Helix (33 page)

They
dropped her—what had she expected, that they might set her down with care?—and
she managed to maintain stillness and silence as the others were carried into
the cell. She heard them drop like sacks of meal, and then felt something
strike her. It was an arm or a leg, its weight pressing unpleasantly across the
small of her back.

After
a scuffle of retreating footsteps, a door clanged shut and was locked. She
listened intently, but heard only the breathing of her colleagues. Cautiously
she opened one eye—her right eye, nearest the straw that covered the
stone-slabbed floor. She made out Joe against the far wall, face up, blood
trickling from his forehead and down inside his faceplate. Next to him Carrelli
lay on her side, her back to Kaluchek. That meant that it was Olembe who was
pressing against her rump.

She
closed her eyes and found herself weeping.

After
a long minute, she opened her eyes and moved her head. They were in a barred
cell, which fronted on to a short corridor. Across the corridor was a small
timber door. She could see no sign of the rats.

Olembe’s
arm pressed down onto her, and now she could smell him, the reek of sweat which
his suit had done nothing to lessen. She felt a second of involuntary panic,
and the ludicrous anger provoked by the idea that even now, insensate, he was
violating her.

She
prayed that there were no rats around to see that she was conscious, and
squirmed from under the African. She shuddered, sitting up and backing away as
if in panic. She reached Joe and lay down beside him, easing him into a more
comfortable position and feeling his warmth strike through her suit.

With
Joe between herself and Olembe, she felt safe again.

She
reached a hand around Joe’s torso, felt the corrugation of his ribs beneath her
hand. His heartbeat was even, his breathing regular.

It
was odd how she had felt an immediate attraction to Joe back at Berne. He was
much older than her—fifteen years older, she calculated—and looked care-worn,
with his long, lined face and greying hair. But she had warmed to his softly
spoken, self-effacing manner, his easy smile and warm laugh. He had the
demeanour of someone who had seen a lot in life, not all of it nice, but had
struggled through and not let adversity defeat him.

They
had got along well in Berne, and since reawakening out here they had gravitated
to each other. She felt for Joe Hendry what she had not let herself feel for
another man in a long time.

She
wondered if her sentiments had been returned, or if Joe had responded to her
merely because he needed human contact after the death of his daughter.

Now
she held Joe to heir, comforted by his warmth in the freezing cell, his
nearness, and stared over his chest at Olembe, face down on the straw and staring
at her, she thought irrationally, even though his eyes were shut. She felt the
weight of his arm again in her imagination, and a wave of revulsion swept over
her.

Why
couldn’t the rats have hit Olembe a little harder and killed the bastard?

She
was weeping again, which she hated. It came over her like this, at the
strangest times, and she hated it because it was a sign of weakness that ran
counter to the tough-girl exterior she tried to adopt. She hated it, too,
because it was an indication that, no matter how well she thought she had dealt
with what had happened all those years ago, she knew that it was still to deal
with—that she had to have some form of closure so that she could put the past
behind her and face the future unburdened.

And
she hated it because every time she wept, Friday Olembe scored another point in
his victory over her.

She
shivered, despite Joe’s warmth. She closed her eyes and dozed, and perhaps
inevitably—with Olembe so much in her thoughts—she had a brief lucid dream of
that night in LA.

She
came awake in quick panic. She had the dream often, so vivid it seemed she had
time-travelled, and always she awoke feeling the same breathless panic she had
experienced back then.

She
had been eighteen, and just in the big city from Nowheresville, Alaska, and
still full of the wonder at the bright lights, the towering buildings, the
bustle and vitality of LA. She had been wide-eyed and naive and innocent, but
the city had taken all that away from her. Or rather a bastard called Olembe
had done that.

A
sound from the corridor cut into her thoughts. She froze. The door opposite the
cell was being unbolted. She closed her eyes, then opened the left one a slit
and made out three armed guards slip into the corridor followed by another rat,
this one dressed not in the tight-fitting black uniform of the others, but in a
long red robe with a pendant—some kind of circle surrounded by
triangles—hanging around its neck.

The
robed rat stepped forward cautiously and peered in through the bars, staring at
the prisoners. It was impossible to read its expression—just as it was
impossible to read human emotion into the face of an animal—but its jaw opened
a little, and its eyes widened, and Kaluchek wondered if it was experiencing
revulsion or amazement, or both.

So
this, perhaps, was a representative of the authority in whose hands their fate
now rested.

The
rat remained staring at them for perhaps two minutes. At one point it gestured
towards the closest human—which happened to be Olembe—and spoke to one of the
militia. Kaluchek willed it to order the removal of Olembe...

If
the rats killed the African, she would be without the continual reminder of the
past that his presence provoked. But she would be without, too, the opportunity
to make Olembe face what he’d done to her back then.

It
was a paradox that the thought of confrontation filled Kaluchek with terror,
for it was something she had dreamed about for years.

The
robed rat backed away from the bars, gestured with a clawed hand and shrieked
at a guard. The guards opened the corridor door and the rat hurried out,
trailing its robe, followed by the guards. The door thundered shut and Kaluchek
breathed with relief.

She
looked across the cell at the unconscious Olembe, and felt revulsion.

A
little over twelve subjective years ago, after a month in LA, she had attended
a fancy-dress party to celebrate the Democrats’ election to government. It had
been a time of optimism—a last-ditch attempt to party in the face of global
collapse. Kaluchek recalled feeling that perhaps there was hope in the election
to power of a party whose foreign policy included the desire to ensure the
continued survival of the world, rather than retreat into the isolationism that
was Republican policy.

So
the party was a celebration of the future, which in retrospect struck Kaluchek
as kind of perversely ironic.

She
had met a big guy dressed as the devil—and how ironic was that?—and they had
chatted and moved out into the college garden. She’d gone to the party as Betsy
Pig, a popular holovision character at the time, and kept the mask on while
they chatted, for which she was eternally grateful.

The
devil had come on strong, nothing offensive at first, just a whisper in her
sow’s ear that they could fuck each other senseless in the long grass beyond
the pond... but Kaluchek had smiled uneasily beneath the mask and tried to
change the subject. She didn’t have anyone at the moment, and wanted the first
time to mean something... But the devil had pressed, taking her by her waist
and pulling her to him, so that she could feel the hard ridge of his erection
beneath his Lycra tights. And instead of having the desired effect of turning
her on, she had felt sick, physically sick and psychologically sickened that
the bastard was resorting to physical coercion.

She
had pulled away, unable to speak, and started walking back to the party. He’d
yanked her to him with a physical force that was shocking, hit her across the
head and dragged her into the copse that skirted the lake. She had tried to
fight him off, but she was a tiny pig and he a strapping devil, and he’d just
hit her across the face, again and again and again, until she was almost
unconscious, almost... but still able to feel what he was doing as he thrust
her into the grass and ripped off her leggings and raped her.

And
he left her bleeding and sobbing in the grass, feeling beyond what any
definition of being violated might suggest, feeling abused to the core, and
powerless, for how could any authority on earth do to him what he had done to her?
And she felt, too, a shame—and hated herself for feeling this—a shame that she
had been weak enough, stupid enough, to let it happen.

Panic
had made her gather her wits, pull on her leggings, and stagger away from the
campus. She feared he might return, pull off her mask to identify his victim,
or worse, drown her in the pond. So she went home and sobbed herself to sleep
in a rage that took months to diminish.

She
told no one, but decided to deal with what had happened in her own way. Over
the next few days she made enquiries, and learned that there had been two
devils at the party that night. She effected a meeting with Satan number one,
and discounted him immediately—a tiny Mexican student with poor English. Then,
with a fear she found hard to control, she befriended a friend of Satan number
two, and in time met the African nuclear engineering major, and knew from the
tone of his voice, rich, superior, American accented, that this was her man,
Friday Olembe.

All
she had to do then was to plan her revenge.

Except,
Olembe dropped out of college a month later—someone said he’d returned to West
Africa— and Kaluchek had experienced an impotent renewal of her initial rage,
anger that his flight had denied her revenge, closure.

After
that she had thrown herself into her studies, worked hard, to prove to herself
that she could do it, and not let what the bastard had done blight her life and
stop her succeeding. She’d studied around the clock, letting her social life go
by the wayside, and ignored all attempts to date her by students who called
her, behind her back, the Ice Queen, the Frigid Bitch of the cryonics lab.

She’d
graduated with honours, got a top job at a government research station on Luna,
then suffered the disappointment of the recall to Earth eight years later.
Almost immediately she landed a post with ESO in Berne, a top-secret assignment
that offered hope to the blighted Earth: the colonisation of the stars.

She
had never forgotten about a devil called Olembe, but he no longer haunted her
dreams. At one point, accidentally, she discovered that he was working on the
N’Gombe fission plant near Abuja—she’d come across a paper of his while
researching potential fuel sources for the starship’s cryo-hangars—and it was
as if a door to her old life had been opened. Over the following week, the pain
returned, and with it the realisation that he’d escaped punishment and made a
very comfortable life for himself back in Africa. Thoughts of revenge had
surfaced, briefly, before common sense made her see reason.

Then,
just a year ago, she had missed out on the final selection for the
Lovelock
mission, and disappointment had hit her hard.

In
a moment of weakness, she had allowed the seed of hate to grow again, and it
took root, became almost an obsession. She would go to Abuja, confront
Olembe... During her most despairing and anger filled moments, she even dreamed
of killing him.

Then,
months before the
Lovelock
was due to light out for the stars,
terrorists had struck mission control, killing five of the six maintenance
team. Amazingly, the tragedy became the opportunity for Kaluchek to fulfil her
dreams. She was summoned to Director Bruckner’s plush office and asked if she
still wanted to go to the stars. Light-headed, not believing her luck, she had
said yes.

Then,
a couple of days later, an odd thing happened.

In
conversation with Bruckner beside the pool, he had let slip that the
replacement maintenance team was complete but for two places—a smartware
engineer and a top person in fission nucleonics.

Almost
without thinking, guided by her subconscious, perhaps, she had. found herself
saying, “Actually, I’ve heard there’s a good man in Africa, Friday Olembe.”

Bruckner
dropped by a few days later and told her, casually, that her suggestion had
been acted upon. ESO had checked out Olembe, and he was now part of the team.

For
the next few days, before they were due to meet for the first time, Kaluchek
wondered if she had been horribly mistaken. Wasn’t it best to let sleeping dogs
lie; wasn’t forgiveness the way to move on, not revenge?

She
wondered what had provoked her suggestion. Perhaps it was the thought of
leaving him on Earth, of allowing him to live out his life without restitution
for what he had done to her. Paradoxically she had granted him an extended
future—for the sole purpose of extracting some form of yet-to-be-planned
revenge.

Then
they had met—five new recruits around the pool at Berne—and Kaluchek had
experienced an almost heart-stopping fear. As she gazed across the table at
Olembe’s broad, well-fed, arrogant face, she knew hatred as never before.
Olembe was a beast, a macho thug whose arrogance in maturity she had
extrapolated from the student she had briefly known. She had managed to
tolerate his company for about five minutes, before making some excuse and
slipping away.