“Looks like he can do everything but tango,” Charlie said appreciatively.
Chris felt a big grin spread across his face.
“Tango,” he said quietly, and the name stuck.
In retrospect and with the benefit of hindsight, what happened next seemed self-evident, but at the time no one saw it coming.
It would be years before the true cause of the conflagration was known. Was it arson, as some suggested? Or simply nature, helped by shortsightedness, taking its course?
“Excessive oxygen enrichment,” the official report would read. “Unforeseen interaction of transplanted Terran hybrid grass with climatological variances in a nonnative environment causing spontaneous combustion under dry conditions. Duplication of the event under laboratory conditions indicates…”
And so on. Dry bureaucratese to describe a conflagration that nearly destroyed a colony before it was contained.
Several of the evacuees, notably an adolescent girl named Silk, reported seeing a group of boys from the Neworlder settlement setting fires the day before in the brush on the border where Neworlder land abutted the Prescott holding. But the pattern of the main conflagration indicated it had actually spread away in an entirely different direction, and eyewitness reports were deemed inconclusive.
Sifting through the evidence provided by the charred and ruined land once the embers had cooled, investigators found several new steam vents spawned by the volcano at the southernmost edge of the Prescott holding. While they found no new magma flows, this did not indicate conclusively that there had not been, and did confirm that a few sparks or embers, or even the intense heat of a bubbling magma pool, might have been all that was needed to start the grasses on fire.
In summary, they concluded, the grass might have ignited spontaneously, as the result of human intervention, or sparked by a new outgrowth of the volcano, or any combination thereof. Two things only could be deduced. One, that these particular varieties of grasses ought not in future to be transplanted from Earth without careful testing under all possible planetary conditions and, two, that if the grass had not been growing on Elysium, either humans or the volcano might have produced a small conflagration or two, but not the maelstrom that resulted.
Sheets of flame roared up one hillside, crested, then flowed down the other side, destroying everything in their path. They devoured the acres of new trees that several homesteaders, following Heston’s lead, had planted around their holdings, leapt over creeks and streams, slowed a bit at the well-irrigated fields of the Neworlders, but eventually gobbled them up as well, then headed for the houses. Traveling with the prevailing wind, the fire was difficult to battle. No sooner had fleets of shuttles from the city and volunteers on the ground contained it in one place than it sprang up in another.
Fighting brushfires was an antique art, not needed on Earth since the early part of the twenty-first century, and not prepared for on most colony worlds. With the growing number of settlements on Elysium, however, a requisition for fire containment technology had been submitted to the Federation Colonial Division for Environmental Safety only the week before. The subspace message had no doubt reached Earth by now, but the necessary equipment would be months in coming.
The sky was dark with smoke, the air hot and almost tangible. The sun shone a demonic red-orange, and the sky glowed eerily at night. Outdoors it was difficult to breathe.
Standing at the edge of the yard, too restless to stay indoors in spite of the smoke, Chris was startled by the sudden violent movement of the tall grass as far as the eye could see, and wondered if it meant more earthquakes, along with everything else. Instead, he watched in amazement as tens of thousands of the small native rodents, birds, and lizards, abandoning their primeval rivalry over food supply, leapt and scurried past him, around him, even over his feet in their haste to flee the destruction. He covered his face with his arms until they had passed, then stared off the way they’d come, curious to see how close the fire was.
“Don’t go far!” Willa pleaded with him. “As soon as we find a way to move the horses, we’re evacuating.”
“All of us?” Chris asked pointedly, picking off a couple of stunned lizards still clinging to his shirt and jeans and watching them scuttle away.
“I don’t know yet, Chris,” his mother said.
She assembled them all, even Charlie, in the living room, and keyed in a map of the homestead on a flat screen in the center of the coffee table. The comm was on in the background, issuing up-to-the-minute reports on the status and location of the fire.
“I’ve modified the irrigation system to provide a continuous soaking on the entire perimeter,” Willa said. Her voice was calm, but she couldn’t help biting her lip occasionally. “The buildings are fireproofed; I saw to that. If it were just smoke we had to worry about, we could seal the barn and the house and keep the environmental controls cranking. But if the fire breaks through the irrigation system…”
“It shouldn’t,” Heston interrupted. “Not if you built it right.”
Willa ignored the comment. “One way or the other, tomorrow Chris and I are evacuating. Charlie? What can be done about the horses?”
“If you tell me it’s safe to seal that barn, I’d leave enough forage down for them for three or four days. But what concerns me is whether we’d be allowed back in, and whether or not the power supply can sustain uninterrupted. I’ve heard some of the outer homesteads lost power when the fire came through. Horses might be better off let loose to fend for themselves. Better than being locked up to suffocate or starve.”
“You’re awfully free with my property!” Heston said.
“I’m trying to save your property!” Charlie shot back.
“You keep them in that barn until I tell you otherwise!”
The shrill of the comm unit interrupted them.
“…Evacuation to begin immediately. Each person permitted to bring whatever can be carried…Livestock to be secured and, if possible, retrieved after all human inhabitants have been safely removed…personal vehicles to remain grounded so as not to get in the way of official evacuation vehicles…”
There was a crackle of static, followed by a long silence. Charlie got to his feet.
“Let’s go,” he said to Chris.
Heston left the house with them, and Chris wondered if he was going to help them for once. No one was prepared for him to run toward one of the aircars and take off without a word of explanation to anyone.
Within minutes, they heard the explosion. Wherever he was going, whatever he had intended to do, Heston must have flown too close to one of the runnels of flame, and the ’car had gone up like a rocket.
The sound brought Willa out to the porch, and she stood stock-still, the knuckles of one hand pressed against her mouth, her other hand resting on the slight bulge of her pregnancy. She swayed for a moment, but did not cry out.
It all happened rather quickly after that.
Very large fires create their own wind, a searing sirocco that drives the flames before it, and feeds off them, whirling in circles, impossible to contain. By now what had been distant smoke was accompanied by ominous crackling sounds, and the wind.
Rescue shuttles were battling that wind. Chris watched as a formation of three soared by overhead, not stopping. Were there others in greater danger than they? The wind spun dust devils where the ground wasn’t wet enough, flung ash and stinging cinders into their eyes.
Suddenly all the power went out.
Sources would later insist that it was to cut off excess oxygen supply from the environmental controls that was feeding the fire, but by now it didn’t matter. The irrigation system stopped; the plashing water fell to a trickle. The flames raced beyond the perimeter, and headed for the last ring of hills protecting the homestead. The wind seemed to be sucking all the oxygen out of the air, and even with breather masks every breath was an effort.
Inside the barn, there was turmoil. Panicked, the horses reared and screamed, kicking
out at the walls of their stalls, eyes rolled back in terror. Charlie heard the environmental controls click off and shook his head.
“Too little too late!”
As Chris watched him, it was clear Charlie had anticipated the worst and prepared for it. He began with the last stall at the rear and, using a soft piece of sacking as a blindfold, took Petula by the halter, calmed her, and led her toward the open door. He seemed to be listening to the air.
“Fire’s currently traveling west to east,” he told Chris. “They may be able to run out ahead of it.”
He slid the towel off Petula’s eyes, slapped her on the rump, and she was off.
“But we can’t just—!” Chris stood between Maia and Tango, unable to bear the thought of letting them go.
Charlie didn’t answer. He handed Chris a piece of sackcloth for Maia, and went to open the hasp on the next stall.
His eyes stinging from more than the smoke, Chris was leading Maia out, Tango jostling beside her, when they heard the scream.
“…the house…” he told Vina, his voice tight, as if even now, a lifetime later, it was hard to breathe. “…my mother was right, the house itself was fireproof, but the vegetation around it, and some of the contents…there were investigations and reports, reams of red tape after the fact…they’re filed away somewhere…I’ve blocked the details out of my mind. But the house went up like it was made of paper, and my mother was inside…”
“Run, Chris, run!” Willa screamed, the wall of flame moving rapidly behind her, around her, the great wind it created whipping her clothes, embers catching in her hair as she screamed for him to flee, to get away.
Run he did, not away from her and the danger, which was what she wanted, but toward her, to save her, pull her out of the roofless wreckage of the house, save her, must save her…
He got as far as the burning porch, eyes swollen shut from the smoke. Blinded, he managed to grab the door handle, oblivious to the fact that it was so hot that the flesh of his hands would melt into it. The house imploded then, throwing him backward into the yard, his hands burned, his sleeves on fire. Somehow he staggered to his feet, slapping out the flames engulfing his arms, taking flesh with them, and would have tried again, though there was no sound from within now except the rush of flames—
—but a pair of powerful arms wrapped themselves around him, lifting his gangly twelve-year-old self bodily off the ground, dragging him not toward, but away.
“No, you don’t!” the voice said gruffly, harshly. “You can’t save her, son. It’s too late…”
Chris fought then, kicking and clawing, howling like an animal, the screams of the panicked horses as the fire engulfed the barn drowning out the sounds that after a while it seemed only he could hear. The house was gone, his mother was gone, and the world was a wall of flame…
He couldn’t breathe, except to cough. Something the size of an elephant was apparently sitting on his chest, and he couldn’t get his eyes or hands to work at all. When he tried to sit up, something held him back. All he could do was hear.
“…triox taking effect…vital signs stable…moving him now…Sir, you’ll have to come now; we won’t be coming back this way.”
“You’re forgetting something…” Was that Charlie’s voice?
“Sir, I’m sorry…there’s no more room. The shuttle’s barely able to lift off as it is.”
“She can handle the extra weight if you balance her right.” There was a sound of large objects being moved across a metal surface. “You take the three of us, or just the boy. It’s important.”
Three of us?! Chris wondered. Had his mother survived somehow? Maybe by some miracle she’d been thrown clear of the house. He wished it wasn’t so dark in here. He had to see.
“Charlie?” he tried to say, but his throat was closed from the smoke and it emerged as a croak, lost in the engine hum. The next thing he heard was the sounds of a life-signs monitor.
“Mom—!” He sat bolt upright, and was overcome with a wave of dizziness. He would have fallen off the diagnostic bed if Charlie hadn’t been there.
“Easy,” he said, easing him back down.
His eyes focused finally. “Where are we?”
“Starship sickbay.”
“My hands—”
“Sterile dressings. Medical officer tells me the tissue has to rest overnight, then they’ll treat you with regen tomorrow. And you have to rest, too. They’ll only let me stay with you if you promise to stay put.”
Chris looked Charlie over. He must have stayed with him throughout. He’d sustained a few scrapes; his shirt was torn and covered with soot. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he wiped them frequently. From the smoke, Chris thought.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’ve been worse,” Charlie answered.
Chris swallowed hard. He knew the answer to the question he was about to ask, but he had to ask it anyway.
“Charlie? Where is she? You said ‘three.’ When we were rescued, you told them to take the three of us—”
The look in Charlie’s eyes made him stop. For the first time since he’d appeared out of nowhere to change Chris’s life, there was no mirth in them.
“I’m sorry, Christopher. I’m truly, truly sorry…”
The whole weight of it crashed down on him, and he sobbed like a baby, his tears soaking into Charlie’s shirt.
His hands would heal in a day or two. But nothing would heal the pain in his heart.
TALOS IV
“Now I see why they failed with you the first time,” Vina whispered, stroking his hair in the dark. “They should never have tried to terrorize you with fire. They couldn’t know it would only make you stronger…”
That first time, his keepers had changed his surroundings so often and so abruptly that, even after he had figured out that everything except Vina and the four walls was an illusion (and he still wasn’t entirely sure about Vina), it took him some time to adjust.
He found himself crouched on all fours, struggling to get to his feet, but the pain was too great. It distracted him, weakened him, made it impossible for him to do anything but try to fight it, though he knew it was useless, and that this time there would be no one to save him, and he was going to die.
He saw flames ripple through the fabric of his tunic, devour it like paper, begin to attack the flesh underneath; he could smell the all-too-familiar stink of burning flesh. Helplessly he beat his hands against the ground, trying to extinguish the flames, but that only seemed to make things worse. He told himself he would not cry out, he would not, even as the hoarse, agonal howl tore from his throat, a sound he hadn’t made since—
Since I tried to save her. I tried, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t…
“If you continue to disobey,” came the inexorable voice, with its prim superiority, its need to dominate, to scold, “from deeper in your mind there are things even more unpleasant.”
The pain receded then, the illusion that he was trapped in an unquenchable fire—oh, he’d read the myths about a place called Hell, but descriptions on a page were pallid compared to the actual experience—his clothing and his very flesh burning, skin already burned away, sera leaching away in a process that could only lead to death (if he let himself believe even for a moment that they’d actually kill him, and of that he wasn’t sure), ended as abruptly as it had begun. Christopher Pike gathered his thoughts, defiant. The Keeper had made a critical mistake.
More unpleasant? he wondered, in fact, from deeper in his mind, a place the Keeper hadn’t yet been able to access, because the labyrinthine neural pathways of each human mind were unique. He pulled himself to his feet, murder in his eye. No, now there you’d be wrong. Nothing can be more “unpleasant” to me than fire.
“Why not put irresistible hunger in my mind?” he’d challenged them. “Is it because you can’t?”
He had maintained the defiance for as long as he could, not allowing them to get near the truth, which was that the way to reach him had a
lways been fire. They hadn’t learned that secret the first time. In sharing his deepest memories with Vina, had he given them too much this time?
“We sometimes make the mistake with aliens of thinking that just because they’re superior to us in certain things, they are in everything.” Vina was only a voice in the darkness, the tender touch of a hand against his brow. “They aren’t, you know. They’re just as fallible as we, only in different ways.”
They lay in bed as if they were an old married couple talking over the events of the day, not two strangers caught in an eerie déjà vu telling each other their innermost thoughts. Had he really wept in her arms the way he had in Charlie’s all those years ago? What must she think of him? Had the listening exhausted her as much as the telling had him? In any event, it was enough, for now. He propped himself up on one elbow, seeking out the shape of her in the dark, cradling her face in his free hand.
“You mean like when they ‘repaired’ you?”
“Yes. But not only that. Also in interpreting us, what we mean. When you first arrived, for example, they weren’t used to you, to all that raw, male energy. All they had to go on about humans was Columbia’s memory banks, and me.”
She sat up, cross-legged like a child, and took his hand between her own. “What a terrible thing, to lose your mother when you were so very young—! Did you ever find your father?”
“Well, yes, but that was much later.”
“And you never went back to Elysium?”
“No. Years later I heard there was some kind of inquiry. Allegations that the Council had been negligent about evacuation procedures. I’m told that to cover up their own mistakes they made Heston Prescott some kind of hero. Named their second city after him. My mother had a street named after her in Elysium City; that was the best they could do for her. No, I never went back…”
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