Red Claw

by Philip Palmer

  “And so this is why?” Mary said, in jagged tones, to Professor Carl Saunders.

  Saunders was very aware that Mary had a plasma pistol strapped to her waist.

  “This is why,” continued Mary, “why William died? And why so many thousands of my colleagues died? Because of you? Because you tried to assassinate the Cheo?”

  “Yes,” said Saunders. “And I’m —”

  She waved him silent with an imperious gesture.

  And then she smiled.

  A rare, exhilarating, crazy smile.

  “Well, I’d say,” said Mary Beebe, and her eyes were moist, “and I’m sure William would agree with me, that certainly is a cause worth dying for.”

  Hugo was cooking sausages over an open fire made out of laser-beam-severed Aldiss tree. The others were gathered round, sitting on the ground or on camp chairs. Sorcha sat nearby, cross-legged, silent, tethered with unbreakable wire, at what was considered to be a safe distance away from Saunders.

  “This is nice,” said Saunders.

  The jungle was loud. The crackling of sausages merged with the sounds of insects and birds and monsters howling and screeching and cawing.

  “Lull before the storm,” said Hugo. He seemed calm, adept in his sausage cooking, attentive to the mood of all around him.

  “It’s going to be grim,” Saunders admitted.

  “Too fucking right,” said Clementine.

  “I feel —” Saunders broke off. He had a vision of bloodied bodies and corpses, and his guilt was starting to drown him. “I’m tormented,” he said eventually, “by the knowledge that —”

  “Have I ever told you,” said Hugo, interrupting with panache, seemingly oblivious to Saunders’s yearning to expiate himself, “about my first tour on a xenoexpedition?”

  Saunders blinked. He had lost his train of remorse. All eyes were on Hugo, waiting for him to tell his story.

  Hugo took his sweet time. He started serving up the food. Tonii got up and helped him. Clementine was able to use the exoskeleton of her body armour to move her arms and legs, but it made it hard for her to drink wine elegantly. However, she persevered. She drained her glass and smacked her lips.

  “Nice wine,” conceded David Go.

  “Thank you, David,” said Hugo, who had synthesised it himself.

  And still they all waited for Hugo to tell his tale. It suddenly dawned on Saunders: this tubby little man had the whole group in the palm of his hand; he had them captivated.

  They began to eat. There were no vegetables, just plant extract tablets, but the sausages were freshly thawed and delicious. Saunders sipped, and ate, and waited.

  And finally Hugo began: “I cried, for six months afterwards,” he said, still referring to his first xenoexpedition. And he let the pause linger for a while.

  And then he continued: “After, that is, you know, the genocide.”

  They all nodded, sharing his pain. It was a moment of group catharsis.

  “Which planet?” asked Saunders.

  “Delphi.”

  “Swamp planet,” Saunders recalled, and Hugo nodded. “The green warthogs,” added Saunders. “Biggus verdus.”

  “I apologise for that. I had some very jejune colleagues,” said Hugo.

  “Slimesnakes,” Saunders continued. “Amphibious birds that could spend half the year in the ocean, half the year in flight.”

  “Persephone aves,” Hugo recalled.

  “A beautiful planet?”

  “Not especially. An unvarying habitat. Swamp and mud and muddy swampy ocean. Even the air was rich in colloid, it was like oxygenated mud. My body armour turned brown. But even so, I had a month of tears after I destroyed it all.”

  “Same here,” admitted Saunders. “I’ve done it six times now. I had no choice. I was a fugitive. Science is my only skill. Each time it gets worse.”

  “I weep every time, too,” admitted Mary.

  “Such wonderful worlds. Ugly creatures. Beautiful creatures. Gentle creatures. Savage creatures. Vile biospheres. Visions of paradise. But all different.”

  “Unique.”

  “Special.”

  “We destroy them all.”

  “And why?”

  “We need the planets,” said Sorcha stubbornly, from her position of tethered isolation.

  “Don’t you ever fucking listen to a word I say?” Saunders snapped at her.

  “I listen, I usually don’t agree.”

  “There should be a God,” said David Go firmly. “For if there was, he would smite us down, as vile and evil murderous sinners.”

  “We are who we are,” protested Clementine.

  “Yes! We’re animals,” pointed out Sorcha. “We do what all animals do. We promote our own survival.”

  “Animals don’t kill for pleasure,” retorted Mia.

  All the Scientists snorted at her naivety.

  “Animals don’t lay waste to other planets.”

  “They would if they could.”

  “Then we should be better. We should fulfil our destiny,” Mia protested.

  “We have no destiny,” said Sorcha. “Except survival.”

  “Anyway,” said Hugo. “Let’s agree this much: it’s a tragic waste to kill so much life. A deeply tragic waste,” he repeated, with calm insistence. “And stupid. And immoral. And wrong.” He stared at Sorcha fiercely, and finally she actually flinched.

  “But not this time,” Hugo added. “New Amazon must survive.”

  “Even if we could save the planet,” scoffed Clementine, “it won’t be for long. They’ll send another expedition, they’ll conquer us, they’ll terraform. What’s the fucking point?”

  “It’s the moral thing to do.”

  Sorcha and Clementine winced at his use of that word. But Tonii nodded; he agreed.

  There was a howl in the distance, of a Screech-Lizard. An eerie song, as two Godzillas mated. Smoke from the fire billowed out towards the canopy of trees beyond the oasis clearing, and Saunders could swear he saw arboreals on the lower levels of the Aldiss tree trunk peering down at them.

  “The real point,” said Saunders shrewdly, “is do we want Hooperman to win?”

  “Fuck no,” said Sorcha, suddenly changing her ground.

  “No fucking way,” said Clementine.

  “Cream that mf,” added Tonii.

  “So, do you have a plan?” asked Hugo.

  “Oh yes,” said Saunders, chewing slowly.

  They all looked at him. He’d been saving this moment up for some time, and it didn’t disappoint.

  Saunders milked the pause for as long as he dared. Then: “Yes,” he said, “I do know a way to defeat Hooperman.”

  “Explain,” said Hugo.

  And Saunders explained. And they listened.

  “That could work,” Hugo said.

  “It’s a suicide mission,” Saunders pointed out. “We’d need a volunteer.” He waited.

  “That’s not a problem,” said Sorcha, proudly. “I’m a Soldier. Tell me where I die, and there I will die.”

  “If we let you go, you’ll kill me,” Saunders pointed out.

  Sorcha grinned. “Hey, that’s a risk you have to take.”

  “It should be me,” Tonii argued.

  “No, me. I have less to lose,” said Clementine, “because I’m a cripple.” And a look of pain flashed over Hugo’s face.

  “No, it should be me,” said Hugo, calmly, and they all stared at him, amused and sceptical. And Hugo stared them down.

  “I’m willing to die,” he said. “And I’m expendable.”

  Saunders smiled, and then realised Hugo was serious.

  “I’m a zoologist, a taxonomist,” Hugo continued. “But so is Mary, so is Professor Saunders, my skills aren’t needed. But we desperately need all our Soldiers to defend us in the times ahead. And we need all our women, to create a new generation. So if you need a volunteer to die, then I volunteer. I have to, you see. Because it’s my job. My duty. My imperative.” Hugo blinked fiercel
y. “To protect my people.”

  Sorcha couldn’t sleep.

  All her life she had dreamed of a Glorious death. Her parents had died Gloriously, so had her brothers, and most of her friends from military academy had died Gloriously. She had never wanted anything more out of life than her own death.

  But at the moment when Hugo Baal volunteered to die, Sorcha had been overwhelmed with . . . relief. She’d glanced at Tonii and seen the same look in his eyes. She looked at Clementine, and saw it there too.

  Hugo was right, he was expendable. And furthermore, he embraced his death. Sorcha could smell his raw courage, and was in awe of it.

  Because Sorcha herself had lost her faith, her creed, her will to die.

  Everything she had believed in now felt worthless. When Saunders had cut her bonds, she’d had a chance to break his scrawny neck and beat him to a pulp; but she couldn’t do it. He had kissed her on the temple, and she’d allowed it.

  Her killing rage had vanished. Her loyalty to the Cheo now seemed futile. She remembered the wind on her hair, the touch of Saunders’ skin on hers, and she didn’t want to lose the chance of more moments like that. Traitor or not, she couldn’t bring herself to kill him. In fact, quite the opposite.

  And so, despite all her instincts, despite her own better judgement, she wanted to live — so very very much.

  Mary watched Mia as she slept.

  The two of them often shared a bed these days. They didn’t have sex, but Mia had said she needed the company, and the comfort of cuddling, at this time of stress and horror. And Mary didn’t have the heart to say no.

  And in truth, Mary didn’t mind having Mia in her bed. Anything to take the curse off her loneliness. She had no desire for Mia — no love — no fondness even. But it helped, a little bit, to have someone sleep beside her.

  Mary stroked the hair off Mia’s face, gently, so as not to wake her, and thought, as she always thought, about William.

  Hugo Baal was eleven years old when he had his first microscope, and from that moment on he was lost in the joys of the insect world. He lived on a terraformed planet called Shadalia with no wasps or bees or scorpions, but a wealth of beetles, ants, millipedes and, most of all, butterflies. Hugo built his own wind chamber with magnifying-glass walls so he could watch the butterflies in flight, magnified to the size of birds.

  Hugo’s father was a bureaucrat, and they rarely spoke. Hugo’s mother divorced her husband and her son when Hugo was five years old, and he never saw her after that. Occasionally she appeared on television, in her capacity as an Ethics professor, lecturing on family life, but Hugo never watched.

  Hugo didn’t have many friends until he was in his twenties, and even then they were all fellow Scientists, who were also emotionally withdrawn, many of them orphans. He had never married. He had never, in fact, been in love.

  But in a century and a half of life, he had never been lonely, never sad, never dejected, never rejected. Because he had his thoughts, and his ideas, and his insects, and that was all he needed.

  Until now. For now, he had a family . . .

  Saunders was remembering Hooperman’s first day as a graduate student. A tall, gangling, awkward wild-haired eighteen-year-old with bad skin and blazing energy. Hooperman had been late and had run up the stairs to the lab, and arrived dripping with sweat, and breathless, and the minute he walked through the door he started talking and he didn’t stop for ten minutes. Saunders had been awed by his bravura and charisma, and by his absence of social skills.

  Hooperman had been so annoying back then. And arrogant. And rude. He didn’t care about anyone, or anything, except himself and the thought that happened to be in his head. They had all disliked him intensely. And no matter how many hints they dropped, Hooperman was there at every party, always in the pub, always button-holing Saunders for advice, in his tedious awful way.

  But Hooperman was also, it had to be admitted, the finest and most brilliant student Saunders had ever taught.

  And once, a very long time ago, they had been friends.

  Hooperman, or rather, what remained of Hooperman, was remembering the hummingbird.

  The hummingbird was where it all went wrong. That was the real cause of the legendary feud that had sprung up between the two men. It wasn’t the bitter quarrels they had during the Amazon Expedition, or the endless low-level bickering, or the sniping over food rations, or Saunders’s constantly condescending tone. No, it was all because of a tiny creature like a will o’ the wisp that haunted the shadows of the dense rainforest. For hundreds of years this creature had eluded all the naturalists who had sought in vain for new species.

  And Hooperman was the first to see it.

  But to his astonishment, Saunders had shamelessly and outrageously denied Hooperman’s claim; he said that he was the first to see the bird. It was so tiny it was almost invisible but Saunders — so he claimed — sensed it, and saw it, and captured it.

  This meant, of course, that he, Saunders, would go down in history, not Hooperman. Hooperman would become — well, a footnote.

  And Hooperman knew full well that the world would believe Saunders’s story, not his — because Hooperman was a nobody, and all the world loved and respected the great Professor Saunders. And he knew too that, because Saunders was faster to reach for his camera, the datestamp on his digital image of the bird would clinch and for ever prove his priority.

  And that, looking back on it, that was the moment when Hooperman’s love had turned to hate. For Saunders had lied! His mentor, his inspiration, his god, had lied to him. His insufferable vanity had made him lie.

  And Hooperman could never forgive him for it . . .

  That’s when the hate was born. And when the bomb blew up in his study and Hooperman was turned into human wreckage, that’s when the hate was stoked to a burning flame.

  Hooperman wondered sometimes if it was hate that had kept him “alive” when Juno and the QB were destroyed. What else could have allowed his consciousness to exist independently of his body? Sheer blind hate?

  It was a thought.

  And Hooperman was certainly aware that in his new state of being he had a limited range of emotions. Intellectual curiosity, that was undimmed in him. Rage, and hate, yes, they flowed freely. But love? Could he feel love? He barely knew what it was any more.

  Remorse and guilt, however, these were emotions he had felt, and was capable of feeling. These were the emotions that had impelled him to rescue those fools who’d buried themselves alive, and that poor Soldier who had been crippled.

  But, as it turned out, these were pale, feeble emotions compared to hate. For at the moment when Hooperman had confronted Saunders for the very last time, by the shores of that New Amazonian lake, hate had filled his being once again. And he had felt all-powerful! Remorse, guilt, shame — these weaker emotions all vanished.

  One emotion at a time, that was all he could manage most days.

  So when that bitch reached for her plasma pistol — well, what else was he going to do? She threatened him, he tasered her, and hate possessed him utterly.

  And now, that one emotion, hate, defined him. It made him what he was. It made him possible.

  And thus, tragically, but exhilaratingly, all the humans now had to die! To feed the Hooperman hate.

  Oh yes — “pride”. That emotion still came upon him sometimes.

  “Sorrow” . . . a delightful emotion. But no, sorrow, no, not any more. However —

  “Regret”!

  That was an emotion he could still feel, and now felt, as he primed the Satellite to commence its deadly terraforming process. A delicious, heart-gnawing, soul-searching regret, as he remembered the hummingbird.

  Ah — mused Hooperman, with infinite regret — ah, what beauty it had possessed, that glorious hovering bird!

  It was a bird designed to break your heart. Sweet, small, fast, mercury-silver in colour, with a haunting and barely audible song. It took them four hours to trap it. But, once inside a
cage, its essence was gone. It was mere flesh and blood; it was no longer the will o’ the wisp of the rainforest.

  Catching it killed something; arguing about what name to give the damned thing killed something else; bickering about who saw it first killed everything.

  If only, thought Hooperman, he had seen the bird and not said anything. Saunders would never have seen it, for it was as small as a flicker of light. And if Hooperman had kept quiet it might still, all these hundreds of years later, be undiscovered, unnamed.

  And free.

  “Will this work?” Hugo asked, anxiously.

  “I hope so,” said Saunders.

  Sorcha and Saunders and David Go had jerry-rigged an apparatus that employed all the body-armour jets of the seven survivors, attached to a hardplastic rig that could be a worn by a single astronaut.

  “All you need to reach the Satellite is escape velocity,” Saunders explained. “This will give it. The jets in one body armour aren’t powerful enough to get you here; but this should do it.”

  “It’s a high-gravity planet.”

  “Yes, but this will give you a hell of a lot of acceleration.”

  “How long will it stay intact?”

  Hugo looked anxious. Saunders shrugged.

  “No idea. Hopefully, long enough.”

  “How long?”

  “Twenty minutes?”

  “Not enough,” said Hugo, “to get me up and out of the atmosphere.”

  “He’s bloody right, of course!” said David Go, exasperated.

  “Maybe we —” said Sorcha, then ran out of road.

  “I have an idea,” Saunders announced.

  Stars.

  Planets.

  Moons.

  A flying creature, flying with the stars.

  A Two-Leg flying, on fire. Flames coming out of body armour. Flying, flying, falling, smashing, body breaking up.