I slumped down in the pilot's seat, Melanee sinking down beside me, an action that caused Mike to raise his eyebrows but Bradley put his hands together and began to tell me what was wrong. After a time, I began to wish I hadn't heard.
"That day you left with her." He nodded at Melanee. "They were all over us before we knew it. It was raining like hell and we just huddled and dozed under that tree trunk." I shot a glance at Mike but he shook his head.
"I know." He muttered. "We should have set a sentry."
Bradley looked irritated. "Don't matter. They weren't naked savages, they talked and organised, looked at all our stuff and threw away what they didn't want." He shot a look down to the girls who were all leaning back looking sleepy. "They kept the medical stuff, some clothes, knives and they marched us off. There were maybe ten, fifteen, and they left a party for you."
"We met." I said laconically.
He nodded. "We heard the gunfire, we were a couple of miles off. Knew you wouldn't get caught like us." He said but it wasn't a compliment. "We got to this place after a two-day march."
"And then what?"
"Nothing." Mike said. "Just bloody nothing. They kept us in that cave most of the time, let us out every day for air but they didn't do anything else, not to Bradley and me."
"Linda? Hilary? Mary?" I just stared at him.
"They made them take pills." Bradley said. "I know it sounds Goddamn stupid but that's all they did."
"The boss man, he was clever." Mike said wearily. "They wanted water, they took the pills. Then he told us..."
"Told you?"
Bradley sighed. "Yeah, he drew pictures and he acted it out, he was good like Mike says. He says the pills, whatever they do, it takes two days to work and after that we all get to go. But, he said the women would belong to him, that's what he said." He frowned. "They took them near two days ago and Hilary, she ain't said a word to me since, she just sits and stares."
"Mary doesn't talk anymore." Mike said, the lines on his face suddenly deep.
The pills! What had Marie said? Neuron controllers. Fertility limiters, yes, but there were much simpler methods of doing that, why interfere with neurons, brain cells, and why produce some kind of artificial enzyme? I swung round and punched in the link with the drone.
"Marie? You there? Come in."
The screen steadied and showed her looking somewhat startled. "Those damned pills, they made the women take them. What the hell do they do?"
Bradley and Mike stared at me with ferocious frowns. "What the hell..." Mike started but I waved him down because Marie was gazing out of the screen with a face that was suddenly flat, expressionless.
"They prevent children..." She began but I cut her off.
"The hell with that, what else?"
"I think, David, they alter perception." She hesitated. "They override the autonomic systems." Her eyes stared at me with inscrutable intelligence.
"So you know about these ever loving pills, right? Where they come from, eh? Some hole in the ground?" Bradley was scowling at me. "Every sucker that takes them, they don't have kids, huh? We need some Goddamned answers." He leaned over my shoulder, breathing hard. "Hi, Marie. You having fun back there?" His deep rumble was not welcoming. "I hear what you say. What's the point?"
"I do not know but..." She hesitated, looking more and more uneasy. "The autonomic systems, they can stop, alter any one of them, the heart, kidneys, I don't know, I don't!"
We looked at each other blankly. "They're all behaving like wooden Indians." Bradley growled.
"Marie? How do we find out what's happened to them? How do we know what that damned pill is doing?" Mike demanded.
It was Jules, a worried and subdued Jules who answered. "You bring them back 'ere, oui?"
It wasn't enough because the whole idea seemed weird. "OK, fine but why are they like sacks of coal?" I shot the question at him like a bullet.
"David, I 'ave been looking at the spiral. It does something else but I do not know what. I think they come out of it soon and I think that was what the people were waiting for, you see? They wait until the brain is running, eh?"
The startup whine of the turbines broke up the discussion. More questions were swilling round my head, as if we didn't have enough of them. That camp looked semi-permanent, the ground well scuffed by many feet, evidence of fires outside. So, we had a party, unknown in number, who passed the time by capturing people, correction, women, preferably young. They give them nice white pills and wait for, well what? And what the hell for? And this has been going on for a thousand years?
A brief resume of our adventures to satisfy the clamouring demands of Mike and Bradley took us back to the now familiar hill with the hole in the side of it. Circling the complex with Melanee peering out of the front screen as if she was a veteran flier, I decided I didn't want to take the car back down that drain hole. The entrance had been a thirty-foot-wide armoured door with ceramic protection on the outside. The charges had blown it out but it hinged on the lower edge coming to rest forming a platform quite wide enough to land this thing on, which was obviously the plan. The verticals made loud tearing noises but the landing skids made hardly any jolt. I hadn't lost my touch.
Sitting there as the engines whined down to silence I felt a familiar hand on my shoulder and Linda was there with a wondering smile, her eyes flicking from me to Melanee. "Come on." I told Melanee and held Linda's arm. "She's been good to me and she's special." I told Linda. "There's something about her."
"Want help Daveed. He always think of you." Melanee said seriously.
Linda nodded, her smile still there but to me who knew her so well, there was something missing. And Melanee knew it, I could see her eyes examining Linda, glancing away to watch the other women who were now being ushered out of the car, a chatter of conversation floating back to us. The sun was now high and hot, a wilting glare on that flat shelf of metal sticking out of a tree covered hillside. Linda shaded her eyes as we stepped down from the entrance hatch and joined the others. Hilary was drooping, being held up by a worried Bradley while Mike was still cuddling Mary. They all looked at me as I took Linda's hand and started to walk down the long, steep shaft.
Our footsteps echoed slightly and the deep shadow eased the glare. The air cooled markedly fifty feet down and Linda let go of my hand. Surprised, I turned round, seeing Melanee suddenly reach out and grab Linda's arm but she just looked at her with slack features, her face white. I took hold of her shoulders in alarm and she smiled at me, a long smile that slowly faltered. The look in her eyes faded and she just folded up, collapsing into a heap before either Melanee or I could stop her. The others stood in shocked silence before Bradley and I knelt swiftly, Bradley tearing away at her shirt, his hand on the throat pulse.
His black face slowly turned, the sweat on his forehead glistening in the light flooding in the shaft entrance. Twice he opened his mouth and twice he shut it again but by now a freezing terror had me by the throat. Mike and Mary sat down abruptly, Mary cradling Linda's head on her lap. Tears dripped down from Mary but not from me, I couldn't move or feel or speak.
"It can't be." Mary said at last, gazing up at Hilary's strained expression. "She's...I mean she's..." She suddenly turned to look at me, her eyes watering. Hilary sank down on her knees, her hands seeking out Bradley's arm.
"Oh God." Her voice was quivery with fear. "What did they do? I can't think straight, I can't." She stared at Linda's still form and shivered. "When is it going to happen to us?" She asked, her face working as Bradley held her. Mike and Mary seemed stricken, they all were, except me. I was frozen, not here, somewhere else, alone with Linda as we had been so many times, seeing her smile, listening to her gentle jokes at my expense, locking her away in my head. Presently I became aware that Melanee was tugging my shirt.
"Take Linda down?" She asked softly. "Perhaps Zhools help?"
No one could help but we couldn't sit here forever waiting for the next woman to drop dead so I picked Linda up as they all took a p
ace back. None of them had said anything directly to me, their expressions showing apprehension at what they saw in my face. Someone was going to pay and I didn't care if he was the last man left alive on this planetary graveyard, he would be extinct when I found him and so would anyone else who tried to stop me.
The shaft sloped down at an angle allowing pedestrian access and Jules had opened the rear hatch, the artificial light from the overheads down there streaming through the opening. Carrying Linda with Melanee just behind me, we emerged into the familiar space to find Marie with her hands on her cheeks, Jules standing behind her with a white face.
We set Linda down on one of the work units and they all gathered round, the tension palpable until I slowly passed a hand over her face and shut her eyes. I could hear the breathing, it was so quiet.
"Right." My own voice sounded normal, as if we were discussing the weather. "I want to know what the hell is going on." I addressed Marie directly, her look of instant wariness telling me she knew why. "What did that bloody pill do? What's the master plan?" I looked down at my hands before glancing up at her again. "Because there is one and I think you know what?"
Marie shook her head and Jules took a pace forward, his body tense, the muscles on his forearms standing out, but my sidearm was already pointing at Marie. Everyone stood like ice statues except Melanee who was watching Marie intently.
"Non!" Jules edged towards me.
"Oh yes." I said calmly. "Linda has just been murdered. Let's call things by their proper names. And you," I pointed the gun at Marie. "You know what's happening and you're going to tell me. Don't give me any of that crap about being scared. You were on Selena's team and now you've killed Linda." My words concealed an overpowering desire to shoot her here and now and the fear in her eyes told me she knew it.
"Non!" Jules shouted again and stepped towards me, his face working. Melanee leaned back in alarm but I just batted him across the jaw with the revolver barrel. The sound was flat, like hitting a tree trunk. Marie gasped and cried out but made no attempt to help Jules who was now sitting on the floor, nursing his jaw.
"I'll give you a day." I told her. "If you attempt to leave here, I'll kill you. If Jules interferes I'll kill him too. Understand?"
I left the group standing there and walked off to run the systems on the spare drone they had been tinkering with. I needed to do something with my hands to stop the elastic in my head from snapping. All that day with Melanee as a silent but constant companion, I checked the drone, rechecked the aircar systems, working outside in the hot sun, sweating but unable to stop. Melanee ferried up water and food. I drank but I couldn't eat. None of the others came near us although I was aware that they were all engaged in furious and heated discussions, conducted in fierce whispers. Screens were being peered at, equipment and plans stared at. I heard sobbing from Mary, glimpsed her tear stained face as she wept over Linda but none of them talked to me which was just as well.
When the night was near, we buried Linda, me and Melanee between us. We carried her up the long, dark staircase and out into the quiet woods. The grave was deep but no stone was there to record who she was, who she had been. We were standing, looking down at the mound of earth when Mike, Mary and Bradley came up, the tears streaming down Mary's face in the dying light of evening. Mike picked up a handful of earth and threw it down, the sound muted, final.
"Hilary's not good." Bradley's normal booming tones were reduced to a miserable rumble.
"Cannot think?" Melanee surprised us all by asking such a question.
Bradley just gazed at her, his big hands shaking as he rubbed them together. It was Mike who replied, his arm round a forlorn Mary. "I don't know who you are, girl, but you know a lot. You're right, she's just sitting down there, staring at the wall and we can't get any sense out of her."
"I think...maybe she's going to..." Bradley couldn't finish.
It was time to talk to Marie. Melanee looked sharply at me as I placed tree branches and rocks across the grave, but I didn't want some inquisitive pig to start digging. She made no comment or protest when I took her shoulders and pointed her back down to the oasis of light and technology that we were tethered to. Mike couldn't keep his hands off Mary, keeping her close to him. Somehow, in the space of days, they had found a fire to burn between them and the desperate fear on his face I recognised all too well.
"If she was going to switch off permanently, she'd have done it by now." I told Bradley, but his dark eyes were remembering what was under the earth we had just left.
"Why do you think Marie knows?" Mary sobbed, seemingly unable to stem the tears.
"Melanee here found out." They stared at Melanee's vivid face, reflected in the lights as we descended the crumbling staircase. "She recognised deceit before I did."
There was no doubt in my mind. Marie had reacted to my accusation with guilt. I hadn't, in truth, been more than faintly suspicious, Melanee's observations notwithstanding, so I played the old interrogation trick. Tell them you know they did it and suspects will surprisingly often agree with you. Marie did, not with words but with expressions.
She was slumped down, white faced, with Jules nearby looking ill with a grossly swollen jaw. The implacable purpose that I had been fighting to control was hovering close to the surface of my mind as I walked over to her, the others trailing after until we stood round her in a semi-circle, waiting. She looked up, her hands clasped tightly together, her face whiter than ever.
"I am not a murderer." She said, so quietly I had to lean to hear her. "As God is my witness, I did not wish Linda to die."
"But you know something, don't you?" My voice was surprisingly mild.
Jules groaned and she shot him a quick glance but she hunched her shoulders and answered. "It was before the ship was ready. The biology team was gathered together. We all went to America and we were sent to the disease centre at Boston."
I nodded and squatted down, Melanee keeping close like a shadow. Bradley had Hilary in his arms but they were all listening with fixed and drawn faces. "Yeah, I remember."
"There is, was, a very secret project. The Americans, the Europeans, the Russians. They all poured money into funding, secret money. It was to perfect embryo life in suspended animation."
Bradley glared at her, while Mike frowned, and Mary just stared. "Embryos?" Mike repeated. "They can keep them alive, nothing secret there, been doing it for centuries."
"This was human embryos and the project was not to keep them alive but to stop their development at a certain point. Millions of sperm and eggs were to be joined by a machine that picked out specific genetic characteristics, certain predictable traits. The embryo would then be allowed to grow to near maturity in artificial amniotic fluid and then frozen, the process of growth suspended."
The silence was heavy, Melanee's breathing beside me quite audible. "You mean," Bradley said slowly. "You mean, the plan was to grow a whole generation of selected people and store them away someplace?"
"What the hell for?" Mike interjected, his expression showing his revulsion at this perverted scientific idea.
"I do not know." Marie said, looking me in the face. "I am a Catholic and I take my faith seriously. Such a plan was anathema. I was excluded from the secret briefings but I think the idea was for colonisation."
"Yeah." Bradley breathed. "You see the plan. The money men must have got their hooks into the scheme of things. You shoot off a ship, two ships, more. And you just send a cargo of embryos. The ship lands, the machine grows the kids, huh? Then they send them out on a new world. They survive, they prosper, the big boys they advertise for colonists and there's a work force already there."
"Genetically bred." Mike muttered. "Slaves, that's what we're talking about."
I grunted. "What has this to do with Linda and this place?"
"This was one of the experimental stations." Marie said. "There were three and they were all linked by satellite and microlinks, each station to work on different areas. The space we can
not go in, that was where the machines were to be set up." She looked down at her hands. "In America, the public scrutiny was too energetic, anyone finding out could stop the project, but in Europe, we do not 'ave such scruples."
"So," Mike said. "Under here you think there's a whole army of frozen eggs." He wrinkled his brow. "But, I don't see."
"Neither do I." I grated.
"I do not know but I think, yes, I think when the event 'appened, someone 'ere, they set up a program. They want to stop any survivors from multiplying." She stood up and waved us to a terminal, the screen covered in swirling, gyrating graphics. "This is the neuron controller. It is part of the research for inhibiting growth, but it gives protection against disease and an alteration in the genetic programming of certain nerve cells." Mike and Bradley peered at the screen and scrutinised her pages of calculations.
"My God." Mike said. "They set up a supply of pills that would protect survivors, that's the idea."
"Oui." The muffled voice was Jules, who had dragged himself to his feet and was now acting according to character by being unable to let Marie finish her lecture. "They want to 'elp." He glanced at me, keeping well out of arm's reach. "They set up a supply of drugs that protect survivors against virus and bacterial infection."
"But they got it wrong." Mike said slowly. "They must have done it in a hell of a hurry. Some surviving egghead, just after Armageddon, he sets this up, he tells the machine to alter the chemical balance to avoid the suspense of growth and provide disease protection. The by product is the limit on breeding but three kids, that's not too bad, they can sustain the population with three if they keep the disease down. That's all fine and dandy but there's something else."
"I am not a specialist in 'uman neural function and synaptic alteration." Marie was rocking herself to and fro. "But I was afraid of something like this." She turned and looked me in the face. "I thought you would find them all dead and you would blame me." She glanced nervously at Melanee. "I do not know who this woman is but I tell you she is clever, cleverer than you, than me." Marie's gaze became slightly more than nervous. "She is yours, you understand David? She give 'erself to you but in return you belong to 'er now and I wonder who she is." In the face of this astonishing comment, I contented myself with watching Melanee's expression which was calm but wary, as usual. "I could see she did not believe me and you would work it out. Selena and her twisted crew, they knew something!" She cried. "But I do not! I do not!"
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