by Ruth Morgan
‘You’re crazy,’ said the flattened voice beside me.
‘This whole thing’s crazy,’ I whispered, gazing around at the amazing little world we’d stumbled upon.
‘But it’s dangerous.’ Halley was leaning over so his mouth was near my ear, and this time, although he was speaking quietly, it was with his real voice rather than the flattened version. He’d removed his visor and hood too. ‘We must stay alert, Bree. It’s so loud here, we’d never hear a dragomansk and with the lid off, it could get us easily.’
‘We’ve got these.’ I held up my tile, showing the dormant alert signal. ‘Anyway, no dragomansk is going to get in here, the trees are too close together. Remember yesterday, the one that couldn’t get into the wood? Its wingspan was too big. It’d be exactly the same here.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
Doc Carter would have been furious if he’d known, only because of the risk to his precious celephet. With the heat and excitement making my heart speed like crazy, Doc Carter’s graphs were probably going wild. The thought made me smile.
Although I tried convincing myself and Halley that we were safe without our headgear, we proceeded very slowly and froze whenever we heard a rustling in the branches or a plop in the water. It was ridiculously exciting, the most exciting thing I’d ever done. With my head exposed it felt as though I was actually part of everything.
I sensed eyes on us, lots and lots looking down at us from the branches and peering from between the roots and leaves, and just as I was wondering if Halley was sensing it too, he leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘Doesn’t it feel like we’re being watched?’
I nodded.
We came to a crossroads and turned right into a side canal, heading deeper and deeper into a maze of water, trees and buildings until it struck me where we were.
‘I know this. Remember that picture of the arcade? That ancient covered arcade from hundreds and hundreds of years ago? These were “cafes”. This is where our ancestors met each another. This is where they must have held the tea ceremonies.’
It all bore scant resemblance to the picture I’d seen, with the towering trees breaking through the masonry, creating a dead end up ahead. Yet something about the rounded sweep of the wood and broken metalwork, now mere rusty prongs poking out of the water, convinced me this was it.
‘Can’t remember,’ said Halley.
As we reached the great roots of the biggest tree blocking our way, a small creature almost the same colour as the root launched itself, diving into the water and swimming in a big circle in front of our craft. Again, it took me a few moments to realise what it was. A real live frog, with all its body parts intact rather than dead and splayed out on a screen. When I dug my elbow into Halley and pointed, recognition dawned on his face.
‘If only Coro were here now,’ he said.
‘I’m glad he isn’t. Scalpels at the ready,’ I mimicked our teacher’s gruff voice.
‘Slice it cleanly!’ said Halley and we both laughed.
The frog stopped swimming as though it had heard us, fled back to its root and clambered up onto it with its bizarrely jointed legs. We watched its shiny little body scuttle off between the ferns.
‘There’s so much life here,’ said Halley. ‘But it’s hiding from us.’
‘We’re aliens, aren’t we?’ We looked at each other. It was true, in a way. We did and yet didn’t belong in this world.
It grew lighter as we reached an end to the canal system. The water broadened out into a lake and the surrounding marshland. We replaced our hoods and Halley closed the roof just before a large v-formation metamansk came flying towards the west where the sun now hung in a pale, watery blue sky. Halley backed us into the mouth of the canal and we watched them pass. Whatever mission this metamansk was on, it looked scarily organised and determined. These weren’t just overgrown insects getting on with their lives and trying to stay out of trouble, the way the small ones buzzing round our masks were doing, they were the trouble and they seemed to know it.
‘It’s creepy. Where are they going? What do they want?’ I said.
‘Us, of course. It’s what they were bred for.’
‘Do you think they’re intelligent? That they’ve got some kind of plan?’
Halley shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s time we headed for the Museum,’ he said.
There it was at last. I could hardly believe I was here, in front of my beloved Museum. It took my breath away. Imagine a face you’re very familiar with, one you love very much, which has all of a sudden aged by a thousand years, and has also, bizarrely, swelled in size. I still recognised the face but couldn’t help wondering what it had been through. As in Grace’s photograph, it was standing in the middle of a muddy area of swamp surrounded by other fine buildings, unlike our own Museum on Mars which stands alone. There were ancient words carved into the top which didn’t appear on our Museum, mostly unreadable except one: CYMRU still stood proud.
Halley must have sensed my mood because he didn’t say a word. He piloted the amphibical as far as the top of the steps and the row of great pillars and we stepped out. The floor was caked in a thick layer of mud. The heads of weird, long-faced, horned beasts above the door were unfamiliar but the bronze doors themselves, tall, slim and decorated with flower heads, were only larger versions of the ones I knew so well. One of the doors opened reluctantly when I gave it a shove, grating along the floor, and although it wouldn’t open very wide, the gap was just large enough for us to squeeze through.
Inside was very dark. Chinks of light shone between the boards fixed over the windows, including the semicircular windows near the roof, and a little light followed us through the doorway, stealing in like an intruder. We removed our gloves and held up our illuminated tiles. The air was cool and I was relieved, when I removed my hood, that there were far fewer insects inside the building than out. It seemed as if the vast hall contained a huge gathering of Earth people who had fallen silent the minute we entered and were now staring at us very strangely. Halley grabbed my arm. We were rooted to the spot, uncertain and apprehensive, but as our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we realised that these ‘people’ were larger than life and that several were on large blocks.
‘They’re statues,’ I whispered. Why was I whispering?
‘They’re what?’
‘Statues,’ I said out loud. ‘They were popular here on Earth. They were valued as works of art. There aren’t any in our Museum back home. Well, we don’t have them at all, do we?’
‘But what did they do? What was their purpose?’
‘I don’t know. To tell a story? Or act as some kind of warning?’ I was looking at the statue of a naked man holding a sword in one hand and a gruesome, severed head in the other.
‘I don’t like “warning”,’ Halley continued to whisper. He still isn’t sure we’re safe, I thought.
‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘They can’t harm us.’
As we walked around, our feet echoed in the crowded yet empty hall. Some of the statues were carved from white stone and others were dark metal. I ran my tilelight over the many different faces. There was a man in a tall, pointed hat sitting playing a drum and shouting over his shoulder; there was an old man in long robes raising his fist as though he were ready to strike down his enemies; there was a warrior sitting high on a horse.
A couple of enormous pictures on the wall were also of warriors. In one, a team of them marched through the darkness, the explosions around them lighting their faces with a sickly, green glow. One was falling with his arm outstretched, perhaps at the very moment of his death. A robotic machine seemed to be chasing them.
‘They certainly had a liking for war,’ I called over to Halley, my voice echoing round the hall.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Except come and take a look at this.’
He was near one of the staircases, studying the pale shape of two large Earth humans, male and female, their bodies curved around one another. Their pose made the cold,
unfeeling stone seem warm and alive and as our tilelights swept over the curves of their arms and legs up to their heads, we saw that they were locked in a kiss.
‘It’s amazing,’ I said. ‘Quite unlike the others. Perhaps these people weren’t obsessed with war the whole time?’
Halley took my hand and in a quick movement, kissed my cheek gently. ‘I’m sorry.’ He heaved a sigh.
I was surprised. ‘That’s okay,’ I said, although I felt sure that it wasn’t the kiss he was apologising for. ‘Why sorry?’
‘Just … sorry.’ He let go of my hand and walked off into the gloom.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To see if I can find exhibits for my project. Or something.’ It didn’t sound like he meant it but I didn’t feel like rushing after him. All I wanted to do was explore the Museum, to fulfil the dreams I’d dreamt a thousand times and the truth was I preferred to be on my own. Halley was in one of his strange moods but I was used to them. Here I was at last, in my Museum. It was time to explore.
It felt as though I’d shrunk: the place was so familiar yet so big. I knew exactly where I wanted to go first, through the central doors to the Origins of Earth section. The layout was completely different from the layout I knew and with my tile my only source of light, it was much darker in this maze of rooms than it had been in the main hall. Any organised displays had long been dismantled but many ancient stones and fossils lay in heaps around the edges of one large room. I bent to touch them with my bare hands. Robeen would not have approved.
Fossiliferous limestone … garnet-bearing metamorphosed basalt … stromatolite in banded iron formation… The beautiful words were missing but I recognised the different types of rock, crystal and fossil, jumbled together as though they had just spilled up out of the Earth. A lump of anthracite caught the light from my tile and shone with an impossibly black gleam. On its side lay a huge, ugly fossil fish, its monstrous jaws parted as though about to attack. The scales of the fish were intricate and beautiful and I ran my fingertips over them. There was a huge amethyst geode, as big as a seat, and the geometric clusters of intense purple crystals seemed the truest expression of colour I’d ever seen. It was as though all this abandoned treasure had been waiting patiently in the dark for a very long time, waiting for someone to come and really appreciate them. In the dark I really could touch them, feel their cool shapes and textures, and no one would know.
Perhaps my project, which was supposed to have some scientific basis, could combine an analysis of these rocks and fossils with my own poems? I was wondering whether I’d be able to get away with this when I heard footsteps in the next room.
‘Halley,’ I called. ‘Come here a moment, this is amazing!’ Maybe it wouldn’t be as amazing to him as it was to me, but I needed to share it with him, anyway.
The footsteps stopped as though they’d heard me.
Silence.
‘Halley!’ I yelled. I was worried, remembering that he’d been acting strangely.
I went to the doorway leading to the next room. This was another of those impossibly old-fashioned doors with manual handles. Opening it carefully, I shone my tilelight inside. The room was empty.
‘Bree, here!’ It sounded as though Halley was back in the hall again. I retraced my steps. When I reached him, he was wide-eyed with excitement. He grabbed my hand.
‘Didn’t you hear me call?’ I asked but he wasn’t listening. He dragged me past the statues to the staircase.
‘Back in there, in the Origins of Earth?’ I tried again. ‘I was calling and calling. Didn’t you hear me?’
‘I’ve found something upstairs,’ Halley said, oblivious. ‘You must see this.’
I followed him up, his tilelight illuminating the stone steps. I was annoyed that whatever he’d discovered had to take precedence, but it was useless complaining when he was so fired up. Rounding the corner, we climbed to the balcony.
‘Through here…’
‘Wait – you mean you were up here all the time?’
‘Come on!’
‘Halley…’
Back home, these upper galleries are full of artworks, mainly holo-sensory projections, but this was completely empty. It echoed to the tiniest footfall, the tiniest whisper. It seemed to echo to the rapid beating of my heart.
‘There’s nothing here,’ I said, still confused about what had happened downstairs.
‘There is. It’s here … and through there. Just look around.’
I turned to the patch of wall he was shining his tilelight at and there it was. A drawing in heavy, rough black strokes that looked as though it had been done in a hurry or more likely in a fit of rage or madness. A drawing of an eye, a large, compound eye.
‘Dragomansk,’ whispered Halley.
I searched the wall with my light. Every tiny area was covered with these black drawings, all telling the same story. A chill spread right through me. The dragomansk and metamansk were in flight all over the walls. Below them open-mouthed Earth humans ran for their lives, their arms raised in panic or surrender, running from the lethal streams of acid shooting from the beasts’ mouths, vapourising whatever it hit. The dragomansk were as intent on their deadly mission in these pictures as they were in real life.
The images were awful and somehow seemed even worse because of the terrible silence of the dark room, as though the noises were sealed inside the pictures, like a giant, invisible hand blocking their mouths and stifling their screams.
I crept closer, my horror increasing moment by moment.
The dragomansk were not the only beasts attacking the humans. Hundreds of terror-stricken humans were also running from a huge ground-based creature emerging over the brow of a hill, very like the machine in the picture downstairs. It looked like an enormous, armoured louse trundling blindly along, snapping its whip-like antennae through the air. Further over, another one was curled up in a ball and rolling straight at a scattering pack of panicking humans, sending them running straight into the jaws of giant grey worms which were popping out of earthquake-like fissures in the ground, sightless worms with needle-sharp teeth. Overhead, dangly-legged flying spiders dropped bombs of smoking fire.
Enormous predatory armoured insects grown far beyond their normal size rampaged all over the countryside in these pictures, taking easy aim at their soft-bodied human prey as if they were hunting for sport.
‘They’re through here too.’ Halley stood in the doorway on the other side of the room. ‘They’re everywhere, the walls are completely black with them from top to bottom. It’s insane.’
‘I don’t want to see any more.’ Yet I couldn’t tear my eyes away. ‘Do you think it actually happened, all this? Or is it someone’s imagination?’
‘I’d love to know. How much of this do you think our people know? Captain Calamus? Or Doc Carter and the rest of them? Even our professors at school, even Core Panel? What aren’t they telling us about the history of those last days?’
‘Perhaps no one’s ever seen these pictures.’
‘They must have.’
‘Well, we know not everything’s made public. People wouldn’t be able to cope with it. They don’t want to think of Earth like this.’ I floundered.
There were fresh horrors in the dark wherever I pointed my tile: angry and terrified eyes; swarms attacking a single human left behind by the crowd and sinking to her knees; vibrating antennae and rows of teeth bared ready to attack; running legs and flailing arms. There were the piles of slaughtered victims, and swarms of insects feasting on them, sucking up their blood through long, tubular tongues.
‘There were loads of them,’ whispered Halley. ‘The dragomansk are the only ones that have survived. They must have killed off the others. They triumphed.’
‘Let’s go,’ I pleaded.
Halley seemed lost in an awful wonder. ‘You know, it’s almost like someone’s trying to communicate with us in this primitive way,’ he said. ‘But if all this really was going on, it must have been f
ilmed a million times over. Where are those recordings?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘There must be something somewhere, some recording. This can’t be the only record. I’m going to look downstairs.’
‘Halley, I need to tell you something.’ But he had already shot out of the door. Unwilling to be alone in that terrible room, I followed him downstairs. ‘Halley? Halley!’
He spun around. ‘Sorry, what is it?’
‘I heard something.’
‘Like what?’
‘When I was downstairs in Origins of Earth. I heard footsteps in the room next door and I assumed it was you. But it couldn’t have been, could it? You were up here. And when I looked inside the room, it was empty.’
‘Footsteps?’
‘That’s what it sounded like, yes.’
Halley took a deep breath. ‘You’d better show me.’
We went into the room with the fossils and stones. Halley searched the walls for any more pictures but to my relief they were blank. I showed him where I’d been crouching beside the massive amethyst geode when I’d heard the footsteps. The room next door contained even more fossils and minerals, all jumbled together as though they’d been tipped from the pockets of a scavenging giant on his return home. We called out but no one answered. All was silent. We wandered further and further around the display rooms until we were practically climbing over the jumble of exhibits: more statues, flaking pictures in huge carved frames, even a collection of ancient musical instruments. When I tripped and grabbed hold of something to stop myself falling, I realised I’d grasped an ancient cello, made of wood. What would Robeen have given to get her hands on it, assuming it was still playable?
We arrived back at the start of Origins of Earth.
