The Fall of Tartarus (39 page)

He
looked up at Alvarez. ‘But why . . . ? What can they want with her?’

Alvarez
avoided his gaze. ‘I wish I knew—’

‘We’ve
got to go after them!’

Alvarez
nodded, turned and addressed his men. Hunter watched, removed from the reality
of the scene before him, as Alvarez’s minions armed themselves with lasers and
stun rifles and boarded the truck.

Hunter
rode on the roof with Alvarez and Dr Fischer. As they raced up the incline of
the valley, towards the v-shaped cutting perhaps a kilometre distant, he
scanned the rocky horizon for any sign of the vehicles belonging to Sam or
Codey.

His
wife’s words rang in his ears, the consequences of what she’d told him filling
him with dread. For whatever reasons, Codey had supplied the Slarque with
humans on two other occasions. Obviously Sam had failed to see that she had
been led into a trap, with Freya as the bait.

They
passed from the lower valley, accelerated into one almost identical, but
smaller and enclosed by steep battlements of jagged rock.

There,
located in the centre of the greensward, were Codey’s crawler and Sam’s truck.

They
motored cautiously towards the immobile vehicles.

Twenty
metres away, Hunter could wait no longer. He leapt from the truck and set off
at a sprint, Alvarez calling after him to stop. The pain in his chest chose
that second to bite, winding him.

Codey’s
crawler was empty. He ran from the vehicle and hauled himself aboard Sam’s
truck. It, too, was empty.

Alvarez’s
men had caught up with him. One took his upper arm in a strong yet gentle grip,
led him back to Alvarez who was standing on the greensward, peering up at the
surrounding peaks.

Two
of his men had erected the collapsible cage, then joined the others at
strategic positions around the valley. They knelt behind the cover of rocks,
stun rifles ready.

An
amplified voice rang through the air. ‘Hunter!’

‘Codey
. . .’ Alvarez said.

‘Step
forward, Hunter. Show yourself.’ The command echoed around the valley, but
seemed to issue from high in the peaks straight ahead.

Hunter
walked forward ten paces, paused and called through cupped hands, ‘What do you
want, Codey? Where’s Sam and my daughter?’

‘The
Slarque want you, Hunter,’ Codey’s voice boomed. ‘They want what is theirs.’

Hunter
turned to Alvarez, as if for explanation.

‘Believe
me,’ Alvarez said, ‘It was the only foolproof way we had of luring the
Slarque—’

Hunter
was aware of the heat of the sun, ringing blows down on his head. ‘I don’t
understand,’ he said. ‘Why me? What do they want?’

Alvarez
stared at Hunter. ‘Three years ago,’ he said, ‘when the Slarque attacked and
killed you, it laid the embryos of its young within your remains, as has been
their way since time immemorial. The primates they used in times past began to
die out millennia ago; hence the fall of the Slarque. It so happened that
humans are also a suitable repository ... Of course, when Sam rescued your
remains and had them suspended, the embryos too were frozen. We discovered them
when we examined your remains on Million.’

Hunter
was shaking his head. ‘You used me . . .’

‘It
was part of the deal, Hunter. For your resurrection, you would lead us to the
Slarque.’

‘But
if you wanted the Slarque, you had them! Why didn’t you raise the embryos for
your exhibition?’

‘The
young would not survive more than a few months. We examined the embryos and
found they’d been weakened by inbreeding, by cumulative genetic defects. I
suspect that the brood incubated in the body of the prisoner thirty years ago
did not survive. We need the only existing pair of adult Slarque.’

Something
moved within Hunter’s chest. He winced.

Dr
Fischer approached. ‘A pain-killer.’

Hunter
was unable to move, horrified at what Alvarez had told him and at the same time
in need of the analgesic to quell the slicing pain. He just stood as Fischer
plunged the injector into his neck.

Codey’s
voice rang out again. ‘Step forward, Hunter! Approach the south end of the
valley. A simple trade: for the Slarque young, your wife and daughter.’

Hunter
stepped forward, began walking.

Behind
him, Alvarez said, ‘Stop right there, Hunter. Let the Slarque come to you . . .
Remember our deal?’

Hunter
hesitated, caught between obeying the one man capable of granting him life, and
the demands of the Slarque who held his wife and daughter.

The
pain in his chest was almost unbearable, as if his innards were being lacerated
by swift slashes of a razor blade. My God, if this was the pain with the sedative
. . .

He
cried out, staggered forward.

‘Hunter!’
Alvarez cried.

He
turned. He saw Alvarez raise the laser to his shoulder, take aim. He dived as
Alvarez fired, the cobalt bolt lancing past him with a scream of ionised air.

He
looked up the valley, detecting movement. Two figures emerged from behind a
jagged rock. They were at once grotesquely alien and oddly humanoid: scaled,
silver creatures with evil, Scorpion tails. What invested them with humanity,
Hunter thought, was their simple desire to rescue their young. And even as he
realised this, he was overcome by the terror of their initial attack, three
years ago.

Behind
him, he heard Alvarez give the order to his men. He turned in time to see them
raise their stun-guns and take aim at the Slarque.

‘No!’
he cried.

A
quick volley of laser fire issued from a single point in the rocks high above.
The first vector hit Alvarez, reducing him to a charred corpse. The succeeding
blasts accounted for the others, picking them off one by one.

Only
Dr Fischer remained, hands in the air, terrified.

Hunter
hauled himself to his feet and cried Sam’s name, trying to ignore the pain in
his chest.

The
Slarque approached him. As they advanced, Hunter tried to tell himself that he
should not feel fear: their interest in him was entirely understandable.

‘Sam!’
he cried again.

In
his last few seconds of consciousness, Hunter saw his wife run from the cover
of the rocks and dash past the Slarque. He was suddenly struck by the
improbable juxtaposition of ugliness and extreme beauty. Behind her, he saw a
thin, bedraggled human figure - the madman Codey, hefting a rifle. In that
second he remembered the death of Alvarez, and wondered if Codey’s action in
killing the doctor meant that he, Hunter, would die on this infernal planet without
hope of resurrection.

He
keeled over before Sam reached him, and then she was cradling him, repeating
his name. Hunter lay in her arms, stared up at her face eclipsing the swollen
sun.

He
felt the life forms within him begin to struggle, a sharp, painful tugging as
they writhed from his chest and through his entrails, the tissue of his stomach
an easier exit point than his ribcage.

‘Sam,’
he said weakly. ‘Freya . . . ?’

Sam
smiled reassurance through her tears. Behind her, Hunter saw the monstrous heads
of the Slarque as they waited. He tried to raise his face to Sam’s, but he was
losing consciousness, fading fast. He was aware of a sudden loosening of his
stomach muscles as the alien litter fought to be free.

The
he cried out, and died for the second time.

Aboard the
Angel of Mercy,
orbiting Tartarus Major, 1st, May, 23,210 — Galactic Reckoning.

I
need to make this last entry, to round things off, to talk.

With
Dr Fischer I collected the remains - the bodies of Alvarez and his men - and
your body, Hunter. Fischer claims he’ll be able to resurrect Alvarez and the
other men lasered by Codey, but he didn’t sound so sure. Personally, I hope he
fails with Alvarez, after what he put you through. The man doesn’t deserve to
live.

I’ve
negotiated a price for our story with NewsCorp - they’ve promised enough to pay
for your resurrection. It’ll be another three years before you’re alive again.
It’s a long time to wait, and I’ll miss you, but I guess I shouldn’t complain.
Of course, I’ll keep Freya suspended. I look forward to the day when together
we can watch her grow.

The
final exodus has begun. I can look through the view-screen of my cabin and see
Tartarus and the giant sphere of the sun, looming over it. Against the sun, a
hundred dark specks rise like ashes - the ships that carry the citizens to
safety. There’s something sad and ugly about the scene, but at the same time
there’s something achingly beautiful about it, too.

By
the time we’re together again, Hunter, Tartarus will be no more. But the
exploding star will be in the heavens still, marking the place in space where
the Slarque and poor Codey, and the other lost souls who wished for whatever
reasons to stay on Tartarus, perished in the apocalypse.

I
can’t erase from my mind the thought of the Slarque, those sad, desperate
creatures who wanted only the right to die with their young in the supernova,
and who, thanks to Codey and you, will now be able to do so.

[SF Age, January, 1999]

He
buried Francesca in the rich jungle soil of Tartarus Major while the sky pulsed
with the photon haemorrhage of the supernova and the Abbot of the Church of the
Ultimate Sacrifice knelt and chanted prayer.

And
he thought that was the end of the affair.

Hans
Cramer met Francesca when she was eighteen, two decades his junior but wise
beyond her years, and already a second-class helio-meteorologist aboard one of
the Fleet’s finest nova observation vessels. Cramer was employed as an
itinerant lecturer, teaching philosophy and theology to the reluctant crews of
the various ships of the Zakinthos Line. His posting to the observation
sailship
Dawn Light
was just another move, but one that changed his
life.

Francesca
was a regular at his rambling lectures in the vast auditorium of the city-sized
sailship. She was distinguished by her striking Venezuelan face and jet black
mass of hair - an affectation in space, where so many crew went partly shorn or
bald. What attracted him initially was not so much her physical aspect as her
youth, and that she attended every one of his lectures. She was that rarity
among spacers: a student who wanted to learn. After years of having his talks
received with boredom, or at best polite apathy, Cramer found her attentiveness
exhilarating. It was natural that he should single her out for special tuition.
He gave her one-to-one lessons, and she responded. He prided himself on the
fact that she excelled herself, absorbed everything he had to offer, and was
still hungry for more.

Inevitably,
perhaps, they transcended the teacher-pupil relationship and became lovers. It
was a gradual process, but one which culminated in an event that informed them
both that their feelings for each other were reciprocated. They had been
discussing the physics of spatial dimensions congruent to singularities, and
the conversation continued well beyond the time Cramer usually allotted for her
tuition. The talk turned general, and then personal. There was a period of
silence, and Cramer looked into the depths of her Indian eyes - and he was
suddenly aware of his desire, affection, and overwhelming need to be
responsible for Francesca.

For
the next year Cramer lectured aboard the
Dawn Light
as it sailed from
star to unstable star, and their love deepened into a thorough understanding of
one another. She told Cramer that which she had never told anyone before: how,
at the age of ten, she had lost her father. He had been a scientist, working on
the planet of a sun due to go nova, when the sun blew before its time and
killed him and his scientific team . . . This, Cramer thought, helped to
explain the choice of her profession.

Cramer
became for Francesca a combination of lover-teacher-protector, as well as a
friend and confidant . . . And for him Francesca was the first person in his
life to remind him that he was not, contrary to nearly forty years of
assumptions otherwise, the fulcrum of the universe. Her naivety, her vitality
and honesty, her willingness to learn, her trust in others - he was in awe of
all these things. Sometimes he wanted to protect her from herself when others
might take advantage, but at the same time he learned from her that openness
and trust can bring its own rewards: contact with one’s fellows, even
friendships, which for long enough he had shunned. Her youth and enthusiasm
were a foil to Cramer’s age and cynicism, and though at times he found it
exhausting, more often than not he was swept along heedless by the tide of her
passion.