The Chromosome Game

by Hodder-Williams, Christopher

  ‘Get to his side and he’ll think again.’

  ‘He told me to get clear and just slammed the computer-room door on me. Trell … Why? He’s always been so strong.’

  ‘And he’s always been so right.’

  A clear look passed between them. Nothing more was said about it. From only a few decks up the guns spoke again.

  Helen said, ‘What do we do?’

  ‘We wait. Meanwhile go aft and ask Kelda to scrap the trolley idea. She and the rest will be mown down. They’ll be butterflies hosed-down with insecticide. You, Kelda, the rest … Bolt yourselves in and keep out of the line of fire. Don’t wait.’

  ‘Kelda will want to be with you.’

  Trell’s face contorted: ‘You and Kelda are no use to me if you’re riddled with holes! Get moving!’

  *

  The waiting.

  Silence, now. Yet you could feel them creeping down toward you, grappling with derelict stairs, using ropes where cankers had eaten away those that had rotted away. Insane creatures now, acting from primaeval instincts but activating weapons that would, with such finality, express them.

  And Trell seemed to see, in abstract cinema, all that had gone before … Nembrak and Fulda and Triumph and Nicola, laughing from the counter of the Disco Dive and tricking the computer for that extra Special … Eagle, so thoughtful on his horse, Krand immobile in the flight simulator. He saw Sakini and Inikas torturing Hallow into extremes of delight, whilst Cass, patient and tolerant, remained immune at the chessboard … Mendra, slim and magnificent — but human and inarticulate and self-adoring — confronted for the first time with the real-time beauty of her native Provence …

  … And Kelda, reaching up to him on the swivelling, treacherous stairs, as the two of them had gone aloft to the Vacuum chamber, there to make love. All this to be erased forever? …

  If Krand — wise and poised, profound in natural philosophy — If Krand thought this, how could it not be so?

  Yet the anger in Trell did not permit such enlightenment. With a yell, he crashed his fist down on the table-top, so near to where Cass lay dead.

  Then he leapt out of the refrigeration room, heaved the heavy door hermetically shut, and rushed down the corridor to his place of duty. There, the cables were ready and connected.

  It was fundamental to fight.

  *

  They converged from four decks.

  And they were even laughing, some of them — maniac laughter and slithering blood.

  There was coloured tracer.

  You could see it kill, actually see it do the job.

  It came out of the muzzle of the Thompsons and it made patterns while the people screamed.

  Bodies gushed scarlet blood and painted the broken ship.

  The dying did not know they were dying and the living did not know that they lived, it was all the same, it didn’t matter, this was real action, wasn’t it, why hadn’t they put this in the movies, it would have been great in the movies.

  *

  Just as the main lights on ZD-One blew out Milem staggered up to Trell, wounded.

  Trell hit the switch for the battery lights.

  Milem’s face sweated in their dim glow. ‘Trell, they got Krand, and when they got him he dropped the live cables —’

  ‘— That’s what blew the lights?’

  ‘Yeah, but those wires you’re holding, they’re dead. Wouldn’t kill a dormouse! Sorry, pal.’

  He fell, writhing.

  Scorda saw Trell and tried to fire a Thompson from the hip, but the magazine was empty, so he asked Trell, ‘Say, how do you fill up this thing?’

  And Gendabrig ran up to Scorda and showed him how, while Trell dashed toward Kelda’s quarters aft. Kendip tried to shoot Trell in the back but Handem, who was also trying to fire at Trell, he got Kendip instead and Scorda shouted ‘Anyone seen that nigger Milem, I’ll get him right through his ugly great scrotum.’ But Mendra-118, shocked out of her chronic selfishness and narcissism, screamed at him ‘you bastard, you bloody won’t’ and Scorda let rip with half a magazine straight through her.

  But Frume, timid little Frume, he stood there with a weak smile on his face and he said, ‘It’s okay, Scorda, I got Milem myself.’

  Scorda didn’t hear him. His mind was locked into the firing-pin of his gun. And there was half a magazine left. For whom? Why waste it on people like Trell, who were bound to be slaughtered by the others anyway?

  No. Scorda had his own score to settle. Why be humiliated forever by Sladey-555? Hadn’t Sladey hidden himself away with his whores, secured behind a bulkhead door? — while the regular guys had been doing the fighting?

  Scorda was supreme. Enraged in a single spasm, he tore up the steel steps that led to the Sladey hidey-hole and shot out the lock.

  For an instant he found himself face-to-face with Sladey, who seemed suddenly to be a frail weakling with nothing in the gut. Behind Sladey was a seething mob of sycophants who abruptly became terrified statues. There was a momentary silence broken only by a half-filled glass that smashed on the deck.

  Scorda’s lips went dry with anticipation as he saw the whimpering plea forming in Sladey’s eyes.

  Tracer illuminated the Sladey Bunker with the brilliance of ignited magnesium. Sladey and his minions fell amid screams of death.

  But the gun was too hot. The barrel exploded backward when there was still one round left in the chamber.

  Scorda’s head was a gushing blob of spattering blood. An obliterated, headless torso, he crashed down the companionway in which bits of his flesh became embedded.

  *

  ‘Kelda! …’

  ‘Trell. This!’

  ‘Watch out. Get inside here, quick.’ He raced for the Refrigeration Room. Cass: a pool of blood on the floor.

  Trell slammed the heavy door and engaged the heavy flange-lock.

  When Kelda saw Cass dead she could only clutch at Trell’s arm.

  Trell said, with a strange sort of calm, ‘Nembrak’s dead. Fulda’s dead. End of General Motors.’

  ‘Trell, listen!’

  ‘Killing each other still.’

  ‘And don’t even know it.’

  ‘Right. We stop it, Kelda. But how?’

  ‘Trell, any way of getting a mike hooked up to the loudspeakers?’

  *

  — The Attorney-General, Milky Way, didn’t often betray emotion. He did now. ‘I’ve got the stellascope on them, Interrogod! They’re inspired, those two.’

  The Interrogod couldn’t hide his feelings, either. ‘The cables! They’ve got to find the right cables!’

  The Duty God said coolly, ‘Quantum radio. Worth trying?’

  ‘Switch on full power! They deserve this,’ breathed the Interrogod. ‘We missed-out on Eagle that last time; this is the time for faith. Send them Faith!’

  The Duty god complied by just lightly touching a fluorescent loop of wire.

  For a few moments, the gods of the universe crowded round the stellascope and were As One in their Will for just two young people.

  *

  ‘If Nembrak were around,’ said Trell, ‘We could —’

  ‘— but he isn’t. That cable duct overhead? Where’s it lead?’

  ‘What’s on your mind?’

  ‘They need mothering.’

  ‘Mothering?!’ Kelda, they’re —’

  She said, ‘They’re children.’

  He gave one peremptory nod. ‘You’re going to talk to them. Right.’ Trell jumped up, reached the cover of the duct, wrenched it away.

  A great mass of cables sagged down.

  Kelda said, ‘How can we recognise mike wires?’

  ‘They’ll be screened … Braided wire around the outside.’ Feverish now, Trell set about sorting the wires. As he did so he rapped, ‘Even then we don’t have a mike. No hope of getting one, far as I can see.’

  ‘How about the phone. There? Can you connect the phone up so I can speak through that?’

  ‘Dammit,
it might just work!’

  ‘That the wire?’

  ‘It’s the only braided one.’

  ‘Try it.’

  Trell slit the telephone wire and bared the ends of the pair connected to the phone. ‘Can’t keep my hands from trembling.’

  ‘You’re doing okay.’

  ‘Hold that a sec … Fine. Kelda. Those noises you heard! More life below us. Another deck.’

  ‘I guessed. New life! Trell, get that thing working. At all costs we protect the new babies. It’s a second chance.’

  ‘Christ! Hear that crash?’

  ‘Don’t listen for anything, Trell. We have a chance. We take it in both hands.’

  ‘You’re right. When did we not?’

  ‘Is it ready?’

  ‘If these are the right wires, nearly.’

  ‘They’re going to be the right wires, Trell.’

  ‘Faith. Do you realise what you have? Pure, unadulterated, marvellous faith —’

  ‘— in you.’

  ‘In God.’

  ‘In both.’

  ‘The phone is through! Listen!’ Trell banged the mouthpiece. The thumping echoed through the ship. ‘It works!’

  He watched her as a man watches a miracle for the first time. She was so calm, so much at Peace with herself. He could only say, ‘Speak. I know it will be all right. If you do it! I know.’

  Her smile was a faraway thing. She murmured, ‘You say I have faith. You think you don’t?’

  Quietly, without a tremor, she picked up the telephone receiver paused for just a few seconds —

  Then she resumed what she’d always set out to do.

  The mothering.

  If you enjoyed The Chromosome Game check out FISTFUL OF DIGITS by Christopher Hodder-Williams here.

  For weekly updates on our free and discounted eBooks sign up to our newsletter.

  Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.