Alternate Realities (25 page)

“Lady Dela,” Modred’s voice came then. “I suggest you come inside and seal yourselves into a compartment.”

“I suggest you do something,” Dela said shortly. “That’s what you’re there for.”

“Yes, my lady,” Modred said after a moment, and there was a squealing in the background. “But we’re losing pressure in the topside lab. I think they’re venting our lifesupport. I’d really suggest you take what precautions you can, immediately.”

“We hold the airlock,” Dela said.

“No,” Modred said. “You can’t.” A second squealing, whether of metal or some other sound was uncertain.

And then the com went out.

“Modred?” Dela said. “Modred, answer me.”

“We’ve lost the ship,” Lynette said.

“Lady Dela—” Lance said quietly. “They’re moving again.”

They were. Toward us. A wall of serpents and taller shapes like giants, lumpish, in what might be suits or the strangeness of their own bodies.

Dela stopped and gathered up a spear, leaned on it, cumbersome in her suit. “Get me up,” Percy was saying. “Get me on my feet.”

“If they want the ship,” Dela said then in a voice that came close to trembling, “well, so they have it. We fall aside and if we can we go right past their backs. We go the direction they took Griffin, hear?”

“Yes,” Lance said. Gawain got Percy on his feet. He managed to stay there. Lynette stood up with me and Vivien. Out of Vivien, not a word, but she still held her spear, and it struck me then that she had not blanked: for once in a crisis Vivien was still around, still functioning. Born-man tapes had done that much for her.

The lines advanced, more and more rapidly, a surge of serpent bodies, a waddle of those behind, beyond the hulking shape of the machinery they had used to breach us, past the glare of the floods.

S
o we stood. In front of us was that machine like a ram, and that was a formidable thing in itself; but it was frozen dead. And about it was a fog, a mist that made it hard to see—I thought it must be of their devising, to mask how many they were, or what they did, or prepared to do. Within the mist we could see red serpent shapes shifting position, weaving their bodies together like restless braiding, like grass in a sideways wind, like coursers held at a starting mark, eager and restrained. It was peculiarly horrible, that constant action; and broadbodied giants stood behind, purplish shadows less distinct, an immobile hedge like a fortification.

“You understand,” said my lady Dela, “that when they come, we only seem to hold; and fall aside and lie low until we can get behind their lines. Don’t try more than that. Does everyone understand?”

We avowed that we did, each answering.

And then a clearer, different voice, that was from the
Maid
’s powerful system. “My lady Dela.” Modred. And a sound behind his voice like groaning metal, like—when the lock had given way. “I’ve sealed upper decks. They’re breaking through the seal. I suggest you withdraw inside. Now.”

“My orders stand,” Dela said.

“There’s danger of explosion, lady Dela. Come inside
now
. I am in contact with the alien. It instructs we give access.”

“Protect the ship.”

“I’m doing that.”

“You take your orders from me, Modred.”

A silence. A squeal of metal.

“Modred?”

“They’re in. We’ve lost all upper deck. Withdraw into the ship.”

And now it began. In front of us. The serpents were loosed, and they came, looping and heaving forward like the breaking of a reddish wave. The giants behind them moved like a living wall.

“Stand still,” Dela said, paying no more heed to Modred. Lance and Lynette put themselves in front of her, and Percy and Gawain stood to either side. Myself, I gripped my spear in thick gloved hands and left Viv behind us, moved up to Percy’s side, because his one arm was useless now.

Oh, there was not enough time, no time at all to get used to this idea. I had never hit anything. I had a sudden queasiness in my stomach like psych-sets amiss, but it was raw fear, a doubt of what I was doing, to fall under that alien mass—but that was what our lady had said we must do.

“They’re hard to cut,” I heard Lance tell us; very calm, Lance, my lady’s sometime lover and never meant for more. “But hit them. They do feel it.”

They. I could see them clearly now. The serpents had legs and used them, poured forward overrunning their own slower members, like the rolling of a sea, all soundless in the insulation of my helmet, and time slowed down as my mind began to take in all of this detail, as my heart beat and my hands realized a weapon in them. The tide reached Lance and Lynette and boiled about them, hip-high until they felt Lance’s blows. One reared up, and others, and those behind overran, climbing the rearing bodies, with blind nodding heads, and flung themselves aside and poured past. One came at me, a snaky, legged body whose hide was a slick membrane of purples and reds. I swallowed bile and jabbed at it with all my strength: the point of the spear made a dent in its muscle and scored its slickish hide: it nodded its head this way and that in eyeless pain: a small
O
of a mouth opened and its screaming reached me past my comrades, amplified sobs for breath and my lady’s curses. I had no idea what became of that beast or where it went: there was another and I struck at that, and went on jabbing and beating at them until my joints ached, until finally one slithered behind my legs and another slid off an attacking body and came down in my face, huge and heavy and horridly alive.

I was buried in such bodies. I yelled out for horror, bruised, aghast at the writhing under and over me as I became flotsam in that alien tide. “My lady!” I cried, and heard someone cry out in great pain—O Percy! I thought then, with his arm already torn; and where my comrades were in this or where my lady was I could not see. Even the light was cut off, as a body pressed over my faceplate, and then my com went out, so that I had only my own voice inside my helmet, and the murmuring rush from outside.

Then the mass above flowed off me, and I saw light—saw—the giants passing near, next in the alien ranks. One almost trod on me, indifferent, and I clawed my way aside, scrambled atop that heaving mass of dragon-shapes, tumbled then, borne toward the
Maid
’s gaping lock. I remembered the com control on my chest, pressed the button and had sound again, Lance’s deep voice calling out a warning: “Look
out
!”

And oh—the giants were not the worst, them with their broad violet bodies like gnarled trees come to life—There was a shape that shuffled along as if it herded them all, a lumpish thing larger even than they, and puffed with delicate veined bladders about its face, its—I could not see that it had limbs in its fluttering membranous folds. It seemed brown; but the membranes shaded off to greens, to—blues about its center and golds about its extremities. It rippled as it moved. There was a wholeness and power about it that—in all its horror—was symmetry.

I saw one of us gain his feet, sword in both his hands. It was Lance: I heard his voice calling after help even while he swung at it to drive it off. Its membranes fluttered with the cuts. I scrambled over bodies to gain my feet; I saw another of us closer, trying to help; but it came on, and on—just spread itself wider and gathered Lance in sword and all; and that other, who must be Gawain—it got him too, and it kept coming, at me. I couldn’t find my spear; but of a sudden my feet met bare decking, the serpents all fled as the fleshy webs spread about me, all dusky now: more limbs/segments—I saw the floods glow like murky suns through the folds as it swept about me. I felt—horror—muscle within those folds, a solid center. I heard one of my friends cry out; I heard someone curse.

And it
spoke
to us—our Beast: it was nothing else but that. It rumbled deep within and moaned and ticked at us, a sound that quivered through my frame until it was beyond bearing. I yelled back at it—
I
screamed at it, till my throat hurt and my voice broke. I heard nothing. The sound pierced my teeth and marrow, too deep for hearing.

I hit the flooring on my back suddenly, which for all my lifesupport and padding hardly more than jolted me. The veil of its limbs swept on, the sound was gone, and it passed, leaving me lying amid the litter of our weapons. I flailed about getting over on my knees so that I could begin to get up. I heard Viv making a strange lost sound, but she was there. And my lady—“Lady Dela,” I called, trying to reach her to help; but Lance was first, pulling her to her feet. A hand helped me, and steadied me, and that was Gawain. Percy—I looked about, and he was on his feet, with Lynette. I found my spear, or someone’s, and gathered it up. Our Beast lumbered on, into the
Maid
’s open airlock, as all the rest had done, leaving us alone.

“Modred,” Gawain cried, and he would have gone after, but Lance caught his arm. And Lynette:

“My lady,” she said then, and pointed with her sword the way toward the machine, the way down the passage, that we had hoped to go.

And there amid the smokes stood another rank of giants, no less than the first.

Dela swayed on her feet. The weight we all carried seemed suddenly too much for her. “We’ve lost,” she said. “Haven’t we?” And slowly she turned toward us. I couldn’t see her face: our faceplates only reflected each other, featureless. “Percivale,” she said, “is the arm broken?”

“My lady,” he said, “I think it is.”

She was silent for a moment. “So we’ve nowhere to go.”

She bent down. I thought she meant to sit down. But she picked up a spear from off the ground and stood up and faced toward the giants.

So did we all then. It was that simple. It occurred to me finally that my knees hurt and I was bruised and sore from that battering, when my heart had settled down, when the minutes wore on. One of us sat down, slow settling to the deck. We looked; and that was Viv, sitting there, but not blanked ... “Vivien,” my lady asked, “are you all right?”

“Yes, lady,” Viv said, a small thin voice. She was with us. She had her spear in both her hands. She was just never very strong, except in will. She wanted to live. She fought for that, perhaps. Perhaps it was something less noble. With Vivien I never knew.

But she was there.

It was a strange thing, that none of the rest of us sat down, when it was so much more reasonable to do. When giving up, I suppose, was reasonable. But getting up took so long a time, and we had seen how fast the enemy could move. Besides—besides, there was a sense in us that it was not a thing to do, facing this thing. My hands clenched tight about the spear and while I had no strength to go charging at them, I wished they would come on so that I could do something with this frustration that was boiling in me ... in
me
, who could feel such a thing.

We should have the banner here, I thought. We should have the bright true colors, which was what we
were
, in this place of violet murk and white mist and glaring floods. It might be they would understand us then—what we meant, standing here. Maybe others besides humans used such symbols. Maybe it would only puzzle them. Or maybe they would think it a message where voices meant nothing at all, one side to the other.

But we had nothing. We had no faces to them; and they had none for us, standing like a wall of trees.

And silent.

“Ah!”
Vivien cried, a sudden gasp of horror from behind us. I jerked about, nextmost to her—a serpent was among us, loping from out the lock. Vivien hurled herself aside from it, and I did, thoroughly startled; but as I turned to see it pass, Gawain hit it with his sword. It writhed aside and scuttled through with all its speed, evading Lance and my lady and Lynette, running as hard as it could go toward the cover of the machine and its waiting giant comrades.

“A messenger,” Dela said. “We should have stopped it.”

“My lady
—
”
A faint voice, static-riddled.

“Modred,” Dela exclaimed. “Modred, we hear you.”

“It ... inside ... the tubes ... I don’t ...”

“Modred?”

“... broken through ...”

“... tried ...”

And then static overwhelmed the voice.

“I think,” said Lynette, “that’s a suit com.”

“Modred,” Dela said, “keep talking.”

But we got nothing but static back.

“If he’s still near controls,” Percy said, his voice very thin and strained, “he may be communicating with the other side.”

I cast an encumbered look toward the line of giants, fearing
that
coming at our backs. “My lady,” I said, “they’re closer.”

Others looked as I looked back; and then—”The lock!” Percy exclaimed.

It was back, our Beast. It filled the doorway, having to deflate some of its bladders to pass the door; and in leathery limbs like an animal’s limbs it had something white clutched against it and buried in its membranes.

“Modred,” Dela exclaimed in horror.

He looked dead, crushed and still. And the bladders inflated again, in all their murky shades of blue, taking him from view. But then the limbs unfolded and it squatted and let him to the decking, a sprawl of a white-suited figure out of that dreadful alien shape. It spoke to us, a loud rumbling that vibrated from the deck into our bones; and oh, what it was to be held inside it when it spoke, with the sound shaking brain and marrow. It stood over Modred, partly covering him with its membranes. It quivered and rumbled and wailed and ticked, and Lance came at it, not really an attack, but making it know he would. I moved, and the others did; and the giants were a shadow very close to us, coming at our side.

Then our Beast retreated, a flowing away from us toward the giants, a nodding, slow withdrawal, and rumbling and ticking all the while. A loping serpent, murky red, came out of the lock and ran along beside it as it went.