The Telemass Quartet

by Eric Brown

  Beside him, Tiana gripped the wheel and stared fixedly ahead. “They got away, Matt. I suspected they left the planet, so I contacted a colleague at the station. They left on the last transmission. He said they were bound for Kallithea.”

  He tipped back his head and swore.

  “But it’s okay, Matt.”

  He stared at her. “Okay? They’ve got away, fled to Kallithea. When’s the next transmission to that godforsaken hole?”

  “Not for another week. But you see, it wasn’t a direct transmission from here.”

  He looked at her. Had the pulse charge scrambled his head? “I don’t understand . . .”

  “They took a cheap transmission to Kallithea via Brimscombe, where there’s a day’s wait until the onward journey to Kallithea.”

  “So . . .”

  “So if we get you to the station by noon today, you can take the direct transmission to Earth and pick up the Kallithea shot tomorrow. You’ll get there just after them, Matt.”

  He laughed out loud with relief. Despite the ache in his sternum, he was feeling better already.

  “Thanks for getting me out of there,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t leave you, Matt. And . . .” She stopped.

  “What?”

  She shook her head, her lips compressed. He saw that she was weeping.

  “Tiana, what is it?”

  She braked the truck suddenly and sat very still in the ensuing silence, staring through the windscreen and silently crying.

  He reached out and touched her arm. “Tiana? What is it?”

  “I’m sorry, Matt.”

  He shrugged uneasy. “Sorry? I don’t understand . . .”

  She hung her head and murmured, “You’ll never forgive me.”

  “Tell me.”

  She turned and looked at him, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Last week, after the transmission from Earth . . . A tall blonde woman needed medical assistance . . . We got talking.” She shrugged. “We met for a drink later. She told me that someone was trying to find her, a vicious ex-lover. She was running away. She asked for my help. She gave me your description, asked me to contact her if you showed up and followed her.”

  He nodded. That sounded like Maatje—lying and scheming and using people in order to keep one step ahead of him.

  “And when I arrived . . . ?” he asked.

  “When I got off shift after treating you, I contacted her, told her you were on Avoeli. She asked me to contact her if you took the train to Allay.”

  He said, “And you did?”

  Mutely, she nodded. “That night, before we . . . before we made love, I told her you’d be aboard the two o’clock train. Matt, I’m sorry! I . . . I didn’t know you then . . . didn’t know what a . . . a good man you were.”

  He said, “You weren’t to know, Tiana. Hell, I know how persuasive Maatje can be.”

  “You must hate me,” she said almost inaudibly.

  “No. No, of course I don’t.”

  She stared at him through her tears. “Honest, Matt? Honest, you don’t?”

  He reached out and cupped her head. “Honestly, Tiana.”

  She started the engine and they drove on in silence. Fomalhaut was rising imperceptibly over the far horizon. It would be a sight Hendrick would remember for the rest of his life, an image loaded with a freight of complex emotions.

  At last Tiana said, “That night, when I picked you up at the bar . . .”

  He glanced at her. “I thought it was too good to be true.”

  “I was drunk,” she said. “I saw you sitting alone. I recalled what Maatje had told me, and somehow her description didn’t match the lonely person I saw. I was intrigued, so I introduced myself.” She shrugged. “And that night, in bed.” She gripped the wheel and went on. “You get to know someone when you’re so intimate, and I knew that you weren’t the person Maatje had described.”

  He refrained from asking her what his ex-wife had said; he could imagine the picture she had drawn.

  He said softly, “You could have told me sooner, Tiana, that you’d contacted Maatje.”

  She compressed her lips, avoiding his eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . .”

  “By that time,” he said, “I was helping you, right, and you thought I’d leave if you admitted contacting Maatje?”

  She shrugged, swallowed. “No. Maybe. I don’t know . . . By that time, I felt something for you. I liked you for the good person you are. And I couldn’t bring myself to . . . to have you hate me. I’m sorry. I feel so guilty.”

  He laid a hand on her leg. “Hey, you’re not the only one, okay? I feel guilty too.”

  She sniffed and looked at him with tear-filled eyes. “You do?”

  “When I agreed to help you . . . it wasn’t out of altruism, okay? I knew—or rather, I suspected or hoped—that Maatje might have . . .” He shrugged. “I knew she’d come to Avoeli and got herself involved in some kind of alien cult. So, you could say that I was using you too. But, at the same time,Tiana, I honestly wanted to help you, okay?”

  She smiled at him. “None of us are perfect, are we, Matt?”

  “None of us,” he said.

  A silence came between them and thenTiana smiled through her tears. “I’d like to keep in contact, Matt, when all this is over. I know you might not want to . . .”

  He smiled. “One day I’d like to come back.”

  She nodded and smiled and backhanded tears from her cheeks.

  They drove on, and on the far horizon the giant hemisphere of Fomalhaut rose on another new day.

  • • •

  Hendrick stood with the other travellers in the departure lounge of the Telemass Station, as anxious as ever before the imminent translation.

  A small figure made its way through the crowd, smiling. Tiana stood before him. She reached out, took his hand, and said, “Good luck, Matt.”

  He kissed her. “I’ll be in touch.”

  An announcement boomed through the lounge: “Will all passengers make their way to the translation pad. Repeat, will all . . .”

  “Say goodbye to Lalla for me.”

  I’ll do that, Matt.”

  “I hope you two sort things out.”

  They embraced for one last time, and Hendrick made his way from the lounge.

  Minutes later he took his place among the other travellers on the translation pad, a pre-emptive nausea rising in his chest. He looked up at the window of the observation lounge and made out Tiana’s small face. She was smiling down at him sadly. She raised a hand and waved.

  The countdown began. “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”

  Hendrick smiled, raised a hand and waved at her.

  “Three . . . two . . .”

  He looked ahead, wondering what might be awaiting him eventually when he arrived on Kallithea.

  A second later, he was blinded by the white light.

  One second he was standing on the translation pad of theTelemass Station on Avoeli, Fomalhaut IV, and the next he was twenty-five light years away on Earth.

  Part Two

  Sacrifice on Spica III

  ONE

  IT WAS HIGH SUMMER IN PARIS AND HENDRICK SAT in the bar overlooking the translation pad of the Élysées Telemass Station. He was wearing a thick thermal bodysuit and sweating, despite having opened the tunic and the leg vents. The call for travellers to make their way down to the pad had been delayed for thirty minutes—some minor technical glitch, according to an apologetic announcement—so Hendrick had bought himself another ice-cold lager. The alcohol helped to cool him down and distract his thoughts from the imminent translation two hundred and sixty light years through space to the planet of Kallithea, Spica III. He was a bad Telemass traveller and a few beers always helped to dull his apprehension.

  To his left, through the clear dome of the station, was the arrow-straight Champs-Élysées, ending in the lighted glory of the Arc de Triomphe. Fliers zipped overhead, their taillights glowing like fire
flies in the sultry midnight air. Down on the translation pad, technicians knelt beside open flanges in the decking, trying to sort out the problem. In the bar, disgruntled travellers were beginning to complain. Hendrick sipped his beer and regarded his fellow travellers. Most of them, like him, were outfitted against the subzero temperatures of Kallithea; others, strikingly, were not. These people huddled in a group at the bar, a dozen men and women wearing scant summer clothing, travel bags piled around their feet like barricades. Another thing set these people apart: they had shaven heads with an odd knot of trailing hair left in situ at the back of their skulls.

  “Matt Hendrick? Matt . . . My God, it’s been a long time.”

  Hendrick turned and stared up at the smiling face of a tall, thickset African whose lined face and grey hair showed the passage of the years. “Ed! Hell, the last I heard—”

  “I was in a dozen bits after the terrorist attack,” Ed Miller said. “The wonders of modern surgery.”

  Hendrick stood and embraced the ex-cop. “Let me get you a beer.”

  He bought a Heverlee Lager from the bar and returned to the table. “It’s good to see you, Ed. I tried to . . .”

  “I left the Netherlands after being discharged,” Miller said, “went back to Ghana. I put the past behind me, started a new life.”

  For a couple of years, twenty years ago, Hendrick and Ed Miller had worked in the same missing persons department in Amsterdam. Hendrick had liked the big, breezy, easy-going African from their very first meeting; they’d shared a fondness for Belgian beer and Ajax Amsterdam Football Club. Miller had been promoted to Homicide and a dozen years ago had been ripped apart by a terrorist bomb. Hendrick had attempted to visit him in hospital a month after the attack, but the medics were still putting the cop together, piece by piece. A couple of months later, when Hendrick next enquired, Miller had been discharged and had taken early retirement.

  Around that time Hendrick had met Maatje, his wife-to-be, and he never got round to tracing his old friend.

  “Now let me guess,” Miller said. “Dressed like that, Matt, it’s my guess you’re going to Kallithea.”

  “Ever thought of becoming a detective?”

  The Ghanaian laughed. “What takes you to the ice planet? A case?”

  “I quit the force a couple of years ago. Took early retirement.”

  “So why—?” Miller stopped, stared across at the curious group of shaven-headed tourists. “You’re not with that lot?”

  Hendrick indicated his full head of hair. “Nothing to do with me. Who are they?”

  “That’s a relief. I thought for a minute you’d converted.”

  “Converted?”

  “You haven’t heard about them? They call themselves Acolytes of the Ice. Some screwy religion based on Kallithea.” Miller leaned closer and murmured, “Apparently they’re suicides—or rather suicides-in-waiting.”

  Hendrick glanced across the bar at the quiet men and women sipping their drinks and conversing in lowered tones.

  “I don’t know much about them,” Miller went on, “but I’ve heard that groups of Acolytes travel to Kallithea every five years or so and freeze themselves to death on the ice fields as the planet moves away from its sun.”

  “The obvious question, Ed: why?”

  The big African shrugged. “Search me. They worship some alien god, so I’ve heard. Maybe we’ll find out more when we get to Kallithea. If we ever get there.” He stared down at the technicians. “Anyway, why are you going there?”

  “Long story,” Hendrick said, wondering for a second how much to tell the ex-cop. Something about Miller’s kind eyes, his easy smile, peeled back the years—and it was as if they were in Amsterdam again, enjoying a beer in a canal-side bar after a long shift.

  “Not long after you were blown up, I met someone and we married. We had a daughter, Samantha.” Hendrick shrugged, staring into his beer. “Anyway, Sam died six years ago while we were living on Landsdowne. An alien virus . . . No cure. We decided to have her body placed in suspension, against the day when someone, somewhere, might be able to do something about the pathogen and cure her.”

  “Jesus, Matt. I’m sorry.” Miller shrugged. “That’s why you’re going to Kallithea? Some medic there . . . ?”

  Hendrick shook his head. “It gets even more complicated. Just after Sam died, Maatje and me split up. She met someone else.” He drained his beer and stared down at the translation pad, where the technicians were closing the hatches and packing away their tools. “I won custody of my daughter’s body and had it lodged in a hospital in Amsterdam. My wife’s lover . . . He was a surgeon. He pulled strings, and the long and the short of it is that Maatje took the pod and fled with her lover. I’ve been trying to get her back for the past five years.”

  “You’ve gone through the courts?”

  “Of course I have. The thing is, Earth’s jurisdiction doesn’t hold sway on perhaps fifty percent of all the colony worlds out there . . . and Maatje’s no fool. She’s not going to stay long anywhere where I might slap her with a writ.”

  Miller nodded. “And they’ve fled to Kallithea?”

  “I traced them to Avoeli, Fomalhaut IV. I almost had them, but they got away on the first Telemass out of there, which happened to be heading to Kallithea. I was lucky that the only transmission out of Avoeli was to the ice planet, because that means I’ve got them.”

  Hendrick tapped his wrist-com and routed a visual to the tabletop screen. He moved his empty glass, wiped the condensation rings with the sleeve of his thermal jacket, and stared at the schematics scrolling down the screen.

  He indicated the line of text showing transmissions from Kallithea. “There are only two more transmissions out of there before the planet closes down, and both are back to Earth.”

  In the two days he’d had to prepare himself for the trip to Kallithea, he’d read up on the ice planet. The tiny orb described a highly elliptical orbit around its primary—or rather, its primaries, for Spica was a binary system. Kallithea suffered a very short, intense period of summer as it approached close to the double star, and then, as its swung away, endured a winter lasting some five years. With the approach of the cold, the population of the planet made their way underground to vast city caverns—the same caverns where they took refuge during the six months of high summer, when temperatures reached 150 Fahrenheit.

  “Kallithea is entering a winter period, Ed. No-one can survive on the surface, and Telemass transmissions are suspended until spring comes round again.”

  He tapped the screen. “The penultimate transmission back to Earth is in six days, and the very last one six days after that. Maatje and her lover will be taking either the transmission to Earth in six days, or the one after that. All I need to do once I reach Kallithea is sit tight and wait till they return to the Telemass station.”

  Miller looked at him. “But why are you making the journey to Kallithea? Why don’t you just wait until they arrive back here?”

  “I thought of that,” Hendrick said grimly, “but decided I had to go. You see, what if Maatje did decide to hole up on Kallithea for five years? I think it unlikely, to be honest, but the thought of having to kick my heels, unable to do a damned thing to get Sam back . . .” He shook his head. “So I’ll follow them back on the same transmission, and before they move on to somewhere else I’ll arrange to have Maatje taken into custody and the suspension pod confiscated and returned to the hospital in Amsterdam.”

  “You’ve got it all worked out.”

  “Well, I hope it goes to plan. Of course, they might call my bluff and decide to wait it out.”

  “But for five years, underground, on a tiny ice planet?”

  Hendrick smiled. “You’re right. Maatje liked the luxuries in life. I can’t see her, or her lover, enduring five years of winter just to evade me.”

  The tannoy chimed and a sing-song French voice announced, “Will all travellers to Kallithea make their way down to the translation pad?” The call was
repeated in English, Spanish, and Chinese, and with a palpable sense of relief the travellers in the bar gathered their luggage and took the escalators down to the pad.

  Hendrick stood and shouldered his pack. “What about you, Ed? Kallithea isn’t exactly a tourist destination.”

  The Ghanaian smiled. “I rejoined the force a year ago. I’m back working in the Homicide division.”

  Hendrick looked at his friend, surprised. “And you’re going to Kallithea on a case?”

  Miller clapped Hendrick on the shoulder. “I’ll tell you all about it when we get there, okay?”

  They rode the escalator down to the translation pad and took their positions on the deck. As the countdown began, Hendrick closed his eyes and tried not to dwell on the fact that, in a matter of seconds, his corporeal self would be stripped down to its constituent molecules and fired off to Kallithea on a tachyon vector.

  TWO

  THE SENSATION WAS OF SOMETHING SLAMMING INTO HIM with incredible force. He felt as if he were at the epicentre of a white-hot explosion. He felt not the slightest pain, but a sensation of intense dislocation: it was as if for a fraction of a second he existed outside time and space, in a realm that had no physical analogue. He had heard some people describe the sensation as having one’s soul wrenched from one’s body. As a rationalist he preferred to think of the process as the purely physiological consequence of being taken apart at the atomic level, fired two hundred and sixty light years through space, and reassembled at the other end.

  By some miracle, this time, he made the translation without the usual nausea. He followed Miller from the deck and up the escalator.

  They passed through customs along with a horde of Acolytes of the Ice. As they took the elevator pod down the scimitar leg of the station, Hendrick sealed his thermal suit and fastened its hood snugly around his face, pulling on the visor and goggles he’d been advised to buy by the travel consultant at the Élysées Station. The pod was heated, but Miller’s first words on stepping from the translation pad had been to warn him that the temperature was fifty below zero out there.