Helix (56 page)

They
stepped cautiously through the arch and stopped to look upon a scene of
absolute destruction.

The
ship was a scattered mass of molten slag, white hot in places, trailing palls
of smoke like the pennants of a defeated army.

Hendry
looked among the debris for any sign of the wreckage of the smaller ship.

Carrelli
was staring up at the surface of the ziggurat, and smiling. Hendry followed her
gaze. The bronze edifice appeared pristine, untouched.

Kaluchek
gasped, released his hand and stepped forward. Hendry stared through the
drifting smoke, to the plain beyond the wreckage.

There,
sitting on the grass with its nose-cone excoriated by the explosions, was the
golden ship. As he watched, filled with an odd euphoria, the ramp opened and
Friday Olembe staggered out. He slumped onto the ramp, his back against the
entrance, and just about managed to lift a hand in greeting.

Kaluchek
turned to Hendry. “Joe, I’ve got to tell him. Apologise, okay?”

He
smiled, and touched her cheek. He watched her turn and walk away. She paused
before the wreckage of the Church ship, then gazed through the rising smoke
towards Friday Olembe, who was climbing to his feet. She set off again, around
the debris, to make her necessary and long delayed reparations.

Hendry
sat down, his back against the warm bronze of the ziggurat, next to Carrelli,
Ehrin and Sereth. Through the smoke drifting from the wreckage, he watched the
two small, human figures face each other. Seconds elapsed. They were speaking.
Olembe reached out. Kaluchek stepped forward, and they embraced.

Ehrin shivered in
the
doorway and watched a procession of zeer-trucks make their way along the ice
canal, waiting for a break in the traffic so that he could cross to the lighted
building opposite. He braced himself against the cold, his teeth chattering.
After the heat of the upper tiers, the sub-zero temperatures of his homeworld
struck him as alien and inimical. He thought of the rainforests of Calique, and
then the warm plains of the homeworld of the Builders, and something ached
within him like nostalgia.

The
humans had set him down in the mountains surrounding Agstarn two nights ago,
promising that they would do what they could to help him. What that might be,
Ehrin could not envisage. The overthrow of the Church would be a long and weary
business, prone to failure, but he had contacts in the city who were just as
opposed to the Church’s rule as he was.

Last
night he had stayed in a safe house on the edge of the city, and recounted with
barely concealed excitement his adventures to a hastily convened coterie of
friends and fellow atheists. They had heard him out in silence, their
expressions conveying wonder, hope, and in a few instances incredulity. Indeed
it was a far-fetched tale he told them, a subversion of every tenet of life on
Agstarn, even if one did not believe in the truth as promulgated by the Church.
It was hard to take in, but Ehrin’s standing in society, his known opposition
to the ruling elite, and the veracity and detail of his description of the
helix and the life that existed on the other tiers, had won over even the most
hardened sceptics.

Now
he was moving on to another safe house, there to meet friends in business whom
he might rally in opposition to the Church.

Tomorrow
he would rendezvous with Sereth in a quiet coffee house in an industrial
district of the city. She had come with him as far as the outskirts of Agstarn,
and then they had parted company and she had made her way to the house of a
friend. She had prepared a cover story for her absence: it would be known that
she had entered the penitentiary with the alien giant, but she would claim that
she had been concussed in the resulting melee and had wandered the ice canals
in an amnesic fugue, until her senses had returned and she made her way back to
her father’s penthouse.

She
had been quiet during the flight to Agstarn aboard the Builders’ ship, clinging
to him and weeping. She had undergone severe hardship during her time away from
home, physically but also mentally. As a believer, the overturning of her safe
way of life, of everything she had held to be true, had proved traumatic. She
had hardly spoken a word to Ehrin during their return journey, avoiding his
questions, his reassurances that all would be well in time.

He
had wondered, and wondered still, how much her silence was the result of
guilt—for the appearance of the deathship before the Builders’ ziggurat must
have had something to do with Sereth. Had she guided Cannak to the homeworld of
the Builders? If so, then he could not guess what pressures might have been
placed upon her...

Before
him, a gap appeared in the caravan of zeer-trucks. Ehrin stepped from the
doorway and skated across the ice canal. It was early evening, in midwinter,
and the cold wind seemed to sharpen itself on him like a thousand knives. Even
the protection of his padded jacket did little to warm him. He would be thankful
of the warmth of the safe house, a mug of tisane and a hot meal.

He
came to the doorway, unfastened his skates and rang the bell. Seconds later a
servant opened the door, glanced once at Ehrin and turned away without a word,
leaving the door open. Ehrin slipped inside while the servant hurried down a
corridor and into a far room.

Seconds
later a large-bellied, prosperous man appeared at the end of the corridor. He
appeared nervous, as if to approach Ehrin might in some manner infect his
person with the insidious virus of apostasy. This was, according to his last
contact, a rich rope-maker whose grandfather had been put to death many years
ago on the orders of Prelate Hykell. There was no love lost between the magnate
and the Church, according to Ehrin’s contact. The industrialist would convene a
meeting of powerful fellow sceptics, to plan ahead... Or so said the contact,
though the man appeared decidedly hesitant now that the time had come to turn
grand words into action.

He
gestured at Ehrin, motioning him into the room with a quick paw. “Make yourself
comfortable,” the man said, barely bringing himself to meet Ehrin’s gaze as the
renegade entered the room.

“Excuse
me while I attend to business. The others will be arriving soon.” He gestured
to a samovar of tisane and a plate of cold meat and bread.

The
door closed firmly on Ehrin and he ate, warming his hands on a cup of tisane.

He
wondered how much the magnate had been told of Ehrin’s adventures, and if his
nervousness was a result of finding stories of other worlds and races hard to
stomach. It was all very well to oppose the draconian rule of the Church, but
some people were almost as fearful of the uncertainty of change.

There
was a loud rapping on the front door, followed by a shout. He heard the servant’s
footsteps, and then the amplification of the voices as the door was opened.

He
stood quickly, spilling tea. A delegation of disbelievers would not have drawn
attention to themselves with such raucousness.

He
was making for the door when it burst open and six Church militiamen swarmed
into the room, weapons levelled. Before he could move, two burly guards had him
by the arms, then two more took his feet, and like this he was carried
struggling from the house. Of the industrialist there was no sign.

He
saw a prison wagon on the ice, shackled to six snorting zeer, and a second
later he was tossed unceremoniously into the back and the doors slammed shut
behind him. The familiar darkness brought back memories of his last experience
of a prison wagon, and what had transpired then.

He
thought of Kahran, and wondered then if his tears were for his dead friend, or
for himself.

He
hardly had time to gather his thoughts and wonder who might have betrayed him,
before the sound of the wagon’s runners skimming over ice changed suddenly. Now
they were scraping bare cobbles, and he knew he was approaching the precincts
of the penitentiary.

A
minute later the doors were flung open, and a hand reached in and grabbed him
by the ankle, yanking him out and onto the hard floor without thought of his
safety. He gasped as his head struck the cobbles, and vice-like hands gripped
his arms and legs. He was borne like a carcass down a series of corridors until
at last he arrived at a barred cell, into which he was tossed. The door slammed
with finality. An ominous silence filled the cell. He stared around, and what
he saw brought a bolus of bile to his throat.

The
cell was bare, but for one fitting—a chair bolted securely to the stone-slabbed
floor, a chair with straps upon its arms and in its back panel a gap through
which the Church torturers might do their deeds.

Rather
than contemplate his immediate future, he occupied his thoughts by wondering
who of the so-called disbelievers had betrayed him. Certainly there had been
many present the night before who might have found his tale of interworld
travel hard to take, but his contact had assured him that all had been vetted
and found trustworthy... But obviously not. The Church had infiltrated the
meeting. Or perhaps the industrialist had been responsible...

Then
another, more alarming thought occurred to him, though he tried hard to dismiss
it. Sereth had known where he was heading when he left her. Perhaps she,
aggrieved that all her certainties had been subverted by his actions, had alerted
the authorities? Their leave-taking had been hurried, with Sereth hardly able
to bring herself to look him in the eye. Even so, he found it hard to believe
that she would so callously betray him, for perhaps a second time.

His
thoughts in turmoil, he started when the thick wooden door creaked open, and
two black-clad Inquisitors entered, followed by a familiar, red-robed figure.

Some
scared, irrational part of his mind half-expected to see Velkor Cannak confront
him, back from the dead to mock his plight.

The
figure standing before him was Prelate Hykell, his face expressionless.
“Indeed, it is Ehrin Telsa himself. I hardly believed the reports of your
return.”

Ehrin
rose to his feet, staring at the Prelate. How might he save himself, he
wondered; what ploy might he adopt to spare his life?

“You
boarded the golden ship with the monster and its cohorts, and now you are back.
Bent upon invasion, perhaps, and upon undermining the rule of the Church.”

The
Prelate waited, but Ehrin gave no reply.

“Whichever,
you will die, but not before we have extracted from you the truth.”

“The
truth?” Ehrin burst out. “You couldn’t handle the truth!”

“The
truth of what happened when you left Agstarn, of the whereabouts of Elder
Cannak and the deathship.”

“The
truth,” Ehrin began, feeling himself shaking uncontrollably, “is that Cannak is
dead, the deathship destroyed, and soon the true nature of the universe will be
known to all who live in Agstarn and beyond.”

Hykell
bared his sharp teeth. “The true nature...? You have no conception of the
truth, you blasphemer.” He gestured, and the Inquisitors grabbed Ehrin and
forced him into the chair, strapping his wrists secure with leather thongs,
then standing back and awaiting, with ill-concealed eagerness, Hykell’s next
instructions.

Even
though all evidence suggested otherwise, he could not believe that he would
die. The thought was too overwhelming, too vast to accept. Shaking, he spat at
Hykell, “I beheld the truth and your puny Church stands futile before it, a
corrupt regime of power-mad zealots who know nothing of the true nature of the
universe!”

There,
he had said it, and saying it he had certainly signed his death warrant, though
the satisfaction that coursed through his being then filled him with euphoria
and a feeling almost akin to triumph.

Hykell
leaned forward, staring at him, “Do you not fear death, you fool?”

“More
than the fear of death, I rejoice in the fact that your Church is doomed. I
might die, but I will die in the knowledge that you and everything you represent
will be swept away when the people learn the truth.”

Something
appeared then in Hykell’s eyes. Was it doubt, even fear? Whatever, Ehrin felt
suddenly heartened.

Then
Hykell said, “I will take great pleasure in watching you die, Ehrin Telsa.”

And
Ehrin tried to laugh, but instead choked on a sob.

Hykell
was about to instruct the Inquisitors, but at that second a knock sounded on
the timber door. For a heady, hopeless second, Ehrin wondered if the humans had
arrived—the humans who had vowed, on leaving him, that they would do all they
could to help his cause. Might they have invaded and come to effect a dramatic
rescue?

But
when Hykell opened the door, Ehrin saw only an armed guard in the corridor
outside. They spoke briefly, in low tones, and the effect was immediate and
startling.

Hykell
swept from the cell, the Inquisitors with him, but not before he turned to
Ehrin and said, “We will return, Telsa...” Ehrin felt he was about to say more,
issue some grand threat or petty jibe, but the Prelate bit his lip and hurried
down the corridor.