The Fall of Tartarus

by Eric Brown

  ‘Sam!’ But the sound would not form.

  He felt his grasp on reality slacken. The colours faded, the sounds ebbed. He fell away, slipped - not into oblivion, as he had feared - but into an ocean of unconsciousness inhabited by the great dim shapes of half-remembered visions, like basking cetaceans. Hunter dreamed.

  At length he felt himself resurface. The rainbows again, the stringed music and babble of water. He still could not shift his vision, not that this overly troubled him. He was more occupied by trying to shuffle into some semblance of order the images revealed in his dream.

  He had been on Tartarus Major, he recalled - that great, ancient, smouldering world sentenced to death by the mutinous primary which for millennia had granted the planet its very life. He had been commissioned to catalogue and holopix Tartarean fauna, much of which had never been registered by the Galactic Zoological Centre, Paris, Earth - in the hope that some of the unique examples of the planet’s wildlife might be saved from extinction, removed off-world, before the supernova blew.

  He had been with Sam, his wife, his life and joy - Sam, carrying his child. He recalled her warning scream, and he had turned, too late to lift his laser. A charging nightmare: teeth and claws, and pain . . . Oh, the pain!

  And, above everything, Sam’s screams.

  And his fear, as he died, for her safety.

  Now he wanted to sob, but he had not the physical w herewithal to do so; he felt as though his soul were so bbing for what might have become of Sam.

  Unconsciousness claimed him, mercifully.

  When next he awoke, what seemed like aeons later, the trapezoid lozenges of sky between the cross-hatched rainbows were cerise with sunset, and marked with early stars. The achingly beautiful notes of a musical instrument, perhaps a clariphone, floated up from the thoroughfares below.

  He tried to shift his gaze, move his head, but it was impossible. He had absolutely no sensation in any part of his body.

  A cold dread surged through his mind like liquid nitrogen.

  He had no body - that was the answer. He was but a brain, a pair of eyes. Only that much of him had survived the attack. He was the guinea pig of some diabolical experiment, his eyes fixed forever on the heavens, the stars he would never again visit.

  Hunter. He was Hunter. For as long as he recalled, he had gone by that simple appellation. He had roved the stars, hunting down the more bizarre examples of galactic fauna, amassing a vast holo-library, as well as extensive case-notes, that were regarded as invaluable by the legion of zoologists and biologists from Earth to Zigma-Zeta. He was a scholar, an intrepid adventurer nonpareil. He had often gone where lesser men feared to go, like Tartarus ... He wondered how his death had been taken by the galaxy at large, how his friends had mourned, jealous colleagues smiled that at last his need to prove himself had instead proved to be his undoing.

  Tartarus, a double danger: to go among beasts unknown, on a world in imminent danger of stellar annihilation. He should have swallowed his pride and left well alone. Instead, he had dragged Sam along with him.

  He recalled, with a keening melancholy deep within him like a dying scream, that Sam had tried to talk him out of the trip. He recalled his stubbornness. ‘I can’t be seen to back out now, Samantha.’

  He recalled her insistence that, if he did make the journey, then she would accompany him. He recalled his smug, self-righteous satisfaction at her decision.

  As unconsciousness took him once again, he was aware of a stabbing pain within his heart.

  * * * *

  Someone was watching him, peering down at where he was imprisoned. He had no idea how long he had been staring up at the lattice of rainbows, mulling over his memories and regrets, before he noticed the blue, piercing eyes, the odd bald head at the periphery of his vision.

  The man obligingly centred himself in Hunter’s line of sight.

  He stared at his tormentor, tried to order his outrage. He boiled with anger. Do you know who I am? he wanted to ask the man. I am Hunter, famed and feted the galaxy over! How dare you do this to me!

  Hands braced on knees, the man looked down on him. Something about his foppish appearance sent a shiver of revulsion through Hunter. His captor wore the white cavaner boots of a nobleman, ballooning pantaloons, and a sleeveless overcoat of some snow-white fur. His face was thin, bloodless - almost as pale as his vestments.

  He reminded Hunter of an albino wasp: the concave chest, the slim waist, the soft abdomen swelling obscenely beneath it.

  Without taking his gaze off Hunter, the man addressed whispered words to someone out of sight. Hunter made out a muttered reply. The man nodded.

  ‘My name is Alvarez,’ he said. ‘Do not be alarmed. You are in no danger. We are looking after you.’

  Oddly, far from reassuring him, the words put an end to the notion that he might still be dreaming, and convinced him of the reality of this situation.

  He tried to speak but could not.

  Alvarez was addressing his companion again, who had moved into Hunter’s view: a fat man garbed in robes of gold and crimson.

  Alvarez disappeared, returned seconds later with a rectangular, opaqued screen on castors. He positioned it before Hunter, so that it eclipsed his view of the sky. Hunter judged, from the position of the screen and his captors, that he was lying on the floor, Alvarez and the fat man standing on a platform above him.

  He stared at the screen as Alvarez flicked a switch on its side.

  A work of art? A macabre hologram that might have had some significance to the jaded citizens of The-World-of-a-Million-Wonders, who had seen everything before?

  The ‘gram showed the figure of a man, suspended - but the figure of a man as Hunter had never before witnessed. It was as if the unfortunate subject of the artwork had been flayed alive, skinned to reveal purple and puce slabs of muscle shot through with filaments of tendons, veins and arteries - like some medical student’s computer graphic which built up, layer on layer, from skeleton to fully-fleshed human being.

  At first, Hunter thought that the figure was a mere representation, a still hologram - then he saw a movement behind the figure, a bubble rising through the fluid in which it was suspended. And, then, he made out the slight ticking pulse at its throat.

  He could not comprehend why they were showing him this monster.

  Alvarez leaned forward. ‘You have no reason to worry,’ he said. ‘You are progressing well, Mr Hunter, considering the condition you were in when you arrived.’

  Realisation crashed through Hunter. He stared again at the reflection of himself, at the monstrosity he had become.

  Alvarez opaqued the screen, wheeled it away. He returned and leaned forward. ‘We are delighted with your progress, Mr Hunter.’ He nodded to his fat companion. ‘Dr Fischer.’

  The doctor touched some control in his hand and Hunter slipped into blessed oblivion.

  * * * *

  When he came to his senses it took him some minutes before he realised that his circumstances were radically altered. The view through the dome was substantially the same - rainbows, towering trees - but shifted slightly, moved a few degrees to the right.

  He watched a vast, majestic star-galleon edge slowly past the dome, its dozen angled, multicoloured sails bellying in the breeze. He monitored its royal progress through the evening sky until it was lost to sight - and then he realised that he had, in order to track its passage, moved his head.

  For the first time he became aware of his immediate surroundings.

  He was in a small, comfortable room formed from a slice of the dome: two walls hung with tapestries, the third the outer wall of diamond facets.

  With trepidation, he raised his head and peered down the length of his body. He was naked, but not as naked as he had been on the last occasion when he had seen himself. This time he was covered with skin - tanned, healthy looking skin over well-developed muscles. He remembered the attack in the southern jungle of Tartarus, relived the terrible awareness of being riv
en limb from limb.

  And now he was whole again.

  He was in a rejuvenation pod, its canoe-shaped length supporting a web of finely woven fibres which cradled him with the lightest of touches. It was as if he were floating on air. Leads and electrodes covered him, snaking over the side of the pod and disappearing into monitors underneath.

  He tried to sit up, but it was all he could do to raise his arm. The slightest exertion filled him with exhaustion. But what did he expect, having newly risen from the dead?

  He experienced then a strange ambivalence of emotion. Of course he was grateful to be alive - the fear of oblivion he had experienced upon first awakening was still fresh enough in his memory to fill him with an odd, retrospective dread, and a profound gratitude for his new lease of life. But something, some nagging insistence at the back of his mind, hectored him with the improbability of his being resurrected.

  Very well - he was famous, was respected in his field, but even he had to admit that his death would have been no great loss to the galaxy at large. So why had Alvarez, or the people for whom Alvarez worked, seen fit to outlay millions on bringing him back to life? For certain, Sam could not have raised the funds to finance the procedure, even if she had realised their joint assets. He was rich, but not that rich. Why, the very sailship journey from the rim world of Tartarus to the Core planet of Million would have bankrupted him.

  He was alive, but why he was alive worried him.

  He felt himself drifting as a sedative sluiced through his system.

  * * * *

  Hunter opened his eyes.

  He was in a room much larger than the first, a full quadrant of the dome this time. He was no longer attached to the rejuvenation pod, but lying in a bed. Apart from a slight ache in his chest, a tightness, he felt well. Tentatively, he sat up, swung his legs from the bed. He wore a short white gown like a kimono. He examined his legs, his arms. They seemed to be as he remembered them, but curiously younger, without the marks of age, the discolorations and small scars he’d picked up during a lifetime of tracking fauna through every imaginable landscape. He filled his chest with a deep breath, exhaled. He felt good.

  He stood and crossed to the wall of the dome, climbed the three steps and paused on the raised gallery. A magnificent star-galleon sailed by outside, so close that Hunter could make out figures on the deck, a curious assortment of humans and aliens. A few stopped work to look at him. One young girl even waved. Hunter raised his arm in salute and watched the ship sail away, conscious of the gesture, the blood pumping through his veins. In that instant, he was suddenly aware of the possibilities, of the wondrous gift of life renewed.

  ‘Mr Hunter,’ the voice called from behind him. ‘I’m so pleased to see you up and about.’

  Alvarez stood on the threshold, smiling across the room at him. He seemed smaller than before, somehow reduced.

  Within the swaddles of his fine clothing - rich gold robes, frilled shirts - he was even more insect-like than Hunter recalled.

  ‘I have so many questions I don’t really know where to begin,’ Hunter said.

  Alvarez waved, the cuff of his gown hanging a good half-metre from his stick-like wrist. ‘All in good time, my dear Mr Hunter. Perhaps you would care for a drink?’ He moved to a table beneath the curve of the dome, its surface marked with a press-select panel of beverages.

  ‘A fruit juice.’

  ‘I’ll join you,’ Alvarez said, and seconds later passed Hunter a tall glass of yellow liquid.

  His thoughts returned to the jungle of Tartarus. ‘My wife . . . ?’ he began.

  Alvarez was quick to reassure him. ‘Samantha is fit and well. No need to worry yourself on that score.’

  ‘I’d like to see her.’

  ‘That is being arranged. Within the next three or four days, you should be reunited.’

  Hunter nodded, reluctant to show Alvarez his relief or gratitude. His wife was well, he was blessed with a new body, renewed life ... so why did he experience a pang of apprehension like a shadow cast across his soul?

  ‘Mr Hunter,’ Alvarez asked, ‘what are your last recollections before awakening here?’

  Hunter looked from Alvarez to the tall trees receding into the distance. ‘Tartarus,’ he said. ‘The jungle.’

  ‘Can you recall the . . . the actual attack?’

  ‘I remember, but vaguely. I can’t recall what led up to it, just the attack itself. It’s as if it happened years ago.’

  Alvarez was staring at him. ‘It did, Mr Hunter. Three years ago, to be precise.’

  Again, Hunter did not allow his reaction to show: shock, this time. Three years! But Sam had been carrying their child, his daughter. He had missed her birth, the first years of her life . . .

  ‘You owe your survival to your wife,’ Alvarez continued. ‘She fired flares to frighten the beast that killed you, then gathered your remains.’ He made an expression of distaste. ‘There was not much left. Your head, torso . . . She stored them in the freeze-unit at your camp, then returned through the jungle to Apollinaire, and from there to the port at Baudelaire, where she arranged passage off-planet.’

  Hunter closed his eyes. He imagined Sam’s terror, her despair, her frantic hope. It should have been enough to drive her mad.

  Alvarez went on, ‘She applied for aid to a number of resurrection foundations. My company examined you. They reported your case to me. I decided to sanction your rebirth.’

  Hunter was shaking his head. ‘But how did Sam raise the fare to Million?’ he asked. ‘And the cost of the resurrection itself? There’s just no way . . .’ What, he wondered, had she done to finance his recovery?

  ‘She had to arrange a loan to get the both of you here. She arrived virtually penniless.’

  ‘Then how—?’

  Alvarez raised a hand. There was something about the man that Hunter did not like: his swift, imperious gestures, his thin face which combined the aspects of asceticism and superiority. In an age when everyone enjoyed the means to ensure perfect health, Alvarez’s affectation of ill health was macabre.

  ‘Your situation interested me, Mr Hunter. I knew of you. I followed your work, admired your success. I cannot claim to be a naturalist in the same league as yourself, but I dabble . . .

  ‘I run many novel enterprises on Million,’ Alvarez went on. ‘My very favourite, indeed the most popular and lucrative, is my Xeno-biological Exhibit Centre, here in the capital. It attracts millions of visitors every year from all across the galaxy. Perhaps you have heard of it, Mr Hunter?’

  Hunter shook his head, minimally. ‘I have no interest in, nor sympathy with, zoos, Mr Alvarez.’

  ‘Such an outdated, crude description, I do think. My Exhibit Centre is quite unlike the zoos of old. The centre furnishes species from around the galaxy with a realistic simulacra of their native habitats, often extending for kilometres. Where the species exhibited are endangered on their own worlds, we have instituted successful breeding programmes. In more than one instance I have saved species from certain extinction.’ He paused, staring at Hunter. ‘Although usually I hire operators from the planet in question to capture and transport the animals I require to update my exhibit, on this occasion—’

  Hunter laid his drink aside, untouched. ‘I am a cameraman, Mr Alvarez. I hunt animals in order to film them. I have no expertise in capturing animals.’

  ‘What I need is someone skilled in the tracking of a certain animal. My team will perform the actual physical capture. On the planet in question, there are no resident experts, and as you are already au fait with the terrain . . .’

  Hunter interrupted. ‘Where?’ he asked.

  ‘Where else?’ Alvarez smiled. ‘Tartarus, of course.’

  It took some seconds for his words to sink in. Hunter stared across the room at the dandified zoo-keeper. ‘Tartarus?’ He almost laughed. ‘Madness. Three years ago the scientists were forecasting the explosion of the supernova in two to three years at the latest.’

  Alvarez
responded evenly. ‘The scientists have revised their estimates. They now think the planet is safe for another year.’

  Hunter sat down on the steps that curved around the room. He shook his head, looked up. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Alvarez. Tartarus holds too many bad memories for me. And anyway, it would be insane to go there with the supernova so imminent.’

  ‘I think you fail to understand the situation in which you find yourself, Mr Hunter. You and your wife are in debt to me to the tune of some five million credits. You are now, legally, in my employ—’

  ‘I didn’t ask to be resurrected. I signed nothing!’

  Alvarez smiled. ‘Your wife signed all the relevant papers. She wanted you resurrected. She agreed to work for me.’