Sabre pondered the situation. The unexpected and unwelcome turn of events disconcerted him. Palpable waves of indignant expectation emanated from her slight form, and clearly she expected him to keep her warm as the cyber had done. He was reluctant to enter into the situation, however; it was just too strange. Apart from the night when she had slept with the cyber for warmth, and he had dimly sensed her closeness, he had never been in contact with another person. The prospect of being inundated with all the sensations he had so long been denied held a bittersweet dread.
“So take some blankets, there are lots,” he suggested.
The level of tension rose as she drew a hissing breath. “I said I will not be able to warm up on my own.”
He played his trump. “If I have another seizure, you could get hurt.”
The tense silence grew more pregnant, and he was sure he could hear the thudding of their hearts. Her voice dripped with accusation. “Do you want me to freeze?”
“No, I don’t want you to freeze, damn it,” he said, annoyed by her persistence.
“So what is the problem?”
Sabre sighed and lifted the blankets so she could crawl in, which she did with alacrity. He grunted and shivered as her icy hands found their way to his skin, fighting the urge to push her away and avoid the alien contact that made him so uncomfortable. The strange sensations disturbed him, but he found he was able to ignore her presence more easily than he had expected.
“Lie still, and don’t wriggle,” he said.
Tassin sighed as his warmth soaked into her, defrosting her extremities. He remained tense, and prevented her from getting closer, but she soon fell asleep.
Sabre stared into the darkness and listened to her soft breathing, remembering the time when the old lady had owned him. She had taken him everywhere, as her bodyguard, even into the women’s recreation centre, where women stripped nude and indulged in hot spas and mud treatments. A cyber was considered to be a machine, so he had been made to stand guard over his owner while naked women relaxed all around him. Some had found it amusing to poke fun at him, giggling with their friends when he had been unmoved by their taunts.
Their comments had been graphic and derogatory of men, giving him an insight into the feelings of women few men shared. Fortunately, cybers did not allow anyone, apart from their owners or those with command privilege, to touch them, and the women had known better than to try. He drifted into a light sleep, but jerked awake every time Tassin shifted or sighed, which increased his exhaustion to the point where, after several hours, her movements no longer disturbed him.
Sabre woke at dawn, to find that Tassin had made herself more comfortable during the night. She had draped an arm across his chest, pillowed her cheek on his shoulder and thrown a leg over his hips. His eyes sprang open, and he quelled the reflex that almost made him leap up. His training and conditioning urged distance around him, while a lifetime of sleeping alone, under a computer’s control, made him long to experience forbidden intimacy. Hoping not to wake her, he eased her leg off, then her arm. She replaced them, forcing him to extricate himself again, and she muttered and squirmed when he shifted away. Just when he thought he would escape without rousing her, she opened her eyes.
“Where are you going?”
Sabre’s brows rose at her possessive tone. Did she think he was her personal foot warmer? “Out.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to, okay, Your Majesty?”
She sat up, rubbing her eyes. “It is cold outside. Are you feeling better?”
“Yeah, I feel fine,” he muttered, crawling out. She joined him moments later, squinting in the sunlight while she finger-combed her glossy hair, then plaited it. He looked away when she glanced at him, and gazed at the vista. In the distance, the dry brown expanse of the Badlands spread out before them, vanishing over the horizon. Only blackened patches of melted sand relieved it. This was a post-holocaust world, he realised, and wondered which one.
“What’s the name of this world?”
Tassin looked startled. “Earth, of course.”
He smiled. It was amazing how every world humans colonised became known to them as Earth. “It must have another name?”
“Oh, yes, Omega Five.”
Sabre accessed the cyber’s information stored in his brain. Omega Five: solar system HL714 was a G-class planet, colonised two thousand years ago. Nuclear war, five hundred and fourteen years ago. Indigenous life mostly wiped out and replaced by Terran stock at the time of colonisation, then further decimated by the holocaust. The survivors had been left to fend for themselves, and pay for their mistake. The world was classified as restricted, off-limits to spacers. Someone kept an eye on Omega Five, however, and particularly on Queen Tassin Alrade of Arlin. Whoever it was, he evidently had enough money to buy a cyber, but his motivation remained a mystery.
“We’ll climb down today,” he said.
“Really?” Tassin raised her chin in a regal gesture.
Sabre sighed. “With your permission, of course, Your Majesty.” He performed a mocking bow, and she glared.
“Do not mock me.”
“Then don’t act high and mighty.”
Sabre returned her glare, and she looked away, making him wonder at the tension that had sprung up between them. He knew why he was on edge and snappish, but she had no reason to be testy, as far as he could ascertain. Tassin shivered as she contemplated the drop before them, and he realised that she was afraid.
“Why today?” she asked.
He tried to soften his tone, but the words still sounded harsh. “We’re running out of food, and besides, I’m not acting as your foot warmer for another night.”
Tassin scowled and stomped off to the cave. When he followed, intending to apologise, she was sulking, instead of packing. He scowled and packed the bags, which were much lighter now that most of the supplies had been consumed. When he finished, he tossed them out into the snow and turned to the Queen. She was no more than sixteen, he guessed, a mere frightened child.
“It’ll be okay, Tassin. It’s probably not as bad as the first cliff, and you managed that alone. This time I’m with you. I won’t let you fall.”
“What if you have a seizure and fall?”
He shrugged. “I’ll bounce. Anyway, I don’t think the cyber will attack me on the cliff. It’s counterproductive, and would endanger you, which goes against its programming. Besides, we can’t stay here forever. You’ll have to do it sometime.”
Tassin crawled out of the cave, her expression determined. He followed, picked up the bags and tied them to his harness, then slung them over his shoulders as the cyber had done. Waves of weakness warned him that his strength had not returned, and he still needed days of rest before he was restored to health. A flashing amber light deep in his brain told him that his bio-status was dangerously low, but he was unable to access the information to find out just how bad it was. It was not red, at least, and he was stronger than he had been the day before. The light was virtual, part of the cyber’s interface programmes, to which it was currently blocking his access, apparently. Tassin stood close to the cliff edge, trying to peer over it.
He took her arm and pulled her away. “Don’t look down.”
“I want to see!”
He shook his head. “I’ll look. I have no reaction to heights.”
Leaning out as far as he could, Sabre scanned the cliff face. A few metres to the right, a ledge ran down it, quite wide, but steep. He beckoned to her and walked along the edge of the cliff, his feet dislodging showers of snow that cascaded to the ledge far below.
“It’s easy, come on.”
Tassin followed him to the path, where he instructed her to hold onto the packs and look at the rock face. Loose chips of stone made the path treacherous, and in some places he had to avoid patches of ice. He kept a hold on the cliff face, which was fortunate, for twice Tassin slipped, only her grip on him saving her from going over the edge. Sabre moved cautiously, testing each step before
putting weight on it, and the sun was overhead by the time they were halfway down. His stomach rumbled, but the ledge was too narrow to permit them to stop and rest. His vision went black, and he froze. Surely the cyber was not going to attack him now?
“Tassin, let go of the packs and hold onto the rocks.”
“Why?”
“Just do it, now!”
The blackness persisted, and he waited for the pain and numbness. Instead, a blue scanner image of the cliff face appeared within his mind, some areas accompanied by measurements. A protruding rock ahead, which he had been about to use as a handhold, was outlined in red. He realised that the red-marked area was unstable, and, had he used it as a handhold, might have crumbled away, sending them to their deaths. Well, Tassin, at least. The cyber’s ground-penetrating scanners had detected it, and it was warning him. After a few seconds, the image faded, leaving a dull ache behind his eyes.
“Okay, hold on to me again,” he said.
They completed the descent, and once safely on the next ledge, he explained what had happened.
“So it is helping us?” she asked.
He nodded. “You, to be exact.”
“Does that mean it is not going to keep trying to take over?”
“I don’t know.”
Blinding agony impaled his skull, and he fell to his knees, clutching the brow band. The battle for supremacy was on in earnest this time. Whirling lights flashed in his eyes in a dizzying vortex of colour, and blackness dragged at him as numbness crept into his limbs. He cried out, vaguely sensing the cold crispness of snow against his cheek.
Nebulous impressions flitted through his mind, a mixture of scanner images, flashbacks of his training, and a vision of Tassin plunging to her death, drawn in computer graphics. He struggled to push away the dark presence that tried to engulf him in its black folds and relegate him to the spectator seat he had occupied for so long. He fought it like a drowning man fights the cold water that drags him down, knowing that if he lost, he would never have another chance. His muscles went into spasms and his hands pulled at the control unit until it cut into his fingers.
The images and agony vanished, and he opened his eyes. He lay in the snow, curled in a foetal position. Tassin knelt a short distance away, watching him with deep concern. He sat up, holding his pounding head, weak and shaky in the aftermath of the pain. What little strength he had regained had drained away, nausea churned his stomach, and stabs of dull fire exploded behind his eyes. He dug in his pouch for more painkillers. When they took effect, he raised his head and smiled wearily.
“Does that answer your question?”
She nodded.
“It was actually trying to communicate with me that time,” he said. “It thinks I’m not capable of looking after you.”
“Why?”
“Because it thinks it’s better than me.”
“Is it?”
“No.”
Sabre experienced a bitter pang at her innocent question, and chased away the sense of inferiority with anger. He frowned, then climbed to his feet and went to the cliff edge, relieved to find broad ledge that meandered down, wide enough to walk on safely. He started down it, and she followed.
The desert’s pale brown expanse drew closer as they descended, and a ribbon of road appeared beyond a broad strip of scrubby, rolling hills that bordered the mountain range. Sabre scanned the desert, which stretched away to a dust-hazed horizon, utterly flat, and devoid of any features except distant glassy patches.
The Cyber Chronicles - Book I: Queen of Arlin Page 23
