Watcher's Web (8 page)

J
ESSICA
RETREATED into the shrubbery at the bottom of the cliff.

First one and
then another figure came out of the reeds. Against the glare of
sunlight, they were nothing more than black shapes. Small, dressed
in rags, with mops of untidy hair like reggae singers. Five of
them.

How could they
have come down that cliff so quickly?

They stopped
on the beach, talking and gesticulating. Any minute now and they
would see her footprints and then they only needed to follow the
trail.

Jessica broke
a branch off a shrub and pushed backwards through the vegetation,
sweeping the fine sand over her footprints as she went. It was a
botch job and if these trackers were worth their salt, they’d find
her in a jiffy, but what else could she do? Branches snagged on her
clothes and scratched her arms. She stopped to peek. The knot of
men broke up and one pointed at the water’s edge, the spot where
she had stopped and noticed her double shadow. Two of the men
followed her tracks up the beach. They disappeared into the
bushes.

Faster she
walked backwards, and faster still. Step, sweep, step, sweep,
step.

A
whistle echoed. They would have found her backpack.
Shit.

Jessica turned
and ran as fast as she could. The men shouted; branches
cracked.

She jumped
over and between bushes. Something funny was going on with her
right shoe. Parts of it flapped loose and her sock was filling up
with sand.

If she could
reach the river beyond the sand spit, swim across, she might escape
if the men couldn’t swim, or at least not as well as she could.

The shrubs
ended abruptly.

Jessica
launched herself into the open, weaving between tussocks of plants.
Here she could gain speed and take advantage of her longer legs,
get away from them as fast as possible. She ran up a low sand dune,
around the corner of the cliff into an invisible curtain of
. . . something.

Her hands
tingled; the skin on her face pricked. The feeling exploded over
her chest, down her stomach, her legs, like pins and needles in her
entire body.

She had to
stop running because her legs threatened to buckle under her.

From where she
stood, a meadow sloped down to a lazily churning river. In the
middle of the grassy space stood a circular wall, and on this wall
about a dozen tall metal poles. Each of these poles bore a glass
“eye” at the top that collected beams of light reflecting from
hundreds of silver dishes attached to the cliff face behind. The
eyes then directed the light to the top of a pillar in the centre
of the circle. There, the light simply disappeared. Some sort of
collection plant for solar power.

The collected
energy from the beams made that pillar throb with power. The air
vibrated with it. It crept through her veins. Warmth spread inside
her, familiar, soothing, and calling for more. Every fibre of her
being wanted to go to that pillar and submerge herself in the
energy it radiated. If it was what had brought her here, it could
get her back home.

Rough voices
sounded behind her. The five men clambered up the sand dune,
silhouetted by the light. One of them pointed.

Jessica
ran.

Her thoughts
soared to the stars, to a place where the sky was blue and a single
sun beat down on the tarmac of the airstrip at Barrow Creek and her
father’s police car stood parked on the other side of the gate. He
leaned against a fence post, a crooked smile on his face and a
twinkle in his eye and hugged her, grumbling, “Welcome home,
poss.”

She reached
the circular wall and heaved herself on top into the full blast of
power from the central pillar. Every particle of her body screamed
with life and with the hunger for more power.

Yes, she could
do it; she had to, for the sake of her parents. She would find a
way back home. She would run or hide or fight the natives, go back
to the beach and catch another lizard, kill it before it had a
chance to bite, eat it raw if she couldn’t make a fire, build a
raft and paddle to the city on the island, swim if it sank, and
learn to communicate with those she found there so they could help
her. If it took the rest of her life, she would find a way back
home.

A long, clear
note pinged across the meadow. The beams of light that passed
overhead went from white to red and faded. The “eyes” at the top of
the circle of posts ceased to shine. Vibrations in the air stopped
and there was . . . silence.

Behind her,
the first of the two suns dipped below the horizon.

Someone
whistled at the ridge.

Jessica jumped
off the wall. An all-too-familiar stab of pain shot up her legs as
soon as her feet hit the ground. Now she had done it. In some way,
this strange machine had charged her to breaking point, like when
the plane went down. How stupid was that? Why hadn’t she run for
the river as she had intended?

Jessica
crouched and pressed herself against the wall.

When those men
reached the circle of poles, she would have to do something, or
they would be tanning her hide. She didn’t think she could trigger
another flash, or at least not on purpose. She could make a web—but
would that risk that person at the other end grabbing hold of her
again?

What then?
Make a dash for the river?

The brown
water looked inviting, but there was no way she could run that far,
not like this.

More whistles
followed, closer this time, and the thuds of running feet. Female
voices shouted in a language full of consonants, punctuated with
loud snaps like the cracking of a whip.

Jessica peeked
over the wall. Even moving her eyes hurt.

A line of
figures ran across the field. Agile like hunting cats, they sliced
through the vegetation. Glass-bladed knives glittered at their
belts. They stopped, facing the approaching men.

Jessica’s
pursuers had come to a stop on the hillside. One of them spoke, his
voice rough.

Several female
voices replied with shouts.

That was a
piece of luck. If these guys were going to have a conference, maybe
she could still get away. She turned . . . and stared
into a circle of faces. Small, lithe creatures human-like enough to
call them people reached only to her chest. Their eyes were at
least three times the size of a human’s, pools of liquid brown.
Their hair, black or greying, was rolled into dreadlocks or woven
into ornate braids with beads and bits of coloured fabric. A faint
muddy scent drifted on the breeze. She recognised that smell from
the people she had thought were poachers.

There were
about twenty of them, naked except for white aprons. Patterns of
white and grey zebra stripes or leopard spots graced their upper
arms, elbows and shoulders, but faded on their faces, and on their
chests, which had pale, rounded breasts.

Jessica backed
into the wall, holding up her hands. “Look, I’m unarmed.”

Stupid. Aliens
only spoke English in the movies.

The
females continued their staring game. One of them muttered a
word,
avya,
another repeated it, until it went around the group like
Chinese whispers.
Avya, avya.

It made her
nervous.

“Well, guess
you’ve never seen a human being before. Suppose we’re kinda ugly to
you.” God, she was saying stupid stuff, babbling. Her head throbbed
with a monumental headache. A cloud of sparks swirled under her
skin.

The spectators
shuffled aside for an older female. Wispy white hair hung to her
waist, threaded into plaits adorned with beads. The low light from
the setting suns made the grooves and wrinkles in her face stand
out like canyons on a topographic map. One of the aproned females
spoke in staccato tones, but the old female silenced her with a
wave of her hand and faced Jessica.

Her eyes
were huge. Gold spots floated in the irises, the pupils black and
fathomless. Long, delicate eyelashes, white with age, blinked. She
reached a wrinkled, paper-skinned hand for Jessica’s upper left arm
and whispered,
“Anmi.”

Jessica looked
down . . . and nearly fainted. The birthmark spots that
had always marked her skin had joined up to form a pattern. Two
signs glowed with bright phosphorescence: one like a small ‘n’ with
a long loop down, the other like a mirrored numeral three.

Jessica rubbed
the skin, but she knew it was pointless. The phosphorescent lines
matched the familiar spots on her upper arm perfectly. They could
only be part of the same thing, some kind of tattoo, and something
in the air—that weird installation that collected sunlight—had
brought out its radiance.

It was like
. . . biology class a few months ago. Their teacher had
used a blacklight on a group of cowrie shells, which had looked
pretty, but ordinary, in daylight, but glowed brilliantly pink
under the blacklight’s rays.

That’s how the
tattoo on her arm shone.

Holy shit
didn’t half describe it. And those stripy-skinned humanoids still
stood staring at it, bright pink dots reflected in their huge eyes.
What the bloody hell did they think she was?

The old female
pointed at Jessica’s chest and repeated, “Anmi.” Then she pointed
to herself and said something like, “Ikay.”

Did it matter
what her name was? These looked like the same type of people who
had killed Martin and the businessman. They had captured Brian.
They were going to kill her anyway. Kill her and eat her like
cannibals and feed the bones to the lizards.

“Well, you got
that wrong. My name is Jessica. You hear that? Jessica.
Jess-i-ca.”

The old female
pressed her finger to lips. “Poh-poh-poh-poh—Anmi.”

“Suit
yourself. Can I go now? Those guys over there are after me. I need
to get to the city to catch the next spaceship to Earth. You see,
I’ve got an appointment with the basketball team, but now I’m a bit
late, I sort of got lost along the way and ended up on the wrong
planet.”

She didn’t
even know what she was saying. This was ridiculous. Completely and
utterly ridiculous. She stumbled a few painful steps, grasped the
top of the wall to haul herself over, get out of here, but
something glittered at her chest. A knife; no, more like a machete,
the blade clear as glass. The female holding it was a fierce
creature. Black zebra stripes on her shoulders gleamed with a
coating of oil. Lean, muscled and ready to spring, a fighting
Amazon.

The
white-haired female Ikay gave a harsh command that sounded
something like,
Alll.

The Amazon
relaxed her hold but something wound around Jessica’s arm and held
it in an iron grip; some kind of snake-like thing, banded black and
white. Jessica attempted to prise her fingers between the coils and
her skin, and found its end: a small, white-haired tip. She
realised where it came from. These people had tails.

“Let me go, I
tell you—let me go. I’m not going to harm you.”

She struggled
against the tail’s grip. Swirls of sparks raged under her skin, but
if the Amazon saw them, or if she felt the heat, she didn’t show
it. Pricks of pain went across Jessica’s shoulders, her stomach and
her legs. Strands of light snaked when she breathed, forming into
the familiar web.

Jessica tried
to withdraw it. She could make Angus do what she wanted, but he was
a bull, and there was only one of him. Now the web wove over the
entire group of natives and there was no way she could control all
of them.

Ikay grabbed
her arms, and shouted harsh words.

Jessica’s skin
burned. She struggled. Every movement hurt. There was pressure
inside her looking for a way to escape. She wanted to scream, but
her mouth wouldn’t move. Before her eyes, the blue-veined web
formed out of strands that came not from her body, but materialised
from Ikay’s skin. As they curved and reached out for Jessica, she
retreated.

Ikay gave a
sharp command. The Amazons took hold of Jessica’s shoulders, and
brought her to her knees, until she faced Ikay, who bent forward
until her huge black eyes filled Jessica’s vision.

Jessica closed
her eyes. She could not let that web connect with her. She could
not let that woman do whatever she did with those blue strands.
Read her mind. Erase her memories. Kill her. Those things she had
done herself.

But closing
her eyes made no difference. The web not only shone through her
eyelids, but it strengthened. The force at the other end pulled at
the heat inside her.

Jessica wanted
to scream, but her voice didn’t cooperate.

Images
flowed into her mind. She saw some huge, hive-like structure in the
forest. A boat floating to a jetty. There were houses in the
background, and people hauling nets. Children, their skin
completely striped. A group of white-haired elders in heated
debate. Snapping tails, furious hand gestures.
Invaders have come. We must
kill them. They fell from the sky.

And then she
was in another place entirely . . .

*     *     *

Grey light
filtered through a window, over empty tables and chairs in some
sort of eating house. Not normal tables—the surface was a
crystalline screen with strange characters . . . which
she could read. The menu.

It was raining
heavily outside, a curtain of water that obscured the view beyond a
grey building on the other side of a street. A man sat by himself
in the corner near the window, his spidery hands—the index and
middle fingers much longer than the others—clutching a cup.

He looked up;
a smile crinkled the skin around deep-set eyes, the irises yellow
with a black rim. “Daya.”