Brown, Eric

by Helix [v1. 0] [epub]

  Hendry said, “Which is?”

  “Which is,” said the light, “the ability, the understanding, to live with their world, their planet, in balance and harmony, with a reciprocal understanding of mutual needs. Worlds are holistic systems that require respect and compassion. Again and again we discovered materialistic races with no comprehension of this universal truth.”

  “So you—” Kaluchek began.

  “It was too vast a task to monitor and aid the many races spread across the face of the galaxy. We knew we had the wherewithal, the experience, to shepherd nascent races through their times of trouble, to even influence their philosophies in a bid to guide them to the truth. But our resources were stretched. We could aid only a dozen or so localised races, which would have been better than aiding none at all, but still far from satisfactory. Then our engineers suggested a radical solution.”

  “The helix,” Kaluchek said.

  “It was the perfect answer, the means of storing, if you like, thousands of different worlds in a compact series of self-contained environments. For centuries we planned the construct, and over millennia went about building it, and populating it as we went.”

  Hendry shook his head. “How did you... populate it? Invite races to relocate, kidnap them?”

  “We had various methods of saving races from themselves. Some we simply took from their planets without their knowledge, races locked in conflict who would have resisted our interference; it was a simple task to translocate viable communities like this, pre-technological races who within a few generations would have supplanted memories of their homeworld with myths. Other, more sophisticated races we contacted by other means, consulting enlightened individuals, building a core community of like-minded people to found colonies devoted to non-materialistic coexistence with their new environments. Yet others, like yourselves, we seeded with—I suppose you might call them memes, ideas, philosophies—and then encouraged the technology to enable them to find the helix themselves.”

  Hendry said, “The reason astronomers didn’t detect the helix back on Earth—”

  “We... you might say we masked its presence, cloaked its luminosity, until we judged the time to be right.”

  “So our arrival here,” Kaluchek said, “was... intended?”

  “That is so. Many things might have stood in the way of your reaching the helix. Thanks to subversives amongst your race, you almost failed to make it.”

  “And if we had perished in space, as the terrorists intended?” Hendry asked.

  “Then,” the light responded in a regretful tone, “we would have mourned your passing, moved on and looked for another race suitable for our requirements.”

  A long silence followed these words. Hendry glanced at Kaluchek. He turned to the light and said, “Suitable? What do you want from us?”

  “Over millennia, we have employed races to... I suppose you might call it govern the helix, and the various races upon it. Govern, guide, assist, call it what you will... as well of course as maintaining the technical integrity of the structure.”

  “Like the Sleeper we found in the rainforest on Calique?” Kaluchek said.

  “He was a Maerl, a race we employed thousands of years ago.”

  Hendry shook his head in wonder at the vast scale of things that the figure in the light mentioned so casually. “But what happened to the Maerl? Why did they cease to govern?”

  The light said, again with the suggestion of a smile, “All races pass on, attain an understanding with the universe—you might call it an empathy or union—which then predisposes them to turn their thoughts to philosophies and modes of existence other than the materialistic. They no longer have the inclination to maintain technological systems, or to govern. They evolve, you might say. The Maerl was one such race. Ho-lah-lee was another. Fifteen thousand years ago, for three millennia, they maintained the helix.”

  The light paused, and the silence lengthened, and Hendry considered the idea of the human race, so recently responsible for the destruction of its own homeworld, being handed the task of monitoring others.

  He gestured. “Are we suitable?” he asked. “I would have thought—”

  The light cut in. “You are suitable now,” it said gently. “It took you millennia, and you almost perished along the way, but thanks to your inherent... call it survivability... and with a little assistance from ourselves, you have achieved a level of understanding whereat we are happy to instruct you in the governance of the helix.”

  In awe, Kaluchek said, “Gaia... It was you, you gave us the idea of Gaia.”

  The light almost laughed at this. “Gaia was always present, a universal truth. We merely gave you the intellectual wherewithal to perceive the truth.”

  “The governance of the helix,” Hendry repeated. “The task must be... almost impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible, my friend. It will take time, and effort, and there will be failures along the way, but we will always be here to assist.”

  Kaluchek said, “But... you no longer wish to undertake the task yourselves?”

  The light pulsed. “We are no longer able to undertake the task. We long ago ascended from the state of the physical to something higher, something exalted. In time, and with effort, other races upon the helix will ascend with us. It is destined. It is the way of the universe.”

  Hendry said, “How many races exist on the helix?”

  “At present, a little over six thousand, though there is room for many thousands more. Over the millennia, they will arrive.”

  “We need to transport the colonists from the first tier, find a suitable world,” Kaluchek said.

  “This will be arranged. We have ships, and this world is available for your use.”

  Hendry looked at Ehrin, his muzzle working as he spoke. The light explained, “I have answered all his questions, reassured him that he will return to his people and bring enlightenment to their clouded world. With your help, of course.”

  Kaluchek said, “And now?”

  “Now,” said the light, “you will return to the plain, and face the future, when a new era for humanity will begin.”

  They were the last words Hendry and Kaluchek heard the Builder pronounce, for the light surrounding the figure diminished, flickered and died, and once more Carrelli stood before them, eyes closed, before slumping to the floor.

  * * * *

  6

  Hendry and Kaluchek helped Carrelli to her feet between them and, each taking a shoulder, walked her from the chamber, seemingly passing through the wall of solid bronze and once more into the vast base of the ziggurat. Ehrin trotted alongside, a hand protectively clutching Carrelli’s leg. A thousand amphibian faces gazed up at them as they emerged, and the Ho-lah-lee parted to allow them through.

  Dazed, Carrelli said, “What happened? What happened in there?”

  Kaluchek laughed. “Where to begin?” she asked.

  They passed from the ziggurat and onto the plain, and halted in shock at what they saw there. Ehrin uttered a pained yelp of terror and Hendry felt an icy fist of dread punch him in the gut. “Oh, Christ,” Kaluchek said quietly to herself.

  Perhaps a kilometre away, hovering over the plain, was the Church ship. After the radiant white light of the chamber, the black ship seemed to suck all light and hope from the air around it.

  Hendry’s first instinct was to dive back into the chamber, but the sound that filled the air stopped him.

  It was an amplified series of barks, issuing from the ship. Ehrin stepped forward, muzzle open in consternation.

  Kaluchek looked at Carrelli. “What did they say?”

  Carrelli cocked her head, listening. She said, “They want to know where our ship is. They’re... they’ve told Ehrin that they have Sereth. They say they will put her to death if Ehrin doesn’t tell them the whereabouts of the ship.”

  Ehrin stepped forward, both fists raised as if in rage against the ship and its crew.

  Carrelli barked at him. They
conferred, and Ehrin turned back to the ship and barked at the top of his lungs.

  Kaluchek said, “What did you say?”

  “I told him to ask for assurance of Sereth’s safety. He will tell the Elder—a high Church official—that he will divulge the whereabouts of the ship only if Sereth is released and returned to him.”

  Ehrin came to the end of his speech and waited, staring up at the ship.

  The response was slow in coming. When it came, at last, booming out over the plain, Carrelli translated.

  “They have agreed. They will release Sereth. They have warned Ehrin that if he does not keep his promise, then they will kill all of us.”

  Kaluchek shook her head. “But if he tells them where the ship is—”

  Carrelli glanced at her. “I thought you and Olembe were mortal enemies, Sissy?”

  Kaluchek glanced at Hendry. “We were,” she said in a whisper.

  “Don’t worry about the ship, or Olembe,” Carrelli said.

  Ehrin barked again, and started forward. From the underside of the Church ship, a column emerged, for all the world like the ovipositor of some stinging insect. Seconds later a tiny figure dropped from it, picked herself up and hurried across the plain towards them.

  Ehrin moved to meet her and they embraced in the shadow of the ship.

  The Elder’s barks rolled over the plain. Carrelli said, “He’s demanding Ehrin’s side of the bargain, now.”

  Ehrin looked up, still holding Sereth, and called out to the Church ship.

  Carrelli smiled.

  “What did he say?” Hendry asked.

  “What I instructed him to say,” Carrelli replied. “That our ship is on the shore of the planet directly across the sea from the ziggurat.”

  Kaluchek shook her head in mystification. “But you could have told them anywhere...”

  Carrelli laughed. “It doesn’t matter, Sissy,” she said, “because the ship is no longer there.”

  “Then where—?” Hendry began.

  He was answered a split-second later when the radio on his atmosphere suit crackled into life and Olembe yelled at them, “Get back into the ziggurat, fast!”

  Carrelli barked to Ehrin and Sereth, and they began running.

  Hendry grabbed Kaluchek and almost dragged her back into the arched entrance. He glanced over his shoulder. Carrelli was right behind them. Behind her, still fifty metres from the entrance, Ehrin and Sereth were desperately sprinting towards them.

  Hendry dived into the ziggurat and rolled to his left, activating his radio and shouting, “Olembe! How the hell—?”

  “Carrelli called me an hour ago!” the African replied. “Now shut it while I sort the bastards!”

  An hour ago Carrelli had been transformed by the white light, controlled, as she had been for who knew how long, by the Builders. Was it they, then, who had summoned Olembe?

  His thoughts were interrupted by the deafening crack of an explosion. He risked a glance outside. A ray from the ship had pulverised the ground a matter of metres behind the scampering figures of Ehrin and Sereth. They fell, scrabbling, and picked themselves up. Hand in hand and yelping with fear, they sprinted towards the ziggurat. Another ray lanced from the ship, striking the metalwork beside the entrance with a deafening clang. Hendry yelled at them to dive and roll, before a third ray accounted for them. Seconds later they reached the ziggurat and fell to the ground, and Hendry made a grab and pulled them to safety.

  The third ray struck the body of the ziggurat above them, and Hendry was aware of the irony. Ehrin’s people, however long ago, had been saved from themselves by the Builders, and now they were unwittingly attempting to destroy their saviours.

  Another explosion shook the edifice. Hendry imagined the towering blocks of the building tumbling down around them. He was about to grab Kaluchek and drag her outside when another explosion, this one many times louder than the first two, rent the air. A great actinic flash blinded him. He rolled over, clinging to Kaluchek, who grabbed him and moaned against his chest.

  He opened his eyes and stared through the entrance. The view was at once devastating, and oddly beautiful. He thought his vision had been slowed, or some processing function of his ravaged mind retarded, for the manta-ray shape of the Church ship was tilting to starboard in a great ball of flame and sliding from the air, impacting with the ground in slow motion. It crumpled, imploding in on itself, as if passing through the very surface of the plain, and all the while subsidiary explosions were blooming about its falling carcass, the sight followed seconds later by a cannonade of detonations.

  Hendry rolled back into the cover of the entrance. Beside him, Carrelli was clutching Ehrin and Sereth beneath her arms like children.

  He activated his radio. “Olembe? Olembe? For Chrissake...”

  There was no reply.

  Had the mad bastard, unable to fathom the alien weapons system, rammed the ship with his own? It would have been a gesture unsurprising from someone as bellicose as Olembe.

  “You don’t think...?” Kaluchek began.

  “I can’t reach him. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  The explosions outside had ceased. All he could hear now was the frantic sound of burning. All around them, curious Ho-lah-lee were climbing to their feet, wandering through the entrance and viewing the aftermath of the confrontation.

  Hendry stood, pulling Kaluchek to her feet. Her atmosphere suit was torn, her face dirty and bruised, and she had never looked so wonderful.

  They stepped cautiously through the arch and stopped to look upon a scene of absolute destruction.

  The ship was a scattered mass of molten slag, white hot in places, trailing palls of smoke like the pennants of a defeated army.

  Hendry looked among the debris for any sign of the wreckage of the smaller ship.

  Carrelli was staring up at the surface of the ziggurat, and smiling. Hendry followed her gaze. The bronze edifice appeared pristine, untouched.

  Kaluchek gasped, released his hand and stepped forward. Hendry stared through the drifting smoke, to the plain beyond the wreckage.

  There, sitting on the grass with its nose-cone excoriated by the explosions, was the golden ship. As he watched, filled with an odd euphoria, the ramp opened and Friday Olembe staggered out. He slumped onto the ramp, his back against the entrance, and just about managed to lift a hand in greeting.

  Kaluchek turned to Hendry. “Joe, I’ve got to tell him. Apologise, okay?”

  He smiled, and touched her cheek. He watched her turn and walk away. She paused before the wreckage of the Church ship, then gazed through the rising smoke towards Friday Olembe, who was climbing to his feet. She set off again, around the debris, to make her necessary and long delayed reparations.

  Hendry sat down, his back against the warm bronze of the ziggurat, next to Carrelli, Ehrin and Sereth. Through the smoke drifting from the wreckage, he watched the two small, human figures face each other. Seconds elapsed. They were speaking. Olembe reached out. Kaluchek stepped forward, and they embraced.

  * * * *

  TWELVE /// THE TIME OF CHANGES

  1

  Ehrin shivered in the doorway and watched a procession of zeer-trucks make their way along the ice canal, waiting for a break in the traffic so that he could cross to the lighted building opposite. He braced himself against the cold, his teeth chattering. After the heat of the upper tiers, the sub-zero temperatures of his homeworld struck him as alien and inimical. He thought of the rainforests of Calique, and then the warm plains of the homeworld of the Builders, and something ached within him like nostalgia.

  The humans had set him down in the mountains surrounding Agstarn two nights ago, promising that they would do what they could to help him. What that might be, Ehrin could not envisage. The overthrow of the Church would be a long and weary business, prone to failure, but he had contacts in the city who were just as opposed to the Church’s rule as he was.