The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25 (Mammoth Books) (109 page)

He could not think clearly. Conrad’s shameless behaviour became confused with the nightmares, the disturbed sleep and uneasy wakening. Those marks on the wall of the inner courtyard . . . He must have room, he could not bear this crowded confinement. He stopped the buggy, checked his gear, and disembarked.

The sky of Mars arced above him, the slightly fish-eyed horizon giving it a bulging look, like the whitish cornea of a great, blind eye. Dust suffused the view through his visor with streaks of blood. He was in an eroded crater, which could be a dangerous feature. But no warnings had flashed up, and the buggy wasn’t settling. He stepped down: his boots found crust in a few centimeters. Gastropods crept about, in the distance he could see a convocation of trucks: he was back in the mining fields. He watched a small machine as it climbed a stromatolite spire, and “defecated” on the summit.

Inside that spoil-tower, in the moisture and chemical warmth of the chewed waste, the real precursors were at work. All over the mining regions, “stromatolites” were spilling out oxygen. Some day there would be complex life here, in unknown forms. The Martians were bringing a new biosphere to birth, from native organic chemistry alone. Absurd superstition, absurd patience. It made one wonder if the settlers really
wanted
to change their cold, unforgiving desert world—

A shadow flicked across his view. Alarmed, he checked the sky: fast-moving cloud meant a storm. But the sky was cloudless; the declining sun cast a rosy, tourist-brochure glow over the landscape. Movement again, in the corner of his eye. Boaaz spun around, a maneuver that almost felled him, and saw a naked, biped figure, with a smooth head and disturbingly spindly limbs, standing a few metres away: almost invisible against the tawny ground. It seemed to look straight at him, but the “face” was featureless—

The eyeless gaze was not hostile. The impossible creature seemed to Boaaz like a shadow cast by the future. A folktale, waiting for the babies who would run around the Martian countryside; and believe in it a little, and be happily frightened. Perhaps I’ve been afraid of nothing, thought Boaaz, hopefully. After all, what did it
do
, the horrid thing I almost saw in that chair? It reached out to me, perhaps quite harmlessly . . . But there was something wrong. The eyeless figure trembled, folded down, and vanished like spilled water. Now he saw that the whole crater was stirring. Under the surface shadow creatures were fleeing, limbs flashing in the dust that was their habitat. Something had terrified them. Not Boaaz, the thing behind him. It had hunted him down and found him here, far from all help.

Slowly, dreadfully slowly, he turned. He saw what was there.

He tried to speak, he tried to pray. But the holy words were meaningless, and horror seized his mind. His buggy had vanished, the beacon on his chest refused to respond to his hammering. He ran in circles, tawny Devils rising in coils from around his feet. He was lost, he would die, and then it would devour him—

Hours later, young Conrad (struck by an uncharacteristic fit of responsibility) came searching for the old fellow, tracking his suit beacon. Night had fallen, deathly cold. The High Priest crouched in a shallow gully, close to the crater where Conrad had spotted his deserted buggy; his suit scratched and scarred as if something had been trying to tear it off him, his parched, gaping screams locked inside his helmet—

The High Priest struggled free from troubling dreams, and was bewildered to find his friend the Aleutian curled informally on the floor beside his bed. “Hallo,” said Conrad, sitting up. “I detect the light of reason. Are you with us again, Reverend?”

“What are you doing in my room—?”

“Do you remember anything? How we brought you in?”

“Ahm, haham
. Overdid it a little, didn’t I? Oxygen starvation panic attack, thanks for that, Conrad, most grateful. Must get some breakfast. Excuse me.”

“We need to talk.”

Boaaz drew his massive head down into his neck-folds, the Shet gesture that stood for refusal, but also submission. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“I knew you’d see sense. No, this is about something serious. We’ll talk this evening. You must be starving, and you need to rest.”

Boaaz checked his eyeball screen, and found that he had lost a day and a night. He ate, rehydrated his hide, and retired to bed again: to reflect. The Mighty Void had a place for certain psychic phenomena, but he had no explanation for a “ghost” with teeth and claws, a bodiless thing that could rend carbon fibre . . . In a state between dream and waking, he trudged again the chance avenue of stromatolites. Vapour hung in the thin air, the spindly towers bent their heads in menace. Isabel Jewel’s module waited for him, so charged with fear and dread it was like a ripe fruit, about to burst.

The miners and their families were subdued tonight. The sound of their merrymaking was a dull murmur in the private lounge, where Boaaz and the Aleutian met. The residents’ bar steward arranged a nested “trolley” of drinks and snacks, and left them alone. Boaaz offered his snifter case, but the Aleutian declined.

“We need to talk,” he reminded the old priest. “About Isabel Jewel.”

“I thought we were going to discuss my scare in the desert.”

“We are.”

Strengthened by his reflections, Boaaz summoned up an indignant growl. “I can’t discuss my parishioner with you. Absolutely not!”

“Before we managed to drug you to sleep,” said Conrad, firmly, “you were babbling, telling us a horrible, uncanny story . . . You went into detail. You weren’t speaking English, but I’m afraid Yarol understood you pretty well. Don’t worry, he’ll be discreet. The locals don’t meddle with Isabel Jewel.”

“Yarol?”

“The station manager. Sensible type for a human. You met him the other day in your courtyard, I believe. Looking at some nasty marks on the wall?”

The Shet’s mighty head sank between his shoulders.
“Ahaam
, in my delirium, what sort of thing did I say?”

“Plenty.”

Conrad leaned close, and spoke in “Silence” – a form of telepathy the immortals only practiced among themselves; or with the rare mortals who could defend themselves against its power.
My friend, you must listen to me. What we share will not leave this room. You’re in great danger, and I think you know it.

The old priest shuddered, and surrendered.

“You underestimate me, and my calling. I am not in
danger
!”

“We’ll see about that . . . Tell me, Boaaz, what is a ‘bear’?”

“I have no idea,” said the old priest, mystified.

“I thought not. A
bear
is a wild creature native to Earth, big, shaggy, fierce. Rather frightening. Here, catch—”

Inexplicably, the Aleutian tossed a drinking beaker straight at Boaaz: who had to react swiftly, to avoid being smacked in the face—

“Tentacles,” said Conrad. “I don’t think you find them disgusting, do you? It’s an evolutionary quirk. Your people absorbed some wiggly-armed ocean creatures into your body-plan, aeons ago, and they became your ‘delicates.’ Yet what you saw in Isabel Jewel’s module was
‘a bear with tentacles’
, and it filled you with horror. Just as if you were a human, with an innate terror of snakey-looking things.”

Boaaz set the beaker down. “What of it? I don’t know what you’re getting at. That vision, however I came by it, was merely a nightmare. In the material world I have visited her
once
, and saw nothing at all strange.”

“A nightmare, hm? And what if we are dealing with someone whose
nightmares
can roam around, hunt you down and tear you apart?”

Boaaz noticed that his pressure suit was hanging on the wall. The slashes and gouges were healing over (a little late for the occupant, had the attacker persisted!). He vaguely remembered them taking it off him, exclaiming in horrified amazement.

“Tear me apart? Nonsense. I was hysterical, I freely admit. I suppose I must have rolled about, over some sharp rocks.”

The Aleutian’s black eyes were implacable. “I suppose I’d better start at the beginning . . . I was intrigued by the scraps you read out from ‘Isabel Jewel’s’ file. Somebody
suspected
of insanity. That’s a very grim suspicion, in a certain context. When I saw how changed and disturbed you were, after your parish visit, I instructed my Speranza agent to see what it could dig up about an ‘Isabel Jewel’, lately settled on Mars.”

“You had no authority to do that!”

“Why not? Everything I’m going to tell you is in the public domain, all my agent had to do was to make the connection – which is buried, but easy to exhume – between ‘Isabel Jewel’, and a human called ‘Ilia Markham’ who was involved in a transit disaster, some thirty or so standard years ago. A starship called
The Golden Bough
, belonging to a company called the World State Line, left Speranza on a scheduled transit to the Blue Torus Port. Her passengers arrived safely. The eight members of the Active Complement, I mean the crew, did not. Five of them had vanished, two were hideously dead. The Navigator survived, despite horrific injuries, long enough to claim they’d been murdered. Someone had smuggled an appalling monster on board, and turned it loose in the Active Complement’s quarters—”

There were chairs, meant for humans, around the walls of the lounge. The Aleutian and the Shet preferred a cushioned recess in the floor. Boaaz noticed that he no longer needed to
look behind him
. That phase was over.

“There are no ‘black box’ records to consult, after a transit disaster,” the Aleutian went on. “Nothing
can
be known about the false duration period. The crew construct a pseudo-reality for themselves, as they guide the ship through that ‘interval’ when time does not pass: which vanishes like a dream. But the Navigator’s accusation was taken seriously. There was an inquiry, and suspicion fell on Ilia Markham, a dealer in antiques. Her trip out to Speranza had been her first transit. On the return ‘journey’ she insisted on staying awake, citing a mental allergy to the virtual entertainment. A
phobia
, I think humans call it. As you probably know, this meant that she joined the Active Complement, in their pseudo-reality ‘quarters’. Yet she was unharmed. She remembered nothing, but she was charged with involuntary criminal insanity, on neurological evidence.”

Transit disasters were infrequent, since the new Aleutian ships had come into service; but Boaaz knew of them. And he had heard that casualties whose injuries were not physical were very cruelly treated on Earth.

“What a terrible story. Was there a . . . Did the inquiry suggest any
reason
why the poor woman’s mind might have generated something so monstrous?”

“I see you
do
know what I’m getting at,” remarked Conrad, with a sharp look. The old priest’s head sank obstinately further, and he made no comment. “Yes, there was something. In her youth Markham had been an indentured servant, the concubine of a rich collector with a nasty reputation. When he died she inherited his treasures, and there were strong rumours she’d helped him on his way. The prosecution didn’t accuse her of murder, they just held that she’d been carrying a burden of unresolved trauma – and the Active Complement had paid the price.”

“Eight of them,” muttered Boaaz. “And one more. Yes, yes, I see.”

“The World State Line was the real guilty party, they’d allowed her to travel awake. But it was Ilia Markham who was consigned for life – on suspicion, she was never charged – to a Secure Hospital.
Just in case
she still possessed the powers that had been thrust on her by the terrible energies of the Buonarotti Torus.”