Alien Caller (58 page)

“But why? We’ve
done you no harm, and these ones do need medical attention in the
next few months. They’re expecting a child.” Gal refused to let it
lie, and for that David was grateful. He was a brave man and that
had to be respected. And someone had to stand up to the alien and
he didn’t know where to begin. Neither did the others by the looks
of things.

“Children have
been born by your people for thousands of years without problems.
But I have left you extensive medical supplies as well.”

“But I’m not
their people! Surely even you can see that!” It just ripped out of
David despite his best intentions. But he knew he had to make the
creature understand. Whatever else happened, he knew Cyrea had to
get to the hospital so she could be properly cared for.

“And surely
even you can see that you are the same people, human. How else
could you be having a child? How else could the others? And why the
**** else would I be here, if you weren’t?” The translator may have
had trouble with the creature’s words, but David understood them
only too clearly. In fact things were suddenly falling into place
all around him.

“Oh dear God!”
Cold certainty clutched at David, as he put the creature’s words
together with everything else he’d been through lately and saw the
complete picture.

“What does he
-?”

“He means love,
that Earthlings and Leinians are two different races of the same
species, just as Africans and Europeans are. That’s why our DNA
matches. That’s why we can have children. We’re the same species,
and somehow I don’t think it has anything to do with parallel
evolution.” She looked at him, and then at their captor. So did
everybody else. David could hear the objections starting in
people’s throats, and dying as they tried to think of anything to
actually say. Which was fine by him. He had a few questions of his
own, and once he’d opened his mouth and broken the silence he felt
the need to continue.

“Your people
are responsible for this, aren’t they?” It wasn’t really a
question. He knew that somehow, somewhen this alien or his
ancestors had created either the humans or the Leinians or both
from the same stock, and planted them on different worlds. It was
the only explanation for why he had attacked them. And logically
there had only ever been two races that were old enough to have
done it, the Floyd and the Mentans. Now, the culprits were busy
trying to cover up the evidence.

After a few
moments thought he even knew the when. Thirty or forty thousand
years before, Cro Magnon had appeared out of nowhere and beaten the
crap out of the Neanderthals. Scientists had speculated for years
that they had been different variants of the same basic genre, and
that there had been interbreeding and competition until one had
wandered its way into extinction. Though scientists had always
wondered why Cro Magnon had won out when Neanderthals were in fact
stronger and smarter. But suddenly David knew that the two hominids
had had nothing in common at all. Not even the same planet. It was
a shockingly long time ago, but the only possibility.

“Correct human.
Our ancestors made some horrible mistakes.” Mistake wasn’t the word
David wanted to hear right then, and the hairs on the back of his
neck started bristling even more. Deep down he was angry. Not just
that this creature should attack them, threaten them, and plan to
exile them, but that he should refer to all of humanity as a
mistake made by his people. That was just too much. Or was he also
referring to the Leinians?

“There are
others?” Cyrea suddenly asked the creature the other question David
should have thought of and he forgot his anger for a moment. She
was right. The Mentan had mentioned others.

“Two more
couples, on a transport that left just under a month after you.
They too will be joining you below in time.” Two more couples, the
knowledge just shook David, and he suspected Cyrea. After all the
panic, once again they weren’t alone.

“So am I a
Leinian or is Cyrea a human?” In hind sight David wasn’t even sure
why he asked the question. It was so completely irrelevant to their
situation. He should be arguing for their release. Negotiating with
their captor. But a large part of him was suddenly curious.
Morbidly so. And he could just imagine the reaction when the news
made it all the way back to Earth, if it ever did. There would be
riots in the streets.

“Neither.”

That was the
last question they were allowed to ask. One of the Mentan’s
tentacles idly brushed against a device in one of its tool pouches,
and all hell broke loose. A bunch of sonic booms caused them to
fall to the ground stunned, the creature’s equivalent of concussion
grenades he guessed. But for once the creature had not prepared
fully. The Leinians fell like bricks, clearly paralysed by the
noise, but to him it was just a shockingly loud fire cracker. He
fell, shocked, hands over his ears, but after the first few seconds
his prone posture became a ruse. Instincts born of training told
him to play dead. He knew from years of being caught in tight
situations that this was his chance. His only chance to act.

He heard the
creature approaching, the rustle of its many feet a sure give away.
And then he saw it through the corner of his eye, prodding the
others one by one, making sure they were out of it. It prodded
Cyrea and he had to restrain himself, hoping that she was all right
as the creature had promised. Then it prodded him. The feeling was
like being poked with a solidified jelly, but he held his piece and
the creature moved on.

He heard its
feet rustle as it reached the next one and prodded, and then rustle
again as it moved on. In that instant David knew his moment had
come.

Like a man
possessed he sprang to his feet screaming, and leapt at the
creature. He leapt high guessing that it didn’t look upwards a lot.
It wasn’t built to look up. So it had no chance. He saw lots of
tentacles raising, going for the weapons or whatever, but it was
simply too slow. His dive carried him right over the top of it and
he simply reached out with both hands, grabbed the edge of its body
and rolled it. It was surprisingly easy as the Mentan was lighter
than he’d expected. Lighter than it looked. And it was frightened.
Even as he landed David heard a distant electronic screech and knew
the translator was trying to interpret the Mentan’s screaming, and
failing.

On the floor he
turned and watched as the creature slid away from him, spinning
upside down, all its tentacles writhing like snakes. But it had no
chance he knew. Not till it had stopped and regained some control.
Meanwhile all its devices were spilling out all over the deck, as
the holsters had no catches, and he knew that that was the chance
he’d hoped for. The Mentan had never been designed by nature to be
upside down and thus had never prepared for it. And worse for it,
while it was screaming in fear it wasn’t ordering its robots to
attack. That was the chance he needed.

David gathered
up the closest of the Mentan’s tools as quickly as he could, and
stuffed them down the front of his jacket. The tight waist band
meant they wouldn’t fall out.

Some of them he
glanced at as he stuffed, others he had absolutely no idea of what
they even looked like as he simply shoved them in, but he gathered
them all as quickly as possible. Then his luck ran out, as he saw
the creature twenty feet away trying to rise, and he knew he was
out of time. Whatever he had gathered was going to have to be it.
Like a marine he improvised, trying to cover his theft with drama.
He dived for the next nearest implement, a dark box of some sort,
and pointed it at the Mentan.

“Stay back!
Back or I shoot.” He was fairly sure the box wouldn’t be a weapon.
Unless the creature carried at least a dozen guns the odds were
surely against it. He also knew that the creature would know
exactly what he held. It wasn’t the point. Slowly and awkwardly the
creature righted itself and stared at him through half a dozen of
its closest eyes, no doubt wondering if the humans truly were the
savages the others had thought. And perhaps wondering how to reason
with a savage. But even that would work to his advantage. Savages
weren’t considered capable of planning so the Mentan wouldn’t
realise what he’d done.

“Get him!”

A door opened
to one side and a group of floating robots appeared. They were very
different to the spider ones, but the same in one key respect. They
were armed. David ducked behind a pillar on the other side of the
room, certain that a little weapons play would follow. He wasn’t
disappointed. The floor all around him suddenly exploded, with
steel choosing to become shrapnel on all sides. He hit the deck,
trying to avoid getting hit but was not entirely successful and
endured the scratches and near misses until they chose to stop. But
that was good. The more confusion the robots created, the greater
the chance that the Mentan would assume his tools were buried under
piles of rubble or destroyed. And things were falling down all
around. Even on a steel ship.

David suspected
that the robots weren’t really trying to hit him after a few
seconds, as the explosions seemed to get further away. They were
just pinning him down, awaiting their master’s fury. But the longer
they kept shooting the more damage they did, and that worked to his
advantage.

When the
Mentan’s demand for him to give up finally came it was much more
muted than he’d expected, partly because the creature wasn’t really
hurt by his rough housing, but largely because it felt itself
completely in control again.

“Put the
scanner down and move beside your friends.” Even through the
translator he could hear the confidence. The creature was certain
it had him. He risked raising his head and taking a peak around.
The robots were everywhere. They had entered silently en mass, and
all his exits were cut off. He took the time to do nothing, forcing
the creature to repeat itself. It was risky disobeying it, but it
was also in keeping with his being a savage. He desperately needed
it to believe that, to never imagine his ruse.

“You’re trying
to trick me into giving up the gun. It won’t work.” A scanner huh?
He’d guessed that it would be no threat to the creature, just an
annoyance. And then if it still intended to abduct him, it would
have to try and prove what it was that he held before he could
disarm him. Before the stupid barbarian understood it. But for once
David had under-estimated the creature. There was a sudden clicking
sound immediately above him and something cold and hard pushed its
way into his back. A robot had managed to float right over him in
the confusion, and even if he had been holding a weapon, he was
caught.

David screamed,
mainly for a bit of theatre, and flung the device away from him as
hard as he could. He made sure to throw it away from the Mentan as
well. He heard it crash into a wall and then fall out of sight.
When the time came for the creature to try and reclaim its stuff,
it would just be another broken, missing or hard to locate item.
Hopefully it would chalk the other missing devices up to the spill
and random weapons fire.

“Get up.”
Knowing there was no choice he did as directed, feeling the cold
barrel of the robot weapon pressed firmly into his back all the
time. He would not get another chance to escape.

“For your
disobedience I suppose you’d expect to be killed. And I suppose if
the universe was fair, you would be.” Even through the bland tones
of the translator David could tell the creature was fairly spitting
with fury. Swearing too from the gaps between translated words. As
the others had told him, the advanced races were morally opposed to
violence of any kind, and he’d counted on that when he made his
move. But moral opposition to violence and anger were running a
close contest in this creature. It really wanted to kill him,
morality be damned.

“But my
intentions have not changed barbarian, although now I worry about
leaving you with these others. Your wildness may be too much for
them. Nevertheless I appear to have no choice again. You are the
father of her child, and I must keep you together, or bear the
extra shame of having needlessly broken apart a family.” Which went
nowhere near explaining how he would bear the shame of splitting up
so many other couples, of whom only one partner was aboard. But
David didn’t get the chance to ask that question.

The group of
armed spider robots suddenly grabbed his wrists and herded him out
of the common room. He didn’t resist. Even when he guessed where
they were going. He knew the route along the curving corridors to
the lifeboats. The captain had drilled them all in it several
times. Others robots carried the rest of the crew behind him and in
short order they were all beside the wall full of hatches.

Someone, it
wasn’t the Mentan since David couldn’t see him, must have hit the
button, and instantly all the metal hatches slid open revealing the
tiny little chambers beyond. Chambers that were in fact the insides
of the life pods. Each of them was nothing more than a little
escape vehicle that could land on a planet and provide a little air
and food when they got there.

The spider
robots abruptly started picking up the limp bodies of the
passengers and crew, and carrying them into the pods, placing them
in the seats. And once they were in they strapped them down, exited
the vehicles, and slammed the doors behind them. David knew that
those hatches wouldn’t open again till they had landed on the
planet, marooned.