The Fall of Tartarus (34 page)

He
was alive, but
why
he was alive worried him.

He
felt himself drifting as a sedative sluiced through his system.

Hunter
opened his eyes.

He
was in a room much larger than the first, a full quadrant of the dome this
time. He was no longer attached to the rejuvenation pod, but lying in a bed.
Apart from a slight ache in his chest, a tightness, he felt well. Tentatively,
he sat up, swung his legs from the bed. He wore a short white gown like a
kimono. He examined his legs, his arms. They seemed to be as he remembered
them, but curiously younger, without the marks of age, the discolorations and
small scars he’d picked up during a lifetime of tracking fauna through every
imaginable landscape. He filled his chest with a deep breath, exhaled. He felt
good.

He
stood and crossed to the wall of the dome, climbed the three steps and paused
on the raised gallery. A magnificent star-galleon sailed by outside, so close
that Hunter could make out figures on the deck, a curious assortment of humans
and aliens. A few stopped work to look at him. One young girl even waved.
Hunter raised his arm in salute and watched the ship sail away, conscious of
the gesture, the blood pumping through his veins. In that instant, he was
suddenly aware of the possibilities, of the wondrous gift of life renewed.

‘Mr
Hunter,’ the voice called from behind him. ‘I’m so pleased to see you up and
about.’

Alvarez
stood on the threshold, smiling across the room at him. He seemed smaller than
before, somehow reduced.

Within
the swaddles of his fine clothing - rich gold robes, frilled shirts - he was
even more insect-like than Hunter recalled.

‘I
have so many questions I don’t really know where to begin,’ Hunter said.

Alvarez
waved, the cuff of his gown hanging a good half-metre from his stick-like
wrist. ‘All in good time, my dear Mr Hunter. Perhaps you would care for a
drink?’ He moved to a table beneath the curve of the dome, its surface marked
with a press-select panel of beverages.

‘A
fruit juice.’

‘I’ll
join you,’ Alvarez said, and seconds later passed Hunter a tall glass of yellow
liquid.

His
thoughts returned to the jungle of Tartarus. ‘My wife . . . ?’ he began.

Alvarez
was quick to reassure him. ‘Samantha is fit and well. No need to worry yourself
on that score.’

‘I’d
like to see her.’

‘That
is being arranged. Within the next three or four days, you should be reunited.’

Hunter
nodded, reluctant to show Alvarez his relief or gratitude. His wife was well,
he was blessed with a new body, renewed life ... so why did he experience a
pang of apprehension like a shadow cast across his soul?

‘Mr
Hunter,’ Alvarez asked, ‘what are your last recollections before awakening
here?’

Hunter
looked from Alvarez to the tall trees receding into the distance. ‘Tartarus,’
he said. ‘The jungle.’

‘Can
you recall the . . . the actual attack?’

‘I
remember, but vaguely. I can’t recall what led up to it, just the attack
itself. It’s as if it happened years ago.’

Alvarez
was staring at him. ‘It did, Mr Hunter. Three years ago, to be precise.’

Again,
Hunter did not allow his reaction to show: shock, this time. Three years! But
Sam had been carrying their child, his daughter. He had missed her birth, the
first years of her life . . .

‘You
owe your survival to your wife,’ Alvarez continued. ‘She fired flares to
frighten the beast that killed you, then gathered your remains.’ He made an
expression of distaste. ‘There was not much left. Your head, torso . . . She
stored them in the freeze-unit at your camp, then returned through the jungle
to Apollinaire, and from there to the port at Baudelaire, where she arranged
passage off-planet.’

Hunter
closed his eyes. He imagined Sam’s terror, her despair, her frantic hope. It
should have been enough to drive her mad.

Alvarez
went on, ‘She applied for aid to a number of resurrection foundations. My
company examined you. They reported your case to me. I decided to sanction your
rebirth.’

Hunter
was shaking his head. ‘But how did Sam raise the fare to Million?’ he asked.
‘And the cost of the resurrection itself? There’s just no way . . .’ What, he
wondered, had she done to finance his recovery?

‘She
had to arrange a loan to get the both of you here. She arrived virtually
penniless.’

‘Then
how—?’

Alvarez
raised a hand. There was something about the man that Hunter did not like: his
swift, imperious gestures, his thin face which combined the aspects of
asceticism and superiority. In an age when everyone enjoyed the means to ensure
perfect health, Alvarez’s affectation of ill health was macabre.

‘Your
situation interested me, Mr Hunter. I knew of you. I followed your work,
admired your success. I cannot claim to be a naturalist in the same league as
yourself, but I dabble . . .

‘I
run many novel enterprises on Million,’ Alvarez went on. ‘My very favourite,
indeed the most popular and lucrative, is my Xeno-biological Exhibit Centre,
here in the capital. It attracts millions of visitors every year from all
across the galaxy. Perhaps you have heard of it, Mr Hunter?’

Hunter
shook his head, minimally. ‘I have no interest in, nor sympathy with, zoos, Mr
Alvarez.’

‘Such
an outdated, crude description, I do think. My Exhibit Centre is quite unlike
the zoos of old. The centre furnishes species from around the galaxy with a
realistic simulacra of their native habitats, often extending for kilometres.
Where the species exhibited are endangered on their own worlds, we have
instituted successful breeding programmes. In more than one instance I have
saved species from certain extinction.’ He paused, staring at Hunter. ‘Although
usually I hire operators from the planet in question to capture and transport
the animals I require to update my exhibit, on this occasion—’

Hunter
laid his drink aside, untouched. ‘I am a cameraman, Mr Alvarez. I hunt animals
in order to film them. I have no expertise in capturing animals.’

‘What
I need is someone skilled in the
tracking
of a certain animal. My team
will perform the actual physical capture. On the planet in question, there are
no resident experts, and as you are already
au fait
with the terrain . .
.’

Hunter
interrupted. ‘Where?’ he asked.

‘Where
else?’ Alvarez smiled. ‘Tartarus, of course.’

It
took some seconds for his words to sink in. Hunter stared across the room at
the dandified zoo-keeper. ‘Tartarus?’ He almost laughed. ‘Madness. Three years
ago the scientists were forecasting the explosion of the supernova in two to
three years at the latest.’

Alvarez
responded evenly. ‘The scientists have revised their estimates. They now think
the planet is safe for another year.’

Hunter
sat down on the steps that curved around the room. He shook his head, looked
up. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Alvarez. Tartarus holds too many bad memories for me. And
anyway, it would be insane to go there with the supernova so imminent.’

‘I
think you fail to understand the situation in which you find yourself, Mr
Hunter. You and your wife are in debt to me to the tune of some five million
credits. You are now, legally, in my employ—’

‘I
didn’t ask to be resurrected. I signed nothing!’

Alvarez
smiled. ‘Your wife signed all the relevant papers. She wanted you resurrected.
She agreed to work for me.’

Hunter
experienced a strange plummeting sensation deep within him. He whispered,
‘Where is she?’

‘Six
months ago, when it was obvious that your resurrection would be successful, she
left for Tartarus to do some field-work, investigations and preliminary
tracking.’

Hunter
closed his eyes. Alvarez had him.

He
thought of his child. Surely Sam would not take an infant to Tartarus. ‘Who’s
looking after our child while Sam is on Tartarus?’ he asked.

Alvarez
shook his head apologetically. ‘I never actually met your wife. Our
negotiations were conducted via intermediaries. I know nothing of your wife’s
personal arrangements.’

Hunter
stood and contemplated the view, the tall trees marching away into the mist,
the canopy of rainbows and the star-galleons. It was against everything that
Hunter believed in to hunt and trap an animal for captivity. How many lucrative
commissions had he turned down in the past?

But
there was one obvious difference in this case. If the animal that Alvarez
wanted capturing was not tracked and taken from Tartarus, then it faced
annihilation come the supernova.

And
there was the added incentive that soon he would be reunited with Sam.

‘I
seem to have little choice but to agree to your demands.’

Alvarez
smiled thinly. ‘Excellent. I knew you would see sense, eventually. We need a
man of your calibre in order to track the creature I require as the prize of my
collection.’

‘Which
is?’ Hunter asked.

Alvarez
paused for a second, as if for dramatic emphasis. ‘The Slarque,’ he said.

Hunter
mouthed the word to himself in disbelief. Millennia ago, long before humankind
colonised Tartarus, a sentient alien race known as the Slarque was pre-eminent
on the planet. They built cities on every continent, sailed ships across the
oceans, and reached a stage of civilisation comparable to that of humanity in
the sixteenth century. Then, over the period of a few hundred years, they
became extinct - or so some theorists posited. Others, a crank minority, held
that the Slarque still existed in some devolved form, sequestered in the
mountainous jungle terrain of the southern continent. There had been reports of
sightings, dubious ‘eye-witness’ accounts of brief meetings with the fearsome,
bipedal creatures, but no actual concrete evidence.

‘Mr
Hunter,’ Alvarez was saying, ‘do you have any idea what kind of creature was
responsible for your death?’

Hunter
gestured. ‘Of course not. It happened so fast. I didn’t have a chance—’ He
stopped.

Alvarez
crossed the room to a wall-screen. He inserted a small disc, adjusted dials. He
turned to Hunter. ‘Your wife was filming at the time of your death. This is
what she filmed.’

The
screen flared. Hunter took half a dozen paces forward, then stopped, as if
transfixed by what he saw. The picture sent memories, emotions, flooding
through his mind. He stared at the jungle scene, and he could almost smell the
stringent, putrescent reek peculiar to Tartarus, the stench of vegetable matter
rotting in the vastly increased heat of the southern climes. He heard the cries
and screams of a hundred uncatalogued birds and beasts. He experienced again
the mixture of anxiety and exhilaration at being in the unexplored jungle of a
planet which at any moment might be ripped apart by its exploding sun.

‘Watch
closely, Mr Hunter,’ Alvarez said.

He
saw himself, a small figure in the background, centre-screen. This was an
establishing shot, which Sam would edit into the documentary she always made
about their field-trips.

It
was over in five seconds.

One
instant he was gesturing at the blood-red sky through a rent in the jungle
canopy - and the next something emerged through the undergrowth behind him,
leapt upon his back and began tearing him apart.

Hunter
peered at the grainy film, trying to make out his assailant. The attack was
taking place in the undergrowth, largely obscured from the camera. All that
could be seen was the rearing, curving tail of the animal - for all the world
like that of a scorpion - flailing and thrashing and coming down again and
again on the body of its victim . . .

The
film finished there, as Sam fired flares to scare away the animal. The screen
blanked.

‘We
have reason to believe,’ Alvarez said, ‘that this creature was the female of
the last surviving pair of Slarque on Tartarus—’

‘Ridiculous!’
Hunter cried.

‘They
are devolved,’ Alvarez went on, ‘and living like wild animals.’ He paused. ‘Do
you see what an opportunity this is, Mr Hunter? If we can capture, and save
from certain extinction, the very last pair of a sentient alien race?’

Hunter
gestured, aware that his hand was trembling. ‘This is hardly proof of its
existence,’ he objected.

‘The
stinger corresponds to anatomical remains which are known to be of the Slarque.
Which other species on Tartarus has such a distinctive feature?’ Alvarez
paused. ‘Also, your wife has been working hard on Tartarus. She has come up
with some very interesting information.’

From
a pocket in his robe, he pulled out what Hunter recognised as an ear-phone. ‘A
couple of months ago she dispatched this report of her progress. I’ll leave it
with you.’ He placed it on the table top beside the bed. ‘We embark for
Tartarus in a little under three days, Mr Hunter. For now, farewell.’