11 Anywhere but Death
“Damned boots,” Dante muttered.
Dress-uniform boots were meant for smooth floors, not the shambles of an ancient city. Since letting go of the camera’s balloon half an hour ago, he’d been scrambling through debris from fallen brick and stone walls, and these boots were too flimsy for that. Furthermore, one of the boots had gotten soaked when he almost fell into a scum-covered sinkhole, and now each soggy step chafed his calf.
Squinting against the glare and the sting of sweat in his eyes, he tried to imagine what this stifling city had once been. Nothing like the relatively familiar modern Shon cities, that was certain. The place ignored geometry—human geometry, at least, of straight lines and right angles. From the ruins, he judged that most of the buildings had been two to three stories high, but they were laid out in no pattern that he could see. The city was a twisting, lifeless labyrinth of tiny rooms and meandering alleyways that, even in ruins, gave him a claustrophobic feeling.
He shaded his eyes against the sun and tried to gauge the distance to the mouth of the cave, which gaped huge and dark on the cliff overlooking the sunken city. At this rate it would take hours to cover the ground he’d flown over in mere minutes. Several times already, he’d found himself facing an unscalable wall or broad patch of stagnant, stinking water and had to backtrack, wasting time that Tompa Lee couldn’t afford for him to lose.
She must be dead by now.
So why the hell had he sacrificed his career? Why, even now, was he wending toward the cave, where he could accomplish nothing? What made him think he’d ever find her if she’d scurried into one of the many side tunnels that surrounded the large central chamber? He’d done many stupid things since his injury, but they paled compared to this inept, quixotic fiasco. If they made a show out of this escapade, it would be slapstick instead of the usual Navy heroics.
He paused in the shaded remnants of a closet-sized nook and rested his head against a pitted stone wall. The old, brilliant Dante would have analyzed this debacle and determined some way to salvage both Tompa’s life and his own career. Furthermore, he’d have allowed for all foreseeable contingencies until his plan resembled the branches of an old-fashioned family tree, back when families had several children instead of one or at most two.
The new, stupid Dante couldn’t envision a single plan other than slogging back to the cave. God, he was useless. Might as well just stand here until a high tide swallowed him.
Hmm. He was at sea level and Zee Shode’s moon had a little over half the mass of earth’s. Would it create tides high enough to inundate his nose? At one time, he might have been able to figure it out in his head. Now, though, he merely pushed himself away from the wall and, with nothing better to do, continued toward the cave.
As though luck was teasing him, he came to an alley that ran clear and straight toward his goal. That was the good news. The bad news was that at the end of the alley was a broad patch of what looked like impossibly bright grass. He’d come across this before. He had tested the ground gingerly, not trusting the sudden lushness after seeing only a few weeds elsewhere, but he’d still soaked his boot in brackish seawater. The green stuff was some sort of pond scum floating on water. This part of the island must be riddled with caves like an overripe hunk of Swiss cheese.
“Dante?”
The voice from nowhere startled the hell out of him. He started to crouch, but his boots slipped and his backside landed on the corner of a brick. More slapstick.
“Can you hear me, Dante?”
It was Carolyn. But where?
“Dante?”
Ah, his mumbler. Showed how far behind he’d put his Navy days. They must have cobbled together a series of radio relays to his short-range mumbler to talk him into surrendering.
Well, he wouldn’t hide from them. He clenched the muscles in his upper arm that activated the implanted device. “Roussel here.”
“Dante!” After a slight pause, Carolyn spoke more formally. “I’m glad we were able to establish contact, Associate Vice President Roussel.”
Why was she using his rank?
“Dante, you’re in danger. The Kalikinikis have spread out through the ruined city, hunting you.”
“How do you know where they are? For that matter, how do you know where I am?”
“I’m watching you on television. Virtually every Shon on the planet is watching the trial, I gather, and the mood is getting ugly. I’m ordering all humans back to the Vance within six hours.”
Dante looked up. A flying camera hovered overhead at a respectful height. Three more were approaching from the direction of the hillside—following a Klick, no doubt, like vultures lusting for a kill. “I think the Klicks have almost found me, Carolyn, but thanks for the warning.”
“AVP Roussel,” a tenor voice said, “this is Culver from Logistics. If it’s any help, we can download to you topographical data about the island that we’ve gathered from orbital photos.”
Dante paused. He’d expected the first words he would hear from the Navy would be something like You’re under arrest. But Carolyn must have somehow smoothed things over for him—although he couldn’t imagine how she could possibly get him out of ignoring a magenta. Then again, she was the Head Trader—and he knew from personal experience that she was careless of propriety and tradition, which were the only checks on her power.
He took a deep breath. “Carolyn, it seems I owe you.”
“You surely do. It’s not everyone I’d assign as my personal observer of this trial.”
So that’s how she’d done it; given him an ex post facto assignment. “Culver,” he said, “if you can help me find my way out of this rat’s maze, I’ll owe you a beer, too.” He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He stood for a better look. “Hold off the download, Culver. Seems I have company.”
A Klick stood on the far side of the sinkhole, staring at him. It wore a broad-brimmed, sombrero-like hat; Krizink’s pregnant wife. Dante tried to think, but the stale air of the ruins smothered his mind like a heavy blanket on a humid summer night.
The Klick stepped toward him. One more step and she’d reach the carpet of green algae, or whatever this local equivalent was. Dante remained silent.
The Klick stepped onto the algae. Immediately she fell into the underlying water, which swallowed her in one gulp, the algae muffling what should have been a loud splash. A tail thrust above the water, its claw glistening in the sun, but then that too disappeared. In seconds the Klick was gone; the six-inch-thick layer of algae quickly rebounded to cover the sinkhole as if she’d never existed. The ruins were quiet and peaceful.
Then something floated to the surface: a sombrero-like bump that didn’t quite poke through the green scum.
She was pregnant, damn it.
Dante stripped off his boots and jumped in feet first. Good thing he hadn’t jumped in headfirst, because his legs slid along smooth rocks that sloped outward at a steep angle. It was like riding a steep waterslide into a pot of foul-smelling muck; he closed his eyes and mouth as he ploughed through the algae. Then the sloping rocks ended and momentum plunged him deep underwater. His eyes stung as he looked around through greenish light so dim he could see only a few feet. He swam back and forth but saw nothing. He came back up for a breath, then went back down for another look. The pregnant Klick was nowhere to be seen. He swam deeper, but the pool seemed bottomless.
On the way back up, his lungs started to burn. Just before his lungs exploded, he reached the outward-angling rocks he’d scraped against when he dove in. And then his head pushed into the acrid-smelling carpet of algae. Desperate for air, he managed to thrust his face past the algae to breathe. Then he crawled to solid ground and lay there for several seconds. He thought of Krizink, who’d sounded so proud of his pregnant lady, and felt sorry for him.
“Dante,” Carolyn’s voice said over his mumbler. “Are you all right?”
He looked around. The Klick’s hat still floated in the si
nkhole. He activated his mumbler as he rubbed algae off his hair and face. “I’m okay, I guess.” Most of the green crap wiped off and the bits he missed dried to a powder almost instantly—but he felt filthy regardless. “Culver, start the download. I need to find a route that takes me away from the Klicks and back to the cave.”
“Just a moment, sir.”
Dante put on his boots, brushed algae dust off his arms, and hurried away, anxious to get as far from the sinkhole as possible before the other Klicks arrived.
“Don’t go to the cave, Dante,” Carolyn said.
“Why not?”
“It’s dangerous, and Tompa Lee is outside already, anyway.”
“She’s alive?” Dante grinned as he leaped over a wall, though he wasn’t sure if the smile was for Tompa’s sake or his own. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“She’s slaughtering Shons by the score.”
Dante laughed, but his mirth was halted by the mental tickle that meant data was flowing through his mumbler to the data chips implanted in his neck. “Culver, make sure Tompa Lee’s position is indicated on the maps you send me.”
“Will do.” Culver’s voice was faint. The download had begun, leaving almost no bandwidth for voice communication.
It took a few seconds to grow accustomed to the sensations of download as he hurried through the ruins. When the tickling stopped, he hid in a dark corner where a fragment of ancient ceiling shielded him from view. He made himself as comfortable as possible on the jumbled rocks; he wasn’t trained to interpret topographical information, so his brain would need several uninterrupted minutes to digest the data. Sweat broke out on his brow and he clenched his fists, fighting a stab of panic at being overwhelmed by chaotic, nightmare images. He concentrated on the breathing techniques that eased the assimilation of raw data, and soon the unpleasantness ebbed. For a minute longer his limbs felt jittery, but even that passed.
Feeling refreshed and almost smug in his new knowledge, Dante emerged from his hiding place. He knew this island now. Not the names of valleys, streams, and peaks; those couldn’t be captured in holographs and infrareds from the Vance’s orbit. However, he knew that the hillside where he’d confronted the Klicks rose cliff-like for three-hundred-seventeen feet before leveling to a more gradual slope leading to the extinct, nine-thousand-foot volcano at the center of the island. He knew that he wasn’t far from the mouth of the island’s largest creek, on which Tompa Lee had emerged four-point-two miles upstream. He knew the best route to get to the stream, too.
Of most immediate importance, he knew where the Klicks were—or at least, where they’d been when the data started to flow. He didn’t have a dynamic feed that could continuously track everyone—that was beyond the capabilities of both his implants and his mumbler, even if the Vance were miraculously able to stay overhead at all times—but Culver had marked their positions at the moment of download.
Dante headed to the stream that would lead him away from Major Krizink’s crew and toward Tompa Lee. It was amazing that she was still alive in the face of such odds, and maybe he wasn’t so dumb after all. He would have whistled a cheerful tune if he wasn’t trying to avoid being noticed.
“Don’t come out,” Tompa begged. Her mouth so dry and salty it was hard to talk. “Please. I’ll just bash your head in.”
The scuffling noises from the mouth of the cave continued, of course. Even if the approaching Shon had a translator in its ear—and most of them didn’t—the Shons wouldn’t give up until she was dead.
Well, she wouldn’t give up, either, though she was shaky with exhaustion and soaked with blood and her own sweat. The pile of dead and injured bodies now reached all the way to the cave mouth. She planted one leg on the slope and the other on the back of a Shon, bracing herself in what was now a very cramped space. Pain lanced through her weary arms as she raised the club overhead.
When the Shon’s head appeared, she swung. Then she swung again, because she doubted the strength left in her arms.
The Shon slid out of the chute-like opening, but not all the way; the mound of bodies was high enough to stop its fall. It lay there like a cork in a bottle. The pursuers in the cave could pull the body backward and clear the exit, but that would take time. To make it harder for them, she dragged the unconscious Shon she’d been standing on onto the body plugging the cave. She piled a dead body on top of that one, jamming arms and legs together until the cave was fairly well blocked.
It was done. For a few minutes or hours, she was safe.
Willpower had been all that kept her standing and swinging. Now she wilted to the ground, resting against the pile of Shons. The hot sun beat down on her as mercilessly as she’d beaten the Shons. Her eyes closed of their own weight, and for a scant second she wondered whether she was fainting or falling asleep.
Water splashed her face. Sputtering, she opened her eyes, then immediately closed one that was filled with water. A Shon leaned over her, dangerously close. Fear made the air in her lungs seem to thicken to jelly. Where was her club? Where was the roach-damned thing?
“Graceful human’s heart beats healthfully?”
“Awmit!” Tompa sat up and heaved several sighs. “Yeah, I think so. Just exhausted.” She took the dipper from his hands and gulped the tepid drops that remained.
Awmit tugged at her sleeve. “These ones flee wisely.” He made a sweeping gesture that Tompa guessed meant for her to hurry.
She was lucky she could move, let alone hurry, but she fought down her aches and pushed herself to her feet. She edged down the slope, being careful not to look at the mass of bodies that were starting to reek of blood, sweat, and vomit under the broiling afternoon sun.
“Water,” a faint voice called.
“Yes, Awmit. So thirsty.”
“This one said nothing, graceful human.”
“Then who . . .”
With the dipper he’d used to splash water on her, Awmit pointed to the pile behind her. Tompa didn’t want to turn, but she made herself do it. A Shon laying on its side at the edge of the pile cringed away from her. When she did nothing threatening, it moved its lips once, twice. Finally a sound came out. “Water . . .”
“Hurry, graceful human. These ones leave precipitously while leaving remains excellently.”
Tompa stared at the wounded Shon and sighed. “Give me the dipper, Awmit.”
As she bent to fill the dipper in the creek, she saw her reflection. It was a stranger, an animal, filthy and bloody and revolting. She plunged the dipper into the water so she couldn’t see herself. After a long drink, she plunged her face into the stream. She came up for air and rubbed her skin with her hands, then doused her face again. Hopefully she looked more human now, but she didn’t wait for the water to settle enough to view her reflection.
Instead, she went upstream to avoid the pink, accusing water, filled the dipper, and carried it to the wounded Shon. Realizing that she didn’t know whether Shons drank the same as humans or how much they could swallow, she poured slowly. She needn’t have worried; the Shon gulped as fast as she could pour. Soon, though, it closed its mouth and gave what might have been a blink of thanks. Or perhaps it was a blink of hatred.
“Water,” called another voice. And another. “Water.”
There was water in the dipper and a begging Shon nearby, so she gave it what was left.
“Please, water.”
“Water . . .”
She looked around with a growing sense of panic. There must be sixty Shons in this pile, and she had no time to help them all. But in fact only half a dozen of them were calling for water. She should leave, but . . .
“Awmit, do you have another dipper in that backpack the guards gave you, so we can help these people quicker?”
Awmit clapped both hands to his shoulders. “Graceful human wastes willingly time to aid pursuers?”
“I can’t just . . . I mean, they’re thirsty.” As she refilled the dipper in the creek, she looked for her reflection to see if the yo
ung woman she knew was back, but the water was rippled. To the water where her reflection should have been, she whispered, “I’m one of the good guys.”
She carried the water back up the slope, holding her right hand under it to catch spills. As she gave water to another injured Shon, she glanced at Awmit. He stood motionless, staring at her with an intense, unreadable expression.
“What is it?” she asked.
He glared at her for a moment before speaking. “Those ones would help negatively the graceful human. Rocks those ones would smash to the mouth, instead of water.”
The injured Shon stopped drinking. Tompa stood, uncertain.
“Thanks this one gives to the human.” The injured Shon sat up.
Tompa stepped back and raised a fist. But it just flexed its hands and feet gingerly, as though testing the extent of its injuries. Then it wobbled to his feet and made an open-hands gesture in Awmit’s direction. It was smaller than most, and Tompa wondered if it was the one she’d spoken with briefly before clubbing it.
“Rocks negative, ancient helper of accusee.” The small Shon turned to Tompa. “Leave water dipper, surprising human, and flee self-preservingly. This one aids painfully herd-mates of prook-nah.”
Tompa didn’t trust the Shon enough to hand it the dipper, so she tossed it to the ground.
“Hurry, graceful human!” Awmit made his beckoning gesture again. “Hurry!”
This time she didn’t hesitate. She hobbled in the direction Awmit had headed. When she caught up with him she paused to look back. Instead of helping the others, the Shon was staring after her.
“A convert, this one wonders?” Awmit said.
Tompa shrugged, then looked around and saw only steep walls of the ravine. “Where are we headed?”
He bobbed his head in distress. “Graceful human leads fearlessly, not this one!”
Great, just great. She was almost too exhausted to move, let alone think or make a decision. It was too much to ask. Wearily, Tompa looked upstream, then downstream, wondering if either direction led anywhere but death.