Helix (28 page)

He
looked at Carrelli. “You okay?”

She
smiled. “They spared me their clubs, just tried to strangle me into
unconsciousness.”

He
tried to move his legs, and only then realised that his ankles were shackled by
some kind of leather thong, which was attached to metal rings set in the
central timbers of the cart.

Olembe
said, “I’ve tried to unfasten them. No way—they’re frozen solid.”

Hendry
shuffled into a more comfortable position, his back against the cart’s sloping
side timbers. From here he could see that a team of six shaggy animals—identical
to those they had seen earlier— was drawing what seemed to be a sledge, judging
by the hiss of runners on ice.

All
around, he made out more of the animals, dozens of them, with hunched figures
mounted upon their backs. The closest was perhaps five metres away, indistinct
in the descending twilight. The creature riding the bovine-equivalent was
small, and Hendry was unable to tell whether the pelt that covered its arms and
legs was some kind of protective cladding or natural fur.

He
tried to make out its face, desperate to know what kind of being had captured
them, but at this distance all he could see was a faint, dark blur.

“We’re
heading for the mountains.” Carrelli pointed ahead, and Hendry was surprised to
see that the jagged peaks, which earlier had been hundreds of kilometres
distant, now loomed close, their stark summits jet black against the perpetual
grey sky. The sledge was approaching the foothills, a series of folds in the
ice perhaps five kilometres away.

He
looked at the medic. “You think the trap was set deliberately? They saw us
coming and dug the trench?”

“Either
that, or it was one of a series already dug, perhaps to capture the animals
they use. They probably herd them towards the trenches, as prehistoric man did
on Earth.”

“But
these creatures are more advanced than prehistoric man, right?”

She
nodded and indicated the rings in the floor. “They have metals, and we know
that others of their kind have airships.”

“You
think they’re the same people?”

“I
wonder if two sentient races would be brought to the same world?”

Brought
to the same world, he thought. “What kind of being would construct a helix and
then populate it with sentient extraterrestrials?”

Olembe
grunted. “Beings, Joe, who have the ability to do so.”

“Perhaps
that was the wrong question,” Hendry said. “I should have asked, why?”

Carrelli
gave her graceful shrug. “Who knows that, Joe? Perhaps only the Builders
themselves.”

“The
Builders,” he said. “At least now they have a name. You’ve christened them,
Gina.”

She
smiled, “Unoriginal, but it will suffice, for the time being.”

He
looked around, attempting to assess the numbers of riders escorting their
sledge. He could see a dozen or so, but occasionally became aware of more as
their forms drifted in and out of the rapidly descending twilight.

He
said, “Sissy was right. We should have listened to her.”

“Huh?”
Olembe grunted.

“She
said the trenches weren’t natural. If we’d thought about it, gone back for the
lasers...”

“She
was right,” Carrelli said, “but we didn’t act. There is nothing we can do now
but attempt to appeal to these peoples’ higher authorities. If they have
airships, some kind of sophisticated civilisation... perhaps they might be
amenable to reason.”

Olembe
laughed. “Sophisticated civilisation and amenability doesn’t always follow,
Gina. Look at the Nazis, the Moroccan fascists this century.”

She
considered his words. “My guess is that these people, or at least the makers of
the airships, are progressive, curious. I think they will want to know more
about the universe, their place in it... But look at this overcast. I think
they know nothing about the helix. Perhaps we are their first visitors. We can
tell them a lot about the universe, if they are willing to listen.”

“That’s
a big if,” Olembe said. “And you’ve forgotten one thing—we don’t speak their
language.”

Carrelli
smiled at him through her faceplate.

Hendry
considered where this was leading. “But even if we can communicate with their
leaders in some fashion, what’s the chances of them being able to help us get
to the next level? Dirigibles are one thing, space-going vehicles quite
another.”

“They
have the basis of a sophisticated technology,” Carrelli said. “With our
instruction, they could perhaps help us develop a simple rocket to take us into
space.”

“Great
idea,” Olembe grunted, his tone suggesting he thought it highly unlikely.

“We’ve
overlooked one thing,” Hendry said. “Perhaps each level has more than one
ziggurat? For all we know there might be dozens of them dotted around each
tier.”

Carrelli
nodded. “There is that possibility.”

Sissy
Kaluchek, her head in Carrelli’s lap, groaned and flailed an arm. The medic
restrained her. “Take it easy,” she soothed. “You’ll be okay, Sissy. Lie back
and rest.”

Kaluchek
opened her eyes, stared up at Hendry. He smiled and reached out for her hand,
took it and squeezed. Her eyes registered nothing but surprise and
mystification, before she closed them again, her lips moving silently.

Carrelli
felt for her pulse, attempted to judge her temperature by placing her hand
against the brow of the Inuit’s atmosphere suit. “It’s good that she came round
so soon,” she said. “I think she’ll be okay.”

Hendry
retained his grip on Sissy’s hand, aware that Olembe was staring at him. He
rested his head against the hard timbers and closed his eyes.

The
feel of her hand, even through the layers of their atmosphere suits, reminded
him of the time in Paris when Chrissie had fallen from her bike and cracked her
head on the pavement. She’d been unconscious for hours, then rushed from the local
hospital to a clinic specialising in head injuries. There, Hendry had been told
that there was a possibility that, even though Chrissie would come round, she
might have suffered some degree of brain damage. The next four hours, sitting
beside her bed with her small hand gripped in his, had been the longest of his
life. Chrissie was seven, and Su had left him a few months previously, and he’d
wondered if things could get any worse than this.

Then
Chrissie had blinked herself awake, and smiled up at him, and a Thai surgeon
had checked her over and told him that she was going to be okay.

Sitting
in the back of the alien sledge, Hendry wept as it came back to him... along
with its corollary: Paris and the smiling surgeon, everything he had known on
Earth... a thousand years gone, now.

“Hey!”
Olembe’s exclamation brought his reverie to an end. “We’ve got company.”

Hendry
opened his eyes and sat up. He heard the snort of the bovine animal first, as
it shuffled up to the side of the sledge. The stench that was ever-present from
the animal pelts increased with the approach of the living article. The sharp
reek of ordure, urine and sweat hit his sinuses like a driven spike.

He
turned awkwardly, hampered by the ankle shackles, and stared at the beast and
its rider.

“We
were captured,” Olembe said with disgust, “by monkeys.”

“Hardly
monkeys,” Carrelli corrected. “More like... lemurs. But we can’t let ourselves
be prejudiced by appearances. The fact that they captured us suggests a certain
level of sophistication.”

Hendry
stared at the creature perched upon the back of the beast of burden, and it
stared back at him. It was mounted like a jockey, knees drawn up, small bare
paws gripping an arrangement of leather thongs connected to the beast’s
dripping nostrils.

The
creature was small, perhaps the size of a ten-year-old child, and wore only a
bandoleer across its torso. Hendry found something about its spindliness
unsettling, but its face was more disturbing still. It was covered in
blue-black fur and dominated by a sharp, vicious snout, above which were two
big, black eyes. Obvious intelligence was at work behind those unfathomable
eyes as it stared at Hendry and the others.

A
weapon of some kind—an old rifle of polished wood and brass—was strapped to its
back. At least, Hendry thought, it showed no inclination to use it.

The
creature leaned forward and spoke in a series of high, protracted yips; rows of
tiny sharp teeth showed, and Hendry could not stop himself from imagining the
creature ripping into raw meat like some primitive animal.

Hendry
looked across at Carrelli, who raised a hand and smiled. Olembe said, “And
peace be to you, friend.”

The
creature yipped again, the words ending in a cachinnation, which shot a hail of
spittle towards Hendry; it froze on the way and tinkled against his faceplate.

The
creature reached down for something on the other side of the beast, and hauled
up what looked like an animal skin wobbling with a full load of fluid. Without
ceremony it hurled the skin into the sledge, then urged its mount forward until
they were lost in the mist.

Hendry
stared at the animal skin sloshing at their feet.

Carrelli
said, looking across at Olembe, “More evidence that they don’t mean us harm.
Why give us fluid if they were going to kill us, Friday?”

He
grunted. “They’re keeping us alive until they can butcher and eat us, for all
we know.”

Hendry
smiled. “Need you be so optimistic?”

Olembe
shrugged. “I think a healthy degree of scepticism about these bastards’ motives
might be in order.”

Hendry
reached out and lifted the animal skin. It was heavy and rolled awkwardly in
his grip. He deposited it in his lap and examined a small nozzle, manufactured
from metal and worked by a tiny tap.

He
looked up at Carrelli. “Would it be safe...?”

“If
we had a softscreen, then we could analyse its content.” She shook her head.
“The fact is that sooner or later we must eat and drink, if we are to survive.”

“I
think I’ll hold off until we reach civilisation,” Olembe said, “if we ever do.”

“Pass
it to me, Joe,” Carrelli said. “I’ll play guinea pig.”

He
passed the skin to the medic and watched as she unsealed her faceplate. She
lifted the skin to her mouth and worked the tap. Clear liquid trickled out,
spilling over her chin. She closed the tap and made a thoughtful face as she
swallowed, then nodded and deposited the skin on the boards of the sledge.

“Water.
Just like anything you’d find on Earth, with a slight taste of some mineral.”

“Let’s
see how long you keep it down,” Olembe said, dubiously eyeing the skin as it
shivered at their feet.

Hendry
was aware of how thirsty he was, and then how hungry. It seemed a long time
since he’d breakfasted on rations back at the ziggurat. He glanced at the
chronometer set into the sleeve of his suit: they had left the ziggurat almost
ten hours ago.

He
stared ahead, through the mist darkening with the approach of night. The
mountains were much closer now, a looming bastion that filled the horizon. They
had left the ice plain and were climbing into the foothills along a well-worn
track cut through rock. Their escorts paraded before and after the sledge.
Ahead, he made out perhaps twenty riders, before they were lost in the
twilight, and the same number to the rear.

Kaluchek
stirred. She gripped Hendry’s hand. “Joe?”

He
smiled down at her. Her face, behind the visor, looked so young. “You’re going
to be fine. Relax.”

“What
happened? I was in the truck, going for the laser...” She frowned,
recollecting. “Something dragged me out. That was the last thing...”

“We’re
okay, Sissy. We’ll be fine.”

Olembe
grunted. “We’ve been captured by a troupe of fucking monkeys, Kaluchek.”

Carrelli
said, “They have given us water.”

Kaluchek
tried to sit up, but the pain in her head stopped her. She winced, collapsed
back into Carrelli’s lap. “Where are they taking us?”

Olembe
said, “To their leader girl. Where else?”

Kaluchek
laughed. “I’m dreaming, right?” She smiled up at Hendry. “What are they like?”

It
was Olembe who replied, before Hendry could think of a suitable description.
“Imagine monkeys, with big eyes, rat-like snouts and lots of little pointy
teeth. Your average nightmare aliens, Kaluchek, even though Carrelli here
thinks they’re born altruists.”

“Not
altruists, Friday,” Carrelli answered evenly, “just not the primitives you take
them to be.”

“Carrelli,
they attacked us and beat our brains out. I don’t call that friendly.”

Kaluchek
rolled her eyes to look at the medic above her. “If they wanted us dead, they
would have killed us back there, right?”

“That
was my reasoning, Sissy,” Carrelli said.