In Solitary (12 page)

Instantly I was on my feet, pulling Tiptihani with me.

‘Run!’ I urged her. ‘They’ve caught up with us.’

She struggled along beside me still groggy from her deep sleep. My head was none too good either as the air was still not clear of gases from the vent. We had run headlong down the slope for about four hundred metres when, gasping for breath, she turned and looked upwards.

‘Where? Where’s their vehicle?’

I stopped. She was right – where was their vehicle? They could not have hidden it on the stark landscape between the top of the volcano and the foothills below. Why should they bother to walk to us?

‘There’s something just a little bit strange about all this,’ I said. ‘You keep moving towards that clump of boulders ahead. I’m going to try to see what they’re doing.’

Tiptihani did as she was told and I ran swiftly behind a spur of the lava flow, then climbing cautiously on the jagged rock I peered over the corner to see if they were following us.

They were still coming, but very slowly and with elaborate stealth, pausing every so often to look ahead of them.

Weyym’s mucus! They were spying on
us!

It must have been a long time since the Soal had had to do anything that involved subterfuge and they were not very good at it. They looked like their own children playing games and if the situation had not been so grave I would have found it humorous. The question, among many questions, was why were they doing it? The leader had a brainstinger in his hand and I could see no real reason for not using it.

I climbed down and ran on to where Tiptihani was struggling in a deep area of ash. I pulled her out roughly and we continued skipping over the loose cinders, downwards towards a comparatively large patch of greenery.

‘What shall we do?’ she asked desperately, as we paused for breath under cover of the bushes. A lizard stood, high on his forelegs, throat pulsing, regarding us from a near-by ledge.

‘I don’t think we need do anything for a while. They don’t seem interested in taking us captive just yet. All they seem to want to do is observe us – without being seen themselves.’

‘But we’ve seen them!’

‘Yes, and they know it – but their orders are presumably not to approach us. Do you think we’ve picked up some sort of disease or something without knowing it? Perhaps they’re frightened to come any closer?’

‘How could we have done that? We’ve been at sea last few days and before that on our islands.’

I shook my head.

‘Well, see for yourself,’ I said, waving my hand towards our enemy. ‘They’re not coming any closer. Every time we stop, they stop. It’s like one of the Soal comedy mimes. I admit the military can be stupid, but they’ve never acted like this before. They obviously know something of which we’re unaware. Come on – let’s get down to the beach.’

I rose to continue our journey to the shore.

When we reached the beach some while later we trotted along the shoreline looking for the Satawal. Perhaps we could get out of range before the Soal got back to their subsea craft? I told Tiptihani. It was a very long shot as they would no doubt have left someone in the vehicle.

The Satawal came into sight and I slowed my jog to a walking pace as we drew near to it.

Reaching the canoe Tiptihani immediately
jumped in. I intended to follow but my foot dislodged a stone as I prepared to spring – except that it was not a stone, it was a grey, warty fish, and one of its dorsal spines entered my instep. I screamed – high and long. So high in fact, that no sound actually came to my throat.

‘Look out!’ said Tiptihani as the fish scudded through the shallows and under a stone. ‘Don’t touch it.’

I paled. ‘I already have,’ I said hoarsely, for the pain in my foot was making it difficult to breathe.

‘Oh no,’ she whispered, the colour draining from her face, which frightened me beyond measure.

‘What was it?’ I cried.

Tiptihani, seeing my distress, immediately regained her composure.

‘Don’t worry, just sit down quietly and try not to move. That is important. If you move poison will reach your heart much more quickly.’

I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, accelerating with the onrush of panic. Blood thudded in my ears as my head filled with pain and my sight began to fail, the greyness moving in from outside edges of my field of vision. I made a quick, and for me, courageous decision.

‘Go on Tiptihani. Leave me here.’

She hesitated, then she said,

‘It is best Soal find you – otherwise you will die.’ Then she ran away to drop the mainsail and put out to sea. I watched the tall canoe skip the reef before sinking to my knees.

I was getting weaker and more afraid as the moments slipped away from me. I was dying – I felt it. What a useless man I was. I had done nothing of any consequence in my whole life. I groaned aloud. Finally they arrived, just before I dropped down the pit of blackness into unconsciousness.

‘Help me,’ I managed to beg of my persecutors. I dimly perceived one of them bending over me, and then I let go of the edge of awareness.

The shaft I had fallen into was as deep as
Weyym’s universe itself – and while I fell my head spun with fantasies of dinosaurs, crunching in gargantuan pleasure on the brittle bodies of Soal. The Soal had had dinosaur-like creatures in their evolutionary cycle on their old world, but their formative era had overlapped that of the giant lizards and their folk lore was full of dragons, real and created. It had impressed the birdmen to find that Earth had also been trodden flat by tons of reptilian flesh and bone. So I enjoyed the spectacle of monstrous teeth splintering Soal bones, even though my head felt like metal and my stomach was emptying itself, over and over again, like a mountain waterfall throwing forth its contents in spasmodic surges.

I swam to semi-consciousness once or twice before becoming fully aware of my surroundings. The first time I merely sensed a dim green light with figures moving to and fro across it. Then I again drifted off into a dream world. The second time a distorted Soal face was inches away from my own. A finger was lifting my eyelid and the owner appeared to be attempting to look inside my head, using my eye as a window. When I finally struggled to the surface for the third time I managed to stay there.

I felt extremely weak and my head was impossible to lift but I was at least still alive. The green light was still with me and I seemed to be sharing my room with some inquisitive fish that swam backward and forwards alongside by bunk. Reaching out I attempted to touch one – and touched the transparent panel between the fish and me instead. I realized where I was then – in a cabin inside the Soal craft, and we were obviously submerged and moving slowly.

I tried to raise myself but the effort got me nowhere and only made me feel like vomiting. There were weeds outside, and all the colours of coral that Tangiia had shown me on the island, so we were in very shallow water. Just as I was contemplating this the plants dropped away and the ocean took on a darker hue. We were on our way into deep ocean.

The cabin door opened and a Soal entered. He or she was an elderly alien but not doting.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked in a voice that surprised even me with its dullness.

The Soal regarded me for a moment and then said
in its own language and frequency, ‘It is of no use speaking – I don’t understand Terran. But I am told you can mouth-read our language so I will tell you some answers to the questions you are probably asking me. The girl is not with us – she has sailed away on her own …’

I felt guilty for a moment since her welfare had not been my prime concern. I had been worried about my own circumstances.

‘… we let her believe in her escape because it will suit a superior’s purpose. My name is Reandeller by the way …’ A female name, ‘… and I have no interest in all this intrigue. I am a doctor, straight and simple, and my one concern is to get you back to health – after which I understand they’re going to execute you, but that doesn’t interest me either. If the execution goes wrong and you end up a cripple,
then
I shall be interested once more – however, to get back to the task in hand, you are in a craft heading towards Ostraylea and at the moment you are still very ill. It took me some while to analyse the poison and produce an antidote – but, well, you’re alive at least. I don’t know how much damage has been done to your internal organs but as long as you lie still for a while I don’t think there’s anything that we can’t repair …’

‘And then burn with the rest of me,’ I retorted as hotly as my condition would allow, forgetting she could not understand – but she understood my face.

The crossed-beaks from Reandeller.

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I see that amused you. Well, one can never tell. Tomorrow we may have decided to create an amnesty for all political prisoners and you will be free, and thanks to me, whole and healthy. Who can say? I’ll let you sleep now, and be assured that no one …’

And there the information ended for she had forgotten I was reading and not listening, and had turned towards the door, still speaking. I could have finished it off though ‘… no one will disturb you until you’re well again.’ A true Soal, Reandeller. She minded her own business – with her rank and position if necessary.

That left me minding
my
business – and business consisted of very dreary pastimes. I concentrated on watching the
ocean smooth by the window. The fish were not numerous and they tended to be of the predator variety – not at all picturesque in appearance but beautiful to watch none-the-less. Muscular sharks and the brown bodies of porpoise in full … I was thinking of flight, since they resembled birds in their gracefulness. But even new pastimes pall when they are replayed by the day and I gradually sank into gloom and depression.

My depression remained with me even when I regained enough strength to stand and walk about the cabin. Apart from the almost paralysing fear of the certain death I was about to face, haunting me night and day, there was also the agonizing experience of the delay in reaching our destination. I did not want to reach Ostraylea and my execution – but at the same time I was not fool enough to think the craft was heading directly for that place. For one thing we were travelling much too slowly and for another we occasionally paused outside island reefs. I got the impression that the craft was checking other islands using a haphazard route – but I was not sure enough to be satisfied. Waiting to die is a terrifying experience – waiting to begin to wait, and not knowing how long, shreds the spirit.

Reandeller did not ease the situation by visiting me occasionally, for she never failed to leave me puzzling over some enigmatic remark.

‘You can forget your friend,’ she said one time, ‘for he never forgets to remember you.’

If she was being sadistically sarcastic she meant Endrod. If not, Lintar. One of them, I was sure, would be waiting for me at the end of the journey. Since it would make no difference whether I lived or died which one it was, I hoped it would be Endrod. He at least would not be heavily censorious of my actions and at the same time full of pity for me – Endrod would only gloat.

Reandeller also brought me a small fine-meshed wire cage the shape and size of a husked coconut. Inside the cage were two mayflies – she said she bred a multitude of flies as a hobby and to inquire into various ways of spreading bacteria – an activity useful for wiling away submersion time. As I watched the insects delicately picking their way over the
wires and joining together in what appeared to be sexual union, Reandeller told me I should be interested because they lived approximately a day, and that short lifetime was spent exploring carefully the inside of a cage.

‘It may serve to remind you that your
day
is nearing its end, she said, ‘and the similar explorations you decided to embark upon in your own prison will soon be over. And what will they have taught you? These explorations? The answer is from the two insects – you will learn that you have lived and died in a cage.’

I thought at first she meant my prison was the world, but Soal are usually very precise and she did say ‘inside’ the cage. I realized, after staring for a whole day at the contours of the mayfly prison with its remarkable resemblance to a human skull, that she didn’t mean the globe – she meant my head.

With excellent timing on Reandeller’s part, we reached the end of our journey a few moments after the second mayfly died.

I was taken in a chiton by the sea captain to a
place inland where the main Soal community lay, beneath the shadow of the giant mushroom. All the way there I stared out, first at the coastal green, and then the desert fringes with its patches of jungle encroaching on sand, thinking that this was probably my last view of the outside world.

The one that was waiting my arrival at the Soal-made oasis beside the tower was of course Endrod. He greeted me without malice, but then proceeded to berate the seacraft captain for having arrested me, which he must have done once already, when the craft had reported my capture. The captain stood with averted face while I watched the tirade, not even pretending to understand why the captain was being reprimanded instead of praised for bringing me to justice.

When it was all over Endrod turned to me and his beak snapped quickly as he said in Terran, ‘Let’s walk along the vats, human? You haven’t seen the Ostraylean vats have you? They’re somewhat larger than those in Brytan.’

‘Why are you here?’ I asked him. ‘Have you been transferred? Had I known that I would have stayed on the mudflats and rotted – rather than see you again.’

He smiled. ‘You’re not being very flattering to yourself human. It’s precisely because you’re here that I came. To answer your query – I haven’t been moved, I came at my own accord ostensibly to visit a Stringbrother, but in reality to foster something that will bring about the return of my
former rank – and the destruction of the human race …’