Ten Little Aliens: 50th Anniversary Edition

by Stephen Cole

  ‘And through each other.’

  Now we hear Tovel. Whispering inside our head. Perhaps the communicator has snapped off his bulging wrist? No. It’s there on the boy’s arm. He seems a little self-conscious about it for some reason.

  ‘You all right, Tovel?’ asks Ben. He’s half-talking into his wrist, the idiot, forgetting whose gear it is. The pressure’s getting to him.

  ‘Comes and goes,’ breathes Tovel. ‘Now listen. Forget Haunt, you have to. Concentrate on the circuit display. If the Doctor’s right, it’ll take two of you to make the repairs on that thing.’

  ‘Tell us what to do,’ we say. We want to get this over with. So we can breathe again, until we figure out what to do next.

  We’re taking Tovel’s orders again. The irony is, it’s almost easier to swallow now he’s no longer competition. Now he’s becoming a Schirr.

  The situation’s quite ludicrous. Absurd. And here we are, stuck in it up to our necks.

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

  Then return here and select another viewpoint

  To witness these events from Ben’s viewpoint, select section 14 on here

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

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

  19

  Polly

  We set off back down the passage. It wasn’t so far from here we took the blue-lit tunnel. The tunnel that led to the place where Joiks –

  Our thoughts crash up against a voice.

  It’s high like a woman’s but there’s a harshness, an anger, that puts us in mind of a man.

  Dimly we feel Shade grab hold of us, his arm round our waist, dragging us along.

  There’s nothing special about the contact now.

  We can’t feel a thing, except that voice there deep inside us.

  The crystals in our hand rattle together as we start to shake.

  To witness these events from Shade’s viewpoint, select section 26 on here

  To switch to Ben’s viewpoint, select section 10 on here

  To switch to Creben’s viewpoint, select section 15 on here

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

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

  20

  Creben

  We trek along these tedious tunnels, endure the jumping touch of the fleas as they swarm in great clouds around the weed above, the great dull lamp we see by. We can feel others trying to get into our head. They can’t reason things out so they want our answers. They want to use our mind to light their way. We prefer not to listen.

  People always seek to use us. It’s been the same all our life. Our parents gained licence to have a further child once they’d made us demonstrate our prodigal intellect. Our university’s reputation was so enhanced by our achievements that its Chancellor received special commendation from the Paris authorities and a bursary. We were not rewarded.

  Cheats do not prosper. Our mother miscarried twice before our brother was born. He grew up a criminal and a stupid one. He got caught burning down the Chancellor’s library.

  He tried to protest it was our idea.

  Always used. We’re thinking this through now because we’re trying to work out if Haunt’s used us. We don’t think she ever has. Brains are a disadvantage in her scheme of things, we suppose. Adaptability, that is what the modern soldier needs. Haunt couldn’t adapt so they threw her out under the guise of honouring her, and left her to train others according to programmes and guidelines and principles that weren’t her own. An insult. She must’ve seen it for that. And still she stayed. Because she believed in the Army, even after all it did to her.

  We were honestly just another person to Haunt back at the Academy. She couldn’t fathom us, so she stuck to her job. Trained us. Gave to us, or tried to.

  Now we’re all she’s got.

  When the time comes, we hope it’s us who kills Denni.

  We stop. We hear Haunt’s voice in our head. Something’s happened.

  Switch to Haunt’s viewpoint. Select section 5 on here

  21

  Shade

  So Haunt’s put us with Polly. That’s good. We need to talk with her.

  We can’t believe we told her all that stuff. That was when we thought we were going to die. It’s like we’ve given away everything we own because we thought it was the end of the world, and now there’s been a stay of execution.

  Except that she can still end the world for us now, any time she wants.

  She doesn’t look so happy to be with us.

  We hope it’s the location and not the company; the usual flea-ridden shadows abound here, masking the jagged slates piled up to the soft-glowing ceiling. The dead weight of the grenade launcher on our back is actually a comfort.

  As we lead the way, we narrow our eyes. Try out this web, try to dip a toe in her head. She’s on edge. Stuff’s going round and round, but one thing we read loud and clear.

  ‘You haven’t told anyone, have you,’ we say. ‘About any of it. Not even your friends.’

  She shrugs her shoulders. ‘Maybe there’s more important things to talk about right now than your guilty conscience.’

  We suppose she’s right. She can’t know how deep this goes, how we can be thinking of this at the same time as thinking of anything else. Anything else at all.

  ‘Besides,’ she adds. ‘I keep secrets.’

  ‘So do I,’ we whisper. ‘Keep them for so long, I can’t ever let go of them.’

  She stops walking. We check she’s OK. ‘You should see your face,’ she says. ‘It’s like nothing ever happened.’

  ‘It happened.’ Our eyes wander down her body to her hips. There’s Lindey’s palmscreen, tucked away on her left. We tap it through her suit. ‘It’s all there.’

  She turns away, reaches a hand into her suit. Pulls out the palmscreen and hands it to us.

  The display is still glowing, waiting for our next command.

  We realise the files have been killed.

  ‘Gone?’ we whisper. We stare at the display. We could’ve wiped Lindey’s painstakingly collected files the moment we found them, but we didn’t. A part of us wanted to let the truth come out. That way it’d all be over. No more fighting against it, no more guilt at hiding our guilt.

  ‘You wiped it.’ We look at her.

  There’s no coming clean now. All the easy evidence has gone. We’re safe in our lies. The second chance still stands.

  ‘It’s wiped,’ she agrees. ‘OK, so it’s not like it never happened. You’ll see to that, by never letting it happen again.’

  She sounds serious. Like she believes we can change now the files are wiped clean, now the mess has gone from my face.

  Can’t she see we’re still marked for life?

  ‘It’s happening now,’ we tell her. ‘Happening to all of us… Denni wants us all dead.’

  ‘You won’t… be like before. You’re not running away.’ She touches our arm, squeezes softly. We guess the blushes will show in our clear cheeks, and wonder if we’ll live long enough to get used to that.

  She takes her hand away. ‘You’re coming after Denni,’ she says. ‘And you’re looking after me. I don’t think you’d run out on me.’

  We follow down the passageway after her, but we don’t say a word. We picture stone angels humming down the tunnels towards us. Imagine us standing our ground.

  The passage forks. Polly leads us to the left.

  ‘You knew Denni well?’ she asks.

  ‘We were together for a time. I could never work out what it was she saw in me. I guess since my face got me noticed, hanging with me marked her out too. She liked being talked about.’ We give a short laugh. It sounds too high. ‘A woman of mystery, that’s Denni. No one could work out what someone who looked as good as her saw in a
guy with a burnt-out face.’

  ‘Woman of mystery is right,’ Polly says. As she speaks we feel she’s picturing our old face, all black and mottled, but she’s struggling. She can’t get the way we look now out of her head. She likes it! And now she’s trying to focus again on the idea of Denni and me together. She doesn’t know what Denni really looks like, of course, and she’s got a mental image of me kissing some big, butch-looking white girl. Then this huge, bright pink animal with a long nose appears out of nowhere. We bail out of her head before it can get any weirder.

  ‘Why would she do something like this?’ Polly says. ‘How could she?’

  She’s upsetting herself. We linger in her mind for a moment longer, to see if maybe she’d like us to hold her or something. Why are we so scared, why can’t we just reach out to her? But she doesn’t want us now, anyway. She’s scared for herself and for her friends. Scared of Denni.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ we say. ‘That she’d turn on us all like this, I mean. She always had problems with Haunt…’ We shake our head, remembering back over the last three years. Haunt got her screaming mad sometimes. ‘Guess she always had ambition and a whole load of attitude too… But to do all this…’

  ‘It’s evil,’ she whispers.

  We just can’t believe that.

  ‘Her temper was evil, sometimes,’ we say, non-committal. ‘But her… I can’t believe this of her.’

  It’s like the image of her in our mind is becoming faceless, dangerous, the woman in Polly’s head. Makes us want to shout out loud.

  The passage narrows as we walk along, and we brush against her accidentally. She doesn’t shy away. We sneak a sideways glance: her body looks so slim in that silly yellow suit, she’s so soft, so unspoilt. We think of Frog, and Roba, and Tovel… think of how the changes will tear through us too. Why shouldn’t we hold Polly close to us? Feel her slender arms wrapped tight about our neck, before all of us change?

  We walk along beside her. Scared of dying, and just as scared of being alive.

  We sense the Doctor is trying to tell us something. Something about Haunt.

  To witness these events from Polly’s viewpoint, select section 6 on here

  To switch to Haunt’s viewpoint, select section 9 on here

  22

  Roba

  We don’t see so clear. It’s dark, we know, but we couldn’t even tell you that. Our eyes are burning up. That thing, that walking dead Schirr that came down the tunnel to get us, to mess with our head…

  Now we keep catching sight of things we shouldn’t see.

  Like we’re walking around inside different people. When we were a marksman, starting off, we used to see people through our sights. Night vision, snow vision, infra red. It was like seeing things through different eyes. Like someone else pulling the trigger.

  Now we can’t control what we do no more. Just feel the fingers pulling through our guts, tugging at our eyes, arms and legs.

  Seeing what works what, and how it can work for them.

  So if we come for you. If we come to kill you. Know it’s not us. We just wanna go home.

  Return to the section you came from and select another viewpoint:

  To return to Shade’s viewpoint in section 8, turn to here

  To return to Frog’s viewpoint in section 16, turn to here

  23

  Tovel

  We’re guiding human hands over the glowing paths and junctions of the schematic. Ben twists and bundles the damaged filaments, Creben routes them through to new circuits. We guess this sabotage is Denni’s work. It’s clumsy, easy to fix. And the schematic, it’s not designed for fat, swollen pig hands like ours. Like Schirr. It’s for small, dainty little hands, like Creben’s, to put right.

  We twitch as a fresh burst of pain flows through us. Feels like our veins are full of slush ice, sticking on its way round our body, watering down our blood. We try to open our eyes, but it’s hard. The lids are like clamshells, tight shut, the eyeballs just pieces of grit lodged inside, changing to strange pearls.

  We find we’re wondering what Haunt looked like when she died.

  ‘The work proceeds quickly,’ we hear the Doctor say. ‘Almost complete.’ He sounds rattled. We get the feeling he felt just a little of what I did then. So he’s checking I’m still here. Trying to distract me with pleasantries.

  ‘Where are you, Doctor?’

  ‘On my way to meet Polly and Shade back in the control room.’

  ‘Why?’ We sense something’s happened he doesn’t want to tell us. We slip through different viewpoints, shadowy figures all around us, hear a babble of voices. For a second we glimpse a field of stars, and a girl’s hand stretched out to them.

  ‘I, ah…’ The Doctor falters. ‘Polly wishes to go back to safety, and I am escorting her.’

  Creben has almost made the last of the links. We watch him through Ben’s eyes as he finishes the work.

  ‘It’s all gone too well,’ we think back at him. ‘We’ve been allowed to do this.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The Doctor sounds preoccupied. ‘After all, as Creben says, why instigate the change in us, then let us die before it takes hold?’

  ‘The damage to life support,’ we hiss. ‘What if it’s just been a decoy, taking our attention from something else?’ We wince as the slush ice scrapes through our bloated veins again. ‘If only we had those navigational crystals.’

  The Doctor pauses. ‘A decoy. Yes, of course, something must be happening in the control room!’ We feel a sense of urgency, but whether it’s the Doctor’s or else something inside us desperate to take charge, we can’t tell.

  ‘Frog. Frog, my dear,’ the Doctor shouts urgently. ‘Can you hear me?’

  But it’s not her we hear.

  It gets black again. We can’t move.

  Something in us shifts, comes alive, as a Schirr speaks in our head.

  To switch to Ben’s viewpoint, select section 10 on here

  To switch to Creben’s viewpoint, select section 15 on here

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

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

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

  24

  Shade

  We’ve come through one of those hidden pathways now. What’s waiting for us here?

  ‘Look,’ Polly whispers, and her hand grips ours. ‘There’s light up ahead.’

  Carefully, we reach back, slip the launcher from our harness and prime it. We cradle it and creep into battle.

  The light’s coming from a window in the rock. Outside there’s just space. We call to Polly, ‘Come on.’ We want her to see this with us.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it,’ she says, and pushes past to see it more clearly.

  We shrug behind her back. We’ve looked out on a million views like this one from thick, scratched safety-glass in ships of all sizes. ‘“Our destiny is in the stars,” my ancestors used to say.’

  ‘On Earth?’ she whispers.

  We nod, almost fondly. ‘Where everything began.’

  Polly sounds surprised we should sound so tender. ‘I thought you were running from the Earth?’

  ‘Maybe you’ll prove that to me, one day,’ we remember Denni saying that last day at the Academy.

  ‘I guess it’ll always be my home,’ we answer.

  It’s not just a line. We’re not Elite, not the best, we’ve always known that. We’ve just survived. Maybe we’ve survived so much, for so long, that we’ve outgrown the questions we were trying to answer in the first place. We look out on that window of timeless, endless space like we’re understanding distance for the first time.

  ‘I’d give anything to see the Earth right now,’ Polly murmurs.

  ‘I’d give anything to take you there,’ we say, without even thinking.

  Then we place both hands on her shoulders. Not afraid.
<
br />   She tenses under our touch.

  ‘I always wanted to reach out and touch the stars,’ she says, like it’s something she wouldn’t want broadcast. But the real intimacy is gone from her voice, and she’s self-conscious as she reaches out her hand to the glass.

  She freezes for a moment.

  When she pulls it back she’s holding three bright, round gemstones in her palm.

  ‘The navigational crystals,’ we realise. ‘They have to be. Hidden where a bunch of soldiers would never think of looking.’ We spin her around, feel a smile stretching back our cheeks further than we’ve ever known. ‘Polly, you’ve done it! You’ve done it!’

  We both start to laugh as we stare down at the crystals cupped in her palms.

  ‘Doctor,’ she says, and she shuts her eyes. ‘Doctor, can you hear me?’ We wait for his ponderous old voice to start up. There’s only silence.

  ‘Hidden in the stars,’ Polly whispers, eyes still closed, smiling to herself.

  We watch her as she nods and cocks her head to one side… The Doctor’s talking to her, he must be. Her eyes open at last and she seems surprised we’ve not been included in the conversation. When she tells us what was said – about keeping the news off the network, about how we shouldn’t trust Tovel, and Roba and Frog… it sounds like the Doctor has taken charge of us all.

  ‘It doesn’t feel right, keeping this some sort of secret,’ we say. ‘You heard Haunt. We’re supposed to work together. A team. If we don’t trust each other…’

  We tail off. Trust. How can we even say this? We’ve lied to everyone from the moment we joined the Academy.

  ‘The Doctor wouldn’t have told us to keep it secret if he didn’t think it important,’ Polly insists. ‘We should go straight to the control room like he asks.’

  We nod uncertainly. But her faith in him is absolute. Could she ever feel that much faith in us? We feel sick.

  To witness these events from Polly’s viewpoint, select section 12 on here

  To switch to Ben’s viewpoint, select section 10 on here

  To switch to Creben’s viewpoint, select section 15 on here

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