by Hall, Andrew
After a while Tabitha’s flight suit made a squelchy beeping sound, and she guessed it must be her air supply. Seven had long since burst through the surface above and flown away; Tabitha had just been lying on the sea bed, looking up at sunlight dapple and pierce the surface high above. A weightless ecstasy.
When she swam back to shore and wandered out onto the hot soft sand, Tabitha heard a sharp hiss coming from her suit. A raised bump on the back was sucking air in, refilling itself. She took off the suit and left it to hiss in the sunlight, and wandered off through the trees into the forest beyond.
Fishbowl was tending to its plants in the waterfall clearing, sipping only as much current as it needed from the flowers in its garden. Tabitha watched it drink current from the anemones like nectar, and then zap it out again into a red turbine flower to help it grow. The strange plants seemed to grow ever larger by the hour, until by midday Tabitha was sitting in the shade of an oak-sized anemone tree by the waterfall. A strange feeling crept over her then; a drunken daze. The sun filled her body with a fresh living light. She felt part of it all. A blissed-out oneness with Fishbowl, the alien garden, the sun. She felt a sudden silver thrill; an electro-hippie in a fleeting garden nirvana. And just like that, the feeling was gone.
After her waterfall shower Tabitha walked back out onto the beach in search of Seven. She gazed up and down the sand as she pulled on her alien catsuit, squinting in the bright sun and clipping the leathery metal belt around her waist. Something far out to sea caught her attention; a thin grey shape crawling on the horizon. A battleship. Not black or alien, but very much human. Tabitha felt her world crash down all over again.
‘Shit!’ she muttered. Tabitha looked around desperately for Seven and caught sight of him way up high; a black gargoyle shape perched on the mountain.
‘Seven! Go, fly away!’ she screamed, waving her hands. ‘Seven!’ she whistled as loud as she could, but it was too late. The cracking boom of artillery filled the bay. A deep weird whirring noise carried overhead from the distant ship, and the top of the mountain exploded in a hail of dust and rock. Tabitha screamed and stood frozen, staring wide-eyed at the rising dustcloud on the peak. There was a roar then, and her dragon tore out from the dustcloud and came soaring overhead. Tabitha’s heart leapt to see him alive. More shots echoed from the ship; missing Seven and pounding into the hills beyond in jumping bursts of sand. Trees toppled. Seven flew around overhead, growling and panicked and unsure whether to attack.
‘Keep moving, don’t slow down!’ Tabitha yelled up at him, running for the trees herself. The beach was suddenly a warzone behind her; a deafening chaos erupting in sand-burst craters. Through the trees Tabitha found Fishbowl still caring for its flowers, as if nothing was happening. She ran for it and grabbed the flailing creature up in her arms, sprinting off into the forest beyond. A deep whirring shot descended and blew the waterfall garden apart.
‘Seven, down here!’ Tabitha yelled, as his black shape swept overhead. He roared in answer and crashed down to the ground where the trees grew thinner. Tabitha leapt up onto the wing he dipped down for her, and quickly sank down through the hatch with Fishbowl wriggling in her arm. The ground around them exploded in a hail of grass and soil, startling Seven as he roared and took off over the trees.
‘Hold onto something!’ Tabitha told Fishbowl in the cockpit. Her mind leapt into Seven’s like a plug in a socket and she launched them into the sky. She could tell what Seven wanted to do, and felt nothing but blind rage coming from his thoughts. When she circled overhead and saw the smoking ruins of Fishbowl’s alien garden, she was inclined for revenge herself. But the battleship only fired on them more as it drew closer to the island, sending wiggling murder-bright lines of bullets rattling into the sky. Flak burst and boomed in deathly clouds all around them. Seven fought Tabitha’s mind for control as they flew, filled with a primal rage and desperate to attack. She wanted to go, he wanted to stay; the result was a stalemate that had them flying in staggering circles under a hail of gunfire. Tabitha set her mind against Seven’s with every fibre of her being; straining to deny his murderous instincts before it got them killed. He was a stubborn bastard. It hurt her head just to push against his will; trying to overrule it was a shrill stinging agony.
‘Let’s just go!’ Tabitha snapped angrily as she gripped the seat, pushing her mind past Seven’s burning fury. His anger rushed back over her mind like a bloody tide. Seven was racing for the ship now, wanting to murder everyone on board. Tabitha tried desperately to pull him back as he dived into the booming gunfire. Suddenly it felt deeply unnatural to have their minds so intertwined; frightening. She was joined with a wild animal. Seven was rabid, freaking out. Tabitha yelled and beat his will into submission. She forced her control despite his objections, and steered his body away into the sky. Suddenly they were soaring away from the battleship and their smoking island. The stronger she held her will over his own, the more he growled and submitted. The more his mind shrank back from her own, the stronger she pushed him down. Afraid for her life, she wanted to be sure he wouldn’t turn them back again. Suddenly Tabitha felt something click in her mind, and she stopped pushing her will. It felt like a gear or a filter had slotted back into place. Suddenly Seven felt like a ship again, no longer animal. His mind felt grey, clinical, unthinking. Like a concrete floor for her own mind to stand on. Absolute obedience. A slave.
By the time they were up above the clouds, high over the endless sea and many miles from anywhere, Tabitha couldn’t feel Seven in there any more. There was still a presence there in her head, of something willing and controlled; but it was nothing more than a shadow. Software. Fishbowl seemed lost as well, confined in the cockpit with nothing to do. Half its tentacles gripped the side of the seat, steadying its bobbing body. The other tentacles waved and writhed in a panic, like they had when she’d first punched it away. Tabitha didn’t know how much Fishbowl could think about its lost garden, but it certainly seemed distressed. We did nothing to deserve this, she said to herself, her ears still ringing from the artillery blasts. Even hiding away on a deserted island was a military threat, apparently. Growing a garden and lying in the sun was clearly enough to warrant death or control. But then, that’s most humans for you, Tabitha said to herself, searching the hologram globe for another distant back of beyond. They ruin everything.
44
The flight was torturously quiet. There was only the dull drone of Seven’s jet scales outside. Tabitha tried constantly to reach out to his mind, but he wasn’t there. Like his personality was locked away somehow; maybe even erased. He was the same unthinking, unfeeling ship she’d felt when they first met.
‘Come back to me,’ she said quietly, touching her fingers to the ribbed console in front of her seat. There weren’t any thoughts or feelings in Seven’s mind. Only a blankness like silent TV static, waiting for orders.
‘He’s gone,’ she told Fishbowl helplessly, past a lump in her throat. ‘There was an animal in there. Now he’s gone, and it’s my fault.’ Fishbowl looked absent too. Maybe panicked at being trapped in the cockpit, flying through the air. Or maybe it felt lost without its plants around, grieving for them. Tabitha sat back and hugged her knees to her chest. All that sadness in her, locked away, came rushing back out again. She blinked and watched her tears patter down on her knees, trickling off the scaly skin of her catsuit.
It was a clear starry night when she reached the next marker on her hologram globe; a tiny secluded island off Hawaii. Seven saw differently at night. The blackness of the world had given way to pale night vision, picking out the land and the sea in ghostly whites and greys. Tabitha set Seven down in an island forest and spoke to him for a while in the cockpit, but it was no use. Any thoughts she’d felt from him once were gone, buried back down under the obedience of a machine. The ship had only just found his freedom, and now she’d stamped it right back into its cage again. Wait, she told herself. If she hadn’t reined him in they’d be dead. Seven was wild whe
n the battleship turned up. She had to control him. Given his way they would have attacked it and gone out in a blaze of glory; a thundering white firestorm to tear the ship apart and slaughter everyone on board. But Tabitha didn’t want that. More than anything else she’d wanted to escape back to peace and quiet, far away, where the three of them could be left alone to survive. She touched her hand out to Fishbowl in the cockpit, but it still didn’t respond. There was no tentacle-tap of acknowledgement against her fingers. Tabitha sighed sadly and climbed up through the saddle hatch, leaving Fishbowl inside and Seven sat there like a statue between the trees. She pulled on her coat and wandered off through the forest, gripping the alien knife at her belt in case this new island wasn’t quite so deserted. She looked back at Seven, resting motionless between the trees and staring ahead, just like a robot again. Tabitha sighed and walked off into the forest. It sucked being the monster stuck with higher thinking.
Of all the things Tabitha expected to run into on the island, a star-studded party wasn’t one of them. She followed the noise and the light through the trees and stumbled out at the bottom of a lantern-lit garden, looking up at an ultra-modern mansion beyond. Walls of glass; sharp flat concrete roof. People talking and laughing around a glowing blue pool. Everything stylish, everything premium. Everything that should have stopped existing after the invasion. Wait, was she dreaming? The place was alive with famous faces, all dressed up for a cocktail party at the end of the world. There was actual music; it sounded so strange now. Snapping beats and rolling rushes of digital wavenoise. Brash and jarring against her familiar silence. Tabitha pushed through the bushes and headed up the garden path, passing a handful of movie stars who’d fallen quiet to stare.
‘Jesus, you look terrible,’ a comedy star chuckled to her, looking her up and down in the lantern light. ‘Go get a drink.’
‘Thanks,’ Tabitha mumbled blankly, still looking around the place in shock. The all-star cast smiled at her nervously, waiting for her to leave up the path. Tabitha pulled her eyes away from them, numb and star-struck, and wandered off. As soon as she turned her back she heard the small group muttering and chuckling about her. A mini-pantheon of her movie gods and goddesses, standing right behind her there on the lawn, bitching about her behind her back. She ignored the sting and the embarrassment and walked off towards the mansion, trying to convince herself that this was all still a dream. It would have made more sense that way.
Tabitha stepped inside the open-plan mansion and met with an alien scene. There was music, dancing, electric lights. Perfumed smells. The clink of ice cubes in glasses. Laughter. Over in the corner lounge an A-list actor was playing videogames with a supermodel. Playing more than just videogames, on second glance. Tabitha could only scan the room in shock, ignoring the few celebrities who were staring at her from their cliques. How was everything working? And more importantly, how was everyone alive and having a good time? Was she dreaming, hallucinating, or what?
‘Oh my god, I love it,’ said a glamourous blonde; a face that Tabitha recognised from blockbuster movies. ‘Who are you wearing?’
‘Sorry?’ Tabitha replied in a daze, still getting over how ordinary the woman looked in the flesh. Elegantly dressed and undeniably beautiful, but inescapably ordinary too.
‘Who are you wearing?’ the woman repeated. ‘The designer?’ Tabitha was lost.
‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ a man chipped in beside her, looking Tabitha up and down as if she was a mannequin. ‘Look at her gloves though, those are incredible!’ he said, snatching up her hand to admire the angular grains in her metal skin. ‘Look at the detail here, the weight of it!’ he said. ‘James would be so jealous if he saw this. Where is he? James! James, you have to come see this!’ several faces turned to look over at her. Before long Tabitha had gained a small crowd of critics and admirers. She looked around at them, not knowing what to say. She could only stare in dumb silence; starstruck and out of practice with human interaction.
‘I love your contacts,’ a husky rock star told her over the music with a nod and a grin, pointing two fingers at his eyes. ‘Very cool.’
‘Thanks,’ Tabitha mumbled uncertainly, staring at his TV-friendly face with wide yellow eyes. Her quiet voice was lost in the noise of the party.
‘Are you high?’ he asked her, grinning.
‘Sorry?’
‘Are you high?’
‘Er, no,’ she said nervously. Tabitha excused herself and made her way carefully through the celebrity revellers, as if they were made of glass. She coaxed and pardoned her way through the crowd over towards the bar, desperate for that drink she’d been offered. That was the only reason she was still here.
‘Who is that?’ she heard a woman mutter in passing.
‘Indie movies, she has to be,’ her friend replied derisively. ‘I mean, look at her hair.’ they chuckled condescendingly. Tabitha felt her bullied schooldays bubbling back up in her mind and wanted to lash out at the pair. She checked herself on that, and felt her claws sinking back inside her fingertips. Maybe she was a little wilder than she thought these days. A tall suited man looked her up and down approvingly as she wandered through the crowd. When the woman on his arm caught him staring he looked away.
‘Daddy, is she a monster?’ a little girl asked her famous father. Say no, Tabitha said to herself, as she walked past them towards the bar. Say I’m just like everyone else.
‘I think she is honey,’ he said warily. He was staring at her hands and feet; her striking eyes. If there were any security staff around, Tabitha was sure he’d be motioning for them to come over. It was the way everyone was just staring but not saying anything. Not asking her what happened, or if she was ok. Just staring at the freak on parade. People were backing away. Tabitha felt something wither away inside her then; some last little piece of her that still wanted to be accepted. She switched off to the people turning and staring, muttering things to one another under cover of the music. A drunk middle-aged man tried to shake her hand and introduce himself, but he recoiled at her hard black fingers and cold golden stare. The barman looked up and smiled as Tabitha approached, obviously trying to ignore her hands.
‘What can I get you?’ he said with uncertainty, glancing around.
‘Whisky please,’ Tabitha replied. She looked down at her reflection on the mirrored glass bar-top. She recalled another bar, another mirror. The hulking black shape in the city of skin, staring down at her in the reflection. She remembered how scared she’d been, and the acid-trip dreams that night after she’d killed it. She didn’t feel scared of these famous reflections staring at her in the mirrored bar. This wasn’t real fear.
‘I’ll get this,’ a man said loudly beside her, shouting over the music. He was grinning, drunk, muscular. He barged into her when he moved a little too close beside her. He put a hand around her waist possessively.
‘Business or pleasure?’ he asked her, his warm boozy breath in her ear. ‘Name your price.’ His hand slipped down to her arse cheek.
‘Leave me alone!’ she said, pulling away from him. Tabitha put her hand on the glass bar to steady herself, used too much strength, and the entire mirrored shelf shattered and crashed to the floor. The music stopped abruptly; every face turned to look. There were screams. The falling glass had cut people at the bar.
‘Sorry!’ Tabitha mumbled into the sudden silence, not knowing where to look.
‘Jesus,’ said the drunk muscleman, staggering away from her as a small group of celebrities asked him what happened. Tabitha turned back to the barman, waiting for her drink, but he was keeping his distance.
‘I think you should go,’ a woman called from the crowd. Tabitha ignored her, shutting down to the sea of faces at her back with mixed anger and embarrassment.
‘Can I have my drink please?’ Tabitha asked the bartender. He just stared at her, backing away down the bar.
‘For god’s sake,’ she said, reaching over the bar for the bottle of whisky. The bottle made a dull
clink against her hand when she grabbed it. She necked a couple of big gulps, and gasped at the fiery feel in her throat as she turned to face the silent party. The way everyone was just staring at her, not saying anything… it was starting to piss her off.
‘What?’ she asked them. She stared at her movie heroes and heroines with contempt. They’d always had more grace and manners than this, at least as far as she knew. Maybe with a bit too much movie polish she’d seen people they weren’t. Right here, right now, they were just a snooty staring mob.
‘Somebody take her outside,’ a man said in the silence. A heavy-set man looked around for support, and stepped towards her.
‘Don’t,’ Tabitha warned him, flicking out her claws. He hesitated.
‘Take it outside, freak,’ a woman called from the crowd. ‘I don’t know what the hell’s going on with you, but you don’t belong here. We’re trying to have a good time. Someone put the music back on.’ Tabitha stared at them until frightened faces looked away. She peered over at the celebrity casualties on the couch, being crowded and fussed over for the sake of a few glancing glass cuts. Where was her sympathising crowd when she’d been wounded? When she’d been stabbed, shot, cut through, opened up and picked apart? Where was all the care and attention then? Oh yeah, she wasn’t human like everyone else. She wasn’t vulnerable; she could take it. Everyone had assumed that just because she could heal from it, she couldn’t feel it.