But it was Purvis, again, who found the words to break the tableau. Dimly, Call realized this was not the first time he'd done that. It was a good thing they'd brought him along, for all their sakes.
"We've got to be moving, miss," Purvis said quietly. "Best gift you can give her right now is a quick death."
That's what it would be for Ripley when the Auriga impacted with Earth. Finally, Ripley would go home.
Call still couldn't move, couldn't leave the last place she'd seen her. "It's not right...." The words caught in her throat, but there was nothing wrong with her vocal mechanism now.
Purvis slipped a hand under her arm, urging her to move forward. The others went ahead, as Purvis led Call on, toward the Betty.
"It's not right—" Call insisted, shaking her head.
Purvis sighed. "I've been saying that all day."
Wake up. Be quiet. We're in trouble.
She paused, listening, sensing. Something was happening. Not a dream. Something real.
Ripley lay still in the arms of the beast. The light was minimal, but that did not hamper her. She breathed quietly, absorbing the breath of the creature. The warm wetness around her said safety, but chaotic dream images flickered across her faltering consciousness.
The cold comfort of cryosleep.
The driving need to protect her young.
The strength and companionship of her own kind.
The power of her own rage.
The warmth and safety of the steaming crèche.
The images were meaningless and meaningful at the same time. She recognized them on a level beyond consciousness, beyond learning. They were part of her, part of who she'd been, what she'd been. And now they were part of what she was becoming.
She floated in the humid, comforting warmth, wanting to hide. There were murmuring, distant sounds that were outside of her. Inside of her. They came and went, the sounds, meaning nothing, meaning everything. Distantly, she could sense the Queen and her terrible need.
Then she heard the inside sounds again, one stronger than the others. The one she always listened to. The one she tried so hard to remember. It whispered—
My mommy always said there were no monsters—no real ones. But there are.
That sound insisted she wake. But once she woke, the dreams would all become real. She was tired, so very tired—But when she slept....
I don't wanna sleep, the tiny voice said. I have scary dreams.
They touched her in her sleep. All the monsters, the real monsters. Moving, breathing, seething—dreaming, planning....
She shuddered.
They were a perfect organism, with only one true function.
Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.
She moaned softly, despondently.
An idealistic young woman had shown her the shadow of what she had once been. What fate had made her. But what was she now? Was she Ellen Ripley, or a changeling as grotesque as ... as...
At least there's a part of you that's human! I'm just— I'm just...
I prefer to be called an artificial person.
Slowly, she registered a dim sensation. Something outside herself. Something happening to herself. Her eyes moved around as she gathered information.
Her terrible children had finally come for her. They were everywhere, carrying her, welcoming her.
But the others were gone. The humans. Those she'd fought so long and hard to protect and save. She'd been separated from them, taken from them. Part of her felt enormous relief. Part of her felt tremendous rage. She vacillated between the feelings as she lay in the arms of the beast.
A cartoonish picture of a blond child wavered in her mind, gradually replaced by a clearer image of a real child. Her child? No, not hers....
Yes, mine!
Her mind swam with chaotic memories.
The steaming warmth of the crèche. The strength and safety of her own kind. The aloneness of individuality. And the driving need to find—
Small, strong arms wrapped around her neck, small, strong legs wrapped around her waist. There was chaos. The warriors screamed and died. There was fire.
I knew you would come.
She blinked, confused, her mind a sudden shambles
of fragments, memories, instincts she could not sort out. The sweeping pain of loss—sickening, irretrievable loss—flooded her mind, her entire body. It meant nothing—it meant everything.
My name is Newt. No one calls me Rebecca.
I'm coming, Newt! I'm coming!
Mommy! Mommy!
Ripley searched for the connection to her own kind, she searched to find the strength and safety of the crèche, but it was not there. And in its place was nothing but this pain, this terrible loss. She was hollow. Empty.
Dimly, she looked at the huge warrior holding her and longed to ask him the same question she had asked the others, the humans. The question no one would ever answer.
Why? Why?
As the memories of Newt's voice ricocheted around her brain, she determined she would have the answer. She would take it from them. In spite of their size, their strength, in spite of their ferocity and hostility. She would take it by force.
Nervously, the survivors of the crew traveled the rest of the way to the Betty quickly, but without racing. They saw no other signs of Aliens, no slime, no acid damage, nothing. Everything was amazingly still.
As Vriess was carried into the ship, he felt an overwhelming pang of homesickness, then a sorrow so gripping, it surprised him. As Johner and Distephano carried him to the copilot's seat, evidence of Hillard's occupancy was everywhere, as was Elgyn's around the pilot's chair. He shook off the memories, promising himself he'd deal with them at a more convenient time, once he got their asses safely outta here. Assuming he could get their asses outta here.
As Vriess securely strapped himself into place, Johner asked, "How long till we can get airborne?" Vriess punched up some schematics and a quick flight plan, looked at the image of Earth filling up their screen, getting closer by the second. "I'll need Call to patch in to the ship again, open the hatch, release the magnets, like that."
"We hit atmo in a few minutes," Johner said urgently. "Only gonna make it harder."
Vriess nodded, hands flying over the board. He didn't want to think about how little time he'd spent piloting this ship. He didn't want to think about his lack of experience. They'd always had Hillard or Elgyn to fly the Betty, with Christie as backup. Vriess was a mechanic, for chrissakes, and Johner was muscle. They were so used to their roles they rarely had occasion to step outside them. He wouldn't think about that now. Today he was a pilot. He had to be.
Call moved up beside him, distracting him from his worries. He stopped, met her eyes. From the first moment they'd met, she'd never looked at him like a cripple. Never stared at his legs. Never saw the chair. She only ever saw him, Vriess, the man. He looked at that fine-featured, pretty face and told himself that the least he could do was the same. See Call. Not the wire-festooned hole in her chest. Not the mechanical port in her arm.
She gave him a weak smile. "Need my help?"
He nodded, immensely relieved. "If ... if you wouldn't mind... Annalee."
She started at the sound of her first name, then nodded briefly. "Sure. No problem." And went about connecting into the computer brain as though she'd always done that in front of him.
He didn't pay any attention to the way she plugged in. He just watched her face. Her small, pretty, human face.
Ripley swam back to consciousness slowly. She was swamped with a feeling of vertigo, a dizziness she couldn't seem to overcome. She kept her eyes shut for a moment. She heard wet sounds, dripping, splashing. She heard moans, human moans. She heard a humming, like insects. And the smell—
Blood. Offal. Death. All of it as wet and hot and humid as a tropical swamp.
Slowly, she tried to move, her body almost too languid to respond. Was she drugged? Hypnotized? She was lying on something firm, rigid, solid. Suddenly
, something sticky plopped onto her face from above. She frowned, the dizziness unabating. Finally, the unpleasant dripping sensation was too much, and she opened her eyes.
The stuff dripping over her face oozed off her cheek and onto the floor, and started hardening immediately, pinning her head in place. She reached up, pulled it off, then wiped her hand on the floor without thinking. Even as she performed this automatic task, she blinked, looking around, trying to think, trying to understand where she was, what was happening. She knew she should be anxious or alarmed, should be worried about her own welfare, but her mind wasn't clear enough for that.
She looked around in the dimness. She was not alone. There were other humans, at least eight of them, standing over her on some kind of ledge nearby. She squinted, trying to see better. Finally, her gaze sharpened and she realized the others weren't standing on a ledge at all. Their arms and hands and legs were all fastened down, glued with ropes of exudate to the walls of a huge cylindrical room. Vaguely she remembered Call's mechanical voice saying something about activity in a waste tank and wished she'd paid more attention.
The eight people she could see were all trapped against the walls of the circular tank. Soldiers, researchers, all stuck like giant flies, half cocooned.
She remembered a similar scene....
All the colonists from Hadley's Hope, cocooned to the wall, growing chest bursters. Most of them had emerged. But everyone here is still intact.
She touched her own chest, but she hadn't been reinfected. She'd know if she had been. She would be able to feel it. Were these people being held here to be infected? The thought terrified her, but as she looked around, she realized there were no eggs in the tank. Yet the image of the eight people trapped like insects in a spider nursery would not leave her.
Ripley pulled her gaze away from the trapped humans and looked around, finally seeing them. Aliens. They were floundering in the deeply sloping bottom of the waste tank, like alligators in a swamp, only their swamp was a sea of human blood, offal, and their own secretions. Ripley was perched where the floor met the wall, at the highest part of the flooring, the very shoreline of the fetid lake. Lying there, hesitant to move, she watched the warriors, wondering if they were there to tend to the cocooned humans. Would they be bringing eggs to infect these people?
Ripley frowned, looked around again. Then she saw her. The Queen.
The huge creature was directly across from Ripley, but the image she presented was so confusing, it took Ripley a few moments to sort it out.
Ripley clearly recalled seeing the Queen and her massive ovipositor once before. Then, the huge reproductive organ had been tethered in place to support its terrible weight and size as she deposited egg after egg after egg on the floor of the atmosphere refinery at Hadley's Hope. But that was nothing like what Ripley was seeing now.
This Queen was tethered in place all right, but not by her ovipositor. She had none. Apparently, that part of her had already been discarded. The Queen herself was partially cocooned against the floor of the waste tank, in the sea of blood and waste. It was either a shallow part of the tank, or the Aliens had supported her by an invisible sling constructed of the same material as the underwater web. Ripley realized now that the Aliens half submerged in the chemical soup below were taking care of the Queen, tending to her. They were completely ignoring the human prey they'd secured in the tank.
Ripley continued staring, still trying to understand what she was seeing.
The Queen was trapped on her back, her legs, tail, and arms half submerged. Her head thrashed back and forth, her extremities waving feebly. Was she in pain? And what was that on her abdomen...?
Then Ripley realized the true horror of what she was seeing. The Queen had a huge, distended belly, fleshy looking, with thick black veins snaking over it. The belly moved, as with a life of its own. The Queen's huge mouth opened, and she hissed furiously.
Ripley stared, whispered, "No eggs. Just..."
An oddly familiar voice spoke up excitedly. "Our greatest achievement!"
Ripley was afraid to turn, afraid to see the owner of the voice, but she was compelled to. As she looked up, she saw Dr. Gediman, cocooned neatly among other researchers and soldiers. His eyes were wide, glowing. He was clearly poised on the edge of sanity—with his toes hanging over.
"A secondary reproductive cycle," he babbled cheerily. "Asexual. Mammalian. No host!"
Ripley almost moaned. "That's not possible." Gediman grinned hugely. "We thought we could alter its reproductive system. Obviate the egg-laying cycles. But the beast doesn't trade." He giggled. "It just added a second cycle. It's wonderful!"
A keening shriek from the Queen shook Ripley, as she glanced back at the creature. She was thrashing, obviously in unrelieved pain. The Aliens tending her backed off slightly, chattering wildly, their insectile hum almost musical to Ripley.
"But how...?" Ripley muttered, confused. "Genetic crossover," Gediman supplied helpfully. Then he looked at her, eyes wide, grinning maniacally. "From the host DNA."
"No...!" Ripley couldn't, wouldn't accept that. "Look at it!" he chortled, gleefully. "It's you! It's you!"
She could barely stand it, but, fighting back tears of horror and frustration, she forced herself to look at the Queen. In despair, all she could think was, this was her terrible child.
The bulge in the Queen's belly grew noticeably larger, then started moving, rippling.
Ripley found her motivation. Struggling to rise from the floor of the tank, she found her body traitorously slow, sluggish. She didn't care; she pushed up from the floor, swearing, "I'm getting out of here. Goddamn it, I'm getting out of here! "
Gediman was still watching her, grinning. As Ripley watched, the last glimmer of his sanity vanished. "Don't you want to see what happens next?" he asked joyfully.
13
Call unplugged herself from the Betty and watched as Vriess prepared to separate them from the Auriga. She felt terrible about Ripley, but they still had to get the rest of them to safety. Vriess smiled at her once he had his flight plan in place, and she allowed herself to smile back tentatively.
There were still things to do. She moved away from the command console to join Johner and Purvis. Looking up at the scarred man, she murmured, "Johner, take Purvis to the freezer."
Johner was clearly relieved to be safe aboard the Betty. Agreeably, he patted Purvis's back, and said, "All right. Nap time, buddy."
Purvis, looking incredibly tired and drained, nodded and followed along.
Call moved ahead of them to help Johner with the cryomix. It'd be faster if she did it, and they were on borrowed time with Purvis already. She started down the dark hallway, waiting for the lights to go on ahead of her, but they didn't. She frowned. She hadn't noticed any mechanical problems while she'd been plugged into the ship, but she hadn't really gone looking for anything minor, either. Still, these lights should've come on when they first entered the vessel. She turned to Johner, concerned.
Before she could speak, a hand appeared from the darkness near her, light glinting off the barrel of the gun it held. A deafening explosion in the small space rocked Call as the gun went off. Purvis took the bullet in the shoulder. He screamed, and hit the floor.
As Johner reached for his own weapon, an arm snaked around Call's throat roughly, and the hard metal barrel of the still smoking gun was shoved into her cheek. She froze.
Who...? What...? How...?
As the man holding her shoved her forward, out of the shadows and into the light, she heard a familiar voice.
"You move," the man said to Johner, "and I put a bullet where her brain is!"
Wren!
Call saw Vriess spin in his chair to face them, his expression one of rage and frustration as he sat there, trapped, unable to help.
Johner was tense, collected. This was a conflict he understood, an enemy he could deal with. The scarred man stood with his feet apart, hands away from his sides, trying to appear nonthreatening. But Cal
l had seen Johner in action. If Wren had any understanding of men like him, the doctor would kill him now, with no discussion. Call also suspected that Wren's knowledge did not lie in those areas.
"Distephano!" Wren barked at the soldier. "Take their weapons."
Call looked right at the soldier. Would he? She'd saved his life in the mess hall riot. Would he turn on them now?
Distephano stood tall, as if ready to salute. "Begging your pardon, sir, but ... fuck you." He made no move to yield his own weapon or disarm Johner.
Wren pulled her harder against him, strangling her. She could feel the terrible tension in his body, his trembling as he grew more desperate. He ground the gun muzzle harder into Call's face. "Drop it!" he screamed at the others. "Drop it, or we all die together!"
A sudden, high-pitched shriek made them all turn. Purvis jerked upright, eyes wide, grabbing at his chest.
No one moved, not even Wren.
Frantically, Ripley tried to figure out how to escape from the waste tank, but from where she knelt she could see no doors, no exits of any kind. They'd gotten her in here, there had to be a way out!
The Queen was thrashing more wildly, shrieking steadily. The other Aliens were more and more agitated, humming, twittering, darting through the muck.
One particular cry from the Queen was especially piercing, and Ripley froze in place. The Queen's belly heaved, alive, something clearly writhing inside it.
Ripley tensed as a memory surfaced.
This happened to me. I gave birth. I was a mother once, a real mother. I lay in my own bed, and my husband was there. And a nurse, and doctor. I cried out as my belly heaved.
She could feel it now, the memory was that strong. Instinctively, her hands rubbed her own belly.
I was sweating hard, but I didn't want drugs, even when my husband begged me to take them. I was worried about all those years of cryodrugs, and wouldn't take anything as I delivered. In my own bed. My own home.
She watched the Queen thrash and scream in the slime and the muck and this travesty, this obscene parody of her own experience, made her sick.
A C Crispin Page 19
