Scales

by Anthony G Williams

  As we approached Grindavik, a small port on the south coast, I dived back under the blanket. Freya turned left off the road before it reached the centre of the town, and headed east along the coast. The road rapidly became unpaved and shortly afterwards the car turned again onto an even rougher track. It bounced along for a while, the surface giving the suspension a good workout, and I put my head up again. The track led down to the sea, and ended at a single house, with a red, corrugated metal roof, perched on the rocks above a small bay. There was no beach, just bare, twisted rock being constantly pounded by breakers.

  'This is it, it's all ours for the next week,' Freya said. 'A bit primitive, but all the privacy we could hope for – much better than my apartment.'

  We got out of the car and Freya produced some keys and unlocked the door of the house. We carried boxes of provisions from her car, then sat at the kitchen table to eat a quick meal while the house warmed up.

  We looked at each other and I said, 'are you really certain? This is an irrevocable step. I wouldn't hold it against you if you changed your mind, you know.'

  Freya was still nervous, but underneath I could sense a grim determination.

  'I know,' she said. 'To be honest, I wish I didn't have to, but knowing what I do now, I don't really have any choice. I've had plenty of time to think it through, and know that this is what I have to do.' She took a deep breath and said, 'no point in delaying'. She took off her jacket, revealing a sleeveless blouse. I took out the silvery ovoid and, following Primo's instruction via the mind-link, held it in a certain way. It sampled and recognised my DNA and opened. At the top was a large flexible patch. I took it out and held it up. Freya took the patch from me, her eyes narrowed and her mouth firm with determination. Her face was pale under her outdoor tan. She peeled off the protective backing and pressed the thin white patch against her upper arm. We watched in fascination as the patch began to change colour to match her skin, becoming less distinct and gradually thinning out until it was all gone. Freya put her jacket back on with a shrug. Now we just had to wait.

  Apart from scanning Freya from time to time to check that she was all right, there was nothing for me to do, and even less for Freya. She spent much of her time walking in the harsh surrounding countryside, getting familiar with the terrain. It would have been unsafe for me to stray far from the house in case I was spotted, so I spent most of the days linked to whichever of the saurians was on duty, reviewing and refining our plans and otherwise engaged in mutual education sessions.

  We knew that we would be found, sooner or later. I was in no doubt that there was an intensive search going on for me, and once my enemies had concluded that I was no longer in the USA they would start looking elsewhere, and would check on Freya. Not finding her at her home, they would start to hunt for her, and that would not take long; she had had to use her true ID in renting the house.

  At night, I went swimming. The late-autumn sea was cold and wild, pounding the shore, and I found it easiest to get into the water by taking a running dive from the rocks just as a wave began to recede. Once away from the turbulent breakers, the depth and power of the North Atlantic Ocean reached out to me. It sang with life, the Icelanders having sensibly protected their seas from the overfishing which had crippled the industries on both sides of the ocean. I spent as much time as possible underwater, slowing my pulse and moving gently to extend the duration, while my mind absorbed the mental orchestra of the sea; the bright tinkling of the fish and the grander notes of the whales, all against the background of the deep, slow rhythm of the ocean itself. I reluctantly surfaced at regular intervals to scan a wide area around, in case we had been discovered and an attack was being prepared.

  After three days I sensed changes beginning in Freya's mind. She had become irritable, complaining of sudden headaches. In the mornings she described strange dreams, jagged and surreal. On the evening of the fifth day, we were in the kitchen clearing up after our – or to be precise, Freya's – meal, when she suddenly stopped and said 'Oh!' At the same instant, I felt her mind opening up and linked with her.

  The sensation was similar to, but subtly different from, a mind-link with the saurians. This was closer and warmer; the compatibility of our minds was clearly greater than between human (or hybrid) and saurian. For Freya, with no experience of mind-linking, it was stunning. She stood unmoving at the sink, her mouth open, for several minutes as she absorbed the new dimensions which had suddenly opened up in her mind. I felt her amazement, her gradual understanding of what I had been talking about, her increasing delight as she explored her new abilities.

  After a while I reopened the ovoid and took out the other items; two saurian headnets, much finer than my home-made affair, with a tiny radio element built into the wires. I knew that there was no need for batteries – they were powered by the body's own electrical field, and could be turned on or off with a thought. Freya snuggled hers into her hair, and it became invisible. We both linked to Tertia, who had been intently observing, and Freya was stunned again by the experience of meeting an alien mind.

  We spent some time playing with the headnets and quizzing Tertia about their effectiveness. Apart from allowing us to communicate with the saurians, they were capable of extending our own mind-linking range from about a hundred metres to several kilometres. Tertia believed that the range at which we could detect each other's presence would be boosted from about twenty kilometres to over two hundred. And, of course, by both linking to the saurian on duty we could form a three-link even if we were on opposite sides of the globe.

  Afterwards, we said goodbye to Tertia, turned off the headnets and sat at the table, just looking at each other. Freya began to practice communication by mind-link.

  'I need to find a mirror,' she said.

  I shook my head. 'No need – you look exactly the same. The saurians did an excellent job of gene-fiddling to avoid what I went through. No scaly skin, no golden eyes, hair all there, even your wrinkles are present and correct.'

  She grimaced wryly. 'It would have been nice to have had twenty years taken off my physical age, but I can't afford to look different or the plan won't work.'

  'How's the appetite? Are you a fruit-and-nutcase too?'

  She contemplated for a moment. 'Wonderful – I could murder some smoked puffin washed down with strong beer!'

  'All right, no need to rub it in!'

  We sat there, each savouring the experience of being mentally linked to another human being for the first time in our lives. I became aware of the depths of her personality, her intelligence, independence, strength and courage. Her passionate idealism tempered by practical cynicism from her years in international politics. And how she felt about me. Without any conscious decision, our minds opened to the fullest extent, nothing held back, and we merged with an intensity which I had never imagined possible.

  We woke together in the morning, our minds as linked as our bodies. Freya looked at me and we smiled slowly, remembering.

  'Worth it, then?'

  'Oh yes – I never quite realised…'

  'Neither did I – it's different mind-linking with another human. Do you feel happier about the next stage of the plan?'

  'Absolutely – we have to do it.'

  I reached for her lazily. 'We have a little time yet…'

  Suddenly I froze as my mental alarm went off. Freya reacted with confusion and anxiety, then sensed through me the approach of trouble. We untangled ourselves and got out of bed quickly; I had a horrible moment of déjà vu, a flash of memory of a wooden chalet perched on the edge of a calmer sea. The men were closing fast and the chop-chop of a helicopter became audible from inland. Before it came within my effective range, it stopped moving and I realised that it had landed and was disgorging men, who began to move steadily towards the house.

  We had already planned what to do when this happened. I didn't want to kill anyone if I could possibly avoid it. Freya, just beginning to learn about her new abilities, was far from ready to
take any effective action. We left, taking nothing except small bags of food and water, and the saurian headnets. Freya headed for the rocks, having worked out beforehand an escape route which offered good concealment; I took a running dive into the sea. I sensed a fishing vessel offshore manned by allies of the troops inland, but it offered little threat to me as long as I kept away from its fish-hunting sonar.

  The vessel moved inshore and the beam of a powerful searchlight flared out, flashing wildly around as the boat pitched and rolled in the rough sea. I swam parallel to the shore, using the nearby the rocks as cover. I checked on the house and discovered that the men, rather surprisingly, had entered it but did not appear to be doing any damage; there were no explosions or gunfire, and I sensed from their minds that they did not really expect to find anyone there. Puzzled, I turned my attention to the nearby fishing boat and picked up a sense of anticipation from the crew; they were clearly waiting for something.

  The sky was beginning to lighten and something moving caught my eye at the same time as I heard a faint murmur of sound from above. I turned on my back for a better view and saw a small aircraft heading straight towards me. I reached out to connect with the pilot and felt no-one there, and then the truth dawned – it was a UCAV, remotely-controlled via a radio link from miles away. These aircraft were equipped with night-vision and infra-red cameras – and weapons. I tried to retune my mind to access the electronic controls, but it was an impossible task at such a distance. I saw something drop from the plane and I desperately turned to swim to the shore, but I was far too late. The shock-wave from the depth charge, designed to crush the hulls of submarines, slammed into me like an express train and sent me spinning down into unconsciousness.

  9

  I slowly woke to a glare of whiteness. As my eyes adjusted, I became aware of straight lines crossing the whiteness, meeting at angles, with brilliant sources of light scattered along them and black blobs where they met. I sluggishly pondered the sight for a few minutes as my brain wearily got into gear. Suddenly, the view snapped into context. I was lying on my back, looking up at a ceiling. The lines were the joins where the walls met – or almost met – the ceiling, the black blobs I could not immediately identify. The light sources provided a bright, even glare.

  I was lying next to one wall. I turned my head and surveyed the rest of the small room. It was a cube about four metres on each side, and almost entirely featureless, just a door in one wall with a small drum-shaped hatch at the bottom, a sink and a toilet. I was lying on the floor, on a thin pad.

  With a considerable effort I sat up, feeling very tired. I recalled what had happened, right up to the shock of the depth charge – then nothing. I checked my own body and discovered that any damage done by the crushing blow had been repaired; possibly the resources which that had used up accounted for my exhaustion. There seemed to be something more, though – an unaccustomed lethargy, and a dull headache which I managed to dissolve with a moment's effort.

  I tried extending my senses beyond the wall, and found nothing – my perceptions were completely blocked, limited to what I could see. My headnet had gone, of course. After a while, and with the usual difficulty, I managed to retune my mind to detect electronic fields, and tried again. At first, I seemed to fare no better than before. Then I looked up at the black blobs in the corners of the ceiling. This time there was progress.

  The black blobs proved to be small windows though which camera lenses peered. Electronic cameras. I tuned into their circuitry, into the feeds which led from them. The cables stretched upwards, a huge distance. I gave up on that for the moment, and tracked other connections, other circuits using the same cabling. Some led to control circuits directly above the ceiling. I looked at the ceiling more carefully, and noticed some slotted panels which must be for ventilation. The control circuits seemed to be associated with only a small number of these vents, however. It dawned on me what these were probably for; to remotely release gas into the room. No wonder I had been feeling lethargic; I must have been drugged or gassed for days.

  There appeared to be two entirely different sets of circuits leading to different vents, which puzzled me for a moment. The most likely explanation to occur to me was not at all comforting; one set would be for anaesthetic gas in case they needed to knock me out again, the other would be for when I had outlived my usefulness.

  Another control circuit led to the electronic door lock. I contemplated that for a while, then turned my attention to the destination of the cabling. I gritted my teeth and forced my mind to follow it, up and up, until it reached a control centre apparently linked to a radio. It dawned on me that there was no-one at all in this installation, whatever it was: I was being imprisoned by remote control.

  I lay back on my pad and gave my frazzled brain a rest; it really did not like messing with electronics. I didn't realise that I had slipped back into sleep until I was woken by a grating noise. I looked around and saw that the small hatch was rotating. As the other side of the drum came into view, it revealed an opening into the drum. Inside was a selection of fruit and nuts. I got up and retrieved them, meanwhile straining my senses to detect anything on the other side of the hatch as it rotated back into position. Nothing – still blocked. I persuaded my reluctant mind to enter the security network again, to find out how the food was being delivered. I detected a stream of radio traffic to and from something moving, apparently in the vicinity of my cell. Then my brain rebelled and I lay back with a pounding headache which I was too exhausted to dispel.

  This set the pattern for the next few days. The lights stayed fully on, all of the time. Once a day, as near as I could judge with no means of telling the time, the hatch rotated with a protesting noise and more food was delivered. There was otherwise nothing to do, so every hour or so I went through a bout of vigorous exercise to try to keep fit; I was literally bouncing off the walls. I slept far more than usual, but even so there was lots of time left. In order to stop feeling sorry for myself, I concentrated on learning as much as I could about the electronic network by which this place was managed, for as long as my brain could stand it. I also had plenty of time to devote to thinking about my situation, and working out strategies for making more effective use of my abilities. In all this time, there was no communication from my captors; they seemed content just to keep me imprisoned. I concluded that for the time being they simply wanted me out of the way, unable to influence the debate which must still be raging about the saurians and their offer of help.

  The headaches caused by my nervous system's clash with electronics gradually reduced with familiarity and I found that I was learning more and more about the system. Eventually, I established as clear a picture as I could.

  My cell was situated at the bottom of a deep shaft – possibly a mine, it was hard to tell. There was a lift running down the side of the shaft. Close to the top, there was some sort of control centre leading off from the shaft. From this centre, once a day, a small radio-controlled vehicle trundled, carrying my food. It entered the lift, descended to the bottom, crawled to my cell, placed the food in the hatch, then returned the way it had come.

  I now knew as much as I was going to discover, and realised that I had to act or stay there and rot. I was painfully aware of the four cameras which covered every inch of my cell; and even more so of those discreet vents in the ceiling. I spent some time thinking of alternatives and testing possibilities before I was ready.

  In order to prepare my jailors for the deception I planned, I took to spending long periods apparently asleep (and occasionally genuinely so), lying absolutely still on my pad. Finally, I could put off the moment of decision no longer. I ate my last meal – rather too aware that it might be exactly that – and lay down, apparently to sleep. My body was inactive, but my mind was anything but. I traced the electronic data feeds from each of the four cameras, memorised the video patterns – and locked them. For as long as my concentration held, the cameras would keep relaying the same view, of me lying
motionless on my pad.

  I got up and walked over to the door. Setting aside part of my mind to maintaining the video hold, I put the rest to the task of following the circuitry to the door lock. After many rehearsals, this was quick and easy. I took a deep breath and "nudged" the circuit. There was a loud click. I pushed at the door, and it slowly swung open. I was at maximum alertness for any electronic alarm messages which might be triggered, but all was quiet – across the entire spectrum. I stepped out of my cell for the first time in many days, reflecting on the irony that a simple medieval locking bar would have kept me in there indefinitely. Outside, the light was much dimmer than in the cell, but good enough to see my surroundings.

  The cell was a plain box, with walls many centimetres thick. Judging by the weight of the door, they were probably lined with lead. The exterior of the cube, including the door, was covered with a metal mesh. It took a moment for my memory to pull up what it was – a Faraday cage, designed to block reception of all radiation inside the cell. My captors had done their best to seal me off from anyone – human or saurian – who might have been trying to contact me; it had obviously been effective in the other direction as well. I turned from the cell and looked around me.

  I was standing at the bottom of a circular shaft. At a rough estimate, it was at least fifteen metres in diameter, and had walls of smoothly finished concrete. The lift was a small, skeletal affair running down one wall. Like the cell, it looked like a recent addition. Various tubes, presumably for ventilation and other services, led from the cell up the wall. A cable with lights dotted along it provided the illumination; it also stretched upwards. I peered up to where the lights ended, which was at a small gap in the shaft wall. The shaft itself went higher. At the top there was a square recess, offset from the centre, which was blocked by something like a huge hatch cover. It must have been at least fifty metres above where I was standing. Some rusting fragments of metal structure remained around the sides, and a spiral metal staircase ran upwards to a walkway which led to the gap in the shaft wall.