Helix Wars (21 page)

A tiny shape ran across the grass towards him. She knelt and reached out, her expression all concern in the starlight. “Jeff, are you injured?”

“I’m... I’m fine. Winded. That’s... that’s all. I’ll be fine.” A minute later he managed a laugh. “You?”

“I am well.” She smiled at him. “I was worried that you had seriously injured yourself. You cried out when you hit the ground.”

“A little unaccustomed to jumping from moving Phandran trains, that’s all.”

She pulled her bag from her shoulders, pulled out a small flagon and passed it to him. “Water,” she said.

He drank thirstily and returned the flask, watching as she raised it to her lips and sipped.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked into the night sky. “We have one hour until dawn,” she said. “By then, we should have reached the canal and found a boat. Are you ready?”

They walked from beneath the sail-rail track through waist-high grass, and minutes later came to a tended field. He made out row after row of fruit trees similar to the ones he’d seen from the train earlier.

Side by side they walked down an avenue between the trees; at one point Calla reached up and plucked a fruit, long and stringy like a runner bean, which she urged him to eat. “This is excellent energy food,” she said, chewing on the fruit she had plucked for herself. He took a bite, scowling at its peppery taste which soon became a rich sweetness as he chewed.

Fifteen minutes later they came to the canal.

Calla laid a hand on his arm and pointed to a silvery glimmer between the trees up ahead.

They approached the water with caution, Calla leading the way. When she reached the last tree she knelt behind its trunk. Ellis joined her.

Starlight glimmered on the stretch of water before them. He heard a grunt. In the distance, dim shadows in the darkness, he made out a team of animals trudging along the path beside the canal.

“What the hell?” he began.

“Shurgs,” she said.

Rhinoceroses, he thought, as the six animals came into view. They were squat and solid, with powerful shoulders and short thick legs, but there the resemblance to the terrestrial animal ended. Shurgs were brown-furred, with pointed heads more like badgers, and they gave high-pitched grunts with every laboured step.

Behind them, moving serenely along the surface of the canal, was a wide, low-sided barge.

“Stay here,” Calla said, and stepped out from behind the tree.

The barge drew alongside. Ellis saw the figure of a Phandran seated in the prow, holding a set of reins with which he controlled the shurgs.

Calla stepped forward and spoke to the bargee, who ordered the animals to halt. They spoke hurriedly, and a minute later Calla returned.

“Good news. We are just thirty kilometres from Mayalahn.”

“He’s agreed to give us a ride?”

“She. Of course she has. I am a Healer, after all. Also, one of her shurgs is sick.”

As they hurried towards the boat, he stared at her. “You heal animals, too?”

“Naturally. Aren’t we all, really, animals?”

They edged past the foul-smelling shurgs and reached the boat. The barge woman stared at him with an unreadable expression, eyes wide. They climbed onto the running board and stepped onto the deck. There, curled behind the seated woman, was the odiferous bulk of a shurg, moaning with what sounded to Ellis very much like self-pity.

Calla gestured to piled bales stacked along the length of the boat. “Rest, Jeff, while I attend to the shurg. I will join you presently.”

Ellis climbed onto the bales, finding them more comfortable than the palliasse back on the train. He fashioned a nest for himself, more like an armchair than a bed, and watched Calla as she lay hands on the panting shurg and murmured soothing words.

Ten minutes later she rose to her feet, spoke to the bargee, then climbed onto the bales beside him.

“It’s okay?” he asked.

“It is old, and has painful joints. But I have soothed the pain and it will be fine when it has rested for a while.”

He looked at her. “It must be a wonderful gift to possess, the power of healing.”

She inclined her head. “What better, Jeff? To aid others, to see their relief, their joy.”

“You’re a selfless person, Calla.”

She laughed. “I am not selfless. I was destined to be a Healer, to help others. What other course could my life have taken, if I were destined?”

He thought about it. “You are a peaceful people. Has there ever been conflict on your world? Wars? Political disputes?”

“No wars, in many thousands of years. Disputes? There are differences of opinion, yes, but we negotiate such disputes. Never do we come to physical violence. But with humans it is different, yes?”

“Well, there have been no major conflicts in the two hundred years we’ve been on the Helix,” he said. “Some have a theory that the Builders, when they chose us as Peacekeepers, somehow... altered us, changed us – genetically reprogrammed us away from violence. I don’t believe it. And anyway, even if it were true, it hasn’t entirely worked. There is still violence among my kind. I’ve seen fights between individuals, groups. These are swiftly and harshly dealt with, though.” He coloured when he recalled the odd occasion when he’d felt the urge to strike out at Maria, and hoped Calla did not pick up on the recollection.

She said, “The Builders are all-powerful. Olembe told my people that. He knew Carrelli, who was a hand-servant of the Builders.”

He looked at her in the starlight. “Some say that she was a Builder herself, made corporeal. She helped to guide the colonists to New Earth.”

“And then?” she asked.

“And then she disappeared one day, a few years later. Some say she was absorbed back into the Builders’ gestalt virtual mind.”

Calla was silent for a while, staring along the length of the canal. She said at last, “And yet, a paradox: if the Builders are so powerful, and peace-loving, then why do they allow such races as the Sporelli to invade my world, to kill my people?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, Calla. Perhaps in bringing us here they have discharged their duty, saved us once, as far as they are concerned, and are now leaving us to our own devices, to learn by our own mistakes, as we grow collectively into adulthood.”

She smiled at him. “In that case, Jeff, some races have a long way to go.”

He almost asked her, then, if she were referring to the Sporelli, or to the human race.

To the west the sky was lightening. Calla led him from the stacked bales to a small cabin amidships, where she said they would be safer when approaching the busy port of Mayalahn.

He slept then, and woke with a start from dreams of New Earth: he was on a small boat on the river that bisected Carrelliville, with a woman who was not Maria but a small, gentle girl whose smile illuminated the day.

He was disoriented when he woke and lay blinking at the cabin’s low ceiling. Awareness of where he was came flooding in. He looked around for Calla.

She was seated across from him, staring out at the passing fields.

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Two hours. We are almost at Mayalahn. Are you hungry?”

“Famished.” He watched her as she dug into her bag and produced cheese and half a bottle of the sweet white wine. He recalled his dream, the details elusive now, and realised that the woman in the boat with him had been Calla. He was overcome with sadness at the thought that soon they would be parted.

“How will you get back to Verlaine?” he asked as he ate.

“I will wait for a day in Mayalahn,” she said, “and then hire a cart to take me back to Verlaine. The journey should take six days.”

He stared across at her. “I’ll be thinking of you,” he said, “and what you’ve done for me.”

In due course the fields gave way to scattered buildings on either side, small farms and villages, and then the sprawling outer margins of the port town. Gaunt timber residences alternated with square parks planted with single gossamer-trees, and beyond, through the interstices between the buildings, he made out the sail-rail track.

He felt a knot of apprehension form in his stomach. The next phase of his escape would soon be under way, this time without the person who had made the journey so pleasant.

He moved across to her. In silence they stared out at the passing town.

Minutes later he was paying no attention to what was outside, but watching Calla’s calm, beautiful face, when she drew a sudden, sharp breath, her expression shocked.

His heart skipped. “What?”

He followed her gaze through the narrow window.

Something very alien and at odds with the timber architecture of the town stood between two rickety buildings. At first he thought it was the model of an outsized beetle, the jet black chitin of its dome glistening in the sunlight. Then he saw that it was a Sporelli military vehicle, its armoured carapace bristling with weapons.

“And there is another!” Calla pointed along a boulevard flanking the canal. Another black Sporelli vehicle stood guard, a bulky troop-carrier similar to the one he’d seen in the mountains.

“There are no citizens about,” she whispered. “The place is deserted.”

His mouth was dry as he asked, “What do we do?”

She bit her bottom lip, thinking. “Remain here,” she ordered. “I will go ahead and try to find out what is happening.”

She slipped from the cabin. Ellis stared through the window as the barge edged along the canal. More Sporelli vehicles came into view, and dozens of soldiers. They wore uniforms as black as their tanks and carried bulky rifles held at the ready as if they were suspecting trouble.

The barge slowed and came to a halt. To the left was a square framed on three sides by timber buildings; the obligatory gossamer-tree took pride of place in the centre of the square, which – like the rest of the town – was eerily deserted.

As he looked out, three troop-carriers rumbled into the square and halted. Dozens of soldiers spilled from the vehicles and jogged towards the canal.

Seconds later Calla returned, looking worried.

“They are on the banks of the canal,” she reported. “They are watching the boats as they pass one by one.”

“They surely don’t know about us?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Are they boarding the barges and searching?”

“No, just... just watching them.”

He kept to himself the thought that they might have heat-sensitive apparatus with which they were scanning the boats for stowaways. The Sporelli were technologically advanced, though how advanced he didn’t know.

Calla moved to the swing door, opened it a slit, and looked out. Ellis joined her. Ahead, an arched bridge spanned the river, and on its apex stood three figures.

Calla gasped something in her own language.

The trio comprised two tall Sporelli and, between them, a diminutive, green-robed Phandran.

“A Diviner!” she gasped. “The Sporelli must have apprehended Janyl, the Elder, when he left the train, and the captive Diviner informed them of what he knew about us.”

She stared through the entrance, then closed her eyes. She appeared to be in a trance.

Seconds later she opened her eyes and turned to him. “You must not think less of my kind for what the Diviner has done,” she said. “The Sporelli have threatened him. They have arrested his family and threatened to kill his daughters, one by one, if he does not comply with their wishes. He is in an impossible position.”

“I detest no one right now but the Sporelli,” he assured her. “Calla... stay here. I’ll leave the boat, lead them away from you.”

She smiled at him, reached up and touched his cheek. “They know we are together, Jeff, on this barge. There is no need to place yourself in any more danger.”

“We can’t just give up. Even running would be better than –”

“Run where, Jeff? There is nowhere to run to.”

The barge advanced slowly. The trio on the bridge were around twenty metres away. To either side of the canal, Sporelli troops were gathering.

A few minutes later the barge came to a halt. He heard a shouted command in the harsh language of the Sporelli.

The barge shook and rocked, and footsteps sounded on the timber decks. The door flew open. Ellis held Calla to him, staring through the opening at the soldier who stood there, watching them without expression. He was breathing heavily, as if scared himself, and gave off a sour body odour.

He gestured with his rifle. Ellis squeezed Calla’s hand and urged her forward.

The soldier backed off as they emerged from the cabin. Ellis blinked in the bright daylight, looking around at the silent enfilade of black-uniformed troops lining the canal, their weapons trained on him and Calla.

He looked up, at the trio on the bridge above them. The small Diviner had closed his eyes and hung his head, shamed by his actions. Ellis thought reassurance at the Phandran, hoping the Diviner would detect that he bore him no ill-will or resentment.

He glanced at the Sporelli flanking the Diviner, expecting to see triumph on their faces. All he saw were two blank, pale blue faces, staring at him impassively.