Africa Zero (9 page)

“Diana,
dearest, oh light of my life.”

Her
reply was immediate. “You have killed brother Michael and brother Kanga.”

“What
do you think?”

“I
think you are a servant of Satan and will burn in Hell. My only regret is I
cannot bring you physical pain to redeem you.”

She
had found God? I thought it unlikely—more likely she was speaking like this
because the others were listening in.

“There
isn’t that much pain in the world.”

“Regrettable.”

“Do
you want to die, my dearest?”

“It
is not my destiny to die. I am God’s servant and the fulfilment of prophecy.
Once you have been sent back to whatever nether hell spawned you I will lead
The Brethren against the families and work God’s will on this planet.”

How
did I read that? She was winding me up simultaneous with gulling her other
listeners. In a way I envied them their naivety, but, insane or not, I knew I
was dealing with a mind over two thousand years old. A mind like my own,
mostly. I am not insane of course.

“Do
your friends believe all this crap from you, then?”

“The
truth is here for them to see.”

Clever.

“Do
they know I was your husband?”

“They
know I was in the thrall of Satan and that my years on the ice were punishment
for it.”

This
was getting me nowhere. I sat there for a moment considering and absently
listening to the grisly crunching of my friend at his lunch. What now? I had to
do what had to be done.

“Tell
me where you are then, and we will settle this.”

“It
is settled already. You are dead.”

From
a brain netted with superconductor, down nerves of the same substance, the
signal was near instantaneous. It took perhaps a few microseconds for the
motors in my arm to react. She was slow on the button, or perhaps she
hesitated. I like to think it was the latter. The radio left my hand with a
sonic crack and was a good fifty metres out over the jungle before it blew. Even
so, the flash singed my skin, and the blast knocked me sprawling.

I
stayed down as pieces of burning groundsel and heather tree fell about me. I
saw a whole tree tumbling end over end into the abyss of the falls. I raised my
head higher for a look around. The jungle burnt, then was partially quenched as
water rushed back into the blast site. A wave swept past the island, carrying
blackened detritus and stunned fish. I looked to the crocodile and saw him
struggle to his feet, snatch up a pair of gory legs, and with his back smoking,
slide into the water and swim away. Typical—you know who your friends are when
the going gets rough. I stood up and quickly moved to the water’s edge to dunk
myself and put out a few of the smouldering bits. As soon as the water touched
my shirt it fell to powder. I did not think the guarantee would cover this.

“I’m
dead, am I? We’ll see about that.”

I
picked up the shear and set out parallel to the edge of the falls. I suspected
Diana was below. You could not see the falls from here and she had always liked
inspiring scenery.

I
crossed three tributaries and a couple of islands before I reached the thick
jungle at the side of the falls. A cliff dropped away below me to jungle, dimly
visible through the mist and spray. Running up from this jungle, keyed into the
mossy rock and projecting out to the falls was a spoon fisherman’s scaffold.
The final platform of it, right at the edge of the water, was empty but for a
couple of long handled nets. These the spoon fishermen used to scoop fish from
the falls, probably the huge barbel that were sometimes seen in these rivers. I
removed my final hand covering, dropped it in my pack, and began to descend.
The rock was damp and slimy where it was exposed and otherwise covered with
moss, but the rock face was rugged, with many steps and ledges holding small
pools, in which small red frogs and white tadpoles swam, and descent was not
difficult. The falls at this point were stepped as well. Soon I reached the
scaffold and dropped down onto the projecting platform. From there I had a look
around.

From
the platform I could see no more than a couple of hundred metres through the
spray. The falls were a continuous dull thunder and I could hear little but
that. I switched to infrared and picked up nothing but the occasional leap of a
barbel as it fought its way up against the water, though for what purpose I
have no idea, and the spectral shape of a goliath heron as it strode across the
pool below. Where were the spoon fishermen? I wondered, and descended from the
scaffold by ladder. Once on the ground I thought for a moment I saw a
triangular head poke over the edge far above me. Could have been imagination. I
followed a path hacked through the jungle to the scaffold.

The
smell of wood smoke gave me fair warning and I was glad my sense of smell was
on. It is quite easy to forget things like that. I moved off the path,
unhitched the rifle, and continued parallel to it as silently as I could. Soon
a clearing and the slow coil of smoke from a fire came into view. I ducked down
and crawled the last few metres. There had been fishermen here.

I
suppose with what amounted to almost the entire clergy, of this area, of the
Church of the Drowned God, all in one place, they had felt compelled to
demonstrate their skills to each other. The four spoon fishermen had been
available.

I
stood up and walked out into the clearing. Three of the fishermen were dead.
One of them had been flayed from the ankles to the waist. They had nailed his
ankles to a tree to suspend him upside down. All very professional—that way up
they fainted less often. Another had been branded and cut with hot knives. His
eyes had been put out as well. The third looked as if just about every bone in
his body had been methodically broken. The fourth one, who was still alive and
groaning horribly, had been suspended over the fire with a rope threaded
through the bones of his forearms. His feet were dripping like roast pork.
There was a savoury smell in the clearing. With the rifle I burnt a hole
through his head and severed the rope. He fell into the fire quite dead. I
turned to the other three and burnt holes through their heads, just to be sure.
Little else remained for me to do there after that. I followed a path that had
been cut through the jungle upslope with atomic shears. It was the way I
assumed the remaining Protestanti and my beloved had gone. Emotionlessly I
vowed, quite simply, that all of them would die.

By
midday I had reached the end of the cut path and come to an area where acacias
grew tall and shaded all. The bracken-covered ground was fairly boggy so it was
quite easy for me to follow their trail. In some places I could see the imprint
of my wife’s feet and matched it against my own. Slightly smaller, but much the
same. I reckoned she must be completely without covering. I thought it unlikely
she would bother with it. I sometimes wonder why I did.

The
acacias became more sparsely scattered and bracken was displaced by elephant
grass. As the temperature rose and the ground became drier I found it
increasingly difficult to follow their trail, and I wasted a lot of time
following the large tracks of a situtunga antelope, which by rights should have
been back in one of the papyrus swamps. Eventually I regained their trail, only
now it looked as if their numbers were less. I could not tell if Diana was with
them. I considered tracing the trail back to see where they had separated, but
decided I had wasted enough time already, and followed the trail before me.
This took me out onto savannah, where I lost it at sunset.

When
I finally admitted I could see no traces of the tracks of those I was following
I spied an acacia tree and set out towards it with the intention of starting a
fire. It would draw someone to me, friend or foe. I was fifty metres from the
tree when the figure rose out of the elephant grass before me—dark as the
night, a foot taller than me, assegai glinting sunset light. He nearly died in
that moment. My hand was a claw arcing towards his stomach to eviscerate him
before I recognised him. At the last moment I changed it into a fist and pulled
the blow. Kephis still oophed loudly and fell to the ground, his assegai
stabbing by my feet.

“You
cretinous idiot! Never do that to me. You nearly died!”

Clutching
at his stomach Kephis rolled his eyes and tried to speak between gasps.

“...
Collector ... Spitfire ... Prot...”

I
squatted down. “Take your time. You can tell me in a minute.”

He
took more than a minute to recover and I worried that I might not have pulled
the blow enough. It had been a close thing—a split second to damp the motors
and snap my hand shut. I could have tried to miss him, but had he moved to one
side in that instant he would have been dead. Was I rationalizing? Or had I
allowed the blow to land because I was annoyed he had been able to surprise me?
He recovered anyway, hoisted himself into a sitting position, and managed to
talk.

“I.
. . did not know it was you, Collector. I came here in search of Protestanti,
like you said.”

“How
did you know they were here?”

“Protestanti
have been in our valley. Four of our fishermen were killed. I come for the
vengeance of the Kiphani.”

I
tried to figure that out. How had he found out? How had he arrived here so
soon? I asked him.

“The
Pykani Spitfire told us of the fishermen. She was searching for you when she
found them. Our village is only four kilometres from here.”

So
much for my sense of direction. The river must curve back on itself. I should
have realised that the Kiphani would not have used the river to get below the falls,
what with the crocodiles—Did they know about my big friend?—and the falls
themselves to block their way. All they did to get there was make a short
overland trek.

“I
found your fishermen. The Protestanti are with the Silver One.”

“I
had no intention of going after that one. I know I have no weapons of any
effectiveness. I have come to kill Protestanti.”

“Where
is Spitfire now?”

“She
searches for you still.”

I
pulled his assegai from the ground and handed it to him. “Well then, you have
not changed my plans much. I intended to light a fire to see who would come.”

He
looked at me dubiously. Lighting campfires at night out on the savannah was
something I did and I was unusual in that. People who had blood in their veins
did not. The fear was an old one, from when there were GAVs out hunting every
night. It was an understandable fear, even now, with only one or two.

He
pulled himself to his feet with a grunt and walked beside me to the acacia.
There we collected together old wood and I started a fire with a blast of the
handgun. He looked at the device with some suspicion.

“The
fishermen were killed with such a weapon,” he said.

“I
killed them.”

He
nodded his head. “The Protestanti... ?”

“Had
done their usual work. One of the fishermen was still alive. I am not so sure
about the other three. You know what the Protestanti do.”

He
bowed his head and squatted by the fire. “My sister, Sipana, was much attracted
to the fisherman Mkoni. Spitfire told us they had been the toys of Protestanti
then killed with energy weapons. I did not like to think what might have
happened to them.”

“Unless
Spitfire tells you, or you look for yourself before the jungle takes them, you
will never know. Let it suffice that Protestanti will die for it.”

I
stirred the fire with a stick before continuing. “You will come with me now, I
have no doubt, but leave the Silver One to me. Don’t try to kill her. You know
you will not be able to. Kill the Protestanti, yes, but even there be careful.
They have energy weapons...” I trailed off and looked up into the tree hoping
to see a familiar dark shape. There was nothing there. Kephis removed a blanket
from his pack and sprawled out on the ground. Then with a polite ‘excuse me’,
he switched himself off like a light.

Half
the night passed. I walked round and round the acacia tree picking up the
occasional branch, or bone from the skeleton of a waterbuck, which I stumbled
across in the grass, and fed them to the fire. As the dark hours slid by I
regretted my lack of humanity. With all I had been through just lately, as a
human, I would have been extremely tired, and been able to sleep like Kephis.
Of course, had I been human I would have been dead and rotting by now. All I
really needed at that moment was a bit of a polish and some repairs of my synthiflesh.
Thinking on that I seated myself by the fire and opened my pack in search of my
hand and foot coverings, and my boots. All I found was one hand covering and a
boot. Somewhere along the line I had lost the rest. After checking I found this
was all I had lost. I sighed. This, I suspected, is what you get for indulging
in water sports with a thirty-foot crocodile. After putting the hand covering
on I did another circuit of the tree, picked up the skull of the waterbuck on
the way round, and threw it on the fire. Kephis raised his head and looked
around, pushed a scattering of embers away from his blanket, then looked at the
fire and at me with some annoyance before turning over. It was only a minute or
so after when Spitfire flapped to a silent landing on a branch of the tree.

“Welcome,
Spitfire,” I said, rousing Kephis again.

“Kiphani
Kephis has found you, Collector,” she lisped at me.

“He
has that... I am sorry for what happened to Hurricane.”

I
could not see her face up there on the branch but in her voice I detected
surprise.

“You
are sorry, Collector? That is ... gratifying. We should not feel pity, though.
Hurricane ran out of teeth and is now on the soft flesh of the Grey Thunderer.”