Tim Lebbon: Coldbrook

It’s not like that , Bill would say, and Jonah would nod because he knew his new friend was right. But at night, lying alone in bed in a nearby hotel and nursing the early insomnia that would grow to haunt him, he couldn’t convince himself that possibilities were not endless.

Jonah was no romantic. He was no crazed Ahab, seeking the impossible in an ocean of infinities. But his long-dead wife was still with him in a way that his atheistic heart had never dreamed possible.

He sighed and sat up. If he couldn’t sleep, he might as well have another drink. He picked up the bottle and poured, and it took a few seconds for him to register that the soft chiming came from his bedside phone, not the glass.

‘What?’ he snapped, snatching up the receiver. He fumbled and dropped it, having to lean over and retrieve it from the floor. His vision swam. Damn it, he was more drunk that he thought. ‘Yes?’ he asked again, holding it to his ear.

‘-coming through, and it’s the biggest yet. I wasn’t going to call you, didn’t want to cry wolf, but. .’

‘Holly?’

‘Jonah, did I wake you?’

‘Yes,’ he said, trying to focus. He placed his tumbler on the table and stood, leaning against his bookcase. ‘What’s coming through?’

‘Sorry. I wanted you to sleep. .’ Holly trailed off, but in the background Jonah heard activity in Control. Someone shouted something — Melinda, he thought — her voice excited and loud. Someone else spoke in the distance, his voice calmer and more troubled.

‘Holly, what’s going on?’

‘-eradicator is fine, fully charged,’ Holly said, though it wasn’t to him.

‘But it should have fried it a couple of seconds ago,’ a male voice said. It sounded like Alex, the guards’ captain.

‘Holly?’ Jonah said.

‘It doesn’t fry things,’ Holly said, and Jonah smiled because she was so defensive of her work. ‘Melinda, can you see-?’

‘Biped,’ Melinda said, her voice high and shrill.

Biped , Jonah thought. Jesus Christ, a human might be coming through, and she’d held back calling him because she wanted him to bastard sleep ?

‘Holly!’ he shouted, and he heard fumbling as she brought the phone to her ear again.

‘Jonah, it’s okay, everything’s fine. Can’t make it out yet, it’s dark, moving strangely, some sort of ape, I think, and-’

‘That’s no fucking ape!’ another guard said.

‘-and it’s almost at containment. Melinda’s trying to wave it back, doesn’t want it eradicated because-’

‘Trying to wave it back how? Just how close is she to the breach?’

‘She’s. . it’s all under control, Jonah. But you might want to get here.’

‘Apes don’t walk like that!’ the same voice shouted.

‘Holly, how is it walking?’ There was a thud as the phone was placed on a desk, then the unmistakable rattle of a keyboard being worked. ‘ Holly ? Do you need to sound the alarm?’ But she did not reply.

‘Melinda, not so close!’ Holly called. And then quieter, to someone standing close by: ‘Yeah, look, it’s okay, fully charged and operational.’

‘Then why hasn’t it fried it?’

‘I told you, it doesn’t-’

‘Positions!’ Alex shouted, and Jonah heard a metallic click. Gun being cocked?

‘Holly?’

A rattle, then Holly’s excited breathing. ‘It’s fine, Jonah. Melinda’s waving it back. I think it sees her! I think it understands!’

‘You should have called me! I’m coming to Control now.’

‘Okay, but it’s fine, Jonah.’

In the background, running feet and more excited chatter.

‘You’ll have to contain it!’ Jonah said. There was no answer, because Holly had put the receiver down again. And as he hung up on his end, he wondered why he’d felt the need to say that. The eradicator would kill any living thing that attempted to ford the breach. The robotic sample pods within the containment field would gather it. There was nothing to contain.

Outside, Jonah clicked his door shut and hurried along the corridor, joints aching. He was angry at Holly for not calling him but it was mixed with a flush of excitement. Biped , Melinda had said, and that implied so much. For three days he’d been monitoring the samples collected and classified by Melinda, and most of them had been, if not completely familiar, then at least recognisable. And for those three days he had been wondering, How similar is that Earth to our own? He’d seen the same look in everyone’s eyes at some point, the same question: Is there anything like us? It was an idea both terrifying and thrilling, and it was the one answer he sought before he’d even consider authorising extraction of any of the samples.

After that, of course, would come the preparations to send someone through.

He hurried along the corridor curved around the central core, his footsteps echoing. There were no other sounds. Most staff were sleeping right now, those of them who weren’t were down in Control. He passed the side corridor that housed Vic’s room and paused, wondering if he should wake him. Probably. But he moved past and entered the staircase instead. Holly had probably called Vic already, and Jonah wanted to reach Control as quickly as possible.

At the bottom of the stairwell he accessed a security door, leaning his chin on the eye-scanner rest. The door hissed as it opened and the air quality suddenly felt different.

More loaded.

He paused inside the door and looked along the hallway. It was twenty yards long, and for the final five yards one wall was made of solid glass, offering a panoramic view of Control’s curved, terraced layout and the breach floor below. The light flickering at that window was the dancing electric blue of the eradicator.

As Jonah’s heart skipped a beat, Coldbrook’s main alarm began to sound.

Holly felt as if she were being watched. It was probably the phone she hadn’t hung up again, with Jonah on the other end. And even though she knew he’d be on his way by now, still the feeling remained until she hit the alarm button. But by then everything had gone wrong.

The thing stood on their side of the breach, within the containment field and the influence of the eradicator, but still standing as well. Maybe it’s dead and just won’t fall down , Holly thought, but she could see movement in its limbs, and its lank hair swayed as it swung its downturned head a few degrees in either direction. It was naked, its exposed skin dark and cracked. Clumps of hair clung to its body and its genitals, though shrivelled, were obviously a man’s.

When it had first come through, Satpal — standing close to Holly now, eyes wide in wonder — had called it humanoid.

‘No,’ Melinda had said, ‘it’s human .’

But there was something so very wrong with that assessment.

As the intermittent wail of the alarm filled Control, Holly’s hand hovered over the manual eradicator controls which she’d already turned to full charge. Enough to kill a rhino five times over. One more time , she thought and she pressed the round red button. The breach flashed as the eradicator discharged. Sparking blue light wormed through the thing’s hair and illuminated the deep dry cracks in its skin, a jigsaw of wounds and fractures. It should be dead, if not from the eradicator then-

Because of those wounds .

‘Charge it again!’ Alex shouted, gun aimed.

‘That was full charge,’ Holly said, and Melinda turned to her, wide-eyed. Full? her look said. Holly nodded, then looked back at the intruder. The eradicator was designed to cease brain activity and negate electromagnetic function, halting hearts, freezing muscles, shifting a thing from living to dead in a matter of seconds.