Tabitha (58 page)

Seven was already flying circles of the
mountain when Tabitha woke up the next morning. She dived into the turquoise
sea with her alien catsuit on, breathing compressed air from her pull-up
helmet. She swam out further and down into the deep, glad of the air supply
when she discovered a sprawling garden of coral down beyond a sand bank. It was
like nothing she’d ever seen before; a waving
colourstorm
of life that almost glowed in the rippling sunlight from above. She’d never
seen fish this bright; vivid shocks of colour weaving in and out of the coral.
Tabitha spent a while just floating there enjoying the sight, letting all the
vital colour and rippling light speak to the deepest part of her. An
incandescent
paintbox
hymn, seeping a holy golden
feeling through her body. A sea turtle appeared from the bright blue distance
and glided past, and Tabitha watched in reverent stillness. It was so graceful;
so
real.
She’d never expected to see one up close. She followed it at a
distance into deeper waters, leaving the coral behind. It was so peaceful down
here, with the sunlight rippling along the white sea bed. Up above the sun
illuminated the surface of the water; a vast glowing portal to another world
above. A shoal of fish slipped by in the blue, silver and staring. Down on the
seabed clear shrimps fiddled the sand. Anemones and starfish wafted and waved
in their own tiny world amongst the rocks. Life down here was oblivious to the
Earth above; another dimension under rippling aquatic sunlight. Tabitha felt a
rare joy rising in her; a peace she’d forgotten about. She jumped with fright
when a vast dark shape cut through the water above. All the sea life around her
fled in fear. Tabitha kicked and flailed and tried to swim away, until she
realised what it was and felt stupid for panicking. Seven dived down into the
shattered peace around her, a giant amphibian terror. Tabitha laughed into her
breather mask when he swam close, looking into her eyes curiously. Seven
dismissed her and swam off, a massive black monster in the bright blue. Tabitha
floated in the deep and watched him go. His tail had flattened into a fin like
a giant newt. Gills glowed softly on his neck in hidden recesses. She watched
him with a grinning pride as he chased terrified fish playfully, spinning and swooping
in the turquoise deep. Her monster.

After a while
Tabitha’s flight suit made a squelchy beeping sound, and she guessed it must be
her air supply. Seven had long since burst through the surface above and flown
away; Tabitha had just been lying on the sea bed, looking up at sunlight dapple
and pierce the surface high above. A weightless ecstasy.

When she swam
back to shore and wandered out onto the hot soft sand, Tabitha heard a sharp
hiss coming from her suit. A raised bump on the back was sucking air in,
refilling itself. She took off the suit and left it to hiss in the sunlight,
and wandered off through the trees into the forest beyond.

Fishbowl was
tending to its plants in the waterfall clearing, sipping only as much current
as it needed from the flowers in its garden. Tabitha watched it drink current
from the anemones like nectar, and then zap it out again into a red turbine
flower to help it grow. The strange plants seemed to grow ever larger by the
hour, until by midday Tabitha was sitting in the shade of an oak-sized anemone
tree by the waterfall. A strange feeling crept over her then; a drunken daze.
The sun filled her body with a fresh living light. She felt
part
of it
all. A blissed-out oneness with Fishbowl, the alien garden, the sun. She felt a
sudden silver thrill; an electro-hippie in a fleeting garden nirvana. And just
like that, the feeling was gone.

After her waterfall shower Tabitha
walked back out onto the beach in search of Seven. She gazed up and down the
sand as she pulled on her alien catsuit, squinting in the bright sun and
clipping the leathery metal belt around her waist. Something far out to sea
caught her attention; a thin grey shape crawling on the horizon. A battleship.
Not black or alien, but very much human. Tabitha felt her world crash down all
over again.

‘Shit!’ she
muttered. Tabitha looked around desperately for Seven and caught sight of him
way up high; a black gargoyle shape perched on the mountain.

‘Seven! Go, fly
away!’ she screamed, waving her hands. ‘Seven!’ she whistled as loud as she
could, but it was too late. The cracking boom of artillery filled the bay. A
deep weird whirring noise carried overhead from the distant ship, and the top
of the mountain exploded in a hail of dust and rock. Tabitha screamed and stood
frozen, staring wide-eyed at the rising dustcloud on the peak. There was a roar
then, and her dragon tore out from the dustcloud and came soaring overhead.
Tabitha’s heart leapt to see him alive. More shots echoed from the ship;
missing Seven and pounding into the hills beyond in jumping bursts of sand.
Trees toppled. Seven flew around overhead, growling and panicked and unsure
whether to attack.

‘Keep moving,
don’t slow down!’ Tabitha yelled up at him, running for the trees herself. The
beach was suddenly a warzone behind her; a deafening chaos erupting in
sand-burst craters. Through the trees Tabitha found Fishbowl still caring for
its flowers, as if nothing was happening. She ran for it and grabbed the
flailing creature up in her arms, sprinting off into the forest beyond. A deep
whirring shot descended and blew the waterfall garden apart.

‘Seven, down
here!’ Tabitha yelled, as his black shape swept overhead. He roared in answer
and crashed down to the ground where the trees grew thinner. Tabitha leapt up
onto the wing he dipped down for her, and quickly sank down through the hatch
with Fishbowl wriggling in her arm. The ground around them exploded in a hail
of grass and soil, startling Seven as he roared and took off over the trees.

‘Hold onto
something!’ Tabitha told Fishbowl in the cockpit. Her mind leapt into Seven’s
like a plug in a socket and she launched them into the sky. She could tell what
Seven wanted to do, and felt nothing but blind rage coming from his thoughts.
When she circled overhead and saw the smoking ruins of Fishbowl’s alien garden,
she was inclined for revenge herself. But the battleship only fired on them
more as it drew closer to the island, sending wiggling murder-bright lines of
bullets rattling into the sky. Flak burst and boomed in deathly clouds all
around them. Seven fought Tabitha’s mind for control as they flew, filled with
a primal rage and desperate to attack. She wanted to go, he wanted to stay; the
result was a stalemate that had them flying in staggering circles under a hail
of gunfire. Tabitha set her mind against Seven’s with every fibre of her being;
straining to deny his murderous instincts before it got them killed. He was a
stubborn bastard. It hurt her head just to push against his will; trying to
overrule it was a shrill stinging agony.

‘Let’s just go!’
Tabitha snapped angrily as she gripped the seat, pushing her mind past Seven’s
burning fury. His anger rushed back over her mind like a bloody tide. Seven was
racing for the ship now, wanting to murder everyone on board. Tabitha tried
desperately to pull him back as he dived into the booming gunfire. Suddenly it
felt deeply unnatural to have their minds so intertwined; frightening. She was
joined with a wild animal. Seven was rabid, freaking out. Tabitha yelled and
beat his will into submission. She forced her control despite his objections,
and steered his body away into the sky. Suddenly they were soaring away from
the battleship and their smoking island. The stronger she held her will over
his own, the more he growled and submitted. The more his mind shrank back from
her own, the stronger she pushed him down. Afraid for her life, she wanted to
be sure he wouldn’t turn them back again. Suddenly Tabitha felt something click
in her mind, and she stopped pushing her will. It felt like a gear or a filter
had slotted back into place. Suddenly Seven felt like a ship again, no longer
animal. His mind felt grey, clinical, unthinking. Like a concrete floor for her
own mind to stand on. Absolute obedience. A slave.

By the time they
were up above the clouds, high over the endless sea and many miles from
anywhere, Tabitha couldn’t feel Seven in there
any more
.
There was still a presence there in her head, of something willing and
controlled; but it was nothing more than a shadow. Software. Fishbowl seemed
lost as well, confined in the cockpit with nothing to do. Half its tentacles
gripped the side of the seat, steadying its bobbing body. The other tentacles
waved and writhed in a panic, like they had when she’d first punched it away.
Tabitha didn’t know how much Fishbowl could think about its lost garden, but it
certainly seemed distressed.
We did nothing to deserve this,
she said to
herself, her ears still ringing from the artillery blasts. Even hiding away on
a deserted island was a military threat, apparently. Growing a garden and lying
in the sun was clearly enough to warrant death or control.
But then, that’s
most humans for you,
Tabitha said to herself, searching the hologram globe
for another distant back of beyond.
They ruin everything
.

44

The flight was torturously quiet. There
was only the dull drone of Seven’s jet scales outside. Tabitha tried constantly
to reach out to his mind, but he wasn’t there. Like his personality was locked
away somehow; maybe even erased. He was the same unthinking, unfeeling ship
she’d felt when they first met.

‘Come back to
me,’ she said quietly, touching her fingers to the ribbed console in front of
her seat. There weren’t any thoughts or feelings in Seven’s mind. Only a blankness
like silent TV static, waiting for orders.

‘He’s gone,’ she
told Fishbowl helplessly, past a lump in her throat. ‘There was an animal in
there. Now he’s gone, and it’s my fault.’ Fishbowl looked absent too. Maybe
panicked at being trapped in the cockpit, flying through the air. Or maybe it
felt lost without its plants around, grieving for them. Tabitha sat back and
hugged her knees to her chest. All that sadness in her, locked away, came
rushing back out again. She blinked and watched her tears patter down on her
knees, trickling off the scaly skin of her catsuit.

It was a clear starry night when she
reached the next marker on her hologram globe; a tiny secluded island off
Hawaii. Seven saw differently at night. The blackness of the world had given
way to pale night vision, picking out the land and the sea in ghostly whites
and greys. Tabitha set Seven down in an island forest and spoke to him for a
while in the cockpit, but it was no use. Any thoughts she’d felt from him once
were gone, buried back down under the obedience of a machine. The ship had only
just found his freedom, and now she’d stamped it right back into its cage
again.
Wait,
she told herself. If she hadn’t reined him in they’d be
dead. Seven was wild when the battleship turned up. She
had
to control
him. Given his way they would have attacked it and gone out in a blaze of
glory; a thundering white firestorm to tear the ship apart and slaughter
everyone on board. But Tabitha didn’t want that. More than anything else she’d
wanted to escape back to peace and quiet, far away, where the three of them
could be left alone to survive. She touched her hand out to Fishbowl in the
cockpit, but it still didn’t respond. There was no tentacle-tap of
acknowledgement against her fingers. Tabitha sighed sadly and climbed up
through the saddle hatch, leaving Fishbowl inside and Seven sat there like a
statue between the trees. She pulled on her coat and wandered off through the
forest, gripping the alien knife at her belt in case this new island wasn’t quite
so deserted. She looked back at Seven, resting motionless between the trees and
staring ahead, just like a robot again. Tabitha sighed and walked off into the
forest. It sucked being the monster stuck with higher thinking.

Of all the
things Tabitha expected to run into on the island, a star-studded party wasn’t
one of them. She followed the noise and the light through the trees and
stumbled out at the bottom of a lantern-lit garden, looking up at an
ultra-modern mansion beyond. Walls of glass; sharp flat concrete roof. People
talking and laughing around a glowing blue pool. Everything stylish, everything
premium. Everything that should have stopped existing after the invasion. Wait,
was she dreaming? The place was alive with famous faces, all dressed up for a
cocktail party at the end of the world. There was actual music; it sounded so
strange now. Snapping beats and rolling rushes of digital
wavenoise
.
Brash and jarring against her familiar silence. Tabitha pushed through the
bushes and headed up the garden path, passing a handful of movie stars who’d
fallen quiet to stare.

‘Jesus, you look
terrible,’ a comedy star chuckled to her, looking her up and down in the
lantern light. ‘Go get a drink.’

‘Thanks,’
Tabitha mumbled blankly, still looking around the place in shock. The all-star
cast smiled at her nervously, waiting for her to leave up the path. Tabitha
pulled her eyes away from them, numb and star-struck, and wandered off. As soon
as she turned her back she heard the small group muttering and chuckling about
her. A mini-pantheon of her movie gods and goddesses, standing right behind her
there on the lawn, bitching about her behind her back. She ignored the sting
and the embarrassment and walked off towards the mansion, trying to convince
herself that this was all still a dream. It would have made more sense that
way.

Tabitha stepped
inside the open-plan mansion and met with an alien scene. There was music,
dancing, electric lights. Perfumed smells. The clink of ice cubes in glasses.
Laughter. Over in the corner lounge an A-list actor was playing videogames with
a supermodel. Playing more than just videogames, on second glance. Tabitha
could only scan the room in shock, ignoring the few celebrities who were
staring at her from their cliques. How was everything working? And more
importantly, how was everyone alive and having a good time? Was she dreaming,
hallucinating, or what?

‘Oh my god, I
love it,’ said a glamourous blonde; a face that Tabitha recognised from
blockbuster movies. ‘Who are you wearing?’

‘Sorry?’ Tabitha
replied in a daze, still getting over how ordinary the woman looked in the
flesh. Elegantly dressed and undeniably beautiful, but inescapably ordinary
too.

‘Who are you
wearing?’ the woman repeated. ‘The designer?’ Tabitha was lost.

‘I haven’t the
slightest idea,’ a man chipped in beside her, looking Tabitha up and down as if
she was a mannequin. ‘Look at her gloves though, those are incredible!’ he
said, snatching up her hand to admire the angular grains in her metal skin.
‘Look at the detail here, the
weight
of it!’ he said. ‘James would be so
jealous if he saw this. Where is he? James! James, you have to come see this!’
several faces turned to look over at her. Before long Tabitha had gained a
small crowd of critics and admirers. She looked around at them, not knowing
what to say. She could only stare in dumb silence;
starstruck
and out of practice with human interaction.

‘I love your
contacts,’ a husky rock star told her over the music with a nod and a grin,
pointing two fingers at his eyes. ‘Very cool.’

‘Thanks,’
Tabitha mumbled uncertainly, staring at his TV-friendly face with wide yellow
eyes. Her quiet voice was lost in the noise of the party.

‘Are you high?’
he asked her, grinning.

‘Sorry?’

‘Are you high?’

‘
Er
, no,’ she said nervously. Tabitha excused herself and
made her way carefully through the celebrity revellers, as if they were made of
glass. She coaxed and pardoned her way through the crowd over towards the bar,
desperate for that drink she’d been offered. That was the only reason she was
still here.

‘Who
is
that?’
she heard a woman mutter in passing.

‘Indie movies,
she has to be,’ her friend replied derisively. ‘I mean, look at her
hair
.’
they chuckled condescendingly. Tabitha felt her bullied schooldays bubbling
back up in her mind and wanted to lash out at the pair. She checked herself on
that, and felt her claws sinking back inside her fingertips. Maybe she was a
little wilder than she thought these days. A tall suited man looked her up and
down approvingly as she wandered through the crowd. When the woman on his arm
caught him staring he looked away.

‘Daddy, is she a
monster?’ a little girl asked her famous father.
Say no,
Tabitha said to
herself, as she walked past them towards the bar.
Say I’m just like everyone
else.

‘I think she is
honey,’ he said warily. He was staring at her hands and feet; her striking
eyes. If there were any security staff around, Tabitha was sure he’d be
motioning for them to come over.
It was the way everyone was just
staring but not saying anything. Not asking her what happened, or if she was
ok. Just staring at the freak on parade. People were backing away. Tabitha felt
something wither away inside her then; some last little piece of her that still
wanted to be accepted. She switched off to the people turning and staring,
muttering things to one another under cover of the music. A drunk middle-aged
man tried to shake her hand and introduce himself, but he recoiled at her hard
black fingers and cold golden stare. The barman looked up and smiled as Tabitha
approached, obviously trying to ignore her hands.

‘What can I get
you?’ he said with uncertainty, glancing around.

‘Whisky please,’
Tabitha replied. She looked down at her reflection on the mirrored glass
bar-top. She recalled another bar, another mirror. The hulking black shape in
the city of skin, staring down at her in the reflection. She remembered how
scared she’d been, and the acid-trip dreams that night after she’d killed it.
She didn’t feel scared of these famous reflections staring at her in the
mirrored bar. This wasn’t real fear.

‘I’ll get this,’
a man said loudly beside her, shouting over the music. He was grinning, drunk,
muscular. He barged into her when he moved a little too close beside her. He
put a hand around her waist possessively.

‘Business or
pleasure?’ he asked her, his warm boozy breath in her ear. ‘Name your price.’
His hand slipped down to her arse cheek.

‘Leave me
alone!’ she said, pulling away from him. Tabitha put her hand on the glass bar
to steady herself, used too much strength, and the entire mirrored shelf
shattered and crashed to the floor. The music stopped abruptly; every face
turned to look. There were screams. The falling glass had cut people at the
bar.

‘Sorry!’ Tabitha
mumbled into the sudden silence, not knowing where to look.

‘Jesus,’ said
the drunk muscleman, staggering away from her as a small group of celebrities
asked him what happened. Tabitha turned back to the barman, waiting for her
drink, but he was keeping his distance.

‘I think you should
go,’ a woman called from the crowd. Tabitha ignored her, shutting down to the
sea of faces at her back with mixed anger and embarrassment.

‘Can I have my
drink please?’ Tabitha asked the bartender. He just stared at her, backing away
down the bar.

‘For god’s
sake,’ she said, reaching over the bar for the bottle of whisky. The bottle
made a dull
clink
against her hand when she grabbed it. She necked a
couple of big gulps, and gasped at the fiery feel in her throat as she turned
to face the silent party. The way everyone was just staring at her, not saying
anything… it was starting to piss her off.

‘What?’ she
asked them. She stared at her movie heroes and heroines with contempt. They’d
always had more grace and manners than this, at least as far as she knew. Maybe
with a bit too much movie polish she’d seen people they weren’t. Right here,
right now, they were just a snooty staring mob.

‘Somebody take
her outside,’ a man said in the silence. A heavy-set man looked around for
support, and stepped towards her.

‘Don’t,’ Tabitha
warned him, flicking out her claws. He hesitated.

‘Take it
outside, freak,’ a woman called from the crowd. ‘I don’t know what the hell’s
going on with you, but you don’t belong here. We’re trying to have a good time.
Someone put the music back on.’ Tabitha stared at them until frightened faces
looked away. She peered over at the celebrity casualties on the couch, being
crowded and fussed over for the sake of a few glancing glass cuts. Where was
her sympathising crowd when she’d been wounded? When she’d been stabbed, shot,
cut through, opened up and picked apart? Where was all the care and attention
then? Oh yeah, she wasn’t
human
like everyone else. She wasn’t
vulnerable; she could take it. Everyone had assumed that just because she could
heal from it, she couldn’t feel it.

‘Get out of my
house, you weird bitch!’ said a man in a white suit, zipping up his flies and
pushing forward in the crowd. ‘Who
are
you, anyway? I didn’t invite you.
Fuck off.’ Tabitha gritted her teeth and walked slowly from the bar towards the
doors. When the man tried to grab her and force her out Tabitha sank her claws
into his arms by reflex. He yelled and backed away, staring in shock as he
clutched his bleeding arm.

‘They’re coming
for you too, you know,’ Tabitha told the room of silent faces, taking another
swig of whiskey as she headed for the door. ‘All your money, all your
talent
,
it won’t mean a thing when
they
get here. You can’t buy your way out of
this.’

‘What’s your
point exactly?’ an actress said mockingly, as Tabitha headed through the crowd
towards the open glass doors. ‘You’re going to die with the rest of us, you
weird bitch. At least
we’ve
got the means to enjoy ourselves before the
end. No one even
knows who you are
. What are you even doing here?’

Tabitha whistled
into the night sky, and walked down into the garden by the bright-lit pool. She
just hoped that Seven still responded to her whistle.

‘You think we’re
bad people?’ the actress said angrily, pressing the point, following Tabitha
down into the garden. A crowd gathered at the doors, drinking in the drama.
‘There aren’t any rules any more that you can judge us by,’ said the woman,
diving into the argument. ‘It’s survival of the fittest now. We’re the fittest.
So if the end’s coming, yeah, we’re going to enjoy our money. And we’ll carry
on enjoying it right up to the end.’ Other people murmured their agreement in
the crowd. ‘We’ll carry on enjoying ourselves right until the end,’ the woman
repeated. ‘We’ll carry on
living
right until the end.’ The crowd of
famous faces liked the sentiment. ‘The best survive,’ the actress told Tabitha,
with a philosophical air. ‘The best look out for themselves and survive to
enjoy the spoils. Like it or not, that’s what makes us human.’ Suddenly Seven
dived down out of the night and landed heavily in the garden, and the house
filled with screams and yells at the roaring black monster. Tabitha climbed up
onto his back.