Helix Wars (20 page)

He did not know whether to feel violated at her ability. He looked away, at the approaching string of lights on the lip of the escarpment.

She said, “You are strange in that you show only a certain aspect of yourselves to each other. You keep parts of yourself hidden, as it were. To your father, you exhibited only what you thought he would see as your strengths, and you kept your emotions to yourself. To Michael, your best friend, again you show only your masculine attributes; you speak of nothing but your work, and sport; never your feelings.”

She was silent for a period, and he guessed what was coming. At last she said, “Perhaps this is one of the reasons your relationship with Maria is... problematic. You do not know how to share your emotions, how to open out your divided self and share with her. Perhaps the fault is that you do not fully know yourself; and how can you really share with someone a self who is not wholly known?”

He shook his head. “By that reckoning, all human relationships are doomed to failure.”

She was watching him. “Perhaps too much is expected from certain bondings? It seems strange, to me, that human society requires a pairing of the sexes that should last for years.”

He laughed. “And on Phandra? How do you do it?”

“Men and women come together briefly to propagate, and for the most part they lead separate lives. We are more open, emotionally, with each other.” She waved a hand. “But it is impossible to compare our races. Different biological drives govern us. We are a short-lived people; our children are independent far sooner than human offspring. We do not need to attend to their needs for more than two of your years. Whereas humans...”

He closed his eyes, trying not to think about Ben.

He said, “I loved Maria so much when we met, and for the first few years. We seemed to have so much in common; it seemed to work. I was so damned happy, Calla... and then we had a son.”

He stopped, then forced himself to continue, “It was shortly after Ben’s birth that Maria withdrew into herself, away from me. She accused me of not talking to her, of not sharing emotions. As far as I was concerned, I was the same as I’d always been. It was painful, watching her grow ever more distant, resentful of my very presence, finding fault with everything I did, everything I
was
. I thought that she’d got what she’d wanted from me when Ben was born. I was surplus to requirements. And then...”

She reached out and touched his hand. “I know,” she whispered. “I know what happened.”

He let the silence stretch as the train thrummed over the triple tracks and the warm, fragrant headwind blew in their faces.

“What happened brought us together for a while, for a year perhaps. Then something happened in here.” He tapped his head. “And I saw that with Ben no longer there... then I was suddenly free. You can’t imagine the sense of liberation I felt, and at the same time the guilt.”

“But you remained together.”

He nodded. “Maria wanted another child. I... I couldn’t, I just couldn’t.” He looked at the elfin, alien woman and said, “And I don’t know whether that was because I feared the pain of having another child and running the risk of... of suffering loss again, or whether I was just using this as an excuse to deny Maria, to force a separation.”

“And you never spoke with her about this.”

He shook his head. “No, I couldn’t. That is, I told her that I didn’t want another child, but not why.”

“And that is where the issue remains, unresolved, with the two of you mutually resentful.”

“And the stupid thing is that I know she’s seeing someone else, and I feel...” He stopped, staring down at her hand on his. “I feel angry and jealous and... and I just wish things were like they’d been nine, ten years ago.”

After a while, Calla said, “And you have never told this to anyone before now?”

He shook his head. “No. No, of course not.”

“And you feel better now for having done so?”

He looked up at her and smiled. “Perhaps. I don’t know.”

She nodded slowly, and was silent for a time, contemplating. “Jeff,” she said at last, “you have admitted your failings, your mistakes. You have shown insight and honesty. You know what you should do, for both Maria and yourself.”

He looked at her. “Do I?”

“Be as open with Maria as you have been with me. Your relationship with her will either end, or be repaired. I suspect that she has been just as guarded with you, and perhaps your opening up with provoke a similar honesty on her part. But the important thing is that you should talk, admit your weaknesses to each other.”

He smiled. “That’s a difficult thing for some of us humans to do, Calla.”

“I know, but it is important for your own peace of mind that the situation with Maria is resolved, and resolution will come only with candid dialogue.”

He reached out, and the silver pelt of her head felt like velvet.

He felt buoyed at some release she had effected in him. He said, “If I get back to New Earth, Calla, I promise I will do just that.”

She looked up at him. “Not if,” she said, “when.”

He nodded. “When,” he said.

She pulled away from him. “Look,” she said. “We have arrived at Lamala.”

The sail-rail train lumbered towards the string of lights that stretched along the edge of the escarpment. A huddle of timber buildings came into view, a town so chaotic to Ellis’s sense of architectural order that it appeared less planned from the street up than dropped from a great height. The three-storey buildings leaned against each other drunkenly, their eaves attempting to meet over narrow alleys and streets. To his amazement the sail-rail track cut straight through the jumble. The train slowed and inched its way past gas-lighted windows and the twisted gable ends of warped wooden terraces. He could have reached out and plucked the weeds growing from the overhanging gutters.

Minutes later the train came to the escarpment and lurched forward alarmingly. Slowly, brakes screeching with the effort of keeping the bloated galleon from hurtling down the incline, they rolled into the station, its warped timbers enclosing them on either side. Ellis stared ahead at the jumble of buildings and alleys which tumbled to the plain far below.

“We will be here for a short while,” Calla said, “and will set off again in the early hours.”

He peered down at the teeming platform. “No sign of Sporelli troops.”

“They will be waiting at Mayalahn station,” she said. “By which time we will have left the train and will be well on our way.”

They returned below decks to their cabin and Calla suggested they take the opportunity to sleep. Curtained cupboards doubled as beds, far too cramped for Ellis to sleep in with comfort. He dragged a straw mattress onto the floorboards and lay down, watching as Calla slipped into her bed-cupboard and drew the curtain after her.

He listened to the noises from outside as the train was loaded, and stared through the mullioned window at the stars. He considered what Calla had elicited from him, and what she had told him, and the fact that she had so little time left before she passed from this life.

That night, sleep was a long time coming.

3

H
E AWOKE TO
pitch blackness and the sound of someone rapping on timber.

He sat up, attempting to adjust his vision to the darkness. He sensed Calla brush past him and approach the door. She pulled it open, and he had to shield his eyes from the sudden dazzle. His first thought was that they had been discovered and that this was a Sporelli raiding party.

Then he heard Calla speaking in her breathy tongue, and a similar reply from someone carrying a lamp.

She approached Ellis and knelt, while the bearer of the lamp remained on the threshold. Ellis made out an old Phandran, presumably the Elder Calla had spoken to the evening before.

Now she said, “There has been another change of plan. The Elder has been speaking to passengers who had boarded at Lamala. They reported increased Sporelli activity in the area where my people were due to damage the track.”

“So what do we do now?”

“The Elder says that when the train reaches the coastal plain, it will slow down while the sails are hoisted. This is our only chance...”

He stared at her in the half-light. “To do what?”

She hesitated, then said, “To jump from the train.”

“Jump?” He recalled the drop from the window and shook his head. “We’d kill ourselves.”

He felt her hand clutching his arm. “The Elder says that the train will come almost to a stop. His cabin is directly below ours, and much closer to the ground. We will go there now.”

She fetched her travelling bag from the bed-recess, and Ellis quickly pulled on his boots. Seconds later they were hurrying through the cramped, twisting corridors, following the bobbing lamp, and squeezing down a staircase that corkscrewed into the bowels of the train.

They came to a cabin similar in dimensions to their own. The Elder ushered them within and crossed to a mullioned window. Ellis opened it and peered out. The drop was around five metres – enough for an ill-judged jump to break an ankle, or worse.

For the next hour he and Calla sat on the window-seat, the window open in readiness, and waited.

“And when we leave the train?” he asked at one point.

“We will make our way through fields to a canal,” she said. “There I will ask a bargee to take us to the coast.”

“Won’t I prove something of a disincentive for them to help?” A giant alien, he thought, the like of which they had never seen before.

“Not when I have explained the situation, and told them you are working for the Phandrans, against the Sporelli.”

He looked through the window. Shadowed land raced by below, and the greased wheels hummed on the tracks. “When we leave the train, how far will we be from the coast?”

“Perhaps fifty kilometres, a little more. It will take us a day or so to get there.”

The Elder spoke to Calla, and she relayed his words. “We are approaching the plain. See, the land is levelling and we are slowing.”

He nodded, apprehensive. Overhead the brakes squealed and the train slowed still further. The Elder spoke, and Calla said, “He wishes us speed and safety. Now climb out, Jeff.”

The train was still travelling at speed, despite having slowed considerably. He opened the window as far as it would go, then climbed out feet first. It was a tight squeeze, and he skinned his back on the frame as he forced his way out. His boots found a ledge a metre below the window opening. He turned and, standing upright, felt for a hand-hold. His fingers encountered a gap in the timbers. He held on and edged his way along the ledge to allow Calla room to climb out.

She hopped onto the sill, making his exit seem clumsy, then turned lithely, lowered herself and found the ledge on which he was standing. She edged her way along and joined him, peering down.

He said, “It’s still a long drop. I think I can climb down. You?”

Lips nipped between teeth, she peered down and nodded.

He made out hand- and foot-holds in the sheer face of the timber: flanges, bosses, gaps between planks and jutting ledges.

“Okay, slowly does it...”

He lowered himself so that he was kneeling on the ledge, then peered down for the nearest foot-hold. A couple of metres down and to his right was a protruding boss. He lowered his right leg towards it, found purchase with his boot, and held onto the ledge with outstretched arms. He found hand-holds, looked down and made out a projecting ledge. Carefully he eased himself down. Like this, descending carefully little by little, he descended the vertical face.

At one point he looked up to see Calla nimbly coming after him, and he smiled to himself at her agility.

They were still travelling at speed, though slowing down all the time. He looked up and made out the tiny shapes of Phandrans, silhouetted against the stars, in the rigging high above. The crew were unfurling the sails.

Calla lowered herself so that she was standing beside him on a ledge, her face pressed to the timbers. If she felt at all apprehensive, her calm expression gave nothing away. She stared at him with big eyes and smiled unexpectedly, and the odd juxtaposition of such a warming smile in such a dangerous situation made him want to reach out and hug her.

He looked down. Grassland spun by below, a couple of metres from his feet. He turned himself around so that he had his back to the timbers. “On the count of three, I’m jumping.” He hesitated, waiting for the train to slow even further. When it failed to do so – in fact, when it seemed to him that it was gaining speed, he said, “Okay. One, two, three!”

He leaped, and a second later impacted with the ground. His thighs hit his chest, winding him, and he tumbled head over heels and came to rest on his back. Gasping, he rolled over and pulled himself onto all fours, taking great breaths to replace the air punched from his lungs.

He looked up, saw the dark bulk of the train, sails billowing, racing away into the darkness.

“Calla!” he called out in alarm.