by Eric Brown
When emerging from each dwelling, he made sure that the street was empty, that Scheering’s men had not seen his arrival and decided to investigate. He moved slowly from house to house and then, with perhaps only another half dozen dwellings to check, he came across signs of recent occupation.
From the outside the house was no different to any of the others: a tumbledown weatherboard frontage, smashed windows, a door hanging awry on one hinge...
But inside, in a room at the back of the house overlooking the valley, he found a portable heater and two armchairs arranged either side of a small table bearing the foil remains of self-heating meals.
In another room he found a mattress, and beside it a couple of old books, and another heater. This, then, was where the radicals had holed up—but where were they now?
He emerged into the lambent noon sunlight and looked up and down the main street. The surface of the road was metalled—or rather had been at one point. Now it was crumbled at the edges, and in places worn down to the underlying aggregate.
He was about to go back into the house, and search it more thoroughly, when he saw track marks in the gravel drive beside the house. They were the unmistakable, churned prints of a big off-road vehicle. He stepped from the drive, onto the road. It was possible to follow the progress of the vehicle across the patched tarmac road—its weight had crumbled the edges like broken biscuit—and up a track into the hills. Here, the surface of the unmade track bore the perfect, ribbed prints of the off-roader. He walked up the track, shielding his eyes and gazing up the incline. The track left the settlement, crossed the road on which he had come in, and wound further into the hills.
Vaughan followed the incline to the crossroads. The track-marks were continued on the other side of the road, imprinting themselves on the shale of the cutting. The off-roader had turned neither right nor left, but had continued on into the mountains.
He was tempted to return to the Bison and give chase, but before that decided to see if the Scheering-Lassiter men had been aware of the radicals’ departure. It would make his job much easier if they were still encamped in their shack on the edge of town, oblivious of the radicals’ escape.
He made his way back down the track and crossed the main street, passing between two buildings and looking down over the valley. He found the winding thread of the road that left the highway and approached the settlement, and the two shacks, which according to the farmers had been recently occupied.
He sat on the back veranda and, for the next hour, studiously watched the shacks for the slightest sign of life.
All was still, silent—and it was only after he’d been gazing at the dwellings for over an hour that he noticed the twin circular burn marks outside the nearest shack.
He stood, staring, and knew instantly what they were.
He hurried back to where he’d concealed the Bison, gunned the engine and slewed the vehicle on the road into the settlement, accelerating along the main street and out of town towards the highway.
Five minutes later he came to the first shack and drew to a halt.
He climbed from the cab and approached the burn marks on the gravel outside the shack. He knelt, examining the perfect circles of carbonised ash.
They were the landing and take-off marks of a twin-engined flier, and they looked as if they had been made very recently.
So the radicals had taken to the hills and Scheering’s men had given chase?
He returned to the Bison. There was only one course of action now: he would attempt to follow the track-marks of the off-roader to wherever they might lead.
He turned the Bison and made his way back into Campbell’s End, then turned off up the track and crossed the secondary road, the track becoming uneven, dangerous, as he climbed ever higher.
Soon it ceased to be a track altogether and petered out into blue grassland rising between jagged spurs of rock, terrain that would pose no trouble for an off-roader, but which even his Bison found hard going.
The off-roader’s parallel track-marks patterned the grassland like an extended equation sign, leading him onwards.
Perhaps a kilometre further on, the track-marks veered left, seemingly into the very flank of a sheer rock face, and Vaughan made out a cutting between rearing grey slabs. He manhandled the Bison left, moving from bright sunlight to inky shadow, and peered ahead. At least, here, the going was easier, as if the surface of the cutting had been levelled to form a passable track at some point in the past.
The track between the rocks climbed, widening out so that sunlight was once more admitted and shone down from beyond the snow-capped peaks like shafted searchlights.
Then the track became a definite road, though unmetalled and crude. It levelled out and hugged the side of the mountain, with a precipitous, sick-making drop to the right. He peered over once, which was enough. The side of the mountain continued sheer for perhaps a hundred metres.
The track continued along the side of the cliff face for perhaps two kilometres, then climbed and passed between two jutting shoulders of gunmetal grey rock. He passed into cold shadow again, not for the first time wondering where the radicals had headed.
Ahead, the track climbed seemingly without end: the vanishing point was so distant that the flanks of the rock on either side seemed to come together and close off the track completely. As he climbed, so the temperature dropped, and he turned on the Bison’s heater. Snow began to fall, a talcum drift so fine it obscured the view ahead until stray gusts of wind ripped it aside to reveal the endless, narrowing vista of grey rock.
It seemed a primitive form of travel, this bucking over unmade roads in a ground-effect vehicle, when there were such inventions as fliers, which would have made the journey a breeze.
He wondered how he might evade being seen by Scheering’s men, who had the double advantage of elevation and speed.
He would worry about that, he decided, when the time arrived.
Suddenly, without warning, the cutting levelled out, the grey rock faces on either side pulled back like a stage effect and Vaughan found himself on a rise overlooking a precipitous track which led down to a narrow cutting between boulders the size of buildings. He wondered if he had actually passed through the mountain range and was emerging on the far side.
He examined the map on his handset and attempted to trace his course so far. He found Campbell’s End, and the two tracks that led from the highway. The track he had taken into the mountains was not marked, but he estimated his course by charting a probable route using contour lines as his guide.
If he was where he thought he was, then he had indeed passed through the range: the cutting ahead should lead him into a vast, flat valley cupped between this mountain range and the one to the south. He wondered if this was the radicals’ destination.
He set off again, his satisfaction of making good progress tempered by the uncertainty of what might lie ahead.
He dropped, easing the Bison into the cutting between the boulders, and considered the irony of getting so far only to be stopped by the narrowness of the defile ahead. He reassured himself with the thought that, going by the track-marks of the off-roader, that vehicle was altogether larger than the Bison.
His fears proved unfounded. The Bison squeezed through the cutting with a metre to spare, and thirty minutes later emerged from between the rocks onto a narrow track overlooking the high valley.
He braked, climbed from the Bison and stared down into the sunlit valley. The starship was just under two kilometres away, but its size—a kilometre from its blunt nose-cone to its flaring tail-fins—made it seem much closer.
He stared at the wrecked vessel, experiencing an odd sensation of déjà vu as he recalled the alien starship from Denning’s memories.
It was similar in shape to other ships he’d seen over the years, but also strangely other in the baroque sweep of its lateral sponsons and bulging, galleon-like mid-section. It struck him as magnificent but also tragic, like some neglected epitaph to the e
xtinct beings which had piloted it across the light years: great sections of the ship’s panelling were missing, showing its interior framework like bones, and much of the vessel was embroidered with growths of vegetation, hung with vines and creepers like the ruins of some ancient cathedral.
Only then, still basking in the visual wonder of the starship and what it represented, did Vaughan make out the shape of the off-roader, made minuscule as it sat in the shadow of the alien vessel.
He scanned the sky, but there was no sign of the flier.
He hurried back to the Bison and rummaged among his luggage for the binoculars.
He turned them on the starship and powered up the magnification. The vessel leaped towards him, becoming even vaster, and he made out the beetle shape of the off-roader and, beside it, the stick-like figures of a man and a woman: the radicals, Jenna Larsen and Johan Weiss.
They were discussing something, gesturing towards the ship—specifically at a rent in the skin of the vessel.
As he watched, the couple turned, and for a stomach-churning second he believed that, somehow, they were aware of him watching them.
But they were looking up, into the air.
Weiss grabbed Larsen’s arm, gestured towards the starship. In seconds they had ducked through the rent and concealed themselves.
Vaughan lowered the binoculars and made out the shape of a flier, high above the valley, as it banked through the air towards the starship. He lifted the binoculars, sighted the flier, and watched with mounting apprehension.
The flier came in low, flowing a metre above the grassland. There were two dark figures in the flier, both men, and armed with laser rifles. The flier slowed as it approached the radicals’ off-roader.
Perhaps a hundred metres from the starship, the flier cut its turbos and settled onto the grassland. Scheering’s men jumped out, rifles at the ready, and walked slowly towards the off-roader.
Vaughan magnified the image. The two men wore regular clothing, thermal leggings and padded jackets. The bulky rifles they carried seemed incongruous in the hands of people dressed so casually, and therefore even more sinister. He watched, at a remove of kilometres, helpless to intervene in the drama about to be enacted in the shadow of the alien starship.
Scheering’s agents paused twenty metres from the off-roader. One of the men cupped a hand to his mouth, obviously calling out.
They looked at each other, nodded, and the first man called out again.
The second man gestured. They made for the cover of the off-roader, knelt and released a volley of laser fire into the rent where the radicals had concealed themselves.
Their fire was returned, but from further along the starship’s flank. A single, searingly blue vector hit the off-roader.
Vaughan lowered the binoculars, dazzled—but even from kilometres away the detonation of the vehicle was blinding. Seconds later he heard the muffled crump of the explosion, as flame erupted from its petrol tank and debris showered down across the plain in seeming slow motion.
He raised his binoculars again, and made out two blackened, twisted figures, still writhing, beside the wreckage of the off-roader.
Heart thudding, he watched for what seemed like minutes before the small figure of a radical—Johan Weiss—emerged from the starship and approached the off-roader.
Of the second radical, Jenna Larsen, there was no sign.
Weiss stood before the twisted wreckage of his vehicle, staring down at the carbonised remains of his pursuers, then dropped into a sitting position and held his head in his hands.
Vaughan slipped the binoculars into his pocket. For the time being, the danger from Scheering’s men was annulled—but soon, perhaps in a matter of hours, Denning’s team would arrive from Earth. He considered his options and decided to conceal the Bison in the cutting and walk the rest of the way to the starship.
He climbed back into the truck, backed it between the rocks, and then set off.
Twenty minutes later he was perhaps half a kilometre from the starship. The radical was still seated on the grass, head bowed. As Vaughan approached, the man looked up and stared across the plain.
He rose to his feet and lifted his laser warily, aiming at Vaughan.
Sunlight illuminated the scene, the great derelict length of the alien vessel, the smouldering debris of the off-roader. It looked like a shot from an epic holo-movie.
Raising his arms above his head, Vaughan made his slow way through the grass towards the radical.
* * * *
TWENTY-ONE
GHOST
Jeff had been away for just one day and already Sukara was missing him like crazy.
She found herself looking up at a sound from the next room, thinking it was him, or anticipating the evening meal when she would be able to tell him...
But their next evening meal together would be days away, and until then Sukara faced the prospect of one long, lonely day after another.
As the hours passed, so her conviction that something terrible was about to happen became stronger and stronger. She was convinced that if something didn’t happen to Jeff on Mallory, then tragedy would befall herself or Li here on Earth. She could feel it, an edgy premonition that fluttered in her chest and made her hands shake.
On the second full day of his departure Sukara took the upchute to Level One, strolled through the park and had coffee at the café overlooking the sea. She normally enjoyed these occasions, but at the prospect of returning to an empty, Jeff-less apartment, she felt miserable.
She wondered—even if Jeff survived this mission—if this would be the first of many cases that would take him away from her. She might have a great Level Two apartment, and more money to spend than she had ever dreamed of, but all that would mean nothing if much of the time Jeff was not with her to share their new life.
She bought a comic from a stall in the coffee shop, returned to her table, and flicked through the garish pages. She hadn’t read a comic for nearly two years, and at one time she had been addicted to their colourful, action adventure stories: they had allowed her to escape from the hardship of her life in Bangkok. Now she had no reason to escape, and she saw that the stories were melodramatic and trashy. Last year Jeff had bought her real books to read, and despite her initial reluctance she had soon found herself enjoying the complex stories of everyday human drama. She decided, as she left the coffee shop and crossed the park, that she would lose herself in a book when she got back. It might take her mind off Jeff’s absence for a while.
She stopped by the market on the way back and bought a few vegetables and a mango, Jeff’s favourite fruit. She would eat it tonight and think of him, out there on alien soil beneath a strange sun.
She had just deposited the bag in the kitchen when a knock sounded at the door.
Her first impulse was to ignore it. She’d been pestered by beggars recently, and people trying to sell her things she didn’t want. Then she thought that it might be her friend, Lara.
She hurried through the lounge and hit the control. The door slid aside, revealing a diminutive Thai girl who looked about five years old.
Sukara took a breath. The girl wore her hair in a bob, with a straight-cut fringe, and she was wearing a white Tigers’ T-shirt. For a second, she knew that the apparition before her was the ghost of her sister, come to accompany her through a difficult time.
Then the notion passed. The girl standing shyly before her was real, her smile uncertain as she looked up at Sukara and rehearsed her words.
Sukara was about to say, “I’m sorry. I’m busy at the moment. Not today—”
But the child said in quick Thai, “I’m looking for a man called Vaughan. Dr Rao said that he lived here.”
Sukara nodded warily. “That’s right. But he’s away at the moment.”
The kid’s face seemed to crumple. She looked desperate. “Away? But when will he be back? I’ve got to see him!”
Sukara recalled what Jeff had told her about the case he was working on.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Pham,” the girl said.
Sukara’s heart kicked. She looked up and down the corridor, but no one was in sight. “I’m Sukara,” she said, then took the girl by the shoulder and almost dragged her inside.
Pham’s reaction to the apartment would have been almost comical, if it hadn’t been so sad. She stared around her, goggling at the size of the lounge. For a second, her quest to find Jeff seemed to be forgotten as she took in the luxury in which other people lived.
Her big eyes returned to Sukara, who smiled and sat the girl in a sunken bunker and brought her a glass of Vitamilk.