Toxicity (15 page)

Svoolzard tried hard not to cry,
to whimper, to pout, or to sulk. He didn’t want to fight. Yes, he had a jewelled
sword, but it wasn’t for fighting with, it was for showmanship! Fighting was
what other, uncouth, uneducated, primal-tattooed stinking scabby arseholes did.
Svoolzard was
above
that, intellectually, socially and academically.
Svoolzard was a
lover,
not a
fighter,
man. But here, and now, he’d
have to fight or he’d be...

Cooked.

He didn’t see the tribesman scale
the tree behind him, so when the twine was snipped he hit the ground on his
face - and, more importantly,
his nose
- with a thud. Stars flooded his
mind like some cheap special effect in a movie, and when consciousness deigned
to make a return, they’d already cut away his fine clothing, tied his wrists
and feet to a long pole, and were carrying him towards the flames.

“Hey, hey! What are you doing?”
he screamed.

“Hey, oy! Why am I
naked?”
he
wailed.

“Hey, that’s a fire, that is, you
really don’t want to be putting me over that! No! No! Aieeeeee!”

The “Aieeeeee!” came as they
indeed lodged the pole into the two upright Y-sections of the primitively-hacked
frame. And no matter how primitively-hacked the frame was, the end results were
the same. It supported the pole, which in turn supported Svoolzard Koolimax
XXIV.

The flames licked his back and
backside, scorching the flesh. Svool lifted himself up as high as the pole
would allow, muscles bunching, his whole body writhing as it suddenly got
very
hot and the tribespeople, who had all gathered to watch the spectacle of
The Cooking, starting chanting and giggling and running circles around him.

“Noooooooooo!” wailed Svoolzard. “Don’t
cooooooook meeeee!”

Tears streamed down his cheeks,
but tears didn’t matter to the cannibals. What mattered were Svool’s generous
belly and his generous arse cheeks. Not for them the ethical dilemma of murder.
Svool was food, simple as simple is.

A cough echoed across the
bizarre, night-time scene. Orange light from the flames flickered from black
rubbery trees. There, at the edge of the clearing, stood a figure, tall and
powerful, and sporting short green dreadlocks.

She held a sturdy staff,
sharpened at both ends. She gazed across the scene with shining green eyes.

“Cut the poet down,” she said.

There came cries and howls, and
the tribespeople shook their weapons at Lumar L’anarr. She took this as an
aggressive act, and as a refusal to her command. In response, she leapt to the
attack...

From his suspended perch over the
fire, Svoolzard watched with mouth open, in total awe, as Lumar danced and
leapt amongst the hairy little village people. The stick swept left and right,
knocking heads, slashing bellies, then rising in great overhead sweeps ending
with the dull
cracks
of fractured skulls. Bodies toppled all around,
brains leaking through ears, and Lumar moved like lightning, a savage cat,
easily avoiding the tribespeople’s sticks and arrows. She moved so fast she was
a green blur, until - only a minute after the battle had begun, and with at
least twenty of the tribe dead or dying - the rest suddenly turned tail and
fled out into the jungle, howling.

Suddenly, the area was still.

The only sound was the crackling
of flames.

And then, “Ow, ow, ouch! I’m
burning, Holy Mother of Manna, I’m burning! Cut me down, please please cut me
down! My
arse is on fire!”

Warily, Lumar strode across the
camp, stooping to grab a knife from a dead enemy. She slashed the bonds holding
Svool’s legs, and his feet dropped into the fire. He stood for a moment, then
started doing a crazy little dance and shuffle, wailing, until Lumar cut free
his hands and he
leapt
from the fire, stomping on the ground, his feet
and skin smoking.

“Ow, ow, ow, oh, the indignity,
oh, the agony, I will never live this down in the Court of Professors, oh, what
am I going to do, how will I ever recover, how will I ever be Svool again?”

He stopped, and watched Lumar
watching him.

“You came back,” he said, and his
face broke into a broad grin.

“Yeah, well, don’t get any
fucking ideas.”

“No, no, you came back, you saved
me, you rescued me, and although I have indeed incurred terrible burn injuries
to my feet and bottom, I am sure you can summon up some pain-killing narcotics
and some kind of unguent to make all the pain and nastiness go away.”

Lumar considered this, her eyes
scanning the edges of the clearing. “First,” she said, “I didn’t come back for
you. I was passing nearby and saw the fire. I’ve scouted the jungle, I know
where we are, and I was heading back to the beach to see if anything else
useful from the crashed ship was available for scavenging before the long trek
ahead of me.”

“Oh. But you
did
save me.”

“Hmm. Yes. I wonder how long it’ll
be before I regret it?”

“So you have painkillers? And
unguent? For my burns? Preferably something that doesn’t smell too bad?”

Lumar looked at him with pity in
her eyes. “No.”

“But... but... but you must have!”

“Why must I have?”

“Because... you simply
must.”

Lumar sighed. “Svool. I’m in this
shit, just the same as you. You really need to get your head switched on to
this plane of reality. You need to tune in, mate. If you don’t, then you will
die.”

Svool stared at her, tears
running down his cheeks.

“Okay.” He coughed. He puffed out
his chest. He manned up. “Okay. I hear what you’re saying. “There!” He ran over
to some rocks, yelping and limping on his burnt feet, and grabbed his jewelled
sword. He waved it triumphantly. “See? See! I can do this! I can be of help! We
will adventure our way out of this place!”

Lumar watched him, and suddenly a
smile cracked her face. “Fucking hell, Svool. You really were brought up like a
pampered idiot, weren’t you? I thought most of it was just for effect, for the
benefit of your effete arsehole friends. But you’re real, aren’t you? Really
a...
dick.”

“Harsh,” said Svool, frowning.

“Not as harsh as this fucking
jungle,” said Lumar. “Now grab your clothes and boots, we need to get going.”

Svool scanned for his clothes,
painfully aware of his nakedness, and the cold of the night when he strayed too
far from the fire. Then, with a yelp of horror, he scrambled on hands and knees
to the edge of the cooking flames and, using his jewelled sword, fished out the
half-burnt remains of one of his glitter boots.

“Oh, woe!” he wailed.

“Oh, woe?” said Lumar.

“Do you
know
how much
these cost? They are Prince Gok von Gok IIIs, you can only get them in London,
and by that, I mean fucking London,
Earth,
baby. Most Space Platoon
Generals couldn’t afford a pair of these glossy high-heeled beauties!”

“Or would want them, being that
they’re combat soldiers,” growled Lumar.

Svool stood up, ramrod straight,
his small penis dangling in the firelight. He fixed Lumar with a steely look. “They
burned my clothes,” he said. “Well. Melted them, at least. I always
knew
Gok
von Gok made stuff from cheap plastic baubles, the cheap bastard! And my
high-heeled boots! Those cannibal fellows, they’ve massacred them! Annihilated
them! Oh, woe!” He still held the remains of one at arm’s length. It smoked,
gently.

“Oh,” said Lumar, face impassive.

“What can I wear?” said Svool.

“I don’t know,” said Lumar.

“And my boots? What can I wear on
my feet? I can’t traipse through the jungle, all naked, with nothing on my
feet!”

“I’m, er, sorry. I think you’re
going to have to.”

“Can’t you rustle me up some leaf
clothing and footwear? You look like you’re that kind of handy sort,” he said.

“No,” said Lumar with a tight
smile. “I don’t believe that I can.”

“And why the hell not?” A snort
of annoyance.

“Because,” said Lumar, pointing
to the edges of the clearing, where a curious widespread glittering had
accumulated, “I believe our little hairy tribespeople are back. And I think
they’ve brought their friends.”

There came a guttural rumbling,
very much like that of a Big Cat.

“Advice?” said Svool, eyeing the
glittering luminescent eyes in the darkness of the tangled foliage.

“I think it’s time we made
ourselves scarce,” said Lumar, softly, and began to back from the camp, her
eyes focused on the edges, her movements smooth and careful. Now, more rumbling
sounds joined the first. She could make out three, maybe four discrete
voices.

Svool stumbled after her, and
they reached the edge of the camp. There was a narrow trail leading away
through the jungle, which was alive with the sounds of buzzing, gnawing,
flitting insects.

“What now?” Svool said, peering
down the organic corridor as if it led straight down to Hell; which, maybe, it
did.

“We run,” said Lumar, quietly.

“In bare burned feet?”

“Run or die,” she said.

“Okay,” said Svool, and ran.

Lumar followed him, and behind
them, a snarl cut across the jungle clearing like a blade.

~ * ~

Svool
ran like his life depended on it, which it did. His arms pumped, his legs
pumped, and his poor sore feet burned and chafed and were scratched and pronged
and poked. Branches and ferns and vines slapped and whipped at him, and it was
all most uncomfortable and undignified. He felt naked without his vast array of
glass and diamond plastic bauble clothing arrangements; in fact, he
was
naked
without them. His bare skin was whipped and chilled by the sudden night-time
jungle air. It all added up to the most uncomfortable race for his life he’d
ever had. Yes, it was the
only
race for his life he’d ever had, but he
was sure that in a more civilised society, on a more
civilised world,
it
would have been somehow more... convenient. All the time he was muttering and
whimpering, whining and dribbling. He could hear Lumar crashing after him, but
it was easy for her, she was more animal than he was; more
primitive.
An
educated man - dammit, a fucking
poet!
- shouldn’t have to run for his
life, naked, with burnt feet and ass; oh, no, that should be solely the
preserve of the comedy Japachinese Torture TV modules blasted across the
Quad-Gal by those deviant gangers and orgs! It shouldn’t have
anything
to
do with civilised society...

There came a bang, a thud, a
snarl and then a roar so loud Svool felt hackles rise in places he didn’t
realise he had hackles. His arms pumped harder than they had ever pumped, and
for a few short moments all discomfort ceased to exist as he pounded on,
ploughed on, through the alien jungle of Tox World.

There came a sudden scrabbling
sound, then a
whine,
and something hit Svool in the back and he went
down hard on his face, outstretched hands ploughing a furrow in rotting jungle
detritus. There were more thumps, and something sailed over him. Svool opened
his eyes, pushed his golden curls out of the way, and saw Lumar in a tight
crouch in the middle of the trail, pointed stick held before her. There came a
bowel-loosening scream from behind him, and a dark object flew over Svool’s
head, snarling and with teeth gnashing. Lumar steadied herself, and the
creature flew straight at her, impaling itself on the sharpened staff. A wooden
point emerged from the beast’s shoulder in an explosion of blood, and Lumar
scrambled back as the big, maroon, yellow-spotted cat kicked and thrashed,
claws swiping, huge distended head biting and snapping at thin air... until,
finally, slowly, it died.