Eden's Trial Read online

“Vince is right. Listen, Zack…” But the words wouldn’t come.

  “I’m listening, boss. You got a burr up your ass, you need to spit it out.” He frowned. “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “Doesn’t go any further.”

  Zack clasped his hands behind his bald pate, leaning back. “Never does. You got an attack of the maybe’s again, huh? S’bin a long time. Hey, let’s go, you know I love this game. Bring it on!”

  Blake nodded, the corners of his mouth lifting. “Okay. Maybe we should have stayed and fought till the end.”

  “Yeah, dead is so cool.” Zack rolled his eyes.

  “Okay then. Maybe you’re right, I shouldn’t be leading this… whatever it is.”

  “So we’ll throw an election once this is no longer a military situation. Come to think of it, we can also throw a serious party. Is this the best you got?”

  Blake hung his head, and spoke to the floor. “Glenda’s getting worse. Cancer’s eating her insides. The trip was really bad for her. Don’t know how long she can hold on. Maybe I –”

  Zack unlocked his fingers and stood up, then leant forward, inches from Blake’s face. “Maybe you should make her fucking proud and give her the chance to die in peace rather than having the top of her head lobbed off and her brain sucked dry by a three metre tall locust!”

  “Christ, Zack!”

  “We done here, boss? We good now? Cos I got stuff to do, you know.”

  Blake nodded, and Zack loped out the door. “Thanks, Zack,” he said, as he levered himself up. He heard Zack shout from down the corridor. “Don’t mention it!” Blake allowed a smile. “You know me too well, old friend. What in hell’s name would I do without you?”

  * * *

  Rashid awoke in darkness, unable to move or feel his limbs. The last thing he could remember was glimpsing the inside of a star, so he knew he should be dead; only the physical discomfort convinced him otherwise.

  “Hello? Is anybody there?” There was no echo, so he knew he was in a confined area. He tried to move his fingers, but all he could sense was a tingling that he guessed was his hands. It reminded him of when he’d crash-landed on Eden a year ago: a stasis field. But then, he thought, he should neither be conscious nor able to speak. He heard movement, and for the first time he smelt something odd, like the drying, rotting seaweed he’d kicked around barefoot as a kid on his holidays in Goa. A rhythmic, clomping, dragging noise approached. His heart accelerated. He tensed, his head at least, which seemed to be out of the stasis field. In the unremitting darkness, Rashid perceived someone or something very close – a foul breath of rancid algae washed into his nostrils.

  “Sarowan,” it grumbled, a voice like rocks grinding, making Rashid flinch. Sarowan. The word resonated inside Rashid’s skull. Rashid was born of a secret and all-but defunct clan called Sarowan, a clan of the Sentinels…

  “You, Sarowan,” the voice repeated.

  The voice hurt his ears. Sarowan… But how could anyone know that? Unless… He had always believed the legends a childish myth. He’d not had time to think about it since leaving Eden, but the stories of his ancestors in Tibet saving an alien creature, calling itself a Ranger…

  He understood it was asking him a question, awaiting a response. No point in hiding it anymore. “Yes, I am Sarowan. My ancestors –”

  “Saved Ranger. Saved Shatrall. Before. Now save you. Blood debt paid.”

  Rashid stopped breathing as the enormity hit him. This Ranger had pulled him out of the ship and the star – before everyone else was incinerated.

  “The others?” He had to be sure.

  “Gone.”

  His mind raced: Sofia dead, two thousand people – all dead, erased by Louise, and her ship was still hunting Blake and the others.

  He tried to swallow. No saliva. “Where am I?”

  “Others close. Find you soon.”

  He heard a dragging sound, like someone lugging a sack of potatoes across the floor, and the thuddish clomp of a foot, or claw. “Wait! You must help us. Please. Louise will find us sooner or later. You could stop her!” He tried in vain to make his limbs move.

  The dragging paused. “Not help. Observe. Your species survive or die.”

  He remembered from his Sarowan upbringing that this was supposedly the Rangers’ creed – a kind of Darwinian non-interference. He resigned himself. “Then at least let me see you. Turn on the lights so I can see the creature my ancestors saved nine hundred years ago.”

  The Ranger made a strange, descending hissing sound, which Rashid interpreted as a sigh. “Lights already on. Apologies. Was late.”

  Chapter 5

  First Contact

  The Hohash’s golden, oval frame lay inert, propped against the wall, its flow-mirror surface dark and still. Pierre walked over to it. “Wake up, damn you!” He punched its rounded edge, sending a reverberating twang around the seven-metre wide wok-shaped Hohash craft. He’d already tried numerous times to rouse Kat, who lay curled up in the recovery position like a sleeping puppy. To his chagrin, the dormant Hohash rose from the floor and buzzed back into life. He stepped backwards, just as it swooped towards him, stopping centimetres from his face. He stood his ground. “Sorry,” he said, unsure why he’d bothered, since by all accounts these alien artefacts didn’t understand human speech.

  Now that he’d gotten its attention, he wasn’t sure what to do. He’d spent the last three hours attempting to land on Pietro, but a sulphur hurricane engulfed the planet’s only continent, causing him to abort atmospheric entry, as well as to seriously downgrade his earlier assessment of its habitability. He’d dawdled long enough above the planet’s toxic ocean to extract oxygen through the ship’s filters before retreating back out into space.

  “It shouldn’t end like this,” he said.

  The Hohash’s mirror surface flickered into a ruby background, purple splinters of broken glass spattered across it. Pierre almost laughed, since the display mimicked his own bleak feelings perfectly. Then his brow widened – he understood. He remembered the time Kat had been immersed in communication with the Hohash on Eden, how she’d explained later that she had seen colours reflecting her emotions.

  It was worth a try. He forced a smile. The Hohash image barely changed, except the splash became luminous and seemed to lift away from the surface. At first Pierre thought his premise wasn’t correct. Then he realised his smile was only skin deep. He closed his eyes and thought back to his childhood, trawling for one of the rare memories of his father that he still treasured, before he’d become one of the latter’s illegal genetic test subjects. His papa, in his Sunday best, pushed Pierre on the garden swing, while his maman, in a floral wrap, clapped in time with the upswings. The sun beat down on his boyish face, the hinges creaking and straining at each shove in the small of his back. He inhaled the smell of fresh-mown grass, and pumped his legs higher and higher, Earth’s comforting gravity tugging him backwards.

  He opened his eyes. The Hohash showed him lush greens, a gentle breeze brushing across a field of tall grass. He smiled, and this time an orange light bathed the synthetic scene.

  “Nice to see you two getting along.”

  He turned to see Kat rubbing her eyes, propping herself up on her elbows. He rushed towards her. “Are you –”

  “Okay, yes. Feel like my head has been used as a zero-G hockey puck, though. Our friend there was in communication with me after…” She stopped, and sat up, pulling her knees to her chest.

  Pierre crouched next to her. He wanted to take her hand, tell her it was all okay and, he realized, a whole lot more. He glanced back at the Hohash; steel-grey rain beat down on the grass, dissolving it.

  “Tell me what you remember, Kat.”

  She rested her brow on her knees, muffling her voice. “Dead. They’re all dead, Pierre. They jumped into the star. I saw it happen.”

  Pierre felt dizzy, as if his legs might cave in. and sat down beside her. “All those people. Rashid. All… I don’t suppose it was an
accident. If whoever attacked somehow retrieved the flight plan, the destination…” He let his head tip back against the metal hull. “And us? Then we are, as they say, really screwed.”

  She lifted her head, placing her chin on her knees, and uttered a short dry laugh. “That’s unlike you, Pierre, you’re normally the logical optimist.”

  He shrugged. He pictured the faces of Rashid, of others on board he could recall. He’d been there with them just yesterday. His scientific mind intruded, demanding more data on how it had happened – whether it had been a mistake, an attack, or sabotage. But his emotional mind gained a rare upper hand; two thousand people had just been vaporised, and he and Kat were almost certainly without hope.

  The Hohash glided towards them silently, its flow-surface dark as a lithium mine-shaft. Pierre felt crushed; they’d already been through so much the past few weeks. He thought of Blake and Zack. What would those two do right now? They wouldn’t give up, of course, but what would they actually do?

  Kat sat up, leaning her head against the bulkhead. “The planet?”

  “It’s uninhabitable right now. Sulphur storm.”

  She sniffed. “Figures. And our friend here can’t contact his pals?”

  “Apparently not. I guess their communication only works over a certain range, they must be too far away.”

  Kat ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair. “Right now, Blake would say, Options, people?”

  He nodded. “Yes, he would, but I’m not sure he’d get too many answers. Let’s see, we’re in a short-range craft that can’t make long-range jumps like the Q’Roth vessels. We’ve little in the way of food, water for a while, and oxygen for a few days.” And no one will ever find us.

  He studied her profile, her dark hair cresting a boyish face. Without thinking about it, his eyes traced the contours of her body.

  “Uh-oh.” Kat said.

  “What?” He followed her gaze to the Hohash, which was still relaying his emotions. Pierre reddened when he saw the display’s crimson and purple loops which somehow conveyed a mixture of tenderness and eroticism.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “Don’t be. The Hohash never lies, you know. Any last requests?” She gave him a crooked smile.

  His flush got worse. He stumbled for words. “Antonia –”

  “Would understand if you just wanted a kiss.”

  Pierre frowned, trying to balance the equation when Kat’s face appeared between him and the Hohash. Warm, moist lips met his. At first he held back, trying to remember a blog he’d read years ago that had rules on how to be a good kisser. But she clearly knew, and so he let himself be sucked into the embrace, amidst flashes of yellow and scarlet emanating from the Hohash. Blood rushed into his head and groin, and his hands fumbled towards her; he wanted to touch her, but didn’t know how. Finally he worked up the courage to trace a shaky hand over the contour of her breast. She gently pushed herself back from him. He let go, his breathing ragged.

  She sat cross-legged in front of him, calming her breathing. “All those months on the Ulysses, travelling to Eden, you never said anything.”

  He stared at the floor.

  “Must have been tough.” She looked sideways, then got to her feet.

  “Pierre, you’re probably the cleverest human left alive. There must be an option. Think, it’s what you do best.”

  His head was still swirling. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and imagined himself back in his father’s musty, book-filled study. Every evening after dinner, a form of ritualistic torture used to take place where his father tested him mercilessly with logical and mathematical puzzles. In his mind he wrote down in white chalk the predicates of their predicament, and its assumptions. He wrote down we are alone, and then paused. He flicked his eyes open.

  “Kat, do you know prime numbers?”

  “Of course, but… Oh, I see. You think it’s a way of signifying we’re intelligent, a sort of universal distress code?”

  He nodded quickly. “We need the Hohash to broadcast prime numbers and our relative position in this star system.”

  “To whom, exactly?”

  “Anyone that’s out there, Kat,” Pierre said, energized by the idea.

  “That’s a pretty long shot. Still…” Kat knelt in front of the Hohash and pointed an index finger to her temple. Instantly she slipped into a trance-like state. Pierre got up and paced behind her, waiting for her to ‘return’.

  She opened her eyes. “It’s transmitting, broad spectrum. Anyone within ten light years should pick it up. I also encoded the emotion distress into the signal.”

  “Are you sure that was wise, it might summon a predator of some kind.”

  Kat cast him a sceptical look.

  “Okay, beggars can’t be choosers.”

  She sat down cross-legged again. “I guess all we can do now is wait.” She patted the empty floor-space next to her with a palm. Pierre felt nervous; the kiss had already thrown him off-balance. He sat, the left side of his body touching hers.

  “Pierre, was there anyone back home for you? You know, someone special?”

  He felt his throat choke up. He shook his head. Please, don’t. He clenched a fist behind his back.

  She smiled. “You know, once, somewhere, sometime?” She paused, her smile faltering. “I mean, once, you know… right?”

  He tried to focus on his breathing; he felt he was made of glass. All the rationalisations he’d built up inside himself over the years came tumbling down, amounting to nothing. He didn’t dare look at the Hohash. But she did.

  “Oh my,” she said.

  He thought the compassion in her voice would shatter him for sure. But instead he felt her hand caress his cheek, with a tenderness he didn’t know she was capable of. He’d never felt so vulnerable. She kissed his neck, then parted his lips with her tongue. He heard the unzipping of her overall, and his hands managed to help her peel the ensemble off her shoulders down to her waist. She jumped up, and for a hellish moment he thought she’d stopped again. But she winked at him and pulled the suit off completely, underwear too. She stood naked above him, and then knelt down in front of him. She took his hands and placed them on her breasts, while her lips locked onto his. She slid his suit zipper all the way down to his crotch, where she gripped him hard, making him cry out. With the other hand she pushed him back down against the floor. He gasped as she mounted him, her mouth still welded to his, and twenty-nine years of mental discipline and programming finally fused.

  Pierre felt the air getting thicker with overuse, yet his mind was curiously calm. The Hohash displayed an emerald sea under an air-brushed magenta sky. Kat lay next to him, her head resting on his hairless chest. He could have reflected on a wasted life, on all the potential loves he could have had, now he knew what he’d been missing. Instead, he chose to dwell on the moment they’d just shared.

  “Thank you,” he said, with more gratitude than if he’d just received the Nobel Prize.

  She tapped his chest with her fingers. “Just don’t tell my girlfriend, okay? And I’m still pretty much a girl-girl. Don’t go ego-hyping on me.”

  Always the inquisitive one, he decided for once not to ask why she’d made love with him, and just accepted it. He thought about his parents. His father had sacrificed him to research, and his mother had consented, though she’d been upset about it. For one thing, the genetic tampering had made him sterile, so his line would end with him. He wondered if his father, when he’d been bleeding to death on that conference podium, shot by an Alician assassin, had maybe, just for a moment, had an inkling of regret about what he had done to his own son. For the first time in his adult life, Pierre didn’t completely reject the hypothesis.

  The Hohash began pulsing increasingly frequent random shades of colour. They hastily dressed while shielding their eyes from the rainbow light’s intensity.

  “What now?” Kat said.

  Pierre guessed what it was – a response. The flashing stopped, and the
Hohash mirror surface turned to a swirling cloud of grey. An indistinct figure appeared in the middle, as if walking towards them. He watched in fascination as it clarified – it reminded him of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, a dog-like creature in a ceremonial head-dress of golds, blues and blacks. As the picture crystallised into vid-screen clarity, they gaped at the figure, who gave the definite impression of staring back at them.

  “Hello?” he tried.

  “No sound, remember?” Kat said.

  He wondered what to do. The creature stared at them, waiting, and Pierre didn’t know how long it would wait. He gestured to the creature, first with his hands, to come towards them, then, seeing no reaction, closed his hands around his throat, as if choking, trying to communicate they were running out of air. The figure disappeared, and the Hohash face re-adjusted to its habitual mirror surface.

  “Well,” Kat said, “not too bad given our extensive experience with first contact situations.”

  Pierre slumped. “Merde! This is hopeless. I’ve always wondered why in all the sci-fi vids the whole universe speaks English, or else there’s a handy universal translator somewhere.”

  “Lazy scriptwriters. Anyway, maybe it understood. Hey, we just found another race. You’re a scientist, you should be ecstatic.”

  He smiled warmly. “Give this scientist a break, he’s just discovered the opposite sex!” But his grin ran out of fuel. “We could try the planet again, at least gather some more oxygen.”

  “Maybe we could use the bathroom there. I’ve heard sulphur exfoliates pretty well.”

  He took her hand. “Kat, I’m really glad –”

  The ship jolted hard to one side, and they both sprawled to the far wall. Pierre had the wind knocked out of him, and struggled into a crouching position. Kat had already sprung to her feet when they both heard a loud thunk from above. He looked out though the normally black portal and glimpsed the silver underbelly of a vessel attached to them.

  “Oh fuck!” Kat shouted.

  At first he didn’t realise why she’d said it, until he noticed his feet and ankles were wet. A warm, transparent liquid trickled, then gushed into their craft, jetting through the air vents. Scrambling to his feet, he sloshed his way over to the environmental controls. Kat beat him to it, and slammed her fist down on it, but the console was dead. He stared in disbelief towards the four upper vents, out of arms’ reach, through which the pink water surged.