“Welcome,” said AnnaLea in her mellifluous voice. “We have reviewed the data on your beacon, but we require your assistance in another matter.” She paused to gauge their reactions.
Deklan watched her with distrust. This eloquent spokeswoman was from a culture that practiced cannibalism.
“Divergences between our technology and yours left some of the data unavailable to us. We wish your help in finding anything that we might have missed.”
“Mr. Tobin,” said Calm, “you would be best qualified for that task.”
Deklan staring over his shoulder at Calm, surprised by the comment. “I’m not a . . . a,” he stammered.
“You worked on the data from The Burningsworth. This isn’t a specialty for any of us, but you may have insight that the rest of us lack.”
Deklan hadn’t decoded the data from The Burningsworth alone. That had been a joint effort with Jonny. Calm had to be sending him for another reason. He could infer only that it was because he could regenerate.
AnnaLea’s smile broadened. “Thank you,” she said. “We appreciate your willingness to help in this matter.”
Deklan felt muscles twitch in his arms and back. This was not going to end well. “My pleasure,” he replied, coughing to ease the strain in his voice. “I’m happy to help.”
“Eric, please take Mr. Tobin to our decryption center while we remain in conference.”
The idea of being separated from the others wasn’t one that pleased Deklan, but he didn’t see a graceful way of avoiding it. AnnaLea also had a good point: they needed all the information available.
“If you’d just come this way,” murmured Eric, inclining his head toward the large doors through which they had entered the council chamber.
“How far is it?” Deklan asked, thinking of how far separated he was going to be from the others.
“Not far. It’s a few stories lower in the building.”
Deklan followed Eric to the far end of the hallway, away from the stairs, where there was a bank of elevators. Six stories down and another hallway later, the transit being spent in awkward silence, he was ushered into the decryption center.
The room was a maze of computers. The background hum of activity abruptly stopped upon Deklan’s entrance. The room held seven men and women, attired uniformly in red, who stared at him like a zoo exhibit. The culture on Tau Prime was manifestly one of conformity and indoctrination.
A man started to speak. “You must. . . .” His next words were obliterated when his head exploded. Red mist and gore splattered everywhere. People screamed.
Deklan lunged to the side and fell, his prosthesis giving way under him. The tile was cool under his hands. He pulled himself along the floor and looked back to see Eric firing a gun. There were no blasts but only a series of muzzle flashes. Each flash was accompanied by the sound of people screaming and of a voice being cut short.
Then there was no screaming whatsoever. The loudest sound in the room was that of Deklan’s own breathing and approaching footsteps.
“I’m not going to kill you.” Eric’s voice sounded euphoric with anticipation. “Just stand up.”
Deklan ignored what could only be a false promise and crawled for all he was worth, his stump making a loud clunk each time it hit tile.
Gore-covered boots came down in front of Deklan’s face. As he attempted to roll away, a boot slammed down onto his chest to prevent his escape.
Eric crouched down, a demented grin on his face. “I told you that I’m not going to kill you.” He brought his gun to within centimeters of Deklan’s nose. It was anodized black, much like the doors to the council room. Deklan’s hands came up of their own accord and clawed at the long barrel.
“Filthy outsiders, you have no trust. You have no worth. You have no place here.” Eric’s face was twisted into an ugly sneer. Then it turned into a smile, the transformation being both sudden and scary. “With my help people will be reminded of why your kind are never to be allowed back.” Eric brought the muzzle up to the underside of his own chin and pulled the trigger.
A loud roar echoed from the walls as Eric’s body fell atop Deklan, blood and gore raining down on him. His face was drenched, and there was a coppery taste of blood in his mouth. Bile rose in his throat.
He heard a door burst open and a voice shout, “Murderer!”
Deklan pushed Eric off him, and the gun fell into his lap.
“Put him down!”
Men in red were aiming guns at Deklan. As he tried to take cover behind a desk, an explosion of pain shot through his shoulder. Jagged bone protruded from the wound, and his right arm hung from a scrap of mutilated flesh. When he was hit a second time, another geyser of gore erupted from his lower torso.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Morgue
Air rushed into Deklan’s lungs as he tried to open his eyes. A crust held his lashes sealed together. His hands automatically came up to his face, and he felt the extent of the dried substance. It flaked away from his eyes. Deklan somehow knew that he was in a morgue on Tau Prime. He could use both hands, and there was no pain in his shoulder or torso. He wiggled his toes, all ten of them, and realized that he had his foot back.
The Tau Primans, he remembered, ate their dead. If he didn’t escape soon, they were going to cannibalize him.
Deklan began to kick with his feet when suddenly the drawer in which he lay was pulled open. The room’s bright light blinded him, but he rolled to the left, hoping that it was a good choice. Something warm and boney and screaming was in his way. Deklan muffled the scream with his hand. After he blinked several times, the room finally came into focus. His hand was over the mouth of a man dressed all in white. His skin was leathery and covered in liver spots. Watery blue eyes were wide, and weak arms flailed at Deklan.
Deklan didn’t want to kill anyone, but he also didn’t want to deal with a manhunt. He smashed his forehead against the old man’s, their skulls clacking like two coconuts in the wind. It felt worse even than it sounded.
The man crumpled. With exaggerated care Deklan wriggled from underneath the inert body and climbed out from the morgue drawer where he had awoken. While doing so he noticed a severed arm in the drawer. It had his Uplink on its wrist.
Deklan clutched as his right wrist, and he looked again at the limb lying there. His fingers traced up to his shoulder, but he felt no scar tissue or injury, nothing to indicate that he’d lost his arm. With a shaking hand he retrieved the Uplink, careful not to touch his old arm.
Like his face the Uplink was covered in dried blood that flaked off. Underneath he could see that its touchscreen was still functional. He wasn’t about to leave the Uplink behind. It might prove useful, and he was going to need every advantage that he could find. Having secured the device, Deklan closed the drawer, leaving the old man there along with his former arm.
It was his first chance to survey the morgue itself. The red motif that seemed omnipresent on Tau Prime was absent, the room being a study in white and silver. It looked spotlessly clean and new, unlike most of the other places he’d seen on the habitat. Dozens of drawers lined the walls. Deklan then noticed that he was still covered in gore from when he’d been shot.
His stained and shredded clothes, decided Deklan, would have to go. With a feeling of spiders creeping over him, he pulled open a drawer at random. Inside was a dressed body, but the person was shorter than he was. His skin crawled at the idea of peeling off clothing from the dead and then wearing it, but he didn’t have a better option. He opened drawer after drawer, searching for someone about the right size.
He met with success in the seventh drawer. There Deklan found a man in red with blue-tinged flesh who looked as though he might be the right size. Deklan took a deep breath and proceeded to appropriate the corpse’s clothes. The moment he was done Deklan slid the drawer shut and ran over to a sink on the far side of the room to scrub his hands furiously. The intensity of his ablutions lessened when he moved on to his face, hair, and torso.
Putting the grisly deed behind him, Deklan pulled on the deceased man’s clothes. Coarse cloth scratched his skin as he slid it over his face and arms. The head wrappings proved problematical. He spent several minutes adjusting them before they sat on him with anything like a comfortable fit, and even then they pinched in the neck. He tried to ignore the ghoulish feeling of wearing a dead man’s clothes. His flowing pants and boots slipped on with ease, however, and Deklan almost felt as though he could pass for a native of Tau Prime.
His own blood-stained clothes he shoved into an empty cadaver drawer. Knowing that an alarm would soon sound, Deklan realized that he had to find Jamie, Jonny, and Calm immediately if they were to find a way off Tau Prime and get back to the Terra Rings with a warning.
The daunting task ahead gave Deklan pause at the door. His hand was on the handle, but he didn’t know where to go or what to do. He slowly turned the door’s handle. The exterior hallway mirrored the morgue in being immaculately white and antiseptically clean. There was also an absence of clues as to whether Deklan should turn to his left or right. With no other inspiration he walked toward the elevator.
Its doors opened without a sound. The elevator could have accommodated at least five people with a mortician’s trolley. Its red and black colors made Deklan feel less comfortable and somehow watched. The control panel’s buttons inside indicated that he was on L3, a subbasement of some kind. That seemed standard: people always wanted a barrier between the living and the dead.
“Feeling a little lost?” said a melodic British voice.
Deklan jumped and hit the wall.
“And jumpy, I see.” Cheshire pressed the button for the ground floor before folding his arms and leaning against the far wall. His black outfit that included combat boots, an amply pocketed vest, and webbed belt looked tailored for warfare. The only thing he didn’t carry was a weapon. “There,” purred Cheshire. “Does the space between us make you feel safer?”
“How did you get here?” asked Deklan in wonderment.
“And how are you still walking around after dying repeatedly?” retorted Cheshire. “We’re Keystones, remember? Normal rules don’t apply to us.”
“What are you doing here?”
Cheshire tapped at the pockets on his vest. “Taking an interest in you, Deklan.”
Deklan didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Why me?”
Cheshire somehow looked comfortable leaning against the metal wall of the moving elevator. “I want you to survive,” he replied nonchalantly.
“Any hints on that front?”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Cheshire reached into a pocket and extracted a small black sphere. “This is a gift. Use it when you’re trapped.” He tossed the device to Deklan.
It was smaller than a ping-pong ball and featureless. “How do I use this?” asked a skeptical Deklan.
“Just throw it.” Cheshire made a whipping motion. “It’ll go off on its own after it’s been armed.”
Deklan looked at the sphere. “How do I arm it?”
“You don’t, but I do. It will flash red when the time is right.”
“Why should I trust you?” said Deklan. “Why shouldn’t I just throw this gadget away now?”
Cheshire grinned an infuriating grin that made Deklan want to punch him. “Do what you like,” he answered, “but you strike me as a man who needs every advantage that he can lay his hands on.”
“You haven’t answered any of my questions.”
“Sorry, but we’re out of time. Another matter demands my attention. Good luck, Deklan.” Cheshire winked and vanished.
As the elevator doors slid open on the ground floor, Deklan expected a cathedral-like space with high ceilings and gothic touches of the color red. Instead there was a preponderance of green. Here were activity and life. Ranks of people walked through a busy open area. For a second he was reminded of Manhattan. It had that same sense of busy purpose.
Deklan transferred the black sphere from his hand to his pocket next to his Uplink. Then he rushed out into the mass of people. He didn’t know where he was going, but a moving body among so many had to be less noticeable than someone standing with his mouth hanging open in an elevator.
He felt that at any moment he was going to be identified as an impostor. It took all of his will to put one foot ahead of the other and move forward. The atmosphere in the room was even grimmer than he’d come to expect after his brief exposure to Tau Priman culture. Everyone he saw seemed to have a storm cloud above his or her head. The flow of people carried him outside to the street, where he followed the largest mass of people ahead of him.
Deklan still felt nervous but was less certain that he was going to get caught. He needed to find some out-of-the-way place, but that was easier said than done. He didn’t dare talk to anyone because his accent would give him away, and he didn’t know what part of the city he was in. Meanwhile he was doing his best to ignore the unpleasant feeling he got from the curvature of the ground. It was impossible to detect in his immediate surroundings, but it made all of the distant buildings seem that much taller, and of course there was no edge to the skyline, which just continued upwards indefinitely. He couldn’t look at it, feeling that he’d fall off the ground if he did.
The more Deklan walked, the warier he grew. His initial relief at escaping the morgue was overshadowed by the city’s oppressive atmosphere. The streets were too quiet. There was the noise of feet hitting the pavement, flitters dashing to and fro in the air, urban transportation chiming at the different stops. These were civic noises, normal sounds heard in any city, but it was the absences that grated on his nerves. There was no laughter, no conversation. There were no mentally unhinged people proclaiming that “The end is near.” There were no food vendors hawking their wares.
Instead people marched to their destinations like silent clones, each in his or her own bubble that no one else entered. Their strides showed that no one out only for a walk, and again Deklan felt his tension mount. One of these people had only to read his body language to know that he was out of place. He concentrated on not looking around so much as to avoid arousing suspicion.
Suddenly a gong sounded. One long and drawn-out hum of vibrating metal, it came from far behind him. Everyone froze.
Deklan froze a second after the people around him, but no one seemed to notice. He didn’t dare look around for fear that his reaction would be out of the ordinary.
Heads all turned in the same direction, and then the marching began. Boots hit the ground in lockstep. Deklan did his best to imitate the group and followed. He had no idea of where people were going or what the gong signified, but there was a new feeling to the crowd, a hungry eagerness. They were like a mob that had found a target to lynch.
People poured out from side streets and buildings, filling the sidewalks. Any thoughts Deklan had of ducking away and hiding were quashed. There was nowhere to go. Not a single person left the flow as Deklan was jostled in the shoulder-to-shoulder foot traffic.
Two more gongs rang out. They came from the same direction as before, and the crowd surged forward, increasing the pace of its march. Deklan was carried with the horde, a silent and confused hostage.
His head whirled with possibilities. It possibly could be some sort of religious observance, but that didn’t seem right because this summons seemed unplanned and unexpected. The occasion felt more like sport but with darker undertones.
Deklan marched with the ever-growing stream of people for half an hour. Like birds migrating, flitters flew by in only one direction. All the traffic arrived finally at an open square filled with an undulating sea of red-swathed humans. All that Deklan could see were bobbing heads and a raised stage in the distance. Hundreds of thousands of people were staring in the same direction at the stage, which was constructed of a rich and dark wood, the first such material that Deklan had seen on the habitat.
A gigantic overhead screen showed an enlarged view of the stage. On it Deklan could see Anna
Lea, the First, and the men who had stood by her in the council chamber. AnnaLea’s face was grim, and her expression was mirrored on the faces of those around her.
A grouping like this on Earth would have had music or some other form of entertainment for those waiting until the speakers began. Here, however, the audience were silent and expectant, like springs waiting to be released. Minutes of silence dragged on with every second a thundering eternity in Deklan’s brain. At last AnnaLea spoke.
“My fellow Tau Primans,” she began, her voice amplified and coming from everywhere. “I have sobering news to bring you today. We have made contact with men and women of the Terra Rings for the first time in just short of a century.” A collective gasp came from the audience. AnnaLea nodded and said, “It’s true. For eighty-two years we have shielded ourselves from their unwholesome ways, yet when we found men and women stranded in space we offered help. They repaid us through the murder of one of our own. Eric Starlmen has been killed.” The crowd gasped again, this time with an undercurrent of outrage. “They brought us tales and lies. They claimed that back on Earth there occurred a disfiguring called The Sweep. They claimed that those shown to have inner darkness were not punished but given help. They claimed that we are all in grave danger from a new and alien threat. They came to us with malicious intent.”
A roar shook the crowd. It was loud enough to hurt Deklan’s ears.
AnnaLea waited for it to subside before she continued. “One of their number lost his life while taking Eric’s.” Another roar burst from the throats of those surrounding Deklan. “His companions, these serpents of lies, have been captured and are ready for execution.” AnnaLea’s mouth curled into a cruel smile.
A cold lump formed in Deklan’s gut. Jamie and the others were going to die, and he was going to be alone on Tau Prime.
Keystones: Tau Prime Page 14
