Brown, Eric

by Helix [v1. 0] [epub]

  He strode from the room and the timber door shut solidly behind him.

  “Two different races of aliens?” Ehrin could not keep the humour from his tone. “Isn’t that an embarrassment of riches?”

  “I wonder what brings these second aliens to Agstarn?” Kahran said under his breath.

  “Perhaps they heard about the famed hospitality and tolerance of the Church.”

  Kahran smiled. “No wonder Cannak is desperate to learn the truth, Ehrin! Imagine his fear— everything he has ever held as true, subverted by the aliens’ arrival. Oh, isn’t it wonderful?”

  The door rattled open. Suddenly serious, Kahran said, “Say nothing, my friend.”

  Two black uniformed Inquisitors strode into the cell, followed by Cannak. The Inquisitors’ bulk seemed to fill the chamber. Ehrin wondered if they had been selected because of their height and girth. Perhaps they were specially recruited from the tribesmen of the plains.

  His idle speculation ended when Cannak said, “Well, gentlemen, have you had time enough to reconsider your obdurate stance?”

  Kahran said, “What do you think, Elder?”

  Cannak paced, around and around. The Inquisitors had taken up positions on each side of the door, staring straight ahead as if the prisoners did not exist.

  Cannak said, “Did you make contact with aliens on the ice plains on the evening of the 5th of St Belknap’s month 1280?”

  Ehrin said, “We saw no one. We returned to the dirigible after seeing nothing of—”

  “When you rendezvoused with the aliens, what were your instructions, and what do the aliens want on Agstarn?”

  “Go to hell, Cannak!” Kahran cried.

  Instantly Cannak said, “Start on this one!”

  Ehrin closed his eyes. He heard the Inquisitors move from the door, and step around him. Then he heard the sound of ripping material, and Kahran’s feeble grunting as he tried to resist their attention.

  Tears had formed in his eyes, and he wanted to raise his hands to dash them away. The manacles prevented movement. He opened his eyes, allowing the tears to track down the fur of his cheeks.

  Cannak had taken a small folding chair and placed it before the door. He sat down, positioning himself so that Ehrin was between him and Kahran as the Inquisitors went about their business.

  He addressed Ehrin in little more than a murmur. “My friends will perform upon the person of Kahran Shollay a procedure known in their trade as the Devil’s Wings. Put simply, two lateral vents are opened in the back of the subject, between the second and third ribs on each side of the spine. A rib is then removed, snapped off, so allowing the entry of an expert hand which takes first the right lung and pulls it through the opening so that it resembles, with a little aesthetic licence, the wings of a devil. It is, I am assured, an exquisitely painful process. The subject is conscious all the while and, when the second lung is pulled through the ribcage, and punctured on the broken rib along with the first lung, death is assured but slow in arriving. A suitable end for the godless, my friends... However, if at any stage it comes over you to cease your lies, you will survive with your lives.” He paused, then, and nodded to the Inquisitors.

  Kahran yelled, “We know nothing, you bastards!” and Ehrin could only close his eyes and sob.

  Kahran screamed as the Inquisitors sliced the flesh between his ribs. Ehrin heard a snap then, like the breaking of a branch, and Kahran’s pained cries saved Ehrin from hearing the second break.

  Cannak raised a hand, a signal for the Inquisitors to pause there.

  “We can bring an end to this business if you simply admit your complicity...”

  Kahran said, between racked breaths, “Cannak, may you burn slowly in your hell—”

  Kahran screamed. Ehrin heard a slushing, liquid sound—for all the world like the noise his father’s hand had made when removing the giblets from the feast-day fowl—and then an odd rushing of air as Kahran’s lung was pulled out and punctured on the shattered rib. The old man yelled, and then panted, and then coughed up what sounded like fluid, and Ehrin could only close his eyes and vow one day to kill Cannak with his bare hands.

  He opened his mouth to say something, concoct some story about collusion with aliens that would stay Kahran’s torture for a while—but too late.

  Kahran’s cries ended abruptly.

  He sensed movement behind him, as the Inquisitors stood up. He heard their murmured report to Cannak, “Dead.”

  Cannak regarded the Inquisitors with rage. “You fools. You claimed that death would come slowly!”

  Ehrin could not make out the Inquisitor’s murmured reply. Something turned to ice within him, and then rage. He leapt forward, attempting to get at Cannak, hurt him before the Inquisitors did their business on him too.

  The chair held solid, restraining him.

  Cannak merely smiled, then said, “You are either supremely foolish, Mr Telsa, or entirely innocent. But I don’t think it’s the latter.” He hesitated, then said, “Very well, there is another way we can go about this. We will evince the truth from the aliens, shall we?” He nodded to the Inquisitors. They came into view and unfastened the manacles, hauling Ehrin to his feet and dragging him towards the door.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Where else, Mr Telsa, but to your friends? We will have them tell us whether or not you are guilty as charged.”

  He was bundled from the cell, but not before squirming in his captors’ grip and looking back at Kahran’s body. His lungs spilled from his shattered back, and his head had slumped forward in death.

  The Inquisitors dragged him down a long corridor, turned into another, his feet trailing, their fingers digging into the flesh of his armpits. He could feel their desire to do to him what they had done to Kahran, their frustration at this interruption of their bloody business.

  He thought of Sereth, then, and had the irrational urge to shout at her, to scream that this was the logical extension of her Church’s authoritarian rule.

  They halted outside a tall timber door. Two guards stationed beside it turned and shot six bolts, then stood back with rifles at the ready as the Inquisitors kicked open the door and pushed Ehrin across the threshold.

  They followed him inside, along with Elder Cannak, and the door was secured behind them.

  They were in a short corridor, on the other side of which was a barred cell.

  Ehrin had expected to find that the aliens were like Havor—having only Havor as a guide to the appearance of aliens—but in that he was very wrong.

  In the cell before him were four huge creatures, their bald flesh an unnatural pink—all except one, who was as black as Havor. They were perhaps half as tall again as his people, and were watching him with small, animal-like eyes. But the most offensive thing about these creatures was their stench, like turned zeer milk and faeces combined.

  One of the aliens, a little less pink than the other two, though not as dark as the fourth, stepped forward and stared through the bars. It had long fur upon its head, and tiny, ugly facial features.

  Then, to Ehrin’s amazement, the creature spoke to him in the language of his people.

  * * * *

  3

  Sereth Jaspariot sat on a window seat in her father’s study and stared out at the winter-gripped city. The grey was darkening, and the mansion buildings on the far side of the street were slowly merging with the night.

  She jumped and turned at a sound from across the room. Her father had stopped on the threshold, surprised at finding her in his sanctum. She wanted to tell him that this was where she had come as a little girl, when awoken by frightening dreams. The solidity of his books, and what they represented, had always calmed her.

  Her father, never tall even in his prime, looked even shorter tonight. He seemed slumped, shrunken within himself.

  “Sereth, my dear.” He limped across the room, embraced her with frail arms and slumped into his armchair. She saw, then, that he was weeping; globular tears had
caught in the fur of his cheeks.

  “Father?”

  “I was at the penitentiary, Sereth. I sought out Governor Kaluka and asked him if the vile rumours were just that, scandalmongering by the lower orders bent on sedition. How could alien beings descend from the sky and step upon God’s ground?”

  She knelt before him and laid a hand on his lap, as thin as the cloth-covered spar of a scarecrow’s limb. “Father?”

  “Kaluka blustered at first, but I saw through him. At last he admitted it. Four strange beings, animals, had indeed been captured beyond the western mountains.”

  Sereth opened her mouth, but words were beyond her.

  “Animals?” she said at last. “Not intelligent beings?”

  “Animals in that they resembled nothing I had ever seen before; but they were undeniably intelligent.”

  Sereth gasped. “You saw them?”

  “When Kaluka admitted that he had them locked up in the western tower, I demanded as the prison chaplain to visit the creatures. Being a mere civilian, he dared not deny an official of the Church.”

  Sereth shook her head. “But did not God say that we of Agstarn were the chosen ones, that no others beside ourselves should be granted the gift of sentience?”

  He returned her stare bleakly. “So it is written, my child.”

  “And yet you saw these creatures with your own eyes?”

  “I entered their cell. They were... they were appallingly ugly, Sereth. For the most part they were furless, other than for tufts of hair upon their heads. Three of them were as pink as a newborn’s anus, the other as black as night. But most distressing was their size; Sereth they were fully half again as tall as ourselves.”

  She swallowed; she felt nauseous, as if teetering on the edge of a bottomless precipice.

  “Did you speak with these creatures?”

  He shook his head. “I admit that I was speechless in their company, though they did communicate amongst themselves in deep, dull tones.”

  “They did not attempt to harm you?”

  “They were peaceable, and had been throughout their incarceration.”

  She shook her head. “But they might have been animals, still. What evidence have you that they were sentient, reasoning beings?”

  “They wore clothing, my dear, strange garments embedded with tiny machines, the like of which we have never seen before. The Governor claimed that they appeared to be even more technologically advanced than ourselves.”

  Sereth stood quickly and walked to the window. She thought of Ehrin, and how he would no doubt delight in this news, and she silently cursed him.

  She turned to her father. “And what will happen to these creatures? The Church won’t let it be known that such beings exist, surely?”

  “Of course not. My guess is that they’ll be executed as godless heathens, their carcasses donated to the Church medical researchers for dissection. But Hykell has yet to decide upon their fate.”

  She was silent for a long time after that, watching her father as he dabbed at his damp nose with a soiled handkerchief and blotted his eyes.

  “Does that make the Church right, father? Does that mean the word of God can be trusted?”

  He looked up. “I beg your—”

  “I’m sorry, father, but if alien beings come to Agstarn, intelligent aliens, then what of the veracity of the Book of Books?”

  He held his head in his hands, his expression woeful. “It has... has yet to be decided. The Book is but the received wisdom of the Lord, communicated through the prophet Kahama. But Kahama was but mortal, and prone to error. This visitation does not, cannot, call into question the other tenets of the Book of Books and the Church’s wise teachings.”

  She wanted to believe his words, but the manner of their delivery, the very state of her once proud father, suggested that even he did not believe what he was saying.

  She felt as if her world were falling apart.

  She thought of her fiancé, and how much she wanted to feel safe in his arms just then. “And Ehrin? With Hykell so busy with the aliens, I doubt he will have decided on Ehrin’s fate, father?”

  He looked up, and his expression was pained.

  “What?”

  “Hykell made his pronouncement late this afternoon, just after the aliens were imprisoned. It was Velkor Cannak’s doing. He is convinced that Ehrin and his friend Kahran Shollay had a hand in the arrival of the aliens while out on the plains. Apparently they heard the arrival of an airborne craft, which they said was a meteorological effect at the time, and they went out to investigate.”

  “But I was there, father. They certainly had nothing to do with any alien visitors!”

  “Cannak claims otherwise. At any rate, Hykell ordered the arrest of Ehrin and Kahran at first dark. I didn’t want to distress you further, Sereth.”

  She could not stop her tears. “Have the militia been for them yet?” She moved to the door.

  “Sereth, don’t be rash. There is nothing you can do.”

  “I want to be with the man I love, father. I want to prove his innocence.”

  He called her name again, but she ignored him and slammed the door. She ran down the stairs, almost slipping in her haste, and snatched her skates from the table in the hall. She spent a long minute pulling them on and fumbling with the laces, before tottering upright and dragging open the door. The icy blast that greeted her had the effect of clearing her mind and stiffening her resolve. She would get to Ehrin before the militia, and if needs be she would be arrested with him.

  She skated north at speed, to the edge of town where Ehrin had his grim place of work, the long mill building of which he was so proud. Tears came to her eyes as she thought of him, and froze on the fur of her cheeks. When she dashed her hand across her face, the frozen tears fell through the air like tiny jewels.

  On the ice canal leading to the foundry, she saw in the distance an approaching wagon drawn by a team of zeer. She passed alongside it, wondering as she did so if it could be a prison wagon—and then dismissed the thought. Ehrin and Kahran were respected citizens, and would not be made to suffer the indignity of being hauled off to jail like drunken hoodlums. They would be approached by a High Church official, surely, and politely requested to accompany him to the council chambers...

  She came to the foundry entrance and was about to haul on the bell-pull when she noticed that the big double doors were standing ajar. Her heart leapt. At this time of the evening, with the shift over and the workers gone home, the doors should be locked.

  Fearfully she stepped inside.

  The vast cavern of the foundry was in darkness, and the silence was intimidating. Orienting herself and crossing towards the stairs, stepping carefully lest she bark her shins on the anvils and girders she knew made an obstacle course of the factory floor, she came to the wooden steps without mishap and hurriedly ascended to the offices, and from there to Ehrin’s attic rooms.

  “Ehrin!” she called optimistically as she pushed open the door. She stood on the threshold, staring about her, heart tolling like the bell for evening prayers. A lamp burned beside his favourite armchair, and his books and papers littered various desks and tables. The room spoke so much of Ehrin’s character that his absence was cruelly emphasised.

  She thought back to their last meeting, that afternoon. She had warned him of his impending arrest, so he would have been a fool to remain where a Church official would easily find him. Therefore he had taken her words to heart and hidden himself.

  But where, she asked herself as she hurried from the attic and tapped down the stairs. The offices offered no place of concealment, and while he might conceivably have hidden himself somewhere in the vast foundry, a more obvious place would be the hangar... It came to her suddenly that he might even have taken flight aboard one of his skyships, but she dismissed this. Even someone as headstrong and recalcitrant as Ehrin would not risk flight when the charges against him were so meagre.

  Having said that, if Velkor Can
nak thought him in league with the aliens...

  But how would Ehrin know of Cannak’s suspicions, she asked herself as she moved carefully across the foundry towards the vast hangar doors.

  Then it came to her that the only reason he would have to take flight in a skyship would be if he were guilty, if he had indeed, that night out on the ice plain, come across aliens whom he had aided and abetted.

  She laughed nervously. She was being fanciful. She had more faith in Ehrin than that; a stubborn radical he might be, but stupid he was not.

  As she crept through the darkness, the thought of aliens sent a chill up the fur of her spine. She felt, unaccountably, under threat. From a workbench she fumbled for something with which she might arm herself, and found a short, sharp chisel, which fitted snugly into her palm and offered reassurance disproportionate to its size.