Gemini God

by Garry Kilworth

Genres: Horror; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

The human race is in decline, is withdrawing into protective city shells. Could contact with civilised aliens revive the probing curiosity once the hallmark of human achievement? Are there any such beings in the Universe? If there are, can they be contacted? The beginnings of an answer, oddly enough, begins to form when Alex Craven sets out in search of his girlfriend Nicole and finds her working in the marshlands of the Angles. Reluctantly he becomes involved in her work. She is experimenting with empathic communication between twins. Eventually, accompanied by one of two particularly gifted twins, he leaves Earth for New Carthage. In that strange world a shadow-line civilisation is in perpetual slow motion to avoid the intolerable daytime heat. But what lies beyond the shadow line . . . ?

Release date: November 28, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 256

Sample

On 23 September 2096, the media informed its news-thirsty public that Captain Miro Alexander, commander of Earth’s first starship, had discovered an inhabitable planet circling the star Wolf 359.

Petral Craven listened with only limited interest, since most of his attention was focused on his wife whom he could see on the other side of a glass screen. He could hear her too, through the communicator. She was giving birth to their first child.

“Relax now—don’t strain. Let the rhythmonitor do its work,” said an attendant.

“Using the transmission medium fast light,” whispered Petral’s wristband, “or, to give it the correct term, accelerated photonstream, we were informed this morning that a module from the starship Dido entered the oxygenated atmosphere of New Carthage and touched down successfully. First pictures show an extraordinary world …”

“Oh,ohhhhhhh!”

A head and pair of shoulders had appeared. One of the doctors moved in the way, obscuring Petral’s view.

“… New Carthage is a planet comparable in size to Mercury. It appears to be inhabited by an intelligent race of creatures that are, by necessity, nomadic. The side of New Carthage which is in daylight is unfortunately too hot for habitation. However, the planet has an extremely slow equatorial solar motion of, we are informed, one kilometre every six Earth days. Thus it is possible to stay on the dark side of the planet by periodically walking a few metres towards the night …”

Petral wiped the sweat from his brow as the baby dangled by its legs from the doctor’s fist. What was it? A boy or a girl? Why was he holding it the wrong way round? Petral wanted to see his child.

“The natives cultivate the dawn area and harvest the crops before their farm-strips creep out into the deadly sunlight. Thus they have been called People of The Dawn Country by Captain Alexander and his crew.”

A boy! It was a boy! Praise God! Elaine was smiling at him. What was that?

“A name, darling? We still haven’t chosen a name,” she said.

She looked weak. Completely washed out. He thought quickly, searching his mind for the nearest name to his memory.

“Alexander!” he blurted out. “How do you like that?”

She lay back with a happy smile on her face. “Alexander,” she said. “Yes, I do like that.”

He felt unprotected, vulnerable. It was difficult to adjust to the sharp definition of the stars. Seeing them like this, with no translucent canopy between his eyes and their brightness, gave Alex some insight to Nicole’s letters. He had found the tapes strange, difficult to analyse—possibly because he had been searching the words for half-hidden references concerning her feelings for him. They were, in fact, just descriptive accounts of her new life in the Outer Angles. Then the letters had stopped arriving. That would have been shortly after she had begun her work in earnest, whatever that work might be.

“Where are we?” Alex asked.

“Nearly there …”

Peter was driving the hummer very slowly. Alex had the impression Peter was a little afraid now that they had left London’s boundaries, although there was no need to be. Possibly Peter felt the same way about the Angles as Alex did. There was a trace of latent malevolence in the way the mist hung above the marshes. They had both been outside the City into the country before, but this was different. This was not a Sunday jaunt to a picnic spot between Regions but a night drive into the flatlands of the east coast, an area of sparsely inhabited salt marshes. Alex could not understand the reasoning behind Nicole’s desire to work in such dreary environs.

“There’s a light,” said Peter, his tone failing to hide the relief he felt. They had just passed Marker Post Five and were nearing their destination.

Peter slowed the hummer almost to a stop and both men peered through the windscreen into the darkness ahead. A dim yellowness, as fuzzy as a moon seen through a poorly focused lens, shone steadily from within the mist from about two kilometres away.

“That’ll be the farmhouse, I’m sure,” Alex said.

“I’ll just drop you there, Alex, then return to the City. I have to be up early tomorrow …”

Alex turned to him in surprise.

“You said you’d stay the night. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, nothing. I just … well, I feel uncomfortable. It was all right back there, in the City, talking about it. But I hadn’t considered the atmosphere out here …”

“The dampness?”

“Yes. Yes, the mist. It’s not at all healthy—are you positive you want to stay? They don’t even have mains power out here you know.”

“Okay, have it your way. Abandon me,” Alex replied, with just a trace of drama.

Peter said nothing. He really did seem worried.

They reached a single-storey sprawling farmhouse a few moments later and it seemed that Peter would have turned around and gone away before Alex had met the owners, if Alex hadn’t stopped him.

“Wait a second, Peter. I won’t be long.”

After knocking on the door of the house, Alex waited as the damp air began to penetrate his oversuit. A small hatch in the door suddenly snapped open, startling him.

“What’s this?” asked someone from the other side. It was a male voice, and a pair of eyes regarded him steadily.

“Alex Craven,” he replied, feeling rather foolish. He felt he should be shaking a hand or something while the introductions took place. “I sent you a written letter—about a month ago. You said you could put me up.”

“It’s him,” said the voice again. The eyes stayed on his face although he was obviously speaking to someone in the room behind him.

There was the sound of a bolt sliding and then the door swung open. Alex was confronted by a bearded man about two-thirds his height—and Alex was not particularly tall—wearing a robe of some peculiar patchwork design. The eyes seemed to glare rather than merely appraise.

“Have you got luggage?”

Peter had placed Alex’s cases quietly behind him and as Alex turned Peter said, “See you soon, Alex. Shall I tell Lila where you are—if I’m asked, that is?”

Alex ignored this question. Peter knew the answer to it anyway.

“You’re not staying then?”

“No, no. I’d better be getting back. Alice would prefer me to get back tonight.”

“Well, don’t surprise her.” Alex grinned in an attempt to lighten the mood of their parting.

Peter merely frowned. “No, of course not. I’ll call her when I reach the limits. Take care—and give my love to Nicole.”

“I’ll do that, Peter—and thanks. For bringing me here, I mean.”

“Okay.”

Peter climbed back into the hummer, which still had the motor running, and slid out of the yard. Alex had not realized before tonight what a coward Peter was. He watched the vehicle’s lights drift over the fields towards one of the tall illuminated marker posts that had been their guides.

The man Alex believed to be his host had already picked up his cases and carried them into the house. Alex followed him into the first room and closed the door behind him.

“Pleased to meet you.”

Another man, much taller than the first but no less bearded, held out a thick red hand for him to shake. Alex did so.

“Mr Polgrove?” said Alex, realizing his first assumption had been a mistake. The man before him had the air of an owner about him.

“S’right. This is Jamie, my uncle. He lives with us.” He indicated the other man who seemed as young, or rather as old (since they were both white-haired), as his nephew.

“My wife, Rita.” He spoke her name as if he rarely used it.

A small, muscular woman with cropped hair bobbed a smile from behind Polgrove.

“You found us then?” she said.

“I don’t think we would have done if your lights had not been on. Unfortunately we started out late and by the time we reached Marker Post Five, it was dark.”

She nodded. “Sit down then, sit down. Jamie will take your things to your room. We don’t have many visitors here—not any more. One or two nature people—for birds and things—two summers ago. But nobody in the autumn before.”

“But you are a recognized guest house?” Alex said, a little alarmed.

“Oh yes. We’re that all right,” replied Polgrove. “It’s just that people don’t seem to want to come any more. Out this way, I mean. Not just to Mrs Polgrove’s.” Not Rita. Mrs Polgrove.

They stood looking at one another while Jamie dealt with the luggage. Finally he returned.

“Cases in your room,” he said.

“Where does your power come from?” Alex pointed to the glow-lamp.

Jamie answered. “There’s a power station out past the Nose.” He pointed vaguely towards the window. “We run a cable from her. The waves do it—moving those floats up and down.”

“Ocean power?”

“That’s it,” said Polgrove. “S’there for the ships to recharge from. Several houses round here use it.”

Without thinking, Alex said, “Isn’t that illegal?”

There followed a terrible silence while they stared at him, their faces inscrutable. His heart pounded in his chest. He was dealing with primitive people. He realized he would have to choose his words with care in future.

Finally, Mrs Polgrove asked if Alex would like some food. Real food, she emphasized. Being used to factory-farmed synthetics Alex knew he would have to be careful about the local home-grown produce. His doctor had warned him that the richness of it might upset his digestion, so he declined, having eaten before setting out, hoping to put off the moment of truth for as long as possible. Making his excuses, Alex said he would like a short walk before retiring. Polgrove nodded and opened the hinged door for him.

“We shan’t be long before bedding down,” Polgrove said.

Alex nodded.

“Is there—am I likely to encounter anything dangerous?” he asked, stepping outside. In all truthfulness all he wanted to do was get a few breaths of air and recover his composure a little. He also had a headache, which refused to be ignored, just above his right eye.

“No, but don’t go too far. Some of ’em get lost in the marshes.” Then he closed the door.

By “them” Alex supposed he meant the tourists that stayed at the house. Alex had no intention of doing a cross-country walk in the middle of the evening, so there was little fear of that happening.

Looking around him there was nothing but blackness, with one or two more small lights in the distance. Smells wafted around him, thick and heavy. Some of them were even recognizable, especially that of the ozone. They had an atmosphere like that in the City—artificial, of course, but who could tell the difference? There was a salty taste to the air and the night seemed to be alive with sounds. Birds in the reeds? All his senses, bar that of touch, were finding it difficult to tune into the new surroundings. The rhythms of the country, though not unpleasant, were out of harmony with those of the man from the City.

He looked upwards, and immediately felt giddy. The stars were up there, swimming around their courses, and he had to clutch the side of the house for support. The cool brickwork was solidly comforting. All his twenty-seven years of life until then had been spent in one or other of the self-governing city states into which civilized Britain was divided. The enclosed cities were loosely connected, in a political sense, by a Federal Council which met annually at York. Physically, the states each controlled a region of countryside which ringed their city boundaries and were connected by an enclosed network of railways. The shrinking population of Britain, like most countries, withdrew from sprawling suburban and country areas into its main bodies, the cities. The human race had lost interest in itself. One day its numbers would drop below the critical level.

One or two day trips to the “outside” had satisfied his curiosity at a very early age and, from fourteen onwards until now, Alex had used the tubeways to cross from Region to Region. It was going to be hard to adjust to the openness, the depth of the sky.

There was a poem written by Mathew Tse which Nicole used to recite to him called “The Long Drop Upwards”. He knew the last few lines by heart, she had read it so often.

—having vertigo, you wonder not at the length and breadth, the span of space,

but how deep? how deep is the fall of the black shaft of the universe …

In his closet flatlet, protected and held safe by layer upon layer of metal and plastic, the lines had meant nothing to Alex. Out here, dizzy with the nothingness that fell away above him, he knew exactly what Tse had meant. Some of Alex’s friends had trained to be astronauts—others had emigrated to colonies located on planets of the solar system. One had even been to New Carthage. Alex’s narrow upbringing had, to a certain extent, helped to define the limits of his desire to travel. The Outer Angles was foreign enough for most tastes.

Something barked nearby. The sound was cold and harsh, making his skin prickle with apprehension. He went inside straight away and Jamie showed him to his room: a stone cell with white-washed walls. However, the bed was soft and comfortable and he soon fell asleep, dreaming of the metamorphosis of townships into a strange wilderness men had once called East Anglia.

Alex woke the following morning with Mrs Polgrove looming over his face. She offered him a hot drink.

“And I’ve eggs for your breakfast—fresh from the run. They’re still warm.”

“I’ll have some bread and … an egg,” he replied. She left him to dress.

Looking out of the window, he saw Polgrove and Jamie moving around a muddy yard, apparently engaged in farming tasks. The land below the yard sloped away very gradually to some creeks in the distance. There was little water in them but the mud gleamed wet and grey. Alex guessed the tide was on the ebb. Several river mouths fanned out to cut the area of the coast into a network of tidal backwaters. It was difficult terrain to cross longitudinally.

Mrs Polgrove called him and he went to face the egg. In fact, it was not at all bad, having been scrambled into a yellow aerated mess, but he found the bread soft, pulpy and barely digestible.

After eating Alex thanked her and said that would be fine until the evening. She shrugged and left him alone. Possibly she had chores to complete.

The objective in coming to the Angles was to find Nicole. Alex decided it was best he accomplished that as soon as possible. Going out into the yard he found it had rained during the night and everywhere was wet. Underfoot, the ground was soft and slippery.

“Mr Polgrove,” he said, as he approached his host.

“Mornin’.” Polgrove was hammering a stake into the ground and Alex could see the power behind each swing was considerable. The beard on his cheeks and chin glittered with droplets of perspiration.

“Mr Polgrove, do you know how I can get to Feerness? It’s an island around here somewhere—but I’m told you can walk out to it at low tide.”

“The broomway.”

“What? I’m sorry …”

“The broomway. There’s poles topped with brushwood alongside a ‘hard’ going out the island. See that bank?” He pointed towards the creeks. There was a mound of grass-covered earth winding away from them.

“Yes.”

“Well that’s the sea wall. You walk along ’top and you’ll come to the broomway. The tide’s not long out so if you want to go today, you’d best do it now. Mind,” he said in a warning tone, “if you take too long you’ll be in trouble. The tide comes in faster than you can run across mud—hard or no.”

He looked quizzically at Alex and then asked the question Alex had been expecting.

“Why d’you want to go there? If you don’t mind me askin’.”

There was no reason to keep the truth from him.

“I’m looking for my … for a girlfriend. She works there—a place called Manston House.”

“Ah!” Polgrove continued to stare at him.

“Do you know anything about it?” Alex asked casually.

“She a teacher is she? Of school or some such?”

“I think that’s what she said she was doing, yes.”

This was a direct lie but it appeared to suit the farmer because he merely nodded and gave Alex another “Ah!”

Then he added, “Lots of children there—in that place. Used to be a hotel of sorts, many years ago, when Jamie was a lad. Then it closed and they only just opened it for these people. Orphanage, I suspect. Twins though.”

“Twins? What do you mean?”

“All twins—the children. Every damned one of ’em’s half a set. Every damned one.” He shook his head as if he doubted the truth of his own statement. “Funny kind of thing to do. Open an orphanage for twins, out here amongst us stems.”

“Yes. I suppose it is,” Alex replied. Then, to change the subject, he asked the farmer, “What was that word? Us what?”

“What d’you mean; stems? That’s us. That’s what the tourists call us.” He looked Alex directly in the eye. “I suspect it’s because we stem from real farming people.”

“I expect it is. Well, I’ll see if I can cross to the island. I’ll see you later.” Alex hesitated then asked, “There’s no transport, is there? Out to the island?”

Polgrove didn’t take the hint. Instead, he shook his head, and added, “Not any that you could use, coming from the City.”

Alex wasn’t sure what was meant by that but decided not to pursue it. He left the farmer pinning some netting to the posts and grumbling about foxes. Alex wondered which of those noises he had heard the previous night was a fox, and he shuddered. It was a reminder that the countryside around the farm was a wilderness and he hurried over turf-sprung fields to the sea wall.

On top of the earth wall the sea air hit him hard in the chest. It was cold, damp and very pungent. Two metres below him was the mud—a grey shining monster that disappeared beyond a vaguely—near horizon swallowed by mist. There were shallow pools of water out on the flat, which lay black and oily now that the early morning sun had retreated behind clouds. Alex walked along the watershed of the man-made ridge until he came to a stone-and-earth ramp.

Two lines of poles stretched out into the mud, forming a channel approximately three metres wide. Hatting each pole was a bunch of tied twigs. This was obviously Polgrove’s “broomway hard”. A path of witches’ brooms. He shuddered. This particular part of the coast had once been the haunt of witches—mostly male witches that had once lived in the now abandoned villages in and around the marshes.

Alex began walking but found that, despite the hard surface beneath the broomway, his feet still sank several centimetres into the covering silt and the going was slow. There was a large, long-necked bird that periodically let out a guttural, croaking “rronk” before disappearing into the mist ahead of him. Every so often it reappeared, saw that Alex was still approaching, and sounded off again before leaving. It was almost as if it were leading him in some way, rather than Alex coincidentally following in its footsteps.

His thoughts left the bird after a while and he began pondering on those events which had led him to the wilds of the Angles on a day when he should have been comfortably installed in his small office awaiting calls upon his services.

Exactly two months previously, Alex’s father, Petral Craven, had died at the age of seventy-five years. It had been shortly after his father’s cremation that Alex met Nicole.

Nicole Toupe was tall with very black shoulder-length hair and a tanned skin. Alex had invited her to lunch and was told over the meal that she had been born of Panamanian parents. He felt at the time that her voice might irritate him if he spent too long with her: it had an underlying note of dissatisfaction, though he had no idea why. It was her large, damp brown eyes that attracted him, however, and though she was not at all encouraging, Alex had asked her to meet him again. She had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, and over the next two weeks Alex had pressed his company on her until finally he had asked her to live with him.

“You’re married,” she had said, flatly.

“You don’t have to marry me. Look, I’m twenty-seven—you’re thirty-one. We’re not children. Most people don’t even want to get married these days.”

“My background is old-fashioned. We still believe in marriage in Panama.”

“If you loved me enough, Panama wouldn’t matter.”

Her lips had drawn together in a thin, dark line. “I haven’t said I love you at all.”

Not long afterwards she had quit her job in Head Office and the next time he had heard from her, it had been by mail. The tape had been delivered by hand to one of the boundary Mail Transfer Offices. She had taken a position outside the City, at Feerness in the Outer Angles. It was a job with Government Communications Research and she had no wish to return to London.

Then followed a series of letters containing information about the Angles, though not about her job. Alex’s questions concerning her feelings for him went unanswered. In the meantime he had applied for a divorce from Lila. Unfortunately his wife saw no reason to let him go since it was very fashionable to be married to a Government Official. His dull existence gave her an anchor during those times she became depressed and needed a temporary rest from promiscuity. Foolishly he had continued to let her use him as her confidan. . .