The Fall of Tartarus

by Eric Brown

  He paused, suddenly pitched into the present with the tribal girl in the crater of an extinct volcano, on a dying world a long, long way from Earth. Leona was silent but for an occasional sniff, her cheek against his chest.

  ‘After her death I left Earth and the memories and travelled to some of the Thousand Worlds I’d never seen before . . .’

  He was running away, and he knew it, but it seemed the right thing to do at the time. He could not face Earth and the painful associations it provoked, and he told himself that a few years away from the place would work wonders. In time, when the thought of Madelaine’s passing no longer tore at his insides, he would return.

  He was in a bar in an exotic port city on a world called Solomon’s Reach when he fell into conversation with a fellow drunk, who introduced himself and added that he was a doctor of medicine. Connery was inebriated and maudlin and it was perhaps natural that the topic of conversation should turn to his late wife and the disease that had taken her life. The information that Madelaine had succumbed to Hartmann’s had an odd effect on the doctor. He hiccupped and straightened on his bar-stool, with that comical attempt at sobriety that sometimes affects those drunks who wish to make a point.

  The doctor told Connery that he had heard of Hartmann’s disease. Not only that, but had actually studied the virus at medical school, paying particular attention to the case histories of the two victims who had survived the disease.

  ‘They were saved by ... by some substance derived from the liver of a beast that lived on the world of Tartarus, a backwoods planet along the arm.’

  Connery could never recall his precise reaction to this news, but he suspected that it might have been lachrymose.

  ‘But . . . but if there’s a cure,’ he began, thinking of all the other Madelaines out there.

  The doctor held up a tipsy forefinger. ‘That was fifty years ago,’ he went on, ‘The creature is reported to be extinct. I’m sorry.’

  Connery sobered up and left Solomon’s Reach and investigated how many people across the Thousand Worlds were currently suffering from Hartmann’s disease. The answer was a dozen, eight women and four men. He discovered that the sun of Tartarus was due to blow in just seven years, but booked passage anyway.

  ‘I arrived and made enquiries, followed leads and red herrings and finally found people who had actually seen the last remaining Vulpheous.’ He paused, then went on, ‘So for the sakes of the people now suffering from Hartmann’s disease, I must return to Earth with the liver of the Vulpheous. From it, we might be able to synthesise a drug to combat the disease. It’s the least I can do. It’s too late to save Madelaine . . . but at least I can stop the suffering of others like her.’

  They remained sitting on the rock for an hour or more, holding each other like the survivors of a shipwreck. At last Leona pulled away, squeezing his fingers, and walked slowly down to the lake. Connery watched her, his heart heavy, as she sat cross-legged and bowed her head.

  As the night came to an end and the horizon brightened with the blinding white dazzle of the new day, Connery returned to the dome. He opaqued the wall, lay on his bed and traced the wound that ran from his chest to his belly. He heard the inner door open, and Leona as she moved through the dome to his room. He saw her back-pack on the floor, and beside it her pouches of powders, and he assumed she was returning for these, before leaving.

  She paused briefly in the entrance, staring through the half-light at him, then crossed the chamber and lay beside him on the bed. Connery took her in his arms in silence, afraid that a word from him might break their uneasy truce.

  * * * *

  Leona took to spending the hours of sunset on the slab of rock overlooking the lake where she had originally pitched her tent, cross-legged and head bowed, but not repeating the mantra of the Summoning. Connery tended his machinery every day, and every morning swam out to check the position of ultarrak. She was afraid that if she summoned the healer, and it came, then he might kill it with his weapon of light.

  Today she bowed her head and wept at her dilemma.

  She loved Connery. They were One, after all. She had sealed their bond with the joining of the wounds, and since then life with him was better than anything she had ever experienced. They made love at every sleep period, and as night fell and her fever took command, Connery mixed the powders and held her as she drank and felt relief. But there was a distance between them, a divide that separated them as well as any sea. She understood why Connery wanted to kill ultarrak, to save the victims of a disease among the stars, because he had been unable to save his wife. But he did not understand why she could not allow him to kill ultarrak, why the creature was important to her - and that was her fault. She had to tell him ... He had asked, questioned her is to what she was doing here, why she had to remain for months, but Leona had been unable to tell him the truth: would he still want her, if he knew?

  But she had to tell him. There was no other way. He could spurn her if he so wished, and she would learn of the man he really was, or he could accede to her needs and agree not to kill ultarrak.

  In a burst of resolve she jumped up from the rock and set off around the lake to where Connery was working among his awkward, angular devices. By the time she reached the canopy, though, her resolve had almost dissipated. She stood in the shadow, hugging her shoulders, as he knelt with his broad back to her, oblivious of her presence. At last she cleared her throat, and he turned and smiled at her.

  He made to return to his work, but Leona said, ‘We must talk.’

  He laid down a metal tool, wiped his hands on his shorts and nodded. They sat facing each other beneath the canopy, his gaze making her blush.

  Unable to look him in the eye, she said, ‘You must not kill ultarrak.’

  ‘Leona?’ He reached out and took her chin in his hand, lifted her head so that she had to look at him. ‘What are you doing here? What does the Vulpheous mean to you?’

  She pulled back her head, freed herself of his fingers, but held his gaze. ‘Do you love me, Connery?’

  ‘I . . . you know I do.’ He looked steadily at her, and she could discern no hint of a lie in his expression.

  ‘Then if you love me, you cannot kill ultarrak.’

  ‘Leona . . . ?’

  ‘If ultarrak dies, I die—’

  ‘You’re not making sense. What do you mean?’ His face was full of anger and confusion, but fear also.

  She stared at her fingers, busy with the hem of her dress, and tried to think of the words to tell this off-worlder, this man she loved, so that he would not think any less of her.

  ‘Many years ago,’ she said, raising her eyes, ‘there was not one ultarrak, but hundreds. They lived among the islands of the south seas. Each tribe kept an ultarrak, except they did notkeep one, exactly, but rather it was there when it was needed. It came when summoned, and it healed.’

  At this, Connery’s eyes widened. ‘Healed?’

  ‘When people were so sick that normal herbs and prayers could not heal them, when they were possessed by death-demons, the ultarrak was summoned and the sick person would be taken.’

  He was shaking his head. She went on, ‘The sick person enters the ultarrak through its vathar - ‘ She indicated the top of her head, ’—where it blows water. There is a chamber in there and the sick person sleeps for a year and is healed by the ultarrak. I have never met anyone healed this way, but my mother, and her mother, knew people who were.’

  ‘You enter its blow-hole?’ he said, staring at her. ‘And you stay in there for a year? But what about food, air . . . ?’

  ‘My mother said that you sleep so deeply that you do not breathe, and ultarrak shares its blood with you through tentacles that heal. And after a year or more, you return to the tribe in full health.’

  Connery said a word she did understand in his own language, then reached out and took her hand. ‘And you are sick?’ he asked her, ‘and need the ultarrak to heal you?’

  She nodded and lowered
her eyes. ‘I am possessed by a powerful spirit in here.’ She touched her temple.

  ‘But your powders—’ he began.

  ‘They will work only for so long . . . Soon I will die, if I cannot summon ultarrak. My people could do nothing to save me. They even took me to the off-worlders who were arranging our evacuation, but they too could do nothing, only ultarrak can save me, Connery, and it cannot save me if you kill it.’

  His reaction was surprising. He stood and pulled her to her feet, and with his arms around her shoulders hurried her up the slope towards the dome. Once inside he sat her on the bed and rushed about the room in search of something. He found it - a flat board from which hung lengths of material like leather thongs. He knelt before her, fumbling in his haste, and tied the thongs around her right arm. She started and gasped - it was as if a thousand ants were nibbling her skin, but he told her not to worry.

  He poked the board with his fingers, and strange shapes glowed on its surface. He peered at these with fevered eyes, muttering to himself in his own language. She wanted to tell him not to worry, that ultarrak would heal her - that if the other off-worlders could not save her, then neither could he.

  Then suddenly his activity ceased. Slowly, he unwound the stinging thongs from her arm, leaving stripes of blood on her brown skin. When he looked at her, she saw tears in his eyes.

  She stroked his hair. ‘Connery, do not worry what your board says. Ultarrak will take me and make me well.’

  He lay with her on the bed, stroking her hair and saying her name, and then many other words she could not understand. She could tell by the tone of his voice that he was trying not to cry. How like a man!

  For the first time in days, Leona felt at peace. Connery loved her, and would not kill ultarrak, and in time she would be healed.

  * * * *

  He could not let Leona see his consternation. He kissed her and left her on the bed, then hurried from the dome and stormed down the slope to the water’s edge. He wanted to scream, to yell to the non-existent gods that it was so unfair. Madelaine had been taken from him, and now Leona . . . He cursed and tried not to weep, but the effort made his throat burn with contained emotion, and eventually he sat down by the lake and wept.

  The diagnosis was that Leona was dying from a neurological disorder known by a dozen different names throughout the Thousand Worlds. There was no cure. Victims rarely lasted for more than three months. The diagnosis gave Leona no more than a few weeks. He cast his mind back to Madelaine’s death, and wondered how he had managed to overcome so numbing a tragedy, and how he might triumph over this one.

  What compounded his pain was Leona’s own reaction - her childish faith in an ancient folk tale. She really believed that she could be cured by the Vulpheous. But how might such a cure be possible? How might she survive for a year within the blow-hole of the creature? It was, surely, no more than primitive superstition . . . And yet, he said to himself, what if her naive faith proved justified, and the Vulpheous could indeed effect her recovery?

  Connery sat beside the lake for what seemed like hours, going over his options. He told himself again and again that it could not be true, that someone as vital and alive as Leona could not be dying ... He stared into the sky, at the clouds corrupted by the supernova. In time the sun would blow, destroying everything: the planet, the island, the Vulpheous . . . Could he risk not getting the cure out to the Thousand Worlds, for the hopeless belief in a primitive folk tale?

  At last he left the lake and retraced his steps back to the dome. Leona was still on the bed, and she turned and smiled it him as he entered the chamber. He sat down beside her and stroked the hair from her forehead. He stared at her in silence, touching the line of her jaw. Her brown eyes watched him, so bright and alive.

  Later, her convulsions began. As she lay on the bed with her eyes closed, shivering, Connery mixed the powders into the blood-red syrup that would make her still. He sat with her in his arms and raised the cup to her lips, and he rejoiced in her relief as her body relaxed and her breathing became even. He lowered her head to the pillow, kissed her on the lips, and then left the dome.

  He stood beneath the fiery sky and stared out across the jade green lake, asking himself over and over if he had made the right decision.

  * * * *

  Connery was standing beneath the canopy when the Vulpheous made its next appearance. The sun had set on another searing day, and the sombre tone of the night sky turned the surface of the lake a dark, brooding shade of emerald.

  He was barely aware of the first lethargic ripple that disturbed the surface of the lake, so lost was he in his thoughts. Then a series of slow bubbles exploded through the layer of algae.

  The Vulpheous rose to the surface with a slow, wallowing buoyancy. Its massive head turned slowly towards Connery, its tiny eyes seeking him out. It remained staring at him for what seemed like a long time.

  Connery slipped into the seat behind the cannon, reached out and struck the command. The laser flashed out, striking the creature through the forehead, and the natural amphitheatre rang to the piercing shriek of the dying animal. Already the harpoons and grapple had found their fleshy target and were hauling the dead Vulpheous across the lake to the shore. It beached with a lifeless shudder, its inert mass of blubber already discharging reeking fluids across the volcanic rock.

  Connery set to work, lasering the carcass into sections and slicing free its massive liver. He transferred the organ to his waiting carricase, then made his way back to the dome. He showered to rid himself of its blood and stench, and was leaving the dome for the last time when he paused. On the floor was Leona’s pack, and beside it her pouches of medicine powders, among them the pouch that had contained the white powder, the fehna, empty now.

  He left the dome with the carricase. Soon, he told himself, thanks to what he had achieved here in the volcano, many people around the Thousand Worlds would give thanks to him, would be able to look into the future with hope renewed.

  For every advance there was a sacrifice.

  On his way up the slope he paused by the cairn of stones beneath which Leona lay.

  Before he began the long trek from the volcano to the cove where his yacht was anchored, Connery knelt beside the cairn, closed his eyes and asked for her forgiveness.

  <>

  * * * *

  Hunting The Slarque

  H

  unter opened his eyes and dimly registered a crystal dome above him. Beyond, he made out a thousand rainbows vaulting through the sky like the ribs of a cathedral ceiling. Below the rainbows, as if supporting them, mile-high trees rose, dwellings of various design lodged within their branches. Large insects, on closer inspection Hunter recognised them as Vespula Vulgaris Denebian, shuttled back and forth between the trees. He guessed he was on Deneb XVII, The-World-of-a-Million-Wonders.

  He was on Million? He wasalive? It was a miracle. Or was this a dream? Was he dying, was this some cruel jest played by his embattled consciousness as he slipped into oblivion? Would this vision soon cease, to be replaced by total nothingness? The concept frightened him, even though he told himself that he had nothing to fear: dead, he would not have the awareness with which to apprehend the terrible fact of his extinction.

  Now, however, he had. He tried to scream.

  He could not open his mouth. Nor for that matter, he realised, could he move any other part of his body. Come to that, he could feel nothing. He tried to move his head, shift his gaze. He remained staring through the dome at the rainbow sky.

  Following his pang of mental turmoil, he seemed to sense his surroundings with greater clarity. The prismatic parabolas overhead struck him like visual blows, and for the first time he made out sound: the strummed music of troubadours, the cool laughter of a waterfall, and muted chatter, as contented crowds promenaded far below.

  Such fidelity could not be the product of a dwindling consciousness, surely? But the alternative, that he was indeed alive, was almost as hard to believ
e.

  How could anyone have survived an attack of such ferocity?

  In his mind’s eye, dimly, like a half-remembered image from a dream, he recalled the attack: claws and teeth and stingers; he had experienced pain both physical - he had been torn savagely limb from limb - and mental, as he had known he was going to die.

  And beyond that instant of mental terror?

  Where had the attack taken place. How long ago? Had he been alone, or ... ?

  He wanted more than anything to call her name, less to verify the fact of his own existence than to seek assurance of her safety.