Something Coming Through, page 33
part #1 of Something Coming Series
McBride smacked his fist into his palm, smiled at Chloe and Henry.
Behind him, the operator said, ‘The speedboat’s leaving.’
‘Keep the drone on it,’ McBride said. ‘The fucker’s up to something.’
The two men bent close to the screen. Henry leaned towards Chloe and said quietly, ‘Stay alert. We might have to make a move of our own.’
Chloe felt her heart beat high and light. ‘Okay.’
‘Are you scared?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Me too,’ Henry said, although he didn’t look it. He was his usual self, possessed by a confidence that Chloe hoped she could trust.
The drone operator said, ‘They’ll be going past us in a few minutes, boss. What do you want us to do?’
A moment later, before McBride could answer, the screen went black.
46. We’re Here To Help
Mangala | 30 July
Vic had never before seen a Jackaroo avatar in real life. The aliens had made contact because humanity had been about to fail and fall short of their full potential, as so many other intelligent species had failed and fallen, but they did not want to control or direct what people did with their gifts. It was not their thing, they said, to interfere. Kind of like the prime directive in that old TV show. They kept their presence on Earth to a minimum and had no contact at all with the people on the fifteen worlds they had gifted to humanity. They had even written it into the treaty with the UN.
Nevertheless, most people on Mangala believed that the Jackaroo were watching them. After the aliens had made themselves known, the conspiracy theorists and the UFO nuts had gained a new lease of life. They’d gone mainstream, elaborating ideas that Mangala and the other worlds were Petri dishes in some galactic experiment. Skinner boxes. Rat mazes. It was possible, some said, that eidolons weren’t the ghosts or memories or imprints of former tenants, but were instead part of a covert monitoring process that nudged and guided people in certain directions.
And here was proof of those paranoid theories, hissing and fizzing and swaying in front of Vic, conjured from some kind of memory wire and parasitising the quantum dust and algorithms that generated the eidolons in this ancient necropolis.
He stood his ground, feeling a prickling across his body, every hair trying to stand up, as the ghostly man-shape turned towards him. Its attention had the weight and warmth of summer sunlight.
Nevers was saying something, saying that it was all right, that this was a friend.
‘I am a friend,’ the avatar said.
Its voice came from nowhere and everywhere. It was the wind hunting in the crevices of the long dark ledge. It was the gentle clap of waves washing along the river’s edge. It was Vic’s breath and heartbeat.
‘We’re here to help,’ it said. ‘But we do not want to shape you. We give you the tools, but we let you make from them what you will. As is right. As it always has been. But there are others. Fellow travellers. Who do not share our scruples. Who plunge into your lives. Who plunder your stories. And if your stories are not pleasing, they reshape them.’
‘He means the !Cha,’ Nevers said.
‘They are young…’
The avatar’s voice faded into a dismal hiss; its body rippled like a heatwave mirage. Rogue eidolons fluttered away like scraps of mist, and the avatar stretched like a whip and gathered them into itself and slowly regained its shape and definition.
‘They have no patience,’ it said. ‘They like to accelerate change. They want to see what comes next.’
‘That’s what this is about,’ Nevers said. ‘The !Cha trade stories. And they create them or make them more interesting by directly interfering. By aiming people in certain directions.’
Vic said, ‘So the people we’re chasing, they’re working for the !Cha?’
‘They are being manipulated,’ Nevers said.
‘We changed you when we first contacted you,’ the avatar said. ‘It was unavoidable. Perhaps you will change further. Or perhaps you will dwindle, or destroy yourselves. But whatever happens, it should be your choice.’
Vic said, ‘Why involve me? Doesn’t that go against your principles?’
The avatar hummed and swayed. It said, ‘The !Cha are part of us. We are part of them.’
‘The !Cha are pointing people towards something dangerous,’ Nevers said.
‘They love stories,’ the avatar said.
‘And we have to give this one the right ending,’ Nevers said.
His smile was fierce and eager and hungry. The poor guy not realising that he was being manipulated – or knowing and not caring.
And Vic was in this too, in over his head. He had a sliding feeling that he was in the wrong place, heading in the wrong direction. Like one of those frustrating dreams.
He said, as calmly as he could, ‘I’m a murder police. I’m here because I want to find the people who killed my partner. And yours, too. This other stuff is way beyond my pay grade.’
‘It’s all part of the same thing,’ Nevers said. ‘The people you want are the people I want.’
Vic thought about that. He didn’t trust Nevers, let alone the avatar, but he’d seen the aftermath of the shootout, knew he was outgunned by the bad guys. And the avatar would definitely give him an edge.
He said, ‘So how can your friend here help us do the right thing?’
47. Run
Mangala | 28 July
Chloe and Henry stood back while Cal McBride harangued the drone operator, telling him to get the fucking thing back on line right now. ‘And give me the phone. Let me talk to Sammie.’
Chloe said to Henry, ‘Drury is coming after us, isn’t he?’
‘There’s a good chance of it. Can you run?’
‘I won the four-hundred-metre race in school one time.’
‘When I say run, run. Run for your life.’
McBride said that Sammie wasn’t answering.
‘He’s watching Drury’s crew, like you asked,’ the operator said.
‘Well he’s not fucking picking up. And why haven’t you fixed the fucking drone?’
‘There’s nothing I can fix. It’s all good here. Either the drone is down, or something is blocking the signal.’
‘Play the last minute of footage again,’ McBride said.
The screen blinked, showed the two men in the speedboat.
‘There,’ McBride said. ‘Stop.’
He pointed at the screen. One of the men was turned in his seat, looking straight at the drone’s camera, one hand raised.
‘Waving hello, the cheeky fucker. Oh, and now he’s giving us the finger. Well, fuck you too, Mr Danny Drury.’ McBride was suddenly all business, telling two of his men to move up the track, find what cover they could. ‘Rolls, you stay with me. Tommy, Dean, pack up this shit. Fast as you can, bring what you can carry to the boats, burn the rest. It’s time to go,’ he said, and turned to Chloe and Henry, pulling his ray gun from its loop, telling them they were coming with him.
Then they were outside, hustling towards the jags of the lightning trees. Chloe, breathless and excited and scared, half-ran, half-walked as she tried to keep up with the men. The ground was ploughed but barren, pale ridges studded with reddish stones. She remembered that Hanna had said that the soil had to be steam-cleaned, sterilised, before plants would grow in it. She stumbled when dust whirled up around her, and Rolls, a big man in a denim jacket, its sleeves ripped off to display his muscular arms, caught her and hauled her along.
She protested, tried to shake off his grip, but he was implacable. They were almost at the trees. And then Rolls seemed to trip, his feet tangling together in an awkward pirouette, and he let go of Chloe’s wrist and clapped his hand to his neck. Blood oozed between his fingers. A hard crack echoed out across the field. Chloe realised it was a gunshot, realised that it was the second one she’d heard, as Rolls grunted and collapsed at her feet.
McBride shouted, a raw wordless sound, and turned and aimed his ray gun. For a moment, a thread of intense blue light seared across the ploughed ridges of the field. Then Henry grabbed McBride’s arm and twisted it up and back. Blue light split the air above their heads, bending towards one of the lightning trees and setting its fluttering clouds aflame. The light winked out; McBride had dropped the ray gun. As Chloe darted forward and scooped it up, Henry stepped back, a pistol in his hand. He must have snatched it from McBride, but it seemed like a magic trick.
‘No,’ McBride said, and put up one hand like a traffic cop as Henry swung the pistol and whacked him on the side of his head. McBride staggered, half-raised a hand to fend off Henry’s second blow, and fell in a heap.
‘Run!’ Henry said, and Chloe ran, chasing him towards the tree-things. The one touched by the ray-gun beam was burning fiercely now. An acrid smell like scorched plastic scraped her throat.
She heard shots behind her, quick sustained bursts, and glanced around. One of the RVs was on fire from stem to stern and two men were silhouetted against the flames, firing into them. Other shots sounded far off, an erratic pop pop pop blowing on the wind.
Henry ran into a space between two lightning trees and Chloe followed, dodging around clumps of stuff like stiff string, coming out of the other side of the copse and seeing the river, seeing boats drawn up at the edge of the water, one of them the speedboat that the drone had been watching, seeing two men turning towards them. Henry swung his pistol up and one of the men fired at him, a hard clatter and a flash of yellow flame. Henry fell and Chloe yelled and ran to him, rolled him over. There were bloody rips in his hunting vest and she couldn’t find a pulse when she laid a finger on the angle of his jaw, couldn’t find a pulse in his wrist.
She locked her hands together and pressed on his chest, and something rattled in his throat as if he was trying to breathe and she pressed again and his mouth opened and a smooth glossy bubble of blood rose out of it and spilled over his chin. Then someone grabbed her and lifted her up and pulled her away. Another man stooped and picked up the ray gun and Henry’s pistol. A tall man in a quilted white coat, wearing a face mask and goggles, long black hair in a loose ponytail, turning the ray gun in his hands, saying to Chloe, ‘This is McBride’s secret weapon?’
Chloe nodded dumbly in the iron grip of the man who’d grabbed her.
‘How does it work…? Aha.’ Chloe flinched as the tall man pointed it at her. Then he shrugged inside his coat and said, ‘You can let her go, Billy.’
She almost fell to her knees. Henry lying dead at her feet. Her hand on the sleeve of her camo jacket, feeling the shape in the sheath at her wrist. Her attention on the tall man, who said to the man who’d let her go, Billy, ‘I thought I told you I wanted both of them alive.’
‘It was him or me,’ Billy said.
‘Did I hear you give a warning? Did you fire a warning shot? Did you shoot to wound?’
The tall man’s voice rising to a shout at the last sentence.
Billy stood his ground. ‘He was armed, Mr Drury. He was going to shoot. So I shot him.’
‘Because it was either him or you.’
‘Like I said.’
‘How about him and you,’ the tall man said, and raised the ray gun.
48. Downriver
Mangala | 30 July
The plane was a sturdy banana-yellow four-seater with blunt wings cantilevered above its cabin. It flew low, bouncing in sudden air pockets, rising and dipping alarmingly but always pressing on against the buffeting headwind, its prop burring like an angry hairdryer.
The pilot, a young Italian guy dressed like a WW2 air ace in a leather jacket with a fleece collar, said it was hairy weather and getting worse. ‘Part of the storm must have pushed ahead of the rest.’
‘But you can fly in it. You can get us there,’ Vic said. He was strapped in beside the pilot; Nevers was on the bench seat behind, crammed in amongst camping equipment that Vic hoped they wouldn’t need.
‘I can get you there, no problem,’ the pilot said. ‘But maybe I can’t wait around as long as you’d like.’
The plane followed the river as it ribboned across the red and grey landscape. The pilot navigated by landmarks, now and then consulting a map displayed on the tablet on his knees. The horizon all around was obscured by a deep ochre haze in which fugitive whips of light flickered. Static discharges, according to the pilot.
‘Fucks up the instrumentation, but as long as we can see the river we’ll be fine.’
Vic wished that he could share the young man’s optimism. He was heading into the unknown, looking for who knew what, in the company of someone he couldn’t trust. It was some kind of plan, but definitely not the kind he’d imagined.
At last the plane flew over a curved range of hills and dropped towards a wide basin floored with a chaotic terrain of broken blocks and narrow canyons: an ancient impact crater bisected by the course of the river. The pilot pointed down, jabbing his forefinger three times for emphasis, said they were going in.
‘Where do we land?’
‘On hills on the far side. Don’t worry. We use the headwind to brake us.’
Vic’s stomach airily lifted as the plane bucked in conflicting currents of air. A range of hills resolved out of the haze, barren slopes suddenly looming in the windscreen. The plane’s nose pitched up and the prop roared and with a sudden bang they were down, rolling uphill towards a crest, crunching over stones and turning sideways, lurching to a halt.
The engine cut off and the blurred disc of the prop resolved into three spinning blades, stopped. In the quiet cabin, Vic could hear his heartbeat and the whine of wind outside. Behind him, Nevers said calmly, ‘Not bad.’
They unloaded quickly, wearing goggles and face masks because of the dust, hunched in the chilly gale. The heavy roll of the inflatable boat, a tent, food and water. It made a small mound that they covered with a ground sheet, pegging its flapping margins firmly into the hard dry ground.
‘How long can you wait?’ Vic asked the pilot. ‘A day? Two?’
‘Not even a day, in this,’ the pilot said. He shook hands with Vic like an executioner measuring him for the drop, Vic slung the rifle he’d borrowed from Karl Schweda over one shoulder and his kitbag over the other, and he and Nevers set off.
They descended into a long draw and crossed a dry stream bed and climbed the slope beyond. The bleary unsleeping eye of the sun was fixed at the horizon, cold and red and huge in the dun sky. Jagged black tufts bent in the wuthering wind. The abrasive hiss of dust. The slope topped out and they started across a rough tableland. Irregular slabs of rock set in drifts of sand; dry gulches packed with leathery vegetation. They cut around the smaller gulches, scrambled down into the larger ones and climbed back up. Navigating by the fixed point of the sun because they had lost sight of the river.
Vic was sweating under his layers of clothing, couldn’t quite get his breath inside the mask clamped over his mouth and nose. Grit chafed his elbows and knees. He stopped every so often to swap the strap of his heavy kitbag from one shoulder to the other, wiped dust from his goggles. He was definitely out of condition. Too old for this Boy Scout shit.
Nevers waited patiently each time Vic halted, calmly scanning the empty landscape that faded into reddish-brown haze in every direction. He had jammed his left hand in the pocket of his jacket, which gave him a slight list as he walked, but otherwise he seemed unencumbered by his gunshot wound.
Vic looked all around too. He had the uneasy feeling that someone was following them, just out of sight.
They passed through a field of stacks of flat rocks piled higher than a man, like figures in some long-abandoned game. The feeling of being followed grew stronger. Once Vic thought he saw something flicker at the edge of his vision and spun around and walked backwards for a few paces, seeing only rock stacks fading into the diesel haze.
They climbed into a gulch too big to navigate around, pushing through presses of stiff leathery vegetation, splashing through a trickle of water at the bottom, scaled the other side. Vic hauled himself up using the vegetation as handholds. His arms and legs ached. The strap of the kitbag cut into his shoulder and its weight unbalanced him; once he fell to his knees and stayed there, helpless with fatigue, until Nevers came back and hauled him to his feet.
There was a short string of Boxbuilder ruins at the top of the slope. Vic unhitched the kitbag and flopped down on a flat stone in their lee, unable to do anything but breathe.
Nevers stood a little way off, looking towards a faint smudged glow at the horizon. After a little while he came over and squatted beside Vic and asked him what he thought the weird light was.
‘The pilot said it was some kind of static discharge.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Is your friend telling you different?’
‘I don’t have a spooky connection with him, if that’s what you’re thinking. It doesn’t work like that.’
‘Right. Powered by eidolons.’
‘I believe he’ll find plenty of those where we’re heading.’
‘He’d better. Because if there’s any trouble, he’ll have to do most of the heavy lifting. I haven’t ever fired a gun in anger, not even back in the good old Wild West days.’
‘My friend is ready to help in any way he can,’ Nevers said. ‘As am I.’
The cold of the stone was seeping into Vic’s behind, but he was too tired to care. He could sit here and let Nevers and the Jackaroo avatar do their thing. Whatever it was. Nothing good, that was for sure. Vic had confiscated the wire that generated the avatar and zipped it into the inner pocket of his jacket, and he was pretty sure that it had something to do with the feeling that something was following them. He was in control right now, but his rifle and pistol wouldn’t do much good against an alien ghost, and he suspected that Nevers would do anything to stop the bad guys getting hold of whatever it was they were hunting, and that he’d take Vic down too, if it came to it.
‘Don’t forget that we’re here only to collect evidence,’ Vic said. ‘We sneak in and we see what’s what and document it and we get out. That’s it. We can deal with the bad guys later.’
