The Fall of Tartarus (37 page)

The
rest of their party, other than himself, Alvarez and the Doctor, consisted of a
team of four drivers-cum-guards, men from Million in the employ of the Alvarez
Foundation. They tended to keep to themselves, indeed were congregated at the
far end of the table now, leaving the others to talk together.

Alvarez
was saying: ‘I made a trip out to the St Cyprian monastery this afternoon, to
see if I could get anything more from Rogers.’

Hunter
looked up from his plate of cold meat and salad. ‘And?’ He winced as a stabbing
pain lanced through his lungs.

The
entrepreneur was leaning back in his chair, turning a glass of wine in his
fingers. He was dressed in a light-weight white suit of extravagantly
flamboyant design. ‘I found Rogers, and a number of the other monks.’

Dr
Fischer asked, ‘Did you learn anything more?’

Alvarez
shook his head. ‘A couple of the monks were dead. Rogers was still alive, but
only just. They were strapped to great wooden stakes on the clifftop
greensward, naked, reduced to torsos. Many had had their eyes and facial
features removed. They were chanting. I must admit that in a perverse kind of
way, there was something almost beautiful in the tableau.’

‘As
an atheist,’ Hunter said, ‘I could not look upon such depredation with
sufficient objectivity to appreciate any beauty. As far as I’m concerned, their
cult is a sick tragedy.’

‘They
could be helped,’ Dr Fischer said tentatively.

Hunter
grunted a laugh. ‘I somehow doubt that your ministrations would meet with their
approval.’

The
three men drank on in silence. At length, talk turned to the expedition.

Alvarez
indicated the huge tracked bison he had transported from Million. The vehicle
sat in the drive beside the hotel, loaded with provisions — food, water,
weapons and, Hunter noticed, a collapsible cage lashed to the side.

‘All
is ready,’ Alvarez said. ‘We set off at dawn. Your wife’s radio beacons are
transmitting, and all we have to do is follow them. Our progress should be
considerably quicker than hers. We’ll be following the route she has carved
through the jungle, and as we have four drivers working in shifts we’ll be able
to journey throughout the night. I estimate that, if all goes well, we should
arrive at the valley of the crash-landing within two weeks. Then you take over,
Mr Hunter, and with luck on our side we should bring about the salvation of the
Slarque.’

Hunter
restrained himself from commenting. The pain in his chest was mounting. He told
himself that he should not worry - Dr Fischer had brought him back to life
once; he could no doubt do so again, should it be necessary - but something
instinctive deep within him brought Hunter out in hot and cold sweats of fear.

Alvarez
leaned forward. ‘Hunter? Are you—?’

Hunter
clasped his chest. Pain filled his lungs, constricting his breathing. Dr
Fischer, with surprising agility for a man his size, rounded the table and bent
over Hunter. He slipped an injector from a wallet and sank it into Hunter’s
neck. The cool spread of the drug down through his chest brought instant
relief. He regained his breath little by little as the pain ebbed.

Dr
Fischer said, ‘You’ve undergone a rapid resurrection programme, Mr Hunter. Some
minor problems are to be expected. At the first sign of the slightest pain,
please consult me.’ The Doctor exchanged a quick glance with Alvarez, who
nodded.

Hunter
excused himself and retired to his room.

He
lay on his bed for a long time, unable to sleep. The night sky flared with
bright pulses of orange and magenta light, sending shadows flagging across the
walls of the room. He thought of Sam, and the daughter he had yet to meet,
somewhere out there in the interior. He cursed the day he had first heard of
Tartarus Major, regretted the three years it had robbed from his life, that
long away from his daughter. He slept fitfully that night, troubled by dreams
in which Sam was running from the teeth and claws of the creature that had
killed him.

He
was woken at dawn, after what seemed like the briefest of sleeps, by the ugly
klaxon of the tracked bison. The vehicle was equipped to sleep eight - in small
compartments little wider than the individual bunks they contained. It was
invitation enough for Hunter. He spent the first six hours of the journey
catching up on the sleep he’d lost during the night. He was eventually awoken
by the bucketing yaw of the bison as it made the transition from the relatively
smooth surface of a road to rough terrain.

Hunter
washed the sweat from his face in the basin above his bunk, then staggered
through the sliding door. A narrow corridor ran the length of the vehicle to
the control cabin, where a driver wrestled with the wheel, accompanied by a
navigator. A ladder lead up to a hatch in the roof. He climbed into the fierce,
actinic sunlight and a blow-torch breeze. Alvarez and Fischer were seated on a
bench, swaying with the motion of the truck.

Hunter
exchanged brief greetings and settled to quietly watching the passing
landscape. They had moved from the cultivated littoral to an indeterminate area
of characterless scrubland, and were fast approaching the jungle-covered
foothills that folded away, ever hazier, to a point in the distance where the
crags of the central mountains seemed to float on a sea of cloud.

They
were following a route through the scrub which he and Sam had pioneered years
ago in their own bison. The landmarks, such as they were - towering insects’
nests, and stunted, sun-warped trees - brought back memories that should have
cheered him but which served only to remind him of Sam’s absence.

As
the huge sun surged overhead and the heat became furnace-like, Alvarez and Dr
Fischer erected a heat-reflective awning. The three men sat in silence and
drank iced beers.

They
left the scrubland behind and accelerated into the jungle, barrelling down the
narrow defile torn through the dense undergrowth by Sam’s vehicle before them.
It was minimally cooler in the shade of the jungle, out of the direct sunlight,
but the absence of even a hot wind to stir the air served only to increase the
humidity.

Around
sunset they broke out the pre-packaged trays of food and bulbs of wine, and ate
to the serenade of calls and cries from the surrounding jungle. Hunter
recognised many of them, matching physical descriptions to the dozens of songs
that shrilled through the twilight. When he tired of this he said goodnight to
Alvarez and the Doctor and turned in. He lay awake for a long time until
exhaustion, and the motion of the truck, sent him to sleep.

This
routine set the pattern for the rest of the journey. Hunter would wake late,
join Alvarez and the Doctor for a few beers, eat as the sun set, then retire
and lie with his chaotic thoughts and fears until sleep pounced, unannounced.
His chest pains continued, but, as Dr Fischer ordered, he reported them early,
received the quelling injection and suffered no more.

To
counter boredom, he pointed out various examples of Tartarean wildlife to his
fellow travellers, giving accounts of the habits and peculiarities of the
unique birds and beasts. Even this pastime, though, reminded him of Sam’s
absence: she would have told him to stop being so damned sententious.

Seven
days out of Apollinaire, they came to the clearing where Hunter had lost his
life. Alvarez called a halt for a couple of hours, as they’d made good time so
far. The driver slewed the bison to a sudden stop. The comparative silence of
the clearing, after the incessant noise of the engine, was like a balm.

Hunter
jumped down and walked away from Alvarez and the others, wanting to be alone
with his thoughts. The encampment was as Sam had left it on the day of the
attack; the dome-tent located centrally, the battery of cameras set up
peripherally to record the teeming wildlife. His heart pounding, Hunter crossed
to where he judged the attack had taken place. There was nothing to distinguish
the area; the disturbed earth had scabbed over with moss and plants, and the
broken undergrowth in the margin of the jungle had regrown. He looked down the
length of his new body, for the first time fully apprehending the miracle of
his renewed existence. Overcome by an awareness of the danger, he hurried back
to the truck.

Sam
had been this way - the tracks of her bison had patterned the floor of the
clearing - but if she had left; any recorded message there was no sign, only
the ubiquitous radio transmitter which she had dropped at intervals of a
hundred kilometres along her route.

They
ate their evening meal in the clearing - a novelty after having to contend with
the constant bucking motion of the truck at mealtimes so far. No sooner had the
sun set, flooding the jungle with an eerie crimson night light, than they were
aboard the bison again and surging through the jungle into territory new to
Hunter.

Over
the next six days, the tracked bison climbed through the increasingly dense
jungle, traversing steep inclines that would have defeated lesser vehicles.
They halted once more, two days short of their destination, at a natural pass
in the mountainside which had been blocked, obviously since Sam’s passage, by a
small rockfall.

While
Alvarez’s men cleared the obstruction, Hunter walked back along the track and
stared out over the continent they had crossed. They were at a high elevation
now, and the jungle falling away, the distant flat scrubland and cultivated
seaboard margin, was set out below him like a planetary surveyor’s scale model.
Over the sea, the nebulous sphere of the dying sun was like a baleful eye,
watching him, daring their mission to succeed before the inevitable explosion.

Alvarez
called to Hunter, and they boarded the truck on the last leg of the journey.

The
night before they reached the valley where the star-ship had crash-landed,
Hunter dreamed of Sam. The nightmare was vague and surreal, lacking events and
incidents but overburdened with mood. He experienced the weight of some
inexpressible depression, saw again and again the distant image of Sam, calling
for him.

He
awoke suddenly, alerted by something. He lay on his back, blinking up at the
ceiling. Then he realised what was wrong. The truck was no longer in motion;
the engine was quiet. He splashed his face with cold water and pulled on his
coverall. He left his cabin and climbed down into the fierce sunlight, his mood
affected by some residual depression from the nightmare. He joined the others,
gathered around the nose of the bison, and stared without a word into the
valley spread out below.

In
Father Rogers’ story the valley had been snow-filled, inhospitable, but over
the intervening years the snow had melted, evaporated by the increased
temperature, and plant life in abundance had returned to this high region. A
carpet of grass covered the valley floor, dotted with a colourful display of
wild flowers. Over the edges of the lower peaks which surrounded the valley,
vines and creepers were encroaching like invaders over a battlement.

Hunter
was suddenly aware of his heartbeat as he stared into the valley and made out
the sleek, broken-backed shape of a starship, its nose buried in a
semi-circular mound it had ploughed all those years ago, grassed over now like
some ancient earthwork. Little of the original paintwork was observable through
the cocoon of grass and creepers that had captured the ship since the thaw.

Then
he made out, in the short meadow grass of the valley, the tracks of Sam’s
vehicle leading to the ship. Of her bison there was no sign. He set off at a
walk, then began running towards the stranded starship.

He
paused before the ramp that led up to the entrance, then cautiously climbed
inside. Creepers and moss had penetrated a good way into the main corridor. He
called his wife’s name, his voice echoing in the silence. The ship seemed
deserted. He returned outside, into the dazzling sunlight, and made a complete
circuit of the ship. Sam’s truck wasn’t there - but he did see, leading away up
the valley, to a distant, higher valley, the parallel imprint of vehicle tracks
in the grass.

Beside
the ramp was a radio beacon. Tied to the end of its aerial was Sam’s
red-and-white polka-dotted bandanna. Hunter untied it and discovered an
ear-phone.

Up
the valley, the others were approaching in the bison. Before they reached him,
Hunter sat on the ramp, activated the ‘phone and held it to his ear.

The
sound of Sam’s voice filled him with joy at first, then a swift, stabbing
sadness that he had only her voice.

Somewhere in the interior . . . Luke’s day, 26th, St Bede’s month,
1720, Tartarean Calendar.

I’ve
decided to keep a regular record of my journey, more for something to do before
I sleep each night than anything else.

I
set off from Apollinaire three days ago and made good time, driving for ten,
twelve hours a day. I preferred the days, even though the driving was difficult
- the nights seemed to go on forever. It didn’t occur to me until I stopped on
that first evening that I’d never camped alone in the interior before. It was a
long time before I got to sleep -what with all the noise, the animal cries. The
following nights were a bit better, as I got used to being alone. On the
morning of the fourth day I was awoken by a great flare from the sun. I nearly
panicked. I thought this was it, the supernova. Then I recalled all the other
times it’d done that, when you were with me, Hunter. It wasn’t the end, then -
but perhaps it was some kind of warning. Nothing much else to report at the
moment. Long, hot days. Difficult driving. I stopped yesterday at the clearing
where
... it
happened. It brings back terrible memories, Hunter. I’m
missing you. I can’t wait till you’re with me again. Freya is well.