The Chromosome Game (23 page)

Like a cat-burglar in sneakers, he darted into the corridor again, circumnavigated the hoist-shaft — and found it.

It was all there, the vertical, square-section tube, running right up to the top of
Kasiga
; the storage area, the fork-lift truck, remotely controlled from a micro hooked-up to the Computer itself.

The place was almost in darkness. But familiar voices whispered. And from a circular incision in the bulkhead, Eagle listened …

‘You punched up the trolley?’

‘Sure. I used the micro, offline.’

‘So we get that spare engine?’

‘Affirmative. Just wait two minutes. The fork-lift truck will grab crate number 0707 from Rack 18A.’

‘And slap it on the hoist?’

‘Right.’

Eagle waited, his knuckle pressed against the protruding flange, clamped until so recently by a ring of massive bolts which described the circle of the hold’s entrance. It was through this incision in the bulkhead that he had entered.

The metallic sounds he’d heard from Dormitory Charlie had been the freeing of this armour-plated orifice that had sealed-off the hoist area in which he now stood.

Eagle watched, coldly unmoved, while the fork-lift truck sleazed up to its chosen load, zizzed to the centre of the hoist-platform, and lowered it obligingly. Having done so, it backed away, waltzed through a turn, and trundled back into the darkness.

There came a click. An electrical whine. A smooth engaging of well-lubricated pinions.

Hoist, crate and incubants tautened the hausers. The platform raised its sulky tableau of hooligans toward the freight hatch.

Eagle threaded himself back through the bulkhead and tore along the arterial corridor for the passenger elevator aft.

On opening the outlet hatch he was drenched in torrential rain. It slashed down onto the skin of
Kasiga
with such force that the cloying edges of giant barnacle shells had got prised open. Slithery parasites glistened in the lightning and turned the rain a viscous green.

Another bolt of lightning of such brilliance that it left a reverse-image on Eagle’s retina showed that the equipment hatch for’ard had opened. His vision cleared and he was able to identify Scorda, who recoiled in shell-shock as a thud of thunder — not a drum-roll but a single impact like a howitzer — echo-sounded the hull. A flash revealed faces, glossy in the wet, emerging at the apex of the hoist. The crate was clumsily manhandled onto the shore conveyor and the thieves hurtled down after it — child-maniacs on a nightmare funslide beneath billion-volt discharges of ionised hate.

Eagle clawed his way down the passenger ramp, concealing himself by keeping his head below the safety-guard.

Spasms of lightning revealed in photo-flash more stark outlines in the pelting ram. The conveyor had stopped. The conspirators were churning mud in a chaotic attempt to heave the engine from the conveyor terminal to the improvised jetty.

A triple prong of lightning fizzed and showed more, a series of flickers like jammed movie film.

At the foot of the conveyor stood the mini-tractor, its motor idling evenly enough despite the downpour. Whatever the purpose of smuggling the spare motor ashore it certainly couldn’t have been to keep the tractor-drivers smiling.

Eagle thought, okay, I’ll get those hoodlums, what the hell they take us for? He made straight for the stables — praying that Zebralegs wouldn’t neigh in welcome.

— But there was a Secret Eagle … an Eagle that only Zebralegs — plus an elite selection from the other horses — ever knew about. And he’d got the idea from simply playing Cowboys and Indians.

What the horses knew was that Eagle was frightened of riding them. He had been from the start. Wild horses — especially these wild horses — wouldn’t have dragged out of him a breath of his inner fear, even to the girl that Eagle had secretly loved all along — Kelda. To just the same extent as he could never reveal the deep hurt that kept him awake nights whenever he thought of her and Trell together, so it wasn’t in his nature to betray his terror of horse-riding. He lived, quietly, with both deadly secrets played close to the chest.

The horses he both loved and feared knew his game.

Eagle — Paleface in the Superlative — was a Red Indian.

The ponies shared his secret. Eagle had evolved, from the diet of Westerns screened so often aboard
Kasiga
, a dialect all his own. It had a therapeutic effect both on himself and the horses alike. Zebralegs liked to hear it because it was gentle. Zebralegs respected it because he sensed that Eagle really was a Brave to conceal so much from so many.

So, all along, he had shared the secret.

And now, as Eagle nerved himself for pursuit on horseback, the game must be played. A quick swallow, a palpitating heart, and Eagle was prepared.

Eagle said to Zebralegs, ‘Me Big Eagle, horse play no nonsense on account of I’m terrified, now stand still and don’t fall into the mud, if I had my magnificent string of feathers on my head you’d behave properly, so you and me, we’re gonna imagine I’m all dressed up in war paint, and any rough stuff from you and I’ll prod you with one of my arrows.’

Zebralegs had nothing in particular to say, just squished toward him in the wet clay.

‘That’s my boy, you know a Chief when you see one, and don’t say who’s kidding who? ’cause I’ve got to ride you on the halter — there’s no time to get the tack. Say after me three times; “I’m not a zebra, I’m a horse”, and don’t mumble.’

In reply, Zebralegs blew quietly through his nose, as if to say, Don’t you be too sure, mister, I’ll be what I like, you’re in no position to argue.

Eagle mounted, then swung Zebralegs around by tugging on the starboard loop of the halter. ‘See those guys, Zebralegs? — You and me, let’s work up a real mutual interest in just what the hell they think they’re doing, only for Pete’s sake keep quiet, they seem like they could be real nasty people. Get the idea?’

Zebralegs jacked his ears right forward, as if somehow this might throw more light on the situation. Then he walked quietly out of the paddock.

The tractor moved off.

Eagle said, ‘Zebralegs, wherever they’re heading, we gotta get there first, but none of your crazy shortcuts on the cliff, I’m a coward and what’s more I’m in my pyjamas, I’d feel kinda stupid if we became conspicuous, which we would if I fell off into the creek, get the hang of it? Make this a smooth one and remember you’re a
horse
, I wish I’d never called you Zebralegs, it’s been giving you ideas …’ And all the time he was patting Zebralegs’ neck affectionately, and saying his lines with a gentle lilt, hell, it didn’t matter
what
you said to Zebralegs, but it was awful important how you said it.

The cloud-roof blazed momentarily from a paroxysm of sheet lightning, revealing nothing on the slimy clay beneath except rivulets of instant streams transforming the bridle paths into churning waterways.

‘My God, Zebralegs, we lost ’em, now I never saw no hovering UFO, where the hell are they, now
control
yourself! Zebralegs. Knock it off! I said
no
short cuts, Me No Want No Mudbath, so where the hell we going? Now look, I’ve always been good to you, right? Never hit you — well I did once but you have to admit you provoked me — but this is crazy, I mean,
insane
, we’ll never make it down that gully, and how the heck did you know they were making for Upper Creek,
I
didn’t know, how come
you
know? and what do they want with an engine in the creek, new don’t you say anything back, you make one false move and we both wind up on those rocks, see them?, right down there, Zebralegs, that’s pretty painful, rocks are
hard
, get that part right, for Pete’s sake!’

Zebralegs did get that part right. He was sure-footed, and honestly
preferred
picking his way down that knife-edge of a trek-path. As a matter of fact, Zebralegs had helped make it himself, and his father before him, and that’s why he was alive now, because during the drought there had been fresh water trickling into that creek, and although the water in the creek itself contained a lot of salt, because the new seas had brought it in, Zebralegs’ family had found it possible to hold their heads just below the outlet of the spring, where it made a tiny waterfall, and that way they had managed to drink fresh water, and stay alive.

‘Christ! Zebralegs, we stop right here. And you just tell me what those guys are doing, down in that creek? What are they building? — The
Mayflower
? — Think we ought to go down there and take a looksee? Now, don’t take any chances, mind. We have to have room to make a turn and get the hell out of there, in such a way that the mud don’t suck us down, get the idea?, and since I don’t see no Canadian Mounted chasing us down here, Zebralegs, you can slow down to about Mach-One and lay off them purple hearts.’

The rain stopped abruptly, as if a burst cloud had collapsed into itself and wrung itself out bone dry. The end of the storm left an ugly, unrequited silence, and Eagle thought, you know what?, that there rain has stopped because something else is scheduled to happen. To Zebralegs he whispered, ‘How’s your nerve?’

*

Big Chief Eagle reverted to being Eagle-100 the moment he saw what he saw.

For he saw Evil.

*

All was now clear. Eagle knew why Sladey had snatched the only spare engine and towed it to Upper Creek.

Abruptly Eagle forgot his fear of riding. Discarding his Apache-on-horseback game forever, he leapt from boyhood to maturity in one move.

‘Down there,’ he said to Zebralegs — and gave a firm tug on the halter. Zebralegs necked-around to the right and obeyed.

*

Upper Creek comprised a sharply concave crater tooled out of the landscape by a subterranean shift. Cone-shaped, it was drilled all the way down to the ravine. From there a natural canal passed out to the seas beyond
Kasiga
.

Because of its bizarre shape, the private enclave of Upper Creek was cut off sharply from the plains above it. So unless you squinted up from one of the jagged granite ledges you could see little above and beyond the cone.

This was what was making it so difficult for Sladey’s team to lower the engine from the power-takeoff of the mini-tractor: unless you got the angle exactly right there was no clear drop for the pulley. In consequence the nylon hauser was in danger of rasping itself against the serrated granite of the basin.

Sladey’s pip-squeak voice yelled petulantly down into the cone, which skewed his falsetto into coilspring shockwaves, like a castrated chorister screaming in a sewer. ‘Call yourself an engineer, Scorda? That’s a block-and-tackle, the way you have it the thing will unwind like a fishing rod and if it does I hope it wraps itself around your neck.’

‘There isn’t enough light. Get some fucking power on.’

‘Kendip, step up the damn power on that damn light, we want the engine lowered onto the pier. This way it gets a full burial at sea.’ But Kendip couldn’t decide between Flip and Flop.

Scorda yapped, ‘Cut that out and lend a hand yourself. Lower the other light, the cable is all fouled up.’

‘I can see that, you blue baboon, you have enough lights for a Hollywood Premier, so use them right, or I’ll be the one to blow a fuse … Handem, Gendabrig:
you
take over the lights, Scorda’s brain must have been omitted in the Ice-cube Department. Kendip, you there?’

‘I’m still stuck on the escarpment.’

‘Then get unstuck. Bring one of the lights.’

‘I can’t, I’m trying to grip the hauser so it don’t unwind itself, why can’t you grab that lever, Chrissakes?

‘Flek, you imbecile, slam on the brake! God, you’re not fit to sew on a fly-button … Okay, Kendip, leave go the pulley: I need you up here to work the power takeoff.’

‘I can’t move, there’s this ooze, see, Jesus I can’t get a foothold and the edge is crumbling, that’s a sheer drop, five hundred feet or more.’

‘I don’t want a Geography lesson, I want action … Scorda, you’re making more of a mess of that rope than it was before. Follow Kendip up, we’ll untangle all that spaghetti from up here.’

‘I’m coming up.’

‘Excellent. We’re communicating.’

Kendip and Scorda emerged, drenched skintight, at the rim of the cone. The tractor was parked on the very edge. Sladey kept glancing at the front wheels.

He wanted to be damn sure that if the tractor went over, he himself — never mind the others — didn’t go down with it.

In brilliant light now, Sladey and Scorda dealt with the tangle of ropes jammed around the tractor drum.

Kendip brought the light closer, then tripped.

‘You
oaf
!’

‘Not so fast Sladey … Look! Up there!’ — Kendip had dropped the lamp. It whipped around, illuminating the steep of the gully. And FlipFlop Kendip felt a conflict he couldn’t identify.

Sladey, struck psychotically silent at what he saw there, strolled forward for three languid paces.