Thump!
Steffi reeled back, horrified, as the boy fell under a powerful blow to the head. He lay still and crumpled on the ground. The sasquatch stood over him for a few moments before opening its mouth, baring its teeth and letting loose a silent scream. Victory? The pain from its wound? A frustrated desire to be left alone in its natural habitat? The last thing she saw of Bigfoot was a sharp, loose branch catching the trunk of a redwood, back and forth, back and forth in a metronomic swing. The beast had barged into it. A clump of its bloodied hair hung from the point.
She looked at the boy, then at the man, then up at Arne.
“What the hell? I thought you said we were here to convalesce. This was downright horrific.”
“You forget we are supposed to be watchers, Steffi. You should not have ventured so close to the action. If it makes you feel better, the boy survives. A search party finds him in a couple of days. But this is perhaps the most interesting of all the simulations, insofar as what it represents. Do you not think so?”
“Watchers, shmotchers. If this is what you call a second date…next time, I’m picking.”
He almost toppled backward over a tree root as he laughed. But Steffi still trembled, and the humour now struck her as extraordinarily callous. She would have nightmares about this forest scene, and about Bigfoot. And most of all about the man who’d dreamed of shooting this legendary creature since boyhood.
Back at the lagoon, Steffi told Flyte her plan for towing the alien ship.
“I agree,” he replied, eyeing his girl who watched him from under the pear tree. “They’re drifting toward Royal space. Better we land them somewhere safe than they fall in with those self-righteous bastards.”
Steffi placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “And I’m sure your new girlfriend won’t argue.” She threw him a wink.
“Look who’s talking.” He tapped his fingers on her cheek then turned to leave for the Albatross.
Steffi lay on the grass, resting her abused back. Giggles emerged from the lakeside trees, and a distant choir broke out in song. She wondered what these sheltered folk would make of a world apart from their safe lagoon. They’d just had a taste of it, at gunpoint. But colonizing a wild planet was a different prospect altogether. She ripped a clump of grass from its roots, then watched the helpless green stalks slide through her fingers onto her stomach.
Hmm, Arne and his people, not to mention the many extraordinary creatures onboard, would need all the help she could give them. They would be underway as soon as Rex could rig the tow harness and attach it securely to the guts of the leviathan. But was it really the best course of action? For all involved, not just those in love?
Chapter Seven
Dinner during the second evening of towing started without a word. No lagoon folk had visited the Albatross yet, though Arne had expressed a desire to do so once or twice. In Steffi’s opinion, it could breed jealousy in the others. Too much to-ing and fro-ing between ships could only result in unnecessary accidents; the beautiful people had never seen space before, let alone negotiated a spacewalk. So they would have to remain lakeside until a suitable planet could be found, however long that took.
“I’ve been wondering…if we’re doing the right thing,” she mused out loud, atypically in front of the whole crew, at the dinner table. “I mean would they be better off left as they are? Not just the people, but all those creatures as well. They’ve got everything they need to last indefinitely—food, water, the exact right environments. We’d be ripping them away from that and asking them to fend for themselves on an alien planet. Food might be hard to come by. It might not suit them. If we didn’t watch out for them, some could even go extinct. What do you think?”
She could have heard a pin drop.
“You don’t agree?” she tested.
“If you’re asking if we think it’s a crapshoot, the answer’s yes.” Rex clasped a huge black hand around his pint beaker of milkshake. “But we both think…” he looked to his wife for reassurance, “…that it’d be a crime to leave them floating like that.”
Alex gripped her husband’s hand on the edge of the table, then glared at Steffi. “What if someone else found them? God only knows what those Royals would do. And it’s only a matter of time before they get pulled in by a star’s gravity, or into another planet. I think it’s our duty to see they get a proper chance at surviving. They’re orphans from Earth—of a sort—so doesn’t that mean we’re related?”
Steffi wanted to nod in wholehearted agreement, but McKendrick, playing with her food, caught her eye.
“McKendrick? Come on, speak your mind. We need to discuss this thing now rather than later. Once we reach the asteroid belt, we’ll have put them in harm’s way, and there’ll be no ditching them then, not while I’m in charge.”
“Sounds like your mind’s already made up, Cap. I don’t have anything too constructive to add.”
Tickled by something in that, Rex spat his mouthful of milkshake back into the beaker. “Shock-a-bye-baby! McKendrick disagreeing with the rest of us? Anyone not see that coming light-years away?”
“Shut it, Van Rynn. If a thought ever went through your head, it’d start a new religion.” Everyone suppressed a titter. Rex beckoned more insults. “But someone’s gotta say this,” she added with a sigh. “These things might have been meant for Earth, but they were never actually from Earth. The aliens created them to fuck with our ancestors, to manipulate us into seeing things a certain way. Now the aliens’ logic might have been right, but that whole cockamamie plan—introducing fantasy creatures as some kind of experiment—just pisses me right off. These things they created are not real. They never were real. We thought them up in the first place to make us feel better about life being so fucking mundane. But the ironic part is—we’ve got these amazing creatures now, and life is still fucking mundane because we know they’re not real. They’re constructs. No matter how dreamy and magical they look, they’ll always be alien experiments that never escaped the lab. There’s nothing magical or supernatural about them. And when you get down to it, that was what fascinated us about them when we were kids. Take that away, and what are you left with?”
“Nymphs, Loch Ness Monsters, Bigfoot, unicorns…” Alex sat up and ticked the myths off with her fingers right in McKendrick’s face, “…winged horses, werewolves, the Ark of the Covenant, dragons, Excalibur. And those are the ones we know about.”
“Blah, blah, blah. They’re movie props, special effects, things created in a workshop to trick us. So they’re living things and they can do amazing things. In what way does that obligate us? We’re taking a hell of a gamble here, risking our lives, for things that insult us by their very existence.”
“That didn’t stop you from screwing half the lakeside population,” Alex snapped. “Feel insulted much then, did you?”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve had the other half.” McKendrick winked, then entered into a staring contest with her much prettier crewmate.
Steffi rolled her eyes. “Chance? What about you? You’ve been with us since October.” The memory of their sordid clinch in the prayer room dirtied him…and her. “What do you think we should do?”
He shrugged.
“Just say whatever you think,” Rex egged him on. “As you can see, that’s our crew motto. Everyone speak his piece, and ignore McKendrick’s.”
Chance stroked his week-old stubble, contorting his expression halfway between pensiveness and shyness. “Not really my beef. I’m lucky to be here at all.” It sounded dumb and fake. He must have realised it because he flicked his glance to every crewmember before setting his cup down with a gentle thump. “Okay, I agree with McKendrick. These things aren’t a part of nature—our nature, that is. But they’re here, and we’re here, and we’re going the same way. Why not give them a lift?”
“Hear! Hear!” Alex toasted with sarcastic glee. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—if we’re going the same way, why not give them a lift?�
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“Because they’re fucking fifty times bigger than us, and they can’t steer worth shit!” insisted McKendrick.
Rex intensified the mood with a roaring belly laugh. “Oh dear. Looks like our little pilot’s gone and lost herself another vote. Quick, let’s do another. Who votes McKendrick has to follow Bigfoot around with a poop-a-scoop for the next week?”
No hands went up, only smiles.
“I vote Van Rynn goes out for some fresh air…without a suit,” countered McKendrick. “It’s been a while since I saw iced shit.”
“Hey, that’s not bad,” he said.
“Thanks. I’m here all week.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.”
“Count? One, two, three, five…aw, what goes next?”
“Your fat ass out of the airlock,” he retorted.
Growing restless, Steffi shut her eyes. “All right, knock it off. It’s settled. We carry on as we are. If we find a planet that looks promising, we leave the alien ship in orbit, check out the surface ourselves. If it’s suitable, we figure out a way to get that shed down in one piece. If we don’t find anywhere suitable…we’ll have to discuss it again.” No dissent. “Okay, anyone who feels up to it, Arne has invited us all to another simulation tonight. Says it’s a surprise.”
“Doesn’t that guy know any other word?” groaned McKendrick.
Steffi glowered at her. “You’ve just volunteered. Anyone else?”
Alex affirmed with great enthusiasm, while Rex agreed to keep watch with Chance aboard the Albatross.
*
In the blink of an eye, what once was brilliant white became dark, majestic and indescribably alive. There was little movement in the dusk garden chock full of colourful flowers, enclosed by old and overgrown trellises, and the fading light did not help define the buds and leaves fidgeting in a solemn breeze. Yet, the garden had life, more life than Steffi could see or hear or smell. The dimmer it grew, the more alive it seemed, like some nocturnal coral realm quenched by the dark.
The girl could not have been more than six years old. Her deck chair lay inside a large bower shaped like two Bo Peep staffs stuck together, facing the flowerbeds. She was sitting upright against at least four pillows. A single Toy Story quilt covered her. When the twilight dimmed too low for her to see, she switched her torch on and roved the beam over the tops of the trellises.
Then she coughed.
A horrid thought braced Steffi as she glanced around at her crewmates standing under a silver birch, a few feet behind her. McKendrick was sitting cross-legged, fist on chin, a little farther away to the left.
The girl coughed twice more.
Steffi nudged Arne, whispered, “Is she—?”
“I am afraid so. Cancer.”
A strong desire to walk away almost got the better of her, but that would mean leaving Arne again.
“Sweetheart? Do you want to come inside?” The girl’s father looked around thirty. Athletic, smartly dressed in a sleeveless cotton shirt and beige trousers, he was handsome in a standoffish, workaholic sort of way. He approached the bower from behind with a tired look of concern, the bags under his eyes quite prominent. “Shall I carry you to bed?”
“I’m okay, Daddy. I want to see one first.” Her fragile voice would blow away in a stiff breeze. “Mummy said they come out at night. She thought she saw one last night.”
“A furry?” he mumbled, half interested, sliding into a more broad Yorkshire accent.
“No, Daddy, a fairy,” she corrected. “Furry is like Teddy. These glow and they have wings.”
He smiled and knelt beside her, tucking the quilt around her midriff. “Ah yes, now I remember.”
“Mummy said you don’t believe in fairies,” the girl stated with a precocious hint of superiority, without looking at him. “She said you’d have to see one first.”
“Did she now? Well, it’s true I’ve never seen one. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. You believe in something before you see it. That’s how it works.”
“So you do believe?”
“Of course,” he lied, hiding a wince then a wounded expression.
They watched the darkness in silence, following the shiver of her beam over bluebells and tulips and tall white flowers that had no name. Crickets interrupted now and then like sentry soldiers reporting in. Low over the trellises, a thin crescent moon kept eerie vigil. The girl was rapt in anticipation.
Then she coughed again. And again. The third time sent her torch lurching onto the grass.
“I think I’d better take you inside,” he almost insisted.
“No! Just a bit longer. I want to see what Mummy saw.”
He checked his watch and heaved a sigh. “Okay, but I’m getting your medicine ready.” Yawning, he stumbled toward the house which stood a good fifty feet behind the bower.
The little girl watched him leave. When he reached the house, she cast her quilt aside and slipped out of her chair. Steffi gasped. The girl was so dainty and darling and her tiny figure seemed but a wisp of what it should be. Gripping Arne’s arm, Steffi whispered, “Does she—?” The word lodged in her throat. A bitter tightness that she couldn’t escape swelled from her stomach to the thorns behind her eyes.
Arne didn’t respond.
The girl’s torch beam pointed right at them. It continued behind them as though they were not there. Her rickety legs, covered in nothing but pink shorts, trembled in front of the azaleas. She walked on toward the trellises, not lighting her path but searching the deepest, darkest shadows of the garden instead. She tiptoed here, staggered there, crouched low to inspect a secretive flower. In daylight, it would have seemed a silly little child’s game; in the dark, it was nothing short of a breathless search for hidden magic. The little girl had tenacity and wonder. But not stamina. Such a brittle thing. So brave. Her legs finally gave way on a blanket of grass beside the tulips. Her torch beam waved across the flowerbed, once back, once forth, then stopped altogether.
Clouds roamed over her, unknowing. The crescent moon slid into a pocket of the night. Crickets reported in, and were not heard from again.
“Beth! Beth!” Something about the father’s run to her seemed rehearsed, inevitable, as though he’d dreaded and accepted the moment long since. He broke down at her side. He cradled her in his arms like he’d probably done the first time they met. So short a time to know one another. No way to get that back, or to prolong it a little. Not even a little.
The man stopped sobbing. All fell silent again while the girl stirred.
“Beth? Beth, stay with me.”
“Daddy. Where am I?” The air barely held her words.
“In the garden, sweetheart. I’m here.”
“What are those?”
He followed her glassy gaze to the old yew at the far end of the garden. Pinpricks of light danced about the dark bough, phasing in and out of existence like some magical Morse code communicating with her.
“Are those—?”
He gathered himself and, summoning a moment of wonder for her, replied, “Yes! Look—Mummy was right. Fairies!”
But her eyes had already begun to close. He held her in his lap, stroking her hair while the gentle sprites waltzed away to a tree in the next garden. In the pursuit of fairies, she gave her last breath of life.
He held her until the wind picked up and the fireflies moved on altogether. When the simulation ended, frozen in a still moment, everyone got up and left in silence. Only McKendrick was not sobbing. She stayed behind, cross-legged, her chin resting on her fist, just as she’d started.
No one saw her for hours after. When she finally turned up lakeside, she glanced over the paradise habitat and, after a long sigh, gave the briefest of nods. Then she left without saying a word. That was the last time she set foot aboard the ship of myths.
Chapter Eight
The first asteroids appeared on radar early the next morning. Rex’s turn at watch in the cockpit began with a bang—literally—when a small rock
, undetected by the scanners, smashed into the Albatross’s roof. He sounded the alarm and course-corrected with care, not wanting to put too much strain on the tow cables. After all, they were pulling a ship the size of a town.
By the time Steffi reached him, one of the nearby suns had begun to emerge from an eclipse. Its shocking yellow glow backlit a sea of rocks suspended in space, a hailstorm with no ground to reach, for as far as the eye could see. Rocks of all sizes rolled at varying speeds. Some looked as big as moons. The way they were clustered together in this massive belt across nothingness didn’t seem to make sense until she remembered the all-powerful nature of gravity. Forces she couldn’t see harnessed the asteroids, and kept planets and moons at bay around stars, binding things together where not even air existed.
“Keep well clear,” McKendrick told Rex. “However long it takes. Trust me, we don’t wanna see even a medium-sized rock headed our way.”
“I heard that.” He chewed his lip while the Albatross dipped to the left, under and wide of the asteroids, at an agonising pace.
“Once you’ve locked the new heading, gradually build up speed,” Steffi ordered. “Then make sure you kill the engines before we clear the belt. We can’t risk anyone spotting our Psammeticum trail. We’ll just have to pick a planet now and let momentum take us. Try our luck ’til we’re clear of the blockade.”
“Where do you reckon the blockade is?” asked Rex.
Steffi shrugged. “They’re pretty much untraceable until you’ve crossed the threshold, then the artillery usually lets you know in a hurry. Two official warning messages, then a warning shot, then you’re dodging rain. We tried to locate the outer markers once around Horatius—you know, to knobble them—but you’ve no idea how small they are, how hard to pinpoint. They could literally be a hundred yards ahead of us right now and we wouldn’t know.”
The Mythmakers: An Impulse Power Story Page 8