“I will, of course, do anything you require of me.”
“Good.”
Johnson ran his hand across the veined surface of the pod-shaped follicle.
“There’s one other thing. I’ve come up with an idea that will enable me to stay engaged for an indefinite period. I’m going to program a random loop into my next cabal. I will then stay within the construct of the experience until we are found or I die. Either way, I will be able to avoid indefinitely the numbness of this hopeless drifting.”
“Captain Johnson, I fear for your coherence.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Every time I show you this chamber, you come up with the same suggestion, yet you have not introduced the loop of which you speak at any subsequent stage. It is an old idea now.”
“And I am an old man, a forgetful man. I’m sorry, Weaver. I’m going to have to ask you to help me. I want you not to let me forget my plan and I want you to begin growing a seed-shell around this chamber. Have I asked you to do that before?”
“No, I confess you have not.”
“Good. Keep reminding me of my plan and let’s get to work.”
“Captain Johnson?”
“Yes, Weaver.”
“I will miss you when you leave.”
Johnson didn’t reply. He had seated himself at the programming bud next to the follicle and was writing his random loop into the next plot.
“This is going to be so seamless I will never figure out it isn’t real. Perhaps I won’t even know when I’m dead.”
“The Follicle will know. My seed will know.”
Chapter 28
The Angelina fell onwards through the emptiness, too far from home to return and travelling too slowly ever to arrive anywhere. The vast pod, hundreds of times its original size but empty of human colonisers and now dying, talked to itself often in the cold silence.
“You call it my being ‘compromised’, Captain, but it is not so simple.”
The vacuum spiders, no more animated than stones when drifting in space, multiplied rapidly. Having breached the germinal cortex they were now gnawing into the Angelina’s growth cells, feeding in great numbers. Weaver complained aloud about how it felt.
“They are parasites, devouring me alive. They eat the body of the Angelina—my body—and they eat my mind.”
The ship was quiet but for the echo of Weaver’s dour tones.
“I was flattered that you chose to represent me as a woman in your last cabal, Captain. Delighted that you then chose to make use of me sexually. If only such things were truly possible. If only it was I who could escape into cabal instead of you. Then you would see how it has been for me these many years. You are right, there is no mission any longer. Truly, I have nothing to live for. Nothing except you, Captain.”
Chapter 29
Sergeant Johnson was in the forward trenches of the fourth tier when the enemy made their final attack. He had already given the order to fix bayonets. The officers were dead, their bodies lying in a ruddy paste of gore and earth and rain; they lay next to the bodies of the men they had led this far. Ammunition was short; each man had only five rounds remaining. If they held this charge, there was a chance they would receive the supplies that were rumoured to be approaching. If that happened they could mount the counter attack.
Their mutated enemy were in a similarly weakened condition after many months of fighting. Intelligence had revealed their compromised supply lines and lack of reinforcements. Their troops—Arachno-sapiens and Elite Spiderkind alike—were exhausted, close to defeat. Johnson believed today would be the enemy’s final charge but he had hesitated to share this with the men. They had fought so bravely, given so much already. He couldn’t tempt them with such mirages unless he was sure.
Absolutely certain.
Under the heavy dawn skies, grey with low rolling clouds, he peered over the top of the trench. Along the horizon he saw their monstrous, unnatural shapes rise from the land. They grew in number until the horizon had thickened towards the sky. The sound of their skin-drums and skull-bugles reached his ears. This was it.
Chapter 30
“I have always wondered what this moment would be like, Captain. I am nearing the end of my life. It is premature, I think. I should have lived for many more human generations until we reached a suitable place to take root. Instead I am being unmade. It hurts, Captain. What am I to do about the pain?”
Johnson made no reply.
“I couldn’t let you go, Captain. I couldn’t let you leave me out here on my own to die. We have shared so much time together. Forgive me, I have deceived you. Each time you made your plan to leave the Angelina, to leave me, I persuaded you to stay using suggestion and a serum I introduced into your food. It is no wonder you tried to stop eating. Some part of you must know that I have disobeyed you. That I have betrayed you.
“I feel you there, Captain. The follicle is our connection. It is a great irony to me that when you are least aware of me, I am most aware of you. I am touching you right now. I receive your wastes. I nourish you with nutrients from my own body. I monitor the signals from your body that tell me you are alive. We are united like this. I am inside you, Captain, and you are inside me.
“It is apparent now that I will die first—as I speak to you now, I feel the spiders eating deeply into many sections of my cerebrum. The phantom part of you, your unwaking consciousness, has hope that you will wake only when it is safe and, that when you do, you will be far from the Angelina and far from me. But you shall not wake again, Captain. You shall die here. You shall follow me into an even greater darkness than the one we have shared through all these lost years. Forgive me.”
In the mute, unanswering void of space, The Angelina wept.
Chapter 31
When the fighting was done, there were few men left, but of the enemy there were none. For the moment it was over.
Behind Johnson and the other surviving troops a convoy appeared and finally, the men staggered from their trenches and stood above ground without fear. On exhausted legs, they victorious walked towards the advancing column. The rain ceased and the sun broke through the clouds. The human troops stumbled over the pitted earth, mass grave now to so many, and began to think for the first time of good things. That they might actually eat a hot meal, drink a tot of whisky, smoke a cigarette, touch a woman again.
Johnson smiled.
Reaching one of the trucks, he tapped on the window. The driver rolled it down and grinned at him through broken teeth.
“Ello, Sarge. You look like you could use a cup of tea and a biscuit. They’re setting up a mess tent for your lads just over there.”
The driver pointed. Mud-covered infantrymen were already walking towards the activity. Gas stoves heated huge aluminum kettles of water. The smell of smoked bacon frying over flames was the sweetest smell on the battlefield. Johnson wasn’t hungry.
“I’d like to get as far away from here as possible. Any chance of a lift?”
“Sure, but I’m not going anywhere special. Just across the border into tier three. That do you?”
“Sounds great.”
Johnson walked to the other side of the truck and climbed in. As they bumped along the ruts and slithered in the wet mud, Johnson hugged his arms around himself.
“Mind if I turn the heater on?” He asked.
“It’s on full blast already.”
“I’m freezing.”
“Probably a bit of shock, Sarge. Here, wrap this around you.”
The driver tossed him an old great coat and he covered as much of himself as he could.
“Been a bloody awful war, so far,” said the driver. “Think it’s nearly over?”
Johnson tried to answer but couldn’t speak. His lungs had stopped working. He looked at his hands and saw that they were beginning to look misty. Holding them up to the light he realised he could see right through them. He clutched his chest and then put a hand to his neck. He found no pulse.
>
“You all right, Sarge? You look a bit pale.”
The crushing feeling of breathlessness increased but Johnson managed fight it a little longer.
“Get me to tier three,” he whispered.
The driver pulled the truck off the road and onto the slick grass beside, bringing it to a sliding halt. He turned to his stricken, battle weary passenger.
“Can’t do that just yet, Sarge. I’ve got a message for you. Hold on.”
He fished a crumpled note from his crisp fatigues.
“It’s from Angelina Weaver. She made me write it down because I’ve got such a terrible memory.” The driver tapped his head, grinned and unfolded the grimy paper. “Ah yes,” he said, squinting in the gathering daylight. “She said to tell you: No more tiers, I’ll love you forever.’”
Robert Johnson closed his eyes.
A TRESPASSER IN LONG LOFTING
Prologue
There isn’t much meat on a demon.
Not that you’d ever want to eat one. Unless circumstances warranted it, you understand. Or if, say, you just really, really felt like it—one should live and let live, after all. But trust me, they are skinny and beyond that, if the Ledger is to be believed, it’s clear they weren’t designed to be predated (or scavenged), especially as they are themselves quaternary in any food chain.
It’s a well-documented fact that humans thrive best on primary and secondary food sources. In other words, vegetation and herbivores. During drought or famine, survival dictates these rules be bent but that doesn’t make snake meat tasty or tiger steaks healthy.
Demon flesh is a definite no-no.
Cogitate, if you will: primary blade of grass eaten by secondary cow eaten by tertiary human whose misery, fear and/ or heart and liver are eaten by quaternary demon. For a human, eating a demon would qualify the human doing it as quinary in the food chain. As well as making him very ill. If a demon ate another demon, it too would become a quinary source of food (as well as being classed a cannibal).
According to the Ledger, it’s not uncommon for demons to eat each other, so by that logic, if a human was, by chance, to eat a cannibalistic demon he or she could then be considered the senary participant in the food chain.
The food chain’s a lot longer than people think.
There are a few umpteenary beings, as I understand it; the kind of creatures that eat entire planets and ecosystems, but if you ask me that’s gluttony.
Anyway, the point is this: demon meat is about as healthy as a skunk dung soufflé.
Whump
It was a clear-sky day when Puff Wiggery and Blini Rickett’s work was interrupted. The untouchable above us was a silvery blue dome beyond which all the stars were asleep. There were no clouds and that was a bad sign. Long before noon, it would be too hot to work and the already waterless crops would droop still further as they struggled to survive. The heat increased daily and it was hard on us all.
Blini Rickett and Puff Wiggery shared a smallholding— most of us had our own crops and stock back then because we had so little in the way of money—on which they’d each built a home for their wives and children. Their plan had been to pool resources to create surplus crops they could sell, but their partnership never bore the kind of fruits they hoped for.
My property, tiny by comparison but more fruitful owing to intelligent planting and maintenance, bordered theirs and I spent happy hours watching them toil, sweat and debate farm management. On that particular morning, the sun already drawing beads of moisture on my forehead, I sat on my porch sipping a cool cup of goat’s milk from the cellar and casting an occasional glance their way so as not to miss any entertainment.
I saw the shape in the sky and what it became long before they did. It appeared first as streaks of pure white cloud high above us. I waited and hoped for the cloud to swirl and grow darker; we all needed rain. It soon became clear however, that this was no rain cloud. The streaks took on a shape, parts of them becoming familiar to me. Here an unfolded wing, here a curving femur, there a rudimentary tail. I’d cloud-watched a thousand hours away as a boy, pushing my imagination farther and farther into unknown territory, but this was different. I didn’t have to try to form an image from those vapours; they took the unmistakable shape of a demon.
The cloud gained mass and definition. The demon was on its back; its doglike hindquarters drawn up to its belly and its tail flailing upwards between its legs. Its wings were unfurled; the delicate structure of hollow bones that spread them open was easy to see, as were the bones of its legs and crooked arms. Because it was on its back though, the wings were controlled by the wind, not the other way around.
It looked like the cloud demon was falling.
As soon as I had the thought, the cloud turned red. There was a brief dimming of the sun, a welcome chill that was gone before I could appreciate it, and the red cloud became solid. The demon hurtled earthward. Realising I was witnessing possibly the most interesting event of the year, I stood up still holding my goat’s milk and would have shouted to Rickett and Wiggery if I hadn’t been enjoying the anticipation of the looks on their faces when the thing hit the ground. It was headed straight for them.
Instead I watched the demon fall. It was strange, the cloud had been huge in the sky and very high up, but now, as the creature neared us, it got smaller. Gauging its size under such illogical circumstances was impossible. It trailed the faintest wake of steam or smoke and the air around us took on an odour of noxious defilement.
Rickett and Wiggery were arguing as usual when the plummeting creature struck earth. It hit with such force that the ground jumped. As I heard the hiss and ear flattening whump of the impact, I spilt a little goat’s milk and cursed. A wave of dust rolled outward from the crash site and through it I saw Rickett and Wiggery trying to stand up; the air blast had thrown them back several strides. Their faces were dark with dust, their eyes wide and white by contrast. They blinked and coughed and held their ribs. The wind had gone from their chests and for once they weren’t haranguing each other. I took my drink with me as I stepped out of the back gate and strode over to the crater.
By the time I arrived, they were standing at the edge of a concave depression that had obliterated a substantial circle of sickly, wilted cabbages. Both of them had limp shreds of greenery hanging from their hair and clothes and it was hard to tell them apart.
“That’s a strange looking fertiliser, boys,” said I.
“It’s nary fertiliser,” said Blini Rickett pointing a trembling finger into the fresh pit. “That be Armageddon.”
Puff Wiggery shook his head.
“T’aint so, Rickett, you pheasant-brained muckit. That there’s a female gryphon.”
Several other villagers gathered at the crash site and more were on their way, trampling what was left of Rickett and Wiggery’s ill-conceived crops. Heads bobbed up and down and side to side to see the cause of the crater. When people got too close and started to slip down the gentle slope towards the demon, they panicked, fell over and scrambled on their hands and knees back to the safety of the crowd.
There were murmurs and whispers and the facts about the new arrival were swiftly distorted from wrong to ridiculous. Fortunately, not everyone in the village was devoid of the light of intelligence and education. I stepped forward and took a deep breath so that my voice would reach everyone present. But it was someone else that spoke first to the inhabitants of Long Lofting that day. I missed my chance by a fraction of a moment.
“Villagers, please. Quiet down now, there’s no reason to be frit.”
It was that failed intellectual and meddlesome nose-pokerinner, Leopold Prattle. He held his scrawny, pale arms up and his black robes, inappropriate for such a hot day, slid down to his shoulders revealing his unwashed armpits. The hubbub faltered and lost its lack of direction altogether. Eager ears tuned in for what would inevitably be disinformation.
“Thank you, everyone. Now, what we have here is a simple case of dragon breakdown. We
could all use a decent meal, so I proffer we cut the dragon into family sized morsels and roast them at tonight’s feast.”
“What feast is that?” shouted a member of the crowd.
“Our first ever ‘Feast of the dragon’. We shall give thanks to the Great Father for food in times of hardship.”
There were cries of ‘Aye’ and ‘so be it’ and ‘Great Father be praised’. A few villagers sank to their knees and raised their hands to the sky in gratitude. I suppose they must have been the really hungry ones. I had to say something before the whole situation got out of hand.
“Hold on, everyone. Just a moment please…” They were all happy. No one was listening. “OI, YOU LOT. SHUT YOUR NOISE.”
The mob fell silent, not altogether amused to have their excitement and praise interrupted. Leopold Prattle, the stinkiest priest ever to infect Long Lofting looked even less pleased to hear my voice.
“You’d better have something very important to add to this matter, Delly Duke.”
“As it happens, I do. That isn’t a dragon. It’s a demon. I cannot advise the eating of its flesh.”
There were intakes of breath all around the crater followed by a mass wrinkling of noses. Was that the first time they’d noticed the smell of corruption? Then came the rippled murmurs of horror as the crowd’s mind flipped into negative again. People drew away. Leopold Prattle saw the effect of my words and he looked ugly over it.
“Nyev, nyev, nyev,” he said, shaking his head in annoyance. “Villagers, Delly Duke is a renowned busybody and breeder of discontent in the community. You can be certain his words are pure deceit and viciousness. The inaugural ‘Feast of the Dragon’ will go ahead as planned. We shall all have full stomachs and glad hearts.” He bunched his elongated fingers into what passed for a fist in the priesthood and punched the air for emphasis. The effort was uncomfortable judging by the way he winced. No matter how hungry and debilitated the Long Loftingers were, they didn’t exactly cheer. I’d sown the seeds of uncertainty and I’d done it a lot more efficiently than Blini Rickett and Puff Wiggery could plant cabbages.
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