s he presumed. The frenzied roar of the weapons made him crouch closer to the ground. He pulled harder on the trigger.