Penumbra (43 page)

He laughed. ‘Hell no! I assumed you’d be gone for ages. Times were when we even reconciled ourselves to the possibility that you’d never find the damned thing!’ His voice, at least, was as strong as ever. ‘But I want to know all about it! Everything!’

Ten Lee came and sat on the bed across from Bennett. ‘How did you find the softscreen, Joshua?’ she asked.

Bennett looked at Mack. ‘I... to be honest I don’t know where to begin. Mack . . . there’s someone I want you to meet. I think she’ll be able to explain about the screen better than I could.’

Mackendrick gave him a puzzled look. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Josh?’

Bennett glanced at Ten Lee. ‘Is he up to a surprise, Ten?’

She nodded and touched the old man’s hand. ‘He’s as strong as an ox.’

‘Josh?’ Mackendrick growled.

‘One minute.’

Bennett stood and moved to the door. He slipped out, expecting to find Rana on the veranda, but there was no sign of her. Then he saw her, about ten metres away, standing alone on the purple plain, staring up at the lofty mountain peaks, at Tenebrae majestic overhead. He stepped from the veranda and crossed the grass, pausing beside her. He touched her arm.

‘Rana . . .’

When she turned to him he saw that her eyes were glazed with tears. ‘It is all so sudden,’ she said. ‘There are so many years, so many incidents that have made us both different people. We’ll be strangers to each other.’

‘He’s your father,’ Bennett said gently. ‘Now’s the time to get to know each other again.’

‘We’ve so little time left, Josh.’

‘All the more reason to meet him and say what you have to say.’

She smiled up at him. ‘I know. You’re right. It’s just so ... so very difficult. Ah-cha.’ She took a breath and nodded. ‘Okay, I’m coming.’

He walked with her back to the A-frame, up the steps and into the lounge. Rana was holding herself tensely, her small fists clenched. She paused across the room from the bed that contained her father. Mackendrick raised his head from the pillow, mystification in his eyes.

Rana stepped forward and approached the bed. She sat down on a chair and pulled it closer. Ten Lee stood and moved to Bennett, sensing their need to be alone.

Mackendrick was staring at the Indian woman. He glanced at Bennett, as if for confirmation. ‘Josh?’

Rana reached out and took her father’s hand. She lifted it and kissed the bony fingers. ‘Father, I have so much to say, and I don’t know how to say it.’

Sita?’ For once, Mackendrick seemed at a loss for words. In barely a whisper he said, ‘Sita, is it really you?’

Rana held her father’s hand in hers and touched it to her forehead. ‘It is me,’ she said. ‘Sita.’

Bennett looked at Ten Lee and they moved quietly from the A-frame and sat down on the steps of the veranda.

From the beginning, the time he left the valley with Hupcka and the rebels, Bennett told Ten everything that had happened.

The gas giant rolled overhead, filling the valley with its vast creamy underbelly and effulgent glow. Someone brought them cups of the excellent coffee substitute, and plates of bread and cheese, then quietly left them talking. Ten Lee listened without expression, this strange distant woman he had come to respect over the period they had been together, even if he could not honestly claim to know her.

At last, after a long silence, Ten Lee said, ‘There is a sense of perfection and closure to Sita Mackendrick’s reunion with her father, as if it were destined.’

Bennett smiled. ‘And you? Are you okay?’

She blinked at him. He had that feeling again, of wondering if she thought him crass with his need for superficial talk. ‘I am at one with the essence,’ she replied, making him smile. ‘I, too, was destined to come here.’

Across the plain, Bennett saw Hans Hupcka, Miriam James and others hurrying towards them.

‘We think we’ve located the entrance!’ Hupcka called. He was waving a map, which he spread on the deck of the veranda. The contour map of the western mountains was marked with a thick red line. ‘We’re here,’ Hupcka said, indicating a valley. ‘The marked line is the route which Quineau and the others took. It twists and turns for over three hundred kilometres from a point ten kays north of here. This’ - he brought a thick forefinger down on a point at the very western extreme of the map - ‘is where the entrance is located, at the very top of this valley, below an overhang.’

‘Will I be able to land the Cobra?’

Hupcka stabbed the map. ‘A matter of a hundred metres away, in the valley. We can land there and move on foot to the entrance. I’ve arranged supplies of food and water.’

‘When do you want to set off?’ Bennett asked.

‘We’ve been ready for months,’ Hupcka said. ‘It really depends on how you’re feeling. Are you up to an immediate start?’

‘I can’t think of any reason to wait.’

Hupcka folded the map and passed it to Bennett. ‘Very well. I’ll get the ship loaded with the provisions. We’ll be ready in ten minutes.’

Bennett returned to the A-frame. Rana was sitting beside her father on the bed, holding his hand. She stopped talking when she heard Bennett, looked up and smiled.

‘Sorry to interrupt - we’re almost ready to go. There’s a valley near the entrance, Mack. I can land the Cobra and we’ll go on foot from there.’

Mackendrick looked at his daughter, and then at Bennett. ‘Can Sita come too? I’d like her to be with me.’

Bennett nodded. ‘Of course.’

Mackendrick closed his eyes. ‘This is it, Sita,’ he murmured.

Bennett and Ten Lee returned to the ship, followed a little later by Rana and Mackendrick. He walked slowly, like the old man he was, assisted by his daughter.

Hupcka and his men were carrying backpacks and thermal wear up the ramp. A crowd had assembled around the ship, watching in silence. As Bennett strapped himself into the command couch, he looked through the viewscreen at the faces of the gathered rebels. In their hardened expressions he saw the dawning light of hope, after so many years fighting a hopeless battle.

Ten Lee read the co-ordinates from the map and Bennett programmed them into the onboard computer. Five minutes later they were ready for lift-off.

Hupcka stepped on to the flight-deck. ‘The provisions are aboard, Josh. Mack and Rana are in one of the sleeping chambers. We’re ready when you are.’

Bennett sealed the hatch and looked at Ten Lee. Her eyes regarded him from beneath her bulky flight-helmet. ‘Ready, Joshua.’

‘Hold on, Hans,’ Bennett said.

He touched the controls. The vertical thrusters fired, filling the ship with a concentrated roar. The crowd gathered on the purple plain quickly backed off. Bennett turned the Cobra on its axis, until they were facing west, and eased the ship forward, felt it surge with restrained power. They climbed slowly and banked around the enclosing mountains. Bennett relinquished control and set the Cobra on the pre-programmed flight-path, slabs of cold grey rock passing slowly by a matter of metres from the sidescreens.

He glanced across at Ten Lee, absorbed in the figures scrolling down the screen of her visor. On the engineer’s couch, Hupcka was gripping the harness, staring through the viewscreen with an expression at once awed and alarmed.

Thirty minutes later the Cobra decelerated, and down below they saw the valley between two high summits of snow-covered rock. The valley, likewise, was covered with an undisturbed mantle of snow, blinding in the glow of the gas giant.

Hupcka pointed. ‘There, the entrance is beneath the overhang to the right.’

‘I’ll bring the ship down as close as possible,’ Bennett said.

He engaged manual override, decelerated and edged the Cobra towards the rock face. Perhaps twenty metres from it he switched to vertical thrust, lowering the ship gradually to the valley floor.

‘There’s a bit of a slope down there,’ he warned. ‘Hans, go warn Rana and Mack that we’re coming down on a right-to-left incline. Tell them to brace themselves.’

Slabs of iron-grey rock rose around them as the Cobra descended and hit the ground. The ship tilted suddenly, and settled at an angle of fifteen degrees from the horizontal. Bennett cut the thrusters and the engines whined into silence. He peered through the sidescreen at the overhang, two hundred metres away through a deep drift of snow.

For the next thirty minutes they prepared themselves for the trek. Hupcka handed out thermal trousers and jackets, then distributed the backpacks containing food and water and flashlights. Bennett suited up, began to sweat immediately, and opened the hatch to admit cold air. Mackendrick and Rana emerged from their cabin, muffled beyond recognition in their thermals.

Hupcka looked at Bennett, then around at the others. ‘So, if we are ready, my friends . . .’

Hupcka led the way down the ramp and into the snow, Bennett and Ten Lee following Mackendrick and Rana. The snow was a metre deep and concealed uneven terrain. They picked their way through the drift with difficulty, losing their footing and frequently falling. Bennett helped Rana with her father, and ten long minutes later they made it to the overhang. They rested, regaining their breath, while Hupcka scanned the wall of rock for the entrance.

Mackendrick held on to his daughter’s arm, breathing heavily.

‘You okay?’ Bennett asked.

‘Don’t patronise me, Josh. I’ll be fine.’

Bennett smiled and joined Hupcka in looking for the entrance. The rock at the back of the overhang was a seamless dark grey slab, with no sign of a break or inlet. He considered the awful possibility of coming so far and being unable to find the entrance.

Hupcka had moved up the incline, to where the overhang narrowed so that he had to stoop. At last he gave a cry and waved. ‘Up here!’ He indicated a narrow, dark shadow in the face of the rock.

They joined him and he stepped through first, soon disappearing from sight down the steep drop. Rana and Mackendrick went next, illuminating the way with their flashlights. Bennett stepped after Ten Lee, having to turn and force himself with effort through the crevice.

They were walking down a tight, sloping corridor cut into the rock. Within minutes Bennett was sweating, despite the cold. He unfastened his thermal jacket and cooled rapidly. He stopped and looked back up the way they had come. The entrance was a glimmering sliver of opalescent light high above. He continued walking, soon catching up with Ten Lee.

The corridor sloped through the mountain at an angle of thirty degrees, for the most part chiselled from solid rock, but occasionally following the contorted twists and turns of natural chambers.

Only when they had been descending for over an hour did Bennett notice the carvings. In square panels of rock to either side were chiselled hieroglyphs similar to the ones they had discovered on the plain, so many months ago: stars and circles and crosses, all enclosed within squares, triangles and ovals. He recalled the statues of the Ancients they had discovered in the temple ruins. So far he had never really considered the possibility that they might still exist - it seemed too incredible a leap of faith to believe in the word of a single man, Quineau, deranged by too many months locked in a suspension unit. He wondered at Mackendrick’s desire to believe in the remote possibility that, even if the aliens were still alive, they might just possess some form of remarkable healing power. As they descended, Bennett considered Mackendrick, and the desperate desire only the dying must know to go on living.

They had been walking for perhaps three hours, and Bennett was tiring, the muscles of his legs becoming tight with unaccustomed use. Even the appearance of the circular patterns on the walls, which Ten Lee said were mandalas - representations of the various stages on the path to nirvana - failed to divert his attention. He wondered how Mackendrick, ahead, was coping with the descent.