The Fall of Tartarus (33 page)

Before
he began the long trek from the volcano to the cove where his yacht was
anchored, Connery knelt beside the cairn, closed his eyes and asked for her
forgiveness.

[Interzone 141,1999]

Hunter
opened his eyes and dimly registered a crystal dome above him. Beyond, he made
out a thousand rainbows vaulting through the sky like the ribs of a cathedral
ceiling. Below the rainbows, as if supporting them, mile-high trees rose,
dwellings of various design lodged within their branches. Large insects, on
closer inspection Hunter recognised them as
Vespula Vulgaris Denebian,
shuttled back and forth between the trees. He guessed he was on Deneb XVII,
The-World-of-a-Million-Wonders.

He
was on Million? He was
alive
? It was a miracle. Or was this a dream? Was
he dying, was this some cruel jest played by his embattled consciousness as he
slipped into oblivion? Would this vision soon cease, to be replaced by total
nothingness? The concept frightened him, even though he told himself that he
had nothing to fear: dead, he would not have the awareness with which to
apprehend the terrible fact of his extinction.

Now,
however, he had. He tried to scream.

He
could not open his mouth. Nor for that matter, he realised, could he move any
other part of his body. Come to that, he could feel nothing. He tried to move
his head, shift his gaze. He remained staring through the dome at the rainbow
sky.

Following
his pang of mental turmoil, he seemed to sense his surroundings with greater
clarity. The prismatic parabolas overhead struck him like visual blows, and for
the first time he made out sound: the strummed music of troubadours, the cool
laughter of a waterfall, and muted chatter, as contented crowds promenaded far
below.

Such
fidelity could not be the product of a dwindling consciousness, surely? But the
alternative, that he was indeed alive, was almost as hard to believe.

How
could anyone have survived an attack of such ferocity?

In
his mind’s eye, dimly, like a half-remembered image from a dream, he recalled
the attack: claws and teeth and stingers; he had experienced pain both physical
- he had been torn savagely limb from limb - and mental, as he had known he was
going to die.

And
beyond that instant of mental terror?

Where
had the attack taken place. How long ago? Had he been alone, or ... ?

He
wanted more than anything to call her name, less to verify the fact of his own
existence than to seek assurance of her safety.

‘
Sam
!’
But the sound would not form.

He
felt his grasp on reality slacken. The colours faded, the sounds ebbed. He fell
away, slipped - not into oblivion, as he had feared - but into an ocean of unconsciousness
inhabited by the great dim shapes of half-remembered visions, like basking
cetaceans. Hunter dreamed.

At
length he felt himself resurface. The rainbows again, the stringed music and
babble of water. He still could not shift his vision, not that this overly
troubled him. He was more occupied by trying to shuffle into some semblance of
order the images revealed in his dream.

He
had been on Tartarus Major, he recalled - that great, ancient, smouldering
world sentenced to death by the mutinous primary which for millennia had
granted the planet its very life. He had been commissioned to catalogue and
holopix Tartarean fauna, much of which had never been registered by the
Galactic Zoological Centre, Paris, Earth - in the hope that some of the unique examples
of the planet’s wildlife might be saved from extinction, removed off-world,
before the supernova blew.

He
had been with Sam, his wife, his life and joy - Sam, carrying his child. He
recalled her warning scream, and he had turned, too late to lift his laser. A
charging nightmare: teeth and claws, and pain . . . Oh, the pain!

And,
above everything, Sam’s screams.

And
his fear, as he died, for her safety.

Now
he wanted to sob, but he had not the physical wherewithal to do so; he felt as
though his soul were sobbing for what might have become of Sam.

Unconsciousness
claimed him, mercifully.

When
next he awoke, what seemed like aeons later, the trapezoid lozenges of sky
between the cross-hatched rainbows were cerise with sunset, and marked with
early stars. The achingly beautiful notes of a musical instrument, perhaps a
clariphone, floated up from the thoroughfares below.

He
tried to shift his gaze, move his head, but it was impossible. He had
absolutely no sensation in any part of his body.

A
cold dread surged through his mind like liquid nitrogen.

He
had no body - that was the answer. He was but a brain, a pair of eyes. Only
that much of him had survived the attack. He was the guinea pig of some
diabolical experiment, his eyes fixed forever on the heavens, the stars he
would never again visit.

Hunter.
He was Hunter. For as long as he recalled, he had gone by that simple
appellation. He had roved the stars, hunting down the more bizarre examples of
galactic fauna, amassing a vast holo-library, as well as extensive case-notes,
that were regarded as invaluable by the legion of zoologists and biologists
from Earth to Zigma-Zeta. He was a scholar, an intrepid adventurer
nonpareil.
He had often gone where lesser men feared to go, like Tartarus
... He wondered how his death had been taken by the galaxy at large, how his
friends had mourned, jealous colleagues smiled that at last his need to prove
himself had instead proved to be his undoing.

Tartarus,
a double danger: to go among beasts unknown, on a world in imminent danger of
stellar annihilation. He should have swallowed his pride and left well alone.
Instead, he had dragged Sam along with him.

He
recalled, with a keening melancholy deep within him like a dying scream, that
Sam had tried to talk him out of the trip. He recalled his stubbornness. ‘I
can’t be seen to back out now, Samantha.’

He
recalled her insistence that, if he did make the journey, then she would
accompany him. He recalled his smug, self-righteous satisfaction at her
decision.

As
unconsciousness took him once again, he was aware of a stabbing pain within his
heart.

Someone
was watching him, peering down at where he was imprisoned. He had no idea how
long he had been staring up at the lattice of rainbows, mulling over his
memories and regrets, before he noticed the blue, piercing eyes, the odd bald
head at the periphery of his vision.

The
man obligingly centred himself in Hunter’s line of sight.

He
stared at his tormentor, tried to order his outrage. He boiled with anger.
Do you know who I am?
he wanted to ask the man.
I am Hunter, famed and
feted the galaxy over! How dare you do this to me!

Hands
braced on knees, the man looked down on him. Something about his foppish
appearance sent a shiver of revulsion through Hunter. His captor wore the white
cavaner boots of a nobleman, ballooning pantaloons, and a sleeveless overcoat
of some snow-white fur. His face was thin, bloodless - almost as pale as his
vestments.

He
reminded Hunter of an albino wasp: the concave chest, the slim waist, the soft
abdomen swelling obscenely beneath it.

Without
taking his gaze off Hunter, the man addressed whispered words to someone out of
sight. Hunter made out a muttered reply. The man nodded.

‘My
name is Alvarez,’ he said. ‘Do not be alarmed. You are in no danger. We are looking
after you.’

Oddly,
far from reassuring him, the words put an end to the notion that he might still
be dreaming, and convinced him of the reality of this situation.

He
tried to speak but could not.

Alvarez
was addressing his companion again, who had moved into Hunter’s view: a fat man
garbed in robes of gold and crimson.

Alvarez
disappeared, returned seconds later with a rectangular, opaqued screen on
castors. He positioned it before Hunter, so that it eclipsed his view of the
sky. Hunter judged, from the position of the screen and his captors, that he
was lying on the floor, Alvarez and the fat man standing on a platform above
him.

He
stared at the screen as Alvarez flicked a switch on its side.

A
work of art? A macabre hologram that might have had some significance to the
jaded citizens of The-World-of-a-Million-Wonders, who had seen
everything
before?

The
‘gram showed the figure of a man, suspended - but the figure of a man as Hunter
had never before witnessed. It was as if the unfortunate subject of the artwork
had been flayed alive, skinned to reveal purple and puce slabs of muscle shot
through with filaments of tendons, veins and arteries - like some medical
student’s computer graphic which built up, layer on layer, from skeleton to
fully-fleshed human being.

At
first, Hunter thought that the figure was a mere representation, a still
hologram - then he saw a movement behind the figure, a bubble rising through
the fluid in which it was suspended. And, then, he made out the slight ticking
pulse at its throat.

He
could not comprehend why they were showing him this monster.

Alvarez
leaned forward. ‘You have no reason to worry,’ he said. ‘You are progressing
well, Mr Hunter, considering the condition you were in when you arrived.’

Realisation
crashed through Hunter. He stared again at the reflection of himself, at the
monstrosity he had become.

Alvarez
opaqued the screen, wheeled it away. He returned and leaned forward. ‘We are
delighted with your progress, Mr Hunter.’ He nodded to his fat companion. ‘Dr
Fischer.’

The
doctor touched some control in his hand and Hunter slipped into blessed
oblivion.

When
he came to his senses it took him some minutes before he realised that his
circumstances were radically altered. The view through the dome was
substantially the same - rainbows, towering trees - but shifted slightly, moved
a few degrees to the right.

He
watched a vast, majestic star-galleon edge slowly past the dome, its dozen
angled, multicoloured sails bellying in the breeze. He monitored its royal
progress through the evening sky until it was lost to sight - and then he
realised that he had, in order to track its passage, moved his head.

For
the first time he became aware of his immediate surroundings.

He
was in a small, comfortable room formed from a slice of the dome: two walls
hung with tapestries, the third the outer wall of diamond facets.

With
trepidation, he raised his head and peered down the length of his body. He was
naked, but not as naked as he had been on the last occasion when he had seen
himself. This time he was covered with skin - tanned, healthy looking skin over
well-developed muscles. He remembered the attack in the southern jungle of
Tartarus, relived the terrible awareness of being riven limb from limb.

And
now he was whole again.

He
was in a rejuvenation pod, its canoe-shaped length supporting a web of finely
woven fibres which cradled him with the lightest of touches. It was as if he
were floating on air. Leads and electrodes covered him, snaking over the side
of the pod and disappearing into monitors underneath.

He
tried to sit up, but it was all he could do to raise his arm. The slightest
exertion filled him with exhaustion. But what did he expect, having newly risen
from the dead?

He
experienced then a strange ambivalence of emotion. Of course he was grateful to
be alive - the fear of oblivion he had experienced upon first awakening was
still fresh enough in his memory to fill him with an odd, retrospective dread,
and a profound gratitude for his new lease of life. But something, some nagging
insistence at the back of his mind, hectored him with the improbability of his
being resurrected.

Very
well - he was famous, was respected in his field, but even he had to admit that
his death would have been no great loss to the galaxy at large. So why had
Alvarez, or the people for whom Alvarez worked, seen fit to outlay millions on
bringing him back to life? For certain, Sam could not have raised the funds to
finance the procedure, even if she had realised their joint assets. He was
rich, but not
that
rich. Why, the very sailship journey from the rim
world of Tartarus to the Core planet of Million would have bankrupted him.