Survival Game

by Gary Gibson

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Elena knows you’re not who you say you are.’ He gave me a long, searching look. ‘She told me she knows people who studied in the same places you supposedly did. She even got in touch with a couple of them through official channels.’

  I blinked. ‘From the island . . . ? How?’

  ‘There are two mail deliveries every day,’ he said. ‘Official communiqués, status reports – that kind of thing. Elena sent her letters back home in diplomatic bags.’ He leaned in closer to me. ‘Seems none of those people she knows ever heard of you. Borodin’s story hangs together better, but only just.’

  I swallowed. ‘I see.’

  ‘It took a lot of work to get the Authority to agree to let you Russians work with us,’ he continued. ‘That whole mess with Nina Gregoryeva came close to scuppering everything. But if Blodel even suspects you’re another spy . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Then the whole deal with the Soviets is kaput.’

  ‘Why would Elena tell you this?’

  ‘Because she knows finding a safe alternate to evacuate to is a hell of a lot more important than stupid spy games, and from her perspective, the Pathfinders are the closest thing to a neutral third party. Where most of us come from, there wasn’t a Soviet Union even by the time our worlds ended. Meaning we don’t have a ball in either court.’

  He leaned back, shifting his foothold. ‘Now, Elena thinks Borodin might have some kind of hold over you, which is why she suggested bringing you here so we could talk to you without him around. So how about you start by telling me the truth?’

  ‘Why should I say anything to you?’

  ‘Because if you don’t, soon as we’re back on Alpha Zero I’ll go straight to Blodel with everything she told me, and damn the consequences. Most likely you’ll be arrested along with Borodin, and neither of you gets to see home again.’

  I glanced back at Elena, who appeared to still be sleeping. ‘It’s . . .’ I closed my eyes tight shut for a moment, fighting back despair. ‘It’s not what you think.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘I . . . I cannot tell you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Because people will die and I will be responsible.

  But before I could say anything, the truck shook around us as something enormous landed on top of it.

  A terrible screech boomed through the air. I heard Elena stir, mumbling to herself.

  ‘They’ve found us,’ said Jerry, staring up. ‘We need to get out of here.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head violently. ‘At least they can’t get in. If we go out there—’

  Perhaps one of the beasts heard me and took this as a challenge, for in the next moment something landed hard against the windscreen behind Jerry. The glass began to bow inwards, coming away from its seal on one side.

  We both scrambled down the length of the truck and came to kneel by Elena, next to the airlock. ‘No, Katya, we have to leave,’ Jerry said urgently. ‘It’s our only chance!’

  The very idea filled me with terror. With those things waiting for us out there? I thought of the body dropping into the river, the way it had been neatly sliced open by enormous claws . . .

  Then came another shuddering impact; the windscreen bowed in even farther, and I saw that one of the beasts was trying to squeeze through the widening gap between the windscreen and the frame. The creature struggled to push its way through, then retreated, pulling its spiny head out before leaping back onto the roof. The truck shifted and creaked and moved: we all cried out at the sudden, jerking motion.

  The truck became still again. I heard the creak and rustle of branches, as if the creature were making its way back up to the top of the cliff.

  Perhaps it had given up and we were safe. But even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true.

  I heard Elena mutter something, and turned to look at her. ‘I was wrong,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper. ‘We have to leave.’

  ‘But which way?’ I demanded, turning to Jerry. ‘We can’t climb back up the cliff, not with Elena in that condition – and we’d only find that fucking monster waiting for us.’

  He nodded towards the airlock. ‘Not up. Down, to the river. We jump. There’s nowhere else we can go.’

  I stared at him. ‘Didn’t you see how long that drop is? You have no idea if—’

  ‘You want to stick around and wait for that thing to come back? Maybe it won’t follow us across to the far shore. Maybe it’ll lose our scent.’

  ‘You can’t know that.’

  ‘Goddammit,’ he shouted, ‘it’s at least worth a try!’

  ‘That still doesn’t tell me how we get Elena to safety,’ I hissed.

  ‘I’ll manage,’ said Elena from across the truck. ‘I can walk if I have to.’

  ‘I’ve been in worse jams than this before,’ said Jerry. ‘Trust me.’

  I wondered how deep the river was. Most likely we would hit shallow rocks and bleed to death, or simply drown, swept away in the water.

  I knew if I allowed myself to think clearly even for a moment about what Jerry was proposing, I would lose my nerve. I nodded sharply, which seemed answer enough for him. He made his way over next to Elena, unlatching the outer airlock door and letting it swing down.

  The sound of rushing water filled my senses. It roared, I thought, like something alive. I joined them, even though I was almost numb with fear, and helped the Pathfinder unstrap Elena from her seat before helping her into a sitting position on the rim of the airlock. Her skin still felt burning hot to the touch, but there was a look of determination about her.

  Jerry sat down beside Elena, his feet hanging over the airlock’s rim and nothing between him and the churning waters below but a dozen metres of air. He cradled Elena awkwardly in his arms like an oversized baby.

  ‘We go first,’ Jerry said to me, ‘then you follow.’

  I nodded, my heart hammering.

  The truck shook with sudden violence. I looked back up front in time to see the windscreen shatter into a thousand glistening pieces.

  ‘No more time,’ Jerry shouted over the noise. ‘Don’t wait – just jump!’

  And then he and Elena dropped out of sight, just as the creature finally forced its way inside.

  I needed no further prompting. I pushed myself over the lip of the airlock and fell, screaming, towards the rushing water. I could see no sign of Jerry or Elena.

  The water enveloped me like an icy coffin. I thrashed, still screaming, and somehow managed to fight my way to the surface. The water was deeper than I had dared hope, but now there was the risk of being carried away by the current and smashed against rocks farther downriver.

  ‘Over here!’ I heard Jerry yell when my head next broke the surface. I still couldn’t see where he was.

  The water was moving fast, and I flailed, searching for something – anything – I could grab hold of. My respirator mask had slid down past my chin, and I choked on water, feeling rocks scrape my shins as I kicked.

  Somehow I managed to swim close enough to the shore that I could feel the riverbed beneath my feet. I half-crawled onto a mossy bank next to a fallen tree, spluttering and gasping.

  I looked up and saw the truck halfway up the cliff above the opposite bank of the river, entangled amongst huge ancient-looking growths. I was now on the far shore from the cliff. I looked up and up until finally I sighted the truck, entangled amongst huge ancient-looking growths. Its interior still glowed with artificial light.

  I made my way past the fallen tree, shivering and soaked. Once again I heard Jerry shouting. Then I spotted him: he was farther downriver, with Elena collapsed on the shore next to him.

  I ran over. Elena turned on her side and pushed her mask out of the way before vomiting up water. She looked more aware of her surroundings than she had in some time. Perhaps adrenalin and the shock of immersion had helped her shake off whatever strange fever had taken hold of her.

  An animal shriek broke through the air and I look
ed over at the opposite shore of the river. A vague blur darted back and forth along the bank without venturing into the water. Then it leaped upwards, scrambling and climbing the steep cliff past the truck and all the way to the top.

  ‘Perhaps we are safe for now,’ Elena mumbled.

  ‘Or maybe it’s working up the nerve to swim across the river,’ said Jerry. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  ‘Go where?’ I asked. ‘We don’t have the truck. How do we even know how to get to Site B?’

  ‘Trust me, I know,’ said Jerry. ‘I’ve got a compass, and I spent a lot of time looking at that contour map while you were conked out.’ He patted a pocket. ‘I even managed to draw a copy of the map while I was at it.’

  We made our way alongside the river for several more kilometres, until the sun rose high above the gorge. The air roared with the sound of strange insects as the afternoon wore on. The cliffs gradually dropped lower on both sides of the gorge until it finally merged with a valley of low hills. At last we were able to make our way north and away from the river.

  I soon developed a bad, itchy cough, and scared myself wondering if some native bug had found a way to plant itself in the rich, alien soil of my flesh.

  It was clear Elena was growing weaker again – and we still had perhaps another fifty or sixty kilometres left to cover. But somehow she continued to stumble along, holding on to one or the other of us. When I tried to speak to her, she responded like a sleepwalker, her voice barely more than a mumble.

  ‘We have to find water,’ I said, when we stopped to rest sometime in the late afternoon. My feet ached, and my ankles were bruised and scarred from banging into tree roots or scrambling through thickets of wiry vegetation. ‘For Elena’s sake, if not for us. This heat . . .’

  Jerry nodded. ‘Now that you mention it . . .’

  He took a long blade out of a pocket and stepped towards a tree, then spent several minutes digging a hole in its bark as I watched, mystified. He grabbed up a rock and hammered the knife deeper from different angles, then pulled it back out. Then he retrieved a tiny silver tube from another pocket and jammed it into the hole, angled downwards. He leaned into it, screwing the tube deeper into the wood. Then he turned to look at me with a satisfied expression.

  ‘What on Earth are you doing?’

  ‘You wanted water.’ He nodded at the tree. ‘If they’re anything like the trees where I come from, we should get some before long.’

  After another minute a few tiny, glistening drops of water emerged from the mouth of the hollow tube. Then it became a steady drip, then a thin stream. I stared at it as if I were witnessing a miracle.

  Jerry pushed his mask down on its strap and let the stream pour into his cupped hands. He drank it down quickly, his throat working as he swallowed.

  He grimaced. ‘Tastes kind of funky, but what the hell. Your turn.’ He stepped back out of the way.

  ‘Is it . . . ?’

  ‘Safe? Sure.’ He shrugged. ‘Probably. Hurry up before it stops flowing.’

  I needed no further prompting. I bent before the tube, pushing my respirator out of the way and letting the water splash onto my tongue.

  It tasted like the sweetest nectar imaginable. I stayed there, frozen with ecstasy, as it poured down my throat. Then the flow began to give out and I stepped back, and Jerry worked at tugging the tube back out, grimacing from the effort.

  ‘Trees have capillaries,’ he explained. ‘Even weird-looking ones like these, to funnel water up to the top of their trunks. Now let’s get some for Elena,’ he said, walking over to another tree and pulling his knife back out.

  ‘Why did you happen to bring that thing with you?’ I asked as he pushed the blade deep into the trunk.

  Jerry finished his work before replying, again screwing the thin metal tube into the flesh of the second tree. ‘Habit,’ he said, letting the water dribble into his cupped hands. ‘I take it pretty much wherever I go. You just never know.’

  ‘What else have you got hidden away?’ I asked, helping Elena into a sitting position. She managed to push her own respirator out of the way so Jerry could feed her water from his cupped hands.

  ‘Hunting knife, compass, matches and a mirror. Can’t leave home without being prepared for the worst.’

  I shook my head in amazement, and before long we were underway again.

  The forest thinned out over the next several hours, giving way to more open grassland. We kept moving, even past the point where I felt sure I could not take one more step. Somehow, I stumbled along, losing all sense of time beyond the slow passage of the sun.

  Finally we came to a halt as the sunlight dwindled. Jerry again found us drinking water, and we sat down against a tree, the last of the light cutting down through its spiral of branches and making strange patterns on the ground.

  I helped Elena to sit down beside me, amazed she had managed to keep moving for so long. I tried not to think about the fact we could have easily made twice the distance without her, probably even more. Jerry took out his notebook, in which he had sketched out a map, and spread its pages flat on the ground to help it dry more quickly.

  Elena’s head nodded to one side, and her chest rose and fell in sleep as the sky turned a deeper shade of blue.

  But I couldn’t rest.

  If anything, staying still was worse than constantly moving. The mind conjured a thousand invisible predators in the windblown motion of a leaf. A branch, sawing in the breeze, became an extended claw, or part of a monstrous spiny head, its jaws gaping.

  ‘Hey. Wake up.’

  I jerked awake from an awful dream full of teeth and black, invisible fury and found Jerry leaning over me. I licked lips that were again parched and dry. ‘How long . . . ?’

  ‘Not too long.’ The moon had risen above the treetops. ‘About an hour. We’re not even halfway to Site B. I know you’re tired, but we need to keep going until we get there.’

  From somewhere far off, I heard a sound like razors down my spine: a long, sonorous howl, unearthly and terrifying.

  ‘Was that . . . ?’

  Jerry nodded. ‘Heard it a couple of times in the last few minutes. Doesn’t sound like it’s getting any closer, but I don’t want to hang around one more second.’ He stooped next to Elena; her head was still tilted to one side. ‘Now give me a hand with—’

  He froze, and I turned to look at Elena beside me. She stared sightlessly past me back in the direction we had come, her mouth slack and lips slightly parted. I shuddered at the sight of her empty gaze, and touched her hand. The skin felt cool and waxy.

  I stood, feeling numb as I looked down at her. I wondered how long she had been dead.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jerry, his voice urgent. ‘I truly am. But we need to go.’

  I was surprised at how much I felt her loss. I realized then that regardless of her suspicions about me, I had come to respect her the most out of all the Soviets.

  ‘I didn’t have time to tell her,’ I said dully.

  ‘Tell her what?’

  ‘That I’m really not what she thinks I am.’

  He looked at me strangely. ‘Then what the hell are you?’

  I looked at him. ‘As you said, we should get moving.’

  He regarded me for a long moment. ‘This conversation isn’t over, Katya.’

  ‘I know.’ I knelt next to the dead woman one last time and carefully closed her eyes. ‘Goodbye, Elena,’ I said, then turned to follow Jerry out across the grasslands.

  ELEVEN

  We were headed towards a range of mountains, following Jerry’s crudely sketched map: Site B, apparently, lay on this side of them, in the foothills. Eventually the ground dipped towards another river, which proved easy to ford, and we took the opportunity to drink as much of its water as we could.

  After that the grassland gave way again to moonlit forest, albeit more sparse than that we had previously encountered. We moved at a steady pace and heard no more howling from behind. I started to wonder if I re
ally had it in me to walk the whole way to Site B: I was sunburned, starved, and my feet were so blistered that every step felt like a punishment. I hated the taste of the air inside my respirator, and the way its rubber seals pressed against my skin. I had my doubts whether there was any point in keeping it on, given the amount of unfiltered air and water we’d taken in.

  See if you can get him alone, Borodin had said. Do whatever you have to, to get hold of those coordinates.

  Up ahead of me, I saw the bulge in the back of Jerry’s cargo trousers where he carried his leather-bound notebook. Everything I needed to free my father and the rest of the exiles lay in those pages.

  During our long hours of walking, I had not lacked for opportunities to brood on my dwindling range of options. The necessity of survival had kept Jerry from pressing me further for the truth, but I knew that if I refused to tell him who I really was, and we survived long enough to be rescued, he would reveal all to Director Blodel. My mission would be a failure and, as Borodin had promised, my father, along with everyone else in the Crag, would die.

  But if I told the Pathfinder the truth, I could not imagine either myself or Borodin ever being allowed to return home with the Hypersphere – and the result would still be the same. I had tried to think of some convincing-sounding lie as we walked, but there was nothing I could come up with that did not end with people I cared about being murdered.

  Unless, that is, there was a way to keep Jerry from ever telling what he knew. Elena, after all, was in no position to tell anyone of her suspicions.

  And out here, lost in the wilderness, I had an unparalleled opportunity to steal the notebook from him.

  We were making our way uphill now at a steady pace. The slope was scattered with rocks and loose gravel that made it hard to get a firm footing. For the past several hours Jerry had taken the lead; I could see him just a few paces ahead, his back turned to me.

  I stooped, scooping up a rock in one hand and holding it tight in my fist. I moved faster to catch up with him, raising the rock in my hand, ready to strike at him—