Starship Fall (12 page)

We stumbled through the narrow tunnel, just wide enough to allow me to remain by Hawk’s side, holding him and urging him on. I was exhausted, and Hawk had lost God knows how much blood, and I could only imagine the pain he was obviously suffering – but he was a strong man and he dragged himself up the chiselled steps with a fierce determination, as if to defy Grainger’s best attempts to kill him, and Kee’s terrible foretelling of the future.

I was too taken up by the events of the moment to consider Kee’s vision and what this might mean. Only later, in the long days back in Magenta Bay, could I reflect on all that had happened and ponder the philosophical implications of Hawk’s succumbing to his lover’s prophecy.

Ten minutes later we emerged from behind the waterfall into blazing sunlight. Delta Pavonis was lifting itself over the mountains, and I realised that I had spent all night and much of the morning deep underground.

My plan was to take Hawk back through the jungle to the bison, which was equipped with emergency medical supplies – but in the event, thankfully, I was saved that gruelling journey.

I heard a sudden scream, and looked up to see Kee sprinting across the clearing, closely followed by Matt and Maddie. Kee was carrying something – a medi-kit, I realised: forewarned by her vision – and her face as she stared at Hawk, at the monstrous weapon that skewered him, was a mask of anguish.

Hawk fell to his knees. Matt was already tearing open the medi-case and withdrawing a hypoject of painkiller. He pumped it into Hawk’s thigh, followed by an coagulant, then eased Hawk onto his side on the grass.

Maddie was a few metres away, speaking urgently into her wrist-com. She returned to us. “I’ve alerted the air-medics in MacIntyre. They’ll be here within the hour.”

Kee sat beside Hawk and gripped his hand and sobbed as he lapsed in an out of consciousness. “I’m sorry, Hawk,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry!”

At least, I saw, the wound had ceased bleeding. I looked enquiringly at Matt, who said, “I don’t know. Touch and go. Hawk’s a tough old bastard. If anyone can make it...”

Maddie said, “Carlotta...?”

I shook my head. “She... she entered the long-house,” was all I could bring myself to say.

Maddie held my hand. “David, there’s nothing you can do here. Go back to her, be there when she comes out, okay?”

“Are you sure?”

I was torn between waiting until the medics had assessed Hawk, and being there when Carlotta emerged from the long-house so that I could question her... I had so much I wanted to ask.

I nodded. “I’ll go.” I glanced at Hawk. He was unconscious, which eased my guilt at fleeing.

I hurried back to the waterfall and made the long descent. Here and there I saw slicks of Hawk’s spilled blood, black in the pale fungal light.

I came to the sacred cavern; only the stretcher-bearers were apparent, sitting off to one side of the long-house. A part of me expected to see Carlotta there, dazed after her session with the alien drug. I wondered, then, at how I might receive her, and her me.

The future was uncertain. I knew what I felt for the woman, but I feared learning that she felt nothing at all for me. More than anything I wanted to know if she had used me as no more than a puppet on the strings of pre-destination, if her apparent love for me had been no more than an act.

I sat cross-legged at the foot of the ramp, hung my head and waited. An age seemed to elapse. I drifted, catching myself with a start again and again as I almost fell asleep. I looked ahead, and saw Carlotta and myself together and happy in Magenta Bay, and I looked ahead and saw myself alone… I told myself that some residual smoke of the burning bones was seeping from the long-house, imbuing me with diluted visions of possible futures, but the fact was my fevered mind was producing these scenarios without the aid of any alien stimulant.

I looked up. There was movement in the entrance of the long-house. An elder, Grainger’s replacement, a slight figure upon whom the face-mask seemed disproportionately large, appeared on the threshold, then stood to one side and thumped his spear.

From nowhere Qah appeared at my side, and touched my shoulder. I tried to read the expression in her big eyes, but could not. She gestured towards the entrance to the long-house, and I looked up. The stretcher-bearers emerged, moving with circumspection as they carried the laden stretcher down the ramp. I glimpsed a fall of midnight hair.

And I knew then that all my questions, all my doubts, would never be answered.

Two weeks later I attended the private viewing of Matt’s latest art-work.

There were perhaps fifty people gathered on the red sand before his dome, standing in groups, drinking and chatting and anticipating the preview. I recognised the great and the good from Magenta and MacIntyre, and even one or two off-world critics among the crowd.

Kee stood off to one side of the group as, one by one, the effulgent spheres appeared as if by magic in the air above the sand. She was talking to Maddie, gripping a glass of sava juice and taking small sips from time to time. She looked, without Hawk by her side, smaller than usual, somehow diminished – which is a paradox because, when in Hawk’s towering presence she seemed a childlike, almost a waif-like, figure.

I was on my fifth beer, and I felt mellow.

I stood and listened to a couple of speeches; a Terran critic said a few words about Matt Sommers’ standing in the world of art, and then Matt stepped forward, characteristically reserved and modest, and said that his art didn’t need explanation: what mattered was the experience. He went on to say that in today’s world it was easy to succumb to despair; it was easy, he said, to allow one’s experience of tragedy and disappointment to colour one’s view of the world: the secret, he went on, was from time to time to be able to look beyond the personal…

He glanced my way as he said this, and I felt compelled to raise my beer in acknowledgement.

Then I caught sight of a tall figure emerging from behind Matt’s dome and edging towards the gathering. I liberated another beer from a passing waiter and moved towards the newcomer.

“Hawk,” I said. “Great to see you. Matt’ll be delighted.”

I embraced him, feeling his solidity, and handed him the beer.

I’d visited him in hospital in MacIntyre, once he was well enough to see people, but we’d avoided talking about what had happened in the Ashentay’s sacred cavern.

I led him towards the gathering. Kee looked up, and the light in her eyes was a delight to behold. She hurried over to him and they embraced.

A dozen spheres filled the beach, and Matt declared the preview open, and people moved towards the glowing globes, at first circumspectly, and then, having experienced one, moving with eagerness towards the next.

Kee skipped away and stepped into a sphere.

I held back and watched.

* * *

A while later Hawk fetched me a beer and we sat in the dunes overlooking the beach.

He chugged at his bottle, his movements a little stiff following the surgery to save his life.

After a period of companionable silence, I said, “What happened, Hawk, back then with Grainger?”

It was a while before he replied.

“He ran a small exploration company,” he said, watching the crowd, “just after the Telemass technology made the big concerns a thing of the past. He cut corners and worked on a shoestring and made things work. I applied for work as a co-pilot. Chalcedony was the second world we explored... We came crash-landed inland a few hundred kays from here – something in the nav-system malfunctioned, and the secondaries misfired. It was a miracle we landed in one piece. Grainger was okay, but I was in a bad way. We had precious little in the way of a surgical-AI onboard, the com-rig was shot, and the ship wouldn’t fly.”

I shook my head. “What happened?”

“Grainger’d been here before, on a pre-exploratory trip. He said there were natives. He was going to contact them, get medical help. He set off. It was a hell of a hike… a few hundred kays to the nearest settlement.” He shrugged and fell silent, his eyes distant as he looked into the past.

“Well,” he went on, “when he didn’t come back, I assumed he hadn’t made it. I patched myself up as well as I was able, and if I’d been a believer I would have prayed.”

“How did you make it back?” I asked. “I thought you said the ship wouldn’t fly?”

“It wouldn’t. I was rescued. A Heatherington exploration vessel was making a fly-by and picked up the ship’s radiation signature. They came down to have a closer look, and the rest’s history. I told them about Grainger, and they searched but found nothing. I just assumed at the time that the poor bastard had died.”

I took a swallow of beer. “Was it a coincidence that you made Chalcedony your home, Hawk?”

He shook his head, smiled. “When I couldn’t get work as a pilot any more, I came here, set up the junkyard, and in my spare time searched the central massifs for any sign of Grainger. I wanted to ensure that he hadn’t survived, that he hadn’t just walked out on me and left me for dead.”

“And then, just last week, you found out.”

He nodded, bitterly. “That first time in the cavern, after Kee survived... something about the elder... I wondered, but told myself not to be so ridiculous. Anyway, when I overheard Kee on the com to you, I forced her to tell me what the hell was going on. I asked myself why Carlotta might want to go to the cavern. It was just too much of a coincidence, given that Carlotta and Grainger had been lovers.” He stopped, then said, “I didn’t believe Kee’s vision, but I just knew it had to be Grainger.” He shrugged. “You know the rest, David.”

I stared at the floating spheres and drank my beer.

“Did you find out what the Ashentay did with Grainger?”

He nodded. “They’re a peaceable people, David. They’re tolerant. Kee told me that they exiled him, and deprived him of the bone drug. I... I don’t know where he is. Matt made enquiries. I think he knows.”

“Will you–?” I began.

Hawk smiled. “I’m not going to ask him, David. I don’t want to know where the bastard is. That period of my life is over. It’s enough to know that Grainger left me for dead... I don’t believe in an eye for an eye. And anyway, his doing without the drug will be punishment enough.”

We sat in silence for a while, as the sun sank towards the sea and the shadows lengthened. At last Hawk said, softly, “I’m sorry about Carlotta, David.”

I nodded, took another swallow of beer, and said nothing.

After all, what was there to say; what could I say to explain, or excuse, her actions? I could not work out her motivations, her rationale. Had she still been in love with Ed Grainger, and used me to get to him, guided by drug-induced visions of the future? Or had she merely been a slave to the drug, and craved knowledge of her destiny, whether or not she might ever return to her exalted status as a holo superstar?

I prefer to think that what she told me, on the plain before the caverns, was the truth:
“I looked into the future, and I saw us together, but what I felt when I met you… what I feel for you now... that can’t be denied, David.”

But all I do know, for certain, is that I miss Carlotta Chakravorti-Luna like hell.

Maddie emerged from the crowd and headed our way. “David,” she said, her expression compassionate as she looked down at me. She reached out, and I took her hand.

She pulled me upright. “Come,” she ordered. She linked an arm through mine and squeezed.

Kee joined us, taking Hawk’s hand as we walked toward the nearest floating sphere. I felt his arm about my shoulders.

They steered me towards the sphere, and then Matt himself, the creator, smiling as he joined us, took Maddie’s hand.

“What’s it called, Matt?” I asked, pointing towards the sphere.

He said, “I call it,
The Love of Friends
, David.”

All around, the assembly had paused to watch us, and I felt a sudden tightness in my chest, the result of some unnameable emotion, part grief, part loneliness, part love.

Together we approached the light.

Novels:

Meridian Days –
Pan Macmillan,
1992