Chapter Two

 

Sabre made camp early that night. Tassin drooped with weariness after her ordeal in the caves, favouring her abused arm. When Sabre sat beside the fire roasting a wild chicken, the Queen opposite, she smiled at him.

"I hope that's the end of our troubles. I doubt Torrian sent anyone else after us."

"Yeah."

She poked a twig into the fire and held it up, watching the flames devour it. "We've been through a lot together." She paused, looking pensive. "Am I just a friend to you, Sabre?"

He regarded her, wondering at her strange choice of topic. "Yes, a good friend."

"Is that all?" Her brows rose.

He smiled. "What do you want?"

She met his gaze, her eyes challenging. "More than that."

"More what?"

"More than friendship."

"You'll have to be a bit more specific."

She looked away. "I thought... maybe you felt something for me."

"Again, you'll have to -"

"Don't play dumb; you know what I mean."

"I'm not sure I do, actually."

Tassin frowned at the fire. "I thought perhaps that you... might... like me more than just a friend."

"Ah. And you'd like that?"

"Yes."

"With a dirty commoner?" His smile widened. "You surprise me, My Queen. I'm only riffraff."

She raised her chin as the barb hit home. "I may do as I wish, and if I wish to flout the laws, I shall."

Sabre experienced a poignant stab of warmth in the centre of his chest, then the mocking voice shouted its derision from that dark corner of his mind. Cyborg! He shook his head, regretting his sarcasm in the face of her determined honesty.

"When we get back to Arlin, I'll be free only until the spacer returns for me. There's no way I can evade him. He'll track me down. There can never be anything more than friendship between us, Tassin. You'll only end up being hurt."

A pregnant silence fell, and he looked up to find her staring at him as if this possibility had never occurred to her before.

"That can be changed! What if -"

"No." He shook his head. "No 'what ifs'. Forget it, there's nothing you or I can do about it."

"But -"

"No 'buts', either." He smiled wryly, masking his despair with false humour as he stared into the fire. "Your future is a blank page, waiting for you to write it, but mine's already written."

Her brows drew together. "How can you be so defeatist? There must be some way of..."

"Of what?" His smile faded and he raised his eyes to meet hers. "Changing his mind? Buying me from him? Fighting him? No, there's no way. I know."

"How do you know? He's my friend. He'll do as I ask."

"No." Sabre lowered his gaze to the flames once more. "You don't understand. He can't leave me here; I'm a cyber. He's already bent the law by loaning me to you; to leave me here would be criminal. Cybers are dangerous. Their use is monitored, and their status constantly checked. Few cybers have ever disappeared, and they were destroyed, their locators deactivated. If he reports me destroyed and someone picks up my locator, he'll be punished severely, and he won't risk that. If he reports me lost, they'll track me down. Just forget it, okay?"

Tassin frowned at the fire, looking daunted, but still rebellious. Her declaration amazed him. Why would she want more with him? He was not even sure what 'more than just a friend' meant, but he was certain it was forbidden. He was not entirely human. The taunting voice in his head was right. He was only a cyborg, scarred inside and out, and incapable of most of what she craved, as far as he knew. Of course, he would never find out. He could never hope to be that human.

Tassin simply had no idea of the depths of his strangeness, and he had no intention of telling her about the terabytes of programming in his brain, some of which he occasionally glimpsed, like Sanskrit on a cave wall. It was hard to decipher, especially since he avoided looking at it. The reminder of what he truly was only depressed him. He wanted the pretence of humanity, as much as he was able, for as long as he could. Sabre inspected the chicken and found it cooked, so he tore it in two and handed half to her.

 

 

The next day, they journeyed out of the diseased area. By the afternoon the scanners detected no more radioactive spots, and the land looked healthier. A hot wind blew from the desert, and Tassin fanned herself on the cart. The evenings brought some relief, when the temperature dropped to a pleasant coolness.

Sabre trudged ahead of the donkeys, certain his brains were boiling, when he sensed the cyber's warning. The scanners showed five humans just within their range, and his suspicions surfaced again. What kind of people would live in this arid land, surrounded by radiation, so close to the desert? The five points of light approached from ahead, and he stopped the donkeys and turned to Tassin.

"There are people coming."

"Oh, good! I hope they're from a nice town. I could do with a rest, and a bath."

He shot her a glum glance. "I hope so too."

Looking deflated, she squinted ahead while the donkeys helped themselves to any greenery within reach. Five men trotted into view, and Sabre stared at them in shock. He had expected deformities, but not this bad. Tassin made a gagging sound and clapped a hand over her mouth.

The strangers slowed to a walk and approached warily, as if expecting hostility. They carried crude spears with a broad, leaf-shaped heads. Thick black or brown hair covered their exposed areas, and they wore rough, ill-fitting homespun clothes. One had a hunched back and only half a face, one side a smooth expanse of skin. Another gripped his spear with hands webbed to the last finger joint, his forearms shorter than normal. A third hobbled on a bent leg, his withered left arm hanging at his side and an extra eye staring blindly from the side of his head. The other two sported lesser deformities, which made them merely ugly, rather than grotesque. One of these stepped forward.

"Who are you?"

Sabre faced him. "Travellers."

"Why do you come to the great city of Gramman?"

"We aren't. We're going into the desert."

The man's frown wrinkled the solid ridge of black hair above his eyes. "What do you want in the desert?"

"To cross it."

"That's impossible. No one can cross the Dead Sector, it's forbidden."

Sabre shook his head, not taking his eyes from the leader's pugnacious, twisted face. "We came from there, and now we return."

"You didn't pass this way before."

"No, we took another route to the east."

The leader pondered this for several moments before reaching a decision. "You'll be welcome in the city."

"Thank you, but we'll go into the desert."

The other men muttered and shuffled their feet, hefting their spears. The leader raised a hand to silence them. "I've said that you'll be welcome in the city. Do you scorn our hospitality?"

"No, we just have no use for it. We're in a hurry."

The leader's over-large jaw jutted further. "You'll come to the city. Our priests will want to speak to you."

So there it was, Sabre thought. Not a friendly invitation, but a stipulation, just as he had suspected. "And if we refuse?"

The man smiled, revealing yellow teeth that grew at odd angles, the canines over-long. "There's only one of you and five of us."

Sabre considered the situation. He had no wish to kill or injure them, and it seemed likely that he would have to in order to pass them. Since he and Tassin had apparently strayed into an inhabited area, avoiding further confrontations might mean a long detour. The mutants did not appear to be a real danger, since they had made no attempt to attack. They seemed too simple to harbour any covert plans, and, if the priests of this tribe wished to ask a few questions, it was just a delay. Perhaps Tassin would even get her bath. These people surely had no motive to harm them.

He shrugged. "Very well. We'll come and speak to your priests, then continue on our way."

The mutant nodded. "A wise choice."

Sabre glanced at Tassin as the men turned and trotted away, catching the look of disgust and trepidation in her eyes before she hid it behind a bland smile.

Several kilometres further on, they came within sight of a pre-war city, not the town Sabre had expected. The city had been bombed, but not with nuclear weapons, and according to the scanners the radiation was within tolerable levels; enough to cause deformed children to be born, but not enough to kill. The ruined city sprawled across the hills, betraying traces of its former charms, but far beyond the glory of its youth. It had been rebuilt crudely in places, old walls patched with new, rough-hewn stone, the craters that dotted the concrete streets filled with sand.

Twisted skeletons of once proud towers remained, their glass looted. Modern materials had been used in odd ways to rebuild. Pieces of plastic helped to cover roofs, and weirdly-shaped windows had been made from sheets of shatter-proof glass. A few derelict streetlamps leant drunkenly beside the cratered streets. Warrens of huts and shanties jostled within the walls of ruined buildings, their upper floors now rubble used to weigh down the odd roofing materials employed. The overall effect was ragtag and dilapidated, a patched and broken corpse of a city.

The empty-eyed people who shambled along the streets were as slovenly as their city, dressed in coarsely-woven clothes that looked like sackcloth. They all had some sort of deformity; eyes blinded by cataracts or missing, faces disfigured by warped bones, limbs twisted and spines crippled. The most horrendous were those who appeared to have lost part of their humanity and now possessed fur or scales, walked on horny stumps or had claws instead of hands. Many bore the scars of brutal doctoring to remove growths or deformities, but the most pitiful were the crippled children who played handicapped games amongst rusted metal and crumbling walls. Tassin stared at them with wide eyes, a hand over her mouth, and it sickened Sabre to see these people still suffering for the mistakes of their forebears.

Their captors led them to a squat, bunker-like building with chunks blown out of its thick concrete walls. Sabre helped Tassin down, and the mutants' leader gestured to the polished steel doors. They entered a luridly lighted room that appeared to be a temple. Oily torches lined the walls, thickening the air with smoke, and a brazier filled with glowing coals stood before an altar that had once been nothing more than a rather ornate dining table. Atop it, a candelabrum held pots of oil with wicks set in them, and a chunk of black glass stood in front of it. Sabre stopped, his blood chilling. The mutants halted and looked at him, hefting their cumbersome spears.

"Let the girl stay outside," Sabre said.

The mutant leader frowned, a fearsome expression on his low-browed face. "Why?"

Sabre pointed at the glass. "That's dangerous. It could kill her."

"So, you're not like us."

Sabre turned as a deep female voice spoke behind him. A tall, thin woman moved out of the shadows, pushing back the hood of a coarse white robe. Her mutated features made her resemble a vulture, for she was as bald as one, and lacked any form of facial hair. A thin, hooked nose jutted between bulbous green eyes, tiny ears hugged her skull, and a receding chin added to the vulpine look. She approached him, as tall as he, and the hairy men bowed, backing away. Dismissing them with a wave, she turned to Sabre while they headed for the door.

"Grovelling fools," she commented, then studied Sabre with evident interest, her gaze lingering on the brow band. "I am Jassine, high priestess of the Nembari people. Have you a name?"

He inclined his head. "Sabre."

"You're not of our people, that's obvious. How did you pass the cursed land?"

"I avoided the radiation."

The priestess scowled, a mere puckering of the skin between her eyes. "You use the ancient word, but the curse is invisible. How could you avoid it?"

"Magic," he snapped. "Let the girl go outside. The black glass will make her sick."

Jassine glanced at Tassin. "What about you?"

"I'm immune."

"Who are you, and why have you come here?"

"We're travellers, and we were forced to come here by those grovelling fools."

"Ah." The priestess looked amused. "How do you know the words of the ancient ones?"

Sabre glanced at Tassin. "Let her go outside, and I'll answer your questions."

"Oh, very well." Jassine waved at Tassin, who hurried out, shooting him a worried look. The priestess wandered over to the altar and stroked the black glass.

"The curse is our protector. We alone are not harmed by it. Any who come here soon die once they've stood before the altar, while others perish before they reach the city. The curse is our friend."

Sabre snorted. "Some friend. Don't you know that that's why your people are deformed? Even though you don't die from it, you condemn your children to a life of suffering. As for scattering the black glass all over the place; you've made the land sick, mutated the creatures that live there, and spread the misery."

Jassine's eyes glinted with anger. "It protects us, as it did the ancient ones. No one dares to attack us; they would die."

"Who'd want to attack you? You live in a ruined city, surrounded by a wasteland of radioactivity and mutated flora and fauna. This evil didn't protect the ancient ones; it destroyed them. All you're doing is killing innocent wanderers and condemning your people to a life of mutated misery."

"Blasphemy! You dare to speak so of the ancient wise ones, who built the great cities and travelled in magical machines? You are nothing! Even the monsters dare not set foot here. While others fight wars and destroy each other, we alone will survive, for none dare attack us."

"Monsters from the Death Zone?"

The bald woman gestured in the general direction of the desert. "Yes, the monsters from out there. Fearsome creatures that our warriors have seen in the desert; that have attacked the people who dared to leave the sacred city. They paid the price for their deceit. None may leave this haven created for us by the ancient ones. It's forbidden, and they make sure the law is upheld. We see the creatures pass by, going to ravage the lands of those who don't have our protection."

Sabre considered the startling revelation that had led to this awful situation. There was no radiation inside the Death Zone, but apparently the creatures that came from there could detect it, and had enough brains to avoid it. Those that did not soon perished. The Death Zone spread its evil far and wide, and what came out of it affected every tribe he had encountered in some way. In addition, it was spreading, breeding more and more foulness to pour out and ravage the land. As long as monsters prowled outside the radioactive lands, these people would not change their ways, fearing an influx of Death Zone creatures and attack by unknown enemies. If the monsters stopped coming, they might leave this terrible place and find somewhere better to live.

It was pointless to try to change the priestess' beliefs, however. She had clearly been brought up steeped in the paranoia of the people who had survived the war and crawled out of the bomb shelters to try to rebuild their lives. They must have been convinced they would be attacked again, and had passed this terrible legacy on to their children. Now they worshipped radiation, an invisible god-like force that killed all but them, and the sense of invulnerability it imparted made up for the mutations. The people who had survived the bombs had apparently not known the holocaust had all but wiped out the rest of civilisation, and built a religion around the radioactive protection. Perhaps they would have ventured out, if not for the monsters that had appeared from the desert and effectively trapped them here. He was wasting words on her, but he had to try.

"There are few people left in the world, and those dwell in peace," he told her. "The weapons of the past no longer exist, so you have nothing to fear. At least move the radiation further from the city, so the mutations will stop. It will still repel the monsters, and the people outside won't attack you. Why should they?"

Her mouth twisted. "You lie. Ours is a flourishing society. Our forebears saved domestic animals, and we grow good crops from the seeds they stored. Many would want what we have, and the monsters will cross the radiation if it's not enough to kill them."

"I don't think they would. They're obviously wary of it. Have any come through?"

"No." She hesitated. "But that's because the curse would kill them. If they could cross the line without dying from it, they would."

They could, though, Sabre knew. If he could find his way through with Tassin and avoid the hot spots, so could the monsters. Just the presence of radiation was enough to deter them. "I don't think so. Only hapless wanderers who can't see the radiation will die from it. I came through safely with a girl who's vulnerable to it, because I can see it, like the monsters. No one will invade if you thin it and move it away. The people outside have all the things you have, and no one would want to have crippled children."

The priestess' eyes narrowed. "Not all of us are affected, some are born perfect." She clapped her hands, and a cowled man appeared from the shadows. "Bring Leat!"

The man vanished into the gloom, and the priestess paced around the altar, a slight limp making her gait clumsy. Sabre wondered how many people had suffered radiation sickness needlessly over the years. The survivors had gradually become immune, and bore immune, deformed children. After living for five hundred years in this radiation level, it no longer sickened them, but the mutations would never stop.

The priest returned, leading a beautiful, empty-eyed girl clad in a scanty gold satin top and a short skirt studded with sequins and fake jewels. Sabre wondered how often she was trotted out before the masses to prove that perfect people still existed in this sick city. Jassine stroked the girl's long yellow hair, her strange eyes glowing with pride.

"You see? There's nothing wrong with her."

Sabre studied the girl. "What happens when she goes out in the sun?"

"We don't allow her to mar her perfection by exposing her to such things."

"I'll bet. She's an albino. She lacks melanin, which makes the skin brown and protects against the sun. How clever is she?"

"She is... normal."

Sabre knew the priestess was lying even without the faint red light that flashed deep in his brain as the cyber analysed her breathing and pulse and deduced her duplicity. He stepped in front of the girl. "What's your name, girl?"

Her eyes focussed on him, and she smiled vacantly.

"She's retarded," Sabre said.

"She's a little simple," Jassine retorted.

"She has fewer brains than those donkeys outside, and she's also deaf and half blind. You call that perfect?"

The priestess made an angry gesture, and the priest led the girl away. "Physically, she's perfect. She'll breed perfect babies."

"No she won't. Her children will be as deformed as anyone else's. You should leave this place and breed with normal people, then perhaps one day your people will have normal children."

"Enough of this. Tell me how you came to be immune to the curse, but your woman is not?"

Sabre sighed, folding his arms. It was a long story, and there was nowhere to sit.