2nd Part: STROMA
The isles of Greece! The islesof Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved andsung,
Where grew the arts of love andpeace,
Where Delos rose and Phoebussprung!
Byron
Twelve - Pushing: Darkened Jelly
The hat was floppy...
Kate Droover gazed at the stars.It was too dark to read and too important not to. But what she hadplenty of - she realized now - was time.
‘Technophiles.’
‘How's that?’
‘You referred to the people ofRadio City as technophiles,’ she said.
Uncle Stylo shifted next to her,turning warm areas cold and vice-versa. He didn't reply, was beingevasive.
‘I want to sleep out here,’Kate went on. Then, ‘How did Ernie get his material to you?’
Why hadn't she thought of itbefore?
‘Spot-beam.’
‘One way or two?’
‘I can send a message to theengine, if that's what you mean. But it will take a while.’
She changed hermind -below ground seemed much the safer; although safe from what shecouldn't say. It was as if the open sky compressed her, whereas thepassage-ridden stone offered protection. It was, she supposed, likebeing aboard the ship, surrounded by confederates...
Kate's mind drifted back to theLicencing Bureau, its staff and its office.
Why hadn't they come after her?
Perhaps she'd imagined the entireepisode, but that didn't seem likely.
And she was meant to havecalled...
‘They'll be worried about me,’she said out loud, jumping up, flustered.
Stylo rose, slower. ‘Among otherthings,’ he said ominously.
*
‘It's going to be very dark in aminute,’ Byron stated. ‘And then anything might happen.’
He could hear Sal's irregularbreathing.
‘Do it!’ she retched drily.
There were fireworks.
Rockets...
They were flying. He wasn't surewhere, or if they'd make it in one piece, but they had escaped theResearch Section, its masked representatives.
Sally leant against a wall. He wasright, she couldn't see a thing, only spectres, globs of chimericallight, angry photons clawing at her eyes, wanting in. There wassound, much of it coming from the engineer.
‘Well,’ he said presently,‘we're not dead. If they fired they missed.’
‘And hit the guppy,’ sheconcluded. ‘That piece of shit stuck to the ship was probably abomb.’
‘Makes sense.’ She couldpicture him nodding. ‘Practical,’ he added. ‘Multi-functional.Economic.’
‘We don't have much fuel, dowe?’
‘Just enough to stop.’
‘Then what?’ She thought sheknew already.
‘We look around, find some.’Simple...
Sally laughed despite the pain.‘Robbers! Your retrograde or your life!’
Friendly Byron came and sat besideher, a more tangible form in the dark, a thicker blackness. ‘Youknow, Sal, I'm starting to like you.’
She pushed from the wall, sagged.‘I feel the same as Kate,’ she told him jokingly. ‘We're thesame size and everything. If you can imagine her with her headshaved...’
‘It's like a warm egg.’
‘Yes; so watch you don't crackit.’
This time it was Byron who had themilk and doughnuts.
Roman candles...
There was an explosion.
‘What's the probability againstus hitting something?’ the co-pilot asked.
‘Not nearly high enough,’ heanswered. Moving gently he slipped from between her polished thighs.
There was aseries of lessening, prismatic waves, a presence.
‘What the...’
‘Luke?’
The cook uncovered his torch.Naked, skin peeling, mouth hanging open, he stood at the foot of thebed.
‘Luke?’ Sal repeated, dazzled.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ saidAbdul. ‘But we've visitors.’ His voice was lazy, the wordssinking to the deck almost as soon as he spoke them.
‘Where've you been?’ Sallywanted to know. ‘Do you feel okay? Tell me...’
‘I'm fine,’ he lied. ‘I'llmake it.’
Byron wrestled with his trousers.‘Who are they?’ The light crashed around the cabin, stinging hishead. ‘Get that out of my face!’
The ragged figure stepped outsidethe room and the blackness swelled once more.
The engine's displacement haddrained every ounce of power, as Byron knew it would. He fumbled withbatteries for his own torch which he should have checked beforehand,silently furious, puzzled more by Abdul's sudden reappearance thanthe million-to-one shot collision. Trillion-to-one if it were a ship.He was shaking, actually physically shaking, and it was excitementcarousing through his veins. He couldn't believe it. He must haveaimed the engine somewhere specific, unconsciously pointed it towardcrowded space.
Wasn't that good? They neededfuel, so it made sense. But it hadn't been intentional. Things wereoccurring the wrong way round. In this instance they were fortunate.Or where they?
‘Visitors?’ Sally echoedbelatedly. ‘That's crazy.’
‘Not if we swallowed themwhole,’ he said, enthused. ‘Like that whale in the bible...youknow.’ He finally got the torch to function, its narrow beammellow.
‘Then it's preposterous,’ sheamended. ‘I'm sleepy.’
‘No - a blessing! There's beenno decompression, so they haven't punctured the hull. What more canyou ask?’
But she was snoring.
And Luke Farouke had gone.
So he went to receive their guests- and to see what could be salvaged - alone.
After all, Friendly was used toit.
*
Kate dozed in a hot bath up to herchin. The water cooled and she climbed out reluctantly, towelled dry,and dressed in jeans and t-shirt, borrowed clothing.
The t-shirt had a picture on thefront, Earth with a sign hung on a rusty nail, reading: NO VACANCIES,a joke on the depleted population (approx. 0.5 billion) and theirjealously-guarded rights of abode - when emigration and planet-hirewere the fashion and the obscenely rich did as they pleased in thegalaxy. Those who clung on lived mostly in the vast island that wasRadio, cosseted in the mid-Atlantic doldrums, encapsulated by imageand pretended form, safe in their micro-climates...
She found Stylo at his desk, a penin his fingers.
‘Your friends made the push,’he said; ‘somehow.’
‘What do you mean, “somehow?”’
He scratched his palm with thenib, marking ting circles. ‘I got through to the engine momentsbefore it flew,’ he explained. ‘The beam was diverted, and I gotthis back.’
Droover took the slip of paperfrom him. ‘To whom it may concern,’ she read. ‘We'remonitoring.’ She turned it over; the reverse blank. ‘That's it?’
‘Yep,’ confirmed Stylo.
‘Monitoring what? Me?’
‘Go and read your comics,’ hetold her.
Kate frowned. The bath hadrefreshed her, but his obliqueness was getting to be infuriating.
*
The air seemed to wobble aroundthe shaft of the torch-beam, rumbling quietly as Byron pressedthrough it, a resistance that to the engineer was deliberate. Likethe dreamt wind gushing from the abyss it attempted to force himback, hold him a bay, keep him at a controllable distance.
But he would have none of it.Byron was the engine, and as the engine he cut the blackness that wasspace, burrowed like a mole to his prescribed destination. Only alack of fuel might stop him. Only destruction.
He plunged inregardless...
They wereTopicans, he discovered, and their craft bisected four inspectiontunnels, six walkways and the auxiliary tank Sal had recently mended.They'd had their throats cut.
It was a time, he reasoned, forwoundings.
Cut, cut, cut, cut...one two threefour murdered crewmen and a torch-bearing engineer.
Quite a procession. He dumped thebodies in a wheeled receptacle and sent it thuddering to the nearestconverter, there to be disposed of, evaporated.
Whistling he next explored theinterloper, its belly-hatch scorched and ajar, where possibly it hadtaken a hit, where definitely its crew had exited.
To find what? Their end.
‘Lucky unlucky,’ Friendlysaid. The craft's interior was new and sparkling. ‘Anyone home?’
A communications panel fizzled.
War raged about the star Horus, herecalled, its six worlds and thirteen moons, one of which was hishome.
‘Abdul?’
No reply.