Helix (44 page)

Hendry
would rather have made the trek himself, but for the sake of diplomacy he
acceded to Carrelli’s wishes.

As
the last of the animals disappeared through the forest, Olembe returned to the
ship, attended by the alien called Ehrin, and inspected the open hatch in its
flank.

Hendry
was still coming to terms with what he had shared with Sissy back in the
forest, viewing his memory of the unexpected passion as if it was an episode in
a dream. It was the culmination of days of increasing affection for the quiet,
yet occasionally outspoken, Inuit woman. He was amazed that it had come to a
head so soon, and with such rapidity. He had been alone, and then through some
mysterious and wonderful fusion, like alchemy, he was no longer alone. At
least, that was how it felt. His future had been uncertain, haunted by the
absence of someone he had assumed would always be there. It seemed now that
Sissy had in some odd way replaced Chrissie, and while euphoric at the turn of
events, at the same time he could not help but feel guilty that he was
beginning to enjoy life again while Chrissie was dead.

Tears
stung like acid in his eyes as it came to him that Chrissie would surely
approve of his liaison with Sissy.

Olembe
pulled his head from the recess in the side of the ship. “I need a hand here,
Joe.”

He
indicated a mass of fused circuitry and a fifteen-centimetre column of
blackened steel, which looked as though it had exploded. “Our lemur friend here
told Carrelli that this was the problem. Don’t ask me what the hell it is. I’m
fucked if I know.”

“But
we need to replace it, right?”

“Yeah,
but with what? I’m a nuclear engineer, not a mechanic. Anyway, I need to get it
out first. Hold this while I work it free, okay?”

Hendry
grasped a hank of charred wires while Olembe struggled to free the burst
cylinder with something that resembled a monkey wrench. While they worked,
Ehrin climbed nimbly up the sloping side of the ship and perched on a golden
fin, watching them work. From time to time it gestured and chattered to itself.

Hendry
caught its glance and winked, not expecting a response and not getting one. He
was aware of the creature’s rank animal smell, its quick respiration.

He
said to Olembe, “Supposing we do get the ship running again, we need to find an
uninhabited Earthlike world before we go back for the colonists.”

Olembe
nodded. “Pity the lizards turned up. This place pretty much fits the bill,
little of it we’ve seen.”

“I
wonder how different the neighbouring worlds might be? Think about it—how many
hundreds of worlds are crammed onto each tier? They can’t all be occupied.”

Olembe,
head thrust into the hatch, paused in his work to shoot a glance at him. “No?
What if the Builders populated each one when they built this place? What if we
aren’t welcome here? We gatecrashed, remember.”

“You’re
one pessimistic bastard, Friday.”

The
African laughed. “Just pointing out how it looks to me.”

Hendry
looked up through the treetops. The great arc of the helix’s next tier curved
through the clear blue sky, so vast that its extremity was lost to sight. He
considered its enormity; not only its physical construction, but the notion
behind it. What the hell had the Builders intended—a zoo, a haven? He said as
much to Olembe.

“How
about,” Olembe said, grimacing with the effort of loosening the cylinder, “a
lab experiment? They gather specimens of alien races from around the galaxy,
build this Petri dish and populate it, and watch the extraterrestrials fight it
out.”

“I
don’t buy it,” Hendry said.

“Why
not?”

He
smiled. “Maybe I’m just a bleeding-heart liberal romantic, but I like to think
that a race advanced enough scientifically would be pretty morally and
ethically advanced too.”

Olembe
snorted. “Wishful thinking. Who says altruism is a universal constant?”

“Who
says evil is?”

Olembe
shook his head. “We’re talking aliens here. Who can guess their motivations?
What might appear evil to us might be intended as something else entirely by
the aliens themselves.”

“Granted.
But I still think that they didn’t build the helix in order to watch a bunch of
aliens fight it out.”

“And
I’ll expect the worst-case scenario until I’m proved wrong.”

Hendry
glanced at Ehrin and said, “What do you think, friend? Why were you brought
here?”

Ehrin
just blinked giant eyes at him and opened its muzzle in what might have been a
snarl.

Olembe
stopped work and glanced at the lemur creature. “I wonder if they know? I mean,
do they have creation stories, myths, about great ships that came from the
skies and took their people to another land?”

“Maybe
we should get Carrelli to ask it when she gets back.”

Olembe
smiled. “Maybe by then she’ll be a lot closer to solving this damned riddle, if
she’s managed to wake this Sleeper. Maybe we’ll know whether the Builders are
benevolent zoo-keepers or sadistic voyeurs.” He swore and yanked the cylinder
free. He held it up to Ehrin and said, “You know where we can find something
just like this, a kind of replacement, yeah? To fit in here? Go fetch, boy.”

Ehrin
merely blinked at him.

“I
reckon the only hope is to cannibalise the ship. I’ll check later. Meantime,
how about a fruit break?” He crossed the clearing to the pile of fruit and came
back with a selection. They sat against the flank of the ship and ate. Ehrin
chattered, ran off up the ramp and disappeared inside.

Olembe
looked at Hendry and said, “So you and Kaluchek are getting it on, right?”

Hendry
glanced at him. “What? You don’t approve? Think I’m too old?”

“Hey,
I’m no moralist, pal. Good luck to you, while it lasts. It’s just that... I’d
like to know something, is all.”

“What’s
that?”

Olembe
paused, spitting out a mouthful of black seeds. “Why does your squeeze treat me
like shit, Joe? And don’t say you haven’t noticed.”

Hendry
nodded. “Of course I’ve noticed.”

“She’s
racist, right? She can’t get her head round why an African, from the continent
that’s given nothing to the world—cos that’s a perception that a lot of people
held back around the end of the twenty-first century—gets to be aboard a
life-saving mission to the stars, yeah?”

“It’s
not that, Friday.”

Olembe
spat. “And don’t say, how can she be racist when she’s half-coloured herself?
It’s a typical ignorant white man’s remark I’ve heard a hundred times before!”

“Screw
you, Friday. I know what racism is. I was married to a Japanese woman, okay,
and she hated every colour but yellow.”

Olembe
looked at him. “So... what’s the Eskimo’s problem? She acts like she’s got an
icicle stuck up her arse every time she talks to me.”

Hendry
looked away, determined not to be provoked by Olembe.

Olembe
went on, “Look, you’re fucking the bitch, Hendry. What the hell gives?”

Hendry
turned, angered now. “She told me, Friday. Okay?”

Olembe
stopped chewing, glanced sidewise at Hendry. “Enlightening. Very fucking
enlightening. She told you... so what the fuck did she tell you?”

Hendry
stared at the African and said, “She ran a check on everyone on the maintenance
team when she was in Berne.” He paused, surprised to find that he was enjoying
getting back at Olembe like this. “She came up with something about you, about
what you did back in West Africa.”

“Christ...
Jesus Christ, man.”

Hendry
turned and looked at Olembe. He was staring off into the distance, biting his
bottom lip. At last he said, “How the hell did she find that out?”

Hendry
shrugged. “Hacked into some UN smartware files. I don’t know the exact
details.”

“UN
files? How the hell did the UN know about that?”

Hendry
looked at Olembe, puzzled. “That’s their business, Friday. They monitor wars,
war crimes. They probably had observers at the trial.”

Now
it was the African’s turn to look puzzled. “Hendry, what the hell are you on about?”

“The
order you gave, sanctioning the execution of the prisoners, the five hundred
Moroccans.”

“Jesus
Christ!” Olembe pushed himself to his feet, striding into the centre of the
clearing and turning. He hurled a fruit at the ship, where it hit the golden
carapace with a ripe splat and slid to the ground.

He
approached Hendry and pointed. “I don’t know what the hell she’s been telling
you, Joe. But that’s a lie, you got me? A fucking goddamned lie!”

“Sissy
seemed pretty convinced.”

Olembe
was shaking his head, vehement. “I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t... Christ, what
kind of monster do you think I am?”

Hendry
opened his mouth, thought through Olembe’s reaction, and said, “So you didn’t
give the order—”

“I
was never in the fucking army, Hendry!”

“But
you’re hiding something.”

Olembe
just stood there, staring at him. He looked, Hendry thought, tough and
aggressive, and yet at the same time vulnerable. At last he said, “Joe... I
trust you, okay? You just sit around, taking it all in. You’ve lost your
daughter, and do you moan about it?” He shook his head. “You’re cool, Joe.”

Hendry
wanted to protest that though he might not bewail his loss, he still felt it
deeply; Olembe’s assessment of his reaction to Chrissie’s death demeaned his
grief. He said nothing, but waited for the African to go on.

“You’re
right,” Olembe said, “I did something back then, but I didn’t massacre five
hundred fucking civilians.”

Olembe
began striding, back and forth across the clearing, nodding to himself as if
rehearsing the lines he would say to convince Hendry.

“Okay,
Joe... this is what happened. This is the truth. I’m not proud of what
happened, but it isn’t as bad as massacring civilians...” He stopped and
dropped into a crouch before Hendry. “This was ‘94, right? Last year—I mean, what
would have been last year... Anyway, the war in Africa was over. What was left
of the Republic of West Africa was trying to recover, pull itself from the
shit. Everything was chaotic. It was every man for himself, okay? Bear that in
mind. I was working in Lagos, on the coast. A shit job in an oil-fuelled power
station. It was a hand-to-mouth existence. The government hadn’t paid us for
three months. I went shooting game for food—I had a wife and two kids to feed.”
He stopped there, hung his head, and Hendry wondered if he was thinking about
the wife and children he had left behind on Earth. “Anyway, I had this brother
working in the north, at the fusion plant in Abuja. We were close, we’d studied
at Lagos together—nuclear mechanics—before he got a grant to study in the US
ten, twelve years ago. When he got back, he landed himself a top post at a
nuclear station in Abuja.”

He
paused, stopped his striding and looked at Hendry. “Then last year, a few weeks
before the ESO call up, my brother came down to Lagos to see me. He knew how
hard things were down south. He gave me money, enough to keep me and the family
alive for a few months.”

Hendry
said, “What happened?”

“He
was staying with us, on leave from Abuja. We went out shooting one day, me and
my brother and a couple of friends. Bag a bit of game to supplement the
rations, right?”

Olembe
fell silent. He dropped into a squat on the golden moss, staring at his big
fingers interlaced to form one great knot. He looked up, into Hendry’s eyes. “I
didn’t shoot him, Joe. It was a friend. An accident. My brother got between the
gun and an antelope... He died instantly.”

“And...”

Olembe
was shaking his head, smiling. “And we covered it up, buried my brother and
didn’t tell the police.”

Into
the following silence, Hendry said, “What was your brother’s name?”

Olembe
smiled. “You’re no fool, Joe. What do you think? Friday Olembe.”

“You
took his identity?”

“I
didn’t plan to, not until the ESO call up came along, forwarded to my place via
Abuja. I opened the file and read the offer and... it came to me in a rush. I
could do the job. I was a qualified nuclear engineer. What could be simpler? I
was to report to a government department in Lagos, where I’d be security
checked, my ID verified—”

“So
how did you get through that?”

Olembe
smiled, held two fingers up before his face and rubbed them together. “How do
you think? I gave a couple of officials the equivalent of a year’s wages—paid
from my brother’s account— and they passed me as Friday Olembe.”

Hendry
nodded, then said, “You left your wife and children?”

“Don’t
sound so fucking censorious, Joe. Do you have any idea what life was like in
Lagos back then? You would have done the same—and yes, it tore me up, it was
the hardest decision in my life, even harder than taking my brother’s identity.
But desperation breeds even greater desperation, Joe. I left my wife and
kids—with enough money to see them okay—but don’t think for a second that that
doesn’t eat me up in here, Joe, because it never stops hurting like hell.”