by Eric Brown
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
She did not look up. ‘I am here to pay respects,’ she whispered. ‘With luck, I will be helped by ultarrak.’
Connery did not know the word. He shook his head. ‘There are no more people here, just you and me.’
She shrugged again, either unwilling or unable to enlighten him.
‘How did you get here?’ he asked. ‘From which island do you come?’
At this, she was more willing to speak. ‘By canoe,’ she said, glancing up at him, then shyly back down again at her fingers. ‘Three days from Sauvé.’
He had seen the island on his map, part of a small archipelago that ran parallel with the main Demargé chain.
‘But what of your people?’
‘My people have left for the stars in great ships.’
Connery shook his head, feeling a sudden stab of pity for the girl.
‘Why were you left behind? Why didn’t you go with them?’
She shook her head in a show of frustration. ‘No ... I could not go with them. I had to come to the holy lake. Later, I will join my people.’
‘Later? How much later? How long will you stay here?’
She had plucked the hem of her dress to a frayed tassel. ‘Perhaps a year, maybe more. It is not up to me.’
‘A year?’ he echoed. ‘A year without food?’
She looked up at him, her wide eyes critical of his ignorance. ‘I do not need food!’ she said.
‘But in a year . . . Don’t you realise that in a year the sun might have blown?’
‘A year, or two,’ she corrected him. ‘Who knows?’
A silence came between them as the heat of dawn increased. He could not keep his eyes from the swelling of her small breasts he glimpsed through the zigzag lacing of her dress.
At last the girl asked in a small voice, ‘Why are you here? What are your devices?’ She pointed towards the canopy.
Connery thought about his reply. If she considered the lake holy, would she think what he was doing a desecration?
‘I am a scientist,’ he said at last. ‘I am studying the lake.’
She nodded, glanced from him to the burning sky. She touched the food tray and container. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and made to move to her tent.
He reached out a hand, forestalling her. ‘I’m Connery,’ he said. ‘And you are?’
‘Leona,’ she said, and unsure how to respond to his gesture, touched the tips of his fingers with hers. He took her hand, and she stared at him in surprise.
‘I . . . There is plenty of spare room in my dome,’ he said. ‘And food. You can’t live in that thing - you wouldn’t last a day. Please, you can join me if you wish.’
Her watchful expression gave no indication that she had understood him. She pulled her fingers free of his and crawled into the tent, taking the food and water with her.
Connery made his way back to his dome, took another shower and lay on his bunk. He could not banish the thought of Leona from his mind. He considered the heat, unbearable even at this early hour. How might she exist with nothing but the flimsy skin tent to shade her as the day progressed?
* * * *
Leona sat cross-legged, clutching the cool container of w ater. Already the heat inside the tent was unbearable - a lank humidity that made a full breath impossible. Still, this was preferable to the direct light of the sun, which would have burned her skin in minutes.
She closed her eyes and considered the events of the past few hours. Her summons had failed to attract ultarrak. She had said the mantra just as the holy-man had told her, and emptied her mind of everything but her principal wish - but nothing had happened.
And then the off-worlder had arrived, bearing gifts.
She had assumed the correct posture to accept the gifts, and looked into his eyes only occasionally, as custom dictated in these matters. He should have said straight away, if he wanted her, that she was welcome to share his dwelling, but instead he had asked many questions, and only later asked her to join him in her dome. Well, perhaps customs were different on his home world.
One hour passed, then two, and the temperature inside the tent rose steadily. The sun was so bright that its invading light pierced the threadbare patches of her tent and smote her with a heat like burning coals. She took a long drink of cold water from Connery’s container, but seconds later she was thirsty again.
When she judged that a suitable duration had elapsed, she slipped from the tent and dismantled it, transforming it quickly back into a pack. She stowed away her cup and bowl, and made sure her six leather pouches of powders were secure. By the time she was ready, the sunlight was burning her skin, the heat searing her throat. Then, her heart beating wildly in her chest, she walked around the lake towards Connery’s dome.
Before she reached the off-worlder’s dwelling, she knelt and cast about for a sharp sliver of pumice. She found a suitable length, tested its point for sharpness, and slipped it into her belt.
She passed into the dome through two doors which opened like the petals of a flower, first the outer door and then the inner. It was cold inside, and Leona wondered how this was achieved. It was as if the inside of the dome was another world entirely.
Connery was not in the main chamber, but an opening gave access to a second, smaller room. Leona stepped silently across the threshold. The off-worlder lay on his bunk, staring at her.
At the sight of his gaze, Leona almost stopped dead in her tracks. A part of her wanted to turn and flee. Another part, which knew that this was what should happen, made her continue towards the bed.
She perched herself on the side of his bunk, very aware of his bulk beside her, though her eyes were staring at the floor. From her belt she pulled her pumice dagger, and reached out for his bare chest. Only then could she bring herself to look into his eyes. He was staring at her with a startled, shocked expression, his head raised from the bed. She smiled to indicate that she would be gentle. She held the point of the dagger above his sternum. He moved his hand, as if to stop her, but did not. Perhaps this was another of her people’s customs that differed slightly on the off-worlder’s homeplanet.
She lowered the dagger until its point touched the tanned flesh of his chest. Then she applied pressure. He let out a breath. A droplet of blood welled. She drew the dagger lightly down his torso, from sternum to abdomen, alternately scoring a bloody line and a thin white scratch across his skin. He gripped the side of the bunk, breathing hard, staring at her.
When she reached the muscles of his stomach, she raised the dagger and stood. With trembling fingers she unlaced her dress, let it drop and stepped from it. She stood before him naked, but his eyes never left her face. She raised the dagger for a second time, pressed it to the skin between her breasts, and winced as she dug the point home and scored it down her body. Then she threw aside the dagger and joined Connery, wound to wound, on the bed.
* * * *
For a few seconds as he came awake, Connery felt the weight of the girl in his arms and his thoughts were filled with the notion of Madelaine. He convinced himself that he could smell the natural scent of her small body, hear the familiar sound of her breathing.
Then he regained his senses and his awareness was flooded with the memories of Leona and her strange courtship rite. An immediate, stabbing sense of regret was soon sluiced away by the memory of what had passed between them. It was more than five years since he had last made love to a woman, during which time he told himself that he missed neither the intimacy nor the affection: the truth was that he had missed both, but as the years passed by he found it ever more difficult to initiate a relationship. Whether this inability was caused by the fear of losing a loved one for a second time, or the thought that he was being unfaithful to the memory of Madelaine, he did not know.
He carefully disengaged himself from her limbs and left her sleeping on the bunk. He dressed quickly, hardly taking his eyes from the girl. She rolled onto her back, into the s
pace he had vacated, and twitched slightly in her sleep.
He was about to leave the dome to check his equipment before the surfacing of the Vulpheous when Leona spasmed, her whole body convulsing for an instant as if electrocuted. This brought her awake; she sat up, shivering and staring across at him. Her mouth moved, but no words came. She lay back, staring up at the apex of the dome and crying. She was hugging her shoulders and pulling her knees up to her chest, as if in an effort to warm herself. Connery rushed across to her, tried to hold her. She pushed his arms away, pointed across the chamber to her pack on the floor. ‘In there’ she gasped. ‘Powder.’
He almost tore the pack apart in a bid to get at its contents. He pulled out half a dozen pouches heavy with crystallised substances and stared across at Leona.
‘Water!’ she cried.
He fetched a water container and a cup. ‘Now what? For chrissake what do I do?’
‘A little ... a little of each powder in the cup.’
His fingers huge and useless, he pulled the drawstring on the first pouch and nipped out an amount of yellow powder. He held it up to Leona, who nodded, watching him with eyes wide in desperation as he transferred the powder to the cup. He did the same with the second and third pouch, but when he came to the fourth, Leona screamed aloud. ‘No! Less . . . That much can kill!’
He dropped a few grains into the cup, then continued with the two remaining powders. He stirred the concoction with a finger, surprised to see it turn blood-red and viscous, then carried it over to the girl. He put an arm around her shoulders and lifted the cup to her lips. Steadying it with both hands, she drank the fluid in grateful gulps. She seemed immediately to relax. He lay her back on the bunk, stroking a sweat-soaked strand of hair from her forehead.
‘You are ill,’ he whispered.
She shook her head. ‘No ... I will be fine.’ She smiled at him, a dreamy half-smile, as her eyes closed in sleep.
He remained with her for a while, watching her even breathing and working to calm himself. Through the wall of the dome he could see the fiery night sky slowly replacing the magnesium glare of daytime, the streaked scarlets and tangerines gaining in strength. He stroked Leona’s hair one last time and left the dome, the heat and humidity breaking over him in an almost palpable wave.
There was something unnatural about the scene as he stood beneath the canopy and stared out across the lake, the green circle of water beneath the two-tone sky suggesting the garish nightmare of a crazed expressionist. Connery had never felt at home on Tartarus, among its many strange peoples and even stranger places. He would breathe easier w hen finally he took his leave of th e dying planet. His yacht was anchored in a sheltered cove on the other side of the island, and sailing time to Baudelaire was a matter of three or four weeks. He thought of Leona, the fact that she had told him she would remain here ‘to pay her respects’, as she had said, for a year or more . . .
He checked and rechecked the settings and calibrations of his equipment. All was as it should be. The lasers, grapples and hawsers were primed to activate when he keyed in the single command on the terminal beside him. All that remained was for the Vulpheous to show itself.
He heard the outer door of the dome open and watched Leona pick her way across to him. She was shy in the aftermath of their lovemaking, her eyes downcast. They sat on the shore of the lake and Connery put an arm around her shoulders.
At last he asked, ‘Do you have to stay here for a year? Couldn’t you leave in a few days?’
Her shoulders moved in a shrug beneath his forearm. ‘I must...at least a year. I wish I could leave soon, but that is impossible.’
‘Why, Leona? What are you doing here?’
She shook her head, as if she found it impossible to explain. She glanced at him, and he saw tears in her eyes. ‘And you?’ she asked. ‘When do you leave?’
He hesitated. Soon, in a year or so, the sun would blow. He would be long gone by then. The gift he would give to the Thousand Worlds could not be jeopardised by needless delay.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I was thinking of leaving soon.’
She glanced at him, then past him at his arrayed machinery. ‘Your work will be finished then?’
He nodded. ‘With luck, yes, it will.’
She looked from his equipment and out across the lake, then returned her gaze to him. ‘What are they for, Connery?’
He sighed. He had prevaricated earlier when she had asked him the same question. Now he felt compelled to tell her what he was doing, to try to explain himself.
‘A great creature lives out there in the lake,’ he told her. ‘The Vulpheous. For five years I’ve tracked it across the southern seas. It’s the last of its kind and it has returned here to die.’ He shrugged. ‘Soon, when it surfaces, I will kill it humanely and drag its carcass to the shore—’
He stopped when he felt her stiffen beneath his arm. She pulled away and stared at him. ‘Kill it? You want to kill it?’
‘Leona, I know it seems barbaric—’
He stopped. At that second, a slow series of air-bubbles broke the surface of the lake.
Connery slipped into the seat behind the laser cannon, sighting down the ‘scope at the ripples radiating from close to the marker buoy. Now that the time had come, the culminating event of five years’ hard work, his awareness of the world was reduced to the surfacing creature, the laser and himself. He stared down the ‘scope, the blood pounding in his temples, and cried out as the domed head of the Vulpheous butted ponderously through the mat of algae, emerging with the slow grace of all colossal creatures. Connery reached out to the terminal keyboard.
He heard a scream, and saw a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. Leona dived at the laser cannon as his finger struck the command key. The piercing blue needle shot high and wide of its target as the cannon toppled with the girl clinging to its barrel. Timed to activate seconds after the laser, the harpoon and grapples exploded out from beneath the canopy, missing Leona by centimetres. Connery watched as the harpoon struck the water before the Vulpheous. Then the hawser sprang into programmed action, hauling in the grapples empty but for gouts of algae and weed.
The Vulpheous, either alarmed by the unaccustomed activity or sated with air, began its leisurely descent. The bulk of its body disappeared slowly, followed by its ugly, domed head. Its tiny yellow eyes seemed to bore across the lake at Connery, at once mocking and accusing.
Leona scrambled from the tangle of machinery, righted herself and ran up the slope. She disappeared behind the dome and seconds later Connery heard her muffled sobs.
He picked up the laser, checking it for damage, and did the same with the hawser and grapples. He recalibrated the weapon and recovery equipment, the weight of aborted expectation settling over him like a depression. He told himself that nothing was lost, that he would try again when the Vulpheous next emerged, and this time succeed.
He spent an hour needlessly going over the programme, waiting until Leona’s sobs abated. When there was silence he left the canopy and walked around the dome. He found her seated on a low boulder, her face lowered to her palms. She looked up as his footsteps scattered pumice, wincing as if she thought he might strike her.
He sat down on the rock next to the girl and was silent for long minutes. At last he reached out and gripped the back of her neck, her skin hot to his touch. He pulled her towards him so that her head pressed against his chest.
In a whisper, he asked, ‘Is the Vulpheous special to your people?’
She drew a breath, hiccupped on a last sob, nodded. ‘We call it ultarrak,’ she murmured. ‘It is as you say –special.’
Connery nodded, silently massaging her neck. ‘I want to tell you something,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘I don’t know if you’ll understand, but I’ll tell you anyway.’
He was silent for a while, marshalling his thoughts, going over the events of the past and sorting them into some kind of consecutive order.
‘Twelve yea
rs ago my wife was told that she was suffering from an illness known as Hartmann’s disease. It was very rare and very deadly. Only a hundred or so cases had been diagnosed since records were kept on all the planets of the Thousand Worlds, and most of the sufferers had succumbed to the disease. It was a viral infection that invaded the lymphatic system, causing paralysis and death within six months. My wife’s specialist held out no hope. I took her home and hired a nurse to help me look after her. I resigned from my job as a physicist with the TWC and spent all my time investigating the disease. The last ten victims, spread far and wide across the Worlds, had all died within the allotted six months, but I discovered that two sufferers had survived. However, these people had lived fifty years ago - their medical records were scant and both men were no longer alive. You can’t imagine, though, how the knowledge that Hartmann’s could be beaten filled me with a hope that in retrospect seemed futile, but at the time kept me alive ... I spent a fortune travelling around the Worlds, interviewing people, talking to doctors and scientists, quacks and charlatans ... I got nowhere. Back on Earth, my wife was slowly deteriorating. I reached the point where I recognised that I had to give up, return to Madelaine and nurse her through her last months.’