Parallax View (3 page)

Jake spoke up, “By that time we’ll be long gone, Rube. I mean, how long till the winter season kicks in? A month? Two? We’ll have moved on by then...”

“Which brings us to the main question,” Imran began. He stood up, staring absently into the excavated pits. “We’ve almost finished this store,” he said. “So what do we do next?”

“I think we should keep to the original plan–” this was Rachel, shyly glancing towards Corrie as if seeking agreement- “and head north. You never know, we might find more of these stores: if there’s one, there’s bound to be more. Next time we’ll ration ourselves instead of gorging on the stuff. That way we’ll easily make it until the
Darwinian
arrives.”

Corrie nodded. “That makes sense. We’ve got over our initial illnesses. We can move north at our leisure, looking for more of the standing stones–” She stopped there and looked at Rube. “Or would you rather we left the meat for the Denebians?”

His gaze was pure dislike. “Hark at the hypocrite who six days ago was worried about the damage contact might do to emergent cultures–”

“That was before we were starving to death!” Corrie began.

He shook his head and turned to Imran. “I suggest that we keep watch at night,” he said. “And keep our weapons at the ready. I wouldn’t want to be sleeping when the Denebians arrive.”

In the event, they were all wide awake when the aliens discovered their presence.

It was five days since Corrie had stumbled upon the subterranean cache, and they had finished the last of the meat the day before. Already, just hours without a meal, Corrie was hungry. She headed into the jungle, searching for any fruit they might have missed, something to fill her stomach before they headed north in search of another underground meat store.

She spent an hour foraging, and to her surprise she found a small clump of green fruits shaped like hand-grenades that had been overlooked by the others. Or maybe someone had tried one and found it to be inedible. She was debating whether to call it a day and return to the clearing when she thought she saw something move in the distance to her left.

She turned and peered. In the aqueous light of the jungle she made out a series of dancing shadows that might have been the play of palm-like leaves in the light of the sun. She told herself she was seeing things and turned towards the clearing.

And screamed.

The thing was running ahead of her, tall and lithe and quick, through the undergrowth towards the clearing. One second it was there, and the next it had vanished, and Corrie was left doubting the very evidence of her eyes.

It had been perilously tall and thin, jet black and hunched, and had moved with frightening alacrity.

She got through to Imran. “I’ve just seen–”

“Corrie. Get back here.”

“I’m on my way. I think I saw–”

“I know. We’ve met them too.”

Corrie rushed back to the clearing, heart pounding at the thought of what she might find. She pushed through the last buggy drape of lianas, stepped into the circle of standing stones, and stopped.

Her colleagues were on their feet, huddled together in the middle of the clearing. They were staring around them at the host of flitting, silent, shadowy figures identical to the one Corrie had seen in the jungle.

She recognised the attenuated soma-types of the native Denebians from her pre-drop studies aboard the
Darwinian
. But the available stock of images, indistinct and pixelated, were a poor representation of these aliens, failing to capture the essence of the creatures. It was their movements that made them so very alien.

They darted around the clearing with rapid, spry articulation of their long, double-jointed limbs, often coming to a sudden stop and scrutinising the ground with eerie, immobile intensity.

A combination of the failing light and the speed at which they moved left Corrie with only a fleeting impression of their facial appearance. Wide cheeks, long snouts, a cross between reptile and insect. And their eyes... The one thing she could be sure of in the twilight was the fact that they possessed huge, crimson eyes.

Quickly, she moved towards Rachel and the others.

Rube was standing apart from the team, watching the antics of the nearest alien. He glanced at Corrie as she reached out and hugged Rachel.

“Welcome to the party,” he said with cavalier bravado. “Allow me to introduce the Gargoyles. They seem to be just a little puzzled as to what we’ve done with their food supplies.”

Gargoyles, Corrie thought. Despite herself, she thought the name apt.

Perhaps a dozen aliens were cavorting around the clearing, darting down into the open pits with the speed of scurrying insects. They paid no attention to the humans – indeed, Corrie thought, they’re acting as if we don’t exist.

Occasionally the aliens ceased their dervish waltz around the pits, paused long enough to reach out and touch each other with horribly long fingers like waving twigs.

They had checked every pit by now, finding them empty, and it seemed inevitable that they should at last turn their attention to the humans.

Corrie had no way of anticipating her reaction when the Gargoyles, as one unit, turned and rushed towards the humans. They stopped perhaps a metre short, as if their advance had been calculated to startle. Corrie stifled a scream, took a deep, juddering breath as the Gargoyles – there was no other way she could think of them, now – took it in turns to inspect the humans. They darted back and forth, peering with huge red eyes, from time to time reaching out to touch and prod with stiff, cold fingers.

Corrie felt a hand palpitate her right thigh, and her heart almost ceased beating.

At last, after what seemed an age, the Gargoyles retreated and conferred, touching each other in a brief and frantic semaphore. Even then they were never still; always at least half of their group were darting this way and that in a fidgety, ceaseless pavane.

As Corrie watched, one Gargoyle ran nimbly from the clearing and climbed the nearest tree. It did so without apparent effort, and with no reduction of speed. Its rapid ascent of the vertical bole was like an optical illusion.

“What do you think they’ll do to us?” someone asked.

Imran shook his head. “They’ve shown no signs of hostility. I don’t know... Let’s just keep together and do nothing stupid, okay?”

The alien descended from the tree and stilted across the clearing. It was carrying something now, a bunch of what might have been some kind of small, purple fruit, like wrinkled aubergines. It passed the bunch to another alien, who advanced upon the humans.

It towered over Rube, perhaps a head taller, then broke a fruit from the bunch and passed it to him. Hesitantly, he accepted. The Gargoyle broke off another fruit and passed it to the next human. Like this it proceeded until every one of the team was holding one of the small, furry-skinned fruits.

“So what gives?” Rube said, addressing the alien. “You want us to eat these things, is that it?”

As if in response, the Gargoyle snapped a fruit from those that remained and raised it to its mandibles. Corrie did not actually see the alien eat the fruit, but when it lowered its hands the growth was no longer there.

“I think that’s what it wants us to do,” Imran said.

Rube guffawed. “Hey, if you ugly bastards think for one second that...” Disgusted, he tossed the fruit away.

Instantly, the nearest Gargoyle snatched up the fruit and, with a movement too quick for the eye to follow, advanced upon Rube and flashed a hand quickly across his face.

Rube doubled up, spluttering. When he stood upright, Corrie could see that the flesh of the fruit was mashed into his mouth, vivid pink juice spilling over his chin.

He wiped his mouth on the back of his arm, glaring at the alien.

“I think,” Imran said, “that we’d better eat the things.”

Corrie looked from her own fruit to Rube. He seemed to be suffering no ill-effects other than a loss of dignity. Hesitantly, along with Tanya and the others, she raised the fruit to her lips and took an experimental bite.

Sharp, very juicy, and extraordinarily pleasant.

Then Rube collapsed. Immediately, Corrie was aware that her vision was swimming. She tried to focus on Rachel, but the woman’s face floated bizarrely in her vision. Corrie opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came. She seemed to be drifting, detached from her senses. It was not an altogether unpleasant experience.

She watched the aliens. They seemed to be closing in, surrounding her team. Corrie knew, vaguely, that she should be alarmed, but the fact was that she could bring herself to feel nothing.

She was aware of cold fingers, prodding her, and her last thought was that they were being shepherded from the clearing.

~

The cave was a big, horseshoe-shaped cavern excavated into the side of the limestone bluff, with two entrances and a central, hub-like pillar. Set into the curving wall of the cave was a series of hollowed-out cells, each one packed with vegetation from the jungle floor, forming so many beds.

Corrie lay on her back and tried to recall the journey here. It had seemed to last forever, but it could only have lasted a matter of hours. They had arrived in darkness, she knew. Five to ten kilometres, she guessed.

How long had they lived in the cave, as guests of the Gargoyles? Corrie raised her hand, stared at the decal. She concentrated, but the figures there made no sense at all. A part of her – the part that knew she was neglecting her duties and herself – understood also that this was not right: another part told her to accept the beneficence of the aliens. It was the only way they had of surviving until the return of the
Darwinian
.

She pushed herself upright and looked around the cave. The others occupied their individual cells, either sleeping or simply too blitzed to move.

She struggled from her own cell and stood on unsteady legs. Her vision swam, and her sense of balance was affected. Across the cave, in a cell opposite her own, Rachel was sitting upright and staring at her with uncomprehending eyes.

Slowly, Corrie made her way across to the Somalian woman.

She sat on the edge of the cell, reached out and took Rachel’s fingers. She raised her other hand, indicating the decal. “How long...?” she managed.

Rachel stared at her, shook her head. “How long until the
Darwinian
arrives?” Her words were slurred, retarded. She looked mystified.

Corrie shook her head. “No – I mean, yes... How long have we been here?”

Rachel stared at her. “On Deneb 5?”

Corrie opened her mouth to speak. Communication was almost impossible. She could not contain the progression of their conversation in her mind.

She had no idea how long they had been on Deneb 5. It seemed like a lifetime. Her other life, her life on Earth, seemed like the memories of another person altogether.

She hit her temple with the heel of her right hand. “No, I mean – how long have we been here, in the cave?”

Rachel was smiling to herself, her eyes staring at a point way beyond Corrie. Slowly, the black woman lay on her back and closed her eyes.

“A week,” she heard the voice, issuing from the next cell. “Maybe a little more.”

She turned. It was Rube. He lay propped on a pile of vegetation in his cell, staring at her. She focused on him, wondering if her eyes were playing tricks on her. The entirety of Rube’s torso now seemed to be scabbed over with the iridescent plaque, almost like a covering of chitin. His head sat atop the multi-coloured armour, bloated but unaffected by the plaque. A ginger growth of beard testified to the possibility that they had been in the cave for a week.

“The
Darwinian
,” Corrie said. She stopped. That seemed the extent of her ability to articulate the thought swimming nebulously in her head. She forced herself to concentrate. “I mean... how long before it gets here?”

Rube laughed. “Jesus Christ, does it matter?” he said. Like Rachel, his voice was slowed, slurred. “What’s the rush? We’re doing okay, aren’t we? You were always one cocky, uptight bitch, Asanovic.”

She waved in futile disgust and pushed herself away from the cell. She made her way around the cave, stopping before each of the dozen cells in turn. Imran... he too was out of it, lying back on his litter of leaves with a beatific expression on his face. Jake – he was sitting upright, legs crossed, staring right through Corrie. When she waved a hand before her eyes, he didn’t so much as blink. She moved on, around the curve of the cavern, and came to the cell in which Tanya and Sue huddled together. The women were naked, sweat-slicked limbs entwined. For a while they had conscientiously peeled the plaques from each others’ bodies, but they had neglected the duty for the past few days. Corrie made out invading colonies of the plaque, like lichen, splotched across the women’s fattening bodies: a patchwork alien carapace.

She reached out and touched a leg, waggled it back and forth in a bid to elicit some response, but Tanya just moaned and turned over.

Corrie looked around the cave. Her thoughts were slow. She wanted nothing more than to lie down in her cell, sup on the juice of another fruit.

Something made her walk past her cell and approach the cave entrance. She closed her eyes, squinting. After the half-light of the cave, the glare of the setting sun was a painful dazzle. Her sight adjusted at last and she made out the bloated hemisphere of Deneb going down behind the jungle on the far side of the river.

On the shelving sands before the cave-mouths, a triptych of Gargoyles stood very still, as if frozen. Corrie had often seen them like this, in postures that made no sense in the human schema of arrested motion.

They looked more than ever like insects in their immobility.

Corrie approached the aliens and walked around them. Their eyes were open, each pair focused on a different point. They seemed not to notice her.

She struggled to fathom what made the attention of the Gargoyles so frightening. For days the aliens had fed and watered the stranded humans, supplying them with half a dozen varieties of fruit, all of which had a sedative, soporific effect on the team.