The Eden Paradox

by Barry Kirwan

  The creature had been stopped by the blinding ionized jets, but didn’t disintegrate as it should do, its roar drowned in the grinding din, four of its six legs or arms flailing at them. Zack’s beam tracked upwards, finding its vocal system, and the roar stalled. The pulse rifles began to overload, their jets stuttering. Blake’s shoulder cannon charges pounded into its chest again and again, blasting them all with scalding shock waves that blew Pierre’s hair back. He locked his knees into place with a determined fear – to turn and run would be fatal. He held on for another few seconds till the creature, shrouded in sheets of flame and billowing smoke, its skin glowing red hot, turned and galloped back up the hill.

  "Cease-fire!" Blake commanded, and the noise stopped abruptly, leaving a ringing in Pierre’s ears. Bushes all around them were either blackened or on fire. His skin tingled from the charged ozone all round them, feeling as if ants were crawling over his flesh. He lowered the rifle, careful not to touch the sizzling muzzle; the entire cartridge was spent. He got up and walked over to help Kat and Rashid up. Zack, clutching the ladder rungs with one hand to stabilize him, checked all around them with the heat-sensing binoculars. "Clear, Skip, it’s heading back up the hill, moving damned quick, too."

  Kat shot Blake an embarrassed look. But Pierre had been senior officer outside; he knew what was coming.

  "So, Pierre," – Blake’s voice was barbed wire – "tell me you weren’t discussing the weather."

  "No, Sir. We’ve worked it out. It’s cleared up now." He gave a slight nod of his head towards Rashid, to convey that Rashid was not a risk to them. He felt Blake’s stare for a while. Blake then addressed Kat.

  "Corporal – the radar was on, wasn’t it?"

  She looked accusingly at the monitor; Pierre worried she might put her foot through it. "Definitely."

  Blake shook his head. "Zack, stay out here and keep watch." He paused, glancing at Pierre. "And Zack – issue Rashid with a pulse rifle. I want this scrub cleared another thirty meters from the ship, so we have a few more seconds’ reaction time."

  Kat butted in. "What if it attacks at night? If our radar can’t see it…"

  Blake held up a hand. "Change in tactics. We’re not waiting for it, or them, to come here anymore. We’re going on the offensive. Pierre, you’re with me." He climbed the steps and disappeared into the ship.

  ***

  Pierre trudged along after Blake, his sweat absorbed by the chameleon all-terrain suit, his back-pack jiggling around on his back despite having pulled the straps tight as they’d go without chafing his armpits. They jogged their way up the escarpment in the tepid afternoon sun. He kept having to look down to ensure he didn’t trip over the small rocks peppering the grassy hill; which meant he had less time to scan for the creature. Each time one of the black-leaved trees loomed ahead he cocked his head sideways a moment to check nothing was hiding behind it, although the trunks were not really wide enough, and the trees themselves were barely taller than he was. They looked like beech. The artistry was impressive, even if something had gone awry with the color rendering; he had no doubt anymore that the Q’Roth had visited Earth at some point in the past. He shivered inside his suit as a bead of sweat evaded the absorbent lining and coasted down his spine.

  His breathing was labored keeping up with Blake; he realized he should have exercised more during the twelve-week trip, as Blake had done. Blake was pulling away again. Pierre nudged up a gear, pushing his front thighs down harder to lengthen his pace.

  The five of them had all agreed they needed to take back tangible proof to Earth. The only discussion, such as it was before Blake made the executive decision, was what constituted evidence. Blake and Zack had already pre-agreed it, Pierre was certain. Although the others said it was too dangerous, Blake’s final argument – that it would have to be something clear enough to convince himself if he were back on Earth – had won the "debate."

  Pierre hadn’t treasure-hunted eggs since a kid, but there had been no three-meter tall guardians before, and this felt more like Russian roulette. Rashid and Kat had taken the skimmer to go back and rig the Phoenix neutralino detonator with a 12 hour silent timer, to accelerate the desertification process, since its effects would be visible to Hubble IV – so that even if something happened to all of them, the people back on Earth would hold back from approaching the planet.

  Pierre tried to ease the tension out of his shoulders, but it was difficult: last time, he’d been sprinting down it in high gear in the opposite direction, as if he’d been immersed in Kat’s nightmare. Still, the logic was clear – Blake believed they were near the eggs. Otherwise, they would have been left alone by the guardian. Pierre must have been very close, causing the guardian to come out to kill him.

  He was impressed by Blake’s stamina as they breached the tree-line. He just kept going, not pausing or looking around while on the move, not even stopping to wipe off the sweat. He never tripped, although he didn’t seem to watch the terrain.

  They’d taken a circuitous route, in order to approach the position where Pierre had been attacked from the rear, rather than taking a direct assault, and had reached the upper escarpment. Blake slowed to a halt, slung off his backpack, wiped his brow and pulled out his flask of water. Pierre caught him up and slumped to the ground, retrieving his own water container.

  "Five minutes," Blake said, remaining standing, hands on his waist as he scanned the horizon.

  Pierre winced. His thighs reprimanded him for the relentless pace of the past hour’s trek. As he placed his backpack on the ground, he noticed Blake glance at it.

  "I see you’ve slung your knife commando style, like Zack."

  Pierre recalled the ghoster encounter. "Well, I wouldn’t be much of a scientist if I didn’t learn anything, would I?"

  "You think only scientists learn? Military engagements are the toughest teacher there is, and you only get one shot, sometimes not even get that."

  He sighed. That wasn’t what I meant. Can’t you see when I’m trying to build a bridge?

  "So tell me, Pierre, have you learned anything from its blood yet?"

  He took a swig of tepid water before answering. He wanted more, but resisted.

  "Nothing conclusive: hyper-dense molecular structure – the Lander auto-lab is still trying to break down its genetic code. Not from Earth, though. Its DNA, if that’s even what it is, is very different."

  Blake smiled. "Well, that’s a relief, I suppose."

  Pierre was always a little nervous when Blake smiled at him. For one thing he wasn’t used to it, and for another, it usually preceded something ominous.

  "You trust Rashid, Pierre?" Blake’s eyes bore into him.

  There was no way to lie, but this time he didn’t have to. "I trust him enough to take him back with us, if that’s what you mean." He wasn’t going to pretend this was idle banter, and knew that Rashid’s life – or to be more precise his ticket home – hung in the balance.

  Blake spared a little water onto his self-cleaning kerchief and wiped his forehead with it, then the back of his neck. "Still, he concealed quite a few things from us. Not to mention he pulled a pistol on me."

  He wanted to head this off straight away, and took a gamble. "Sir, we all hide things, don’t we?"

  Blake’s hand slowed down a moment, before slipping the kerchief back into a pocket.

  Pierre pressed on. "I wasn’t there when you were in the remains of his ship, but my understanding is that he was ensuring you heard the truth – as he believed it to be – from the Hohash. He probably thought that if he didn’t have you under a pistol, you’d have blasted it as soon as it came within view."

  Blake remained poker-faced. "You like him, don’t you? More your kind than I am, I mean – or Zack for that matter."

  Pierre cringed inside – he hated this type of discussion. No logic – all gut feeling and impressions. "Sir – all I know is that he would be the first one to volunteer to remain here if we decided only four could go."


  "I’ll remember that." Blake closed his flask tight, stashed it in his backpack, and picked up his weapon. "Shall we, Lieutenant?"

  Pierre got to his feet, suppressing aches he hoped would disappear after ten paces, only to resurface more assiduously the next time they stopped.

  They lay prone on a ridge, surveying the area below where he’d been earlier, and where the guardian had first been sighted.

  "What’s our plan exactly, Sir?"

  Blake put his binoculars down and gave him a smile that seemed genuine this time. "Zack’s going to get its attention, and then we’re going into its lair."

  He regretted asking.

  Ten minutes later, Zack charged up the escarpment on the skimmer, yelling as he came. Pierre strained to hear the words in the breezeless air, and then didn’t bother, as they were more color than content, the word "motherfucker" serving as the general refrain. "Why does he do that?"

  Blake was tracking it all through his binoculars. "I remember a cadet asking him that very question, so I’ll tell you what Zack told him. He said the difference between a yell and a scream is simply a matter of who starts first, you or the enemy."

  Pierre dismissed the idea as the sort of nonsense you tell cadets to make them trust you. He scanned to see where the guardian would come from. Blake spotted it first.

  "Two o’clock, three bushes in a triangle, a small tree to the right." Blake said quietly, then with a flick of the microphone, "Zack – he’s in your ten o’clock."

  They watched as Zack headed right for the creature. Pierre actually thought he was going to ram it, but a second before contact, Zack flipped the skimmer one-eighty, catching the guardian in a focused jet stream, and accelerated away in the opposite direction. It followed in hot pursuit. God, it was fast!

  "Not so smart," Blake said. "Let’s go."

  They stole down the hill using as much boulder and tree cover as possible. In two minutes they reached the place where the Q’Roth had emerged. A gaping hole loomed before their feet: a downward channel about a meter wide, and three high, descending into darkness; a ramp to hell, Pierre thought. Blake pulled out his torch and fixed it to his rifle. Pierre copied him, with less practised movements, and followed him inside.

  As they jogged through the channel that was far taller than they needed, it only reminded Pierre of their size relative to the creature. The passageway was clearly not natural – the walls smooth, uniform, and dry. There was a strange smell of rancid citrus fruit. Worse was the noise their footfalls made, echoing both backwards and forwards into the tunnel. If there was another guardian inside… He gripped his rifle tighter, and checked he could reach the knife handle in his backpack.

  It felt like venturing down the esophagus of some sleeping leviathan. They continued two full minutes descending into the hill at a steep incline – it was going to be tricky getting out of there – it wouldn’t be a fast exit. The thought occurred to him that Blake might be on some kind of one-way ticket, armed with as many explosives as he could carry. Pierre didn’t want to think that he might end here, inside an alien burrow. He tried to concentrate, praying for an end to this nightmarish corridor that was playing havoc with his nerves, and hoping that Zack was still infuriating – and therefore occupying – the creature.

  Blake skidded to a stop in front of Pierre and held out his arm. Pierre managed to stop just in time, on the edge of a precipice, as they entered a cathedral-like chamber. Sharp cracks stabbed the silence, as small rocks they had just pushed over the edge tumbled to the bottom, landing within a couple of seconds. Tardy, deeper echoes told him the vastness of this subterranean cavity, the torch beams dissipating hopelessly in the dark void. Blake put down his rifle and extracted a stubby pistol from his backpack. He lifted his arm and fired a magnesium spike flare upwards into the middle of the cavern. It found purchase in the massive domed ceiling, illuminating the cavern in a ghoulish twilight.

  Pierre looked down below, across the plain stretching out before them. "Eggs," he said, a hollow feeling in his stomach; eggs, as far as he could see. But they had been cruelly misled by the Hohash image. It was almost a joke. Steal an egg, they’d decided. As if they could put one in their rucksacks. Pierre recalled that when Blake had seen the Hohash image, there had been no frame of reference. He gazed at the nearest row. Each egg was twice the height and width of a man.

  He switched into scientist mode, to allay the welling-up of fear. He cleared his throat. "They must hatch fully grown. Makes ecological sense for a predator."

  Blake crouched on the solid-rock floor, and tossed a pebble over the side of the small cliff. He pulled out a navcon from his backpack and swept the surrounding area, before the light from the flare dimmed. When it sputtered and died, it felt worse to Pierre – not seeing the silent arrays of eggs, yet knowing they were there.

  "The navcon has ninety-five per cent of the image," Blake said.

  They both retrieved and donned their goggles, and switched off their torches, plunging themselves into abyssal darkness. Pierre flicked a switch on his goggles and instantly could see pretty much what he’d been able to see in the fullness of the flare a minute before, whichever way he moved or turned his head. Pierre recalled this gadget had come close to getting the Nobel Tech prize. He reckoned it should have won.

  He activated his transponder, so the navcon could map their relative positions and overlay them onto the recorded scene, stopping them from bumping into each other. Peering over the edge again, he saw the eggs – large and rugged-looking, sitting upright. Of course he was seeing where they were, and was assuming – hoping – that nothing was moving down there.

  Pierre heard Blake remove his goggles briefly, so he did too, flicking his torch on.

  "Motion sensor," Blake said, lobbing a small device back into the tunnel behind them. He then took out a self-burying eye-bolt, placed it on the rocky floor, touched the two-second primer, and stood back. With a sound like an underwater gunshot, it fired itself into the stone with a reassuring thud. He attached the auto-feed wire system to the eyebolt via a karabiner and replaced his goggles.

  "Wait twenty seconds, then follow."

  He swung himself smoothly over the edge and abseiled down.

  Pierre counted to twenty, attached his own auto-descent system to the wire, and replaced his goggles. He backed toward the edge. He thought he heard something, a distant rumbling, coming from the entrance. Uselessly, he looked toward it, but of course the goggles could show no movement. He leant back, bent his knees, and kicked off, propelling himself away and down the cliff-face.

  A shrill electronic whine, rising in tone, made him misjudge his descent, and his knees smashed into the cliff face, stinging with pain – the motion detector had sensed something approaching, fast. The whine was drowned out by the creature’s roar, and it felt to Pierre as if the whole chamber vibrated. He pressed the freefall button on his harness and dropped faster, but was suddenly yanked upwards. Pebble-sized rocks pummeled his head and shoulders.

  "Cut the line!" Blake shouted from below.

  In disbelief Pierre looked upward and saw nothing, then raked his goggles down and managed to switch on his torch – the creature was hauling him up. He could see its trapezoidal head, the blood red breathing slits writhing on its black-blue face. The creature’s roar made Pierre’s hands freeze, clinging to the cord.

  "Pierre! CUT – THE – LINE!"

  He rose rapidly in jerks, a meter at a time, the creature’s forelegs feverishly pulling up the line, like a spider reeling in a fly. Pierre could hardly breathe, as his right hand flailed behind him groping for the knife. His head bashed against the cliff face knocking his torch from his left hand as he tried to protect himself. He knew he had only a few more seconds. His outstretched right hand fingers brushed across the hilt and he gripped it with all his might. Another yank pulled him up almost to the ledge. With a yell not far short of a scream, he whipped the knife above his head and severed the line, feeling a gust of air as a claw lashed past h
is face. He freefell, hurling the knife sideways so he could lock his elbows around his neck and head, the creature’s howl of fury chasing him as he tumbled into the darkness below.

  Chapter 35

  Confession

  Micah forced apart leaden eye-lids. It felt like prizing open an old, soil-encrusted coffin, from the inside. For a moment he thought he was suffering déjà vu – he expected to find Louise leaning over him, and Vince there as well. But instead he looked up into the doe-brown eyes of Antonia. Their gaze locked for a moment as he detected a flicker of passion, and he dared to wish… But she pulled away and slapped his face. Hard.

  "He’s awake," she stated, her voice taut.

  Micah felt four individual fingerprints stinging his cheek. He tried to sit up but his muscles weren’t talking to him. For the second time in a week he momentarily feared he’d become paralyzed. But he tried to calm himself – Antonia wouldn’t be so harsh on him if he was. He could no longer see her, but another body, plumper and with features that should ideally be kept in the dark, loomed into view. Must be the nurse. She muttered in a Spanish dialect he didn’t recognize, and fiddled with tubes he guessed were connected to him, moving her garish moon-face closer to his. He tried unsuccessfully to shrink into the pillow.

  "You wake now?"

  Micah always wondered why people said such obvious things. He decided he was too vulnerable not to humor her. "Yes."

  She smiled, though he wished she would stop, at least with those teeth.

  "You hungry?"

  Micah thought about it. "No. How long?"

  The face pulled back. She inspected the drips. "I get doctor, he explain everything. Eh! Que pasa? What that doing there? Bien, doctor must have reason." She seemed to be talking to herself. She leaned conspiratorially closer, her breath causing Micah to suspend respiration, and whispered louder than most people talked. "She mad with you." And like a sped-up eclipse she receded, revealing normality again.