I became aware that Junith and Alma were arguing about something. “We have to leave now,” I heard Junith say.
I went over to them. “What is it?”
“Wolther and Islor have not returned,” Alma said, “They should have been here an hour ago.”
“If we stay here any longer we’ll never get away,” Junith said to Alma. She turned to me, “Alma thinks we should wait until they show up.”
“What does Eilan say?”
“She’s with Tomas. We have to decide.”
I considered. Alma looked worried; Junith, grimly determined.
“If we get caught,” I said, “all this effort will have been for nothing. At least we can salvage our pride by escaping. I think we should go.”
Alma nodded solemnly, accepting the majority decision without further argument. She went up to the bridge and a moment later the engines fired.
We moved off, rapidly picking up speed, the solar panels at the rear of the craft beginning to glow. The prow of the craft lifted from the water, the engines increased their whine, and a breeze rose cool and fresh on our faces as we plunged into the star-filled night.
Chapter Ten
I awoke. Bright sunlight was streaming into the cabin, and the hammock in which I was lying swayed gently with the rise and fall of the foil. Tomas lay asleep on the bottom bunk, his face swathed with bandages. Quietly I threaded my way past the row of empty hammocks which had been set up in anticipation of a larger complement of passengers (the foils normally carried a crew of four) and thrust my head through the porthole: the ocean stretched unbroken to the horizon.
I wandered down the narrow passageway to the galley and found Eilan at the stove, stirring up some vegetable broth. While I washed (my hands were covered with cuts and abrasions from the hurried descent down the rock-face and my watch had been broken), I asked her where we were going.
“The Antipodean Isles,” she told me.
I studied my lathered hands. “Why there?”
“It’s necessary,” Eilan said. “We have to get as far away from Helmine as possible. After last night’s raid she’ll stop at nothing to track us down.”
The soap was stinging my eyes. I rinsed my face and found a towel.
“We could hide out in the mountains,” I said.
“How would we eat?” She began to fill a bowl with broth as if to demonstrate her point.
“What about the western shore, beyond the mountains?”
She filled a second bowl and brought them both over to the table.
“A desert of rock,” she said. “The Antipodean Isles have plant and animal life. We can survive there and it’s highly unlikely that Helmine will pursue us half-way round the world. Do you want bread?”
“I think it’s ridiculous,” I said, sitting down at the table. The smell of the broth was extremely inviting; I was famished.
Eilan took a hunk of brown bread from the larder. “It was all decided before we began the operation.”
“I was not consulted.”
“No one knew except for Alma and myself.” She broke off a handful of bread and passed it to me. “In that way, unless we were all captured, Helmine would not be able to trace us.” She looked up at me. “Besides, you could not reasonably expect to be involved in policy decisions at such an early stage. None of us knew you and we could not be certain of your loyalty.”
“The events of last night will have hardly served to confirm my worth to you.”
“No, you acted bravely if somewhat foolishly in trying to save Jax. In your position I would probably have done the same thing myself.” She sat down and began to eat her broth.
After a while I asked; “How is Tomas?”
“He’ll recover. But his optic nerves were permanently damaged by the blast.”
“You mean he’s blind?”
“He doesn’t know it, yet. But yes.”
I pushed the half-empty bowl away. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t insisted on getting Jax back to the boat, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“You can’t be sure of that. Besides, he knew what risks were involved.” She pushed the bowl back to me. “Make a meal of that, instead of your guilt.”
I ate without enthusiasm. Jax dead, Tomas blinded, Whither and Islor in Helmine’s clutches. The entire operation had been, a disaster.
Eilan brewed tea, which we drank from tin mugs.
“Has Alma been at the wheel all night?” I asked.
“She refuses to sleep. She says that there is no one else to steer the foil.”
“Is this true?”
“Strictly speaking, yes. In our original plan we anticipated that Islor and Jax would take turns at the wheel. But in reality her objection is only technical. We are in open water, the weather is good, and it is simply a matter of holding the foil on a firm easterly course.” She spat a tea-leaf back into the mug. “Alma is worried about Wolther, They have been in liaison for twelve seasons. Theirs is a close bond.”
“What of the others left on the mainland? Helmine must know by now about Landfall Three and the Star.”
“Judging by the resistance which Jax and the others put up to the mind-probes, I doubt that she has learned anything useful. In any case, Landfall has been abandoned.” She refilled her mug with tea. “As for the others, well, there are only a handful left. Very few maintained their allegiance to the League after Helmine sabotaged the parlours.”
“The fire-bombing was her doing?”
“Of course. You don’t think we would have been stupid enough to wreck a successful campaign with such a suicidal move?”
I nodded; there really was no limit to Helmine’s deviousness and ruthlessness.
“The others will be looked after,” she said. “Roger has friends in high places.”
“Why did you decide to take on Helmine in the first place?”
She smiled, wrinkles multiplying on her face. “Like you, I had an encounter with a dying Voice.”
She got up and took two more bowls from the shelf. She filled them with broth and carried them outside to Junith and Alma.
I waited until she had returned, “When?”
“When what?”
“When did you meet the Voice?”
“Six seasons ago.” She put her hands on her hips and stretched, straightening her back.
“I’d like to hear about it.”
“I’m sure you would,” she said, flopping into the canvas chair beside the stove. She leaned back, as if collecting her thoughts.
“I was working for the government at the Complex,” she said, “and it was my habit to take a stroll along the riverside after finishing work. One evening, just after dusk, I noticed a body lying in the shallows downstream from Round Island Bridge. It was a woman, a hairless woman garbed in the muddied robe of a M’threnni Voice, At first I thought she was dead but when I went down to her I was able to detect a faint pulse. She was in in a coma, and fading rapidly. I managed to carry her back to the Complex and took her up to my laboratory.
“There was no one else about and so…” She paused, sighed. “It’s a shameful thing to have to admit, but I made no attempt to save her life. I told myself that she was dying, that I could do nothing for her, so why not conduct an experiment?
“I had been doing some research into the clinical applications of brain phase monitoring—attempting to correlate certain dream images with certain types of psychosis—and my lab had effectively been converted into a dream parlour. It was an opportunity too good to pass up. I hooked up a dual series system and connected the dying Voice to one headpiece and myself to the other so that I could directly monitor her mental activity.
“There was little apparent activity. The Voice was dying and all her mental processes were shutting down. At first all I could detect was a fuzz. But then I became aware that at the core of this static there was some activity and as I probed it I discovered that it was like a vortex, an eddy of thought which spiralled so fast that I could hardly penetrate
it. But I could tell that it was not a purely human mental process: there were undertones of an incomprehensive flux which had to be alien in origin.”
She stared at me. “You are right, David, the M’threnni do exert a dominance over a Voice’s brain, but it’s an indirect one. They don’t speak through the Voices in the sense of using them as mental puppets; they implant a nucleus of alien thought-patterns in the cerebral cortex, thus enabling the Voice to think like a M’threnni.”
She shook her head slowly, as if she still found the idea hard to accept.
“And then what?” I asked.
“The Voice died. All activity faded into nothingness. I unhooked myself and got up. When I looked down at the Voice I was overcome with a revulsion for the aliens who had not only penetrated her mind, but left her to die like an animal. She must have been dumped in the river, or had fallen in and somehow managed to struggle ashore. In that moment of hatred I decided that I would do my utmost to secure the removal of the M’threnni from Gaia, I could no longer countenance working for a government which effectively supported the aliens and I knew that I could never work changes from the inside, so I resigned my job and joined the League.”
“The League was already in existence?”
“Oh, yes. Has been almost since the M’threnni first arrived.” She smiled faintly. “I just put a little organization and backbone into their efforts.”
“But why didn’t you reveal all this during your campaign against Helmine?”
“I had no proof. After the Voice died I took her back to the river and returned her body to its intended grave. I didn’t want anyone at the Complex to know of it. I thought I’d be in a better position to reveal all when the League gained office. I was hoping that by then we would have the full weight of public opinion behind us and thus be able to force the aliens to leave Gaia.”
“You might have learned something from an examination of the body,” I said.
“Dead Voices have been discovered in the city on a number of occasions in the past. What do you think happened to the one you encountered? It was doubtless taken away for autopsy like all the others. Nothing significant has been learned from physical examinations of the bodies. The Voices all died of ailments associated with old age but otherwise appeared physiologically normal.”
So, there was a conspiracy of silence surrounding the Voices. Jon must have known of this, yet he had said nothing during our seminars. Little wonder that the authorities wanted to keep public knowledge of the M’threnni to a minimum. A general disregard for human life was tolerable in view of the aliens’ material aid; but a calculated callousness was another matter altogether. No doubt this was why Eilan had been confident that if the League gained power they would be able to compel the M’threnni to abandon their base on Gaia.
Alma was resolute throughout the day and night but finally, towards dawn on the second day, exhaustion overcame her and she fainted at the wheel. Junith and I carried her below and left Eilan in charge of her second patient.
While Alma rested, Junith and I took turns at the helm, six hours at a stretch. As Eilan had indicated, it required little effort to keep the foil on a straight easterly course; there was no wind and few tidal streams. Within a day Alma had recovered but we maintained our rota, for piloting the foil at least helped break the monotony of the voyage. For days on end there was nothing else to do except stare out at the placid, leaden ocean.
Junith, when not at the wheel, spent much of her time in the radio room, poring over some kind of receiver. It was an unusual piece of equipment, occupying one whole wall, and unlike anything I had ever seen before. Junith refused to explain its function to me, and Eilan was similarly non-committal when I questioned her. Obviously I would have to wait a little longer before I was made privy to all the secrets of the League.
By the sixth day Tomas was sufficiently recovered to be pressing Eilan to remove his bandages. That evening, when Eilan and I accompanied him back to the cabin after dinner, he announced: “If you don’t take them off, I’ll remove them myself.”
Before Eilan could even frame her objections, he added: “I know I’m going to be blind.”
“You know?” I said.
“It’s obvious. That blast seared my eyeballs. I couldn’t see a thing when we were on the rowing boat. I knew it would be permanent.”
Eilan and I exchanged glances, then she got up and began to unpeel the bandages from his head. She worked carefully and removed the final layer with particular delicacy. Tomas winced once or twice, but he did not cry out.
His face was not as badly burned as I had expected. His forehead, cheeks and nose were reddened and festering in places but the burns were second-degree and would eventually heal. His eyebrows and eyelashes had been seared away but his eyes looked quite normal apart from a slight mistiness. And yet they were dead. They were dead because they had had to absorb not just a tremendous burst of heat, but of light as well. It was the light that had blinded.
The semblance of a smile formed on Tomas’s blistered face.
“Perfect,” he said.
“Perfect what?” I asked.
“Perfect darkness.”
The morning of the eighth day was overcast and Alma announced that she was stopping to overhaul the engines. The foils were powered by a series of solar batteries which lined the stern of the craft and vaporized sea-water drawn in through four conduits in the hull. The batteries could store sufficient energy to power the craft throughout the night but their efficiency tailed off after more than twenty hours without direct sunlight. This in itself was sufficient reason for stopping, but it also gave us the opportunity to dismantle the panels and get inside the insolation chamber. Salt residues built up within the chamber over a period of time, reducing the engine’s efficiency and I knew that it was normal practice to carry out the descaling operation every ten days or so.
It was several hours before the batteries had cooled sufficiently to permit their removal. Clad in green rubber coveralls, Alma then descended a ladder into the encrusted chamber armed with canisters of desealant. Junith and I donned gill-masks and dived under the boat to clear debris from the conduit grilles.
Junith entered the rear, starboard conduit; I, the rear port. The conduits were roughly five metres deep and about half as wide so that access was easy. The gill-masks would allow us to stay underwater for ten to twelve minutes, sufficient time to complete our task. I moved towards the grille in the murky half-light, took a knife from my belt and began cutting away the debris which had been sucked into the conduit during the voyage. It was mostly algae, greenkelp and a few dead jellyfish; I stuffed them into the bag tied at my waist. They came away easily and within minutes the grille was clear. I moved to the inner port conduit. As I approached the grille I could see that a large body was blocking it, an obstacle which, though covered with weed, I took to be a piece of driftwood, shaped in a warped parody of a human body. I began stripping it of its coating of weed and suddenly, to my horror, I discovered that I was holding a man’s arm. I recoiled in fright, backpedalling frantically, but the body detached itself from the grille and drifted after me like a green mummy. On one of the fingers of the outstretched hand a circlet of copper gleamed.
I flapped my arms and legs vigorously, cursing the inertia of the water. Finally I was out of the tunnel and pushing upwards towards the gleaming horizon, I broke surface, tore away my mask and began gulping in air. For several minutes I rested against the side of the boat and then Junith surfaced, swam towards me and noticed my distress.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
With confused, disjointed utterances I told her. When I had finished she said nothing, but slipped her mask back on, turned head over heels and disappeared beneath the water. Some time later she reappeared beside me and said: “He’s gone.”
She was wearing Jax’s snake-ring on her right thumb. I thought perhaps she had recovered it to offer it me as a memento, but she made no move to do so. Despite feeling va
guely outraged that she had plundered my dead friend’s body, I said nothing; I was still trembling with the irrational conviction that Jax was determined to follow me to the Antipodean Isles and punish me for killing him.
I was shaken for the remainder of the day and Eilan broke open one of the bottles of wine which she had been saving for our journey’s end. She gave me sufficient to drink that I slept soundly that night. Early next morning, before we resumed our voyage, I went underwater and examined the four conduits. They were all clear, as was the water round about; but several days were to pass before I could think of Jax without experiencing a tremor of unease.
We continued on our way. Tomas’s face began to heal but he talked little, despite all our efforts to engage him in conversation, Before joining the League he had been a shuttle pilot, a profession now irrevocably lost to him. Junith continued to spend most of her free time alone with her receiver. She did not seem to want for companionship and would only appear on deck when it was her turn at the wheel or when there was an essential task to perform. Alma, once she had recovered from the loss of Wolther, showed a stolid good-humour throughout the voyage and I always felt relaxed in her company. She seemed quite content with her lot and I guessed that she was one of those rare people who have no inner demons urging them on. Eilan and I discovered a common interest in Earth history and we spent many hours deliberating on the variegated past of our ancestral planet We did not talk of the M’threnni or of Gaia; perhaps we sensed that we had temporarily put both behind us and that they were better left untalked of until the immediate future resolved itself.
Alma sighted land towards dusk on our twelfth day at sea and we mustered on the bridge. There it was: a smear of darkness on the horizon. Alma increased our speed but we soon realized that we would not reach the island before sunset. So, as the descending suns burnished the ocean with their bloodshot stare, Alma cut the engines. We would ride in at dawn tomorrow.
That night we celebrated our arrival with a feast of fish freshly caught the day before. We drank the wine which remained and talked well into the night. We were all in good spirits. I demonstrated several card tricks which my father had taught me; Alma told jokes, chuckling to herself long before she reached the punch-lines; Eilan recited ribald poetry with a gusto far removed from her normal sedateness; Tomas surprised me, too, by singing several songs in a clear, forceful tenor. He seemed to have regained all his earlier fire. Only Junith did not join wholeheartedly in the festivities. She drank a little wine and retired to bed early. At length the wine dulled our sensibilities sufficiently that the rest of us stumbled off to our bunks and hammocks, weary but content.
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