Helix Wars (18 page)

Ever since then there had been a Builder Liaison team attempting to re-establish contact with the aliens, wherever they might be residing now. Director Dan Stewart was the team’s current head. It was, he had often told Maria, a thankless task, not made easier by the fact that the whereabouts of the Builders was unknown. All the team had to go on were the artefacts the Builders had left behind, and the transcriptions of the initial communications between them and the early human settlers.

Maria approached the black Agstarnian ship and stared up at its fractured superstructure. The ship, crewed by members of the Agstarnian totalitarian Church, had followed Hendry’s vessel from their planet with the intention of destroying both the human devils and the apostate Agstarnian Ehrin, who had helped the humans escape from the Church’s custody.

She walked up the grassy mound to the ship’s buckled nose-cone. Beneath its jutting prow she saw a gaggle of Agstarnians, a couple of families with tiny children who tumbled playfully around the mound, oblivious to their parents’ intent focus on their guide.

Maria moved towards the group, along with a dozen humans, and listened in as the guide spoke first in Agstarnian, and then in English. She was finishing her spiel: “...and as we know, the Church in effect met its nemesis here on that momentous day. Friday Olembe, in the golden ship, crossed the sea and shot it down before it could wreak further damage on the ziggurat or, indeed, murder Hendry and his colleagues... Weeks later, the Builders ensured that the rule of the Church came to an effective end on Agstarn when they banished the clouds that had cloaked that world for millennia and allowed the populace for the first time to behold the wonder of the Helix’s circuits...”

Maria gazed back at the rearing ziggurat and considered the drama played out here two centuries ago.

One of the younger Agstarnians piped up in its own language, and the guide smiled and replied with a string of high whistles. She looked above the heads of the aliens and addressed the gathered humans. “She asked, what became of Ehrin and his mate, Sereth? Well, as some of you might know, they returned to Agstarn and married, and Ehrin managed the family airship company. Sereth rose to be an influential politician on her world, and oversaw the uneasy transition from the Church’s draconian rule to that of a freely elected governing council...”

The Agstarnians chattered excitedly amongst themselves, and Maria left the group and strolled down the incline. She glanced at her wrist-com. It was almost noon. She hurried across the greensward to the hotel plaza to keep her date with Dan.

3

I
N THE EVENT,
he was over an hour late.

He contacted her just after twelve, and for a terrible second, as his face appeared on her wrist-com, she thought he’d called to cancel their holiday. “Dan?”

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m still in Carrelliville. Something’s come up.”

“Sabine?”

He shook his head. “No. Work.” He hesitated. “Look, I’ll tell you when I get there, okay? I should be with you in an hour. I’m sorry about this, Maria, but I couldn’t get away.”

She smiled. “I understand. Can’t wait to see you. Love you.”

“See you soon,” he said, and cut the connection.

She sat back in her seat and sipped her ice-cold mango juice. Dan had appeared harassed, and had not reciprocated her avowal of love. She wondered if he were telling the truth. Perhaps he hadn’t yet told his wife about her, and couldn’t find an excuse to get away. She told herself she was being paranoid. If that were the case, then he would simply have called her to cancel the vacation, not tell her that he was delayed.

She decided to order lunch, and while eating a light salad with local bran bread, she watched the vast, spinnaker-like shapes of the Sails – as they had come to be known – disport themselves in the thermals over the ocean. They were great rectangular membranes, an animal life-form which remained perpetually airborne above this ocean and the neighbouring world inhabited by the sentient, frog-like Ho-lah-lee. It was the Sails which had transported Hendry, Kaluchek, Carrelli and the alien Ehrin across the sea to this world as they attempted to evade the Agstarnian’s black ship. In the collective consciousness of humankind, the floating Sails had come to represent the epitome of altruism, and Maria never saw one of their kind, whether in the flesh or as an image, without experiencing a resurgence of hope.

A couple with a young boy were eating lunch on the next table. They appeared to be in their thirties, the woman a tall, well-groomed blonde, the man an equally well-presented executive type. The boy was around seven... Ben’s age, had he survived.

She looked away, attempting to squash the demon of grief back into its box.

The boy resembled his father, chunky and dark. Just as Ben had looked like Jeff... She had joked to Jeff that, as Ben had taken after him in looks, then it was to be hoped that he’d inherited her intelligence. And Jeff had always taken it in good part, to begin with. In the later years, as their relationship after Ben’s death entered a deep freeze, he’d come to resent her constant barbs at his lack of education.

She flinched, inwardly, at the thought of what she’d said when they had last parted.

She finished her lunch, ordered another juice and read a magazine for half an hour.

“You look miles away, darling.”

“Oh!” Disoriented, she stood quickly, too quickly, managing to knock over her glass in the process, and clung to him. The feel of him in her arms, solid and substantial, banished the guilt and the grief.

“Hey, what’s wrong...?”

“Just glad to see you. Oh, look...!” She picked up the glass, tried to mop up the spilled mango juice. He wrested the glass from her grip and whispered, “A waiter will see to that. Come on, let’s get a drink. I need one.”

He took her hand and led her into the hotel. They took the elevator to the penthouse bar and sat at a window seat, gazing out at the expanse of greensward and the glittering blue ocean. Not that they had eyes for the view.

“Maria, forgive me. Something came up at the last minute and I couldn’t get away. And I couldn’t leave it with Gonzalez.”

She took his hand and smiled at him. “Care to tell me, or is it another secret?” she asked, when all she really wanted to know was how it had gone with Sabine.

Their drinks arrived, a whisky and soda for Dan, a lager for her. As he sipped his drink, she watched him, enjoying the play of his lips, the twinkle in his eye. He was in his early forties, but looked younger. He was tall and fair and of Nordic stock – his great-great-great grandfather had been a geneticist, one of a hundred Swedes chosen to leave the Earth aboard the starship
Lovelock
.

Dan was into jogging – one of their shared passions that had brought them closer together a year back, when she had joined his team on a field-trip as in-house medic. She’d arranged to bump into him accidentally-on-purpose a couple of times while out running, and had suggested they meet every other day to help each other along... and a week later one form of physical exercise had turned to another.

And that was all it had been for Maria, at first. Casual, no-ties sex with a handsome man after too long without it. Then, as the months elapsed and their trysts increased, she soon realised that Dan meant much more to her than a desire to work off her sexual frustration.

“I...” he began, then amended it to, “I mean,
we
discovered something today.”

She laughed. “That sounds... what’s the word... portentous?”

He smiled. “I suppose it does. And it is. Look, this goes no further than the two of us, right?”

She crossed her heart. “And hope to die.”

“You know how we’ve suspected the Mahkan of... if not being directly in contact with the Builders, then not being truthful about the fact of their whereabouts.”

“I’ve seen you snarl at the very mention of the Mahkan,” she said. “So?”

“So something came up this morning that suggests we’re right.” He took a drink. “We have someone working with the Mahkan engineers, liaising with them. Between you and me, he’s a spy, working on a certain soft Mahkan we think might be willing to divulge more than her superiors would like.”

Maria frowned. “Not sure I like the sound of that.”

He shrugged, as much to say,
That’s the way of the world
... “Anyway, Governor Reynolds had word from the spook and summoned me to his office this morning. The upshot is that our Mahkan contact more or less confirmed what we suspected.”

Maria sat up. “That the Mahkan are in contact with the Builders?”

But Dan was shaking his head. “No – but they do know where this... this so-called virtual realm they’re inhabiting is situated.”

“One of the polar worlds, right? Stands to reason that it’d be somewhere well out of the way.”

Dan drew a frustrated breath. “That’s just it. Although our tame Mahkan confirmed that the Builders’ whereabouts was known, she didn’t know exactly where.” He shook his head. “It’s so damned frustrating! I’m this close –
this
close” – he squeezed his thumb and forefinger together – “from making the biggest breakthrough for a couple of centuries and it all depends on some lowly spook and his tame Mahkan contact. Reynolds wouldn’t give me much more than that. ‘Security reasons,’ he said.” He swore. “Christ, if only we knew where the bastards were... then at least we might know what measures to consider in order to contact them.”

She took a sip of lager, watching him, and said playfully, “But... have you ever considered that the Builders haven’t contacted us because they don’t want to establish contact? Because there’s no
need
to renew contact?”

He laughed, but without much humour. “Often. I have nightmares about it. But” – he smiled at her – “and this might sound arrogant... but I’m less concerned about the motives of the Builders than I am about the need for us, the human race, to establish contact.”

She reached out and twirled a finger in his blond locks. “It’d certainly be a feather in your cap, Dan.”

“Of course it would, but I’m truly not thinking about what it would mean to me, Maria. The bigger picture is that for the first time in a couple of hundred years we’d be in contact again with perhaps the most powerful race that has ever existed in the galaxy. Hell, you don’t know how difficult it is attempting to monitor the Helix and maintain peace among the races – despite the best teachings of the Builders. The Peacekeepers would give an arm and a leg just to ask for the Builders’ occasional advice.”

“Seriously, Dan, why don’t the Builders realise this and contact us?”

“You want my opinion? They see being incommunicado as a ploy to strengthen us. They placed us in a position of trust, all those years ago, and they want to see us prosper through our own efforts. A crude analogy is a parent who lets his kid climb a tree without...” Suddenly, his face crumpled. “Oh, Maria... Hell, that was crass of me.” He reached out and drew her to him. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking...”

She smiled at him, more touched by his contrition than hurt by his unheeding words. “Dan, it’s okay. I know you didn’t mean... I get what you’re saying. The Builders want us to stand on our own two feet, right?”

He took her hand and squeezed. “Something like that. At any rate, they want us to learn by our mistakes... even if some of those mistakes might prove costly.”

He reached out and, with the back of his hand, stroked her cheek. A silence came between them, broken a little later by his whispered, “Bed?”

She kissed his fingers. “Yes, please.”

4

T
HEY MADE LOVE
in the penthouse bedroom overlooking the ocean.

As ever with Dan it was both cathartic and tender; it was both a giving and a taking. He knew how to give her pleasure and, she liked to think – confirmed by his reaction – she knew how to give it in turn. She couldn’t help contrast this with what she’d experienced with Jeff, who’d worshipped the temple of her body like a fumbling, amateur acolyte, but had never learned how to give her real pleasure. She smiled at how he’d used those very words early in their relationship, ‘I worship the temple of your body...’ and how, innocent as she was, she’d found his naivety endearing.

They lay entwined as the sun set, and Maria traced a line down the centre of his chest and asked, “Sabine?”

She looked into his eyes as he replied, without a beat, “I... I told her about us.”

Maria swallowed, nervous. “And? How... how did she take it?”

“Badly. Very badly. She...” He sat up and pulled her to him, pressing her head to his shoulder. She could not see his expression when he said, “I told her that I’d met someone, someone who meant a lot to me and who I wanted to be with. I didn’t mention your name. She asked... but...” He shrugged, jogging her head. “I just thought she didn’t need to know.”

“What did she say?”

He sighed. “Christ, it was awful. I... I don’t like hurting people, especially someone I once loved and who I still feel a lot for. To see her like that, to see what my words did to here... how they
reduced
her.”