Cloud Field

by A M Russell

  ‘Why didn’t they treat the concussion, the idiots!’ I heard a voice that was unmistakably Joe’s, ‘This kid has got to be the luckiest bastard ever!’

  ‘How soon?’ I thought it was Jules, but I wasn’t sure. It faded again.

  It was morning. I could feel it. The sound of morning. A radio… no it must be someone’s personal player pouring out jolly morning music. From a distance. I could smell something quite wonderful. Toast. That slightly burnt warm note of life. That thing that sings to you with your cup of tea, as you bite into its butter laced textured yumminess. My eyes were open. And like a vision from another world I saw sunlight falling across the light plastic planks that formed the little inner viewing space. The flap was tied back out of the way. Further over in the main area I glimpsed some people were sat in their pullovers, in the middle of a game of cards, with cups of coffee steaming in the light.

  I tried to lift my head, failed. But I was awake. Someone would come eventually. They did do. Joe and Jules.

  Jules had a blanket around his shoulders. He looked awful. Very pale. A lot thinner. But seemed chirpy enough. They were so pleased. Joe sent Jules to tell the others.

  ‘Is everyone alright?’ I said in a broken rasp.

  ‘Now you need to get up. And have some breakfast if you can manage it. Then you will have to sit and do nothing at all I think. No work for you Davey. Not until you learn to do as you’re told!’

  ‘Hello Doc.’

  ‘Hi Davey.’ Joe grinned patted me on the arm and then turned away in a business-like way. ‘Give me Ten minutes of your precious time. I’ll unhook you from the drip.’

  ‘Can I get up now?’

  ‘Hang on. Just wait until James and Adam come in. They’ll lift you to the chair.’

  ‘What about Oliver?’

  ‘He’s outside. With Nik.’

  ‘Nikolas is well again?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say well exactly. But taking pictures certainly cheers him up. Oliver needed someone to be over protective around, and since I wouldn’t let him bother you, I set him on a job carrying tripods and stuff for Nik instead.’

  I was silent for a few minutes, while Joe unhooked me.

  ‘Do you know what happened? I mean about… well...’

  Joe carried on. He pulled out the needle, and pressed hard on my inner arm; ‘Yes, we all know.’ He turned to get a small dressing, ‘there’s been a lot of discussion while you were out for the count. We have worked out a few things. There are a few bits missing. But there is a lot that is clear. You will have the joy of filling in your missing pieces this evening.’

  ‘You know what happened to us...’

  ‘You are not to blame for Jared’s death.’ said Joe with some finality, ‘I think the sooner we all start seeing the larger picture and where we fit into it the better.’

  ‘Thanks Joe…’

  ‘That’s what I’m here for. To tell Muppets like you the blindingly obvious; when you are not in a state to see it yourself.’

  It was 5 o’clock. I sat in the comfort of a camp chair with foot rest. I related everything I could about the adventures into the outlands. There wasn’t much I left out. Just the tiny little bit about Marcia and Jared. I felt embarrassed to admit that I could see a side to anyone else that revealed their soul and their desire. I was still clawing at that little stiff formal grasp of my own destiny that had always eluded me.

  We all knew that we were in the middle of a reality that could change. We knew that the dead were only that until we lived it all over again. Perhaps that was why it distressed me so much. Being blasé about something so dreadful seemed wrong. But this was my first time. In another reality Jared really was alive; but seeing a person die is still just as tragic. It had changed me. I didn't think it was possible to forget. Yet apparently this is what this place was doing to us. I found that the most tragic thing of all. Everything that I had learned… that it could just disappear. It could cease to mean anything. I told them about my embarrassment instead. I needed to laugh at myself before I forgot it all.

  ‘That’s useful.’ said James, bringing in coffee and biscuits, ‘Oliver told us the rest,’ he added, with a cheeky half smile.

  The whole group exploded with laughter.

  ‘You are always such a prude Davey!’ said Adam.

  ‘He got them off eventually.’ said Oliver, obviously enjoying my hesitant approach to swimming in the buff.

  It was strangely refreshing. Their perspective somehow rewrote the minor key of memory. I really saw things in a different light. There was only one thing that couldn’t be taken any other way. I told them what happened up to that point. About Mr Alexander, about his office, and the guards; even about their uniforms. But then…. Marcia. She might be alive and well in a room at Main at this very moment. She could be reunited with her true love. She could smile again. But that innocence of evil I had once known could never be recaptured. This new knowledge:- I must raise it up as a banner or forget it completely. And as I could not forget, I had to see that even if you could undo something. Even if that was possible; the carelessness, and capricious devaluing of people to the point where they really are just fodder for one man’s ambition could not be something I wanted to unlearn.

  Here we were, the ones who were left out of twelve: Oliver and Jules; Nikolas and Adam; Joe and James; and lastly Curly Pete and of course myself. Four of us; gone…. Four! It very nearly could have been four more.

  We talked some more. We were on day forty-five. There was no way that the officials at Base would NOT give us a rough time if we didn’t set off soon. We fixed our time to break camp for the day after tomorrow, on day forty-seven.

  The weather had eased. It seemed now so fortuitous. Somewhere at the back of my mind lingered the story that Marcia had told me about Aiden’s disappearance.

  James called the others to dinner. He made me stay where I was and brought it to me. I stabbed a rehydrated carrot. I loved them. Simple, nutritious, and cheerful to boot.

  I then remembered the Tattoo. We had talked about them, sure. I hadn’t actually thought of trying to operate its “science”. Perhaps, like Heelio had told me, I needed to feel it inside of me first.

  After dinner I limped slowly to the viewing port. Jules brought me a small stool. I watched as the snow began to fall again. A light sprinkling. It would erase the tracks. Apparently someone had talked to Main. George wasn’t on tonight, but Dieter had been filling in. I remembered that he had been around when the rescue party came for those who made it back from here last time. It had, it seemed, taken some persuasion, but we would be making it back ourselves. Base wasn’t sending anyone else out. We had lost people. True. But with the curious exception of Hanson, it was all in the line of duty.

  *****

  Twenty Five

  I wasn’t in the front this time. Relegated because of “brain trauma” I rode in the comfort of adjustable back seating on the large transport. My other companion was Nikolas. Poor subdued Nikolas! He made me seem like a comedian in comparison. Joe took the driving seat, with Curly Pete as navigator. James drove the Landy with Jules in the front passenger seat. Adam was given the job of driving the “Space buggy” which he seemed quite excited about, Oliver was navigating and was equally unexcited about his role. Joe decided that we would stop in two hours and swap drivers round. This was only to stop Oliver going into a furious sulk. Personally I thought the whole train driver thing had gone to his head a bit. He wanted to ignore the effects of our sleep deprivation and get back behind the wheel. Joe for once actually raised his voice and told Oliver to shut up, in words that I couldn’t quite make out from a distance. Oliver followed that by a stream of Welsh. Joe surprised all of us by shouting back at him in the same language. I had seen Jules grinning as he packed kitchen stuff into a storage box. I asked him what was going on. Jules (who it appeared also understood Oliver’s native language) said that it involved something to do with “your mother is a sheep” and “your head is full of woo
l”. But the way Jules was sniggering I suspected it could have been a lot ruder that that.

  We pulled away from the ice lake for the last time. I was depressed. The anti-climax of this terrible journey was beginning to fall down on me. Joe had warned me about the moods I could experience. He was gentle and reassuring, and even more so with Nikolas. Nik barely spoke to anyone any more. I hoped that it would change. But it was as if we had lost another of our number. He was in the cab with me, but absent in a way that he had never been before the terrible incident with the sled and everything that followed. I wondered in a vague sort of way how he could have got back from where we had been. It might have taken days. Joe said that it wasn’t that long. I thought of the camping forks and Jared laying them on top of one another. Everywhere was as near or as far as it had to be. This place was truly crazy. If you tried to make sense of it would drive you over the edge too. I looked at Nik as he stretched lengthways on one of the long back seats. He stared into the distance, somewhere out of the window. A little light sun gleamed on us. He shut his eyes as we turned and the light crossed his face. The other two were exchanging comments every so often in the front of the transport.

  ‘Nik…. I wondered…’ I was truly at a loss.

  His eyes turned to me, and the sunlight crossed his face again; ‘Davey.’ He said and paused, the space between like a moment between two strikes of a hammer. Aimed…. And would it miss?

  ‘Nik… Joe said you took some more pictures.’

  ‘Yeah…. I did. It was a good light the last two days. I actually had to open up into the sun…. really good contrast, some nice tonal shots.’

  ‘How about you though?’ I felt bad asking but curiosity was always my besetting sin.

  ‘I’m alright. Yes that’s it. Alright.’ He tapped his fingers on the edge of the seat, ‘I want to go home now. I just need to go home….’ He shut his eyes and turned away from me.

  At the break for driver turns and hot coffee, I had a word with Joe.

  ‘You are the strong one Davey.’ Joe handed me a cup as we stood in the middle of a cold sunlit desert. A little way away, Curly was asking Nik about meter readings and time of day for different light levels.

  I sipped; always welcome. I had a flash of Janey handing me a cup. Joe saw that fleeting moment cross my eyes; ‘Compared to Nikolas, you are. But being insanely brave doesn’t do anything for the mind when you have had your brains nearly bashed in. Have you had any unusual err…. sightings since yesterday?’

  ‘No….’ I thought hard if my daydreams counted, ‘nothing that I wouldn’t have normally experienced before.’

  ‘Honest answer.’ Joe looked at me with a new and thoughtfully appraising stare, ‘you might even be able to convince the evaluation team that you’ll still be ok for another round.’

  ‘Another round of what?’

  ‘You decide.’ He tipped the cup back draining it, ‘there’s always Base Staff. You’d still have access.’

  I thought that he might be trying to tell me something. But perhaps it was just the kind of thing that we all tended to do for each other. Addiction, as they say, is hard to escape. I wasn’t sure what had so captivated me. But looking at Nikolas I knew that he would be home by next week, never to return. I squinted into the sun for a moment, just past its zenith on this autumn day. Chilly, but not freezing, we would make camp by four today with no difficulty. This whole world seemed to be going easy on us for a change. As we got back in the transport, the afternoon sun should have cheered me, but it just made me feel more depressed. After a while I slept; this time, mercifully free from dreams. I awoke to the lamplight of an evening supper awaiting me in the dry warm cave. Someone had lit one of those incense stick things. The smell was soothing yet reviving. We ate cheerily, swapping a few jokes. No one wanted to play cards though. We all turned in early. They’d somehow lost the desire to bet for washers. Jared had often kept score; and it didn’t seem as much fun went there wasn’t any reason to be sneaky about it, with no Hanson about.

  We were on the last leg of our journey home. I learned that Curly had managed to analyse some to the samples he collected. As well as the water that we had brought back. It had yielded some very interesting things too. He chatted to me as we slowed down and steered through the landscape past mounds and giant tunnels. There was plenty of vegetation here. We could see it better as the snow inexplicably didn’t sink as deep as on the way down. We had our snack break early. Everyone gathered round the big transport. There had been some discussion that the others felt they needed to make while I was out cold. We all needed to be in agreement about it though.

  ‘As spokesperson for us all,’ said James calmly, ‘I think that we should all lay a few facts at your feet.’

  ‘A tribute to the King of the Outlands.’ said Curly, with a little mock bow.

  ‘You tart!’ said Adam, who was holding a notebook and pen.

  ‘The first,’ continued James, ‘is that we all decide a version of events that we will all tell at the debrief. And since we will be interviewed separately, they don’t need to be word for word. That would be unrealistic; just what we agree.’

  ‘So tell me,’ I asked, ‘what do you think we should say?’

  ‘It’s is rather what we ought to leave out.’ James said mildly, ‘we have our thoughts; we’ll tell you what they are. Then you can decide.’

  ‘What am I deciding?’ I felt alarmed, but managed to sound calm and thoughtful.

  ‘You went as far as any of us.’ James said, ‘You were the last one to see Jared….. before….’ Even James couldn’t say it.

  ‘It’s alright,’ said Joe, ‘I’ll fill in now. We agreed that because of this you can say whether or not we should let the people at Base have the samples that have been collected.’

  ‘What is important about the samples?’ I really was confused.

  James again: ‘Curly discovered something by accident. Something no one was anticipating. That some of the samples react to each other! Pete, tell him.’

  ‘Yeah Wow Man!’ said Curly, waving his arms about, ‘but seriously it was really super freaky! I was doing the usual tests. I won’t bore your unscientific little mind with the details as such. But your lovely Jules came in with a cup of really hot tea!’ he looked round for Jules to pass him the notebook… ‘Yes where was I, Oh,… tea, hot….. then test sample “B” again. Now this was just what happened. I put the vial of mineral water you and Oliver brought back, near to the case with the sample that I got my mitts on:- from the weird place that made the compass needles point all over the place….Anyway; I sat down and drank my tea. I hadn’t even done anything. They were just there on the bench. Not touching. But the water started to vibrate; sort of wibble about inside the container. It was just like the kind of thing you'd see if you are sat on top on the washing machine trying to read the Sunday Times. No?’

  I shrugged. The others laughed.

  ‘Not really meaningful outside of certain circles. Anyway, I got up and was about to pick up the vial with the water, and the earth sample started doing the same thing. It was like it was alive or something!’

  ‘Ok. Go on. Tell me.’ I was agog with curiosity.

  ‘In the spirit of the true scientist; I got Jules to come and observe these initial findings. Record them, and then together we conducted my proposed experiment.’

  ‘I think I get the dramatic pause. So what happened?’

  ‘Nothing at all. We put them together. Just a little bit of each. And they stopped wibbling.’

  ‘Oh….’

  ‘But get this….’ Jules came back after taking the tea cup away. And the whole lot started reacting again. At first I thought it must be the proportions. Or something else. It wasn’t doing it at certain times. Then it was again. It made no sense, until Jules went to get Adam…. Objective witness that sort of thing.’

  ‘And it started reacting as soon as he came back in the room..’ I said.

  ‘How did you know? I mean yes… tha
t’s exactly what happened.’ Curly looked at the Notebook again, ‘so I tried it on everyone. Each person went near it with no one else within ten feet and we recorded the results.’

  ‘It’s unbelievable!’ said Jules gasping, he sat down, and Joe bent over him.

  ‘It’s very definitely a reaction to those of us who have had some contact with the outlands. That is Jules and Oliver and you. But you and Oliver seemed to do something else as well. The temperature started to go up in the flask when it actually was touching each of you.’ That was without touching the stuff itself you understand. You have an effect, we suppose by what has happened to you. That is somehow making this stuff react. But the conditions have to be right. Earth and Water. Not just one or the other. We tried that too. So the question is what happened to you?’

  ‘There’s a common denominator,' said Jules, still bending forward in a sitting position, 'We have to think what it is. Base will want to know. But I have a feeling…. I mean a very strong feeling that we shouldn’t tell them.’

  ‘Is this to do with Hanson?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Yes. Maybe….’ Joe was frowning now, ‘It’s all we’ve got. Apart from George, no one will believe that Hanson was actually with us on this expedition.’

  ‘What about all his books and stuff?’ I asked.

  ‘Books?’ Joe looked at me sharply, ‘what books? No one has any books except to write in. It’s the weight limit thing again.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ I turned away, so I had hallucinated Hanson reading books…. So what? It was no odder than anything else that had happened. I stifled an involuntary shudder.

  James and Adam packed away the cups ready for us to be on the move again.

  Jules was still bent over. Joe got the small med kit out of the driver’s case under the seat and gave him two tablets and some water to swallow them.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked Jules as we made ready to get on the way again.