Engineman (23 page)

Now, Ella moved around the lagoon, tears of joy in her eyes. Her memories were so vivid, so alive. There was the camel's hump of rock, and she could see it standing there, could see it diving into the water, emerging with the quick sleek grace of a seal. She stood on the flat of rock on which they had sun-bathed, and stared across the water.

Nothing had changed. Everything had changed.

They had met at the lagoon on every weekend for the next four months.

At first they remained within the confines of the lagoon, diving and swimming in the calm blue water. There was little communication between them other than gestures, and they were often so bizarre on the part of the alien - and no doubt hers were to it, too - that she often failed completely to understand its meaning. It spoke occasionally in a soft whispery rush, but the only thing she understood was its name: L'Endo-kharriat, or so she wrote it in her diary, where she kept a detailed account of their meetings. There seemed to be a clicking pause between the consonant and the vowel of the first part of its name, and a shorter pause before the second word. L'Endo-kharriat...

As for its sex... Ella could not be sure. They shared a friendship that was platonic, like that between girlfriends, but for some reason, as time wore on, Ella came increasingly to think of the Lho as a male, perhaps in compensation for the fact that at school no boy had yet shown an interest in her.

At one point every time they met, L'Endo would swim to the camel's hump and perform his strange ritualistic statue-impression, which could last up to thirty minutes. It seemed at these times that he was in a trance, oblivious of Ella and the lagoon around him. One day when he rejoined Ella on the flat rock and lay beside her, golden and spangled with water, she indicated the camel's hump and asked, "Why, L'Endo?"

He stared at her. "
Why?"
he breathed, and said no more. Ella shrugged to herself and reflected that she might never know.

The following week, before commencing his ritual, L'Endo pointed across to the rock. "Why," he said. Then, "Give thanks," he said, but without any indication that he understood the words. "For life."

Ella nodded, intrigued by the fact that there was a member of his tribe who could speak English.

The months passed, and they left the lagoon and explored the upper reaches of the plateau so far left undeveloped by the colonists. It was a magical realm of caves and grottoes, spectacular waterfalls and placid lagoons. L'Endo showed her tunnels which riddled the mountainside, secret passages leading from lagoon to lagoon, strange flowers she had never seen before and even stranger animals.

In return for L'Endo's showing her the wonder of the plateau, on one occasion Ella led him to a nearby dome whose owners were away on vacation. She broke in through a cooling vent and they crawled inside. She had become so accustomed to seeing L'Endo where he belonged, in his home environment where his alienness seemed natural, that seeing him in a human habitat once again made her aware of how very strange - how very
alien
, there was no other word for it - he was.

He seemed uncomfortable in the hi-tech dome, like a stone-age man in a spaceship. Ella showed him all the technological wonders; the synthesiser and vid-screen, the ultra-son shower and the walls of the dome which polarised during the day. L'Endo was quiet and watchful, his eyes half-cupped by their lower lids in an expression Ella thought might denote wonder or suspicion. They left after one hour, returned to the lagoon and sported in the water.

Then, two weeks later, L'Endo failed to turn up at the lagoon. Ella was there at the same time as ever, but there was no sign of the Lho. It was the first time he had failed to show for four months, and Ella was worried. Perhaps their meetings meant less to him than they did to her, and he had quite simply grown bored with the company of the strange human? She had no idea where she might find him, where his tribe was encamped.

Ella waited for three hours, and was about to leave when she saw, through the trees that partially concealed a narrow fissure in the rockface, a familiar alien form. She leapt to her feet, her heart skipping, but the alien was not L'Endo.

It approached Ella with long, nimble strides, an old, bowed Lho whose skin was mottled and faded. It regarded Ella through half-cupped eyes.

"Ella Hunter?" It asked her, and she knew then who L'Endo had spoken to in order to explain his ritual.

"Where's L'Endo?"

"L'Endo-kharriat wishes to see you. This way..."

"Is he okay?" she asked desperately. "Please, what's wrong?"

The old Lho turned and walked away without replying.

Now Ella sat cross-legged on the flat rock beside the lagoon and stared at the sunset. Was it really ten years since she had last been here? She remembered the events of all those years ago as if they had happened yesterday. She recalled minutely what happened next, every last detail of the climb to the summit and what she found there; she relived the horror of it, and also the wonder.

Ella had followed the old alien into the fissure in the rock. As they walked the defile widened, became a gorge with jungle plants clinging to its sides. They climbed a narrow path, the old alien pacing ahead with long, sure-footed strides. The rockface on each side tilted back, opened out to form an ever-widening valley. Well-worn paths striated the sides of the valley like contour lines.

When Ella asked, "Please, is L'Endo okay? Why does he want to see me?" the Lho either failed to understand or chose to ignore her. They passed scampering children, tiny and golden, who hardly reached to Ella's knees. She felt eyes watching her from the entrances of caves on either side of the valley.

More than once she considered turning back. The further they went, the more they entered into alien territory, with animals and plants Ella had never seen before and dozens of aliens who stopped to stare at her. But the thought that L'Endo wished to see her kept her going.

At last the old Lho paused before a dark cave entrance overhung with creepers. He gestured inside. "L'Endo is ill," he said now. "Many of my people have succumbed to the plague." He swept his arm in a scything gesture, his face expressionless.

Ella felt something growing within her; a disbelief that was physical and hard in her chest, threatening to burst with rage and anguish.

Hesitantly she stepped into the cave. A flickering brand lit the nether recesses. In the half-light she made out a figure lying on packed animals skins. Someone crouched beside L'Endo, administering mouthfuls of water from a conch shell. At a word from the old Lho behind Ella, the nurse stood and hurried out. Ella felt a hand on her elbow, gesturing her forward.

She approached her friend and sat down next to him.

L'Endo turned his head and stared at her, and in the hesitant light of the brand Ella saw that the right side of his face had dissolved, the flesh fluid and suppurating, the infrastructure of muscle beneath subsided.

The cry she stifled seemed to resonate in every part of her body, filling her with pain. She quickly dashed tears from her cheeks.

Something clutched her fingers, and when she looked down she saw that it was L'Endo's frail hand. Wound around his wrist was the rock painting she had given him.

"Five of your days he has been ill," the old Lho whispered to her. "L'Endo, and many more of my people. We can do little. We can only rejoice at their passing."

She stared at the old alien through her tears. "What do you mean?" she spluttered.

The alien sighed. "Humans..."

L'Endo moved his head closer to Ella, spoke in a voice even lighter than his usual whispery register.

The old Lho translated. "L'Endo says, 'Do not cry for me, be happy.' This is the moment for which he has lived his life. Truly, Ella, he gives thanks that he is passing. He gives thanks that he has experienced this life and will experience the next."

Ella felt L'Endo's fingers squeeze hers. "The next?"

The old Lho took her free hand. "Only the humans you know as Engineman and Enginewoman believe, like us, in a Beyond. They know that we should rejoice in the gift of life, and not grieve for its passing, for without this life there would be no hope of attaining the Beyond. Look upon L'Endo - do you see a being in mortal agony? He rejoices, Ella. Truly he rejoices!"

She gazed down at her friend. Through the pain, through the obvious affliction of the plague, she recognised in L'Endo something of the inexpressible rapture he had exhibited when standing on the rock in the centre of the lagoon - giving thanks, as he had said, for life.

L'Endo glowed with an energy at odds with his failing life-force. He spoke, and the old Lho translated.

"Can you return in five of your days, Ella, for his passing?"

L'Endo squeezed her fingers.

"His... passing?" she echoed.

"A time of celebration, of joy at his attainment. More than anything, he wishes you to attend. He wishes to share with you his joy as he leaves this life. He wishes to
convince
you..."

"In five days..." she began. "But how can you tell?"

"In five of your days, L'Endo will release his hold upon life and pass from us. He feels it within him, he feels that then the time will be right."

She was in a dark cave with two aliens, she told herself, one of whom, a friend for the past four months, was dying of some horrendous wasting plague, and yet all she could feel was... was
joy
.

She wondered if it was her way of coping with so much grief, but she searched within her and found no such emotion, only the strongest communion with anyone, alien or human, she had ever experienced. Closer to L'Endo than ever before, she shared in his rapture, and felt blessed.

"I'll be honoured to attend his passing," Ella said.

The old Lho translated her words, and L'Endo lay back on the skins with what might have been relief.

Then she took her leave of the dying alien, and the oldster arranged to meet her in five days, and then led her back to the lagoon and said farewell.

For the next few days at home, her life seemed dull and lacklustre. She contrasted the materialism of colony life with what she had experienced with the Lho, and felt cheated. She could never become a Lho, but she could leave the Reach, start a life of her own. She anticipated the time, in three months, when she could legally leave school and the clutches of her father.

In the meantime, she wanted only to re-experience the communion she had shared in the cave with L'Endo.

Then, two days before she was due to attend his passing, her father appeared on the patio above the lagoon where she was swimming. "Ella - my study, this minute."

She shivered, despite the sunlight. He spoke to her rarely, and an official summons to his study could only mean that in some way she had transgressed. She dried herself and dressed quickly, trying to think what she might have done wrong, then hurried inside. The sooner she got this over with...

Her father was seated in a swivel chair behind his desk. To his left stood Conway, her minder. He was dressed all in black today and held, by his side, Ella's metallic-backed diary.

She wanted to scream that they had no right intruding in her private affairs, but she had no intention of giving them the satisfaction of seeing her upset.

Then she realised the subject of the latest entries...

Her father held out a hand, and Conway placed the diary upon it; a set-piece surely rehearsed. He flipped through the pages, came to the last entry and paused, reading it.

Then he closed the diary and laid it very precisely on the desk before him. He looked up at Ella.

She could never guess what her father was thinking. The expression on the only readable part of his face was forever stern, unsmiling.

He tapped her diary with his forefinger.

"This is not permissible, of course," he said. She tried not to smile to herself. He could never address her without resorting to a stilted legalese, as if he were a prosecuting lawyer and she the accused.

"Quite apart from the fact that contact between humans and the Lho is proscribed by colonial edict, there is the very considerable health risk to take into consideration."

She tried to out-stare him, tried not to redden - an impossible combination. She looked away, through the window at the sloping garden leading to the summit of the plateau, and felt herself colour.

She had used phrases like
love
and
feel one with
about the Lho; the admission of which emotions made her feel vulnerable in the face of her father's withering cynicism.

"As you know," he continued, "the Lho have succumbed to a devastating plague. As yet, its full implications are not known."

Ella interrupted. "I've known L'Endo for months and I'm not ill..." She felt a dull certainty about where all this was leading.

"That does not alter the fact that I cannot allow you to attend this... this ceremony."

"But, you don't understand, I must! I promised... If I didn't..." She could only imagine her friend's disappointment if she failed to turn up on the most important day of his life.

She told herself that nothing could keep her from attending L'Endo's passing. Even if her father locked her in the villa, she would find a way out.