by Marc Everitt
“In that case, I hope it’s friendly,” Eli commented.
On the screen, its timing impeccable, the remains of Graves’ World flew apart in a blinding flash unlike anything Taylor and seen in his life. The crew and passengers of the ‘Cavalry’ threw their hands to their eyes and the ship was rocked by the shockwave from the blast. Taylor prayed that the rumoured aggression of the long dead T’suk, which he had witnessed first-hand through the race memory of the Warrior, had not been passed into their final creation.
He could be fairly sure that the creature was born of their DNA but could not know how much of the behavioural aspects of the T’suk they had been able to implant into it. As the light faded and they could see the creature dragging itself out of the shattered remains of what had once been Graves’ World, Taylor found himself looking in amazement at the most incredible thing he had ever seen.
Through a vast hole in what had been the crust of the planet, he could see an enormous tendril pushing chunks of crust out of its way to enlarge the hole. Within seconds Taylor heard an intake of breath from the people watching as the newborn emerged from the planet. It was almost as big as its former home had been, and shone brightly with a silver iridescence, which hurt Taylor’s eyes. A central mass shaped like a sphere made up the majority of the newborn with hundreds of tentacles and tendrils emanating from its body. It cast out one of those tendrils towards the ‘Cavalry’.
On the view screen, they could see the huge glowing appendage getting closer with incredible speed. “Arm the lasers!” shouted Kyle.
Fenchurch went to run to the controls but found himself restrained by Taylor. “I don’t think we should do that. We can’t possibly hurt it anyway. We’ll only anger it.”
“But it’s attacking us!” shouted Fenchurch, pushing Taylor back.
Taylor shook his head. “I think it’s curious. We are not threat to it. Why kill us?” he pointed out, sounding a lot more confident then he felt inside. He had no idea what the newborn was about to do, but he sensed no malice from it. Even with the empty tracts of space between himself and the newborn, he could feel its presence. It had frightened him when he had felt it while on the surface; the sheer size of the mental power it had was too much to take in.
But out here, with the frustration of the newborn gone and its joy at being free filling its being, Taylor could feel no rage, or desire to kill. Only a happiness at being alive, and a wish to travel and experience all that the galaxy had to offer. As the tendril touched the ship, Taylor was sure the creature meant them, or anyone else, no harm.
“Can you feel it?” he asked in hushed tones. From the looks on the faces around him he assumed they could. The ship pulsed with an energy and vitality, which charged all systems and made all the people feel as if they had just been born themselves.
Then it was gone and the tendril withdrew, the newborn moving away at incredible speeds; flying through space in a way only it could. The deck was silent as they tried to take in what they had seen. Taylor felt a peace he had not felt for some time. He knew he had things to attend to, not all of them pleasant. He had to tell Lana Maxwell her husband died to buy him, and all of them, enough time to escape. He had to explain his actions to his Executives when he got back to Earth and face the consequences. He would probably have to fill in reports on what had happened until he was blue in the face.
He knew the military would try to use the newborn as a reason to re-arm the fleet, and would have difficulty explaining how he knew the intentions of the creature were peaceful. He suspected he would have to help Eli over his grief at what had happened between him and Sara on the planet. He also knew that when he got home he would, no doubt, have a mass of mail telling him he owed money for books he had never ordered. He was well-aware of these things, but right now he didn’t care. He had seen something marvellous, unmasked a killer and escaped with his life when that seemed impossible several times. He walked out of the flight deck, a large smile on his enigmatic face.
Eli called after him, “Where are you going? Explain what just happened please.”
Taylor pulled his battered puzzle book out from his cavernous pockets without turning round, held it aloft and said, “I’m going to finish this, work it all out for yourselves.”
Epilogue
Case Closed
Earth17th April 2501
The rain fell as it always had. The grass soaked it up thirstily, as there had not been rain for many weeks. The trees breathed a sigh of relief as they felt the moisture seep into their branches and leaves. Creatures in the small oasis of greenery got themselves undercover as the clouds of rain began to fall harder and with more purpose. They were also glad to see the rain to see the rain but had no intention of expressing their joy by staying in the rain and getting wet like humans do. Much more sensible for them to stay warm and dry. The woodland animals were startled by the sound of a shuttle engine, powering its way through the storm; heading for the Regional Offices of the Company.
In the shuttle, Taylor West sat with his feet on the instrument panel; partly because he found it comfortable but mostly because he knew it annoyed the shuttle pilot. Eli smiled, he knew perfectly well what his friend was doing and found the facial expression of the pilot amusing. Taylor looked out of the front of the shuttle at the beautifully sculpted habitat they were heading through. He had always found it strange that a soul-less organisation such as the Company should landscape the grounds of their offices in such a pleasant way. The trees and greenery were supposed to soothe the overworked Executives in the main building at the centre of the idyllic gardens. Taylor had a suspicion that they were used for another form of relaxation altogether, but had never been able to prove the Executives hired girls to do anything there. Still, he thought that all looked quiet there now as the shuttle passed over treetops towards the landing pad; scaring a large owl as it did so.
They had only been on Earth for about ten minutes when they had been asked to get into the waiting shuttle and told they were needed at the Company offices right away. The shuttle trip had only taken an hour and Taylor had spent most of that time relaxing and trying to annoy the pilot, but he was still feeling very tired from the previous day’s exertions. He knew he was lucky to be alive, several times over but had no intention of letting that knowledge slow him down from the kind of life he wanted to lead.
He had not been happy to unmask Sara as the killer on Graves’ World, especially when he considered the way Eli felt about the woman and how hurt he was by the events of the final hours of the planet’s life. He knew that he didn’t have any choice, however, he felt as if he was born to catch people like her. It was wrong to say it made him feel good, but it certainly gave him a sense of worth. As he watched the towers of the Company offices draw closer and felt the shuttle decelerate as it neared the landing pad, he thought about the creature born out of the chaos and destruction on Graves’ World.
It was, he thought, ironic that the project the T’suk had sowed the seeds of so long ago should be colonised and called Graves’ World. The name could not have been less apt if it tried. A new life form had been born in front of his eyes and that made him feel humble. He didn’t know where the life form had gone or what it would do when it got there, but somehow that didn’t matter to him. It was enough that he was there to see it begin its journey, where it finished it he would never know. He had felt no threat from the life form as it had hovered, vast and ominous, in front of the ‘Cavalry’.
None at all. He didn’t know whether that was because it had no desire to do what its progenitors had done for so long and sweep its way across the galaxy leaving a trail of devastation behind it; or whether it had every intention of doing just that but he hadn’t been able to sense it. He suspected the former, though. He could see nothing about the life form that led him to believe it had the same morals and ethics of the long dead race it shared its biological make up with. It was like man, he supposed. Mankind evolved from a barbaric sub-species and was getting more c
ivilised, slowly.
He thought that this life form was merely the product of millions of years of the natural evolution of the T’suk people. Had they survived through the thousands of years between the time they died out and the time they were born again, they may well have become that which they created. Taylor could not see a direct evolutionary link between the humanoid reptilian creatures he had seen through the mind of the Warrior and the life form he had seen burst its way out of the shell that had sustained it and allowed it to gestate for so long. He did know, however, that such a link existed.
It was likely that the T’suk would have taken hundreds of millions of years to evolve into the luminescent being he had seen, but certainly they would have eventually. The thought that such a merciless race as the T’suk could have evolved over time into a being such as that cheered him. It gave him hope that maybe there was hope for his species after all. It was difficult for him to see the humanity in humankind, but he knew it was there somewhere. He wondered what would become of Man, thousands of years from now.
Would they have slowly evolved, dragging themselves up the ladder through pain and endless hardship? Or would man do what he thought the T’suk did, create their own evolutionary path; take matters into their own hands. He felt a good deal of respect for the long dead race. They had seen their demise coming and had worked to find a solution and let them live again. Their race was now alive in the universe again, albeit in a totally different form, and Taylor suspected they would be around for a long time to come. The scientists so long ago would have known they could not save the race, and that all of them would die out. If they could not preserve their individuals then at least they had found a way of saving their essence.
Taylor did not know if the knowledge that thousands of years later a creature would roam the galaxy as a direct descendant of them had been any comfort as the race slowly petered out to extinction; but he suspected it was all the comfort they could have hoped for. He doubted Man would have had the foresight to see things that way, and found himself hating his own kind for not the first time.
The shuttle landed and the pilot was glad to see the two passengers disembark, to be escorted to the office of their Executive. He powered his shuttle into the air again, and wiped the instrument panel with his sleeve to clean where the passenger had rested his feet. “Bloody man was a pain in the butt,” he muttered and flew over the treetops and out of sight.
***
Executive Arlen was particularly aware of how much Taylor West could make himself a pain in the butt, and was not happy that he had been instructed to bring him there. He had received a communication in the middle of the night, just when he had been about to get his money’s worth from a rather expensive young escort. His anger at being disturbed had melted away when he saw who was calling him, to be replaced by a feeling of surprise and nerves. He had never been called by one of the Board of Directors of the Company and had been frustrated when he had found out it was regarding his constantly irritating employee Taylor West.
He had been further irritated when he saw that the content of the communication was not that he should punish the errant engineer for activities that almost certainly contributed to the destruction of one of the Company’s colonies and the loss of dozens of lives. Instead he was instructed to perform the task he had called West and Jackson halfway across the world for now. All things considered he was not looking forward to it.
He sat up in his chair as high as he could, trying to make himself appear as large and important as was possible. His secretary used the direct line to let him know the people he was expecting had arrived and were on their way up in the private elevator as he had instructed. He had not wanted them to use his private lift but he had his orders and was not about to go against a member of the Board of Directors in this, or any other, matter.
Arlen sat adopting a superior posture as the door to the private lift opened and Taylor West and Elijah Jackson walked out. “Engineers West and Jackson, thank you for your prompt attention. Please take a seat,” he indicated the small chairs lay out in front of his desk. Taylor sat first and relaxed himself despite the pitiful nature of the chair.
Eli wedged his large frame into the next chair and waited for Arlen to speak. Taylor and Eli looked at each other as time passed, then the Executive spoke. “You have been up to your old tricks again I see. Destruction of Company property, to whit one rather expensive research station that you blew up. Your involvement in this affair is one that should not have occurred. This was not your assignment.”
“We both know why I was there,” Taylor muttered, not willing to be a pawn in someone else’s games if it meant getting chastised and punished for it.
Arlen looked startled at being interrupted. “I will thank you to mind your manners, Mr West. You are in enough trouble as it is. Now, I will overlook your last comment, but further outbursts will not be tolerated.” Taylor looked bored but nodded his assent. Arlen continued, “You had instructions to devote your energies to the task in hand, not to get involved on anything else.”
“We were just trying to stay alive,” Eli interjected. He didn’t care about the repercussions he had to stick up for his friend. He owed him that much.
Arlen glowered at Eli before carrying on, “However, if you let me finish, you had your instructions and I have mine. You are to mention nothing of what you think you saw. Our doctors think you were suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and that is all your report will show. I was in favour of your dismissal from the Company, but like I say I have my instructions too. You are to report to the Board of Directors in twenty minutes.” With that, Arlen waved them both out of the room with derision.
He was not happy. He had waited for twenty years to be asked to see the Board of Directors and now those two were going in his place. ‘Things were not fair,’ he thought, then brightened as he realised that could work both ways; and that if superiors could use him then he could use sub-ordinates as well. “Miss Cartwright, would you come in please. And hold all my calls for the next hour or so,” he said into the intercom. The half-hearted efforts of his poor young secretary kept him distracted so well it was a full half an hour before he noticed Taylor West had stuck a note to the front side of his desk saying ‘Idiot’s desk’.
Taylor and Eli left Arlen’s room in a state of some surprise; they had not expected that to happen. Taylor, in particular, had been sure he had reached the end of his leash and was about to be reeled in. Perhaps, he thought, they had annoyed so many people that the Board of Directors wanted to punish them personally. The lift to the top floor of the building was guarded night and day, and Taylor could not remember anyone going into it. Yet they passed the guards and proceeded straight to the top floor with no trouble at all, and this was something that bothered Taylor. He had heard rumours that the top floor of every Company office was reserved for if and when a Director was in the area. He could not believe one of them wanted to see him. When the loft door opened and he saw the face of the member of the Board of Directors waiting for them, he was in even more disbelief.
The man sat behind the biggest desk Taylor had ever seen and beckoned for them to enter and sit down. Eli’s jaw fell open and he had to shake his head to reassure himself he wasn’t seeing things. “Gentlemen. Good job on Graves’ World, things worked out just about as the Board planned and we thank you for your efforts,” said the man kindly. Taylor could still not manage to speak and his mouth opened and closed without sound. The member of the Board of Directors smiled. “I can see this is a surprise.”
Taylor found his voice, “It certainly is, you were dead.”
Eli nodded. “I saw you, how did you….?” His question tailed off as he realised he didn’t even know where to start.
The man laughed. “I had no wish to involve myself in what I thought would become a bloody conclusion to the whole affair. You would flush out our undercover problem, shall we say, I was sure of that. I saw no need for me to hang around. Once you
left I made my own way off the planet.”
“How?” Taylor asked.
The man wagged his finger reproachfully, “Now, Mr West. I can’t tell you everything. Let’s just say the Board of Directors have ways and means others don’t.”
“Did you set all this up?” Taylor asked pointedly.
The man nodded, still smiling. “I’m afraid I did. We knew there was someone on Graves’ World who was from the Worshippers of T’suk and we had to flush them out. Didn’t really matter in the end, but we don’t like loose ends.”
“What will happen to us?” said Eli, the shock beginning to dissipate and slowly being replaced with understanding.
The man looked confused. “You get on with your lives. Forget you ever saw anything and we never met.” He held out his hands as if stating the obvious. “Now go on, get out of here. You have our thanks.” He waved them out of the room and got on with the other business he had to attend to. He had the fate of several small colonies to manipulate that day and the man they had thought of as Major Hastings could not spare them any more of his time. Before he disregarded them totally, he decided he liked to look of the West guy, he had heard good things about him.
The lift door closed behind Taylor and Eli, who stood silent, their faces betraying different emotions. Eli wore a mask of confusion and surprise, Taylor merely looked resigned. “Eli?”
“What?”
“I should have known.”
“How?” No one could act like Hastings in real life unless they were acting.”
“What about the business about the cameras?”
“He wanted to keep an eye on everyone, it suited him to let us think he was a pervert spying on women. I tell you one thing though.”
“What?”
“I wish Chris could have known he had half beaten a member of the Board of Directors to death.” Eli smiled and agreed with his friend. When the lift reached the bottom they exited and got on with their lives.
