The Man Who Talked to Suns

by Stephen Andrews

  The ambassador listened and protected herself too, in the way that she had learned. She filled her thoughts with cold, diabolical deeds; acts of betrayal, savagery and revenge that were the antithesis of love. She heard the rhythm begin to build and accelerate, the tones taking on an anthemic quality that moved from love to desire. As it did she closed her heart to all that was good and found a defence in the black deeds of humans. She hated this defence, knowing full well that each time she deployed it she lost part of her humanity. But she could not avoid it. She had no other way to protect herself from the Helvyani, and it had served her well. It had become a tool of her trade, a self-inflicted torture that gained her access to other forms of reward. One day she would leave this all behind and try to open her heart again. One day, but not today.

  As if to compliment the ambassador’s thinking, a dark ring appeared on the sphere; a matt black circle cut into the fiery gold. The darkness appeared to reflect her mood so fully, that it was the Ambassador’s turn to flinch inwardly. For a moment she wondered if the Helvyani could somehow read her innermost thoughts, and were readying themselves to cut down her defences and negotiate from a position of absolute strength. She pushed that thinking away. That could not be. The Helvyani would have used such ability long ago, long before they bargained away their neutrality here to the Tash-eh. Long before she resisted their seduction and trapped them in hers. Suns-shine-dark, she thought, what a game this is we play.

  The circle lifted away, drifting towards them, closing slowly and inexorably. It was half way between their craft and the globe, when in the Helvyani fashion, it broke into hundreds of pieces, shattering like glass hitting stone. But the pieces did not fly in random directions, they flowed into a new shape. The circle was becoming a line, each piece moving in space to join with another and stretch from the craft to the sphere. Eventually they formed a narrow path, and as the human pair watched, silver markings and engravings appeared on the obsidian surface; words of welcome in Helvyani and Tash-eh, and graphics that implied banter and flirting and the absolute ecstasy of a death desired.

  Annali moved as if to cross, and the ambassador stretched out an arm to stop her. “Not yet. We will be invited to move, and escorted across. Wait for a while.”

  Annali waited, anticipation irritating her with its emotional tug. She did not like these spontaneous stirrings and the danger they implied, so in her own way she shut them down. It was usually as easy for her as blinking, but the reflex did not entirely remove the feeling, she had to consciously suppress it. It was interesting to her that she was already negotiating with herself, on Helvyani terms. And as she controlled herself, something at the far end of the path moved. A hint of gold on gold caught Annali’s eye. Two objects had separated from the globe and now drifted towards them, following the line of the black path. As they moved closer Annali could see them; the were Helvyani.

  They drifted closer and Annali sensed the ambassador tense and then relax herself. She did not turn and look at Annali or offer last minute words of caution. It was now too late for anything that words could accomplish. The ambassador could only trust that the engineers and researchers and done their jobs well and that the training she had personally given Annali would enhance the very sophisticated package she had been given. Annali was conceived, born and raised to be here at this moment. She was new, but she was not a child. Her life was in her own hands.

  The Helvyani approached and settled in front of the waiting women. They were human in general aspect, but much larger — twice as tall as Annali, and much broader. Their shoulders and hips were of equal proportion implying a weightiness, and seen from the side they were thinner than a human would have expected. It was a mistake to see arms and legs and assume there was a human physiognomy under the armour. These were alien beings, one of the most enigmatic of the twelve sentient races, and rightly feared by all.

  But it was not the general shape and size of the Helvyani that impressed the most, it was their costume. The pair were both in full armour. Each suit was composed of thousands of finely crafted pieces that moved and flowed over each other as the Helvyani shifted. Every piece was gold coloured, and the movement mesmerised like flames. A small shift produced ripples as if the elements themselves were alive and consciously reorganised to meet the demands of the body beneath. Some pieces were large enough to be called plates while others were tiny, but regardless of size the parts cooperated to move with absolute precession and fluidity. People had speculated that perhaps once in Helvyani history this armour was functional as it would have been for humans; a protective layer to prevent blows penetrating in combat. That may have been true long ago, but today it served a far deadlier purpose. It was designed to seduce.

  Annali looked up into the nearest Helvyani face, or at least the armoured face it presented to her. It too was made of intricate pieces. Hooded golden eyes gazed down at her, behind a large curved beak shape. The head was crafted as exquisitely as the body and merged into it perfectly from a broad flowing neck. There was no mistaking the shape; it was a bird of prey. She wondered if the shape of the helmet had been chosen to awe and intimidate, and then caught herself. Of course it had. The Helvyani were attempting to play with her subconscious, to imply power and threat and beauty, and to do so using human references. There were no birds in the Helvyani ecosystem. It was a little obvious, and perhaps the first weakness she had seen; a clumsy attempt to influence her feelings.

  The ambassador quickly and carefully examined the Helvyani armour. She knew that the mass of pieces were individually and painstakingly arranged to broadcast the status of the wearer, at least to those who knew how to read it. The ambassador was impressed; her Helvyani counterpart stood before her with its senior assistant facing Annali. The Helvyani had dispensed with the usual pre-amble from lower ranking officials, preferring this direct approach. That was a great courtesy and also a great threat; it signalled their confidence. The ambassador bowed slightly and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Annali do the same. At this each Helvyani slowly knelt, swept an arm low and cupped a hand to form a step. The other arm was held in a half moon shaped cradle. The two beings mirrored each other and froze, statuesque and impressive. The invitation was clear — they would carry the ambassador and Annali to the meeting, as a human parent carries a child.

  Annali was considering the invitation when she saw the ambassador move. The senior woman stepped into the hand, turned around and sat gracefully in the arm of the Helvyani ambassador. She moved as if this had been rehearsed a hundred times, and could not be more natural. Annali followed suit, failing to match the ambassador’s grace but still finding herself sitting in the gallantly offered armoured cradle. She had expected to feel discomfort as her soft flesh pressed against the armour, but to her surprise it cosseted her and reacted to her shuffling. It was sensitive to pressure and responsive to her weight. It offered a sensation more like firm cushion that hard metal, and Annali realised, it was as warm as flesh. She wondered if it was armour at all, or in fact a living part of the Helvyani. Perhaps one day she would have the seniority and skill to ask.

  The two Helvyani rose slowly with care for their charges, then turned and stepped into the windswept gulf between the ship and the orb. The did not walk on the black path, rather they floated next to it, and Annali realised that it was not a path at all but an aid to their flight. She felt a wave of embarrassment at thinking this was designed for human feet. It was a naive assumption; exactly the kind she had been taught to avoid. Life it seemed was more challenging than her tutorials. Annali glanced down as they passed the threshold of the craft and felt her stomach go light and her legs tingle. She had never had a head for heights. It was an imperfection, a by-product of her accelerated growth that there was not time to unravel. Now she wished for a few more days in the vats to cure her of the nauseating feeling that she could not control. Both the vertigo and her inability to simply switch it off bothered Annali. She was very uncomfortable with losing control of herself.r />
  They were about half way across, and it was all that Annali could do to stop herself from cowering in the arms of her benefactor. She did not know what it was to seek protection in a parent’s comforting chest, but deep in her genes the urge unwound itself. She held herself steady, unwilling to show fear that could then be soothed and eventually built into rapture by her allies. She was strong and looked straight ahead at the orb which now had the aspect of a small planet. At the periphery of her vision the surrounding clouds gently glowed and bubbled, and below, below she did not think of. Annali focused her attention on what she wanted to see, pushing the limits of her vision without moving her eyes. She let her mind focus on the movement of the clouds to her side, a view that was as natural as standing on the ground and looking up. For a moment it was comforting and she felt herself regain control. That was until something like the vapour trail of a hot object moving through cold gas emerged in a curling lance of blood red vapour and arced towards her.

  The tentacle of cloud rushed at the Helvyani carrying Annali and hit it hard and fast. As it did the Helvyani armour rippled from the point of impact making a wave of oscillating parts that speed across its whole body. On the opposite side a cloud of dark debris erupted and spat itself into the wind. Annali was confused, she had no knowledge of this part of the Helvyani ceremony, but she prepared herself to be taken along with it. The serenity mantra was half complete when against all protocol she felt her guide patch blossom into reception and a wave of emotion hit her from the ambassador. The feelings were shrill and clear, and so was the message. This is an attack, it blared. We are under attack!

  Other lances of cloud were launching themselves as the Helvyani pair, and small objects had burst from the cumulus to speed at the orb. Annali calmed herself and raised her levels of perception. Everything was changing. Parts of the orb had turned from red-gold to amber hot and seemed to be boiling off in great spumes of gas and molten material. Something in her immediate vicinity shifted. She felt it as a movement of dimensions, a re-ordering of reality, and her senses fed her confusion in high definition. She was not sure what was real anymore. What her eyes thought they saw would not lodge in her mind. She breathed and yet had the feeling of moving in the void of space. Here and there were becoming one. The Helvyani was still a large solid presence in her universe, but little else seemed to have meaning. She had only once taken a ship and jumped from one solar system to another, but the feeling she had in those endless short moments was like the one she had now. She suddenly wondered if her Helvyani counterpart was attempting to move by jumping. Suns-shine-dark, could it do such a thing?

  A metallic smell with hints of tar and citrus fruits filled Annali’s nostrils. It was alien and unsettling; a combination that did not sit well with her aural experiences. Her mind could not categorise it. Around her the cloudscape had turned dark, or rather it was fading from existence. She felt nausea rise as reality spun around her in ripples of existence. Darkness was winning the battle for attention and she could feel her grip on the world beneath her fading. The Helvyani glowed gold and red and cast its radiance on nothing except herself. For a few moments there was nothing, and then a presence emerged. Suddenly there were more and Annali felt the Helvyani shift its body and its place in time and space. She had the distinct and powerful feeling that they were fleeing.

  They were speeding now, moving away from some terror that she could not see. She could only sense the feeling of flight. There were no points of reference, but escape oozed from the Helvyani. Its emotions fluttered between panic and seductive overtones, both urgent and compelling. Around them a crowd was gathering; it moved with them, seeming to keep pace exactly whatever manoeuvres the Helvyani tried. The presence of others crowded in, they filled the space and Annali felt the Helvyani shifting and squirming, its discomfort and fear a palpable thing now. Something insinuated a long sweeping arc. It came at them from what felt like light years away and found its mark, thumping into the Helvyani so hard that splinters of armour exploded from it, shards splashing Annali with unforgiving fragments. For the first time she realised she was at risk. She had believed that the Helvyani was the target; some enemy or predator finding its unlikely prey. Now she understood that by accident or design, she was also in peril.

  The Helvyani armour was reacting, shifting and changing to protect the wound it had received. What had once been an accommodating cushion under Annali’s body turned into a meshed clockwork of re-organising razor edged parts. She was cut and grazed more times than she could count, her nerves transmitting agonies of slicing and penetrating. She screamed and squirmed but the Helvyani held her close, unwilling or unable to release her. Around them the others closed in a claustrophobic mass. There was nowhere to go, no place to turn, no exit away from these attackers. They were prevented from moving further, and only one option presented itself.

  Cloudscape returned. Annali could see again, and as her eyes adjusted to the sights around, she immediately longed to return to sensory deprivation. Chaos and destruction greeted her. The great golden globe was charred and disintegrating, pieces flying and falling into the clouds around. Clouds which themselves were collapsing, torn and shredded by objects hitting them. There was no sign of the ambassador or the other Helvyani. The atmosphere was laced with arcing sinews of gas and half seen aggressors moving at incredible speed. Annali looked around, eyes wide with fear and pain. She had not been prepared for this. She was ready for a subtle battle of seductions with the Helvyani negotiators, but not combat. She had not even been told this was a possibility. How could her superiors have been so wrong and prepared her so badly?

  For a brief moment Annali thought her Helvyani protector had found a way to escape. Despite its wounds, wounds that now leaked liquid and minute metallic parts into an atmosphere already rich with detritus, it lifted itself energetically away from the disintegrating globe. It accelerated with such force that Annali was penetrated deeper by the shards of its armour that had become her bed of nails, and then the force subsided and it began to drop. It had lost its immunity to gravity and the climb turned quickly into decent. As it dropped it began to topple sideways, passing through a limb of gaseous material that Annali saw as a massive looping tail. Annali felt it wash over her and sting her flesh as she passed through it, adding to the unfamiliar agonies her body offered. She realised in deep horror that the gas did not emerge from the Helvyani, it connected with it. The ascent was not an escape, it was a death throe; the result of a weapon impacting and blasting the Helvyani upwards. She was now held by a corpse that was plummeting to the ground, nailed to it by its own armour.

  They fell earthwards, human flesh hooked to a dead hulk of cold hard matter. They were high and there was little to breathe now the Helvyani hex was broken. Annali was freezing and choking as she fell. A scream formed but it would not make sound. Instead her jaw stretched wide and she gagged and gulped, trying at once to emit noise and gasp in the thin molecules of air she desperately craved. Her lungs burned and tears streamed away from her face in tiny frozen droplets. The realisation that she was dying struck her. It was unlike any emotions she had ever felt. It was a horror of nothing, an understanding that there were no options left to her. She fell, dying from inside and out, and as she did, a thought filled her mind: whether born from the womb or the vats, death united every human. It was the one experience that people could not separate themselves from, and yet they all fought so hard to avoid. In death, all of her kind were united in the desperate desire to be experiencing something else.

  Chapter 20.

  Tannen felt the Helvyani hex break. It popped like a raw egg hitting concrete, and he knew that reality had found them again. He was cocooned in the medical couch, drifting in the comfort of its embrace, relieved of his duties and ordered to heal. Even so he instantly tapped into the ship’s systems. Outside existed again. They had slipped into a world of beautiful soaring landscape and layers of translucent cloud. It was a world with sentient life, and sentient death.
Destruction had visited the world. A giant black welt stained the sky and landscape below. Pieces of something once whole, drifted and span and split in ways that matter should not. He felt the ship’s crew recoil from what they saw through the ships senses, and yet it was a victory. Ansti, he thought. Ansti did this. He freed us from the Helvyani defence. Suns-shine-dark what has he become?

  Tannen’s wonder was interrupted by a more pressing presence. Ashur appeared and filled the space. He wanted to know if they had a pilot, and how quickly they could jump. This is enemy territory he reminded them. They did not have time to celebrate or gawp. A world would recover and mobilise against them very soon. They needed to move and move fast. Ashur sent out a stream of orders and Tannen sensed his compatriots complying. The crew was moving out of torpor and into action, but while the crew responded, the ship did not. Tannen felt it and heard it in the flashes from his fellows. The pilot’s couch was unoccupied, the vehicle absent, and they were just as stranded as they had ever been.

  Tannen could not act, he could only wonder. Had Ansti been lost somehow in the action that brought down the hex? Did he even care about the mission and the enslavement of those he once loved? Tannen felt very small as he pondered these things. He felt like a little piece of fleshy mass, just one amongst the trillions the universe harboured, and the sum of them all lost against the infinite scale of the void. Home felt far away and the enemy felt very close. If it weren't for Ashur’s unbending strength and will, they would never have started this mission, and, he doubted they would have got this far, but it seemed Ashur had created something he could not control, and Tannen wondered if their enemies had perhaps feared this more than they feared the potential power of his people.

  Chapter 21.