Netherspace

by Andrew Lane

  The grubless hounds folded their legs and knelt down in front of Marc. The small objects from the tray were arranged around them: a collection of metal cubes, pyramids and globes. One of the hounds with a grub trotted past Marc, stopped in front of Tse, looked up at him, then turned and began to move slowly back towards the two kneeling Cancri.

  “Better go,” Kara said. “It asked nicely.”

  Tse followed it over to the arrangement of metal objects surrounding the two kneeling hounds, before being led back to rejoin the others.

  The second Cancri with a grub laid its weapon at Marc’s feet. Both the hounds with grubs returned to their vehicle.

  “I’d bet those two kneeling were involved in capturing the SUT,” Tse called. “Maybe the leaders. Or dominant ones. It’s a symbol, I think. But real.”

  “You’re not making sense,” Marc said, even as a terrible suspicion crept into his mind.

  “These… kneeling ones,” Tse now sounded troubled, “are different somehow. Marc, I can see everyone going home. But I can also see what must happen first. It’s why they gave you the weapon.”

  “Maybe it’s all symbolic,” Marc said a little desperately. One of the kneeling Cancri had raised its head to look at him.

  “You’re expected to kill them,” Tse said flatly.

  “It could be a test. Do it and we all die. Spare them and it’s drinks all round.”

  “Marc. Trust me. Do it. For all of us.”

  Marc looked over to Kara. “Boss?”

  “I can’t order you.” Kara’s voice left no one in doubt what she wanted.

  “He must kill them,” Tse insisted.

  “Fuck.” Marc shook his head. “First time you get at all involved, Tse, I got to kill something. Two somethings.”

  “C’mon. I make good coffee.”

  “It’s almost like the other half of a trade,” Marc said. “Why do you think they put those pyramids and spheres around them?”

  “Religion, something to do with sacrifice? Some legal shit?” Kara guessed.

  “So why bring Tse over? Maybe he’s meant to shoot them.”

  Kara found herself again thinking more like an artist as the simulity took over. “Maybe it’s more they see Tse as our… our spiritual leader? Judge? Moral arbiter? Something like that.”

  “I’ll be leading prayers later,” Tse said. “A collection plate will be passed around.”

  “Maybe it’s all symbolic,” Marc said again.

  “They’ve taken away their grubs,” Tatia snapped. “That’s like they’ve been cast out. You got problems, Marc, I’ll do it,” she offered. “I recognise the markings on one of them. It killed my people on the LUX-WEM-YIB.”

  Marc nodded, not really caring. “Has to be that weapon?”

  “You just press the button,” Tatia said. “I want to do it.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Marc walked over to the two kneeling Cancri who stared up at him, surrounded by the small metal shapes. Two triangular tongues emerged and deposited a single drop of green ooze each on the ground. Marc picked up the Cancri weapon, studied it for a moment, pointed the business end at the nearest hound and pressed a square-shaped button. There was a noise more sizzle than crack! and the first hound exploded, then the second a moment later. Marc spat on the ground. “Now what?”

  “Up to them.” Kara pointed at the vehicles. “They’re coming this way.”

  The vehicles stopped. The Cancri stayed inside, waiting for… whatever.

  “Come on,” Kara said, turning back to their truck. “Leave those metal things. Let’s get that awning down,” she called. Three minutes later she drove the truck towards the Cancri, whose vehicle moved off. Kara followed it towards and then amongst the low, domed buildings.

  “You okay?” Tatia asked Marc.

  “Didn’t feel a thing. Funny, that.”

  The Cancri vehicle stopped, as did Kara.

  “I know where we are,” Tatia said. “That warehouse I told you about!”

  Kara looked at Tse.

  “It’s important,” he said firmly. “We have to go inside.”

  15

  Tatia had said very little about the building itself, more concerned with what she’d seen there. It was understandable, especially for a civilian. But it was unforgivable for a soldier like Kara not to observe and evaluate everything.

  The Cancri had stopped some distance away and remained in their vehicle. Motioning the others to stay quiet and still for a moment, Kara took stock.

  The entrance was square, about five metres on each side. No door. Presumably the dry atmosphere helped preserve whatever was inside. Or maybe there were force fields involved. Kara checked with a combat scanner. No electromagnetic activity in the area, other than what one would expect from solar activity and a nearby spaceport. The building itself was made of a material that felt like plastic but sounded metallic when tapped. It curved up to fully thirty metres high, its circumference a near-perfect hundred and fifty metres across.

  Inside she could see well over fifty parallel rows of shelving made of the same drab-coloured material as the building’s shell. The shelving rose almost to the roof – Tatia had said it glowed but Kara thought it somehow transferred light from outside to inside without being obviously translucent. She signalled Marc to remain with the others and walked inside.

  There was no floor and the soil crunched slightly under her feet. There was no smell, either; strange, given the number of artefacts. If anything, Tatia had underestimated how many there were and the sheer variety. From just inside the entrance, Kara could see clothes, washing machines, children’s toys, vid-players, books, a small armchair – every household object imaginable, all used, often badly worn. All badly copied, as Tatia had said. She saw a primitive carving of a woman, all breasts and swollen stomach, a Stone Age Venus statuette, clearly ancient. How long had aliens been coming to Earth?

  There was no apparent system to the storage. Relatively new items were next to ancient ones, large next to small. She walked over and opened an antique washing machine. The clothes were still inside, dry but again lacking any smell, as if sanitised. There was a hopper next to the control panel half-full of a white granular powder. Kara guessed it was ancient detergent – surely there should have been some faint chemical scent, even after all these years? There wasn’t, any more than there was in the saucepan next to it, still half-full of stew. No mould, but Kara decided not to taste it. Her attention was caught by an object on the opposite aisle and the breath caught in her throat. How many times had she watched the movie? How the hell had the Cancri got hold of a prop that had been burned in a furnace? No. There’d have been copies made over the years. And yet… She walked across and ran her fingers along the runners, touched the faded wood. A child’s sled with the brand-name Rosebud. She wondered if Orson Welles would have seen the joke, then turned and called the others to come inside.

  “Can you remember where you saw the bodies?” she asked Tatia. The sound of her voice vanished almost as soon as she uttered the words. The building also absorbed sound. It was, Kara thought, like a vast home for abandoned belongings or a memorial to a culture the Cancri could never understand.

  “They’re towards the back,” Tatia said, pointing. “Near a penny-farthing. It’s upright, should be easy to spot.”

  Marc found the antique bicycle but there were no bodies.

  “They were there,” Tatia said after they’d looked for other penny-farthings. “I know.”

  “So they’ve been moved,” Marc murmured. “So maybe humans weren’t meant to see them.”

  Tatia looked sharply at him, perhaps alert for any hint of a patronising male tone, but Marc had turned away.

  “Nothing to see here,” Kara said lightly. “Apart from the obvious.”

  The Cancri vehicles had moved closer; the inference was that they wanted the humans to get back inside their own and follow.

  “Might as well,” Kara said. “Everyone back on the bus.”

>   The suspicious, increasingly on edge humans were taken to a warehouse half a kilometre away. The four walked inside and as one stopped in their tracks. The warehouse was empty except for a plinth – altar? – on which lay two bodies. Even from fifty metres away they were obviously dead. There is, as Kara knew only too well, a basic shapelessness to a corpse, the relaxation of muscle and powered-down cells, the sense of being little more than a reminder of fading memories. Looking at a dead body one could understand why the ancients had thought that the soul had weight – once it had fled, or been taken, a body looked shrunken. These two wore their pointlessness like a shroud.

  Kara led the way forward.

  The two naked men lay on their backs, eyes shut, arms by their sides. They were European, tanned. One was in his fifties, balding, his short black hair flecked with grey, a gold wedding ring on his finger. The other was in his early twenties and had a blond, shoulder-length mane and several strands of different coloured twine around his left wrist. There was no obvious sign to show how either had died. Both looked peaceful. Small metal objects were arranged around the bodies, similar to those now marking the dead bodies of two Cancri. Pyramids, spheres, cubes.

  “I’m making a link,” Marc said. “Death is sacred. Or fun.”

  “Far too early to draw any conclusion,” Tse said. He sounded nervous. “Those things could be condiments.”

  Kara had seen many dead bodies, and not all of them fresh. Yet there’d always been the sense of a story behind them, of a life lived. Here there was nothing. The bodies might just as well have been mannequins in a shop window. She switched her combat gloves for plastic ones and took tissue samples for Henk to analyse later, noting that the flesh felt as if the men were not long dead; it was cool, not cold, to the touch. She pointed to a small-bore bullet wound – a tiny entry point – behind the older man’s right ear and looked questioningly at Tatia.

  “I never noticed,” Tatia said.

  “With everything you’d been through,” Marc said sympathetically, “I’m not surprised.” Then, noticing Kara’s brief ghost of a smile, hardened his voice. “I’m looking for a pattern here and can’t see one.”

  “Any pattern is theirs,” Tse said. “We wouldn’t understand it. Maybe there is no pattern. Perhaps they collect what they find beautiful. Like humans watching a sunset.”

  “I met the Cancri and Eridani back home,” Marc said firmly. “They have no sense of aesthetics.”

  “That why the Eridani bought your art?” Kara said innocently.

  “Isn’t to say they don’t want one,” Marc said far more mildly than he felt. “Or can’t recognise it, something, in us. Look at all this.” His gesture took in the entire warehouse. “It’s a fucking memorial. Think of that other warehouse. The aliens are fascinated by us. Not our science and tech but our natural aesthetic, by our weirdness, our customs and practices as they see them. Everything we’ve seen of them so far is dull, boring. Unimaginative. Well, to us. Possible somewhere there is a richness of alien creativity that’ll stun the world. I don’t think so. Okay, you could say the tech needs imagination – but do we even know they developed it? Here’s the thing: you need imagination and creativity to develop science and technology. You come up with an idea that explains an observation and you test it. Or you come up with an idea for a new invention and you build it. So maybe Greenaway was right. Somewhere there’s another alien race who developed the netherspace drive and all the rest. Sure as hell can’t see the Gliese doing it.”

  Tse looked down at the ground. “You’re not entirely right,” his voice so quiet Kara had to strain to hear him. “There’s another way to advance science.”

  Marc got it at once. “You mean pre-cog stuff?”

  Tse looked up. “How do you think human scientists figure out alien tech?” he snapped. “By working with pre-cogs is how. Which is why GalDiv has a programme to identify pre-cogs as kids. So they can be trained.” His voice was now tinged with bitterness. “But don’t tell the public. Because pre-cogs are weird. People are scared of them. Always peeking and prying, right?” He was suddenly aware of three shocked faces staring at him. Tse shrugged. “Sorry. It’s been a tough day.”

  There was a long silence.

  Kara finally broke it. “If there is a more advanced alien species, it sure as hell doesn’t want to be found. Or maybe doesn’t even know we exist.” She took out a mini-vid recorder and ran it for a few seconds then spoke to Marc. “Put on your plastic gloves and help me turn these guys over.”

  Tatia announced she was going to look around and Tse said he’d join her. Neither seemed disturbed by the prospect of naked male buttocks, more that the area had suddenly become a morgue.

  “Never realised Tse was so sensitive,” Marc said as he pulled on latex gloves.

  “You never saw the point of him did you?” Kara sounded annoyed.

  “He makes great coffee….”

  “He helped Nikki navigate us here, remember? Shut up and help me roll these guys over.”

  The body of the older man was lighter than Kara had expected, although “emptier” was the disturbing word that popped into her mind.

  “Oh fuck,” Marc whispered. “Fuck, fuck. No.”

  There was no back to the man’s head. No brain. No spinal column. Just a neat incision from neck to buttocks and a V-shaped hole.

  “Steady, soldier,” Kara said quietly, managing to control her own shock. These are not necessarily call-out fees. “Could have been an autopsy.” She glanced around, and was relieved to see that Tatia and Tse were some distance away. “On Earth. Marc?”

  “They took his spine!” Marc sounded as revolted as he was shocked. “What kind of fucking autopsy is that?”

  “A very specific one.” Kara took a quick recording. “Help me put him back.” Their simulity training cut in and together they rolled the man back over. “Now the next one.”

  Simulity might have helped Marc control his reactions. It didn’t prevent them. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Just do it, Captain,” she ordered. “Now!”

  Marc shook his head but obeyed.

  No back of the head. No spine. Kara took another recording then they rolled the younger man onto his ravaged back.

  “Notice anything?”

  Marc looked thoughtful. “There’s a faint scent… can’t quite place it…”

  “Exotic?” Kara prompted.

  He nodded. “Like…” Then he had it. “Those curries Tse keeps on eating. No. It’s a single spice… cardamom.”

  “I got that too.”

  They looked at each other, both fighting a very human urge to find humour in the worst situation. Marc lost. “No wonder they look peaceful,” he said. “They’re mindless.”

  “Forgetful, too.” Battlefield humour. “No one else hears about this, Marc, understand?”

  He nodded.

  “You okay?”

  “Seen a couple of autopsies,” he said briefly. “Idea about an art installation: robot surgeon taking apart a human who is simultaneously dismantling the robot. Couldn’t find a way of doing it without being accused of murder. It struck me as odd then that a person with an incurable disease could sign themselves up as a Gliese fee in the service of exploration and trade but I wasn’t allowed to recruit one in the name of art.” He shook his head. “These aren’t Earth autopsies. The rib cages were intact.”

  Kara agreed. “The edges of the incisions were fused. Could have been a laser.”

  “And maybe it was something else.”

  “But we don’t know. Any more than we know the Cancri did this. Hang on to those thoughts. Let’s get the others. Oh, and try and figure out the connection between these metal objects here, and the ones by the two Cancri.”

  “Already did.” He had too, the idea popping easily into his mind. “It’s symbolic. They want us to make a link. They’re saying the Cancri I killed are responsible for this.”

  Kara nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

 
; “We also don’t know if these men were call-out fees,” Marc said, seemingly surprised by his own sensitivity. “And even if they were, it doesn’t mean they all end up like that. Anyway, fees are Gliese business – not Cancri.”

  Kara thought of brushing the comment aside – it wasn’t the time for sentiment. Then again, maybe a person can be a little too closed up. “I’m telling myself the same thing. Thanks.”

  They met Tatia and Tse at the entrance. Both were subdued.

  “Got anything?” Kara asked.

  Neither had. The warehouse was empty, a vast mausoleum – assuming the bodies remained there.

  “Why kill so many on the LUX-WEM-YIB if they like humans so much?” Tatia said. Her expression was twisted by memory and grief.

  Marc and Kara exchanged brief looks.

  “Tell you something else,” Tatia said. “Those bodies were experimented on.”

  Tse made a contemptuous face. “How can you possibly know that?”

  “I just do,” she said, looking him in the eye. “A bit like you.”

  “Nothing like me,” Tse said, tetchy. He’d displayed more emotion in the past two hours than in the past week. “I was trained since a boy. You have hunches.”

  “Okay, people,” Kara interrupted. “Settle this later.” She led them in silence back to the truck. The Cancri were waiting. As soon as the humans were seated in their own vehicle, the Cancri moved slowly off.

  “I know,” Kara said before Tse could say anything; “Follow the little bastards.”

  They drove about half a kilometre to another warehouse. Instead of shelves there was a single, narrow rubble-like construct running the entire length. On it were laid a series of…

  “What the fuck are they?” Marc asked.

  Varying in size, made of metal and other materials, the nearest ones were elaborate and although faded by time, had once been brightly coloured. Curlicues, spirals, wire constructs that on Earth could be mobiles. And then more objects that looked like machinery, although what for was impossible to guess. And so it went on, but with a change, subtle at first but soon obvious. The artefacts lost their complexity, became more and more stylised until at the very end the four humans found themselves looking at three large solid metal objects: a pyramid, a sphere and a cube. Just like the ones laid beside the sacrificial hounds and the human corpses, only larger.