by Sam Kates
“How much farther?” is how the words the woman spoke would have translated into English. They had not yet encountered that language.
The man glanced at the displays on the bank in front of him. “Allowing for the greater rate of deceleration as we approach, we shall enter Earth Haven’s atmosphere 9.26 days from now, in time as they measure it.”
The craft’s velocity had already slowed to less than one per cent of light speed and would continue to decrease as it neared its destination. They were confident that the power of their surface thrusters would allow them to put down safely on the ocean very near to where the signal had originated. The craft had been designed with storage areas to hold the large number of buoyancy aids with propellant systems to carry them to land where the remnants of the advance party should be waiting.
“And what shall we find upon our arrival?”
The man shrugged. “Who can truly say? It has been five millennia since the ten thousand left Earth Home. That is but a blink to us, but on a young, vibrant planet such as Earth Haven it may represent a significant period during which certain species might have evolved dramatically.”
“Certain species… you mean the drones.”
“They were given impulses that drive them to procreation, instincts to protect and nurture their young. It’s quite possible that they now number in the millions.”
The woman breathed out heavily. “Millions?”
“All we can say with certainty is that our people survive on Earth Haven. The signal proves that.”
“But how do a mere ten thousand control millions of drones?”
“I do not know. Yet the way is clear or the signal would not have been sent.”
“And our people? You harbour no doubt that what we intend is the correct course?”
The man glanced at her sharply. “You already know the answer to that. They still labour under attitudes instilled in them by the wisdom that prevailed when they left Earth Home. The false wisdom, created by that bitch Sivatra and propagated by generation upon generation of Keeper. You took part in the decision that the office of Keeper shall end when we have secured Earth Haven. You agreed to the proposed solution to the problem posed by the ten thousand.” His voice dripped menace. “Do not question the decision to eradicate them.”
The woman bowed her head in acquiescence. “I will not, Keeper.”
* * * * * * *
“Are you sure you won’t come with us?”
Colleen nodded. Impulsively, she threw her arms around Ceri’s neck and hugged her tightly.
“Thank you,” she said in a low voice that only Ceri would hear. “You freed me.”
She stepped back. Ceri offered her a smile, a sad one that Colleen did her best to return.
“Where will you go?” asked Tom.
Colleen shrugged. “Never been to Britain before. Might work my way up the coastline to Scotland. Perhaps find me a castle to live out the last of my days. Or maybe south. I’ve been wanting to visit Brighton since I was a teenager and saw Quadrophenia.” Despite her loose front teeth, cut gums and thick lips from where Dermot had struck her with the pistol, her resulting lisp did not distort her speech to such an extent that no one could understand her.
“Steer clear of London.”
“I will.”
“And you’ll be okay with that scooter?”
“Yes.” She glanced at Bri. “Thanks again for the offer of the car, but I don’t know how to drive one and I can’t be arsed to learn now.” She patted the seat of the scooter; they’d found the keys in Dermot’s jacket pocket. Tom had filled the petrol tank from a plastic container he kept in the boot of his swanky car. “This baby’s a doddle to drive.”
Will nudged Bri. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Please, Colleen, me and Will, we want you to take our gun. You’ll need one if you’re going to be on your own. The dogs are growing hungry and your golf club might not be enough to keep them away.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Tom. “I don’t want to leave you on your own, but at least if you have a gun…” He tailed off as though unsure what else to say.
Colleen had been mulling over the possibility of acquiring pepper spray as a means of defending herself against feral animals. It would, she imagined, be easier to use and more effective against a pack than a gun. She didn’t think pepper spray was legally obtainable in Britain so she wouldn’t find it in shops, but she had an idea British police sometimes carried it; it may be worthwhile investigating any police premises she passed. She had no wish to carry a gun, least of all the one that had been used to kill Howard, but it made sense for her to have it in the meantime, until she could locate some spray.
“Okay. Will, Bri, I’d be most grateful to take your gun. It’s very kind of you.”
The ghost of a smile touched Will’s face. It was the nearest he’d come to smiling since the events of the previous afternoon.
Once the initial shock had worn off, Tom had taken charge, ushering everyone out of the bar. As Colleen passed him, he handed her the bottle of scotch. Tom had insisted that they all, except for him, take a walk and not return until dusk. So she, Ceri, Bri and Will had stepped out into spring drizzle and walked numbly along the deserted seafront. Dogs and rats and gulls gave them a wide berth, almost as though they could sense their shock and grief. Colleen dabbed at her bleeding mouth with a handkerchief and sipped gingerly from the whisky bottle.
When they returned to the hotel hours later, Tom looked exhausted. Colleen stepped past him and poked her head around the door to the bar. The corpses of Howard Newton and Dermot Ward, a.k.a. Clint, had gone. So, too, had the globules of flesh from the wall next to the bar, although the blood stains there and on the carpet where both men had fallen were still visible, like red wine spillages, and a metallic smell tainted the air. Colleen withdrew, closing the door firmly behind her.
Later, before darkness had fallen completely, Colleen went out of the hotel’s back door from the kitchen. She walked around the corner of an outbuilding, noting that the padlock had been broken off, and stood staring at the small lawned area. It was marked by two fresh mounds of earth. A shovel lay discarded to one side.
“Goodbye, Howard,” Colleen murmured, although she did not know beneath which mound the doctor lay.
Before retiring to her room with what remained of the bottle of scotch, she looked out Tom and embraced him.
“Thank you,” she said as she drew away, “for not burying him in the same hole as Dermot.”
Now this following morning, as they all gathered in the roadway outside the hotel, Bri did manage a smile, although it looked forced and weak. She displayed no physical after effects of her headlong charge at Dermot. First Tom, then Ceri, had looked closely at the healing injury to her temple and declared themselves satisfied that she had not reopened the wound.
Her mental scars might take longer to heal, thought Colleen. The same could be said of them all. Ceri, in particular, was still weepy and shaky, struggling to come to terms with having taken another’s life.
Bri stepped forward and handed to Colleen the pistol that they’d had to prise from Dermot’s fingers.
“Be careful,” said Bri, “it’s still loaded. I’ll fetch you the spare bullets.”
Colleen hefted the weapon in her hand. It felt surprisingly heavy and cold, and not as abhorrent to the touch as she’d imagined. On the contrary, its solidity soothed her, anchoring her to the here and now when the more fanciful side of her nature wanted to fly free to the stars so she would never again have to think about loss and grief and death. With Howard gone, her mind might soon begin once more to unravel.
Bri returned with a clinking carrier bag. Colleen glanced inside when Bri handed it to her; it contained half a dozen or more magazines packed full with brass cartridges.
“Thank you,” she said. “I hope I never need to use your pistol, but it will be a comfort to have it by my side.” She found that she meant it, too, and not only because she had a defence against an
y wildlife that might take a notion to attack her. If she ever needed to go to Sinead, now she had a quick, certain and painless method at her fingertips.
“Okay,” said Tom, rubbing his hands together. “Shall we get going?”
Will nodded, but both Ceri and Bri hesitated, regarding Colleen with anguished expressions. Fresh tears brimmed in Ceri’s eyes.
Colleen smiled and found that, despite the pain of cut lips and bruised gums, it felt natural. “Really,” she said, “it’s okay. I want to be alone. I need to be alone.”
“If you change your mind,” said Ceri through a stifled sob, “we’ll be in Cornwall. Land’s End.”
“I know. Tom’s given me directions. Now, go.”
Colleen watched as Tom and Ceri climbed into the Peugeot where Dusty patiently awaited them, and Bri and Will clambered into a white Range Rover. She waved as the vehicles pulled away and stood watching them until they had vanished around a bend in the road.
She did not expect to see any of them again.
* * * * * * *
It was as well that the roads were empty and all she had to do was follow the Peugeot. In addition to her inexpertise and inexperience, Bri’s driving was somewhat hampered by the blurring effect of the tears that insisted on running down her cheeks on a regular basis.
She wiped them away with a handkerchief growing soggy through use. Will didn’t even notice. Head resting against the door pillar, his eyes were closed and he breathed deeply. She let him doze. If his method of dealing with shock was to succumb to slumber, she was fine with that. It prevented him seeing her blub and she was fine with that, too.
Bri barely gave a thought to where they were heading and what had prompted it. The message had come to her the previous afternoon, while they had been out walking along a rainswept seafront. Dogs and cats, scavenging for vermin, turned wild eyes towards them. Bri maintained the protective aura without it any longer causing her head to ache and, for now at least, it continued to keep the animals away.
They had stopped to watch the grey waves roll in. Colleen stood a little apart, sipping scotch and sobbing quietly. Ceri stood with her arm around Will’s shoulder; on this occasion, he didn’t seem to mind. Bri stood on Will’s other side. She gave a gasp when the voice spoke inside her head.
Hello, Bri. Don’t be afraid. My name is Milandra. Your friends Peter and Diane are with me.
Bri had begun, instinctively, to try to expel the invading intelligence, but she recognised the voice as the one that had spoken to her inside the cycle shop in Lambeth, and the mention of Peter’s and Diane’s names made curiosity overcome caution.
We are in a place called Land’s End in Cornwall said the voice. Ah, I see that you know it. There is plenty of room in the hotel for you and your companions.
It is only fair to tell you that the man who shot the boy is also here. He wants you to know that you have nothing further to fear from him. Anything else he wants to say, he can tell you himself if you decide to come.
Please consider coming here. As quickly as you can. As we speak, almost two thousand humans are attacking my people in London. I am afraid it will not go well for them and their actions may seal mankind’s eventual fate.
The remainder of my people are travelling here from a place many light years distant from Earth. They will arrive ten days from now. When they come ashore, I want the first human they encounter to be you, Bri. You do not yet realise it, but you may represent the next stage of mankind’s evolution. You may represent mankind’s best—only—chance of saving itself from complete annihilation.
The voice paused.
That is a huge responsibility to lay on the shoulders of a teenage girl, but I make no apology. Besides, I can see that my words make little impression on you. Your emotions run to sorrow and regret. You have endured a tragedy, one that is too close, too raw, for you to take in the full import of my words.
Nevertheless remember this: come to Cornwall. Come today or tomorrow or the next day. But come.
The voice fell silent. Both Ceri and Will were gazing at her with concern. She was about to say something when the voice spoke again. Quieter; the mental equivalent of a whisper.
Bri, I am still here but now I am alone and I must be brief.
The others do not know that we have spoken before when I helped you to escape from London. It is better that they continue not to know.
I must tell you that your coming here is not without risk. I believe that you are safe from the man who shot your friend, but I am unsure about her. Still, I will protect you as much as I can, and Peter and Diane would lay down their lives for you, although you won’t get Diane to admit to that.
Come to Cornwall. Bring your friends.
This time, Bri was sure that the voice had gone. While it was still fresh in her mind, she relayed to Ceri and Will everything it had said about going to Cornwall, omitting only the part about her being mankind’s best hope of salvation. That was something she didn’t understand or want to consider. Some things were too big, too damned scary, to think about.
“Are you sure?” Ceri sounded as scared as Bri felt. “This Milandra wants us to go to Cornwall?”
Bri nodded. She glanced down at Will. “He’s there,” she said. “The man who shot you.”
Will reached out his good hand and gripped hers tightly. “But so is Peter?”
“And Diane. I won’t go if you don’t want to, Will.”
“I don’t mind, Bri. He won’t try to shoot me again, will he?”
“Milandra said he won’t, but I don’t know.”
“You can’t go,” said Ceri. “It’s way too risky.”
“More risky than being amongst humans?” Bri nodded back towards the town. “There are two men shot dead back there. Not an alien within a hundred miles.”
Ceri opened her mouth, paused with it still open, then closed it again. She fumbled in her jacket pocket for her cigarettes.
Bri looked back down at Will.
“What do you say, buster? I swore I’d never leave you again and I mean to keep my promise. So if you don’t want to go to Cornwall, we ain’t going.”
Will stared at her for a long moment, bottom lip tucked between his teeth. She could sense indecision washing off him as clearly as she could smell salt from the ocean.
“If you want to go to Cornwall,” he said, “I’m coming with you.”
Being mindful of his injured shoulder, Bri reached out and hugged him as tightly as she dared. Ceri watched them, a look of deep sorrow on her face, but she said nothing more.
That night, Tom and Ceri came to see her. Tom wanted to hear about the voice and listened closely while she repeated what she’d told Ceri and Will earlier.
“What have you decided to do?” he asked when she had finished her tale.
“Will and I are going to Cornwall.” She felt her chin jut out, but defiance it transpired wasn’t necessary.
Tom regarded her intently for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Ceri and I are coming with you.”
Without quite knowing why, Bri burst into fresh tears.
That had been yesterday. Today, after saying goodbye to Colleen, the four of them were driving in convoy to Cornwall and, so far, Bri had leaked most of the way.
She had never been what she thought of as a girly girl; not one for fancy frocks or Parisian perfumes or shoes with heels like stilts. Her interests were more surfing and cycling than boy bands and Twilight. Uncontrollable weeping didn’t fit her character profile.
He had saved her life; she had tried to save his.
While Howard lay on his back on the floor of the hotel’s bar, a dark red stain spreading across his shirt, Bri had looked down at him and reached into his mind. Not knowing if there was anything she could do, she found his psyche. Immediately, she knew. This wasn’t like trying to heal an old hurt as she had done with Will and Joe; attempting the same here would be like trying to staunch a breached river bank with a bucket of sand. All she could do was watch as Howar
d slipped away. She could not even offer comfort; his mind had become as insubstantial as foam. With nothing to which to anchor herself, she had returned to her own head, but not before seeing that Howard’s last thoughts had been of his family. That gave her some measure of solace. Ironic, really: she had gone to offer comfort, but had found some herself.
Bri’s right hand came off the steering wheel. She raised it to her temple and touched the indentation where the man had struck her with the paperweight. Her hair had grown back and the egg-like lump had disappeared, but she could feel the hole beneath her skin where her skull had not yet completely fused. It would only close at all because she was young enough that her bones were still growing; a few years older and she would have been left with a hole in her skull for the remainder of her days.
Howard had created that hole with a bone drill in Salisbury Hospital under the careful watch of that strange woman Diane. Bri’s psyche was held tightly by Peter so that her head could not so much as twitch and she avoided the acrid odour of scorched bone. Later, she asked Peter about the smell. “Take a fingernail clipping,” he said, “and burn it with a match. That is what it smelled like when Howard drilled into your head.”
Peter had persuaded the doctor to perform the procedure with the help, Bri suspected, of a little of his ‘special’ persuasive powers. Even so, Howard had not agreed without first speaking to her. Gripping both her hands in his, he had looked intently into her eyes.
“Brianne,” he said, “you have to understand that I am a general medical practitioner. I deal with the treatment and relief of conditions like influenza and mild psoriasis and ear infections. If a patient presented to me with a subdural haematoma, I’d be referring them straight to the A&E Department of St James’s Hospital, not attempting to operate on it myself. For very good reason. Surgeons undertake years of specialised training, acquiring knowledge of anatomy and dextrous skills that I do not possess. Diane will assist me and she has experience of these procedures, but she isn’t a surgeon, either.” Howard took a deep breath and his gaze became even more intense. “If you allow me to attempt this procedure, there’s a chance that you will die because of my ignorance and ineptitude.”