The Recollection (18 page)
Former lover speaks out.
Disappearance still a mystery.
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RATS!
Every world has them. What makes them so successful?
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HAGWOOD MISSING
Poet fails to return from sabbatical on Djatt.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TSUNAMI
On the Dho Ark, the improvised human quarters were housed in a warren of caves and tunnels drilled into the rocky planetoid, especially to accommodate the expedition. Each of the team’s one hundred members had their own alcove for sleeping: a narrow, coffin-like slot in a cavern wall, just big enough to contain a sleeping bag and air mattress, and into which they had to slide feet first. The caverns themselves served as shared living and study areas. The largest of all was the refectory, a circular room with a high dome-shaped ceiling. It was the only space big enough for the entire expedition to assemble, and therefore the venue Professor Harris had chosen for his presentation.
For five years, he had been working to frame the Dho’s jumbled carvings into a coherent historical narrative. To accomplish this, he’d had to photograph, scan and analyse thousands of individual scenes—a process that the Dho themselves watched with tolerant amusement.
Now, clad in his threadbare tweed suit, he stood at one end of the room, in front of an unrolled soft screen. The rest of the expedition sat on chairs and tables, facing him. Toby Drake sat near the front, eager to hear his interpretation of Dho history. For five years, during breaks in his own studies of the second Gnarl at the heart of the Ark, he’d watched the old man mumble and mutter over image after image, and now he was as keen as anyone else to hear the conclusions his old teacher had finally drawn.
A handful of Acolytes stood patiently at the side of the room, hands folded in their drab habits. Behind them, a Dho observer stood as impassive and expressionless as a beetle, regarding proceedings with its shrivelled black eyes. Harris glared at it for a moment, returning its stare from beneath brows like wind-plucked storm clouds. Then he drew himself up to his full height and cleared his throat. Chatter died away. Behind him, the projection screen cleared to reveal his first image.
“Those of you who have spent any time in the halls will be familiar with this. As far as we can tell, it’s one of the oldest carvings on the Ark, made during construction. Down here, you can see a group of Dho clustered around an instrument that we believe to be a telescope.” Harris pointed to a group of horned stick figures at the bottom of the picture. Above them, two giant lights blazed like childishly drawn suns against a backdrop of smaller stars.
“We believe these two objects in the sky are novae. It appears that early in the Dho’s history, two nearby stars exploded almost simultaneously. There are dozens of images of the event in the halls of this Ark, and judging from these related carvings we can see that the twin novae had a profound effect on Dho culture and religion. Almost overnight, their old gods were swept aside. They became scholars and astronomers, in an effort to comprehend what they were seeing. And finally, they understood enough about stellar evolution to realise something that startled them even more than the initial explosions.”
Harris turned his hooded gaze on the Dho, as if waiting for it to confirm or deny his words, but the creature remained mute and immobile, its emotions unreadable. Irritated, he continued:
“They call this picture
The War In Heaven
, and I believe that’s exactly what it depicts. By piecing together hundreds of images, I am now certain that what the Dho found in the afterglow of the two explosions was more than simple coincidence. They stumbled on a war. Two races fighting in the depths of space, each with the power to destroy suns.”
The audience stirred. Harris ignored them. He gestured at the screen and the image changed. This second carving was larger and far more intricate than the first, and pictured the diamond Ark under construction above the Dho’s home world. Digging machines bored into the rock of the planetoid. Other machines extruded sheets of crystal.
“Fearing that they would become embroiled in this gigantic conflict, the Dho prepared to flee.” Harris paused again. Toby saw sweat peppering the old man’s forehead. “However, before they were ready, the sky fell quiet. Violence turned to silence. The fighting ceased.”
The professor snapped his fingers at the screen and it flicked to a third image: an oncoming storm of billowing cloud.
He cleared his throat.
“We cannot be sure exactly what this cloud represents and our hosts have been most reluctant to expand on the matter.” His eyes were on the unmoving Dho at the side of the room. “It may have been an expanding nebulae of hot gas left over from the stellar explosions, a dust cloud or maybe a weapon of some sort. All we know is that they were so afraid of it that they completed their Ark and abandoned their home planet.”
Another click of the fingers and another slide appeared. Toby felt a mild thrill. This carving was the most familiar to him, the first he’d seen on his arrival, five years ago.
Five years...
In some ways, it didn’t seem that long since he’d stood with his nose pressed to the transparent crystal wall of the Ark’s boarding tube, watching the wedge-shaped silhouette of the
Ameline
fall away into darkness. For a moment, he closed his eyes and pictured Katherine as he’d last seen her: standing at the
Ameline
’s airlock, her rumpled fatigues thrown on over her skin-tight ship suit, her hair tied back and gaze downcast, avoiding his.
When he opened his eyes, he found Harris glowering directly at him.
“I’m sorry Mister Drake, am I boring you?”
Toby jerked upright in his seat.
“S-sorry professor, I was just thinking—”
The older man raised a furry eyebrow. “Aye, and I know exactly whom you were thinking about, too. But if you don’t mind...?” He turned back to the screen, which still showed the familiar depiction of the Ark fleeing the looming cloud as smaller ships wove around like mosquitoes to cover its retreat.
“The Dho call this picture ‘The Burning Sky.’ Whatever the cloud was, they escaped it by only the narrowest of margins, using these weapons,” he indicated the stylised lightning bolts flickering from the smaller ships surrounding the diamond planetoid. “With their help, they kept the cloud at bay while making good their escape.”
The professor pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. He took a deep breath, as if nerving himself.
“The fact that they used weapons against it leads me to believe that the cloud was not a natural phenomenon.”
At the side of the room, the Dho turned its head a few degrees. It was a tiny movement but all eyes snapped toward it.
Harris took a step towards the creature.
“Do you have something to add?” he demanded, irritation allowing his Scottish accent to come through stronger than ever.
The creature regarded him. It seemed to consider the matter for some time. When it finally spoke, its voice was low: full of hisses, pops and scratches like a bad recording.
“The cloud is not natural,” it said. There were mutters and exclamations from the crowd.
“Then what is it?”
The Dho turned to fully face the old man for the first time, although from where he sat, Toby couldn’t tell if it looked at the professor or at the picture of the carving behind him.
“We call it ‘The Recollection,’” the Dho said. “It is an evil born of war. It is the end of all things.”
More mutters. A few shouted questions.
Professor Harris stalked back to the display screen and brought up the next image.
“And what of
this
?” he demanded.
The room fell silent. The picture showed an arch, exactly like the ones that had first appeared on Earth all those centuries ago, the arches that formed the network that had allowed humanity to escape and spread out into the cosmos, and whose mechanisms had been back-engineered to provide engines for ships like the
Ameline
, who could take short cuts within the network because they weren’t tied to its labyrinthine routing.
The Dho shuffled forward a few steps.
“As we fled The Recollection, we found traces of other races, younger races, and we knew we could not leave them defenceless. So we constructed the arch network to help them spread out across the stars, in the hope that some of them might escape the horror that followed us. For we knew The Recollection would never give up its pursuit. We knew it would never forget about us or grow weary. We knew it was coming.”
The Dho turned to face the crowd.
“And now, it is almost upon us.”
The meeting dissolved into uproar. Arguments broke out between scientists. People rose to their feet, yelling questions and accusations. Some wanted to get to the Dho, but the Acolytes had formed a circle around the creature, shielding it.
“If you can build the arches,” the woman beside Toby shouted, “why do you travel in
this
?” She waved her arms to encompass the bulk of the crystal Ark.
The Dho’s head swivelled in her direction. When it spoke, its voice silenced the room.
“Our species is uncomfortable in hyperspace,” it croaked. “We find the transition disorientating and often fatal. That is why we must rely on our Acolytes to talk for us on all the settled worlds of human space.”
It raised its head and the light caught on the bony sheen of its four horns.
“When we ran from The Recollection, we seeded the space behind us with probes, to monitor its progress. Like us, it moves at speeds slower than light. It has been a thousand years, but we have at last received the signal we have been dreading. The Recollection approaches human space. Already the darkness will have befallen the world you call Djatt. Others will soon follow.”
Toby leapt like he’d been electrocuted.
“Djatt?” He elbowed his way forward through the crowd, ignoring indignant protests. Harris moved to intercept him.
“Calm down, lad.”
“Let me go!” Toby tried to shake the older man off, but the gnarled fingers were stronger than they looked.
“You knew!” Toby waved an accusing finger at the Dho. “And still you let her go!”
The circle of Acolytes drew tighter around the alien creature, which shivered. The bulges squirmed under its black robe.
“We were not sure,” it said. “We suspected, but it was only hours ago that our suspicions were confirmed.”
Toby stopped struggling. “Is she in danger?”
The creature bowed its head. “She will be protected by the pendant given to her by our Acolyte, Mr Hind.”
“But what is the cloud?” Harris thundered in frustration, all semblance of patience lost after five years of painstaking and frustrating work. “What is this
Recollection
?”
The Acolytes moved and the Dho stepped forward. It spoke in a voice so loud Toby felt it in his bowels.
“The Recollection is darkness and hunger. It is a cancer gnawing at the bones of the galaxy. None of you can stand against it.”
The creature paused, its laboured breathing the only sound in the room.
“It is a tsunami of unspeakable horror, and it will swamp your defences and drown your souls. It cannot be defeated, appeased or bargained with, and it will scour all the life from your planets.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
PHANTOM LIMB SYNDROME
Katherine Abdulov woke in a hospital bed, in a private room with no windows and a police guard on the door. The walls, ceiling and floor were a soothing shade of green. The sheets smelled of disinfectant, and a surgeon stood by the far wall, arms crossed, watching her.
“How do you feel?”
She smacked her lips a couple of times and swallowed.
“Where am I?”
“You’re safe. There are guards on the door. No-one’s going to get to you here. Don’t try to move. You’re still on Vertebrae Beach, in hospital. My name’s Doctor Misaki. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Kat gave a weak nod. Misaki smiled.
“That’s good. Now, can you remember why you’re here?”
She frowned. Her thoughts were as woolly and cumbersome as clouds, and she had a bone-deep ache in her right arm. “There was an accident?”
The surgeon uncrossed his arms. He glanced at the guard on the door.
“I’m afraid it’s more serious than that. Three days ago, you were caught in a bomb attack. You’re lucky to be alive.”
Kat tried to sit up but found she lacked the strength.
“What happened?” she said.
Doctor Misaki stepped over to the bed. He looked to be somewhere in his early thirties. “You were on the observation deck of the
Ticonderoga
when a bomb went off. It wasn’t a big bang, but against the outer wall, it was enough. The window was old and weak and it gave way. Luckily, the ship’s automatic pressure seals worked, or we might have lost the whole dome, and everyone in it.”