DAY 26

 

 

Another slow, tedious day of even more ghastly waiting.

Until —

“That’s fucking it,” said Tonii. “We’re walking!”

Hugo didn’t attempt to argue.

They took their body armour off and spent an hour flexing and stretching. Then they turned the food pouches into makeshift haversacks and loaded up as much of the suits’ food and water supply as possible. They were all heavily armed, but they had no protection against armoured predators, or against the acid rain.

They walked. And walked.

The jungle was less dense here; but it was raining leaves from the canopy. A whirlwind of purple leaves blocked their vision and slapped viciously against their faces and bodies, leaving them bruised and bleeding. But they carried on walking.

An Exploding-Tree exploded fifty metres away from them. By this time they were so jaded and fed up they didn’t even break step. Hugo noticed, with some interest, that the Exploding-Tree had managed to burst through into the canopy. Did the trees commute between ground and canopy? Was that the reason for the exploding?

And on they walked.

David Go feared the acid rain, even though he knew they were on the second day of a rain-every-ten-days weather cycle. He was fed up, but didn’t wish to grumble, because he was always being told he grumbled too much.

Tonii imagined how he would look if the rain fell. His skin would peel, his eyes would fall out, he would die ugly, and in pain. It was not what he wanted for himself. He missed his armour badly.

Mary Beebe wished William was here, so she could criticise him, to take her mind off this godawful fucking walk.

Mia admired Hugo for his resourcefulness in killing Ben Kirkham. Who would have thought that tubby, funny little man had it in him!

And Hugo — Hugo was worried about Clementine.

Worried — and puzzled, and indeed, intrigued by her too. She was a quietly spoken, decisive, courteous warrior. But was that all there was to her? Did she have hidden depths? Hobbies?

Clementine was immensely calm, and capable and competent, in a way that Hugo admired, and had a style and a swagger that he adored. He himself was brilliant, analytical, insightful, arguably a genius. But never capable or competent, except in purely scientific matters. And never calm. And he never ever, except in his academic writings, swaggered.

Yes, he admired her very much indeed.

Hugo wondered if she’d managed to reach the AmRover yet.

He wondered if she was in any peril.

He wondered if a DR had found her and killed her; or if a Godzilla had stomped her; or if she’d been overpowered by Basilisks; or carried off by Rocs; blown up by an Exploding-Tree; or buried alive in a mountain of Wiggly-Worms.

And he also wondered, idly, irresponsibly, and with mischievous glee, if one day, she might ever consider fucking a geek such as himself.

But no! Surely —

It began to drizzle.

Mia felt it first — a scalding pain on her shoulder. Then the drizzle thickened and they were all jumping and hopping, stung by the painful rain.

Hugo looked up at the dark stormclouds abruptly gathering. “Monsoon,” he predicted, sadly.

“But the rains aren’t due for —”

“It’s fucking raining! It’s the weather!”

“But —”

“Let’s walk back to the suits?”

“No chance.”

“Then?”

“We die, in agony, flesh peeling?” suggested David Go.

“Oh fuck,” said Mia, and there was panic in her voice.

“What do we do?” Mary asked Tonii.

“I — don’t know,” he muttered.

“You’re a Soldier! You must have some idea!”

“Find shelter? Under a tree?” said Tonii, pathetically.

“I think I may have the glimmerings of a notion,” said Hugo.

Mia let out a wail of utter fear.

David Go closed his eyes and counted his blessings. It didn’t take long. His eyes flicked open again instantly.

Mary conjured up a memory of William; she wanted that to be the last thing she ever saw.

“I said,” Hugo repeated impatiently, “I have an idea.”

“What?” said Tonii.

“What?”

“You do?” said Mary, with relief.

“What is it?”

“This,” said Hugo. He took out his plasma gun. “Let’s dig a hole.”

Clementine knew she was close, and the knowledge filled her with a savage exhilaration.

She had crawled, inch by inch, for almost two days, with a broken spine. Her guess was that the landmine had been seeded randomly by a DR, or a Draven. She was a fool not to have considered that possibility. Though it still seemed bizarre to her — it was a big planet, how could she have been so damned unlucky?

After a while she’d stopped crawling, and had given up, and had lain unconscious for some hours, and the Flesh-Webs had attempted to envelop her. But her suit had self-sealed, healing serums were pumped through her veins and arteries, and then she woke up again and through sheer will-power she kept herself conscious. Occasionally, she subvoced a Mayday call, but she was out of radio range now.

But she kept her nerve and carried on dragging herself towards the AmRover. She was crawling face-down, gripping the earth with her gauntleted fingertips, and pulling herself forward in a complex slithering motion that covered the ground with remarkable speed, at a terrible cost to herself.

Only pride and hate and a desire for revenge kept her moving.

“One, two, three, fire.” At Hugo’s cue, they opened the plasma guns to Full and blasted the ground. The blazing heat incinerated soil and carved a long trench into the ground.

“Now move.” They moved and blasted the ground from the other side. The aim was to create a triangular wedge in the ground that could be collapsed from the inside.

A streak of lightning shot across the sky.

“And more.”

Hailstones fell. The Flesh-Webs shuddered and closed up into black impermeable balls and steam arose from the ground where the hailstones hit. Hugo took a hail stone in the forehead. His eye stung and he could feel his own flesh burn.

“Fuck!”

“Let’s get in.”

“Too soon, we . . . !”

“Get in the fucking hole.”

Hugo, Mia, Mary and David scrambled into the hole, pulling down earth on to themselves. The ground was hot, it was burning them, but the acid rain was burning them too. Hugo scrabbled desperately at the earth, then suddenly they collapsed downwards deep into the hole and there was an earthslide and the soil closed around them and above them.

They were now trapped under the earth, dozens of feet below the surface, breathing air from their oxygen implants, with no certainty they would ever be able to get out again. But at least they were spared the acid rain.

“Well, that went almost according to plan,” said Hugo cheerfully.

“Swim?” said Saunders. Sorcha nodded.

And they each leaped from the escarpment and landed in the icy cold tarn below. Both still wore their body armour, but in the water the suits no longer seemed bulky and inhuman. And the exoskeletons allowed them to swim powerful strokes.

They dived deep under the surface and swam through shoals of Water-Beasts — water molecules in an organic lattice that blobbed like jellyfish from hither to thither. Saunders had seen remote robocam footage of these creatures but he’d never encountered them at first hand before.

Then they swam/clambered a path through the underwater roots of the Freshwater-Aldiss-Tree, and spotted some Digger-Crabs. An Octagon swam lazily passed them. Saunders realised the Aldiss-Tree was flowering underwater and subvoced some notes.

Sorcha spiralled elegantly in her black body armour, which was perfectly contoured around the swells of her body; diamond-hard, yet soft to the touch. The armour made giants of them both. But even though Sorcha was embedded in an exoskeleton nearly five inches thick, Saunders found her wonderfully sensual.

“Are you OK, Carl?” she asked.

“I’m fine.” He realised he’d stopped swimming, and was just floating free, staring at her. “Waxing inwardly lyrical again.”

“You do that, don’t you?”

“I do. Can I ask a question?”

“Ask away.”

“What do you think of the Gryphons?”

“They scare me.”

“Me too.”

“Can we enslave them?”

“Huh?”

“I said, can we enslave them?”

“And I say again, Huh? Why would we do that?”

“So they can fight for us. That was your plan, remember, a Gryphon army?”

“I was thinking more in terms of asking nicely.”

“How intelligent are they?”

“On a scale of what?”

“Humans are six, flame beasts are ten.”

“I’d say four, five. But I might be wrong.”

“They’re dangerous.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You saw what they did to the Sand-Rats.”

“They did nothing bad. Gave them a purpose in life. No, fuck that, I take your point. Any creature that can do that can — well, who knows what they can do.”

“Agreed. And that whole visual telepathy thing is spooky.”

“It’s worse: they’re evolving it.”

“Huh?”

“They’re evolving it.”

“Again, and I’m quoting you here, Professor, Huh?”

“I saw them wage a war. An unnecessary war. No land was at stake. Survival was not an issue. They just picked a fight with the two most dangerous predators on the planet and fucked them over. Just to prove they could. And as a way of honing their killing skills. This is how the visual telepathy evolved. Through war.”

“That’s cool.”

“But even so, they’re a gentle species. Generous too. I think of Isaac as a friend.”

“He’s just a fucking bird.”

“He’s more than that. He risked his life for me.” Saunders found himself strangely moved. “It’s a long time since I had a friend who would risk his life for me.” As soon as he subvoced it, he knew that was a lie.

He had never before had such a friend.

Clementine saw the Rat-Insects swarming over her body and turned her armour heater on. The creatures burned off her back. But they kept swarming and swarming on her, trying to bite off bits of her body armour. Before long, her body was enveloped in biting insects, but she kept crawling, and crawling, and dragging her body across the ground, her lifeless legs trailing.

It was dark. Very dark. Hugo felt as if he was suffocating.

Clementine wept and crawled, and wept, and crawled.

So very dark.

Sorcha and Saunders sat by the shore of the tarn, and retracted their helmets, and felt the breeze.

“I used to love swimming when I was a girl,” she said wistfully, “but most of all I would love to be able to fly.”

“You could have the surgery done. It’s quite safe these days.”

“Maybe. When I retire. I could find a high-gravity planet.”

“Like this one.”

“Maybe like this one. Once we’ve terraformed it.”

“Would you still do that? After all you’ve seen?”

“Why not?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“My great-grandmother was born on Mars. Are you saying that shouldn’t have been terraformed?”

“I’m not saying that. But —” Saunders hesitated. “Well, those beach resorts, I always felt that was a step too far.”

Sorcha snorted; she got his jokes far more often now.

“Things have to change,” she said. “Planets have to change.”

“People can change too,” said Saunders.

“Nah, not so much.”

“I’ve changed,” Saunders admitted. “I’m not the same person I was.”

“How so?”

Saunders thought very hard. “I used to be a shit?” he said, eventually, and Sorcha laughed.

“Changed how?” she taunted him, and Saunders realised that he loved her, as he had never loved any woman, as he had never before loved any other human being.

He had changed, and that was how.

And still Clementine wept and crawled, and wept and crawled.

And still Hugo, and Mia, and Mary, and David, and Tonii lay trapped and desperate beneath the dense choking earth.

Slimy and slithery and venom-oozing burrowing creatures crawled over their bodies. The soil itself coagulated and tried to crush them. Claustrophobia enveloped them and threatened to push them into madness.

And it was dark, so very dark, so very, terribly dark.