Come Back

by George Erlynne

  A very careful reconnaissance up to the debris ridden entrance of the access tunnel revealed nothing in sight. Their lander stood close to the wreck of the aircar, the forest was quiet, birds and bees seemingly going about their business unconcerned. Birds were a great help. During our time in the forest we had learnt to know which was which and Melanee, encyclopaedic as ever, could tell us where they roosted. Any disturbance by two legged predators and they twittered nicely or at least some did and Melanee, creeping along beside me, kept whispering encouraging comments in my ear. Mary and Mike were alert, twitchy and nervous, with guns pointing in all directions, but the glade was empty. I had no ants marching on my back, no feeling of being watched. Where the hell were they? As soon as we found a victim we would have to fire guns and that would tell them where we were.

  There was nothing for it but to settle down on one of the game trails and await a customer. I put them in defence positions, made sure they would not shoot each other and squatted down painfully beside Melanee. Slowly, the day advanced but pigs did not. At last, after a silent lifetime during which my shoulder became unusable because of pain, a large shape sniffed its way towards us. It wasn't a mummy boar, much too dangerous, but a nearly grown offspring rooting around for lunch. Mike let it get within twenty unsuspecting yards before he let go nearly a whole magazine.

  Perhaps Selena and Mark plus their tremulous allies thought it was the start of another war. It certainly sounded like it but apart from a relative of the deceased porker which arrived, took one look and departed, silence returned to the forest. It was odd but we didn't stop to commune with nature, we gathered up the corpse, Mary and Melanee collected a mass of fruit and we were all systems go.

  A measure of insanity was necessary to become accustomed to sitting on a concrete floor inside a preserved nursery while eating roast pork in front of a roaring fire. Of course, we lit the fire under the access shaft, what do you take us for? If Selena decided to descend she would get a nicely singed posterior.

  Several days later we were faced with the same problem again but before then Melanee, peering at the monitor screens, announced that Marie was ready to rejoin the group. I wasn't too happy about that. First, she would eat food we didn't have and second, she was not going to be a happy lady.

  Medi-units were marvels of technology. Accelerated cell repair, bone regeneration, all done while you slept the deep sleep. Moodily, I told the others that none of this fancy hardware was going to last more than three years now that we had broken all the seals and anyone getting bullet wounds after that had better make sure they were not in vital spots.

  Melanee listened, smiled indulgently and lifted Marie who certainly looked better than last seen. Wrapping her in practically our last spare shirt, we fed her and clustered round her like old friends, but I was waiting for her to turn her eyes to me and remember Jules.

  Chapter 31

  SACRIFICE

  Marie had been in the machine for several days, enough to seal the wounds and replace the blood loss. She'd been treated for shock, but she was pale, fraught and wide eyed, particularly when she found Melanee bending over her. Her condition didn't improve when she saw me, but we did her an injustice. Despite being in thrall to a religious belief which did not appear to provide any comfort or absolution she had a splendid brain which seemingly had been at work while she was unconscious.

  She regarded the rows of incubators with a calmness mixed with regret, or so it seemed. Melanee explained everything, including her master plan which produced a wintry smile. Standing, hugging herself, she gazed at me with tired acceptance.

  "So, David, it is Melanee who brings back the world, eh? Perhaps you give 'er a soul." She shook her head wearily. "It does not matter." She seemed to cogitate while we waited. It was important to know if she still harboured evil intent against Melanee because if she did, she was destined to walk in the woods all by herself because I was going to throw her out. She gave me a wry smile as I glowered at her, transforming her to the pretty and attractive woman she had been. Slim waisted and high breasted, Jules had been entranced with her, not that it did him any good in the end. I was immune to her charms, or thought so, but she had other things on her mind.

  "Well, Marie." I said heavily, after a long silence. "What's done is done and can't be undone. If it makes any difference, I can tell you I wish I hadn't..."

  "Non." She stopped me. "I know. You and Melanee, eh? You will protect 'er. I should 'ave known." Tears glistened in her eyes. "It was me kill 'im, not you." She turned away and waved at the lines of caskets. "Selena? You kill 'er yet? Non? You must."

  "You think so?" Mary had been waiting for the opening. "She damned nearly killed us, but you are the one who doesn't like killing, remember?"

  "It must 'appen or none of them will ever live." She waved an elegant hand at the incubators. Melanee frowned but nodded and the three women started a stilted but highly technical discussion. Seeing them engrossed, I grabbed Mike and began a tactical talk about how to forage without meeting old friends. I could not understand where the hell they had got to and neither could he. Why didn't they swan off in their super space wagon and leave us to sweat?

  "They can't fly it." Mike looked at me and nodded.

  "Yeah." I breathed. "Only fucking Max could do it and they're stranded."

  "Let's go get 'em." He muttered, directing a sly glance to the female club which was busy planning the New World.

  "Not yet!" Melanee swung round and stared at me, her eyes like dark searchlights. She was tuned in to my thought processes and knew when I was about to do something stupid. "You have to get better first."

  Marie smiled her wry smile, but the brains had decided, without my consent, to bung me back in one of those infernal machines and let it work on my shoulder. Loud protests made no difference and Mike was no help, standing there grinning like an ape. Telling them sternly not to be heroes and stay underground, I allowed myself to be shut inside the damned thing. In truth, the shoulder was hurting a lot and Melanee, ever watchful, knew it.

  Three days they kept me like a slowly roasting joint, but I have to confess it was as if I had been given a new shoulder. Twinges, yes, but it worked and I could fire guns, which was all that mattered. Waving the arm about and wishing we were out of this depressing floodlit dungeon, I lovingly set about cleaning the rifles and counting ammunition.

  Marie, surprisingly, sat down close by and regarded me with some wariness mixed with an emotion I didn't identify then. Clinking small arms ammunition kept me occupied and silent but after a time she began to talk.

  "You are a pagan, no? But no, not a pagan, they worship strange Gods. You do not worship any God." She spoke lightly but behind the words was a question. Laying down the rifle I gazed at her, seeing the brown eyes watching my hands on the weapon.

  "Marie, I don't know, I wish I did." I said evenly. "If you want to know whether the men I have killed come back to me, the answer is yes, some of them." I paused. "Jules for example. He comes back to me in dreams." I gave her a steady look because she had to know. "I could have wounded him, I didn't have to kill."

  "And Max...?"

  "Not a second thought."

  She nodded, brooding, her face calm but the tension flowing out of her. "Many hours I spend thinking. We will 'ave to kill Selena. If she come back and finds a terminal she can maybe alter the programs."

  "What? Kill off her brood of muscle men?"

  She smiled her lopsided smile. "She knows she cannot win now but revenge is sweet, yes?"

  "You think so?" Did she have ideas of revenge floating about in her head.

  But she did not explain and it was time to go. Despite furious argument, the three women refused to let me and Mike do the job. They insisted on coming, thus multiplying our problems and the targets for Selena. Mike was bad enough but at least I had taught him to shoot in the right direction. However, it seemed that he was not worried about assassination, he wanted to get inside their orbital lander, having convi
nced himself he could fly the thing.

  Indian file, no talking, Mike at the rear, Melanee behind me, then Mary followed by Marie. Only Mike, me and Mary had firearms, but Melanee carried spare ammunition plus sundry medical stores, smiling brightly at me all the time. We left at dawn, a clear day, the sun rising into a deep indigo sky, birds waking up, night time denizens going to bed. The plan was to do a semicircular sweep all round the clearing and look for tracks. Still seething with annoyance at the women's pig headedness and worried about ambush, I took it slow.

  We were stupid, it doesn't need to be said. I should have hit them over the head before allowing this cretinous behaviour. Naturally, there were tracks all over the bloody place, some fresh, some not but we ended up drifting to where they had parked their lander. This was a big machine, much longer and taller than our ex-aircar, beetle shaped with extended wings which gave deep shade. Massive engine nacelles covered multiplex engines, complex assemblies which could behave like turbines or rocket motors, the whole engine pods rotating to give vertical lift at God knows what cost in fuel consumption.

  The thing sat there, the entrance hatch gaping open. It was an invitation no one but a dimwit would have accepted. "I'm going in." Mike asserted, closely followed by vigorous agreement from Mary.

  All right, it was my fault. All that boasting about military prowess and guns and I let them climb into a large aircraft without checking who was in it. Melanee, the biggest brain in the universe, stood and watched them, while Marie frowned at the surroundings. She was the only one with any sense because she was distinctly uneasy and started to tell me about it when the gun went off.

  It wasn't my gun, no, it was a rifle which was held to Mary's head by a grinning Mark who marched her back down the access ramp to the lander's main deck. Behind him was Selena, not grinning but certainly looking gratified if somewhat tousled. The shot had been a warning to us to behave ourselves, fired close enough to make Mary deaf and very frightened.

  "Didn't think it would be so easy." He said, the grin getting wider.

  "Put the guns down." Selena added coldly.

  They only had the one rifle, Melanee was right, and Mark was pointing it at me. What had they done with Mike and Mary's rifles? Left them in the lander? They really were a cretinous pair. Thought flashed through my head like lightning bolts. He was three yards away with the safety catch off and the rifle set for auto fire, I could see the catches on the receiver clearly enough. By the time I got there, at least twenty rounds would go through me and out the other side. He wanted to do it, I saw the signs, the thin lips, the white knuckles where he held the rifle.

  "I will not help you if you kill." Melanee said with iron finality.

  "We don't care if you do or not." Selena bestowed one of her cold smiles on her.

  Their plan was in tatters, we had ruined the great project and killed everyone except them. Their marvellous new human race would never be born, they were going to kill us come what may, they were past all argument, far gone in insanity, sliding down to a depth beyond any recall. It was time for me to pay for past deeds. Mike and the women could certainly do without me. I took a deep breath.

  "Why did you not kill Jules and me when you had the chance?" Marie's voice was quiet, her expression tranquil.

  "You?" Mark almost laughed. "Easily corrected." He shifted the rifle to aim at her and took up the slack on the trigger.

  "It was simple, just like you." Selena seemed to have forgotten all about relieving me of my rifle which was pointing inconveniently at Melanee's feet. Any shifting of this heavy piece of metal might bring on the brainstorm which I was sure was coming so I contented myself with making certain that the safety was off while she let out the spite in her soul. "You think you have a monopoly of belief? And Jules, you could make him do anything. You two, with archaic sins and talk of souls, you are the prisoners of Jewish Prophecy, of a God with a beard." They both laughed, an ugly noise. "We let you wander around and knew you would try and remove our mutant here." Selena chuckled at the joke. "We didn't think you could do it with the killer she was attached to still around, but you might and that would have been a bonus. You might even have killed him, a cause for joy. Or he kills you. Either way it was profit."

  Marie just stared at them, her face white. "Jules die for me." She said softly, so quietly I wondered whether they heard it, but they had.

  "More fool him." Selena sneered. "You were always surplus cargo anyway."

  Marie jumped, leaping at them with such suddenness that it took us all by surprise, even me. She screamed as she did it, a screech of despair and hatred such as I never hope to hear again. Mark seemed thunderstruck for a split second but then his finger must have jerked the trigger because a storm of fire roared out from his rifle. Marie was snatched back, blood spurting from her chest, a terrible moan of agony escaping as she landed on her back. No medi-unit was going to cure her, she had taken ten or fifteen rounds right through her chest.

  Mark was wide eyed, the act of murder taking him by surprise, but he abruptly reverted to type, waving the rifle away from Marie's blood-stained body and turning it on me. Then he stopped, froze, became a statue which turned pale because my rifle was now pointing at his head and he knew, I saw it in his eyes.

  "David." Melanee spoke softly, but she wasn't telling me not to, she understood it would do no good.

  "You designed a world where we all feed the Earth God, that right?" I enquired, watching the sweat growing on his face. Selena had him by the arm, but she was seeing what he saw, she couldn't speak. "You think you are Gods or maybe servants of God. All sins must be paid for and if you go back to the Earth that made us then I am carrying out your religious duties for you."

  It all seemed so reasonable but somehow it lost its appeal for Mark. He didn't want what he had done to a living world to happen to him. He opened his mouth to explain but the words wouldn't come.

  "Get on with it, you killer." Selena snarled.

  So I did. The round went through his forehead and carried on while he stood for an instant with a halo of blood and brains before collapsing into a silent heap. Selena was still, his blood all over her, staring at me with a blindness in her eyes. She was the biology genius, she knew all about the loss of consciousness when neutrons went through your brain. Bullets are more primitive but the effects are just as final and perhaps more satisfying.

  Mary and Mike rose from where they had been kneeling by Marie. "It's execution." Mary stared at me. "You can't, it's cold blooded...please David."

  "It...it makes us like them." Mike muttered, but Mary had been inches away from assassination by a smiling Selena and he knew there was no other way.

  "Well, Selena, back in the old days when we had our imperfect world still up and running, people like you would have been put away for life, hidden away from the rest of us. In some places you would have been given a short walk one morning and that would have been that." I watched her curiously, waiting to see if she had come to terms with her last moments. "We have no prisons and you killed more people than I could ever count in a lifetime. Anything to say?"

  She shuddered but she had courage. "You will recreate what we have destroyed. The world will be despoiled again. We, the humans will make a desert and in the end the Earth will fight back. What we did, we did for the future, even for you."

  "No path is ordained." Melanee's voice was cold, clinical and merciless. "We will not go down the same road and we will try and forget you and all your works."

  There was nothing more to say. We all stood like actors on a stage when the last lines have been spoken. Mary and Mike were close together, both of them gazing at me. It had to be me, it was predestined from the time when I lifted Linda's body. If it was a sin then it was mine and mine alone.

  The shot was loud, the high velocity round threw her back, crumpling as she fell. Walking forward, I gazed down and fired another shot. It was finished.

  Chapter 32

  COLONY

  Mike knew, h
e didn't have to tell me, that Selena and Mark had to die. He hated it, he was torn up inside by the act, but he understood, even if he could not have done it himself. Mary was different. She tried but she could never talk to me again in the same easy way as before. The jocular friendship we had seen grow between us all on board the air car during our fraught trip to the far North, it disappeared and something like revulsion took its place. We had won but the price was high.

  Melanee said nothing and carried on as usual but the girlish rapport between her and Mary disappeared. Mary withdrew into herself, took to walking solitary walks and made sure she was never alone with me. Mike became nervous because we still had one of the biology club around somewhere, but he never did reappear. Maybe he's still wandering somewhere in the dark forest, dying of terror. Mary and Mike had moments of terror, you could see it in their faces but none of this emotional reaction mattered because we had a world to create, a new order, a million children to bring up.

  We buried Marie with care and sorrow. Mary found papers, writing she had been scribbling in private moments. The French was difficult to translate but the remorse wasn't. She had been tortured by Jules death and she still felt torn about Melanee despite her scientist brain accepting her as a person, a character, a soul if you like. As for me, to my astonishment and dismay, she had been drawn to me, attracted like a moth to candle flame, knowing it would be the end of her. Poor Jules, he was too compliant, but he loved her and she was tied to him. She had decided to bring things to an end but she certainly didn't tell me, nor did I have any inkling of her uneasy feelings. That odd conversation when she had asked me about retribution and contrition came back to me. She had decided then, the talk of Jules was the catalyst.