The Chromosome Game (14 page)

Trell clutched her hand. ‘Go back!’

She held on tight to his hand. ‘Up there!’ — her voice a fevered whisper. ‘Death itself can’t be like this!’

*

So here was the Stonehenge of Hawkridge’s extinction.

Spiders crawled through mounds of congealed rubble. The travelator was a crazy-paving ruin that receded into an unlit chasm. Heavy machinery had been twisted so out of true from age it seemed like steel with leprosy. Sagging cables protruded from rust-flaked ducts overhead like severed arteries. Warped catwalks with steel bars were fashioned into ugly wrought-iron sculpture from hell.

Here was agony, expressed even in the hollow guts of what had been a clean machine once managed by men. It was the rusting fossil of their scientific sophistication, hollow and terrible in its implications … great banks of controls and switches that had long since welded themselves immovable; a row of video screens with their tubes imploded; an entire turbine rotor that had crashed through the deck above and now stood, like some flanged phallic symbol, with its end smashed deep into the disembowelled torso of a vast boiler.

And from this fearful photoflash of prehistory there emerged, from its spidery mounds and crystalline senile decay, the harsh, pitiless voice of the Commander — three hundred years dead. The recording was cracked and distorted; but it ricochetted crazily from its origins in infinity through to the vast forgotten hollow of the supership.

‘Attention all passengers. A Thanksgiving Service will be held at 1400 hours in the B Deck Chapel. Please bring your children. All are welcome.’

‘Kelda, stay
back
!’

‘You know I can’t. No one can be allowed to see what’s up there on his own.’

‘Someone already has.’

‘Someone mad … Trell! How is this possible? It makes us … extinct! Who could have reared us if they were … that old?’ She caught his arm and guided the flashlight further to the left. ‘Look at that!’

‘Part of a turbine … Old as the pyramids almost, yet it’s current technology! That’s the remains of a two-stage compressor. Unmistakable. But … but how?’

‘They must have … have renovated just our own part of the ship.’

‘But, Kelda! Don’t you see? It shouldn’t
need
renovating! The engineering! The engineering of that … tomb — up there — is
modern
!’

Trell panned the torch slowly across what showed of the wreckage, spoke absently. ‘Our part’s new, this part’s old, they were both built at the same time. Does this make sense?’

‘Let’s get up there and see what does.’

‘Nothing does, Kelda. It’s mad.’

‘Yes.’ Soberly, she said, ‘Don’t try and stop me, Trell. Whatever this ocean-going Taj Mahal, we go together.’

‘Are those your oldest jeans?’

‘Well look at the patches!’

Together they reached the gnarled remains of the engine-room companionway. Kelda managed, ‘We’re right about one thing: Someone’s been up here. Recently. See? Fresh footprints in the dust!’

‘Yes … I’m going to try one level up. If it’s safe, you follow. No arguments.’

The companionway swayed, partly adrift from its mountings. They got up there, one at a time, were silent for a long while, trying to take in what should have been totally impossible, looking down on the crumbling machinery below the catwalk. One end of the catwalk was unsecured; it swung with Trell’s weight, sagging down toward the gash made by the huge turbine rotor as he edged his way to the other end.

‘Trell,
careful
!’

Replying, Trell sounded just plain interested now, an explorer faced with a mystery that somehow had to be solved. His voice was casual, matter-of-fact. ‘It’s okay if we move one at a time. This platform I’m on is safe. Come across and don’t make any sudden movements … Good. Now, take a look at that.’

‘Looks like an elevator.’ She stared back at him in the torchlight. ‘As you say, the design is … new.’

‘Yeah, let’s just investigate first and work it out later. Obviously there’s an explanation. We’re being dummies … I don’t think we’ll take the elevator up, though! Do you?’

The elevator, what remained of it, was a pocked hollow cube full of debris. Around it ran an emergency staircase of steel. It seemed reasonably secure though badly rusted.

Trell flashed his torch aloft, sending a shaft of light precisely centre of the stairs. He could do this because the top of the elevator was stove in. Most of the shaft had disintegrated. The beam from the flashlight got lost in the dust but the stairs seemed to go up forever.

Still gazing upwards, searchlighting the torch as high as the beam would penetrate, Trell said, ‘We move one at a time, okay? This is some kind of emergency staircase, I guess. Probably goes all the way up, looks like a long way, too. I’m heading for the next platform. For the love of mike, watch out for falling debris … Here, hold this slab of metal over your head, like that. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

Trell got up one more flight, the staircase swaying dizzily … ‘Just make out an embossed sign.’

‘What’s it say?’

‘G-Deck.’

‘And we’ve come up three already. Must be enormous.’

‘No question about that. Now. Feel your way up, on your toes, be a ballet dancer.’

She said, ‘I don’t care for the scenery much.’

‘You’re doing fine.’ She’d arrived next to him. ‘Right, I’ll take the next level. Same as before. What a stink, though.’

‘Fungus.’

‘Among other things. Still see those footprints, all right. Whoever came ahead of us was either stupid or very brave — Scorda for sure … I guess we still mustn’t assume anything … If it weren’t for the fact that whoever-it-was got this far I’m not sure I’d … Hang on where you are! I’ve lost the scent!’

‘No more footprints?’

‘Right. Something’s shifted. Everything’s so loose and derelict … I guess whoever came up here has weakened the structure even more.’ Trell shone the flashlight momentarily down to the chasm below.

You could see how girders, recently displaced, had smashed into the old debris; the discolouration was different and the uppermost wreckage was clear of the heaped-up shrapnel of the former decay. Trell swung the light-beam down and right; held it so as to illuminate the fractured steel step on which Kelda now stood. ‘Watch it! That step is going to give, and it’s a long ways down —
No
! … Don’t look below you! Just go up one and stay put, till I find out where the trail leads.’

‘Be careful Trell.’

‘Like eggs.’

She said, ‘Make sure it doesn’t abruptly become the powdered egg
we
get.’

‘Too right … I’ve found a door, a kind of bulkhead I guess. Looks like it was once a pressurised compartment.’

Her voice echoed up to him, ‘Has it been opened recently?’

‘Hard to tell … I’m trying to shift it …
Christ
!’

The whole thing came away in his hands. Breaking free from its massive hinges it plunged and ripped off the rails.

‘Kelda! Look out!’

The heavy steel door missed her by centimetres and slammed into the fractured skeleton of the metal below.

Trell couldn’t see more than a few metres and the torch just threw back reflected light from metal filings. ‘
Kelda
!
You
okay!?
’

‘I’m okay. Just ruined my T-shirt. Good thing it’s disposable!’

Trell said grimly, ‘But you are not.’

Trell picked his way downward, reached her hand, clasped it.

The dust was almost choking them both. He still managed to speak calmly. ‘One thing is for sure. It’s not safe to go back to our luxury suite by this route. We’ll have to find another way down. Now hang on, if necessary I can take your whole weight —’

‘— Then we both go —’

‘— We’re going to make it … Now, as the stairs sort of tremble under your feet, don’t let your legs wobble in time with it, get what I mean? — It amplifies the movement.’

‘Trell, I’m so scared.’

‘Just keep a hold of me and smile, that’s lovely, soot and all, now just watch my face, nothing else, my face, it’s not much to look at —’

‘— I’m sure glad it’s there though, Trell. With the railing gone —’

‘— Just watch
me
. Up one. Up another …’

‘— It’s gonna go, Trell! It’s getting
away
—’

He yelled, ‘Up two, fast!
Jump
!’

Trell hauled so hard on her arm he could have pulled it out of its socket.

He was just in time. As she made the fifth stair down from the platform the whole of the remaining steps simply fell away, twisting and clanging, splintering the jagged remnants of deck partitions, all the way down.

The hollow impact of shattered metal within
Kasiga’s
gutted husk echoed, back and forth, for what seemed an eternity. It was, perhaps, six seconds.

Kelda’s eyes dilated.

Till Trell smiled his way into them.

Nothing was said. Quite easily now, Trell hauled her up to the platform.

‘Trell, I want to be held. The way you want.’

As he felt her eyelashes against his face he thought, there’s never been any moment in anyone’s life like this, her Maker is a genius, how can anyone be so delicate and yet so strong at the same time?, I thought my dreams were accurate but her beauty exceeds them.

He said, when she turned her face sidelong against his, ‘Is it okay for someone like me to adore you like this?’

She said, ‘The way you hold my body makes me feel so much better than I can ever be.’

Without saying anything further they entered the Air Lock Ejector Chute — for some, the last place of life. For them, the first.

For a while they noticed nothing about their surroundings.

They did not notice the bare rectangle on the floor, where Webster’s dictionary should have been.

They did not notice the pathetic pile of oddments that Slazenger and Hawkridge had left in there, or how cold was the floor, or how dead and still the surroundings.

They said nothing because they loved frankly, as only the innocent may love.

Trell, unused to love and untrained in its art, found there was no call for practice, because he found himself outside of his own body, looking on while souls met in intimacy. He saw pictures … They were pictures of two people, one a youth, the other a young girl, and the picture became one, that’s what he saw, and everything about this picture was beautiful, his own part and her part, two bodies that belonged, and demonstrated just how much they belonged, contrasting, agreeing, warm and wild, yet notionally cooled by invisible springwater that came from dreams.

And they took pleasure in each other, until they became silent and still.

Trell?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you know what I feel?’

‘What do you feel, Kelda?’

‘Bad. I’ve just stolen a hundred specials.’ She smiled, imp-like, in the light of the torch. ‘And you know what? I’m going to steal simply millions more.’

‘Yes, you feel terrifically bad. Isn’t it lovely.’

‘Yes, isn’t it lovely.’

Minus Five

For all the world it looks as if the super-swallow and the Atlantic gull are in conference. There are reasons for this.

The drought is now a grim reality which threatens the very lives of the creatures on whom it has brought such misery.

Usually an extravaganza of wild foliage and massive pines, the landscape that flanks the newly-encroaching sea is bleached dry. A mixture of angry brown and a peculiar milk-white, the territory that was formerly pasture land has soured into infertility. The fresh-water pools have evaporated, leaving an embossed watermark at each rim and showing great gashes beneath, where the parched earth has crumbled and dilated, then set into crusted, brittle ruts.

The swallow, as if to demonstrate some of the problems threatening survival, executes a test flight for the benefit of the gull, around the broken towers of the old chateau. No doubt the gull can appreciate what is wrong; feathers, normally lubricated and greased by body health, are jagged and uneven, warping in the sun and rendering the swallow prone to deep stall. The swallow, unable to conduct a properly-coordinated steep turn without coming within an ace of an incipient spin, lands, clumsily though without injury, back on the ancient chimney piece.

While these two seasoned aviators go into a huddle about the aerodynamic problems brought about by the unrelenting heatwave, so the new horses, proverbially lively and loving, are clearly irritable and ill. There is practically no grazing; and, except way up in the hills, where there is still a dwindling source of irrigation from the streams originating in the Alps beyond, the horses have their work cut out finding something to drink. Those that no longer have the strength to make the trek so far inland find themselves locked in a watershed; and the stallions fight each other for what remains. The mares look on, terrified for their foals. How can the weakened youngsters be herded so far from their customary grazing? Some of these lie dead already, rotting in the agonising heat. More will follow.

Where, asks the despairing animal community, are the rains? … Wild wheat, much mutated but still recognisable as vital gram for the whole gamut ranging from the rabbit to the ram, sags in the sunlight. The stalks are like matchwood. As the hot winds blow in from the south, the corn, instead of flexing obligingly in the gusts, snaps off into broken spikes and is blown into the seas that foment so angrily around
Kasiga’s
hull. High above this, the tattered vultures eat off the stinking bodies of the ponies, leaving the worst of the meat to the eager insects which revel in spreading disease.

Even the monkeys, normally chatty and active when the menu is far from perfect, find themselves marooned in barren trees where the nuts lack the oil they know to be so succulently rich in vitamins. Though they live on, these beasts have less and less to say to each other. Although they remember in their genetics that Africa itself could get like this, often with insufficient warning for a mass move, they feel cheated and deprived at the sudden sulkiness of their Futureworld.

Naturally, they are still optimistic about things; but the wiser old monkeys, sitting about in threes as usual, survey the downturn in climate conditions with considerable distaste and unease. Though not good at arithmetic, they fully appreciate the urgent need for rain. It is a matter of counting days — not weeks any more — so they save what energy they have and keep in the shade as much as possible, standing-by for the full call for crisis measures. They have no idea what such measures will entail; but they are determined to implement them nonetheless if things grow much worse. They will then bank on instinct to guide them.

… So the sad swallow, not quite so blue and not quite so gold as in the spring rams, watches the take-off of the gull critically and wonders whether the gull will make it to North Africa — destination: the airfield that was once Alexandria. There, parts of the Nile Valley still supply fresh water; but it is bitter and contaminated and a long way away.

The swallow watches the gull become a pinpoint in the sky, then wretchedly resumes the energy-consuming search for the sparse pickings that remain.

The Atlantic gull doesn’t get very far. Its storage hump badly shrivelled, the gull soon falls out of the sky thirty miles offshore, then plunges in a sickening dive, well over the Do Not Exceed velocity, and breaks up into a mass of splintered bones on impact. Other gulls on the same route gaze down momentarily, then grimly try to climb for cooler altitudes in the forlorn hope of making a presentable approach on Africa — final approach in most cases.

Such widespread failure of the Earth’s natural thermostat is not chance. The stratosphere, punctured as it was through the simultaneous eruption of the world’s entire stockpile of plutonium, needs more than three centuries to absorb the shock.

Whatever the cause, Futureworld is demonstrating its unpredictability at a time all too close to the unscheduled urge among the incubants to take advantage of its natural resources.

*

As is reflected in the Log of the Complaints Department at the Hilton, the synchronism between various branches of life, whether mortal or otherwise, is a vastly complex commitment. The gods of the universe are, on their own admission, far from omnipotent because by definition the anti-gods are dedicated to the task of consistently upsetting the balance. Top Management on Planet 47 often feels frustrated by some of the sermons — not to mention a good many of the prayers — known to have been preached on Earth during the Twentieth Century and before. The Attorney-General, Andromeda (who through his very role of Disinterested Party) has frequently stated that though he applauds the celestial allegory of the accepted Earth-religions, such as Christianity, and has no personal objection to the over-simplifications inherent in the significance seen (for instance) in the appearance of Emissary Jesus Christ, he cannot for the life of him understand why so many clergymen uttered billions of words about God whilst seeming positively embarrassed about any serious reference to the Devil. To him, within the child-philosophy of so sawn-off a concept of the significance of things infinite, it would have been entirely logical to accept the ‘Devil’ as the symbolic counterpart of those Forces with which the gods constantly had to contend. To omit from the limited logic of formal religion the concept of Hell seems to him — and always did seem — entirely irrational. His colleagues at the Hilton naturally feel the same but. through their more direct involvement with Planet Earth, feel less qualified to make an unbiased comment. The nearest anyone else got to it was in the pithy comment made by the Deputy-Administrator, Milky Way: ‘I suppose it’s better than nothing that some of them, at least, should believe in us, however narrow their view. And I personally don’t worry too much when we get the blame for everything or — perhaps worse — constantly get branded as some Force of Eternal Punishment. If Homo Sapiens didn’t have such a masochistic streak they might have come to realise that their coy disregard for the activities of the ‘Devil’ distorted the situation.’

He certainly had sympathy for Nembrak the Inventor who, in all good faith, was forced to assist in the Exodus at the worst possible time in terms of supply and demand.

*

Nembrak said, ‘It’s all fixed when you’re ready. Trell.’

‘The Computer won’t know?’

‘It can’t. I’ve run a fresh cable direct from the mechanism of the orifice hatch to the electricity supply. The switch is behind the teaching machine unit in Cubicle E. You open and shut the orifice from there. I also wired … well in jargon it would be called a “virtual orifice” — in effect, something the computer
thinks
is the orifice — to the master panel of the Controller.’

‘An orifice that doesn’t really exist?’

‘It’s like they say someone feels about an amputated limb, Trell. They still feel it, but it isn’t there.’

‘Right. You’re saying we can work the real orifice independently from the Controller; and the Controller can work an imaginary orifice to its heart’s content, without realising that nothing is really happening?’

‘Not even in its nightmares.’

‘Okay fine, Nembrak. Don’t think I’m criticising … The whole idea is marvellous except the positioning of the control switch in Cubicle E is too dangerous … This meeting
must
be kept secret. Totally secure. If someone discovers that switch it’s curtains … Say, can you fix that dispenser? — I have a thirst like an alcoholic on the rampage.’

‘No way, Trell. Since we were cut down to one Special per month the Controller has kind of tightened up on regulations … And you just spoke one of the New Words.’

“Alcoholic”.’

‘Right.’

‘Is it on the list compiled by Krand?’

‘I don’t know. He’s rapidly running out of paper.’

‘Just shows, Nembrak. These New Words are going to get in the syntax very fast.’

‘Well, Eagle knows who’s spreading them … Anyway, about tonight —’

‘You gave Eagle the details and timing of the meeting?’

‘Yes, all set. Where do you want that switch, Trell?’

Trell did a rapid scan of the Recreation Area. ‘Wait a minute while we change the cassette in that thing. Play something real loud … Okay, this switch. It shouldn’t
look
like a switch, Nembrak. Maybe somewhere in the music room there’s a —’

‘— Got it! The electronic organ in there!’

‘One of the pedals or something?’

‘Two
of the pedals, Trell. One for “open”; one for “close”. Who else plays the organ besides Eagle? You’ll need him up at the meeting. We want someone in there who plays anyway. Then it won’t look odd.’

‘What about Triumph?’ — Triumph of the Inventors’ Club.

‘I’m putting Triumph on guard at the orifice itself. We have a system of signals —’

‘— Okay, what about Cass?’

‘Right. Cass.’

‘Fine. You’d better brief him yourself, Nembrak … Can you do the rewiring in time?’

‘Easy.’

‘And what about if someone else starts playing the organ, and happens to use one of the fixed-up pedals?’

‘The pedals will only be in circuit when the computer’s wired up to the —’

‘— the ghost orifice, I get it. Are your two girls taking part?’

‘Fulda and Nicola will be posted outside the main dormitory areas. Fulda covers Alpha up to Delta; Nicola watches Echo, Foxtrot, Golf and Hotel.’

‘Let’s hope no one comes out of the Hotel at the wrong moment … Is the safety rope up?’

‘Krand found some parachute nylon —’

‘— Scorda’s watching us, back by the nets. Start an argument, Nembrak.’

‘Look, the British girl has
never
won at Wimbledon —’

‘— I tell you I saw it on tape. Wade we’re talking about, right?’

‘Sure. Virginia Wade. You’re thinking of Forest Hills —’

‘—Yeah? They’ve just closed Forest Hills; that must have been some tennis game. No courts.’

Scorda said, ‘You guys really care if Wade has ever won that tournament?’

Trell said, ‘Maybe you can settle the argument, then.’

‘This some kind of a dumb show?’

Nembrak said, ‘Meaning what? Is it illegal to disagree around here?’

‘Oh, it’s legal.’ Scorda turned to Nembrak. ‘That’s a loud cassette you put on, all of a sudden.’

Nembrak said, ‘Gee, I’m sorry if it’s getting on your nerves.’

‘It’s just I think I heard a line-call which you did not.’

‘Could we have that in English?’

‘Sure. Nembrak doesn’t know deuce from a back-hand lob.

Trell said, ‘Still, Scorda, we all know when
you
are playing one of your sneak shots.’

*

Eagle was disturbed by Trell while preparing the most curious experiment that had ever occurred to him.

Though not secretive by nature, Eagle had felt, during the preliminaries of this scientific probe, that any knowledge of it on the part of other people might be highly disturbing … especially as it was not possible, in engineering terms such as would evince an understanding nod from Nembrak the Inventor, to wholly account for the intuition that had guided him. Using naiveté to conceal his real intentions, therefore, he had approached Nembrak and asked for some electronic equipment — including a transistorised telephone. Taken item by item, the bits of gear he chose appeared to Nembrak perfectly straightforward. Had Nembrak put the Lego bits together in his own mind as Eagle had done before him, Nembrak himself would have raised his eyebrows prior to expressing, in typically Nembrak patois — light-hearted but precision-tooled — a penetrating interest in the entire list of components he handed over to Eagle when taken as a whole. To prevent this happening, Eagle had asked for them in small batches. In this way he had successfully thrown Nembrak off the scent.

It being public knowledge among the incubants by now that Eagle used the fan-room — strictly this was known by the embossed legend on its door: ‘Valve Room’ — Eagle could work in there quite openly without arousing too much curiosity. Moreover the drone of the fans themselves, which were an essential of the finely-controlled air conditioning system, obliterated any telltale sounds that could have revealed prematurely what Eagle’s research was all about.