Helix (46 page)

The
sun went down and the light in the clearing dulled to the colour of old gold,
and the humans talked on while they ate.

Ehrin
thought about the deathship, and Agstarn, and how he might bring the truth to
the people of his world.

Kaluchek shifted uncomfortably
as she sat, legs astride, behind Carrelli on the broad back of the
slowly lumbering beast—sharls, Carrelli said they were called. “The sooner we
arrive, the better,” Kaluchek said. “I’m getting saddle sore.”

Ahead,
the insectile lizard who called himself Watcher Pharan slowed his mount so that
he was riding alongside Kaluchek and Carrelli. He spoke in a rapid burst of
flute-like sounds.

Carrelli
nodded her understanding.

Kaluchek
asked, “What was all that about?”

“He
asked if we were comfortable. I assured him that we were... and asked how far
we were from the Sleeper’s ship. He said that we should arrive in about five,
six hours. Before nightfall anyway.”

Behind
them were two slowly plodding beasts, each carrying six tiny quicksilver
aliens. From time to time the aliens had taken it in turns to dismount, dart
forward and scale the mountainous flank of Kaluchek’s sharl. They would sit
staring at her and Carrelli for a few seconds, their large pink eyes
nictitating unsettlingly from the bottom up, before dismounting again, fast as
an eye-blink, and returning to their mounts.

Now
Carrelli passed a fruit over her shoulder. She had been trying various berries
and pod-shaped things all afternoon, picking them
en passant
from
overhanging branches. “Try these. I’m sure they have a mildly soporific
effect.”

“The
best thing I’ve heard all day,” Kaluchek said, taking a handful of the berries.
They were sweet, with a pungent acid aftertaste.

She
was still sore at being separated from Joe. She would rather Olembe and
Carrelli went in search of the sleeping alien, leaving her and Joe back at the
ship to have some fun. But she saw things from Carrelli’s point of view. Olembe
knew a bit about mechanics, and needed someone to help him repair the ship.

Last
night they had halted at sunset and slept in a clearing pretty much identical
to the one they had left. The golden moss had proved a surprisingly comfortable
bed, and the temperature never dropped below a clement twenty-five Celsius,
according to Carrelli’s atmosphere suit.

Kaluchek
had lain on her back and stared through a rent in the canopy at a tier of the
helix that swept overhead. She assumed it was the second tier, the one they had
left, as the planet they were now on, Calique, was turning away from the sun
and so was therefore facing
down
the spiral. She made out oceans
glittering in the sunlight, and the alternate sections of massed land, which
were individual planets. To think that down there somewhere was the place where
they had very nearly lost their lives...

Then
her thoughts had turned to Joe, and the miracle of her finding him, and she’d
forgotten all about vengeful rats.

She’d
turned to Carrelli and asked to use the radio on her atmosphere suit. She
wanted to hear his voice, receive the assurance that he was okay. She explained
that the damned rats had mashed hers.

But
Carrelli had said it would be best to maintain radio silence. If the Church
ship were still in the vicinity...

“Sure.
Sorry,” Kaluchek said, feeling like a schoolgirl reprimanded by the head
teacher.

Now,
rocked by the swaying motion of the great turtle-like animal, sedated by the
fruit Carrelli had given her, Kaluchek thought about Joe Hendry again. For the
first time in years, she could look ahead, plan her life with someone. She saw
a colony thriving on a world like this one, next door or not far away, and
herself a vital part of it; married to Joe, maybe with kids.

She
sat upright, wondering if it was an effect of the fruit that was turning her
head all mushy. She’d never given a thought to kids in the past, and she’d
known Joe only a matter of weeks, give or take a thousand years...

Carrelli
was saying, “...between you and Friday?”

“Mmm?”

“I
said, why the antagonism between you and Friday?”

“Goes
back a long way,” she replied, almost unconscious now.

“Tell
me.”

“Rather
not.”

“It’s
getting to the point where your animosity is disturbing the rhythm of the team.
I don’t want it to affect the outcome of the mission, Sissy.”

“Won’t,”
she said. “It’s fine. I’ll ignore him from now on, ‘kay?”

Carrelli
looked over her shoulder. “You promise?”

“Promise.
Cross my heart.”

She
felt suddenly woozy, and lay back on the leathery hide of the animal. Its broad
back was accommodating. She could lie down, face up, without fear of falling
off; her legs were bent awkwardly on either side of Carrelli, but the drug
dulled her mind to any discomfort. She stared up at the scintillating spokes of
sunlight spearing through the canopy for what seemed like hours. At one point
she became aware of voices, alien voices, like duelling flutes, and opened an
eye to see Watcher Pharan riding alongside, talking to Carrelli. She closed her
eye and minutes later slipped into unconsciousness.

She
woke with a start and sat up, disoriented, wondering where the hell she was.
Then it came to her. She was riding a turtle on a planet called Calique with an
Italian dyke and a lizardly insect named Watcher Pharan...

She
wanted to be back with Joe, holding him in her arms. She laughed to herself.
Here she was, in all probability one of only a few human beings left alive in
the galaxy, on the mission of a lifetime, and all she could think about was the
guy she loved. She didn’t know whether to commend or castigate herself.

The
effects of the drug had worn off. She felt bright and alert. The sun was going
down, laying a patina of honey over everything she could see.

Carrelli
looked over her shoulder. “You back with us, Sissy?”

“That
was a pretty strong... whatever it was. Where are we?”

Carrelli
smiled. “Not far to go now. Another hour maybe.”

Kaluchek
nodded, glancing ahead at the lumbering beast bearing the tiny form of Watcher
Pharan. She nodded towards the alien. “What were you two talking about?”

“I
was asking it about the Sleeper. What kind of alien it was, if it said anything
about the Builders, their motives.”

“And?”

Carrelli
shook her head. “All this happened long ago,” she said. “Thousands of years
ago. There were no written descriptions of the Sleeper ever made—or rather, Watcher
Pharan suspects there were at the time, but that these have been lost from the
scriptures.”

“Lost?
Sounds odd.”

“That’s
what I thought, but I have a theory. The Sleeper is so alien, so relatively
ugly to these people, that the Teachers—they’re almost like priests, you might
say—suppressed the Sleeper’s description in order to make the Sleeper more
mysterious, godlike.”

Kaluchek
thought about it. “And where exactly do we fit into it? I mean, who do the
Caliquans think we are? Some distant cousins of the Builders?”

Carrelli
shook her head. “All they know is what they’ve interpreted from what was
written down, that the Sleeper said that one day a race of beings would fall
from the sky and come for him or her. It had to happen sooner or later, Sissy.”

“And
what do they expect from us? I mean, what do they expect us to do when we come
to the Sleeper?”

Carrelli
shrugged. “That was hard to determine, Sissy. I think, but I’m not sure, that
they credit us with motives that will remain always mysterious to them.”

“So
what’s in it for them?” she asked.

“As
far as I can make out, the act of leading us to the Sleeper is reward enough. I
know this sounds corny, but they seem a wholly altruistic people.”

Kaluchek
looked at the tiny alien perched upon the back of the leading animal. “They
have a whole religion based around the Builders and the Sleeper?”

“They
revere the Builders for obvious reasons, and I think they see the Sleeper as a
holy relation of these godlike beings. For centuries the Caliquans have been
watching the heavens for signs of our arrival.”

Kaluchek
smiled. “What’ll we find, Gina?”

Carrelli
was a second or two before answering. “Answers, perhaps. The reason the
Builders built the helix? That would be rather nice.”

Kaluchek
laughed. “Yeah. The stuff of fairy tales. We’ll probably come across nothing
more than the rusted wreck of a spaceship.”

Carrelli
glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “Do you know something, sometimes your
cynicism reminds me of Friday.”

“Christ,
don’t say that, Gina.” She shook her head. “It’s just that I’d rather expect
the worst, and if it doesn’t happen... well then, that’s great.” Just like I
never expected to come across Joe Hendry, she thought; just like I told myself
that all men were bastards.

“Did
you ask Pharan about the neighbouring worlds, Gina? Does he know if they’re
inhabited?”

“I
asked. He doesn’t know. They’ve had no contact with alien races, until the
Sleeper came along, and then us. They’re a... I was about to say they’re a
backward people, but that would be grossly unfair. They’re a race that have
turned their back on materialism, on technology, and embraced the way of the
spirit. So they haven’t developed vessels to explore the neighbouring worlds.
They look inward, not outward.”

Kaluchek
considered this. “And they haven’t been visited by their neighbours. That might
mean the worlds on either side aren’t inhabited.”

“Or
it might mean that they are, but their citizens do not have the means or the
inclination to cross the oceans.”

“I
just want to find a warm, Earthlike world where we can settle and live in peace
without making a mess of it.”

The
Italian smiled. “I’ll second that, Sissy.”

Minutes
later the air was filled with shrill ululations, and on the leading animal
Watcher Pharan raised his hands and called out, his cry taken up by those
Caliquans riding behind. Kaluchek turned to see the insect-lizards dancing
about on the backs of the stoic sharls, hands raised, great cerise eyes
nictitating in what might have been religious euphoria.

Ahead,
through a gap in the boles of the trees, she made out the object of their
frenzied veneration.

The
great ship had felled a whole swathe of forest with its forced landing, pushing
down trees in an oddly beautiful, and symmetrical fan shape around the blunt
end of its nose-cone. The forest had regrown around it, new trees giving the
impression that the ship was imprisoned; custodial vines snaked over its
surface, as if pinning it to the forest floor. The ship itself had suffered an
extensive fire in the aftermath of the crash-landing, its silver carapace
excoriated and blackened.

The
Caliquans had erected a stairway to the open hatch of the ship, constructed
from logs, the rustic architecture of the stairs contrasting with the ornate,
almost baroque, lines of the ship.

An
air of sanctity hung over the scene. Kaluchek wondered if she would have felt
it had she not known of the Caliquans’ reverence of the ship and what lay
within it.

They
were entering an artificial clearing now, and over the tops of the surrounding
trees Kaluchek could see that the sun was setting on another day— or rather,
she thought, the planet itself was turning on its equatorial axis, bringing
night to this hemisphere as it turned towards the outside of the helix.

The
caravan halted. Watcher Pharan slipped from his mount and approached the
stairway. He performed a series of gestures, so fast Kaluchek could hardly make
them out, then knelt and lowered his face to the forest floor.

He
stood and gestured, raising his arms high.

The
other Caliquans left their sharls and hurried to either side of the stairs,
creating a guard of honour down which Kaluchek and Carrelli would have to pass
to board the ship.

“I’ve
been thinking about the Sleeper,” Kaluchek said. “Surely the Builders would
have noticed the loss of the ship and come for the Sleeper ages ago.”

Carrelli
nodded. “The same thing occurred to me.”

“And?”

Carrelli
said, “Perhaps they did. Perhaps the cold sleep unit—or the ship’s
equivalent—is empty.”

“And
the Caliquans have been venerating an empty casket all along?”

Carrelli
smiled. “Couldn’t that be true of all religions?”

Kaluchek
shook her head. “Maybe... But I like the Caliquans. I find it sad.”

Carrelli
touched her hand. “They have faith. That’s what is important. It gives purpose
to their lives and makes them what they are.”

“Isn’t
that even sadder? They might be worshipping the empty casket of an advanced
alien race.”