The Devil's Nebula (23 page)

“They saved us, many years ago,” Leah said. “They showed us how to live here, to adapt to the jungle. They gave us everything we needed to survive. Before, my people worshipped a race of aliens known as the Kurishen, from the sixth planet of this system, a peace-loving people who fled their planet when it became uninhabitable.”

Carew recalled the wrecked space stations circling the planet, the destroyed fortifications. “They fought a war with another race?” he said.

“Perhaps, a long time ago, this was so, but it was long before our time. My people found the crashed starships of the Kurishen and decoded their books and took on their beliefs. But they were the beliefs of a dead race, which had no relevance or value to the settlers of World. Over the years, we came to revere the Weird.”

Carew asked, “But the ships of the Kurishen, when they came to the Expansion, were found to be empty, with no trace of the Kurishen.”

Leah smiled. “Perhaps that mystery only added to the appeal in the eyes of my ancestors. It is an enigma I cannot hope to answer.”

A silence lengthened, before Gorley asked, “And your relationship with the Weird, your beliefs...?”

“It is not a complex system of belief, my friend – there are no great lengthy screeds or tenets that must be obeyed, rather a series of simple facts that cannot be denied. There are no rules that followers must obey for fear of punishment.”

Carew considered what Hahta had said, that her people had sent a Sleer to track down and bring back her sister, Maatja, and that Sleer were used to capture those known as the Outcasts. Was this the action of a belief system which claimed to use no punitive measures?

“The simple facts are that the Weird, in the many forms they take, whether Harvester, Flyer, Shuffler, or any other, give us life, and we for our part give the Weird life in return.”

Gorley inclined his head as if in understanding, then asked, “In what way does this transaction work?”

Leah and Rahn leaned towards each other and spoke in lowered tones; Rahn nodded and Leah looked up and smiled. “If you would care to follow us to the domicile of the Harvester.”

The Elders stood and moved from the long-house. Outside, Leah spoke to her gathered people. They remained seated as Gorley led the way from the shade and into the blasting heat of the sun.

Lania fell into step beside Carew as they made their way down the length of the clearing. “This should be interesting.”

“I’ve never been introduced to an alien god before.”

She smiled. “That’s how she made it sound, isn’t it? I can’t imagine what her people can give the Harvester that it can’t get itself.”

“Or what it gives in return,” he said.

Ten minutes later they approached the long-house within which the alien creature dwelled.

He had only seen it at a distance before, but even then it had appeared gross. At close quarters, its corpulence was hideous and obscene. It filled the length of the long-house, great bulges of grey fat swelling out between the timber supports. Each bulge was slit laterally with what might have been a mucous membrane, suppurating with a rank green ichor.

A team of attendants made its way around the long-house, placing crude ladders on the flank of the beast and mopping away the ichor with what looked like sponges.

The stench was eye-watering, though clearly Leah and Rahn and the other settlers were unaffected.

The pair led the way around the long-house to the creature’s rear, where a thick tentacle hung. Leah spoke to a pair of cleaners, who approached the tentacle. The first woman grasped its thick base, while the second directed the trunk-like appendage towards a wooden bucket.

The first woman then squeezed the tentacle, easing her hands expertly along its length until, from a raw pink sphincter, a thick milky fluid oozed into the waiting bucket.

Within seconds the receptacle was full and the woman replaced it with a second.

“We dry the phar,” said Leah in lowered tones, “and it provides our staple form of nourishment.”

Lania exchanged a glance with Carew and pulled a face. Carew smiled and murmured, “Don’t criticise until you’ve sampled it, Lania. It might taste exquisite.”

Gorley said, “And in return, you give the Harvester...?”

Leah smiled and led the way to the front of the long-house.

Carew had expected to find a face, or at least a semblance or eyes and maybe a mouth. Instead, the head of the Harvester sported multiple tentacles which snuffled around the sandy ground, sucking up husks of some dried fruit placed there by the cleaners.

“The Harvesters find the rind of the ghar fruit a delicacy, and as it is inedible to humans...” Leah gestured at the probing trunks.

“A wonderfully efficient system,” Choudri commented.

“And this forms the basis of your belief system?” Lania asked, and Carew detected a note of sarcasm-cum-incredulity in her question.

Leah smiled. “A small part of it; merely one of the bases on which we found the belief we call Sacred Circularity.”

Rahn stepped forward and addressed the group, “Later today, one lhan before sunset, approximately two of your hours, we will perform the ceremony of Return. We will remove the Harvester from its resting place here and transport it” – he gestured across the clearing to the fissure – “to the bank of the river. From there it will be taken downriver to the lair of the Weird and a new Harvester will take its place. Thus the Great Circularity is continued. This ritual is the highpoint of our calendar, and we would be honoured if you would attend.”

Gorley replied, “And we feel honoured to be allowed to attend.”

Leah led the way back across the clearing. “If you would care to retire to your huts until the commencement of the ceremony, my friends, I will have food brought to you.”

“The phar?” Lania asked.

Leah inclined her head. “A little phar, but also the less nutritious fruits of the jungle.”

They parted company outside their huts and sat in the shade, watching Leah and Rahn as they rejoined their people and dismissed the crowd.

“Well,” Gorley, “what did you make of that?”

Lania said, “What she told us about the diminished numbers of settlers...”

Carew looked at her. “What about it?”

“I don’t buy her explanation. They started with five thousand and now there are only around a thousand settlers here and a few hundred in the jungle? Given the fact that their numbers should have at least quadrupled in almost seventy years, the figures don’t add up, even if there had been conflicts and hardship.”

Carew considered what Hahta had said. “Also, this give and take thing, the Great Circularity. Hahta said that her father had gone to ‘help’ the Weird. Another aspect of the circularity? Leah mentioned nothing of this.”

Two serving boys ferried trays laden with phar and spiky green fruit across the clearing and set them on the sand beside their guests. Then they brought gourds full of drar juice, then bowed and departed.

Carew regarded the trays. The dried phar resembled a slab of cheese, pale and sweating in the midday heat.

Lania tested it with her smartsuit, then smiled at him. “Full of good, healthy bacteria,” she said, “but nothing harmful.”

He broke off a chunk as the others watched him. “There’s an old saying, ‘When in Nova Roma.’”

“Don’t do it, boss!” Jed said.

He slipped the phar into his mouth and chewed. It was dry and sour, not at all the delicacy he had been expecting.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
WO HOURS LATER
Carew stood beside the long-house where the Harvester reposed. Leah and Rahn were nearby, murmuring a commentary to Gorley and Choudri. The settlers were massed in the clearing. They had set up a low monotone hum which according to Leah was the song which signalled the commencement of the transportation ceremony.

“I’ve watched the Pan PharmOlympic games on New Athens,” Lania murmured to him, “and I’ve seen the grand final of the Expansion skyball contest on the Persephone trading station – but I think this might beat them all.”

The same team of a dozen cleaners which had ministered to the Harvester’s needs now began to dismantle the long-house. They did it with the practised expertise of a circus team bringing down a big top at the end of a show. They swarmed up the timber supports – using the blubber of the alien as foot-rests – and withdrew pinions from the roof joists. Within moments they were lifting the thatched roof and sliding it down the far side of the creature, then pushing it back to rest upside-down against the margin of the jungle.

Next, the team lifted the timber support columns from pits in the ground, abrading the flesh of the Harvester as they did so. When the posts were removed, the creature, its tonnage released, sagged outwards – its colossal flank barred with pale indentations.

Rahn stepped forward, anointed the Harvester’s proboscis with fluid and intoned something under his breath.

A great chant rose up from the gathered settlers, followed by a rhythmic stamping of feet. This ceased suddenly and an eerie silence filled the clearing.

Reverently, heads bowed, a hundred men and woman emerged from the crowd and moved around the splayed, stranded alien. Leah stepped forward and raised a hand.

“And so the eightieth Harl ceremony of the year 42 commences.”

The crowd cheered, and the bearers moved into position. They knelt and, on a shouted command from Rahn, gripped a series of timber handles projecting from beneath the monster’s bulk. Then they lifted the vast catafalque in one fluid motion.

Carew had expected the bearers to struggle, the catafalque to teeter under the great weight, but the bearers were well practised and strong, and the great beast never so much as wobbled as it rose into the air. The bearers lodged the timber handles across their necks and shoulders like yokes, and on another shouted command, this time from a woman at the front of the team, they walked in step across the clearing towards an archway constructed from curved tree-trunks on the edge of the fissure.

Leah and Rahn escorted their guests behind the catafalque, followed by the mass of the settlers.

“Impressed so far?” Carew murmured to Lania as the procession neared the lip of the escarpment.

“Beats the hell out of skyball,” she said. “But how the hell will they carry it down five thousand steps without the thing sliding off?”

Carew tried to banish the vision of the Harvester slipping from the catafalque and tumbling all the way down to the bottom of the fissure.

“They’ve had plenty of practice, Lania.”

She grunted. “Hell of a lot of work to appease the appetite of a minor god,” she said. “And all the settlers get from it is a daily slab of tasteless goo?”

The bearers had reached the archway of trunks. They passed beneath it, slowed and turned laboriously, negotiating the esplanade of packed earth at the top of the flight of steps. When they were parallel with the fissure, they stepped forward and negotiated the first of the steps.

Now Carew saw how they accomplished the operation without any embarrassing mishaps. The steps were shallow and wide, so that they proceeded down the incline at an obtuse gradient; the bearers at the front kept the handles on their shoulders, while those in the mid-section and to the rear lowered the handles and gripped them at waist-height – effectively keeping the Harvester level.

Lania moved alongside Leah and said, “Isn’t it odd to have a race divided into so many different... types?”

“Strictly speaking,” Leah said, “they’re not divided, as such. Many years ago, the Harvester here was a Flyer, and before that a Shuffler, and before that a Sleer. Before that, they were a series of other... manifestations... many of which do not show themselves for human inspection.”

“And the Harvester?” Lania asked. “What will that change into?”

Leah smiled, like a holy disciple asked the true nature of her god. “Ah,” she said at last, “that we do not know.”

The packed-earth stairway zigzagged down the side of the fissure. Some stretches were long, others short, taking in the nature of the gradient. Carew imagined the back-breaking work it must have taken to hack the path through the jungle which clung to the side of the ravine. He peered over the edge of the path, but the bottom of the fissure was lost in shadow.

They passed from direct sunlight into shade and the temperature fell by at least twenty degrees. He pulled his water flask from his backpack and took a long drink, offering it to Lania and Jed. The engineer accepted, but Lania shook her head. It was at times like these that Carew envied his pilot her smartsuit, with its thermostatic facility which kept her body cool in the punishing heat of the day.

An hour passed and Carew found himself thinking of the girl, Hahta, and what she had told him early that morning. She had said that her father had been ‘chosen’ by the Weird, selected to go to their lair in order to ‘help’ the aliens.

Presumably he had come this way, followed by his other daughter. He wondered what fate had met her father. Hahta had said that the Chosen never returned – but what about Maatja?

He looked over his shoulder at the mass of descending settlers straggling down the zigzag path: there were humans of all sizes, youngsters and their parents – but, he realised for the first time, no old people amongst their number. He wondered about that.

“What?” Lania said, watching him as he scanned the settlers on the flight of stairs directly above them.

“I’ve only just realised, Lania – I haven’t seen a single settler over the age of, say, fifty.”

Lania looked up reflexively, frowning. “Come to think of it...”

“What the hell do they do with the oldsters?”

She shrugged. “Okay, how about this. They live such healthy lives, eating all that fruit and Harvester shit and stuff, they don’t age as obviously as we do? Perhaps Leah and Rahn here are eighty, but only look fifty?”

He pursed his lips. “Or perhaps they lead such relatively primitive lives, with no drugs and healthcare as such, that they die off in their fifties and don’t reach old age.”

Ahead, the bearers came to a gradual halt. “The halfway point of the descent,” Leah said.