Helix Wars (8 page)

Now, she was determined to discharge that debt of honour.

If, of course, Jeff Ellis were still alive.

The flier burst through the cloud cover shrouding her world. She stared out at the arc of worlds, scintillating in the dazzling sunlight far below, and set course for Phandra ten worlds further along the circuit.

F
OUR
/// C
ALLA’S
D
ESTINY

1

C
ALLA’S FATHER, WHO
had been a Diviner, once told her that she was destined for great things. She would, he said, travel far and accomplish much.

Now she was old, and though she had travelled the length and breadth of her world, Phandra, and accomplished everything that she could as a Healer, she had in her heart expected something
more
. She had gone through her life wondering what it might be, this great thing; she had resisted petitioning other Diviners and seeking her destiny. What would happen would happen. But as the years passed, she began to wonder if all her father had meant was that she would travel the face of Phandra and heal thousands of her people.

She had less than one year of life remaining, and she still harboured the hope that this great thing might happen.

She rose early that morning, as always, and bathed in the stream that tumbled down the mountainside beside her hut. The water was ice cold, and concentrated her thoughts. Today she was due to go into the village of Yan and conduct her monthly healing sessions with whoever sought her services.

And then next year, in the season of honey-fruit, she would make a final journey to the Retreat of Verlaine and for the last two weeks of her life take to her bed, surrounded by Elders and acolytes, and slowly, painlessly, die.

Hers would have been an exemplary life, a life spent in the service of others, healing her fellow Phandrans, for she had inherited her mother’s talent for Healing and none of her father’s for Divining.

And when she had passed from this life, she would join her parents, and their parents, and everyone else who had ever lived on Phandra – and, who could tell, on the Helix and beyond as well – in the reality which underpinned this reality.

The realm of Fahlaine.

Her last duty before leaving her little hut and setting off for Yan was to feed the birds that gathered every dawn and awaited their handful of seed. She stepped from the hut, clutching the seed, and expected to be deluged in a twittering, feathered storm.

But this morning the birds did not come. She stood, almost stunned, and stared into the clear blue sky. There were no birds, no ice-hawks, redwings, or night-pippins in the air or perched in the yahn-trees.

She waited, then called out and whistled, but still they did not come.

This she took as an omen.

With heavy heart she returned to her hut, packed her bag with the medicaments of her trade, donned the red robe of her calling and set off down the rocky path to Yan.

She moved slowly, picking her way with care over the rocks which, over the years, her footsteps and those of Healers before her had worn to rounded smoothness.

She was troubled by the absence of birds, and no matter how hard she tried to fathom their non-arrival, she could think of no satisfactory explanation.

She was a third of the way to Yan, with the sun rising over the mountain peak and warming her back, when she felt the pain in her head. She stopped dead in her tracks and touched her temple. The vicarious pain of another throbbed in her forebrain like a migraine. A boy, no more than four seasons old, was approaching along the path. His thoughts, addled with pain, were a confusion of horror, fright and disbelief. She hurried onwards, anxious to find the boy and treat him and learn of the catastrophe that had befallen him and, if his desperate thoughts were to be credited, the rest of his village.

He came into view five minutes later. He was no longer climbing the path, but had collapsed beside the same stream that, higher up the hillside, surged past her hut. She hurried down to the stricken child, damping out the distress of his thoughts and his pulsing pain.

She stifled a cry when she reached him and saw the severity of his wounds. He was on his belly, attempting to crawl to the stream and slake his thirst. She turned him over, weeping as she did so, and saw the bloody hole in his chest. It was a miracle he had managed to drag himself this far from the village. With each ragged breath he took, more blood pulsed from his wound and stained his jerkin.

She touched his forehead, working to ease the pain, and he smiled up at her. “Healer,” he whispered.

She murmured consolatory platitudes, for that was all she could manage now. He would die, in minutes, and the only blessing was that he would now die without pain.

He was trying to speak, to tell her what had happened, but she whispered for him to rest and opened her mind to his, briefly.

She withdrew, catching her breath, having seen enough in just three brief seconds.

Someone had attacked the village of Sharah, half a day beyond Yan, on the main track to Verlaine. She had discerned fleeting images of otherworldly vehicles,
mechanical
things, and creatures in black uniforms firing weapons into dwelling huts.

She soothed the boy, and his breathing came easily. Five minutes later his eyes fluttered shut and he died.

She laid him out on the path, decorating his chest with a garland of blue fahrl flowers, and spoke the words of Leaving above his small body.

She stood, shouldered her bag, and hurried on down the path.

Soon she came to the village of Yan and found that other wounded Phandrans had sought refuge there, with tales of violence and destruction. She ministered to the needs of the injured, treating everything from bullet wounds to burns, and from the dozen men, women and children she treated she managed to piece together a fragmented scenario of what had taken place at the village of Sharah that morning.

At dawn, without warning, a flying craft had descended from the sky and six blue-skinned men in black uniforms had jumped out. In minutes, they had collected together all the elders in the village, and one of the aliens, speaking a corrupt form of Phandran, had interrogated the cowering old folk. The blue men wanted to know where the humans were. She knew the word – humans were another, technological, race of beings who dwelled upon the Helix. But the invaders’ request made no sense; the elders knew nothing of the whereabouts of any humans, and told their tormentors this... and their admission provoked terrible rage.

An invader shot an elder at point-blank range, and another turned a device that spat flame and torched a hut. Inside were Phandrans, who died a terrible death, and still the alien soldiers questioned the elders, and then other men and women, demanding to know the whereabouts of the humans and threatening everyone with death if they did not speak.

Many villagers managed to flee the violence, but many did not, and the heads of those who had escaped rang with the cries of the dying as the soldiers wrought their senseless carnage.

Calla moved from injured man to maimed woman, from sobbing child to terrified infant, and did what she could to ease their pain and heal their wounds, and when she had learned all she could about what had happened, she damped their thoughts, allowed their nightmares no further place in her head.

When she had done all she could for the dozen survivors, she knew what she had to do next.

She repacked her bag, lodged it on her shoulder and hurried from the village, ignoring the pleas of the elders to think twice before approaching the village of Sharah.

She hurried down the path, probing ahead for straggling survivors, and for the minds of the men from another world. She encountered only blissful mind-silence at odds with her memories of the pain she had left behind.

She came to the village of Sharah at noon, as the bright sunlight cast sharp shadows among a scene of utter destruction. Not a single hut or dwelling had escaped the attention of the aliens. Twists of smoke rose in the clear air. The dead lay where they had fallen, pierced by bullets, scorched by fire. She moved among them in a daze, arranging limbs, closing eyes, showing a respect to the dead that the aliens had failed to show them while they lived.

She wept, less for the dead – for they had passed on to the realm of Fahlaine – but for the souls of the people who had done this. How reduced they must be, to be able to commit such violence; how ignorant of the sanctity of life.

She had once seen a yahn-gatherer, in a fit of drunken jealousy, strike a work-mate, and that had been shocking enough.

Phandrans were a pacific people: many millennia ago the Builders had saved her kind, and ever since, the Phandrans had lived by the principles of their saviours, respecting the sanctity of life, eschewing the way of violence.

She had heard that not all the races of the Helix lived by these tenets, but the knowledge had always been abstract, intellectual. Now she had ample evidence of it.

But what did it mean? Why had the aliens come to her world, in search of humans?

Had the Diviners seen this? Of course they had, she reasoned, for the Diviners saw everything. So they had foreseen this, and decided to keep the knowledge to themselves, in their wisdom – for they knew the course of future events and understood the pattern of this arbitrary violence in the grander scheme of things.

Still, it seemed inexplicably cruel to her. Couldn’t they have warned the villagers, told them to be elsewhere this morning?

But who was she to question the motivations of the Diviners?

She was startled by a sudden noise. She looked up, expecting to see an alien flier descending from the heavens to finish the business begun that morning. Instead, on the loop of track above the village, she saw two green-robed Elders rising on the back of a rurl.

They paused, staring down at her with serene dignity.

She raised a hand in a forlorn wave.

They called down to her, “Calla-vahn-villa?”

“That is I,” she said.

“Approach, Healer,” the older of the Elders said.

She looked around the carnage, feeling a sweep of sadness return, and moved from the village. She walked up the path that led, eventually, to the track which made its way to the Retreat of Verlaine.

She stood before the great wrinkled head of the rurl, which regarded her with its tiny, rheumy eyes, and stared up at the pair of Elders.

They were males, and wore their great age in the sallowness and in the folds of their skin, almost as wrinkled as the rurl they rode.

“I did what little I could,” she said. “I treated those survivors who made their way to Yan, but no one survived here.”

The oldest Elder inclined his venerable head and said, “You did what you could, Calla-vahn-villa. You obeyed your calling. Now you will come with us.”

She squinted up at them, silhouettes against the noon-day sun. “To where?”

“The Retreat of Verlaine,” they said as one.

She showed her surprise. “May I ask who has summoned me, Elders?”

“Diviner Tomar,” said one, “on a matter of the utmost importance. Now please, climb up and join us and we will be upon our way.”

She did as she was instructed, climbed up the scaled leg of the rurl and straddled its broad back. The creature set off, lumbering along the track, and Calla fell to wondering just what Diviner Tomar might want with her.

2

A
DAY LATER,
with frequent stops upon the way, they arrived at the Retreat of Verlaine.

She visited the Retreat twice a year, but it still struck her anew with its soaring majesty. Built into the very summit of Phandra’s highest mountain by the very first generation of settlers on Phandra, according to her father it was a replica of the greatest of all Retreats on the Phandran homeworld, five hundred light years away towards the rim of the galaxy. Its lower ramparts nestled in the gulfs and fissures of the mountain, while its towers and belvederes soared above the mountain’s craggy peaks. It was the seminary where as a child, after leaving her parents, she had been trained; it was like home to her.

The rurl laboured up the switchback road that rose from the valley, and each bend of the road brought her closer to the vast timber door, fully a hundred times her height, set into the cliff-face.

It was almost sunset by the time the rurl eased its bulk around the final bend and halted before the gate.

She took her leave of the Elders and approached the tiny picket gate set into the timbers. As ever, the tiny door opened before she reached it, and she stepped through.

A nervous acolyte greeted her and led the way up the winding staircase to the central corridor. She had expected to be left in one of the waiting rooms outside the Diviners’ chamber, but the acolyte twittered “This way, this way...” and led her from the front of the Retreat and through the mountain itself towards the Council chamber.