The Eden Paradox

by Barry Kirwan

  I already worked that one out. He was about to sigh with relief when Antonia appeared above him. It didn’t help that he felt drunk, tense and sentimental all at the same time – he wondered what they were pumping into him. Then he remembered – the booster – it had worn off. What had the doc said? Depression, emotional rollercoaster, best if you lay low for a couple of days, stay away from sharp objects and people you love…

  "Antonia… Don’t hit me again," he said, meaning it. Her face hovered, as stern as she could muster, he guessed.

  "Slap. I slapped you. Hit and slap are different. Trust me."

  He did. "Why? I mean why did you slap me?"

  She shook here head in disgust and strode out of is line of sight. He heard a few steps and then nothing.

  "Antonia – are you still there?" Silence. Micah could hear his heart pounding of its own accord, the faint sound of air conditioning, and a bubble from one of the many drips that were stopping him from feeling hungry and, he imagined, suppressing the pain. He couldn’t quite remember how he got there, wherever "there" was. But the Antonia situation seemed more pressing. His thinking was confused, like an old style radio receiver that couldn’t quite tune in.

  "You and Louise. You’ve been – fucking. That’s the word she used."

  Shit! He knew the only way out was full disclosure. Well, partial disclosure at least. His head was swimming. He hadn’t felt this bad since the morning after he turned eighteen. But as well as the physical withdrawal – like his insides had been raked out, mashed, and then glued back in – his emotions were haywire. He was brimming with self-doubt and self-loathing in equal measure, his life amounting to a heap of pathos. And a cliff-drop of sadness – he’d not felt this way since his sister Cindy, his only real childhood companion, was killed, and he stood at the funeral without a coffin, as she’d been ashed… His mind was all over the place. His head wasn’t swimming, it was drowning. He tried to focus, to reach the surface. What had Antonia asked him? It wouldn’t be good to lose track now. Thankfully, he remembered.

  "Actually, she kind of…" he knew it was going to sound lame."She kind of pushed me into it. She’s quite forceful, in the physical way, too." His brain succeeded in applying brakes to his mouth. He stared up at the ceiling. Maybe it would conveniently collapse right now. He imagined her face appearing there, moments before he experienced the difference between hit and slap. But her voice speared towards him from across the room.

  "So, you’re telling me now she raped you? That’s just another sick male fantasy, Micah. You disgust me!" Her heels clopped over to his bedside, her face swinging into view – eyes hard, nostrils flaring.

  "She knows about me and Kat, Micah. You told her I had a lover – well, I don’t know how much you told her, but she forced it out of me. I trusted you, took you into my confidence, and you led that – that Chorazin bitch – to my deepest secret. What were you thinking?"

  Good question. He tried to distance himself from this – he’d crossed a line, more than one, screwed up. But more importantly, he’d hurt her. His intestines wrapped themselves into a tourniquet. He didn’t know what to say, but decided platitudes were better than nothing.

  "I’m sorry. Believe me, Antonia." He meant it. He wanted to wake up again, somewhere, anywhere else, with the past few days erased.

  She scrutinized him, then vanished from view again. "She threatened me with interrogation – deep profiling." Her shrill voice filled the small room. "She could put me in prison – you know how they work. And you placed me in that position. All so you could… so you could… fuck… that whore!"

  The fact that he was sure she never swore was acid on the blade. He somehow knew she was not looking at him. A swell of remorse swept through him. This was booster-withdrawal-aided, but knowing that didn’t help matters. But a part of him mounted a silent defense – he had been seduced by Louise, and he loved Antonia, yet she didn’t love him. But another part of him, a cooler, more collected part – the analyst – asked himself why he had told Louise?

  "Micah, I only told you because of Kat. I thought you agreed to help her, to help us?"

  He gave up his internal self-defense. Somewhere in the back of his mind he saw his father shaking his head in dismay, disappointed with him yet again. Everything that had happened over the last few days surfed over him; the booster wasn’t there anymore to buoy his confidence. His lips began to tremble so he forced them together. He felt a stinging in his eyes. Not now, he thought, that’s the last thing I need, but the emotional storm sought release. He squeezed them shut, too late.

  "She’s up there, Micah!" she continued, in full flow. "Light years away, risking her life for all of us, and you don’t – you don’t give a shit! This isn’t a game you know."

  He heard her approach. He wished his neck would damn well respond, so she wouldn’t see the tear burning a trail down his cheek. He sensed her standing right next to him. All he could hear was his own jagged breathing.

  A cool finger touched his cheek. He felt the wetness between his face and her, a kind of amniotic connection. He squeezed his lips tight, his eyes still closed – if he opened them now, and saw sympathy or even empathy… He never wanted her to see him like this, like the small boy his father still taunted him from his grave that he would always be.

  Cotton wool dabbed at his face, his eyes. The transitory vortex of self-pity and angst blew itself out, and he regained at least a fumbling control of his breathing. Sniffing once, he opened his eyelids, still wet from the inside, fearing what he might see. But her face had mollified. He saw a degree of confusion there, but at least the anger was gone.

  "I’m – so – sorry, Antonia." The words came out naked. His own voice sounded foreign, the analyst switched off. "You have no idea. No idea what I’ve been through these past few days. And I’m trying, trying really hard," he sniffed again, and she dabbed at his cheek, "to save them all. And I would never – ever, do anything to hurt you. As for Louise – I honestly wish none of it had happened. It was you, Antonia, I –"

  Another voice cut across the room. "Well, well, finally woken up, I see."

  Micah stopped dead. Antonia whirled out of view.

  "Why are you wearing that? Where’s the doctor?" Antonia was shouting.

  There was a dull sound followed by a rustling.

  Micah frowned. "Antonia?"

  Louise loomed into view, a deadly calm expression that outdid Antonia’s stern look any day of the year.

  "What have you done to her?" Micah tried again to move, but nothing happened. "You men are so dreadfully predictable, so pathetic. She doesn’t love you, Micah." Louise flickered a smile. "Don’t worry; your platonic friend is just KO’d for a short while. She was beginning to sound whiny, don’t you think?" Louise perched herself on the bed next to him. "The question is whether to let her wake up or not." She paused to allow it to sink in. "And that depends on you, Micah. You see, I’m willing to make you a deal. Your life for hers."

  Micah gaped at her. ‘W-what do you mean? Why would you kill either of us? You’re Chorazin… we’re on the same side. Vince –"

  The suddenness of the fist rocketing into his solar plexus was almost as much a shock as the blinding pain that occurred a second later. He couldn’t breathe for a good twenty seconds, even as the nausea churned deep in his gut. At last he sucked in some air, as if through a straw.

  "Vince isn’t here. As for the Chorazin, you could say I just tendered my resignation. I’m playing for the winning side."

  Although she glared down at him, there was still something, Micah thought, a strand of possible redemption in her eyes. "Then why," he rasped, "why did you, you know…? I thought you –"

  Her face hardened. "You thought what, Micah? Don’t think you know me. You haven’t even scratched the surface. Vince and I were an item for two years, but he barely understands what I’m capable of."

  Micah didn’t doubt it. He recalled Rudi’s devastated Optron landscape, wondering if that was what it was li
ke inside her, ruined beyond redemption.

  "First things first," she resumed, "do you love the Slovakian waif lying unconscious on the floor?" She arched her eyebrows as she waited for the answer.

  Micah was nonplussed. Could she be jealous? Ridiculous. Idle curiosity? He did his best to nod in the affirmative. He coughed, at long last getting serious air back into his lungs.

  "I want to hear you say it, Micah, loud and clear."

  "Why? What does it –?"

  "Just between you and me."

  Micah swallowed. He’d been on the point of confessing to Antonia when Louise arrived, though he had not been sure the words would ever have come out. Perhaps it would be good to say it to someone. Anyway, Antonia was knocked out on the floor…

  "Okay. Yes, I love her. I’ve loved her from the first day I saw her."

  "And yet you are going to try and re-unite her with her astronaut girlfriend?"

  He scrutinized Louise. He didn’t know what game this was, but he saw no other option for now than to play along. She’s probably going to kill me anyway.

  "Yes. I – I know she loves her, not me. I... I want... Well, I know you won’t understand, Louise, but if she’s happy and I’m not, then it’s better than nothing." It sounded pretty sad even to him.

  "I’ll give you this, Micah, of all the losers I’ve met in my time, you have to be the most self-acknowledging of them all. A shame. I had my eye on you, you know. Thought you showed promise, that maybe we could save you. Would have been a lot of work, but… Never mind, your choice."

  He detected a shift – whatever the something he’d seen in her regard for him before, was gone. She placed a thumb and forefinger on either side of his neck.

  "Here’s the deal. You tell me what you found out during your Optron run of Rudi’s data crystal, and then I kill you. But she gets to wake up."

  He looked at her incredulously. It was one thing to think someone might kill you but quite another to hear it from them, so cold, so matter-of-fact. But he recognized she was serious; he’d seen that look in the assassin’s eyes too. Her right hand closed around his throat, thumb on one carotid artery, fingers on the other. Her other hand brought a pulse pistol into his line of sight as she waved it in what was presumably Antonia’s prone direction.

  "How do I know –?"

  "That I won’t kill her afterwards? Well, I’ve been undercover long enough, I’ve enjoyed my – sabbatical, let’s say – at the Chorazin, but the agenda is moving faster now, and I’ve been recalled. Frankly, your little friend is inconsequential, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, or in this case, won’t get her killed. It’s just between you and me, Micah. I like to make my business personal."

  Micah knew he’d die, but he could save Antonia. It was something. "Okay," he said, voice firm.

  "I want all of it, Micah. You lie for an instant, I’ll kill you both, her first. And I’ll see it if you’re holding out on me."

  Micah did his best to nod. Since waking he’d been aware that something had been downloaded into his brain during the Optron accident. It hung in his mind like a wrapped parcel waiting for him to access it, and he had the feeling it wasn’t good news. Shutting out the external world, he switched into recall mode. He let the words pour out.

  "When I crashed in Rudi’s landscape, I blacked out, but it downloaded memories that weren’t mine; I still don’t know how… I saw partly through the data-stream hidden by the Kat simulacrum before it was destroyed by the virus, partly through Kat’s own eyes, and also through something else’s the rest of the time, what or who I have no idea. I witnessed the ghoster attack from the cockpit screens, which is where Kat was at the time, and her actions, which triggered the comms virus. I also saw what I believe was one of her nightmares, but it was very clear – she was being chased by a blue-black creature, a giant insect with six legs." Micah felt Louise’s hand on his neck flex when he mentioned the creature. "Then she woke up, and I saw Zack through Kat’s eyes, and then Pierre." He paused. So much had been downloaded. This was way beyond Rudi’s expertise, or anyone else’s.

  "Resume," she said, flat.

  He realized she was encoding it in her memory, word for word, maybe even the intonation – he’d seen the technique before, some analysts could do it – so she could relay it later. He continued; he couldn’t afford to interrupt the flow. "Then, there was something else. It was very different, and I don’t think it was seen by the crew, but by someone, or something more like – well, not human, at any rate." He flicked open his eyes to look at her, but she was just staring at him, and for the first time she looked somehow alien to him – or rather, she was looking at him as if he were an inferior being. He felt a chill run through him, as he grasped the truth about Louise. Her hand twitched, reminding him of the deal. He closed his eyes.

  "It was somewhere else. I mean not Earth, nor Eden. This set of images had been lodged in the datastream before it finally disappeared, before the Kat simulacrum was disaggregated by the virus. It was a city – a beautiful city, with spider-like creatures…"

  Micah re-counted the whole scene of the destruction of the planet, and then the scenes of the eggs and the two guardians on Eden. He stopped.

  "Anything else?" Again, a flat, distant tone. "Anything else?" she repeated, squeezing his neck so that he felt a throb of blood pressure in his skull.

  Micah thought about the old story he’d heard when he was a kid – A Thousand and One Arabian nights – but he had nothing more to tell, and Louise only wanted facts, not stories. "That’s it."

  She stood, fishing for something from a black doctor’s bag, while one hand remained on his throat. Micah knew he had very little time. Since witnessing the creatures and the other-planet incursion, he’d been trying to put all the pieces together: the ships, the creatures, the Alicians. He had to ask. A name had been encoded in the message.

  "These creatures – the Q’Roth –"

  Her hand tightened around his throat. "Don’t speak their name, Micah."

  He coughed. "They’re on Eden, but they’re coming here, aren’t they?"

  She produced a syringe filled with a blue liquid, and spoke while she inspected it, tapping it with her second finger. "Some people go to Eden; there is a first feed – a booster if you like, and then they come here for the main course." She stabbed the syringe into one of the drips above his head, her thumb poised on the plunger. "They’re going to eradicate this pitiful, fatally flawed species, and crush this planet – but the best, with humanity’s weaknesses genetically ironed out of us, will survive, start afresh. No more wars, Micah, no more injustice and corruption, no more hurting each other or our new planet."

  She gave him one last look. Then she closed up like a fan. "Goodbye, Micah. This won’t hurt, you’ll just go to sleep and not wake up. But if you make a sound, I’ll crush your vagus nerve and leave you to asphyxiate slowly."

  Micah wondered what he should think about in his last few seconds of life.

  He heard a loud popping sound. Hot blood rained down on him, a deep cavity appearing in the centre of Louise’s forehead. He watched with a mixture of shock, revulsion and morbid fascination as she continued to stand for a second, a coin-sized cauterized hole above her right eyebrow, so that he could see charred brain matter inside, the smell of barbecued flesh assaulting his nostrils. She slumped out of his line of sight. He coughed as some of her blood trickled down his throat, and squinted painfully as more of it seeped into his eyes.

  Vince, panting, appeared over him, sweat on his forehead.

  "Christ that was close. I damn near ran all the way from the set-down point, once I found what she’d left of Abrahams. Had to down three of our own to get through the false security ring she’d placed around this ward." He caught his breath. "You okay, Micah?" Vince wiped most of the blood out of Micah’s eyes with a piece of bed-linen.

  "You killed her?" Micah said, still trying to come to terms with what had just happened. It was yet another obvious statement, but he
needed to have it confirmed.

  Vince paused and looked down at her, as if surprised at what he’d just done. "Reflex," he said. "No time to think about it. She was about to kill you, and believe me the girl would have been next." Vince tugged some of the tubes out of Micah’s arm. He barely felt the pain.

  "One of these drips is a neuro-muscular blocker – shouldn’t be here – no doubt Louise inserted it yesterday – that’s why you can’t move."

  Micah looked up at Vince, trying to gain his attention. "Vince – she wasn’t going to kill Antonia – she knocked her out, so she didn’t hear any of the stuff I got from the datastream."

  Vince shook his head. "Antonia wasn’t knocked out, Micah. Louise used a curare-based stun needle on her – she’s been paralyzed but conscious the whole time. Believe me; she was going to be killed straight after you."

  Micah’s mouth opened. Then it closed.

  "I’ll bring her round in a moment," Vince said. He moved close to Micah and whispered. "She must really like you, kid, looks like she was so worried about you she’s been crying."

  Micah nodded absently. His head felt heavy. Vince injected him with something and he immediately felt his muscles again. Vince helped him up into a sitting position.

  "Stay there. Don’t move." Vince pulled Louise’s body to one side. He seemed to Micah to feel no remorse about killing her, but he decided, with Vince, you’d never know. Two more agents appeared at the door. Vince nodded to where Louise lay,

  "Take her for autopsy straight away." As they manhandled her body, he added, "Hey – take it easy with her, for Christ’s sake."

  Micah observed the scene, surreal to him, as Louise’s blood-drenched form, so full of life a minute ago, now a flaccid corpse, was hefted out of the room.

  Vince stooped over Antonia, now in a chair facing Micah, and gave her an injection. Micah could see her half-glazed eyes, her face immobile and soft, no muscle tone. But her cheeks were stained. She stared in his direction. Micah didn’t utter a word. He’d said more than enough already. Besides, he had no idea what she was thinking. But while everything else was being cleaned up around them, she never once broke his gaze.