There was a loud, cracking noise from the crawl-s.p.a.ce. Suddenly a pincer pushed through, slicing and snapping at the air. Basel yelped, and Rose grabbed hold of his hand and dragged him down the pa.s.sageway behind her.
Into h.e.l.l.
Rose skidded to a stop, stared around in horror, clutched his hand tighter for comfort. The pa.s.sage had widened into a cave dark as night and strewn with skeletons. Thick, fluffy mould hugged the bare bones like cobwebs. Everywhere her blood-red torchlight fell, sightless sockets stared back at her.
"What is this?" she whispered, a sick feeling rising up from her stomach.
"Must be that thing"s trophy room," Basel hissed.
From the tunnel behind them, the horrible clacking of the creature"s feet on the bare rock grew louder and faster.
Fynn was attempting to write a journal of the day"s bizarre events, pausing every couple of words just to stare numbly at the things he was writing, when the lead box containing the bat almost leaped off the workbench. Like it was trying to break out of its cell and be free. . . Gingerly, he pushed the heavy container back into the centre of the bench. Then he turned and left the lab, spooked. He went to lab block reception and grabbed a two-way radio, suddenly anxious there was good back-up out there should they need it. "Main gate, this is Director Fynn, do you copy?"
Static crowded out of the radio, no voices, no signal at all.
"Main gate, repeat, this is Director Fynn. . . "
65.He heard the distant sound of breaking gla.s.s. The static sounded even louder. Cursing under his breath, Fynn changed the frequency.
"Solomon, are you receiving me?"
Nothing.
Cursing again, Fynn went out into the hot, starlit night. Sand blew about, stinging his exposed skin, coating his lips. He hurried towards the main gate. If he found that the guards" radios were turned off or faulty he would put a rocket the size of a Saturn V up their. . . Fynn staggered to a halt. A sick feeling thrilled through him. The guards" radios might well be working. But the guards themselves had been frozen into life-sized, gleaming gold statues, clothes and all. Six of them huddled together beside the sentry hut in various stages of panic. Fynn stumbled backwards in fear as the men suddenly lurched apart, taking up positions in front of the main gate like they meant business. Clearly no one else was coming in, and no one was getting out.
"Doctor! Solomon!" Fynn was almost dribbling into the two-way radio. "Are you receiving me?"
Static still, like the sound of stars being scratched out of the sky. Then he caught sluggish movement. A golden blob, undulating towards him from behind the sentry hut. Heart pounding, Fynn found himself changing course and haring headlong into the wide-open night, towards the volcano.
"Keep looking for another way out," Rose urged Basel. If only the d.a.m.ned torches were brighter. Telling a shadow from a crevice was next to impossible and Rose wound up feeling along the walls, stumbling over the skeletons, desperation rising.
"There was a way out here, look," Basel called miserably. "But it"s caved in. Completely sealed."
"Good. That route leads away from the volcano," came a weird, high, rattling voice that seemed to crunch up the words like crisps. "I want to go deeper inside."
The alien had caught up with them.
66.Rose risked shining her torch on it. The thing didn"t flinch, but she and Basel did.
What she"d taken for cactus spines were actually eyelashes, long and bristly, which formed circles around five piggy little eyes. They were arranged like spots on a dice in the middle of the alien"s budshaped head. It had a bulbous nose and a small slash for a mouth. Incongruously, it seemed to be wearing a dark suit. A bow tie was fastened loosely round its puffed-up neck, and its shirt and jacket had four enormously flared sleeves whether as a fashion statement or simply to allow its pincers through, Rose had no idea. In contrast, the "trousers" it wore were skin-tight; the mora.s.s of legs reminded her of bristles on a brush, bending and flexing and clacking together as the creature shifted its weight about.
"What are you?" she whispered, beckoning Basel over towards her.
" Who Who am I, thank you very much," the creature corrected her. "I am an individual, you know. Extremely individual." It clattered about in a circle. "Few are more individual than I!" am I, thank you very much," the creature corrected her. "I am an individual, you know. Extremely individual." It clattered about in a circle. "Few are more individual than I!"
"You certainly stand out a bit," Rose agreed.
"My name is Jaxamillian Faltato," it said primly, dropping a small bead on the floor that glowed a bright, sulphurous yellow, lighting the cavern. "You are natives, I take it."
"That thing can speak Arabic too," whispered Basel, standing beside her now, eyes wide with shock. "It"s from s.p.a.ce. How"d it learn to do that?"
"It? It is a he he!" Faltato shimmied with annoyance. "How dare you challenge my masculinity! As for your silly language, that is child"s play. One needs only a single tongue and two lips to speak it."
Rose switched off her torch and took a wary step towards it. It was a bit tetchy but it wasn"t trying to kill them. Maybe it was just lost. Lost and very, very ugly. You couldn"t judge by appearances. . .
"Did you kill all these people here?" Rose asked quickly.
"Don"t be absurd," the creature growled. "You can see these carca.s.ses are old. The flesh has rotted and there"s stuff growing on them."
Basel swallowed hard. "So. . . this ain"t your lair, then?"
"A s.k.a.n.ky cave like this, my lair?" Faltato twittered, his legs clacking 67 like a pile of bamboo canes toppling over. "What kind of an animal do you take me for? I come from a world of style and cla.s.s! I live my life surrounded by art treasures so unutterably beautiful that your puny eyes would implode at the mere sight of them. And you a.s.sume my natural habitat to be a rancid rock-hole like this? I was never so insulted and by bipeds!" The creature whooshed two pincers behind his back and hurled a pile of hardware at their feet. "Here. You can work these tools."
Basel looked down at them. "More construction stuff, from the unit"s stores."
"I can"t work them," Rose admitted.
"It was not a statement, it was an instruction," snapped Faltato. "You were trying to break through the wall before. The tools will allow you to do this."
Rose"s feeling of unease was growing. "Why do you want to get through there?"
"Because I have a job to do," said Faltato, puffing up his bulging neck, "and I have come a very long way in order to do it."
"You"ve been sat up in s.p.a.ce, polluting the place, haven"t you?" she realised.
His five eyes scrunched up in suspicion. "You detected the ship?"
"In, like, five seconds," Rose informed him.
"What ship?" hissed Basel.
"Trust me," Rose murmured, folding her arms and raising her voice.
"So, what were you doing up there?"
Faltato clicked his legs together in a slow, rhythmical manner. "You will work the tools," he repeated Basel jutted out his chin. "What if we don"t?"
He snipped his pincers together. "Oh, please, let"s not go into that."
"What"s on the other side of that wall?" Rose demanded.
"I"m tired of this." He suddenly surged towards her on his clattering legs, scattering skeletons, all five eyes wide and staring. Then the slash of his mouth opened like a tunnel and something splashed out long and grey, like a wet vine. It coiled around a skull and threw it into the air. It landed in a dark corner with a clatter. 68 "I make words with my speaking tongue," said Faltato. "I take food or make points " he looked at them both meaningfully "with my hunting tongue." His legs vibrated, a sound like a rattlesnake shaking its tail. "Do not make me show you other tongues."
Rose quickly scooped up one of the tools and looked up at Basel.
"So. Knocking down walls, eh?"
He nodded dubiously. "How hard can it be?"
Faltato retracted his clay-grey tongue and nodded in approval. Adiel locked the entrance to the eastern caves, her mind a rushing whirl. She couldn"t believe what she had just done to Basel and Rose, couldn"t believe that after all these weeks of setting up that everything would kick off tonight. Of course, it would be dangerous. Faced with the prospect of capture and the labour camps, the rebels might well decide to go down fighting.
People could die.
But as she hurried from the entrance she knew she couldn"t turn back now. There was so much at stake not just the villagers" survival, not just the removal of the most brutal militant gang in these parts, but the means to get an official inquiry launched into Fynn"s affairs. Let him try to cover up this stuff with the golden blobs or let this Doctor deal with it on his behalf Adiel would make sure there was no way Fynn would sweep his involvement with seditious groups under the. . .
She stumbled to a standstill and her heart seemed to stop with her. There was Fynn now, running towards her, radio clutched in his hand. He knew. Oh, G.o.d, he knew, and he was coming to "Golems!" The word came out in a strangulated whisper as he almost fell into her arms. "Main gate, they"ve all been turned turned to gold. Like statues, moving statues."
"What?" Adiel pulled away from him. "What about security in the grounds?"
"I can"t reach anyone!" he shouted. She watched as he made a visible effort to calm himself. "Have you seen the Doctor or Solomon?"
"No."
69."What about Basel?"
" No No," she insisted, glancing back at the door to the eastern tunnels.
"Now, there must be someone from security who can "
"There"s no one. Those magma forms have left the lava tubes. The golems want to catch us and give us to them." He gripped hold of her arm. "We could be the last ones left alive!"
"This can"t be happening," Adiel murmured. "Not tonight. Not now."
She found herself s.n.a.t.c.hing the radio from his other hand. "Could this be faulty?"
But he ignored her, staring past her now. "Oh no," he said. "No, no, no. . . "
Adiel turned to find a grotesque, deformed, golden figure shambling towards them from the direction of the complex. Once it might have been Kanjuchi, but the face was twisted, the body a solid, lumpy mess of muscles, flexing as if they were trying to break through the golden skin that had formed over them.
She pressed the radio to her ear. "Security, come in please."
No response.
"Kanjuchi, stay back! It"s me, Adiel!"
"He"s going to kill us," Fynn whispered, backing away, pulling her with him. "Or else make us like he is. We have to hide in the tunnels."
"No. Not there."
"We have to!" He started to drag her over, but before they"d covered a couple of metres a loud pounding noise started up from behind the doors. Then a gunshot. And another. "Who the h.e.l.l"s in there?"
Adiel yanked her arm free, blinked away the tears welling in her eyes, willed away the building static, the nightmare sight of Kanjuchi quickening his step as he stumbled towards them. "Please!" she shouted into the radio, shouted out into the wide night as she and Fynn ran for cover. "For G.o.d"s sake, someone help us!"
70.
[image]
Basel"s hands felt half-broken from gripping the demolition tools so hard. They vibrated with energy, sending pulses of power into the thick, dark rock. It was coming away like parts of a scab, but the picking was a slow process. How long before this monster-thing lost its patience and broke his skull in a second?
He lowered the pulse tool for a moment, tried to shake the cramp from his arms and the fog from his head. Most of his life, the big problem had been getting water. Working the pump. Working out each day so he could carry more home the next. Life unchanging, the long hours filled by the numbing routine struggle to survive. He had worked so hard to better himself, to get out into the wider world and see what else life could offer. He"d got an apartment with urban boys, landed a proper job, been listening to the teachers. This morning he"d bounced out of bed as usual, feeling that everything lay ahead of him. And now here he was, working his guts out in some secret cave, knee-deep in furry skeletons with some four-armed, five-eyed freak from another planet ready to lick him to death.
It"s different, he supposed.
Suddenly Rose powered down her proton hammer.
71."Why have you stopped?" enquired Faltato at once, impatiently clipclopping his skinny hooves on the ground. "Continue the work."
"We"ve only got two hands each," Rose replied. "And they"re both aching."
How did she dare to stand up to the thing? Basel felt like he was in a nightmare one he might never wake up from if this thing was to stick its tongue out at them again.
"The wall is almost penetrated," said Faltato. "I am sure of it."
"Are you?" Rose asked.
The monster sighed. "Not really. I"m just trying to keep us all motivated."
Basel picked up the pulse tool again and aimed in at what the sensors a.s.sured him was the weakest point. And this time, almost at once, he was rewarded with a thin stream of rock dust showering down from the lumpy ceiling.
"Try there, Rose," Basel shouted. Maybe then this thing would let them go.
Maybe.
She started up the hammer and blasted at the same point. The stream of dust became a torrent, and then, with a clap of splitting rock, a huge chunk fell away from the wall, cracking and crumbling into the darkness waiting on the other side. Thick dust whooshed into the cavern. Basel choked, tried to draw breath and coughed all the more, felt his eyes streaming.
"I was right!" Faltato shouted. "My instincts do not desert me! Now, climb up and over into that cave."
Rose dropped her hammer. "Why? What"s in there?"
"Go and see," said Faltato. He flicked out his tongue. "I"ll be right behind you."
Basel swapped an uneasy look with Rose and pulled himself through the hole they"d knocked in the dark, gla.s.sy basalt, feeling its hard edges bite into his stomach. Then he swung his legs round and dangled over the edge before dropping down among the rock debris. The swirling dust obscured his view, backlit eerily by the light spilling from Faltato"s lamp in the cavern next door. He pulled his torch from 72 his shorts pocket and flicked it on, but only succeeded in turning the thick dust scarlet.
Rose scrambled down beside him, coughing noisily, then flicked on her own torch. "Come on," she said. "He wants something in here, right? If we get it first, we"ve got something to bargain with."
"What if he gets us?" Basel whispered uneasily. Then in the scarlet smear of the torch beam he caught a gleam of gold.
"It"s that stuff!" he shouted. "That stuff again!"
Next moment, Rose was beside him. "No," she said. "It"s real gold. Like a little chest or something." She shone her torch round and picked out a dark figure looming over them. Basel cowered, but Rose shook her head. "It"s just a statue stone or something."
"Stay where you are and touch nothing," Faltato called to them. Suddenly, a whipcord cracked out from the hole in the rock and wrapped itself round one of the stalact.i.tes in the uneven ceiling. It grew taut as a sc.r.a.ping, clattering noise started up.
"Its tongue is a grappling hook," she whispered.
Basel shuddered, then gave the statue an uneasy second look. He saw now that the shape was tall and sharp like an obelisk but with all these curving fronds rising up from it, like it was having a bad hair day. "What is it meant to be?"
"They sort of look a bit like wings," she murmured. "And see, there"s another one over there. Like a bird with its wings. . . being ripped off." She smoothed her hands through her hair, uneasy now. "Not just statues though, look. Paintings and things."