Africa Zero (11 page)

“I
would speak with you, vampire!” I shouted.

Kephis
was on his feet with his APW held ready. He was trying to see what Spitfire and
I could see, and failing. I watched as the GAV circled once more then moved in
closer. I put my gun away and turned to Kephis.

“Put
your rifle on the ground.”

He
looked for a moment as if he was going to rebel. Then he did as I wished and
stood ready to spring in any direction. Only when the vampire landed did he see
him clearly, and he nearly stepped back into the fire.

“Machine,”
said the GAV as he folded closed wings that filled half the night. I noted then
he was not so much bigger than Kephis, only a foot or so.

“There’s
blood on your chin,” I observed.

“Holy
water,” said he, and I suddenly realised he had a sense of humour.

“How
many?”

“Two
of the white robes.”

He
turned his head slightly and fixed his febrile ruby eyes on Kephis. Had Kephis
not been so black he would have turned white. As it was he took a step back and
eyed his APW.

“I
would take your head before you reached it, Kiphani.”

I
said, “There’s no need for that. You’ve fed tonight and these two are under my
protection.”

His
head swivelled again and he seemed to notice Spitfire for the first time. When
he spoke again he seemed to be directing his words at her.

“I
have mated with human women. My mate has a human man in her nest. She will
drink of him when he is done.”

I
found I was not anxious for Kephis to hear about this. I moved closer to him,
ready to stop him if he made a grab for his APW. As I made that move I saw
Spitfire was rigid as a statue, her eyes wide open. She seemed mesmerized by
the GAV. Abruptly the GAV turned his attention back to me. Spitfire gave a
shudder and shook her head.

“You
wanted to speak with me, machine. Speak with me.”

“The
Protestanti you killed. Did they have weapons like ours? Were they with the
Silver One?”

“Give
me the Pykani and I will tell you.”

“She
is not mine to give. Why do you want her?” I already had my suspicions.

“Diversity,”
he replied, and turned his attention back to Spitfire. She began to shiver. My
suspicions were proved correct.

He
said to her, “Fly with me, little sister.”

An
unlikely match I thought. He was so big and she was so tiny. There was also the
memory of Hurricane to take into account. I was just about to tell the GAV to
back off when Spitfire stopped shivering and gave out a strange abandoned
laugh. She spoke to him then in a tone of voice that told all she just did not
care.

“I
will come with you, vampire. I will fly with you. You may love me or kill me
... Tell the Collector what he wants to know. I will come. Mammoth will be
saved and deaths avenged.”

The
GAV looked at me. “Northeast of here were six white robes with weapons like
that one.” He pointed a long clawed finger at Kephis’s APW. “I took the two who
guarded. Should you leave now you will come on them in darkness. Before I saw
them I saw the Silver One walking from the camp. I was curious and asked
questions before I killed. I was told she travels quickly to the Family
complexes. I do not go there.”

The
Family complexes? Did she really intend to lead the Brethren against them as
she said? I doubted it. Death. Power. The endless catharsis of hate. They were
answer enough.

“I
thank you, vampire, and I ask, when you come to the sky, that you do not kill
this Pykani.”

I
put as much threat in the plea as I could. It was wasted. The GAV and Spitfire
were staring at each other with heated intensity. Spitfire walked forward to
stand at his side. She put her hand on his thigh. The difference in size was
even more evident then. But other things were evident as well. She was as small
as a child, but sexually she was an adult. The hand she rested on him seemed to
be a claim of possession. Chemistry? Madness? Lust? Genetic imperatives? I do
not claim to know. I think it was for Spitfire and the GAV to know.

“I
will mate with her. As you suggested I will spread my seed and renew the GAVs.
Why should I kill a mother?”

With
that the two of them launched into the sky.

I
was only just quick enough. It was good I had moved closer to him. Kephis had
the APW up before him, but his finger had not reached the firing button before
I knocked it out of his hands. He swore and struck me across the face. I caught
hold of his wrist and the back of his neck and held him while the GAV and
Spitfire flew out of sight. He struggled violently at first. When he realised
struggle was no use he desisted.

“You
told him ... spread his seed ... amongst our women?”

I
said, “He is partially human and can father children on human or Pykani women.”

“Why!?
More of them will kill more of us!”

I
looked at him. “More of you, you mean. Why should I choose the survival of his
kind over the survival of yours?”

“Because
you were human!”

It
was his best argument. I released him.

“Would
you kill all tigers because tigers eat men?”

He
looked at his APW and rubbed his wrist before replying. “A tiger does not only
eat men.”

“Exactly.
What do you think a GAV crossed with a man or a Pykani will eat? I think in
such a case human flesh and blood will lose some of its exclusivity... Are you
following me?”

“You
tricked him.”

“No,
I gave him the only course to the survival of his genes he could accept. He
will have grandchildren. He may not like them. But he will have them.”

He
sounded less sure of himself now. “But he is taking and raping women ...”

“Would
you prefer him to go back to the way he was? Better a raped woman than a
headless one. Or do you think death preferable? That is often the case with
those who don’t do the dying.”

Slowly
he turned and walked to his APW. He looked thoughtful. I expected him to pick
it up casually, then as quickly as he could, turn it on me and burn me to slag.
He did not. He picked it up and slung it over his shoulder.

“I
asked myself about my sister . . . There is a point where pride ceases to be
useful... We have Protestanti to kill.”

He
moved to pack his blanket. I eased my grip on the atomic shear in my pocket. A
flick of a button and a twitch of my wrist and he would have fallen in half. I
was glad he had not tried anything. Wisdom is a survival trait as well.

Two
hours of journeying brought us to a place where a pack of hyenas was bickering
over the remains of a headless Protestanti—one of the ones the GAV had dropped
after feeding on it. Half an hour after that we found the head caught in acacia
scrub with its nose gnawed away and a black rat sitting on it like the King of
the Hill. Obviously we were heading in the right direction. Half an hour more
and we came in sight of the fire. It had been built up very high—an acacia tree
had been chopped into logs to feed it. The four remaining Protestanti sat
around with their weapons held ready. They’d had a bad night. It was going to
get worse.

“How
do you want to do this? They’re yours,” I said.

Kephis
tested the weight of his assegai. “I want them away from the fire, in the
darkness.” He looked at me. “You drive them out into thenight, Collector. I
will do the rest.” And with that he stooped down into the elephant grass and
was gone.

I
gradually worked my way closer to the fire, close enough to see that all four
were armed with APWs. The ones the GAV had grabbed must have dropped their
weapons. I imagined that some of this four had atomic shears as well. I set my
APW at about medium and aimed at the centre of the fire. My shot ignited the
night and I saw embers flying into the air before I got down and crawled away
as quick as I could. There were two more flashes and the grass was burning
behind me. Another glance showed them on their feet moving away from the fire.
I hit it again and watched them diving for cover, shooting wildly in every
direction as they went. I got my head down and slowly worked my way forwards. I
was about ten metres from the fire when I heard the first scream.

It
was the drawn-out and girlish scream of somebody discovering something
extremely unpleasant and painful has happened to them. There had been no shots.

“Kenda!
Kenda!” someone shouted. There was the crack of an Optek and the horrible
smacking sound of a bullet hitting flesh. I heard a rushing sound in the grass.
Someone was moaning.

“Christa!
Over there!”

Purple
flashes brought weird daylight and there was an explosive conflagration. I
worked my way in that direction. Hopefully I was behind them now.

As
I crawled the moaning became a babbled plea then a scream. Again there was APW
fire.

“Chakaree?”

I
do not think Chakaree and Kenda were capable of answering. I crawled on, and
eventually came across the body of one of them. He had been shot in the arm and
then opened from crotch to chest and was trying to say something. Every time he
tried he made a sibilant bubbling sound. As I moved past him there was another
scream.

“Chakaree?...
Kenda?... Evan?”

I
presumed the one calling out the names was Christa. Silence fell. I could hear
nothing at the normal level. I juiced up my hearing and listened to Christa’s
breathing. Even then I could only just hear Kephis crawling through the grass.
I waited. Suddenly Christa let out a yell of fright. There was an actinic
flash, burning grass, and he was running towards me. I stood up with my APW in
my hand, but because of my augmented hearing I had misjudged how close he was.
I had assumed he was further away than I discovered him to be. He had his APW
in one hand and something else in his other hand. To my right I saw grass
falling as if after the sweep of a very sharp scythe. Something tugged at my
right arm and I looked down to see my right hand holding my APW fall to the
ground. Then Christa was past me. I swore. Something of moonlight and razored
silver flashed past me. It made not a whisper as it hit his back and pierced
him. He fell forwards with a metre-and-a-half of assegai protruding from his
chest. The point of the assegai stuck in the ground and held him at forty-five
degrees for a moment. Then he slithered down it with a choked retching and to
lay flat on his face in the grass, bleeding’and dying. I turned to the source
of the throw and Kephis was before me, starlight glinting off the sweat on his
ebony skin. His APW was pointed at me.

“I
think that’s all of them,” I said.

“Yes,”
said he.

The
APW had not wavered one millimetre from the centre of my chest.

“I
said I think that’s all of them.”

“Did
you think, Collector, I did not know you had your hand on one of those
invisible blades when we talked of vampires and their mating, and of my
sister?”

I
looked yearningly at my APW on the ground with my hand clutching it like a
chrome spider. I had a shear in my right-hand pocket and the handgun in my
pack. I could move fast, but not that fast.

“I
did think that. Do you intend to kill me?”

“Is
‘kill’ the right word to use?”

“I
can die right enough.”

Kephis
seemed to consider for a moment, then he threw the APW on the ground at my
feet. I nearly went for him then, but I showed the most restraint I have shown
in many years. I let him live for his temerity. He walked past me and retrieved
his assegai from the dying Protestanti, who made a horrible grunting sound when
the blade was pulled from him. Kephis cleaned the blade on those pain-patterned
robes, and with only his Optek across his back he set out to the south and the
Kiphani village. He said nothing more to me.

As
I watched Kephis stride off I thought to myself that in a century he would be
so much bones and dirt. The thought gave me no satisfaction.

* * *

In
the dull light of early morning I wandered to each of the corpses and collected
their weapons. Sometime before the light had impinged the sky had clouded over
and the temperature dropped. The weather had always been unpredictable this
close to the encroaching ice, and I suspected the savannah was in for one of
those dramatic winter changes of climate that had, over the centuries, profound
effects on the flora and fauna of the area. Changes that had allowed plants
like the groundsels to grow on the slopes of the Atlas Mountains rather than on
the equatorial mountains of Old Kenya as they once had, and changes that had
allowed baobabs to grow and were now killing them.

Soon
I had collected together four APWs and three atomic shears, and stacked them
near the burnt-out fire. If there had been others I did not find them, and
hoped no one else would. As I considered how best to disarm them a snow flake
spun lazily down from the cold white sky.

Forgetting
the weapons for a moment I searched through my pack and took out the few tools
I carried, then I inspected the stump of my right wrist and my severed hand. It
did not take me long to see that the cut had been through the most complex area
of jointing and servo motors of that wrist. I could reattach it, but there was
little chance of me getting it working again. I needed high tech tooling: a
powder fusion forge for tungsten ceramal, microshear tools, and a supply of
servo units and superconductor. There was no way I could do the job properly
out here with a few hand-held tools for the working of normal metals. I needed
the facilities of JMCC. I put my tools and hand away in my pack, making sure my
pack was secure, and turned my attention back to the weapons I had collected.

I
could have set one of the APWs to dump its load, but such an act would have
been messy, leaving the area radioactive for years to come. There was also the
possibility I might need them, or their power packs, sometime in the future.
Only a few small alterations would make them exchangeable with my own. Instead
I turned on one of the APWs and burnt a hole in the ground next to one of the
boulders. It took a number of minutes with me standing next a continual
incandescent explosion, backing away from the occasional fumarole of slag and
molten rock, or fused sand. Soon I had a hole six feet deep. But for one atomic
shear and my handgun from JMCC, I dropped the weapons into the hole, then I
sheared off a lump of the boulder at such an angle that it fell in and capped
it. Perhaps I was being overly cautious, considering that the likes of JMCC
could manufacture such weapons at will. But I just did not like the idea of
weapons, which could turn me into a deposit of metals on the ground, lying
around the savannah like discarded toys. By the time I had finished the snow
was coming down more heavily to melt on the still warm ground of the savannah.