by John Shirley
Maybe there was hope. Maybe his wife and son were alive. Maybe he would find them, and the crashed alien ship. He would even make it all good with Berl—send him his share. He had no problem with that.
Might be hard to do, though, if Berl killed him before he could find the treasure. Always a possibility. He peered down at the desert, in the direction of Berl’s hideout, at least twenty kilometers back. He shaded his eyes, looking for Bizzy. Wherever Bizzy was, Berl wasn’t far away. And Bizzy ought to be easy to spot. Just look for a shape like a daddy longlegs as high as a house.
He saw nothing but a movement in the sand, almost directly below the cliff. Big creatures that seemed to swim in the sand, down there: emerging, dipping out of sight, emerging again. Giant purple crustaceans.
And there, a half kilometer off—the rising sun was throwing long, rippling shadows from a group of trotting skags. Farther, rakks wheeled over the horizon. A few clouds scudded. Nothing else moved.
Maybe the old man wasn’t coming after him.
But Zac knew better. Berl was obstinate and obsessive. When the old hermit realized what had been taken from the cave, he wouldn’t stop till he got back “what was his” or died trying. In time, Zac would have to face him.
He returned to the old surveyor’s camp, a hut and a circle of stones, where he’d spent the night. He knew it was an old surveyor’s camp because the old surveyor was there: a skeleton, hand still clutching surveillance instruments.
Most of the instruments were rusted, broken. But one, protected by a scrap of canvas bag, looked intact—a small telescope. Did it still work?
He picked up the telescope, brushed off the lens, and looked into the distance. Yes. The little telescope zoomed in quite sharply. And it was solar powered, so the power unit was still functional. This instrument could save his life—he could use it to see enemies before they spotted him. Give him time to take cover. It also just might help him find the starship crash site …
Feeling like maybe, for once, he was on point with destiny, Zac ate a small amount of the food he’d cadged from Berl, drank a couple of swallows of water from the canteen, and then reached into his satchel, took out the strange helical neon tube–like artifact he’d stolen from Berl’s stash. He remembered seeing a spirochete in a microviewer once—this thing was shaped something like that, but large as a man’s hand. It squirmed at his touch, turning, shifting, rolling in his palm—to point west.
He put on his floppy hat against the increasing glare of the rising sun, carried the telescope and the artifact to the other side of the plateau, less than a quarter klick away to the west.
Zac approached the edge carefully and hunkered down, not wanting to be seen against the sky.
A warm breeze rushed from the west, fluttering his hair, and bringing the smell of carrion and unknown spices. He raised the spiral artifact, held it loosely on his palm so it could move freely. It quivered, and turned compasslike to point southwest. He set the artifact on the rock of the butte, and lifted the telescope to his eye.
Southwest, a promontory jutted against the sky, rising like a worn tooth above a series of canyon rims. A conical shape, broken on one side—could be an old volcanic cone. Hadn’t Rans said something about that?
… Now it just happens the crash site is under a kind of overhang in an old volcanic cone …
That could be it, right there. Meaning he was in the same area of the planet, in a rough sort of way, as the coordinates he’d been given.
But how far away was the dead volcano? At least fifty kilometers, maybe a hundred. How was he going to get there alive? He didn’t have enough food or water …
Berl had said a man could eat almost any animal on the planet. He had the shotgun. He could kill game. If it didn’t kill him first.
He’d sent the location of the crash site to Marla. It could be that she and Zac had gone there already. They could be there waiting for him. Maybe they’d gotten help—
Or maybe they’d gotten killed. Or … remembering the bandits who’d nearly done him in by the DropCraft he felt sure that there were worse things than being dead on this planet. If Marla was in the hands of people like that …
No. He had to put that out of his mind.
Zac returned thoughtfully to his campsite. “Well, old boy,” he told the skull of the dead surveyor, “sorry to leave you without company. Maybe Berl’ll be along soon. No doubt he’ll have something to say to you …”
Zac gathered up his supplies, stashed them in the satchel, picked up the shotgun and the canteen, and left for the steep, twisty trail that led down to the desert.
An hour later, he was trudging through the shadows of a gulley, headed southwest. He stopped from time to time, to listen, and look. Twice he scrambled under cover of stone overhangs to hide from rakks soaring overhead.
But he kept moving—one step at a time to the southwest. Wondering if he was getting closer to his wife, and son, with each step. Or farther away.
Marla woke in the sheet metal shack to find Vance gone.
The first feeling she had wasn’t fear of being left unprotected on this dangerous planet. It was one of emotional abandonment. A deep resonant pang went through her. An ache.
“Oh no,” she muttered, looking sleepily around the malodorous little shack. “Don’t tell me …”
Surely she didn’t have feelings for the big lout, did she?
Ridiculous. Despite more than an hour, last night, of … bonding. Of a sort.
Sex, sure. But love? Not possible. First of all, she loved her husband, flawed though Zac was. Second, Vance was a felon wanted on numerous planets. Third, he was a big, sweaty thug who’d killed a number of unsuspecting men in front of her—in fact, he’d killed scores of them, blowing them to hell on Grunj’s Island. True, they were all sea thugs, awful men from what she’d seen, but still … the ruthlessness of it was frightening.
And fourth, she had to think of what was best for Cal and …
Wait. Why was she having to make this long list? Why wasn’t “she loved her husband” enough?
The why was … last night. Vance had picked her up in his arms, carried her easily to the bed of old rags, and he’d taken her, acting as if it were a matter of course—and she hadn’t resisted. Just as she’d acquiesced that first time on Grunj’s Island. Both times she’d told herself it was because she needed to develop a relationship with him, so she could use him for her own ends—to protect her till she could get back to her family. She needed him to survive, and besides, if she resisted him he might hurt her.
But she’d opened herself eagerly to him; she’d sought out his rough lips, she’d let her hands trace his powerful shoulders as he took her, she’d enjoyed his considerable endowment—in fact she’d reveled in it.
All right, she was a grown woman, the circumstances were unusual, she could be forgiven for enjoying herself, squeezing a little pleasure out of life in this terrifying world. Who knew how long she’d be alive? No reason to be a martyr. She could enjoy the little … if little was the word, given the ravaged soreness she felt between her legs today … that life offered her, on Pandora.
But surely there was no real emotional involvement. Nor should there be. It wasn’t lovemaking, it was just sex. That was all.
But she ached, seeing he’d left her here alone without a word. There was something primeval here. Her ancient ancestors, hundreds of thousands of years earlier, had been hunter-gatherers, she supposed, traveling the land looking for shelter, for game; the man protecting the woman, the woman doing her part maintaining whatever dwelling they managed, offering him affection, a kind of shelter in her open arms.
The circumstances seemed to call those ancient instincts up within her. To make her want to follow him, forever, making a fire, arranging a bed for them, watching out for enemies as he slept … bearing his children …
She shuddered. This was insane. But the feeling was strong.
Then Vance came back into the shack, carrying a bloody carcass
slung over his shoulder.
She stood up—and he dropped the dead animal at her feet. Then he took a long, serrated combat knife from a belt sheath, and threw it so it stuck in the carcass. “Marla, you got to clean that, and prepare it, ’cause we’re short on food. I had to trade some food for information. I found out where the truck is I want. The one they brought you in on. Same bunch. If you don’t like those fuckers, we can kill ’em. Might have to anyway. Meanwhile, we got to have food. Skag meat’s not bad if you hang it a couple hours, and salt it. See there, in the corner of the shack? That’s a drain. There’s a hook over it. Bag of salt on the shelf. You drag it to the drain, gut that skag, and I’ll hang it, then we’ll let it bleed out, and we’ll cut meat and salt it. May as well keep busy. We’re gonna be here till after dark …” He yawned, and wiped skag blood off his arms with a scrap of cloth. “I’m gonna get some more rest … you just about wore me out last night …”
He walked past Marla, leaving her in a welter of emotion. Vance was back. That was good. Only … only … because he would protect her till she could get back to her family. It wasn’t the bonding thing.
But he wanted her to gut this hideous, large, smelly animal. It looked about the size of a large wild boar, with three oddly splayed jaws, spines along its back, reptilian skin. A horrible reek rose from it, like the repellent smell that garter snakes put out to drive away predators.
Contemplating the dead skag, and the idea of gutting it, her stomach tried to retreat into her bowels.
Still, Vance had gone out and killed the thing, at a risk to his own life. He was going to be protecting her—though she’d have to do some fighting herself—and she had to show him that she was useful. Suppose he decided that sex didn’t make her useful enough?
Marla sighed, and plucked out the knife. Grimacing and gagging, she began to carve at the creature’s belly.
The hard part was getting the knife into the skin. Once it was in, halfway down the blade—especially in the softer part near its groin—she found she could saw her way up to the ribs. Its general anatomy was not so different from a boar; the skeleton seemed roughly similar. Her hands ached by the time she got the belly split open. She made a cross cut, to open the belly up more …
Mottled purple and green, the skag’s guts slopped out, with a smell that doubled the repulsive reek of the creature’s exterior. Marla’s gagging redoubled too, especially when she had to reach into its still-warm, gooily wet interior to cut the guts loose, but she kept from vomiting until, in cutting the thing’s stomach off, something popped out …
A human hand, bitten off at the wrist.
She rushed to the drain in the corner of the shack, and vomited.
Still bent over, hands on her knees, she turned her head to see if Vance was sneering at her—but he was snoring instead, lying on his back on the raggedy bed, asleep, mouth open. In his right hand was a gun, held across his chest. His finger was on the trigger as he slept. Was the gun a message that he couldn’t trust her, clasped there to warn her off—or was it there to protect them?
Marla straightened up, shook her head, and laughed softly to herself, not sure what she was laughing at, and returned to the skag carcass. Looking at the bitten-off hand, the thought passed through her mind that it could be Zac’s hand, or even Cal’s. But as she looked at it, despite the fact that the skin was half-digested away, she could see it was far bigger than their hands. Some bandit, wandered too far from his buddies, knocked over on his back, had tried to hold the slavering skag’s jaws back—and lost his hand for his trouble. To start with. She didn’t look into the stomach to see what else was there.
She found an old sack to put the guts and the hand in, using the knife blade to shove them into it. She carried the sack to the door, opened it slowly, and looked through. A sunny morning. A blessedly clean wind in her face. In the distance, down a series of stony slopes, she could see the ocean. Something flew through the sky over the sea—a rakk?
She saw no other movement but the slow nudging of clouds.
She dragged the sack of offal out in the open, tossed it behind a boulder. She hoped the smell wouldn’t attract scavengers, but there was no way she was going to share a shack with a pile of rotting skag guts. After a moment’s thought, she used her hands to cover it with sand.
She lingered outside, standing by the doorway, taking deep breaths of air. Then she went back inside, closing the door behind her.
“Vance?” she called. “Wake up! You going to help me hang up this skag carcass, or what?”
• • •
“Roland … ,” Cal whispered.
“Yeah kid?” Roland was barely audible, both of them trying not to be heard by the others. Roland was cleaning sand from the engine of his outrunner, Cal bending over it beside him, pretending to help. He glanced over at the mercs.
The mercs, twenty meters away, were mostly still gathered around the smoky campfire, grousing as they drank their morning coffee, some of them casting disapproving glances at Roland. Crannigan was up on the dune’s crest, talking to the sentry he was posting. Another was trudging sleepily down to get some rest.
Cal lowered his voice a notch more. “You think Crannigan buys the thing we told him about, uh, you’re gonna get money for me and only you can speak the language and … all that crap?”
“I think he half-believes it,” Roland whispered back. “But pretending he believes it—that’s just cover. More likely he’s decided he needs me—he’s expecting trouble these thugs can’t handle. I guess he knows me well enough to figure, if I say I’ll stand by him in a fight … I will.”
“You will? A guy like that?”
“Sure—long as I need him too. He’s on his way to where we’re going. Could be he’s doing the same thing we are—checking out the place your dad came down. Ol’ Scrap’s being mighty close-mouthed about it all. We’ll see. And once I don’t need him—I’ll tell him so. And I’ll tell him to his face. Then all bets are off. Him and me, we’ll go toe to toe. I’ll give him a little something special from my old pal McNee.”
“Crannigan and his men are going the same way we are?”
“That’s the way I heard it.”
“They work for Atlas?”
“They’re subcontractors, you might say. Atlas has its own men—Crimson Lances. But when they’re trying to keep something real quiet, they’ll use mercenaries. Guys who soldier for pay. Usually means they got some real dirty work to do …”
“Hey …” Cal lifted his head, listening. An anomalous keening, humming sound vibrated from above.
He peered up at the sky, half-expecting a swooping predator. But instead he saw a square of silver, growing bigger, bigger, as he came down toward them. “Something’s flying down to us! A transport!”
Roland stepped back and they both craned their heads to look. Within a minute, a silvery vehicle, about the size of a four-bedroom two-story house, was slowing to hover over them. About forty meters up, it was shaped like a step pyramid of silvery metal and glass, point upward, with oval pulsers at its four lower corners. Cal guessed it was an orbital landing craft, probably from a starship. He’d seen this model in pictures, but never in person.
It slowed, hovered, then eased over to the nearest hilltop, opposite the big dune, and settled down, extending struts to straighten it, hissing steam, its shimmering repulsion fields raising a cloud of blue dust. Along the lower tier of the metal step pyramid was the corporate logo, red against silver:
THE ATLAS CORPORATION: OTG VESSEL 452
A port opened, and a ramp extended. Down the ramp came four men. Two of them were bodyguards in heavy armor—one silver, the other blue—their faces unseen behind opaque plasteel helmets, sleek Atlas rifles in their hands, heavy boots clanking on the ramp. They kept watch over a scruffy red-faced older man with lank hair, who limped as he walked, and a polished-looking young man in a clingsuit stenciled with a coat and tie; an executive, Cal supposed. The exec wore light blue sunglasses, a friendly, sof
t smile on his affable face.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Roland muttered. “That limping old duffer there is Rans Veritas. I know him from New Haven, and Fyrestone. Sneaky old hustler mostly. The guy with him—don’t know him. Got to be an Atlas exec. Come on, let’s see if they’ll let us listen in …”
They walked casually toward the shuttle. “Who’re the guys in the armor?” Cal asked, in an undertone.
“Canned soldiers, we call ’em. Probably Atlas elite. Usually more cold-blooded than a viper.”
Scrap Crannigan hurried up the slope to meet the men standing at the bottom of the ramp. Roland, Cal, and the mercs stood in a quiet group near the vessel, listening.
“Scrap, how are you?” called the slick guy in the blue sunglasses. “Rans here says he can take you to the site. You’ll go with him, cross-country from here.”
“That right, Gorman?” Crannigan seemed to be holding himself back as he spoke to the exec. He looked at Gorman with a dull, sullen hatred. “Why don’t you just take us up in that thing and set us down near it?”
“We haven’t got the exact coordinates. We had it down to a few hundred square klicks …”
“I know. And we’ve looked nearly every square centimeter …”
“And,” Gorman went on patiently, “Rans here says if we get too close to the ET site from the air, it’ll shoot us down. Uses some kind of beam we can’t shield against. We tried a drone, and we lost it. Never found out what happened to it. But it seems if you approach it from the ground …” He shrugged. “It’s possible.”
