The Crimson Tower

by Alex Marshall

and
appeared in issue 266.

part 3 of 4

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Grunts and murmurs arose from the council. Eyes returned to the drawing. Minds turned; picturing the metal sphere rolling and pitching and spitting lethal rays at incoming alien craft.

“Is it photon powered?” asked Udin.

“It has a 50-gauge laser cannon, yes!” Lord Limbold replied.

“Range?” probed Dhorvush.

“A little under 2 kiloms,” said the inventor.

“Will it stop a gunship?” the air vice-marshall wanted to know.

“It will stop a battle cruiser!” Lord Limbold assured them.

“Who will operate it?” The vice-chancellor stood again, addressing the council as a whole. His dismissive attitude toward the weapons master spoke clearly of the way his thoughts were running. But he reckoned without Lord Limbold’s wine-emboldened conviction.

“It is my machine! I and no other will wield it!” said the inventor, drawing himself up before the politician.

“That is a decision for the council,” replied the other, coldly.

“No!” stormed the weapons master, his eyes ablaze with bitter fires. “It is mine! I built it. I have laboured without food or rest in this godforsaken hole after all others have fled. It will be I who take the controls!”

Rigid with anger, the vice-chancellor met the inventor’s wild stare for a long minute and then, slowly, he turned toward Count Voormidrath. The warlord shook his head and lowered his gaze. The politician pursed his lips and put his anger to one side.

“I merely thought to relieve you of such a burden, weapons master,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “You have worked long and hard. You say you are weary and we understand this, of course we do. Moreover, you have a keen mind. You are a valuable asset to the war. Perhaps this is a task for one more... martial? You can withdraw from the city. Take your family...”

“I have none,” snapped the weapons master. “My son was slain on the eastern front. My wife died long ago. You cannot hurt or manipulate me. I will operate the machine.” He drained his wine, banged the goblet down upon the table and began rolling up the drawing.

In the sudden silence the vice-chancellor glanced briefly around the room then gave a small, philosophical shrug and went to pour himself more wine. Dhorvush followed and then General Udin. Count Voormidrath stared at the weapons master briefly and then joined the council at the food table where talk turned to troop movement, logistics and finer points of strategy.

With a deep sigh, the old man sagged into the vacated chair. His hands lay useless upon his armoured thighs as his chin fell upon his chest. In his mind an image played: a small boy splashed happily in the basin of a fountain. Soapy water sculpted his tawny hair into wild shapes. A blond-haired woman, with a gentle face and smiling eyes looked on. Light shimmered from water and polished stone and the boy’s laughter arose in bubbling echoes. The light became harsh as the image faded in a stinging fog of tears.

* * *

Alone in the transport on his return across the city, the weapons master dozed. He dreamed of the interrogation as he had so many times since that night in the basement of the crimson tower.

In his dream, lamplight shimmered among the tubes and wires of the Interrogator and gleamed from the uniforms of the marines that lined the walls. Upon a table, the captive lay prone. Clad entirely in the alien exoderm with its strange curves and protrusions and its long, chitinous helm it looked like nothing more than a giant insect, grounded and crushed.

Voormidrath’s face, puffy and wrathful as ever, hove into view and then the marine with the cutting gear stepped forward. A razorlite hummed into life throwing insane shadows over the stark walls. It sizzled and smoked as the plates of the helmet came away revealing parts of the head and then, finally, the face of the thing within. He and Voormidrath leaned over for a first glimpse of the enemy. With his dreamer’s perspective the two of them, huge in black armour, hunched like carrion creatures above a broken cadaver.

At first it appeared monstrous: The pallid flesh, blackened and scorched in places from the razorlite, the mechanised eye swivelling wildly whilst the other blinked helplessly up at them, the mouth twisting in an awful rictus of fear and pain. He tried to avert his gaze as he attached the electrodes to its peculiarly sprouting skull. He sought to divert his thoughts by wrangling bitterly with the count until the man withdrew, cursing beyond the lamps and out of the weapons master’s way.

Now he was seated before the Interrogator itself, intent within the weird radiance cast by the viewer. Above the hood, encased in wires and glowing softly was the strange blue stone that was the unfathomable heart of the machine.

Slowly at first he began to manipulate the dials and switches on the console. He felt again the awful paranoia of that episode; the crushing sensation of every pair of eyes in the room following his slightest move or pause. But as he began to develop a sense, a feel for the machine he grew bolder and as the viewer gradually came to life, he forgot everything but the images that formed and faded in front of him. Happenings, moments, things, places, emotions all wheeled, sparkled and vanished as he stared captivated into the depths of the captive’s mind.

Through the viewer came an impression, clearer and stronger than the others. He saw a cave’s mouth looming in a mountain wall at sunset. There were sounds of celebration. Strange music played, it was a joyous time — a homecoming!

In haste, he entered the cave. He was searching, trembling with excitement. He looked down. There on the stone floor an infant — a boy was playing. The boy’s back was turned, all his attention bent upon the toy soldiers; little figurines of glass and alloy that leapt and tumbled beneath the arc lights.

Slowly the captive, whose perspective he shared, knelt; the armoured skirts of the alien battle-dress spreading around him. Reaching out he spoke softly, two strange syllables — a name! The infant paused and the toy soldiers froze mid-combat as though a sudden truce opened beneath the tiny hands. The boy turned and the weapons master saw his face through the surging joy and sudden tears of the captive’s memory.

“Daniel?”

The hair was not the same but darker, braided and beaded in an unfamiliar style. The skin tone was different also — textured like his father’s by the legacy of some tarnished gene and overlaid with the pallor of the northern hills. But otherwise the likeness was plain. The Hattooshan child was no alien. He was a small boy, just like any other, just like the weapons master’s own son...

“...Daniel!” Lord Limbold awoke. He sat upright in fear and confusion. He was not in the transport but back in his bedchamber. Around him the white expanse of the bed glowed in the darkness. His nightshirt was soaked with sweat. His head ached with every tiny movement and his mouth was as parched as the desert. He shivered. The door opened and Haggai appeared, attired for sleep with a lamp in one hand and a drinking cup in the other.

“What hour is it?” the weapons master asked his manservant reaching for the cup. “Last I knew I was boarding the transport, hither from the council. Gods! That wine...” He took the water and drank gratefully.

“It is nearly sunrise,” said Haggai. “You were conscious when you got home, but barely. I put you to bed.” The servant took back the empty cup and regarded his master with concern; a frail figure among the huge shadows of the chamber. A frightened old man dwarfed upon the voluminous pillow.

“Were there tidings at the council that unsettled you, my Lord?” Haggai asked.

“No, Haggai. There is nothing they can say that makes the slightest difference to me now. Everything is done. Everything is finished! Except the machine. Oh yes,” a trembling finger lifted from the counterpane. “Except that, of course. But soon, today it will be!” He patted the bed beside him. The manservant hesitated and then, stiffly, he sat.

“Listen Haggai. There is something that I must tell. It is something that I can keep within no longer for fear of losing my mind — and that must not happen, not ere my work is completed! But the dreams, they plague me so! You have no idea. It is not just the desire to finish the machine that has kept me from my bed these nights.”

“This has to do with the evening they brought the Hattooshan here?” Haggai knew his master. He had seen the changes steal upon him.

“Aye,” Lord Limbold nodded. “The knowledge of that night has denied me peace of mind ever since. You may not believe what I will tell, but you must try. You must at least hear me out — for you are the last, old friend, the last person that I care for and I would have you know the truth, whatever becomes of us.

“They are coming. The end is coming. It is the least of what I have learned but it something we can be sure of. They will come with their gunships and missiles and machines of war and there is so little time...”

“I know master,” said Haggai. “I feel it, here!” the old warrior rubbed at his thigh where an old wound lay beneath the gown. “It troubles me little as a rule, but lately it has begun to throb and tonight its nagging wakened me — before you did! It tells me that they will be here ere long. But we will fight them as we always have. Perhaps we will win. If no, then some of us will remain to build again.”

“But who are they, Haggai?” To the manservant’s alarm he felt the master’s hand grasp his shoulder as the old man hauled himself up, out of the bedclothes. “Who are they? And why do we fight — on and on destroying everything, killing, spoiling, poisoning the very air we breathe? Why must we bequeath a legacy of death and misery for our children and their children for ever!”

“They are aliens,” Haggai spread his hands, “Hattooshans, enemies. It is war. It is our duty to destroy them. It is the pledge we take as soldiers, as defenders of the seven cities of the earth. They have blighted our planet for a thousand years and for a thousand years we have warred. And we will for a thousand more, if necessary, until the scum are finally defeated. After all, they will not rest until we are destroyed. What option do we have? What else is there, what else...”

“What else, Haggai?” the weapons master fixed him with a haunted stare. “Just so! What if they weren’t alien, separate, monstrous. What if they were just like us?”

Silence. Lord Limbold watched as strange emotions made strange territory of the bluff, familiar face.

“I don’t understand, my Lord. How do you mean, ‘just like us’? They are alien... unnatural. They are entirely... different. What do you mean?

“I mean, Haggai what do you really know of them? You have killed many — maybe dozens but have you ever spoken to one? Of course not, I know it is not possible, but wait, have you even seen a Hattooshan without armour? One that hasn’t been lifeless upon the battlefield, blown to pieces by a blaster, or carved unrecognisable by a razorlite? Think, man! What do you actually know?”

Haggai shook his head. His hands pressed against his bulbous temples as the cogs of his mind sought to turn against the flow of tradition, of generation upon generation of received wisdom.

“Listen whilst I tell you of our enemy,” Lord Limbold continued, his voice low as though other ears lurked unseen within the chamber. “ I will tell you what I know and may God have mercy upon us all!”

“That evening, they brought him here and he lay dying upon a table in the basement of this very tower. Voormidrath was there, aye and others. For they would not allow uncontrolled information to leak from that shuttered room, not likely! They watched me as I stepped up to the viewer. I was afraid — they expected me to fail, I have no doubt of that.

“But I had researched long and diligently and I knew how to make the Interrogator serve me. I have no detailed knowledge of how it works, don’t misunderstand me! I have no grasp of the physics or even the electro-mechanics that could animate such a device but I understood the concepts and I realised where the power that animates it lay.”

“It is an Interrogator after all! A machine designed by our forebears to plumb the depths of a man’s mind, and heart. Yes, Haggai a man’s! And that is what I saw! The captive’s cares, his fears, his sorrows were the same as my own. God help me, but I saw the face of his dead son and it was like looking at my Daniel! I felt his pain, his loss.” The weapons master clutched again at the manservant and Haggai knew his grip on sanity was every bit as desperate. “I tell you, for this is the truth! They are just like us. They are human!”

Haggai was silent as the old man’s tears fell upon his shoulder. He watched the cold, first light growing through the cloud and dust that swirled outside the window. He could not doubt his master but it was so contrary, so at odds with all that he had been told. Presently he said: “Can it truly be as you say, my Lord? Do they not look different to us? Did they not come here from another planet?”

Lord Limbold shook his head. “Nay, Haggai, the old books are clear. There are no hospitable worlds within a lifetime’s journey of this rock. It is a myth — a lie! It is another deceit to prolong the hatred. As for how they look, well he seemed abhorrent at first. There were scars, the thickness and pallor of his skin. He had a prosthetic eye that was frightening to behold but no less horrific than that brute Dhorvush with his head in a wire bag! As soon as the Interrogator began to work, I knew. I knew that he was a man. A man like me — a man to whose destruction you and I and the hundreds of generations of our ancestors have dedicated their lives.”

“But why...” said the manservant, bewildered

“Why? Maybe instead you should ask when. When did it become our purpose to destroy them? Did it start before the Great Migration or the War of the First Republic? Perhaps it pre-dates the closure of the middle-sea or even the Great Impact. Perhaps the conflict has its ultimate roots in the Plague Wars or the Holocaust that finally brought the third age to an end. Who can say? History does not. For war is all-consuming and history itself has been destroyed; its lessons usurped as all human endeavour is twisted to serve the twin tyrants of survival and the destruction of that which threatens it.”

Proceed to part 4...