Helix (20 page)

An
alien turned. Hendry made out waving eye-stalks beneath a bony ridge like an
ossified mushroom cup. In the blink of an eye the thing sprang, covering the
distance between the truck and the viewplate in a fraction of a second. It hit
the door with a thud, followed by a raging rattle of chitinous pincers. Its
eye-stalks waved dementedly, peering at them through the viewplate.

Hendry
backed off, sweating, and looked in sudden alarm for the others. Olembe and
Carrelli were slowly walking along the length of the chamber, approaching the
tall oval plate at the far end, like supplicants in a cathedral.

He
turned to the viewplate. The sound from outside was growing louder, a frantic
scrabbling and scraping as more aliens joined the first and sought to force
their way inside.

“Oh,
Christ. Let’s just hope the doors hold,” Kaluchek said. He took her arm and
they hurried up the aisle towards Olembe and Carrelli.

“Our
friends still trying to get intimate?” Olembe asked.

“Christ
knows how long that thing’ll hold,” Hendry said.

Carrelli
was staring at the bronze oval before them. “Long enough,” she said with
infuriating calm, “to allow us to work out what this thing is.”

Hendry
gazed up at the portal set into the stonework. The bronze oval was perhaps ten
metres tall, with a pattern of arabesques decorating its surface.

“Maybe,”
he found himself saying, “it’s the entrance to some kind of transporter.” He
wondered if he was making wild assumptions again. “That’s why the filament
wasn’t in the aerial image: it connects briefly when the station on the facing
tier is geo-synchronous.”

Olembe
said, “You’re reading my mind, Joe. Question is, how brief is briefly? My guess
is very brief. Presuming this thing’s connected to the world at the other end,
and both worlds are turning, then the period of connection can’t be that long.
I reckon we don’t have much time before disconnection.”

Carrelli
said, “Then it would be another day— however long a day is on this world—before
it reconnects.”

Olembe
smiled. “And I don’t want to spend a day locked in this place with those
critters baying for our blood.”

Carrelli
stepped forward, almost hesitantly, and laid a palm on a patterned section of
portal. Instantly the oval panel began to slide open, surprising Carrelli who
stepped back with a gasp.

“How
the hell did you do that?” Olembe said.

Carrelli
shook her head. “That symbol,” she said, pointing to a vaguely fish-shaped
hieroglyph. “It was similar to the one that opened the outer door.”

They
stared into the revealed chamber, awed and silent. Hendry made out a vast
space, dimly lit.

At
last Olembe said, “Okay, get the truck.”

Hendry
hurried back to the truck with Kaluchek and hauled himself aboard. Outside, the
aliens were still scraping at the doorway. He glanced at the viewplate, and
wished he hadn’t. Frantic claws had excavated a deep gouge in the material.

Kaluchek
revved the engine and steered towards the chamber. She braked before the
entrance while Olembe and Carrelli climbed aboard.

They
stared into the chamber.

“Okay,
let’s do it,” Olembe said at last.

She
started up the truck. It rolled slowly forward, crossing the threshold. A
second later the portal eased shut behind them and Kaluchek cut the engine. All
was silent for a second or two, and then Hendry became aware of a faint but
definite vibration, as if the vehicle was still in motion.

Olembe
opened the door and swung from the cab, climbing down onto the deck and
laughing. “We’re going up,” he said.

Hendry
joined him, followed by the others. He stood very still, feeling the vibration
that ran through the soles of his feet and up his legs. At the same time, his
stomach seemed to be floating. He recalled the sensation from elevators back
home, but found it hard to believe that he was really riding some kind of
transportation system between the tiers.

“The
air’s breathable in here,” Olembe said, looking up from his softscreen.

Hendry
pulled off his faceplate, breathing in warm air tinged with a sharp, metallic
note. He moved to the edge of the floor, where scrollwork tiles segued
seamlessly into an identically patterned wall. The chamber was oval, like the
inside of an egg, one with the colour and design of the ziggurat’s interior
panelling.

He
reached out and touched the warm metal, and felt a distinct thrumming beneath
his fingertips.

Kaluchek
said, “Do you think the same beings built the elevator and the helix?”

“It’d
make sense,” Olembe said, “to have a transport system between the tiers. The
alternative would be some form of space flight, which might be costly, or else
it’s the long haul up the spiral.”

“There
was no sign down there of the beings who built this,” Hendry said. “Unless
those aliens are the devolved ancestors of the original builders.”

“What
a terrible thought.” Kaluchek shivered.

“The
builders must exist somewhere,” Carrelli said, smiling at the notion. “I
imagine them as an incredibly ancient, wise race. Anyone who had the capability
of constructing the helix must have been around for a long, long time.”

“How
romantic,” Olembe said. “And what if your wise ones turned out to be
ichor-dripping fascist lizards?”

Carrelli
chose to ignore him. They returned to the truck and shared out the rations.

As
they ate, Carrelli said, “I’ve been thinking. This can’t be the only elevator
on the helix. There must be others, no?”

“Don’t
see why not,” Olembe grunted.

“So
maybe there will be a series of elevators, connecting each tier of the spiral
at certain intervals.”

Hendry
said, “Well, that’d make the task of finding a habitable world a little
easier.”

“If
you’re right, Gina,” Kaluchek said, “then we might find somewhere in a matter
of days. Imagine the reaction of the colonists when we wake them with the good
news.”

Olembe
pointed at her. “Always assuming, Sis, that the worlds we find aren’t already
inhabited.”

Hendry
was considering this when the chamber seemed to bob. He rocked in his seat, his
stomach flipping. The sensation was as if he’d been spun quickly
head-over-heels and returned to his original position.

Kaluchek
said, “Midpoint, right? We turned in the tube, and now we’re heading down to
the next tier, the one above the first?”

Carrelli
looked up from her sectioned plate and nodded. “My guess too, Sissy. We should
be reaching the next tier in about ninety minutes.”

They
wondered aloud at what they might find on the next tier, and whether it might
be warmer than the last, and habitable—or inhabited.

Hendry
imagined finding some temperate, habitable and vacant world, and then returning
to the
Lovelock
and leading the colonists, via the filament, to their
destination. Surely the colonisation of the helix would not prove to be that
simple?

Or
perhaps they had experienced the worst of the mission so far, and the rest
would be plain sailing.

He
climbed from the cab. He wanted to be on the deck when they touched down, not
confined in the truck. He crossed to the wall and touched the scrolled
patterning of the bronze tiles, wondering if the design was merely aesthetic or
possessed some inherent meaning. Lost in thought, he moved slowly around the
chamber.

He
recalled the last time he had seen Chrissie, at the starship graveyard in
Melbourne. They had held each other as they said goodbye. She had been so real
in his arms, so solid and vital—and if he closed his eyes he could feel her
again.

Kaluchek
said, “You’re miles away.”

He
opened his eyes. “I was thinking... weeks ago, subjectively, I was facing a
future on Earth without Chrissie.” The instant he said it, he wished he hadn’t.
It had sounded so self-piteous.

She
looked at him. “Joe, I’m sorry...”

They
were silent for a time, staring at the curlicues and whorls that adorned the
tiles. Kaluchek glanced back at the truck.

Hendry
said, “Why the downer on Friday, Sissy? You said—”

She
wrinkled her nose. “Because the guy’s a shit,” she said.

He
shrugged. “He seems to have done a decent job so far, taking charge and all.”

She
looked at him. “I know you’re going through hell with what happened back there,
but don’t let it blind you to what Olembe’s doing.”

“He’s
doing his best to lead us to safety.” He hesitated, then said, “Back in the
truck, you said something about Olembe’s past.”

“Yeah...”
Unexpectedly, she took his hand and said, “Joe, listen—back in Berne, while I
had some free time, I did some research on the folks I’d be living with for God
knew how long.”

“And?”

She
asked, “What did he tell you about himself?”

“Not
much, just that he had a wife, kids.”

“He
didn’t tell you what he did for a living?”

“I
assumed he was a nuclear engineer.”

“He
was. He worked at the big N’gombe plant near Abuja. But before that he was a
colonel in the West African Army.”

Hendry
shook his head, at a loss to see where this was leading. “So?”

“He
was in charge of the unit that took five hundred hostages in the war with
Morocco six years ago. Five hundred men, women and children. They were held for
ransom. The WEA wanted a mass release of its prisoners from jails in Rabat and
Casablanca. They threatened to kill the hostages— women and children first.”

Hendry
looked back at the truck. Olembe and Carrelli were in the cab, sitting side by
side without speaking.

“And?
I didn’t keep up with world events back then.”

Kaluchek
stared up at him. “The Moroccan government held out, and Olembe was as good as
his word. He ordered the murder of the hostages. All five hundred were killed
and buried in a mass grave in the Sahara.”

Hendry
shook his head. “Christ. Sissy... you sure about this?”

“Unlike
you, Joe, I did nothing but keep up with world news five years ago, wondering
where the hell we were going. I took a big interest in what that bastard did.
He was never arrested, never tried. The five hundred were just another set of
casualties in wars and famines and other disasters that’d claimed the lives of
millions. When I got to Berne, I thought I recognised Olembe. I did some
checking on what’s left of the web. When I knew for definite, I got hold of
Bruckner, asked him if he knew he was employing a mass murderer.”

“What
did he say?”

“He
prevaricated, but I pressed him and he admitted that ESO was aware of Olembe’s
past.”

“And
they were turning a blind eye because they were desperate for competent
engineers so close to launch?”

Kaluchek
was nodding, her face hard. “You got it, Joe.” She looked across at the cab.
“Now you know why I don’t like the bastard.”

Hendry
nodded, lost for words. Kaluchek went on, “I don’t like the idea of someone
like Olembe benefiting from ESO’s largesse. More than that, I don’t like the
idea of starting anew with a mass murderer in our midst.

“Sissy,
don’t do anything foolish like confronting him.”

“Don’t
take me for a mug, Joe. I’ll wait till things have sorted themselves out, till
we’ve found a world we can settle and got the colonists up there... then I’ll
tell the authorities what I know and they can take it from there.”

Hendry
nodded. “Fine. That sounds like the best thing.”

“So
anyway, as I was saying, be aware of what he is when he’s issuing all those
commands, okay? Don’t trust the bastard an inch.”

Back
at the crash-landing site, out on the ice when the alien had attacked, what
Olembe had done had effectively saved his life... Of course, Olembe had done it
to save his own life, too, but nevertheless Hendry had felt then some debt of
gratitude for his actions.

He
wondered what had driven Olembe to order the murder of five hundred innocent
men, women and children.

He
looked at Kaluchek. “And while you were checking up on your travelling
companions, what did you get on me?”

She
shook her head. “Not much. I know about what happened to your wife. I couldn’t
help noting the irony.”

He
nodded. “You mean, the Fujiyama Green Brigade’s responsibility for killing the
five members of the original maintenance team? Had that not happened, I
wouldn’t be here now. I’d be a thousand years dead.”

“Life’s
strange, Joe. And if it was the Brigade who managed to sabotage the
Lovelock...”

He
closed his eyes. What might his wife have said about the Brigade’s actions
bringing about the death of her only daughter? How might she have justified
that act of terrorism? The frightening thing was the thought that she would do
just that, claim that personal sacrifice, no matter how bitter, was of little
consequence beside the accomplishment of the Brigade’s objectives.