Web of Fire Bind-up

by Steve Voake

  The acceleration was simply extraordinary. One second Sam would be staring at a large rock in front of him, the next he was catapulted high into the air and the rock would be a tiny speck, hundreds of metres below.

  The hardest part was getting used to the landing. Once the flea had reached the highest point of its jump it would start to fall again, plummeting out of the sky at such a terrifying rate that it seemed he would be smashed to pieces on the ground that rushed up to meet him. The first few times it happened, Sam shut his eyes and pressed his face against the flea’s bristly back, expecting it to crash violently into the ice and rocks below. But instead – to his relief – the landing was as soft as jumping off a sofa onto a huge pile of cushions. The suspension in the flea’s legs was so efficient that it absorbed all of the impact by compressing its muscles, ready for the next spectacular burst of energy.

  Sam landed with a gentle bump and stared ahead through the display goggles.

  He was high above the lake on an outcrop of rock, looking down at the shining waters from which he had earlier emerged. His stomach flipped as he peered down over the precipice, but he was already becoming more used to the fact that the flea could jump from a great height and still land quite safely.

  Squeezing the lever once more he rocketed over the edge at great speed, soaring through freezing air as the wind whistled around his ears and blew ice crystals into his hair.

  Seconds later, the flea crunched down on the cold lake shore and Sam swung himself off, kicking out the side-stand to leave the flea parked at a jaunty angle on the stones.

  Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure exactly why he had come.

  But as grey flakes of snow began to fall thickly from the lead-coloured sky, he felt a strange longing which grew stronger with every second that passed.

  Find the one who is true of heart.

  He found himself drawn towards the waterfall which tumbled down the side of the mountain before plunging into a pool of foam and glitter at the base of the cliff. Approaching along the shoreline he noticed that the air was filled with a fine, cool mist which carried upon the wind to form small, delicate clouds against the grey winter sky.

  As he listened to the roar of the falls and watched a rainbow arc bright colours across the water, something in the centre of the pool caught his eye. The light was failing and at first he thought his eyes were playing tricks upon him. But as he looked more closely, he saw the body of a young girl floating beneath the surface, her arms wide open and her face tilted up toward the sky. Hidden currents dragged her downwards and strands of blonde hair waved gently around her pale, expressionless face as she drifted in the watery breeze.

  ‘Oh no,’ whispered Sam. ‘Oh please, no…’

  Running across the stones he launched himself headlong into the pool, gasping as the icy waters closed around him. Sucking cold air deep into his lungs, he dived beneath the surface and swam frantically toward the girl as she sank lower into the pool’s murky depths.

  The freezing water enveloped him and as he groped desperately around in the gloom he could feel the thud of his heart and the roaring of blood in his ears. With a final effort, he grabbed the girl by the arm and swam for the shore, dragging her cold, limp body onto the stones before collapsing in an exhausted heap next to her. Resting his face wearily on the pebbles, he listened to the thunder of the waterfall behind him and then, as his breath returned, he lifted himself up onto his elbows and turned to face the girl who lay so still and silent beside him.

  Her face was grey and her eyes were closed. She looked peaceful, as though she were asleep.

  ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘No…’

  Gathering her up in his arms, he carried her to a small cave at the base of the cliff where he laid her gently down upon the stones. As he did so, he noticed another robe lying in the shadows at the side of the cave and, still shivering, he carried it across to her and tenderly covered her with it. But as his fingers touched her face he felt how desperately cold she was.

  And then he realised that he was crying, and that it was too late.

  Hours passed, slipping away like ghosts into the grey afternoon.

  Alone on the cold lake shore, Sam stared silently into the water’s black depths. As the day grew dark and the setting sun rimmed the mountains with crimson, he felt empty, as though he had come to the end of everything.

  ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘How shall I save her?’

  But as evening spread itself across the sky and the wheel of stars turned slowly above him, the only reply was the roar of the waterfall, splashing and tumbling over ancient stones.

  Overcome by exhaustion and despair, Sam slid into a cold and dreamless sleep.

  He woke early to the sound of birdsong; a single, warbling call that floated through the trees and into his consciousness. Confused, he stood up and stretched his cold, aching muscles. Then the grief rose in his throat as he remembered, and he ran quickly across the deserted shoreline towards the cave.

  Reaching the entrance, his heart fluttered wildly and for a few moments he stood motionless at the threshold, unsure of what to do. He pressed his forehead against the cool rock and felt its smoothness against his skin.

  Then, taking a deep breath, he stepped inside, steeling himself for what he knew he must find there.

  But the cave was empty.

  There was no one there.

  With a cry of anguish, Sam fell to his knees and began to scrabble furiously at the stones with his bare hands, searching frantically for any sign of the body he had placed there so carefully the night before.

  But there was no sign of her; nothing to suggest that she had ever been more than the cruel invention of another wretched dream.

  In his anger and frustration, Sam picked up a rock and threw it at the side of the cave where it smashed into a thousand fragments, clattering away into the shadows.

  ‘Let me wake up!’ he cried. ‘I don’t want to dream any more – I want to know what’s real!’

  As his cries died away, fading into the dark recesses of the cave, the hairs prickled on the back of his neck and he sensed that he was no longer alone.

  Slowly, he turned to face the entrance of the cave and there, silhouetted against the light, stood the figure of a young girl. Her hair was blonde and straggly, and she wore a robe like his own.

  ‘Sam,’ she said softly. ‘Is that you?’

  Hardly daring to hope, he got unsteadily to his feet and shielded his eyes against the light. Then, with a little squeak, the girl sprang forward and ran barefoot across the stones towards him.

  ‘It can’t be,’ he whispered. ‘It can’t be…’

  But as she launched herself at him and threw her arms around his neck, he staggered backwards, shouting her name until it echoed and sang through the shadows of the dark and lonely cave.

  ‘Skipper,’ he cried, ‘Skipper – you’re alive!’

  Eight

  It was late. Through the laboratory window, Alya could see the three coloured moons rising high above Vermia. She thought of a night in summer long ago, a night when she was four years old and the light of magic had yet to fade from the things around her. Her mother and father had walked with her to the edge of their village and pointed up at the sky.

  ‘Look, Alya,’ her father had said. ‘There is one for each of us. The green one – that’s your mother. The red one is me. And you see that pale blue one, shining in the darkness between them? That’s you, Alya. The most beautiful one of all.’

  And that was it; the last time she ever saw them.

  That night, her village was caught up in the war between Vahlzian troops and Odoursin’s renegade army. The soldiers had come and destroyed everything. Nothing had been the same since and nothing ever could be.

  Oh, there had been kindnesses along the way; the women at the Vermian orphanage for instance – saving her from the work camps by pretending that she was pulled from the rubble of a bombed-out air-raid shelter. That small act of compassion
in itself had been enough to give her the chance she needed – her own natural intelligence had done the rest. She had excelled at school in Vermia from where she had gone on to win a scholarship to the Government Academy of Life Sciences. Her work on parasites had attracted the attention of the people at InRaD who had quickly recognised her talent and recruited her into their research team.

  And now, it seemed, even Vermia’s highest officials were interested in her work.

  But the truth was, none of this really helped to remove the dull ache she felt inside whenever she remembered how much she had once been loved.

  She would work sixteen hour days and return exhausted to her empty flat, too tired to do anything but fall into bed and sleep until the sound of the alarm clock woke her again the following morning. She secretly hoped that each new accomplishment, each new scientific discovery or accolade would go some way towards filling the empty void.

  But somehow, it never did.

  Perhaps, she thought, it would be different this time. If she could only find a way to manipulate the genetic code of these toxoplasma worms, then she would be the toast of the scientific community. Finally, she would have her proper place in this world.

  Switching on the anglepoise lamp, Alya pulled it down so that a bright pool of light spilled onto the stainless steel worktop. She snapped open the catch on the temperature-controlled storage unit, pulled out a test tube and, with the help of a pair of tweezers, removed a tangled white slab of living tissue. It made little squelching noises as she placed it firmly on the shiny surface and using a sharp scalpel she carefully removed a cross-section from the centre. Leaving the rest of it glistening wetly on the worktop, she picked up the small sample and took it over to the powerful electron microscope in the corner of the lab.

  The microscope hummed softly as she switched it on and Alya was pleased to note that the twin eyepiece was still set at the correct height for her; she had adjusted it for her own use earlier in the day and it seemed that no one else had used it. She wasn’t really surprised. Most of the team were more concerned with macro-sized engineering developments, so she tended to have the use of the microscope to herself these days.

  Placing the sample on a glass slide, she positioned it beneath the lens and then, using a dial on the side of the microscope, adjusted the focal length until the complex structure of the tissue came sharply into focus.

  She smiled to herself with quiet satisfaction.

  The years that she had spent studying similar creatures had enabled her to find quickly, and with unerring accuracy, whichever part of them she chose to analyse. And as the microscopic landscape of small ridges, peaks and valleys emerged from the darkness – illuminated by the glare of a billion electrons – she knew she had entered a world that few others would ever see.

  She was staring deep into the mind of a parasitic worm.

  Commander Firebrand lay on the cold stone floor of his cell and wondered – as he had taken to doing lately – how long it would be before they finally decided to kill him. He knew from the small scratches he had made on the wall with his fingernail that it had been nearly a month since his capture. During that time they had starved him, threatened him and beaten him to within an inch of his life.

  But he hadn’t told them anything.

  Not a single thing.

  ‘You are a foolish man,’ they would say, tightening his blindfold and spinning him around so that their voices seemed to come from every corner of the cell. ‘Why be so hard on yourself? Just tell us where the Resistance base is. Tell us where your people are hiding and we can put a stop to all this unpleasantness once and for all.’

  But Firebrand would just shake his head and say nothing. And then the whole shameful business would start all over again.

  Sometimes, in the lonely, tar-black hours, he would find himself wondering if the next blow might be the one that broke his spirit, the one that left him pleading for mercy in exchange for the information that they required. It was this, perhaps, which he feared the most, for he knew that such a betrayal would dissolve the last shaky foundations of his faith and consign him to an even greater darkness; a darkness where even the light of hope would finally be extinguished. But just when it seemed that he could hold out no longer, the pain would unexpectedly unlock a place in his heart where something precious still shone, bright and strange, untainted by the corrosive horrors that closed in from all sides.

  Firebrand shut his eyes and remembered it once more.

  He was walking through a meadow in high summer, a soft breeze stirring the treetops as the scent of dry earth and pollen hung heavy beneath an empty sky. Next to him skipped a little blonde girl with a wild rose in her hair.

  ‘I can’t let you do it,’ he was saying. ‘I won’t let you.’

  ‘But why not?’ she cried. ‘I’m perfectly capable. You know I am!’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ he said. ‘That’s not the point at all.’

  ‘Then what is?’ replied the girl. ‘What is the point? You can’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t fly this mission, but still you won’t let me go.’

  Firebrand had sighed and taken her by the hand.

  ‘There is a reason,’ he said, ‘but I am afraid it is a selfish one.’

  He had looked at the girl then, seen how much she wanted to do this and known in his heart that he would not be able to stop her.

  ‘I don’t want to let you go,’ he said, ‘because I do not want to lose you.’

  And the girl – whose name was Skipper – had looked at him and said, ‘We always lose the things that we love. That is part of what love is.’

  Here in the darkness, Firebrand thought about how his fears had been justified; for he had let her go and now she would never come back.

  All that remained were these vague, electrical pulses in his head, memories that tricked him into thinking the past was something that still mattered.

  But there was something else that she had said right at the end, something that still allowed him to hope – oh he knew how foolish it was – to hope that there was something beyond the despair that he felt.

  ‘We always lose the things that we love,’ she said.

  And then, seeing the sadness in his eyes, she had turned to him and smiled.

  ‘But that does not mean,’ she added, putting a small hand on top of his own, ‘that we shall not find them again one day.’

  Typing some numbers into a computer linked to the microscope, Alya programmed the small motor-driven belt beneath the glass slide to move a tiny fraction to the left. The beauty of working with creatures from Earth was the difference in scale; on Earth the toxoplasma worm was so small that it would need a powerful microscope even to see the whole of it. Here on Aurobon, the fact that it was the size of a snake meant that you could delve much deeper into the tiniest twists of its DNA, peer at its structural secrets and stare at the shape and form of the very building blocks that had made it.

  For several months now, Alya had been convinced that if she could just drill far enough down into the brains of the parasites she studied, she would eventually find the material home of their subconscious mind, the home of every thought and desire that drove them. She knew that somewhere, hidden deep within the microscopic folds of the brain, lay a code which would enable her to unlock the secret language of their minds, the language which told these creatures where they should go, what they should do and even what they should wish for. If she could somehow discover this language and learn how to read it, then maybe – just maybe – she could learn how to write it too…

  Squinting through the lens, Alya increased the magnification and was pleased to see that – as she had hoped – the familiar undulating landscapes of the worm’s brain tissue had been replaced by something entirely different. The hills and valleys had given way to a regular series of hexagonal rings, each one linked to its neighbours by strands of yellow and red nerve tissue. There was no doubt about it; here was a very orderly, very definite sy
stem of patterns which Alya recognised instinctively as having their own logic. She was filled with a sudden exhilaration as she realised that she was now sailing into uncharted waters. But as remarkable as this was, there was something else even more remarkable that quickly drew Alya’s attention. Up in the very top right hand corner of the slide was a jagged, blue line with numerous small spikes along its length, sticking out like thorns upon the stem of a bramble.

  Alya let out a small cry of astonishment and sat back in her chair, blinking with quiet amazement under the white glare of the laboratory lights. All at once, the facts and figures gleaned from years of study and long, lonely nights of research began to gather together in her mind like a thousand chattering birds, transforming themselves into an organised flock that soared high into the clear skies of her understanding. Alya gazed after them in wonder as if seeing them for the very first time, and was filled with a strange and terrible excitement.

  The blue, bramble-shaped line was, in itself, nothing new to Alya. She had come across it several times before in her biological textbooks. Studies had shown that it was almost certainly the neurological link between thought and action, the physical bridge across which a creature’s desires walked in order to make themselves known in the outside world.

  It was well known, of course, that all living things contained a similar structure which allowed their behaviour in the ‘real’ world to reflect the ideas in their minds. But studies so far had shown that these structures were each as different as the organisms of which they were a part. Alya certainly hadn’t expected to find one that looked anything like this in the brain of a parasitic worm.

  In fact, Alya knew there was only one place where you would expect to see a structure with the same shape and colour as this one. She thought back to the lecture in college three years ago where she’d stared for the first time in fascination at the jagged blue image projected on the screen. She could still remember the professor’s words exactly: