Alien Caller (59 page)

There was
nothing he could do any more to stop them being marooned. He
couldn’t stop it from happening to him either. The robots were
everywhere, they seemed to have multiplied somewhere along the way,
and the floor was slowly being emptied of unconscious bodies. Soon
it was his turn and one of the robots roughly shoved him through
the hatch and forced him into the seat. It didn’t even give him a
chance to do up the seat belts, its hands if they could be called
hands, simply lashed out, grabbed the belts and did them up for
him.

Then it stepped
back, exiting the pod faster than he would have believed possible,
and the hatch slid shut. His fate had been sealed.

He knew from
his familiarisation with the ship’s safety features that the pods
were completely automatic, and once jettisoned they would guide
themselves directly to the nearest safe point, which in their case
had probably been decided for them by their captor. And worse
still, he couldn’t even see where they were going. The pods were in
effect little more than guided steel beach balls. They had no port
holes, not much in the way of instrument panels, and nothing to see
except steel and a few coloured lights.

At least he was
strapped in beside Cyrea. She was moaning softly, clearly the shock
of the device was wearing off, and he reached across to her
worried. He needn’t have. Her pulse was strong, and at his touch
she flinched and slowly started to rouse.

A sudden punch
in his guts told him it was too late to do anything more as he knew
they had been jettisoned, and he felt his lunch rising as the
artificial gravity of the ship deserted them. From this point on he
understood their destiny was now out of their hands. But that same
movement brought Cyrea all the way back to life, and that was good.
It wasn’t so good when she immediately understood their
situation.

“We’re in a
pod.” He nodded, knowing there was nothing else he could really
say. The game was over and they were going down. He just had to
hope they weren’t out.

“It’s a one way
trip and we’re on our way down to an unknown planet. He says we’ll
survive there, but we won’t leave.” Which was a silly thing to say
when she’d already heard their captor tell them exactly that.

“Crap!” Cyrea
cursed loudly and David couldn’t have agreed more with her, he only
wished he could have done something about it. Though maybe, just
maybe, he had done enough. But that wasn’t something to discuss
just then, not when they were in a mechanical life boat controlled
by the Mentan who could well be listening, assuming that the pod
had some sort of radio on it.

Instead he just
held her hand and waited for nature to help him adapt to zero
gravity, before they hit the atmosphere. Then he suspected he might
lose his breakfast.

“The
others?”

“The same. The
robots were loading everyone they could find into the pods.”

“Oh.” She
sounded glum and she had good reason to be. And David knew he
couldn’t tell her what he’d done. Whether it was good news or bad,
the one thing he couldn’t afford was for the Mentan to guess his
ruse, and he was sure somehow their captor would be watching them.
So instead he had to offer her platitudes. Not that there were many
for this sort of situation. Somehow ‘it’ll be all right’ just
didn’t seem comforting. Luckily as they sat there waiting, her
natural curiosity returned to her.

“What did he
mean …?” David calmly told her of the archaeology of his people,
and of Cro-Magnon man and Neanderthal man. Despite the fact that
the discovery rocked his world and had even left him wondering
about the place of religion in it, he was eerily calm, scaring even
himself with his self-control. Modern dating suggested perhaps
twenty to forty thousand years earlier, Cro Magnon had come on the
scene and usurped the original Neanderthals, despite the fact that
the older species was larger and had a bigger brain. Now they knew
why.

“My guess is
that your Mentan friends were somehow responsible for that. They
came with a new human or Leinian species, or both, modified it to
suit the local environment, and then set it free to play with the
locals on Earth. And they must have done the same with the larger
primates and perhaps a few other animal species, maybe even an
entire ecosystem, as they too share DNA in common with us. In short
they were playing God, reworking a whole world to their experiment.
Now, they simply don’t want to admit it.” The terrible thing was
that of all the scientists he’d met in the most top secret labs
over the years, most he would have guessed, would have been
perfectly happy to do the same if they could. The Mentan’s
ancestors had committed an appalling act, wiping out the future of
an entire hominid race to favour their own creation, but still one
that was no worse than those of his own people. And the lengths
those human scientists had gone to to cover up their crimes if and
when they’d been found out he was painfully aware of. After all
that had been a part of his role. So if the Mentan was anything
like them and had superior technology, what would he do? What could
he do? He didn’t want to know.

“It could be
the other way. Thirty three thousand years ago, the modern Leinian
was born, and like Cro-Magnon he dominated his world, usurping all
competitors. Maybe neither of our people is from our own worlds.”
It was a disturbing thought since it meant neither of them truly
knew where their races belonged. Was the Earth mankind’s home, or
had the garden of Eden been somewhere else entirely? Were men
actually aliens? It was something he and all his people, had never
questioned. It also meant that there could be other human Leinian
races out there, still waiting to be discovered. But there were
more important things for David to worry about.

“What I don’t
get is why they’re so worried about us discovering it? And what use
is it getting us out of the way? Sure some of the proof may now be
missing in action, but all your people have to do is a few
evolutionary genetic analyses and the truth will come falling into
their laps.”

“The why is
easy. It’s politics. Of the five space faring races, the Mentans
and the Floyd are the oldest, both have been travelling through the
galaxy for easily fifty thousand years. But their technologies and
societies have become stagnant with very little progress being made
for thousands of years. The three younger races are catching up
their technology fast so that today there’s very little difference.
They have an edge, but not an insurmountable one. And if any two of
the younger races joined forces, they could overwhelm either of the
elders, or both, one after another.”

“War’s very
unlikely of course. None of the five are particularly warlike. The
aggressive races seem to kill themselves off early, long before
they reach space flight. But the pecking order in the sector is
still based on power. As a result the elder races often choose the
better systems for their people, trade is often heavily weighted in
their favour, and usually they decide the space law for the
sector.”

“The Mentans in
particular pride themselves on their ethics and as such they
dominate the courts, denying the other races many opportunities to
exploit the sector, even seemingly harmless ones. Interfering with
another sentient culture for example, is a strict no no, which all
agree on. However, the Mentans have interpreted that to mean that
even colonizing or mining on remote continents of worlds that have
primitive aborigines who one day might develop space travel is
prohibited. Not all are so happy about that. This is the first
evidence that the Mentans themselves have been less than squeaky
clean, and it will undermine what they say at Council. Every word
they say, every law they dictate, every value they trumpet, will be
set against this.”

“At the very
least it would be a major slap in the face for them. But then
consider that their interference has been instrumental in creating
one of the other foremost space faring races, and maybe a second in
a few short years. My people won’t accept that, no more I suspect
will yours. To find out that we were bred like lab rats is
humiliating, and we will have no choice but to demand redress.”

“Also, we need
to know if there were any others of our people created. He did say
you weren’t Leinian and I’m not human. The logical answer is that
we’re both of yet another race. We may well have more brother and
sister races. The other younger races themselves will be wondering
whether they too were the result of Mentan experiments. They will
demand to see the records, and rightly so. The Floyd meantime will
take it as evidence that they are the top of the pecking order, and
they will rub that in for centuries.”

“If the Mentans
have been playing god as it were, the resultant chaos will change
the balance of power in the sector. It could very well tear the
treaties apart and leave the galaxy wide open. And it will also
force them to open their history books, releasing more of their
highly secret technology to the younger races in the process.”

“But it all
happened at least thirty thousand years ago.” That was what David
truly couldn’t get. It was simply such a huge length of time to be
worried about. No one who had been alive then was still living. Not
even anyone who had met them. And it was a natural principle of law
that people weren’t responsible for the crimes of their parents.
Cyrea just shrugged, and while he still couldn’t even begin to
grasp the length of time involved, he gathered it was unimportant.
That they had done it was all that mattered. Which led him back to
the other thought that had been pestering him.

“What I don’t
get is what he plans to do about the Earth? With apparently three
babies on the way now, and since we’ve started a trend more are
probably to come, how does he plan on stopping them all? He can’t
just keep kidnapping every transport that leaves Earth, surely.”
Unspoken in which was his very dark thought that the creature had
serious plans for the Earth. Ones that would prevent any more
babies being born, permanently.

“He can’t do
much else. Not and let his people maintain any pride. He won’t harm
your people. If just the knowledge of his ancestor’s actions is so
terrible, acting with violence would be so much worse. And that
would in all likelihood create a war. All four other races would
band together for their common good, and he knows that. My guess is
he’s just trying to buy some time.” Cyrea understood what he
couldn’t bring himself to say, and answered his fear. He just hoped
she was right because unfortunately he wasn’t so sure. The Mentan
had already done things he couldn’t do, and he was quickly being
backed into a corner by events. He was desperate, and desperate
people do desperate things.

But even if she
was right which was all very well, it still left them with the
prospect of being stranded on a world in the middle of nowhere,
with very little hope of being found.

He rubbed his
middle, feeling the comforting weight of whatever items he’d
managed to steal from the creature. As well as the stuff he’d
grabbed from the cabin when the panic had begun, Cyrea’s hand
laser, the rest of the learning tapes and player, his own survival
toys and a handful of Cyrea’s mini-robots were all neatly stacked
away in the army jacket’s multitude of hidden pockets. God bless
the army. He wanted to show them to her, to tell her all about it,
but he had the terrible feeling they were under observation. Maybe
it was paranoia, but he knew he couldn’t take the chance.

Besides, though
he hadn't told Cyrea as she had enough to deal with, he understood
that this wasn't the first time the Mentan had struck at them. The
fact that her shuttle had gone down for no apparent reason. The
other accidents. There were no accidents. Though he had no
explanation for how he'd done it, David knew it was him. He had
been determined to end the Leinians' mission to Earth and what
better way to do it than a nice, public shuttle crash. He'd been
trying to stop the information getting out for a long time.

It was at that
moment that the turbulence suddenly hit them and he forgot
everything else in his sudden panic. Inside the tiny pod they felt
as though a giant hand had suddenly caught them, and then started
playing catch. He stared at Cyrea’s worried face and saw his own
reflected. But she wasn’t surprised by this turn of events. Even
having been strapped in, David realised he still hadn’t understood
the nature of the trip. He had somehow assumed that this was going
to be another silky smooth ride, like everything else the Leinians
had offered. Instead it looked like being something much
rougher.

“Quick. Get in
position.” Cyrea leaned her head back against the head rest and
pushed her hands firmly under her buttocks. The seat responded to
her position, the head rest suddenly growing into a ring that
moulded to her skull, and the straps around her tightened, holding
her rigid in the seat’s embrace. David quickly copied her and his
seat did likewise. In a second he was bound tighter than any mummy,
completely incapable of moving and barely able to breathe.

He tried to say
something, anything, but Cyrea beat him to the punch, telling him
swiftly not to. He’d bite his tongue in half. Instead he
concentrated on breathing, and calming his heart rate, which was
going through the roof.

It was cramped
and uncomfortable, but he was grateful for the security of the seat
and its belts when the pod started shaking and rocking like a leaf
in a tornado. Had he been able to move a muscle, he would surely
have broken something. The buffeting got worse as they fell towards
the land so far below. Sounds began assailing them, the noise of a
giant roaring in pain and rage, while he rolled the pod like dice.
The nausea swiftly became unbearable as he stared at the roof,
three feet in front of him, concentrating on it, while his inner
ear told him he was spinning completely out of control. But somehow
he kept his breakfast down, knowing it would only end up all over
him if he didn’t.