Ten Little Aliens: 50th Anniversary Edition

by Stephen Cole

  ‘Is Haunt dead?’

  A breathless pause. ‘I’m afraid I can no longer detect her in the neural network.’

  ‘Haunt’s dead.’ We can barely bring ourselves to say the words.

  ‘What about everyone else?’ Polly says.

  It’s only a matter of time, we think. If Haunt’s dead, with all she’s lived through… how can the likes of us go on hoping for miracles?

  The Doctor gives her a kindly answer, and says how he’ll be in touch. Will it be him next, shouting and screaming in our head as the angels close in on him, as the Schirr come stealthily for him out of the shadows?

  Polly’s looking at us. She looks like she might burst into tears. She holds out her arms to me. We shamble over and clutch her close to us.

  ‘Who’s going to get us out of this now?’ we whisper. Our face is clear, unmarked, like the past never happened, like we’ve never fought our own battles before.

  And Polly has nothing to say to us.

  If you have not yet witnessed Marshal Haunt’s severance from the network, review section 11 on here.

  Then return here and select another viewpoint

  To continue in Shade’s viewpoint, select section 24 on here To witness these events again from Polly’s viewpoint, select section 7 on here

  To switch to Roba’s viewpoint, select section 22 on here – then return here

  9

  Haunt

  We trudge about in the dark, playing out this stupid sick game. We can feel Schirr here. Out in the darkness.

  The Doctor holds us up. He feels useless, we don’t need to try to spy on his head to get that signal. We have to keep stopping for him to rest.

  We’re back thinking about Ashman. Listening to the Doctor’s old-man-breathing here in the chilly darkness brings us crashing back to Toronto. Nothing else to do while he catches breath but look back. Try to warm ourselves round that inner image. Maybe others are looking in. Let them.

  After the Schirr blast, we came round in the shattered data office an hour or so later, woken by the sound of screaming. We couldn’t swallow. Our head felt like someone was slamming it in a blast door.

  It took us a few minutes to realise the screaming was Ashman’s. In combat his voice had always rung with calm authority. In pain, he sounded like a hysterical woman. The noise was coming from outside the room. Most of the ceiling had fallen inside it.

  We wanted to help him. We tried to push ourself up. That’s when we found our arm was broken, and we joined our CO in the shrieking.

  ‘Haunt,’ Ashman shouted, when he heard the noise. ‘Haunt, are you all right? Can you move?’

  The concern for us in his voice left us stunned. We even forgot the pain for a few seconds. ‘I’ll live.’

  ‘For God’s sake you’ve got to help me,’ Ashman moaned. ‘Get to me. For God’s sake get to me.’

  We crawled past the remnants of the data inputter, and the leering mask of the Schirr. Incredibly, the medikit was intact. And Ashman and us, we were both alive. Lucky.

  A slick of blood poured suddenly out of our mouth, over our chin and onto the floor.

  Bewildered, we checked our neck and found a jagged piece of metal sticking out there.

  Ashman was still screaming for help. But we knew that unless we helped ourself first we would both die.

  We ripped a length of charred material from the dead woman’s shattered leg. Gathered a handful of pills from the floor around the medical kit, tried to fathom them. Gave up and swallowed the lot.

  We didn’t dare pull out the piece of metal from our neck straight away. We didn’t know what else it might pull out. But we worked out the metal was probably from the back of the monitor housing, and just knowing that made us feel a bit better. Crazy. Ever since we were a child, we always felt we could handle anything as long as we understood it. Got it. Weren’t floundering about, out of our depth.

  ‘You’ll never fall in love, then,’ our mother used to tease us.

  There was a small hole in the ruined doorway. We wormed through. Ashman was lying in the corridor. His body was bent all wrongly. It looked like it was only his combat suit that was holding it together.

  His face was a sticky red-black where the blast had stripped his skin away. But he must still be able to see through the eye that hadn’t melted into the flesh, because he fell silent when he saw us. It was one of those stupid, slushy moments when you look at each other and you feel the electricity. Power there, between two people. Like in books. He started shaking, trembling for us as we crept towards him. He wanted us. Needed us. He would die without us. We could feel it, and we shivered.

  ‘Are…’ It was tough to talk with the metal in our neck. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘You’re funny,’ he said. Like normal.

  We held out a handful of painkillers. He lunged for them like they were diamonds. But his hand was shaking too much to keep hold of them. They fell and scattered on the floor. We picked up each one and tucked it inside his mouth. He moaned, like we were feeding him strawberries dipped in chocolate. He coughed pathetically as he tried to swallow them down. His eyes stared blankly at the metal stuck in our throat, but he said nothing.

  Finally, his shaking hand gestured to his comms unit, just out of reach. ‘More Schirr, they said,’ he muttered. His voice was hoarse. ‘Unit came down outside. Took most of us out.’

  ‘Did we beat them?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  Neither of us said anything for a while. We listened to Ashman’s breathing grow gradually easier. Ours got worse. Throat felt like it was closing up. We coughed and felt something hot flood out the back of our nose. There was nothing to break the silence now. The shadows were thick and coal-black. One emergency light still flickered half-heartedly.

  We fixed up our neck as best we could. Lay down beside him, careful not to get too close. We wanted to but we knew somehow that would hurt us more.

  ‘They might come for us,’ we whispered.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Help.’

  A pause. ‘I thought you meant the Schirr.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If the Schirr won, they might want to get back down here,’ Ashman said slowly. ‘Finish off whatever they wanted to do.’

  We didn’t answer. We felt so tongue-tied this close to him, seeing him so vulnerable.

  What could we say? Someone who’d been so strong, weak like an old man, catching his breath.

  Like the Doctor now, who can’t even make a crummy mile in the dark.

  That feeling, the fear and resentment and the sorrow, never left us over the days that followed. We painfully built the rudiments of a nest about the two of us. The rest of the dead woman’s clothing made a cushion for Ashman’s head. A half-melted plastic covering draped over one of the ruined banks of equipment served as a blanket for us both. It was freezing now in the silent, shattered corridor.

  Somehow, under Ashman’s direction, we manhandled the ruined monitor into the corridor. There was no power supply, but Ashman told us that by crossing some of the wires inside, we could generate enough current to heat up the casing, and so warm us in the chill of those fitful days and nights. But Ashman was wrong. We crossed every wire in the machine, every possible combination methodically, but it remained cold. Dead. This was a ritual we had to go through every day, sometimes several times in a day. Our failures incensed Ashman. He insisted it was possible if only we could do it right. And when we didn’t, he laid into us, ordered us away in disgust. He’d only call us back when he couldn’t last a minute longer without the painkillers we would ease into the dry split of his mouth.

  He was getting worse. We felt like we were dying with him. Light-headed, we would glare for hours at a time at the broken bulk of the useless monitor.

  Then finally, days later, once life had dwindled to little more than a cold, painful sleep punctuated by rummages through the dregs of the medikit, the comms unit squawked into sudden life.

  The voice was heavi
ly distorted, but it sounded like a woman. It said something about victory, and about help.

  Ashman stared at it dumbly, and we felt a stab of pain in our hungry stomach. They would come for us. They would help. They would help Ashman like we never could.

  He grunted at us. We turned. He was looking straight at us with his good eye.

  Holding out his hand to us. It wasn’t shaking so badly now.

  Can you feel it now? How our quiet shrivelled little heart quickened? We even dared to smile back at him. We reached out our fingers to his, touched them, entwined them. Everything seemed too hot. Our breath steamed out into the dank air like a warm kiss to him.

  He pulled free, smacked our hand away, threw out his palm again.

  ‘The pills, you stupid useless bitch. I need more of the pills.’

  We froze. Froze everywhere. Then we reached into our pocket for the painkillers and we hurled them away as far as we could. Like our senses, scattered to the shadows.

  Ashman bellowed like we’d stuck him with a knife.

  ‘Forgive me.’ The Doctor’s voice in the dark. ‘I’m ready to go on, now.’

  We jump like a current’s just been put through us.

  The Doctor’s looking at us expectantly. Was he in our head watching the show or was he…

  We slip back there for just another moment before we have to go on.

  This was the moment. When everything changed.

  Our good hand was groping around in the dust and the dark for the pills. We despaired of finding them before help came. We pictured the rescue party in the ruins outside doing much the same as us. Hunting round uselessly in the dark for tiny, meaningless things.

  It’s as dark here.

  The Doctor’s set off again, breathless along the tunnel.

  We feel our side. It’s sticky, pink and gleaming in the torchlight. We knew it was coming but still we’re shocked. Repulsed. And we know this is just a tiny taste of what the future holds.

  The Doctor beckons to us. We have to pick up the search.

  To switch to Frog’s viewpoint, select section 3 on here

  To switch to Creben’s viewpoint, select section 20 on here

  10

  Ben

  Tovel really puts us through our paces, fixing up the light-wires for the life support. We’re grabbing this, tracing that back…

  ‘Whoever done this knew what they were doing,’ we mutter to Creben.

  He nods. ‘They did. They certainly did.’ Then he takes my latest bundle of laser spaghetti and buries them somewhere lower down in the grid. The red links flare brighter and then the lines merge.

  ‘This should be the last of the links,’ he says.

  ‘Good news, my friends.’ The Doctor’s whisper starts up from somewhere deep in our head. ‘Polly and Shade have the crystals. We can reset the coordinates and steer ourselves far from Morphiea’s noisome influence.’

  We want to yell and cheer. But the Doctor’s shushing us, frantically.

  ‘We should not make this known to all in our network,’ he says, his voice low and urgent.

  ‘As we saw the Schirr through Roba’s eyes,’ Creben says, ‘you think they can see through his?’

  ‘And Tovel, and Frog, too, are no longer dependable,’ mutters the Doctor.

  We want to protest. But we remember the change in them, their bloated, twisted bodies, and we just nod. One sensible thing our old man used to say: careless talk costs lives.

  ‘I think we were allowed to complete these repairs,’ Creben says. ‘Denni could have sent a hundred angels to take us here. She’s been waiting for something. … Just keeping us busy…’

  ‘Perhaps so. But Denni won’t have expected us to find those crystals. Hidden most ingeniously, most ingeniously, yes.’ He chuckles. ‘Those little gems may yet give us the advantage in this struggle. Once you’ve finished here, head for the control room. Be on your guard. I shall join you.’ With that, the Doctor breaks radio contact.

  Creben stands back from the glowing red maze, pleased with himself.

  ‘All done and dusted?’ We can’t believe it. Life support’s fixed up, and we’ve got back the crystals. Maybe, just maybe, we stand a chance of getting out of this.

  Creben nods.

  ‘Let’s get back to the control room, meet the others.’

  ‘Yes, I think we –’

  Before he can say anything else, the other voice comes booming out at us all. Sounds like a woman… but with some edge to it we can’t place…

  To switch to Polly’s viewpoint, select section 19 on here

  To switch to Shade’s viewpoint, select section 26 on here

  To switch to Tovel’s viewpoint, select section 23 on here

  To witness these events from Creben’s viewpoint, select section 15 on here

  Or you may withdraw from the neural net – but only after experiencing Frog’s perspective. Select section 27 on here

  11

  Haunt

  ‘You can discard those tools,’ the Doctor tells us. ‘They won’t be needed.’

  We shrug. He knows what he’s talking about, we’ve worked that much out about him. We drop the tool kit to the cold ground.

  Goal one will be achieved – to get life support back on line. Provided Tovel and the Doctor can make sense of the Schirr systems, that is. The Doctor says he can. We see he’s resolved to win out here, just like us.

  At the point we’re standing in, the tunnels cross. We catch movement up ahead. Something swift and stealthy, dodging past.

  ‘Did you see that?’ the Doctor’s asking. He’s sharp, pointing ahead into the gloom.

  ‘I saw it,’ we say. We start in pursuit, run off along the tunnel. The fleas flick off our bare face and hands as we go.

  ‘I will wait for you here,’ the Doctor calls.

  We’re sprinting away. We reach the intersection and take the left.

  It’s there. The figure. Not running any more. Shrouded in murky shadows from the ember-glow of the ceiling, facing us.

  Denni. Can you glimpse her there in the dark?

  A hand slaps down on our shoulder. Heavy as stone. We turn, catch a glimpse of one of the cherubim, standing behind us.

  We shrink back but it’s got hold of us. Digging in its fingers.

  Another one forms from nowhere in front of us.

  ‘Do all you can,’ we bellow, so loud that everyone in the web can hear, however far away they are. ‘Work together. Keep the neural network open. That’s an order.’

  The stone hand clamps down on our face, its wide palm scrapes our skin, rough and cold. Its fingers pull

  Marshal Haunt has been severed from the network

  To switch to Polly’s viewpoint, select section 7 on here

  To switch to Shade’s viewpoint, select section 8 on here

  To switch to Ben’s viewpoint, select section 14 on here

  To switch to Creben’s viewpoint, select section 18 on here

  Or if you were instructed to return to the section you came from, go there now

  12

  Polly

  We didn’t stay hugging Shade for long. We were both too jumpy. So we moved on, out through these endless, endless tunnels. Denni’s out here somewhere. And angels. And Lord knows what else. Once we found glass on the ceiling, half-hidden by weed. It made us dizzy. Brought us through to a new tunnel, one of those concealed entrances Ben mentioned. So what do the Schirr hide here?

  ‘Look,’ we breathe. Our feet crunch into the scree as we stop suddenly. ‘There’s light up ahead.’

  Shade pulls the heavy grenade launcher from the harness on his back, and checks it over. He tries not to let us see his hands are shaking, and he goes ahead first, slow and cautious. We wonder, if it came to it, if he would run off and leave us here, alone, to whatever Denni’s sending after us now.

  He stops. Turns back to us and smiles. ‘Come on.’

  The light, white and harsh but beautiful all the same in this world of darkness, is no
thing to be scared of after all. It’s only starlight, from that window in the rock we looked out through an age ago.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it,’ we say, as the two of us stare out at the star-speckled night. We hear his breathing, slow and steady behind us.

  ‘“Our destiny is in the stars,” my ancestors used to say,’ Shade murmurs.

  ‘On Earth?’ we ask softly.

  ‘Where everything began.’

  Our soldier’s becoming a priest. ‘I thought you were running from the Earth?’

  He pauses for a second. Sighs. ‘I guess it’ll always be my home.’

  Ours too. A sigh escapes us as we think of all we know and love back in London, in our own time. Black cabs. Cocktails. Parties on roof gardens. ‘I’d give anything to see the Earth right now.’

  ‘I’d give anything to take you there.’

  He places both hands on our shoulders. Thinks his ship’s come in.

  The thought of Ben comes to us, loud and clear.

  Ben missed his ship that first night we met. He looked at me across the bar, miserable as sin. Not calculating. Not weighing up his chances.

  We’ve tensed up just a fraction.

  ‘I always wanted to reach out and touch the stars,’ we say, and the subject is changed, Shade is waved off alone into the cold window of night before us.

  We reach out our hand to the glass, as if to caress and capture the brightest stars in this sky.

  Our hand tingles and passes through the window. We’re touching something hard-edged and cold. Pulling out a handful of stars from that amazing vista.

  We’re staring dumbly down at three crystals in our palm.

  ‘The navigational crystals,’ Shade breathes. ‘They have to be. Hidden where a bunch of soldiers would never think of looking.’ His hands tighten on our shoulders. He flips us around like we were a rag doll and grins stupidly into our face. ‘Polly, you’ve done it! You’ve done it!’

  We burst into giggles, stare at the crystals in wonder, as if they’re made of ice and might melt away.

  ‘Doctor,’ we say, closing our eyes. ‘Doctor, can you hear me?’

  ‘Gracious, my child,’ comes his voice in our head. ‘What is it you have there, hmm?’