by P A Vasey
NINETEEN
“How the hell is it so hot this side?”
Matt Hamilton rubbed his face, already dripping with sweat, and blew out his cheeks.
Stillman and Hamilton were sitting next to me on the grass, jackets off and wafting their caps in front of their faces to cool off. The storm was gone and a warm breeze ruffled my hair, bringing with it the suggestion of a balmy day. It was hard to comprehend the hypnagogic quality experiencing this in an Antarctic environment.
On the other side of the barrier, the snowstorm continued, flakes melting on contact. I could just make out Eddie Wong staring in at us, wide-mouthed. Harvey was kneeling over the injured marine, applying a field dressing to the side of his head.
I shrugged out of my anorak and gloves and stood up to stretch. Then, and only then, I turned to face the object. The thing. The … alien structure.
Or whatever I should call it.
Jagged black edges pointed and indented upward, clefts in shadows dark and ominous. I walked the ten yards or so to its nearest edge and absent-mindedly ran a hand over the shiny burnished surface, lustrous as a gemstone. The ambient temperature increased the closer I got, but its surface was cool to the touch, in fact almost icy cold compared to the air. There was a gentle vibration of what I guessed was some kind of machinery: the low amplitude thrum reminded me of the purring of a big cat.
I moved slowly, running my hand along the side. My reflection was visible in its mirror-like surface.
My thoughts were blank: a strange occurrence, as normally they were twisting and turning and generally suffocating me with their whispers.
“What are you?” I said softly.
A voice, feminine and mellifluous, came out of nowhere. “It is a self-replicating machine that is autonomously capable of reproducing itself using the raw materials found in its local environment.”
Walking toward me was a woman of average height, very pale, with a shaved skull, angular features and wearing what resembled a white hospital gown.
“Kate …” shouted Hamilton, leaping to his feet. He’d drawn his gun and was pointing it at the woman in a textbook FBI two-handed stance. Stillman also had her gun out, but was holding it by her side.
“Weapons will not be necessary, Agent Hamilton,” she said. “We brought you here to be safe.”
“Stay where you are,” he warned.
I tried to concentrate, to focus my thoughts, try to get some feel for what she was. What IT was. But there was nothing. However, I didn’t get any bad vibes. No sense of the Vu-Hak. She wasn’t trying to infiltrate my head. This was something different.
“It’s all good, Matt,” I said, waving him off.
The woman approached me but stopped a few yards away. Up close, her features were waxy and baby-like, no lines or blemishes: showroom-dummy perfection.
“Why’d you leave the others outside?” I said.
She folded her arms and her mouth twitched into a half smile. A cold chill blossomed within my chest and the familiar feeling of spiders running around inside my skull appeared. My vision blurred as her voice reverberated in my mind.
It is not safe out there.
I rubbed my eyes and blinked, trying to clear my head. Hamilton and Stillman were frozen in place, like a movie that had been paused. Hamilton was still pointing the gun. Stillman was looking angrily into space, mouth open. The woman walked over and disarmed them both. She flipped the guns around and handed them to me, like she was Wyatt Earp in Tombstone.
“We need to talk, you and I,” she said, this time aloud.
“Release my friends, then we talk.”
“Don’t worry about them; it’s nothing permanent, I assure you.”
She waved a hand at the object and bubbling appeared on the surface as if something was coming to the boil. A protuberance appeared, rapidly enlarging and taking the shape of a couch, which dropped soundlessly to the grassy floor.
“Are you Vu-Hak?” I said, more calmly than I felt.
She hesitated, and then blinked slowly. “Of course not.”
“Then who or what are you?”
She walked over to the couch and sat down. She looked up at me and patted it, encouragingly. I remained standing.
“Are you going to answer my question?” I said.
She smiled and said, “How did you get here?”
“Not until you tell me who you are,” I insisted, starting to get angry.
Would you prefer I read your mind to get this information? You will not enjoy the experience.
I laughed. “I’ve been there before. Do your worst.”
She stared at me and her face creased, awkwardly, into what I assumed was an attempt at a smile. It seemed plastic, lines in the wrong place, like a prototype of what a face smiling should look like. She folded her arms in her lap and looked up at me. “Come on, I don’t bite.”
I moved closer and tested the surface of the seat with my hands. It gave way, reassuringly, and had the texture of an old leather settee.
Without taking my eyes off her, I sat.
“Good,” she said. “Now we can talk.”
“Not until you release my friends.”
For a brief moment her eyes closed and she cocked her head sideways, like a dog hearing something out of the range of human hearing. Then her eyes opened lazily and I caught the last vestiges of a greenish glow.
“Very well,” she murmured.
Stillman and Hamilton came to life, as abruptly as if someone had just pressed play. Hamilton quizzically looked at his empty hand and then over at Stillman who was already stomping toward us. I guess the sight of me and this strange woman sitting on a couch protruding from the side of a spaceship (which is now what I thought it was) may have appeared jarring, to say the least.
“Who’s your new friend?” she growled.
The woman/thing facing me looked up at Stillman. Her eyes were the deepest black, but with speckles of green phosphorescence flickering from right to left, not quite rhythmically, but near enough. Even sitting, she was completely still and calm. There was no extra movement, no twitching or glancing away. A statue.
“You’re not human, are you?” Stillman said, slowly.
The woman returned her gaze to me and it was instantly unsettling. She looked at me, through me, past me, like she’d seen something fascinating two inches behind my eyes. I waited for the voice to appear my head again, but this time she spoke aloud. “No, but I am not your enemy.”
“You’re a machine,” Stillman said tightly.
The woman glanced up at her, a mischievous smile flickering at the side of her mouth. “You mean like a robot?”
“Yes.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong.”
“You’re like Adam,” I said. “You’re one of those Vu-Hak machines.”
“Adam who?” she said, her eyes guileless.
I shook my head. “Let’s not play that game.”
She seemed to find that amusing. “Do you want to know who I am? Or actually, the correct form should be – what I am?”
I thought I already knew the answer, but I nodded slowly.
“Close your eyes,” she said.
I did, and the darkness was immediately replaced with an explosion of colors and patterns, spinning and coalescing into a small globe of light. It danced for me, spinning like a firefly before spasming and growing into a tumescent ball of silvery liquid. Deep matte blackness appeared at its very center, rapidly expanding until stars and novae flickered into existence. They formed a cartwheeling galaxy, an outer rim of young stars and a bulls-eye core with spiral arms extruding from a massive black hole at its center. My own face appeared in the center of the black hole, unnatural green eyes glowing with unearthly phosphorescence.
“What’s this?” I said.
Do you understand your place in the universe?
I shivered and couldn’t stop staring at my face. My eyes pulsed emerald as if with each heartbeat. Electricity discharges framed my head, b
lue-yellow flashes outlining a backdrop of ruined cities and burning skies.
“Are you talking about me,” I said, with a shiver, “or humanity?”
She paused.
Both.
The reply was drawn out, as if the word had multiple syllables.
The images vanished and my eyes snapped open.
“A view into your future,” she said. “The end is near.”
“What do you mean? I thought Adam had saved us. I don’t understand.”
She looked down at her hands, which were resting on her thighs. She said nothing, but her silence was more unsettling than anything she’d said so far.
“Are you Cain?” I said, although there was nothing familiar about her thought patterns.
She shrugged. “Perhaps we are all Cain?”
What the fuck did she mean by that?
Stillman interrupted, pointing over my shoulder. “Kate, something’s wrong.”
Harvey was waving from the other side of the barrier. He pointed at the Marine on the ground, who, even from this distance, looked grey and ashen. Wong was still staring in at us, useless as ever.
I turned on the woman. “Let them in, can’t you see they need help?”
“It is not safe,” she said, calmly.
“Yes, so you said. Why won’t you let them in? You brought us here to keep us safe, so do the same for them?”
“This is a mistake,” she said.
Maybe, but I wasn’t going to let someone die if I could help it.
“Let them in or we’re leaving,” I said, although I wasn’t sure how I was going to quite follow through with that particular threat.
We locked eyes for a moment and then she nodded. There was a rush of wind as the barrier opened and a circular aperture ten yards wide appeared. Snow started to blow through and cold Antarctic air mixed with the subtropical atmosphere around the ship.
I ran through the aperture to Harvey, Stillman and Hamilton following. He was leaning on the marine’s leg, pressing some kind of dark cloth on it, and he’d tied a belt just below the groin.
“He’s not doing well.” He grimaced. “I think there’re penetrating injuries to his abdomen, but more importantly I think some of the shrapnel hit his femoral artery. Look …”
He lifted the cloth up and there was an immediate spurt of blood, arcing into the air. I knew a fatal injury when I saw one. He needed urgent medical intervention. The woman hadn’t moved from the makeshift seat but the ship and was watching us, expressionless and silent.
“Can you help him?” I shouted, the wind now howling and the blizzard picking up again.
She gave no answer, no sign she’d heard me. Her head was cocked to the side, as if she was listening for something.
I came to a decision. “Let’s get him in there. We need to get him out of this cold.”
With some co-ordination, we managed to lift him while Harvey applied pressure on the femoral wound. There was a dribble of blood coming from the marine’s mouth as well, and his lips were navy blue.
I turned to Eddie Wong, who hadn’t moved. “Eddie?” I said. “Some help here, please?”
Then I knew we were in trouble.
TWENTY
I’d missed the signals because of the cold.
I could tell when a Vu-Hak was near because of how they made me feel. The abnormal, irrational fear. The cold chills running up and down my spine. The primeval sense of something bad approaching. The urge to look behind.
I’d missed it all.
A piercing whistling started, rapidly increasing in pitch and loudness. My head felt like it was going to explode and I brought my hands to my ears and screamed, losing hold of the marine. I rolled over on my back and squeezed my eyelids together tightly.
Pain seared through my skull, hotter than a branding iron, my mind conceding to the torment, unable to bring a thought to completion. Without my meaning it to, my body curled into something fetal, and all the while the pain burned and radiated.
I opened my eyes to see Wong standing over me. He was holding the marine’s submachine gun. The hole at the end of the barrel looked a foot wide.
He smiled. You have brought us here.
“Please, no …” I began.
But in that moment I knew it was narcissism, delusional to think for a second that they would exercise anything like human compassion. They appeared in my mind more like shadows than physical beings, black smoke in a dark void. Each form rippled whenever it moved like disturbed water. They didn’t care what or who we were.
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded.
We have no more need of you.
He pointed the gun at my head and I closed my eyes.
TWENTY-ONE
I could feel soft sheets and warmth on my skin. My eyes were closed but light was squeezing through my lids. They flickered and I tried to open them but the effort was too much: they were so heavy it was as if they were glued together.
To say I felt weird was an understatement.
I had no idea who I was.
I lay there, motionless, debating whether or not to get up. My muscles felt weak, drained of energy. There was a smell of … flowers, yes that was it. Freshly cut flowers. Pollen. I could hear a faint droning noise, like a vacuum cleaner, and some beeping sounds. Low voices in the distance.
My eyes opened.
I was lying in a bed in a sterile, magnolia-painted room. White unpatterned sheets were pulled up to my chin, and my bare feet were poking out over the footrest. Sunlight was slicing through blinds on a window to my right. There was a door at the bottom of the bed with a window halfway up.
I brought my hand up to my face. I was wearing green pajamas. I wiggled my fingers. So far, so good.
I lay there quietly and the beeping noises became more insistent. I matched my breaths to the beeping and slid my eyes sideways. There was a monitor with wavy lines and red lights winking on and off on a bedside table. Wires protruded from another box and snaked toward me, disappearing beneath the sheets.
There was a quiet knock on the door. I closed my eyes.
The handle clicked and made an un-oiled squeak as it opened.
“She’s still out,” came a softly spoken voice. Female.
“We need to talk with her when she wakes.” A man’s voice. Not trying to be quiet. Authoritarian.
Law enforcement?
Footsteps approached, and fingers took hold of my wrist. Soft, slender cold fingers looking for a pulse.
I kept my eyes closed.
“What do those readings tell you?” I heard the man say.
The woman sighed as she let go of my wrist. There were scratchy noises as if she was writing and then the sound of turning pages.
“Just that she’s stable, not in any danger,” she said.
Heavy footsteps moved away, and the door opened and closed. After a couple of seconds there was a quieter footstep as the woman moved around the bed to the monitors. I sneaked a quick look, assuming that if she saw my eyes move she would think it was just a reflex. I caught a glimpse of her. Pale, blonde, average-height, early thirties. Nice bone structure. A stethoscope around her neck. A white coat with a name stenciled below the pocket.
Dr Kate Morgan
There was some fumbling with my sleeves as she rolled them up and then tightness as she wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm. Next came the wheezy sound of air being pumped in and a slow hiss as it was let out. She fussed around a bit more and then went still. I held my breath and was about to open my eyes to see if she’d left when I got a whiff of her perfume and a pressure on my arm as she leaned forward. Her cool hand pressed on my forehead, as if she was assessing my temperature.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Talk to me again.”
Had I already spoken with her? Did I know her or did she know me?
I felt her lean back and disengage.
“Okay then, I’ll be back in half an hour to check on you. Don’t go away.”
A mild rebuke in
there somewhere.
The door closed and I opened my eyes fully.
In a single motion I sat up in bed. The movement was easy so I flicked the sheets off and swung my legs over and onto the floor. I walked across the room to where there was a small sink with a mirror.
I bent down to see my face and staring back at me was no one I recognized.
Lumpy, half-formed features, like Play-doh or putty.
Empty, black eyes, like those in a doll.
It wasn’t my face, though I had to admit to myself I wasn’t sure what my face did look like.
I took a deep breath and leaned on the sink, shaking my head. “It’s a dream,” I said to my reflection. “Wake up. Wake up.”
Then there was a tickling on my skin, and a feeling of pressure behind my eyes. A strange disquiet came over me, a feeling of restlessness and butterflies in my stomach.
Then the voice came.
It isn’t over. It’s just starting.
My eyes flashed fluorescent green and I staggered back from the sink until my backside touched the bed. I shakily sat down and brought my hands up to my eyes. There was a blur as my fingers touched and I noticed the absence of fingerprints, and the waxiness of the skin. The monitor had stopped bleeping and all the wavy lines had flattened. I blinked and they all started up again, assuming normal, healthy human values.
“No, no, no, no …” I murmured. “This can’t be right.
TWENTY-TWO
Wake up.
The voice boomed around my head, echoing as if bouncing from a distant cave. There was absolute darkness, obsidian and impenetrable. I tried to open my eyes again but nothing happened. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs. It felt like I was weightless: insubstantial, drifting, maybe in a flotation tank, maybe in space.
My thoughts accelerated like I was on speed or cocaine, and I tried to slow them so that I could breathe, but they just exploded, a flight of ideas without connection or direction. Breaths came in ragged gasps, and my heart hammered inside my chest such that it felt as if my skin was wafer thin and the organ would burst out. Nausea washed over me.
You are safe now. Try and relax.