Helix (52 page)

“Hey,”
Olembe said, holding up both hands. “So we go sailing off into the sunset with
the vague hope of arriving on the other side of the ocean...? I think I’d
rather take my chances with the bad food here and the Church ship, thanks.”

Hendry
thought of sailing over the ocean on a membrane...

Carrelli
was saying, “They have control over the sails. I surmise it’s some kind of
empathic link with the creatures.”

“The
creatures?” Kaluchek cut in.

“The
sails are alive,” Carrelli said. “Animals. The aliens... they call themselves
the Ho-lah-lee... control them, ride them. Continually, groups of Ho-lah-lee
ride the sails across the ocean to pay respects to the Guardians.”

Kaluchek
said, “If we could ride the sails... that’d be the answer, wouldn’t it? I mean,
the rats on the Church ship won’t be looking for us aboard the sails, will
they?”

“Hold
on. Let’s think abut this.” Olembe looked around the group. “Okay, it’s one
option. But there’s the danger involved, right? Accidents, for Chrissake. What
if... I don’t know... what if the sail we rode in came down in the ocean?
They’re animals, right? What if one died mid-flight, what then? We’d be dead
and the colonists back at the
Lovelock
would be in the same position we
were in when we landed. We owe it to them to be cautious.”

Carrelli
nodded. “Friday’s right.” She thought about it. “The obvious answer would be to
split up. Some of us go with the sails, if that’s possible, while someone stays
with the ship.”

Olembe
nodded. “I can fly this thing. I know how it works. I volunteer to stay here.
Keep in radio contact, and if you don’t make it—”

Hendry
said, “And what if the Church ship’s monitoring for radio signals?”

Carrelli
said, “We’ll contact you only in the event of an emergency, okay?” She looked
across at the African.

Olembe
nodded. “Fine by me.”

Carrelli
turned to Hendry and Kaluchek. “How about it?”

“I
want to sail over the ocean,” Hendry said. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Kaluchek
nodded. “I’ll second that.”

Carrelli
turned to Ehrin and explained the situation, and in due course the alien
replied. Carrelli smiled. “Ehrin’s coming too. Okay, I’ll go out there and see
if we can hitch a ride.”

Hendry
watched her go, wondering what the alternative would be if, for some reason,
they were unable to sail the spinnakers. He put the question to Kaluchek and
Olembe.

The
African shrugged. “Then we sit tight and wait, and at some point try to make it
across the ocean in the ship.”

“And
just hope the Church ship isn’t in the area,” Hendry said.

“Jesus,”
Kaluchek said, “I’d rather take my chances with the sails.”

Hendry
moved to the viewscreen. Its extraterrestrial patterning had diminished now as
more of the creatures moved off to join their fellows in conversation with
Carrelli. She stood beside the ship, backed by the ocean, and addressed the
phalanx of alien amphibians.

Hendry
was aware of his heartbeat as he watched. Their future, he knew, depended on
what happened over the next few minutes. Kaluchek joined him and placed a hand
on the small of his back.

Carrelli’s
audience came to an end. She inclined her head, lifted a valedictory hand and
moved back to the hatch.

Kaluchek
prayed quietly under her breath. They turned to face the corridor.

Seconds
later Carrelli entered, smiling. “It’s on,” she said. “The Ho-lah-lee will
summon a sail for us. We set off at sunrise.”

The sea was
blood red.
The sun, rising at a right angle to the ocean, filled the dawn sky with coppery
light.

Hendry
stepped from the ship and paused in wonder at the view. The light was
incredible, illuminating the scene before the ship. More than a hundred
Ho-lah-lee had assembled on the foreshore. They stood upright on the littoral
loam and in the shallows, gazing out to sea in a silence he guessed must be
part of some ritual obeisance. One or two raised their arms, and after a minute
a concerted sound issued from the creatures, a bass note that for some odd
reason struck him as profoundly moving.

He
walked with Kaluchek to the edge of the sea, Carrelli and Ehrin close behind.
Olembe stood on the ramp of the ship, watching them.

A
Ho-lah-lee moved from the mass of creatures at the water’s edge and spoke to
Carrelli. She replied, then turned to Hendry and Kaluchek. “They will now
perform the ritual of the summoning. Many of them are embarking on the pilgrimage
today. We must wait our turn.”

As
if at a silent signal, the assembled Ho-lah-lee raised their arms as one, and
another silence descended upon the gathering. Hendry looked into the sky.
Directly above, the tendrils waved in the wind, great lazy sweeps that seemed,
because of their great height, retarded like the ebb and flow of marine flora.

“Look,”
Kaluchek whispered, pointing.

High
above the tendrils, Hendry saw the first sail. It drifted in over the
vegetation, then descended suddenly and with slow majesty. It was, he saw,
vast—perhaps a hundred metres high and almost as wide. On closer inspection it
appeared silver, though the tendrils could be seen through its membrane as if
through an opaque lens. It was, he thought, the strangest animal he had ever
witnessed.

The
sail came in low over the shallows, then slowed itself by some unknown feat of
aerodynamics and paused long enough for a dozen Ho-lah-lee to scramble aboard.
They climbed up the concave inner curve of the sail, and seemed to hang suspended
as the sail took off again, allowing the wind to waft it out to sea and higher
into the air. Soon it was a rapidly dwindling speck against the brightening
sky.

“And
there’s another, and another...”

They
were coming in threes and fours now, a slow procession of the incredible
extraterrestrial beings, dipping over the tendrils and slowing above the
shallows. Little by little the crowd of Ho-lah-lee diminished as they climbed
aboard and took off on their once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage.

A
Ho-lah-lee approached Carrelli and spoke to her. She translated. “The next sail
is for us. According to the Ho-lah-lee, it is an ancient sail, which has made
the journey a thousand times before. It will be honoured to convey us to the
hallowed land.”

Hendry
turned and watched a great sail dip over the tendrils, its bellying curve
catching the sunlight in a rouge filament like a sickle. It swept in low,
slowing and coming to a halt a few metres from them. The Ho-lah-lee spoke again
and Carrelli said, “We simply climb aboard and the sail will do the rest. Don’t
climb too high, though, or we’ll be in danger of tipping the creature.”

As
the closest to the sail, Hendry waded into the shallows and climbed aboard,
turning to help Kaluchek after him. The membrane gave beneath his feet, like
the surface of a slack trampoline, and he wallowed for a few paces before
coming to the concave inner sweep of the curious creature. He reached out, and
was amazed to find that his palms adhered to the diaphanous surface as if
glued—and yet he was able to pull his hands away with ease. He climbed, then
turned and found himself supported by the membrane. He lay back as if in a
hammock and watched Kaluchek ascending until she was beside him. Carrelli came
next, followed by Ehrin, and they settled further down the curve. Last of all
came two Ho-lah-lee, who laid their heads against the membrane and closed their
eyes as the sail rose and moved away from the shore.

The
sail climbed, and the land sank away beneath them. The ship became ever
smaller—Olembe on the ramp a tiny stick figure, waving a hand in the air—until
it was a golden sliver almost lost amid the tendrils that crowded the
foreshore.

They
rose rapidly, their ascent dizzying, in total silence. Hendry recalled a
balloon ride in his youth, and his amazement at the lack of noise. As was the
case then, now they were moving with the wave-front of the wind: the only sound
was Kaluchek beside him, laughing to herself in exhilaration.

He
scanned the skies for any sign of the Church ship. The heavens above the
tendril forest were a cloudless bright blue, a shade deeper than any sky on
Earth. All that could be seen in the depthless blue were a hundred elliptical
specks as the sails headed out to sea.

He
examined the surface of the sail. It appeared to be a jelly-like substance,
shot through with tiny silver filaments like veins. He craned his neck,
straining to see to the top edge of the creature, but he could detect no
evidence of sensory organs, or a knot in the flesh that might denote the locus
of a cortex. He reminded himself that his was an alien creature, a very alien
creature, and he would be foolish to expect its physiology to conform to
terrestrial norms.

They
were rising all the time. The ocean glittered below, and the land they had left
was on the horizon now, a fringe of waving tendrils that seemed kilometres
distant. Hendry looked left and right, and made out a flotilla of a dozen
nearby sails, all bearing their cargo of tiny frog-like Ho-lah-lee. He wondered
how many years this had been going on, and what form their pilgrimage took when
they reached journey’s end.

Journey’s
end... He doubted it would be his journey’s end, but merely a stage upon the
way. The thought of returning to the first tier for the colonists, having to
avoid the lemur militia and any other dangers that might be lurking, filled him
with apprehension. There was a long way to go before that, though: the finding
of a suitable, empty world, the planning of how best to go about ferrying the
colonists up the tiers...

Kaluchek
reached out and touched his arm. “What are you thinking, Joe?”

He
smiled. “Journey’s end,” he said. “But we’ve really only just begun.”

“It’s
as if we’ve been travelling for ages,” she said. “I’m tired. I want to settle
down, start the colony.”

He
looked at her, at the beautiful woman he was coming to love, and wondered at
the secrets hidden behind her open, smiling face. He wondered how someone so
loving could harbour so much hate. What had happened all those years ago in LA,
between the man who had been Friday Olembe and herself?

“Sissy...”

She
looked up at him, smiling radiantly. “Mmm?”

He
reached out and knuckled her cheek. “What happened?” he asked.

Her
eyes narrowed. “I don’t...”

“At
university in LA. You met... Friday Olembe, right? What happened?”

She
stared at him, her expression mystified, and he wondered suddenly if he’d got
it horribly wrong. Then she said, “How do you know?”

“I
don’t. That is, I know something happened— to make you feel the way you do
towards Friday. But I don’t know exactly what.”

She
looked away, shaking her head, pain in her eyes.

“You
don’t have to tell me, Sissy. If it’s too... if it’s something you don’t want
to share. But,” he paused, wondering how to phrase what he had to tell her,
“but I think there’s something you should know about Friday.”

She
stared at him. “I know all I need to know!” she said with a flare of anger. “I
know what he did to me, how he, how...”

Her
face collapsed, her mouth pulled into a pained rictus, and she was crying,
sobbing silently. He reached out and cradled her in his arms, rocking her.
“Sissy, listen to me, I need to tell you... You’ve got to know.”

She
looked up, shaking her head. “What?”

“It
wasn’t Friday,” he said, then corrected himself, “That is, it wasn’t the man we
know as Friday Olembe.”

She
pulled away, eyes wide, as if accusing him of some terrible complicity with the
man who had destroyed her life all those years ago. “Sissy, he took the
identity of Friday Olembe a year ago. Friday was his brother, a nuclear
engineer like himself, but who studied at LA in the eighties, while you were
there.”

“Olembe
told you this?”

He
nodded. “I asked him about his past. I wanted to know if he really was
responsible for the war crimes, as you claimed. I questioned him. He took it
the wrong way, told me about the crime he
had
committed, in taking his
brother’s identity.”

She
shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

So
he told her about the shooting accident, and Friday Olembe’s call up from the
ESO, and how his brother had seen the opportunity to steal his identity.

“And
you believe him?” Kaluchek asked.

Hendry
nodded. “He was telling the truth, Sissy.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I put two and
two together, realised something must have happened between you and Friday’s
brother back in LA.”

“Something
happened
? Christ, do you want to know what
happened
? The bastard
raped me. I was eighteen. A virgin. He
raped
me!”

“It’s
okay. It’s over. That was a long time ago.” He held her.