DAY 12

 

 

From the diary of Dr Hugo Baal

June 33rd

Yesterday was an awful, and terrible, and yet it has to be said, a truly amazing day. A day full of incidents and horrors and marvels.

I think back on it all: our arrival at Helms City, the dinner, the dancing, the unexpected ambush by the DRs, the death and destruction, the loss of our second base, and the shocking realisation that many of my esteemed colleagues and, dare I say it,¹ friends on this expedition are now dead.

And now, to cap it all — let us call it the silver lining in a black black cloud — and please do not think me heartless, in finding pleasure from this, in the midst of terrible grief² — I have just met one of my greatest heroes!

And mark my words, this is no ordinary man. He is the first among equals, the finest xenobiologist in the history of science — nay, the very inventor³ and deviser of that discipline!⁴ The man who rewrote evolution and designed the Gene Scope. The man who made First Contact with the first sentient species ever discovered by mankind, the Lyras; the most brilliant scientist of our age, a veritable Newton among us.

Unfortunately he is now being held in protective custody, following his selfish and deranged actions which led to the death of 383 Scientists⁵ and Soldiers on New Amazon, in two separate ghastly massacres and a few skirmishes in between,⁵ and hence my opportunities to question the Great Man about his work and ideas have been severely circumscribed.

Mary Beebe was twenty-nine years old when she first met the man who would become her husband. She was a doctoral student who had rashly decided to write her doctorate on flame beasts. For eleven years she had lived among these bizarre creatures in a space station circling the planet Luce. The flame beasts had entertained her and told her tales and quizzed her about her favourite television programmes, and she’d discovered absolutely nothing about their physiology, anatomy, evolution, cytology (assuming they had cells), morphology or even their basic physics. Her instruments had failed to identify the particular kind of “flame” that constituted the flame beast. It wasn’t fire, as such, nor was it plasma, as such, nor was it hot to the touch, except when the flame beasts wanted to burn things, and then it was incandescent and could ignite metal. It was, she eventually concluded, some kind of fundamental “stuff”, on a par with electrons and muons. But it was not, she eventually concluded, animal, vegetable or mineral. She confirmed the genus, Flammabestia, but was unable to identify any species, let alone subspecies (since the flame beast doesn’t procreate, can it have different species?).

Her work was a marvel of futility! She and William laughed about it often, her glorious, wasted years chit-chatting to superbeings. William had written his own doctoral thesis on the multiple digestive system of the Traskian dung beetle, and had hence won himself a place in xenobiological mythology. But though Mary’s thesis wasn’t worth the paper it wasn’t written on, William had seen her potential, and intelligence, and insight. They had become devoted colleagues. And eventually, after a number of years working together in the most appalling of environments, at the very closest of quarters, they had become lovers.

But she couldn’t believe . . . that he . . .

“Move this fucking thing!” Sorcha roared as tendrils descended upon the AmRover, and some kind of sessile animal attempted to eat them, and plasma guns roared and they were free again.

She couldn’t believe . . . that . . .

The flame beasts had grown very fond of Mary, and eventually they towed her spaceship to the neighbouring planetary system of Fecunda, where they knew she would be able to study a vital, complex habitat with fleshly creatures who could be categorised. And that’s how William first came across her: to his utter astonishment, she was delivered to his Research Camp in a one-person lifeship conveyed by a dozen pillars of living flame.

She could still remember that moment vividly. William staring up, aghast, as she descended from her lifeship, with the flames dancing in homage around her.

Mary raged; it was all so random! They’d almost got away from the DRs. They’d both seen the hole in the wall and were about to leap through it. Then Mary turned to check William was OK, but his head had fallen off and the neck stump was gushing blood, and she should have stayed and died with him but her reflexes kicked in and she allowed herself to be led away to, to, to life.

She knew he was dead, of course he was dead, his head was severed, but she hadn’t stopped to check, in case he might be just a little bit alive, she hadn’t . . .

William had hired Mary as his research assistant, he had assessed her second dissertation on Fecunda’s most prolific life-form, the Death Toad (Nex viridis, Nex purpura and Nex turpis), and after twenty-four years of intimate professional collaboration on a variety of planets, he and Mary had sexual intercourse in a two-person tent, and then they got married the following day.

Now William was dead, his head cut away from his body by the plasma blast of a Doppelganger Robot, and it was all because of that fucking bastard Professor Carl Saunders, DPhil, MA, FRS, Nobel Laureate, twice winner of the Genius Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievements, author of the definitive text on xenobiology, and fugitive.

Mary vowed that Saunders’s death would be a painful one. And she wished that she could be allowed to kill him herself, with her bare hands and teeth. That might help to ease the — ease the —

For she couldn’t believe — William was actually dead? She missed him. The pain of loss was unendurable.

She remembered William’s smile. His wit. His gentle sarcasm. His brilliance. His look of pure joy when he first saw a Death Toad inflate and fly. His huffy look when she wasn’t paying attention to him.

Now, no more joy, no more sarcasm, no more huff.

Beebe william.†

No more.

Professor Carl Saunders, formerly known as Professor Helms, was still cuffed and bound, but at least they had found him a chair to sit on. The survivors surrounded him in a semicircle. And Sorcha paced around him, like a lion laying claim to a haunch of deer, as the interrogation began.

“OK,” said Sorcha. “Explain.”

“It’s complicated,” said Saunders calmly, then met her gaze and flinched at the hate he saw there.

“We have time.”

“I didn’t mean for any of this to —”

“Just,” said Sorcha, “fucking, talk.”

“Hooperman is trying to kill me.”

“We know that much.”

“Because of what I —”

“We all know the story of you and Hooperman. You attempted to murder him and failed.”

“I —” Saunders slumped. “I guess so.”

“And now he’s decided to take revenge.”

“He’s been trying to take revenge for the last two hundred years.”

For these last two centuries, Saunders had lived as a hunted man; changing identities, constantly fearful, never staying too long in the same sector of the Solar Neighbourhood. And for all this time, Hooperman — through his murderous Doppelganger proxies, and with the aid of his remarkable computer genius — was remorseless in pursuit. There were times when Saunders had longed for it all to be over. Times when he wished he could lose, and be killed, and put the end to the endless vendetta of Professor Andrew Hooperman.

“And you don’t deny you bombed Hooperman?”

“Well I don’t deny it. But I had my reasons. I —”

“I don’t want to hear your fucking reasons,” snarled Sorcha.

“I do,” said Mary Beebe. She stared intently at Saunders. “I want to hear. What possessed you, Saunders? You are arguably the greatest xeno-scientist of all time —”

“Hooperman would dispute —”

“Not a murderer. What were you thinking of? Did you really hate him so —”

“I didn’t hate him —”

“You attempted to —”

“Yes — but not because — I’m not explaining this well.”

“Take your time,” said Mary Beebe. “Because it’s the only time you have left.”

Saunders blinked. “Are you saying you’re going to —”

“Kill you? Yes of course. It’s what you deserve.” Rage burned in Mary’s eyes.

“Ah,” said Saunders, with infinite regret.

“So tell us. Tell us it all,” said Mary Beebe.

And so Professor Richard Helms, aka Professor Carl Saunders, DPhil, FRS, Nobel Laureate, told his tale.

“First, you have to understand how it was with Hooperman and me.”

A flock of Sunlights flew above them, catching the red embers of the sunset.

“He was my DPhil student, at the University of Oxford, England, Earth,” Saunders told them, “and he was brilliant. Charismatic. But also, annoying. Intense. He used to — no matter. We became friends, of sorts, and colleagues. And he was my first choice for the team I led on my Amazon Expedition of ’98. And he —”

“And that’s when you betrayed him, and left him for dead,” murmured Hugo Baal.

“No!” Saunders snapped. “That was just a stupid lie told by Hooperman, to make — oh forget it. The point is, we had a series of major quarrels during the Expedition. Our friendship fell to pieces. And then — then we found the hummingbird.”

Hushed awe spread between the Scientists at those words. They all knew the legend of the nocturnal Amazonian hummingbird, the last new species ever found on Earth. And here was Saunders himself, actually talking about it . . . !

“Hooperman became insanely competitive — and that’s why he told all those stupid lies about me. And then, later, the quarrel between us was exacerbated,” Saunders explained, “when he wrote those articles about me. He tarnished my reputation. He called me a liar, a plagiarist, he — he . . . Anyway, for many years, as you all know, we feuded, bitterly and shamefully. But I still had great respect for Hooperman. I always thought he was an honourable man. And then —”

The memories came washing over Saunders. He picked his way carefully through the wreckage of his past, as he tried desperately to argue for his life.

“You see, about two hundred years ago I had a meeting with the CSO, and he asked me to lead a new scientific expedition. I refused. Hooperman came to see me, and we drank a bottle of whisky together. And I explained to him my reservations about the project’s intended outcome. He made me realise that if I didn’t say yes, I would be killed. So I said yes. But I drafted a plan to thwart the CSO’s stupid edict.”

“What stupid edict?” asked Sorcha.

“The Genocide Edict, of course!” This was the law that had led to the deaths of countless trillions of aliens; it was the legal justification for the terraforming of thousands of planets with thriving, rich ecologies.

“And why is that a problem?” Sorcha asked. Mary glared at her, furiously.

“Because you can’t terraform a planet that’s got life,” Saunders said, angrily.

“We do it all the time,” Sorcha replied, snidely.

“Not in my day,” Helms retorted. “Hope was a barren planet without water; it was irrigated; life was seeded there. Cambria was a hothouse Venus-type planet; it was cooled, then seeded with Earth life. There are plenty of terraformable planets in the Habitable Zones of the Solar Neighbourhood. We don’t need to exterminate alien species. That’s not what we do!”

“Why not? We are the human race. It’s our universe,” Sorcha pointed out.

“That’s what Hooperman said. But it’s not. It’s just not.” Saunders was lost for words, for a few moments, then he ploughed on: “Life is, well, it’s life. Sacred. Unique. You can’t exterminate alien species. That’s what Hitler would have —”

“That’s what William used to say,” Mary said in hollow tones. “Hitler would have — but oh no, no, that’s a false comparison. You can’t compare Hitler with — his Reich lasted barely a decade. Whereas —” She broke off, mindful of the angry stares that the Soldiers were directing at her. “William and I always thought the Genocide Edict was — well — arguably, in some ways, a slightly flawed strategy,” she concluded, in a feeble attempt to avoid self-incrimination.

“On that we are agreed,” said Saunders, crisply.

Sorcha tapped the handle of her gun. It was an act of treason punishable by death to query the CSO’s edicts. And Sorcha, like all Soldiers, was trained to enforce these edicts instantly and brutally.

But surely, Saunders hoped desperately, after all that had happened on New Amazon, even brainwashed Soldiers could no longer have any loyalty to the old regime?

Sorcha’s eyes burned into him. “Continue,” she said, scornfully, “with your abject confession.”

“Right. Then I shall. Cutting to the chase,” Saunders continued, shakily, “I told Hooperman my plan. I would travel to a planet rich in alien life-forms, then falsify the records so that it was logged as unterraformable, destroy the mother ship’s computer, and keep the alien life-forms alive and flourishing. It was masterly, in my view.”

“No, it was treasonous,” Sorcha said savagely. “If you’d told me that was your plan, I’d have shot you, or turned you in to the authorities for them to shoot you.”

“Well, as it happens, I told Hooperman, and he turned me in to the authorities,” Saunders said bitterly. “The next day the Soldiers came to interrogate me. I denied everything, naturally. But I was interrogated for three months, then found guilty without a trial, and dismissed from all my academic posts. My Nobel Prize was revoked. Just because of a single conversation I had with Hooperman! And then I was told that I would continue to work as a xeno-phylogenist, but in solitary confinement, under house arrest, for the rest of my life. So I used my influence, placed some bribes, then escaped from custody and fled Earth, in order to start afresh. And —”

He hesitated.

“Hooperman,” Sorcha prompted.

“Yes, indeed,” said Saunders, and his tone was crisper, more abrasive than it had ever been as Helms. He thought for a little while, judging with care the words he was about to utter, and then he smiled, and it was a cruel smile.

“And then I sent a book bomb to Hooperman. Because he deserved to die, after betraying me to the CSO. And then I went into space with a face transplant and a new identity.”

“But Hooperman survived.”

“Indeed,” Saunders said sourly. “You know that bit of the story?”

“Of course. He —”

“He was lucky. I used a close-proximity charge, but he had a robot servant to open his mail. Even so, I maimed the bastard. Hurt him real good. He claims he’s now living in intensive care, in dire agony, that the body transplant failed. But who’s to know? That may just be another of his lies.”

“And so that’s why?” Mary whispered. “You were angry with Hooperman and you tried to kill him? And that’s why William died?”

“I was rebelling against —”

“Don’t give me that,” Mary Beebe said, fiercely. “Hooperman may have been a coward, but he wasn’t your enemy. You just hated him — because you were and are a petulant, arrogant man. You brought this down on us. You dragged us into your stupid fucking feud, and hundreds of innocent people are now dead, including my husband, all because Hooperman hated you, and you hated him.” She paused, and spat the final words at him: “You deserve to die, Professor Saunders, and you will. For what you have inflicted upon us, you will never be forgiven.”

Ben sat in the cockpit of AmRover 3 and remembered the exhilaration of battle. The smell of burning flesh. The screams.

He’d been among the first to escape from the Doppelganger Robots when they attacked at Helms City. But he’d got separated from the main party, so he’d fled to the East Evacuation Bay, where he encountered a group of six Scientists who hadn’t bothered to attend the dance. They’d all breathed a sigh of relief when he joined them, appalled at what they’d witnessed through the surveillance TV screens. And they were all, clearly, delighted to find that being party-pooping workaholics had saved their lives.

Ben had regaled them all with the tales of the horrors he had been through.

And then he’d charged up the plasma cannon he had taken from a dead Soldier, and fired it at his unwary companions. His close-quarters high-energy plasma blasts and explosive bullets ripped through the body armour of those hapless fools, and popped heads, and gouged huge holes in bodies. Torrents of blood poured out of the torn suits. He could smell burning flesh, and hear screams, and then they were all dead and it was quiet again.

Later, it occurred to Ben that his meds were no longer working. He was now completely, clinically, mad. But it also occurred to him — he no longer needed medication!

For, as a diagnosed homicidal psychopath, he’d always been told it was essential to keep his emotions strictly regulated, in order to function and conform in civilised society.

But now that they were fighting for their lives against Doppelganger enemies of devilish malignity, it seemed to him that a man possessed by a paranoid kill-lust was precisely what was required.

Sorcha drove. It helped her to focus on a practical task, because her thoughts and emotions were in a state of turmoil.

She’d trusted Richard Helms. She’d felt a rapport with him. They’d been lovers, and colleagues, and — so she had thought — friends.

And he’d lied to her, from beginning to end, and at every moment in between. He’d lied about everything, including his age and his area of specialism. He wasn’t a geologist, he was a zoologist, a taxonomist, a First Contacter.

Because of Richard — Carl? what the hell should she call him? — hundreds of people had died. It was entirely his fault. He’d brought this curse on them.

And he’d lied to her. Constantly. Every word he had ever said was a lie. That much was beyond doubt.

So when he had said to her, in his soft and gentle tones, that he loved her — was that a lie too?

“Where are we going?” Clementine McCoy asked her, and Sorcha’s focus returned.

“I don’t know.”

“Then why are we going so quickly?”

“They’ll be behind us. They’ll follow. We have to put some ground between us.”

“They can follow faster than we can run.”

“I know.”

“They can use the Dravens to scour the area.”

“It’s a big area. They won’t know which way to go. The further we are from Helms City, the more ground they have to search.”

“You shouldn’t have relaxed security at the dance,” said Private Clementine McCoy.

“I know that.”

“Just so my observation is noted.”

“It’s noted. I accept liability.”

“Fair enough.”

“You lost a lot of friends back there,” Sorcha conceded.

“They died a Glorious death,” said Clementine, casually, then brooded. And eventually she said: “Perhaps we should stand and fight.”

“We wouldn’t have a hope.”

“I know. But —”

“You want a Glorious death?” said Sorcha, scornfully.

“Of course,” said Clementine, shocked at her senior officer’s tone.

“And so do I,” said Sorcha, hastily. “But let’s explore the other options first. I’m not going to fail a second time. We’ll find a way to live.”

Tonii and Mia were in the Observation Bubble of AmRover 1.

Mia was in tears. Tonii was baffled. He held her, as she cried and cried.

“Why aren’t you crying?” she asked, eventually.

“At what?”

“So many died!”

“But I did not,” he said calmly.

Mia looked at Tonii curiously. “You don’t care, do you? All your friends are dead, and you don’t care?”

“No.”

“So long as you’re alive, you’re happy.”

“Yes.”

“So long as your Glory is intact, you’re content.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not any different, are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the same as the others. The other Soldiers. You’re all KMs. Killing Machines.”

“Of course,” said Tonii, surprised at her scathing tone, and pseudo- philosophical censure. “It’s what we’re bred for.”

“Don’t talk like that! ‘Bred’! We’re human beings!” said Mia, anguished.

“No, you’re human. We are more so. Because we do not fear death.”

“You’re really telling me you’re not afraid to die?”

Tonii hesitated, and knew he had to lie.

“I long for death, so long as it’s Glorious.”

“You fucking . . .” Mia struggled to find the word, “freak.”

Saunders hated being tethered in the secure cage in the back of the AmRover.

He felt like a specimen, a xeno, or a captured lion. Or, indeed, the most apt comparison of all in his case, a caged bird.

He remembered all the birds they’d captured in the Amazon, he and Hooperman, and the guileful use they’d made of call birds and trap-cages. Now, he was in a trap-cage. Locked in the boot of the AmRover, bouncing every time the vehicle veered to avoid a root or a swamp or a predator.

This was Hooperman’s revenge.

Nice one, Andrew.

Saunders’s guess was that Hooperman must have spent longer on New Amazon than he’d realised before launching his attack. He’d hacked into the Juno mainframe, broken into all Saunders’s secret files, reprogrammed the DRs into hunter-killers, and given them detailed information about the Depot. So the fact that Hooperman himself had now lost contact with New Amazon was no obstacle to his revenge. The robot monsters were acting as his pawns and his agents.

Saunders had underestimated his old enemy. Hooperman wasn’t just evil, he was smart.