Web of Fire Bind-up (37 page)

‘Look, Alya,' her father had said. ‘There is one for each of us. The green one – that's your mother. The red one is me. And you see that pale blue one, shining in the darkness between them? That's you, Alya. The most beautiful one of all.'

And that was it; the last time she ever saw them.

That night, her village was caught up in the war between Vahlzian troops and Odoursin's renegade army. The soldiers had come and destroyed everything. Nothing had been the same since and nothing ever could be.

Oh, there had been kindnesses along the way; the
women at the Vermian orphanage for instance – saving her from the work camps by pretending that she was pulled from the rubble of a bombed-out air-raid shelter. That small act of compassion in itself had been enough to give her the chance she needed – her own natural intelligence had done the rest. She had excelled at school in Vermia from where she had gone on to win a scholarship to the Government Academy of Life Sciences. Her work on parasites had attracted the attention of the people at InRaD who had quickly recognised her talent and recruited her into their research team.

And now, it seemed, even Vermia's highest officials were interested in her work.

But the truth was, none of this really helped to remove the dull ache she felt inside whenever she remembered how much she had once been loved.

She would work sixteen hour days and return exhausted to her empty flat, too tired to do anything but fall into bed and sleep until the sound of the alarm clock woke her again the following morning. She secretly hoped that each new accomplishment, each new scientific discovery or accolade would go some way towards filling the empty void.

But somehow, it never did.

Perhaps, she thought, it would be different this time. If she could only find a way to manipulate the genetic code of these toxoplasma worms, then she would be the toast of the scientific community. Finally, she would have her proper place in this world.

Switching on the anglepoise lamp, Alya pulled it down so that a bright pool of light spilled onto the stainless steel worktop. She snapped open the catch on the temperature-controlled storage unit, pulled out a test tube and, with the help of a pair of tweezers, removed a tangled white slab of living tissue. It made little squelching noises as she placed it firmly on the shiny surface and using a sharp scalpel she carefully removed a cross-section from the centre. Leaving the rest of it glistening wetly on the worktop, she picked up the small sample and took it over to the powerful electron microscope in the corner of the lab.

The microscope hummed softly as she switched it on and Alya was pleased to note that the twin eyepiece was still set at the correct height for her; she had adjusted it for her own use earlier in the day and it seemed that no one else had used it. She wasn't really surprised. Most of the team were more concerned with macro-sized engineering developments, so she tended to have the use of the microscope to herself these days.

Placing the sample on a glass slide, she positioned it beneath the lens and then, using a dial on the side of the microscope, adjusted the focal length until the complex structure of the tissue came sharply into focus.

She smiled to herself with quiet satisfaction.

The years that she had spent studying similar creatures had enabled her to find quickly, and with unerring accuracy, whichever part of them she chose to analyse. And as the microscopic landscape of small ridges, peaks
and valleys emerged from the darkness – illuminated by the glare of a billion electrons – she knew she had entered a world that few others would ever see.

She was staring deep into the mind of a parasitic worm.

Commander Firebrand lay on the cold stone floor of his cell and wondered – as he had taken to doing lately – how long it would be before they finally decided to kill him. He knew from the small scratches he had made on the wall with his fingernail that it had been nearly a month since his capture. During that time they had starved him, threatened him and beaten him to within an inch of his life.

But he hadn't told them anything.

Not a single thing.

‘You are a foolish man,' they would say, tightening his blindfold and spinning him around so that their voices seemed to come from every corner of the cell. ‘Why be so hard on yourself? Just tell us where the Resistance base is. Tell us where your people are hiding and we can put a stop to all this unpleasantness once and for all.'

But Firebrand would just shake his head and say nothing. And then the whole shameful business would start all over again.

Sometimes, in the lonely, tar-black hours, he would find himself wondering if the next blow might be the one that broke his spirit, the one that left him pleading for mercy in exchange for the information that they required.
It was this, perhaps, which he feared the most, for he knew that such a betrayal would dissolve the last shaky foundations of his faith and consign him to an even greater darkness; a darkness where even the light of hope would finally be extinguished. But just when it seemed that he could hold out no longer, the pain would unexpectedly unlock a place in his heart where something precious still shone, bright and strange, untainted by the corrosive horrors that closed in from all sides.

Firebrand shut his eyes and remembered it once more.

He was walking through a meadow in high summer, a soft breeze stirring the treetops as the scent of dry earth and pollen hung heavy beneath an empty sky. Next to him skipped a little blonde girl with a wild rose in her hair.

‘I can't let you do it,' he was saying. ‘I won't let you.'

‘But why not?' she cried. ‘I'm perfectly capable. You know I am!'

‘That's not the point,' he said. ‘That's not the point at all.'

‘Then what is?' replied the girl. ‘What is the point? You can't think of a single reason why I shouldn't fly this mission, but still you won't let me go.'

Firebrand had sighed and taken her by the hand.

‘There is a reason,' he said, ‘but I am afraid it is a selfish one.'

He had looked at the girl then, seen how much she wanted to do this and known in his heart that he would not be able to stop her.

‘I don't want to let you go,' he said, ‘because I do not want to lose you.'

And the girl – whose name was Skipper – had looked at him and said, ‘We always lose the things that we love. That is part of what love is.'

Here in the darkness, Firebrand thought about how his fears had been justified; for he had let her go and now she would never come back.

All that remained were these vague, electrical pulses in his head, memories that tricked him into thinking the past was something that still mattered.

But there was something else that she had said right at the end, something that still allowed him to hope –
oh he knew how foolish it was
– to hope that there was something beyond the despair that he felt.

‘We always lose the things that we love,' she said.

And then, seeing the sadness in his eyes, she had turned to him and smiled.

‘But that does not mean,' she added, putting a small hand on top of his own, ‘that we shall not find them again one day.'

Typing some numbers into a computer linked to the microscope, Alya programmed the small motor-driven belt beneath the glass slide to move a tiny fraction to the left. The beauty of working with creatures from Earth was the difference in scale; on Earth the toxoplasma
worm was so small that it would need a powerful microscope even to see the whole of it. Here on Aurobon, the fact that it was the size of a snake meant that you could delve much deeper into the tiniest twists of its DNA, peer at its structural secrets and stare at the shape and form of the very building blocks that had made it.

For several months now, Alya had been convinced that if she could just drill far enough down into the brains of the parasites she studied, she would eventually find the material home of their subconscious mind, the home of every thought and desire that drove them. She knew that somewhere, hidden deep within the microscopic folds of the brain, lay a code which would enable her to unlock the secret language of their minds, the language which told these creatures where they should go, what they should do and even what they should wish for. If she could somehow discover this language and learn how to read it, then maybe – just maybe – she could learn how to write it too…

Squinting through the lens, Alya increased the magnification and was pleased to see that – as she had hoped – the familiar undulating landscapes of the worm's brain tissue had been replaced by something entirely different. The hills and valleys had given way to a regular series of hexagonal rings, each one linked to its neighbours by strands of yellow and red nerve tissue. There was no doubt about it; here was a very orderly, very definite system of patterns which Alya recognised instinctively as having their own logic. She was filled with a sudden exhilaration
as she realised that she was now sailing into uncharted waters. But as remarkable as this was, there was something else even more remarkable that quickly drew Alya's attention. Up in the very top right hand corner of the slide was a jagged, blue line with numerous small spikes along its length, sticking out like thorns upon the stem of a bramble.

Alya let out a small cry of astonishment and sat back in her chair, blinking with quiet amazement under the white glare of the laboratory lights. All at once, the facts and figures gleaned from years of study and long, lonely nights of research began to gather together in her mind like a thousand chattering birds, transforming themselves into an organised flock that soared high into the clear skies of her understanding. Alya gazed after them in wonder as if seeing them for the very first time, and was filled with a strange and terrible excitement.

The blue, bramble-shaped line was, in itself, nothing new to Alya. She had come across it several times before in her biological textbooks. Studies had shown that it was almost certainly the neurological link between thought and action, the physical bridge across which a creature's desires walked in order to make themselves known in the outside world.

It was well known, of course, that all living things contained a similar structure which allowed their behaviour in the ‘real' world to reflect the ideas in their minds. But studies so far had shown that these structures were each as different as the organisms of which they were a part.
Alya certainly hadn't expected to find one that looked anything like this in the brain of a parasitic worm.

In fact, Alya knew there was only one place where you would expect to see a structure with the same shape and colour as this one. She thought back to the lecture in college three years ago where she'd stared for the first time in fascination at the jagged blue image projected on the screen. She could still remember the professor's words exactly:

‘Ladies and gentlemen,' he had said. ‘Can anyone here tell me what we are looking at?'

There had been a long, somewhat uncomfortable silence and a shuffling of feet before the professor had spoken again.

‘No? Well perhaps I should not be surprised, for it is in truth a rather recent discovery. But it is one which you should mark well, for it may contain within it the secrets of the universe – secrets which – one day – some of you may yet begin to unravel.'

A hush had fallen across the auditorium, and the professor had let it hang in the air for several moments before finally gazing out at the serious faces of his young students and telling them:

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at a doorway into the human brain.'

‘So you've really got no memory at all of how you got here then?' asked Sam as they sat huddled together, chattering excitedly about the turn of events that had led to their reunion.

‘No, not really,' replied Skipper. ‘I remember having a sort of dream that I was being carried, and I was very cold, and then someone dressed me in this warm robe. The next thing I knew I was waking up here in this cave. Before all of that, the last thing I remember is you and me flying in a mosquito, trying to get you back to Earth again.'

‘Well that's the weird part,' said Sam. ‘I
did
get back to Earth.'

‘What?' said Skipper, puzzled.

‘I know,' said Sam, ‘and it gets weirder. I met up with Zip and Mump yesterday, and they told me that you and I both went missing from Aurobon four years ago.'

‘Four
years
?' exclaimed Skipper. ‘But that's impossible.'

‘That's what I thought,' said Sam, ‘and I wouldn't have believed it except for the fact that they both look so much older.'

Skipper looked at him doubtfully. ‘Are you sure about this?'

Sam sighed. ‘Look, I know it's hard to believe,' he said, ‘although it's easier for me because I can still vaguely remember my time back on Earth. Do you really not remember anything?'

Skipper shook her head and Sam saw that she looked quite frightened. ‘No,' she said, ‘nothing at all. None of this makes any sense to me, Sam.'

At that moment there was a loud
thwump
outside the cave and they looked up to see that Zip and Mump had landed their flea in the snow outside. Sam ran across to the entrance and waved.

‘Hey, buddy,' Zip called. ‘Are you OK? We were worried about you, so we followed your tracks.'

‘I'm fine!' Sam shouted back. ‘But come and see who I've found!'

There followed several minutes of loud whooping and laughter, with Mump and Zip doing a little celebratory dance around Skipper while she stood amused and bewildered in the middle of the cave. Later, after the excitement and emotion of their meeting had died down a little, Mump managed to get a fire going while Zip told Skipper about all the things that had happened during her absence.