Ten Little Aliens: 50th Anniversary Edition (22 page)

She moaned and opened her eyes and saw a feminine face, framed by long straight blonde hair. The woman who shouldn’t be here, Polly. Soothing her. Haunt tried to struggle, hated to let anyone see her so weak. Something hot and molten was stirring sluggishly in her guts.

‘What’s happening?’ she mumbled, almost choking on her tongue.

‘Tovel told me to give you something when you woke up,’ Polly said. She got up and went away.

‘Did they kill Frog?’ Haunt said thickly.

‘No.’ The gurgling voice came to her like she was underwater. ‘No, the frog ain’t croaked yet.’

‘Stay with us,’ Haunt whispered, as sound and vision lost all definition again. She felt a hot pinprick in her arm, invasive, bruising the muscle. Shadows came for her again. ‘Stay with us, Frog…’

‘Wouldn’t miss this party for nothing,’ Frog muttered.

Marshal Nadina Haunt heard the voice die away.

The darkness swooped and caught her.

*

III

‘She should rest quietly now,’ Polly told Frog.

‘Great,’ Frog retorted. ‘What did Tovel say that was?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Polly confessed. ‘Something to break the fever, he said. Help her sleep.’

‘What’s he want Haunt to sleep for?’ muttered Frog. ‘Think he likes being in charge?’

‘He just wants to help, I suppose,’ Polly ventured.

‘Nah. He just likes being in charge.’ Frog gave a crooked smile. ‘Now Haunt’s popped that shot, she may never wake up.’

Polly shuddered. ‘Don’t.’

They listened to Haunt’s breathing, a sound just too ragged to be soothing.

‘Now give me something to fix me up, will ya?’ Frog said brightly.

Polly sighed. ‘I wish I could.’

‘Sure you do.’

‘Of course I do!’

‘’Cause you feel soooo sorry for me.’ Frog narrowed her eyes, spitefully. ‘You, with your doll’s hair, your long, young skinny body, your clear skin. Bet you grew up under a blue sky and a warm sun. Had yourself toys to play with.’ She laughed. ‘Where I grew up,
I
was the toy. People picked me up and did what they wanted. Whenever they wanted. Dad. His friends. Anyone.’

Polly stared at Frog dumbly. She couldn’t find a thing to say.

‘Feeling sorry for me, now?’ Frog sneered. ‘That always follows. The sorries.’

‘What do you want me to say,’ Polly murmured, looking away. ‘That I’m glad you’re sick or something?’

‘I don’t need the sorries. Don’t need nothing. I fight, see? The army made me someone.
Something
.’ Tears rolled down her scarred cheeks. ‘Now I’m being made into something else.’

Faster than you know, thought Polly sadly. Frog’s jumpsuit
was
zipped right up, but a track of the raw and puckered new flesh had crept up to her neck, right up to the small black disc on her throat which must make her voice sound so strange. The normal skin blistered and burnt round the edges of the patch.

Polly couldn’t just sit and watch Frog cry. ‘I’m going to check on Shade,’ she said.

Frog didn’t answer. Haunt had begun to snore softly. The sounds were taken by the weird acoustics in the great chamber and twisted, distorted, flung back at her. Polly felt horribly vulnerable. She kept glancing up at the bodies on their platform, counting them over and over. Six. Six. Six.

IV

‘You sure you can find this place again?’ Roba asked in a loud whisper. He led the way up the passage, rubbing distractedly at his injured wrist.

‘There’s a bend coming up, then the tunnel should fork,’ Tovel hissed back. ‘It should get lighter too.’

‘Polly had placed a pile of stones outside the relevant path,’ the Doctor added. He paused for breath, and dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief.

Ben waited dutifully beside him, and Creben and Joiks both pushed past. Ben looked nervously around – a pointless exercise, since it was so dark you couldn’t see your hand before your face. He was sure it hadn’t been so dark before, and had become convinced that the fleaweed on the ceilings was able somehow to shift itself about. Was there nothing that didn’t move when it shouldn’t in this God-awful place?

In an attempt to avoid unwelcome attention, they’d decided to have just the one torch on, Roba’s, leading them on. It was like trailing after a lost little sunbeam in the cold, dark tunnels. Twice they had heard the soft, rhythmic flapping of stone wings
in
the blackness. Roba had flicked off the torch and they’d stood frozen like statues themselves until the noise had faded back into the shadows.

‘Wait a minute, then!’ Ben called quietly into the darkness, afraid the others would get too far ahead.

‘Don’t fuss, my boy,’ the Doctor told him stiffly, and they started off again.

They caught up with the others in time to see them crouched beside a little slate cairn that marked one of two tunnels. The fleaweed was back, casting its seasick glow.

‘Polly must’ve left that,’ said Ben.

‘This is the way,’ Tovel said.

The passage wound on, getting brighter the further they got. The fleas skipped and scuttled over their faces and hands. Ben brushed them away furiously. Then he realised Roba and the others had stopped – and, a moment later, saw why.

‘Stone me,’ Ben said, staring out into a star-filled night. ‘They put a window in here.’

‘Why would they do such a thing?’ Creben wondered.

‘I wonder, yes,’ said the Doctor, making a big show of contemplating the mystery. Ben supposed he was grateful for the extra rest. ‘Why one window, and why here?’

‘Well, it’s not a bad view, is it?’ Ben said. The stars were solid points of light, glaring out from the most absolute blackness Ben had ever seen.

‘Nothing out there,’ Roba remarked.

‘Not yet,’ Joiks added.

Roba led them onwards

‘Can’t get no further,’ said Roba. ‘Rockfall. Time to get busy.’

‘All right. Polly said she ran straight down this tunnel from the blue area.’ The heavy crack of boulders impacting against floor and wall punctuated Tovel’s speech as Roba got his hands dirty. ‘If we can clear that lot, we’ll be on the way to getting clear ourselves.’

Ben wished he could believe it.

As Tovel helped Roba dislodge the really big stones, Joiks and Creben both began work themselves. While Creben sized up different rocks, looking for those that might bring a number more tumbling down without further effort, Joiks tore at the landslide. He was probably imagining each one was Frog’s head. She’d given the berk a right bloody nose; if it hadn’t been flattened a dozen times before she’d probably have broken it. Still, it had knocked some of the cockiness out of him and no mistake. He was good as gold and keeping his lip buttoned. Ben almost liked him that way.

Poor old Frog. If there was even a chance they could stop what was happening to her…

‘Come on, Ben,’ Roba called, as he heaved at a huge boulder. ‘You can maybe shift the pebbles, OK?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Ben was glad to see the big man back on side, but a little wary of him too since his acting up back in the control room. He grappled with a chunk of slate too big for him to tackle easily alone, just to show willing. But the thought of Frog had suggested something to him. ‘’Ere, Roba. That cut of yours. How come your suit’s not digging in, staunching the blood or whatever?’

‘It ain’t working,’ Roba grumbled, not looking up from the rockpile. ‘Cheap junk they give us.’

They worked on. Just as he was beginning to think that any second now the noise of crashing rock would bring the stone angels flapping back in sympathy, Ben saw a wisp of wraith-like blue light ahead.

‘Look!’ he called. ‘We’re almost through!’

V

Haunt stirred, her eyes opened almost involuntarily. The control
room
snapped back into sharp focus. The fever had broken, and her thoughts had suddenly an awful, fragile clarity. She felt not just the dreadful empty pain in her side and the warm throb of the shot in her arm, but the full weight of her responsibility for the safety and success of the mission. All those lives that depended on her.

She was so tired. Too tired. Didn’t they realise that?

Her eyes closed. Just for a moment Haunt thought of Ashman again and wished she could go back there, back then, to that time on Toronto.

VI

Shade had been sleeping silently for some time now; or so Polly had thought. She stopped as she approached him. He was lying facing away from her, curled up.

Lindey’s palm-sized computer was gone from his pocket.

Polly stealthily advanced. Now she was close enough to see he was actually using the computer, holding it up to his eyes, entirely caught up in whatever it was showing him.

Polly reached in and grabbed the computer from him. Shade spun round in surprise. Polly stifled a gasp, felt her stomach churn, and the flesh at the back of her thighs go tight at the sight of him.

His face was a mess of half-formed scabs, and streaked with bright red blood. Guilt was written gorily all over him.

‘Guess I’m always going to have the same effect on people, aren’t I,’ he said. ‘One look and they scream.’

‘This isn’t about your face,’ Polly snapped. ‘Except in as much as you seem to have two of them. Oh, yes, you were so sad to have lost poor old Lindey one minute… didn’t stop you stealing her computer thing and keeping whatever it might tell you to yourself!’

She wanted him to deny it. He didn’t. She looked at the screen, focused on the green capitals clustered there.

PRESS OK TO KILL FILES ++

‘What’s going on, Shade?’ she breathed.

‘Nothing,’ he said, his hoarse voice sounding more choked than usual. ‘Give me that palmscreen.’

‘I’ll get Haunt to show me how it works,’ she said defiantly.

Shade stared helplessly at her, his face twisted in pain. For an awful moment she thought he was going to start crying too.

‘But if you tell me, I won’t tell anyone else,’ she added.

Shade laid his head back down on the firm mattress. ‘I don’t suppose it matters much, since we’re going to die anyway.’

‘What do you mean, we’re going to die?’ Polly demanded.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Shade whispered. His brilliant green eyes seemed to look straight through her. ‘Don’t you see? It’s me, Polly. The reason we’re going to die. It’s all
me
.’

‘What are you talking about, Shade?’ Polly croaked, backing away.

‘I’m from Earth. You know what that means?’

Polly sort of half-shook her head, not wanting to get sidetracked by unnecessary explanations.

‘Privilege. Power. Reward.’ He gazed up at her. ‘My family could buy the planet that Frog grew up on, and barely notice the expense.’

‘So?’

‘So I didn’t want to be like that. Just about money, and privilege. I wanted to give something back.’ He smiled at her, a strained sort of smile.

Give something back. Polly thought back to the New Year’s resolution she’d made in 1963, to work in the charity shop for cancer research. Giving something back. But she’d hated the squalor of the grey little store in Notting Hill, standing all day
amid
the remnants of drab little lives on shelves and hangers. She’d walked out after a week – making her mum ecstatic in the process – and donated a pricey pile of last year’s fashions instead to assuage her guilt.

‘Go on,’ she nodded.

‘I joined up. Thought I’d fight for the Empire. Coming from Earth, they made me a lieutenant straight off.’ The smile was still on his face, though now it looked like someone had carved it in with a pen knife. ‘On New Jersey…’

‘You hurt yourself there,’ Polly remembered. ‘The mine…’

His face crumpled. ‘I was squad leader. Schirr everywhere. Walked straight into an ambush.’ He contorted his lips over his clenched teeth, trying to keep the words coming.

‘That wasn’t your fault,’ Polly said gently. ‘You were helping the children…’

‘No. There were no kids. Except the kids in my squad.’ He swallowed. ‘Didn’t fight. Didn’t lead. Just left my men to it. They were screaming… I didn’t care. So scared I ran straight into a mine.’

Polly looked down at the screen again, at the word ‘OK’, as Shade kept on talking, so quietly she could barely hear him.

‘It took half my face off and stopped my career dead. Without my connections – those same stupid connections I was running from – I’d have been court-martialled and either executed or else given ceremonial duties on some crummy world mid-Empire.’

‘And instead?’

‘Instead I was given an honourable discharge, and allowed to rejoin the following year with a doctored record.’ He started to cry, a soft mewling noise coming from somewhere deep inside. ‘Every day I look at myself. And I remember.’

I never forget the scum that did this to me
, Shade had told her back at the rockfall. Polly looked up from the palmscreen. It was hurting her eyes. ‘Lindey found out, didn’t she?’

‘Someone she knew died thanks to me. Thanks to me
believing
I could be something I’m not.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘You’ve got the files there. I think she was going to blackmail me once I’d made AT Elite.’

‘Why?’

‘Show me one person who’s happy where they are. I’ve always kidded myself I could rough it out in Empire. She wanted Earth contacts, I suppose.’

‘And now she’s dead?’

Shade stared dreamily into space. ‘All I need do is hit the button, kill the files, and my secret is safe.’

Polly pushed the palmscreen inside her spacesuit. ‘I know your secret.’ She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘What about me?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he whispered. ‘Thanks to me, we’re all going to die anyway.’

‘No. That’s silly, stop it.’

Shade shook his head, shut his eyes. He seemed suddenly exhausted. ‘I can’t stop it. No one can. I’m a jinx, see. And the ambush, it’s happening all over again.’

VII

The patch of blue light had got everyone excited. Ben noticed that even Creben had abandoned his methodical knocking out of the key rocks in favour of scrabbling at the pile like the rest of them until the hole was big enough to scramble through.

There was a pressure in Ben’s ears, like a sea was roaring and rolling in his head. A glittering indigo filled the wide passage, blissfully welcome after the murk of the tunnels or the sick green glow of the fleaweed. His feet felt like they were barely touching the ground, like he was floating through the night sky in summer. How many warm evenings had Ben looked out at that dark expanse and imagined he could splash out into it as easily as he could the warm, dark sea.