Lotus Blue

by Sparks,Cat

  The sand was scattered with broken bones, but there were no others as enormous, not that they could see.

  “Woah,” said Grieve. “What happened here?”

  Star shook her head. She didn’t want to think about it. What happened here had happened everywhere.

  The ruins appeared no closer. They endured the crunching of bones under the lizard’s feet, dodged around a series of boulders too large to have been blown there by the wind.

  “Don’t like this place,” said Grieve. “Gives me the creeps.”

  “Me too.”

  Finally, the bones came to an end. Ahead of them, a stretch of open sand was peppered with a kind of spinifex grass Star had never seen before.

  “We’re going to make it,” she said, feeling an elation she had not felt since before . . . before when, exactly? Before the Van had been disintegrated by the storm? Before she and Nene had lost everything they’d ever had?

  Grieve’s expression was grim, his cheeks red, fair skin burning in the rising sun.

  “Wrap your head, you idiot. Sunstroke’s going to make short work of you.”

  He raised his hand, and it looked like he was going to touch her cheek, but his hand hovered mid air, uncertainly.

  “Grieve, what is up with you?”

  Was his skin flushed with embarrassment or the sun? Hard for her to tell with his pale complexion.

  Iolani continued, holding steady. “Look!” said Star, pointing back the way they’d come. A long way back, beyond the bones, the rogue tanker was coming after them again.

  She clutched Grieve’s arm. “I knew it was still out there.”

  She let go and shouted at Iago. “Faster! Make her go faster, it’s gaining on us.”

  Then, without warning, the ground gave way beneath them. Grieve was thrown backwards, tumbling clear of the saddle. Star’s arms and legs flailed in a desperate attempt to grab on to something. Anything. Her eyes, mouth, and ears filled quickly with soft, slippery grains. Sand. She clutched at it, blinking back the grit, in a panicked attempt to try and clear her vision.

  She punched and kicked, both hands soon entangled in clusters of drifting root. She heard someone calling out her name. Grieve.

  “Here,” she called back, fear flooding through her. It was quicksand. The desert kind, waterless and deadly. An ocean of it with grassy clumps floating deceptively on top. Iago’s lizard had plunged right in, headfirst, taking the human riders with her.

  “Iago!”

  Spitting her throat clear of sand, she managed to force her eyes open. She knew what to do. Nene had taught her, just like she’d taught her so many other useful things. Lie across it. Spread your weight as evenly as possible. Don’t panic, or you’ll sink as surely as a stone. Thrashing only sinks you faster. Easier said than done.

  Something thudded close to her ear. The tattered end of a length of rope. Star could see Grieve suddenly, standing at the edge on firmer sand. Shouting words she couldn’t hear over the terrible lowing sound that filled her ears. It was so loud, it drowned out the residual whine of the tankersong and the whispering in her head.

  Iolani.

  Iago sat astride the creature’s neck just across from Star and she could see him clearly, suddenly: wide awake, slapping and pulling at the animal’s tiny ears in the language only the two of them understood. Iolani bellowed mournfully in response, her large maw filling with sand. It was hopeless. The lizard was too big, and was drowning quickly, her sheer bulk dragging her beneath the sucking sand. Iago’s efforts were utterly useless.

  Grieve kept shouting Star’s name, over and over. She grabbed the rope with both hands, overpowered by the realisation that there was nothing she could do for the drowning beast.

  She lay across the top of the quicksand as foot by foot, Grieve hauled her up to safety.

  “Iago!” she shouted, coughing sand from her lungs when she reached the edge.

  Grieve coiled the rope and threw it back out for the drover to grab hold. On the second try it landed near enough. Iago’s shoulders were rapidly vanishing below the surface. Only the tip of the lizard’s muzzle remained above the quicksand.

  “Iago! Iago—grab the rope!”

  But the drover wasn’t listening. Iago cared for nothing but his drowning beast. The mighty creature howled and thrashed but it was too late. Suddenly Star understood—as did Grieve. If his beast was going to drown, the drover was too.

  The mournful bellowing became muffled by choking sand.

  There was nothing either of them could do. At the very last moment Iago turned his head and they locked eyes.

  Then Star and Grieve watched in silent horror as the sand consumed them both, man and beast.

  = Sixty-five =

  A pattern of repetitive footfall draws the Blue’s attention, too heavy and regular a tread for dogs or other desert beasts. He’s become distracted by the digging and the arrival of the ship, watching it jam its mighty wheels in heavy sand.

  Intruders.

  He pauses to listen carefully before activating electronic sensors: eyes and ears attuned to chatter as the four of them trek through the grey cement corridors of his bunker-skull. They scratch and shrill like locusts in long grass. The Blue remembers how swarms of their kind would move from place to place, stripping the greenery off everything, drilling the ground, building towers to block the sunlight and the sky.

  The four are bold, brazen as soldiers. They think they can walk right in and help themselves to what they like.

  One of them etches crude graffiti on the walls. The General can’t see properly, his micro lenses choked with years of dust. No, not graffiti, but a trail to mark their passage, to lead them back out again to safety, as if something as vital as survival could be trusted to such a flimsy trail of crumbs.

  The Blue rummages through his crystal memory lattice, each treasured track small and sweet and bright and cold as jewels.

  He realises he never showed that old Templar witch the good stuff. Perhaps he had been saving the lushest, greenest images for later, best and last.

  He reaches deep into his vintage hoard, his store, his private stash, and considers the tricksy mechanisms required for fooling the human eye-and-brain, bombarding the senses, deluging with detail. Overkill works best, experience has taught him.

  How desperately the Blue misses the company of articulated minds, his own kind most of all. But his brother and sister generals lie far across the Risen Sea, across lands scorched by flame and storm and savagery.

  For the meantime, young explorers will have to do. Four minds alive with delusions of grandeur and achievement. They have made no secret of their intentions: to rob him blind and gut him thorough, steal his treasures and bury them under sand like dogs would bones. They are too stupid to comprehend what they are actually a witness to: the rebirth and ascension of a god. A god who plans to burn the world and build it up from scratch.

  And scratch is all there is remaining of the poor old thing. All the best bits have been consumed, like the carcass of a lamb or cow—this land had once abounded with such creatures.

  The explorers have come to pick out his brain, never guessing that they are walking inside of it at that very moment, up the stem and through the temporal lobe, deep inside the occipital where he keeps his secrets.

  The female makes the greatest noise; forever asking questions, yet she speaks like she’s the one in charge—like she has mapped out the future further in advance than the others.

  Curious.

  He decides to give the little creatures what they’ve come for, after a fashion. But it isn’t long before their persistent chitter chatter begins to bore him utterly. None of these creatures are of any use, it’s the other girl he’s after. The flesh-mesh construct, the one with enhanced cerebral stora
ge capacity.

  The General decides to construct a little garden. A cage, more like—he coaxes the four intrepid explorers inside to crawl about within its confines. It’s so easy to hack the primitive map they carry. He soothes their minds with images of water falling, of peace, serenity, of cool, dark calm.

  Simultaneously, on the sands outside, the Blue commands an end to the excavations. Those still standing strong enough to fight put down their hoes and shovels and axes, shoulder weapons, and stand to attention in strong, if uneven lines. A ring of frozen Templar warriors now protects the heart-and-core. A vortex swirls above the Sentinel tower, power bleeding upwards from revitalised, reautomated chemlabs in the bunker’s bowels. The General cannot control the manufacture of the storms. The process, once begun, cannot be stopped.

  Once freed from the pressing tasks at hand, his mind is better directed to other more important things. Like finding her, the flesh-mesh girl called Star.

  = Sixty-six =

  The top of the sand lay utterly still, all traces of the lives it had taken from them gone. A sharp breeze ruffled through Star’s matted locks. Star sank to her knees, hands clasped uselessly before her, staring at the churned-up patch of sand.

  Grieve was still brushing sticky sand slick off his arms and legs. He touched her on the shoulder. “Come on, get up.”

  She ignored him. Just knelt there staring at the patch of rippled nothingness where Iago and Iolani had disappeared. One minute they’d been struggling, the next minute, gone. Dragged under by the sucking sand. Lost without a trace.

  “No time for mourning—we gotta keep moving. Got to get to higher ground. Get off the open sand.” He looked back the way they’d come. “Wind’s picking up—and that tanker’s swinging around for another pass, plus the rest of them—plus hell knows what else.”

  She didn’t move. Didn’t say anything.

  He touched her gently on the shoulder once more. “Star.”

  He expected her to slap his hand away. To yell at him, accuse him of insensitivity—or something. But Star did nothing. She didn’t even blink. Just kept staring at that rippled patch of sand.

  Eventually she clambered to her feet, patted down her clothing, looking for something. She thrust her hands into her pockets, then pulled out a hard and lumpy object. Possibly a bag of dice-and-bones—he wasn’t sure.

  A wave of anger washed over her, so intense it made her shake. She stared at the place where Iago and Iolani had so pointlessly lost their lives. With a roar of anguish, she threw the bag as hard as she could manage. It landed with a dull thud on the sand next to a floating spinifex clump.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” She stared after it sullenly. “Nothing that was ever any use to anyone.”

  The small bag wasn’t heavy enough to sink.

  “Come on, we gotta go,” he repeated, keeping one eye on a suspicious, low hanging cloud formation that had definitely not been there in the moments before the lizard had sunk to its death. The clouds began to thicken and coalesce, moving towards them, or so it seemed at first, then broke up harmlessly, scattered by rough winds.

  “Gotta go,” he said again, louder this time and more insistent. “The wind is changing—might be more of those acid-pissing clouds on the loose.”

  “I barely even spoke to Iago,” said Star. “I don’t know anything about him.”

  He gripped her shoulder and firmly squeezed. “We will mourn them later when we’re safe.”

  “We murdered them,” she said miserably. “They died because of us.”

  “They died because everything out here is trying to kill us. We have to get out of here or we’ll be next.”

  The air began to thicken with stinging blasts of sand. Clouds gathering. Pressure dropping. Grieve dragged a khafiya from his pocket and bound it tightly around his face.

  “We’ve lost everything. Gotta get out of the wind.” He hooked his arm through hers. She offered no resistance. “Come on, Star, I need you with me.”

  Unexpectedly, she sank back to her knees. He lashed out and grabbed her before she tumbled headfirst into the quicksand.

  “He’s gone, Star—they’re both gone and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  A gut-wrenching, high pitched whine drowned out the sound of rising wind. Star blinked grit from her eyes. Tankersong. Very loud and very close.

  Her damp face was cloying up with gritty sand.

  “Lean on me,” he shouted.

  She let her weight fall in his direction and they staggered around the quicksand’s edge, sticking to places where rocks protruded and the unfamiliar spinifex did not grow, arms around each other, facing directly into the stinging wind, the air alive with reverberating tankersong. Eyes closed, faces wrapped, lips pressed tightly together, throats and noses chafed and choked. Moving blindly in what they could only hope was the right direction.

  They could smell the stench of tanker nearby. The thing was sporting with them. Able to take them down any time it chose. Sing them to death or slam on over them, crushing them to gravel beneath its wheels.

  Each forward step was agony. The rotting stink of the creature’s gut made them cough and gag uncontrollably. Star seemed to have lost her will to live, a fact that frightened Grieve more than the unseen menace stalking them.

  “Keep moving!”

  Star didn’t answer. She did what he did. Put one foot in front of the other and pushed on through the rising wind. Now and then her steadiness would falter. He’d grip her more tightly, push on harder, no matter that they couldn’t see in front of them. Moving forward was all that mattered.

  “Sometimes you gotta do the hard thing,” shouted Grieve. “Sometimes the hard choice is all the choice there is. Hard choices means you gotta suck it up and keep on going. Just keep on going, Star, don’t you stop, cos I swear on the grave of my cousin Selene, I’m not losing anybody else.” Cousin Selene never had a grave. There’d been nothing left to bury, just hearsay as to what had become of her—and the rest of them.

  He knew Star couldn’t hear him above the sand. It was just as well, because Grieve found himself blurting out all kinds of crazy things. Things he’d never admitted to anyone. Not even Selene. Especially not Selene. “Just keep on moving. Keep on moving. Keep on—”

  He was surprised to find his own face damp with itchy tears and sticky sand. “Not gonna lose you. Not gonna let you fall. Lost everything else I ever had, but I’m not losing you. Not here. Not like this.”

  Grieve still saw their faces every time he closed his eyes. The family he had run away from, leaving them to their scraping and foraging, while he hopped Vans from border town to border town. Grifting, thieving, fighting when he had to, running when the going got too hard. He eventually saw the world for what it was—a hard, cold place without much to recommend it—and skipped back home to dearest cousin Selene and his sisters. He thought he was gonna be the big man when he returned, a man with experience, with coin in his pockets and a twinkle in his eye. Only Selene was dead. No family, no tents and wagons. Their foraged sand had been overtaken by a well-armed tribe who’d cut up the bodies and disposed of all the evidence.

  If only he’d stayed with them, things might have turned out different. If only he had stayed. If only he had taken Selene with him.

  Grieve barked his shins on something hard. Hopefully it was one of the rocky masses they’d been heading for, big enough for shelter if they could climb it.

  “Get up high! Climb up on the rocks!”

  Star slid from his grasp. She’d been wedged under his arm one moment, but the next he could find no trace of her.

  “Star!”

  Useless to cry out, blind through the wild and stinging sand, but he cried out anyway, calling her name over and over.

  No answer
. He dropped to all fours, feeling blindly. She was not dead. He would find her. She was not dead. He would find her . . . She was not dead like Selene and all the others.

  But the wind had stolen her away. There was the base of the rock, rough and crumbling, scraping at his hands and knees. Grieve hauled himself up away from the sand and the rogue tanker and the death of a good, kind man and his tame lizard and all the ones he had left behind in different times and different places. The past he could not change. A future taking more than he had to give. And then, finally, there she was, Star, curled into a ball to protect her face.

  She wouldn’t climb and he couldn’t drag her so they stayed down there and he wrapped his arms around her, hoping the tanker had given up and that the polyp storm—if that’s what it was—had dissipated, torn to shreds by the natural, howling wind.

  Eventually the wind subsided. His ears still rang with high pitched, piercing tankersong and his leg throbbed where he had banged it against the rock.

  He unwrapped his khafiya and shook out his sweaty, matted hair. “Star?”

  She coughed and he backed up to give her room. A pall of gritty gloom hung over everything.

  “Come on, Star, we gotta get higher off the sand.” Once standing, he realised his right leg was a bloody mess. Scraped and skinned, but that was all. Not broken. Not anything worse.

  Lucky.

  It hurt when he bent it but he was good to climb. He shook her gently, but impatiently.

  Star’s movements were slow and clumsy, like she had been forced awake from a deep and troubled slumber.

  He clicked his fingers. “Come on, Star, wake up, we gotta move.” He lifted her up until she stood on her own two feet. Clicked his fingers louder in her face. “You still in there?”

  “Shhh . . . listen. Can you hear them?” she whispered.

  “Hear what? I can’t hear anything.”

  Her lips parted. She moistened them with her tongue. “Tankers—they’re singing to each other.”