“Planet?” asked Grace. “What’s that?”
Carter looked confused again. She had no concept of the world she lived. No concept of anything. A confused woman and a confusing man.
“Perfect,” he said, smiling. “What’s this fence?” he asked, pointing to the contorted net of hexagonal shapes that hung above them.
“I don’t know,” she said, “another wall maybe, you broke it when you crashed.”
“I did?”
“You did.”
Carter laughed. “Breaking walls, not the best way to introduce yourself to a new civilisation.”
“What?”
“Never mind. You said you live here?” asked Carter, motioning in the direction of the farmhouse.
“I do, please come in,” said Grace, as they finally approached the door.
67
Parkins was standing in front of Room 2774, alone. As soon as the door began to slide open, he could see the carnage left behind. Blood on the floor, people lost to time. The body of Carter lying dead on a table. He did not understand what event had occurred.
Inside the room, he noticed a hatch beneath the bed, now closed; he rightly presumed it to be where the escape pod had been launched from.
He walked over to one of the bodies, confirming the officer to be no longer animated. He looked for evidence, for motives, for reasons, but nothing else stood out. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for a room full of struggle and time.
Half a glass of water was sitting on a small table next to a bed, clearly moved to release the pod, but otherwise quite well made.
He wandered to the body of Carter, some blood was splattered on his head; other than that, he looked almost at peace.
Parkins turned around suddenly, caught by the surprise of the door sliding open behind him, it was Yudar.
“What happened?” he asked, as he entered the room.
“I’m not sure, four officers dead. Pistol fire. Not sure about Carter, he looks unharmed.”
“Very strange, the men that came here wanted to learn what Carter knew; presumably they gave him time for not talking.”
“I think Carter shot the other men and then escaped.”
“Why do you think that?”
“This Carter is the one we found floating in space, check the notes.”
Yudar walked over to the table, took the pad and notes, and put them in his jacket pocket. He then produced a pistol.
“What are you doing Yudar?”
Yudar ignored Parkins, took a step away from the table and fired at the head of Carter. Blood flew in every direction, some splattering on Parkins.
“What the...”
“You should wash yourself, clean up the blood. We do not have much time. I can explain but not here. Do you trust me?”
“I guess so; I’ve known you for...”
“Good, grab the other end of this body, help me get him down.”
For whatever reason, Parkins went along with Yudar’s instructions. He took Carter’s arms, and Yudar grabbed his feet. They lifted the corpse from the table and dumped him onto the floor beside his bed.
“Good,” said Yudar.
“What next?”
“The table, we have to return it. Make it look like we only found one Carter in space.”
“Wait, we found more than one?”
“Yes,” said Yudar. “I calculate that he touched the Universe Prism on two separate occasions. But you know nothing if Ragin asks.”
“I understand, so it works like you thought?”
“Right, it seems that way. Anyway, let us take the bed back, we have to be fast.”
They wheeled the empty bed through the corridors, returning it to the room where the bodies and birds from space were being stored. The room was still absent of people, Yudar’s plan was flawless.
They cleaned the table and themselves of blood, and put the empty table with the others. Yudar replaced the notes on the bed containing the second copy of Carter with the notes from the first.
“They will think there was only one Carter found, and that the second Carter in Room 2774 was the original and is now lost to time. They will not suspect a thing.”
“Yudar, what’s going on? I don’t think I can go along with this, what if we get caught?”
“We will not get caught,” said Yudar, with confidence.
“And why are you doing this anyway?”
“I need to cover tracks. Look, Parkins, there is something important going on, something beyond the comprehension of anyone else. It is impossible to explain fully, and even if I did, you would not understand. I am sorry.”
“Fine,” said Parkins, defeated. “What next?”
“We go back to the Command Deck now and talk to Ragin. You confirm what you saw in the room, five corpses, one of which was Carter. They will run checks, we will be fine.”
“Okay.”
“If you do not know how to answer anything, do not worry, I will talk instead of you; they do not believe that we are able to conspire as a species. They are as numb as the others, following orders and lacking free thought.”
“You really think Commander Ragin is that stupid?”
“I know he is. I have known that for a very long time.”
68
Grace prepared some raw vegetables whilst Carter sat at the kitchen table drinking from a canteen.
“So, where did you come from?” asked Grace.
“I’m not entirely sure, somewhere in the depths of space.”
“I don’t understand what that means.”
“Do you have something to draw with?”
“No,” she said.
“Do you have a knife?”
Grace glanced suspiciously at Carter.
“Why do you need a knife?”
“To draw with,” said Carter.
“How can you draw with a knife?”
“Fine, not draw, but I can carve.”
Grace, who had earlier perceived this man to be a threat, was still uncertain as to whether she could trust him, especially with a knife.
“How do I know you won’t stab me?” she asked. “You could be the enemy.”
“The enemy?” Carter’s mind raced back to the letter, a photograph of a boy. “I will show you the enemy, in the box.” Carter pointed to the box on the table.
“What is it?”
“Open it, there’s a photograph inside, a photograph of the enemy.”
“Okay,” said Grace, as she walked to the table and opened the box.
It was empty except for a few small items.
“Careful,” said Carter. “There’s an object in the middle, you can’t see it, but it’s there. Don’t touch it. Just slide the photograph carefully from the side of the box, touch nothing else.”
Grace did as Carter asked; however, as she put her hand into the box, a light ringing sound filled the air around her, just for the briefest of moments, before stopping just as quickly as it had started. She slid the photograph from the box and held it before her face. Carter saw her reaction, one of confusion and fear. Grace focused her eyes on the boy, the boy in the farmhouse, the boys at the city, the enemy. Grace wondered what it meant. What anything meant.
“What is this?” asked Grace.
“He is the enemy,” Carter recalled Yudar’s words. “His name is Justin Jenkins, but he will probably have chosen another name. He can’t be trusted. This is all I’ve been told.”
“Who gave you this information? This image?” asked Grace.
“A man I trust very well. His name is Yudar.”
“I don’t think I know him.”
“Perhaps you never will,” said Carter.
69
Yudar and Parkins returned to the Command Deck of the Archytas. Ragin was clearly furious as he spoke.
“Where have you been? I sent word for people to find you; you’ve been gone half the day.”
“I would not say it has been that long,” said Yudar. “Anyway, you can call off t
he smart-scout; the escape pod was launched by mistake.”
“By mistake?” asked Ragin. “How can a pod launch by mistake?”
“There was a struggle, it seemed, Parkins will explain,”
“Ah yes, a struggle, there was a fight. We found bodies.”
“Bodies?” asked Ragin.
“Yes. Five bodies. Four were officers sent to interrogate Carter, the fifth,” Parkins paused, “the fifth was the body of Carter. He was shot in the head at point blank range.”
“Wait, you’re saying that four men entered Room 2774, there was a pistol fight, and all the men fell to time.”
“Exactly,” said Yudar. “That is exactly what happened.”
“Did you call in a forensic team?”
“Not yet. We wanted to report to you first.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it. They can report directly to me.”
“I took the pistol,” said Yudar, producing the pistol from his jacket pocket.
“Great, so you soiled the crime scene, is that what you’re telling me?”
“Sorry about that,” said Yudar, apathetically. “What I think happened is that the four officers went to speak to Carter about the birds, Sykes said something about him having strange dreams or something, so they went to speak to him. Information was likely concealed, so they fought. There was a struggle; the empty escape pod looked to have been launched by mistake. I will check with the Assessment Team, but we found a body of Carter in space, as you know, I will check we still have that body to confirm that the body we found in Room 2774 was indeed the real Carter.”
“Don’t worry, I will check that. They will report to me for the time being. Both of you, please return to your chambers. If what you say is confirmed, I will call back the smart-scout, it’s a waste of resources following an empty pod. Please do nothing else; we don’t need any more mess.”
“Fine,” said Yudar.
“Fine,” said Parkins.
“Good,” said Ragin.
70
Grace and Carter were sitting around the kitchen table.
“My name is Carter.”
“My name is Grace.”
“Great, Grace. Please tell me everything you know,” said Carter, as he began to carve shapes in the table whilst she spoke.
“Okay. I lived in the walls from when I was born. I escaped yesterday. I knew nothing of this place. I was expecting only water but I found crops. I saw boys, the same as in your picture. They all have the same face. I slept here last night, in a room with a bed. This morning I saw a light, it was you. After the light came, I saw birds, thousands of birds. You crashed through the fence and the birds flew away. Then I ran to you, found you, and brought you back here.”
“Interesting,” said Carter. “You lived inside the walls, what’s there?”
“People living in terrible cold houses. Working every day to make credits to buy food. Horrible conditions. Rain soaked streets. Bright lights advertising bars and pleasure clubs. Old men sleeping amongst the rats. I escaped through a tunnel. It led outside into where we are now.”
“So your society lives inside the walls. Everybody?”
“I don’t know, how big is this place anyway?” asked Grace, as she lit a cigarette.
“Look,” said Carter, motioning toward the splintered wood and carvings on the table. He brushed aside the shavings and pointed to a large circle. “This is Terra. Terra is a planet. A planet is a big rock. You live on this big rock, and here,” he pointed toward the next circle, “this is Sol, it is a ball of fire that provides daylight to your planet. The rock you live on spins and rotates around this fireball. Imagine the fireball is so heavy that it makes a hole in the table, pulling everything else nearby toward it. And the rock we call Terra,” he began to carve a new line, a groove, the ripples in the fabric of spacetime, “your planet, it follows this route,” he demonstrated the orbit of the Earth to Grace. “This is the channel that your planet sits in; it rotates around this so-called trench. This is what makes day and night. Everything else around this rock and fireball, this is what is known as space.”
“So you came from space?”
“That’s right...” said Carter, motioning back to the carving of Earth. “The city you spent your life in, that is here,” Carter pointed to a small speck on the planet, a tiny little cross he had made. “You see, the size of the planet is probably beyond your comprehension. Your city makes up less than one percent of that, a lot less in fact. There was a time once when the whole planet contained life, contained people. Everywhere on Terra were cities, every spare piece of land was occupied. But, one day an event occurred. You said you saw birds?”
“Right, thousands of them,” said Grace.
“An event occurred and those birds, they began to destroy all of the crops on Terra. People need food to survive. Without food, I imagine many people were lost to time. But I am not sure how many.”
“How do you know so much about my...” Grace paused as she tried to remember, “planet?”
“It’s complicated. Listen, what do you know about the boys?”
“When I escaped the city, I saw hundreds of boys tending to the crops. They were the ones supplying the food to the city. They all had the same face. Then I arrived at this house, and on the third floor I saw another one, a boy with the same face.”
“Wait, you mean there’s another boy inside this house?”
“Yes,” replied Grace.
“Did you speak to him?”
“No, he was busy, and I was scared.”
“Busy?”
“Yeah, he was walking around pushing a pole in a circle,” Grace smiled, “a little bit like your carving here, rotating.”
“Show me, I want to talk with him.”
71
After a day of waiting, Yudar was summoned back to the Command Deck. He had already destroyed the second set of notes and the pad, and a member of the forensic team had collected the pistol from him.
He walked leisurely along empty corridors to the Command Deck, he had completed the first stage of his plan, and now the Universe Prism was travelling with Carter toward Terra. All he had to do now was go along with the nonsense that the other leaders spoke, before disappearing.
On the Command Deck, Parkins was waiting. On the screen, Commander Ragin’s face was displayed, a weathered face with a look of impending anger.
“Right, Yudar, we checked everything, all of your facts were confirmed,” said Commander Ragin. “As usual,” he added, bitterly.
“Thank you, sir.”
“We’ve called off the smart-scout; that pod will most likely crash soon anyway.”
“Good,” said Yudar.
“There is another problem though, the four officers that were found in Room 2774, they were the officers responsible for the Universe Prism.”
“Right...” said Yudar.
“The problem,” said Ragin, “is that the prism is gone.”
“Gone!” exclaimed Parkins.
“Yes. Gone.”
“Well, it’s going to be difficult locating an invisible object,” chimed First Technician Williams.
“Ms Williams! This is serious. Do yourself a favour and speak only when spoken to.”
“Just doing my job,” she said.
“More feeble mockery! This is a serious situation. That prism could well be the energy source we’ve been searching for. It isn’t a joke, Ms Williams.”
“Listen,” said Cartographer Marx, “doesn’t the Universe Prism give off a huge amount of energy? Surely we can scan for energy; it shouldn’t be difficult to locate at all.”
“It is sporadic,” said Yudar.
“Sporadic?” asked Ragin.
“The energy comes and goes. Sometimes it disappears completely, stops producing energy for years. If it were always there, we would have found it long before we did. Even on our mission toward it, after we retired the last planet, it was not giving out energy. It was a gamble, we kept the coordinates but
it was a gamble. It took a good two thousand years for it to produce energy again, that is when we knew it was there, right before we arrived.”
“What good is an energy source that doesn’t produce energy? This was all a waste of time,” said Ragin.
“No, not at all,” said Yudar. “The prism is still seemingly powered by nothing. If we can harness the energy whilst the prism is active, we can easily store it for a long time, and then when it does start emitting again, we can harness once more. Every time, the energy will be free.”
“Why is this the first I’ve heard of the energy disappearing?”
“I do not know,” lied Yudar. “I sent you my report.”
“And it just stopped today, a little too convenient,” accused Ragin.
“Commander, believe what you may, but these are the facts,” said Yudar.
“Fine, then search by hand. I want everyone on your ship to touch all of the areas by hand. Eventually someone will touch the prism.”
“And you are sure that is safe, sir? We are still not entirely sure of the consequences of touching the prism. We are still at a hypotheses stage.”
“I don’t care, just find it. Your lockdown is officially lifted and everyone on your ship has to help with the search and recovery of the prism. That’s an order.”
“Fine,” said Parkins.
“Fine,” said Yudar, “and if we do not find it?”
“You will find it. Because if you don’t, you’ll pay with time.”
72
They climbed the steps to the attic, and slowly opened the hatch. Carter went first, carrying Grace’s knife. He pulled himself through the opening and into the room. Grace followed. Inside, as Grace had described, a boy was pushing a huge metal pole. They stood in the attic and watched the boy. Trancelike turning. He did not appear to notice them as he continued with his meticulous movements.
The Archytas Page 13