Cormorant Run

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Wait a minute. Vanich.” Barko’s hands had gone numb. “Almost a decade ago. It was big news. Big house, big family. Everyone dead, even the grandmother.”

  “Oh, yeah. Wife, kids, mother and father, mother-in-law, cousins. Good rifter, brought out lots of salvage. Fast and mean.” She hunched her thin shoulders. “He told people he was gonna wish to be free. Tired of listening to everyone yelling at home all the time. Well, they weren’t yelling no more.” She folded the top of the pouch, carefully, and tore along the line to make the spout. “Rifters got other stories. It don’t give you what you think you want. Just what you really do.”

  Barko shivered, zipping his backpack closed. “Didn’t he end up hanging himself?”

  “Yeah.” She slurped at the pouch, lowered it, and covered her mouth with her hand when she caught him watching. A guilty little movement. So she didn’t like anyone watching her eat. It was almost a relief to find out he’d guessed one thing correctly. Chowing down in the canteen must have been an act of strength, or just a plain fuck-you to everyone in the room.

  “Son of a bitch.” Morov stared, his mouth hanging open, his stubble tipped with ruddy firelight and his hair standing up stiffly in every direction. “A room? You didn’t tell Kopelund this, now did you?”

  She shrugged. Her shoulders had filled out a little. “Didn’t ask.”

  “Oh, man.” The commander shook his curly head. “You bitch. You lying, sideways bitch.” He sounded, of all things, grudgingly admiring.

  This earned him the briefest of nods. “Don’t wanna go back to Guan.”

  “Who would?” Barko settled with his own ration pouch.

  Morov raked back his sweat-stiff hair. “Son of a bitch,” he repeated. Barko didn’t blame him. “A fucking room.”

  The rifter made no reply. Barko began massaging his ration pouch. The heating-bead inside it gave under his fingers with a crunching snap, a smaller sound than Tremaine vanishing into the undergrowth or Eschkov hitting the ground.

  “Kope wouldn’t have come in himself after it.” Barko’s hands squeezed, released. He watched the fire leap to caress a few fresh sticks tossed on its heap of coals. “Would he?”

  “Not without a whole goddamn legion.” Morov sagged against his makeshift bed-pile. They’d have to treat it with the heat-ray again before they settled; the wind had risen at dusk and brought a damp chill on its back.

  “He couldn’t have covered that up. Not for long, anyway.”

  “Yeah, well.” Morov shut his eyes, finally tearing open his rations with the ease of long practice. “He couldn’t cover this up, either. Probably suspected what was coming.”

  “What do you mean, what was coming?”

  A slight gleam from under one eyelid. “Well … shit, I might as well tell you. Remember when he sent in the Rat?”

  How could Barko forget? He nodded, and the rifter tensed slightly, taking another long slurp from her pouch and covering her mouth again as she chewed. Or tried to chew, the slurry would slip right down your throat if you let it.

  “Well, after that, I sent in a blacksheet.” The commander took a mouthful of ration paste. “To Second Branch. Sent another one after Bechter, too. He was going to fuck with the man’s pension, for fucksake.”

  For a few minutes, the fire did all the speaking. It crackled again, a few sparks rising idly on the updraft and winking out. The soot mark on the ceiling was spreading, condensation glistening at its edges, and if it got much damper in here they would probably wake up to find spots all over their bedrolls and clothing.

  “You shady bastard,” Barko said, finally. An anonymous report even hinting at Kopelund sending people into the Rift again would get a relatively swift response. ILAC bureaucracy ground slow, but it ground exceedingly fine. “So when we get out, they’ll fucking arrest us, too.”

  “Not likely. Just following orders.” Morov’s tired grin stretched. Amusement made him briefly younger in the uncertain light.

  The rifter made a small noise, a stifled chuckle. Barko’s wasn’t stifled at all. That set Morov off, too, and outside their tiny cave, the sound of human laughter brushed against a dense white fog rising from pavement and weeds alike.

  55

  STILL IN THE TUBE

  Stupid. Clumsy. Almost lost a foot.

  Vetch fed a few more dry sticks to his small fire, hunching his shoulders. He couldn’t stand anymore, he was swaying and weaving too badly. His belt buckle gleamed dully, and his pack, laid right next to him, would be his pillow tonight. Sheer luck had saved him, thrown him back instead of out into the street, landing a hairsbreadth from the wall. His neck ached, and the back of his head was scabbed over. Dizzy from bouncing his skull off concrete, bruised all the way from heels to neck, he’d lain there stunned and thought, What the fuck am I doing here?

  Didn’t matter. A man did what he had to, and if he didn’t want to examine why he was crouched in this precarious lean-to, smelling the flat mineral tang of the river and the heatless thick clinging of danger, nobody could force him. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway.

  Surviving through sheer luck was good enough. He hadn’t lost anything, his mapper was secure and his gun was safe. His vision was doubling, but he’d still managed to cut across her wake and come out here, on the very edge of downtown, near what had been a street of high-end boutiques with gold leaf on their windows and well-mended sidewalks. This lean-to was post-Event, maybe another rifter’s temporary refuge, and it was clean. Potzegs stacked in a ring in the middle glowed a little, milky opals.

  He wasn’t hungry, but he eased down to sit cross-legged and chewed at the protein bar anyway, washing it down with half the remaining water in his canteen. With that done, he dug in his mapper, dreamily, staring out the lean-to’s triangular door. There was even a pad of overlapping bits of cardboard and scavenged fabric on the north side, far enough from the fire-circle to keep from going up but close enough to feel radiant warmth.

  His left pupil was far bigger than his right. The world was a smear of fuzzy light and dark, and his fingers found what they wanted in the mapper. He drew out the capped syringe, tore the cap off, and had to try three times before he could tap it and clear any air bubbles.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have stopped to eat. He had to aim the needle at his own throat. Everything was whirling, and he had to jab twice before he found the right spot. Then he had to push the plunger down while the triphase plasma scoured up one side of his neck and down the other. Hoping it would get past the blood-brain barrier and the brain trauma wasn’t too—

  The sitting rifter toppled sideways, landing hard on the packed dirt. He didn’t manage to roll onto the cardboard bed, and the syringe jutted up from his neck, half its cargo of glow-yellow plasma still in the tube.

  Sometimes, when a rifter’s luck ran out, it didn’t kill him right away.

  The fire, a chemical reaction, would continue as long as it had fuel. Outside the lean-to, tiny tongues of thick white vapor rose from the sidewalks and roads, thickening as the day’s heat escaped the earth and made its way past layers of air and magnetism, out into the vacuum of space.

  56

  WHAT WE CAME FOR

  Svin jerked into full alertness, her ears burning and her blanket almost sopping wet. She rolled off the counter without thinking about it, landing next to Barko with a thud. His deep, whistling breathing halted as he lunged into wakefulness, and she got her feet under her with a brief, thumping scramble, kicking his arm.

  “Ow!” He was about to object further, but she clapped her hand over his mouth.

  “Shhhh,” she breathed. “Listen.”

  He shook his bald head, blinking furiously. He probably didn’t hear it, so she peeled her palm away and hissed in frustration, grabbing his arms and shaking him with far more strength than her wiry little frame seemed capable of.

  “Get up,” she whispered fiercely. “Get your pack. Now.”

  “Whafuck?” Morov shifted on his bed-pile. Little scurrying soun
ds proved the heat-ray had been ineffective as he sat bolt-upright, groping for his rifle.

  “Put that away,” she told him. “We have to go. Now.”

  Thankfully, he didn’t argue, just began struggling upward. Svin grabbed his arm and hauled, then grabbed the light pack she’d insisted he put together before they went to sleep. It was on his shoulders in a trice, but Barko was still rubbing his eyes and yawning.

  “Hurry up,” she whisper-yelled.

  Poking and prodding, she got them to the door and peered out through the vapor-fogged glass. The sound drew closer, scraping against her nerves. A crackling, like ice forming on a river’s skin. It was getting closer, too.

  She could have just slid off the counter the other way, hit the door, and been gone before they woke up. It wouldn’t have been hard.

  The fog closed around them, but even its choking curtain couldn’t deaden the noise. They heard it now, too, and Barko kept glancing back as she led them away, not on the left or right sidewalk but squarely in the middle of the road. Hexmoss grew on what had been painted stripes and the moisture had made it balloon, sending up tiny bright-red sacs on short thick stalks. When they burst, fluorescent green particles would scatter, whisked by stray breezes, and the moss might find another food source.

  Svin very carefully didn’t step on them, and neither did the men. They followed her closely, their breathing labored and loud in the semi-stillness. Barko looked over his shoulder again.

  “Don’t,” she told him. She wanted to get out a strip-and-bob, but it wouldn’t be any use in the fog. Instinct and other senses had to keep her alive.

  “It’s moving,” he whispered back, two awestruck little words.

  Of course it’s moving, she wanted to tell him. Why do you think I got you out of there? She knew what he was seeing—the amber resin, now tar-black and gleaming, running with moisture, creeping up the sides of the building they had slept in, making that slight icy-rubbing sound as it stretched bit by bit, flexing over iron, glass, wood, concrete, brick. When the sun rose, it would turn translucent, but she didn’t intend to be around to see that.

  Morov cursed, hobbling on his cane. Even at this speed they would outpace the black goo. The alleys slowed it down, tendrils throwing themselves from one wall and failing, splatting against the ground—or succeeding, splashing against the far wall and spreading, digging fingers in and thickening. It moved at a leisurely pace, but Svin was less worried about that than about the sense of dread in the fog. It was too thick to see very far ahead, though they could look back and peer through the hole in the vapor made by their passage.

  “Stop looking back.” She grabbed Barko’s shoulder, dug her fingers in as hard as she could. “Don’t make it notice us, for fucksake.”

  Then she let go and plunged forward again, into the mist.

  Sunrise found them an hour and a half later, working parallel to the river along a street that had once been high-end boutiques. Their antique signs creaked unsteadily in the freshening breeze, and the trees along either side of the boulevard had outgrown their spindly pollution-crippled phase. They stretched tall, wide, and gnarl-barked, naked limbs showing a fuzz of golden-green, circles of fallen leaves around each of the deciduous ones making wheeling patterns on pavement no step had disturbed for a long, long time. Some were bearded with gray moss that tinkled softly as the breeze shook by, and the tubs in front of some of the storefronts—a haberdasher’s, a pharmacy, a milliner’s and a fashionable atelier, a coffeehouse with its outside seating area full of rusting tables and age-spotted chairs—held remnants of ornamental flowers gone to seed as well as the rattling brown pods of winter-blasted weeds. Glancing downhill every time there was a break in the structures, Svin could see the river’s false placidity. The fog was retreating in streamers for its watery refuge, and it had cleared enough that she could throw a strip when she felt uncertain. Uneasiness ran below her skin, a feeling like someone was breathing on her naked nape.

  She kept them away from the buildings, because every window and glass-paneled door held thin threads of almost-breakage, a pattern of stress-stars as if something had hit from the inside, wanting to get out.

  “If I’d known, I’d’ve brought a fucking bomb,” Barko said. “Blow that shit up.”

  Morov’s ersatz cane made a clicking sound on the cracked, bare street. “Why not just sell tickets?”

  “Christ.” The scientist dabbed at his forehead with a cream-colored snot-rag Svin had found in Eschkov’s pack. “I know enough about human beings to guess it’s a bad fucking idea.”

  “Money-back guarantee. But nobody would ever ask for it, or they’d have to admit they wanted disaster in the first place.” Morov snorted a bitter little laugh. “We’d make millions.” Click-tap went his cane as they paused for a moment, and his forehead was speckled with little beads of sweat. His eyes glittered, too, and the bandage on his upper thigh wasn’t as pristine white as it had been. A thin spot of crimson had worn through at its center.

  “I don’t think I’d want to.” The scientist glanced, a little guiltily, at Svin, who swung a bob lazily, deciding which direction to throw it. “What about you, rifter? You gonna go in?”

  She shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “How can you not know?” Morov coughed, spat. The wad of phlegm splattered against a hexmoss-loaded stripe; tiny threads of violet steam rose. The red pods had shriveled—the moss would not be spreading along this street today.

  “Not there yet.” She checked wind direction, swung the bob some more. They were getting close. Each way forward felt hazardous. The problem was guessing which one was only mildly dangerous and which one was actively carnivorous. Cutting through an alley wasn’t a good option for a few blocks; the shadows inside the ones on the left were too thick, and the right got them closer to the river. It would have to be the streets.

  “But what do you think?” Now it was Barko persisting. Some color had stolen into his cheeks under his gray, thickening beard, but his head was as innocent of hair as ever. A few thin scabs at his temple, mere scratches. His stride had grown longer. He didn’t look cheerful, but he was certainly a little more spry.

  Some people took to the Rift despite themselves.

  The sun had just broken the eastern horizon. In the distance, birds were serenading the return of the daystar. Around them, though, a bubble of silence swelled. Here and there, in the circles of fallen leaves around the frowning trees, flashes of discolored bone showed. Tiny skeletons, some subtly altered—no squirrel had teeth that sharp.

  Yes, staying away from the buildings, and the trees, was a good idea here.

  “We’re close,” she said, finally. “I can still take you back to the wall. You could cross later today.” She didn’t look at either of them, focusing instead four or five blocks down where the fog slithered across the street, a gliding, glinting greasepaint rope. “Probably safest.”

  Morov coughed again. This time he didn’t spit. “Might as well get what we came for,” he said, finally. “Barko?”

  The scientist took his time. Maybe he was thinking it over. Or maybe he was just struggling against the inevitable. Svin didn’t care to look at him and figure out which. If they decided to go back to the slugwall, she’d take them. The odds were in favor of them surviving passage through, and Morov could get his leg treated. They might even be called heroes, surviving QR-715. Kopelund, with his piggy little eyes looking for the next angle, might even listen when they told him the Cormorant wasn’t what he thought.

  For a moment she thought about him coming into the Rift. Now that would have been interesting.

  “Are you sure?” Barko finally said. “You don’t look so good, Morov.”

  “Fuck you,” was the commander’s equable reply. “Let’s go.”

  Svin tossed the bob at an angle, watching its rise and rapid descent. She didn’t wait to hear more, just began walking again.

  57

  THE MEMO THAT SHRANK

  His tibia had thermab
onded wrong. Each step was a corkscrewing reminder, and his hip had begun to hurt with a dull deep ache as well. Morov followed the rifter’s skinny shoulders, watching the bag bouncing on her hip, envying how she tested each step before she committed her weight. Behind him, Barko lumbered, and he envied the scientist’s plodding, normal steps as well.

  His thigh hurt, too. If they’d had another hypo of plasma, he might have been okay. As it was, the throbbing from the deep gash was returning, and so was the fever.

  He was going to die while they slept tonight. Or he was going to stagger into whatever piece-of-shit hole the rifter said granted wishes, and die there.

  The boulevard widened. They were in the belt orbiting downtown now, and the sun beat down once more. The fog had vanished, and the buildings on either side were covered with long yellow vines exhaling a weird, sweetish rot-smell. Their leaves were long and knife-edged, clacking when the wind rose in irregular cycles. Moving air whistled between the rising structures. Soon they’d be in the skyscrapers, and he couldn’t shake the idea that if any of the buildings had decayed or been shattered by the Event, they might collapse on the tiny animals at their feet. The rifter’s nuts-and-hankies wouldn’t keep that disaster at bay.

  There was also the uncomfortable feeling that the Rift was, well, breathing. The whooshing between buildings down toward the river halted every once in a while, paired with a funny head-lightening sensation until the next bellows-squeeze. Each time the breeze rose, sweat cooled on his forehead, cheeks, nape, hands. The light pack weighed him down, straps cutting cruelly. Was this what Eschkov had felt right before he keeled over?

  Nope, Morov’s heart was fine. He kept walking, aware the rifter was slowing to match his cane-clicking pace. Frustration boiled in the bottom of his belly. He deserved better than this. Kope shouldn’t have sent him in here. Shouldn’t have sent Tolstoy or Senkin or Mako either. Who knew what that motherfucker Brood had planned for, with that cold-blooded cocksucker in charge?