Brown, Eric

by Helix [v1. 0] [epub]

  She smiled at him. “You think I’m dreaming all this?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s give it time, okay, and see what happens? I might be eating humble pie before long.”

  “And big helpings of it, Joe.” She reached for his hand and held it.

  Two minutes later Olembe called out from across the chamber, “Hey, this is it. Here it comes!”

  They hurried back to where Olembe and Carrelli were sitting cross-legged, leaning over the softscreen. Olembe was manipulating the touchpad, refining the image. The screen showed the summit of the ziggurat, and approaching it as if in slow motion the tentacular length of the umbilical.

  Carrelli was saying, “The engineering is truly amazing. Once it docks, as it were, it’s connected to both the ziggurat here and the one on the tier above. By the very nature of the worlds’ rotation, that means the ziggurats will be moving away from each other all the time, though very slowly. The umbilicals must have some form of telescopic or elastic capacity.”

  Kaluchek said to Carrelli, “Any idea how long they’ll remain connected?”

  Carrelli shook her head. “It’s hard to say. Technically, maybe only minutes while the transfer from the portal to the umbilical is achieved by the travellers. After that, my guess is that it disconnects so the umbilical is trailing through space, tethered only to the destination world.” She shook her head in wonder.

  “It’s almost there,” Olembe said.

  Hendry watched as the terminus of the umbilical swept through the air above the ziggurat. He felt a sudden apprehension: soon they would be aboard the umbilical, rising to the next tier, and whatever they might find there. The truck was packed; all that remained was to jump aboard.

  The umbilical hovered briefly above the summit of the ziggurat, then passed on, whipping through the air a good ten metres above the top block.

  Olembe swore. Kaluchek asked, “So what happened?”

  Hendry watched the umbilical move ever further from the peak of the ziggurat, taking with it any real hope of easily ascending to the next tier.

  Carrelli shook her head, at a loss for words, and stared at the screen.

  Olembe was hunched over the softscreen, muttering angrily to himself and tapping the touchpad. He stilled the picture, played it back, then magnified the image. He froze the scene and pointed. “Look...”

  The end of the umbilical was a mess of tangled and shredded metal, blackened and twisted. It’s interior could be clearly seen, a silver honeycomb diminishing into the length of the column.

  “Looks like there’s been some kind of explosion,” Kaluchek said.

  “What the hell might have caused that?” Olembe muttered.

  “Whatever,” Carrelli said, her expression impassive, “it rules out attaining the next tier the easy way...” Kaluchek was staring at her. “And the hard way?”

  Olembe laughed. “Think about it, sweetheart.”

  Kaluchek turned to the African, glaring. “If you call me that one more time—”

  He raised both hands in a mocking pantomime of fear. “Hey, cut me some slack, lady. Back off, okay?”

  Carrelli said, “Squabbling will do nothing to help the situation.”

  “Well, tell that fucker to stop patronising me.”

  Carrelli turned a warning glance towards Olembe, who rolled his eyes with a who? me?expression.

  Hendry laid a clandestine, hand on the small of Kaluchek’s back and applied pressure. She shot him a glance, smiling.

  “Very well,” Carrelli said, looking around the group. “The only thing we can do in the circumstances, if we wish to ascend to the next tier, is to make contact with the alien race that inhabits this world. Agreed?”

  Olembe nodded. “Makes sense to me.”

  “They have obviously reached a rudimentary level of technological innovation,” Carrelli said. “Who knows, with our know-how and their manufacturing capabilities, we might be able to rig up some means of getting to the next tier.”

  Hendry said, “And if not,” he smiled bitterly, “then it’s the long haul up-spiral.”

  With this sobering thought they boarded the truck and prepared to leave the sanctuary of the ziggurat.

  * * * *

  2

  They rolled outonto the plain of ice. The blizzard had ceased and the snow had stopped, revealing a flat, frozen landscape, featureless and without even a hill to break the iron-grey monotony that stretched out before them. To the right, in the distance, could be made out a faint line of black, snow-capped mountains.

  Olembe was in the driving seat, Carrelli next to him. Hendry sat in the back with Sissy Kaluchek. Olembe braked the truck. “Okay, which way? Do we head for where the airships were coming from, or going to?”

  Hendry said, “The dirigibles we saw were heading towards the mountain range. Would it make sense to follow them?”

  Olembe tapped a touchpad and brought up the windscreen’s magnification facility. The far range sprang into startling view, a jagged array of cold peaks. There was no sign of the airships.

  “I don’t see any habitation that way,” Olembe said. “No cities, villages.”

  Kaluchek spoke up, “What did you expect, a string of streetlights spelling out ‘Welcome’? In my experience, cold communities conserve energy.”

  Olembe restrained himself. “No sign of buildings, roads, anything like that.”

  “Anyway,” Kaluchek said, “I think Joe’s right. Let’s make for the mountains. What do you think, Gina?”

  She considered the question. “Perhaps the mountains might provide some limited form of protection from the elements,” she said at last. “In which case, a settlement might be found there. That’s making a lot of assumptions, however.”

  Hendry said, “We’re in a situation where that’s unavoidable.”

  She nodded. “Then shall we turn right?”

  “The mountains it is,” Olembe said, revving the engine and slewing the truck away from the ziggurat, accelerating over the hard-packed ice.

  A minute later, Kaluchek said, “What if there is a settlement, but it’s on the other side of the mountain, and airships are the only way to reach it?”

  “We could always attempt to attract the attention of a passing ship,” Hendry quipped.

  The tracked vehicle ate up the kilometres. The grey of the day was about as bright as a Melbourne twilight, Hendry thought. He stared through the sidescreen, willing some feature to appear and break the monotony. The only thing that moved was the loose snowfall on the ground, wafted into wave patterns by the incessant wind. The central section of the windscreen showed the mountains, and he found himself staring at them in an attempt to discern anything that might signal habitation.

  The heat inside the cab increased, inducing somnolence. Kaluchek closed her eyes and let her weight ease against Hendry, her head against his shoulder. He was pitched back twenty years, to when he and Chrissie had travelled on shuttle buses in France during his leave from space, heading off on holidays to the Normandy coast. Inevitably she would fall asleep, the pressure of her body against his inducing in him a sense of peace and contentment.

  Now he wanted to stroke Kaluchek’s jet-black hair, to show her some small gesture of affection. He was sure that she would not object, and yet he found himself holding back, afraid for some reason he could not quite fathom of escalating the degree of their relationship.

  He was dozing when Olembe called out, “Hey, what was that? Over there, ten o’clock.”

  He slowed the truck. Hendry jolted awake and likewise Kaluchek beside him. He realised that his heart was hammering and peered through the sidescreen, wondering what the hell the African had spotted.

  Then he saw it, or rather them.

  They were dim at first, obscured by the fall of snow that had started up again: faint, humped shapes in the grey, white against the snowfield. He was reminded of yaks, though these creatures were half as large again as their Terran equivalent.

  Olembe slowed the truck to
a crawl, turned and approached the herd of a dozen or so passive creatures.

  Passive, Hendry thought—but he nevertheless felt in the footwell for his laser.

  Kaluchek placed a hand on his leg and leaned across him, grinning like a child at the zoo as she stared out at the herd.

  “They look harmless enough, Joe.”

  He nodded, aware that his first contact with an alien race had prejudiced his reactions to this encounter. Olembe braked the truck a few metres from the animals. They looked up at the truck, large eyes incurious, then bent their thick muzzles to root again through the snow for whatever morsels of food might be found.

  “They appear bovine,” Carrelli said, “and built for the climate. Look at those pelts.”

  Grey fur hung to the ground in soiled tassels. Most of the creatures sported four horns, emerging at right angles from massive heads. Despite the proximity of the truck, the herd had lost interest. Hendry suspected that the task of foraging for food in this hostile landscape was perpetual, and it was a wonder they found anything at all in the snowy wastes. Their backs were encrusted with mantles of frozen snow, which, along with their immobility, gave them the appearance of statues.

  “Seen enough?” Olembe asked.

  Hendry could have stared at the odd beasts indefinitely, fascinated by the fact of their existence on this cold and lonely world.

  No one objected, and the truck roared into life again. The noise moved the animals to lethargic flight, and then only a few metres before they bent once again to nuzzle for elusive food.

  The truck cruised towards the mountains, crunching over the tundra at a steady fifty kilometres per hour. At one point Olembe manipulated the touchpad and said, “The range is around five hundred kays distant. I reckon we’ll make the foothills in around ten hours or so.”

  Carrelli said, “I’ll take over the driving in a while, okay?”

  Hendry stared at the magnified mountains, looking for a pass or cutting that might allow them through. There was no sign of habitation in the rucked foothills. He wondered where the dirigibles had been heading, and imagined some ice-bound mountain fastness inhabited by who knew what bizarre species of extraterrestrials.

  He found himself taking Kaluchek’s hand and gripping hard. She squeezed back, smiling up at him.

  A while later she said, addressing everyone, “This reminds me of my childhood in Alaska. Miles and miles of snow. Long journey to get anywhere.” She sat up, leaning forward without letting go of Hendry’s hand, and said to Carrelli, “Where were you brought up, Gina?”

  “Me? Oh,” the Italian sounded surprised at the question. “Naples, until I was eighteen. Then I went to college in Rome.” She turned in her seat and smiled. “It was nothing like this, I can assure you of that.” She fanned her face. “The heat! You wouldn’t believe it.” The gesture, Hendry thought, made her seem human.

  “You studied medicine in Rome?” Kaluchek asked.

  The Italian nodded. “Five years of general studies, then I specialised in neurology for three years.”

  “When did you join the ESO?”

  “Five years ago, when I was thirty. They were recruiting for medics to work on the ground in Berne. Then three years ago I was approached by Bruckner and told about the expedition.”

  Kaluchek smiled. “You must have jumped at the chance?”

  “Actually, no. I asked them to give me time to think it over. I mean, to leave everything familiar for an uncertain future...”

  “You had family, loved ones?”

  Carrelli shook her head, her expression hidden by the back of the seat. “I had no one. My parents were dead. I was an only child. I had a lover until a few weeks before the offer of a place on the mission, but she left me, so...”

  At this, Hendry saw Olembe turned his head and glance quickly at the medic.

  Carrelli shrugged. “So, there was nothing really to keep me on Earth, except perhaps fear of the unknown. I thought about it over the days, tried to overcome my fear, and then contacted Bruckner and accepted.”

  Kaluchek said, “And you haven’t regretted it?”

  Carrelli turned in her seat and smiled at the Inuit. “Of course not. It was the best decision of my life. To experience what we have experienced, what so few humans have experienced... that is truly wonderful, no?”

  Kaluchek’s gaze slipped past the medic to the mountains. “I acknowledge that intellectually, Gina, but in reality... I don’t know. Had anyone told me what we were going to experience, I would have considered it amazing, but now that it’s happening to me—the fact that it’s me, here, undergoing this amazing experience... to be honest, I can’t help feeling it’s all a bit mundane. I hope that doesn’t sound ungrateful, or small-minded, but it’s true...”

  Gina smiled at her, reassuringly. “I understand what you mean. It’s a surprisingly common reaction to individuals in extraordinary circumstances. They close down, concentrate on the small-scale. It’s one way of combating the fear.” The medic looked at Kaluchek, glanced down to her hand gripping Hendry’s. “You are afraid, aren’t you, Sissy?”

  For a second, Hendry thought the woman beside him was about to tell Carrelli to go to hell, but what she did say made Hendry admire Kaluchek even more. The Inuit nodded her head minimally and said, “Afraid as hell, Gina,” and she squeezed Hendry’s hand all the tighter.

  Carrelli said, “Don’t worry, you’re not alone. We are all a little scared of what the future might hold, aren’t we, gentlemen?”

  Hendry laughed. “Ever since those things back there got Lisa... I’ve been wondering what might happen next. Sure I’m scared.”

  Carrelli turned pointedly to the driver. “Friday?”

  The African gripped the wheel, eyes straight ahead. “I’ve seen a lot, Gina. I’ve been through hell in Africa. What happened to Lisa back there, sure, it was god-awful but I’m not scared of anything the future might throw at us. The worse that can happen is that we die, right? I’m not afraid of dying.”

  Kaluchek said, “There’s worse things than dying, Olembe. How about dying slowly, and knowing you’re going to die?”

  The African took his attention from the screen and turned to glare at the Inuit. “I’ve been there, Kaluchek.”

  She was about to say something, but Hendry frownedno at her, and to her credit she restrained herself.

  Hendry looked at Carrelli. She had closed her eyes, head against the rest, in a fair imitation of sleep. But she wore a satisfied expression, and he wondered how much she had learned about her fellow travellers.

  Thirty minutes later, with Kaluchek asleep beside him, and Carrelli breathing evenly in the passenger seat, Olembe looked at Hendry in the rear-view and said, “How about that, Joe? We’re shacked up here with a dyke and a shit-scared Eskimo. You were just going along with all the fear stuff to make the women feel cosy, yeah?”

  Hendry smiled. “Wish I was, Friday. But it’s true, and I don’t mind admitting it. Maybe I led a sheltered life the past five years, but I wasn’t expecting anything like this. Of course I’m afraid. It’s a natural human reaction.”

  Olembe shook his head. “We’ll be fine, Joe. Have faith. I’ll see us through. Okay?”

  And the way Olembe said this, with a touching belief in his own abilities and without a trace of macho bravado, made Hendry wonder if he would ever truly understand the outwardly surly nuclear engineer.

  He closed his eyes and was asleep in minutes.

  Then, all the more shocking for coming so unexpectedly, the truck hit something and pitched forward, slamming the passengers against their restraining harnesses and waking them instantly.

  * * * *

  3

  “Christ, Olembe!” This was Kaluchek, hanging forward in her harness as the truck tipped nose-down, its tracks screaming as they churned uselessly through the air.

  Olembe cut the engine and yelled, “Quit it, Kaluchek. I didn’t see the fucking thing! A mist came down about five minutes ago.”

  In
the silence that followed, Carrelli said, “Everyone is okay?”

  Hendry massaged his neck. “I’m fine.”

  Kaluchek said, “I’m okay. What the hell happened?”

  The view in the central section of the windscreen, still set on magnification, was blurred, but the glass to either side showed a wall of ice a metre from the windscreen. Hendry peered through the misted sidescreen. The truck had pitched into some kind of trench or ravine.

  “Okay,” Olembe said. “It’s no problem. We’ve fallen into an ice trough or whatever. We can dig a way out in front of the truck and drive on.”