Against A Dark Background (59 page)

Zefla looked up at the mountain slopes. She was surprised they hadn’t heard any shots. She left Sharrow to sleep and went down to the shingle beach. She left her little back-pack there, so that Miz and Dloan wouldn’t walk past them. Then she went back to sit with Sharrow.

The men arrived an hour later. They were both limping; Dloan from the bullet wound he’d received the night Cenuij had died, Miz from the combination of hard boots and soft feet.

They were empty-handed. Zefla thought they had brought something, but it was only the back-pack she’d left on the shingle. They had shot at a few birds with their laser pistols and killed one, but it had been crawling with parasites when they’d picked it up and they hadn’t thought it was worth eating. They still hadn’t seen any large animals, though they had heard impressive bellowing noises from still further upslope.

`Fish,’ Miz said, as he and Dloan tore into the last of their foodslabs and Sharrow looked sleepily at them, frowning and rubbing her left glove.
We’ll do some fishing.’ He grinned at the others.
Fish; we’ll eat fish tonight.’ He patted the pocket of his fancy hunting jacket that held the fishing gear.

They heard what sounded like gunfire just as they were setting off again; a distance-dulled crackle that seemed to come from further down the fjord in the direction they were heading.

They ran to the shore and stood there, gazing down the fjord.

Shit,’ Miz said.
Wonder what that means?’

Nobody suggested anything.

They had been walking for about an hour when they saw Feril jogging towards them through the trees.

`Welcome back,’ Zefla said. Sharrow just stood there, smiling at the android.

`Thank you,’ Feril said. It still had the dials and the laser they had given it; it presented both to Zefla.

`So?’ Miz asked it.

‘I have been to the end of the fjord,’ the android began.

`Let’s walk and listen at the same time, eh?’ Zefla said.

They hiked on; Feril walked backwards in front of there without once putting a foot wrong, which was an unsettling but also rather impressive sight.

`The ground between here and the end of the fjord,’ it told them, ‘is similar to that you have already traversed. There are two sizeable streams to be crossed, one of which has a fallen tree across it and so is quite easy, the second of which is more difficult and has to be waded. There is a place where one must either cross a very exposed beach only a kilometre or so from a point on the far side, or make a four or five kilometre detour round some cliffs.’

`What did you do?’ Zefla asked.

`On my outward journey,’ Feril told her.
I crossed the beach without incident; on my return I again started to cross the beach. But then I was fired upon.’ Its upper body did a quarter turn to show a bullet graze on one shoulder. It kept on walking.
I returned fire with the laser pistol but then decided that my position was too exposed, and entered the water. I completed that part of the journey crawling along just under the ford’s surface.’

Zefla smiled. Miz shook his head. Dloan looked vaguely impressed. Sharrow just blinked and said, `Hmm.’

`Where is this beach?’ Dloan asked.

`About ten kilometres from here.’

Dloan nodded. ‘We heard the gunfire.’

`So they’re that much further ahead?’ Zefla said.

I believe only a sniper has been left on the point opposite the beach,’ Feril said.
I think I saw the main body of the Solipsists earlier, about another three kilometres further down the fjord, ferrying themselves across the mouth of a side-fjord in an inflatable boat. I attempted to fire on the boat, but the range was approximately four kilometres and I was not able to observe any effect.’

Dloan shook his head understandingly.

So,’ Miz said,
what have we got to look forward to apart from finding the Solipsists there first?’

`There are no more major obstacles after the beach I mentioned, though there is a small hill to be climbed, avoiding a cliff which is sheer to the water. The end of the fjord has many small islands and rocks, starting from about ten kilometres or so from its head; I believe these are why the flying boat did not simply land immediately. The end of the fjord is quite sudden; there is no significant narrowing, just the islands and then an almost straight length of shore in front of a marshy plain, which looks as though it is the result of land reclamation.

`The Gun is, I believe, in a stone tower. The tower is approximately fifteen metres high and seven metres in diameter and topped with a hemispherical black dome of indeterminate substance. It stands in the centre of a stone square about fifty metres to a side; the square has a circular wall half a metre high built upon it which just touches the mid-point of each edge of the square, and a metrehigh stone post at each corner. A small river delta forms the far boundary of the square; on this side there is a field of tall rushes.

`The stone tower is surrounded by numerous human bodies, pieces of equipment and debris; these are mostly within the circular stone wall. From the state of decay involved, I would estimate that some of the bodies and pieces of debris have been there for many decades. The most recent bodies in the vicinity appear to be those of two young men I took to be Solipsists by their uniforms. Both bodies were attached to parachutes; one lay against the inside of the circular wall, his parachute snagged on a small tree just outside the square; the other parachutist appeared to have been dragged for some distance through the rushes before being stopped by rocks, and I was able to determine that he had been killed by some form of laser device which had removed his head. It had also left a hole in his chest and another in his groin, consistent with a sixty-millimetre beam. I deduced that the dome on top of the tower housed such a device, perhaps along with the concomitant detection and tracking equipment it would require.’

`Amazing deduction,’ muttered Miz. He glanced at Sharrow but she didn’t seem to have heard.

I noticed,’ Feril continued,
that the few birds which overflew the area kept well away from the tower, though there were avian bodies of various species distributed around it, along with those of numerous small animals. Insects appeared to be tolerated. I conducted a brief experiment with pieces of wood, and found that anything moving within twenty-five metres of the centre of the tower with a frontal area greater than approximately two square centimetres will be attacked by the tower’s defences. I believe this to be a powerful X-ray laser, though the beam used on the pieces of wood I threw into this zone was considerably smaller than those which had killed the two Solipsist parachutists. I also noticed that when the dead parachutist resting against the inside of the wall moved - when his parachute was caught by a gust of wind - the beam that hit him was narrow and attenuated, and one of several dozen or so which had seemingly hit him after his death while he was presumably in the same state of morbid mobility.’

`Well,’ Sharrow said.
Sounds good news and bad.’ She looked distracted, grimacing as she rubbed at her left glove.
Let’s assume whatever’s in the tower is . . . intact, but-’

`But how the hell do we get in when nobody else has?’ Miz said, kicking at a rotten branch in his way.

‘Ah,’ the android said. It held up one finger. `I mentioned the stone posts at each corner of the square.’

`Yes?’ Zefla said.

Beneath a cover on the top of each post,’ Feril said,
there is a handlock plate; a security device in the shape of a doublethumbed hand. From their construction I would say that they are designed to react to some chemical or genetic trigger rather than the more usual handprint-pattern. At least two of these posts appear to be operational, the other two having been partially dismantled. All four bear the legend, “Female Line”.’

Sharrow stopped; they all did.

Zefla looked at her.
Sounds like Gorko again,’ she said.
Might just switch the thing off for you, eh, kid?’

Sharrow was staring at her feet. Then she looked up at Zefla and seemed to shake, and then smiled and nodded.
Yes,’ she said. She gazed at her left hand, holding it awkwardly.
Yes, it might.’

So even if the Solipsists do get there first,’ Miz said,
they won’t be able to do anything.’

Yeah,’ Zefla said.
But if they do get there before we do, they can make it impossible for us to do anything either.’

Sharrow swayed, blinking, trying to think. There was something else, too. So hard to think.

Zefla looked at Feril. `When will you have to set off if you’re to rendezvous with the sub?’

(Yes, that’s it, Sharrow thought.)

`In about thirty hours,’ Feril said.

Zefla nodded, looking at Sharrow. `Onward?’ she asked.

Sharrow swallowed. `Onward,’ she said.

Her hand hurt. She felt hungry and nauseous at the same time. She recalled Miz talking about eating fish and suddenly her mouth filled with saliva as she remembered the taste of spiced, blackened fish. That had been in Shouxame, in Tile, many years ago. She had sat at the rough wooden tables with the others, beneath the lanterns and the firecracker strings and the glow-ropes. They had eaten fish caught in the lake that afternoon and drunk a lot of wine; then she and Miz had gone to bed, and then while they were making love the firecrackers had gone off, and she was there again, in the hotel in Malishu, on the bed under the membrane roof in front of the tall mirrors, but even as she thought about that something dragged her further onwards, transported her forward and back at the same time, to that quiet hotel in the mountains, with the view over the hills and the windows opened to the cool breeze which blew the gauzy white curtains softly in and made her skin tingle and dried her sweat and gave Miz cold bumps, and her hands stroked him, fingers stroked him, smoothing the skin on his back and his flanks and shoulders and behind and chest, urging him, controlling him, moving him, and he was a beautiful grey shape above her in the first hint of dawn, and a slowly pulsing presence inside her, a soft-hard rocking nudging her closer and closer to an edge like the edge of the balcony, grey-pink stone through the haze of curtains, shoving and nuzzling and pressing her closer and closer, his breath and her breath like the noise of surf, so that she remembered building sand-castles on the shore once when she was young.

Breyguhn and she; they had each built a castle and made it as high and as strong as they could, right alongside each other; they had each put a paper flag on top of the tallest tower of their castles, and waited to see whose castle would collapse first; the two-moon tide had come in strong and fast and the waves beat at the walls they had each built, and she had seen her own castle start to crumble at the edges, but knew she had built better and had really been watching Breyguhn’s, willing the waves to hit the base of that sea-facing wall, and watched wave after wave after wave hit the sand, bringing the wall to the point of crumbling but not quite undermining it sufficiently, and slowly an incredible sensation of expectation and frustration had built up in her chest and belly, along with a fury that the sea could so nearly hand her victory but then hold back - as the power and strength of the waves seemed to ebb briefly, and no more damage was done - and started to believe that it was never going to happen, that neither castle was ever going to fall, but then seen the waves come strongly in again, breaking and surging and sucking at the castles’ walls, and then finally, finally, finally, with a sudden last pulsed rush of waves - waves that went on and on, piling into the sand when the thing was done and the contest decided - the whole wall of Breyguhn’s castle collapsed and fell, tipping out and breaking in the air and disintegrating into the waves, turning them golden brown as the surf fell tumbling over the wreckage and burst against the rough vulnerability of the sand revealed inside, and smoothed that and slipped back and surged forward again and smoothed and slipped and smoothed and slipped and smoothed, tumbling Breyguhn’s tower and flag into the water.

But then the light had flared, beautiful and terrifying, sublime and sickening, erupting over the beach and the mountains as the burst, glittering ship spun end over end towards the cold planet where she fell forever to the snow; a snow-flake amidst the fall.

There had been another night when she slept badly, trying to curl up round her injured hand, holding the thing to her like a treasure and trying to will the pain to stop and let her sleep until eventually she fell into a kind of coma from sheer exhaustion, a semi-sleep in which she dreamt of the distant sparks of the two fires on the other side of the fjord, so far in front of them now that they could only just be glimpsed with the naked eye, flickering through the trees. She had thought she’d heard Cenuij calling to them from the trees ahead, but at least he hadn’t actually appeared in her dream.

Then she was woken with the others to the freezing cold of another day when the floor of grey flat water and the ceiling of grey flat clouds were shackled together by chains of sleet, and in the clear spells between the hail and the sleet showers they could see that the mountain tops were covered in white.

She marched on, talking with the others and to herself and getting hungrier and thinking about food and wishing her hand would stop hurting, and telling the others she was fine even though she wasn’t. They took the detour the android had suggested, around the beach in front of the cliff, near the point on the other side of the fjord, then crossed the first of the two large streams the android had warned them about by going across a fallen tree. Miz cut some branches off it with a laser to make the traverse easier but still she almost fell.

The forest was a cold, dark, damp place and she hated it. She hated her hand for hurting and her belly for being empty and her head for being dizzy and sore and her anus and vagina for itching and her eyes for not focusing and her brain for not working properly.

The android carried her across the second stream, the cold water washing round its chest.