by Eric Brown
Singh appeared through the forest, backed by half a dozen of his men and a couple of spider drones. “What happened?”
“They took Namura.”
“They?” The Sikh looked around, alarmed.
He glanced at Singh. “Who the hell do you think? Aliens.”
His words had the effect of alerting the rest of the guards, who looked about nervously, weapons aimed into the surrounding forest.
Belatedly Vaughan enabled his tele-ability and directed his scan underground. He read nothing - not even the static of Namura’s mind-shield - as evidently they had already passed beyond the limit of his probe.
He told himself that even if he’d probed earlier, he would have read only the obscure signatures of extraterrestrial minds: it would have done nothing to help him save Namura.
“How did they get through the barrier?” Singh snapped.
Vaughan indicated the seam in the fungus. “They didn’t. They went through there. The hole closed after them.”
Singh pushed forwards. “Stand back.” He aimed his laser at the seam and fired, excavating a small, blackened crater in the ground.
Vaughan peered; there was no sign or any tunnel or corridor beyond. “We need to get back,” he said. “See if Chandrasakar has any digging equipment...” Even as he said it, he was aware of the futility of attempting to find Namura now.
Singh detailed two of his men to remain beside the charred pit, then led the way back to the ship. As Vaughan emerged with the security team from the forest and came to the crest of the hill, he looked down and saw that scientists and crew had left the Kali and gathered by the ship’s ramp. He hurried past Singh and down the incline. An air of fear, a miasma almost palpable, hung about the gathering.
Chandrasakar, Das, and McIntosh came to meet him. “Kiki?” McIntosh said; he was white, wide-eyed.
“She’s alive. I don’t think whoever took her intended to harm her-”
Das stared at him. “Jeff, what happened?”
“She was taken by perhaps a dozen aliens. Small, green - your standard comic-book Ee-tees.” He described how they’d utilised tunnels through the fungus to get around the laser cordon.
Chandrasakar said, “You scanned them?”
Vaughan thought about telling the truth - that in the heat of the chase it hadn’t entered his mind to scan - but decided against it. “Of course. But I didn’t pick up a thing.”
Chandrasakar looked at him, almost suspiciously, and Vaughan wondered if he’d seen through the lie. The tycoon turned and spoke to Singh in lowered tones.
“So...” Das said. “What do we do now?”
“We’ve got to go after Kiki!”
“Is the ship equipped with digging equipment?” Vaughan asked. “We could always...”
Chandrasakar shook his head impatiently. “No, but even if we had diggers, I’d counsel caution—”
“But the bastards have got Kiki!” McIntosh cried.
“Rushing after them might not be the best way to get her back,” Chandrasakar said. “The fact that they didn’t kill her immediately-”
Vaughan said, “Presumably the aliens were responsible for what happened to the crew of the Mussoree?”
Chandrasakar shrugged. “That’s a possibility, but debatable. We’ll find out in time.”
Das said, “Do you know if the aliens were armed, Jeff?”
He shook his head. “I... something suggests to me that they weren’t. They appeared to be naked, as far as I could make out.”
“But what do they want with Namura?” Das said.
Vaughan looked at the swaying polyp forest. “The same as they wanted with the crew of the Mussoree?” he said. “Perhaps they might still be alive.”
“We could speculate until the sun turns blue, Vaughan,” Chandrasakar said impatiently. “Let’s get McIntosh to the sick-bay, then meet in the observation lounge and take it from there.”
* * * *
That evening, as Delta Cephei went down behind the high fungal horizon in an effulgent blaze of ruddy light, Vaughan sat before the viewscreen in the observation lounge and drank a beer.
Immediately after Namura’s abduction Chandrasakar had called a meeting in the observation lounge. Present were the tycoon himself, Das, Singh and his deputy in security, and a couple of head scientists. They had gone over and over what had happened to the biologist, and Vaughan had again recounted what he’d seen.
The meeting broke up with little achieved, other than a total ban on crew venturing further than fifty metres from the ship for an indefinite period. Security were patrolling the perimeter, aided by a dozen spider drones.
The atmosphere at dinner that evening had been tense, with long silences and brittle conversation. Vaughan had been glad to escape to the nacelle with his beer.
He calculated that it would be in the early hours of the morning now on Bengal Station, so he couldn’t call Sukara. Instead he summoned her blurred image on the screen and stared at it for a long time, wishing for the end of the mission and longing for the journey home.
He was on his second beer when McIntosh joined him. The big Australian seemed jumpy, harried, continually running a hand through the red mop of his hair.
“You don’t mind?” He indicated the opposite foam-form with his bottle.
“Of course not. Sit down.” Vaughan hesitated, then said, “I think she’s going to be fine, David. I know it’s a hell of a thing...” He shrugged. “We’ll find her, okay?”
McIntosh managed a smile. “Thanks. It’s just... we’re close, Jeff. We’ve been together over a year...”
Vaughan went to the bar and came back with a pair of beers.
They were joined by Parveen Das, and Vaughan was pleased that she didn’t have Chandrasakar in tow.
McIntosh asked, “What went down at the meeting? We’re not going to just sit here while Kiki...”
Das said, “Of course not, David.” She looked at Vaughan, then went on, “Look, this is between us, okay? There was a survivor from the crew of the Mussoree. She’s in coldsleep as we speak. Tomorrow, Jeff will meet her, read her, and find out exactly what happened back then.”
Vaughan stared at her, more than a little surprised that she knew about the engineer.
McIntosh said, “Read her? Why not just get her out of suspension and question her?”
“The medics say she’s traumatised,” Das said, “that it’s safer if she doesn’t relive the incident. It’ll be better for her if Jeff just reads her mind. Then,” she went on, “we might be able to work out exactly what’s happening here.”
“Cheers to that,” McIntosh said bitterly, raising his bottle.
The Australian turned in a while later, but not before making a detour to the bar for a couple of beers.
When he’d gone, Vaughan looked across at Das and said, “You said earlier that you didn’t know what I was doing here?”
She looked at him speculatively. “Rab told me just now.”
“One of the advantages of sleeping with the enemy.” He watched for her reaction.
Her expression remained neutral. “That all depends on whether you consider Rab the enemy, Jeff.”
He laughed, and decided to be blunt. Three beers had loosened his circumspection. “For Chrissake, Das, who are you working for?”
She pursed her lips. “Would you believe me if I said I’m working for myself?”
He considered this. “Pass,” he said. Then, “So he told you that the engineer’s traumatised?”
She had been staring through the viewscreen as the land around the ship darkened. Now she turned quickly and said, “She isn’t?”
Vaughan smiled to himself, pleased that Chandrasakar evidently hadn’t told her everything. “Something like that,” he said.
A minute later - a long, silent minute - Das pushed herself from her seat and said, “I’m going to turn in. Night, Jeff.”
“Sleep well,” he said, and he hoped she picked up on the note of irony.
He fetched another
beer from the bar, sat in the nacelle, drank, and stared out into the darkness. Night was not absolutely pitch black on Delta Cephei VII. The fungus glowed in the darkness, giving off a low, lambent light. Occasionally he made out the silvery twinkle of a patrolling spider drone.
He brought up Sukara’s image on his handset and stared at it. As the night wore on he became steadily more inebriated, and only later, in the early hours of the morning, did he admit to himself that more than what had happened that afternoon, more than the fear of the aliens and what might have befallen Kiki Namura, he dreaded reading the engineer’s dead mind later that day.
* * * *
TWELVE
A TURN FOR THE WORSE
Sukara woke suddenly, snatched from a terrible dream in which she was falling.
She sat up, crying out, and found herself in a strange bedroom. It was not the hotel, but smaller, more minimally furnished... Then she had it. She was in the guest room at St Theresa’s.
Li...
She rolled out of bed and dressed quickly. She grabbed a bulb of coffee from a dispenser, decided against having a shower, and hurried into the corridor.
Last night on the way to the hospital she’d made a detour to drop Pham off at a friend’s on Level Three. Kath took Pham in without a second thought and said she could stay as long as Sukara was at the hospital. They had hugged for a long time after Pham had run off to play with Kath’s daughter, and Sukara thanked the gods she had such a good friend.
Then she’d hurried to St Theresa’s and the consultation with Dr Grant.
Now she moved along the corridor to Li’s room and slipped inside.
The bed was empty, and something lurched sickeningly within Sukara. She felt a solicitous hand on her arm. “It’s okay -” a nurse was smiling at her, “- Li’s in the examination room. If you’d care to follow me...”
They moved down a corridor, and then another. The nurse ushered her into a small room, without a bed or other furniture. She turned in query to the nurse, who pointed at a viewscreen in the far wall.
Sukara approached the viewscreen slowly, her heart in her mouth, and stared through. Li, wearing only a pair of white underpants, looking incredibly thin and vulnerable, was stretched out on a metal table, a dozen silver tubes inserted into her small body. She was unconscious. Dr Grant was reading something from a big screen behind Li’s head, and another doctor was talking to him. Two spider drones, looking alien and inimical, were poised over Li, from time to time adjusting catheters, taking out tubes and replacing them with others.
Sukara turned to the nurse. “What’s happening?”
“It’s okay. It’s a routine examination. Nothing to worry about.”
It didn’t look routine, but then what did she know? With the drones and the silver tubes bulging into her daughter’s arms, legs, and torso, the procedure looked invasive and painful.
Last night Dr Grant had examined Li for over an hour and then, while her daughter slept, had sat Sukara down with a cup of coffee and explained the situation.
Li’s healthy white blood cell count was low, very low. Dr Grant had explained, as if she were a child, that white blood cells were what helped the body fight off infection. In the morning, he said, they would attempt to clone healthy white cells from Li’s body. Later, they would introduce them into her system and so start the process of treating her disease.
She felt tears welling as she stared at Li. She wanted to hug her daughter, repeat over and over that she loved her and that she would be okay. She wished Jeff were here now, beside her, to hold her hand and reassure her that everything would be okay.
Last night Sukara had asked Dr Grant if Li would be okay, hardly able to ask the question in little more than a whisper, and stared at the man’s big, ruddy face for any give-away signs before he spoke.
“Li is very ill,” he’d said, “but I am confident she’ll pull through. The next two days will be critical. If the cloning works as it should, then she’ll be over the worst-”
“And if it doesn’t?”
A terrible hesitation as Dr Grant had looked her in the eye. “Then we’ll try the process again, and if that doesn’t work we’ll attempt a transfusion of manufactured cells. That will be a short-term measure only, until we’ve successfully cloned her own blood.”
Then Sukara had asked, in a voice little more than a whisper, “What are her chances?”
“At the moment, they’re in the region of fifty-fifty. They might rise tomorrow if the cloning takes.”
His words had slammed into her solar plexus like an ice-cold axe, and that night she had hardly slept.
Now she turned to the nurse. “Do you know how it’s going?”
The woman looked apologetic. “I’m afraid I don’t. Dr Grant will be out presently. He’ll see you then.”
The drones danced around Li, removing the tubes and catheters. Two nurses eased Li’s limp body onto a trolley and whisked her from the room. Dr Grant pointed to the screen, indicated something to the other doctor; both men looked grim-faced, serious. Sukara wanted to hammer on the glass and ask what the hell was going on.
The nurse touched her arm again and indicated a door. Sukara passed into a snug consulting room and took a seat. The nurse eased the door shut behind her, and she felt suddenly very lonely. She waited, her pulse loud in her ears. She wanted to be with Li now, and hold her hand.
She knew that soon Dr Grant would step into the room, stern-faced and silent; he would sit down behind his desk and steeple his fingers and tell her the bad news.
Sukara knew it.
When the door opened, she jumped and gasped aloud, the feeling of foolishness soon replaced by a terrible apprehension.
Dr Grant perched on the edge of the desk, hands on knees, and smiled at her. She wondered if this was his way of breaking bad news.
Sukara just stared at him, mute. At last she managed, “How is she?”
“The good news is that the cloning took one hundred per cent. Her white blood cell count is back in the normal range. What we’re doing now is placing your daughter in the treatment chamber and beginning the chemical process that should eradicate all trace of the disease.”
Sukara felt light-headed with relief. She wondered if it were too early yet to think that Li would survive.
“If you’d like to come with me...”
Dr Grant slid from the desk and ushered her through the door. They entered another room in the centre of which was a huge white, tubular device with a door at one end. It reminded Sukara of a giant washing machine.
A technician hauled open the door and pulled out a slide-bed.
Dr Grant said, “Li will be placed in here for a couple of hours, and the treatment will begin. She’ll be unconscious all the time, and for the rest of the day. We’ll bring her round again at six. You might care to go home for the rest of the day and come back later.”
She nodded. “Can I watch this part of the treatment?”
Dr Grant smiled. “Of course, but there isn’t much to see.”
Li was wheeled into the room. She was wearing a white gown now, contrasting with her tanned limbs and jet hair. Two technicians lifted her onto the slide-bed. Dr Grant smiled at Sukara and gestured towards Li.
She stepped forwards and took Li’s small, warm hand. Her fingers were limp, unresponsive. She kissed her cheek and stood back as Li was inserted into the machine and the door eased shut behind her. Something hard and painful blocked Sukara’s throat and her eyes swam with tears.
Through an access hatch in the side of the machine, the techs hooked up tubes to the catheters in Li’s arms, then crossed the room to a bank of monitors and stationed themselves before the consoles. Seconds later a bright blue light filled the machine, and Sukara stared in at her daughter.
Dr Grant touched her arm. “There’s little we can do now. If you’d like to take a break, get something to eat...?”
“Can I come back later?”
“Of course. Li will be conscious again at
six.”
Sukara nodded and followed Dr Grant out of the treatment chamber.
She returned to the bedroom, showered, and changed. There was a café in the grounds of the hospital, overlooking the park. She’d get something to drink, buy a book, and try to read for an hour or so.
She took the elevator to the ground floor and left the hospital. She sat in the ersatz sunlight and ordered an iced tea, then decided to call Jeff.
She wouldn’t mention the latest scare. She’d simply say that Li had begun the treatment and that the doctor was confident of her making a full recovery... It wasn’t really a lie, and anyway she didn’t want to worry him.