Day 134 - Babel - Chapter 30 (1734 words)

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BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 30

George could not sleep, not for very long at any rate, under the ship that hovered impassively in the air above the mountain top. He had been on Motukorea for six days now and while they were undetected (as far as they knew), unmolested and largely unseen from the shore of Auckland or any of the islands nearby, he still could not achieve any rest or relaxation in proximity to it.

“Keep your friends close, your enemies closer.” That had been Barbara's mantra this whole week long that they were here, and she was thriving in the shadow of the alien ship. From fear and hopelessness she had turned one hundred and eighty degrees to a zealous and driven woman with a heroine complex. She had resisted coming to Motukorea at first, but when they picked up the man they would later learn was named Victor, or so he said, they had few other options. Landfall on the main shore would deliver them to the Babel or whatever they were now, and the other islands were too big or too far away, whereas this one he knew would be within reach, least likely to be looted and would have a liveable place to stay.

It was a forgotten place, it was something people passed without seeing on the way to other islands and as a conservation hideaway it was stocked and looked after, but not worth travelling to and looting, to ninety nine percent of the population this was an empty rock sticking up out of the harbour. In the panic of the moment they got in the boat, headed here as fast as they could praying that the fuel they had in the tank would last.

Then Victor woke up and the balance of everything shifted from passively hiding and trying to understand, to aggressively planning the demise of the alien invaders. How did that insanity start again? George had his world turned upside down plenty of times in the last few years, the Babel, the Village, the zombification of the Babel, the bizarre bridge explosion, the bomb, the island escape and now? Now he was part of Team Victor and they plotted an assault on the Alien Saucer.

None of this sat well with him at all, he saw something in Victor he did not like and he could not put his finger on it. He suspected the man had been driven insane by … well god only knew what the man had been through and he never answered their questions directly, he would counter them with a question of his own. He was intense, brooding and far to quick to react to any situation. His eyes darted around the room on a mission of their own and George was certain that Victor was talking to himself, or a voice in his head. There had been no specific instance that made him think that, just a few times when he would blurt out something, something that could have been an answer to a question that was not asked out loud. He would cover it by providing context, but it looked like that to George, that he was providing context and covering up the real reason why he had opened his mouth.

Barbara took comfort in Victor's strength and she fell under his leadership instantly, his forceful manner and the purposeful nature of everything he said and did gave her something to anchor herself to. George and Barbara went back a way, but he was not responsible for her, and he could easily justify any reason to just leave them in each other's company. Yet he could not just leave her with Victor, even if he really wanted to because there was only one way off the island, and if he took the boat then they would be stranded. He did not want to broach the subject of splitting up, Victor seemed to unstable and he was not sure that he would survive a conversation with him where he voiced any fear or concern that undermined Victor's cause.

He had come to them on the shock-wave of a bomb, thrown by the explosion backwards into the harbour and into their lives. With a few days to think it over George concluded that it was likely no coincidence that Victor was at the centre of an explosion only a day or so after a similar set of explosions killed what must have been dozens, potentially hundreds of Babel on the Harbour Bridge. George asked him about it, but the answer had started vague, avoiding the conclusion that George had already reached and that eluded Barbara completely. Then as the discussion wore on and Barbara voiced sympathy for the innocent dead, George could see the tone and tempo of Victor's speech change and align itself with their expectations.

He did not know it, not for certain, but he thought that Victor was the maniac that set the charges on the bridge. It made sense, more sense than Victor's explanation had done about the Aliens being behind it. Why? Why would they call people onto the bridge only to detonate it, killing dozens if not hundreds of people? Why then stop them from walking off the edge and into the sea? Why try and reroute them to the city again.

Victor's eyes took on the sharp edge that a cornered animal would get, the wildly desperate and shrewd narrowing that flickered from side to side, sweeping like radar for anything to it's advantage. George dismissed his line of questions right then and there, not caring how it looked or sounded to suddenly back pedal away from his thoughts. He knew that there was more to it, that must have been why Victor was there on the dock when the bomb went off, it must have been his, did they know that? The Babel? The Aliens, whoever or whatever they were?

Victor was fixated on the ship, he had plans to get to the Naval base and float one of the Frigates out here to the Gulf and let it's missiles fly at the gigantic bulk just sitting there an easy target. He had told them both how slow and ungainly they were when arriving, how long it had taken to heave into view, to position itself where it was then the hours of righting itself over and over again to get it in the right spot. He and Barbara drew up a plan, on the floorboards of one of the rooms, a map of the harbour, not to perfect scale, but one that they hoped would allow them to calculate line of sight from the ship to the base. Then the amount of time it would take the frigate to position itself for firing and lining up the shot.

George was afraid to pose too many problems, ask to many difficult questions that may sink the plan. He thought that maybe the best thing to do would be to wait his time, then when they hit land or near enough to it, that he could jump overboard and swim for shore. Victor did not have his guns, he had an armoury back in the city and he freely admitted to taking the shots that killed the first few 'aliens' off the shuttle craft. They had looked human enough to George, but not to Victor and Barbara, they were as good as body snatchers to them now. Victor had almost managed to convince Barbara that the Babel were no longer Human themselves. They were designated the 'Enemy' and the enemy had to be defeated.

Victor had found a fuel cannister in the boat shed near the jetty where the DOC boats would moor, and he figured they had enough for some scouting trip over to Waiheke, perhaps find some supplies there and maybe even more fuel and weapons. Barbara was keen on foraging on the big island too, but for more down to earth reasons, there had to wine there in some of the vineyards. There was no sign of life on Waiheke, they assumed it was abandoned or a problem for the Aliens.

Victor had a theory that they were allergic to water, they could not communicate or control people easily when water was interfering or blocking their signals. It sounded crazy to George, and before the Babel he would have written this off as tin-foil-hat conspiracy territory, but now it made as much sense as anything else anyone had to say about the new way the world worked. Victor had no evidence but he said that there was proof, and he made a list of examples that proved nothing, but satisfied him and his one disciple so George said nothing.

The Babel did not come out on the wharves to pursue them, as if they could not or would not be able to function on the thin strips of tarmac merely feet from the sea. Then they had trouble connecting to the Babel that fell to the sea, the ones on the bridge were far enough away from the surface that they could compensate, but the ones in the water, they lost control and drowned.

George did not point out how little sense this made, after all it was Victor's position that the Aliens had blown up the bridge, dropping the Babel in the water in the first place, but again he bid his time and waited for the chance to jump ship at the earliest time he could manage. Maybe the foraging trip to Waiheke would provide that chance. There would be boats there, there would have to be plenty of private moorings and boathouses on the coastal properties and private bays. They had binoculars from the ranger's hut and in the last three days and nights they had seen no one, and Victor was convinced that if they stayed close to the water's surface they would be invisible to the Alien overlords, as he started calling them.

George was not convinced. He was not even sure there were aliens in the ships, so far they had seen nothing and there was no clue of any extraterrestrial beings presence, he was beginning to think the ships were operated remotely. If Victor was an example of a typical local reception to this kind of First Contact, perhaps no one could blame them for that.