Walking to Aldebaran

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I MEAN: YES…

I mean, okay, confession time, I am overdoing the naïve and tragic monster here. I am not Hercules at home with the family, after all, and while the Mother Machine might have made me Herculean, it didn’t drive me quite so obliviously mad as that. I could make a lot of excuses: I’ve not been well, it was an off day, haven’t been sleeping, all that, but I can’t fool myself and I can’t fool you, Toto. I can’t really pretend that I just went off after the rest of the goblins without putting two and two together.

I’m going to keep calling them goblins, because one thing human ingenuity is good at is an infinite capacity for self-delusion.

I sense I’m losing audience sympathy, Toto. After all, surely I’m meant to have that big scene now where I hold up those name tags in my bloody hands and scream at the gods for tricking me. I mean, this is grade-A anagnorisis territory, as much as if I’d killed my father and married the Mother Machine. Howl, howl, howl! as the man says. And somewhere a masked chorus sings about reaching too far, tragic flaws and hubris.

But really, hubris? Me? Gary Rendell from Stevenage? Not exactly Prometheus, am I? I never stole anything from the gods. They turned up like Greeks, arms full of gifts and wanting to know how they could help. I can’t be blamed, can I, for saying I wanted to get back to the others, to go home? And so it becomes a little more Monkey’s Paw than Homeric ode. I made a perfectly well-meaning wish and there were unintended consequences. Mistakes were made, but innocent ones. I’m not at fault. Don’t blame me.

And I still hear them, that irresistible mental thread that cuts through my brain like fishing line and draws me towards them. It hurts, that tug. It won’t let me rest. Scritch, scritch, scritch all the time inside my skull as their thoughts bombard me like particles in an accelerator.

There’s a pack of them just round the corner, I realise. I can hear them clatter and rattle with their tools and devices, but more than that I can hear their buzzsaw minds flaring with fear. And I should go, I know I should. I should be the noble savage and return to my land so as not to corrupt the civilized visitors with my mores. I mean, I can dress it up as diplomacy as much as I want but I’m covered in the blood of Carswell P and Proshkin M,

which would probably count as a faux pas at most diplomatic functions. Should I hold out my arms for a hug to show this modern Prometheus just wants to be loved?

And, oh, the fear! The frenetic squabbling panic of them as they try to get their gear packed up before I arrive, except I’m just round the next corner, listening. That fear, the keenest, scritchiest cicada-call of them all, except now my body reacts a bit differently. Now my body has had a taste of that fear, and the soft, easily-digestible tissues that house it. My stomach growls a demand of its own and my salivary glands are working overtime. If they didn’t want to be eaten, they shouldn’t be so delicious.

I make a last lunge for dignity. I am Gary Rendell, astronaut. I was born on Earth too many decades ago. I was lost from the Expedition Team too many months or weeks or centuries ago. I will wave my humanity like a flag, drape myself in it. I will beg forgiveness from the goblins. And I only ate two of them.

And so I round the corner. I want to stand straight like Washington crossing the Delaware, but somehow the corridors are too cramped for that, forcing me to maintain my bestial stoop, my shoulders brushing the ceiling. I hold up a hand: Hi, kids, minotaur-in-training here, how’s that maze working out for you?

There are five of them here, and they’ve been stripping something from the walls, metal strips some previous travellers laid down. There are lights here, like watery cats-eyes, but most of them are dead because the goblins are vandals and are taking away the machinery that powered them, like scrap dealers going down the street for any old iron. Don’t they realise how precious these little islands of light are? Ghastly little destructive creatures.

But still, I keep one hand up in friendship. “Hey, there!” I tell them brightly. “Now, I know this looks bad…”

One of them has a cutting torch, and he takes advantage of my loquaciousness to go for me with it. The name on his badge is Li L and some characters I don’t know, which suggests the Chinese crew contingent ended up on the Expedition Team whether they wanted to or not. Li L is definitely going for it with that cutter, though, and my hand of friendship ends up with a big old burn across the palm, which doesn’t hurt anywhere as much as I thought it would. One of the others is backing him up with a gun, an actual honest-to-goodness chemical propellant firearm, and apparently it’s monster season because they let me have it with the entire magazine over Li L’s shoulder.

I feel the impacts like the punches of the Iron Hunchback (and what happened to that guy?) and I’ll have a nice tight clump of bruises in the morning, but my skin appears to be proof against close-range small arms fire now, which is an interesting development. The others have run, and they’re hauling a trolley of scrap after them, apparently important enough that they’ll risk their lives for it. But then metal’s scarce in the Crypts. You want building material, you’ve got stone, stone or stone.

And now Li L’s jabbed me in the gut with the cutter while I let my mind wander. I don’t think this diplomacy thing is working. Behind him, Diaz J apparently forgot to come out with a second clip, and so ze’s got a crowbar and aren’t we a pair of determined tomb raiders then, eh? But they want a fight, and they want to cover for their friends, and that seems all very dulce et decorum est, so I’ll play my role, snarling and swiping at them until their friends are far enough I can barely see their lamp-glow. I think they know they’re screwed, by then. The burns are only skin deep and not slowing me down, and Diaz J can’t put more force into a crowbar swing than ze did with hir bullets.

So I step back, spreading my hands in a shrug what-you-gonna-do? sort of a gesture, as best I can in the limited space, and grin at them, because they’re bloody game, I can tell you. I appreciate that.

I kill Li L first because he won’t get out of my face with that cutter, and between you and me it is starting to sting. I just close a hand around his weapon and his arms and clench them all into one pulpy mass with my best power handshake. Diaz J hits me in the eye then, right with the hooked part of the crowbar, and that hurts like buggery. I slam Li L down into the floor and just straight-arm Diaz in the chest, powering hir twenty feet straight backwards until ze hits a wall. That’s not enough, apparently, because ze’s trying to get up when I reach hir, though probably concussed and with severe internal organ damage. I put hir out of hir misery with another solid slap and briefly consider going after the others. Not like I wouldn’t catch up with them pretty sharpish. My stomach growls, though, and it would be a shame to charge off and have some revolting scavenger eat these delicious meats. And it feels disrespectful to Li’s and Diaz’s courage to go after the others right away. It’s not as though I won’t be able to find them when I’m done here. No, I’ll respect their bravery, and also their generous contribution to my diet.

I sit down and tuck in. Bon appetit.