“There are plants—”
“No,” Anne said. Although she should just leave the dipshit to die alone in the mist like he had wanted to leave Daisuke. “The plants will keep you alive for five minutes in there, tops.”
“So we’ll walk around the valley to the mouth of the river,” Nurul said.
“No.” Hariyadi shifted into Indonesian, arguing over their route as if Daisuke wasn’t lying there unconscious.
“Shut up,” Anne said. Daisuke needed to get to their tent. She did too. Had either of them actually eaten anything? She would have to catch something. And get another fire going, since the shithead had let theirs go out. Shit, how much oxygen was Daisuke’s brain getting? He was half-awake now, a stumbling zombie. Would he ever wake up the rest of the way? Anne was going mad and Hariyadi was still talking at her!
“Shut up, I said!” Anne bore up the sagging Daisuke, tugged him toward her tent. “We aren’t going anywhere. Daisuke needs rest and I will fucking murder anyone who says otherwise.”
“I am not saying otherwise, Ms. Houlihan,” said Hariyadi, possibly not for the first time. “I agree with you. We must stay here. We cannot risk getting any closer to that poisonous gas.”
“But sir,” Nurul said in English. “We’re already too close to it. What if the wind shifts?”
“Why, we have the wormhole,” Hariyadi said. “We can simply cross over to the Ripe Blood planet and wait there until the air here is fresh again. In the meantime, we are within sight of the mouth of the valley. If we light a bonfire—”
“No one is coming for us!”
Had Nurul just raised her voice? At any other time, Anne would applaud. Now, though, she had more pressing concerns. She pulled Daisuke another step closer to their tent.
“We must arrive back in Imsame as fast as possible,” said Nurul. “Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed!” Hariyadi bit the words off as if tearing them raw off the bone. “We have two wounded men, men we need, Mrs. Astarina, and an impassable barrier in front of us. We shall stay here at least until Alekseyev and Matsumori recover.”
Nurul’s response was bitter. “Or until one of them dies.”
Chapter Fifteen
Inversion
As he rose from the healing depths toward the chill surface of consciousness, Daisuke’s muscles and bones began to protest. His head and joints ached. His diaphragm creaked with the effort of breathing. His finger- and toe-tips tingled. It was very much like the case of the bends he’d gotten coming out of the Caribbean Sea. Not to mention the fact that his chest still hurt as if he’d been kicked by a zebra.
It would have counted among the top ten hardest awakenings of Daisuke’s life, except Anne was here, more solid and marvelous than anything he could have imagined. Still not entirely aware of what had happened to him or what planet he was on, Daisuke only knew that once again he had awoken in Anne’s arms, and this time he wouldn’t let the opportunity slip away.
“You’re all right!” Anne squeezed him. “Are you all right? Stop that! How’s your brain?”
Daisuke lifted his lips from her skin and considered the question. “Still dizzy,” he said. “Trouble focusing. Nausea. What happened? I remember…mist. Dark mist.”
“The Death Wind Country,” intoned Anne. “It got you and Misha, but you were worse. He woke up after they dragged him out, but you’ve been unconscious almost all day.”
Daisuke was glad to hear the darkness in the tent wasn’t a sign of some scary neurological disorder, just the sun going down.
“What happened?” he said again. “Poison gas?”
“Carbon monoxide,” said Anne. “And maybe anoxia. You fell unconscious suspiciously fast. Which is good, actually, because you didn’t breathe in as much poison as you might have. So I’m hoping that means less brain damage.”
Daisuke hoped so too. “But I can remember everything from before we ran into the Death Wind biome,” he said. “And I can still speak English. Uh. Can’t I?” He switched to Japanese. “So that you can take care of the drooling me, you have to learn Japanese, I suppose.”
Anne slapped him on the shoulder. “Shut up, you awful man.” She squeezed him again. “Just shut up and let me hold you.” She bumped his forehead with hers. “And yell at you. We’re on a different fucking planet, Daisuke. Every new biome we come to is a new planet. You can’t just go prancing off into the bush like an eager little puppy and trust there to be stuff like air to breathe.”
“I’m sorry,” Daisuke finally said. “I will be more careful.”
Anne sniffed wetly in his ear. “Damn right you will. Keep yourself safe, Daisuke.”
They held each other until something jabbed him in the thigh.
“Ow!” Daisuke slapped at himself, battling with another wave of nausea as his eyes struggled to focus. There were – what? Chunky black and red beads? – scattered across his lower body. “Why….” he said, and one of the beads extended a proboscis.
“Linguipods,” said Anne in disgust and brushed the parasites off Daisuke. “How did they get in here?”
Fear gripped Daisuke’s heart. He remembered overturning one of his boots on a shoot in Thailand, and the pit viper that had plopped out. The ticks he’d found tangled in his socks after a hiking trip in Montana.
Daisuke tried to leap out of his infested sleeping bag, but all he managed was a sideways roll, eyes clenched shut against the dizziness.
“Why are you writhing around?” asked Anne. “However venomous those things might be to toymaker biochemistry, they’re no match for your mighty Earthling body.”
Right. Right. But who knew about allergic reactions? Daisuke passed his shaking hands down his body, searching himself for itching, sweating, tingling, and of course now that he was looking, he found them. He could be about to die or merely about to go mad.
“Relax,” Anne said. “They bit Misha and nothing happened. So, buck up. We’ve got bigger problems right now and you can’t fall apart.”
“Anne,” he tried to tell her. “I’m scared.”
Anne screwed up her face. “What’s there to be scared of? You just have to be more careful.”
That hurt. As if Daisuke hadn’t spent his whole professional life being careful as well as bucking up and all the other useless things you said to people when their painful death would inconvenience you. If Anne really cared about me, she would see how worried I am.
And there was something worse. The linguipods were from Toymaker Country. Toymaker Country was a hundred meters up the slope. Those little aliens couldn’t have gotten into Daisuke’s tent without human help.
“Dice,” she said, “we got to get up and out of this tent. There’s no time for whatever it is you’re thinking about.”
Daisuke looked at Anne, then away. No, it was too melodramatic. The Iron Man of Survival should do what Anne said and get out of the tent. Throw himself at the next source of danger. Reveal the plot only after the murderer had been apprehended. But what if Anne was in danger too?
So what if a confession of fear would look silly and weak? So what if it wouldn’t fit in this scene? Anne had saved his life. She had seen him at his weakest and most foolish. If he could not tell her how he really felt, what was the point of even being alive?
“Anne.” He licked his lips, fear thrilling his heart. “I think one of us is a murderer.”
She jerked back. “You what?” Her face twisted. “Fuck, Dice, I have to take paranoid bullshit from Hariyadi and Misha, don’t you give it to me too!”
Daisuke slammed down his mask like a storm shutter. “Yes,” he said. “I understand. I’m sorry.”
He felt like screaming, but Anne didn’t appear to notice. “‘Impending doom,’ indeed. I said it before, and it’s just as true now. We have to work together or we’ll die, right?”
“Yes,” said Da
isuke again, “I understand.” His headache was back, his limbs as heavy as sacks of sour mash. He might as well be back under the Death Wind.
“We should leave the tent,” he said. It was what was expected of him.
Standing was very difficult. Folds of dizziness and nausea draped across his vision and Daisuke swayed on his feet. What if this was brain damage? Would he be able to tell if his mind suddenly slipped into a lower gear? What if he started babbling and soiling his underwear?
Why, the same thing that would have happened to Pearson if he had not so conveniently ‘died of his injuries’, Daisuke answered himself. I would myself have abandoned him in the kelp-tree forest along with Tyaney. Daisuke knew he could look forward to the same sorry treatment if he outlived his usefulness.
“I’m sorry, Dice,” Anne said, crawling out of the tent behind him. “You can’t be feeling great right now, but we’ve got to get a move on. An ill wind blows and all that.”
Daisuke barely registered her words. He knew why Tyaney had died. Pearson too. The American had tried to keep them in one place, the Nun had almost driven away their guide. They had slowed down the expedition, and someone had killed them.
Anne didn’t believe him, but that didn’t matter. Daisuke was alone, as he had always been alone. Not just Man against Nature, but Man against everything. The venomous reptiles not only out in the bush, but sharing a bed with him.
Daisuke blinked, and his vision cleared. He was standing on the green slopes of the Oasis biome. Anne was behind him and Misha was in front of him.
“Ah,” said the Russian. “You awake.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Anne said. “Come on, Dice.”
Daisuke shrugged off her hands and wobbled into the chilly alpine dusk. The tops of the mountains across the valley still shone yellow, but the shadow of the Outer Toymakers crept ever upward. The Lighthouse wormhole had become visible against the darkness and, through some quirk of interplanetary orbital dynamics, so had the Oasis wormhole. Oasis daylight lent an eerie green vividness to the scene. The landscape was simultaneously darker and brighter than it should have been, as if the sun had been eclipsed. Creatures in the peanut-bushes fluted and rasped in panic.
“Yes,” Misha answered some question Anne had asked. “We put almost all equipment now in wormhole. Hariyadi and Nurul there now, on Oasis Planet.”
“Why?” asked Daisuke. Had the murderer been driving their expedition to this goal the whole time? Some insane colonization effort? “We can’t live on the Oasis Planet forever.”
Misha stared at Daisuke, then his beard parted in a smile. “You hurt head, my friend. I joke about brain damage, but please try to not thinking so hard, eh?”
So he could trust no one. But Daisuke would survive. It was the only thing he was good at.
Misha lifted his head as if scenting the air. “Now come on to wormhole. Here not safe. The wind is changing.”
It was true. The wind had blown steadily from the north-west since they’d crossed the Outer Toymakers, but now a breeze from the east tugged at Daisuke’s clothes, carrying the smell of smoke.
“That’s bad,” he said.
“Correct,” said Anne. “You know what will happen when the new wind tears the lid off the temperature inversion over the Death Wind biome.”
“It will vomit poison all over us,” Daisuke said, understanding finally dawning. “We have to hide on Planet Ripe Blood until the Death Wind passes.”
“Ya.” That was Rahman’s voice. “But Nurul and Hariyadi know what we will do, insha Allah.”
Daisuke turned, very slowly and carefully, a hand pressed against the side of his head, to see the lanky cameraman walking up to them.
“Good, good. I happy to see friend okay!” Rahman patted Daisuke on the shoulder. “You okay?” He looked at Misha and Anne. “Damage brain?”
“Ehh,” Misha held apart his index finger and thumb. “Maybe a little. Okay. Nurul and Hariyadi are on other side of wormhole. Now we help Daisuke through wormhole, yes? Then I go get Sing.”
“I’m fine,” said Daisuke. The wind ruffled his hair. Invisible, scentless poison billowing up the hill. Daisuke stopped himself from shivering.
Rahman pointed up the wormhole mound. “Nurul already go. She go in wormhole with Colonel Hariyadi. Make camp…um, emergency camp? Hariyadi says we wait there until, uh, weather stabilize. Nurul say weather never stabilize. The longer we wait….” He held out his hands, as if asking to be rescued. “They argue with each other! Always! I worry.”
Daisuke remembered his odd conversation with the colonel the previous day. Hariyadi had certainly seemed angry at Nurul, but it was unclear why. The memory of Sing and Tyaney surfaced. The cameraman couldn’t believe his wife was cheating on him?
I will solve this mystery, even if nobody else believes there is a mystery to solve.
“Good,” said Misha. “You take Sing’s stuff yet?”
Rahman shook his head.
“We should still be able to get at her through the wormhole,” Anne said. “I was helping her consolidate her kit into a form we can transport and it’s absolutely fascinating, Daisuke. She’s halfway domesticated that colony of toymakers already.”
Daisuke arranged his face in a way he hoped signified interest and respect.
“Toymaker?” Rahman said. “Toymaker stay here. I no like…I no….” He said something in Indonesian.
Anne said something back to him, scowling.
“What is it? This is no time to argue,” said Misha.
Anne jerked her chin at Rahman. “Paragon of modernity here has decided Sing is a witch after all, and he doesn’t trust her and her toymaker devil-box. As if you don’t spend half your time pointing a camera at her.”
Rahman shook his head. “Camera? What? I don’t understand.”
Anne said something sarcastic-sounding in Indonesian, to which Rahman angrily responded. The wind pawed at them.
“No time,” Misha said again.
Daisuke just tried to stay upright, looking up at the wormhole. A shadow stretched down the mound from the silhouette at the top, outlined in dappled green light.
The animals in the bushes stopped singing.
Daisuke squinted. “Who’s up there?”
The figure screamed.
“Nurul?” said Rahman, looking around, and shouted something in Indonesian.
“Monsters!” Nurul waved at them from the top of the wormhole mound, bloody shirt streaming out behind her. “They’ve killed Hariyadi!”
Daisuke’s teeth clenched with the memory of bulbous, twitching eyes, limbs like coiled baby ferns.
“What?” Misha thundered. “Dead? God fucking damn it! You sure?”
“Killed? How?” Anne demanded.
Rahman said nothing. He only jerked like a startled deer and bounded up the hill toward his wife, camera thumping on his back.
“We aren’t safe on the Oasis Planet,” yelled Nurul, stumbling down the hill. “We have no choice but to pack up everything and move on. Oh, Rahman!” She broke into Indonesian as her husband embraced her.
“Move on where, Nurul?” Anne asked, while Daisuke’s head pounded.
“No,” said Misha. “Hariyadi can’t be dead. Are you sure, Nurul?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Nurul said. “Come. We must go up to the edge of the Toymaker biome.”
“No. We need that body,” Misha said, stomping up the mound toward her.
“Body?” said Anne. “There’s a Death Wind coming. Would you please focus?”
Misha closed on her. “Even if he’s dead, we need that body.”
“Whatever for?” Anne asked.
Misha didn’t answer. “Rahman,” he shouted, “Daisuke, help me! Scare away those monsters!”
Rahman let go of Nurul. She clawed at him, trying to hold him back, but t
he cameraman was infected by the panic in Misha’s voice. He churned up the hill, silhouetting himself against the wormhole that Nurul had just exited. It pulsed with green and white light.
Daisuke followed them, since it would look bad if he didn’t. But why would they need Hariyadi’s body? They hadn’t even bothered to bury Tyaney. Not that there’d been much of him left to bury. And there was something strange about Misha’s voice, but Daisuke could barely think. His head ached. His vision throbbed with the strobing of the wormhole’s light.
“We need to go through anyway,” Anne said. “Our supplies are in there and the Death Wind is coming.”
“No,” said Nurul. “No, not the wormhole. Up the hill. Rahman!”
The wormhole shimmered, throwing rainbows against the puffy bushes, the fluted mound, and the stricken faces of the people running toward it. Daisuke gaped. Blinked. Rubbed his eyes. Was he hallucinating?
“Wait a second,” Anne said.
Nurul ran after Rahman, who had put his head in the wormhole. Weird lights played over the lower part of his body as the upper smeared like a reflection in a carnival mirror.
“Go!” Misha had reached the wormhole as well. He put his hands on Rahman’s back, as if to shove him through.
Nurul screamed in frustration. “Listen to me!” she said. “That place will kill us! Our only hope is to go uphill. Get out of the wormhole!”
“Huh,” said Anne. “I think she’s right. Everyone?”
So maybe Daisuke wasn’t hallucinating that multi-hued aurora around the wormhole. Should he stop and ask Anne what was wrong? No, she didn’t want that from him. She wanted the Iron Man of Survival, who would climb any hill, leap into any danger. A spatter of raindrops ran down Daisuke’s face. A breeze blew from the east.
“Go!” said Misha, and shoved. Rahman seemed to turn inside out, his image warped and wavering in a shower of rainbow light. The light pulsed faster, or maybe that was just Daisuke’s racing heart playing tricks with his vision.
He and Anne were level with Nurul now. She beat ineffectually at Misha’s shoulder, her snarling face awash with the garish light of the wormhole. Small animals plopped out of the bushes downslope, asphyxiated.
Junction Page 24
