The Recollection

by Gareth L. Powell

  He scratched irritably at his forehead. Flakes of peeled skin fell like dandruff. When he spoke again, he was hoarse.

  “I’d just about given up hope, sir.”

  Kristin turned to survey the line of arches running the length of the deck.

  “And you didn’t consider moving on, trying to reach the objective?”

  Krous shook his head. His eyes burned with resentment.

  “No sir, I thought my best chance was to wait for you.”

  Ed straightened up. “Then why didn’t you go back to look for her?”

  The soldier bunched his fists.

  “Who is this idiot?” he said.

  Kristin put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Stand down, private.”

  Krous looked down at her. Then, abruptly, he turned to face the distant horizon.

  Kristin left him and walked over to the Land Rover, arms folded, treading warily on the slimy deck. As she passed Ed, she said, “By the time he got back, I’d have either been long dead or already en route. We would have missed each other.”

  Ed shrugged. He didn’t much care. He looked back at Alice glowering behind the windshield.

  “So, what do we do now?”

  Kristin paused. She glanced back to the edge of the deck, to the hunched figure of the soldier standing there.

  “We go on,” she said.

  In the driving seat, Ed rubbed his palms together.

  “Is everybody ready?”

  He glanced in the rear-view mirror. Alice wasn’t happy about riding in the back. She scowled at him. Beside her, Otto Krous sat with his eyes fixed forward. He held his machine pistol across his chest, ready for action. Sweat rolled down the blistered skin of his face.

  “We’re ready,” Kirstin said, voice positive and self-assured, every inch the competent officer. “Just take it slowly, okay?” She glanced through the passenger side window at the water heaving against the sides of the wooden ship, far below. They were perilously close to the edge and the deck was slippery. One wrong move and they’d be in the sea.

  Ed took a deep breath and let it out in a long, slow exhalation. He depressed the clutch pedal and turned the key in the ignition. The Land Rover’s 2.5 litre diesel engine juddered into life.

  “Okay, hold on,” he said.

  He slipped the gear lever into second and slowly let out the clutch. For a second, he felt the front wheels slither. It felt like driving on ice. Then the tyres bit and the Land Rover rolled forward, towards the row of arches stacked between the masts.

  “You know, no-one’s asked what happened to the crew,” he said.

  Kristin frowned.

  “How do you mean?”

  “The crew. What happened to the crew of this ship? Where did they go?”

  Kirstin shrugged. “Into one of the arches, I expect.” She turned to Krous. “Did you find any sign of them?”

  The soldier shook his head. He didn’t look like he cared one way or the other. “Is it significant, sir?”

  Kristin turned to face forward. “No, probably not. If they’d had the technology to build the arches, they wouldn’t be carrying them around in a wooden boat. I guess they were just trying to use and understand them, same as we are.” Regretfully, she rubbed the outside of the hip pocket containing her sample bags. “But I still would have liked to have had the chance to have a proper look around.”

  She turned her attention to the row of arches in front of them. “That way,” she said, pointing.

  Ed leaned over the steering wheel. It was a random selection, but she sounded confident, speaking in a tone used to obedience, and he was in no mood to argue with her. He let the tyres roll forward. The big car eased into the arch she’d chosen. As they crossed the threshold, he closed his eyes to protect them from the white flash.

  The next thing he knew, they were in darkness.

  The ground crumbled away beneath their wheels. The Land Rover tipped over onto the driver’s side. The chassis scraped against solid rock with a metallic screech. Ed fumbled for the lights, but they were already falling sideways. The steering wheel yanked itself out of his hands. Alice cried out.

  The car crashed down into shadow. It landed on its side, and the windows shattered.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MECHANICAL EQUIVALENT

  Although it looked tiny when compared to the overall vastness of the Dho Ark, the entrance to the dock in its prow could have swallowed a city all by itself. Its maw dwarfed the Ameline as the little ship slid inside, navigation lights reflecting back from semi-opaque diamond walls a thousand metres thick.

  Ahead, in a softly lit alcove like a pore in the planetoid’s ancient skin, a docking cradle hinged open, clamps reaching hungrily.

  > Thirty seconds, the ship said.

  Standing at the door of the rear airlock with her two passengers, Katherine Abdulov took a deep breath as she watched the approach via her implant.

  “Understood.”

  She looked at Toby Drake. “I guess this is it.” She smoothed down the front of her flight suit. The Dho had given permission for her to deliver her passengers, but only on the strict understanding that she depart as soon as they were safely on board the Ark.

  “I guess so.” Drake looked uncomfortable in a shirt and tie and formal brown jacket. His eyes were wide, drinking her in, memorising her face, her stance, and the way she shifted her weight from one hip to the other.

  Francis Hind had the hood of his robe pulled up, shadowing his eyes.

  “Ready to go?” Kat said. “Because as soon as we get a hard seal, I’m kicking you both out.”

  She itched to get going. Her hands fluttered in front of her like nervous birds. She had to catch Victor; and yet, remembering the feel of Drake’s lips against hers, the warmth of his dark skin in her bed, she suddenly wanted more time. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye so soon.

  “Are you all right?” Drake held his case in one hand and a bag of books in the other. He put the books down and took her hand in both of his. As his fingers brushed hers, she felt the hairs rise on her arms.

  His hands were warm. She clenched her jaw and swallowed away the emotion.

  “I’m going to be gone a long time,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse.

  Drake ran a thumb over her knuckles, giving her an involuntary shiver.

  “But you will be back, won’t you Katherine?” His eyes were boyish and hopeful. She withdrew her hand.

  “It’s just less than twelve light years to Djatt. That’s a roundtrip of twenty-four years.”

  “I’ll wait for you.”

  She shook her head. For her, the trip would take a few weeks, maybe a month. By the time she got back, he’d be in his fifties, almost twice his current age.

  “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  Firmly, she turned to the Acolyte.

  “So, Mister Hind, do you have everything you need?”

  Hind bowed from the waist, hands wrapped in the voluminous folds of his robe.

  “Yes, thank you, Captain. You have been more than hospitable.” He pulled back his hood. The corridor lights picked out the grey hairs at his temples. “And I have something for you.”

  He unfolded his hands to reveal an irregularly-shaped pendant, which dangled from his fingers on a thin strap of leather.

  “This is for you.” He pressed it into her hand and she looked down at it. It was a smooth, flat pebble with a rune cut into its surface: one long vertical line crossed by two short horizontal slashes.

  “What is it?”

  Hind reached out and covered her hand with his.

  “If you insist on going to Djatt, it will protect you,” he said.

  When they finally docked, Kat kept the farewells to a minimum: a nod to Hind, and a tight, regretful smile for Drake. Then she pressed the wall control and turned away as the door swung shut with a solid clunk.

  She stamped back through the ship to the bridge and strapped herself into her seat. She linked her implant into the s
hip’s sensor array, felt the power building.

  “Prepare for emergency departure.”

  > You got it.

  She checked the airlock, found it clear.

  “Passengers gone?”

  > We’re good to go.

  She opened her hand and looked down at the pendant she’d been given. First Victor, then her father, now Drake.

  Fuck it, she thought. Nothing lasts.

  She slipped the leather cord over her neck, letting the pendant fall against her chest as she cast her eyes across the displays. A few final checks, then: “Release.”

  She closed her eyes and felt the ship shudder as the docking clamps disengaged.

  > Released.

  The Ameline tumbled out of the Ark, between the kilometre-thick diamond walls of the bay, into naked space. Through her interface with the ship, Kat felt the chill of the vacuum against the hull, the pinprick lights of distant stars like mosquito feet on her skin. She smiled, feeling the building thrust like an eagerness fluttering in her stomach.

  > Fifteen minutes to designated jump zone.

  “Jump now.”

  > Have you seen the size of this thing? Trust me, you don’t want to piss it off.

  “Jump now.”

  > This isn’t doing my engines any good.

  “Jump.”

  The ship gave the mechanical equivalent of a sigh.

  > You’re the boss.

  Manoeuvring jets fired. The ship’s nose moved, seeking its destination. It shook itself.

  And jumped.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE GLASS ELEVATOR

  Through the transparent crystal wall of the Dho Ark’s debarkation lounge, Toby Drake watched the blunt triangle of the Ameline fall away into the night. Sensor pods blistered her nose. Red and green navigation lights winked along her length. He felt a strange tearing sensation, and tightened his grip on the handle of his suitcase. Even though it had been his home for only a day and a night, the old ship represented the last direct link to his former life on Tiers Cross. He watched it dwindle until it jumped away, collapsing to nothing in a flash of white light.

  “Goodbye, Kat,” he whispered.

  Beside him, Francis Hind cleared his throat. The middle-aged Acolyte had his black cowl pushed back, revealing his thin grey hair and pale, sky-blue eyes.

  “Are you ready?”

  Toby nodded. He turned away from the view, hefted his suitcase, and followed Hind into a tunnel leading deep into the rock of the hollowed-out planetoid. Their footfalls echoed as they walked, and the air smelled of chlorine. Toby sniffed. It reminded him of a swimming pool.

  At the end of the corridor, they passed through an airlock with reinforced ceramic doors a foot thick. It took a few seconds to cycle. On the other side, dim overhead lights bathed the corridor in a bloody sunset red. Two figures waited in the gloom. One was human, the other...

  Toby recoiled. The suitcase slipped from his grasp and thumped onto the deck.

  The other figure was monstrous, towering over him. Its black robe bulged in all the wrong places, and it had four twisted horns of yellowing bone where its head should be.

  He swallowed. He could hear his heart hammering in his chest.

  “Jesus.”

  Although Toby had known roughly what to expect, it was still a shock to suddenly confront one of the creatures. Every fibre of his being shrank from it. His fists clenched. In the hundred years since the discovery of the Ark, few people had come face-to-face with one. The aliens were notoriously reclusive, never venturing far from the security of the Ark, preferring to interact through their human recruits, the Acolytes.

  He took another step back and felt Francis Hind’s hand on his arm.

  “This is one of our hosts,” the older man said. “And, of course, you know Professor Harris.”

  With an effort, Toby dragged his eyes from the alien to the man standing beside it. Despite a few grey hairs, Professor Harris looked much as Toby remembered him. The man had his hands in the pockets of the same threadbare tweed jacket he’d worn when lecturing at the university on Tiers Cross. He still sported the same disreputable beard and his green eyes still glared from beneath a pair of untameable brows.

  “Drake. Good to see you, boy. Glad you could make it.”

  He thrust out a hand. After a moment, Toby stepped through the airlock and shook it.

  “G-good to see you too, Professor.”

  Toby looked sideways at the Dho. Three glistening alien eyes gazed back at him from sockets set deep in the bone at the root of the creature’s horns. They looked like olives. The front horns were short and spiky, like tusks. The ones behind were almost a foot in length, curving forward from thick bases, ending in jagged and misshapen tips. It looked like a horned beetle, but how much of that was helmet and how much living tissue? Was it even possible to make a distinction?

  Toby closed his eyes and dipped his head in a formal bow.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said.

  The Dho shivered. A series of dry clicks and scrapes came from beneath its cloak.

  Francis Hind folded his hands.

  “Our host is likewise honoured to make your acquaintance, Mister Drake. But right now, it’s time for Professor Harris to show you the reason for your invitation.”

  “Yes, come along, Drake.”

  The Professor turned on his heel and set off down the dim red corridor, beard jutted purposefully in front of him, hands clasped firmly behind his back.

  Toby hesitated.

  “You go ahead,” Hind said. He looked at the Dho. “I’ve been away from here for fourteen years. I have a lot to catch up on. You go with the Professor and I’ll bring your luggage along later.”

  The corridor took them deeper into the rock of the planetoid. They passed service tunnels and strangely arched doorways built to accommodate the horns of the Ark’s inhabitants. Dense, intricate murals covered every surface.

  “The Dho carry their history with them,” the Professor said. “Apparently, these hieroglyphics depict events from their past. Take this one, for instance.” He stopped and pointed to a scene carved into the rock above an archway. “This is a stylised rendering of the Ark itself, and we think these specks here are smaller ships in its wake.”

  “And that?” Toby pointed to what appeared to be a dark and angry, looming cloud, seemingly reaching out tendrils to catch the flotilla of ships.

  The Professor shook his head. “We have no idea. But these lines here appear to represent bolts of energy leaping from the smaller ships, holding the cloud at bay while the Ark makes its escape.”

  He straightened up.

  “The Acolytes tell us this is a key scene. They call it ‘The Burning Sky.’ The whole ship’s covered in similar pictures, but they don’t appear to be arranged in any comprehensible order or sequence. As far as we can tell, they’re all placed randomly. We’re having terrible trouble fitting them into anything resembling a coherent chronology. It’s frustrating, to say the least.”

  He sniffed. “Of course, our hosts insist the whole thing makes perfect sense to them, but instead of sharing their insight, they’re making us work it all out for ourselves.”

  They arrived at an elevator. The car was two metres tall and around ten metres square, and its walls were made of the same diamond as the skin of the Ark. Harris ushered Toby inside and the doors hissed shut behind them.

  “This will take us where we need to go.” The Professor grinned through his beard. “However, I should warn you, you may find the ride a tad unsettling.”

  Toby raised an eyebrow but before he had a chance to respond verbally, the elevator leaped forward and accelerated into a dark tunnel. Instinctively, he reached out to steady himself, but there was no feeling of movement. Beyond the car’s crystal walls, the lights in the tunnel zipped past, faster and faster, but inside, all was still. It was as if they were standing in a movie theatre watching pictures on a screen.

  He was just getting used to th
e sensation when the elevator burst out of the tunnel into daylight. He twisted his head around in surprise. Behind them, a vast cliff receded, dotted with lights and openings. They were travelling through a cloudless sky with no visible means of support, and Toby’s stomach twisted as he looked down at the miles and miles of empty air beneath the car’s transparent floor.

  “Whoa.”

  He looked across at the Professor, standing unconcerned in the centre of the car, hands still in the pockets of his tweed jacket.

  “This is one of the caverns,” the old man said. “There are hundreds of them in the Ark’s interior, of all shapes and sizes. This one’s a cylinder about a hundred miles in length and fifty across, with a city on its inner edge. Others house jungles or swamps. We think each one preserves a different environment from our host’s home planet.”

  Ahead, another cliff rushed at them. Toby swallowed. He felt like a bug facing an approaching windshield.

  Then they were in another tunnel. Lights whipped past the walls so fast they were little more than blurred streaks.

  “Did you have a good journey from Tiers Cross?” Harris asked.

  Toby closed his eyes. Without visual cues, it was impossible to tell whether or not they were moving.

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  He thought of Katherine Abdulov lying warm and tousled in his arms and felt another stab of loss and longing.

  “Good, good. And I trust you brought your research with you?”

  “Yes sir. I’ve got electronic copies of everything ever written on the Gnarl, including all my own papers and notes.”

  “And some books, judging by your suitcase?”

  Toby opened his eyes with a smile. “A habit I picked up from you, Professor.”

  Harris twitched his moustache. “Quite. Well, you’re going to need them. Your notes, I mean.”

  Toby frowned. “Can I ask why? Only I’ve come all this way, and no-one’s told me anything.”

  The lights outside the car were passing more slowly now: they were decelerating.

  “No need, you’ll be able to see for yourself in a moment.” The Professor gestured forwards. Ahead, a circle of light lay at the end of the tunnel, growing as they slowed. By the time they reached the tunnel’s end, they were travelling at walking pace.