Helix Wars (29 page)

He stared at Maria and said, “Do you know what the worst thing is about losing Ben?”

Biting her bottom lip, she shook her head.

He said, “You spend so much time looking ahead, seeing your child at five, ten, fifteen. You invest emotionally in a future that’s out there, a future that’s inevitable. You wonder at your relationship with your son when he’s twenty, at university or whatever. There are so many possible futures, but the human mind only conjures the very best. And then, something like that happens, and suddenly there is no future, absolutely none at all. And it’s impossible, totally and utterly impossible, to express the loss of that future to anyone.”

She gripped his hand as if hanging on for dear life, and stared at him through her tears. “Even to me?”

He said, “At the time, yes. It was just too painful to...”

He made a sudden decision and stood up, still gripping her hand.

“Jeff?”

“You brought me here. We need to...” He pulled her to her feet. She came around the table and joined him. He took a deep breath and turned to face the stand of pine trees.

He walked across the chipped bark towards the nearest tree, Maria at his side, her arm around him now, and came into its cool shadow.

He fought against the constriction in his throat and said, “I’m sorry, Maria. He was only...” He reached out, touched a bough, only a metre and half from the ground.

He said, “I looked away, for about three seconds. That’s all it was, Maria. Three seconds. He was climbing, so happily... I was standing about there, over there, a few metres away. If I hadn’t turned away.”

Ben had been four, only four years old...

They held each other, her face against his chest, and wept.

“I heard him cry out when he slipped, but by the time I turned, he was already...”

Ben was lying on the floor in a posture so still that it was hard to believe that he wasn’t sleeping. He’d known, instantly, that his son was dead, his neck broken, that no amount of resuscitation would restore him to life, even though he and Maria tried ceaselessly, turn and turn about, in mounting desperation, until the medics’ copter arrived seven minutes later and eased him aside and confirmed what he knew to be a fact.

If only he’d not looked away, to where Maria was bending over the picnic table, arranging lunch, beautiful in the sunlight.

Then the sudden cry: “Daddy!”

And, later, in the hospital, Maria had said, mired in her own shock and incipient grief, “Why did you look away, Jeff?”

Three seconds, an errant glance, a life extinguished.

Maria led him away from the tree, and they emerged from its enveloping shade into bright sunlight. They walked through the picnic area until they came to the river and paused, side by side, staring at its glittering width in the late afternoon sunlight.

He said, “What now?”

She looked up at him, a question in her eyes.

“You brought me here to talk. We’ve talked. And now you want to...” He almost said, ‘ask my absolution,’ but stopped himself. He went on, “Let’s remain friends, okay? We’ve been through too much just to part and never see each other again.”

Silently, she nodded.

He said, “Be honest with me. It is Dan Stewart, isn’t it?”

She nodded again.

He smiled, reached out and stroked her hair. “I hope you’re happy with him, Maria.”

“Oh, Jeff.”

They held each other, and he looked over her head at the flowing river, and he experienced a strange sense of release, of long-delayed liberation, which at once filled him with exuberance and something almost like despair.

She said, “Come on, I’ll drive you back.”

He wanted to be alone with his thoughts for a while, and could not face the confines of his A-frame. “No. I’ll call a taxi. I just want to stay here a little longer, okay?”

“You sure?”

He smiled. “I’m sure.”

They came together again, in an embrace that seemed to him affectionate, and when she pulled away she was smiling. “There’s a party at the Governor’s place next week. It would be lovely if you could come along.”

“I’ll try to make it,” he lied, and watched her walk away through the trees. She turned, once, to wave, then disappeared into the distance.

He sat on the bank of the river as the sun went down, then lay on his back and stared up at the sweep of the circuit overhead, which would soon be lost to sight as daylight turned to night.

3

H
E SAT ON
the veranda of his A-frame and stared out across the lake. He was on his fourth beer and he was feeling mellow. At last the long limbo of uncertainty, the time of not knowing for sure whether Maria was or was not conducting an affair behind his back, was over. He had even unburdened himself, and felt better for it, and in doing so had allowed Maria to leave him without the rancour and recriminations he had thought inevitable.

He was sunk in the luxurious lassitude of self-pity, and told himself to snap out of it. He had always despised self-piteous people in the past, and now he was taking the course of least resistance and giving in to the easy emotion.

He sat up. He’d been granted a month’s furlough after the medical check up, and at the time had relished the prospect of so much paid leave. He was not so sure about it now, with nothing to do but drink himself stupid, regret decisions made in the past, and dream about how it might have all been very different with Maria.

He’d go over to the spaceport first thing in the morning, buttonhole Kransky in personnel, and report fit and able for duty.

He was about to fetch another beer from the kitchen when the com-screen chimed. He moved to the lounge.

This time an image appeared on the wall, though it was not Maria’s. “Accept,” he said.

A reptilian face stared out at him. “Jeff?”

“Kranda, what a surprise.” He raised the bottle. “Just having a little drink in celebration. Why don’t you join me?”

“That might be difficult, Jeff. I’m on Mahkan. What are you celebrating?”

He thought about it. “The end of my marriage, Kranda.”

The alien blinked at him. “We Mahkans celebrate the successful completion of gender union,” he said. “I thought humans were monogamous for life?”

“In... in theory, yes, that is so. In some cases. Not all. Not in this case. Maria and I have untied the knot.”

“And you’re celebrating?”

“Yes. Or drowning my sorrows, I don’t really know which, Kranda.”

“You are, my friend, talking in riddles.” She leaned forward. In the background Ellis made out a grey stone wall and a slit window. “I called to say that, once again, I am in your debt.”

Ellis shook his head, confused. “You are?”

“You saved my life on Phandra, Jeff.”

“Oh... that.”

I killed an innocent – well, perhaps not so innocent – Sporelli soldier
, he thought.
Instinctively, in order to save the life of Kranda, and maybe even my own... I killed another sentient being.

He was still trying to work out how he felt about that.

“What about it?” he asked, taking a long mouthful of beer.

“I am in your debt.
Sophan
. I am honour-bound to pay off that debt.”

“Kranda,” he laughed. “You’re nothing of the kind. Humans don’t work like that. Forget it, okay? I won’t think any the less of you.”

“Humans might not work like that, Jeff. But we Mahkans do. I owe you.”

He tried not to smile. “Well, if you insist.”

“And I know how to pay off the debt, Jeff.”

Ellis leaned forward. “Go on.”

“I have been monitoring Sporelli movement on Phandra, with the aid of a high orbit observation station. I concentrated on the coast of the D’rayni sea.”

“And?”

“And I discovered where the captured Phandrans, the Healers, were taken.”

Ellis pulled the bottle from his lips, slopping beer down his shirt. “Calla...” he said.

“I cannot be certain that the Healer you knew is among the prisoners taken to D’rayni, but I suspect it is a high probability.”

“And... are the Phandrans in danger?”

“They are in the company of the Sporelli invaders, Jeff.”

Ellis climbed unsteadily to his feet and paced up and down before the wallscreen. “Christ! There’s no news here about the Sporelli invasion. Nothing. I had hoped the Peacekeepers might have done something by now.”

The Mahkan on the screen pulled back her lips in a humourless grimace. “My guess is that your leaders will do nothing for the time being. They are spineless as the faction that at the moment rules my people. However...”

He stopped pacing and faced the alien. “Yes?”

“However, I have been given to understand that, while Mahkan government action might not be forthcoming, the authorities will turn a blind eye to any individuals acting unilaterally.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that I will shortly be descending to the surface of D’rayni and attempting to liberate Calla, along with as many other Phandrans as possible, from the Sporelli.”

“Alone?”

The Mahkan inclined her long head. “Alone.”

At the time Ellis had no idea what made him say, “Take me with you, Kranda.”

The alien regarded him in silence for perhaps ten seconds. At last she said, “You would be a liability, human.”

Ellis said, “You owe me, Kranda! You said so yourself. So, pay the debt. Let me go with you. I owe Calla, for saving my life. I want to pay off
my
debt to
her
.” He blinked, then laughed. “And how dare you say I’d be a liability!”

“Well, human, you would. Unless...”

Ellis approached so close to the screen that the Mahkan’s great snout was a pixilated blur. “Unless what, lizard?”

“Unless you were equipped with a varnika – what you call an exo-skeleton. And you would have to be armed, of course, unless that goes against your refined human sensibilities?”

He thought of the exo-skeleton Kranda had worn on Phandra, how near-invincible it had made her. And if he were armed, that did not mean he would be compelled to shoot to kill.

“Very well, I agree.”

Kranda was silent for a time, thinking. “If you were equipped with a varnika, and armed... We have a saying on Mahkan: two warriors, one brain. I will need to requisition a varnika small enough for your puny frame, but that should be no problem.”

“How do we get down there?”

“I’ll commandeer a flier, Jeff, and request landing rights at Carrelliville for eight-hundred hours tomorrow, your time.”

“And when we get to D’rayni? Have you thought about how we’ll go about liberating the Phandrans?” The very thought was enough to sober him.

“That, my friend, will have to wait until we have assessed the situation on the ground. I will see you tomorrow, Jeff.”

She cut the connection.

Ellis sat for a while in stunned silence, wondering if what he had talked Kranda into doing had been at all wise. He told himself that he owed it to Calla, after all, for everything she had done for him. He set the half-finished beer aside: any more and in the morning he’d be in no fit state to go anywhere with Kranda.

He slept fitfully that night, dreams of Maria phasing weirdly into images of the tiny Phandran Healer. At one point he came awake suddenly, wondering if the conversation with Kranda had really happened. He even rolled out of bed, his throat parched, and moved to the lounge. He activated the wallscreen, called up the memory, and ordered it to replay the last communiqué.

Kranda stared out at him, saying, “I’ll commandeer a flier, Jeff.”

He heard his own reply, as ever hating the sound of his recorded voice, and quickly ordered the wallscreen to close down.

So he hadn’t been dreaming, and very soon would be touching down on D’rayni soil.

F
IFTEEN
/// T
HE
H
OLDING
S
TATION

1

T
HE FLIER TOOK
off from Carrelliville spaceport a little after six that morning. Ellis sat back in the co-pilot’s seat, instinctively reaching for the controls as they powered away from New Earth. He had a pilot’s habitual mistrust of other pilots’ capabilities, and felt twitchy at not being in command of the ship.

Behind their seats, hanging from the bulkhead like a pair of skeletons in a dungeon, were the Mahkan varnikas. His own was dwarfed by Kranda’s, puny by comparison. Equipped with the exo-skeletons and armed with the latest Mahkan weaponry, they would be a forbidding double-act.

He tried not to dwell on what might lie ahead.

He looked through the side-screen at the bright green rolling countryside of New Earth. To the west was the park where he and Maria had parted yesterday. He wondered where she was now, what she might be doing, then quickly closed down that line of thought.