Cloud Field

by A M Russell

  Every few minutes Joe checked him: temperature and pulse.

  Curly sat down and put his head in his hands. Jared stood patiently and waited; a completely unreadable expression on his face. The others apart from Joe and Oliver stood or sat and remained almost motionless. Minutes ticked past. The storm that I had been ignoring for the last few minutes moaned with a horrible overtone of frequencies like the dampened twang of a guitar string. I looked up. I did not see, but felt the vibration of the flexible frame. I didn’t doubt we were safe but I was loaded now with a new kind of fear. I picked up the night suit and Jared’s outer and took them to hang. Marcia handed me the two inner suits as I came back from the prep room. I shook them out and hung them too. I could smell a faint hint of wood smoke in Jared’s and Marcia was like violets or Lilac, as if she kept a pomander in there. It wasn’t a perfume she habitually wore. Maybe exotic mothballs.

  They were all sat down, and Marcia was heading for the kitchen area. Jared looked shattered. Joe was examining his patient, whose eyes were flickering. The man lifted his hand, and pulled down the mast from his face. The husky rasping whisper was filled with tears and relief: ‘Thank you.’ was all he said. He laid his hand back down. I turned away. I went to my pod and cried… quietly for a long time. It was Nikolas returned to us. If he had made the journey on foot, alone and injured… well there was work to be done. He had brought us news. Perhaps with hope, or not. Now we were raised from our subjugation under the yoke of the University. Obedience now to a higher claim was our driving force. I did not know what this might mean. But I had seen Jared… I knew now his feelings. Revenge, and love for his team. He would get us home. All of us. If he could. I saw it in his eyes. Hanson had been ousted. He was our leader now.

  *****

  Thirteen

  Jared called everyone into the main space. Marcia complained about soup being made. Jared said to turn it down and come in.

  I watched their eyes. First the shock, then the anger. It helped to objectify it for me. I had run over this edge before. What was it to me? But it wasn’t that I didn’t care. I just didn’t have time to waste thinking about this in an emotional way. It slowed me up; it stopped me from helping the very people I said I cared about. In its place a new thing; the daring attitude of a risk taker. I would never be a leader, because I didn’t know when to stop. There would have to be control. That was where Jared was so brilliant; so inspired. He had, in the space of ten minutes got everyone to agree to taking the all-terrain buggy on a rescue mission. Four would go, and four would stay. He hadn’t decided which yet.

  We found that Nikolas hadn’t actually travelled very far. For a fit person in good shape the journey would take two hours. It had taken Nikolas almost four times that. There was a tunnel. It came out on the south side of the lake near the Western tip. There was a whole network of these bunny holes running down deeper into the rock. How they had been formed who could say? Like the giant ovoids they were a mystery. But they led to an underground camp run by someone call “Elland”. It looked like Janey had found the tribes people after all. Nikolas was adamant as he could be in his fragile state that they weren’t all tribal folk. And our people, though alive had been kept by this leader in some kind of rock cell.

  ‘But why on earth would they do that?’ I asked, ‘what can they hope to gain?’

  Nikolas, who was propped up in a chair, opened his eyes. ‘They are keen to see the results of any err…. interference, such as our experiments destroyed. I think they were trying to decide if we posed enough of a threat.’

  ‘How did you get out?’ Curly was also wrapped in a blanket.

  ‘I was in a cell with Jules. He got me out. He managed to spring the bars wide enough for me to just squeeze through. The pack was what was left of the sled. I hid in the place with all the skins and the rugs… everything else had been left there too. I couldn’t get out all of the data we got from the boundary lands, but I got two things that were important….Photos and the Metal knife thing. The rest is our supplies and the mini dome. The bigger dome is gone I’m afraid. But I think that all the puddings are still intact. Everything else… all the science equipment… all additional stuff is gone; sorry….’ he coughed and wheezed and waved a dismissive hand at Oliver who was obviously trying to get him to rest.

  ‘What happened to your inner suit?’ Jared was thoughtful.

  ‘I wasn’t wearing it. The nick I got in the chest was from a tussle with one of Elland’s men. When I wanted to leave I needed to kit up again. They’d taken some of the stuff. I took the one that fitted. I think this was Jules’ suit. But I don’t know how the cuts got in it. And by the way…. It wasn’t Hanson’s fault we were ambushed. The snow had blocked our way. We couldn’t get the sled over it. We were only going to one cave to camp. It was pure fluke that it turned out to be an outer run for these erm…. Individuals.’

  As I listened to Nikolas’ story, I felt as if this was something that had happened many times before; just like that moment that repeats but in a bigger loop. I wanted to know more, but Joe got stroppy with Adam who was equally curious, and made Nikolas go and rest. I asked Joe what was really up with Nikolas. He just swore and said: ‘He should be in hospital.’

  I stood by Jared who was trying the radio. Nothing. He turned to me and said in a light-hearted tone: 'Do you know, this is being a considerable nuisance!'

  'Has George got through at all?' I asked feeling now like I didn't need to run away from Jared's bad temper. It seemed to have dissipated.

  'He won't be able to talk to us for quite a while.' he looked thoughtful. Then, looking squarely at me as if calculating the odds said: 'Are you fit for the challenge? I mean will you come with me?'

  'I'm coming.' I said without hesitation. I looked very hard to see if there was some other meaning in his eyes. 'I want to help rescue Janey and Jules.... And of course...'

  He stopped me, raising a hand: 'Don't say anything beyond that. I now know where your heart lays. There is no room for pretence here.'

  'I know.' I said, 'I'm sorry Jared.'

  'Don't be,' he stared at me as if looking into his own motives, 'we've all been following the accepted line. If this storm hadn't arrived, Base would have ordered us to start back immediately. We would have done what they wanted or gone on report for extreme something or other.... I forget the technical term for it.'

  'Mutiny?' I ventured.

  'No. That's when a crew of a ship turns against their Captain.'

  'Isn't that what we're doing?' I felt it was better to air this feeling posed as a bit of a quip.

  'You know,' said Jared in quite a different tone, 'You have actually surprised me Davey....In a good way. I never took you for the defiant sort.'

  'I wasn't until....' I didn't seem to be able to explain the passions and the new found determination that had been brought to the surface by seeing Nikolas so weak and near death.

  I thought of Jules springing him from the cell, and then arranging the few things that had been left with them to make it look to the casual observer as if there were still two people in the cell. I tried to imagine the sheer terror of being found out before he (Nikolas) could get out... Of finding the bits of our stuff and lashing together a pack and a base board into a makeshift small sled; and then when there was enough light, setting out into the snow alone as the guards changed over. He must have been sweating at first, trying to put as much distance between himself and the tribesmen, hoping that the falling snow would cover his tracks. Nikolas had trudged on then, only stopping when he heard them calling to each other. He had to hide in the bushes when they started swarming about. He waited, until they had returned down the tunnels; and all through yesterday, as the weather had begun to shift and change, he had slowly made his way to us. Nik had walked for eight hours; the last hour in a blizzard so thick it was an honest miracle he'd found his way up and over the rocks and slid down into the stabilising cables for the Secondary dome. That was the one that housed the vehicles. The nois
e that Joe heard was Nikolas' mini sled banging on a cable. He must have known he'd found us. But by then his strength was spent. The fall had winded him. He was already becoming hypothermic, and he honestly couldn't see where the entrance to anything could be. Jared found him, but it needed two to pull him and the kit. Marcia went out and cut Nik out of the harness so Jared could carry him, and she dragged the sled pack. Without Marcia and Jared he'd have died within just five minutes of finding the door.... Nikolas had whispered to me that when he felt someone lift him, he knew he was safe.... That it was us. Jared had carried him over his shoulder in a fireman's lift. Apparently the tribe’s people would always lash the ankles and drag the captive if it was over a short distance.

  I saw in my mind that long walk into the unknown, and the terrible fear that gnawed at every step. It had been an act of faith that came with no guarantee. But Nikolas did have one thing the others did not, a visual knowledge of that end of the lake. He'd seen it through his camera lens from our end of the huge loch. He remembered. It boggled my mind that someone could navigate by reversing something they'd only seen from one point of view: but as Nik had pointed out; when there's a bloody great piece of ice on one side of you; you just keep off it and keep walking.

  ‘Davey? Are you with us?’ Jared was watching me, amused, ‘You really must try to limit your flights of fancy. It might not be helpful for us in this Elland’s patch.’

  ‘I was thinking that maybe I’m not the man for the job… I err…’

  Jared looked at me as of weighing me up. ‘Do you want to know what we saw that night?’

  ‘When you sneaked off with Janey and Curly?’

  ‘Yeah, that night.’ He smiled easily.

  ‘Tell me’ I said.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Jared, ‘there is only one way to know. And you already know what that is.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told you. Don’t you remember?’ Jared wasn’t smiling now. In fact he looked rather serious. ‘This place can screw with your head if you let it. Adam is the only one it hasn’t done that to. I can’t work out why.’

  ‘Adam wants to survive… he said he wanted to see his family again.’ Now I was scared, I mean really scared. Jared was still watching me. I stumbled over the words, ‘The thought that I couldn’t return is…. sometimes….not alright….sometimes it is. I…. I can’t see through it. I mean I don’t know why I don’t want to go back. I think of home and sometimes… it’s so near I could taste it... Others I can’t remember the colour of the cat’s eyes.’

  ‘Like Jules?’ he asked

  ‘Yes. How did you know?’

  ‘She talks in her sleep;’ then in answer to my expression, ‘It’s not like that… Janey is well, we go back a long way. She’s my sister. Like my kid sister…. You know.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry Jared. I just thought that it might be better for me to try to get back. To find Janey. To stop this at source…. As it were.’

  ‘You know that if I fail to sort this out. When I return to base, they’ll debrief me and send me home…. I forget Davey. Everything. I have to find a way to take the power they are trying to take. I don’t want them to wipe it out. All of it.’

  ‘Is that what those people do? They erase our memories?’

  ‘Davey!’ He took hold of my shoulders, ‘It isn’t like that… Erase you say? No. It never was. When we forget, it simply hasn’t been. But I was different. Not like Aiden was. They made me sleep but sometimes, I didn’t forget. If I could keep hold of that thought before it slipped away like a dream on waking;….when I do that; those few times it’s different. Then I saw it all. Everything. Each inch of the parlour trick. That pain that makes you think they did something to you. You did it to yourself. You will it to be so.’ He let go of me and turned away. He spoke softly then, ‘You can’t forget something that never really happened; any more than you can forget a story you made up. But neither can you make it so real it overcomes all else. Only Aiden ever got out. He was the only one who survived when we were all attacked. He helped my little sister. And when I came back… when I was me again. They…. said I was fit. But it was a trick. I tricked them that time. You need to know that I was with Janey’s group too, the one Aiden had by all accounts stowed away with. I saw myself die Davey. I stood there and watched! We became two. Not one. We both did, Aiden and me. He was always my friend. And he’s here. Just as George told us.’

  ‘Did he go back?’

  ‘Yes. He went home.’ Jared turned and faced me squarely again, ‘And they could not follow. They thought that he was small fry. But he wasn’t. He was greater than the past he left behind. He was more than that one decision. Because when you die here you are still out there. But if you survive and leave; and you’re not mad to believe it was all a dream, there it still some hope.’

  The idea came to me suddenly; ‘So what if I got Janey out of here and she went home with me? Would that upset the whole thing?’

  ‘Very probably. But she would still have to visit Base…. Still arrive before she left to have any memory of all of this. She would need proof that it was true. I believe it is possible for someone to actually meet themselves at Base. But what happens then is anybody’s guess.’

  ‘The universe exploding. That sort of thing?’

  ‘I sincerely hope not,’ Jared looked disgusted, ‘I personally don’t want the responsibility for all of that; and by the way you didn’t really answer my question.’

  ‘I know now,’ I said, ‘In order to know what it is, you have to see it for yourself.’

  ‘Just so.’ said Jared and smiled, he turned away and paused, and then turned towards me again, ‘You will be navigating. We leave in the morning.’ he quickly threw me something, I caught it without thinking.

  ‘What’s this?’ I spoke as I looked down.

  ‘Proof.’ Jared left me standing there. I held the soft supple dun coloured rope looped and tied in a surgeon’s knot.

  ‘Is this Janey’s?’ I called after him.

  ‘No.’ he stopped and pointed, ‘Look again.’

  I rubbed my fingers along its length as Jared disappeared into the kitchen. It had been tied around something a lot smaller and the stopper knots were different this time. Then I remembered… the pack… on the remains of the sled. Aiden had to have been there; he had helped Nikolas all the way. That was how he found the way to us.

  I gripped it very tightly and thought about the sunshine on a warm terrace near the beach, and decided that all of us would be there. In my mind’s eye I saw a get together. A reunion. We would drink wine or good beer, and eat seafood. The ladies would have the puddings that looked like fairyland to me, while the lads had the chocolate fudge cake. I believed it. I could hear the crashing waves and hear them laughing. We were all together after all of this was over. The others were defeated... It was my future, it would be real. I looked up and the vision was gone leaving an odd feeling of confidence. Now I knew that I was ready.

  *****

  Fourteen

  We had been travelling now for two hours and it was hard going. I had started to feel sick. We crawled up and down snow drifts in the buggy. I felt, as I had every five minutes since we set out that the ability to crawl over anything was offset by the darker matter of bounding vibration, which made the strongest stomach hold onto the edge of sanity. I sat in the front and sited landmarks. We had used Nik's photos and our maps to get a fuller picture. We crept along.

  Jared, Myself, Oliver, and Marcia. I was perturbed by this. Jared and Oliver were both big muscly men, I was quick and skinny and able to slip through a gap small enough to get back inside a cell again. But Marcia? It was insane that she should go. I thought that Adam would have been the logical choice. He was our North Star. He could see the real in the madness. He wanted to go home. That was why Jared said he wasn't the one. Joe, James, Curly and Adam had stayed with Nikolas. Jared decided that being with Adam was better for Nikolas. They were good friends. James was the calmest and most stable person in
the group on the whole (as well as being the expert Foodie). Curly Pete had been sick so he wasn't under consideration. And Joe was of course the senior medic. Jared's sodding logic had me floored yet again. I made a mental note to learn about this logic shit, and use it the next time I wanted things to go my way. We went up and over another drift and even Marcia, who had the strongest stomach of anyone I'd ever known began to look green around the edges.

  'Time for a break!' announced Oliver, much to my relief.

  We feasted on tea and energy bars, a special recipe as prescribed by Joe. Marcia and James had concocted them while the storm had trapped us in immobility. I recalled how we had waited for the snow to lessen. It was not for the impatient, hour after hour we’d waited. The day and the evening came. Then the morning came; this morning, like the hazy lace of old soft hankies. Jared had told us in no uncertain terms to shift our backsides with extreme speed. We took advantage of this brief lull in the long storm cycle. Jared risked this for the sake of Nikolas as much as the three we were looking for. We had to be back before the people who distributed the money hauled us in for insubordination. I realised that Jared wanted us to get there and back without them ever having to be told. It seemed that there might have been quite a bit of this sort of thing going on. In Aiden’s time the reports seemed elaborately vacuous. I’d done some catching up in the last few days, calling stuff up on the data reader to keep my mind from withering from lack of stimulation. It gave me a really insistent headache. Nothing correlated with anything else. It was more than just the difference between different people’s points of view. It was if they were talking about completely different events. I remembered Adam’s sketch and the huts he drew. Why couldn’t I see them? There had to be an explanation. There had to be something that remained logical and consistent even when everything else changed around us…. and all those other people who went before. A strange thought occurred to me; ‘Who else has seen the tribes’ people?’