by Eric Brown
They sprinted up the incline towards the first of the cactus trees, followed by Akio. As they entered the shadow of the tree line, Hendrick recalled the Vhey they had seen earlier, watching them. Were they being observed now—and, if so, might the aliens move to intervene?
They crept west, keeping to the cover of the trees. Hendrick was aware of Akio’s frantic breathing behind him. The kid was scared stiff.
At one point he paused and peered back the way they had come: the commune was silent in the starlight. He almost found it hard to believe that someone was intent on killing them. For a fleeting second, he wondered if Akio was lying and this was a setup—then he chastised himself. Mercury had read the boy’s mind: he was telling the truth. He knew where Maatje and Hovarth were, Hendrick thought, and Samantha!
They came to the edge of the clearing and turned downhill, still hugging the shadows. Ahead, Mercury was a panther-like shape, creeping along circumspectly, pulser at the ready.
Akio grabbed his arm and hissed, “Look!” He pointed across the clearing, towards their A-frame.
Two figures, mere shadows in the starlight, moved from a neighbouring long house and stepped onto the verandah of the A-frame. Mercury signalled that she’d seen them and increased her pace. Hendrick jogged to keep up, wishing that he too were armed.
They had left the flier at the bottom of the meadow, perhaps two hundred metres from their current position. At some point they would have to leave the trees and cross the greensward in open sight. Once Lincoln’s henchmen discovered that they’d vacated the A-frame, the obvious place to head them off was the parking area. A thought occurred to him: What if Lincoln had had their flier disabled to prevent their getaway?
A light went on in the A-frame, and then another. He heard shouts issuing from the dwelling. Someone emerged, followed by a second figure. The pair stopped before the dwelling, turning to scan the greensward. Mercury froze, reached out and pulled Hendrick further into the shadows. He stared across the clearing. Akio crouched beside him, moaning involuntarily.
The pair split up. One hurried down the incline, heading for the parking area. The other moved further into the middle of the clearing, staring around him.
“This changes things,” Mercury whispered. “Christ, look.”
Hendrick stared across to the parking area. One of the thugs was carrying out what he’d feared they might have done earlier: disabling their flier. He saw a flash of white light, illuminating a tall figure beside the vehicle as he applied the beam to the controls. Something crackled. On the warm breeze wafting across the meadow, Hendrick caught the reek of charred plastic.
Akio murmured, “Don’t worry. They won’t damage our own fliers. And I have an ignition card.” Grinning, he held it up in the starlight.
“Good man,” Hendrick whispered. “Remind me to buy you a beer when we get back to civilisation.”
“A beer?” Mercury said. “I’ll buy you your own damned artist’s studio.”
“I just want to get safely away from this place,” Akio said, “and back to my family in Japan.”
Mercury touched Hendrick’s arm and pointed across the greensward. The second figure was making his way down the incline. He joined the thug beside the flier and they spoke in lowered tones, then turned to scan the surrounding jungle.
“We’re safe where we are for a while,” Mercury said. “And I don’t think they’ll make a move any time soon. They know we can’t get away without a flier.”
“Can you read them?”
She shook her head. “They’re a little too far away.”
“What should we do?”
“Let me think.”
Hendrick turned to Akio. “You said you know where Hovarth and the woman are . . . ?”
The boy nodded. “Lincoln took them far to the north of here, delivered them to a so-called sacred zone.”
“What the hell . . . ?” he began. “Why? Why did they want to go there?”
The boy shook his head. “I do not know. The man, Hovarth, wanted to go there.”
“The sacred zone—that’s where the Vhey took your sister, right?”
The boy’s eyes were wide in the starlight. “You know?” He nodded. “Yes, the Vhey took her.”
“Against her will?”
Silence, as Akio regarded his hands. “No. Oni wanted to go. She believed what Lincoln told her about the Vhey.”
“What about them? What did Lincoln tell her?”
“That the Vhey would Exalt her . . .”
“Exalt . . . ?” It was the word Pascal had used. “What the hell does that mean?”
Akio shook his head. “I . . . I really don’t know. Oni said something about being one with the cosmos, but I don’t really think that she knew what really happened.”
Hendrick looked at Mercury. “But why would Hovarth want to go a sacred zone? To be Exalted?”
She shook her head, staring across at the parking area.
Hendrick looked at Akio. “You said you could take us there—but is it safe? I mean, it’s sacred, right? Will the Vhey allow us to enter?”
Before Akio could answer, Mercury touched Hendrick’s arm. “Look.”
He peered across the clearing. One of the men was leaving the parking area and climbing the hillside towards Edward Lincoln’s long house.
“He’s going to report to the boss,” she said. “I think we should make our move before he returns.”
“What do we do?”
Mercury raised the pulser. “I need to get closer to make sure I hit the bastard. I’ll set it to stun, but even so he’ll be out a good hour or more.”
“Okay, but there’s precious little cover . . .”
Akio said, “I have an idea. I will approach him and distract him while you come from behind . . . He won’t suspect me.”
Mercury stared at the boy, looking into his mind and assessing his capability, his confidence. At last she nodded. “You okay with that?”
“I will say that I couldn’t sleep,” Akio said, “and needed some fresh air. I will ask what he is doing, and chat for a while.”
Hendrick said, “Do you know who it is?”
“Rodriguez, one of Lincoln’s yes men.”
“Okay,” Mercury said. “Better hurry, before the other one returns.”
Hendrick peered at Lincoln’s long house. The second man had disappeared inside.
Akio hurried from the cover of the trees and walked into the centre of the greensward without being seen, then turned and approached the parking area, affecting a casual stroll as he made his way down the incline. Hendrick saw the armed man stiffen. Akio lifted a hand in greeting and said something.
Akio came within a couple of metres of Rodriguez and gestured, moving so that the other faced him; the man now had his back to Hendrick and Mercury.
“Okay,” Mercury said. “Here goes, Matt. Follow me at a distance.”
She eased herself from the cover, straightened up and ran towards the parking area. He gave her a few seconds then followed, his heart thumping.
All they needed now, he thought, was for the second man to return.
It would take Mercury seconds only to disable Rodriguez, and then it would be a matter of boarding one of the fliers, Akio starting it and lifting off. If the second man were armed, then he’d have no compunction about bringing the flier down . . .
Mercury was five metres behind Rodriguez when she slowed and lifted the pulser.
He willed her to fire, but at that very second something alerted the man to her presence and he turned, ducked and fired. His shot was off target, but it still clipped her; she went down with a cry, spilling the pulser. Hendrick sprinted and dived, hit the floor and grabbed the weapon. He rolled, came up in a kneeling position, and steadied his firing hand. Rodriguez pivoted to fire at him, but Akio leapt, pushing Rodriguez to his knees.
Hendrick took the opportunity to fire, and dropped the man with a two second pulse to his chest.
He ran to Mercury. She lay o
n her back, unconscious but breathing. He checked her pulse, relieved to find it strong. He’d been hit by pulsers in the line of duty, years ago when he worked for the Amsterdam police; it hurt like hell, and for a day afterwards it was as if you were recovering from the world’s worst hangover.
He scooped her up and crossed to where Akio was opening the rear door of a flier. Together they eased her across the back seat and dived in the front.
Akio hunched over the wheel and inserted the ignition card, muttering in his own language.
Hendrick glanced up the greensward. There was no sign of the second man.
The turbos caught and the flier rocked. With a roar loud enough to wake the entire commune, the flier wobbled into the air.
Hendrick peered out, saw the third flier, and called out, “Hold it, Akio!”
He leaned through the window, set the pulser to maximum, and drilled a ten-second bolt of white-hot energy into the flier’s dashboard.
By now the uproar had alerted the commune. As they ascended and banked, Hendrick peered down at the moonlit greensward. A dozen or more artists had hurried out and were staring up at the departing flier. He saw two figures rush from Lincoln’s long house—Edward Lincoln and the second man—and smiled as he imagined Lincoln’s rage.
“Well done, Akio,” he said.
Akio lifted his right hand from the wheel. “Look at how I am shaking, Mr Hendrick!”
The clearing dwindled and was soon lost in the darkness of the surrounding jungle. Akio set course north, flying low towards a string of lakes shimmering in the starlight.
Hendrick clambered into the back seat, settled Mercury’s head on his lap, and stroked her forehead as the flier carried them to temporary safety.
EIGHT
“THE STRANGE THING, MR HENDRICK,” AKIO SAID, breaking the silence after an hour, “is that I know I shouldn’t hate Edward Lincoln. But if I don’t, then the only person I can hate is myself.”
“How do you mean? And call me Matt.”
Akio was navigating their way to the sacred zone by way of the lakes strung out in diminishing perspective towards the horizon. Both moons were riding high now, shedding a bright magnesium light over the alien terrain; it had the effect of making the jungle seem inky black and the lakes silver.
“You see, Lincoln truly believes in the Vhey, in their belief system and their philosophy. He came here twenty years ago, with his wife.”
Hendrick stared down at Mercury’s face, beautiful in the moonlight. “He told me that. She was dying . . .”
Akio shook his head. “No, she wasn’t. That’s a story he tells to gain people’s sympathy, and to explain what happened.”
“What happened?” Hendrick echoed.
“Edward and Anthea were inseparable, and it helped that they worked together. They were well respected in the crystal art world. Edward often said that their work represented a melding of their souls. I don’t know why they came here—maybe he’d heard about the Vhey and their belief system, or then again it might have been by pure chance. Anyway, they came to Beltran and communicated with the Vhey, and found that the aliens’ philosophy of universality accorded with their own beliefs. Edward tells the story of how they first came upon a sacred zone. They were travelling by flier in the north when they saw a congregation of Vhey down in the jungle. They landed and approached the Vhey, and were allowed to witness a ceremony. The Vhey called it pahn-malahn. It was the most sacred of all the Vhey’s rituals, or procedures. It was something that the Vhey had practised for millennia—the process whereby a Vhey, most often an old citizen at the end of its physical life, is conjoined with a younger relative.”
“Conjoined?” Hendrick stared at the young man. He recalled what Pascal had told them about the Vhey’s belief that they carried within them the souls of their ancestors. “How do they do this?”
Akio shook his head. “I don’t know. No one does.” He shrugged. “But anyway, Edward and Anthea witnessed this. They saw a young alien take on the soul—for want of a better word—of its older ancestor, and saw the change in the former. They saw the old Vhey slowly die, and witnessed the transformation of the younger.”
“Hocus pocus. The Vhey might believe in this to the extent that they feel transformed . . .”
“That’s what I first thought, when I heard the story from fellow artists back at the commune, but then I’ve witnessed Edward Lincoln’s behaviour.”
Hendrick shook his head. “I don’t follow . . .”
“Edward and Anthea left the sacred zone, greatly moved. Over the following months, they discussed the pahn-malahn procedure and spoke to Vhey who had undergone it. After several months, they came to a decision. They wanted to undergo pahn-malahn themselves.”
“Themselves? But—?”
“They had always sought unity in their art, in their philosophy, in their day-to-day lives. What better way to be together, on some elemental level, that to be conjoined in the alien rite of pahn-malahn?”
“You mean Edward and Anthea underwent . . . ?”
Akio looked over his shoulder at Hendrick and nodded. “That’s right. Anthea gave up her corporeal being and allowed the Vhey to move . . . to decant . . . her essence into Edward. Her body died in the jungle of Beltran, but her soul lived on in her husband.”
“And you believe this?” Hendrick was incredulous.
Akio was silent for a few seconds. “Not at first, no. But then I looked at the evidence.”
“The evidence?”
“They had always worked together in the past, but Edward had been the less talented of the two. Anthea had been the creative genius. But then, not long after the pahn-malahn, Edward’s work suddenly achieved brilliance. I saw the pieces myself and read the reviews of his exhibitions and installations—this was fifteen years ago—and they were unanimous: they declared that Anthea Lincoln’s death had inspired Edward; it was as if he were channelling her creative spirit.”
Hendrick shrugged. “That’s not exactly proof, Akio.”
“Perhaps not in itself. But there’s also his behaviour, and this convinced me.”
“His behaviour?”
“His mood swings, his erratic temperament. It’s hard to explain, if you haven’t witnessed it yourself. Sometimes, when you’re speaking to him, it’s as if you’re having a normal conversation . . . and then all of a sudden his entire manner changes and you get the impression you’re in the presence of someone else.” He shrugged. “It sounds unbelievable, and hardly proof of pahn-malahn, but until you’ve experienced it for yourself . . .”
Hendrick recalled what Pascal had told him about Lincoln’s mood swings, and his own observations of the man’s erratic conversation—but these could easily be explained rationally without invoking bizarre alien ceremonies. Stated simply, the man was mad.
Mercury herself had mentioned the possibility of multiple personalities . . .
He considered what Akio had told him. “And something else I don’t get, Akio: Why would the Vhey consent to do this to Edward and Anthea? They’re an insular, secretive race. They’ve eschewed contact with us for the most part.”
Akio said, “Ah, but you see . . . the Vhey wanted something from Edward Lincoln.”
“They did? What?”
“In the limited contact the Vhey had had with the human race, they found us fascinating. They were curious, and wished to study us. The best way to do this was to allow a human community to flourish on Beltran, deep in the jungle, where they could be studied at leisure.”
“The artists’ commune,” Hendrick said.
“Exactly. They urged Edward to set up a commune, and this is what he did. Edward got to advance the philosophy of Vhey universality, and the Vhey could study the human race at close quarters.”
Hendrick thought it through. At last he said, “It doesn’t necessarily follow, Akio, that Edward underwent pahn-malahn, you know? He could have started the commune because he was simply interested in the Vhey, and the Vhey were happy to study t
he artists.”
Akio turned and looked at him, his lips compressed in thought. “That’s right, perhaps. But . . . But why then, when the Vhey told him that they wanted more than just to study us humans, did Edward agree?”
“Agree? What do you mean?” He stared at the young man. “And how do you know that the Vhey wanted more?”
“Over the past couple of years,” Akio said, “Edward Lincoln has lectured us on the Vhey philosophy of hahnram: the taking of the belief of universality to the next level. Edward encouraged certain individuals from the commune to . . . to give themselves to the Vhey, in the sacred zones. This is what happened to my sister, Oni. Edward said that she had become Exalted, but as to what that really means . . .”
He stopped, swallowed, and stared ahead in silence.
Exalted . . .
And was this what Edward Lincoln had promised Hovarth?
“Now do you understand why I had to get away, Matt, but at the same time try to find out what happened to Oni?”
He nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
“My sister was brainwashed. She believed implicitly in what Edward Lincoln told her, believed in the creed of the Vhey. I . . . I almost understood that belief. It is tempting, beguiling. The Vhey promise universality, a melding with the very cosmos on an elemental quantum level. Many before Oni succumbed, and gave themselves, and Oni was impressionable. We argued for days and days, but her desire was greater than her love for me.”
“And the authorities have done nothing to stop Lincoln?” Hendrick asked.
“What authorities? Human presence here is limited. Pascal is Europe’s representative, and he’s apathetic . . . or fearful. The other representatives are hardly any better, and the Vhey don’t encourage communications with the outside world.”
Hendrick stared down at a distant oval lake, shimmering in the moonlight like a shield of mercury. The jungle beyond, dark and undulating and populated by the enigmatic Vhey, seemed hostile.
“I hate Edward Lincoln,” Akio murmured, “because if I didn’t hate him, I would hate myself for not being able to stop my sister from . . .”
Hendrick allowed a quiet minute to pass. “Do you know the exact location of the sacred zone?” he asked a while later.
