by Eric Brown
He was about to start the roadster and set off when a thought occurred to him. Chandra was fast asleep, snoring gently. If he reached into Chandra’s jacket pocket, removed the shield, and carried it the requisite distance from the car. Chandra’s mind would be revealed to him in blazing clarity, his every memory, his every hidden secret.
Chandra’s manner since arriving on Verkerk’s World, his reserve and attitude of suspicion, quite apart from the fact that he was careful never to be without his shield, suggested to Vaughan that he was hiding something.
As he contemplated the sleeping Chandra, he wondered how much of his reluctance to scan him was because he did not want to know what Chandra really thought of him. There had been times, over the past few days, when Vaughan had made cynical jibes at Chandra’s expense, and Chandra had regarded him with an expression little short of loathing, and quite justifiably so. Vaughan could do without a mindful of Chandra’s dislike.
He started the roadster and drove on.
The sun climbed, turning the frost to dazzling quicksilver on the surrounding meadowland. The road wound into the foothills, and the rearing mountains filled the width of the windscreen with a range of blue-grey flanks and snow-covered summits.
Chandra woke an hour later, stretched and yawned. “Oh, the mountains. How far have we come?”
“Five, six hundred kilometres.”
“You should have woken me, Jeff. Stop and I’ll drive.”
“Relax. We’re almost there. You could pass me a coffee, though.”
“Coffee coming up.” He passed Vaughan a steaming bulb of black coffee and sandwiches of the tasteless, rubbery cheese popular on Verkerk’s World.
Thirty minutes later he pulled off the road and parked the car beneath a concealing stand of fir trees. He opened out the map and indicated the route to Chandra. “It’s by foot from here. I reckon around eighteen, twenty kay.”
“You sure you don’t want a rest?”
He was feeling wide awake, the combination of caffeine and the mind-silence invigorating him. “We’ll stop and rest when the heat gets too much. Let’s get going.”
Vaughan opened the boot of the car and broke out the supplies: two backpacks, one containing a tent and insulated clothing, the other food and water. He took the pistols from their case—two automatics—and passed one to Chandra. He strapped his own pistol beneath his jacket, ensuring he could reach it without hindrance.
They drank a bottle of water, consulted the map, and then set off up a long, wide valley.
It was mid-morning and the heat increased by the minute, though the ground underfoot was still hard with frost. All around, Vaughan saw the unopened buds of a thousand flowers. He imagined the green meadow in an hour or two, when the sun climbed and the blooms decided to open.
The gradient increased; the last few hundred metres before they reached the head of the valley were littered with the rocky deposits of the glacier that had torn through the land millennia ago. They walked between boulders, and then the rocks became so closely packed that they were forced to climb them, jumping from boulder to boulder. Soon they reached the opening to a side valley, this one narrower and steeper than the last.
Vaughan stopped and unfolded the map. “This is the one. And when we get to the top,” he indicated the second valley, “there should be a trail through the rocks for a couple of thousand metres.”
He turned and surveyed the terrain they had crossed so far. The valley fell away steeply, a broad green sweep between two fingers of rock. In the distance, beside the twisting course of the road, was the stand of tiny fir trees behind which their roadster was hidden. Beyond the road and the vast, spreading expanse of the plain, the coastline was obscured by a morning mist that stretched the entire length of the horizon.
Chandra was shaking his head. “I’ve never been anywhere like it, Jeff. To someone brought up on the Station... you can’t imagine. The silence, the openness—it feels almost threatening.” He took a deep breath of the clean, cold air, turning three hundred and sixty degrees in a kind of disbelieving wonder. “Not a soul in sight for kilometres. Wait till I tell Sumita about this.”
Vaughan smiled to himself, oddly pleased by Chandra’s childish exhibition of wonder. He closed his eyes and scanned. Silence filled his mind, a void in which the only thoughts in his head were his own.
Down in the valley, the flowers were opening. The comprehensive transformation, from the uniform green of the meadow to the multi-coloured tapestry of the writhing blooms, was so sudden that it reminded Vaughan of something programmed—like a colour sweep on a computer screen. A swarm of insects buzzed over the land, a million individual pixels of iridescence scintillating in the light of the sun.
From behind them, long-beaked birds darted down the valley, heading for the bounty of pollen on offer. Vaughan was reminded of the scene reproduced at the Holosseum.
They set off again, heading up the narrow valley. The sun was almost directly overhead now and the increased temperature, combined with the steeper gradient, made for an arduous two-hour climb. They persisted doggedly, no longer exchanging talk. Vaughan was aware that years of inactivity were taking their toll on tired legs and lungs. They stopped frequently to rest and drink water. The head of the valley, a steep cutting in silhouette against the snow-covered mountains beyond, seemed to remain just as distant no matter how far they walked. He spurred himself on with the incentive of a long, well-earned rest when they reached the cutting.
Chandra forged ahead, reached the pass, and sat against a rock. Vaughan dropped his pack unceremoniously, sat and collapsed against it, hanging his head back and gulping in the mountain air. He pulled out a water bottle and chugged the cold liquid.
“Ten minutes, Jimmy. For Chrissake don’t set off before then, okay? I need time to recover.”
“When you get back to the Station, Jeff, I’ll book you into a gym.”
“Don’t bother. I don’t intend to be doing this too often in future.”
He pulled out the map and passed it to Chandra. He traced their L-shaped route up the valleys, then indicated the winding track to the mouth of the Geiger Caves. “It’s less than three kilometres from here. We should be there in an hour.”
Chandra looked up from the map. He stared down the valley. “Beautiful,” he said to himself. “It must remind you of Canada?”
Vaughan shrugged. “Toronto was much flatter.”
Chandra hesitated, then said, “You never told me much about what you did before you came to the Station.”
Vaughan pursed his lips around a mouthful of water, feigning concentration on the label of the plastic bottle. He swallowed, nodded. “That’s because it’s a time I don’t talk about. Simple as that.”
“It must have been a bad time, if you can’t talk—”
“Quit it, Jimmy.”
Chandra opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head.
Vaughan stowed away his water bottle, lifted his pack, and swung it onto his shoulders. He looked up, scanning the way ahead. “Let’s get to it,” he said, as if nothing had come between them. “The sooner we set off, the sooner we get there.”
He strode off up the rocky, winding track. Silently, Chandra followed.
As he climbed the path between great, tumbled boulders and craggy overhangs, it came to him with a startling jolt why the track was so well defined. Over the years, the sacrificial victims, the faithful who had obeyed the calling, had come this way by the hundreds. They had sought union with the One, and instead had joined with oblivion.
Thirty minutes later the path opened out on to a sloping, meadowed incline. Over the rise, according to the map, was the opening to the Caves. Vaughan scanned ahead.
“It’s okay. We’re alone. Let’s go.”
They hurried up the greensward towards the crest where a series of flattened rocks jutted from the earth. From the cover of these sloping rocks they had a clear view down into the dell where the mouth of the caves, gaping as if in surprise, showe
d dark against the blue rock of the mountainside.
Before the cave mouth, the hollow of grass had been churned in the not too distant past by the passage of the faithful.
Chandra hunched, shivering. “What now? Can you read anything?”
“Not a thing.” He pulled the map from his jacket, studying the system of caves marked by Essex. “See these, here? They’re a couple of kilometres away. Maybe we should try there.” He looked at his watch. “We’ve about another hour of daylight left. What do you think?”
Chandra smiled. “Sure. Why not?”
They set off again, climbing the steep incline between the grey rocks. Vaughan remained vigilant, constantly scanning ahead for the first signature of human presence. The warmth of the sun dissipated and the wind from the mountain-tops was razor-sharp.
“We’ll make it to the caves, change into our thermals, and camp the night,” he said. He made sure his pistol was handy, checked his flashlight.
They climbed quickly, moving faster in the cool of dusk. Vaughan led the way, consulting the map from time to time but for the most part following the well-worn track up the side of a rock-strewn valley.
Thirty minutes after setting out, Vaughan stopped. Something, some quick, sharp signal, had pulsed in his head like the mark on a radar beacon. He closed his eyes and concentrated. There were more of them, a whole cluster. Too far away to be read as individual thoughts, they registered as a lively buzz of intelligence—human intelligence.
“Jeff?” Chandra said, watching him.
“There’s someone up there.” From the strength of the signal, he judged the people he was scanning to be about a kilometre away.
“More than one. Perhaps...” He grimaced, concentrating. “Perhaps ten, fifteen. Come on, we can make it before dark.”
They continued along the trail. The buzz of human presence was located at the head of the next valley, the area around the entrance of the caves towards which Vaughan and Chandra were heading. As they climbed, taking exaggerated care not to dislodge rocks, the signal gained in strength. There were thirteen individuals, nine men and four women. The contents of their minds became discernible. The reason he had not read them earlier, he knew now, was that they had just arrived, flying in low from the south.
He flitted from mind to mind, searching for any information that might prove valuable. Their thoughts were fuzzy, hazed with something he was unable to make out at first—then he realised that he was scanning the minds of addicts.
Suddenly, Vaughan was granted a glimpse of the truth.
These people were... Disciples, as they thought of themselves, and their God was the One God, the gestalt unity of the Vaith. The Vaith, he discovered, the extraterrestrial beings that had arrived on Verkerk’s World millennia ago—taking their fill of the local fauna until humans happened along— were no longer present on the planet. The long-planned transfer had been successfully completed. Vaughan dived deeper into the mind of, the closest woman. He read a frightening loyalty to the Vaith, a loyalty that would have involved sacrificing herself for the welfare of her God, and he read too that the Vaith had willed their transfer so that they might more fully experience human civilisation and so facilitate the communion with the One for the legion of human faithful-to-be. Vaughan picked up brief glimpses in the woman’s memory of how the creatures had appeared to her, and brief glimpses were all he wanted: great crablike shapes of midnight chitin, flashing claws, moist pink mouths equipped with ancillary claws with which to draw in their victims. To the woman, the sighs of the sacrificial faithful were the sounds of salvation itself: she lived for the day when she too could give herself to the One.
He pushed the images aside and scanned the woman and others, trying to find the location of the alien demi-gods. He found that three were on Earth; the three others had been transferred in the last week to the colony planets of Harmony, Zalspar, and Greenwood.
They set off again up the valley, keeping in the cover of the rocks. When they gained the crest of the valley, Vaughan ordered Chandra into a crouch and edged forward, peering over the tumble of rocks into the sloping sward before the mouth of the cave below.
The Disciples were busy dismantling a series of extruded polycarbon dwellings, flattening them out and loading them into the hold of a cargo-flier, their mission almost accomplished. They were dressed in silver insulation suits, the uniform design giving them the appearance of an army.
Beside him, Chandra had remembered their original plan and was filming the proceedings. Vaughan felt his heart beat deafeningly in his ears, aware of the danger if they were discovered now. It came to him that the threat would have been grave enough if the Disciples had been acting on their own initiatives: driven as they were by drug-induced loyalty to the Vaith, the danger was maximised.
He scanned the Disciples below, searching among the minds for the exact location of the Vaith on the colony planets, on Earth, and specifically on Bengal Station. But in every mind he drew a blank. The Disciples were aware of the individual planets to which the Vaith had travelled, but not their precise locations. Next, he scanned for knowledge of the ringleaders on Earth and the colonies, but again he scanned in vain. The Disciples were organised in a system of highly disciplined cells, with only the cell leader having contact with commanders in higher cell structures. None of the Disciples down below knew of others beyond their own cell of eighteen.
He told himself, later, that he should have known at that moment. Eighteen, and he had counted thirteen down below.
Then he read something in the mind of the Disciple: Where the hell is Jenson?—we’re almost ready for off...
Jenson... Elly Jenson’s father?
He knew, of course, that Jenson possessed a mind-shield—and with the realisation came the sudden awareness of danger.
There was no time to get away. He seemed to be-moving in slow motion: it took an age to gesture to Chandra to stop filming and flee, an age to turn and begin the descent of the valley.
The attack, seemingly out of nowhere, of the silver-suited Disciples—their sudden appearance from the shadows all the more shocking for the fact they all wore mind-shields—seemed to happen over a period of protracted seconds, their movements slowed in his perceptions with shock and the futile awareness that this should never have happened.
And then the Disciples were upon Vaughan and Chandra before they had time to draw their weapons. Someone knocked him to the ground, a fist in his face. He felt blood trickle, thick and hot, down his cheek and into his mouth. A Disciple kicked him in the stomach. He groaned and curled up tight against the ice-cold ground, pain exploding through him.
Seconds passed, and then he felt callous hands turning him over and searching for weapons. He struggled, but was held in position by more than one person. A Disciple pulled the pack from his back and grabbed his jacket, tearing pockets and sleeves. They found his pistol, took it.
Two men dragged him to his knees; the same number held Chandra. Jenson stood over them. His expression was impassive, his mind unreadable.
“Sir?” a Disciple said.
“Get rid of them,” were Jenson’s only words before he vanished into the shadows.
Then Vaughan was upright and borne through the air. He put up a token struggle, but the hands restraining him were unshakeable. He was carried up the valley towards an outcropping of rocks. Vaughan closed his eyes, ready for the bullet in the back of his head.
Instead, the hands released him and he was falling through the air, and it came to him that they had saved a bullet and had thrown him from the mountainside. He experienced the stomach-churning sensation of falling. The impact came after brief seconds, ramming his thighs into his chest and winding him. He rolled, falling on his shoulder and yelling in pain. Chandra arrived a second later, thudding down beside him.
Vaughan rolled onto his back, gasping for breath. He could hear Chandra nearby, sobbing quietly. He looked up, made out a ragged circle of twilight sky between the rocks. They were in a natura
l pit, perhaps three metres across.
Seconds ticked away, became an interminable duration Vaughan spent waiting for the coup de gr â ce , the bullets from above. As the minutes and the silence stretched, a slow realisation came to him.
Chandra said, “What are they waiting for? Why don’t they get it over with?”
Vaughan pushed himself into a sitting position, his right shoulder protesting. “Why should they? Think about it. How long do you think we’ll last before freezing to death?”
In the darkness of their prison, Chandra said, “Why didn’t we change into our thermals earlier, Jeff? We might have stood a chance.”
Vaughan leaned his head against the rock, massaging his injured shoulder.
Chandra was on his feet, a dark shadow moving around the confines of the pit, feeling the rock.