Helix (49 page)

Ehrin
followed her.

Kaluchek
said, “What was that about?”

Carrelli
shook her head. “Ehrin is with us. He wants to meet the Builders. He told
Sereth and she... She’s finding all this hard to take, to say the least.” She
looked around the clearing. “So we’ll go, but we’ll be very careful about it.
My guess is that the Church ship is miles away by now, but even so we’ll set
off through the jungle on auxiliaries, okay?”

She
led the way to the ship, followed by Olembe. Joe was about to step onto the
ramp, but Kaluchek stopped him. She pulled him to her. “One last kiss on the
planet where it first happened,” she said, exhilaration flowing through her.

He
kissed her, then looked around at the forest and pulled her up the ramp.

Carrelli
and Olembe were strapped into the pilots’ couches, going through pre-flight
checks. There was no sign of Ehrin or Sereth. They strapped themselves into
seats set into the bulkhead, close enough together to allow contact. She
reached out and touched his fingers, feeling apprehension despite herself at
the thought of ascending to the next tier in a patched together alien ship.

Thirty
minutes later, Carrelli said, “Well, everything seems to be functioning pretty
well. Let’s hope your repair holds.”

“Amen
to that,” Olembe said.

Behind
them in the corridor, Kaluchek heard a commotion, the high chatter of Ehrin and
Sereth. She turned, expecting to see them enter the flight-deck.

Joe
touched her hand and pointed through a sidescreen. The aliens had left the ship
and were standing in the clearing, facing each other, evidently arguing. At one
point Ehrin reached out, grabbed Sereth by the arm and tried to drag her back
to the ramp.

Sereth
exploded, lashing out at Ehrin and screeching so that she could be heard inside
the ship. Then she turned and sprinted off into the forest.

Kaluchek
was aware that they were watching an alien drama, and though she was unable to
understand the nuances of the discord, the salient facts were obvious. She looked
across at Joe, and wondered if he too was feeling a vicarious melancholy as he
apprehended Ehrin’s dilemma.

Ehrin
started after his mate, then stopped. He reached out a hand, called out and
waited.

Then
he dropped his hand and looked back at the ship. He hesitated, torn between two
desires, and at last made his decision. He hurried back to the ship and
scampered up the ramp.

Carrelli
said, “Sealing the hatches. Okay, let’s power up. Auxiliaries activate.
Standby, Friday.”

“A-OK.”

The
ship vibrated, shaking as the engines came to life.

Ehrin
joined them on the flight-deck, found a seat and strapped himself in. Joe
smiled across at him, and the alien open its muzzle in what might have been a
reciprocal expression.

“This
is it,” Carrelli said. “Okay, hold on. Here we go...”

The
ship rose unsteadily, rocking like a boat in a storm. Carrelli managed to
equalise the lift, gripping the frame and scowling with the effort. Seconds
later, the ship rose higher with a lurch. Carrelli eased the ship forward, through
the trees. Like this, cautiously, they proceeded for perhaps an hour.

“Okay,”
Carrelli said. “Hold on back there.”

Seconds
later they crashed through the treetops, moving from shade to dazzling
sunlight. All around was a sea of green, and to their right a wide river looped
towards the horizon.

Then
the ship tipped, flipping Kaluchek’s stomach, and accelerated at an incredible
speed. Calique vanished beneath them, and immediately ahead, through the
forward viewscreen, appeared the great arching parabola of the fourth tier, its
length marked with alternating sections of ocean and thicker bands of land.

Joe
gripped her hand as they accelerated way from Calique.

Sereth fled into
the
rainforest, her only thought to escape Ehrin and the aliens.

He
had changed. He had become someone else, a being Sereth no longer knew, as
different to her as were the aliens. He had always been a little different, she
knew, which perhaps was what had attracted her to him in the first place—but
she wished she could have told the impressionable girl she had been back then,
on first meeting the illustrious Ehrin Telsa, where her infatuation with him
might lead.

The
aliens, the minions of the anti-god, had turned his head with this illusory
quest for the truth, and were leading him ever further astray. Now they were
ascending to the fourth tier of this hell, to rendezvous with the evil
creatures responsible for the creation of this illusion. That had been enough
for Sereth, that and the fact that Ehrin had said that he had
loved
her.
She felt the same for him—she had loved him, once, but no longer.

It
would be better to be alone and lost in this forest than to be imprisoned with
the aliens aboard their cursed spaceship bound for perdition.

She
halted in her flight and looked about her.

Then
she heard it, a roar she at first ascribed to a wild animal. Her heart skipped,
before she realised the truth. The sound was the engine of the alien spaceship,
a crescendo of noise that soon became deafening even at this distance. The ground
seemed to shake beneath her feet, and the cacophony of the engines became the
only reality. She fell to her knees and covered her ears, and dropped her hands
only when the roar diminished. She listened until the sound died in the
distance, and thought of Ehrin aboard the ship with the aliens and their doomed
mission to meet the Builders. When she climbed to her feet, she realised that
she was crying.

Through
a gap in the foliage overhead she glimpsed a section of the helix. She was a
long way from Agstarn, wherever that might be now. She felt a keen sense of
loss, a longing to be in her father’s apartment, to be surrounded by all that
was familiar—the ice of the city, the reassuring grey skies—rather than this
sultry forest and the dazzling sunlight that penetrated the foliage and
irritated her eyes.

But
this was all an illusion, she told herself, a mirage conjured to lead her from
the truth.

But
if that were so... If this
were
an illusion, if she were living a dream,
then where in reality was she? In some limbo world of hallucination, instilled
in her mind by the anti-god? Might she in fact still be in Agstarn, but tricked
into believing she was elsewhere?

She
touched the bark of a tree. It felt solid enough. The golden moss beneath her
feet felt real. Perhaps she really was here, but that
here
was what was
not really real. Perhaps
here
was what the anti-god had created to lure
the unsuspecting away from God’s one truth.

She
didn’t know which was the more frightening, that the illusion was in her head,
or that this place was a creation of the anti-god.

But
the creatures that inhabited this world? They had seemed, from what she could
make of them from their actions, and from Carrelli’s reports of what they had
said, to be peaceable creatures, if deluded. If she could find them, then
perhaps she might learn from them whether this world had substance in fact.

She
set off in the direction she had seen them take.

Even
as she went, scampering through the golden forest, a part of her was aware of
the flaw in her reasoning. How might she petition the truth from a race of
beings who might themselves, unknowingly, be part of the illusion created to
snare the pious? She pressed on regardless, wondering if it were only the
desire for the company of others, whoever they might be, that made her seek the
insect creatures.

After
a short while, she realised that she was hungry and thirsty. She had not shared
the fruit gathered by the aliens, although Ehrin had eaten without ill effect.
Perhaps, if she found the silver insect beings, they might be able to provide
her with something more substantial than fruit.

She
stopped, listening. In the distance she thought she heard a snort, one of the
grey creatures clearing its great proboscis. She set off in the direction of
the sound, then stopped again to listen. This time she made out the laborious
shuffle of the animals as they made their slow way through the forest, and
seconds later she glimpsed the grey hide of a beast between the trees.

She
surprised herself with her relief at coming across the caravan.

For
a minute she ran alongside the procession, concealing herself behind the trees,
and only when she drew near the first animal, carrying upon its back the
spokesman of the silver insects, did she step from the cover and stare up at
the alien.

It
saw her and called something in its high impossible language, and the beast
beneath it plodded to a halt. The being spoke to her, gesturing with a thin,
stick-like arm.

She
said, “I... I’m lost. I need food...” before realising the futility of her
words.

The
silver spokesman fluted something to the beings seated on the animals behind
it, and they replied in kind. The spokesman blinked its huge pink eyes at her,
then gestured to the place beside him high on the back of the animal.

For
some reason she could not identify, though the alien was like nothing she had
ever seen before, she did not feel threatened by him as she had by the other
beings.

She
accepted his invitation, and with difficulty scaled the flank of the animal and
at last perched beside the spokesman.

He
instructed his mount to proceed, and then turned and addressed her.

She
gestured her incomprehension, opened her mouth to show her tongue and indicate
that she intended no threat, and wondered how she might communicate to these
aliens the essence of her plight.

They
processed slowly through the forest. The alien talked almost continuously to
her, indicating trees and bushes with its many-fingered hands, and Sereth could
only make gestures that she hoped might convey that she was listening.

At
one point, a couple of hours into the journey, the alien plucked a bunch of red
berries from a shrub and offered them to Sereth. Despite her earlier caution,
she took them. Her mouth watered at the very thought of eating, and though she
was unaccustomed to berries—they were rare in the winter climes of Agstarn—she
popped one into her mouth, and then another and another as she found their
taste more than pleasing. They were sweet, like frosted-tubers, and soon she
had consumed the entire bunch.

Shortly
after that she began to feel drowsy, and then a great lethargy descended over
her, a sensation that was not at all unpleasant and rendered her physically
unable to move a muscle. Mentally, too, she was affected, filled with a strange
euphoria that made light of the fact that she was experiencing an illusion, in
the company of weird alien creatures, her future uncertain.

All
she could appreciate was the languor that cushioned her, the strange beauty of
the surrounding rainforest. Even the sudden thought, as she drifted into
unconsciousness, that this might be another of the anti-god’s ruses to beguile
her and subvert her piety, did not trouble her as she thought it might.

Seconds
later she was sleeping upon the back of the plodding beast.

She
awoke instantly, alerted by the high whistle of the alien beside her.

She
opened her eyes and stared about her. The sun was low on the horizon, where
before it had been high. Had she slept for most of the day?

They
were no longer in the forest, but climbing a narrow track up the side of a
mountain that thrust itself vertically from the surrounding land. As they
climbed, they rose above the level of the treetops, gaining a startling view of
the green ocean of foliage stretching to the horizon, with the bright blue
radiance of a river coiling sinuously into the distance.

Then
all was darkness as they entered what appeared to be the mouth of a cave. Here,
in the twilight gloom, the aliens descended their mounts and Sereth did the
same, wondering where they might be taking her. The spokesman indicated ahead,
and she made her way along a wide tunnel, which turned, eventually, into a
flight of steps seemingly carved through the heart of the rock.

Burning
torches illuminated the way, casting flickering shadows across the black walls.
The steps were tiny, made for feet much smaller than hers, and she had
difficulty climbing. She found it best if she proceeded on all fours, gaining
speed and safety this way.

The
light increased, and she looked up to see that the stairs terminated in a great
dazzle of sunlight. She slitted her eyes and climbed, at last coming to the top
of the carved stairway and standing.

She
looked around, her eyes adjusting to the glare, as the spokesman and the other
aliens emerged from the mountain and gathered around her.

She
had had no idea what to expect when she came out into the sunlight, and at
first she doubted the evidence of her eyes.

She
was standing on a level section of the mountainside, perhaps as wide as a
square in Agstarn city. But this was not what caused her to stare in wonder and
disbelief.