Chapter Two – Grievous Ordeal
“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind.”
Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 1940.
Gideon became aware that he was staring at a ceiling. Then he realised he had no-idea where he was. The last thing he remembered was a speech by Benson who had slipped him a drug in his coffee. How weird was that? Well it was all over now. No doubt Benson had been arrested and Gideon was home in bed, the Haven Executive Office a bad memory. But he did not remember a concrete ceiling at home.
He looked down – he could move his eyes but could barely stir his head – and realised that he was in some sort of capsule, with a mask over his mouth and a tube down his throat. The tube was, in turn, attached to a fixture on the side of the capsule. More tubes were attached to his arm, and electrodes taped to his chest and head. Hospital then. When did hospitals have concrete ceilings and why was this sort of treatment thought necessary for a case of drugging? Unless.. but how could Benson have gotten a drugged person through the launch administration people – a completely separate group from the executive office?
The mask and tube had become uncomfortable. Gideon found that he could move his arms and, with considerable effort he pushed the mask up, over his face. The breathing tube followed. He took several relieved breaths then let the tube and mask drop over the side of his capsule. He pulled the tubes and electrodes from his body. There, that should bring the nurses. No-one came. With considerable difficulty, he swung his legs over the side of the capsule and levered himself upright – to find that he was in a parking garage or, to be strictly accurate, in a space that reminded him strongly of a parking garage. It had the same blank concrete walls and columns, floor and ceiling. No decoration at all. Unlike a parking garage, however, there did not seem to be a way for cars to get in and out, just a door at one end.
He looked around. There were five other capsules and, to judge from the movement, people were struggling to get out of all of them. Gideon was one of the first up. To his left was a man with straggly red hair and beard and a fiercesome number of tattoos on the bits of the skin Gideon could see. He was also about the about the size and shape of a small gorilla. Someone to be wary of. To his right was a man with long, dark hair, a spade beard and the look of an all-in wrestler. He managed to stand and fixed the reserve sergeant with his beady eyes.
“You the shit in charge of this fuck-up,” he growled.
Charming!
“Don’t think anyone’s in charge,” said Gideon, grabbing the side of his crib for support. He did not think this was the time to mention Dr Benson’s speech and comment about ‘his team’. He became aware that he was wearing socks but no shoes. What happened to his shoes? For that matter, what had happened to his clothes. They were all wearing one-piece technician overalls.
“Where the fuck are we?” said the red-haired man.
Gideon noticed a tall figure standing in the shade of a pillar, at the far end of concrete space.
“You beside the pillar,” he called, pointing. “You know what’s going on?”
The figure took two paces forward, emerging from the shadow. It was humanoid in basic form with two hands, two legs and a head and dressed in a blue, luminous suit, but his face was a wrinkled ellipse, like the cross section of a gridiron football, with two dark eyes that never blinked, a thin mouth and a vast, curved prominence of a nose. The creature towered over the humans and was considerably broader.
“What the fuck is that,” said the charmer.
“Whatever it is, it ain’t human,” said the redhaired man.
“What’s going on, honeys?” said a female voice. Gideon turned to see an Asian female who might politely be called chunky emerging from her capsule. Beside her was a small dark man who chose not to say anything. As Gideon later discovered, he rarely said anything at all.
“Hey, shithead,” called the charmer. “Call the boss down here to tell us what’s happening?”
The creature said nothing.
“I’m talking to you!”
This also produced zero result.
“I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore, honeys?” said the female.
Gideon had to agree. The capsules they had been in had Haven Executive Office stencilled in large letters on the side, as well as a ‘Keep upright at all times’ supplemented with an arrow that pointed in the right direction. They had been offloaded on arrival and brought to this place, wherever it was. He then noticed another, small capsule with COMMS stencilled on the side, behind his own pod. He flipped open the top of this to find that it contained a few items of equipment which Gideon couldn’t identify plus a notice headed “Confiscation”.
The notice was a form that had been filled in by what amounted to an inspection officer, who must have gone through the box before it was loaded aboard the space ship. The form included a series of small boxes with a one line label beside each. The box labelled “dangerous implements” was ticked and beside that was written “three rifles”. Another box for dangerous goods was ticked with “30 boxes of ammunition” written beside it. At the bottom of the form in a space marked comments, the same official had written “incident referred to police for investigation”.
“So much for Benson’s carefully-planned fight back,” thought Gideon, but at least it confirmed the director’s story and what he had suspected. “We’re in Haven,” he said to the others, loudly.
“What?” said the red haired man. “You don’t buy that load of crap that Benson-dude handed us, do you?”
“Haven? You’re shitting me,” said the Asian girl. “I was thinking about moving to another city and now I’m on a different planet?”
“I’ve had enough of this,” said the wrestler-type and he marched over to the tall creature. Although the wrestler type was a tall man he was full head shorter than the creature, which tilted its head to look at him. As that was the only movement the creature had made since emerging from the pillar, Gideon suspected that it was mechanical, or perhaps bio-mechanical, rather than flesh and blood.
“Listen, shit-head, call your head guy down here now.”
No result.
Charmer grabbed the creature’s clothes in both hands and hauled. The cloth moved a little, the creature did not.
“Fuck, we’ve got rights. Get your guy down here.”
By then Gideon had recovered enough to notice more of his surroundings including a distant, rhythmic clanging sound, as if a bell was being hit, every few seconds by a heavy mallet. Gideon had watched the news reports from Haven in the early days, before the place had become a settlement dedicated to political correctness, and he realised where they might be.
“We’re in that Alien structure on Haven. We’re inside it.”
“WHAT?” said the red-haired man. “You mean that big place they found? The one with the aliens inside who didn’t want to know us.”
“At a guess. Pretty sure there’s nothing like this in Haven City,” said Gideon, indicating his surroundings. “All their large areas have windows, and I think someone’s knocking on the structure front door.”
“Yeah, how do you know that?”
“Just listen to the sound? Can’t you hear it?”
“Oh yeah,” said the red-haired man after a pause. “Couldn’t hear over Boothie shouting.”
Boothie, for Boothroyd, had indeed been screaming obscenities at the android for precisely no result.
“So, what’re we going to do, honey,” said the Asian woman. Her name was Honey because she called everyone honey.
“Well, when Boothie stops shouting at our friendly neighbourhood android,” said Gideon, “I’ll try.”
“Hey, Boothfuck,” yelled the red-haired man. “Let this guy have a go.”
Boothroyd looked around and snarled but stopped shouting. He pushed the creature, hard. It did not move.
Gideon walked up to the android, still a little unsteady. The creature moved its head slightly to look at him.
“We know we’re in the big structure we have seen, but we don’t know what we are doing here. We are here against our will. We also know that someone is hitting the entrance door - panel. Can we talk to the person in charge please?”
The android stared at Gideon with its deep, dark eyes for what seemed an age then abruptly stood to one side and held out a hand, fingers extended, towards the room’s one door. Gideon walked towards it, android following.
“Don’t forget us,” yelled the red-haired man.
“I won’t,” Gideon called over his shoulder.
Beyond the door was another corridor then a lift which took him up to the receiving room of ‘The Witches’, as Gideon promptly dubbed them.
They never thought of any name other than The Witches. They had the same long, pointed faces and very prominent, beaky nose of the android and so resembled the popular idea of witches. Unlike that popular image, however, they wore bright red, flowing robes akin to an Indian sari with a gold trim and a hood. When Gideon entered the reception room and saw them for the first time they were seated on high backed, ornate chairs on a dais, as if they were three queens receiving the commoner earthman, an impression reinforced by the room’s rich, red carpeting, small trees in gigantic pots of earth at either end of the dais and walls lined with an impressive number of portraits of witches all in slightly different poses. All he could see of the creatures was their faces and, when he first saw them, they all had their eyes shut and appeared to be humming.
Gideon stood there for a few moments waiting for them to acknowledge his existence and then coughed discreetly. Three pairs of eyes snapped open to stare at the impertinent human.
“You are the leader of the group below?” said the middle witch. She spoke with a slight English accent.
“I cannot be called a leader, as I only just met the others.”
“We read the messages from the leader of the first party that referred to you and the others as the soldier party.”
“I don’t know anything about a first party. I am a soldier of a sort,” said Gideon. “But I only just met the others.”
“You are a soldier?”
“Yes, ma’am, of a sort.”
“Why have your people not defended us?”
“Um, excuse me - we were supposed to defend you?”
“We need protection from them. Look!”
With a slight movement of one shoulder the witch indicated the back wall. Gideon turned around to see the wall dissolve into a 3-D image of hominid creatures somewhat shorter and slighter than Gideon working a medieval-style battering ram - a tree trunk slung by ropes from a primitive wooden frame with solid wood wheels. Their skin was pale and the heads had the same basic structure of that of a human, with two eyes, a nose and mouth but their features were coarse and they had no hair or eyebrows. The creatures wore leather pants and jackets without arms or buttons, giving them a passing resemblance to off-duty bikers, as well as a strip of black cloth tied around the necks. Another of these creatures, dressed in a similar fashion but with a strip of red cloth around his neck and waving a sword sat on one of the cross bars of the battering ram, encouraging the others, or so Gideon supposed. The repeated thumping of this ram, one end sharpened, was the rhythmic knocking he had heard down in the parking-garage room. The target was the metal panel the first scientist-explorers had knocked on when trying to communicate with the inhabitants of the structure.
“These must be the Midis Benson was talking about,” thought Gideon. Individually they did not look formidable.
“Can you show me more? What is behind the battering ram?”
“What did you call it?”
“A battering ram. It’s very primitive.”
The picture shifted to the human-made road beside the structure with the tourist centre and a small car park on the other side of the road. Gideon had seen pictures of the structure, the tourist centre and its surroundings, as had almost everyone on earth, but this view included Midis. Besides the group working the ram, there were three parties of similar size that he could see, playing a game involving dice. The relief crews, Gideon surmised. Spears, shields and conical helmets were stacked by each group. Taller Midis with swords by their sides and red cloths around their necks sat separately, watching the battering ram action. On the other side of the visitor’s centre more Midis were working on what looked like catapults. This military force had apparently set up camp in the visitor’s centre with the overflow being housed in makeshift tents and lean-tos between the centre and a grove of trees.
“Who are these creatures? Do you know?”
“They have come from another planet and have been bred to attack us,” the middle witch said.
“But when humans, my people, first came here,” said Gideon, “there was no sign of these creatures.”
“We think they have been bred in secret on this planet by our bitter enemy. He has bred them and then let them loose. Now they are here.”
“Is that why you’re in this place? Is it built for defence against attacks by these creatures?”
“This is our home, built to sustain us and not for ‘defence’, as you say. We have long lost all arts of violence. We live in peace. Our enemy, who wants to stop our important work, has also forgotten all the arts of violence, but he has copied enough of these primitive creatures you see to overcome your colony and make this battering ram as you call it.”
“This enemy of yours also doesn’t know anything about violence but knows enough about everything else to breed these creatures,” said Gideon, puzzled, “but those creatures only know enough to build a battering ram?”
“We invited your people to settle here because you are advanced but have not lost the arts of violence,” said the middle witch. “We thought you would be violent when our enemy came, and we would be left in peace.”
“You invited Earth people here so that they would provide military security for your home?”
“Military security…. Yes, that’s what we wanted from the humans.”
“But you didn’t tell us that. You didn’t tell us anything. Just to settle here and leave you alone.”
“We thought if humans came here they would naturally protect themselves. If we started speaking then we would be faced with endless questions about the universe and its physical laws, as well as other matters in which we have no interest.”
“After reading the messages generated by the first group to come in your ship we are glad we kept silent,” said the witch on Gideon’s right. It was the first time, either of the other two had spoken. “The messages talked about opening a dialog on the environment. What do we care about the environment? We don’t go outside.”
“There was talk of gender equality,” said the Witch on the left. The three witches looked at one another. “What use is gender equality to us? We only have one gender.”
Gideon almost laughed over that.
“We do not want to talk to humans if they are going to lecture us about these things,” said the middle witch. “We want to concentrate on our real work here. The reason why we set up this community.”
“Can I ask what is the real work you do here?”
“We meditate on the structure of space-time itself.. we intend to become beings of pure energy imprinted on the structure of space time and free to roam the galaxy.”
“I see,” said Gideon, although he didn’t. He had taken some physics courses and was pretty sure that human scientists didn’t know anything about imprinting themselves on space time. However, that was an issue for the future.
“If you want military protection then you can just ask for it,” he said aloud. “Let me talk to the governments on earth and they will send soldiers who will have more firepower – more violence - in one weapon, than the whole group out there. Your troubles will end.”
Gideon knew it would be far more difficult than that. His message would be unpalatable to various groups, notably those that controlled the Haven Executive Office. Academics and the HEO had constructed an image of the aliens and a purpose for the community which had been dogma for decades. All that was not about to be overturned by a few words from a reserve quartermaster sergeant. Then there was the problem of earth’s governments sending soldiers to fight on another planet with little confirmed information on the political situation which had caused the Midis to pound on The Witches’ front door. Admittedly he could parade The Witches, and the Midis had attacked and killed humans, if the HEO could be made to drop its passivist principles long enough to admit this. But decisions would not be made overnight and the teams still had to be assembled and sent through the gateway. It would take days, at least, assuming that the United Nations did not insist on sending a fact-finding mission first.
“You cannot call back to your planet, or go back there,” said the middle witch, interrupting Gideon’s train of thought.
“What? Why not?”
“Because the gate has been shut. We put both ends in place, now not even we can access or use it. The gate is shut.”
“These powerful enemies of yours have shut the gate, against your will? How could they do that? It’s your gate.”
“They have interfered with its control systems. We can’t work out what has been done. Fixing it may take months.”
“You guys got hacked?”
“Hacked?”
“An earth term for another party shutting you out of your own control system. You’re working on regaining control?”
“We will, but that noise makes concentrating difficult. It is very distracting. We want it to stop.”
“It would be distracting – just to be clear, nothing can come from earth and nothing can return to earth from here?”
“For now, no,” said the left hand witch.
“And this first group of humans you speak of – the ones that came through in the same ship as us but left us behind, where did they get to?”
“We cannot track individual groups, but as far as we know they went to Haven City, and their messages spoke of a new attempt to open negotiations,” said the middle witch. “When they went, we had our manual androids,” she indicated the android that had come in with him, “go to your rocket ship place and remove the pods with the soldier team. The negotiating team did not want to wake the soldier team. They sent messages back to your planet saying it was no solution, and that no-one had asked for soldiers. But we decided we needed the soldier team. We needed protection.”
“I see. You had the pods brought here, then these creatures came and started thumping on the side of your home with this ram?”
“Yes.”
“We decided to wake you up and speak to you directly,” said the right hand, non-environmentalist witch. “We want the noise to stop and these creatures to go away.”
The others nodded assent.
“Me to stop them?” said Gideon and he pointed at the image which had reverted back to the battering ram and its crew. When he raised his arm, even though he was pointing in the opposite direction, the witch trio reared back in their chairs as if he was about to strike them. Gideon noticed this, lowered his hand and put both hand in his pockets. “Sorry, pointing upsets you?”
The trio visibly relaxed.
“Don’t raise arms,” said the middle witch. “It is a primal gesture for us. We know nothing of violence but raising arms to us indicates aggression.”
“Okay – anyway, if you want to stop this ram, do you have access to your roof?”
“Yes, of course,” said the right-hand witch. “We can go outside we just have no need to. The environment is messy and full of sharp things and little creatures that buzz.”
“Then I may be able to stop this ram, but it’ll mean hurting and even killing a few of the creatures.”
“These are our enemies,” said the middle witch. “We would not hurt them but they are attacking us. If you have to hurt and kill to make them go away, then that is what must be done.”
“How can you do it?” said the right-hand witch. “Can you attack the ram’s operating system?”
“Hack it? No, it’s way too primitive for that. I was thinking more along the lines of whether you had anything heavy I can drop from the roof?”