by A M Kirk
Our cattle, explained the Soros. Your textbooks speak of these lumbering beasts as rulers of the planet, but it was not so. They were our cattle. And the creatures you call tyrannosaurus rex (The Soros’ voice seemed to convey amusement) we kept them for our sport. No, they did not rule – we ruled! We ruled. And the evolutionary branch from which humans developed, the mammals, your ancestors, in our time were no more than little mice, shrews, smaller than your fist. Our children used to keep them as pets and train them to stand on two legs.
“What happened?” Mark wondered.
Ten million years of evolution, replied the Soros, were wiped out in an instant. We had conquered all the ills that plague you now – hunger, disease, old age – and we had mastered our genetic code, something your race has still not been able to do fully. There is much you can learn from us. Our lifetimes extend to many thousands of your years. We on this space ship have been travelling for three hundred years. But because we have spent much of that time at speeds very close to the speed of light, time slowed down for us. Three hundred years for us meant millions of years passed on Earth. We knew that would happen. We were willing for that to happen. Your own scientists have figured out as much. But what we did not imagine was that when we returned our entire civilization would be gone. Gone.
The Soros grief was unmistakeable.
Your textbooks have the reason: it was a comet, hitting the Earth in the equatorial region, in the area of what you call the Gulf of Mexico. But we calculate there were other impacts all over the planet; only these are not evident now. How the collapse of our species happened we do not know. Like you, we had developed powerful weapons and the world was well defended, against just such an eventuality. Perhaps they could not be deployed in time. We just don’t know. We, on this ship, must have left just weeks before the comet struck.
So we, on this ship, represent the crowning achievement of our evolution because we are the last remnant of it. Only one other ship capable of interstellar flight had been built. Only two. We launched at the same time, on the same mission.
Kind of like Noah’s Ark, thought Mark.
But only one ship has returned, continued Striped Arm. We left our planet to take part in a journey of discovery. As I have indicated, our understanding of the physical laws of the universe had led at last to a means of reaching speeds very close to the speed of light. We have indeed travelled right round the galaxy in less than one of our lifetimes, while those we loved, our lovers and our children, became dust blown over a dead land in the wind of centuries. So when we said we came from the other side of the galaxy, we were not lying. In a manner of speaking, my left hand is on one side of the galaxy and my right hand is on the other.
Again Mark clearly detected amusement in the tone: another trick; another play on words.
But – in that journey round the galaxy, we discovered something.
Now Mark felt darkness envelop him. He was on the bridge of the Soros space ship, staring at a view-screen that was dark except for a few pin-pricks of light. He saw what they had seen at the moment of their “discovery”.
What you are seeing now are the stars on the outermost edge of our galaxy, explained the Soros. The furthest fold of the spiral arm. It was here we found…
The Soros could not translate the words.
The monsters? The old ones? The dark gods? The enemy? The Soros could find no real words in human vocabulary to describe exactly what they had found in these furthest reaches. But Mark knew with absolute clarity that what they found made them deeply afraid.
We dropped out of light speed in a dark solar system. Its sun was collapsing and was on the verge of extinction. It had six planets in close orbit around it and as its gravitational pull intensified the planets would be drawn in to their destruction in two to three hundred years.
The Soros, as you will have realised by now, have a telepathic link with each other. This link, which had enabled us to achieve so much, was finally to prove our curse.
We needed supplies of uranium and some other minerals to replenish our power sources, so we spent some time scanning the planets for signs of it. My ship located some on the fourth planet and our second ship explored the third, a dark, desert, lifeless world, forbidding in every aspect.
The second ship had no sooner touched down than the crew was assailed by the most horrible fears and visions. Realizing that some force, or forces in the planet itself, were the cause, they tried to take off, but the ground beneath the ship had somehow “bonded” with the hull, as if the planet’s soil had formed claws and seized the ship’s legs in the tightest of grips. This “bond” had happened even at the sub-atomic level. That was why our anti-gravity propulsion had no effect, and the ship was trapped.
In our minds we had no choice but to witness all the horrors the crew suffered. Creatures came, life-forms unlike anything ever imagined. They were not carbon-based, like Soros or human, they had nothing in common with animals or insects or anything that we would describe as ” life”. They moved through matter like… like we move through air. Solid, liquid, gas, it made no difference to them. They seemed to move into matter at times, and inhabit it, changing it to suit themselves. They moved in the spaces between the atoms, the sub-atomic, scarcely comprehensible dimension. Using the energy that makes our telepathy possible, they could enter an individual’s mind and, with a gentle torturing “caress”, throw the brain’s electrical activity into havoc. They could change molecular densities, atomic weights, and alter cell structures. We became for them like a human child’s plasticine toy. There was no escape. They lurked in shadows, waiting, waiting.
I cannot explain how it was to watch our companions… not die! For these beings did not kill, not at first. They absorbed, they entered and controlled, and they changed the shapes of our companions into whatever whims they had. By altering cell structures, they grew hideous organs and limbs, and our companions became abominations. But within those abominations our friends were helplessly alive still.
(Briefly – thankfully briefly – Mark glimpsed something of the horror the Soros experienced at telepathically witnessing the fate of those on board the second ship.)
These beings had not known what space travel was.
We gave them the concept and the key, when they took our friends and the second ship.
Our weapons were useless against them. They move through matter, but are not of it, and our weapons, of course, depend on physical laws, just as yours do. The second ship took off. We saw it. But we knew none of our friends was in control. We were so frightened… We, who had hunted tyrannosaurus for sport, lost our reason with fear. I mean that. We went mad in our terror, and we fled.
The galaxy, Mark Daniels, is not well populated with intelligent life. There are many life forms, but not many are not what we could call “intelligent”. Life is so diverse. But we can no more communicate with the fish, or insect life here on earth than we can with some of the beings we found. Can you imagine trying to explain your culture to a bluebottle or a midge? The idea is absurd. And although, using machines or telepathy, we can carry on a conversation with humans, we cannot share the truth of what we have experienced, what we feel and what we know. Not really.
If an army of ants is coming towards you are you going to try to establish communication with them? Of course not. It is simply impossible. You destroy them or you run away. So we ran from the Enemy. They are not animals, you see. And so they have not evolved as animals have, with senses and feelings and instincts. They are completely beyond our comprehension, it’s as simple as that. But there was nowhere we could run to get help. We had found no one else in the galaxy so advanced as we were. So we came home, thinking that our civilization would still be intact, and that somehow some means could be found to defeat these … monsters.
We arrived back just over a hundred years ago. We sent down a little probe, first, because it was obvious things had changed drastically. But in our eagerness to return, perhaps we failed to program
me the probe correctly. It created something of a bang in the atmosphere, somewhere above the land you call Russia.
A spark of all-but-forgotten lore fired in Mark’s mind.
You humans have been speculating about it ever since. But, in any event, it soon became apparent that the continents had shifted, some of the planet’s resources had been renewed with the movement of the tectonic plates, the atmosphere had subtly changed, and the life forms were not what we expected, not at all. Of our species there was no sign, and a new species, descended from that little group of mammals I spoke of earlier, had evolved to fill the gap: humans; homo sapiens.
I’ve mentioned that some of our children had kept mammals for pets. It was quite common. Our children used to make the small shrews of that era do tricks – they could roll over, beg for food and some of us liked to make them stand on two legs, as I have said. Understand, then, how we felt when we found our home overrun by pets! Imagine you come home one day and find your family dog standing on two legs, wearing clothes and issuing orders!
At first it was easy to hide from you. We could land in unexplored parts of the world and carry out our researches to find out what had happened and at the same time we could study the human race. But such things take time. Time was not something we had a lot of. The Enemy, you see, had been able to use the Soros telepathic link to trace us. They were following us through space, in the second ship, using the telepathic structures in our friends’ brains.
They are coming. We can feel them even now, like a mad chaos arising over a distant horizon. But they are not far away, and our time is running out.
We studied human beings. Your minds and your brains were of particular interest to us. All life on earth is ultimately derived from the same sources. Earth DNA is unlike any other. So we are linked, you and I, Mark Daniels. Separated as a species, and seventy million years apart, yet we are linked. A strange thought for you, no doubt.
But your brains… You have at the base what your own scientists call the “reptilian” brain; then, wrapping around that, in a sense, is the mammalian brain; and finally, the thing that gives you your intelligence, your human qualities, is the cortex, the human part of you that has only evolved in the last few million years. And it is unlike anything else in the universe. It is completely unique, and can never evolve again anywhere else.
It means that you can accomplish certain things we cannot. Despite our telepathic ability, and our immense intelligence, we are not quite your equals in imagination. You can visualize certain things that we cannot, and you can perceive certain things that we cannot. Some of you can foretell the future; some of you can move objects by will power alone; and some, such as your greatest philosophers and scientists, can see, as indeed we can, into the true nature of things.
It was this that made us think that, in you, we could save ourselves. The powers that lie in your minds, in the dormant eighty per cent of your human brains, can be our weapons against the Enemy.
So we began experiments.
About sixty years ago we took the decision to start experimenting on human beings. Some of us opposed the idea, but the majority was in favour as it seemed the only option open to us. Some of us suggested that we make contact with you, reveal our existence; but to be honest, sixty years ago you were like children playing with new toys – atom bombs, nuclear power, rockets, and your wild imaginations were keeping you awake at night thinking about life from other planets and how nasty it would be. So it was not the time to make contact. We don’t even think the human race is ready yet, for as a species you are very stupid, but we have no choice now. That is why we made ourselves known to you five years ago. We knew the time was coming when we might need your help, so we established contact in the way we did. But we now know that the second ship is fast approaching the outer edge of the solar system. They will soon be here.
Our experiments tried to stimulate the sleeping parts of your brains. We tried to increase your mental powers, while still retaining some sort of control over you.
The implants, thought Mark.
Yes, the implants.
And my father.
Yes, your father, answered the Soros. Subject number 506919. And then you, but you were not the subject of one of our experiments. You, Mark Daniels, are the subject of your father’s experiment. It’s strange how fate turns out. It was precisely because we exercised no control over you that you developed in your own particular way. You are a rogue element.
We only discovered you when you visited the ship the first time. We sensed the magnetic fields you generated - oh, you have no idea how powerful you can be - and we realized that in you lay our best hope. But you were trying to stifle the power you had. We had to get you to see yourself for what you were.
So you arranged what I suppose you will call my “education”!
Yes. We arranged it all. Including, sadly, the death of Miller. The organisation called “The Human Freedom League”, while they think they are plotting against us, are actually doing our work. The implants again.
Mark had the confirmation of his earlier suspicions.
They all have implants, and I am in fact the one they think of as “the Chairman”. Miller was not an enemy, but you had to be put through a series of emotional traumas and it was calculated that witnessing his death was the climax of those. It is your emotions that give you much of your power. We were helping you to grow.
Mark remembered Miller’s body as it lay slumped against the verge, and he remembered the images he had seen of his father, and he thought about the anguish his mother had gone through.
We had to do what we did! insisted the Soros leader. We had to! If we had let you bumble on in your own little way, the second ship would have arrived and that would be the end of Soros, the end of humanity, the end of our planet! You must understand that!
But Mark, understanding or not, felt only cold, cold rage. Power began to gather again in some deep recess of his mind.
A needle’s thin tip was inserted into his neck.
Now we take what we want! he heard a Soros say. The second Soros had clearly come back into the room. Enough of this talk. Begin the process to use what we need now, without delay!
The drug was very powerful and Mark was helpless to resist.
29Janette and Carrie
They had been escorted by the soldiers to the McIntyre’s Field Centre first while Roberts’ identity was verified and thereafter removed to Allied Command Headquarters. Janette and Carrie were inconsolable. Roberts’ attempts to say something foundered against their combined despair.
He used his influence to find them comfortable rooms within the underground complex and sent word to Carrie’s parents. Martin had been released from hospital with what amounted to no more than a slight head wound, and they would soon arrive to offer what comfort they could to their daughter.
Roberts had never felt so helpless, so useless. No words of his could ever make this situation any better. He moved restlessly in the well-appointed lounge that had been allocated to them and busied himself from time to time with other aspects of the investigation. Carrie and Janette ignored him.
For the umpteenth time Roberts checked his watch. It was 11.15am. As if someone had been waiting for a cue, the door opened and an aide entered and took up an at ease position. “General Talbot to see you, sir, ladies,” he said.
Red-eyed, Janette and Carrie looked up as Talbot came in.
The newcomer was a tall man, in army uniform, with lots of gold and braid and ribbons above the left breast pocket. He wore thin, black-rimmed glasses, and his hair was grey-black, combed back.
“My name’s Talbot, Andrew Talbot.” His manner was serious, concerned and sincere. “Aaron Miller was bringing Mark to see me and then we were going to arrange for him to visit the Soros leader. Events now seem to have moved out of our control, somewhat. I’m what’s known as the General Officer, Commanding Scotland. I want you to know we are trying to understand exactly what has been going on and
precisely what has happened to your son, Mrs Daniels.”
He took command of the situation with cool confidence. “But if you don’t mind, I’d like to get a doctor in here, Doctor Sheila Gold, who will give you quick check up to make sure you’re all right. I know, I know - you’re a doctor yourself, but I’d rather one of our people gave you a check-up.”
Janette nodded apathetically. “If you want. What difference does it make?”
“In the meantime, if there’s anything else you need…”
Janette’s expression came to life and she stood up, almost defiantly. “There is. Apart from my son back. A magnetic resonance imaging machine,” said Janette. “Please.”
“A what?”
“A magnetic resonance imaging machine. Stirling Royal will have one you can borrow, or some doctors’ surgeries even have them now. Maybe you’ve even got one here, I don’t know. I used to have one, before the goddamn Soros blew my home to pieces.”
Talbot said he would see what he could do. “It’s important that you understand, Doctor Daniels, that I am not your enemy.”
Janette appraised him carefully. “We’ll see,” she said.
**********
Darkness. No sensation. This must be death, thought Mark. I’ve been killed and my soul is drifting somewhere in space and time, cut off from everything. I have no eyes to see with, no ears to hear with, no nose to smell things, no nerves to feel things. I am just thought, drifting, and alone. What have they done to me? What have they done? He was not afraid.
**********
Janette was mildly surprised when General Talbot and Director Roberts willingly submitted to the MRI scan. She set it up in their living quarters.
“Anyone ever told you you should have your head examined?” asked Janette, as she affixed the sensors to Talbot’s head. There was no real humour in her tone.