Brown, Eric

by Helix [v1. 0] [epub]

  The alien said, “I will aid you in so far as destroying the deathship will rob them of a fearsome weapon.” He returned the beads to Kahran, then stood and moved to the control couch. “I have preparations to make, if we are to strike in the early hours.”

  Kahran stood also. “We had best prepare the freighter, Ehrin.”

  In a daze, shocked at his own rebellious thoughts, as well as by the momentous reality Havor had just opened up for him, Ehrin climbed to his feet and picked up the lamp.

  With a nod to Havor, he led the way from the interworld ship and hurried from the freighter’s cargo hold. In the fitful light of the lamp, the scarlet envelope of the freighter bulged above them. Soon, he thought, he would be embarking on a mission that might just spell the beginning of the end of the Church in Agstarn. The notion filled him with delight and dread.

  They were making for the entry hatch of the freighter’s control room when Kahran halted him with a hand on his arm. “Shh! Did you hear that?”

  Ehrin cocked his head, heart pounding. “What?” he hissed.

  “I thought I heard footsteps, on the foundry stairs.”

  Ehrin listened. He did hear something, then. Voices, coming from beyond the hangar doors.

  He heard shouts. There were people in the foundry. His first thought, which struck him as ridiculous in retrospect, was that the factory was being burgled.

  Then the massive door to the hangar swung slowly open, and a dozen uniformed men carrying rifles and torches filed into the chamber.

  He froze, aware of Kahran’s hand still gripping his arm.

  The intruders wore the feared sable uniforms of the Church militia. “Halt there!” the cry came from a militiaman who stepped forward confidently, brandishing a pistol.

  Kahran hissed. “We could drop the lamp and run for it, through the side door and into the canal. We could return and set off with Havor in the early hours.”

  “And if they have the place surrounded?” Ehrin said. “And anyway, we’ll be released soon enough, and then we’ll go with Havor.” Arrest was not to be feared—he was confident that they would be let off with a stiff fine, at worse a suspended jail sentence.

  “Let’s play along with the bastards,” he said to Kahran. “Let them think we’ve given in.”

  He placed his lamp on the ground, then raised his hands. “We’re here. Lower your weapons and we’ll come peacefully.”

  He stepped forward, and instantly he was surrounded by a swarm of militia, surprised and not a little shocked by the force with which they dragged him across the hangar. He had expected courteousness, at least, even when being arrested, not this casual brutality.

  Behind him, he could hear Kahran struggling and cursing in protest.

  He was hauled from the foundry and tossed into the back of a zeer-drawn prison wagon, and seconds later Kahran unceremoniously joined him.

  They untangled themselves in the darkness and sat upright as the zeer team started up and dragged the wagon along the ice canal.

  Despite himself, Ehrin was shaking with fear.

  * * * *

  NINE /// REVELATIONS

  1

  Only good fortune saved Sissy Kaluchek from being beaten unconscious by the alien militia. Joe was the first to be dragged from the wagon and set about with clubs and rifle butts. The rats came for Kaluchek next, and after the first blow—a glancing strike which ricocheted off the side of her head and crunched into the control panel of her atmosphere suit, positioned like an epaulette on her left shoulder—she lay face down on the ice-cold cobbles and feigned unconsciousness. It took an effort of will to quell her rage and tell herself not to fight back. In any other situation she would have fought like a tiger. Now she knew for certain that her life was at stake, and her act worked. After kicking her in the ribs, her tormentors moved on. Kaluchek heard Olembe shouting in fury, his grunts as he flailed out, and then the high yelping of the rat-like creatures as they dealt with his attack. She kept her eyes shut tight, petrified. She heard another crunch, and then Carrelli’s moans, and then an ominous silence. It was broken only, seconds later, by the sound of the quick, excited respiration of the rats—as she’d decided to call them, even though they were technically more like weasels, or even lemurs—and then a rapid exchange of yips.

  When her fear that they were going to be beaten to death diminished, she became aware of the cold. Until now her atmosphere suit had kept the planet’s Killing temperature at bay. Obviously the blow to its control panel had smashed the smartware system. Her immediate fear was not another attack from the rats, but the sub-zero temperature.

  Surely, she thought as she maintained a rigid position on the cobbles, the rats wouldn’t leave their captives out in the open air to freeze to death.

  She was answered minutes later when she felt hands grab her arms and legs. She was hoisted unsteadily and carried, the pinch of claws digging into her flesh making her want to cry out in pain and revulsion. The stench of the creatures was unpleasant too, a faecal reek that made her want to retch. She kept her eyes shut and flopped in their grip, as she imagined an unconscious body might, and felt herself borne from the cobbles and evidently into a building. The temperature increased, though only slightly, and her captors’ footsteps echoed along what might have been a stone-paved corridor. More than anything she wanted to open her eyes, but self-preservation urged caution. There would be time later to satisfy her curiosity.

  Her body tipped—she was being carried down steps—and then levelled out. Seconds later she heard the rattle of bars, and a squeal of hinges. On the way into the cell, her hip struck stone and it was all she could do to stop herself from crying out.

  They dropped her—what had she expected, that they might set her down with care?—and she managed to maintain stillness and silence as the others were carried into the cell. She heard them drop like sacks of meal, and then felt something strike her. It was an arm or a leg, its weight pressing unpleasantly across the small of her back.

  After a scuffle of retreating footsteps, a door clanged shut and was locked. She listened intently, but heard only the breathing of her colleagues. Cautiously she opened one eye—her right eye, nearest the straw that covered the stone-slabbed floor. She made out Joe against the far wall, face up, blood trickling from his forehead and down inside his faceplate. Next to him Carrelli lay on her side, her back to Kaluchek. That meant that it was Olembe who was pressing against her rump.

  She closed her eyes and found herself weeping.

  After a long minute, she opened her eyes and moved her head. They were in a barred cell, which fronted on to a short corridor. Across the corridor was a small timber door. She could see no sign of the rats.

  Olembe’s arm pressed down onto her, and now she could smell him, the reek of sweat which his suit had done nothing to lessen. She felt a second of involuntary panic, and the ludicrous anger provoked by the idea that even now, insensate, he was violating her.

  She prayed that there were no rats around to see that she was conscious, and squirmed from under the African. She shuddered, sitting up and backing away as if in panic. She reached Joe and lay down beside him, easing him into a more comfortable position and feeling his warmth strike through her suit.

  With Joe between herself and Olembe, she felt safe again.

  She reached a hand around Joe’s torso, felt the corrugation of his ribs beneath her hand. His heartbeat was even, his breathing regular.

  It was odd how she had felt an immediate attraction to Joe back at Berne. He was much older than her—fifteen years older, she calculated—and looked care-worn, with his long, lined face and greying hair. But she had warmed to his softly spoken, self-effacing manner, his easy smile and warm laugh. He had the demeanour of someone who had seen a lot in life, not all of it nice, but had struggled through and not let adversity defeat him.

  They had got along well in Berne, and since reawakening out here they had gravitated to each other. She felt for Joe Hendry what she had not let hers
elf feel for another man in a long time.

  She wondered if her sentiments had been returned, or if Joe had responded to her merely because he needed human contact after the death of his daughter.

  Now she held Joe to heir, comforted by his warmth in the freezing cell, his nearness, and stared over his chest at Olembe, face down on the straw and staring at her, she thought irrationally, even though his eyes were shut. She felt the weight of his arm again in her imagination, and a wave of revulsion swept over her.

  Why couldn’t the rats have hit Olembe a little harder and killed the bastard?

  She was weeping again, which she hated. It came over her like this, at the strangest times, and she hated it because it was a sign of weakness that ran counter to the tough-girl exterior she tried to adopt. She hated it, too, because it was an indication that, no matter how well she thought she had dealt with what had happened all those years ago, she knew that it was still to deal with—that she had to have some form of closure so that she could put the past behind her and face the future unburdened.

  And she hated it because every time she wept, Friday Olembe scored another point in his victory over her.

  She shivered, despite Joe’s warmth. She closed her eyes and dozed, and perhaps inevitably—with Olembe so much in her thoughts—she had a brief lucid dream of that night in LA.

  She came awake in quick panic. She had the dream often, so vivid it seemed she had time-travelled, and always she awoke feeling the same breathless panic she had experienced back then.

  She had been eighteen, and just in the big city from Nowheresville, Alaska, and still full of the wonder at the bright lights, the towering buildings, the bustle and vitality of LA. She had been wide-eyed and naive and innocent, but the city had taken all that away from her. Or rather a bastard called Olembe had done that.

  A sound from the corridor cut into her thoughts. She froze. The door opposite the cell was being unbolted. She closed her eyes, then opened the left one a slit and made out three armed guards slip into the corridor followed by another rat, this one dressed not in the tight-fitting black uniform of the others, but in a long red robe with a pendant—some kind of circle surrounded by triangles—hanging around its neck.

  The robed rat stepped forward cautiously and peered in through the bars, staring at the prisoners. It was impossible to read its expression—just as it was impossible to read human emotion into the face of an animal—but its jaw opened a little, and its eyes widened, and Kaluchek wondered if it was experiencing revulsion or amazement, or both.

  So this, perhaps, was a representative of the authority in whose hands their fate now rested.

  The rat remained staring at them for perhaps two minutes. At one point it gestured towards the closest human—which happened to be Olembe—and spoke to one of the militia. Kaluchek willed it to order the removal of Olembe...

  If the rats killed the African, she would be without the continual reminder of the past that his presence provoked. But she would be without, too, the opportunity to make Olembe face what he’d done to her back then.

  It was a paradox that the thought of confrontation filled Kaluchek with terror, for it was something she had dreamed about for years.

  The robed rat backed away from the bars, gestured with a clawed hand and shrieked at a guard. The guards opened the corridor door and the rat hurried out, trailing its robe, followed by the guards. The door thundered shut and Kaluchek breathed with relief.

  She looked across the cell at the unconscious Olembe, and felt revulsion.

  A little over twelve subjective years ago, after a month in LA, she had attended a fancy-dress party to celebrate the Democrats’ election to government. It had been a time of optimism—a last-ditch attempt to party in the face of global collapse. Kaluchek recalled feeling that perhaps there was hope in the election to power of a party whose foreign policy included the desire to ensure the continued survival of the world, rather than retreat into the isolationism that was Republican policy.

  So the party was a celebration of the future, which in retrospect struck Kaluchek as kind of perversely ironic.

  She had met a big guy dressed as the devil—and how ironic was that?—and they had chatted and moved out into the college garden. She’d gone to the party as Betsy Pig, a popular holovision character at the time, and kept the mask on while they chatted, for which she was eternally grateful.

  The devil had come on strong, nothing offensive at first, just a whisper in her sow’s ear that they could fuck each other senseless in the long grass beyond the pond... but Kaluchek had smiled uneasily beneath the mask and tried to change the subject. She didn’t have anyone at the moment, and wanted the first time to mean something... But the devil had pressed, taking her by her waist and pulling her to him, so that she could feel the hard ridge of his erection beneath his Lycra tights. And instead of having the desired effect of turning her on, she had felt sick, physically sick and psychologically sickened that the bastard was resorting to physical coercion.

  She had pulled away, unable to speak, and started walking back to the party. He’d yanked her to him with a physical force that was shocking, hit her across the head and dragged her into the copse that skirted the lake. She had tried to fight him off, but she was a tiny pig and he a strapping devil, and he’d just hit her across the face, again and again and again, until she was almost unconscious, almost... but still able to feel what he was doing as he thrust her into the grass and ripped off her leggings and raped her.

  And he left her bleeding and sobbing in the grass, feeling beyond what any definition of being violated might suggest, feeling abused to the core, and powerless, for how could any authority on earth do to him what he had done to her? And she felt, too, a shame—and hated herself for feeling this—a shame that she had been weak enough, stupid enough, to let it happen.

  Panic had made her gather her wits, pull on her leggings, and stagger away from the campus. She feared he might return, pull off her mask to identify his victim, or worse, drown her in the pond. So she went home and sobbed herself to sleep in a rage that took months to diminish.

  She told no one, but decided to deal with what had happened in her own way. Over the next few days she made enquiries, and learned that there had been two devils at the party that night. She effected a meeting with Satan number one, and discounted him immediately—a tiny Mexican student with poor English. Then, with a fear she found hard to control, she befriended a friend of Satan number two, and in time met the African nuclear engineering major, and knew from the tone of his voice, rich, superior, American accented, that this was her man, Friday Olembe.

  All she had to do then was to plan her revenge.

  Except, Olembe dropped out of college a month later—someone said he’d returned to West Africa— and Kaluchek had experienced an impotent renewal of her initial rage, anger that his flight had denied her revenge, closure.

  After that she had thrown herself into her studies, worked hard, to prove to herself that she could do it, and not let what the bastard had done blight her life and stop her succeeding. She’d studied around the clock, letting her social life go by the wayside, and ignored all attempts to date her by students who called her, behind her back, the Ice Queen, the Frigid Bitch of the cryonics lab.

  She’d graduated with honours, got a top job at a government research station on Luna, then suffered the disappointment of the recall to Earth eight years later. Almost immediately she landed a post with ESO in Berne, a top-secret assignment that offered hope to the blighted Earth: the colonisation of the stars.

  She had never forgotten about a devil called Olembe, but he no longer haunted her dreams. At one point, accidentally, she discovered that he was working on the N’Gombe fission plant near Abuja—she’d come across a paper of his while researching potential fuel sources for the starship’s cryo-hangars—and it was as if a door to her old life had been opened. Over the following week, the pain returned, and with it the realisation that he’d escaped punishm
ent and made a very comfortable life for himself back in Africa. Thoughts of revenge had surfaced, briefly, before common sense made her see reason.

  Then, just a year ago, she had missed out on the final selection for the Lovelockmission, and disappointment had hit her hard.

  In a moment of weakness, she had allowed the seed of hate to grow again, and it took root, became almost an obsession. She would go to Abuja, confront Olembe... During her most despairing and anger filled moments, she even dreamed of killing him.

  Then, months before the Lovelock was due to light out for the stars, terrorists had struck mission control, killing five of the six maintenance team. Amazingly, the tragedy became the opportunity for Kaluchek to fulfil her dreams. She was summoned to Director Bruckner’s plush office and asked if she still wanted to go to the stars. Light-headed, not believing her luck, she had said yes.

  Then, a couple of days later, an odd thing happened.