"I've been talking to you all the time, since you went under, Falk," Cleesh said. "Have you been able to hear me? I've been with you all the way, like I promised I would."
"Thanks."
"I said I would. Like old times."
"I know."
"Okay."
"Cleesh, can you tell me what the problem is? Why am I still in the tank? Why haven't you pulled me out?"
"Bari says–"
"Bari can go fuck himself. Sorry, but I want you to explain it, Cleesh. I want you to explain it without any fucking around."
He waited. He could hear the warm water gently rocking in the darkness.
"Turns out," said Cleesh. "Turns out you weren't properly fit. Underwood was right. We should have done a lot more tests. A lot more. We rushed into it. I told you it would be okay. I'm sorry, Falk. I shouldn't have done that."
"It's okay. What's the problem?"
"You had underlying medical problems, which mean you're weaker, your immune system. Uhm, there was way too much alcohol and stuff in your bloodstream too. That's freeked® things up a bit. The biggest problem is your hip."
"My hip?"
"Yeah. The bone density. Too much time on drivers. Underwood said the bone density was a systemic problem, but your hip is the worst place. The bone strength there is so weak, you've actually broken it."
"I've broken my hip?"
"It's a hairline fracture, but yeah, basically. You had so much alcohol in you it was masking the pain, but the fracture, it's new. Looks like you might even have broken it as recently as the night we put you in. Falk?"
"Yeah?"
"Why did you laugh?"
"The chances are I broke my hip engaging in vigorous and empty sex that I was too old for anyway."
"You dog," she said. "That'll teach you."
"It will. So I've got a fucked hip. How does that alter anything?"
"It's infected. Remember what I said about your immune system? You're sick. Fighting it, running a temp. Underwood's trying to treat it with broad spectrum, that kind of stuff, but you're sick and it's affecting the interface. We're trying to disengage you, except Ayoob's worried that pulling you out might freek® your system up."
Warm black water slapped in a lightless womb.
"And when you say that you mean 'kill me'," he said.
"There's a range of stuff that Ayoob's concerned about," Cleesh said. Some of her words, if not actually backwards, sounded side-on. "Paralysis, brain damage, organ failure… Basically a whole bunch of things, none of which you want."
"You know me so well."
"So we're working on it. Just being able to get through to you is a huge step forward and a really good sign."
"There's the other problem as well, isn't there?" he asked.
Water, rolling in darkness. Backwards whispers.
"Yes."
"Bloom's dead, isn't he?"
"Yes, functionally."
"Tell me what you know."
"Underwood's monitoring his vitals," said Cleesh, "but the data is patchy. We haven't got the whole picture. What we've seen so far is the effect of the headshot. All higher function's gone. If he was on his own, he'd be dead."
"There's actually a surprising amount of him still about in here," said Falk. "Emotions. Memories. Under stress, his muscle memory takes over. It's done that a couple of times."
"Interesting. I'll talk to Ayoob."
"I keep getting bouts of pain, Cleesh. Crippling pain. Cramp in my belly and head. It comes on, no warning, and
I'm helpless, then it fades."
She said something. The words were backwards, whispers.
"Cleesh?"
She'd drifted out, her speech just backmasked loops.
"Cleesh?"
"I said, that's us, Falk," she said, suddenly loud and the right way around again. "The pain is us. Our fault. I'm sorry. It's the attempts we're making to physically remove you from the Jung tank and disconnect. Each time we've tried, the trauma you've suffered has been so great, we've been forced to abort."
"What about Bloom?"
"What about him?" she asked. Unseen water lapped.
"What happens to him if you get me out?"
"We don't know. If there was decent medical support for him…"
"Cleesh?"
Quiet.
"Underwood thinks you're keeping him alive. Your mind is keeping the autonomic functions of his body running. You're kind of like his life support. You're what's keeping him going."
"So if you pull me out, he's definitely dead?"
"We think so."
"Okay. Okay. You know what's going on here?"
"We've got a partial picture. We've been listening via you. And we've been watching developments here. Apfel is going through channels via GEO's links to the SO, but there is no official line. SOMD issued a statement that an operation is underway, no other details. That whole zone is still communication-dark. Via you, we can see the problem on the ground. Have you got confirmed Bloc forces?"
"I haven't got confirmed anything. But if you wanted me to make an educated guess, I'd say yes. Central Bloc special forces."
"Apfel wants to know–"
The words suddenly inverted, became a blur.
"Cleesh? Cleesh?"
"–hear me? Can you still hear me, Falk?"
"Yes."
"Apfel says he wants to know what kind of hits the SOMD taskforce is taking there. We haven't been told anything official, but the SO is clearly gearing up to send serious support in. We think they're getting quite spooked about the total loss of contact."
"They should be," said Falk. "I don't know much. Of the three teams I went in with directly, there's about four of us left. Four people. The insurgents were waiting for us on the ground. Plus, they had expunged most of the local pop too. Whole settlements cleared out, executed."
"Are you serious?"
"They knew we were coming, or they knew we would be coming. Cleesh, there's something in play here that no one can see. This whole extro-transition element thing is beginning to make more sense. Scary sense. There's something so valuable, the Bloc is prepared to turn the Cold War hot for the first time ever. But listen, listen to me, Cleesh. Everybody says it's because of Fred, but I don't think it's about Fred at all. Fred might just be the icing on the cake. I think it's actually about something down here. This whole thing here at Eyeburn, this whole situation, it's really geographically specific."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. But I've got a clip. A playback. I need to translate some Russian. If I play it back and sound it out?"
"Yeah, I can work with that. Translation should be no problem."
"Okay. Give me a few minutes. Give me a second to sort myself out. Cleesh?"
Water moved softly, in hiding. A reversed whisper hid just beneath its lapping surface.
"Cleesh?"
Nothing.
Nothing lasted for a while.
He opened his eyes again and sat up.
"Shit!" Valdes cried. "Shit, man! Nestor's awake! He's with us!"
Falk looked around. The forest clearing was bathed in grey light, a haze. The trees were close-packed around them, heavy with cables of tendril creepers. The underbrush was a thick carpet of grey-green leaves and thorns, a foot or two deep. There was a smell of damp earth, of plant resin, of loam. It was cold, the wrong side of damp and unlit.
Preben and Rash stood over him, Valdes crouched to his left.
"We didn't die, then?" Falk asked.
"Not all of us," said Preben.
"Thought you had, though, man," said Valdes. He grinned. His face was bruised under the dirt.
"Where did we come down?"
"A way back that way," Rash said, gesturing over his shoulder.
"You carried me?"
"Had to," said Preben.
"We thought the fucking thing might explode," Valdes said. He shook his head. "Thought the whole fucking thing might go up in a fucking fireball."
br /> He looked at Falk, grinned.
"It didn't, though," he added.
"Where's Mouse?" Falk asked.
"Here," said Bigmouse, from behind him. Falk turned. Bigmouse was sitting propped up against a tree trunk. He tried to smile, but he looked like death. The half-light of the forest was making his skin look particularly ashen and sickly.
"Masry?" Falk asked.
"Fucker," said Preben.
"He wasn't so lucky," said Valdes. "Not so lucky at all."
Falk got to his feet. It wasn't a stable, steady process. Valdes rose and helped him.
"Where are we?" Falk asked.
"In a fucking forest, man," said Valdes.
Falk looked at Preben.
"What he said. The middle of a fucking forest," said Preben.
"We're going to need to move. Find decent shelter," said Rash. "It was hard to carry you anywhere. But now you're awake."
"What would you have done if I hadn't woken up?" asked Falk.
"We would probably have had to leave you," said Rash.
"Shut up," said Valdes. "You shut up. He doesn't mean that, Nes. He really doesn't."
"It's what we talked about," said Rash. He shrugged.
"I hope it was," said Falk. "Seriously. This is the Hard Place and a lot more besides. If it's a choice between ditching me and making yourselves secure, you know what you have to do."
"Exactly," said Rash. "We can't be weak."
"I ain't weak," said Valdes.
"Where are my glares?" Falk asked.
"Didn't see them," said Rash.
"They weren't on you when we carried you clear," said Preben.
"I need them," said Falk.
"Borrow mine," said Rash.
"I had good copies of area maps," said Falk. "Not just Eyeburn, this whole zone. I copied them from the land registry. Probably need them. Probably be really handy."
"They must have fallen off you," said Preben. "Maybe at the crash site."
"I need to look," said Falk. "I need to find them. Try, at least. Where's the crash?"
"I'll show you," said Rash. "Rest of you stay here. We won't be long."
Someone had brought the Koba along. Falk picked it up.
"Let's go, then," he said.
They walked back towards the crash site. Rash led the way, stopping now and then to wait while the slower-moving Falk caught up. The forest was quiet, wisps of mist drifting like smoke, like steam.
"Who's Cleesh?" Rash asked.
"Who?"
"Cleesh?"
"Why do you ask?"
"You were talking. After the crash. You were talking like you were having a nightmare. In your sleep. It was the main reason we decided not to dump you. It was as though you were talking about someone called Cleesh, or to someone called Cleesh."
"Just someone I used to know. Years ago. I haven't thought about them in a while. My mind must've gone there."
"That must be it."
They moved on in silence. Falk began to smell a waft of petrochemicals. The backmasked voices drifted around in the shadows behind him.
"Here," said Rash. "Just here."
The crash site was a little way ahead. They were approaching a glow, a luminosity cupped within the forest gloom. Daylight was streaming down through the ruptured canopy, through the grey mist that was gathering under the spectral snowgums. Pika-don was dead, a tangled black carcass driven up against a stand of robust trees, front end crumpled in like a boxer's nose, flanks dented from motion impacts and scarred down to base metal. Its tail boom was up, partly propped by a slumped tree trunk. Vines and ropes of succulent creeper were draped off its edges and stub wings, dragging like streamers, like lilac ribbons off a wedding car's bumper, like the running cables of multiple harpoons stretching out behind a whale that had finally been slain. There was a great carved wake behind it, a giant furrow of splintered tree trunks, ploughed soil and shredded vegetation that stretched away through the forest ranks, a deep incision bleeding green sap and pulped wood. The ground was littered with debris: pieces of twisted hull plate, fragments of glass, chips of plastic, unidentifiable component parts trailing wires or cables. An entire engine mount had torn off and lay half-submerged in the undergrowth. There was a lingering smell of burnt sugar.
Falk limped towards the main hull and approached the port cargo door. The door was missing, wrenched off its sliders, leaving only the buckled runners and the slot it had fitted into. A large piece of tree branch was wedged into the upper corner of the door space, like a lump of gristle stuck between teeth.
Rash came up behind Falk, weapon clutched low across his belly.
"See them?" he asked.
Falk shook his head. He looked around, parting ground cover stalks. Then he got up on the exposed kick-step of the hull and leaned into the cabin. Leaves, twigs, glass and stones had gathered at the foot of the sloping deck. There were blurds all around: small ones buzzing around his face, larger ones circling the glade, catching the shafting light. Some, large and glossy, crawled and basked on the trunks of nearby trees.
He finally located the glares behind the pilot's seat where they had slid. He leaned in to retrieve them. One arm was slightly bent.
"Okay?" asked Rash.
"Yeah," Falk replied.
Masry was still in his seat, and his seat was still in the nose section of the boomer, but the nose section now shared, with a massive tree trunk, a space that had previously been occupied by the trunk alone. The compression damage was immense. The hull's metal skin had puckered and wrinkled like elephant hide as it crunched and folded. Hydraulic fluid was leaking out of fissures and cracks, beading the leaves of the undergrowth, stinking of lube oil and man. The enormous impact forces had crushed Masry into his seat, pushing him down into the footwell under the instrument panel and then squeezing that shut too, like an over-stuffed purse. Falk didn't really want to think about the physics required to pack a body up into a space so small and enclosed, the snapping of long bones that would have been required, the terrifying momentum. Masry had been jammed into a cavity designed to accommodate his legs. Very little of him was visible, just his right arm and hand, raised to ward off both the forest and the death rushing up to greet him. The arm was draped forward, limp and unmarked, over the top of the instrument panel, through the shattered front screen. It was pinned between the seat back and the dashboard mount that had shunted backwards to meet it during impact.
Falk was pretty grateful he couldn't see Masry to admire the compact form into which he was now packaged.
Blurds buzzed and chirred around the arm and found ways into the compacted mystery below. They settled briefly on the top of the dashboard and twitched, then buzzed away again. They landed on Masry's sleeve, his cuff and on the red-gold hairs of his arm. Falk found himself staring. The tiny touch of blurds against the fine arm hair made him itch. He kept expecting Masry's arm to move, irritated, to flick them away.
The blurds were the same kind of bottle-black ones he had seen on the corpses up at the weather station.
"Fucker," said Rash.
Falk nodded.
Rash stared at what they could see of Masry.
"If he had survived," Rash began. He cleared his throat. "If he had made it, I swear to God I would have shot him."
"That's been a popular sentiment," Falk replied.
"Uh-huh."
Rash looked up at the canopy around them, the greylime wash of the light, the spiralling blurds.
"We should go back," he said.
"Okay," said Falk.
"You got what you need?"
"Yeah."
They turned and started to pick their way back from the wreck, through the undergrowth and ground flowers. Rain, a passing squall, pattered on the leaves above them, and wind shushed the branches. A moment later, drips fell like glass beads out of the tree cover.
Falk took a last look back at Pika-don, dead in its forest grave. Masry's arm, hanging from the compressed cockpit, looked like i
t was waving them goodbye, a sad farewell.
Either that, or it was beckoning them back, urging them not to leave, encouraging them to stay.