Borderlands: The Fallen

by John Shirley

  • • •

  “I’d really hate to just kill ’em quick,” Mash was saying, thoughtfully, hefting his Cobra combat rifle. “The girl—I’ll sell her to the meanest buyer I can find. Vance—he’ll die long and he’ll die slow. Big strong fucker’ll cry like a little girl before I’m done. And the boy …”

  “The boy is mine,” Grunj said, his eyes alight with sick flames.

  “Why sure, Grunj,” Mash said affably. “But you got to buy me out on him.”

  “You don’t own him, damn you!”

  “We co-own this bunch of losers! You’d be buying out my share of the brat!”

  Marla was looking desperately at Vance, silently pleading with him to find a way out of this. Vance ignored her, but his hands tightened on his rifle as he looked back and forth between his chief enemies, evidently trying to decide whom to shoot at first, Grunj or Mash.

  If Vance opened fire—and she knew he would—it meant an all-out firefight. The chances of Cal coming out of it alive weren’t good.

  “I’ll give you that outrider you came in, for the boy,” Grunj said. “That’s one of my outriders you’re using, you know.”

  “Done deal!” Mash declared, his misshapen face creasing in his version of a grin. “Now—”

  “You guys move an inch,” Vance growled, teeth clenched, “and I’ll take out one of you—you Grunj, or you Mash. And you don’t know which one.”

  Grunj chuckled. “You can’t get through my shield that quick. Yours is weak, it’s flickerin’ out.” He brandished his Stomper combat rifle. “This’ll cut right through that shield of yours. We’ll shoot your legs out from under you, shoot your arms … and then we’ll really start in on your …”

  “He’s gonna let me put out your eyes!” Patch said. “That’s because that blast you set off on Grunj’s Island cost me my eye.”

  But Patch didn’t move. He was looking at Vance’s gun, probably to see if it was powerful enough to break through his shield …

  Marla frantically searched her mind. What could she offer these thugs they didn’t have already, to prevent them from murder and rape and atrocity? Nothing. Because no deal they made would mean a thing. They’d do just as they pleased.

  “He’s got your money, Grunj, remember?” she blurted. “What if he led you to where he’s hidden it? I happen to know he hasn’t got it on him.”

  “Marla shut up!” Vance hissed.

  Grunj grunted. “Oh he will lead me to it, missy ho, don’t you worry! He’ll tell me right where it is so he can make the pain stop!” Grunj said. “I don’t need to make any deals with him for that!”

  She could see the men bracing—Patch was aiming his shotgun at Vance …

  “What’s that?” Cal asked, pointing at the cliff.

  “Ha-haaaaa!” Patch chortled. “The kid thinks that old dodge is gonna work!”

  “No, really!” Cal insisted. “There’s something cloaked over there—I saw the sparks … coming around the outrider! I think it’s a stalker!”

  Vance let out a grim laugh. “It seems I didn’t kill them all …”

  “Grunj!” Patch bellowed, “I say enough of this bullshit! Let me take this bastard—Uck.”

  “Take him uck?” Grunj said, turning to him, puzzled and annoyed. “What the hell are you—?”

  “Uck … uck …” Then Patch spat blood—and fell face forward, dead, with large, sparking stalker spikes still quivering deep in his back. The electrified spikes could go right through a shield.

  The men turned toward the stalker—visible now for a moment—Grunj swinging his rifle instinctively toward the stalker, Mash trying to see it as it flickered in and out of visibility. He fired a burst and a rifle-launched grenade at it—sparks outlined the stalker as the bullets hit it and it gave out that angry squealing … and then the grenade struck, blowing its head off. It died with a last, long, furious screech.

  But Vance had already seen the stalker, and knew that Grunj was between him and the predator. When the others looked away from him he used the moment to make two moves, in under a second. He planted the butt of his combat rifle on his right hip, swinging it toward Grunj with his right hand—his left shot out and shoved Marla hard, so that she was flung right into Cal—and both of them went sprawling onto the ground.

  She was stunned and angry for a moment, but as he opened fire at Grunj she realized Vance had done it to save their lives. Covering Cal with her body as best she could, she watched as Vance slammed his rifle through Grunj’s shield, shoving the muzzle into the sea thug’s right side, and firing point-blank—a burst of rounds smashing under Grunj’s ribs, shattering his insides. Grunj staggered, looking stunned. He coughed. He spat out a bloody bullet. Then he went down like a felled tree.

  Vance was already turning toward the others—but by then Mash had fired his Cobra at Vance, roaring with murderous delight as he emptied the whole clip into Vance’s shield—and Dimmle did the same with his assault rifle, bellowing with wordless fury: two men blasting Vance with automatic weapons at once, emptying their weapons into him.

  Vance was knocked off his feet, rolled over a couple times and lay on his back, gasping, as the guns finally quieted. Vance’s shield was gone. His right arm was shot away at the elbow; his neck fountained blood; his big jaw was shattered. His broad chest was pocked with oozing bullet holes. But he was alive, turning his head to look right at Marla.

  She got unsteadily up, gestured at Cal to stay down—and walked over to Vance. She sat down beside him, next to his intact arm, in the only spot that wasn’t pooling with his blood. She put her hand over his.

  “Mom?” Cal said, puzzled.

  Marla was dimly aware that Mash and Dimmle were reloading their weapons. But she bent near Vance, to listen as he whispered hoarsely to her, barely audible: “The Trash Coast. Under that shed. The money. When you were out, I …”

  “Never mind that, Vance,” she said softly, squeezing his big, calloused hand. She thought she had hated him. But seeing him die like this—she saw the boy, who’d been dying, in a way, ever since that day he saw his family killed by the Wasters. “Rest,” she said. “You …”

  He coughed blood, and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know any other way to be … it’s all I … it’s what I …” Then he shuddered, his eyes went blank, and he breathed his last.

  “Dammit,” Mash said. “Did you hear what he said to her, Dimmle?”

  “I did not.”

  “Well maybe he told her where he hid that money!”

  They turned toward Marla—and Mash strapped his rifle over his shoulder. He flexed his fingers. “Don’t think I’ll need the gun for this. I’ll squeeze it out of her.”

  “Leave her alone!” Cal yelled, throwing himself at Mash’s legs, trying to tackle him. The move had hardly any effect—except to make Mash laugh.

  He shook Cal off, as if shaking off a poodle humping his leg. “Get away, boy. Or it’ll go harder for both of you. Maybe I’ll sell you together, if you’re good … You and mom can be a team!”

  Dimmle laughed at that—and then stopped laughing. He looked around, puzzled. “Mash—you hear something? Sound like a gun cocking or …”

  “You’ve got good ears,” said a deep, amused voice.

  Marla turned to see a large muscular black man wearing goggles, standing nearby—how had he crept up without them seeing him? In his hands was a strange-looking weapon, like nothing she’d ever seen. It looked like it had been grown instead of manufactured.

  “Roland!” Cal said happily, jumping to his feet.

  “So that’s Roland,” Mash muttered, realizing that Roland had a gun pointed right at him—and his own was over his shoulder. “I’ve heard. No need to fight, Roland. You can share in the booty—”

  “Yeah, in every sense of the word,” Dimmle chuckled. “See, booty got two meanings—”

  “Shut up, Dimmle, I’m talking. Thing is, Roland, this bitch here is gonna tell us where that backstabbing bastard lying dead over there hi
d Grunj’s money. Seems like she might know. There’ll be plenty to go around …”

  “We’ll have a nice chat about it,” Roland said pleasantly. “Soon as you drop your weapons on the ground there.”

  He glanced at Cal in a way that seemed to carry significance …

  Cal nodded and moved away from Mash, sidling over to his mother.

  “I’m not dropping my weapons for no man,” said Mash flatly. “Dimmle—nail him and I’ll give you a double share of that money.”

  Dimmle chewed his lower lip nervously.

  Roland shook his head warningly.

  Dimmle swung his rifle toward Roland—

  Who fired the strange, gnarled weapon, blasting both men with a spray of electrified orbs—Dimmle and Mash screamed, their shields shorting out, their bodies jumping spasmodically … and then they fell, Dimmle staggering one step so he fell facedown across Mash. Their bodies made an X.

  “Only cross you’re gonna get from me,” Roland muttered, stepping over to kick the bodies—just making sure they were dead. He turned to Marla, smiling, then lowered his rifle.

  “Crazy luck,” Cal said, “your coming along then!”

  “Not really,” Roland said. “I’ve been tracking you since you went missing. Finally tracked you here. There’s a break in the glass, a long crack back there, gives a little cover for sneaking if a man slides on his belly.” He turned to Marla. “I’m Roland. You’d be Marla—Cal’s ma, I’m guessing … ?”

  She sighed and nodded. “You’d be … guessing right.” She felt dizzy. Exhausted.

  “Mom? You okay?” Cal asked, taking her hand.

  “Yeah, I’m just … I guess I saw a few too many men die. Especially …” She looked at Vance’s body—and decided not to say anything more about it. Cal wouldn’t understand. She wasn’t sure she understood it herself.

  “No need to bury those others,” she said. “But that one, Vance there—could you help us bury him? There wasn’t much good left in the big oaf. But I owe him my life. He saved me—more than once.”

  “Sure, I’ll bury him,” Roland said. “We’ll find a spot off the glass ground here. Glad to help, you being Cal’s mom.” He winked at Cal. “That means you’re a close associate of my partner. He did a damn good job for me. That kid’s got a lotta sand in him, like they said in the old days. Gonna be a hell of a man.”

  She put her arm around Cal, seeing the boy beaming at Roland. “Yeah. He is.”

  But she hoped Cal didn’t have to grow up without a father.

  Zac couldn’t remember having lost consciousness. But he must have. Because he was somewhere else now. In the same room, but moved.

  He blinked, trying to clear the haze from his eyes, looking around. He was no longer in that pocket on the wall. He was sitting up in something like a chair, which seemed to grow out of the wall, facing the spiked, flashing orb. As he watched, the orb changed shape, some spikes shrinking, others growing.

  “We can now converse, Zac Finn,” said a clear, sexless, pleasantly urbane voice in his mind.

  Zac jumped up, unnerved by the feeling of another being’s voice resounding in his head. He was losing his mind. Hearing voices …

  “Sit down,” commanded the voice. Power and authority resonated in it.

  Zac sat down.

  “Zac Finn: I have examined your mind, your history, your sociological signposts, your interactive social mechanisms of exchange, your means of reproduction, your family units, your society’s values, such as they are, your values, such as they are, your level of self-knowledge, which is microscopic, your movement through the fractal patterning reactivity of your life in all four dimensions; I have additionally been observing your race, on the planet, from time to time, as I regenerated. Your species is made up of bumbling dumbasses, on the whole. Kind of makes me ill to contemplate all the resources you have access to and the poor choices you make with them. What a bunch of knuckleheaded apes, for crying out loud.”

  “Wait,” Zac said. “Hold on one damn minute …” He was determined to get at the truth no matter what happened. He was speaking aloud, because it was easier for him to concentrate that way. But the ship read his mind as he spoke. “You use the words dumbasses, and knuckleheaded, crying out loud—What’s up with that? You sure you’re not someone from my planet pretending to be an alien computer?”

  “First of all, I’m not an alien computer or pretending to be an alien computer. Disabuse yourself of that notion. I’m not any sort of computer. Second, I am using whatever terminology from your store of word phrases that conveys my feelings best. I wish to convey irritation and disgust, and my perceptual evaluation, all at once. Dumbass knuckleheads does the job. It’s your vocabulary, not mine.”

  “What do you know about us?” Zac said, bridling. “You haven’t spent any real time with us.”

  “I’ve been observing your race since you arrived on this planet, through the occasional scan. But as I was dormant most of the time, in regeneration mode, I was not able to see everything. It was enough. You seem fairly typical primate-type bipedal omnivores, predatory, astoundingly wasteful and self-deceiving. As a people you have some sociobiological altruistic instincts, as well as a capacity for elaborate societal structures and modalities of exchange. Yours is a remarkably short-lived species. Level of consciousness, averages fairly low …”

  “Look, the big question for me, is, what do you plan to do with me? Do I even want to know? Should I beg you to kill me painlessly or what?”

  “If I decide to be sensible and practical and simply put you in my samples collection, with your own bottle and label, you will be put to death quite painlessly. I see no point in cruelty to animals. But I haven’t quite decided what to do yet. I’m still assessing the situation. Essentially, if I find the Hidden Thing of Interest in you or one others of your companions, I will be inclined to release you, and to let you and some of the others live. That Hidden Thing of Interest is a precious thing, rare and exotic and exquisite. I thought I’d glimpsed it, before, in your people, though it was tiny, emaciated, underfed, barely alight. But I could not be sure—my senses were not fully recovered.”

  “What is that ‘Hidden Thing of Interest’ that makes someone worth preserving?”

  “The spark of higher consciousness. It’s usually expressed in meaningful self-sacrifice, enlightened unselfishness, mindful heroism. All that speaks of a level of inner potential, which could evolve to entelechy. I’ll know it when I see it.”

  Zac hesitated, wondering what tack to take. He was in danger of being stuck on a pin under glass, it seemed. A dead specimen. He needed more information. “You said you’d examined others?”

  “My monitor captured a few others of your kind, some years back, but they died before I was able to look deeply into their minds. Since I’m beginning to reach full regeneration, I was able to investigate your mind more thoroughly. My primary conclusion is that you personally are a flailing, bumbling loser, a chump who usually makes the wrong choices, more or less typical of a race that has allowed greed to formulate its social standards. You have only a few qualities of interest to me—and you have kept them suppressed. You are like people lost in a dark cave, wishing for light, refusing to light the candles you carry for fear of burning your fingers a little. What a lot of jackasses you people are.”

  “Oh and you’re so much better. Probably if I had access to your memories and your history I wouldn’t be all that impressed.”

  “Since individuals of my race, at this time, live about ten thousand of your years, at least, with our most recent civilization’s history stretching for millions of years, I doubt you’d be able to follow it. You can barely count to a hundred without losing track of the process.”

  “Mind telling me what planet you’re from?”

  A collection of sounds and shapes appeared in Zac’s mind, the shapes arranged in a three-dimensional lattice that seemed to intertwine meaningfully with the sounds. “That is the name of my homeworld. The short ve
rsion. The full version requires seventy-seven thousand characters to express.”

  “You’re not from this solar system, anyway?”

  “No. Nor am I from the galaxy you so quaintly call ‘the Milky Way Galaxy.’ I am exploring galaxies that neighbor the one my own people are in. I’ll return home soon with my report. In emerging from a wormhole, I was misdirected by an errant black-hole gravitational aberration, and was struck by a comet, which sent me off course, causing me to crash on this world.

  “I’ve lain here for hundreds of ‘years’ getting my strength and consciousness back. In the process I tapped the raw energy deep under this volcanic structure, with an exploratory probe, and converted it to my own uses …”

  “Don’t I get to meet you, face-to-face? Or are you inside that big round spiny thing I’m looking at?”

  “‘Spiny thing’ … oh that object opposite your chair? That’s a perceptual nerve cluster with sub-brain capabilities. You could not ‘see me face-to-face’—my ‘face’ is spread over my entire person. You would have to perceive too much in three-dimensionality all at once, to see that. But look at anything around and you see part of me. Everything you see is a part of me, here. It’s what you call ‘the alien starship.’”

  Zac felt there was something essential he was missing. “So—you are the spaceship? Some kind of biocomputer program talking to me? The spaceship is an unmanned drone?”

  “No, I’m not a biocomputer, nor a drone, nor a transportation device except in the sense that your own body is your transportation device. I am one single organism. What you suppose to be a spaceship is a conscious organism, a creature who quite naturally is capable of flying through space, and passing through ‘wormholes’ to go vast distances. The creature you are addressing is not in the spaceship. What you suppose to be ‘the spaceship’ is itself the creature you would meet. And you, Zac Finn, are inside my body.”

  • • •

  It was dusk before they were ready to go in search of Zac. Burying Vance took time. Marla scratched Vance’s name into a shard of plains glass, which they set up as a marker. She felt strange doing it. Like she was both betraying Zac—and letting go of part of herself, at once. Vance had been a brute. She had no good reason to feel so attached to him …