‘How’d you sleep?’
‘Like a rock.’ Swinging my legs around, I sat on the side of the bed and shook sleep from my hair. ‘I still feel guilty, though. After three nights on that couch, you must be aching all over.’
‘Not really. I gave up on the couch on the first night. The floor isn’t all that bad. You’re not inviting me to share the bed, are you?’
I looked at him for a moment, then smiled. It wasn’t a come-on. Not really. ‘I’m not feeling that guilty.’ Then I paused again, and just looked at him.
It made him nervous.
‘What?’
But I just smiled. Then I put him out of his misery. ‘Why did you take me in?’
‘You know, I don’t have a clue. I guess I don’t like mysteries, and if I’d handed you over to Security for safekeeping, I’d most likely never have found out what was going on. Besides, you didn’t look too keen on trusting them when I brought it up. And you didn’t have anywhere else to go. Remember?’
I remembered.
Over dinner on that first night he’d suggested that maybe, if I couldn’t tell him what was going on, I should go to Security and tell someone there. But some instinct told me that wasn’t such a good idea. I didn’t have any notion of who had doctored the research files, or what had happened to Hendriks, but it stood to reason that any organisation with the resources it required to hack into the mainframe would certainly have its ways of knowing what was going on inside Security.
I didn’t know where I was going. But I knew where I wasn’t going. That was when Denny offered, and I accepted.
But for how long? I couldn’t stay holed-up in his room indefinitely. In the end, I had to do something positive. The problem was, I didn’t have a clue what.
I realised that I was staring into space when Denny cleared his throat theatrically, and moved across to sit on the bed next to me. ‘Thinking?’
‘Worrying. I can’t stay here, Denny. In the end it’ll put you in danger, I’m sure of it. I don’t know what I discov . . .’ I bit down on what I was about to say. In a moment of weakness, I’d nearly spilt the beans. I looked at him.
I don’t like mysteries . . . That was what he’d just said. And I did trust him. Still, the last person I’d shared it with had disappeared. I didn’t want to put Denny in that sort of danger.
But wasn’t it too late for that? I’d been with him in his room for three days and nights. If they knew I was here, they’d have come for me already, and they would assume I’d told him, anyway. It was clear they didn’t know. That meant he was safe for now.
But if they ever did find out, they probably wouldn’t stop to ask exactly what he knew or didn’t know. They wouldn’t take any chances. So in the end, it made no difference whether I told him or not. Except that it might stop me feeling so damned alone if I did.
‘Do you still want to know what’s going on?’
He nodded.
‘Well, don’t expect me to solve any mysteries for you. I think I’ll probably raise a lot more questions than I’ll answer . . .’
And then I told him.
Base Hospital
Genetic Research Facility, Edison
24/7/101 Standard
ELENA
She woke with a start. The man beside the door wanted to hurt her. He was wearing one of the hospital gowns, and he looked just like the doctors who came and went all day. But he wasn’t a doctor. His mind was full of dark thoughts. As dark as the night outside the windows.
In his mind, she saw the needle. He was reaching into his pocket and taking it out. He was injecting it into the drip that hung above her head. He was watching her gasping for air, coughing. He was watching her go still. He was smiling.
She was watching him now with her eyes closed. Watching his mind. Slowly she turned over, pretending to move in her sleep. She mumbled a little to make it sound convincing.
It worked. He tensed for a moment, then she felt him relax, as she settled again with her back towards him. Now she opened her eyes. In front of her, the communicator panel glowed gently on night-light mode. Slowly she slid her hand across and pressed the call button.
Behind her the man began to move, making his way across to the bed.
Desperately Elena cast her mind along the corridor, but the nurse had not seen the call-light. He was talking to someone on the screen and his mind was distracted.
The man was right beside her now. He was reaching up to take hold of the tube that would feed his poison into her vein.
Part of her wanted to scream, but she had seen inside his mind. She knew what he would do if she screamed, and she was too small and too weak to stop him. She felt the thrill of dark pleasure run through him as he pressed the plunger of his syringe and watched the stream of death disappear into the thin tube.
And she knew what she must do.
Her hands were beneath the sheet, and swiftly, ignoring the sharp pain, she drew the needle out of her hand. Then she held it tightly, so that it would not fly free during what was about to happen. For a couple of seconds she lay still, preparing. Her mind probed his, and she found what she needed. He knew what should happen. He had seen it before, more than once. He must see it again. Now.
When she began to react, he stepped back a pace, and then another. On the bed, the little girl arched her back as the first convulsion hit. Then she opened her eyes wide with shock and struggled to draw a breath, but her breathing was paralysed. The drug was working.
He smiled, and watched her choking. He watched her right hand clawing at the air, and her body begin to shake as the final convulsions took hold. It was beautiful. It was the moment he loved.
With a final shudder, she lay still. There was no need to check. The result was inevitable. And when they looked for a cause, they would find nothing. Delayed shock. The crash of the flyer had claimed another victim.
He turned and made his way out of the room, sliding the empty syringe back into his pocket.
Moments later, the nurse noticed the call-light, and made his way along the corridor to the little girl’s room. When he arrived, the bed was empty. And there was a small, round bloodstain and a wet patch where the intravenous needle was leaking onto the sheet.
DARYL
How she found me I’ll never know. Admittedly, the Base Hospital isn’t all that big, but she was only eight years old, and she’d just been through an experience at least as terrifying as the flyer crash. It was just about midnight, and she woke me up by shaking my shoulder.
We’d both been admitted for observation. They had us on drips to replace the fluids we’d lost, and to make us feel like there was a reason for us being in there, but they weren’t really too worried about us. Apart from a touch of sunburn and some mild stomach cramps from eating Yorum meat twice in three days, we were, according to the brief press release, ‘tired but well’.
At Cael and Saebi’s own request, no mention was made of the help we’d received from them. That was the way they wanted it, and I couldn’t convince them that they’d be heroes, that it would be good for the image of all Elokoi. As far as anyone knew, we’d made our own way over the Ranges and across the flatlands to Edison. I knew what the tube newshounds would make of that, as soon as they were allowed near us. Maybe Cael and Saebi had the right idea after all. Besides, it was no use arguing with them. It wasn’t the Elokoi way to take unnecessary credit for what you should do anyway, and we owed it to them to honour their wishes. That was how Elena explained it to me, but I think she was just repeating what the Elders had told her.
She seemed different after she’d spent that couple of hours ‘talking’ with them while we were waiting for the flyer to arrive at the Reserve. Cael had told me about her ability to ‘thought-speak’, and I’d watched her with Saebi in the evenings, staring and smiling. But after that time with the Elders, she said, her mind was ‘open�
�. She understood what the fuzzy ‘visions’ were that she’d been troubled with all her life. She knew how to control them. Talk about the value of expert tutoring!
But all that didn’t help me any at midnight, in a dark hospital ward, when she leaned over me, pulled the drip out of my arm, and whispered, ‘We have to get out of here. They’re trying to kill us.’
Us? As far as I knew, no one had done anything to me. I thought for a moment that she’d been dreaming, and I told her so, but she just looked at me. I don’t know exactly what it was about that look, but it just didn’t fit on the face of an eight-year-old.
‘Tell me what happened,’ I heard myself saying, but she just shook her head.
‘No time. I’ll tell you later. When we get away.’
I managed to grab a change of clothes from the closet before she dragged me out into the corridor.
‘Down the staircase. There’s no one down there as far as the ground floor.’
I was going to ask her how she knew, but something told me it was a really dumb question.
She looked up at me and smiled. ‘It is,’ she said. ‘Really dumb.’
And then we were on our way downstairs.
I guess we’d both put too much faith in Elena’s new-found powers. We hadn’t made it down two flights before we were surrounded by a whole group of people she just hadn’t sensed. I was ready to fight, but Elena stopped me with a movement of her hand.
She stood facing them in total silence for a full minute, then she shook her head and took my hand. ‘I won’t go, then.’ The outburst made no sense to me, but she squeezed my hand to emphasise her point.
For another few moments they faced each other, silently, then Elena nodded. ‘Okay.’
They started down the staircase and we followed, with a couple of their number bringing up the rear.
I’d given up trying to make sense of the whole situation. It wasn’t at all surprising when a flyer swooped down out of the night sky, and came in to land on the forecourt of the hospital.
There was a young woman at the controls. She spoke to Elena. ‘Thank God you’re safe. I thought we were going to be too late.’
Elena just smiled and looked at me. ‘You were,’ she said, and climbed aboard.
What could I do? We’d come this far together, why break up a successful team?
I turned to the girl at the controls. She looked about eighteen Standard. ‘I’m Daryl . . .’ I began, but she turned back towards her controls.
‘We’re aware of who you are, Mr Newman. Will you please move to your seat. We have a long journey ahead of us.’
I groaned to myself. My idea of fun at that moment in time was most definitely not ‘a long journey’.
I sat down next to Elena and she smiled at me. ‘Don’t mind Gwen. She has a lot of responsibility. It’s hard for her to keep control of everything and be polite too.’
I looked at her, and then at the girl who was piloting the flyer. Gwen? ‘How did you know her name? How did you know anything about her?’
Elena gave me ‘that look’ again. ‘She told me, silly. How do you think I knew?’
Central Administration, Edison
25/7/101 Standard
‘Look, it’s not my fault. DeGroot is our best man. He’s never failed before.’ Nervously Kennedy shifted from foot to foot. ‘And he swears he saw the girl die. He injected her with enough DTX to kill a full-grown man. There was no way she could have survived. Besides, the Security report just says she’s missing. How do we know she’s not dead?’
Gaston’s silence was more telling than the words that followed. When he finally spoke, his voice was too quiet. ‘We know she’s not dead because there’s no damned body! And because that damned Security officer – the one from the crash – what’s his name?’
‘Newman . . .’ Kennedy consulted the file on the desk in front of him. ‘Daryl Newman.’
‘Because this Daryl Newman is also “missing”. Doesn’t that strike you as a little too coincidental?’
‘But how could she surv—’
‘I’m not interested in how! Until I see her body – personally – that girl is still alive, and you, Kennedy, are responsible. If DeGroot isn’t up to it any more, then you’d better “retire” him, and find someone who is. Or do the job yourself. Just don’t tell me it’s not your fault. Nobody is indispensable, Kennedy. Nobody. Remember that.’
I’ll remember. Just as long as you do, you fat toad. One day, you’ll push me too far. And no one lives forever . . . Kennedy turned and made for the door without a word.
12
NYASSA
Elokoi Reserve, Wieta Clan
Edison Sector (East Central)
25/7/101 Standard
RAEL
Through the shadows on the eastern edge of the village, two figures were moving cautiously towards the huts. He watched them for a moment with his mind, then smiled and sat back in Leani’s favourite chair. Soon they would arrive. And he would be waiting to greet them.
Above the plain, the twin moons were both full, and the night sky was tinged with purple. The Wieta called it a ‘hunter’s sky’, but that was only out of habit. There were few hunts any more. What need for hunting, when the offworlders fed you and clothed you and told you where you could live? When they treated you like cubs instead of hunters. When, like cubs, you took what they forced upon you, without complaint, because the alternative was worse than their derision.
There was no law against hunting, of course, but the Yorum and the slow-moving Utiina had drifted away from the lands that were left to the Wieta, and few would follow them as far as the Ranges, especially as it meant leaving the safety of the Reserve, and risking what lay beyond.
Rael closed his eyes and remembered his father’s hunting stories. It was long since he had recalled them, and the fact of it saddened him. It was the Teller’s fault; filling the past nights with stories, asking them questions to which there were no longer any answers. Making him wish for something that was long dead.
The young female, Saebi, had spent the days and nights camped at the old Teller’s feet, drinking in the words of the Histories and the Thoughtsongs of the Trek. Rael had watched the firelight as it reflected from her wide eyes, and in those eyes he had glimpsed a power; an energy that denied the life that had been thrust upon them. A stubborn pride that refused to cast off the past and simply accept.
Her mate, her partner on the gruelling haaj, had stood back from the Teller’s circle, watching. Cael, he was called. A desert name. One of the Old Names. Only once had he stood within the circle, and then only for a few moments. Once, in the middle of a song, the Teller had stopped and looked up. And with a movement of her hand and a mind-tone of welcome, the old one had called him forward.
Long ago, the Teller said, when I was young, I met with one whom the Ancestors had touched. She had looked into Cael’s eyes for a moment, silently. It seems that now I have met with two. Then she had turned to Saebi, who sat unmoving at her feet, and she had smiled. Or maybe three.
Bending down, the Old One had taken Saebi’s hand, to help the young female to her feet. Then she had joined both the young ones’ hands beneath her own, and spoken aloud. ‘Be free.’ Nothing more.
Then she had resumed her song, and Cael had moved out beyond the circle once again.
The next morning the Teller was gone, back towards the highlands to the south. And the two young journeyers too had disappeared, back towards the desert and the haaj that had called them.
And part of Rael had gone with them. He stared out into the black night, east towards the Ranges, and for a moment he tasted the wind of freedom, and remembered his father’s stories.
By the light of the full moons, he studied the gift they had left behind.
On the smooth surface of a tiny shard of Kienyi stone, Cael had painted one of the an
cient Pictures. It showed Gaita in the desert, drawing water from the spring of Eltaas, which the Dream had told her would flow from the bare rock and save them from thirst.
Be free . . .
He cast the thought upon the wind, then turned to face the two humans, approaching out of the shadows of the huts directly across the Greenspace.
JANE
The old Elokoi was waiting for us as we made our way across the open space at the centre of the village. It was as if someone had called to tell him we were coming. Denny speeded up slightly, and reached the hut a few paces ahead of me. The place looked different at night. The last time I’d been here, the sun was out, and the life of the village was going on all around me.
Rael had risen, and was standing where his mate Leani had sat when I’d been introduced to her, that first afternoon. I could see that Rael recognised me, even though we had only met once before. I approached him, and touched my face in the Elokoi gesture of greeting, the way Denny had taught me.
This whole thing was Denny’s idea. ‘Where’s the last place anyone would think of looking for you?’ It really wasn’t a bad idea at all. Providing the Elokoi went for it. I still didn’t know much about them, but I knew the law. We hadn’t left them with a whole lot, but on the Reserves they were still in control of their own lives – to a limited extent.
You had to get permission from the Native Species Protection Agency to visit – permission which, of course, we didn’t have. But even if you did, the Elokoi had to agree. Rael had made me quite welcome the last time, but then I had been an ‘official guest’, and I didn’t know how he’d react to what Denny was suggesting.
When I quizzed Denny about it, he just laughed. ‘I wasn’t always a Security drone, you know. I’ve led a pretty interesting life. Rael and me, we’re like this.’ As he spoke, he crossed two fingers on his right hand and held them up in front of him. ‘Remember I told you I’d visited the inland sea?’
I nodded.
‘Well, I brought back a couple of souvenirs. I found them a metre or so underground while I was digging out on one of the old flood plains. They were made of stone. A couple of carvings of animals I couldn’t recognise. I kept them in my room, and I didn’t think too much about them. Then, when I joined the Corps, my first posting was “zoo duty”. That’s what they call Security at the Reserve. We were supposed to keep people out, but most of the uniforms acted like it was their job to keep the Elokoi in.’
Deucalion Page 10