Slimer

Sixteen

Linda refused to believe it. ‘No! That wasn’t the pilot! You shot the creature!’

‘I wish I had,’ said Paul bitterly. ‘But think back — the guy was carrying a flashlight. The thing wouldn’t do that. And that’s why the airlock was open. He’d just come in from outside.’ He shook his head. ‘No. That was a real person I shot down there. I’ve just committed a murder…’ ‘But you didn’t know… and we can’t be sure yet that was the pilot. You could be wrong.’ Please say you’re wrong, she pleaded silently. To be this close to rescue and then have their hopes dashed was ridiculous. It couldn’t happen. It was too cruel.

Paul didn’t answer. He climbed into the machine and began to investigate its interior. She stood there helplessly, feeling the cold wind pluck at her tattered shirt with icy fingers. She had never experienced despair as overwhelming as this before. For a moment she contemplated going to the edge of the pad and throwing herself over the side.

‘It’s a Sikorsky S-76,’ came Paul’s voice from inside the helicopter. ‘It’s pretty new too. These things haven’t been in service long. It’s supposed to be a good aircraft.’

‘Well, that is fascinating,’ she said with heavy sarcasm. Then she decided to follow him into the machine. At least it would be warmer in there. ‘You know everything Paul,’ she said as she climbed in. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t be able to fly this thing? Maybe you could get-us as far as another oil platform? We could ditch in the sea beside it. Just as long as we could get away from here.’

If he noticed her sarcasm he didn’t give any sign of it. ‘I know the basics of flying a helicopter,’ he replied seriously, ‘but that’s light years away from actually being able to fly one. They’re difficult things to handle, even for experienced pilots. If the weather conditions were perfect I might succeed in lifting her off the pad without smashing the tail rotor to pieces but I wouldn’t bet on it. In this wind — forget it.’

‘So what are we going to do?’ she demanded.

‘I don’t know,’ he said blandly. She didn’t like the sound of his voice. 11 gave the impression that he’d given up at last. She watched worriedly as he climbed forward into one of the pilot’s seats and started examining the control panel as if he was looking over a new car in a showroom. How long would it be, she wondered, before that thing followed them up here?

She moved closer to Paul, peering over his shoulder at the maze ofdifferent instruments in front ofhim. Then she noticed something that sent a pulse of excitement through her. When he’d sat down he’d picked up a pilot’s helmet from the seat and shifted it to the other one. Now there were two helmets resting on the other seat.

She dug her fingers into Paul’s shoulder. ‘Paul, there are two of them! Two pilots! See, the helmets!’

He looked at them for a long time and then turned to her. His eyes were alive again. ‘Christ, you’re right!’ he exclaimed. He started to get up. ‘We’ve got to find the other one, fast. Before it gets him…’

‘Go back in there again?’ she cried. The thought of entering those dark corridors made her stomach muscles contract unpleasantly. ‘No, I can’t. Don’t ask me to.’

‘Okay. You wait here.’ He pushed past her and jumped down onto the pad.

‘Wait!’

He stood there impatiently. ‘Well, are you coming or not?’ She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to go back inside again but neither did she want to be left on her own. She had the strong feeling that if she let Paul out of her sight she’d never see him alive again. Oh, she might see something that looked like Paul but how would she know for certain it was him?

She took a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Hurry then.’ He helped her out of the helicopter then headed for the gangway.

‘We’ll go in the door we first entered on the top level,’ he told her as they climbed down. ‘I imagine they must have split up. One w.cnt to the bottom level and the other one probably worked his way down from the top.’

As they entered the passageway Paul’s theory seemed correct because the airlock was standing open here too. They hurried through the corridors but could find no trace of the pilot.

‘He must already be down on one of the lower levels,’ panted Paul.

Of course he must be, thought Linda sourly, her heart thumping from both exertion and fear. It was too much to expect that they would locate him straight away without any trouble. The platform wasn’t going to let them go that easily.'

But they didn’t find him on the second level either.

They went down to the next one… and immediately came face to face with Shelley.

They almost collided with him as they turned a corner. He was staggering along in a kind of drunk’s shuffle. When he saw them he slumped against the wall and raised a hand. ‘No, don’t shoot! You must listen to me…’

Paul was already aiming the M16. But he held his fire. Linda guessed that after his accidental shooting of the pilot he was going to have difficulty in using the gun again, even against the creature.

‘Don’t waste your time talking,’ he snarled, ‘you’re not Shelley. This is just another of your tricks. You’re Charlie or Phoenix or whatever and I’m going to blow your head off…’

‘It’s no trick!’ cried Shelley. ‘I’m still me… I’m the last one left in here with my own personality intact… but I don’t know how much longer I can hold out. You must listen to what I have to say, it’s vitally important…’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Paul. But he didn’t shoot.

‘It’s dying,’’ gasped Shelley. ‘You have succeeded where I and all my colleagues, with our scientific resources, failed. You have found a way to destroy the Phoenix…’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Paul suspiciously.

Shelley was barely able to stand upright. His limbs were shaking and his face had the pallor of a man in the last stages of a terminal illness. Linda was reminded of the way Mark had looked before…

‘The heroin,’ said Shelley. ‘Your idea to inject the creature with heroin was a master-stroke…’

‘But it didn’t kill it. It’s still…you’re still alive.’

‘Yes, but it is dying. Slowly but surely. And it can’t evolve a defence against what’s killing it.’

‘Why?’ asked Paul. T' thought it could protect itself against anything.’

‘Yes, but…’ Shelley groaned and slid slowly down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. With an obvious effort he spoke again. ‘By over-dosing it with heroin you have made it totally dependent on the drug. Now it is experiencing fatal withdrawal symptoms. It can’t evolve a defence against this threat because it has become its own enemy. The Phoenix is self-destructing… its own body is destroying it and it can’t do a thing about it…’ He closed his eyes.

There was a period of silence until Paul said dubiously, ‘I’d like to believe that.’

‘It’s true. The only thing that will keep the creature alive is another dose of heroin.’ He opened his eyes. ‘There’s none left, is there?’

‘No,’ said Linda quickly. Shelley might be telling the truth — she was more than half-convinced herself- but if he wasn’t it would be stupid to let the thing know about the rest of the heroin that Paul was carrying. And besides, if this was Shelley he was probably feeling in urgent need of a fix himself. He was, after all, sharing the same body as the thing.

Paul backed her up. ‘We used it all. Your creature would have to travel a long, long way to reach another supply.’ ‘Good,’ sighed Shelley. ‘Then it’s definitely over. We will have destroyed this monstrosity that we so foolishly brought into the world.’ A violent shudder ran through his body and for a second or two his face seemed to shimmer out of focus. Then he was back. ‘Won’t be much longer,’ he said weakly. ‘It’s beginning to break down inside.’

‘How much longer before you.. you.?’ asked Paul.

A flicker of a smile appeared on Shelley’s lips. ‘Die? Possibly only minutes. But don’t be sorry for me. I look forward to the release that death will bring. At least I didn’t suffer the fate of my friends and colleagues… I have stayed myself to the end. I wasn’t… taken… by that horror. I only lost my body… not my soul…’

‘There’s one more question,’ said Paul urgently. ‘You’ve got to tell us — is there only one creature?’

Shelley gave a feeble nod. ‘Yes. Only one. It didn’t need to reproduce. It didn’t even possess the capacity for reproduction, either asexually or bisexually…’

‘I don’t follow you,’ said Paul. ‘Why couldn’t it reproduce?’

‘I told you — it didn’t need to reproduce. Species only reproduce in order for their genes to survive, or we could say that genes themselves have contrived for the species to reproduce in order to improve the chances of their own survival. But because the Phoenix organism is in itself immortal, or thought it was, it didn’t have to rely on such a clumsy mechanism…’

‘The Selfish Gene,’ murmured Paul.

Another ghost of a smile from Shelley. ‘Ah, I see you have seen my video tapes. Young man, you must ensure that those tapes are seen by the right people. Steps must be taken to ensure that something like the Phoenix can never be unleashed upon the world again. Do you promise?’

Paul nodded. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll make sure the full story of what happened here gets out.’

‘Good,’ said Shelley. He gave a deep sigh and his head lolled back on his shoulders. His features began to melt and run together. Then there was a hissing sound and something black emerged from between his lips.

‘Get back!’ Paul warned Linda. They began to retrace their steps up the corridor, keeping' the lamp trained on the squirming shape on the floor. It was then that Linda realised they’d left the flame-thrower up on the landing pad.

Shelley rapidly disappeared and in his place was the familiar horror of the pool of glistening black slime. But it was different this time. Its viscous surface was rippling and bubbling in an agitated manner. Then thick, greasy-looking fumes began to rise up from the liquid.

Both Paul and Linda started to cough as the acrid gas reached them and were forced to back even further away. ‘What’s happening to it?’ wheezed Linda.

‘It’s dying — I hope,’ said Paul.

They watched it for about ten minutes. By the end of that time there was nothing left of the creature but a scattering of dried, black flakes. Eventually Paul walked carefully towards them and then prodded through them with the barrel of the M16. ‘Careful,’ warned Linda.

‘It’s okay. There’s nothing left but ashes. It’s all dried up. It’s dead.’

‘But how can we be sure?’ She wanted to believe it was dead, with every fibre of her being, but the suspicion remained. The thing had tricked them before.

‘We can’t be. Not absolutely,’ said Paul. ‘But I’m 99 % convinced and that’s good enough for me.’ He came back to her, a wide grin on his face. ‘I really believe it’s all over.’

‘God, I hope you’re right. But what do we do now?’

‘We find that other pilot,’ said Paul, slinging the M16 over his shoulder. He sounded almost carefree and she half-expected him to start whistling at any moment.

‘How do we know he’s not in there? she gestured at the pile of blackened flakes. ‘The thing might have got him while we were up top.’

‘No, I don’t think so. In the condition it was in I doubt if it was capable of attacking anyone. I’m sure we’ll find him safe and sound. Come on, let’s go.’ He set off down the corridor with a definite air of jauntiness.

Linda followed him wishing she could feel as cheerful as he obviously felt but she couldn’t shake off the strong suspicion that their troubles were far from over.