Borderlands: The Fallen

by John Shirley

  Roland grunted assent. “True enough, kid. They need me for a while. And I need them for a while. But that’s one treaty that just isn’t gonna last—whoa, better slow down, what the hell is that?”

  Roland slowed the outrunner, brought it to an idling stop on the edge of a dark spot in the plain. He got out and walked up to the edge of the big blot on the glassy ground.

  Roland stared down at the slick ground, shook his head, and growled, “What the hell! Kid, stay in the vehicle.”

  Cal was annoyed at that—but he’d learned not to argue with Roland when he used that tone.

  Roland turned and waved at the sandtracker, signaling them to come, but slowly. In a couple of minutes the sandtracker caught up. Crannigan switched the engine off. “What’s going on? We need to get moving!”

  “Not through here,” Roland said. “Looks like something’s hollowed out the plain in this spot. Kinda looks like it might’ve been done deliberately.”

  “He’s right,” Rans allowed, getting carefully out of the sandtracker. He studied the glassy surface, then walked gingerly over to Roland and looked down at the dark blot. “They’ve expanded their tunnels. They didn’t used to be this far out. Might be true what I heard—they have some kinda tribal gathering out this way …”

  “Who’s they?” Crannigan asked, getting out and walking over with Rosco.

  “Tunnel rats,” said Rans, spitting.

  “I was afraid of that,” Roland said, lifting his goggles to wipe dust from his eyes. “Goddamn tunnel rats.”

  “Which is what?” Crannigan asked.

  “Screwballs who live down in tunnels, most of which they dig themselves,” Roland said. “Went kinda wacky, hiding out from the Psychos. Never came back up. Inbred and mean and filthy motherbuggers. And if that wasn’t enough—cannibals.”

  “They stay down there, out of our way?”

  Rans Veritas shook his head. “Can’t be sure they’ll stay down there. They come out at night and nab people. And they lay traps … which might be what this is. One thing for sure, if Roland hadn’t spotted it, it would’ve collapsed under him. He’d be down there with the kid right now …” Rans turned to look at Cal in a speculative way that made Cal shiver. There was something sinister in that conjectural look.

  Crannigan was giving Rans a sour look of his own. “You didn’t know about this? We didn’t get any warning about it from you. And you’re no good in a fight—you hide under the vehicles! So what good are you?”

  “You’ll see,” Rans grumbled. “You’ll all see when we get there. Right now we got to find a way around this.”

  “Let’s get back in the outrunner, and drive around it,” Roland said, shrugging.

  “Looks like these dark spaces go on a ways,” Rosco said. “Branching out all over. Hey—is that someone down there?”

  Cal stood up in the outrunner to try to see what was down in the sheathed pit.

  He couldn’t see much in the glare of reflected light on the slick ground, just a sense of depth he hadn’t noticed before on that glassy plain.

  “Yeah—looked like a tunnel rat to me,” Roland muttered. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Tunnel rats, Cal thought.

  His father might have come this way. For all he knew his father, or mother, was already down there.

  Vance got in the outrunner; the others got in the sandtracker. Roland backed up a little more and drove around the edge of the dark spots in the glassy surface.

  They hadn’t gone more than thirty meters before the silicon sheath underneath them began to crack. Roland stopped the outrunner, backed up a little, and watched the glassy surface. The cracks stopped spreading.

  “Can’t go on that way … Hard to see with all the sunlight shinin’ off the glass. We’re gonna have to head over to the edge of the plain and go the long way. Makes me nervous, though, taking the extra time. Too many people seem to know about the alien crash …”

  “Roland,” Cal said, “I’ve got an idea. Suppose you give me some tinted goggles. There’s a pair in the sandtracker. Then I walk real slow up ahead of the vehicles. I don’t weigh much—I probably wouldn’t break through. I can point you to a safe route.”

  “Kid, you don’t know for sure you don’t weigh enough to break through. Those little bastards might’ve undermined it so almost anything’d fall through.”

  “Looks solid enough for someone my size. Come on, Roland. I want to be good for something out here.”

  Roland looked at him with a grim seriousness. Then he sighed. “Can’t argue with that. That’s what any man should want. Okay. Get out and wait by the vehicle.”

  Roland went back on foot to the sandtracker, found the tinted goggles, and brought them back to Cal. He tossed them over, and Cal put them on. The world shifted into a cool blue. Details he hadn’t been able to make out before came through. Rocks that had looked blue now looked gray, or flat black, or reddish.

  “Okay, kid. You’re on. Head away from those cracks—off that way, toward the edge of the plain.”

  Cal swallowed hard, but walked out in front of the outrunner, in the direction Roland indicated, testing the ground as he went. Treading lightly, he moved slowly to the west, away from the cracked areas. Even more slowly, the vehicles followed him, inching along.

  There were a good many dark areas, indicating undermining tunnels. But with the goggles, and being close to the plain’s surface, he could see a way past them, on the glassy ground where there was solid support. They kept going roughly the way they had been, but wending carefully between the dark tunnels, visible in outline beneath the translucent surface.

  At last they reached the end of the maze on the glassy surface. Up ahead, between here and the volcano, it looked mostly clear.

  But to his left, in the single dark shaft still visible under the scratched, translucent glass, something moved. He peered down through the glass—and caught a face goggling up at him.

  Tunnel rat. Manlike, but with a rubbery face and glass eyes, the creature clasped its hands together, wringing them …

  Suddenly it pointed up at him and gestured with its clawed finger. Come here.

  Something about the tunnel rat’s gesture hinted that coming down there was Cal’s destiny.

  We may be going the long way around,” Berl was saying, as sunset began to turn the glassy plain a streaked, rusty orange. “But we’re more likely to get there in one piece than any of them others. Sure, I seen ’em too, boy. Mercs. And way far off I spied some folks in a truck. I asked Bizzy was it you. He said no. And those mercs ain’t gonna make it, no sir. The tunnel rats, and the ShipGrowth—that’ll get ’em. But the way we’re going … we’re good. Up to a point, anyhow. Ha! Up to a point …”

  They were tramping along the curving edge of the plain, Zac carrying most of their baggage, getting closer to the lower slopes of the old volcanic shell. Bizzy was well ahead, ranging back and forth, looking for trouble. Zac wondered if he could knock Berl down, take the gun—use it to control the old man. Berl would keep Bizzy off …

  But how would he know what Berl said to his pet? One spit of that corrosive venom and Zac would be a mass of dying, bubbling flesh.

  It occurred to Zac, then, that he was going to where he’d planned to go anyway. When he got close enough, he could turn the tables on the old hermit.

  An undertow of excitement began to tug at Zac. He was going right to the alien crash site. Maybe he would die there. Or maybe it would make his fortune. With enough money, he could find his family.

  Because they were alive. Definitely. They had to be.

  “Now—you see that wall of rock up ahead?” Berl asked him suddenly, pointing to the cliffs under the foot of the volcano shell. “Tell me, boy—how you think we’re gonna get over that?”

  “I dunno unless Bizzy can carry us. You got a jetpack on you?”

  “See that fold in the rock there, not much more’n a crack from here? Don’t look like much, do it?” Berl chortled. “Just you wait. L
et’s pick up the pace—it’ll be dark soon. Want to get in the pass before dark.”

  They trekked onward, and at last, as the half-moon began to rise, they came to the cliffs abutting the glass plain. The cliffs beetled over them, leaning out above the plain as if about to rush it. Bizzy had already climbed the cliff, was poised at the top, looking down at them, his yellow eyes glowing against the deepening night.

  The seam in the rock Berl had pointed out appeared to be just that. They came closer, and Berl skipped ahead, and seemed to disappear.

  “Berl?” Zac looked up to see Bizzy staring down at him. There was no running off now, even without Berl to watch him. Because his giant pet was watching. And Bizzy always knew what Berl wanted.

  Berl’s head seemed to appear in the wall of stone, jutting out sideways. “Get on in here, boy!” He vanished again.

  Zac reached out, touched the stone, and felt his way along it—and suddenly no longer felt the rock under his hands, though he could still see it there in front of him. He stepped through what had seemed like impenetrable rock—but it was just an image. Something shimmered, and then he found he was standing in a shadowy crevice just wide enough for two men, a little light shafting down from overhead.

  Berl was there, combat rifle in hand, grinning at him. Zac turned and looked back at the plain—and saw an open entrance, a meter wide, as high as the cliff, the “seam” he’d seen earlier. “Some kind of optical illusion?”

  “It’s more’n that, boy. Someone way long ago hid that entrance there. I think it was the ship done it. And I think it did it so it could bring its took-overs up here without anyone seeing where they went.”

  “What are took-overs?”

  “The Vault had its Guardians—these aliens do it different. Come on, there’s a way up, nice ’n’ smooth. When we get to the top, there’s a cave we can spend the night. We’ll want to go about our ‘fishin’ early in the mornin’. Let’s just hope we don’t run into any took-overs on the way.”

  Berl gestured with the rifle and Zac went on ahead. They climbed a ramp, at the widening back of the crevice, that zigzagged upward in short switchbacks, up and up … to the foot of the hollow volcanic cone, and the outer region of the alien debris field.

  “We can’t drive up any higher than this?” Cal asked as they stood at the edge of the plain in the moonlight-damaged darkness.

  “Nope, not in either vehicle,” Roland said. “The passage is too narrow. Way too steep. Anyway it’ll be stealthier this way. And we’ve definitely got to be stealthy. And I think we oughta go and have a look right now. See what we can see. We’ll be too visible come daylight. May as well use the night to our advantage.”

  Rans snorted and complained, “We could fall into a damn crevice or something, in the dark!”

  “There’s just enough light,” Roland said patiently. “I think we’ll be all right …”

  They were at the foot of a short cliff, maybe forty meters high, below the rugged foothills under the shell of the volcano. A break in the wall opened up in front of them; a tumble of broken rock offered a route up to the top of the cliff. It looked like loose rock, and a dangerous way to go. But it was the most expedient.

  “Let’s go!” Cal said. He was excited on several levels. First the possibility existed that he might find his father up on the volcano. Second, the sheer excitement of being at the end of a journey. And then there was the mystery, the alien mystique, nestled in the ancient volcanic cone …

  Rans glared at him. Cal could only see his eyes in the uneven light. “We stay here and rest! I’ve got a bum leg—I’m not going to climb that now! We can go up just before dawn. It’ll still be dark.”

  Crannigan shook his head. “You’ve lard-assed your way through this whole trip, Veritas! Now you want to lie around some more! We need to move! We’re burning moonlight!”

  “I ain’t going, I tell ya! I haven’t been able to pay for a rebuild of my leg! It hurts like the devil!”

  “Oh hell, let’s rest, I could use some too,” Rosco said.

  Roland nodded. “We’ll have to move the vehicles out of sight, around that point there,” Roland said. “They’ll attract too much attention if we leave ’em here. Me and Rosco can do that. It’ll take us a half hour or so to walk back. Cal, you help the others set up camp—see there, up the crevice, there’s a shelf of rock. We’ll camp there. But a cold camp—no fires. That was our mistake last time …”

  Cal opened his mouth to object—he didn’t want to be left here with Rans, even for a few minutes, without Roland. Some instinct warned him against it.

  But he saw Roland looking at him and decided he didn’t want to seem weak.

  “Sure, okay,” he said. “I’ll start moving the tents.”

  He and Rosco took the camp supplies out of the vehicles, and then Roland and Rosco drove off toward the point where the cliffs thrust out into the plain.

  Cal, Crannigan, and Rans—who was carrying as little as possible—toted their gear up the crevice, over the shale and loose rock, toiling in the darkness, sometimes falling and barking their shins.

  At last they reached the shelf where they’d take their rest. They set up camp, and then Crannigan said, “I’m gonna climb up, see if I can see anything. I wanna know if any of those weird brain-controlled bastards are hanging around up there. Keep an eye on the kid, Rans, will ya? Roland’ll be back soon.”

  Cal snorted. “It’s not like I need anyone to keep an eye on me.”

  Crannigan ignored him and started climbing the rocks, vanishing into the darkness above them.

  Cal was looking for something to eat in the packs when a big, grimy hand closed around his mouth, clamping down hard. “Hold still, kid,” Rans said, “or I’ll break your neck right now.”

  Cal stopped struggling—and bit Rans hard in the hand.

  “Ow!”

  Then came a thumping crunch, and a big splash of darkness, as Rans hit him hard in the back of the head—and Cal lost consciousness.

  He was on his back, moving backward on the slick ground …

  Someone was dragging Cal along by the collar. He was no longer at the camp. He was out on the glassy plain. He could see it stretching out to his left, and the half-moon rising over it. The moon was reflected, dull and smeared, in the surface of the plain.

  That’s when the pain hit him. The throbbing in the back of his head crackled with a piercing hurt.

  Cal reached back, tried to pull his collar loose from Rans’s grip. He wasn’t strong enough.

  “Forget it, kid,” Rans said. “The thing is, I don’t like loose ends. And you’re one. Your old man’s gotta be dead. And that means you and your family’ll blame me. If you come out of this alive—you’ll come after me. You or some other Finn putz. And another thing is, I don’t like the way you talk to me. No respect.”

  Cal struggled again, trying to wrench loose. It hurt to do it but he had to try. “You’re just guilty, that’s all—you know what you did to my dad! You don’t like me around to remind you!”

  Rans twisted Cal’s collar angrily—the kid had hit a nerve. “Shut up, boy.”

  “They’ll know—Roland’ll know what happened. He’ll figure it out. And he’ll kick your ass up over your head!”

  “Naw. I’ll tell them about the skags that jumped us and dragged you off. Happens all the time on this planet. And they’re sure not going to find you where you’re going. Bye, bye, kid.”

  Marla guessed it was near dawn because of the way that Flemmel was sagging. The tunnel rats were accustomed to sleep during the day. No one came to relieve Flemmel, and eventually he squatted down, leaned back against the wall. Soon he was snoring, clutching his submachine gun to himself much the way a sleeping child hugs a stuffed toy.

  She’d slept fitfully, her stomach burning with the bitter mash of seed pods and roots they’d brought her to eat. There had been meat too, but she’d picked that out and put it in the waste bucket. She didn’t know what—or who—it might be.

>   The lantern was still glowing, but weakly now. She had just enough light to see what she was doing, as she got up, stretched, wincing at her aching muscles, then went to the far, darkest corner of the cell, half-hidden by the stone bench. Here she was partially concealed from anyone who might watch from the corridor. She might be able to dig a certain amount … but with what?

  She scraped at the wall near the floor with her fingers, and found it was indeed fairly soft stone here—not quite soapstone soft, but almost. But she could make no real progress with her hands. She soon had bloodied nails.

  Then she remembered the diary. Checking Flemmel again, and finding him still asleep, she pulled the diary from under the rags, removed its metal cover—noting a corner of it seemed bent, and dirty—and used it as a crude shovel. Now she made real progress, using the small metal rectangle to dig out the soft stone.

  She might try to slip out, find a way past the tunnel rats, without even dealing with Flemmel. But …

  No. She would need his mask. His clothing. That was the way to do it. Disguise herself as a tunnel rat. She’d have to kill Flemmel to get his mask and clothing.

  No problem. She’d grab the gun from him, and smash his head in with its butt before he had time to think. It wouldn’t do to fire it and make a ruckus, draw other sentries here.

  It could work. It had to work.

  She glanced at him, and saw he was still squatted down, and snoring softly.

  She went back to scraping at the soft spot in the wall. It was even softer than she’d supposed, sometimes falling apart without her having to push hard. Which suggested that it had been dug out before, and filled back in.

  This was the darkest part of the cell—much of her digging had to be done by touch. But by degrees her eyes adjusted a little, just enough to see a piece of paper, barely visible, buried in the soft material of the wall.

  Marla stared. Then she dug the paper carefully out and brushed it off. It appeared to be one of the pages from Frank’s diary. She checked Flemmel—he was still asleep—and held the paper up to read the writing on it in the dim light from the lantern: