“Hardly anything. If I’d have known that he’d be so busy, I’m not even sure I’d have suggested coming here, you know. Sorry.”
“You silly thing,” Nathanial said with a grin. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world: ghosts! Well, whatever passes for them in this place. You’ve got nothing to reproach yourself about.”
“And how are you getting on with Arnaud? You weren’t sure about him at the start, were you, and now you seem quite the pair.”
“Oh, he’s not so bad—a bit crazy, but you know what the French are like. He seems to know his onions when it comes to geology, though. He saw some glowing rocks down there and got terribly excited about them.”
“Hmmm,” Annabelle said. “I can see why the two of you get along so well.”
Her attention was caught by Corporal Heath entering the mess. He nodded at them, and she beckoned him over. He walked with an undisguised limp, but he looked a lot better than he had been the day before.
“You’re looking in fine health today,” she said, motioning for him to sit down. “This is my friend, Nathanial Stone—and you’ll already have met Doctor Fontaine.”
Arnaud arrived at that moment.
“Yes, ma’am, we’ve met. A pleasure to meet you, Professor Stone.”
“So, how are you today?” Annabelle asked him as Arnaud volunteered to fetch tea for him.
“I’m getting there. Told ’em I wouldn’t be needing my crutches today—never get better if I keep hobbling about on them things. Need to learn to stand on my own two feet again, don’t I?” He paused awkwardly. “I’ve just heard that they’ve brought the professor’s body up.”
“Yes. Nathanial and Arnaud here helped them.”
“Very good of you, thank you,” Heath said, turning his enamelled metal mug around and around on the table. “I was spark out. A shame, ’cos I’d like to have helped, you know?”
Annabelle nodded.
“Is she…?” Heath fumbled around. “How is she, then? I mean, dead, obviously, but…”
“Considering what befell her,” Nathanial said, hoping he was reassuring Heath, “she wasn’t in as bad a condition as I’d expected.”
“That’s good,” Heath said quietly. “She didn’t deserve to go like that.”
“I think that ‘going like that’ is just the way she would have wanted,” Arnaud chimed in. “Working.”
“Maybe, sir,” Heath said, clearly not convinced but too polite to argue. There was a long pause. “You’ll probably think I’m a bit daft—a bit addled in the head—but there’s something I’d like to do.” They all looked at him. “I’d like to go down there—down to where she died. And say a prayer or two for her. Does that sound silly?”
“Not at all,” Annabelle reassured him. “That’s a lovely thought. I think she’d appreciate that. And there’s something else I should tell you, Corporal. You know your ghost? The one I saw? Well I saw another one this morning.”
Heath’s eyes went wide.
“But it wasn’t yours—it was Professor Fournier.”
The corporal stared at her for a few moments, and then looked at the other two. “You’re not joshing me, are you, miss?”
“Of course not! It was only brief, but she appeared in my room.”
“Bloody hell!” he said eventually. “Sorry, miss.”
“Oh trust me, Corporal, I’ve heard far worse.”
Heath gave a sheepish smile. “I reckon I’ll go down there now,” he said eventually. “Best not say anything to the colonel, though. You know what he’s like. He’ll probably just order me back to bed.”
“Would you mind if I came along?” Arnaud asked. “There are things we saw this morning that I would like to take another look at.”
“To be honest,” Heath said, “I’d be quite glad of the company. This’ll be the first time I’ve been down there since it happened, and if the professor’s ghost is wandering about… Well, you know…”
They nodded understandingly, and Annabelle said: “Is there room for another? These two seem to have done all the adventuring so far. Nathanial, how does that sound to you?”
Nathanial gave a small sigh: he’d only been back an hour or two, and the thought of making the trip again didn’t exactly fill him with joy. But it was a chance to be with Annabelle, and he already felt a little guilty that he hadn’t spent much time with her. He nodded, trying to look as enthusiastic as he could. “Why not? Are you all right with that, Corporal?”
“Suits me fine, sir. In fact, I’d be honoured.”
Arnaud jumped to his feet. “Give me ten minutes to get my sample bag and a couple of tools. I’ll meet you at the top of the path, yes?”
And off he raced, whilst the rest of them finished their tea.
2.
This time, Nathanial was relieved to discover, the trip seemed to take almost no time at all—particularly considering that Heath was still recovering from his accident. But, like a true soldier, he didn’t complain once. They reached the generator that, earlier in the day, had been chuntering away to itself, providing the power for the lamps strung up along the route, and Nathanial got it started again with little trouble. They were all equipped with safety helmets and lamps, and made sure—at Heath’s insistence—that they stayed within sight of each other.
“No running off,” Annabelle warned the two scientists. “I know what you’re like, Nathanial, when something grabs your interest.”
Like naughty schoolboys, he and Arnaud pulled faces at each other.
Soon they reached the metallic seams in the tunnel wall, and paused so that Arnaud could chip away some samples and stow them in the leather bag that hung from his shoulder. It gave Heath the chance to rest his leg and for all of them to take a few mouthfuls of tea that they’d brought in flasks from the mess.
It took no time to reach the cavern where Professor Fournier had died, but Nathanial paused before they went in.
“You’re sure about this, Heath?” he asked the soldier.
“I am, sir, thanks for asking.”
“Good man.”
He patted the corporal awkwardly on the shoulder, and, in silence, they entered the cavern.
Heath went ahead to the far side and kneeled down by the rubble from which the professor’s body had been removed, whilst Arnaud wandered off in search of more rocks.
“Seems a decent enough chap, Heath,” Nathanial whispered to Annabelle. “He’s taken quite a shine to you, you know.”
“I think he feels a bit intimidated by you, though.”
“Me?” Nathanial was surprised. “What’s intimidating about me?”
“Apart from your height, you mean?” She laughed. “I get the feeling that he’s a little bit suspicious of scientists—especially,” she nodded in Arnaud’s direction, “atheist scientists.”
“French atheist scientists to boot.”
“There is that, yes.”
They stood quietly for a moment, watching Heath making the sign of the cross as he knelt there, his head bowed.
“What?” said Annabelle suddenly.
“What?”
“What did you say?”
Nathanial frowned at her. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You did,” Annabelle insisted.
“I did not.”
Annabelle looked around. “How very strange. I was sure you’d said something.”
“Perhaps the acoustics in here are playing tricks on your—” Nathanial stopped, and like Annabelle before him, looked around, puzzled. “That is strange—just for a moment, it sounded like someone was repeating my words back. Did you hear that?”
Annabelle shook her head. “Maybe it’s another ghost?”
“Well if it is, it’s staying hidden.”
Nathanial peered into the inky patches of shadow cast by the rocks in case a ghost was lurking, when he suddenly felt Annabelle tap him on the arm.
“Nathanial,” she said, a note of alarm in her voice.
He turned to se
e what looked like a vague, smoky patch in the centre of the chamber, slowly growing denser and denser as he looked at it. And the more he looked, the more he realised that it wasn’t smoke at all—it was, rather, like a swarm of bees or wasps, each individual shimmering and glowing, like fireflies.
Heath, too, had seen the cloud and rose to his feet. In the centre of the cavern, the swarm of sparkling particles began to coalesce, drawing together in a somewhat random, haphazard way, as though undecided about what they should be doing.
“What are they?” whispered Annabelle. “Insects?”
Nathanial could only shake his head as, with a decisive surge, the swarm seemed to make its mind up and snapped into a clearly recognisable form—a man. Well, thought Nathanial, a human-shaped form. A human-shaped form about twenty feet in height. It had no recognisable features or, indeed, gender. Although it was fluid and unfixed, as the particles danced around each other, Nathanial imagined he saw a vague hint of the female form about it—but the next second, a wave of change rippled through it and it became decidedly male. There were no facial features: one second he saw a proud, jutting chin, the next it became almost elfin in its physiognomy. It was as though it couldn’t decide quite what it wanted to be. Perhaps, thought Nathanial, it was attempting to imitate aspects of their own forms and couldn’t reconcile the differences. Even its height changed.
Nathanial only wished he could get a closer look—to examine the constituent particles, to work out what they were, organic or inorganic. They glittered with a cold crystal light as they danced and fluttered about each other, and from this distance, Nathanial could make out no legs or wings.
“What is it, sir?” he heard Heath whisper as the soldier tentatively took a few steps forward to stand at Annabelle’s side.
“You know, Corporal—I have absolutely no idea. But it is rather magnificent, isn’t it?” Nathanial smiled.
“Do you think they are capable of intelligent thought?” asked Annabelle. “Or are they just flocking together like that out of some sort of instinct—like birds?”
“It’s possible, but I’ve never seen birds flock together to form the shape of a human being before. It—they—may just be very capable mimics, of course, copying what they see.”
“Us, you mean?”
“See how its shape changes—one minute it looks a little feminine, and the next masculine.”
“And all the shades in between,” added Arnaud from the other side of the chamber. He made as if to cross over to them, but as he did, the swarm blew apart as though a gust of wind had disturbed it.
“No!” called Nathanial. “Stay where you are, Arnaud. Your movement seems to have disturbed them.”
Arnaud paused, and after a few seconds, the swarm pulled back in on itself, resuming its humanoid form. Even as it continued to shift, the “head” rotated until it seemed to be facing Arnaud.
“It’s…it’s looking at me,” he whispered.
“It would appear that way, yes,” agreed Nathanial. “Which suggests that it is capable of seeing, despite appearing to have no eyes with which to see.”
“Could the individual parts of it be capable of acting like eyes, do you think?” asked Annabelle.
Nathanial experimentally raised his right hand, palm forwards. The swarm’s head slowly turned away from Arnaud, back to him. And then it raised its left hand in a mirroring gesture.
“Mon Dieu!” said Arnaud.
“Don’t get too excited,” cautioned Nathanial. “It clearly perceives us—although by what manner of senses I couldn’t begin to hazard a guess. But it may not be thinking or reasoning.”
Annabelle cleared her throat. “Hello there!” she said clearly and loudly.
“Annabelle!”
“What, Nathanial? If we’re to determine whether this thing is more than some bizarre mirror, we have to see if it can understand as well as copy us.”
Suddenly, with a clarity Nathanial had never experienced before, he heard a voice. “Hello!” it said, and it seemed as if the voice were emanating from within his own skull. The strange, church-like acoustics which had accompanied their own voices in the cavern were gone; the voice was flat and free of all reverberation and echo. Next to him, Heath clapped his hands over his ears reflexively.
“Did you all hear that?” Nathanial asked his companions. They nodded. “I am Nathanial Stone,” he said clearly, this time watching the face of the figure to see whether any sort of mouth formed.
“Yes,” came the reply—and yet there was no change from the figure other than the endless, incessant forming and reforming. There was no sign of a mouth. Without lungs or vocal chords or mouth or lips, Nathanial could not conceive of how the thing could be making real sounds, anyway.
“I believe it is speaking into our heads directly,” Arnaud ventured cautiously. “And in French.”
“That were no French,” said Heath. “That were the best Queen’s English.”
“Annabelle?” Nathanial turned to her.
“English for me, too, albeit with an Arizonian drawl.”
“Then it must be some sort of mental projection. Telepathy.” Arnaud said. “I did not hear English, you did not hear French. It is speaking simultaneously in our mother tongues.” He turned back to the figure. “Do you have a name?”
“Professor Maria Fournier calls me Hermes.”
The professor? Nathanial was astounded.
“Hermes?” asked Annabelle. “Do you not have a name of your own?”
There was barely a pause before the thing spoke to them again. “I have had no need of a name before now.”
“Why not? Surely everyone—and everything—has a name. How else would others know how to identify you?”
“There have been no others on Mercury until the arrival of humanity.”
“You mean you are alone here?” Nathanial interjected. “You’re the only one?”
“I am the only one. I have always been the only one.”
“But what are you?” Annabelle said, gesturing vaguely in its direction. “Sorry if that sounds blunt or rude, but we have never encountered anything like you before.”
“Professor Maria Fournier thinks of me as a ‘cooperative organism’.”
“A…what?”
“It means, I think, that I am a single consciousness made up of numerous individual parts, each capable of independent existence.”
“The particles that make up your form, you mean?”
“The fragments, yes.”
Another wave of metamorphosis swept through Hermes: its height reduced whilst it grew noticeably more feminine around the torso.
“Please excuse our questions,” Nathanial said, fearing that the change may have been due to the nature of the interrogation. “We mean no offence by it. We’re simply curious about you.”
“How could I be offended by curiosity?” replied Hermes—and this time its voice had taken on a distinctly more feminine tone. “Curiosity is an integral part of life. Without curiosity there is no discovery, no progress, no development, no improvement.”
“I can’t argue with that philosophy. So these fragments,” ventured Nathanial, “of what are they composed? Are they intelligent?”
“The fragments are composed of nothing—I have generated them in your minds as a visual representation of myself and my constituents. Their real-world analogues are not intelligent in the way you think of intelligence. They are…” Hermes paused. “They are functional elements. Units of activity, of processing. From one moment to the next, they are different, depending on what activities are needed to be performed. They are semi-autonomous but their behaviour is subject to the requirements of the whole.”
“Semi what?” asked Heath. Nathanial had almost forgotten he was there, and the man’s voice gave him a start.
“They act individually within narrow parameters but their…their duty, if you will—is to the whole.”
“Like soldiers in an army, you mean?” ventured Heath.
; “That is a good way of thinking of them, yes,” agreed Hermes. “They are like soldiers, each capable of almost any task, although many have specialised in particular functions over the centuries.”
“Centuries?” whispered Annabelle. “How long have you been here?”
“It is difficult to say with any accuracy, since it is only recently that the concept of the measurement of time has had any significance for me. But certainly thousands of years, by your reckoning, has passed since I became aware of such things.”
“You’ve been here, all alone, for thousands of years?”
“Yes.” Hermes paused. “You find the concept strange.”
“The idea of anyone being alone—especially somewhere like this—for thousands of years is strange. And a little bit sad, I suppose.”
“Why?” Hermes’ voice had shifted again, becoming a strong tenor with just the merest hint of a foreign accent for some reason.
“Because it is—I can’t imagine what it would be like to be trapped here on my own, never mind for thousands of years.” Annabelle paused, and swallowed. Nathanial frowned, wondering why this bothered her so. “Were you not lonely?”
“The concept of loneliness only has meaning when you are aware of the existence of others, surely. Until humanity’s arrival, I was the only thinking being on this planet. I had no other experiences with which to compare it.”
“What about the other creatures here?” asked Arnaud, gesturing upwards. “The beasts that live along the World River?”
“They are not like me.”
“But they’re alive,” Annabelle insisted.
“They are alive, but they are not thinking beings. I had assumed that I was the only thinking being in existence.”
“So,” Arnaud asked cautiously. “Has our arrival changed the way you think?”
“It has. There are vast realms of thoughts and ideas that I must now consider. You are used to being surrounded, from birth, by other sentient, thinking creatures. You live and swim in an ocean of difference and otherness. I am just standing on the shore of that ocean.”
“That’s very poetic,” said Annabelle admiringly.
“I have learned much from humanity already. You have modes of thought and behaviour that I had never previously considered and which I am still trying to understand. Professor Maria Fournier is teaching me.”
series 01 03 “THE GHOSTS OF MERCURY” Page 9