Helix (32 page)

“Will
it suffice?” Ehrin asked.

“We
will find out shortly,” the alien replied.

They
returned to the hatch and climbed inside. In the control room, Havor slipped
into the horizontal couch while Ehrin and Kahran stood and watched. The alien
was reaching up to a console above his head, tapping at a series of tiny
panels, which responded with sharp musical notes. Lights glowed in a sudden
array, and Ehrin heard something humming deep within the interworld ship.

Havor
looked at them and grimaced. “So far it is functioning as it should.”

He
reached up and pulled something from a recess in the ceiling of the cabin, a
black frame which he gripped in both hands. The frame was scattered with small
lights, and arrays of tiny panels, which Havor tapped quickly with his
fingertips.

“Hold
on tight, now.”

They
did as instructed. The ship rose rapidly and stopped, then seemed to bob in
place like a boat on a river.

Havor
was staring at a square of glowing material embedded within the frame. Tiny
letters and numbers rolled down the flat surface.

“One,
check. Two, check...” This went on through to six, at which point Havor turned
to them. He was wearing his biggest grimace yet. “Thanks to you, my friends,
the ship is airworthy once more.”

Ehrin
felt a flood of emotion, and it came to him how proud his father would have
been at this moment.

Kahran
was saying, “When do you plan to make the strike?”

“Sooner
rather than later, my friend. It would be folly to wait even a day or two.
Perhaps tonight, in the early hours, when all Agstarn sleeps.”

Kahran
turned to Ehrin and said, “The interworld ship leaving from the foundry might
give the Church even more evidence against us. I have an idea. We take the
freighter out in the dead of night, fly from the city, and only then launch the
ship.”

“That
makes sense,” Ehrin said.

Havor
agreed. “You are already on bad terms with the Church?”

Ehrin
laughed. “Well, that’s one way of putting it,” he said, and went on to tell the
alien about the High Council’s extraordinary meeting to discuss their fate.

Havor
heard him out, then said, “It is always detrimental to society to allow a group
of people, who believe in one way and one way only, to come to power. The first
casualty of autocracy is the common man, the second is the truth.”

“The
truth,” Ehrin echoed. “For so long the truth had been the word of the Church,
but perhaps now that is coming to an end.”

Kahran
said, “For centuries the Church has taught that there is but one world, one
platform in the grey, even though latterly they knew that to be a lie. Then I
travelled to your world and discovered to my amazement that other beings beside
ourselves existed in the grey.” He looked at Havor. “And how many others might
exist out there too?”

The
alien grimaced and touched Ehrin on the shoulder. “Did I not promise that I
would tell you what I know of the universe, though of course perhaps my
understanding is but partial.”

Ehrin
shook his head. “So much has happened of late that my head is spinning...”

“Where
to begin?” Havor said. “Perhaps I should ask what you know already of your
world?”

Ehrin
told the alien what his people believed. “Though,” he went on, “I often
wondered if there were other platforms out there, despite Church teachings. And
then Kahran told me that we were but one of many platforms or worlds, strung
out on a chain through the grey.”

Havor
grimaced, and Ehrin knew that the alien found his ignorance amusing.

The
alien pointed to the lamp that Ehrin still gripped. “Pass me the lamp.”

He
handed it over, and Havor settled himself cross-legged on the floor. Ehrin and
Kahran hunkered down. Havor set the lamp between them. “Now... may I borrow
your beads, Kahran?”

From
around his neck Kahran lifted his chain of brown beads and passed it to the
alien. Havor unfastened the tiny clasp so that the chain hung straight.

“Kahran
was right, in a way,” said Havor. “The worlds we inhabit are strung out on a
kind of chain, though the chain does not pass through a sea of limitless grey,
but,” he went on, “is wound about a central sun, like so...”

Ehrin
watched in amazement as Havor, holding one end of the chain beside the oblate
glass cowl of the gas-lamp, proceeded to wind it around the glass so that, by
the time it reached the top, the chain with the tiny beads upon it described a
helix.

“The
flame within the lamp,” Havor said, “is equivalent to the sun, which gives us
light. The sun is a star, and far beyond our helical system there are millions
of other stars, burning bright...”

Ehrin
found his voice. “And they too have helical systems, with other worlds, strung
about them too?”

Havor
inclined his head in assent. “We have no reason to suspect otherwise, though my
kind have not travelled to them.”

Ehrin
asked, “And where are we upon the chain? At which level?”

Havor
indicated the second level of eight that wound about the lamp. “We are here.”

Ehrin
nodded, staring in awe at the model of his solar system.

Kahran
pointed to the helix. “There must be hundreds of worlds in existence around the
sun!”

Havor
made the deep, guttural sound that indicated his amusement. “I am sorry, but
this demonstration is not so very accurate. There are many thousands of worlds
strung out on the helical chain, my friends.”

Ehrin
leaned back against the bulkhead, overcome with dizziness. “Thousands?
Thousands of world just like this one?”

Havor
lifted a hand. “Not just like this one, Ehrin. They are vastly different. Some
are barren, without sentient life. Others bear life in various stages of
evolution. My race has explored a handful of neighbouring worlds, and
discovered three bipedal peoples, all technologically inferior to the Zorl.”

“With
ourselves,” Kahran said, “being one of them.”

Havor
inclined his head. “But you, if it is of any satisfaction, possess a greater
technology than the other two races we have so far discovered. We have taken it
upon ourselves—considering our experience in these matters—to monitor the
progress of these races; to act, if you like, as moral guardians. Though I
admit that there are dangers in such interventionist tactics.”

Ehrin
thought about it, then said, “Havor, if other beings came to our world, then it
would suggest a level of sophisticated technology, am I right?”

“To
a varying degree, yes. They might possess the equivalent of your flying
machines and hale from neighbouring worlds on the same level, or interworld
vehicles if they came from the levels above or below.”

He
told Havor about the rumours of aliens from another world.

“Did
Sereth describe them?” Havor asked.

“Her
father did not witness them himself. If it is true, then they are held in the
Church penitentiary in Agstarn.”

Kahran
shook his head and said, more to himself, “We need to overthrow the Church’s
despotic regime.”

The
alien said, “I will aid you in so far as destroying the deathship will rob them
of a fearsome weapon.” He returned the beads to Kahran, then stood and moved to
the control couch. “I have preparations to make, if we are to strike in the
early hours.”

Kahran
stood also. “We had best prepare the freighter, Ehrin.”

In
a daze, shocked at his own rebellious thoughts, as well as by the momentous
reality Havor had just opened up for him, Ehrin climbed to his feet and picked
up the lamp.

With
a nod to Havor, he led the way from the interworld ship and hurried from the
freighter’s cargo hold. In the fitful light of the lamp, the scarlet envelope
of the freighter bulged above them. Soon, he thought, he would be embarking on
a mission that might just spell the beginning of the end of the Church in
Agstarn. The notion filled him with delight and dread.

They
were making for the entry hatch of the freighter’s control room when Kahran
halted him with a hand on his arm. “Shh! Did you hear that?”

Ehrin
cocked his head, heart pounding. “What?” he hissed.

“I
thought I heard footsteps, on the foundry stairs.”

Ehrin
listened. He did hear something, then. Voices, coming from beyond the hangar
doors.

He
heard shouts. There were people in the foundry. His first thought, which struck
him as ridiculous in retrospect, was that the factory was being burgled.

Then
the massive door to the hangar swung slowly open, and a dozen uniformed men
carrying rifles and torches filed into the chamber.

He
froze, aware of Kahran’s hand still gripping his arm.

The
intruders wore the feared sable uniforms of the Church militia. “Halt there!”
the cry came from a militiaman who stepped forward confidently, brandishing a
pistol.

Kahran
hissed. “We could drop the lamp and run for it, through the side door and into
the canal. We could return and set off with Havor in the early hours.”

“And
if they have the place surrounded?” Ehrin said. “And anyway, we’ll be released
soon enough, and then we’ll go with Havor.” Arrest was not to be feared—he was
confident that they would be let off with a stiff fine, at worse a suspended
jail sentence.

“Let’s
play along with the bastards,” he said to Kahran. “Let them think we’ve given
in.”

He
placed his lamp on the ground, then raised his hands. “We’re here. Lower your
weapons and we’ll come peacefully.”

He
stepped forward, and instantly he was surrounded by a swarm of militia,
surprised and not a little shocked by the force with which they dragged him
across the hangar. He had expected courteousness, at least, even when being
arrested, not this casual brutality.

Behind
him, he could hear Kahran struggling and cursing in protest.

He
was hauled from the foundry and tossed into the back of a zeer-drawn prison
wagon, and seconds later Kahran unceremoniously joined him.

They
untangled themselves in the darkness and sat upright as the zeer team started
up and dragged the wagon along the ice canal.

Despite
himself, Ehrin was shaking with fear.

Only good fortune
saved Sissy Kaluchek from being beaten unconscious by the alien militia. Joe
was the first to be dragged from the wagon and set about with clubs and rifle
butts. The rats came for Kaluchek next, and after the first blow—a glancing
strike which ricocheted off the side of her head and crunched into the control
panel of her atmosphere suit, positioned like an epaulette on her left
shoulder—she lay face down on the ice-cold cobbles and feigned unconsciousness.
It took an effort of will to quell her rage and tell herself not to fight back.
In any other situation she would have fought like a tiger. Now she knew for
certain that her life was at stake, and her act worked. After kicking her in
the ribs, her tormentors moved on. Kaluchek heard Olembe shouting in fury, his
grunts as he flailed out, and then the high yelping of the rat-like creatures
as they dealt with his attack. She kept her eyes shut tight, petrified. She
heard another crunch, and then Carrelli’s moans, and then an ominous silence.
It was broken only, seconds later, by the sound of the quick, excited
respiration of the rats—as she’d decided to call them, even though they were
technically more like weasels, or even lemurs—and then a rapid exchange of
yips.

When
her fear that they were going to be beaten to death diminished, she became
aware of the cold. Until now her atmosphere suit had kept the planet’s Killing
temperature at bay. Obviously the blow to its control panel had smashed the
smartware system. Her immediate fear was not another attack from the rats, but
the sub-zero temperature.

Surely,
she thought as she maintained a rigid position on the cobbles, the rats
wouldn’t leave their captives out in the open air to freeze to death.

She
was answered minutes later when she felt hands grab her arms and legs. She was
hoisted unsteadily and carried, the pinch of claws digging into her flesh
making her want to cry out in pain and revulsion. The stench of the creatures
was unpleasant too, a faecal reek that made her want to retch. She kept her
eyes shut and flopped in their grip, as she imagined an unconscious body might,
and felt herself borne from the cobbles and evidently into a building. The
temperature increased, though only slightly, and her captors’ footsteps echoed
along what might have been a stone-paved corridor. More than anything she
wanted to open her eyes, but self-preservation urged caution. There would be
time later to satisfy her curiosity.

Her
body tipped—she was being carried down steps—and then levelled out. Seconds
later she heard the rattle of bars, and a squeal of hinges. On the way into the
cell, her hip struck stone and it was all she could do to stop herself from
crying out.