by Rob Rowntree
Pickering’s translator appeared in front of Alan and gestured with its hands. “Pickering, translate.” Alan demanded.
Relaying the Expediter’s words; “You and I discussed your proposal earlier. I allowed you your wish. To maintain compliance with our requirements I informed you that I would ensure you remained obedient. If you create trouble this will be your fate.”
The creature pointed at Kiki. The Expediter holding her exploded into action, flashing out a clawed hand straight into Kiki’s face and eye. She screamed, an animalistic sound of pure anguish, driven by pain. The creature drew its hand away and where once there’d been an eye only a bloody hole remained. The alien tossed Kiki’s eye away like a waste piece of paper.
Still screaming, Kiki shouted to Alan, “This is what will come, this and worse.”
Too stunned to answer, Alan looked away.
The creature holding Kiki’s leash gave her a cuff and picked her up. Alan saw her body relax, the fight finally leaving her. Poor Kiki, so misguided and yet she found strength even at the end to justify her philosophy.
Guards roused Alan and the others; they all marched over to the balcony’s parapet. Forced towards the edge, the wind bit into them, it blew its ammonia-stench into unwary mouths. Alan kept his mouth firmly closed.
Further along the parapet, the aliens offered Kiki’s limp body to the wind. It howled and screamed, whistled and shrilled. The pathetic wings constructed from her flesh rippled and flapped.
Alan watched, unable to take his eyes off her, waiting for the moment of release, not just of Kiki’s body into the raging air but also for Kiki herself - release from her torment.
It came suddenly, one moment there, the next... Gone. And in that fleeting moment Kiki had opened her good eye and stared deep into Alan’s soul. The imprint of that look would remain seared into Alan’s mind for a long, long time. Ironically, her philosophy rang true? Perhaps only nightmare awaited the deep space explorer after all.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Dust and Memories
Alan refused to acknowledge the others. The flatbed they rode in remained deathly quiet as each of them dealt with personal nightmares. Ahead lay the settlement and graves, and Maslov’s ship. And hope. But as each meter faded and they pulled nearer, Alan liked his plan less and less. Lacking any contingencies made him nervous.
Cresting a small rise the flatbed halted. Above flew the Unbound, quilting the sky with their bodies.
Alan turned his attention to the valley beyond and the stark settlement jutting from the side of a small track visible across the dusty terrain. As before, they’d come upon it while it had remained some distance away. Now sunlight came from a more elevated position, the defined shadows of the earlier sighting washed away by the sun’s glare. The town resembled a group of lonely boulders.
Woodland nudged Alan, “If we get airborne they will throw everything they can at us, including themselves. If we make it past them where do we go? Haqiqa is a drifting wreck.”
“Your best lifeboat is your ship. Recognise it?”
“Yeah, old manual. But if we manage to reach the ship there’s no guarantees we will get rescued—”
“I’m not handing out guarantees. There’s always something hiding in the woodpile. Trouble is, I’m nearly all out of options.”
“Can we really do it Alan?” Stowe looked worried, wrinkles lined her face.
“Look, you guys know it’s risky, but Maslov had the right idea, he just had nowhere to go. With the Peterson gone he sat there and ate his rations. The good news is that these old pods had disposable one-off booster assemblies, brute force packages. If it’s untouched and attached, there’s a chance. All we gotta do is get inside.”
To while away the time, Alan kept an eye out for the local flora and fauna. Several ground dwelling creatures played amongst domed mounds of soil. Alan wondered if they were groundhog equivalents, but as the flatbed drew closer he noticed an over abundance of legs. Like the earlier herd they’d seen from the shuttle, these creatures had a strip of armoured scales running along their backs.
The track switched back and forth, eventually bringing the flatbed out onto the valley floor and a very straight road. Flat, arid land on either side proved to be uninteresting. He could imagine Peterson’s stranded crew eking out a living, barely finding enough sustenance. In the rising heat, wind gusted across a vast plain where dust devils danced.
Tired to the point of exhaustion, Alan drifted into a restless sleep. Bedded down, he heard Pickering say, “Don’t fret Avram, we’ll make it.” Alan’s tired mind tried to show him who’d spoken; Jimmy appeared, ‘Don’t fret Alan, you’ll make it,’ and somewhere a voice said ‘Yes, I will’.
***
“Wake up Alan, something’s happening.”
Pickering’s words elongated, distorted by a fuzziness that enveloped Alan’s mind. Pain stabbed at his eyes, his lids quickly closing against an invading bright daylight. That light ignited a headache. With shaking limbs and sweat drenched clothes Alan struggled to sit up. Not now, he thought. Now is not a good time for withdrawal.
“Alan?” Stowe sounded concerned.
“It’ll pass.”
Woodland came over, “Oh shit, Alan.”
Alan fought a sudden nausea, “Be fine, just tough it out. It’s not like I’ve got a choice and anyhow,” his teeth chattered, “my meds are up there. Incentive right?” He saw doubt in their faces, “Seriously, I’ll deliver. What’s up?”
“We’ve arrived.”
Beyond the flatbed’s side Alan saw multiple rows of mounded earth dwindling into the distance. “Where is the town, the ship?”
Woodland pointed, “Around that bend disappearing beyond that small rise. This looks to be the remnant of an attempt at agriculture. You can see irrigation ditches, and over at the far end of this field you can just make out rusted pipe-work.
“Puzzling how the low rows of earth have remained intact for all this time? Surely erosion would have removed the traces. Looks almost new: dusty, dry, but new.”
“I guess we are going to get a chance to find out more,” Stowe nodded towards the dead field. “Here comes our translator.”
After a few moments conferring Pickering announced, “We walk from here. Apparently, they want us to witness the past. This is no place for humans.”
Woodland chuckled, “You can say that again. Let’s move.”
Alan steadied himself and rose gingerly to his knees.
“Here.” Woodland held out an arm. “Grab on and haul yourself up. We’ll take turns until you’re recovered.”
“Thanks.”
Alan managed to stand. The flatbed swayed, but he thankfully remained upright. Hell of a time for this. Just an hour or two, then it would fade. There’d be time, he told himself, considering the distance they had to cover. With luck.
Pickering kicked at a row of packed earth. It looked ploughed, albeit roughly. With Woodland’s help Alan drew alongside. The centre of the mounded row lay exposed. Running the length of the gap were tendrils of some strong, dried fibrous vegetation giving hints at how the rows maintained their structure for so long.
In places, petrified stumps of vegetation scarred the ground.
Pickering looked towards the bend in the road, “I guess we’d better start walking.”
“Okay,” Alan said.” But steady, yeah?”
“Sure. No sweat.”
Stowe said, “Why are they making us walk? They seemed eager to want to talk to the Free. Why delay it?”
“Beats me,” Woodland said. “But let’s do it as fast as we can; Alan’s a heavy bastard.”
An embarrassed Alan welcomed Woodland’s support. A few minutes further along, Pickering came over to lend a hand. This increased their pace and soon the corner loomed.
Alan’s senses gradually returned to normal, leaving him more able to deal with whatever lay ahead. Devastation surrounded them, Alan thought of the abuse they’d suffered; it forced him to con
cede a point – From here it looked like Kiki’s argument held merit. These aliens were a cruel and heartless bunch. He guessed it came down to the fact that aliens are just that, alien, and any situation regarding exchanges of information, mutual understanding and values were fraught with danger.
“What the—” Stowe stumbled to the ground as a shadow flashed by. Shading his eyes, Alan looked after the fleeing Unbound. Small, a youngster perhaps.
Higher, but below the massed Unbound following proceedings, flew several small dots. The receding alien flew to join them. “A gang of unruly teens?” Alan mused aloud.
“More like a training ground,” Pickering said with some surety. “See?” Pickering indicated several larger shapes flitting about the group. “I think we’d better move.”
Alan shrugged aside Woodland’s offer of help, “We need to be more mobile, present a more confused target. That way it’s possible some of us might get away unscathed. Get going, I’ll be fine.”
Without argument, Woodland set off at a jog, Alan fell in behind Stowe and Pickering. They ran Indian file, weaving in and out of the ploughed rows. Dust kicked from their feet.
Shadows fell across them, increasing in size and maintaining pace. Alan gauged the imminent contact by watching his own shadow and comparing it to the onrushing darkness to his left. “Down!” he yelled.
Those ahead of him dropped to the floor and the shadows fled, their owners grumbling at the sky.
Alan, alongside Pickering as they resumed their run said, “So, Conway’s treasure, what is it?”
“Wondered how long it would take you to get around to that.” Pickering looked amused.
“You find it funny?”
Pickering slowed, searched for breath. “Not really, just another irony. If the reports Conway received were accurate the Dark Ones’ gift might have helped us right about now.”
“How so?” Alan faltered, his headache nagged. A few deep breaths and he resumed his jog, always with an eye on the sky.
“That’s difficult. Conway received several blue-space messages regarding the find. Each message suggested the object remained an enigma.”
Pickering grabbed Alan’s arm and pulled him into the lee of a sorry looking bush. “Gotta breathe, Alan, can’t hold a board meeting on the hoof like I used to.”
The shapes still hovered overhead, apparently not too great a threat right now. Stowe had slowed, she joined them; Woodland left to find his own place to rest up ahead.
“Where was I?” Pickering asked. “Oh yes, Woodland and his boys didn’t hear squat about the reports until recently. A leaked memo, Kiki probably. The messages—”
They all looked up to see Woodland scurrying back, body in a stoop as he zig-zagged towards them. “Here they come,” he shouted.
As they dived to the floor Alan grabbed Pickering’s shirt and hauled him over. “Cut the evasiveness and tell me what the object is. Now.”
Pickering squirmed, then said, “It’s complicated. Conway has been looking for sentient civilisations for a long time. He came across a cartouche, Parvonis IV. The symbols referred to a myth, to a portal hidden on ‘the lip of Heaven’. When stories of the Peterson’s discovery began to circulate, well, Conway got excited.”
What? “Pickering, we haven’t got time for myths and riddles.”
“It’s no riddle. They found it. The portal.”
“To where, Pickering? Come on.”
“The where the sentient species went, Alan. Fermi’s answer!”
Time to leave. Alan stood: wrong move. He whirled in time to see two outstretched talons bearing down on his face. More Unbound attacked now, one for each of them. They looked young.
Angered, Alan waited. It came, closer, closer – Leaping sideways Alan pushed out his right hand, grasping the Unbound by its ankle. The impact yanked him from the ground, but his weight countered it and he landed back on terra firma with a thump. The small Unbound native, fell with him, landing hard against his midriff. It scratched and nipped, taking a bite of flesh from his shoulder.
Enraged, Alan stood, dragging the flapping thing with him. Suspended by Alan’s outstretched arm it reached back and around desperately trying to seek purchase. Alan used his free hand and grasped a neck, thin and hot, leathery, delicately thin.
“No, Alan.” Pickering raced towards him.
He felt its fast pulse, its rasping evil alien breath. With both hands he snapped the creature’s neck, almost breaking it in two. “That’s for Gibson.” Discarding the corpse, he ran towards the bend ahead.
Woodland, caught up, “What the frig was that?”
Stowe close by said, “Yes, I’d like to know that.”
“Revenge. A test.” Alan supposed. “Who knows?”
“A test? Hell man, we don’t want to antagonise them. Not yet.”
Alan glanced upward, “See, there’s no reaction. They look and act socially like a relatively advanced culture, but they lack bonding, possibly because the winged children are never allowed to bond with their parents. A whole section of society brought up on valour and flying expertise, on nobility and honour. That one died, we replace him. It’s nature’s way, especially here.”
“Bollocks. You are as bad as them,” Woodland said.
Alan grinned, “Okay, you got me. I just wanted to kill the little bastard. Maybe I am as bad as them, maybe we all are.”
They ran on. Alan, pleased that his instinctive retaliation had, at least for a time, halted the attacks. Perhaps this harassment represented part of the Unbound’s control mechanisms.
The track dog-legged through a cleft in the hillside, and dipped down towards the town proper.
Mounds of tumbled earth, some supported by prefabricated walls, stood in rows either side of several wide roads. No roofs remained and several mounds bore marks of looting or vandalism.
As they approached, Alan came across a larger structure beyond the streets. At maybe two blocks wide the structure, although collapsed, still had its small chimney.
The roads between buildings were spacious and flat. Alongside the buildings, dust had accumulated in drifts. The town’s eerie resonance was made none the less so by the ever-present dust devils that danced amongst the detritus of the Peterson’s crew –
Abandoned, rusted tins, possibly paint tins, hung along a wooden pole jutting from the side of a building. Myriad parts from plastic computer casings lay strewn around the base of one building.
Alan heard a squealing sound. “Shsss.”
It came from across the street, from around back of a single story structure. Cautiously rounding the building’s crumpled corner, Alan halted. The ground fell away revealing a lower level. Dust and soil filled most of the depression but Alan saw that it once had tiles. Several remained, cracked and dirty, supporting the nearside wall.
Sticking from a dune of windblown soil, the rusted front-pedalled wheel of a child’s tricycle turned intermittently in the stiff breeze. The noise grated against Alan’s unfurling calm.
Stowe exclaimed, “A kid’s bike? Not much of a life for any kids here.”
Turning away from the scene, Alan said, “We’re leaving. Let’s go find our ride.”
Chapter Twenty Nine
Graves and Stone
Moving quickly, Alan led them towards the far side of the town. A small hill, possibly the dust shrouded carcass of a large building, climbed above the surrounding dwellings. They’d built well, the buildings proved that.
Atop the rise Alan gazed around. The majority of the town lay on one side of the hill, which was behind them. On the other, a small symmetrical cemetery stamped its sombre regularity into the landscape.
“Where’s the ship?” Stowe’s voice held a note of panic.
Alan began to pace, casting about. What would it look like? It’s squat, white with a truncated cone for a nose. Nothing.
“Where – is - it?”
“Avram, hold, it together,” Alan sounded harsh. They were all scared. “I’m missing somethin
g,” he said. “After two hundred and eighty years or so, what would it look like?”
Woodland jumped in, “When you say it like that I can’t see it working. Two hundred and fifty years is a long time for something to sit out in the open.”
“What would it look like, Woodland?”Alan said.
“Weathered, dust, soil, windborne rocks. Banged up. Buried?”
Buried! Of course, the dunes would have built up and eventually covered the Lander.
“Look for a hill or boulder about the size of—”
“There!” Pickering sounded and looked stunned.
Alan followed Pickering’s shaking arm. Maybe one hundred meters beyond the cemetery, a symmetrical boulder sat in sand on a flattened area of ground.
Pickering said, “How are we going to get into that? I can’t make out any access ladder.” Jerking a thumb skyward, Pickering stated with some alarm, “They’ll never give us the time.”
Alan agreed. At least for now that is. Looking skyward, Alan saw only a few of the Unbound aloft. “Where have they all gone?”
“Who?” Woodland said, following Alan’s gaze. “Oh.”
“There were hundreds a moment ago.” Stowe still fraught, sounded ready to burst. “I don’t like it, this is getting weird.”
“‘Getting’, she says.” Alan’s comment received a grin from Stowe and Pickering.
Woodland took a step towards the cemetery, “So we go over, dust her down, you open her up and we walk inside, then leave. Too easy mate, too easy.”
“Like I said, it’s all we’ve got. They know about my augmentation. Think it will allow contact with their precious Free. And by the way, I’m beginning to think that’s a fragment of some racial memory and not anything substantial. Whatever happens, I doubt they’ll stop me connecting and hopefully that’s all I’ll need. The linkage on the capsule is old, but my optic neural-fibre bunches are adaptive. It should work.”
Woodland nodded. “Okay then. We do it.”
Before Alan could consider anything else, Woodland jogged down into the cemetery. Looking at the others, he said, “Come on, you heard the man.” He turned and hurried after Woodland.