“And not long after that,” I told my friends the following morning as we drove towards the central massifs, “she collapsed in a drunken heap and I made my escape.”
“And she didn’t explain herself, or apologise?” Maddie asked.
I laughed. “That’s why she invited me over, isn’t it? I’d completely forgotten about that. No, she didn’t say a word about her behaviour on the beach the other morning.”
“She sounds,” Hawk said, from the passenger seat beside Matt, “a sad and tragic woman.”
I nodded. “She’s haunted by who she was, the mistakes she made.”
“But what’s she doing on Chalcedony?” Maddie asked.
“That I didn’t get round to discussing.”
Matt laughed. “You can ask her the next time she invites you round for a drink, David.”
I returned his laugh with a hollow version of my own and concentrated on the passing scenery. What I’d neglected to tell my friends was that, immediately after she’d extinguished the ghosts of her past, she had taken my hand and dragged me towards a nearby sofa. There, she’d traced a long finger down my cheek and asked me if I realised what a handsome man I was. Fortunately, as she leaned towards me with predatory lips, she’d lost consciousness and collapsed back against the cushions, and then I had fled.
Now I recalled that Hawk had known one of her old lovers. I said, “Did you ever meet Carlotta when you knew... what was his name, the pilot?”
“Grainger,” Hawk said. “No – he talked about her plenty, but I never met the woman. I only knew Grainger briefly. We flew a couple of missions together.” He lapsed into silence.
I watched the shola trees flicker past, thought about last night, and tried to work out my reluctance to get involved with Carlotta Chakravorti-Luna. There was no denying that she was beautiful, and famous, and no doubt rich – and many a man would have fallen at her feet, given the opportunity. But I think I saw her as an unwelcome interruption of a contented life; I was happy for the first time in years, and Luna, with her complicated past and twisted emotional freight, would have been an unnecessary burden.
Beside me, Maddie said, “A penny for them, David.”
I decided to come clean. “Before I left last night, Luna made a pass at me – then collapsed. I was just wondering why I don’t want anything to do with her.”
Maddie regarded me, and with her usual perceptiveness said, “It’s because you haven’t had a relationship for over five years, David, and you’re afraid she’d find you wanting.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it and smiled.
That morning, before setting off, Matt had rung around every car-hire franchise in MacIntyre, asking if they’d rented a vehicle at any time in the past five days to a single female Ashentay. He’d drawn a blank at a dozen places, and then struck lucky. A small firm on the edge of town had hired out an off-road bison to a native, two days ago. Which meant that Kee would have already reached the sacred site.
One hour later we turned off the highway and took a winding minor road through the rucked foothills. Ahead, the central massifs were scintillating facets of purple rock topped by snow, their lower slopes cloaked in jungle.
As we drove, I thought about Hawk and the alien girl. Many human relationships were hard to fathom, but trying to work out the mutual attraction between a fifty-five year-old space pilot and an alien almost half his age was impossible. It was easy to be glib about it and see what Hawk saw in Kee: she was, after all, young and pretty in a fey, elfish kind of way. As to what she saw in him... I’d once asked her about her relationship with Hawk (I was drunk at the time) and she’d merely smiled and said, “Hawk is a good man. In the words of my people, he and I are k’oto.” And when I asked what that meant, in English, she had merely smiled again and shook her head gently. “There is no word in English, David.”
But I saw how Hawk and Kee behaved together, and I could not doubt their love.
We climbed. The road became twistier, and the drop to our left took on a frightening aspect. I’d never been good with heights and I tried not to look. This far inland the vegetation was spectacular compared to the littoral flora of the bay. We passed great multi-coloured blooms that looked like fireworks made flesh, riotous fountains of sparkling leaf and bud. The open-top car was flooded with a heady, honeyed scent.
Maddie pointed far ahead, beyond the mountains. Through the mist, we could just make out the effulgence of the Yall’s golden column, the alien construct which, until five years ago and our discovery, had remained one of the Expansion’s greatest mysteries.
Maddie said, “It doesn’t seem like five years, does it? Do you know something, I never thought we’d survive intact, as a group of friends, after all the media interest.”
“What?” I looked at her. “Did you think we’d be lured by all the offers, the money? The fame?”
She smiled. “When Hawk decided to pilot a ship through the column to the stars... I thought that was the start of the break-up. And then the film offers came in.”
“Which we all refused to have anything to do with,” I pointed out.
“Yes, and how I loved you all for telling the money men to go stuff themselves!” Maddie said. “Little did we realise that the unauthorised film would be so terrible…”
Hawk turned in his seat. “But how do you think the experience did change us?”
“Well,” I said, “we all learned something about ourselves, didn’t we? We grew. I think we became stronger. Happier. I know I did.”
Maddie reached forward and mussed Matt’s hair. “And I found the man of my dreams, didn’t I, deary?”
Matt just laughed.
“And I found I could pilot again,” Hawk said. “Strange thing was, after a few trips out-there, that was enough. To know that I could do it. What mattered was what I had here on Chalcedony, my friends, and Kee.”
At this he lapsed into silence again, and our thoughts returned to the alien girl.
An hour later Matt slowed to a stop and indicated the screen on the dashboard. “Dar is twenty kilometres south-west of here,” he said. “There are no metalled roads indicated, and the track isn’t shown on this.” He shrugged. “Any idea where it might be, Hawk?”
“Let’s drive a little further and keep a look out,” Hawk suggested.
Matt started the engine and we drove south-west, keeping our eyes peeled for a break in the jungle to our right. Thirty minutes later Maddie called out, “There!”
A sandy track, little wider than the car itself, interrupted the wall of vegetation. “And look,” she went on, pointing.
A series of saddled hills could be seen beyond the treetops, and kilometres away, nestling in a green clearing between two rearing peaks, stood a collection of huts. Smoke drifted vertically, undisturbed by wind. I made out the tiny stick-figures of alien natives.
“Dar,” Hawk said.
Matt eased the car right, squeezing between the trees. Fronds whipped by, lashing at us. The jungle panoply closed in and the sunlight diminished. We bucked along the uneven track at walking pace.
Matt said, “When we reach the village – if we reach the village – we’ll have to leave the car and continue on foot. How far did you say the sacred site was from Dar?” he asked Hawk.
“Roughly ten kilometres.”
“Hell of a walk,” I said.
The jungle opened out as we climbed, and the track widened. We no longer had to dodge the attention of lashing branches and fronds. Matt picked up speed. I gazed up at the tranquil view of the sequestered alien village and wondered how the locals might receive us – how indeed they might view our quest to retrieve the alien girl before she indulged in what the Ashentay saw as a valid cultural ritual?
I voiced my concern.
Hawk said, “We won’t tell them we want to stop her. We’ll just say we need to find her. The Ashentay aren’t a curious people. They won’t ask questions. It’ll help that I can speak a little of their language. Thing is, we might be too late.”
Maddie said, “Even if we are, Hawk, then look at it realistically – chances are that Kee will be okay.”
“I know, statistically. But even so…”
I said, “But if we find her before she’s taken part in the ritual, how will she react to us barging in and saying she shouldn’t do it?”
Hawk grunted a laugh. “Kee’s stubborn. But I’ll tell her that what she’s doing will hurt me, pain me, and that might make her think again.”
“But,” Matt pointed out, “she’s obviously doing it for a reason. She’s a sensitive person, Hawk; she’ll have thought through the consequences.”
Hawk nodded. “I know, I know. And that’s what makes it all the more painful.” He stopped there, then said, “I’d just like to know why she feels she has to go through with it, is all.”
We had no answer to that, and we fell silent as the car rocked and careered along the pot-holed track.
Ten minutes later Matt slowed down and said, “Look.”
“Jesus,” Hawk said.
A hundred metres ahead, to our right, sunlight glinted off the roof of a bison. It had gone off the track, into the ditch, and fetched up against the thick bole of a palm. It all depended, I thought, on how fast the vehicle had been travelling when it impacted with the tree.
It occurred to me that if she had crashed the vehicle a couple of days ago, injured herself and was still in there... She was a slight creature, almost childlike. I felt my pulse increase as we approached.
Hawk was leaning forward, and I was glad I was unable to make out his expression.
Matt slowed and braked beside the canted bison.
Maddie said, “Are you sure it’s Kee’s?”
Hawk just pointed to the hire-car logo on the door of the vehicle.
We climbed out. The bison’s fender was buckled, the windscreen shattered. There was no sign of Kee. Hawk yanked open the passenger door and climbed inside. I peered in after him.
He was staring at the blood on the dashboard; he gave a low groan. Maddie took his arm and helped him away from the cab; I climbed inside. Matt rounded the vehicle and approached it from the driver’s side. He stared at me through the open door.
“It’s my guess this makes it seem worse than it is,” I said, loud enough so that Hawk could hear. “The driver’s door is open. I reckon she climbed out.”
I scrambled from the cab and joined Matt. He was staring at the broken vegetation in the ditch beside the truck.
“She went this way,” he said, indicating a patch of trampled grass. He moved away from the bison, along the ditch, then climbed out onto the track. I followed him.
He indicated the sandy surface of the road. I made out patches of what looked like scarlet sugar – Kee’s spilled blood that had picked up grains of sand and dried in globules.
Matt called back to Hawk. “She survived the crash and walked away.” He looked up and fitted his hand over his eyes, shielding the sunlight. “I think she made for the village.”
Hawk joined us, Maddie by his side. We followed the sporadic trail of blood along the road until it petered out. Maddie said, “I don’t think she was bleeding all that badly.”
“Badly enough,” Hawk said, “going by the mess in the cab.”
“She’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s not far to the village. Look at it this way, it might even have slowed her down. She might not have made the ritual yet.”
Hawk nodded. “Let’s get going.”
We climbed back into Matt’s car and set off again, driving slowly and from time to time coming almost to a stop in order to scan the ground and search the ditch.
I glanced at Maddie. She looked white. I wondered if we were putting an optimistic gloss on the evidence: there was always the chance that Kee had been badly injured in the accident and had wandered off into the jungle, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
The track climbed and wound around a hillside, and twenty minutes later we turned a bend and before us was Dar, a collection of perhaps fifty straw-hatted huts dotting the green incline.
Matt braked a hundred metres before the first hut and suggested we go the rest of the way on foot. We nodded agreement and climbed out. Hawk was expressionless, his stony features set.
Our arrival had been noted by a group of children playing on the perimeter of the village. They stopped and watched us, frozen into comical immobility, before running off twittering into the village. Seconds later the adults gathered, though these people seemed hardly taller than their children.
They were a humanoid race, almost identical to Homo sapiens to the point where they might have gone unnoticed in a crowd of humans. You might have wondered, though, at their slightness, their wide mouths, thin noses and large eyes; their faces bordered on the ugly, but in a few instances, as with Kee, possessed a strange and delicate beauty.
We advanced slowly and stopped perhaps ten metres from the gathered group. Hawk stepped forward, a hand raised in a gesture of greeting. He halted, cleared his throat, and spoke in their language. It seemed odd, a series of mellifluous, almost watery notes coming from the mouth of this rangy, piratical figure.
An old man pushed his way through the grouped aliens and stood staring at the ground, his head cocked in an attitude of polite attention.
When Hawk fell silent, there was a stirring among the Ashentay, and all eyes turned to the elder. He wore nothing but a loin-cloth and a necklace of beads; his face, despite the lines, suggested vitality.
Hawk turned to us and whispered, “I asked if they know of a fellow Ashentay called Kee, who had crashed a vehicle nearby and might have made her way to the village.”
The old man spoke quickly, and I glanced at Hawk. He nodded, frowning as he attempted to decipher the elder’s fluid tongue.
Hawk said to us, “He asked what business it is of ours.”
He spoke to the elder again; I caught the word ‘Kee’ from time to time.
There was a stirring of interest among the group. Hawk said, “I told them that Kee was a dear friend of ours, and that she came to the area intending to take part in the smoking of bones ritual, but that she had crashed her vehicle before arriving here. I said we’re concerned for her safety.”
The elder moved his hand in a quick, circular gesture and spoke.
He was still speaking when Hawk hung his head and said, under his breath, “Thank Christ...” He turned to us, relief flooding his face. “She’s okay. She came to them two days ago. She had a badly cut forehead, and her arm was injured. But Jyrik – the elder – he said the village’s doctor fixed her up and she left the village on foot today.”
“Today?” Maddie said. “How early?”
Hawk spoke to the elder, then reported, “She set off at first light.”
“And how far is it to the sacred site?” Maddie asked.
Hawk addressed the elder again.
The old man flung out a hand towards the mountains and uttered a flow of whispery words.
“A few hours,” Hawk relayed, unable to keep the smile from his face.
Maddie said, “Then we might catch up with her before...”
“If we follow in the car,” I said.
Hawk was shaking his head. “I asked him about the terrain. The car wouldn’t stand a chance–”
“What about the bison?” Matt said. “I could go back and see what state it’s in...”
Hawk spoke with the elder, then said, “It’s worth a try. It’s pretty steep terrain, but we could go as far as possible and travel the rest of the way on foot. The elder said he’d provide a guide.”
“We’ll go back to the bison,” Matt said. “Try to get it started.”
While Hawk continued his conversation with the elder, Matt, Maddie and I hurried back to the car. Matt jumped into the driver’s seat and we sped back down the track. Ten minutes later we came to the bison.
Matt hoisted himself into the cab while I moved to the rear of the vehicle and inspected the ditch; it wasn’t deep, and I suspected the bison’s tracks would have no difficulty in reversing out.
I joined Matt and Maddie in the cab. Matt held up the ignition card, kissed it and said, “Now let’s just hope the smash didn’t do any irreparable damage.”
He inserted the card and depressed the starter, and the engine roared to life. The bison bucked, and Matt yelled and hauled the gear-lever into reverse. With much revving and swearing, he eased the vehicle from the ditch and pointed it in the direction of the village.
We bucketed along, laughing like kids on a fairground ride.
By the time we reached the village, Hawk was unloading provisions from the car. We stowed them aboard the bison and climbed back into the cab. Hawk remained standing beside the vehicle, discussing – I presumed – the matter of directions with the elder. A minute later a young female Ashentay climbed warily into the passenger seat beside Hawk; her resemblance to Kai, to my untutored eye, was remarkable. She glanced unsurely at him, and then back at us, and reached out to touch the unfamiliar lines of the cab with timid wonder.
We left the village, crashing along a track through the enclosing jungle, and began to climb.
As Hawk wrestled with the steering wheel, almost manhandling the bison through the steep terrain, he spoke to the girl.
She replied with monosyllables at first, hardly glancing at him. Then, as he gained her trust, she smiled and chattered more easily.
Over his shoulder, Hawk reported, “Qah says that Kee went with a group of Ashentay, whose time it also was to smoke the bones. They were impressed that she’d come so far by herself, and they wanted to know more about her life with us humans. I don’t think she told them she was living with me; some tribes might ask how that came about, and if they found out... well, they’d probably shun her.”
The fact was that, ten years ago, Kee had been left in the jungle by her family as an offering to the Koah tree; she was the youngest girl from a litter of twenty children, and therefore expendable, and great credit would accrue to her tribe when her spirit was absorbed by the holy tree.
Then Hawk had happened along and rescued her, and the rest was history.
He said, “I asked her how many of her tribe had undergone the smoking ritual over the years. She said perhaps a hundred, with around thirty fatalities.” He looked grim.
“Don’t worry,” Maddie said. “We’ll get to her before it starts.”
We held on as the bison rocked back and forth, riding the motion like sailors on a storm-tossed sea. The jungle swamped us, filtering the light to an aqueous gloom. I heard the eerie squeals of alien fauna and wondered if there were any predatory animals in the region.
Hawk answered my question. “We’re safe. The hoffa live on the southern continent and never get this far north. There are some nasty insects, though, and snake analogues... I just hope it doesn’t come to leaving the bison and walking.”
He spoke to the Qah, who replied.
He called back to us, “I asked her how far away the sacred site is, in distance, not days spent walking. She said twelve toha, say about eight kay. We should make it in a few hours. Before sunset, at any rate.”
The Fates must have been attending to his words. Two hours later the incline, already steep, reared to a forty-five degree slope and the bison growled, dug in, butted aside a few thick-boled trees, and finally admitted defeat. Hawk tried again and again, backing up and charging at the obstruction, then attempting to go around it, but to no avail.
“I think this is as far as we go,” he said. “The rest of the way is on foot.”
Qah leapt nimbly from the cab, manifestly relieved to be back in an environment she understood. She ran ahead, making light work of the incline, stood on a toppled tree trunk and stared ahead.
She called something to Hawk, who translated. “She says it’s not far from here. An hour or so. If we hurry, we’ll make it by nightfall.”
We hauled backpacks containing tents, water and food from the bison and followed our guide, Hawk first, Maddie and Matt coming after, and myself bringing up the rear. It was hot, the kind of sultry heat that has one drowning in sweat after about five seconds of exertion. I looked ahead, through the thick cover of foliage; the sun was making its slow descent towards the near, mountainous horizon.
The going, surprisingly, was not as difficult as I’d expected. We’d followed a narrow path in the bison, the vehicle widening it somewhat, and we continued on it now. The sandy trail climbed through the jungle, affording occasional glimpses through the canopy of the rearing peaks ahead.
The climb might have been easier than I’d feared, but I still found the going hard. Muscles which I’d forgotten I possessed began to protest, and my lungs felt as if they were being forced up through my gullet.
We’d been walking for an hour when Maddie looked over her shoulder and smiled. “You okay back there?”
I grinned heroically. “I’m still here, Maddie,” I panted. “Surely there can’t be much further to go?”
As if he’d heard me, Hawk called a halt. We gathered on a mossy rise and, after speaking with Qah, he pointed through a rent in the canopy ahead. “See that hill, projecting from the jungle? The waterfall to the right? That’s where we’re heading. Thirty minutes, no more.”
“Hallelujah,” I laughed. I broke out my water canister and took a long drink. The others did the same.
“The gym for you, my boy, when we get back,” Maddie threatened.
We set off again, our lithe guide skipping ahead, making the incline seem like child’s play.
The sun was slipping behind a jagged mountain peak when we crested a rise and saw, a few hundred metres ahead, a domed hill rising before us with a quicksilver waterfall cascading from the rocks to the right.
“This is it?” Matt asked. “The sacred site?”
I looked for signs of occupation, huts or temples or something, but the place seemed deserted.
Hawk said, “Behind the waterfall is the entrance to a system of caves. The rituals are performed in one of these caverns. Qah suggested that we spend the night by the waterfall; she said she’ll enter the caves and look for Kee...” He shook his head. “I told her we need to find Kee sooner rather than later. We’ll go into the caves and follow Qah to the sacred chamber.”
“And she’s okay with this?” Maddie asked.
Hawk nodded. “She seems to be. As far as I know there’s no precedent ever been set of humans entering sacred territory, so...”
“Let’s go,” Matt said.
We crossed the clearing, and the humidity seemed to lift as we left the confines of the jungle; a flagging wind lapped across the hill, and as we approached the waterfall its spray drenched us in a cool, jewelled shower.
Qah led us around the sink formed by the waterfall, and along a ledge behind its sheer crystal sheet of water. The rock underfoot was treacherous, and Matt, Maddie and I gripped each other’s hands as we inched along the ledge.
We came to a gaping rent in the rock and followed Qah within. Something glowed on the walls, mats and rafts of what looked like fungus, giving off a dull green luminescence.We followed a natural corridor in the rock as it dropped rapidly. I made out carvings on the walls, stick Ashentay figures and animals, and wondered what xenologists back on Earth would make of this alien treasure.
Ten minutes later I saw light ahead, brighter than the verdant gloaming of the corridor. Seconds later we emerged into a vast cavern.
I thought, for a second, that we had emerged into the twilight, that we’d somehow penetrated through to a valley fissure deep within the mountain. Then my eyes adjusted and I made out the rocky bounds of the cavern – perhaps a kilometre distant – and the fires, bonfires no less, situated at intervals around the perimeter and providing a bright rouge glow. Only then did I make out the long-house, raised on stilts above the ground and entered by a timber ramp. Positioned in the centre of the pitched roof was an opening through which poured a thick pall of smoke. It rose and hung beneath the natural ceiling of the chamber like a threatening storm-cloud.
I inhaled and smelled the sweet, almost familiar scent of the bone smoke.