by John Rankine
Small goedesic domes, which had once housed the technicians and the monitoring gear, had been stripped out and now served as houses. It was Koenig’s nightmare of what could happen to Moonbase Alpha, given a catastrophe.
Having a stable climate, life was clearly lived mainly outside the houses. Gutted consoles were set up as tables. Seats had been roughly fashioned from lengths of duralumin tubing and strips of metal cloth. A woman came up close to stare at her and she saw that the barbaric, ornamental pectoral she was wearing had once been a printed circuit.
Hadin halted the column with a curt gesture. Lowry who had been walking like a zombie was brought savagely to a stop. Directly ahead, the forest clearing ended in a bulkhead which had been kept open for a run of ten metres and reminded Helena of a wayside shrine. Polished slabs lay at the foot and on them were pieces of intricate machinery, whose purpose was no longer known. But each item gleamed and shone. Somebody spent much care to keep them clean and furbished.
There was no doubt that the place had a devotional purpose. Taking pride of place on a central slab was an open book and above it, set in the bulkhead was the picture of a man’s face like an ikon. Between the book and the face there was a cavity, a man sized niche that could have held an idol. It was closed by a transparent lid.
It was enough to be going on with. Hadin seemed to rule by gestures. He signalled again. Hands closed on her arms and she was pulled without ceremony to an empty hut. Lowry and the female mute were thrust through the hatch after her. Two guards, swinging clubs took up station at the open door.
Back at the Eagle, Alan Carter was making progress. Squatting on his heels, he had convinced the midget that for the time at least he had nothing to fear and the big stranger was on his side of the fence.
It was a one sided conversation, but Carter persevered. He said slowly, ‘You were here when . . . the others . . . came?’
The mute looked from Carter to Morrow and back again, clenching and unclenching his hands. Then he nodded twice for good measure.
Morrow said, ‘Where did they go? Which way? There?’ He pointed to the corridor that Koenig had taken.
The mute shook his head and pointed to the wall. It looked like nonsense, but Carter straightened up and walked over to the blank bulkhead. He said, ‘He’s not kidding, Paul! There’s something here and it could be a door.’ The mute followed him still pointing and nodding like a clockwork doll.
More sophisticated than Lowry, Paul Morrow searched around for an opening mechanism and found a kick stud under the rubble. The door slid open. Morrow pointed into the corridor, ‘This way?’
There was another succession of rapid nods.
‘You will show us?’
This was not so popular. Eyes widened with panic and there was a whimper of pure terror.
Morrow said gently, ‘You must help us . . . please . . . you will come to no harm. We will protect you.’
The mute looked from one to the other. In his bitter, hunted life, there were no sureties. But something about the two Alphans, not least their obvious compassion, seemed to tip the scale. His nod was minimal. He reckoned he was being a fool to himself. But they were in business. He even led the way through the door.
Coming up for a second time, Koenig found himself in a better situation. Softer fabric at his back told him that he was no longer staked out on his slab. He was in some kind of rest room with a sophisticated decor showing no sign of disrepair.
The most spectacular element in it was seated on a boudoir chair not three metres from his head watching him with large kohl rimmed eyes. Female, elegant, of a flawless, ageless beauty, she wore a shimmering hip-length tabard and broad electrum bangles on her slim wrists.
He was, however, a man with a grouch and his long stare was more challenging than appreciative. Under it, she shifted about, becoming a little uneasy. Koenig said, ‘Why did you attack us? We came to help.’
Her voice was clear and bell like, ‘Please understand, you were strangers. We found you on our ship. We had to know if your intentions were hostile or not.’
Jacking himself on one elbow, Koenig went on with the hard questions, ‘Then why the hell didn’t somebody ask?’
‘We have probed your mind and the mind of your friend Professor Bergman. We know now that your intentions were good.’
Spoken in that direct, unaffected voice and backed by her serious, candid eyes, it had to be true, but Koenig was still staring hard trying to make sure of her sincerity.
‘Who are you?’
‘Our people are called Darians.’ She pointed to a long mural set in the bulkhead and he saw a great panorama of people thronging the streets of a splendid city. She went on, ‘That was our world . . . Daria. I am Kara, Director of Reconstruction on this ship.’
Koenig swung his feet off the couch and stood up. His head was clear, but he felt drained of energy. He took a walk over to the picture and then came back to face her. ‘Have you found the rest of my people?’
‘Your friend Bergman is resting. For the others, there is some doubt. We are not sure where they are. Do not be anxious. We will find them, but it will take time. You must understand Commander Koenig, apart from this small sector the rest of our ship is still a wilderness.’
She stood up to face him and the movement shook out a pollen cloud of sandalwood. He had to fight a rearguard against conviction. If beauty was truth as the man said, she had to be on the level.
‘We picked up your signal.’
‘That signal was automatically triggered when certain nuclear reactors on our ship went into a runaway explosion. It has been transmitting ever since.’
That figured. Alpha’s own Moon was the victim of a rogue nuclear event. Even the best technology had its failures.
‘Ever since when for instance?’
‘Since the disaster occurred, a long time, Commander. Nine hundred years. We cannot cut it off.’
It was said in the same simple direct way and he had to believe it, but his mind grappled with the time scale. Daria had been a wandering hulk for almost a thousand years. On Earth that period had seen a fantastic surge of human development. At the beginning William of Normandy was striking across the narrow seas on his English adventure. Man’s maximum speed across the face of his planet was the speed of a galloping horse. At the end, there was Confederated Europe and geothermal power and speed was whatever anybody liked to make it.
His own people had gone from a late Iron Age culture to the technocratic civilisation that had built Moonbase Alpha. And Daria had gone on ploughing her lonely furrow in the interstellar outback.
Whether Kara could follow his train of thought or not, she could read his bewilderment and deftly changed the subject, ‘Only this part of the ship, which housed the high command, was fully shielded. Out of a complement of fifty thousand Darians only fourteen of us survived intact.’
‘Fourteen. From so many!’
‘Not all died at once, of course. Thousands survived the initial explosions, but they were all sick and doomed, irradiated . . .’
Her voice trailed off. What beauty alone had not been able to do, compassion completed. Koenig, was a convinced man. Shocked and sympathetic, he said, ‘And we came to offer help. What can we do against suffering on that scale?’
Kara had recovered her composure and was giving him a look which was difficult to define. She said slowly, ‘It is true we are way beyond the cry for help which caused you to come here . . . but there is a way in which your presence is vital to our survival.’
A faint alarm bell sounded in the depths of Koenig’s head, but he was still thinking about Daria’s epic passage. He said, ‘Anything we can do, we shall do, of course.’
Once committed to the venture, the small mutant seemed to have accepted whatever fate lay ahead. At a quick jog trot, he led Carter and Morrow through a maze of interconnecting passageways into the bowels of the ship.
When he finally stopped at a door which was hanging askew from one broken hinge
, Carter drew a sleeve across his sweating forehead. It had been getting steadily warmer and was now a good seventy Celsius.
Morrow said, ‘Here?’
The nods were rapid and the little man was looking frightened again. But he went on through the hatch and they followed him out onto an inspection gantry clewed to the wall of the vast garden area where Hadin’s people had their home.
Writhing foliage crawled in all directions. Overgrown by creeper, small geodesic domes could be made out dotting the floor. Overhead, some of the immense roof structure with its yellow glaring ports could be seen through the tangle of vegetation. The mute was like a small animal scenting danger. Face raised, he was sniffing the foetid air, body taut as a spring.
He pointed down and Carter found a circular trap with a companion leading to ground level. Once they were down among the foliage, it was anybody’s guess where the track lay; but their guide was off again, picking a way through the undergrowth without hesitation. They must have gone half a kilometre before he stopped, shivering with fear.
Carter and Morrow drew their lasers. Morrow bent down and asked in a whisper, ‘What is it?’ He pointed. Clearly, they were getting close to the action. Ten paces farther on they could hear faintly what he had already heard. There was movement and voices.
The mute was in a pitiable state of fear. As they went forward, he drew back ready to break and run. Morrow mimed that he would be safe and was to come with them, but he shook his head, backing off into the bush. Then suddenly, he turned on his heel and vanished.
Morrow was half-tempted to follow, but Carter was anxious to get on. ‘Leave him, Paul. He did all we asked. He got us here. Let’s see what it’s all about.’
Moving cautiously, they went for the voices. Fifty metres farther on, they were at the edge of the clearing and some ceremony was afoot centred on what could only be an altar and a shrine.
It was as savage a scene as any enacted in a jungle clearing, in spite of some of the technical junk that was in use. Primitives were busy with a tribal ritual.
There was a semicircle of men and women round the temple area. Attended by guards, Helena Russell, Bill Lowry and a small female pigmy were being escorted out of their prison cell. At the edge of the circle, the leading hand who was organising the ceremony stopped short and pointed to the mute. She was seized. The circle opened and she was thrust inside.
She stood where she was put, too petrified by fear to move. But there was no sign of pity or compassion on any face, male or female, in the assembly. There was a waiting silence, a greediness for some kind of sacrifice to come. A very old man, hardly able to walk, dressed in a bizarre, shroud like garment of metal cloth with printed circuits and strings of transistors hanging around him like amulets, came slowly from a geodesic dome and approached the intent circle.
It opened to let him pass. Hands stretched out in front of him, he tottered slowly towards the small, naked figure. As his lingers touched her head, her mouth opened in a soundless scream. The gnarled hands of the oldster moved over her hairless crown and to her shoulders. The crowd waited, breathless, expectant, knowing the outcome, but wanting the sanctity of an official pronouncement from their shaman. It came in a hoarse shout from a mouth of broken teeth. ‘Mute!’
It was a signal for audience participation. Taken up from every side in a fierce chant, the roar of ‘Mute! Mute!’ rang round the clearing.
Noise broke the spell of terror holding the victim to the spot. She darted for the ring of watchers with a vain hope of getting out. But two guards were in with a rush and seized her by her arms. At a run, they dragged her to the shrine. A third had swung open the transparent door of the cavity in the wall and she was thrown forward and in. When the hatch was closed, she could be seen clawing insanely at the smooth glass.
The operator was making ritual signs of profound respect to a boxlike control console. Everything must be done with correct procedure. When he finally pressed a red button and stood clear, the crowd roared again ‘Mute! Mute!’
Intense light glowed in the capsule. For a beat the scrabbling intensified. Then the frantic body was still and seemed to be shrinking. With the crowd’s shout going on like a rhythmic countdown, it thinned and etiolated to a wisp of glowing gas and then it was gone.
Excluded from the circle, Bill Lowry and Helena Russell had no clear idea of what was going on.
Lowry said, ‘What are they doing in there?’
‘I don’t know. I wish we could see.’
There was a hush and a small surge in the crowd that gave her a clear view to the dying glow in the capsule. The mute had gone and no crystal ball was needed to tell where.
Before she could react to the full horror of it, the crowd was looking at Hadin for the next move. Hadin lifted his club. It was Lowry.
Dragged into the ring, Lowry put up a fight, but there was no ghost of a chance. Held rigid, he was presented to the oldster. The crooked fingers touched his hair, then his face. Lowry’s tunic, already torn was ripped off and the exploring hands checked the torso, then the arms. At the left hand he suddenly stopped with a cackle of triumph and one of his helpers held the arm out for all to see.
Relic of an accident with loading gear, Lowry had lost the first joint of the index finger on his left hand. The old man’s shout rang out, ‘Mute!’
The crowd rocked and chanted, ‘Mute! Mute! Mute!’
Real fear had gotten through to Lowry. He knew he was in a terminal situation. His shouts turned to a scream of despair as he was dragged kicking and struggling to the cavity and manhandled inside.
Carter and Morrow had worked closer. Now they could see clearly what was going on. The operator shoved down the stud and Lowry’s struggles were over.
Laser in hand, Carter was on his way when Paul Morrow pulled him back.
‘But Lowry. Look what they’ve done to Bill Lowry!’
‘Hold it. We can’t help him now. Helena’s right in the middle of those bastards. What chance would she have if we start shooting now? We can’t get to them all before somebody gets to her.’
Angrily, Alan Carter said, ‘We can’t just do nothing!’
‘Wait!’
The glow died. Lowry was gone. Alan Carter checked his laser. Before the charges ran out, there would be many to accompany him on his journey. Grim faced, he watched the crowd settle for another round of ritual.
Helena Russell shrugged off the hands that were aiming to force her into the circle. She was afraid, deeply and utterly afraid, but she was not going to be dragged screaming and shouting to the edge of the grave. Head tall, her face composed, she forced herself to walk, unhelped, into the centre of the circle.
She remembered Everyman’s journey. At the last, he had come to accept the thesis that this was the one thing that had to be done alone. The unique bundle of experience and personality that had made her look out on the world from one pair of eyes was due to close its ledger. Even if John Koenig had been here, they would have had to cross the last barrier one at a time. It was harsh, but it was true and in the context of the immense universe, it was unimportant. For her, their long seeking for a homecoming was at an end. She hoped he was safe and that he would go on. But she had to close her mind to that. Otherwise she would not be able to stay calm.
The grotesque hands were stroking her hair. They ran hungrily over her face. Other hands were roughly stripping off her tunic, belt, slacks. Then her thick soled boots. The oldster’s hands went on with their remorseless check.
In spite of the warmth in the air and her iron will not to show the fear that was driving her almost insane, she was shivering with involuntary muscular tremors that were outside any hope of control.
The old man was standing in front of her, staring fixedly into her eyes, showing his vile teeth. Medical training died hard and one part of her mind judged that good medicare would have them tidied up for the sake of his digestive tract.
The mouth opened wider and her brain gagged. For a split second she thou
ght she would fall and then she recognised he was calling a different tune.
The word he had yelled with a gust of bad breath was, ‘Clear!’ and the crowd had taken it up. To give them their due, they seemed pleased about it. Maybe the savage destruction of mutants had been forced on them by a will to survive.
The shout went round the circle again, ‘Clear! Clear!’
The old man had a new piece of ceremony to initiate. When there was silence, he called out, ‘Prepare to summon the spirits.’
A woman had pushed out of the crowd holding a metal cloth tabard and a plaited belt. She knelt down respectfully and offered them on extended arms.
Suddenly conscious that she was the only complete nude on the set, Helena slipped on the tabard and fastened the belt. Another woman came forward and took her by the hand. This time she was being led rather than driven, but the destination was the same. She was taken back to the geodesic hut, that had served as a prison.
Out of the bush, Carter said, ‘So far so good, but I still don’t like it. We have to get her out of there. What does the old bastard mean about the spirits?’
‘I’d say she passes the local test, but the spirits have to be consulted. How long do spirits take? We’ll work round there and see how close we can get.’
Koenig found he was unable to make up his mind. Whether it was the lingering after effect of the session under the Darian probe, or simply that the data coming into his mind was so finely balanced that decision was, anyway, difficult, he could not say. One thing was for sure, it was making him irritable and Kara’s eloquent eyes did nothing to help.
When talking to her, he felt he had to believe her. But evidence from the semi-derelict hulk of the vast spacer did not entirely gell. In nine hundred years, a small crew with a power source and a lot of sophisticated equipment still functioning ought to have done some sorting out.
Then there was Helena and the rest of the landing party. In spite of Kara’s disclaimer, he had a hunch that, on this one, she was being evasive. But it was gut judgement. Everything she said and the way she said it marked her out as Truth’s own sister.