by Mike Ashley
Danny shook his head. "I don't buy it. They want something."
Two hours later, as the sun sank and ignited the horizon as if it were touch-paper, Danny signalled ahead. I made out, perhaps a kilometre before us, a dark irregularity in the sea-bed, a mere line widening as it ran away from us.
We had arrived at the eastern end of the sea-bottom trench. Danny slowed and veered so that we were travelling parallel to the widening rift.
"I reckon Tangiers is around a hundred kays south-west of here," he said. "I'm going to stop here and just pray that the bastards keep on going."
He eased the truck to a halt beside the lip of the ridge. After the drone of the engine, the silence rang with its own eerie volume. We sat quietly as the truck ticked and cracked around us, and minutes later saw what we were secretly fearing.
To our left, the hovercraft moved into view, slowed and settled a couple of hundred metres from us.
Danny said, almost in a whisper, "I just hope Skull didn't tell them about the rig."
The very idea filled me with dread. I stared out at the hovercraft's array-encrusted carapace, expecting at any second a hatch to crack and Samara's men to come pouring out.
After ten minutes, with no discernible movement from the vehicle, I began to breathe a little easier.
We ate the evening meal in silence: potatoes and spinach. As I ate, I wondered if Kat and Edvard had been unable to bring themselves to prepare Skull's gift of meat. We hardly exchanged a word, and afterwards I moved to the hatch and peered through the window.
The hovercraft was a dark, domed shape in the darkness. Samara's crew were partying again. They had lit a fire on the far side of the vehicle, and its flickering crimson illumination danced above the uneven crenellation of the solar-arrays.
I made a decision. I turned to where my friends were still seated. "I'm going over there. I want to talk to Samara, find out why they took Skull."
Kat looked shocked. "I can't let you go-"
"I— Samara won't harm me," I said. "I'll try to get a promise from her, that her men won't attack us."
Kat made to protest further, but Danny lay a quick hand on hers, and nodded at me silently. Something in his gaze told me he was aware of what had passed between me and Samara the night before.
Edvard said, "If you're going, then for God's sake take this." He moved to the weapon's locker and withdrew a small pistol.
I hesitated, then nodded and tucked it into the band of my shorts.
I nodded farewell and slipped from the truck. I stopped and stared across the dark expanse of sand to the hovercraft, my heart pounding. I was about to set off towards the vehicle when a door hinged open in its flank and a figure stepped out. I smiled, relieved.
She stopped when she saw me, a hand still on the door.
I crossed the cooling sea-bed towards her.
I came within range of her heady scent and my senses reeled. She stroked my cheek. "I hoped you'd be out, Pierre. I was going to invite you over ... It'll be more comfortable here, yes?"
"What about ...?" I gestured to the far side of the vehicle.
She smiled. "They're having their fun, Pierre. We won't be disturbed, okay?"
I could only nod, all thoughts of asking what had become of Skull forgotten.
She took me by the hand and led me into the hovercraft. We moved down a warren of tight corridors, past tiny stinking cubicles where her crew slept, and a rack containing the canisters of water we had traded with her. We ducked through a hatch into a larger chamber - evidently the engine room where the dangling leads of the solar arrays were coupled to banked generators.
Samara's room was beyond this.
I stopped on the threshold and stared.
The room was twice the size of the lounge back at the truck, and sumptuous. A vast bed occupied the centre of the room. To the left was a small window, looking out onto the sea-bed. Through thin curtains I made out the flare of the fire and the sound of voices, loud and drunk.
Then I saw, in the far corner of the chamber, a clear perspex kiosk. I crossed to it, then turned to Samara with a question.
"A shower," she said.
I repeated the word.
She smiled. "It's a water shower," she said.
I looked at her. "But how can you...?"
"I make sure we're well supplied, Pierre. And of course it's recycled after I've used it."
I could hardly conceive of the luxury of having sufficient water to use for bathing.
She took my hand and pulled me towards the bed. We kissed. She reached behind her, unbuttoned her dress and let it fall. I stared like a fool as she rolled onto the bed and smiled up at me.
I pulled off my shirt and dropped my shorts. Samara laughed.
I reddened. "What?"
"I see that you have more than one weapon in there, Pierre."
I struggled to explain the presence of the pistol. "Ed, he said I might need it."
"A wise move in these times." She reached out and pulled me onto the bed.
We made love, Samara urging me to slow down, take my time, as she opened herself to me.
Time was obliterated. I had no idea how long might have passed. I lost, too, all sense of self. It was as if I were an animal, indulging in primal appetites, oblivious of anything else but the pleasures of the flesh. Samara was ferocious, biting me, scratching. I felt a heady sense of accomplishment, almost of power, that I could instil in her such a display of passion.
Later we lay in each other's arms, slick with sweat and exhausted. She sat up, left the bed and padded to the shower. I watched her, overcome with the sight of her nakedness. She gestured for me to join her.
We stepped into the cubicle and stood together, belly to belly. She touched the controls and I gasped. Warm water cascaded over our heads, and I experienced both a sense of pleasure at the silken warmth of the water, and guilt at the profligate use of such a resource.
She passed me something, a small white block.
"Soap," she explained. "Rub me with it."
I did so, surprised by the resulting foam, and we made love again.
We dried ourselves and lay on the bed, facing each other. I stroked her cheek. Even then I knew that this was a passing pleasure, unexpected and delightful but hedged with danger. I knew that it could not last.
Then, as if reading my thoughts, Samara traced a finger across my ribs and said, "You can stay here, if you wish. Leave the others, travel with me. The life is hard, but I have my comforts."
I stared at her, at her hard eyes, her cruel mouth. Even then I had wits enough to wonder if she harboured ulterior motives.
I said, "And leave my... my family?"
"You'd have me, Pierre," she said. "We'd want for nothing. We'd eat well."
I wondered if she had a hydroponics expert aboard. I'd seen no evidence of things growing in my brief passage through the hovercraft.
She leaned on one elbow, staring down at me. "And things will get better, believe me."
I shook my head. "How?" I asked, wondering suddenly if she had information about a thriving colony somewhere.
"We're heading to Tangiers," she said.
"There's a colony there?"
She smiled. "There was once a successful colony at Tangiers, Pierre. It died out, I've heard, a few years ago."
"Then ... " I shrugged. "Why go there?"
She paused, stroking my chest. "The colony was religious - one of those insane cults that flourished as civilization died. They called themselves the Guardians of the Phoenix."
I shook my head. "I've never heard of them."
She looked at me. "But you've heard of Project Phoenix?"
"Edvard told me about it," I said. "A ship was sent to the stars, hoping to find a new Earth."
She was smiling. "That was the plan, anyway."
"The plan? You mean ..."
"I mean the ship was almost built, in orbit, before the end - but the funding ran out, and governments lost control. The project became
just another dead hope-"
"How do you know this?"
She rolled from the bed, crossed the room to a small wooden table and returned with a sheaf of papers.
"A read-out," she said, curling next to me. "I obtained it years ago from a trader. This was before the Guardians of the Phoenix died out. It's an official report about the winding up of the Project, and the resources that remained."
I leafed through the papers. They were covered in a flowing script that made no sense to me.
Samara said, "It's an Arabic translation."
I lay the papers to one side. "And?"
"And it contains information about the spaceport at Tangiers. It's a copy of the so-called sacred papers on which the Guardians founded their cult."
"I don't see-"
"Pierre, the Tangiers spaceport was where the supply ships would be launched from, before the departure from orbit of the Phoenix itself."
"Supply ships," I said, suddenly understanding. "You reckon they're still there, the supply ships, full of everything the colonists would need for the journey - food, water ..."
She laughed suddenly, disconcerting me. "Oh, I'm sorry, Pierre! You are so naive. No, the colonists would not need such supplies as food and water."
"They wouldn't?" I said, puzzled.
"The supply ships at Tangiers, some dozen or so, were full of the colonists. But they were frozen in suspended animation, and would be for the duration of their trip to the stars. Five thousand of them."
I stared at her. "Five thousand? That's ... that's a city," I said. "Christ, yes ... With so many, we could start again, rebuild civilization."
Samara brought me up short. "Pierre, you've got it wrong. We couldn't sustain a colony of 5,000. How would we feed them? What about water? Pierre, face it - the Earth is almost dead. It's everyone for themselves, now."
"Then—?" I gestured at the print-out. "What do you mean? You said there were colonists?"
She stroked my jaw, almost pityingly.
"Of course there are, but we couldn't just revive them to ... to this. That would be... cruel."
"Then what?" I began.
She jumped from the bed and crossed the room, kneeling beside a curtained window and gesturing for me to join her.
Bewildered, I did.
She eased the curtain aside and inclined her head towards the revelry outside. A dozen men stood around a blazing fire, singing drunkenly. They were swigging from plastic bottles and eating something.
I turned to Samara. "What?"
Her hand, on my shoulder, was gentle. "The fire ..." was all she said.
I looked again at the fire, at the spit stretched across the leaping flames, and at what was skewered upon the spit.
I felt suddenly sick, and in terrible danger. My vision misted.
I said, "Skull?"
Samara murmured, "He was a traitor. He was against our plans. He stole supplies, water."
"But ... but ... " I said, gesturing to what was going on out there.
"Pierre, Pierre. Life is hard. The Earth is dying. There is no hope. We must do what we must do to survive. If that means—"
I said, "The colonists."
She did not say the world, but her smile was eloquent enough.
Meat.
She led me back to the bed and pulled me down, facing me and gently stroking my face. "Pierre, come with me. Life will be good. We will rule the Mediterranean."
Despite myself, I felt my body respond. She laughed, and we made love again - violently now, like animals attempting to prove superiority. This time, I did not lose my sense of self. I was all too conscious of Skull's words, his warnings. I was in control enough to know that however much I revelled in the pleasures of the flesh with Samara, this had to be the last time.
She gasped and closed her eyes. Fighting back my tears, I rolled over and reached down beside the bed.
"Pierre?" she said. She sat up, but she had no time to stop me. She merely registered sudden alarm with a widening of her eyes.
I shot her through the forehead, sobbing as I did so, and only in retrospect hoping that the sound of the gunshot would go unheard amid the noise of the party outside.
I stood and dressed quickly, then moved to the door. On the way I stopped, returned to the bed and picked up the print-out.
At the door I paused, and forced myself to take one last glance. Samara was sprawled across the bed, the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life.
I fled the room. I passed through the chamber housing the solar arrays. Despite the desire to get away, I knew what I must do. I spent a long minute looking over the couples and leads, then judiciously snapped a bunch of connections and removed a capacitor. The hovercraft would be going nowhere for a long, long time, if ever.
I hurried along the corridor until I came to the water canisters. I grabbed two, made it to the hatch and stumbled into the night, gasping air and hauling the canisters towards the truck. I imagined some drunken reveller finding Samara and chasing me, catching me before I reached safety...
I barged into the lounge, startling Edvard, Danny and Kat. They stared wide-eyed as I staggered towards them.
"Pierre?" Kat said.
"Start up! We've got to get out of here!"
Kat, closest to the cab, needed no second telling. She scrambled through the hatch and seconds later the engine kicked into life. The truck surged, heading west.
Sobbing, I collapsed into a chair.
Danny and Edvard knelt before me. "Pierre ...?" Danny reached out and touched my shoulder.
I passed the print-out to Edvard and told them about Samara and her men.
For the next four hours, as the truck headed along the ridge of the crest, I was afraid lest the cannibals repair their vehicle and follow us, crazed with the desire to avenge their dead queen. I sat at the rear of the truck, staring through the dust of our wake.
An hour or two before dawn, Danny turned the truck and we headed nose-down into the trench. We bucked down the incline, then straightened out and accelerated. A little later he judged that we had put enough distance between ourselves and the hovercraft: he slowed the truck and stopped with the sloping wall of the trench to our left.
I joined Danny and Kat, and together we set up the rig and dropped the longest bore through the crazed surface of the old sea-bed.
"Where's Edvard?" I asked as I locked the final length of drill column into place.
Kat nodded back to the truck. "In there, trying to translate the print-out."
Danny stabbed the controls that dropped the drill-head, then stood back mopping the sweat from his brow. It was still dark, but the sky in the east was turning magnesium bright with the approach of dawn and already the temperature was in the high thirties.
Dog tired, I returned to the truck to catch some sleep.
An hour later I was awakened by a cry from outside. I surged upright, thinking we were under attack. I launched myself from the truck, into the heat of the day, and stared around in panic.
Kat and Danny were standing in the shadow of the rig, holding hands and staring at the bore.
As I watched, the trickle of water bubbling from around the drill column became a surge, then a fountain-head. I ran to join them and we embraced as the water showered down around us.
I opened my mouth and drank. "It's fresh!" I shouted. "My God, it's fresh!" I held Kat's thin body to me, looking into her eyes and crying with more than just the joy of finding water.
We dismantled the rig and stowed it aboard the truck. Danny marked the position of the bore on the map, and the three of us sat in the cab as we accelerated up the incline of the trench.
Later, Edvard joined us. I glanced at him as I drove.
Kat said, "What is it?"
Edvard seemed subdued. He sat between us, staring down at the print-out in his lap.
Danny said, "Ed? You okay?"
He lifted the sheaf of papers. "The colonists," he said in barely a whisper, "number some 5,500, and they were
selected to found a new world on some far star. Among them are ..." his voice caught "... are doctors and scientists and engineers, specialists in every field you can imagine."
He looked around at us, tears in his eyes We drove on in silence, into the blazing sun, towards Tangiers.
LIFE IN THE ANTHROPOCENE
Paul Di Filippo
Paul Di Filippo is a prolific science-fiction writer and critic noted for his colourful, quirky and highly original, vivacious stories that have been appearing at a relentless pace for over twenty years. A selection will be found in Ribofunk (1996), Fractal Paisleys (1997), Lost Pages (1998), Shuteye for the Timebroker (2006) and a half-dozen other volumes. Although he's American, I sometimes wonder if his often surreal stories appeal more to the SF community outside of the US, because his stories have won the British SF Award and the French Imaginaire Award but he has yet to win a Hugo or Nebula, although his short novel A Year in Linear City (2002) was shortlisted for just about everything. I always know that when you come to read anything by Paul, it will be unlike anything else.
* * *
1
Solar Girdle Emergency
AUROBINDO BANDJALANG GOT the emergency twing through his vib on the morning of August 8, 2121, while still at home in his expansive bachelor's digs. At lLDK, his living space was three times larger than most unmarried individuals enjoyed but his high-status job as a Power Jockey for New Perthpatna earned him extra perks.
While a short-lived infinitesimal flock of beard clippers grazed his face, A.B. had been showering and vibbing the weather feed for Reboot City Twelve: the more formal name for New Perthpatna.
Sharing his shower stall but untouched by the water, beautiful weather idol Midori Mimosa delivered the feed.
"Sunrise occurred this morning at 3.02 a.m. Max temp projected to be a comfortable, shirtsleeves thirty degrees by noon. Sunset at 10.29 P m- this evening. Cee-oh-two at 450 parts per million, a significant drop from levels at this time last year. Good work, Rebooters!"
The new tweet/twinge/ping interrupted both the weather and A.B.'s ablutions. His vision greyed out for a few milliseconds as if a sheet of smoked glass had been slid in front of his MEMS contacts, and both his left palm and the sole of his left foot itched: Attention Demand 5.
