Toxicity (38 page)

Zoot grew haughty at this
accusation. “Hey, how was I supposed to know he’d be carrying an anti-PB
actualising necroliser? Eh? I might be your bodyguard-slash-PR-slash-management
unit, but I can’t read the mind of every psycho we come across!”

“Well, you’re a useless shit,”
said Svool, and turned to Lumar. “ Shall we get going, before Black Jake and
his gang come looking for the man who killed his brother? I’m pretty sure he
won’t want to shake my hand and spank my bottom and buy me a pint of
Japachinese lager!”

“I think that would be a good
idea,” said Lumar, softly. She nudged Angelina, turning the robot horse, and
leading the way, trotted north out of the town. Svool followed on Herbert, who
seemed to be watching Angelina’s rump with a curious tilt to his rusty metal
head.

A disgruntled and shame-filled
Zoot brought up the rear, using his short-range scanners to check for any signs
of pursuit.

~ * ~

THE
LANDSCAPE CHANGED in sudden leaps and bounds and folds of rock and hills;
first, from jungle to rolling grasslands: bang! they crossed a ridgeline and
the whole world seemed to change in an instant, without the graduated change
normally associated with real-world geographical topography. Lumar sat her
horse atop a grassy hill and stared back at the distant jungle, then up at the
sky with its streaks of black and violet and green, then ahead, past the
grasslands and rolling hills to where mountains speared the horizon.

“This place is weird,” she said.

“I’m not an expert on geography,”
said Svool, steadying Herbert with a twitch of the reins, “but I’d have to
agree. I confess I’m not the sort of trendy cool dude who has travelled many a
hill on the back of a metal horse, but I’d concur that I have never seen
anything quite like this, not from the decks of a Pleasure Hover Cruiser, nor
on the screen of my favourite filmy.”

Lumar stared at him. Then looked
back to the mountains. “Ho! Herbert. So those are the Mercury Peaks?” She
pointed yonder, where titanic mountains of silver and white touched the clouds.

“That would be them, buster,”
said Herbert, pulling a face that should never belong on a horse. There were
tiny sliding sounds as metal plates grated together. A few flakes of rust
tumbled down to merge with the swaying grass on the hill.

“Er, guys,” said Zoot, whizzing
up to them.

“Yes, Zoot, trusty useless
non-protection pile of shit PopBot?”

“I think we have company.”

They all turned, and they all
looked. Against the distant horizon behind them was a dust cloud. It was rather
a large dust cloud, presumably spat up by the stampeding hooves of fifty or so
metal horses galloping at full speed across the plain.

Lumar and Svool exchanged a
quick, worried glance.

“They could be friendly,” suggested
Zoot, voice weak yet hopeful.

“Wanna bet, buster?” Herbert
grinned.

“I’m assuming they can keep up
that gallop all day, what with them being metal horses?”

“Oh, yes,” said Herbert.

“But then, so can we,” pointed
out Svool.

“No, no,” said Herbert, “I’m a
Special
Model.
I have an inhibitor. That sort of behaviour can burn out circuit
boards!” He made a
huh
sound, and tossed his head, as if to say those
people who ran their metal horses all day should be ashamed of themselves.

“So they can, in fact, catch us,
then,” growled Svool.

“Er. Yes.” Herbert looked
suddenly sheepish.

“Let’s get moving,” snapped
Lumar, kicking Angelina into a trot, then a gallop. Herbert followed, legs
flying all over the place but by some miracle managing to lumber up to a gallop.

For Svool, this was a new
nightmare to rival all the other nightmares of his recent existence. He tried
to imagine what it would be like travelling on a high speed tractor with square
wheels and no tyres and five legs attached to each wheel - that pretty much
summed up how he was now being bounced around. His bottom went up and down,
slammed and bashed and battered, each slam transferring a painful jar to the
base of his spine, which elicited a pained yelp from his chattering chipping
teeth. Svool was tossed about like a marble in a washing machine during a spin
cycle, and he looked over longingly at Lumar, who seemed to be suffering no
such problems. Her Angelina seemed to purr along on plush suspension as she sat
upright, spine straight, face serene, enjoying a comfortable, cushioned ride.

They galloped down a range of
long grassy hills. Green sunlight glowered overhead.

“Oy!” shouted Svool.

“Yes?”

“Is it comfy?”

“The horse?”

“YES!”

“Yes, she is. Why?”

Svool’s answer was lost as they
came to a ditch, and bunching his metal muscles, Herbert leapt the small
ravine. He landed, legs thumping and churning, and started the long gallop up
the sweep of a fresh hill.

Svool spat out a mouthful of
blood. “There’s something wrong with this heap of junk!”

“Hey buster, I can hear you, you
know?” said Herbert, his head turning with a sound of metal ratchets. “It’s the
suspension, guv’nor. Sorry about that. It’s all shot to shit. It’s all the
humidity from the jungle, like. You know how it is.”

“I am sure that I do not,” said
Svool, frowning, then biting his tongue as they leapt and hit the ground once
more. His mouth filled with blood. He scowled, and realised Herbert had trapped
his ankles again. Svool pictured a prone Herbert tied to a workbench, and him holding
a hacksaw.

Across rolling grass plains they
galloped, Zoot scooting along behind them. Slowly, they wound towards the
Mercury Peaks, which became ever larger, ever more massive as they came to the
end of the foothills. There, the rolling grassland hills ended suddenly, as if
some mad terraformer had just turned off his machine and wandered off for a
long holiday.

They drew rein on their
mechanical mounts, and Herbert cocked his leg and urinated black engine oil
against a rock.

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry!”

Svool looked across their back
trail, but could not see their pursuers. He was just about to open his mouth,
when they galloped into view. They were closer. Much closer. They were gaining
fast.

“Er, I think we should go,” said
Svool. Lumar glanced back and gave a nod, and the horses skidded down a scree
slope and into a jagged, stone-walled canyon. Ahead of them, the valley led off
and was joined by more steep-sided rocky valleys, presumably carved by running
water; or maybe even sulphuric acid.

“This the right way?” said Svool.

“I will guide thee,” crooned
Herbert, and gave a heavy metal
clonk.

The horses started forward across
the broad valley floor. It was made from dark sand and heavily littered with
rocks. Svool found himself looking up at the steep sides of the valley walls,
which were rugged and jagged, and covered in all manner of hardy clinging
bushes and loose-looking boulders.

“This is starting to feel
dangerous,” said Svool.

“As dangerous as fifty enraged
bandits coming up fast behind us?” said Lumar.

“Point taken.”

They moved further into the
canyon. The walls got steeper, craggier, more violent. The canyon floor got
narrower and more heavily littered with boulders. It slowed their speed, but
would presumably also slow down their pursuers.

“How far do we have to travel to
the tunnel entrance?” yelled Lumar.

“It’s up ahead. Maybe a kilometre
or two.”

“Through canyons?”

“Oh, aye,” said Herbert, and gave
an acidic metal fart. There was a tinkling sound as several washers ejected from
his metal bottom and spun on the rocky ground.

“Are you feeling all right?” said
Svool, frowning. Last thing he needed was his metal horse to break down. That
would mean - the horror - having to travel on foot once more.

“Just nerves,” said Herbert, grinning
sheepishly. There were more clonking sounds from within. “I’ve met Black Jake.
I’ve seen the horrors he subjects Special Friend metal horses to!”

“And what about humans?”

Herbert made a large gulping
sound, and issued another sour oil fart. “I think that sums it up.”

“Great,” muttered Svool.

They continued through the long
afternoon, the heat of the sun baking them, the stench of something sulphuric
and eggy coming to their nostrils with increased regularity. The canyon through
which they journeyed crossed other canyons, and several times Herbert chose a
new and different route, zig-zagging slightly but always heading north and
northeast.

As the sun started to sink in the
heavens and the Mercury Peaks reared above the travellers like some insane oil
painting against the canvas of the world, the mountains filling the sky -
blocking
the sky - a harsh cold wind blew suddenly in down the canyon. Lumar, up
ahead, dragged Angelina to a halt, and the metal horse gave a strangled metal
“Neigh!”

There, ahead of them, was a
tunnel entrance. Rubble rockfalls to either side had obviously been cleared in
the past, and the entrance was about the size of a normal doorway. It looked
cold and dark and very uninviting.

“Smells funny,” said Svool,
wrinkling his nose.

“Like something died in there,”
agreed Lumar, jumping down off Angelina and stretching her back. She patted the
horse’s rump, and Angelina nuzzled Lumar’s green fingers.

Groaning, Svool climbed down from
Herbert like a geriatric going backwards down a cliff. He hit the ground and
stood for a while, like a sailor after a long voyage trying to find his land
legs.

“Gods, I feel sick,” said Svool.

Zoot zipped along the canyon and
stopped, bobbing before him. “They’re close,” he said. “And there’s seventy of
them. All heavily armed.”

“Seventy!”

“We should get into the tunnel,”
said Lumar. “At least it’s easier to defend in there. Despite the smell.” She
moved closer, not just her nose but her whole face wrinkling. “Gods, that’s a
fuckawful smell. Is it like that all the way through? And what is it, anyway?”

“Well, the Asbestos Joy Mines
are, despite the name,
not
a place for joy.”

Svool and Lumar turned and stared
at Herbert. The metal horse grinned sheepishly.

“Asbestos?” said Lumar. “Isn’t
that incredibly dangerous?”

“Yes. But not as dangerous as the
other things down there!” Herbert gave a metal shudder, and his eyes went wide
in a face like a rusted skip.

“Other things?” said Svool,
carefully.

“You know, the toxic deformed
creatures, the lakes of bubbling acid, the pits of nuclear waste, the pipes of
rancid starship fuel - that sort of thing.”

Svool stared at Lumar, then back
to Herbert.

“You
fucking said it was safe!”

“No I didn’t.”

“
Yes,
you fucking
did.”

“Hold on,” said Lumar, holding a finger
in front of Herbert’s nose.
“You
said the Mines of Mercury were a
massive network of old tunnels,
you
said they’d be your top vote for
crossing this mad bad country,
you said
they were cleared out by
Greenstar years ago and there was nothing more dangerous than a fucking
luminescent mushroom.” She feigned a metal horse voice that was pretty close to
the original.
“Trust me. I know whereof I speak.”