Mindwarp

by James Follett

  “Neat,” he commented.

  “You’re not the only one capable of lateral thinking. Come on.”

  They left the rope hanging and clambered eagerly over the fallen rocks, their weakened state temporarily forgotten. The sea seemed further away than it did from above. Several times they had to make detours around particularly large boulders. Jenine suddenly stopped and pointed, her face pale and frightened. Ewen stumbled down the rocks in the direction of her outstretched finger. The flies rose in an angry swarm from the dead seagull.

  “It’s all right. It’s the bird thing you killed yesterday.” He picked it up by a leg and flung it clear of their route to the water. The flies dispersed. He returned to Jenine and helped her down from a large boulder. They eventually reached the beach and staggered across the shingle to where the surf boiled and foamed. The waves were intimidatingly large. Jenine held back but Ewen dropped the holdall, timed a gap between the rollers, and waded in.

  “Be careful,” Jenine cautioned. “It might not be water.”

  “Of course it’s water!” Nevertheless, he heeded her warning by scooping some water in his cupped palms and tasting cautiously. He grimaced, spat it out, and was about to say something when a wave bowled him over. Jenine dashed forward and helped him scramble out of the surf. His legs gave out and he sat on the pebbles.

  “It’s contaminated!” he said angrily. “Sodium chloride! Salt!”

  Jenine ran her finger along Ewen’s forearm and tasted. Her face matched his dismayed expression. “You’re right. At least four percent to taste as strong as that.”

  “Which means that it’s undrinkable. Right?”

  Jenine nodded and gazed at the sea. “How can so much water be contaminated? It just doesn’t seem possible - pollution on such a scale. Something terrible must have gone wrong.”

  “Maybe it’s deliberate. Maybe you’re right, Jenine. Maybe this place is some sort of punishment for those who’ve rejected the GoD.”

  They sat in dejected silence for some minutes, contemplating the booming surf. The sun rose higher and beat down from a clear sky. Jenine climbed to her feet and held her hand out to Ewen. “Come on. Now we’ve got down, we ought to explore.”

  They turned their backs on the headland and trudged through the shingle that dragged at their weary feet. The closeness of the water amplified their thirst to a blind craving that dulled the impact of the extraordinary scene that confronted them. The narrow beach skirted a rocky promontory and widened to a broad sweep of sand that stretched for what seemed an incredible distance to another low headland. A little way ahead the cliff sloped down and finally disappeared into a forest of strange trees and dense undergrowth that crowded down to the sand. Seagulls scavenging for sand worms along the water’s edge rose up at their approach and wheeled overhead, uttering loud cries of anger at this intrusion. The couple crossed a broad streak of dark sand that looked strangely out of place. Jenine knelt down and made a ball of sand in her fingers.

  “Look, Ewen - it’s wet.”

  “So? A wave from the water. Some are bigger than others.”

  Jenine looked doubtful. Her eye followed the streak of discoloured sand towards the cliff where the trees gave way to a dense forest of towering reeds. “I don’t think so,” she said. She rose and followed the dark ribbon of sand towards the cliff with Ewen trailing behind. He quickened his pace and caught up with her. There was a strange scent in the air - sweet and undefinable. Also there was a trickling sound that could mean only one thing. It was cool under the trees. They shouldered their way through reeds that rose to at least three times their height and stopped at the edge of the pool, not daring to even blink least the mirage in the glade was banished.

  The pool was fed by a spring in the side of the cliff caused by a stratum of porous sandstone that had folded itself into a lower layer of granite. The spray of water jetting into the pool sparkled like a cascade of crystals in the warm sunlight that filtered through the trees. Jenine waded into the water up to her knees. She cupped her hands and tasted. A look of joy and wonder crossed her face. She fell to her knees in the water and drank greedily. Ewen dropped the holdall and joined her. When they had sated their thirst, they peeled off their clothes and bathed in the cool, clear pool, using leaves and twigs plucked from the bushes to wash the accumulated grime from their bodies. Ewen spotted some bushes with different leaves that were growing a little way up the rocky slope. He scrambled up to them, grabbed an armful and jumped back into the pool. He was about to use them to rinse the dirt off Jenine’s back when a sudden flutter overhead made them stop what they were doing and look up. The bird had a long, yellow bill which it used to preen its magnificent plumage, seemingly unconcerned that it had a shocked audience. It was larger than any bird they had ever seen.

  “It’s beautiful,” Ewen breathed, captivated by the way the light created brilliant kaleidoscopes of colour on the creature’s wings.

  Jenine was about to automatically voice her distaste when she realised that she had been about to react in accordance with her conditioning. Ewen was right; the bird was beautiful. The spell was broken abruptly when the bird flew off and disappeared into the canopy. Jenine shrieked when Ewen bowled her over without warning and began rubbing the leaves briskly between her breasts. Her cries of pleasure suddenly changed to a gasp of alarm when she saw the purple streaks that had appeared on her skin.

  “Stop it, Ewen! They’re causing a rash!” There was a little catch of panic in her voice.

  Ewen stopped and wiped one of the streaks with his fingers. The stain came away. Then they saw that Ewen’s palms were also stained bright purple. The strange juice smelt sweet. He licked his hand cautiously and beamed at Jenine. “Whatever it is, it tastes good. I wonder where it came from?”

  The mystery was solved when Jenine picked up one of the sprays of foliage that was floating around their knees. She turned it over and they both examined the cluster of small, blue-black berries. A sweet smell was released when she crushed them in her fingers, stirring their taste buds. Even though they had no experience of wild flora, they both shared an instinctive race memory of the danger of poison.

  “What do you think?” Jenine asked.

  Ewen took her hand, opened her palm, and licked her fingers clean, one by one, with slow, deliberate movements. “Anything that tastes as good as this can’t be bad for us,” he said.

  They had an audience for their love-making by the crystal pool. A pair of baleful, unblinking and unmoving yellow eyes watched the couple from the depths of the dense undergrowth.

  The cougane was uncertain what to make of this latest intrusion although she had vague memories that told her that there had been others like this couple, and that they could be dangerous. The newcomers were as large as the cougane therefore they represented competition. Food was scarce on the island for it and its mate. The cubs could manage on rodents, insects and the occasional lucky catch of a fish, but the two big cats’ diet depended on the dwindling numbers of wild pigs and monkeys whose cunning seemed to increase as their numbers decreased. Sometimes the cougane or its mate chanced on a dead seal or large fish washed up on the beach, but such occurrences were rare, and usually the seabirds had had the best pickings.

  Soon the couple stopped moving and lay perfectly still. The sun passed its zenith and cast dappled shadows on them when the quickening mid-morning breeze stirred the forest canopy.

  The big cat timed her moment and backed off without making a sound. She reached the forest track and broke into an easy, lopping run. Hunger made her ribs stand out under her tawny fur, yet she moved with her customary sinuous grace and power.

  This hungry time that she had her mate were enduring was proving the longest; but it would end soon.

  5.

  Jenine woke suddenly and stared up at the myriads of twinkling stars. Her face and forearms were stinging slightly. She recalled a similar sensation after she and a fellow student had been working on the ultra-violet elements in a
faulty zargon light. Perhaps the zargon light here carried high levels of UV light? She made a mental note to remind Ewen to keep well-covered in the daytime. The gentle burning sensation made the touch of the night air on her face seem icy cold. She settled into a more comfortable position and allowed the memories of the previous day to drop into place.

  During the afternoon, they had scooped out a deep hollow in the sand near the trees to protect them from the wind. A brief foray into the forest had resulted in them returning with armfuls of fronds which they had spread out in the sun to dry before using them to line the bottom of the simple shelter.

  She caught her breath when the weird moaning started. Ewen didn’t stir. She longed to wake him, to feel his arms tightly around her, but it would be selfish to disturb his sleep. She found herself listening to the strange clarion call of the tormented spirits with detached interest. It sounded a long way off. The wailing was frightening, but it hadn’t done them any harm. Eventually the blood-chilling howl subsided to a low, continuous note and then died away.

  The sea boomed idly on the beach.

  A drop of water hit her cheek, and then another.

  Precipitation. It was only to be expected with such a high daytime humidity. She glanced up at the scattered clouds that were scudding across the strange points of light in the sky. Rain sometimes happened in the domes of Arama when the air-conditioning machinery played up.

  Large raindrops started falling.

  The thought of getting soaked through was worse than the terrors of the night. She rose quietly without waking Ewen. The night air closed like an icy hand around her.

  The hunger-racked cougane was twenty paces away, where it had been bracing itself to spring on the unsuspecting couple. The woman’s unexpected movement confused it. Thinking that it may have been seen, it flattened its body against the sand, allowing the tension to ebb from its adrenalin-charged muscles while keeping perfectly still.

  Jenine delved into the holdall and found the discharge tube among the tools. It was a temptation to turn it on right away but that would be a waste of energy. She trudged up the sand towards the trees. The cougane watched her approach. The scent of warm, rich blood produced a rage of hunger in the creature and yet the innate caution that had guaranteed its survival against all odds prevented it from rushing at the human. The memories of others like these was linked to the sharp pain from the old wound in its flank - a reminder that these animals that walked upright were dangerous. It was best to pounce when they were still. There was a sweet memory of when it had waited for the right moment. Claws ripping into a soft, unyielding belly, spilling succulent viscera, and intestines; jaws saturated with warm blood. The evocations amplified by its aching hunger caused it to give an involuntary whimper of anticipation.

  Jenine stopped and listened, her nerves shrieking, wondering what the sound had been. She was about to run back to the camp but the spots of rain became a light drizzle. She turned on the discharge tube. The light temporarily blinded her. She thought she saw a shadow dart across the sand and held the tube high.

  Nothing. An optical illusion.

  She reached the trees, and uprooted a few saplings and fronds. She returned to Ewen, laid the foliage across the hollow as additional protection from the rain, and scrambled back in beside him. Perversely the light rain chose that moment to stop.

  “Good idea,” said Ewen sleepily.

  “I thought you were asleep. I’m sorry if I woke you. I thought we’d get wet but the precipitation’s stopped.”

  “It wasn’t you - it was that noise.” He put an arm around her and pulled her close. “I’ve been watching the stars.”

  “The lights? Is that what you think they are? Stars?”

  “They’re just like the pictures we were shown during those crazy heaven studies lectures. They move.”

  “What?”

  “Memorize their positions, then close your eyes for a few minutes, and open them again, and you will see that they’ve moved. Not independently, but as one.”

  Jenine tried it but she didn’t allow a long enough period for the movement to register.

  “They follow the same movement as the zargon light,” said Ewen. “I’m trying to fathom out how this dome works. I think we’re suspended inside a sphere that’s free to rotate. The zargon light and the stars are attached to the inside of the sphere. The sphere is turning slowly to simulate day and night.”

  He fell silent while trying to work out the same problems that had taxed the minds of the ancient philosophers many millennia before.

  Jenine was doubtful. “This dome’s far too big,” she reasoned.

  “Oh? Why?”

  “Domes are really a series of arches - they convert downward loads to lateral thrust. Right?”

  Ewen agreed that she was correct.

  Jenine continued: “There’s an upper limit to the span of a dome just as there’s limit to the span of an arch. A dome this size formed from rock can’t stay up without a central support.”

  “Maybe there is one?”

  “We’ve not seen it.”

  “We’ve hardly explored this place,” said Ewen. “That’s what we’ll do tomorrow.”

  6.

  The wild boar track through the still, silent forest was hard going even though they had set off before dawn to avoid walking in the worst of the sun’s heat. At first the small creatures that scurried away at their approach caused them as much alarm as they caused the creatures, but they soon came to terms with them, realising that the denizens of the forest were the more scared. What they could not come to terms with so easily were the mosquitoes. “At least they’re easier to kill than the small flies,” Jenine commented, slapping at them.

  After an hour she flopped down when they reached a clearing and announced that she wasn’t going to move another pace until she had rested for ten minutes. The grass was still heavy with dew, but she didn’t care. Ewen scouted ahead and returned to her side.

  “About another hour’s walk and we’ll be there. There’s some sort of regular structure at the top, and there’s still a lot of fog.”

  “A building? Something we could use as a shelter?”

  “It’s too far off to see clearly, but I don’t think so. It looks very old. A lot of precipitation damage I expect.”

  “The environmental control system of this place is in an appalling state,” Jenine complained. “Don’t they realise that allowing the temperate to drop at night without lowering the humidity is going to lead to condensation and precipitation problems?” She rummaged in the holdall for a biscuit. Her fingers closed around a small, cylindrical device. She held it up. “What’s this?”

  Ewen shrugged. “I was going to throw it away. It never was much use, but I thought that its battery might come in handy.”

  “But what is it?”

  “A radio. Father Dadley gave it to me. He said that if ever I was in trouble, all I had to do was squeeze the ends together to get help.”

  Jenine studied the gadget with interest. “Have you ever used it?”

  “A few times. All I ever received were cryptic messages. Recordings.”

  Jenine pushed the ends together.

  “It won’t work outside of Arama,” said Ewen.

  “Have you tried?”

  “No. And you’ll have to squeeze harder than that.”

  Jenine used the heels of her palms to press the capsule’s ends.

  “You’re wasting your time. I was going to-”

  Ewen broke off in surprise when a thin, barely audible voice spoke from the radio. Jenine pressed it to her ear, listened for a minute, and passed the gadget to Ewen, frowning.

  “You’re right. A cryptic message repeated over and over again.”

  Ewen listened. It was the same voice that he had last heard in his cell when awaiting trial.

  “You must escape from the island… You must escape from the island… Escape from the island…” The message was repeated more several times. There was a
faint click and the carrier died. Ewen pressed the ends of the radio together again. The same message was repeated. Jenine took the capsule from him and listened again, frowning in concentration. She looked up when the recording ended.

  ““Escape from the island?” What does it mean?” Island of what?”

  Jenine was right to be puzzled. In Arama the word “island” was an incomplete descriptor; it was always used to modify another noun: an island of bookshelves; public parks were islands of tranquility; there were even traffic islands. By itself the term “island” was meaningless.

  Ewen helped Jenine to her feet and they resumed their uphill trek along the forest track. The lush trees thinned out rapidly to bush and scrub, and their destination, a strange, squat circular structure thrusting through the impoverished topsoil on a hilltop like a grey thumb, came into sight. They toiled to the peak. The structure was a parapet of decaying concrete around a mine shaft. Its sides were crumbling, and in one place were low enough for them to peer down into the blackness. A rusting mesh grille was set into the concrete a little way down. Ewen accidentally dislodged a large piece of masonry. It dropped through the grille and rattled down the side of the shaft, its echoes fading into oblivion.

  “A ventilator shaft?” Jenine suggested.

  “Certainly looks like it.”

  They turned and surveyed the circle of heavy mist that lay over the forest like a tablecloth. The low sun shone a menacing crimson through the fog like a broken blood vessel beneath a girl’s skin.

  “No central pillars or supports to hold the dome up,” Ewen commented. “So how do they do it? It flies in the face of logic and reason.”

  “Perhaps we should be asking ourselves who they are.”