by Eric Brown
She looked around the cavern. “I’m not at all tired. Too much going on up here... I’m going to see what Rab’s found out from his scientists.”
“See you in the morning,” Vaughan said, yawning.
She stood. Rab had left the group of scientists who were examining the frescoes and moved off to stand by himself, gazing at the images.
She crossed the cavern, enabling her tele-ability, and joined him.
“Parveen... how are you and Vaughan getting along?”
She tried to judge his tone, detect jealousy. It seemed absent: he was enquiring with professional interest in mind. “Fine, Rab. He’s just glad to have got reading the engineer out of the way.”
“We can trust him?”
She smiled at the royal ‘we’. “He has no political loyalties, no axes to grind.”
He smiled and returned to the inspection of the frescoes. “Rab...” she hesitated, then went on, “You didn’t tell me about the aliens. You knew, didn’t you? I would have thought...” She tried not to sound like a hurt little girl.
“Parveen, I’ve said it before. Security.”
“You did know?”
“The communiqué from the rebel colonists made some mention... but it was garbled. Let’s just say that I suspected.”
“I wish you could have trusted me enough to tell me that,” she said. On impulse she reached out and touched his hand. A second later she felt the metacarpal itch as the virus made the transit.
She pulled away and looked at him. “Will you tell me this, at least,” she murmured. “What do you feel about me?”
He smiled and took her hand. “How many more times do you want the reassurance, Parveen? Anything I don’t tell you is because of reasons of security. Not because I don’t trust you, but because I’m suspicious of betrayal by those close to me.”
She looked at him, and surprised herself by saying, “Like Singh?”
“Anil? No, of course not. I have utmost faith in him.”
She sent out a probe. She encountered the static of his shield, an abstract hiss where his mind should be. Then, minimally and fleetingly, she did read something: it was almost too tenuous to detect. The virus had broken through briefly, even though his defences were working hard to rebuild themselves.
She read a flash of impatience with her, as much as a father might feel towards a child - but did she also detect a father’s love, she wondered? The contact was too transitory to tell; she probed deeper.
She was taking a chance, of course. If his defences alerted him to her viral attack, as Singh’s had done, then she would merely claim that she was attempting to read what he felt for her.
She said, “Tell me, Rab. Is Singh a telepath?”
Not only did she want his verbal assurances that Singh was not telepathic, but she wanted an accompanying flash of mentation from the tycoon that would confirm it, and ease her fears.
“Anil? A telepath? No, of course not. Where on earth did you get that notion?”
She probed, and caught something, very deep and very faint: Rab’s ultimate trust in Singh, and his belief that his chief of security was not a telepath.
Of course, she thought - that didn’t rule out the possibility that the security chief was telepathic.
She smiled and squeezed his hand. “Rab, I’m just looking out for you, okay?”
He reached out and touched her cheek. “Parveen, that’s sweet. But I assure you that I can trust Anil, ah-cha?”
She withdrew her probe and, when Rab had turned back to the frescoes, disabled her psi-program.
She left Rab and crossed to the camp, frustrated that her probes had done nothing to allay her apprehension.
Not only that, but she had failed to detect if Rab felt the slightest affection for her.
She was assailed, then, by another disturbing thought: if Singh were a telepath, but hadn’t reported her deception to his boss... then might he be keeping the knowledge to himself for ulterior reasons?
Vaughan was asleep. She considered trying to sleep herself, but her mind was too active. Instead she crossed to the scientists huddled around a heater and joined in their lively speculation.
* * * *
NINETEEN
EXTRATERRESTRIALS
Vaughan woke suddenly.
He blinked up at the green, momentarily confused and wondering where he was. Then it came to him in a rush. He was a kilometre or more underground on Delta Cephei VII, and the green vaulting above him was the luminescent fungi. He sat up and accessed the chronometer on his handset: he had been asleep for just over six hours.
He struggled from his padded sleeping bag and stood up.
A group of scientists huddled before the wall-frescoes a few metres away, chatting; their voices must have woken him.
He joined them. “Definitely alien?”
Last night, dog-tired, Vaughan had given the frescoes a cursory inspection before eating and turning in. They’d certainly looked alien to his inexpert eye. The scientists, being scientists, considered that on balance the likelihood was that they were perhaps extraterrestrial in origin...
Now a stout grey-haired Thai woman in her fifties was certain. “Without a doubt. Look at this.”
She indicated a line of engravings, set out after the fashion of a cartoon strip, showing a series of primitive, dome-headed stick figures going about their alien business; they were carrying what looked like amphorae and long sticks. Vaughan was not surprised that the figures accorded to default humanoid proportions: a head, two arms and two legs. Ninety-five per cent of the aliens discovered so far in humankind’s expansion were similarly humanoid.
Other scientists were filming the frescoes and taking measurements with sophisticated com-apparatus.
“My guess is that these carvings are in the region of fifteen thousand years old, maybe more.” She ran her fingertips lightly across their surface, smiling to herself.
He moved off, looking at the stick figures carved around the time humankind were painting the caves at Lascaux.
“So, Jeff, Delta Cephei VII does have sentient alien natives.” Parveen Das stood next to him, yawning.
He said, “This puts a whole different perspective on Chandrasakar’s plans for the planet. No more grabbing this alien real estate as part of the Expansion.”
“Always assuming the natives aren’t extinct,” she pointed out.
“Assuming that, yes,” he agreed.
“But the colony planet isn’t what he wants to grab, is my guess. It’s the secret - the alien secret? - he’s after.”
Vaughan nodded, wondering what the secret might be.
“While you were snoring last night, we got into a lively debate about the Ee-tees,” Das said. “We didn’t arrive at any firm conclusions, but the speculation was interesting.”
“Speculation?”
“For instance, did the aliens achieve industrial, scientific, technological standards? Did they attain spaceflight? My guess is that they didn’t. The nature of their world means they’re a subterranean people, who venture to the surface - if at all - only for brief periods when the surface temperature is clement. So their scientific inquiry might not be directed towards the stars.”
“They might not even have attained technology,” he said.
She shrugged. “It’s impossible to tell, until we go deeper, find out more. Who’s to say they’re still around? Look at all the extinct races we’ve discovered the remains of in our travels.”
He thought about it. “To discover, maybe meet, an alien race for the first time...”
“Anyway,” Das said, “How about some food?”
Back at the camp, the others were up and breakfasting. Vaughan and Das joined them and sat together, eating eggs and beans from pre-packed trays.
He wrapped his hands around a cup of self-heating coffee. For all his padded suit, he was still feeling the chill this far underground.
Chandrasakar moved across to them. “This is where the party splits,” he said.
“It’s as good a place as any. The scientists, with the exception of Parveen, are staying here to continue their research. Six security personnel and four drones will remain with them. The three of us, with Singh, six security men and six drones, will continue onwards.”
Vaughan looked at the squat Indian as he spoke; he wondered what was going on behind those eyes; what plans, what greed.
“Do you think we’ll find who carved those frescoes?”
Chandrasakar looked at him. “It would be a remarkable experience if we did.”
“Even though it might rule out claiming the world as a potential colony?”
He could see that Chandrasakar was keeping tight control on his irritation. “There is more to our expansion than mere territorial claims,” he said.
He watched the tycoon closely as he asked, “Did you know about the aliens when you set up the expedition?”
Chandrasakar considered the question, and Vaughan was surprised by his reply. “I’ll be candid with you, Jeff. The communiqué we intercepted did mention them.”
“Did the colonists say if they were still around?”
Chandrasakar shook his head. “They didn’t. That’s one of the reasons we’re here,” he went on. “The push for knowledge is an oddly nebulous pursuit, my friend. Who knows from where benefits to humanity might accrue?”
Vaughan looked away. There were times when he found the little Indian insufferably smug, and he didn’t know whether the best reaction would be to laugh or to condemn.
“Right.” Chandrasakar turned and addressed his team. “Let’s pack up and head off, everyone.”
They set off five minutes later, leaving behind them the vast frescoed cavern and dropping through the rock by means of a narrow tunnel. Singh and a couple of drones led the way, followed by Chandrasakar and three security men. Two further security personnel, Vaughan noted, took up the rear this time. He wondered if this were an intentional ploy on Chandrasakar’s part, to keep an eye, and perhaps an ear, on him and Das.
“Did you know Chandrasakar knew about the aliens?” he asked Das.
She considered his question, before nodding. “He admitted as much to me only last night.”
Vaughan smiled and grunted a humourless laugh.
She looked at him. “And what does that mean?”
“It means, I wonder what else he’s keeping from us?”
She shrugged and looked ahead.
He enabled his tele-ability and probed. Only the mind-shields were evident. He decided to keep the program running on the off chance that it might warn him of the approach of any extraterrestrials.
The corridor dropped, wending its way through a natural fissure in the rock, and the party dropped with it into the depths of the planet.
* * * *
Three hours later the corridor levelled and opened out into a long chamber; a worn track ran the length of the wall to their left, and Vaughan thought of it being used over millennia by beings making forays to the surface of the planet.
Up ahead, one of the guards said, “What the hell...?”
He was a hundred metres ahead and kneeling beside a natural gully in the rock that crossed the cavern floor and veered to run parallel with the track. The gully was about three metres wide and brimming with a crimson, viscous substance, which flowed in a rapid, muscular torrent.
In the distance Vaughan watched as the guard dipped the tip of his laser into the steam; it came away dripping slow liquid globules.
It was then, shocking in its unexpectedness, that Vaughan felt the first odd stirrings of something other than the mind-shields in his head.
He looked at Das, touching his temple. “I’m getting something.”
She stabbed her handset.
He probed, and he knew then that the aliens of this planet were not extinct. He made out, perhaps a hundred metres ahead, a dozen slithery signatures of minds not human. Their thoughts were unreadable, their emotions and memories mere abstractions.
“Rab!” Das yelled. “Aliens!”
The security personnel dashed ahead, followed by the drones. The two following guards eased past them and gave chase. Vaughan and Das followed along the path towards a narrow fissure in the rock. The aliens, by his reckoning, were beyond the fissure and moving rapidly away. He wondered if they had been disturbed by the unexpected arrival of Chandrasakar and his team, and were beating an alarmed retreat, or if they had been expecting the humans and were leading them towards...
He never finished the thought. He and Das were bringing up the rear of the group, separated by about twenty metres, when he sensed an alien mind-signature in his head and glimpsed sudden movement to his right. Two sleek green figures, moving fast, leapt from the crimson river, grabbed him and pulled him into the fluid before he could resist. He heard Das scream briefly as she too hit the river.
He expected the shock of water, and received instead another surprise. The warm, cloying sensation gripped him and dragged him beneath the surface and along at an alarming rate. Later he wondered how he was able to breathe; he must have been submerged for minutes, and yet never once felt the panic of suffocation. It was as if his mouth and nose were covered by a permeable membrane which allowed the passage of air.
He felt what might have been hands on his body, pushing him here and there, as if steering him at speed downstream. All was darkness. The only sensation was the odd invasive pressure of the rubber-like medium that had captured him as he tumbled head over heel.
He tried to cry out, but either his mouth failed to make the sound, or any sound he did make was muted by the fluid. He wondered if Das were reading his frantic mind, and hoped that, wherever the aliens might be taking him, they would be taking her too.
He sent out a probe, but found nothing. He attempted to locate the alien minds. The bizarre thing was that, despite the fact that he could still feel the occasional proddings from his alien abductors, he was unable to make out their abstract signatures. It was as if the viscous medium of the fluid were acting as a barrier, which would explain how the aliens had been able to come alongside him and Das in the stream and leap out unnoticed until the very last second.
And this made him think that their abduction - however fantastical this notion might be - had been intentional.
It was hard to judge the passage of time; long minutes seemed to elapse, though it might have been seconds or even an hour. He was locked into a tumbling darkness, with only the warm envelopment of the fluid and the infrequent prods of the aliens to stimulate his senses. He entered into a kind of audio-visual deprivation; deaf and blind, he had only his tactile sense with which to order his impressions of what might be happening. At times he seemed to be tumbling, limbs flailing, while at others he was drilling through the fluid like a torpedo.
Then, with a sudden change in routine that came as a shock, he was falling. A moment later he fetched up painfully against what he assumed was a wall of rock. The fluid drained from around him, and he heard a grunt and felt Das’s limbs fall across his body seconds later. He struggled upright, extricating himself from the Indian, and looked around.
They were in a natural sink-hole, with a circular opening at his feet through which the fluid had presumably drained. He looked up and made out a circle of green light high above. The walls of the natural prison extended two metres above his head, as effective as any purpose-built oubliette.
He touched his shoulder, realising that at some point he’d parted company with his backpack.
Das climbed to her feet, panting. She looked at him. “What?”
“My pack. It’s gone.”
She peered behind her. “Mine too.”
Only then did Vaughan notice her right arm.
Her handset was covered by what looked like a splint of crimson rubber.
Alarmed, he looked at his own arm. His handset was similarly encased in the fluid - except, he found, it was no longer fluid but had hardened into a solid, impermeable cast.
Das was staring down at her arm
, her expression horrified.
His tele-ability had been enabled, but when he probed now he came across nothing - neither the alien minds nor Das’s mind-shield.
“Clever,” he said. “Very clever. We’re dealing with creatures who know what they’re doing.”
“They’ve deliberately disabled our tele-programs?”
“As effectively as chopping off our arms, only more humanely, if you can say that about aliens. They’ve also stopped us from communicating with the others.” He paused. “And the way they singled us out...”