Meridian Days (18 page)

From my position on the path, sprawled out on my uninjured side, I had a perfect view over the cliff and out to sea. The helicopter lumbered towards the coastline, nose down — its arrival yet another component in a mystery far beyond my understanding. It hovered over the rocks of the foreshore, and I made out dark figures in its exit hatch, preparing to jump.

Then, before they could do so, a bright spoke of laser fire flashed out from amid the rocks below me. The bolt clipped the helicopter's starboard engine cowling, and shards of disintegrating machinery spun away and out into the night, turning over and over in slow motion. I made out the Telemass Organisation logo on the flank of the 'copter as it hung lopsidedly, lost its fight to remain airborne and slumped the two metres into the shallows. Small, dark figures swarmed out, their progress to shore impeded by the depth of the ocean and the treacherous rocks. Within seconds, more laser fire hailed through the darkness, both from the rocks below and from the cliff-top. The bolts homed in remorselessly on the stricken 'copter and the floundering figures. The vehicle exploded under the onslaught, the roiling haemorrhage of flame followed by a muffled crump. The sudden illumination made the ongoing carnage all the more graphic; Trevellion's guards were picking off the invasion force with contemptuous ease. I saw bodies fall, lacerated, one by one until there were no more to target — and perhaps two minutes after the first bolt was fired, the skirmish was over. The sea extinguished the burning 'copter, and the waves washed over the rocks and the bodies below. Soon, nothing but the burned-out carcass of the 'copter remained to evidence the fact of the abortive invasion.

I closed my eyes, aware again of the pain in my side. I lay like a victim of the carnage below, caught on the cusp between the end of one dramatic occurrence and the beginning of another. I tried to make sense of Steiner's offensive, connect it to the happenings of the past few days. It struck  me as odd that the invasion should have coincided with Trevellion's latest event. It became imperative that I should witness it.

Unable to stand, I pushed myself up the bank towards the gap in the trees, taking an age to move just three metres. I paused, a head's length from being able to see over the brow, then made one last desperate push. The length of my body scraped painfully over sand, rocks and pine cones. The glare of the will-o'-the-wisp lanterns came into view, dazzling me. I sagged, one cheek against the ground, breathing hard. Then, my eyesight becoming accustomed to the brightness, I lifted my head and stared down into the performance area.

Fire was standing very still on a circular grav-platform in the centre of the greensward, floating a metre above the ground. Her stance suggested apathy, or a drug-induced stupor. Her head was bowed and her arms hung limply by her sides.

Below her, the audience sprawled on scattered cushions and sunken foam-forms, looking up past Fire to where the open front of the floating stage was illuminated suddenly by a great block of golden light which spilled out across the greensward. The chattering spectators fell silent. I found myself holding my breath in anticipation.

As I watched, a small figure appeared on the golden stage. Shambling and hunched, he padded to the edge and looked out, down the ramp of light. Then he stepped off the stage and descended through the air. He was an ape-man, covered in hair and clutching a wooden club. Others soon followed him — small, trotting figures who hurried from the stage and deployed themselves around the perimeter of the greensward, crouching in wait. One readied himself in the air a metre from me, and its solidity, its reality, said much for Trevellion's talent. Down below, a spotlight was on Fire, and she was reciting her mother's poetry in a low voice, too faint for me to hear.

Then, from the stage, burst a herd of mammoths, with a speed and ferocity that alarmed me. A manufactured wind blew across the performance area, carrying the rank stench of the beast, and the illusion of reality was heightened by the sound of their drumming gallop as they charged down the incline. Almost upon me, the leading mammoth fell and disappeared, and the ape-men emerged and cast spears and stones into the invisible pit.

While this was going on, yet more figures appeared and stepped from the stage, Egyptians flanked by distinct, towering statuary. There followed a series of set pieces featuring a succession of ancient races, each one emerging, playing out their story, and fading to make way for the next champion of civilization in the course of humanity's evolution. We were treated to scenes from the long history of Homo Sapiens; from Egyptian to Chinese, Greek to Roman, and then the wonders of the modern world: the industrialisation of Earth, the fusion age, the halcyon period of the post-nuclear era, to the miracles of the present day. All this was commented upon by Fire, reciting her mother's magnum opus, and though I could not make out the individual words, the sight alone was wonder enough.

As the last scene faded, a spotlight picked out the the grav-platform on which Fire stood as it rose into the air. She intoned: "In Earth, jewel of the Expansion/ We share a heritage..." She continued, but either the speakers were not directed towards me, or the pain distracted my attention: I made out only the odd word. The platform sank again and the aerial display continued.

The theme of the second act was the conquest of space. From the stage emerged the immense length of an early multi-stage rocket. Startled gasps and cries of delight came from the crowd as the spaceship exploded into the night sky, as seemingly real as if it were a thing of steel and fire, and not just a brilliant projection. I was deafened by the thunder of its engines, even felt the heat sweep over me as it overflew the bank on which I lay. Then other craft issued from the stage, and we watched a procession of vessels from the early days of humanity's exploration of space; the first primitive luna vessels, poignant in their antiquity, the manned Martian probes, the exploration smallships to the closer stars. Then came the bigships which carried colonists to the newly discovered habitable planets, vessels the size of city blocks which move through the
nada
-continuum with the unhurried grace of all colossal objects; 'ships with evocative names like
The Pride of Madras, Remembrance of Things Past, The Sartori Express.
.. As the last bigship faded, its place was taken by the technology that had superseded these leviathans of the space lanes: we watched Telemass stations beaming out bolts of demolecularised cargo from Earth to the many enclaves of life around the Expansion.

The spotlight found Fire, and she recited: "We conquered Earth and/ Our ambition Unconquered/ We claimed the stars..." She continued, singing the praises of humankinds' achievements, our inexorable shaping and forming of the great historical processes which culminated in the conquest of the stars. I strained to make out every word, but it was obvious that I was slipping in and out of consciousness — coming to my senses, startled by an amplified phrase or sudden burst of illumination, only to slip back against my will into troubled darkness, where words and images merged in a nightmarish alternative to what was happening above. It came to me, in my delirium, that so small a figure as Fire must surely be crushed by the recital of so much historical fact. Was this what Trevellion had had in mind, the desire to crush Fire's spirit with a display of her, Trevellion's, art and erudition, and for me to witness it? Then, quite suddenly, I would come to my senses, and the nightmare would fade, and I would realise that I was projecting my own fears, my own terror at being overwhelmed by the weight and significance of past events (perhaps rooted in my part in history's worst space disaster) upon Fire. During periods of lucidity I tried to shake this nightmare fear, but even then vague horror and apprehension lurked in the back of my mind. At one point I passed out for what seemed like hours, only to be awoken by a flash of light.

The night sky was transformed into a series of stunning panoramas, each one quite unlike the last. I gathered that these were scenes from the many colony worlds. I looked out across a rain-forested delta and a quicksilver sea; plains of crimson sand spangled with spherical living domes; water-worlds bearing floating pontoon megalopoli...

As the scenes changed, Fire intoned words familiar to me, "I stand as one deserted/ An alien upon Alien soil..." The aerial display now presented various scenes from across our own planet, and so real were they that I felt I had been transported physically. I saw landscapes of Brightside, the farthest reaches to which unmanned probes had ventured without destruction: molten rivers, white hot, ran into great steaming oceans of magma abubble and aflame. Then came further scenes, each one a little more temperate than the last, until zone blue appeared and the cool shores of the meridional sea. Then the display showed a succession of scenes from the frozen, inimical wastes of Darkside. The first, in complete contrast to Brightside's hellish inferno, presented a hostile vision of mammoth glaciers and vast ice-sheets reflecting the unwinking light of the stars... The overall effect, from the conflagration of Brightside to the frigidity of Darkside, was that the planet of Meridian was too hostile a home for a species as unadaptable as humankind, and that the meagre points of habitable terrain, which did support life, did so in defiance of the mighty, mindless, alien forces at work on either hemisphere... Against this melancholy scene, Fire lamented in plaintive tones the place of humanity on Meridian — and this vision of our insignificance complemented my own nightmares of personal failure, and I slipped once again into unconsciousness, my mind full of the fires of hell and the frozen void of space to which I had consigned one hundred innocent victims.

When I came to my senses, the aerial display was fading. The illumination died and the spotlight fixed on the hovering grav-platform winked out. The guests stood as one and cheered, and the cheer was taken up and repeated, carried across the greensward in a great appreciative roar. At last the guests began to drift from the meadow, return to the garden to resume their drinking and conversation, eager to applaud the genius of Tamara Trevellion.

Minutes elapsed. I felt a curious sense of anti-climax. Then the spotlight snapped on again, presenting the platform to an empty greensward as it sank to ground level. Fire was a tiny, exhausted figure seated cross-legged with her head bowed almost into the bowl of her lap. Slowly, then, she raised her head, and I saw that she was looking into one of six vid-cameras floating beside the platform. She climbed wearily to her feet, gestured, declaimed to the camera, clearly still performing, her words no longer amplified and thus lost in the distance between us. Only then did I notice the one remaining spectator. Seated directly below me, upright on a foam-form, was Tamara Trevellion. She was leaning forward, watching intently, and her posture indicated a sense of anticipation which at once froze and frightened me.

Was it my imagination, or did Fire look up then, with an expression of torture on her perfect face? I even imagined that I saw tears in her eyes. With all my strength I raised my head and called, "Fire!" but weakly, so that she might hardly have heard me. As I watched, consciousness dwindling, I heard my cry repeated, at first thinking it an echo. Then I saw, sprinting from the darkness surrounding the platform, the figure of Wolfe Steiner. He dived in one last frantic effort to reach her — and I was with him, our enmity forgotten, willing him to succeed on my behalf.

By the evidence of the laser bolts which flashed from the darkness, half a dozen guards were lying in wait. The electric blue shafts formed a matrix which skewered the Director. I covered my eyes to be spared the sight of his death, but could not shut out the crackle of laser on flesh and the sickly sweet stench which resulted.

Down below, Tamara Trevellion was on her feet.

On the platform, Fire stared at Steiner's shredded remains in disbelief. She turned from the sight and, as if against her will, stepped down and walked across the greensward. I cried out again, oblivious to danger. Fire paused. For long seconds she looked up at me, her mind filled with who knows what terror and regret. Then with the fatalism of the damned she calmly knelt and switched something set into the ground. She stood and turned. Five metres before her a trap-door lifted automatically to reveal a subterranean chamber. Even then I wanted to deny what I knew was about to happen.

The sand lion emerged, paused and stared at Fire. I thought for an incredible second that it was about to forego the imperative of its kind and ignore the girl — then I saw Trevellion move below me. She was holding something, a mechanical device of some kind. The sand lion advanced, tossing its barbarous head of horns. It opened its jaws in a roar that stilled my heart. I attempted to stand, but the pain allowed me only as far as my knees. Then it was all I could do to remain conscious and watch as the lion charged. Fire tried to run; I could see the terror on her face as she willed herself to countermand her drug-induced instructions, but she was mired to the spot like a figure in a nightmare.

The lion leapt, dashed her small body to the ground, and I cried out in rage and anguish.

~

It was daylight by the time I came to my senses.

I lay face down on the grass, the events of the night before swamping me in the seconds it took to regain full consciousness. I kept my eyes closed against the glare of the sunlight — but the real reason was that I did not want to witness the remains of last night's event. When I did open my eyes, some macabre fascination made me look over the edge and down into the performance area. To my surprise, it was empty. There was no sign of the stage, the grav-platform or the trap-door to the underground chamber. I climbed unsteadily to my feet, my ribcage throbbing. Regardless of the danger, should any of Trevellion's guards see me, I made my way down the bank to the greensward.

I was obviously still in shock: that was the only explanation for my ability to cross the grass to the place where mere hours ago Fire had lost her life, and stare in bewilderment around the arena. I turned to where I had seen Director Steiner fall, but there was no sign of his remains, either. Still in a daze, I left the greensward and came to the garden. I was still too overcome with numbed incomprehension to think of revenge, and the only reason I made my way to the dome was that it was a link to a far better past. Perhaps part of me thought that I might even find Fire, hiding in her room. I tried to convince myself that the finale of last night's performance had been nothing more than a macabre trick with screens and projectors...