Helix Wars by Eric Brown Page A

drone of insects. The sound that had drawn him from sleep, however, was neither that of birds nor of insects.
    He looked to his left, and through a stand of frond trees saw the distant wall of a building, and an archway set into it. Great double doors were in the process of being hauled open, and through the entrance stepped a procession of Phandrans.
    Perhaps two dozen slight, robed aliens passed from the castle and crossed the garden. As he watched, they parted, a dozen to each side, and formed what he took to be a guard of honour.
    He looked through the arch, and watched as two figures appeared and walked sedately through the honour guard. One was an old man, garbed in a long green robe, hunched over and walking with the aid of a staff, his silver hair threadbare. Beside him was a young girl, perhaps twelve years old, in a red robe. She was slight and elfin-pretty, her face fine-boned as if crafted from delicate china. What struck him most, though, were her cobalt blue eyes, bright and piercing.
    Only then did he become aware of other Phandrans on the periphery of the clearing. There were around twenty of these shy, elusive creatures, hiding behind the trees and peeking out at... not him, he realised... but at the advancing duo, the ancient man and the girl-child. It was as if the watchers were awed, entranced.
    He recalled, with a stab of sadness, what Abi had told him before the crash-landing: that Phandrans lived on average for only twenty New Earth years, and he realised with incredulity that, for all the disparity of their apparent ages, the girl could not be that much younger than the old man.
    The pair stopped at the foot of the bed and stared at him without expression. He recalled something else that Abi had told him – that the Phandrans were empathetic. He wondered if they were able to read his alien thoughts.
    At length the pair turned their gaze from him and spoke together in hushed tones, their breath-like words hardly reaching him.
    Minutes elapsed before they moved again. The old man turned and hobbled slowly from the garden, taking the honour guard with him. At the door he turned and called out, and as if by magic the circumspect watchers slipped from their hiding places behind the trees and drained in silence from the garden.
    Within a minute, when the timber door had closed finally, Ellis and the girl were quite alone.
    She approached the side of the bed, drew up a high stool fashioned from polished wood, and seated herself with grace, carefully drawing the folds of her robe around her.
    She looked upon him in silence, and Ellis was struck by her ethereal, other-worldly air. More than any of the others, she made him think of an angel.
    She sat with her slim hands enfolded together in her lap, the slightest smile on her alien lips.
    He said, “I would like to thank you, your people, for what you have done for me. I know you can’t understand my words, but perhaps you can... can somehow sense my gratitude.”
    The girl appeared deep in thought, staring down at her folded hands. Then she looked up at him.
    “We helped you because we are a civilised race, and...” She relapsed into thought again. “...and we could do nothing but help a fellow sentient.”
    He smiled, then laughed aloud in amazement. Her words were the softest, slightest emanations of sound imaginable.
    “You speak my language!”
    Her facial expression did not react as a human’s would; she seemed impassive, dwelling in some inner, cerebral realm. In his current frame of mind, it gave her the calm piety of a saint.
    She digested his words, considered them, and at length made her response.
    “Some of my people, numbering only in our hundreds, were schooled by the Elders who were schooled by the Elders who tended Olembe. From him we learned your language, and much more. We learned of humans, of the Peacekeepers. We have much for which to be grateful to Olembe.”
    He wanted to reach out and take her hand. “The story is still told, on