Helix (24 page)

The
Zorl moved its huge eyes between Ehrin and Kahran, and said at last, “Are you
in the employ of the Church?”

Ehrin
could only shake his head. “Why... why do you ask?”

The
Zorl stared at him. It moved its lips in an odd grimace. “I need to know my
enemies,” he said.

Ehrin
exchanged a glance with Kahran. To the alien he said, “You... your enemy is the
Church?”

The
Zorl did not reply, but instead pulled something from the breast pouch of his
silver suit. The device was small, square and flat, like a slate. From its
glossy black surface depended two thin wires.

If
it were a weapon, Ehrin had never seen its like before.

The
Zorl inserted the end of the wires into an inlet in the arm of his suit, then
held out the black plate to Ehrin. “You. Touch this when you reply to me. Do
you understand?”

Ehrin
nodded, his mouth suddenly dry.

“Now,”
said the Zorl, “are you in the employ of the Church?”

Hesitantly,
Ehrin reached out and rested his fingertips on the plate. It pulsed with a
slight heat. He said, “Technically, we have been hired by the Church to explore
the western plains. But...” Here he looked at Kahran, as if for support. “But
we are opposed to the Church and its regime in Agstarn.”

As
he spoke the plate grew warmer.

The
Zorl pulled another of its odd lip-grimaces, and said, “You speak the truth,
friend.”

Ehrin
stared at the plate. A device that could divine truth from lies...?

The
alien said, “How far are we from your capital city?”

“Perhaps
six hundred miles—a long day’s flight from here.” He stopped, realising the
stupidity of his words. “But your ship could do it in a fraction of the time.”

“The
ship, my friend, is incapacitated. Even such a short journey is beyond it.”

Kahran
leaned forward. “You wish to go to Agstarn? For what purpose?”

Ehrin
stared at the alien, wondering at the reaction of the Church to the arrival of
the Zorl in the capital. He felt a thrilling pressure of excitement in his
chest.

The
alien was silent for a time, then replied with a question of his own, “Can you
help me reach the capital city?”

Ehrin
gasped and looked at Kahran, who said, “That depends on your mission there, my
friend.”

“My
mission,” the Zorl said, “is to locate a weapon your Church took from my world,
a weapon of terrible capacity. Then I will destroy it.”

“A
weapon?” Ehrin echoed.

The
Zorl continued, “My world fought a terrible war in the recent past. We who
survived, we who rebuilt our world, renounced violence... But your Church took
something from us, and if they were ever in a position to use it,” the alien
closed its fist in a gesture that had meaning only to itself, “then the Zorl
would mourn anew.”

A
silence followed his words. Ehrin looked across at Kahran, who was staring into
space, his mouth open as if in shock.

“Kahran?”

As
if in a daze, his friend mouthed, “The deathship?”

The
alien stared at him. “You know!”

Ehrin
shook his head. “What? How do you know? A deathship?”

“Fifteen
years ago, my friend,” Kahran said, addressing the alien, “I came to your land,
saw the destruction. We were led by agents of the Church. We found the
deathships, only one of which was functioning.” Kahran looked at Ehrin. “The
Church coerced your father into working on the ship, fathoming its mechanics.
While I was returned to Agstarn, your father remained on Zor until the ship was
airworthy once more. Then he flew it to Agstarn.”

“My
father...?”

“He
had no say in the matter.” Kahran addressed the alien, “The Church, as you
might know, is a force of evil on our world.”

The
Zorl made its lip-grimace again. “The fact that it possesses the deathship
fills me with dread,” he said. “I must reach Agstarn and destroy it.”

Kahran
leaned forward. “I can help you, my friend. The Church has a hangar in the
mountains, where they keep the deathship.”

The
Zorl reached out with the truth plate, offering it to Kahran. “You truly know
where the deathship is located.”

Kahran
reached out and touched the plate. “I know where it was fifteen years ago. I
see no reason why the Church would have moved it.”

The
alien lay back on the couch, gripping the padding with its hairless black
fingers. “Then all that remains is for me to reach Agstarn and find the
hangar...”

Ehrin
looked at Kahran. He said, “We could take him back in the freighter, conceal
him in the hold, and then hide him in the foundry until it’s time to find the
deathship hangar.”

Kahran
nodded. “Very well. But what about this craft?” he asked the Zorl.

“Leave
it here. It has served its purpose.”

Ehrin
stared at the alien. “But how... how will you get back to Zor? I mean, once
you’ve destroyed the deathship, how will you...?”

The
alien was staring at him with an odd intensity. “My return was never calculated
in the scheme to destroy the deathship,” he said simply.

Ehrin
closed his mouth and nodded, his mind racing. “We could learn so much from this
craft,” he said in a small voice. “Why, it’s years, decades ahead of anything
we might create...” He puffed his chest. “I run a dirigible factory, designing
many of the ships myself.”

“This
is an
interworld
ship,” the Zorl said. “It can fly into space, through
the vacuum, to the worlds on other levels.”

“Other
levels
?” Ehrin repeated.

The
alien lip-grimaced again. “Later, I have much to tell you about the universe
beyond your present understanding,” he said. “Meanwhile, if you would help me
reach Agstarn, then the ship is yours.”

“Mine?”
Ehrin could only gasp. He turned to Kahran. “I have a suggestion. Hear me out.
We take both the Zorl and the ship back to Agstarn...”

Kahran
stared at him. “The ship too?”

“It
will be easier to hide the alien in the ship, and the ship in the hold of the
freighter, than to conceal the alien in the hold without him being discovered.”
He turned to the Zorl. “You can lock the hatch, and somehow cover the viewscreens
so that it’s impossible to see inside?”

The
Zorl reached out, and the viewscreen beyond his head turned as black as the
surrounding fittings.

Kahran
said, “There is the little difficulty of getting the craft aboard the
freighter, Ehrin. And how do you propose to keep the geologists from telling
Cannak about the craft?”

“I’ll
talk to Kyrik. If he wants to hire the Telsa ships at much reduced rates in
future, I’m sure he’ll agree to keep quiet.” He turned to the alien. “You said
the ship is incapacitated... Would it move just a little, a matter of yards? We
have a transporter nearby, with a cargo hold large enough to take the ship.”

“The
secondary drives are working—enough to allow the ship to hover. It’s a
component in the primary drive that suffered damage.”

“In
that case, if I position the freighter closer to the ship, can you manoeuvre it
into the hold?”

The
alien reached out, touching a series of glowing panels on a console above his
head. Disconcertingly, the craft lifted quickly, bobbing in place perhaps a
yard from the ground. He hit another panel and the hatch opened with a hiss.

“Before
you go,” the alien said, gesturing to his chest. “My name is Havor.”

“I
am Ehrin.”

“Kahran,”
said the old man.

The
alien grimaced again and inclined his head. Ehrin nodded to the alien, then
hurried from the cabin. He jumped to the ground, assisting Kahran, and arm in
arm they leaned into the wind and trudged back to the freighter.

Minutes
later they stood side-by-side at the controls as Ehrin lifted the dirigible
into the air and eased it fifty yards across the plain so that it sat before
the hovering Zorl ship.

Kahran
touched his shoulder. “Ehrin... what we are doing, if the Church found out, you
do realise what they would do to us?”

Ehrin
stared at his friend, and nodded. “I’m prepared to take that risk, Kahran. And
you?”

“What
do you think?” Kahran smiled. “You remind me so much of your father, Ehrin.”

They
left the gondola and stood side-by-side in the wind-driven snow as the Zorl
ship eased itself slowly into the hold. They followed it in; the alien settled
the ship in the far corner of the chamber, where it occupied a quarter of the
floor-space.

They
boarded the interworld ship again and crouched before the alien. “Is there
anything you need? Food, water? You’ll be shut up in here for a day or so,
until we get back to the foundry.”

“I
have sufficient supplies to last me months,” the Zorl said.

“We
will meet again in two days from now. And then...” Ehrin grinned. “And then you
can tell me more about the universe.”

The
Zorl reached out and took Ehrin’s hand in an unusual gesture. “The pleasure
will be mine.”

They
hurried from the hold, secured its double doors, then returned to the control
cabin and hauled the freighter into the air, its engines whining at the
increased load.

Ten
minutes later Ehrin set the freighter down beside the
Expeditor
and took
a deep breath. “I only hope Cannak doesn’t see through our lies, Kahran.”

“Allow
me to do the talking, Ehrin.”

“I’ll
find Kyrik and tell him about this ship,” Ehrin said.

They
left the freighter. The geologists and engineers gathered about the rig,
talking animatedly among themselves. Kyrik saw them coming and waved. “Great
news—the bore’s yield exceeds anything we might have reasonably expected. We
could head back home in the morning, if that suits you?”

Ehrin
nodded. “We’ve had good luck too.” He told the geologist they had found
something on the plains. Inspired, he said that he thought it was a gondola
from one of his father’s old test dirigibles. Kyrik was too full of his own
success to consider the likelihood of this.

Leaving
the workers to their celebrations, Ehrin and Kahran crossed to the
Expeditor
and stepped into the warmth of the lounge. Sereth stood up when they entered.
“Ehrin! You were an age! I thought you’d crashed, or lost your way.”

He
held her. “We’re fine, Ser.”

Cannak
looked up from the Book of Books. “You were gone long enough.”

Kahran
grunted, “I wanted to find a crashed alien starship on the plains,” he said,
silencing a startled Cannak. “But all we did find was a mangy herd of wild
zeer.”

Ehrin
suppressed a laugh and sat with Sereth, taking the pot of tisane she offered
and warming his hands. He wanted to tell Sereth everything, but that would have
to wait until their return to Agstarn.

And
then, how to explain that he was harbouring an alien being bent on destroying
Church property, albeit property stolen from its inventors?

In
the morning, the engineers dismantled the test rig and stowed the equipment in
the freighter’s hold. An hour later they were in the air, Kahran at the
controls and Ehrin staring out through the forward window at the driving snow
as they headed east.

Elder
Cannak was in his own room. Sereth was still sleeping.

Ehrin
glanced across at Kahran, formulating the words to express what he had been
thinking. “Kahran, did my father talk to you about the deathship after he’d
returned to Agstarn?”

Kahran
looked up. “We met only once, and we discussed it briefly.”

“Did
my father guess what a powerful weapon it was?”

Silently,
Kahran nodded. “He knew, by the time he had worked on it and flown it back to
Agstarn.”

“But
he still did the bidding of the Church?”

“Ehrin,
you can’t blame him. They threatened him with death. How was he to know that—”
He stopped suddenly, and stared through the window.

Ehrin
looked up. “Know what?”

Kahran
turned tragic eyes on Ehrin. “How was your father to know that they intended to
kill him anyway?”

Ehrin’s
stomach seemed to lurch, as if the dirigible had dropped ten metres. “My
father’s accident...?”

Kahran
nodded. “Church militia planted a crude explosive within the ship’s engine.”

Ehrin
felt tears sting his eyes. He looked at his old friend. “And yet they allowed
you to live?”

Kahran
stared down at his mangled fingers. “They tortured me to learn what I knew,” he
said. “I managed to deny that your father told me anything about the
deathship...”

Ehrin
stared ahead, seeing nothing.

Kahran
placed a hand on his shoulder. “We will prevail, Ehrin. Be assured of that.”