Slide On The Run

by Mick Farren

  As with the fibers acting as an anchoring attachment, the tendril looped around him. When Slide was firmly in its grip, it began to retract, drawing him towards the body of the bio-craft. Too late to fight now. As the old-time Borg were so fond of putting it, resistance was futile.

  In a matter of seconds, he was out of the void and in among a filmy, leaf-like outer-growth that covered the entire exterior of the ship, and, Slide assumed, was an organic means of trapping radiant energy from space. He was suddenly in a place of dappled light and limited visibility as he was pulled deeper into the canopy. He also noted the leaf things moved out of his way, as though informed as to the tendril's intention.

  t only released him once he was inside what he though of as the orifice, a mouth-like slit in what he assumed was the hull of the craft, with fleshy, vegetable labia. When the orifice closed behind him, Slide was momentarily in darkness again, and this time he made no pretense at reaching for the blaster when the disembodied voice came out of some soft and sightless nowhere.

  "Remove your helmet, Yancey Slide."

  "Forget about it."

  "You will find the air quite breathable."

  "I'd rather confirm that for myself."

  "As you wish."

  Some inner portion of the orifice opened, and Slide found himself in a high cathedral place of grey mists, and blue and green light. A sudden return to gravity caused him to stumble slightly as he found himself on a floor that was covered in a thick carpet of lush moss. He walked carefully ahead until he reached what looked to be a path that wound between the moss-banks, and revealed that the moss flourished on a floor of yellow brickwork. He halted and looked around. Distances were hard to judge, but the lack of an horizon, and the way the floor curved up, until it was lost in some high distance, led him to believe that he was on the inner surface of some vast and hollow spheroid.

  "Follow the yellow brick road? I don't think so."

  The disembodied voice was back. "You could do worse, Yancey Slide."

  "Would you care to explain?"

  "The swiftest way to the Orchids."

  "What?"

  "The yellow brick road is the swiftest way to the Orchids."

  "The Orchids?"

  "The Orchids are."

  Slide suspected that whatever intelligence controlled the voice was not much smarter than a talking clock. A simpleminded verbal transfer.

  "The Orchids are all round us."

  "Where?"

  "The Orchids are all round us."

  Slide looked up. What he'd though of a jungle style tree canopy was in fact a complexity of huge petals that rose, dipped, and shivered, inflated and deflated with what Slide read as a languid vegetable ecstacy. Insects and humming birds danced constant attention and, at regular, perhaps even timed intervals, puffs of heavy vapor gasped into the upper air and then drifted down as a localized drizzle.

  "Remove your helmet, Yancey Slide." The voice sounded as though it had come back to where it had started. "You will find the air quite breathable."

  Slide hesitated. He knew to remove the helmet made sense. The air in this part of the bio-craft looked maybe high in carbon dioxide, but by no means harmful, and if he continued to be stubborn he would only deplete his own reserves.

  "I won't argue."

  His hands went to the ring fastening, and as he was twisting the helmet lock he heard another voice. "You can take off the helmet, but I'd keep the suit on." "What?"

  The new voice came from a distance, but was certainly not disembodied. Something was moving in the mist beyond the moss. At first Slide couldn't distinguish it as anything but a hunched form. Only when the thing was a matter of fifteen or twenty yards away did it cease to be a thing, and was revealed as a man in the most complicated mechanical wheelchair that Slide, as far as he could remember, had ever seen.

  "I said you can take off the helmet, but keep the suit on. That's if you don't want to end up like me."

  Slide unlocked the helmet and lifted it over his head. He took an experimental breath and found that the atmosphere in this part of the bio-craft was heavy with humidity and stank of cloying perfume and chronic plant decay, but was, at the same time, perfectly breathable. "And who are you?"

  "I am Sternwood."

  To say that the figure in the wheelchair was a man might have been considered by some as an exaggeration. In fact, this creature who called himself Sternwood was barely half a man. His right arm, right leg, most of the right side of his body, and the lower right side of his face had seemingly been dissolved away, as though by a powerful acid. Slide could see that this Sternwood was human, but how he could have survived such a devastating chemical attack was a total mystery. The motorized chair with its feeder tubes, gleaming chrome, and hardwired circuitry clearly kept him alive, to the point that he and the chair were practically integrated as one.

  "I am Slide."

  "I already know that."

  "Then you have the advantage of me."

  The half face attempted a grotesque smile. "I would hardly say that."

  Slide looked the creature in the chair up and down. "You might be right."

  "At least you're honest. Many try not to look at me."

  Slide placed the helmet under his arm. "Maybe I value honesty over delicacy."

  "You're doubtless wondering what happened to me?"

  "Obviously."

  "It was the Orchids."

  Slide looked up at the canopy of fleshy petals. "The Orchids?"

  "I was half digested before I could convince the Orchids that I'd be of use to them, and they spat me out again."

  "I'm not sure I completely understand."

  "Never been on an Eloi ship before?"

  Slide shook his head. "No, not me."

  "You want a drink?"

  Slide shrugged. "Why not, now I'm here."

  Sternwood slapped a control on the chair with his remaining hand. "I can't drink myself, but I like to watch a man who can."

  "I'm not a man. I'm Idimmu."

  "I know that, but you'll pass."

  Three figures emerged from the mist. Two girls and a boy, if that was the right term for the ever-young species. All three wore lipstick, sultry eyeshadow, alien jewelry of plant-like inter twining gold curves, and filmy capes of sheer gauze that left them functionally naked. Slide's body took notice of the near-nudity, as they responded to Sternwood in near-chorus

  "Master Sternwood?"

  "Master Sternwood?"

  "Master Sternwood?"

  "Give Master Slide a drink, my children."

  Slide frowned. "These are your children?"

  Sternwood approximately shook his head. "No, but I treat them as such. You can really do what you like with them."

  The male Eloi stepped forward and whipped a silk wrap from what turned out to be a chilled bottle of Dom Perignon '52. "Does this please new Master Slide?"

  How the hell a bottle of Dom Perignon '52 came to be aboard an Eloi biocraft presented something of a puzzle, but Slide was in no mood to ponder details when there was so much else to consider. "Sure, and totally unexpected."

  The Eloi male popped the cork, with an accustomed skill that, in itself posed another how-the-hell question, and handed Slide the bottle along with a long spun silver drinking straw. Slide declined the straw. Apparently the Eloi didn't know everything about serving vintage champagne. He look a swig straight from the bottle, and, only then, realized that he had been extremely thirsty ever since he had materialized in deep space.

  The three Eloi spoke in chorus again.

  "Any one, two, or all of us would be most happy to engage in sexual congress with you, new Master Slide."

  "Any one, two, or all of us would be most happy to engage in sexual congress with you, new Master Slide."

  "Any one, two, or all of us would be most happy to engage in sexual congress with you, new Master Slide."

  The body became extremely enthusiastic at the prospect, but Slide brought its hormones to heel, a
nd glanced at Sternwood. "But that would involve removing my armor?"

  Again the half-face smile. "The Orchids have taken quite a few that way."

  "I'm not sure I get this. These Orchids feed on humans and Eloi?"

  "They feed on anything mammalian that moves."

  "How does that work?"

  A set of servos lifted Sternwood's head so he was looking up. A sudden flurry of movement had started up in the canopy. "I think you're about to get a practical demonstration."

  A huge fleshy petal, purple at the edges, but soft pink in the center, extended downwards, reaching to enfold one of the female Eloi. As it closed around her, she neither struggled, resisted, or cried out. Her companions looked but also registered no protest, or attempted to save her. Once totally enshrouded by the petal, the Eloi form could be seem for a few seconds and then it slowly shrunk away as though absorbed by the flower, or, as Sternwood had put it, disgested by it. After maybe a minute, the petal unfurled slightly and a few fragments of bone dropped from it to the carpet of moss, that swiftly moved to cover and conceal them. Slide looked sharply at the remaining Eloi. "You don't have a problem with that?"

  The boy and girl shrugged. "It is the way if the Mulch. There can be no question."

  Sternwood sniffed. "What can you do? It's how they fuel their ship. What you need to concentrate on is not getting caught."

  Another, very familiar voice from behind him took Slide totally by surprise. "Having to wear these damned suits all the time gets really tired when you've been here as long as we have."

  Slide spun round, reaching unconsciously for his blaster, and found himself facing Lupo, Queen Mina, and Mrs. Rosa Coote. All four were wearing space armor similar to Slide's. Lupo raised a hand. "Hold with the weapon, demon. We've been wondering when you would arrive."

  Queen Mina nodded. "For some reason, you were left behind on the Gridley ride." "Does someone want to tell me what's going on?"

  Rosa Coote was terse. "There's no time for explanations, except that it would appear we've all been brought here for a purpose."

  Queen Mina lips pursed. "And you can imagine how I hate being brought anywhere with a purpose. Unless, of course it's my own."

  "So what is this purpose?"

  "It seems that this vessel, despite its size is about to come under attack by space pirates and we are expected to feature in its defense."

  "What?"

  Lupo, who was very plainly unhappy, came close to snarling. "You heard what she said."

  "Space pirate?"

  "That's what we've been told."

  "Not the pirates of the Lower Quadrant?"

  "How did you know?

  "Just something that came to me I was still in the Gantenbrink."

  Story so far: Yancey Slide, Idimmu Demon of the Tenth Continuum, now lost in space in the company of Mina Harker, Rosa Coote, and Lupo the nosferatu, following his abrupt and less then orthodox exit from Mars, finds himself thinking of fat and fires as he arrives aboard an Eloi biocraft just in time for an attack by extra-planetary buccaneers

  Episode Eleven

  Pirates of the Lower Quadrant

  The entire pirate fleet swung majestically into the field of the gaseous display; three distinct formations, and two dozen or more small ships. Slide knew from millennial experience that Pirates of The Lower Quadrant had never been able to maintain a single, overall coordination, but they had at least all managed to arrive in the same place at the same time. He could only imagine that recent pickings had been slim, and the Eloi biocraft was viewed as necessity rather than a prize. Although not exactly acting as one, the sheer size and variety of pirate fleet was epic; discs, deltas, and asymmetrics, Treen telezeros, Adamski saucers, ancient, tri-robot fighters left over from the Cylon wars, and Pleiadean beamships, attack-customized with strap-on Steely Dans. When the alarms had sounded, Slide had expected maybe a half dozen marauders, but what he saw was closer to two hundred ships, that ranged in size from hulking, rust-stained, former Imperial Sardakar battle-barges, to tiny predator pods of the metal-eaters that were more cell structures than machines. In the middle of the attackers, Slide spotted the dark bulk of the cruiser Starhawk, which was more than enough to crystalize his immediate flight or fight response, and it was wholly the latter.

  "Out of here?"

  He turned to Lupo, expecting to be met with a similar negative reaction to his own, a desire to get off and away from the Eloi ship by any means necessary, but Lupo was staring at the buccaneer armada with rapt attention. He was totally absorbed and, behind the plexiglass of his bubble helmet, his eyes blazed with a chill and momentary nosferatu glee. "So the ballet begins."

  For a vampire created during the Italian Renaissance, Lupo seemed to accept a space battle with pleasurable anticipation. He was the closest that Slide had ever seen him to excited.

  Slide, Lupo, Queen Mina, and Mrs. Rosa Coote, still in full space armor, helmets locked down, and with the semi-human Sternwood leading way on his rolling mechanized chair, hurried to what was known as the cortex. On any ship of steel, polymer, ceramic and electricity, the cortex would have been would have been called the bridge, but on an Eloi ship, where almost every component - from gunport to bulkhead - was more or less living cell-structure, things were done a little differently.

  The centrepiece of the cortex was a misshapen ovoid, a thick, multi-vesseled,

  dermal sheath containing a slopping liquid interior of sweating, and - Slide suspected - sentient ooze. The monstrous and less that appealing growth stood over thirty meters tall and maybe three times that in circumference, and it was surrounded by a complex, tree-like gantry, on the branches of which selected Eloi monkey-moved - serving/aiding, maybe controlling the huge soft-ovoid's function - although Slide doubted that the nebulous Eloi, too dumb even to prevent themselves being eaten by the orchids, were capable of any such thing, and that nothing controlled either the cortex or the biocraft, except the cortex or the biocraft itself. The primary function of the Eloi on the various gantry levels seemed to be that of entering or modifying data by massaging, kneading, and prodding designated sections of outer skin, much in the style of those old monks in the Damaged World who'd had a big bio-computer they'd called the Living Meditation, or the Vreen'agth who had called their all controlling bio-brain the Mind-Sac. Slide knew that he was in some crucial confluence of the biocraft's primary nervous system, and he didn't like it. Growths of giant orchids lined the walls of the chamber, but seemed to play no visible role in its operation, except, every now and again, one would reel and unreel a predatory tendril as though stretching.

  "I feel like a parasite."

  He had not addressed the remark to anyone in particular, and no one answered. This lack of response was mainly because the pirate fleet had chosen the very same moment to open fire, not with any degree of coordination, but, when one group decided to blaze away with everything it had, the rest obviously felt it was incumbent upon them to do the same. The first thing this barrage revealed was that the biocraft had sturdy and effective screens, extending well into the mid-distance, that manifested themselves with a purple, zapper flash each time a photon torpedo, a plasma blast, nova boom, or the burn from a PBA, attempted to penetrate it.

  Slide, Lupo, Queen Mina, and Rosa Coote were able to view the battle on a highly detailed repro-vision that appeared before and even around them, and provided a panoramic, if somewhat ghostly 180 degree view of the space immediately in front of the Eloi biocraft. The appearance of the display was the one acknowledgment of their arrival in the cortex. The biocraft didn't appear to have any captain, commander, first mate, or even a master at arms to greet them, brief them, or otherwise tell them what they were supposed to be doing there. This part really didn't bother anyone except Slide, and since no one else in the group from Mars seemed to share his instinct to flee - and he wasn't in the mood to discorporate out on his own - he contented himself, for the time being, with standing beside Lupo, and watching the miniaturization of the
conflict unfold. The pirates were maintaining their intense bombardment, but the biocraft was so far successfully taking on the shields.

  When the biocraft finally returned fire, seemingly a result of an almost orgiastic flurry of physical activity on the branch-like gantries around the mind-sac, he observed that the biocraft was by no-means vegetable helpless, and, in fact, could muster two separate levels of weapon technology. One was matter/anti-matter-based, as Slide might have expected. Slow-moving plasma fireballs were dispatched from some invisible transmitter behind his vantage point. The other was more remarkable if less spectacular. Where the fireballs - once locked on - rolled up on their targets and consumed them to a crisp, the other weapon was nothing more than a focused double-eex-zee shimmer in space, and the vessel at it's epicenter simply winked. Slide figured the weapon manipulated its target past the Horowitz barrier, and shifted it in either time, space, or both, and, if the mind-sac, or the supposedly, top-of-the-food-chain orchids were capable of viciousness, it probably re-materialized in the heart of a sun without its occupants having a chance to set the controls.

  Just as Slide was starting to come to the conclusion that this Eloi ship was so fucked up no one would ever going to bother to tell him and his companions why they were there, but just leave them alone to observe the battle undisturbed, three Eloi detached themselves from a group of a dozen or more at the base of the mind-sac. In this state of emergency, they still favored their filmy, gauzy, semi-nudity - more suitable for a Dionysian bacchanal than a firefight - and, as two women and one man approached, they still seemed both vague and vacant, but at least managed to look a little worried. They first spoke to Sternwood in their own lisping, trilling, multi-octave castrato-sounding language. The half-human in the cyber-chair was seemingly supposed to play interpreter, and Slide wondered why the ones who had served the champagne in the previous episode had spoken English and these didn't. Was it some obscure matter of protocol, or had the champagne servers been specially trained by Sternwood?