The Telemass Quartet

by Eric Brown

  “And what is that?”

  Lalla’s entire demeanour appeared hesitant, unsure—wary not only of those around her but of her own reactions. She said, “You’ll find that out shortly.”

  One of the Avoel returned bearing a woven basket containing a variety of fruit. It placed the basket between Hendrick, Lalla, and Tiana, and then retreated.

  Lalla said, “You haven’t eaten for a while. We have a long trek ahead of us.”

  She stood and moved to the edge of the bracket shelf, staring out at the rising sun. Tiana smiled at him, took a fruit, and hurried over to Lalla.

  Hendrick ate what looked like an apple but was pulpier and tasted much sweeter. He finished it and only then realised how hungry he was. He took another and bolted it down.

  What exactly could it be, he wondered, that the Church was up to here on Fomalhaut IV?

  And was it possible that Maatje might be implicated . . . ?

  He looked across to where Tiana and her lover were engaged in animated conversation. Tiana appeared to be urging Lalla, her body language almost pleading. Hendrick guessed what was going on: Tiana was trying to convince her lover that he, Hendrick, meant nothing to her. He looked away, trying to work out just what he felt about that.

  An Avoel emerged from the slit in the bole and called across to Lalla.

  She turned and replied in its high, fluting tongue.

  She crossed to Hendrick, followed by Tiana. “We must be going.”

  He grabbed another fruit and stood up. “Where?”

  She hesitated characteristically then said, “Underground.”

  • • •

  Lalla! It’s so great to see her . . . and she and the aliens are working together—not that she told me that. The first thing she said—typically—was, Who’s the prick? Didn’t explain what the hell’s going on here, why her alien friends rescued us, or what the Church is doing—just,Who’s the prick? Jealous to the last.

  So I told her he’s a detective, a friend working to help me find her. I asked her what was happening, but all she said was,You’ll find out.

  I said, I love you, Lalla.

  She smiled at last, touched my cheek, and said, Love you too, babe.

  And oh, the joy.

  EIGHT

  THEY DROPPED THROUGH THE BOLE OF THE TREE which was hollowed out in the shape of a corkscrew. Much of the passage was smooth, so that they slipped and slid down. In other places, series of steps had been carved for Avoel dimensions, and these were more difficult to negotiate. Lalla led the way with a flashlight, followed by Tiana and Hendrick, and a dozen aliens brought up the rear.

  Even here, Tiana was chattering into her wrist-com, keeping up a running commentary. She reminded Hendrick of a kid with a new diary.

  Occasionally, they passed slits in the trunk of the tree, which gave onto other fungal platforms situated below the level of the jungle canopy. After descending for perhaps twenty minutes they came to a vertical slash in the bole through which Hendrick made out the shadowy jungle floor.

  They continued the descent. Below ground the spiral was constricted, which made sense; they were descending through what he supposed was the tree’s tap-root. The flesh pressed in on them and the spiral became even more convoluted. Hendrick, as the largest member of the party, delayed their progress when squeezing around particularly tight twists. He was relieved when Lalla looked up at one point and gave a rare smile. “We’re almost there.”

  A short while later, she disappeared from view, followed by Tiana. Hendrick arrived at the tight slit through which they’d vanished, and Tiana reached back to take his arm and pull him through. The aliens emerged after him, one by one.

  He guessed they had travelled as far underground as the tree was tall. They were standing in a long cavern, its walls curving to a ceiling perhaps five metres overhead. All around, dozens of long, slim stalactites hung like iciles: tap-roots of trees similar to the one from which they had just emerged. It was appreciably cooler down here, and illumination was provided not only by Lalla’s flashlight. The walls were coated in a film of sulphurous fungus which gave off a low, lambent glow.

  Lalla saw Hendrick staring around in wonder.

  “It’s algae,” she said. “The Avoel grow it down here to provide light.”

  “Ingenious.”

  “This way,” she said and then set off, followed by Tiana. The Avoel remained behind Hendrick as they made their way through the chamber.

  The cavern narrowed after a couple of hundred metres so that they were forced to walk single file. The floor sloped; they were descending even further into the bowels of the planet. He wondered how many other humans had passed this way before him.

  Perhaps an hour later the passage opened out again into a vast chamber. They were traversing a natural gallery a third of the way up the side of the cavern, and Hendrick looked down on an idyllic scene. A twinkling silver river threaded its way through the cavern, and a thousand tap-roots hung from the high ceiling. Hendrick judged that the cavern, from one side to the other, was in the region of a kilometre wide. He looked ahead but was unable to make out where it narrowed.

  He saw movement to his right, down the slope. The Avoel who had been behind him were now descending to the ‘valley’ bottom. Lalla and Tiana slowed to watch them.

  “Where are they going?” he asked.

  Lalla glanced at him. “A slight detour to pay their respects.”

  “To . . . ?” Tiana asked.

  “To their ancestors,” Lalla said.

  Hendrick kept an eye on the aliens as he walked. The Avoel had reached the river now and were wading through the silver water. They climbed the far bank and approached a hanging root. Rather than tapering to a point like the others, this root bulged at its base. One by one, the Avoel reached out, touched the goitrous tumescence with their fingertips, then tapped their foreheads with a peculiar flicking gesture and moved on. They passed a dozen other roots until they came to the next swollen one, where they repeated the ritual of touching the root and then their brows.

  “They think their ancestors dwell in the trees?” he asked.

  Lalla glanced at him. “Something like that.”

  Over an hour later, Lalla called a halt. “We’ll take a rest here and eat.”

  She sat down on a flat rock overlooking the sloping cavern. The Avoel were distant, tiny figures, darting from root to swollen root and observing their bizarre ritual.

  Lalla opened a rucksack and pulled out more fruit, energy bars, and small bulbs of juice.

  They ate in silence for a while until Hendrick asked, “What exactly is the Church doing here?” He paused and, on a hunch, continued, “Trying to convert the natives, right? Trying to wean them from this . . . this form of ancestor worship?”

  Lalla chewed an energy bar stoically before replying, “Quite the opposite, Mr Hendrick. The Church is embracing the practice as their own. And that’s the reason I’m so worried.”

  She pulled a camera from her rucksack, and Hendrick thought that she was about to show him what she’d filmed earlier. Instead she strapped the device around her head and adjusted the settings.

  Before he could question her, she jumped to her feet and set off. Hendrick looked at Tiana. “What the hell does she mean by that?” he asked.

  “I know as much as you do, Matt,” she said and hurried after Lalla.

  They had been walking for at least three kilometres before the cavern narrowed to a point and they slipped one by one through a gash in the rock, rejoined now by the dozen Avoel. This channel was narrow, and in places Hendrick was forced to turn sideways to squeeze through.

  His legs were aching and his back was raw from constant scrapings when they finally emerged from the corridor. Once again they were in a cathedral-like chamber, though whereas the last chamber had been hung with perhaps a hundred tap-roots, this one was dense with thousands of pendant roots—many of them, he saw, terminating in the odd, tumorous swellings.

  They were movi
ng along a worn path halfway up the side of the wall, with a long sloping drop to their right. Due to the density of the tap-roots he was unable to assess the dimensions of this cavern. The roots obscured the view—a bizarre mirror image of the forest above their heads.

  He expected the Avoel to leave them again and go amongst the roots to observe their ritual obeisance. He glanced over his shoulder, but the aliens were still trotting along behind him.

  Ahead, Lalla slowed and signalled for him and Tiana to do the same. She switched off her flashlight, turned, and raised a finger to her lips.

  The cavern was so silent that Hendrick’s heartbeat sounded preternaturally loud in his ears.

  Then, faintly, he made out a sound.

  A low chant on the threshold of audibility.

  Tiana whispered, “What’s that?”

  “The Disciples,” Lalla replied. “The Chosen Few. Father Jacobius’s favoured minority—or, rather, those who have paid to be allowed to undergo the process.”

  Hendrick said, “Would you mind telling me what the hell you’re talking about? Allowed to undergo what?”

  She regarded him for long seconds. “Allowed to be killed by Father Jacobius,” she said. “Killed so that they might live again.”

  • • •

  I’ve got to be brief.

  Lalla’s just told us about Jacobius and what he’s doing to his people—or rather that he’s killing them. And what the hell did she mean by all that ‘so that they might live again’? She’s not telling us the whole story . . . That’s just like Lalla, keeping things to herself.

  Something terrible is happening down here. I’m not sure that I want to . . . The fact is that we’re in danger. If Jacobius’s people find us . . .

  I’m scared.

  Right. We’re on the move again.

  NINE

  LALLA MOVED DOWN THE SLOPE AND HENDRICK stumbled after her, numbed by her words. Tiana came alongside him and gripped his hand, the feel of her warm flesh a welcome reassurance. They were striding through the packed root system, weaving between the tapering roots. As they moved away from the wall of the cavern and the sulphurous illumination, the air became murky. He was gripped by a clammy coldness.

  The chanting remained on the edge of audibility; it was impossible to judge how far away the Disciples might be. Tiana tugged on his hand and hissed something, pulling him towards one of the swollen roots. “Look, Matt!”

  The dozen Avoel approached the root. One by one, they laid fingers on the fibrous tegument, quickly touched their foreheads, and then moved away.

  The fabric of the root had been sliced into ribbons and then braided, plaited around something. As they drew closer and their eyes adjusted to the gloom, they made out what was enclosed within the braided root. Hendrick stared at the upright body of an Avoel, crosshatched by the sliced root and covered by a semi-translucent caul. Its eyes were closed, its mouth open to reveal two rows of small, sharp teeth.

  Up ahead, Lalla hissed at them to follow her, and they set off again down the sloping bank of the cavern. They passed more and more root-wrapped and mummified Avoel, and each time the attendant aliens stopped to show obeisance to their dead.

  They caught up with Lalla and followed as she wound her way through the stalactite root system. Tiana clung to his hand and he heard her breathing rapidly. He felt light-headed and wondered if it were the after-effects of the alien drug still coursing through his system.

  The chanting grew louder, though it was still far off. Ahead, dimly, Hendrick made out an orange glow between the pendant roots. It was such a contrast to the prevailing gloom that he knew it was the result of lighted torches. The idea of a torchlight procession seemed primitive yet fitting.

  Lalla was slowing down, almost creeping along. She had dropped into a crouch. She veered right, down the sloping bank of the cavern. Below, the flickering illumination grew brighter. An enfilade of roots shielded what might have been going on down there. Their own presence, Hendrick realised, would be concealed from the Disciples.

  Lalla stopped and gestured for everyone to do the same. She crouched behind a swollen root and peered around it mass. She pulled back quickly and waved at Hendrick and Tiana to join her.

  Hendrick crept forward and squatted beside Lalla, who pointed down the slope.

  In the distance, perhaps a hundred metres away, he made out a procession of humans. They were garbed in cerise robes and washed in the light of the flaming torches they held aloft.

  At the head of the congregation, leading the way with torch held high, was a tall grey-haired figure Hendrick recognised as Father Jacobius.

  They had gathered in a natural amphitheatre, an almost perfectly circular bowl in the rock formation. Lalla explained in a low whisper, “This is the Avoel’s most holy place. According to their beliefs, it is the centre of the universe—the very first place created by their gods. Everything else in existence grew out from this point.”

  Only then did Hendrick notice that three groups of Disciples carried, on their shoulders, biers laden with what he assumed were corpses, swaddled like mummies in brilliant white winding sheets. Jacobius moved from bier to bier, tracing the symbol of the cross on the chest of each corpse.

  Hendrick scanned the crowd for any sight of Maatje, without success.

  Lalla went on, “Once a month, the Avoel gather here for the ceremony they call kashanshar.”

  She touched the camera mounted on her forehead like a miner’s lamp, activating the device, and fell silent.

  As they watched, the human celebrants were joined from all sides by the tiny, fleet figures of the aliens, swelling their number and filling the amphitheatre. Hendrick judged that there were in the region of two hundred Avoel down there, and perhaps fifty humans.

  At the far end of the amphitheatre, positioned like the altar of a church, stood a frame lashed together from what looked like lengths of timber. A murmur went up from the congregation, and the mass of human and Avoel down below parted to create a central passage. Three groups of four Avoel processed down the aisle, and each group carried what Hendrick realised—after an initial moment of confusion—was a knotted root system encapsulating an Avoel corpse.

  The gathered aliens issued a keening sound, which swelled and, aided by the acoustics of the cavern, seemed to come from all sides at once. The ululation rose and fell. Hendrick thought of it as a lament, but he knew that that was wrong; there was a note of joy in the rising, fluting sound . . . which served only to make him wonder anew at what might be taking place down below.

  Lalla whispered, “I was with a colleague a year ago, working with the Avoel nearby, gaining their trust, studying their social systems. I became very close to one particular family . . . They told me of this ritual, which is at the very centre of their lives and beliefs. Kashanshar bears a passing a passing resemblance—with one obvious difference—to the ancient Malagasy ritual of famadihana. I vowed to keep it a secret, at least until I’d learned more about it and attempted to assess what effect public knowledge of kashanshar might have on Avoel society. But my colleague . . .” She hesitated and then went on, “He was less circumspect and mentioned the practice to a member of the Church of the Ultimate Redemption. Which was how Father Jacobius came to know . . .” She looked from Hendrick to Tiana. “Jacobius made his own study and drew very wrong—but, to him, useful—conclusions, and set in motion the process being played out here today.”

  She fell silent and stared down at the amphitheatre, and Hendrick also turned his attention to the ceremony.

  The Avoel bearing the roots containing their dead now approached the frame at the far end of the amphitheatre. The keening note soared. The bearers knelt and reverently eased the severed root system upright and propped it in the frame.

  They backed away and were replaced at the makeshift altar by another Avoel. This one carried a long blade fashioned from stone.

  The Avoel approached the root system and methodically cut away the enclosing strands of braid
ed fibre, slowly revealing and releasing the figure within. Perhaps ten minutes later the task was complete and the Avoel corpse stared blindly out at the congregation.

  Hendrick looked at Tiana. Her face appeared almost petrified in the half-light as she gazed at the ceremony far below.

  Now would occur the ritual that had most in common with the Malagasy practice of Famadihana, he thought; they would take the corpse of their fellow and bear it aloft in celebration of death, of life . . .

  Suddenly, the high fluting note that had filled the cavern for so long cut out. The ensuing silence was startling.

  Hendrick felt a tension in the air. It was indefinable, almost unbearable, and he had no idea why he felt this sudden sense of imminence. Evidently, Tiana sensed it too. She gripped his hand tightly and hissed, “Matt . . .”

  The four Avoel bearers stepped forward, approached the revealed corpse, and reached out . . .

  And the corpse moved. It held out a long, thin hand then lifted a leg, stepped forward, and came into the embrace of each of the four Avoel. The thin high wail went up again, and this time Hendrick heard only the joy and celebration of the miracle of resurrection.

  His vision misted and he thought he was about to pass out.

  The debris of the root system was removed and the second of the severed root systems was placed in the frame and the ritual was resumed.

  “Father Jacobius found out,” Lalla whispered, “and initiated his own warped and perverted practice, convincing those in his congregation, the weak and the vulnerable and the ill, that he knew the secret of kashanshar— that he too could bless them with renewed life.”

  Hendrick stared into the amphitheatre as the second Avoel corpse stepped from its erstwhile prison and embraced its saviours. The third root system was propped in place, and the Avoel with the blade stepped forward and began cutting away the caul.

  “But . . .” he began, finding his words with difficulty, gesturing at the miracle. “But the dead Avoel have come back to life.”