Mech (imperium)

by V. B. Larson

  Fryx awoke when Kris cried out. It was still dark, but the howlers had fallen silent. Near at hand, he caught a glimpse of Kris’ pallid form rising up swiftly into the air. Fryx goaded Garth’s exhausted body into flight, but he too was snatched up in a hairy black fist. Moving with sickening speed, the jungle ape bore them hundreds of feet up into the hork trees. Sure-footedly, it trotted along branches as wide as highways, leaping from tree to tree.

  The constricting fingers held him so tightly and the beast’s stench was so foul that Fryx had difficulty forcing Garth to retain consciousness. His terror of the crude outer creatures had never been greater. Soon, he felt sure, he would have to abandon the crushed husk of Garth’s body. A rider feared little more than being exposed to the open air and unknowable dangers of breathing creatures. He would most assuredly wither and perish, an ignoble ending to a magnificent life span filled with philosophical achievement. It was enough to set his spines to quivering.

  In desperation, Fryx did his utmost to reach out to the monster, to touch its brutish mind and perhaps nudge it in the proper fashion. He did his best to generate an aura of curiosity about Garth, suggesting that perhaps this creature was fascinating and worthy of study.

  Whether due to his feeble efforts at telepathy or to some other dark motive of its own, the ape didn’t kill them out of hand. Instead it deposited the two humans in its nest, a stinking bowl of mud, leaves, half-eaten carcasses and feces.

  Gasping, Fryx sought Kris and led her up to a more wholesome spot in the nest, presumably the spot where the animal slept. Under the scrutiny of a shadowy mound of flesh, they curled up together, massaging their bruised ribs. After a minute or two, during which they could only listen to and smell the bellowing breath of the giant simian, it made its decision. Leaping backward smoothly, it fell out into open space. They heard branches below creak and swish as the creature caught itself and moved away through the treetops.

  Kris rolled apart from him and sighed in relief. “I believed myself dead. How will we ever get down?”

  Fryx allowed Garth to say nothing. His hold on his host had disintegrated greatly of late. Allowing the rogue’s speech centers to operate was out of the question. Even interpreting her words was an unwelcome strain. Eyes bulging in the darkness, he reached out and grasped her wrists.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, squirming to get away.

  Fryx drove Garth to climb on top of her, ignoring her efforts to escape. Their touch allowed him to communicate with Tuux, and Kris immediately quieted. Her rider allowed Kris to shed her human inhibitions and she quickly became amorous. In the way of communion between skalds of opposite sexes, they mated most vigorously on the crude bed of moldering hork-leaves and black animal hair.

  The next morning found them entwined together with the cackle-grouse making a great deal of noise in the treetops around them. The bald ape, to the best of their knowledge, had not returned.

  Garth was surprised to find that he was in command of himself. He suspected that Fryx had been over-taxed by the previous evening’s activities and had receded somewhat to recover. Maintaining control of the skald’s body was a constant mental battle for both of them.

  “Look, there’s blood here,” he pointed out to Kris. “Fresh blood, and yet no signs of a recent kill.”

  Kris shrugged disinterestedly. She kept her eyes lowered. Her limp white hair hung in her face.

  “Maybe the beast was badly wounded yesterday,” said Garth with fresh hope. “Perhaps it could even have died during the night.”

  “Or perhaps it is only the blood of the men I led to their deaths.”

  “Ah, disregard that,” Garth chided her gently. He turned to her and noticed her sullen appearance. “You were goaded by your rider-as we both were last night.”

  She turned away from him further.

  “You’re upset about our communion?” asked Garth quietly. He felt a small knot of guilt. He had enjoyed the activities, but not the way they had come about.

  “I am embarrassed.”

  Garth nodded. “Put it out of your mind. Or better yet, use it to turn rogue against your rider.”

  She whirled on him. Her white hair shone in the sun. “That’s why I’m upset. This whole thing has got me thinking like you. The philosophies of my rider now seem like nothing but idle platitudes. It is clear that association with a rogue is indeed dangerous.”

  Garth shrugged and climbed to stand on the rim of the nest. “It makes no difference to those who will now seek us whether you’ve turned rogue or not. Certainly, you realize you are to be expunged.”

  “Then I must leave you, we must part ways.”

  Garth shook his head. “If you believe that then you don’t know the inquisitors as I do. Have you ever seen them in pursuit of a rogue?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “They are ruthless and thorough. They will have full accountings from all skalds involved, coerced by their riders into giving exact testimony. Your current feelings combined with my influence will be your undoing.”

  After this Kris fell silent and moody, while Garth searched for a way down from the jungle ape’s nest. The equatorial variety of the great horks was the largest. They dominated the plant growth in the ecosystem, and were in fact ecosystems unto themselves. Whole species of animals had evolved that relied particularly to a given stratum of the great horks, which often towered over five hundred feet into the air. Every branch and leaf of these living islands teemed with insects and parasitic plants. Garth kept a sharp eye out for the deadly leaf-snakes, but none seemed interested in approaching the nest.

  A careful search of the nest revealed the badly mangled corpse of a forester. One of his power-boots still remained, rekindling hope in both of them.

  “We can use this to drop down from the trees safely,” she said, excitedly testing the slid controls on the top of the boot. Although bent and scored they were operable.

  “There’s only one boot and two of us,” he said doubtfully. “How will we balance well enough to get down without destabilizing and falling to our deaths?”

  Kris made an impatient gesture, already strapping the boot to the belt around her midsection. “I live in this region. I have passed all the basic survival courses, don’t worry.”

  Worrying strongly, Garth followed her directions, lying on top of her while she lay on the boot. Delicately, she adjusted the angle of the boot and pushed the power control slider to the maximum. Giving a desperate groan of fear, he allowed himself to fall from the side of the nest, clinging to Kris and the power-boot.

  They fell together in slow motion. Even set to maximum power, the boot couldn’t force them to rise, although it did manage to turn their fall into a gentle drifting descent.

  “You certainly are heavy for a skald,” she said, gasping for breath.

  To Garth’s relief, Kris didn’t attempt to drop all the way to the forest floor, but rather made short trips from one major branch to another. Howlers pelted them with debris and leaf-serpents hissed as they passed. Cackle-grouse, resplendent in their yellow and crimson plumage, sought to bomb them with guano. Their odd, laughter-like cries soon became tiresome.

  After perhaps half an hour of drifting in the humid air of the jungle, they reached the ground. Garth stamped about in pleasure, enjoying the feel of solid land against his feet. They made their way toward the highway, which they had caught a glimpse of during the long flight downward.

  Not far from the base of the great hork tree, they found the body of the great ape. A vast mound of furred flesh it was, already being eaten away by scavengers. Long black hair covered the creature from head to foot, save for its leathery face and the white-skinned bald spot on the peak of its pointed head.

  “I guessed right,” whispered Garth in a hushed voice. “The gunshot wounds finally took their toll.”

  “Well, I’m glad it’s dead. It killed three good men.”

  Massive wounds showed in the creature’s head and neck. Part of i
ts cheek was blown away, revealing a mouthful of gleaming white teeth.

  “Such an impressive creature. We seem so puny in comparison,” said Garth. Gingerly, he climbed up onto the broad chest and stood there, rubbing his chin. “It seems such a waste.”

  Kris snorted. “It would have eaten us before the night was out if it had survived. These beasts relish live food and often store prey in their nests for later. I’m surprised that it didn’t snap our legs to prevent escape, that is what they usually do, or so I’m told.”

  “Probably, it was distracted by its injuries,” said Garth. He climbed down from the hairy mountain of death. “Come, let’s get back to the road before other less pleasant things begin to stalk us.”

  “What could be less pleasant?”

  “There are more horrid things about on Garm, even now,” said Garth. “My rider has intimated this to me over the last few days, mostly in dreams, or during our most intense battle for control. This is what Fryx fears as much as death itself, I believe. The threat from the skies has driven him and I into disharmony.”

  “You don’t seem to battle Fryx now as you did earlier.”

  “No. I believe this is due to the fact that I’ve decided to listen to his desperate warnings. I won’t relinquish my body completely again without a struggle, but I will head for the South Pole, as he wants me to. As long as I travel this way, I think he will restrain his desire to control me.”

  Scrambling over a tree root the size of a flitter, Kris asked, “Do you not miss the philosophical heights to which only a rider can take a human?”

  “Yes, at times, although I’ve had precious little time to consider it.”

  They reached the gully and Garth’s wrecked air car. Hunting about, they managed to find the hand-cannon and one of the rifles. Taking up the unfamiliar weapons, they found the hauler still sitting beside the road. They climbed in and soon were winding deeper into the jungle toward New Chad.

  Garth took the time to tell Kris of the horrors that Fryx had intimated to him. Both parties tactfully avoided all discussion of the previous evening’s activities, although Garth noted that he was treating her differently and he thought to notice a similar change in her manner. As he sat in the hauler’s cab with her for long hours, free for the first time in days of his rider’s constant abuses, he took the time to study her face sidelong. She was indeed attractive.

  It was the following evening at camp deep in the jungles that Fryx began to trouble him again. A stabbing pain seemed to exist directly behind his left eye, causing him to blink and twitch in an unnatural fashion. Itching spasms traversed his spine at regular intervals, making it almost impossible to eat or sleep.

  “What does Fryx want now?” asked Kris in concern.

  “He would like to commune again with Tuux,” slurred Garth, leering. The left half of his face clenched up in an unnatural manner.

  Kris looked away.

  “I’m sorry,” sighed Garth, trying to regain all of his mind. “I think he wants to commune with me.” With shaking hands he produced his skire, which he hadn’t had the heart to destroy. Placing the reed to his lips he began to play.

  Fryx was right there, aiding with every note. Clear beautiful tones sounded in the humid night. A group of howlers somewhere in the forest hooted a contemptuous response.

  For a time it was as it had been before with Fryx. Garth exalted in close communion, the music of his skire filling everything with rose-colored joy. While Kris looked on happily, he pranced about the fire they had lit, playing his skire as a satyr would play his pipes. His rider intimated further details concerning the Imperium and their fantastic aggressions of the past. Images of entire worlds enslaved and burning filled his mind. Dark ships sailed out of the void to devastate unsuspecting worlds, exterminating spindly bipedal creatures that bore riders in their skulls, as did skalds. Garth learned that these ancient hosts of the riders had perished in a fantastic war with the Imperium that had lasted for a thousand years.

  So entranced was he, that at first he didn’t hear Kris’ cries of distress. Shots rang out from the forest and he saw her frail body collapse in upon itself, folding up like a holo-image when the power is cut off. Blood pumped between her fingers. She looked into his eyes with horror and agony. Some dim part of his mind realized with cold logic that they had gut-shot her so that she would take a long time to die.

  Making an odd, croaking noise, Garth stumbled away from the campfire. Fryx goaded him to stay put, to wait for the inquisitors to join them and perform the necessary extractions. Bucking like a wild horse, he lurched and shambled into the trees. He crashed through black-green walls of vegetation.

  The shadowy jungle night swallowed him up whole. There was no possibility of immediate pursuit. Taking up refuge in the hollow bole of a fallen tree, he pressed the barrel of his hand-cannon to his forehead and wept profusely.

  Inside his skull, the spiny gelatin that was Fryx writhed in fear. Half of Garth’s face sneered in grim delight while the other half sagged in grief.

  Ten

  The farmer had a loud rolling laugh that boomed out over the fields and was audible among the smooth dark trunks of the horkwoods. It was the loud laugh that killed him. Thinking that the sound was a warning, that perhaps the vertebrates had somehow detected it, the killbeast altered course toward the farm. Normally, it wouldn’t have bothered with this farm, as there was a relatively small herd of food-animals huddled in the barn. Its orders, however, were clear on the subject of detection: there could be none. Any enemy attempting to sound the alarm had to be silenced.

  Reaching the edge of the trees, the killbeast paused to investigate a crude electric fence. Clearly, it had been designed to keep unintelligent animals in and out. With a single, contemptuous spasm of its powerful hind legs, it vaulted the ten-foot barrier and landed in the moonlit fields. Slinking toward the unknown and misunderstood sounds of laughter, it slid from shadow to shadow, nothing but another ripple in the waving fields of grain. Using the radio crystals grown in its thorax, it sent a single burst transmission. The chirp of data signaled the trachs waiting back in the forest to advance, there would be much protoplasm to carry back to the Parent’s digesters very soon.

  The jax herd in the barn lowed mournfully at the strange and frightening smells that came from the woods. Inside the shelter of their barn, they shoved and grunted their way into a huge circle of tightly packed animals, forming a single mass of woolly bodies. The ones in the center were soon crushed near to death and bucked up above their comrades, scarring the others with their stone-sharpened hooves and trying to walk on the lumpy, woolly sea of jax backs.

  “The jaxes are balling up again!” cried little Jimmy Herkart, trotting into the harvester garage where his father and Uncle Rolf were smoking a bit of swamp-reed in their long-stemmed pipes. “Daddy, they’ll kill themselves this time, it’s real bad. They’ll be deaders in the middle for sure!”

  The two men stopped laughing abruptly at the news. “Damned morons,” muttered Jimmy’s Uncle Rolf as they set aside their pipes and followed Jimmy out of the garage. They were a bit unsteady on their feet, and Dev Herkart, Jimmy’s father, almost fell into the old dried-up well shaft as he staggered across the yard.

  “Where the hell are the dogs?” Dev demanded, rubbing bleary eyes. He shook his head to clear it, and seemed to stand straighter.

  “They ran off into the fields, barking at something out there. They haven’t come back yet,” explained Jimmy, pointing toward the shadowy treeline. The silvery wires of the electric fence glimmered in the bluish light of Gopus.

  “Probably after a tree-yeckler, or maybe a landshark pup that the patrols missed. If the herd’s been harmed, I’ll take the lot of them to the auction tomorrow,” said Dev with a growl. As the two men and the excited boy approached the barn, the frightened lowing turned to a terrific screaming. The scream of a Jax, despite its great size, had a disturbingly human sound to it, and all three of them recoiled.

  “Sou
nds like a slaughter!” shouted Uncle Rolf, clapping his hands over his ears.

  Dev broke into a run, and the others followed. As they passed the toolshed, the farmer stopped to throw open the door and pull out a long-barreled Wu shotgun and a box of shells. He shoved shells into the breach as they all trotted up to the barn door, cursing his absent dogs with each step.

  “It’s a landshark, sure as shit.” said Uncle Rolf with just a hint of nervous fear in his voice. “It’s got to be.”

  Inside the barn, the unmistakable sounds of a slaughter in progress continued. If anything, they had heightened. The very walls of the barn shuddered with the impact of heavy bodies charging about in blind panic. The leaves of the doors buckled, and the chain across the opening went taunt with a rattling sound. Human-sounding shrieks, wild grunts and the heavy thumping of hooves filled the night air.

  Dev didn’t bother with the chains; he simply blew the lock and the chain apart with his shotgun. Inside, a jax buckled against the doors and the body rolled out into the yard, forcing the doors open wide. The leaves opened with such force that they smacked against the wooden walls. The jax was dead, its head half-blown away by the shotgun blast.

  Then the herd charged for freedom, but fortunately they had been expecting this and had stepped out of the way. Eyes rolling with terror, tusks wet with blood from chewing their own tongues, the jaxes poured out of the barn in an avalanche of woolly bodies.

  “Only forty?” howled Dev as the last of the jaxes able to move staggered out. “I have ninety head in there!”

  Rage took over and drowned out all caution. Dev rushed into the barn, finding and snapping on the overhead lights. They flickered into life and illuminated a scene of dreadful carnage. More than half the herd lay twitching, all obviously victims of violent death. Throats had been ripped out and left exposed, entrails had been pulled from soft bellies and splattered on the walls. One nearby jax, its front legs both severed at the midpoint, tried repeatedly to stand on its remaining stumps. Blood covered the walls and ran in rivers on the concrete floor. There was an overpowering odor of excrement and death.