Eric Brown: Penumbra

Carstairs took a step forward, and Bennett could only watch as Klien casually pulled the trigger of his pistol. The laser fire lanced instantly across the chamber, bright as lightning, and in the dark aftermath of the shot Carstairs crumpled to the ground.

Then Klien cried and began firing at random. The effect was gruesomely beautiful, as sapphire spears of laser light criss-crossed the chamber and illuminated the falling figures of the Ancients. At that second Hans Hupcka yelled out and charged. He was almost upon the assassin before Klien reacted. He fired, the bright flash dazzling Bennett. He grabbed Rana and dragged her to the floor. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Hupcka lying dead—obviously, horribly dead—beside the central stone.

Klien continued with the slaughter, and for long seconds a series of flashes snapped on and off around the chamber. Oddly, the Ahloi stood unmoving, facing Klien’s insane rage with the fatalism of true believers. Klien was turning like a homicidal dervish, crying out as he fired. One by one the Ahloi tumbled grotesquely, their cries high-pitched and inhuman, and hit the floor with a chitinous rattle of limbs.

Bennett shook Rana from him, but she grabbed his hand and would not let go. “No!” she cried. “He’ll kill you!”

Brutally he pushed her away and scrambled around the chamber in the brief periods of darkness between the bursts of laser fire, attempting to get on Klien’s blind side. He was overcome with the need for vengeance, a rage he had never before experienced.

He leaped towards Klien, and at that precise second the madman turned and fired. The charge tore past Bennett’s head, the heat burning his hair, and a second later he impacted with Klien and knocked him from his feet. They struck the stone floor and rolled, Klien roaring with rage beneath him as one pistol skittered away across the polished stone floor. Bennett wrestled with Klien for the second pistol, pulled it from him and tried to roll away and shoot. Klien dived after him, pinning him to the floor and reaching for the laser.

Bennett felt a painful grip on his wrist, and then Klien was forcing the pistol little by little towards Bennett’s head. Klien seemed possessed with the strength of the insane, and Bennett felt his resistance weakening as the bulbous barrel of the laser pistol moved closer to his face.

He closed his eyes, heard the quick hiss of a shot, and Klien spasmed on top of him.

When he opened his eyes he saw Rana standing nearby, frozen in contemplation of the enormity of her actions, the laser pistol Klien had dropped now gripped in her outstretched hands. Klien toppled from him, the lower half of his skull a shattered gourd spilling the viscous liquid of his brains.

Rana ran to Bennett’s side and helped him to his feet. Mackendrick joined them, taking his daughter in his arms without a word. The humans huddled in a group in the centre of the chamber and watched the activity of the Ahloi all around them.

More Ancients were hurrying into the chamber, their clicking legs working like stilts; they gathered about the dead and fallen, lifting the lifeless bodies and carrying them down the steps and away. They seemed to approach Carstairs with especial reverence, half a dozen Ahloi lifting him with care, caressing his body with their long-fingered hands.

Bennett was aware of movement behind him. When he turned he looked into the attenuated, insectoid visage of an Ancient. Its swollen ruby eyes regarded him without discernible emotion. It opened its mandibles, and beneath its clicks and hisses Bennett made out the whispered aspiration of words.

“Bennett…” it said in a hot rushing breath. “They will be taken… resurrected. In time they will live again.”

Bennett shook his head, turned and watched the dead as they were carried from the chamber.

Hupcka’s great body was lifted by four Ahloi and borne away, his leonine head hanging lifeless, his chest a charred mess where the laser had impacted. Next came the perpetrator of the killings; three Ancients hurried away with Klien’s macabre remains.

He looked at the Ahloi beside him. “What will happen to Klien?” he asked.

“Like the others,” the alien breathed, “he too will be brought back to life.”

“But he will be punished?”

The alien regarded Bennett with all the expression of a praying mantis. “Punish?” it breathed, as if that word were missing from its vocabulary.

Perhaps, Bennett thought, an indefinite period in which to contemplate the error of his ways would be punishment enough for Klien. He checked himself. He was taking for granted something that hours ago he would have considered impossible.

“Is it really possible?” he asked. “I mean, how can you… ?”

“No injury is beyond our ability to repair,” the alien whistled. “It will take longer to effect their transcendence, but we have time in abundance. And now…” The tall Ahloi turned to Mackendrick. “Carstairs informed us that you were ill, that you sought the truth.”

The alien moved to the centre of the chamber and stationed itself beside the nub of stone. It was joined by another, this one bearing a flaming brand. As Bennett looked about him, he realised that the Chamber of Rebirth was no longer a scene of carnage. As if nothing untoward had occurred, a circle of Ancients stood about its circumference.

The alien who had spoken to Bennett now lifted a long, skeletal arm and gestured to Mackendrick, who stepped slowly forward.

Rana moved from Bennett’s side, rushed to her father and held him. For long seconds they embraced, Rana sobbing like a child, before Mackendrick released her, coaxing her with gentle whispers to rejoin Bennett. She nodded and stumbled across the chamber. Bennett pulled her to him, holding her as they watched with a sense of awe and disbelief.

Mackendrick took his place between the two aliens.

“First,” the Ahloi said, “you will be touched… granted a glimpse of the way. You will make your decision, and if you wish salvation, then the ceremony will commence.”

Mackendrick raised his head. He seemed a small figure, reduced by age and illness. He stared back at Bennett, Ten Lee and his daughter, something proud and at the same time apprehensive in his eyes.

“I’m ready,” he said at last.

The alien reached out, spanned Mackendrick’s head with its long fingers, and Mackendrick staggered but remained upright. The alien lowered its long head and whispered to him. Mackendrick raised his face to the alien and spoke, then seated himself on the central stone.

The Ancient turned towards Bennett, Rana and Ten Lee. “Mackendrick has perceived the way, and wishes to join us.”

At once, the Ahloi stationed around the chamber moved forward, causing great disorienting shadows to fly and flap around them. They surrounded Mackendrick in an orderly yet frightening melee, a ritual Bennett found dreadful in its similarity to nothing in his experience. It was as if the aliens were devouring the human, taking something from him instead of giving. For long minutes they reached out with attenuated arms and caressed Mackendrick with long fluttering fingers, obscuring him from sight. Bennett was aware of a charge in the atmosphere of the chamber, as if, truly, the miraculous was being performed.

Then the Ahloi backed off, resumed their silent stations around the chamber, and the Mackendrick seated on the stone seemed like a man transformed. His face glowed, Bennett thought, though it might only have been an effect of the torchlight, and his posture was that of a man years younger, no longer bent with age and pain.

He stood and walked to Bennett and Rana. He embraced his daughter, touched Bennett’s arm in a wordless communication of his joy and transformation.