Red Claw

by Philip Palmer

  And he wanted to build tree houses on the Ocean-Aldiss-Tree that would allow them to colonise the oceans in an organic, unplanned way. He proposed underground railways that connected city to city without disturbing the native habitat. And he anticipated that they would, in time, build art galleries, cinemas, theatres, museums, all contained in networks of vast biodomes. It would require some careful genetic tinkering — since their gene pool was so small — but with the help of incubators and gene-splicing Helms confidently anticipated that the small pool of forty or so settlers would grow over ten or eleven generations to become a fully fledged civilisation of 50,000–60,000. The perfect number, in his view, for a human society that could comfortably coexist with native fauna and flora.

  Sorcha stared at it all, with growing wonderment. Eventually —

  “I don’t get it,” she said bluntly.

  “What don’t you get?”

  “This. What you have in mind. Why so timid? We could fill this planet. Millions, in less than a century. And all this space you plan to waste — the jungle! We don’t need all this fucking jungle.”

  “The jungle is a vital part of the planetary ecology,” Helms said stiffly.

  “Ah fuck ecology,” said Sorcha, oblivious to the fact that, in xenobiological circles, that was fighting talk. “Look! Use your head here, Richard! We have the resources to terraform! Why aren’t you planning to terraform?”

  “Because,” said Helms gently, “it’s wrong.”

  Sorcha stared at him, utterly baffled by the word, and by the concept underlying it.

  “Huh?” she said, eventually.

  He continued to smile patiently at her, as if expecting her to get it.

  But she didn’t; and wouldn’t; and couldn’t.

  And, for the first time in his life, Helms was lost for words. He had no idea whatsoever what to say, and how to answer her. For how could he explain something that ought not to need explaining?

  Helms felt a dark depression coil around his heart.

  He had planned this all so carefully. The Depot — or Helms City as it was now called — was his masterpiece. He had designed it himself, he had chosen the colours for the walls and furniture and programmed the Fabricators himself. He had built tunnels under the City connecting it up with secure bunkers where they could withstand full-scale assault from space.

  He had built a music room, and an art room. He planned to have an Encyclopedia of Alien Life room, where it would be possible to see holograms of every single species of life-form in the entire known universe. Helms even planned to have himself elected President in due course.

  And there was so much to do, so much to achieve.

  But the one thing he wasn’t prepared to do was to destroy all the native life-forms on the planet, or to turn them into zoo specimens existing on sufferance on an Earthlike world.

  Because it was wrong; and because it was evil.

  How could Sorcha fail to understand that?

  Ben sat in the computer control room and checked the perimeter defences and the Depot’s arsenal. He was impressed; this place was a fortress.

  Ben exulted at the power they had. Plasma howitzers, fusion bombs, antimatter bombs — he almost yearned for the DRs to attack, so he could smash them, and kill them, and watch his own people die in a blaze of glory, and . . .

  But no. That wasn’t the way. What the hell was he thinking of?

  Ben firmly got a grip on himself, as the meds kicked in.

  “Solar for your thoughts,” said Hugo Baal.

  “Must you always speak in clichés?” said Ben, sneeringly.

  “Oh I think so!” said Hugo cheerfully, seemingly oblivious to the insult. “After all, a cliché is usually a cliché,” Hugo chuckled, “because it’s true!”

  Ben winced, and then he seethed and plotted how to kick this fucking imbecile’s fucking brains in.

  Deep below Helms City, in tunnels they had burrowed the previous day, the DRs waited.

  Dinner was a crazy celebration. Hugo was mildly drunk. Sorcha was flirtatious. Professor Helms was openly cheerful. Some of the Scientists started throwing rolls and making jokes in Latin, in time-honoured fashion. The Soldiers told tales of battles lost and won many years ago, and then Sergeant Anderson and Ashley got into a one-handed press-up competition. After forty minutes, the rest of the diners left, but the two men weren’t giving up.

  Jim Aura was there, with Sheena, each quietly detached, each surrounded by their own small world of thought and reflection. Sheena smiled gently at all the laughter she heard around her, and wondered if she was going to fall in love with this man.

  Jim wasn’t much of a catch, admittedly — he was dull, awkward, and ill at ease both in his own body and in the company of others. But he was, after the massacre, the only other Noir apart from herself in the entire world. And after all these years — after all the prejudice she’d encountered, the contempt directed at the Noirs and their fatalistic, moment-embracing way of being — Sheena wasn’t inclined to start straying from her own kind.

  Besides, he was sweet.

  The diners retired to the ballroom, where music played. They were joined there after a while by the sweaty and exhausted Ashley and Sergeant Anderson, each claiming victory. Crystal chandeliers lit with real flames cast long shadows and the floor was made of a complex coloured mosaic that, if viewed from a height, depicted the stars of the New Amazonian night reincarnated as mythological beings. Professor Helms shocked them all by leading Sorcha out on to the dance floor and dancing a slow salsamba with her, badly but boldly.

  Then the Professor left the floor and the music picked up its pace, and Ashley and Private Clementine McCoy danced Jig Jag, brilliantly and expertly. Then the Moody Schmaltz kicked in, and the dance floor slowly filled. Sorcha danced with Sergeant Anderson, who was still grim-faced and scowling as always, but who proved to be a remarkably graceful dancer. William and Mary Beebe joined them, sedately cruising across the dance floor. The music was soulful and Sorcha was enjoying it.

  “So? What’s the verdict on the Major? How many from one to ten on the Good Fuckometer?” Ben said to Professor Helms, as Sorcha danced with the Sergeant.

  “Don’t be so vulgar,” Helms told him, acidly.

  “Ah, she’ll conjugally engage with anyone, that wench,” Ben said casually, and Helms restrained an impulse to hit him.

  Instead, he looked again at Sorcha. She and Sergeant Anderson danced sinuously around each other; she wrapped her legs around his neck and arched down and vanished between his legs then leapt up and landed the other side of him, still dancing. Anderson was a vicious old bastard, but he exuded a dangerous sexuality, and the dance that he and Sorcha danced together was more intimate than many sexual acts.

  Helms shocked himself by encountering a hint of jealousy in his heart. He’d never been able to dance like that, despite lessons and several skill-implants. The two Soldiers looked good together. Their bodies achieved a unison of rhythm, a shared body language, that Helms found enchanting.

  Mia took Tonii by the hand.

  “I don’t dance,” he said, smiling.

  “You can’t?”

  “I can, but I choose not to.”

  “I bet you can’t. I bet you’re a lumbering ox.”

  “You’re using psychology on me, aren’t you?” Tonii smiled and he took Mia in his arms. He waltzed with her, in five/four time, with effortless grace. She allowed herself to be swept up by him. She knew that all eyes were on them, because of Tonii, because of his extraordinary beauty, and she relished being part of that beauty.

  But she could also tell, from the warmth of his unvarying smile, and his totally relaxed body language, that he felt no sexual desire for her, or indeed for anyone else in the room. Mia marvelled; this man, who was also a woman, was also an island.

  Sheena led Jim Aura out on to the floor, and the other dancers parted graciously as she blundered a path through them. She could hear the breaths of the people around her, she knew r
oughly how much space she had to dance in. Jim stood awkwardly, and waved his arms, but Sheena couldn’t see how crap he was. She held his shoulders with her hands. She swayed, and her tongue flicked her lips. Her body was beauty, its motion was beauty, and Jim’s heart soared with love and unconsummated desire.

  Sheena had a hunch, and brushed her hand over Jim’s crotch, and her hunch was confirmed. “Later,” she murmured, and Jim was thunderstruck. Later! Him! Sheena! He could scarcely believe his luck.

  Sheena entered into the music and became part of it, while Jim was lost in love and lust.

  And Helms watched them dancing, and grinned.

  Hugo joined him, and the two of them stood on the edge of the dance floor, watching the wild and sexy and utterly uninhibited dancing, and reminisced silently and jointly about all the dances they’d missed out on as teenagers.

  “You know we have a choice,” said Hugo.

  “In what sense?”

  “We don’t have to stay on this planet. We can convert the Satellite into a colony ship.”

  Helms nodded, annoyed at hearing this suggestion again, but hiding his feelings well. “Well, perhaps, if I may so prevaricate, one day,” he said. “In due course. Let’s make a home here first.”

  “Fair enough,” said Hugo cheerfully. “You know, I love this planet.” Hugo’s face twitched; he’d used the “l” word, almost without embarrassment.

  “I also love —” said Helms, and the floor erupted and the Doppelgangers attacked.

  There were six Humanoid DRs, a dozen DRscalpels, and a small Draven scout ship. The Draven flew up through the floor, colliding with and killing two of the dancers, while the Humanoids opened fire with their plasma guns.

  Helms was unarmed. So was Hugo. But Sorcha and Sergeant Anderson and the other Soldiers had their regulation plasma pistols strapped to their thighs. They swiftly drew and they opened fire.

  The DRs absorbed the energy beams and fired back, just an instant later than the human shooters. A haze of plasma energy ripped across the room and blasted through the bodies of the Scientists and Soldiers. Sergeant Anderson rolled, as two of his fellow Soldiers ignited beside him. Sorcha lunged for a pillar. The DRs didn’t even try to dodge, they just kept hosing fire at all in the room.

  A single plasma beam cut Sheena, Queen of the Noirs, in half. She lived for seconds. Jim leaned in close and heard her dying words: “Just, fucking, run,” she whispered to him, and then she was gone.

  It was an inferno, and a bloodbath. Thirty-five men and women were in the dance hall, and a dozen of them died in the first few minutes. Helms had thrown himself to the floor and watched with fear as the air turned red with blood. The mosaic of the floor was rent and splintered. The Draven lunged and crashed against walls, severed robot arms mingled with severed human limbs on the floor and tables, and the smell of spilt wine and beer merged with the smell of burning flesh and the rank odour of shit expelled from arses.

  “Where are the fucking sentries!” screamed Sergeant Anderson, emptying his plasma pistol on a DR’s head with barely any effect. A plasma cannon roared out of its left arm, and Anderson dived out of the way. Then he changed the setting on his gun and fired a hail of explosive bullets.

  Then Sorcha aimed her plasma pistol at the back wall and fired. Anderson joined her, firing in synchrony. A hole in the wall appeared. Sorcha glanced back — and saw a DR with its plasma gun aimed at her head. She stopped breathing.

  The DR stared into her eyes, as if weighing her soul, and didn’t fire.

  Sorcha turned and leaped through the hole in the wall, followed by Anderson. Helms saw his moment and got up from the floor, and followed them through the hole in the wall, together with Hugo, Ben, Mia, Tonii, Jim Aura, and a sprinkling of others.

  “Lock Down,” Helms told the security systems via his secure MI-radio channel, and toughmetal doors slammed into place behind them in the corridor. It would only detain the Doppelgangers for a few minutes, but that was all they’d need.

  Martha Le Clerk saw the hole in the wall and looked around for Hugo; and then she screamed as she was engulfed in pain and flame.

  Mary Beebe watched appalled, as she saw Martha burning alive, her head turning into skull then crumbling into ash.

  Then William grabbed Mary and yanked her away just as another plasma blast sheared past. A Soldier — Ashley — leapt forward and fired at a DR at point-blank range and the DR was smashed off its feet and bounced on the ground, and then Ashley was hit and Mary could see through his torso, and he was weeping as he died.

  “Run for it! The wall!” screamed William, and Mary turned and saw the hole, and prepared to run. And a moment later, a DR plasma beam cut William’s head from his shoulders.

  Mary watched his head bounce, his expression frozen in fear. She fancied she saw his eyes turn to her. Mary waited a heartbeat so she could join him in death. But the DR who’d killed him was ripped in half by an explosive bullet that had burrowed through its skin. Then an arm grabbed Mary and tugged her.

  “Run!” screamed Private Clementine McCoy, and Mary ran.

  The corridor was empty, and the way was barred by a metal door, but Clementine had memorised the Depot map and she knew a way round. She ran down a side corridor and dragged Mary with her through a ventilation shaft until they caught up with Helms and the others, and ran with them down the long corridors.

  Helms security-swiped each door swiftly as they ran, and then they were in the garage and Mary could see the DRs coming towards them, and she also saw Mike Green and Jennifer Munro running, running, almost at the door.

  The garage doors closed, locking them out. Heat buckled the metal but it did not melt. Mary heard the screams on the other side of the toughmetal door as Mike and Jennifer and the other survivors were killed.

  “Take three —” Helms instructed, and Mary lunged at him and caught him by the throat and tried to strangle him to death.

  “What the fuck!” Ben Kirkham pulled her off. Helms was on the ground, wheezing, with vivid weals on his throat.

  “Are you fucking mad?” screamed Sorcha.

  “He’s dead, dead,” said Mary. “It’s his fault! William is dead!”

  “How many of us are there?” Helms said, ignoring the pain, and Mary’s hysteria, and his own overwhelming guilt.

  “Fifteen,” Sorcha counted.

  “Let’s go. Take three vehicles,” Helms wheezed. “We need the supplies.”

  The toughmetal garage door was starting to melt.

  “Now!” screamed Sorcha, and they began to pile into the AmRovers. Mary was bundled into the lead AmRover. She felt it start up and roar into motion. The second AmRover followed. Then the garage door melted and the third AmRover was incinerated in a haze of plasma beams.

  Around them Helms City shook with the impact of plasma guns and flash grenades. Then came an eerie silence as the two surviving AmRovers barrelled away from the Depot.

  “Heliplane mode.” The AmRovers fired their jets and took off vertically. They roared into the sky.

  Plasma blasts fired from below heated the chassis of the AmRovers. In AmRover 3, Helms sat next to Sorcha and Hugo. Ben was piloting the other vehicle.

  “Into the jungle,” said Helms. “Get in as deep as we can. We —”

  “Hello, Carl,” said a voice in Helms’s head.

  Helms was ashen. “What?” he said out loud.

  “Professor?” said Hugo anxiously.

  “Is that you?” Helms subvocalised. His face was distorted with rage and fear.

  “Oh yes.”

  “Go to hell!” Helms screamed subvocally.

  “Who are talking to? What channel are you using?” Sorcha asked suspiciously. Helms raised a finger: bear with me.

  Sorcha shrugged. She piloted the AmRover away from the Depot. Missiles arced above her, narrowly missing their flying craft.

  “You’re a hard man to find, Carl,” said the voice in Helms’s head.

  “Are they following?” Helms said
to Sorcha, in his brusquest voice.

  “No.”

  Helms kept his features still, and subvocalised:”You bastard! How are you doing this?”

  “No matter. Here I am. I’ve been tracking you for two hundred years now. I almost caught up with you on Rebus. And on Asgard.”

  Helms burned with rage at the memories of the deaths on Rebus, and the carnage that ensued when the space torpedo hit Asgard. But he kept his face calm and his tone neutral: “I knew that was you, both times. Innocent people died, because of you.”

  “Well that’s too bad. You could have stopped it all, you know. Surrendered yourself. But you couldn’t bear to, could you? You prize your own skin over the lives of others.”

  “I have a right to run for my life.”

  “All those people died, because of you, Carl. All your friends and colleagues. Hundreds of them. Because of you.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Oh I am in hell. I’m crippled, you know. I had a body transplant and it failed. So my head is in a tank and I communicate with my computer via neuron discharges and movements of my eyelids. Can you imagine anything more tragic?”

  “It sounds laughable. Can you still weep? I hope so.”

  “You’re a bastard, Carl.”

  “And you’re a monster, Andrew.”

  “You made me so,” said Andrew Hooperman; and to his horror, Saunders knew it was true.

  Then Hooperman cut the link.

  Sorcha and Hugo were staring at Helms. “We need to get out of here,” he said stiffly.

  “We’re doing so,” Sorcha said curtly.

  They flew on.

  They flew below the canopy for forty minutes and landed in a jungle clearing.

  Sorcha sent out the coordinates on a permanent loop, in theoretically unbreakable Delta Code, in case any other Soldiers had escaped from the wreckage of Helms City.

  She blamed herself. Poor security. Complacency. Incompetence. All the deaths were her fault, and it was as if she had died herself.