Easy to Be a God, page 9
Morrisey cautiously approached the cylinder and tapped it with the barrel of his phaser. Nothing happened, so he moved still closer and rested both hands on the shining surface, and then pushed down with all his strength. The cylinder dropped a little, but immediately returned to its previous position without apparent effort.
“Antigrav, stone me …” The captain knelt down and looked at the cylinder’s bottom part.
Meanwhile, Bourne walked around the object operating the controls of the sensors.
“It seems to be perfectly smooth,” he said. “No cracks, grooves, or temperature differences.”
“Tough. We’re gonna pry it open anyway,” Morrisey muttered.
Iarrey was about to protest, but Annataly spoke first.
“We’ll have cut through the bulkhead in a few seconds,” she informed. “Here we go. The visuals of—”
Her voice was suddenly drowned by static. In the chamber the glowing growths flickered, and their light intensified. Morrisey jumped away from the cylinder. Bourne and Iarrey raised their weapons. Nike backed off and stood nearer the wall.
The cylinder was changing color; the upper part darkened very quickly, and its surface wasn’t smooth any longer. Waves ran over it, as though the cylinder experienced combined stress.
“—ing on, for fu—” the navigator’s distorted voice broke through the crackling for a moment, “—got to——ish—”
No one paid attention to Annataly’s snatches of speech, or her evident anxiety—even when she started shouting. Suddenly the cylinder’s surface bulged, as though something was trying to get out of it. And this was exactly what was happening. The shell—up until then as hard as helon—tore open under the pressure of almost human, six-fingered hands.
Someone fired. Nike didn’t know who, but it certainly was not Morrisey. A gush of energy enveloped the upper part of the cylinder, blackening its entire width and burning a hole in one of the cylinders standing behind.
“Lost your fucking minds?!” the captain yelled.
Meanwhile, entire forearms appeared in the rent. They were horribly thin, considering their length. Gray skin, clearly visible gnarls of muscles working subcutaneously, and something like elbows. The creature seized the edges of the opening where the cylinder had remained solid, and began to pull itself up.
First they saw the Alien’s head. Covering its crown were long protrusions, soft but thick as human fingers, the color of gold; they fell over its thin shoulders like hair. Seemingly, the creature’s face resembled a human’s. The eyes, nose, and mouth were in the right places, but everything was totally … ALIEN.
The eyes, which were in whole as black as the darkness of space, lacked irises, the nose was underdeveloped and without any nares, the mouth so wide that its corners disappeared under the hairlike protrusions. But the strangest of all was a small growth in the center of the forehead, resembling lips squeezed tightly together. Something like a third eye, only closed.
The creature looked around the chamber. It did not seem astonished by the presence of the short beings surrounding it. It moved its mouth, and may have said something, but they couldn’t hear anything through the crystallite anyway. Then it waved a hand, as though driving the intruders away. They did not react, just stood there, staring at the Alien as it straightened up. It was over nine feet tall, and standing in the cylinder it towered over the spacesuit-clad figures even more. Its head reached the domed ceiling. Its gray body was covered with a flowing tunic bereft of decoration. The clothing hung down over the cylinder’s surface, obscuring the Alien’s legs. The only other thing that could be discerned was a large bulge on its back.
Nike, fascinated, lost track of time. The Alien looked down on them from above, and they kept craning their necks to look up at it. Finally, Bourne took a step forward and raised his hand in the classic gesture of greeting. The being slowly turned its head toward him and tilted it, like a bird observing its surroundings. Yes, just like a bird, thought Nike and at that moment two curved shapes—furled wings—appeared from behind the Alien’s back.
The being slowly spread them out to their full width, revealing complex patterns on a downy, snow-white background.
“It’s an angel …” Iarrey whispered, and genuflected, crossing himself reflexively.
A sort of a smile widened the Alien’s lips. The being spread its arms and suddenly—
It all happened so quickly, the exact sequence of events wasn’t clear. The Alien trembled. Its wings fluttered and the previously smiling mouth opened as if to scream. Nike saw the teeth; rows of even, conical fangs. Hundreds of them … And that was the last thing he registered before his crystallite visor became covered in a dense web of cracks. At the same time, a split second before his visor shattered into tiny fragments, he heard the Alien’s voice. It was an inhuman, ululating howl. Nike was standing farthest away, so he did not pass out at once, though he couldn’t be sure any longer if what he saw was a real image or a delusion. Only a moment later did he realize he was breathing the air of an alien ship. He held his breath instinctively and almost immediately understood the absurdity of such behavior.
The Alien jumped down onto the floor and seized unconscious Bourne by the arm. It cleared his helmet visor of the crystallite shards, then lifted him up to his face. In his mind’s eye, Nike saw hundreds of pointed fangs clamping onto the lieutenant’s neck, but nothing of the sort occurred. The Alien and the human touched foreheads and remained so, motionless for several seconds. Finally, Bourne landed on the floor and the creature turned toward the exit, charging straight at Nike. The lump on its forehead, which had resembled pursed lips a short while before, was now open, but Nike didn’t get a chance to peek inside. Flung by the Alien, he flew several yards down the corridor.
THIRTEEN
“Annataly! Come in, for God’s sake!” When Nike returned to the chamber the captain had recovered his wits. He was holding the comlink headphones of his destroyed helmet in one hand, and was gently slapping the lieutenant’s cheeks with the other. Bourne was covered in blood and had a large darkening bruise on his forehead. Iarrey’d already staggered to his feet and was throwing up by the wall.
“Did you see where it went?” The captain turned to face Nike. The cadet nodded toward the corridor without a word. “Is your comlink working?”
“I don’t know … I’ll just check …” He glanced at the panel on his sleeve. Most of the lights were glowing red. He reset the device. There was a slim chance that self-repair would work, so it was worth trying.
“Iarrey, grab your phaser, you take the lead,” Morrisey ordered meanwhile, guessing the outcome. “I’ll carry Bourne, and Nike will cover our backs. We’re going back onboard the Nomad. Then we’ll scorch the feathers of that screamer in the nearest sun.”
No one argued. Nike brought up the rear, staring back into the semidarkness concealing the farthest section of the corridor. That was why he didn’t notice when Iarrey and the captain suddenly stopped.
“What is it?” he asked, bumping into them. A moment later, he saw what had made them stop.
Where there had been the membrane leading to the passage that connected both rings, now there was nothing. The smooth wall looked exactly like any other.
“Perhaps it’s the wrong section.”
“We passed four membranes,” Iarrey said. “We’re in the right place.”
“Are you positive?” Morrisey asked.
“Absolutely.”
The captain laid Bourne’s limp body on the floor and walked over to the wall. He examined it carefully, then took two steps back, set his phaser at maximum power, and shot a gush of plasma. It hardly lasted a second. A large fragment of the wall vaporized, but when the cloud of acrid smoke dissipated they didn’t see the inside of the corridor, which had been there a short time before. The hole was almost six feet deep, but for all intents and purposes it seemed to be just a dent in a solid matter.
“Captain!” Nike looked at the comlink panel. The lights were now glowing green.
“What?”
“I beg to report, sir, that my comlink is working.”
“Terrific. Except that you don’t need it to talk to me. And you can’t make contact with the Nomad without open passages.”
Morrisey cursed and pulled the trigger once more. Again they were enveloped in acrid smoke. All of a sudden Nike felt the floor shudder. As though the ship had felt pain; as though a tremor had passed through it. The cadet barely kept his balance. The captain also staggered, making a large breach in the ceiling before he managed to turn off his phaser.
This time they saw a familiar sight. It was one of the chambers they had explored a short while earlier in the connecting passage. Morrisey smiled wryly.
“Now we know why our measurements didn’t add up.”
“Astounding,” said Iarrey, entering the opening. “The ship doesn’t have a stable structure. It creates passages where they’re needed at a given moment.”
He looked around the chamber and pointed at the wall where once the entrance membrane had been. Now all he saw was the same smooth surface as there was everywhere else.
“I think it’s led us to the place we were meant to get to …” He turned around and looked at the burnt edges of the opening. “Take a look at that, the matter is beginning to replicate—”
Indeed, bubbles, growths—whatnots—began to appear on the smooth surface which had been torched by the stream of plasma; the ship had already begun to rebuild its damaged structure.
Morrisey lifted Bourne and pushed Nike through the hole.
“Let’s hope that the main corridors won’t close up like the connecting passages. Nike, can you access the holomap of this part of the ship?”
“I’ve lost my holopad.”
“Not good. Do you remember the layout of these chambers?”
“More or less … We’re on the right, there were four small chambers here, of approximately this size.”
“Four, you say …” Morrisey was silent for a while, as though he were calculating something. “The connecting passage was roughly fifty feet long. I’d say these chambers are probably about ten feet wide. So we have to cut through around ten more feet of wall to break through to the main corridor … My phaser’s dead now, but we’ve got two fully charged ones … that ought to do.”
“We can’t risk using up all the plasma,” Iarrey objected. “We might come across that … that angel again.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Morrisey put an end to the discussion. “Move out of the way—”
“No,” Nike said softly but decisively.
“What do you mean, no?” The captain stopped and looked at him unkindly.
“You ought to think it through, sir.” Nike gulped nervously. “That matter gives off a lot of smoke when it burns. If we all go in there, we’ll suffocate.”
Iarrey, who was still examining the edges of the opening, unexpectedly supported the cadet.
“The boy’s right. This hole will close up in about six, seven minutes. You blast ahead, Henrichard, but we are staying here. We won’t use up your oxygen,” he added, handing over his phaser to the captain.
In order to cut through to the fourth chamber, Morrisey used up all the plasma from Iarrey’s phaser. Their calculations showed that only three feet of wall were separating them from the main corridor. Unfortunately, the first opening had shrunk so much that they started to fear they wouldn’t be able to get through it. Morrisey decided it was time to deplete the rest of the plasma from his phaser, which was the only weapon among the three men waiting in the inner ring.
Iarrey had managed to widen the opening by a foot or so before a soft hiss told him he completely ran out of plasma. That gave them another sixty—ninety at most—seconds. Morrisey had not wasted his time. Choking on the acrid black smoke, he had been obliterating another wall. Meanwhile Nike and Iarrey were fearfully looking down the corridor fading away in the darkness. Were the Alien to show up right then, none of the men would stand a chance. They preferred not to think what might happen if Morrisey had been mistaken and the outer ring no longer existed or had been moved somewhere else.
“It’s now or never!” The first officer grabbed Nike by the arm and pointed at the rapidly shrinking hole in the wall. “We’re going through.”
They picked up the still unconscious lieutenant and dragged him in. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do even in zero gravity. The billows of smoke, which made their eyes water and their lungs burn, stopped them from opening their eyes or taking a breath. They were bestriding the opening between the third and fourth chambers when something buzzed in Nike’s headphones and he suddenly heard some words, heavily distorted by interference. Morrisey had got through to the place where the chain of drones was still in contact with the Nomad.
He lurched, choking, into the corridor.
“—re you? Over!” the navigator’s voice, hoarse from shouting, sounded like heavenly choirs to Nike’s ears.
“Smiley, we’re alive!” he shouted between spasms of coughing. “Galacticunt, we’re alive! We’re in the main corridor—”
Morrisey, who was lying two yards from him with eyes as red as a vampire’s, suddenly stiffened.
“What did you say?” he asked barely intelligibly.
“I reported that …” Nike, still struggling to get his breath, smiled at the captain but only momentarily. The captain’s face reddened.
“What did you say, you clone-of-a-bitching spawn?” Morrisey repeated and almost gagged, dry heaving.
“I don’t get it—”
“You don’t get it?” Morrisey lifted his phaser, its barrel still glowing red-hot. “What did you just call Annataly?”
Nike blenched. “Smiley.” The only people Annataly allowed to call her that were the ones she … He was careful onboard the Nomad, but now the sense of relief made him forget himself.
“It’s not what you think—”
“Not what I think?” Morrisey could hardly speak, but his eyes expressed utter hatred. “I warned you, you little shit. The tiniest trace and …”
Nike closed his eyes as the captain pulled the trigger. He didn’t feel anything, though, just heard a piercing cry.
“Henrichard!”
Astonished, he looked down the corridor. A figure in a spacesuit was standing there. Annataly, with no doubt.
“What are you doing here, you cloned slut?” Morrisey asked, equally surprised. He glared at the woman, then dropped his now useless, empty phaser in fury. “Who’s looking after the fucking ship?”
“Slut? Cloned?” Annataly’s voice sounded like the hissing of a viper. “Perhaps if you were more interested in me than the bottle, you wouldn’t have such trouble getting an ere—”
“Shut your mouth, you whore!” roared the captain, turning blue. “I’ll kill you and that … that …”
“You shut your mouth, Henrichard!”
The words didn’t come from either Annataly or Nike.
“I couldn’t give a fuck about your virility!” Iarrey continued, voiced raised. “We have a much more serious problem here. And I have no intention of dying just because you can’t get a hard-on. Do you hear me, you old prick?!”
Morrisey’s face turned purple. He was just opening his mouth to curse the first officer and the rest of them, but Annataly was quicker.
“I don’t know what you’ve found, but you might like to see what I’ve discovered beyond those bulkheads.” She threw the holopad toward them.
“I’ll bet you won’t trump us.”
Morrisey caught the device in midair. He pressed play, but it was pretty apparent he would rather have torn the navigator and the cadet to pieces.
The ship’s holds seemed humungous. It was hard to judge just how big they were. It was equally difficult to count how many bodies there were in its bowels—although the word “bodies” didn’t apply particularly well to the situation. They saw thousands, tens of thousands of gutted, frozen humanoid beings hanging in orderly rows. Judging by their shapes and sizes there were women, men, even children …
“What the fuck—?” Morrisey whispered after a moment’s silence.
“I don’t know about you, but for me the pieces are beginning to fall into place,” said Iarrey. “That dude with the wings, these bodies, the craft in the dock—”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Heraclesteban?” Morrisey asked. “What craft?”
“I carried out an analysis of those little ships moored to the turret in the dock,” Iarrey reminded him. “I catalogued them all and … it’s been niggling me since then. I had the impression I’d seen one of them before somewhere. So I decided I’d—”
“Get to the point,” Morrisey hurried him.
“The Old Testament. The Book of Ezekiel,” Iarrey summarized. “A wheel within a wheel.”
“I asked nicely.”
“A description of the angels which bore the prophet Ezekiel to heaven,” Nike elaborated on the first officer’s version, “and of the chariot that carried him away. And a wheel within a wheel …”
“I noticed the same design in the vehicles we found in the ship’s dock,” Iarrey concluded.
“Are you trying to tell me that this winged clone-of-a-bitch with a voice like an air-raid siren is the precursor of an angel?” Morrisey demanded.
“What winged clone-of-a-bitch?” Annataly asked, confused.
Iarrey ignored her question.
“Yes,” he addressed the captain, “this is exactly what I want to say. For thousands of years people have talked about angels, God’s messengers. And here we have a spaceship with a winged creature straight out of a fresco from an ancient temple, and a hold full of eviscerated humanoids. I’m prepared to bet they’re humans.”
“You mean …”
“… we really are the food of the gods,” Iarrey nodded.
“All right,” Morrisey said, switching off the holopad. “And now may I ask who’s looking after the Nomad?”
