by Eric Brown
It was as if his eyes, momentarily tricked, had worked out the optical illusion. The dwellings were tiny and the human—it could only be the lone radical, Breitenbach—was like some giant guardian left on to monitor the safekeeping of the valley. The juxtaposition of the human and the mounds served also to highlight how alien the buildings were, with the fluted openings atop every mound, their triangular doorways and slit windows.
Breitenbach raised a hand in greeting.
* * * *
TWENTY-FIVE
FINDING ABDUL
Pham paused on the steps of the train station and watched the press of humanity flowing down the street. The noise was intense, the babble of conversation never-ending. The occasional roar of fliers obliterated other sounds for brief seconds before the hubbub resumed.
She was jostled, carried down the steps and along the street. She fought her way through with bony elbows, came to the far side of the street, and looked for the turning that would take her to the hospital. She slipped onto the sidewalk and dashed through the less tightly packed pedestrians, then turned right.
She had a lot to tell Abdul. For the past four days she had been living in a plush Level Two apartment with a Thai woman who she had come to think of as the mother she didn’t have. Sukara was patient and kind, and seemed to understand Pham, and their days had been full of fun and laughter.
She could not help but wonder what might happen when Sukara’s husband, Vaughan, came back.
Khar had been silent since she had moved in with Sukara. Sometimes, at night, she had lain awake in her big bed in the spare room and tried to contact him, calling his name, asking if he were still there. Once, on the first day, he had reassured her that he was there, but had said nothing more. Every other time Pham had tried to summon him, Khar had remained silent.
Sometimes she wondered if she had dreamed of the voice in her head.
She turned down the side street to the hospital, looking forward to seeing her friend again. She hoped his leg had healed by now, and the bruising on his face.
As she entered the hospital and approached reception, she realised that she should have brought Abdul a gift, a comic or some sweets.
“I have come to see Abdul Mohammed,” she told the woman behind the desk.
The receptionist consulted a screen and said, “Abdul Mohammed was discharged this morning.”
Pham frowned. “Discharged?”
The woman smiled. “He left hospital. Went home.”
Pham nodded, thanked the woman and left the building, disappointed. She recalled her last meeting with Abdul, and how he had warned her from going back to Chandi Road. He wondered where he might be, now. The chances were that he would be in none of his old haunts, for fear of the telepath finding him.
She wondered how she might begin to find him, and then had an idea.
She found a phone kiosk and dialled Dr Rao’s personal number.
Seconds later he answered. “Speak. This is Dr Rao, and my time is a commodity in short supply.”
“Dr Rao. Pham here. I’m trying to find Abdul. Is he at the starship?”
“Abdul is working—”
“But where?”
Rao sighed. “After his contretemps with the Westerner, he has moved his pitch. You will find him outside Allahabad station.”
“Thanks, Dr Rao!”
“But tell me—did you locate Vaughan and inform him that it was through my good offices that...”
The phone began bleeping at her. “No money left, Dr Rao. Must go!”
Despite his squawked protests, she hung up and made her way to Chandi Road train station. She boarded an inbound train and alighted at Allahabad station, excited at the prospect of meeting her friend.
She pushed her way through the crowds that filled the street outside the station. Across the busy road she made out a row of expensive-looking restaurants. She thought Abdul might be begging there, and ran across the road dodging motorbikes and auto-rickshaws.
She found a gaggle of street-kids playing kabadi, but Abdul wasn’t among them. “Has anyone seen Abdul Mohammed?” she asked.
A boy stopped playing long enough to say, “Abdul was beaten up bad by a suit. Almost killed.”
Pham’s heart lurched. Could Abdul have been beaten up again? “When was this?” she asked.
“Oh, last week. His leg was broken.”
Pham breathed a sigh of relief, thanked the boy and hurried on. She stopped outside an Indian sweet shop, staring in at the piled barfi. She would buy some as a gift for Sukara. She jumped when a familiar voice called her name.
She turned. “Abdul!”
She took his hand, stared at his beaming face.
“No bruises,” she said.
“And look. The leg is as good as new!”
She looked back at the window. “Would you like some chai and barfi?”
“Here? It’s expensive.”
She laughed and pulled him into the old-fashioned, air-conditioned shop. Wooden stalls were set around the tiled floor, and Brahmin customers sipped chai from small china cups and picked at plates of barfi.
They found a booth at the back of the shop and ordered chai and a selection of sweets from a uniformed waiter.
“You’ll never guess where I’m living,” Pham said around a mouthful of gulab jamon.
“The Ritz? The Ashok-Hilton?”
“Even better! A big apartment in Chittapuram, Level Two!”
Abdul goggled, and Pham laughed at his expression and told him all about going to Vaughan’s apartment and meeting Sukara, and staying with her while Vaughan was away. “And that was thanks to you, Abdul.”
“It was?”
“You told me about Vaughan, after all,” she said. “You told me he was a good man.”
Abdul took a big gulp of chai. “But what will you do when Vaughan gets back?”
Pham frowned. She knew what she would like to happen—but that was impossible. Sukara was having a little girl in two months; she would not want the bother of looking after Pham as well.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe Vaughan can find me a job, and I can rent an apartment somewhere.”
Abdul smiled. “I hope that happens, Pham.”
She told him about the skyball match Sukara was taking her to see later that day. “We might be going next week, too. If you like, I’ll ask if you can come too, ah-cha?”
“Really? I’d love to see the Tigers play!”
For the next hour she told him all about life on Level Two, the size of the rooms in the apartment, all the luxuries like a bathroom with a real bath, the kitchen with dozens of strange appliances. Most of all she wanted to tell him how happy she was to have someone who liked her, but she didn’t want to brag about this to Abdul, or remind herself that one day soon it would end.
The big clock on the wall read two o’clock, and Pham drained her glass of chai. “I’d better be going, Abdul. I’ll ask Sukara about the next Tigers’ match, ah-cha?”
“Will I see you before then?”
“I’ll meet you outside here tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here from eight till six, Pham.”
They slipped from the shop, and Pham turned and waved before squeezing herself back into the scrimmage of pedestrians moving towards the station.
She caught a train back to Chandi Road, then walked to Chittapuram. It was only a kilometre, and she was feeling great. In fact, she could not remember a time in her life when she felt better. In Abdul she had a good friend, and she was sure that whatever happened in the future, she and Sukara would remain friends. Pham could even baby-sit for her when she wanted to go out with Vaughan.
She took the dropchute and strolled along the quiet corridor to Chittapuram. From time to time she stopped at an observation gallery and stared through the viewscreen at the vast ocean and the voidships approaching the Station.
She looked ahead to the rest of the day, the Tigers’ game with Sukara, and the Indian meal afterwards.
/> She came round the slight bend and approached the door to Sukara’s apartment.
The voice in her head commanded:Stop!
“Khar! So you’re still there?”
Stop, Pham! Do not enter the apartment!
She laughed. “Why not? I don’t understand. I’m going to—”
She tried to take a step, move towards the door, but it was as if she were frozen to the spot.
Pham, you are in grave danger if you enter the apartment!
“But what about Sukara?” Pham cried.
Khar was silent for a second, then said, Do as I say, do you understand? Do exactly as I say, and all will be well.
She nodded. “Ah-cha.”
Pham, go to the spaceport. Vaughan will return soon. If you go to terminal two, Colonial Arrivals, you can sleep on the loungers until he gets back. Look out for ships from Mallory, understood?
“Ah-cha, but why—?”
Just do it! Khar commanded with such urgency that Pham set off at a run towards the ‘chute station.
This is what Vaughan looks like, Khar said, and a sudden image of the detective appeared in her head.
“Ah-cha,” she said.
Tell him, when he gets back, that I will do everything I can to help him.
She felt a sudden heat in her head, and a quick dizziness followed by a strange sensation of absence. “Khar?” she asked as she ran. “Khar?”
But there was no answering voice in her head as she sprinted along the corridor towards the ‘chute station and the spaceport.
* * * *
TWENTY-SIX
THE HORTAVANS
Vaughan stood beside his flier and stared down at the radical.
Breitenbach was tall and thin, as if years of privation in this mountain redoubt had taken its toll; he wore a tattered thermal suit and scuffed boots. From this distance, perhaps fifty metres, he would have passed for a beggar on any street corner on Earth.
Vaughan raised a hand in greeting, then slipped back into the flier. He gunned the turbos, then activated his implant. As he’d expected, Breitenbach was shielded. The mind-silence continued.
He eased the flier from the mouth of the opening and hopped it down into the valley, coming to rest on an avenue of the miniature mounds ten metres from where Breitenbach stood, watching him.
He climbed out and stepped forward. Something stopped him perhaps halfway towards the hermit radical: the sense that he was in the presence of someone whose appearance indicated nothing at all about his true being. Vaughan felt disconcerted, and at the same time overawed.
Breitenbach’s face was thin and pale, his eyes watery and lips down-turned, and yet there was something scholarly in the lineaments, the ghost of the man he had once been.
Vaughan found himself saying, “I have the crystals.”
Breitenbach smiled, the gesture patrician, bestowing beneficence on a minion.
“I’m—” he began, but a gesture from Breitenbach stopped him.
“No names, my friend. The less we know about each other...” It was said with a smile, in an accent Vaughan thought English.
He was about to tell Breitenbach that he was not part of the radical network on Mallory, but the man gestured and said, “If you could help me get them into position, that would be most kind. Then, perhaps, you might care to join me in a meal?”
Vaughan smiled. “That would be good.”
“I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything but a selection of vegetables and pulses—but they’re home-grown,” Breitenbach said with a smile, gesturing towards a long vegetable patch beyond the dwellings. “I manage to grow enough to sustain me, despite the inclement climate.”
Vaughan stared around. “How long have you lived here?” he asked.
“A little over five years,” Breitenbach said. “I am a wanted man on Mallory. I’d done as much as I could, and it was only a matter of time before Scheering apprehended me. Then,” he paused, his eyes brightening as he remembered something, “then events conspired to bring me here.” He gestured around the valley, as if showing off Shangri-La. “And what more fitting venue for the role I now find myself playing?”
Vaughan gestured towards the mounds. “You didn’t build these yourself?”
Breitenbach smiled. “They are the work of the Hortavans,” he said, then gestured towards the flier. “But come, we have work to do, and the light fades.”
The Hortavans, Vaughan repeated to himself as he opened the rear door of the flier and hauled out the crystals: Were they the extraterrestrials?
He set the racks on the grass, and Breitenbach knelt and caressed the elongated stones with reverence.
When he looked up, Vaughan saw tears in the old man’s eyes.
Breitenbach stood and pointed to a path that wound up the side of the valley, to an opening in the rock opposite that through which Vaughan had entered. “We will carry them up there,” the radical instructed.
He picked up one rack and, with difficulty, Vaughan carried two. He followed Breitenbach along the path, up the hillside and into a narrow cutting in the rock. This one, unlike the wider corridor down which he’d arrived, had the appearance of being hewn from the rock: the corridor was squared off, finished, though obviously built for the passage of beings smaller than themselves. They were forced to stoop as they struggled with the weight of the racks.
The light from the valley soon gave out, but the period of darkness lasted only a few minutes. From up ahead came the wan glow of twilight.
They emerged on a wide ledge cut into the side of the mountain, which afforded a spectacular view of peak after snow-clad peak as they receded into the interior.
The ledge, Vaughan saw, was merely part of a long winding track, which followed the side of the mountain, disappearing inland between distant rock faces. Vaughan could only assume that this track, too, had been constructed by the Hortavans. It was the inland access to the hidden valley, though the narrowness of the corridor had precluded the flier’s entry.
A cold wind blew along the ledge, cooling Vaughan’s sweat-soaked face.
They stopped, laying the racks on the ground and resting.
“What now?” Vaughan asked, staring along the track.
“Now,” Breitenbach said, “we place them.” He indicated recesses chiselled into the face of the rock above the ledge. Each recess was a metre from the next, and they receded along the side of the track for perhaps twenty metres.
Breitenbach eased a stone from the rack and approached the closest recess, holding the gem before him with something like awe.
He paused before the chiselled niche, then reached up and inserted the stone. To Vaughan’s amazement it slid home as if precision cut to fit the inlet.
Vaughan took a stone and slid it into the next inlet, ignorant as to what he was doing and yet, at the same time, aware that he was taking part in something vitally important. The perfection with which the hollowed rock accepted the stones seemed natural and right, and each insertion filled him with a certain inexplicable satisfaction.
Ten minutes later the racks were empty, and the row of ruby gems set into the mountainside caught the last of the day’s light.
“And now?” Vaughan asked.
“Now we eat,” Breitenbach answered, and then, with a smile as if aware of what Vaughan had meant, he went on, “And in the morning, at first light, they arrive... If you wish, you may stay and watch the ceremony at sunrise.”
And with that he turned and entered the corridor through the mountain. Vaughan followed, a little dazed.
Could it be, then, that the Hortavans had survived? Would he witness an extraterrestrial ceremony involving the stones as the sun came up on an alien world seventy light years from Earth? The idea was too great for his imagination to grasp. He wished suddenly that Sukara could be with him to witness whatever was about to happen.
He followed the radical through the mountain and back into the valley, and they sat outside one of the small dwellings. Breitenbach gathered woo
d and built a fire, igniting it with a lighter, and in a primitive cooking pot boiled a broth of pulses, vegetables, and herbs.
A single moon rode high, casting opal light across the valley.
Vaughan ate the stew, surprised at how good it was, and fetched the canisters of water from the flier, along with the remaining pre-packed meals as a gift for the radical.
