Authors: Colin Harvey
Five days after the sentence was passed, the warders led Helen from her cell to the execution chamber. Head shaved, body bathed, clothed in a simple black robe. In some ways it was as if she was less a criminal than an initiate. Helen knew better. The gentleness of the treatment was to soften to what was to come afterwards.
They placed her in a chamber with a single seat and small stark white walls on every side except one. The ceiling and floor were also white.
If she were executed, she could return as a zombie. Her punishment must be irreversible and a deterrent even to those who could face returning as zombies; she would have no further existence whatsoever.
A Spell of Elsewhere, massively powerful, would be used. Such a spell was held securely at the Thaumaturigical Institute, brought out only when necessary and guarded constantly by a host of mages sworn to the Institute. When the spell was invoked, she would be flung from the little chamber into the very depths of the sun itself, so there would be nothing from which to reassemble her.
On the last side of the chamber was a clear panel through which witnesses could observe the ceremony, and she in turn could see the observers. There was no escape though; the white walls held every ward, charm and hex imaginable to prevent interference with the process within.
The rows of seats rose in tiers like an amphitheatre. Her execution was to be as public as her trial had been private. So was the mystery of the law preserved while would-be transgressors were deterred. In the front sat Firenze, knuckles crushed against his mouth, beside him her advocate. The woman had failed, but Helen bore no grudge. She had done the best she could, but the odds had been weighed against her so heavily she could never have won. It was as though some huge malign force had determined to destroy Helen. The worst of it was, she couldn't begin to understand why.
Amongst those seated were their friends, some staring blankly, some tearful, some unforgiving. She could cope with them being there, all but Firenze. When she saw his face it was as if she'd been stabbed with a knife, it hurt so much, and it was all she could do to retain her composure. Somehow she managed not to break down.
The night before, he had paid a last visit. She wasn't surprised when he asked her the question that had been preying on his mind. “Did you do it? Did you kill him?"
"No,” she said, and added, shaking her head in puzzlement, “If I had, I promise you I'd tell you now. At one point I even wondered if I had and blanked it out. But I didn't."
Twelve hours later he represented her victim's family, waiting to watch her die. It should have Maurice's friends and relatives filling the chamber. But Maurice had no one to mourn his passing or to watch his posthumous revenge. Instead it was left to her people to fulfil that role.
And there sat at the back the old woman, the woman who claimed to be Jocasta Pantile. Beside her sat a handsome young man who also looked vaguely familiar. On the other side of the woman sat a spellhound. Pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. Could her scars have been the result of magic?
The archmage began his chant, seeking atonement for her from whatever gods he prayed to and at the same time invoking the spell. The room trembled as it built.
She gazed for the last time at Firenze, who, white-faced, gnawed at a knuckle. She blew him a kiss. It was too late to worry now, too late to change anything.
The expert witness had given them the clue. “It could have been a Spell of Shadow-casting, I suppose."
The archmage left the room barely seconds before the spell was fully triggered, and Helen realised why the young man looked familiar. “Do you know, I could have sworn that waiter was a zombie,” Maurice had said.
At the same moment as she was hurled from the room by forces so powerful they flicked her ninety-three million miles in an instant, Helen remembered where she'd seen the woman. Why would a domestic of one of her old friends claim to be Jocasta Pantile, a girl Helen had been to school with?
After that, it ceased to matter.
Shhh! Be still, be quiet, big kids don't cry. Be still, be quiet.
Open one eye very, very carefully.
A fly crawling over an outstretched hand.
Tickle, tickle, tickle but you mustn't giggle, because this is the nastiest, most serious game you'll ever play.
Tickle, tickle, tickle; Blue-green wings glinting in the unforgiving sun.
Don't swat it.
Be still be quiet be still be quiet.
A footstep, a boot scraping over the stony ground—don't screw your eyes too tight or he'll know you're not dead, like the others. Don't think about the others. Don't think about the others, picked up in the blast, tossed aside, and cartwheeling through the air.
Be still be quiet big kids don't cry be still.
Wish that harmonica would shut up. Never hated Za's tune so much before.
Be still be quiet big kids don't.
Sunlight so bright it makes spots behind the eyelids even when they're clamped tight shut (but not too tight) against images of death and destruction.
Be still be quiet, big kids don't cry, Papa told me once, when I fell down when I was little, and I cried and cried, as I want to now.
I want my papa! You want to cry. I want my mama!
The boot scrapes again.
Be still be quiet.
A sneeze builds. Be still.
Eye am a camera, and the camera never lies. Think nothing feel nothing, just look and remember. Above all, remember (as if there was any choice).
To the recurring soundtrack from Za Kunter's Bar, the same five notes on the harmonica and the plangent twanging of the sitar, the camera pans around through three hundred and sixty degrees drawing a circle of pain: The remains of a man, exploded from within as if by a grenade; Uncle Pilotus. Then Johanna, eight years old, a little girl whose eyes are glazed as she tries not to see that she's munching on her own hand, only minutes from death from shock. Keep panning slowly around the circle of pain, the blood pounding in your veins the percussion in the orchestra that is your body.
Mama who sparked it all, (
No! Don't think about it! Be still be quiet big kids don't cry!
) lying in a pool of her own blood. Her intestines slithering through her fingers, the machete protruding from beneath her skirts where she'd thrust it, her hand under another mind's control, the stranger's willpower making her use it in a parody of the sex he'd been refused.
Circle further, the sticky metallic smell of blood cloying in the air. There is Felipe, beloved elder brother, big brown eyes staring in puzzlement at the broom handle embedded in his chest where he's turned on himself at a command from the interloper he'd dared to attack. Behind him lie scattered bits of bodies blown by the force of the blast when the stranger clapped his hands.
Circle further. The pounding of heart of blood building to a crescendo in time with sitar and harmonica (why didn't he come and help? Where were you, Za, when we needed help? Of course he didn't, he was scared—and for a six-year-old that's as much a revelation as an evil man causing an explosion by clapping his hands), circle further and there, as internal and external orchestra climax, is Papa.
There he stands, casting the rope over the branch, his eyes unfocussed in the same way as Mama's, his treacherous hands obeying another's bidding, tying it to the tree, then circling the noose at the other end of the rope around his own neck. His hands obey the big, dark, laughing stranger with the misshapen teeth and ugly face, who urges Papa on to leap from the ledge, who laughs even as the snap of a breaking neck ends another life.
"No!” you scream, without thinking, then realize what you've done.
—Be still be quiet—
The head turns slowly, those huge dark eyes come to rest on you.
Be still.
The equatorial sun beat down with such intensity that even the most stoic panted and mopped their brows. The spellhound stood away from the group waiting for the next hookcar. Only the flicking of its pointed black ears betrayed that it was not the statue of some strange local idol. It wanted to pant badly too, but something—perhaps not wanting to ruin the air of menace it had cultivated since its arrival—prevented it from doing so.
Several weeks had passed since its return from the past. Even with its almost superhuman powers of recovery it hadn't fully recovered from the battering of the journey. Jocasta's look of elation at its return and a driven despair that their quarry might yet elude them had persuaded it that recovery could wait. As soon as O'Malley had been located, it leapt on the first available skimmer to this forsaken rock.
It read the plaque on the marker-point: Once Skyhook Island had been known as Sao Tome. There had been few reasons to come to the island before the building of the skyhook; now there was no other reason to come.
The plaque claimed there had been continuous human habitation on the island longer than anywhere else in recorded history. The spellhound knew a dozen other places that made the same claim.
In fact the island was a seven-mile-long, ugly, concrete-covered breeze-block, with nothing green to interrupt the metal and concrete. There were two other skyhooks, one on the other side of the nearby continent, the other on the eastern side of Amerik-Sud. One took only cargo to the vast orbiting ribbons, while the other had an even longer waiting time.
Here the larger groups had guides vying to show who was most knowledgeable and best at publicly broadcasting that expertise. One, a large woman with a freckled face, had a particularly piercing voice and treated her charges as if they were incapable of thought. She repeated everything on the plaque, then added everything in the brochure handed to each passenger on arrival. “The hookcars leave at ten-minute intervals,” she boomed. “We won't have more than a few minutes more to wait.” None of the other guides were any better.
Most of the passengers now boarding the hookcar were human. But there were two aliens breathing through filters, presumably stranded by the Interdiction, as the dreamstalkers had been. These looked exhausted, either due to the gravity or the heat.
The spellhound watched through the window as the ground fell away. The car climbed rapidly—within a minute, the whole island was laid out below them. There was a chime, and the pilot said: “Welcome citizens, visitors, others. We will continue to accelerate at one-g for thirty minutes. We will be weightless for about ten minutes before gravity returns. The entire journey will take about one hour ten minutes. For those of you who are unwell in zero-g, we wish to draw your attention to the bags under your seats and under the windows. A vendor will make his rounds with refreshments very soon. Please enjoy the ride."
The spellhound leaned back to enjoy the view, but it soon palled. To pass the time it reread the brochure it had been handed on the ground. It read that the hookcar was a double cone, pointed upward and downward to ease its passage, four small fusion thrusters at each end. Old, primitive technology, but it still worked. The capacity of each hookcar was one hundred passengers, and sixteen cars ran the entire length of the skyhook at any time, giving an annual passenger capacity of over five million in each direction. To protect the flora and fauna of the polar parks, hookcars ran only to the Equatorial, not the Polar Ribbon. After rereading the brochure, it threw it in the wastebin, bored with it.
An attendant in SkyTransCo smock called, in a slightly hoarse voice, “Refreshments! Relaxants! Stimulants!” His head was shaven, apart from one waist-length braid growing from his right temple. None of the passengers seemed bothered by the beetles that crawled up and down the braid in a tiny copy of the skyhook. “Those things alive?” one of the children asked.
"Yes'm.” He grinned, revealing multihued teeth. “But don't worry. They're attached. Little charge keeps ‘em on m'braid."
"Ser?” he asked the spellhound. “Anything for you?"
The spellhound studied him, as if he were a specimen himself.
"Ser?” he repeated, a little more nervously.
The spellhound still gazed at him, then yawned, revealing a huge pink tongue and fearsome teeth.
The vendor muttered, “I guess that's ‘no’ then,” and moved on.
Their climb continued and showed the Earth as a blowsy blue-green bauble hanging in the sky.
Then they lost weight. For a minute or two there was no reaction; orbital trips were so commonplace, why get excited about it? Then a murmur ran around the cabin. The spellhound wondered what was causing it, then realised that people were pointing in its direction. It swung round to gaze through the window at a face that seemed to be made of stretched toffee. The face stretched again until it was just white gauze, and as if it were a child's drawing of a ghost, there were only holes where there should have been eyes, nose, and mouth. Through it the spellhound could see the stars.
It hung outside the cabin in the cold vacuum. Then it swirled, flicked away, and rolled, circling the cabin.
"It's like an amoeba,” someone whispered.
"Don't be alarmed.” The pilot's voice was muted, as if it were a wild animal easily startled.
Perhaps it is
, the spellhound thought. “Such sightings are very rare."
The sighting set the guides off again. “No one knows exactly what they are,” the large loud woman declaimed.
"There are many theories of course,” the second, competing guide added. A short, tubby man, he and the woman clearly shared a hate-hate relationship. “Aliens, stranded here by the Interdiction. Spies for the Galactics."
"Rubbish!” the first snapped. “More likely to be the remains of some botched experiment."
The second guide looked disgusted by her ignorance. “Or First Humans, changed beyond all recognition. Millennia ago humanity was split into the Shifters who wished to have no bounds on humanity's form, and the Statics who believed in the primacy of the human form. According to legend the latter won."