She barked contemptuously. “The truth? This is a lie, Ehrin, a godless illusion. It says in the Book of Books, chapter three, that the anti-god will confront the strayed with illusion, that the one true world is Agstarn, the one true faith the Church—”
“Superstition used by a corrupt and powerful Church to keep itself in power, Sereth. All lies. We’re like minuscule insects at the bottom of an ice pond, who by some miracle climb out and behold another order of reality. Some can’t take it and scamper back into the darkness. Others blink at the light and try to make sense of it.”
She cried out. “But God did not intend this! It’s an evil illusion.” She stood and approached him. “Can’t you see, Ehrin, you’re being lured into something against your will, by beings we don’t understand, for their own ends. I loved you, Ehrin. I don’t want to see you harmed...” She reached out, touched his coat with her claws.
It was a difficult thing to do, but he did it. He pushed her paw away and said, “There is no God. I am here because I want to be here. I am not being used. I want to know the truth. That and only that is what is important to me.”
She looked at him, and said at last, “More important to you than me, Ehrin?”
“Sereth, Sereth...” He looked into his heart, then, and knew the truth, that he no longer loved the woman who stood imploringly before him. His infatuation with her had been a manifestation of his other, younger self, a self blinded by the clouds of Agstarn, the blinkered social mores of a society ruled by deceit and lies.
He said, “I want to share the truth with you, Sereth. I want you to stop fearing, to open your eyes and apprehend the truth. The Church lied to us. Cannak and Hykell and all the others are evil.”
Sereth spat, “No! My father is a good man, a great—”
“Your father is a deluded fool blinded by ignorance.”
She attacked him then. She leapt at him and tried to scratch his face. He grasped her wrists, flung her back into a sunken sofa, where she sprawled sobbing and stared up at him.
“Your Church is evil and murderous and deserves to perish,” he said.
She cried, “I loved you, Ehrin!”
He moved to the exit. “And I loved you, Sereth.” He turned and hurried from the lounge, pulling the hatch shut behind him. Her sobs followed him all the way down the corridor.
He stopped at the top of the ramp, a sickness in his stomach. Much as he disliked the idea of hurting Sereth, he knew the pain he felt was provoked by his memories of the good times they had shared, the love. All that was over now, part of another life. It was odd, but beyond the pain he experienced a sense of achievement, a sense of freedom at being able at last to state his views. He felt suddenly liberated from everything that had held him back, as if Sereth had been the last connection to the lie that was Agstarn.
He looked around the clearing. The humans were kneeling on the ground beside the engine nacelle again, working with the tools they had found aboard the ship.
The big being saw him and gestured with something, and Ehrin saw that it was a square of metal that the humans were attempting to fashion into a cylinder. Ehrin joined them, fell into a squat and watched.
At one point he gestured to the tool container beside the humans, and lifted out a shaped wrench, which he thought more suited to the job.
The humans looked at each other, commented in their odd retarded language and stretched their lips. They took the wrench and continued their work.
Perhaps an hour later they had shaped the metal to their satisfaction, and then began the process of fixing it to the starboard manifold.
Ehrin squatted on the fin and watched them, and from time to time the humans looked up and stretched their lips and spoke to him. And Sereth had said these beings were evil.
The sun was setting by the time they finished the job and sealed the hatch. The humans spoke to each other again, and both of them stared up at the gaps in the canopy overhead.
They sat beside the food they had gathered, gestured Ehrin to join them, and passed him a large round fruit. He ate, watching these strange creatures as they chewed slowly, and listened to their odd words. He wished the other human was present, the being called Carrelli, so that he could take part in the conversation and tell these people about his world, and ask about their own home planet.
The sun went down and the light in the clearing dulled to the colour of old gold, and the humans talked on while they ate.
Ehrin thought about the deathship, and Agstarn, and how he might bring the truth to the people of his world.
* * * *
5
Kaluchek shifted uncomfortably as she sat, legs astride, behind Carrelli on the broad back of the slowly lumbering beast—sharls, Carrelli said they were called. “The sooner we arrive, the better,” Kaluchek said. “I’m getting saddle sore.”
Ahead, the insectile lizard who called himself Watcher Pharan slowed his mount so that he was riding alongside Kaluchek and Carrelli. He spoke in a rapid burst of flute-like sounds.
Carrelli nodded her understanding.
Kaluchek asked, “What was all that about?”
“He asked if we were comfortable. I assured him that we were... and asked how far we were from the Sleeper’s ship. He said that we should arrive in about five, six hours. Before nightfall anyway.”
Behind them were two slowly plodding beasts, each carrying six tiny quicksilver aliens. From time to time the aliens had taken it in turns to dismount, dart forward and scale the mountainous flank of Kaluchek’s sharl. They would sit staring at her and Carrelli for a few seconds, their large pink eyes nictitating unsettlingly from the bottom up, before dismounting again, fast as an eye-blink, and returning to their mounts.
Now Carrelli passed a fruit over her shoulder. She had been trying various berries and pod-shaped things all afternoon, picking themen passant from overhanging branches. “Try these. I’m sure they have a mildly soporific effect.”
“The best thing I’ve heard all day,” Kaluchek said, taking a handful of the berries. They were sweet, with a pungent acid aftertaste.
She was still sore at being separated from Joe. She would rather Olembe and Carrelli went in search of the sleeping alien, leaving her and Joe back at the ship to have some fun. But she saw things from Carrelli’s point of view. Olembe knew a bit about mechanics, and needed someone to help him repair the ship.
Last night they had halted at sunset and slept in a clearing pretty much identical to the one they had left. The golden moss had proved a surprisingly comfortable bed, and the temperature never dropped below a clement twenty-five Celsius, according to Carrelli’s atmosphere suit.
Kaluchek had lain on her back and stared through a rent in the canopy at a tier of the helix that swept overhead. She assumed it was the second tier, the one they had left, as the planet they were now on, Calique, was turning away from the sun and so was therefore facing down the spiral. She made out oceans glittering in the sunlight, and the alternate sections of massed land, which were individual planets. To think that down there somewhere was the place where they had very nearly lost their lives...
Then her thoughts had turned to Joe, and the miracle of her finding him, and she’d forgotten all about vengeful rats.
She’d turned to Carrelli and asked to use the radio on her atmosphere suit. She wanted to hear his voice, receive the assurance that he was okay. She explained that the damned rats had mashed hers.
But Carrelli had said it would be best to maintain radio silence. If the Church ship were still in the vicinity...
“Sure. Sorry,” Kaluchek said, feeling like a schoolgirl reprimanded by the head teacher.
Now, rocked by the swaying motion of the great turtle-like animal, sedated by the fruit Carrelli had given her, Kaluchek thought about Joe Hendry again. For the first time in years, she could look ahead, plan her life with someone. She saw a colony thriving on a world like this one, next door or not far away, and herself a vital part of it; married to Joe, maybe with kids
.
She sat upright, wondering if it was an effect of the fruit that was turning her head all mushy. She’d never given a thought to kids in the past, and she’d known Joe only a matter of weeks, give or take a thousand years...
Carrelli was saying, “...between you and Friday?”
“Mmm?”
“I said, why the antagonism between you and Friday?”
“Goes back a long way,” she replied, almost unconscious now.
“Tell me.”
“Rather not.”
“It’s getting to the point where your animosity is disturbing the rhythm of the team. I don’t want it to affect the outcome of the mission, Sissy.”
“Won’t,” she said. “It’s fine. I’ll ignore him from now on, ‘kay?”
Carrelli looked over her shoulder. “You promise?”
“Promise. Cross my heart.”
She felt suddenly woozy, and lay back on the leathery hide of the animal. Its broad back was accommodating. She could lie down, face up, without fear of falling off; her legs were bent awkwardly on either side of Carrelli, but the drug dulled her mind to any discomfort. She stared up at the scintillating spokes of sunlight spearing through the canopy for what seemed like hours. At one point she became aware of voices, alien voices, like duelling flutes, and opened an eye to see Watcher Pharan riding alongside, talking to Carrelli. She closed her eye and minutes later slipped into unconsciousness.
She woke with a start and sat up, disoriented, wondering where the hell she was. Then it came to her. She was riding a turtle on a planet called Calique with an Italian dyke and a lizardly insect named Watcher Pharan...
She wanted to be back with Joe, holding him in her arms. She laughed to herself. Here she was, in all probability one of only a few human beings left alive in the galaxy, on the mission of a lifetime, and all she could think about was the guy she loved. She didn’t know whether to commend or castigate herself.
The effects of the drug had worn off. She felt bright and alert. The sun was going down, laying a patina of honey over everything she could see.
Carrelli looked over her shoulder. “You back with us, Sissy?”
“That was a pretty strong... whatever it was. Where are we?”
Carrelli smiled. “Not far to go now. Another hour maybe.”
Kaluchek nodded, glancing ahead at the lumbering beast bearing the tiny form of Watcher Pharan. She nodded towards the alien. “What were you two talking about?”
“I was asking it about the Sleeper. What kind of alien it was, if it said anything about the Builders, their motives.”
“And?”
Carrelli shook her head. “All this happened long ago,” she said. “Thousands of years ago. There were no written descriptions of the Sleeper ever made—or rather, Watcher Pharan suspects there were at the time, but that these have been lost from the scriptures.”
“Lost? Sounds odd.”
“That’s what I thought, but I have a theory. The Sleeper is so alien, so relatively ugly to these people, that the Teachers—they’re almost like priests, you might say—suppressed the Sleeper’s description in order to make the Sleeper more mysterious, godlike.”
Kaluchek thought about it. “And where exactly do we fit into it? I mean, who do the Caliquans think we are? Some distant cousins of the Builders?”
Carrelli shook her head. “All they know is what they’ve interpreted from what was written down, that the Sleeper said that one day a race of beings would fall from the sky and come for him or her. It had to happen sooner or later, Sissy.”
“And what do they expect from us? I mean, what do they expect us to do when we come to the Sleeper?”
Carrelli shrugged. “That was hard to determine, Sissy. I think, but I’m not sure, that they credit us with motives that will remain always mysterious to them.”
“So what’s in it for them?” she asked.
“As far as I can make out, the act of leading us to the Sleeper is reward enough. I know this sounds corny, but they seem a wholly altruistic people.”
Kaluchek looked at the tiny alien perched upon the back of the leading animal. “They have a whole religion based around the Builders and the Sleeper?”
“They revere the Builders for obvious reasons, and I think they see the Sleeper as a holy relation of these godlike beings. For centuries the Caliquans have been watching the heavens for signs of our arrival.”
Kaluchek smiled. “What’ll we find, Gina?”
Carrelli was a second or two before answering. “Answers, perhaps. The reason the Builders built the helix? That would be rather nice.”
Kaluchek laughed. “Yeah. The stuff of fairy tales. We’ll probably come across nothing more than the rusted wreck of a spaceship.”
Carrelli glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “Do you know something, sometimes your cynicism reminds me of Friday.”
“Christ, don’t say that, Gina.” She shook her head. “It’s just that I’d rather expect the worst, and if it doesn’t happen... well then, that’s great.” Just like I never expected to come across Joe Hendry, she thought; just like I told myself that all men were bastards.
“Did you ask Pharan about the neighbouring worlds, Gina? Does he know if they’re inhabited?”
“I asked. He doesn’t know. They’ve had no contact with alien races, until the Sleeper came along, and then us. They’re a... I was about to say they’re a backward people, but that would be grossly unfair. They’re a race that have turned their back on materialism, on technology, and embraced the way of the spirit. So they haven’t developed vessels to explore the neighbouring worlds. They look inward, not outward.”
Kaluchek considered this. “And they haven’t been visited by their neighbours. That might mean the worlds on either side aren’t inhabited.”
“Or it might mean that they are, but their citizens do not have the means or the inclination to cross the oceans.”
“I just want to find a warm, Earthlike world where we can settle and live in peace without making a mess of it.”
The Italian smiled. “I’ll second that, Sissy.”
Minutes later the air was filled with shrill ululations, and on the leading animal Watcher Pharan raised his hands and called out, his cry taken up by those Caliquans riding behind. Kaluchek turned to see the insect-lizards dancing about on the backs of the stoic sharls, hands raised, great cerise eyes nictitating in what might have been religious euphoria.
Ahead, through a gap in the boles of the trees, she made out the object of their frenzied veneration.
The great ship had felled a whole swathe of forest with its forced landing, pushing down trees in an oddly beautiful, and symmetrical fan shape around the blunt end of its nose-cone. The forest had regrown around it, new trees giving the impression that the ship was imprisoned; custodial vines snaked over its surface, as if pinning it to the forest floor. The ship itself had suffered an extensive fire in the aftermath of the crash-landing, its silver carapace excoriated and blackened.
The Caliquans had erected a stairway to the open hatch of the ship, constructed from logs, the rustic architecture of the stairs contrasting with the ornate, almost baroque, lines of the ship.
An air of sanctity hung over the scene. Kaluchek wondered if she would have felt it had she not known of the Caliquans’ reverence of the ship and what lay within it.
They were entering an artificial clearing now, and over the tops of the surrounding trees Kaluchek could see that the sun was setting on another day— or rather, she thought, the planet itself was turning on its equatorial axis, bringing night to this hemisphere as it turned towards the outside of the helix.
The caravan halted. Watcher Pharan slipped from his mount and approached the stairway. He performed a series of gestures, so fast Kaluchek could hardly make them out, then knelt and lowered his face to the forest floor.
He stood and gestured, raising his arms high.
The other Caliquans left their sharls and hurried to either side of th
e stairs, creating a guard of honour down which Kaluchek and Carrelli would have to pass to board the ship.
“I’ve been thinking about the Sleeper,” Kaluchek said. “Surely the Builders would have noticed the loss of the ship and come for the Sleeper ages ago.”
Carrelli nodded. “The same thing occurred to me.”
“And?”
Carrelli said, “Perhaps they did. Perhaps the cold sleep unit—or the ship’s equivalent—is empty.”
“And the Caliquans have been venerating an empty casket all along?”
Carrelli smiled. “Couldn’t that be true of all religions?”
Kaluchek shook her head. “Maybe... But I like the Caliquans. I find it sad.”
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