Helix (26 page)

“And
big helpings of it, Joe.” She reached for his hand and held it.

Two
minutes later Olembe called out from across the chamber, “Hey, this is it. Here
it comes!”

They
hurried back to where Olembe and Carrelli were sitting cross-legged, leaning
over the softscreen. Olembe was manipulating the touchpad, refining the image.
The screen showed the summit of the ziggurat, and approaching it as if in slow
motion the tentacular length of the umbilical.

Carrelli
was saying, “The engineering is truly amazing. Once it docks, as it were, it’s
connected to both the ziggurat here and the one on the tier above. By the very
nature of the worlds’ rotation, that means the ziggurats will be moving away from
each other all the time, though very slowly. The umbilicals must have some form
of telescopic or elastic capacity.”

Kaluchek
said to Carrelli, “Any idea how long they’ll remain connected?”

Carrelli
shook her head. “It’s hard to say. Technically, maybe only minutes while the
transfer from the portal to the umbilical is achieved by the travellers. After
that, my guess is that it disconnects so the umbilical is trailing through
space, tethered only to the destination world.” She shook her head in wonder.

“It’s
almost there,” Olembe said.

Hendry
watched as the terminus of the umbilical swept through the air above the
ziggurat. He felt a sudden apprehension: soon they would be aboard the
umbilical, rising to the next tier, and whatever they might find there. The
truck was packed; all that remained was to jump aboard.

The
umbilical hovered briefly above the summit of the ziggurat, then passed on,
whipping through the air a good ten metres above the top block.

Olembe
swore. Kaluchek asked, “So what happened?”

Hendry
watched the umbilical move ever further from the peak of the ziggurat, taking
with it any real hope of easily ascending to the next tier.

Carrelli
shook her head, at a loss for words, and stared at the screen.

Olembe
was hunched over the softscreen, muttering angrily to himself and tapping the
touchpad. He stilled the picture, played it back, then magnified the image. He
froze the scene and pointed. “Look...”

The
end of the umbilical was a mess of tangled and shredded metal, blackened and
twisted. It’s interior could be clearly seen, a silver honeycomb diminishing
into the length of the column.

“Looks
like there’s been some kind of explosion,” Kaluchek said.

“What
the hell might have caused that?” Olembe muttered.

“Whatever,”
Carrelli said, her expression impassive, “it rules out attaining the next tier
the easy way...” Kaluchek was staring at her. “And the hard way?”

Olembe
laughed. “Think about it, sweetheart.”

Kaluchek
turned to the African, glaring. “If you call me that one more time—”

He
raised both hands in a mocking pantomime of fear. “Hey, cut me some slack,
lady. Back off, okay?”

Carrelli
said, “Squabbling will do nothing to help the situation.”

“Well,
tell that fucker to stop patronising me.”

Carrelli
turned a warning glance towards Olembe, who rolled his eyes with a
who? me?
expression.

Hendry
laid a clandestine, hand on the small of Kaluchek’s back and applied pressure.
She shot him a glance, smiling.

“Very
well,” Carrelli said, looking around the group. “The only thing we can do in
the circumstances, if we wish to ascend to the next tier, is to make contact
with the alien race that inhabits this world. Agreed?”

Olembe
nodded. “Makes sense to me.”

“They
have obviously reached a rudimentary level of technological innovation,”
Carrelli said. “Who knows, with our know-how and their manufacturing
capabilities, we might be able to rig up some means of getting to the next
tier.”

Hendry
said, “And if not,” he smiled bitterly, “then it’s the long haul up-spiral.”

With
this sobering thought they boarded the truck and prepared to leave the
sanctuary of the ziggurat.

They rolled out
onto
the plain of ice. The blizzard had ceased and the snow had stopped, revealing a
flat, frozen landscape, featureless and without even a hill to break the
iron-grey monotony that stretched out before them. To the right, in the
distance, could be made out a faint line of black, snow-capped mountains.

Olembe
was in the driving seat, Carrelli next to him. Hendry sat in the back with
Sissy Kaluchek. Olembe braked the truck. “Okay, which way? Do we head for where
the airships were coming from, or going to?”

Hendry
said, “The dirigibles we saw were heading towards the mountain range. Would it
make sense to follow them?”

Olembe
tapped a touchpad and brought up the windscreen’s magnification facility. The
far range sprang into startling view, a jagged array of cold peaks. There was
no sign of the airships.

“I
don’t see any habitation that way,” Olembe said. “No cities, villages.”

Kaluchek
spoke up, “What did you expect, a string of streetlights spelling out
‘Welcome’? In my experience, cold communities conserve energy.”

Olembe
restrained himself. “No sign of buildings, roads, anything like that.”

“Anyway,”
Kaluchek said, “I think Joe’s right. Let’s make for the mountains. What do you
think, Gina?”

She
considered the question. “Perhaps the mountains might provide some limited form
of protection from the elements,” she said at last. “In which case, a
settlement might be found there. That’s making a lot of assumptions, however.”

Hendry
said, “We’re in a situation where that’s unavoidable.”

She
nodded. “Then shall we turn right?”

“The
mountains it is,” Olembe said, revving the engine and slewing the truck away
from the ziggurat, accelerating over the hard-packed ice.

A
minute later, Kaluchek said, “What if there is a settlement, but it’s on the
other side of the mountain, and airships are the only way to reach it?”

“We
could always attempt to attract the attention of a passing ship,” Hendry
quipped.

The
tracked vehicle ate up the kilometres. The grey of the day was about as bright
as a Melbourne twilight, Hendry thought. He stared through the sidescreen,
willing some feature to appear and break the monotony. The only thing that
moved was the loose snowfall on the ground, wafted into wave patterns by the
incessant wind. The central section of the windscreen showed the mountains, and
he found himself staring at them in an attempt to discern anything that might
signal habitation.

The
heat inside the cab increased, inducing somnolence. Kaluchek closed her eyes
and let her weight ease against Hendry, her head against his shoulder. He was
pitched back twenty years, to when he and Chrissie had travelled on shuttle
buses in France during his leave from space, heading off on holidays to the Normandy
coast. Inevitably she would fall asleep, the pressure of her body against his
inducing in him a sense of peace and contentment.

Now
he wanted to stroke Kaluchek’s jet-black hair, to show her some small gesture
of affection. He was sure that she would not object, and yet he found himself
holding back, afraid for some reason he could not quite fathom of escalating
the degree of their relationship.

He
was dozing when Olembe called out, “Hey, what was that? Over there, ten
o’clock.”

He
slowed the truck. Hendry jolted awake and likewise Kaluchek beside him. He
realised that his heart was hammering and peered through the sidescreen,
wondering what the hell the African had spotted.

Then
he saw it, or rather them.

They
were dim at first, obscured by the fall of snow that had started up again:
faint, humped shapes in the grey, white against the snowfield. He was reminded
of yaks, though these creatures were half as large again as their Terran
equivalent.

Olembe
slowed the truck to a crawl, turned and approached the herd of a dozen or so
passive creatures.

Passive,
Hendry thought—but he nevertheless felt in the footwell for his laser.

Kaluchek
placed a hand on his leg and leaned across him, grinning like a child at the
zoo as she stared out at the herd.

“They
look harmless enough, Joe.”

He
nodded, aware that his first contact with an alien race had prejudiced his
reactions to this encounter. Olembe braked the truck a few metres from the
animals. They looked up at the truck, large eyes incurious, then bent their
thick muzzles to root again through the snow for whatever morsels of food might
be found.

“They
appear bovine,” Carrelli said, “and built for the climate. Look at those
pelts.”

Grey
fur hung to the ground in soiled tassels. Most of the creatures sported four horns,
emerging at right angles from massive heads. Despite the proximity of the
truck, the herd had lost interest. Hendry suspected that the task of foraging
for food in this hostile landscape was perpetual, and it was a wonder they
found anything at all in the snowy wastes. Their backs were encrusted with
mantles of frozen snow, which, along with their immobility, gave them the
appearance of statues.

“Seen
enough?” Olembe asked.

Hendry
could have stared at the odd beasts indefinitely, fascinated by the fact of
their existence on this cold and lonely world.

No
one objected, and the truck roared into life again. The noise moved the animals
to lethargic flight, and then only a few metres before they bent once again to
nuzzle for elusive food.

The
truck cruised towards the mountains, crunching over the tundra at a steady
fifty kilometres per hour. At one point Olembe manipulated the touchpad and
said, “The range is around five hundred kays distant. I reckon we’ll make the
foothills in around ten hours or so.”

Carrelli
said, “I’ll take over the driving in a while, okay?”

Hendry
stared at the magnified mountains, looking for a pass or cutting that might
allow them through. There was no sign of habitation in the rucked foothills. He
wondered where the dirigibles had been heading, and imagined some ice-bound
mountain fastness inhabited by who knew what bizarre species of
extraterrestrials.

He
found himself taking Kaluchek’s hand and gripping hard. She squeezed back,
smiling up at him.

A
while later she said, addressing everyone, “This reminds me of my childhood in
Alaska. Miles and miles of snow. Long journey to get anywhere.” She sat up,
leaning forward without letting go of Hendry’s hand, and said to Carrelli,
“Where were you brought up, Gina?”

“Me?
Oh,” the Italian sounded surprised at the question. “Naples, until I was
eighteen. Then I went to college in Rome.” She turned in her seat and smiled.
“It was nothing like this, I can assure you of that.” She fanned her face. “The
heat! You wouldn’t believe it.” The gesture, Hendry thought, made her seem
human.

“You
studied medicine in Rome?” Kaluchek asked.

The
Italian nodded. “Five years of general studies, then I specialised in neurology
for three years.”

“When
did you join the ESO?”

“Five
years ago, when I was thirty. They were recruiting for medics to work on the
ground in Berne. Then three years ago I was approached by Bruckner and told
about the expedition.”

Kaluchek
smiled. “You must have jumped at the chance?”

“Actually,
no. I asked them to give me time to think it over. I mean, to leave everything
familiar for an uncertain future...”

“You
had family, loved ones?”

Carrelli
shook her head, her expression hidden by the back of the seat. “I had no one.
My parents were dead. I was an only child. I had a lover until a few weeks
before the offer of a place on the mission, but she left me, so...”

At
this, Hendry saw Olembe turned his head and glance quickly at the medic.

Carrelli
shrugged. “So, there was nothing really to keep me on Earth, except perhaps
fear of the unknown. I thought about it over the days, tried to overcome my
fear, and then contacted Bruckner and accepted.”

Kaluchek
said, “And you haven’t regretted it?”

Carrelli
turned in her seat and smiled at the Inuit. “Of course not. It was the best
decision of my life. To experience what we have experienced, what so few humans
have experienced... that is truly wonderful, no?”

Kaluchek’s
gaze slipped past the medic to the mountains. “I acknowledge that
intellectually, Gina, but in reality... I don’t know. Had anyone told me what
we were going to experience, I would have considered it amazing, but now that
it’s happening to me—the fact that it’s
me,
here, undergoing this
amazing experience... to be honest, I can’t help feeling it’s all a bit
mundane. I hope that doesn’t sound ungrateful, or small-minded, but it’s
true...”