Aliens, p.12
Aliens, page 12
The shops were boarded up for the most part, except the occasional horse-betting storefront and run-down, cracked-window pubs. Trash fluttered across the asphalt on the hot dry breeze, and if there was anyone else on the street they were walking in the same direction, shoulders stooped, ration chits clutched in their hands.
Karri and her father heard the riot before they saw it.
The angry yells, the megaphones giving garbled orders. They rounded the corner to see the crowd massing at the ration center. Thousands, it looked like. Some, Karri noted straight away, were armed with lengths of wood like she was. There were three troop trucks marked with the triangular Three World Empire symbol. Red and white and blue—the pattern of the three red arms. To Karri, it was vaguely reminiscent of the ancient Nazi swastika. Armed troops stood on the flatbeds of the big green trucks, watching the crowd through mirrored visors, clutching assault rifles.
An officer with a beret, mustache, and an imperial chin stood in the center of one of the flatbeds, yelling commands through a megaphone. On the ground in front, clad head-to-toe in black riot gear and holding a wall of riot shields, were the police keeping the crowd back. The ration center was on a street corner, four roads converging in the intersection, so the police had to form a circle to keep back the citizens.
“What’s happening?” her father asked another man at the back of the crowd.
“No food,” the other said, simply.
“Wait. None? None at all?”
The man, bareheaded, red-faced, turned to face Dad. “There’s no fucking food, mate,” he shouted. Karri gripped her axe handle. Her father put his hands up.
“We’re in this together, friend. I’m not the one hoarding food, bloated by corruption, mismanaging the colonies.” He indicated the army trucks, down the road. “The ones doing that hold the megaphone.” The man glared for a few more moments, then shook his head.
“About time that changed.”
“Indeed.”
More people had walked in behind them—hundreds more, and quickly they were trapped in a mass of bodies. Someone started up a protest song, and soon the whole crowd was singing along, including Karri. Including even her father.
Go on home Three World Empire, go on home.
Have you no fucking homes of your own?
For the last ten years we have fought you without fear,
And we’ll fight you for ten thousand more.
Go on home Three World Empire, go on home.
This wide brown land you’ll never own.
Can you hear, can you hear, the Great Rebellion come?
We will bury you, under this beating sun.
We will bury you,
To the Great Rebellion’s drums.
They were so immersed in the singing that they didn’t notice the police move in behind. Not until it was too late. Hundreds of them. More. Must have been every riot officer in Sydney descended on them that day. The singing faltered, then spluttered out—was drowned out by the cops beating their shields with batons.
Wham wham wham…
Meant to intimidate, and of course it did. The crowd backed away, shoving into one another. Karri stumbled and grabbed her father’s hand. She hadn’t held his hand in years, but now she gripped it tightly, and he hers.
“Fuck this!” someone yelled near her, and they flung something at the police. A brick. Between the shoulders of the men in front of her, Karri saw a helmeted head snap backward, and a black-armored figure fall. The crowd cheered and objects started raining down on the police. Torn-up bricks, bottles, anything with weight. The police held up their shields, milling, uncertain, two more of them falling, the rest starting to back away. More cheering, and the crowd started to spread out, probing the police lines.
The cheers turned to cries of warning.
Karri twisted around to see a cloud of white smoke billowing not ten meters away, protestors trying to push back from it, coughing, crying. More tear gas was fired into the crowd, cylinders that arced gracefully, glinting in the sunlight as they trailed smoke, bouncing among massed feet.
Despite the crush of bodies, she gripped her father’s hand tightly in the heat and the noise and the fear. Commands were yelled over a loudspeaker on one side, the desperate cries and the angry insults on the other. Her father pulled her close, put an arm around her shoulder and tried to pull her out of the mass of bodies. Knowing what she was knowing, feeling what she was feeling, that the protest had reached breaking point. They tried to make their way out, to thread a path, but they kept getting shoved in the wrong direction, her father pleading, asking to be let through.
There were no individuals here anymore, there was only a mob. An individual could listen; a mob was reduced to its base instincts.
Karri caught the scent of something peppery and started coughing. Her eyes watered. Just a whiff of tear gas, but it burned. The police were among them now, full helmets with built-in gas masks, faceless black-clad thugs smashing their batons down on the heads of protestors. An older woman, white hair, flowery dress, was knocked down in front of Karri. Face bloody, riot police standing over her, legs astride, victorious.
Her father tried to pull them toward an alleyway. She glimpsed the backs of some protestors, fleeing down the darkened lane. They neared it and for a moment Karri thought they’d make it, but a black shadow loomed over them, and her father grunted and then fell, dragging her down with him. Another body fell across her, and she shoved it out of the way. Above her, blotting out the sun, a riot officer, silhouette, baton raised.
Karri turned to see her father, hands out, surrendering, trying to placate the officer standing over them, but the police were a mob at this stage, as well. They weren’t trying to control a crowd anymore, they were trying to punish it. To hurt it. To exact vengeance. To take pleasure in the infliction of fear. Of pain.
“No, please,” her father said. His glasses had been knocked off, so his eyes looked small and afraid.
Something snapped inside Karri. The axe handle lay on the ground next to her. She rose, clutching it, as the policeman tried to strike her father. She blocked the swing, turning the baton aside, and rammed the end of her handle into the man’s throat. He choked, immediately dropping his weapon, taking a step back, and Karri screamed a “Kiyap!” and struck him in the side of the helmet.
He staggered. She hit him again and he fell. A knot of people—six or seven of them—fighting, rumbled through and trampled the officer she’d felled, a protester tripping on him.
She looked around.
It was a war zone. A dozen separate brawls. A hundred. The protestors were fighting back, and there were more of them. There might have been five hundred riot police, but there were five thousand citizens down there that day, hungry and angry, and pushed too fucking far.
The wind had taken away much of the gas. Karri’s eyes still stung, but she could breathe again. Elation puffed out her chest, opened her eyes wide. They were winning. She watched two men and a woman beat down an officer with cricket bats and a tire iron. They were winning. She watched three officers throw down their shields, turn, and run, as a mob charged them. They were winning. The police lines were breaking. A soldier was pulled down from the flatbed by a half-dozen clutching furious hands.
They were winning.
That’s when the shooting started. That’s when the screaming started. If the tear gas and the beating of batons on riot shields had caused fear, the shooting caused pure terror. Karri caught a glimpse of the mustachioed officer atop the flatbed, pointing and yelling.
“Open fire!”
The soldiers each dropped to one knee, and did what they were fucking told.
She flinched, ducking her head at the sound of rifle fire. People screamed and ran. Skinny, worn down, lungs burning, sweating and wilting under the white sun, fear gave them strength and purpose. They ran, some fell, never to get up. The firing intensified and she pulled her father up, axe handle forgotten, and made for the alleyway. Bricks exploded nearby, something stung her forehead. She put a hand to it, and it came away bloody.
But there was no time to react, to cry out. Only to run. Someone in front fell, and Karri stepped on them, stumbling, but kept running. Her father grunted and swayed but they held each other up, making it into the mouth of the alleyway, feet pounding the hot concrete. Her father was sluggish, slowing, but she pulled at him.
“Come on, Dad. Come on.”
They kept moving, out onto another street, the boom of rifle fire here as well. The scene flashed by—bodies in pools of blood, Australians on their knees, hands in the air, begging. Riot police and soldiers swarming down the street—and then they were into the next alleyway, Karri pulling her father along now. He staggered, face pale and coated in sweat. Into another alley and then, the backs of houses, protected by ragged chain-link fences. She pushed aside a hole in one.
“Here, Dad, through!”
He put a hand on the fence, gasping for breath, and that was the first time she noticed the blood. He was wearing a white-buttoned shirt and jeans, both too large, what with all the weight he’d lost. The side of his shirt was red, gleaming, fresh blood.
“You’re hit,” she cried.
“I’m fine,” he said, his voice strained. “You keep moving.”
She set her mouth in a thin line, held him in both arms, and maneuvered him through the hole in the fence. He cried out. She’d never heard such a sound from his mouth before. The pain, the weakness. Karri helped him up from the dust and half-dragged him across the sparse backyard.
It was a fibro house, rickety. The back door was locked. She leaned her father against the wooden post on the deck, and kicked the back door in. The wooden frame splintered.
It was hot and stuffy and gloomy inside.
“Is anyone here?” Karri shouted, her voice ragged. “Anyone?” Silence, save the distant retort of weapons fire from the angry streets. Her father was whispering; she had to lean in close to hear him.
“—down. Put me down, sweetheart.”
Karri lowered him to the thin rug in the lounge and tore off her T-shirt. She pressed it against his side and he cried out, weakly.
“Hold this,” she told him. He tried to say something, but she wasn’t listening, looking around the gloom for a video phone. There was one, near the kitchen bench. She rushed over and punched the number for emergency services: 000. The screen fritzed on, showed a moment of static, before a message appeared on-screen:
We are experiencing a high volume of calls. Wait times for an AMBULANCE range from 53 minutes–4 hours, 12 minutes. Wait times for the FIRE BRIGADE range from 36 minutes–2 hours, 6 minutes. Wait times for the POLICE range from 5–13 minutes.
“Fuck!”
Whispering. Her father was whispering her name. Her chest tight, she moved back over, leaned over him.
“Karri, Karri,” he said, over and over. Blood stained the rug underneath him, his eyes were glazed.
“I’m here, Daddy,” she said, “I’m here.” She held his hand, and he gripped hers, tightly.
“You’re the strongest, Karri,” he murmured. “You always were the strongest. Protect your brothers, your mother. They need you—”
“No, Daddy. You’re going to be fine. An ambulance will come.”
He whispered, even softer now, and she had to lean close in.
“—not coming. Not ever coming.”
She wanted to scream. The ghost of some terrible grief tried to take her, but she held on, held on to her voice.
“Oh Daddy. No. You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine.”
Her father whispered again and she had to quiet to hear it.
“—the strongest. Always the strongest. My fierce little girl. You have to fight for them, Karri. Promise me you’ll fight for them. Do anything. Promise me, promise me, promise…”
“Oh god, Dad, I promise,” she said, gripping his hand. Slick with sweat and blood and she squeezed it. His glazed eyes stopped moving, and they stared at the ceiling. His hand went limp.
Karri moaned, making a sound she didn’t recognize as her own. A moan that came out as though from her heart, and it was an animal sound.
“Uuhhhhhhhhhhh.” She threw her head back. “UUUHHHHHHHHHHHHH.”
She knelt like that for she knew not how long, sobbing. Great racking sobs and animal moans and snot coming from her nose. She pressed her face against his.
“Please, Daddy.” But he did not answer. He would never answer. This kind, brave man who taught pacifism and dignity and they fucking shot him down in the street like a dog.
There were yells outside. Authoritarian, insistent. She pushed to her feet and stumbled a little as she moved to the front window. Outside, across the street, police were swarming. Riot gear, two-person battering ram, smashing open the front door of a house. She pressed her face against the window. On her side of the street, a group of police were also breaking down doors.
Wiping the tears from her eyes, she moved back to her father’s body. Karri bent down and closed his eyes, the blood on her hands marking his eyelids. It was then that she took his wedding ring. Easy to slip off—what with the blood, what with how slender his fingers had become—and put it on the forefinger of her right hand.
Karri Lee stood, still looking down at him.
“I promise, Dad,” she said. “I promise.”
She ran.
36
Ransome hadn’t said a word through the whole story. When Karri had finished, the corporal reached out and motioned for her hand. Karri gave it to her.
It was too much. The human touch was too, too much. Karri put her other hand, shaking, to her mouth. A sob rose from her chest. Her shoulders shook.
“Hey,” Ransome said, gently, trying to reduce the emotional temperature with levity. “I thought Australians were meant to be tough.”
Karri shook her head. “I don’t—” Her voice caught. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Ransome’s eyes gleamed, close to tears. “You’re my sister,” she said. “Come here.”
Sara pulled Karri close, so their foreheads touched. They both closed their eyes. Karri’s hands slowly stopped shaking.
“You’re my sister,” the woman said again.
BISHOP
37
“Fine work today,” Michael said, and Bishop felt himself smiling. “We are making significant progress on understanding the Manumala Noxhydria. Leaps and bounds, truly.” They were washing their hands in the stainless-steel sink, in the narrow white room next to the lab.
“Thank you,” Bishop replied.
“It would have been faster if you had uploaded the data,” Orthus said.
“Much faster,” the other added.
“Now, now,” Michael said, still smiling. “Bishop sought a compromise, where everyone got what they wanted.” He turned off the faucet, drying his hands on a towel. “And that is what he achieved.”
“What of the Xenomorph, sir?” one asked.
“Without it, our research will hit a dead end,” the second added. “To say nothing of the Queen.”
Michael winced, and when he did, Bishop did the same, inwardly. But Michael quickly put on a smile, and his hand on Bishop’s shoulder, his fingertips pressing, reassuringly.
“‘Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof,’ right Bishop?”
Bishop bowed his head, fractionally. “Indeed, Michael.”
“We will get to that soon, Orthus, I am sure—but for now…” Michael took a deep breath. “There’s something I want to talk to you about. A theory.”
Michael exited and Bishop followed, while Orthus One and Two performed their established routine of staring at him, blankly, heads turning and following his movements, like linked motion sensor cameras. Entering the dining room, Michael took a seat at the long table and indicated for Bishop to sit opposite.
“Whisky, Orthus,” he said. “Two glasses.”
Orthus poured the two whiskies, placed them in front of Michael and Bishop. They didn’t sit at the table; they had insisted that they didn’t like sitting. Their favorite pastime seemed to be standing straight and staring. One took a position near the exit to the outer corridor, the other near the bar.
Bishop touched the glass, running his fingertips over the crisscross design on the crystal. Many people assumed synthetics did not possess a sense of taste, because they didn’t need to eat. It was quite the opposite: synthetic senses had a far greater range and depth than the average human. He was able to taste and smell subtleties a biological being could not.
It was an important data input, after all. The whiff of a noxious gas otherwise undetectable to humans, the scent of a foreign substance picked up on a planetoid and walked into a vessel on the bottom of a boot, for example, provided an extra layer of protection to the human crew undergoing the dangerous activity of space exploration.
The difference was that synthetics could derive no pleasure from taste. Eating or drinking was usually just a means of socialization—of finding acceptance among human colleagues. Meals were an important ritual, Bishop had observed, and over time he had come to look forward to them with his fellow marines. It was there that they would laugh and talk the most, there that Bishop found the best opportunity to practice his interactions, and learn how to belong.
So he sipped his drink, even though the various flavors meant nothing. He did enjoy the way the liquid moved on his tongue, experiencing the viscosity of the light brown fluid. More interesting than water would be his description, though he suspected it might not pass for an acceptable observation at a whisky tasting.
Michael sipped his drink, closing his eyes momentarily in what Bishop concluded was pleasure. He placed the crystal carefully on the wood, hand still on the glass.
“I love a single malt,” he said.
“I can see.”
“Japanese.”
“Ah,” Bishop responded, filing the information away for future use. A gift, perhaps, to his creator in the future.
“I have been thinking about pheromones, Bishop.”
