Alien Velocity (6 page)

Charlie’s leading leg started to buckle. He didn’t know whether to throw his arms around the poor thing or throw up instead. It was about four foot six, with six arms and two squat legs. The two foremost arms were cybernetic with several joints and three flexible digits at the ends. The other four arms resembled fleshy tentacles with a few tendrils hanging beneath. At rest, these organic arms coiled behind the creature’s back. Its stump of a body was clearly skin grown over a metal shell—the seams had frayed, and various cuts and abrasions in the skin suggested the creature had been through an ordeal—yet there was nothing crude about this synergy of flesh and mechanics.

Charlie perceived a race of physical weaklings, forced to integrate their biology with cybernetics in order to survive a cataclysmic change on their planet. Perhaps they had been this way for millions of years, and the living cells had become symbiotic with the bionic components, creating a unique bio-mechanoid hybrid race.

“Where is this?” Charlie asked.

The creature lifted its head upright for the first time. A dented metal hood covered the top half of its face and held three green electronic eyes, which pivoted, probably on tiny gimbals. It had no nose. A long slit of a mouth appeared to be the only aperture in its turtle-like head. This suddenly opened to an extreme size, seemingly beyond the point of dislocation.

Charlie wondered what the gesture meant—a warning, hunger, a deep breath or the prelude to speech? “Where is this?”

“This is here.”

“What planet are we on? Which part of the galaxy is this? How far from Earth am I?” He realised the last one was a stretch, but it was worth a try.

After a long pause, the creature answered without moving its mouth, directly into Charlie’s ear, “We are on the planet Baccarat. This is the eleven-thousand-seven-hundred-and-forty-fourth-nearest system to yours. Earth is sixty-nine million—”

“All right, all right, I get the picture. Thanks for breaking it to me so…gently.”

The creature stared at him. He glanced down to its cumbersome metal legs with cross-shaped feet. The thing clearly wasn’t meant for the outdoors, at least not for any kind of rough terrain.

“We wish for you to help us, Charles Thorpe-Campbell.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Will you help us?”

“If I can, I guess. But can you help me?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Food, water, friendship, navigation, problem-solving—”

“Okay, you’ve got a deal.”

It was an instinctive response. Something told him it would be wiser to play along, to see where this led. What did he have to lose? Charlie made his way carefully down the yellow slope, stopping ten feet from the creature. In response, the others filed out around their big sister. About twelve inches shorter than her, they were almost identical in appearance, the main difference being they had four arms instead of six—two tentacles and two mechanical. Perhaps the missing two would grow with maturity. Charlie remembered what the voice had told him, that these were the children.

“Oh, Christ,” he muttered at the fifty count, and there were as many still to come. He cleared his throat. “How many are you? What are you?”

“We are one hundred and thirteen. I am the third. The youngest is the one hundred and fifteenth. We are the children.”

He felt like a celebrity again. More green eyes than he could count—he couldn’t equate the numbers he’d just been given anyway—told him these creatures were glad to see him. That cocktail of wonder and adoration he’d sipped from the hearts of race fans everywhere suddenly crystallized in these gumdrop peepers on planet What-The-Hell. Alien children wanting his help? Robo-alien children? He had to be dreaming. It was too surreal for words.

“Okay, one hundred and fifteen minus one hundred and thirteen leaves two,” he said. “What about the other two? What happened to them?”

“They are on the far side of the mountains. They were injured in the crash. We must reach them before it is too late.”

“Yeah? Who are they again?”

“They are the first and the second. Our mother and father.”

He went to grasp the pendant around his neck, but it was not there. His father’s pendant—back where he’d left it—in his locker at the race dock. His isolation suddenly grew muscles and squeezed. He found himself gasping for air. With no geography to reckon with, no tricks of celestial navigation he could use to find his way home, how long would he last on his own? Hell, he couldn’t even imagine how far away from Earth this was.

He repeated his name over and over in his mind. Charlie Thorpe-Campbell, Charlie Thorpe-Campbell—first man to leave the galaxy, but what the hell kind of accomplishment was that? He’d been dragged here kicking and screaming, wherever here was. He was the most alone that any human being had ever been in the cosmos. The urge to sit down and wallow in nebulousness proved too great, in short shorts and a T-shirt, lost in the backyard of space.

“Are you all right, brother?” the voice asked.

Charlie looked up, puzzled. “What did you say? Brother?”

“Yes.” The biggest creature waddled forward and crouched beside him. It held out one of its mechanical arms. Faking a smile, Charlie shook its hand.

“I fixed tiny nano-translators inside your ears while you were sleeping,” it said, “so sue me, asshole.”

Charlie’s laughter spluttered all over the creature. Its mouth opened wider than ever. To Charlie, it seemed to be in a fit of hilarity, which made him laugh so hard his sides ached. He could hardly breathe. The creature either had genius comic timing or was so oblivious to its own ridiculousness it was funnier still. But at least he knew how they were communicating—he’d have to fret over the invasive operation later. Right now, he didn’t feel threatened at all.

“What can I call you?” he asked.

“What would you like to call me?”

“Well, what are you? Boy or girl?”

“Girl.”

“In that case—” he picked the most famous name he could remember, “—you can be Marley.”

The creature’s three eyes all pivoted toward him. “Charlie, meet Marley.”

“Pleasure.”

“And what are their names?” Marley motioned to her siblings.

Charlie realised he couldn’t possibly tell them apart. He shook his head. “Hmm, for the time being, I guess they’re Spartacus.”

To his amazement, each of them stepped forward in turn, and each time he heard the words “I’m Spartacus.” At first he thought they were in on the joke and he laughed, then he knew they’d read his mind and their collective consciousness amused him, until he clipped the humour and saw how pathetic the gesture really was. They were infants separated from their parents, and this was all an act of desperation—befriending him, buttering him up with humour. They needed his help any way they could get it. Before the last creature had performed its little stand-up routine, Charlie looked out across the mountains. If they could help him stay alive, he would help them reach their parents.

“Not that I have much choice,” he muttered.

Marley stood upright in front of him. “From now on, unless there is an emergency, mine will be the only voice you will hear. When do we leave, Charlie?”

“Soon. I’ve a couple of questions first, though. Why can’t you climb the mountains, and how much of my memory did you download?”

“We cannot climb the mountains because they are full of corborilium. That particular substance negates our vision. We will have to climb blind. That is why we need you, Charlie. To answer your second question, I downloaded your entire memory. I have learned everything you know. That makes us partners, no?”

“Not exactly. I don’t know a goddamn thing about you guys—where you come from, what you’re made of. I might as well be talking to a speak ‘n’ spell that knows all my dirty secrets. Is there any way you can give me your memories?”

“No.”

“I see. Just like that.”

“Yes.”

“Well, sod you, too.”

“I am the third.”

Charlie smirked, acknowledging Marley’s quick wit. At least she’d adopted that part of him as well. “We’ll just have to fill in the blanks as we go. Deal?”

“Deal. And before we go, thank you, Charlie. You are the first creature who has offered to help us.”

“Really?”

“No, not really.”

“So what happened to the others?”

“They were not satisfactory, so we ate them.”

Deadpan or death—he wondered for a moment which side that coin would land on. The monotone voice sounded so emotionless, so utterly devoid of subtlety, even its jokes teetered over outright creepiness. He decided it was an attempt at humour, and the creatures were genuinely trying to befriend him. But the oddness of their appearance would have given anyone from Earth the heebie-jeebies.

“Okay, let’s go.” He fetched his Lucozade container and then took off along the riverbank, listening to the pitter-patter of feet and the squeaks, hums and laboured grinds of a hundred heavy-metal infants. He glanced behind him. They weren’t all out of the hollow yet. The procession moved pathetically slow, half of him wanted to hotfoot it away and not look back, while the other half wished he could carry each of them on his shoulders, over any obstacle. He shook his head.

“What the hell have I got mixed up in?”

When he turned to face the mountains, he almost fell headlong over the first, and potentially trickiest, hurdle. The river. For him, crossing it was a matter of the run-up. Would toddler tin men have the heart to trudge miles and miles in search of a bridge that might not exist? How about crossing it here? He glanced at them again. His heart sank. They had a hard enough time walking, let alone leaping over a channel.

They had better find him some decent food before long, because so far he’d received the shit end of this deal.

Meanwhile, Marley had waited at the hollow to make sure everyone joined the procession. Charlie nodded approvingly. It was very sisterly of her.

“So, how long have you been stuck here?” he asked the nearest child.

It stepped back and glanced round to Marley, who replied, “Nearly three years.”

“Three years?”

“Yes. We can hibernate for much longer than that. Our metabolism has been perfected to a science. I remained awake while the others slept in cycles. I dug a waterhole for us at the bottom of the hollow, and I lived off the tiny creatures that swam by.”

“What are you, exactly?”

A long pause. “We are the last survivors of a dead planet. Disease and biological decay forced us to adapt our bodies, using micro science, into a synergy of life and technology. You do not have a word for what we are. Without our machines and vehicles, we are physically insufficient for natural survival. That critical section of our ship was uncoupled in the wormhole, and we barely managed to reach the planet’s surface.”

“Ditto. I had a helluva time straightening her out for the landing.”

“Yes. You improvised well. We’re counting on you to do so again in the next few days. You are our last chance.”

The entire line of creatures now shuffled along the edge of the canyon. A hundred and thirteen! They resembled oversized lemmings in suits of armour. He hoped they wouldn’t malfunction and suddenly decide to go for a dip. Marley made her way up through the ranks, at twice the speed of her siblings, until she scurried at Charlie’s side.

“That was a neat trick,” he said, “talking from way over there. You guys have some sort of telepathic link, don’t you? What one hears, you all hear. Like a hive mind.”

“Yes. We share everything. But we are also sentient. Each one of us has the freedom to go his own way, but we have always chosen to stay together. That is where we differ from humans, Charlie. When we reach maturity, we do not break free from the family fold. Your species is governed much more by individuality. It makes you mercurial, and also competitive. We have found serenity, whereas humans are able to reach the most extreme highs and lows of emotion. Neither is better nor worse, merely different, and we can comfortably coexist.”

“Yeah? You see a lot for a kid. You’ve got an old head on your shoulders.”

“Oui, c’est vrai.”

He smiled. “Smart arse.”

* * *

By the time the brightest sun bowed once more to leave them only half-light, Charlie marvelled at their progress. The alien lighthouse loomed about fifty miles away, judging by the scale of orange rocks surrounding it. Nothing else had changed about the planet—no atmospheric upheavals nor rumblings underfoot nor any more close encounters of the third kind. Hours had passed since the simple river crossing, a solid rock plateau under which the water had coursed. Marley hadn’t hinted that one existed, but neither had she objected to the long trudge. Ergo, she must have known about the bridge all along. Charlie perceived that tacit understanding between them. These beings were nothing if not economical. He was fairly certain if he did something boneheaded, Marley would question it, at least until her eyesight failed her.

The odd black wisp taxied over the lighthouse from storm cloud to storm cloud when Charlie felt the temperature drop for the first time. A slight breeze nudged him on toward the mountain range. Soon they would begin the upward climb. Soon he would be responsible for a hundred and thirteen blind children. The idea curdled in his stomach. What would Sorcha say if she saw him now? He’d never been responsible for anyone before. Hell no! During a row nights before he’d left for the Tonne, she’d called him a thirty-three-year-old boy. That notion, too, now festered inside until an overwhelming desire to ditch the aliens and sprint for the lighthouse electrified him, left him shivering.

Fear. It was a powerful thing.

He stayed the course, fought the wrecking-ball weight of sudden, surrogate parentage whenever it swung his way, and after a while it didn’t hit so hard or so often. After all, he was only doing what had to be done. What anyone would do. So why hadn’t other alien castaways helped Marley and her sisters?

By sunrise they reached two-thirds of the way across a flat desert of dried yellow mud.

“What can you tell me about these wormholes, Marley?” He was desperate for some kind of distraction. The children moved so slowly, and he wasn’t tired, merely restless.