Capella's Golden Eyes

by Christopher Evans

  “About an hour. But it felt like a lot less.”

  “And they questioned you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t think to ask them any questions yourself?”

  Of course. That was what had been troubling me vaguely ever since I had left the tower. The questions. All the many questions I had wanted to ask had gone unasked. They had not even occurred to me.

  Helmine turned away from the window. She was holding a small cactus plant, stroking the furry down which cloaked it “Well?”

  I shook my head contritely. “I don’t know,” I said. “I was so shocked, so surprised to even be allowed inside…”

  “Do you realize,” she said, reseating herself, “that you are the first person who has even been allowed to enter and leave the tower? Do you realize the opportunity you had? Do you realize how many people would have given a limb for such an opportunity?” Her tone was scathing.

  “Why do you think I stayed behind after the explosion?” I said. “It was because I hoped to meet the aliens. It was because they intrigue me. But the tower is strange. I felt disorientated. I couldn’t think straight.”

  Helmine was not mollified; she stared at me stonily.

  “It was hardly a spying mission, in any case,” I said. “I did not know what to expect and as a result did not know how to react. Perhaps if you had given me a detailed list of instructions beforehand…”

  “Now, now, my boy, don’t be petulant,” Helmine said with oily propitiation. “You must appreciate that this was an ideal opportunity to discover something of our mysterious mentors.” The rictus of a smile formed on her face. “You showed great resolve in staying behind.”

  I did not react to this platitude, Helmine put the plant down on the desk and rested her chin on her interlocked fingers. “I’d like to ask you a favour,” she said.

  “What sort of favour?”

  “I’d like you to submit to a brain-scan.”

  “A brain-scan?” I said with foreboding.

  She waved her hands dismissively. “All we do is hook you up to one of the brain rhythm modulators used in the dream parlours. We programme you to dream of the tower and we monitor the images. It’s perfectly harmless and quite painless and it will provide us with a better idea of what you actually saw inside than any verbal or written account.” She waited.

  “I don’t like the idea,” I said. In fact, it terrified me.

  “There’s nothing to it,” she insisted. “The technique was developed cycles ago for monitoring the dreams of disturbed patients. No harm will come to you.”

  “I don’t like the idea of people prying inside my head.”

  “Oh, come, come. We can ensure that you focus on the visit to the tower alone. I’m not interested in your life-history, my boy. I just want to see for myself what it’s like inside the tower.”

  “I’ve told you what it’s like.”

  “Telling is not enough. I have to see for myself. Can’t you see how important this is to me?”

  She waited again, then said: “You understand, of course, that I can ensure that you submit to a scan whether you want to or not?”

  I simply stared at her.

  “Forcible scanning does destroy large areas of the memory. Sometimes it blanks out the entire brain.” She sucked on her teeth, as if drooling on the thought, “Well?”

  I submitted to the scan. I remember nothing of it, except a blackness. When I awoke I was unharmed and all my memories were intact. I was allowed to return home that evening, hungry and exhausted.

  Wendi was not yet home, I took a bath, cooked myself a meal and, when it was eaten, sat back and reflected on the day. What had I learned of the aliens from my sojourn in the tower? Had I learned anything? Yes, I had established that the M’threnni were not quarantined in the tower, that they harboured no mysterious viruses or bacteria likely to strike down an ordinary human being, in the way that I had once imagined Annia had been. That idea had always been somewhat preposterous, I realized; it had been rooted in my need to assign some special significance to Annia’s death. No, the tower, the aliens were sterile, and Annia had been killed by some terrestrial or Gaian micro-organism. But if not quarantined, the M’threnni were certainly isolated in their tower, maintaining only a minimal interest in the affairs of the colony. The female and the Voice had apparently been unaware of the existence of the League, or indeed of the general feelings of unrest which had persisted since the floods. They were not the omniscient watchers of Jon’s imaginings, but the remote and aloof beings of popular fancy. Even so, I found it hard to accept that they could be that uninterested in a colony which they had subsidized since its inception.

  The tower itself was stranger than I could have imagined, but it seemed to conform to the accepted notion that the M’threnni preferred a cool, dimly-lit environment with a slightly lower gravity and a higher atmospheric oxygen content than that of Gaia. As for the aliens themselves, they remained inscrutable because they only spoke through their Voices. Suddenly I caught myself. Only spoke through their Voices. What if that were literally the case? The Voice had been like a doll, like a man of straw when he had been addressing me. What if the alien had actually spoken directly to me by temporarily usurping his brain? Could it be that the Voices were human puppets, worked by the telepathic hands of their alien masters?

  Deep into these speculations, I fell asleep, and when I awoke it was past midnight. Wendi was still not home, but I decided to go to bed nonetheless. When I went into the bedroom I came across a note on the dresser:

  David: I had to leave. I’m sorry. Please don’t come to the hospital. I need some time alone to work things out.

  Look after yourself.

  Wendi

  Chapter Seven

  I contacted the Complex the following morning and asked for ten days’ leave. At first my request was turned down—I was already over my quota for the season—but when I explained that Wendi had left me, the arrangements were made with a speed which only personal loss seems able to evoke.

  I spent most of the day wandering around the villa. The Chronicle arrived at zenith and the news of the explosion on Round Island dominated the front page. There was no mention of my visit to the tower. The attack itself had been a diversionary manoeuvre: while the militia’s attention had been focused on the island, Helixport Penitentiary had been raided and Eilan Bailey, the former leader of the Humanistic League, had been spirited away. No arrests had yet been made.

  That evening I sat in a café opposite the hospital, watching the day-shift workers depart. Finally Wendi emerged, alone, and headed off down the street. She walked slowly, with an affected casualness, as if she suspected that I might be following her but did not want to look around for fear of provoking an incident. I kept my distance, though, just in case she did. Taking a circuitous route through the backstreets, she finally entered one of the plusher hostels on President Street.

  An hour or so later a floater pulled up outside the hostel and a silver-haired man emerged. I recognized him immediately: it was Theo, the banker we had met at the ski-lodge. He went into the hostel and, minutes later, came out with Wendi. They got into the vehicle and drove off.

  I made no attempt to follow them. Walking without urgency, I began my return to the villa. I felt no anger, just sadness, resignation and a vague envy. There had always been implicit in my relationship with Wendi the feeling that it was provisional, that as soon as one of us ceased to fulfil the other’s needs, it would be time to separate. Wendi and I had both been going through periods of personal crisis when we had come together—I, shocked by the loss of Annia and Jax; she, wanting some form of stable companionship after a spell of indiscriminate sexual activity—and we had never succeeded in transforming what began as a mutual assuagement of pain—a negation of feeling, as it were—into desire in its fullest sense. We had given freely of our passions, but there had always been some essential, elusive quality lacking between us. The quality, I suppose, of love.<
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  And now it was over. And Wendi had looked composed, almost happy now that the stresses of our last uneasy period together had been removed. I envied her contentment, and resented it, for it seemed to mock me. No matter that I had never really loved her; we had shared our lives for over a cycle, drawn strength from one another, but now she no longer needed me. That was what rankled: she no longer needed me.

  The next day I sent notice to the authorities that I wished to annul our liaison. I gave instructions that copies of the relevant documents be sent to Wendi at her new address—a fit of petulance which still leaves me embarrassed whenever I recall it.

  I felt overwhelmed by the recent turn of events, and there was no one I could look to for comfort. I had no close friends or confidants. I spent a further day brooding at the villa, then decided that I would seek out my father. Although it was not customary to make contact with one’s parents on reaching adulthood, it was not entirely unknown, and, besides, I did not plan to reveal myself to him. I Just wanted to meet him, to see what sort of person he was. (Deeper motives than this prompted me, of course, but I was determined not to rationalize them; for once, I would act on instinct.)

  I had already investigated his timetable after my return from my maturation ceremony. He operated out of Venice lock in western Helixport, supplying the north-western quadrant of the Plains. Three six-day voyages a month, on the 1st, 7th and 13 th, with two days’ rest at the end. Towards dusk on the 6th, I entered the Water’s Edge saloon, a rendezvous for barge-masters out of Venice.

  I cradled a large mug of salty beer for half the evening, until it was warm and flat, watching the incoming and departing strangers, but seeing no one who might be him. And then, an hour before midnight, an auburn-haired man of middle height and build entered. There was something about his deportment which seemed familiar. While he stood at the bar, I scrutinized his profile. He shared the same oblique, narrow nose, the same prominent jaw-line, the same squarish cranium. I watched as he sat down at a table and began talking with two women. His posture—the tightly crossed legs, the body hunched forward—was a favourite of mine.

  I gulped down the last of the tepid beer, went up to the bar and ordered a fresh mug. After I had been served, I approached the table and stood there, watching. The conversation dwindled away and three faces looked up at me.

  “Daniel White?” I asked the man.

  He nodded cautiously.

  “Would you spare me a few moments? Can I sit down?”

  There was an empty chair at the table which he pushed back with his foot. As I sat, the two women got up, draining their mugs.

  “You don’t have to leave,” I said.

  The elder of the two wiped froth from her lips with the back of her hand and said: “We have a barge to take out. Otherwise we wouldn’t.”

  The two women nodded to my father and sauntered off.

  “My name is David Carver,” I said, adopting Wendi’s surname for my disguise. “I work for the Information Services section of Central Government. We’re attempting to gather some data on the workings of the canal system in order that we might improve the efficiency of the service.”

  As soon as the words were out, I immediately regretted them. My father’s initial curiosity had become faint, amused contempt.

  “That is,” I said hastily, “we’re looking for ways to regulate and standardize our shipments from the city in order to cut down on unnecessary cargo-space and journey times so that both the bargemasters and the plainsfolk benefit.”

  I was blathering, but his smile was not wholly uncharitable.

  “I’d like to spend a few days on the barge with you. Just one voyage.”

  He took a long, slow draught of beer and put the empty mug down on the table. “Why pick on me?”

  I shrugged. “The luck of the draw.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table-top, considering.

  “I promise not to interfere in any way,” I said. “I simply want to observe.”

  He looked up at me. “You’ll do more than observe. My deckhand’s sick, and I’ll expect you to do her share of the work.” He pushed the mug across the table to me.

  I smiled broadly, gratefully, took the vessel and went up to the bar.

  The Plains farms lie mostly within a ten-kilometre belt on either side of the Tamus; beyond this, the land rises gradually, making irrigation impracticable. The dust-storms have more severe effects on the unsheltered plains than in the city, and soil erosion is a constant problem. I had visited a number of farms on the river plain in the course of my work, and I knew how dependent they were on the supplies of fertilizer manufactured from the nitrogen-rich algae common to the shallow coastal waters of Gaia. The entire area, a geometrically intricate grid covering tens of thousands of hectares, produced the cereal and bean crops for the whole of the lowlands and was under intensive cultivation, Served by a complex system of canals and minor waterways, the farms battled constantly for their soil against the arid winds which blew intermittently but fiercely throughout Autumn and Winter.

  I sat on the prow of the barge as we headed up the Tamus that first morning. A brisk, cool breeze blew down the river and I drank it in gratefully. The muscles in my shoulders and arms ached abominably from heaving sacks of fertilizer, bags of experimental seeds, boxes of provisions and sundry other items into the copious hold of the barge. Starting at dawn, it had taken over three hours to load the vessel fully. My father stood at the tiller, a canvas forage-cap pulled down over his eyes. Apart from delivering orders, he had not spoken to me since he had roused me that morning, my head fuzzy and my mouth sour from an excess of ale.

  We had left the Water’s Edge soon after midnight, my father’s co-ordinated stroll making a mockery of my drunken stumblings, I had failed miserably in my efforts to match him drink for drink at the saloon—a foolhardy venture from the outset. Immediately he had taken me on board one of the long, dark vessels moored at the lock, the gentle swell of the barge in the water had induced a nausea in me, a nausea which I was able to counteract only by swallowing great lungfuls of air like a stranded fish.

  He, too, had been a little drunk, I realized, for he had insisted on showing me around the barge although I had been in no state to register anything beyond a desire for immediate unconsciousness. Finally, he had taken me into the cabin and directed me to the bottom bunk, explaining that it was normally his, but that he would lend it to me for the night since he doubted my capacity to climb into the one above. Stung by this slur on my ambulatory powers, I had, after several abortive attempts, finally heaved myself aloft, collapsing blissfully on the mattress. It had seemed only an instant later that he had been shaking me awake, the pallid light of dawn diffusing through the grime-crusted cabin windows.

  It is often said that exercise is the best cure for a hangover; what is seldom appreciated is that the treatment is worse than the illness itself. Loading the vessel, with only a few mouthfuls of water inside my stomach, I had flushed hot with alarming frequency, while my head had throbbed so vigorously that it seemed at times as if my brain had been about to expel itself from my skull, I had followed my father’s orders mechanically, in a trance-like state, aware only of the inner purgations which were disrupting my entire system. Afterwards, when we had cast off and I was finally able to relax, I had been surprised by the relative lucidity of my mental processes and the wholesome exhaustion which had replaced—as a student friend of mine once put it—“the grisly pulsations of crapulence”. Checking the contents of the hold, I had been further astonished to discover just how much we had loaded into the barge in those few hours. Sometimes the body can work quite effectively when the brain is essentially non-functional.

  We entered a straight stretch of river. My father locked the rudder, went into the cabin and emerged with two food-packs and a flagon of water. We sat down on the belly of the barge and began to eat. There was fruit, cheese, brown bread and slices of pork, all of which I gulped down hungrily, my appetite now full-bl
ooded. My father ate more soberly and slowly, while gazing out at the fields which were beginning to encroach on both banks.

  “You did well this morning,” he said without looking at me. “You were not raised in the city, I think.”

  “The High Valleys. Silver Spring commune.”

  “I thought not. There is a difference between one who has forgotten hard work and one who has never known it. You have been living long in Helixport?”

  “About a cycle,” I said.

  And then, as if I could not help myself, I began to pour out my life story, telling him of my childhood on the commune, of Annia, of Jax, of my scholarship to the Institute, of Wendi, of everything that seemed important to me—except, that is, for my two encounters with the M’threnni, upon which my over-developed sense of obligation compelled me to silence. But I must have talked without stop for ten or fifteen minutes, laying myself bare before this total stranger.

  My father listened without comment, somehow sensing that I was inviting no response. Then, when finally I was finished, he closed his eyes and said quietly: “No more talking. Get some rest.”

  My cheeks flushed with embarrassment, I retrieved the empty food-packs, took them into the cabin and rinsed them out. Feeling weary, I lay down on the bottom bunk to rest awhile, and when I opened my eyes again, I knew that I had slept for several hours.

  I went outside. My father was at the tiller again, guiding the barge down a narrow channel. Capella was in zenith, and its components were approaching eclipse so that it was as if a great golden dumb-bell had been set in the pale skies. Insects abounded, tiny midges which whirled in diffuse clouds over the water, and ungainly black pretzel-flies which buzzed in erratic orbits about my head. Cropped fields hemmed the canal: the green stubble of soya, the olive of thistlegrain, the cream of corn. We were approaching a farm, its neat array of squat white buildings lining the bank to starboard.

  We went past the farm without stopping (a few children waved to us from the bank) and continued down the canal until we came to a larger settlement at the intersection to a transverse waterway. Here there was a lock, and here we stopped. Each item of our cargo was numbered and my father checked each off against a list as we unloaded them on the wharf. No one came to greet us during this time. My father showed me how to operate the lock, and we moved off again.