Code Noir Page 19

  I caught him just short of it. His heart beat wildly against my arm. He clamped his doubled ears in pain.

  ‘Keep moving,’ I yelled hoarsely to the others. ‘Whatever you do, don’t stop.’

  We skirted the towers after that, veering east or west, though the singing stayed in our ears. Biiby whimpered and tugged his ears constantly as if they hurt. Glida stripped a piece of her clothing and persuaded Biiby to wrap them. After that the ma’soop fell silent, as if he’d lost his connection with the world.

  I dropped back to walk alongside Myora. The karadji clutched Cha’s body tightly under his arm.

  ‘We should burn the little one soon.’

  He nodded, watching ahead intently.

  ‘You said Loyl-me-Daac warned your brothers not to wait. Why did Geroo disagree?’

  He waited so long to reply I thought perhaps he wouldn’t. Only as I moved to take the lead again did he speak.

  ‘He b’lieve you the wise.’

  ‘What do you believe?’

  ‘I b’lieve you got them killed.’

  Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t argue.

  The pavements remained passable and mostly level, but webs made of a tough fibre had begun to grow from the gutters across the alleys and walkways. Everything glowed under the bulging moon.

  The first few times we retraced our steps and found other routes, until I realised we were spending more time moving backward than forward.

  The world began to narrow. Claustrophobia crept upon me.

  Fat-tail and Bettong whimpered in fear and Arlli wept tears of exhaustion. Her veil stuck wetly to her mouth.

  Glida tapped my elbow. ‘Mo-Vay won’t let us go,’ she whispered. ‘It makes us stay.’

  ‘It will let us go,’ I growled. I pulled out the Gurkha and stalked to a web blocking the access of the alley we were in. The big blade worked laboriously, slicing the fibres so they fell about and on me. When the hole was wide enough I motioned them to step through.

  ‘Quickly!’

  I moved to follow last but the strings caught and reattached as I brushed past. They pulled taut on me in a trapping dance. A shadow skittered down the lengths of web.

  My gut said spider! My mind reasoned not! I strained to see but my head was caught fast.

  ‘Roo!’

  The Pet spun and ran back to me. He glanced up, digits unsheathing blades . . . and froze.

  ‘What is it?’ I demanded.

  ‘S-p-p-ider!’

  ‘No, it isn’t! It just looks like one. Spiders don’t grow that big.’

  ‘But it has.’

  ‘I don’t care what it is, shoot it! Then take the blade from my hand and cut me out!’ I kept the panic from my voice. Just. ‘Roo, listen to me. It’s mek. Spiders don’t grow that big!’

  He nodded like he understood.

  And did nothing. Terror had him.

  And the web had me. It began to vibrate. I felt the sticky strings tighten as the creature clambered closer. From somewhere in the depths of my pack Loser howled. His fear let mine loose.

  ‘Roo, shoot it,’ I shouted. ‘Or so help me—’

  My threat choked off as the spider straddled me, its body blocking out the moonlight. It exuded a rancid, freshly killed smell - a bio smell that reminded me of a ’Terro. Meaty bones. It belied my insistence the thing was mek. Compound eyes glistened along the underside of its abdomen. Barbed quills jutted from its legs.

  My gut turned liquid.

  ‘Roo!’ I heard Glida’s plea. She squeezed in under the spider’s rancid abdomen, seized the Gurkha from my hand and pulled it away. I felt the sides of the web shaking as she hacked.

  ‘Shoot it,’ she screamed at him. ‘Now!’

  Her voice penetrated something in his mind that mine hadn’t. He fired straight up into the shadow spider’s head. I know because the explosion deafened me and rank insides splattered over my face.

  Way too close, Roo!

  Glida’s side of the web sagged and broke. I rolled a second before Roo fired again. This time he took out its right side and legs. They detonated into thousands of single sensor units that crawled erratically over me, piercing my skin, running in and out of my nose and ears - and other places I couldn’t bear to think about.

  I visited total, abysmal dread.

  The Eskaalim gorged on it. I got unbearably hot. Boiling, bubbling, burning-white hot. Like once before, when a woman had tried to rape and murder me.

  Screams tore out from my chest, over and over. An image came . . . molten Parrish, thrashing and staggering and falling. Out of the web. Burning alive.

  Burning alive, until a boy embraced me and beat out the flames with his mek arms and legs.

  The cooling came slowly. So did coherent thought and the sound of the shamans chanting in soothing time. I immersed myself in the sound like it was burn salve.

  ‘She’s alive. Barely.’

  I struggled to know the child’s voice.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Another. Sharp with distress. Not a child. Ness.

  ‘Let her.’ This one was Glida-Jam. ‘It might help.’

  Let her . . . what?

  I started to remember. Pain cascaded. An agony of burned skin. My face raw to touch.

  ‘Be still, Parrish.’ Firm, clear words on a thick, primitive tongue. ‘Wombebe and Tug help.’

  Wombebe? Shy. Skin like a cockroach. Wombebe.

  I kinked one corner of my mouth to smile. Pain rippled . . . then stopped where they touched. Something hardened on me like a crust everywhere Wombebe’s tiny hands rested. It took the pain away. How breathtaking, how exhausting life is without pain.

  I felt cooler now, and stiff all over.

  I opened my eyes and blinked away grime. ‘What the freak . . .?’

  Shamans, ma’soops and Glida leant over me under the now full-blown moon. Their faces showed relief and something else.

  Loser panted loudly at my side, hair singed to stubble.

  Roo crouched at a distance in the shadows, head down, limbs twisted abnormally.

  ‘What the freak . . . are you all looking at?’

  Ness handed me the overlay of her robe. I stared at my body like it belonged to someone else. My shirt had disintegrated and I was naked from the waist up. My fatigues had blackened like they’d been too close to a fire. Even my boots had heat blisters.

  Wombebe took my hand and smiled for the first time I could remember. ‘Youse bootiful.’

  Beautiful. Never have been. What’s changed?

  They told me what had happened while Roo kept watch apart from us, sullen and distant.

  Glida’s gaze lingered on him. ‘Roo feel bad. The web’sect. He got scared.’

  My thoughts regathered like leaves falling in the same spot. Layers of meaning and memory drifted into place.

  ‘Web-’sect? You seen one before, Glida?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Not like that. But others . . . at night they goes round changin’ things.’

  I tried to smile some reassurance at her, felt my cheek tug, and frowned instead. ‘What’s on me?’

  Ness answered. ‘Your burns would have killed you. Wombebe healed them somehow. But you’ve been left with a - a mark.’

  I didn’t much like the sound of that.

  Wombebe crawled over to me at the sound of her name. ‘Bootiful Parrish.’

  I put a hand to my cheek.

  The skin felt like scale.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It stretched along the ridge of my cheekbone. ‘What do I look like?’

  ‘Parrish like me,’ said Wombebe. She sucked her finger and rocked slightly on her small haunches and stubby tail.

  Vomit soured the back of my throat. I swallowed rapidly to keep it down. This kid lived with a body covered in cockroach skin and legs that resembled a marsupial. I could handle a cheekbone’s worth of scale.

  Or could I?

  I stood up too quickly and the night spun. ‘We go in a few minutes.’

&n
bsp; The shaman and ma’soops got themselves ready to move while I sought out Roo. He heard me but didn’t look my way, stiffening in the dark.

  ‘Roo?’

  ‘You can’t trust me at your back, boss. Next time . . . I’ll probably do the same thing. I froze. Then I nearly shot you.’

  ‘You also covered my body and snuffed the fire. You’re the ONLY reason I’m alive.’

  He shook his head. ‘Wombebe did that.’

  ‘Wombebe healed me. You put out the fire.’

  Finally, he looked at me. The childish poise had gone from his face. It left an adult’s doubt and insecurity. ‘Thought I was cool, boss. Y’know, thought I could get the job done. I never seen nothin’ like that web-’sect. I was . . .’

  I rested my hand lightly on his shoulder, where the mek met flesh. ‘So was I.’

  He didn’t shrug me off but the stiffness stayed. I could hear the whine of his digits as he tried to loosen the blades. The heat of my flames had melted the mechanism. Roo was damaged and he had no Angel inside him to make it better.

  ‘What’s wrong in this place, boss?’

  I took a deep breath, searching for a way to explain it. To myself as well as Roo. ‘I don’t know for sure. Wild-tek has taken over. You heard of that?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘The land here’s been soaked in poisons for years. There’s been a . . . reaction between the chemicals and it’s gotten out of control. Somehow it’s changing the hydrocarbons - the plastics and the wood. Early nano industry began here as well. Could be that’s part of it too.’

  ‘But the place is . . . like growing?’

  ‘In a sick kinda way, yeah. The shaman reckon this King Tide has spiked it. Made everything reproduce faster.’

  ‘What does “re-pro-duce” mean?’

  Oh great. The facts of life! ‘Uh. It . . . uh . . . means . . . like babies. Only it’s stuff.’

  He cracked a tiny grin at my embarrassment and I realised he was winding me up.

  ‘What’s this Ike scud got to do with it?’ he asked.

  I hesitated over detail here. The less Roo knew about Ike, the better for him. And yet he was the one who made Roo. How could I keep that sort of info from the kid?

  ‘He’s been doing a lot of this sorta thing. Now someone’s paying him to spread it.

  ‘That’s a problem.’

  ‘Yeah. He’s responsible for the ma’soops. And the Twitchers. And probably this as well.’ I gestured to the fibrous web strung across the entrance to the nearest alley. ‘He’s been playing God.’

  ‘He ain’t the only one to do that,’ he said bitterly.

  My conscience twinged. ‘Roo, I think this guy Ike maybe is Del Morte.’

  Unreadable emotion suffused his wan face.

  I instantly regretted telling him. ‘I can’t be sure about that. I might be wrong,’ I added quickly.

  He nodded like he was listening, but his eyes had gotten vague with preoccupation.

  ‘Roo!’ I said sharply.

  He nodded. With effort he turned his attention back to me. ‘So why aren’t we on their case?’

  His straightforward thinking made me smile. ‘Little matter of getting you guys home first.’

  He seemed to accept that. The stiffness had left him in favour of a trembling energy. I let my hand slip away, but as I made to get up and walk he grasped my wrist.

  ‘You sure you got your priorities right, boss?’

  Roo’s words haunted me as we pushed through the night, racing the spread. It itched at my psyche the way the new scale itched my cheek. I’d never been shy of confrontation. The Cabal were fighting Ike and Tulu for their lost land. Was that a battle I should be choosing as well?

  The main conflict I guessed would be near the canal. Perhaps I hadn’t missed the party yet.

  We stopped for a short rest sometime before dawn.

  The moon was on the wane and the world felt like it was tipping over, emptying itself. I stared at the grotesquely budding landscape and knew that those left in Mo-Vay would be taken by it, the same way the body had been leached of blood by the tower. Human fertiliser.

  I checked my bearings with Glida. She’d curled into a ball on the pavement, making herself as small as possible. ‘Never been here. It’s too weird now.’

  She was right.

  The night could no longer hide the changes. Behind us the villas had ’creted over with crawl. The one closest to where we huddled had thrown out a strut like a tree - a load-bearing upright that could support another room. A red gelatinous substance slowly welled from inside the strut. It hardened quickly, building in either direction.

  Roo had said the place was growing. He was too damn right. And it was too damn creepy.

  ‘Move on,’ I said.

  But such little rest had the ma’soops moaning with exhaustion and lack of food and water. The shaman were in worse shape. Days of lying prone had taken its toll on their muscle conditioning. Ness could barely walk.

  I got edgier. How far would the changes spread across The Tert? What about the Mo-Vay people who had fled? Where would they all go? What about the Twitchers?

  I carried Wombebe and Fat-tail. Wombebe stroked the scale on my cheek like it was silk. I batted her hand away but it didn’t deter her. Fat-tail hung around my neck, chittering in my ear. Neither of them was heavy but my strength was failing too.

  And this time I doubted I’d get up from it.

  With relief I noticed the villas around us were less crawl-affected. Then I heard the noise of skirmishes. We had to be close to the canal.

  A pressure built in my head. Vivid, unwanted visions bloomed. They sent me stumbling, catapulting the two ma’soops to the pavement.

  ‘What?’ Roo and Glida tried to help me up.

  I flung them off, pressing hard on my temples. The force of my fingers seemed to squeeze my mind high above the ground. I saw the area clearly despite the graininess of predawn, even my own fallen body. I felt free from it and yet connected - an accretion of desires and beliefs barely tethered to a flesh husk.

  We were close to the banks of the canal where I had crossed days before. To the west, near the remnants of the monorail, the canal banks teemed with frightened people fleeing the transformation.

  I watched the mad confusion and violence. Some tried to swim but choked and drowned in the copper-laden water. Others flung themselves at the skeleton remainder of the monorail, hoping to somehow climb across, but finishing impaled on the jagged uprights.

  Up and down the banks, small groups clashed.

  Hidden by the chaos, Kadais fought with stealth and deadly accuracy, picking off isolated Twitchers. A flash of iron-copper weapons, a shimmer of form, and they gouged the hearts from their opponents. I circled the scene, fascinated by their skill.

  Then a blur, like a mirage, caught the corner of my eye - a smear of distortion. I drifted over, curious. Twitchers guarding it. I dropped closer but the air became slippery as a sand dune. Instinctively I knew Leesa Tulu was there. Ike too.

  I backed away and swept on toward the Outer Tert side. Mei squatted there with others from the Cabal. The force of their combined chi power steadied large, roughly made rafts rowed by warriors. They rocked and took water in the middle of the canal while a spirit battle raged above it.

  It should have been invisible - was it really happening? - like the early puffs of a strong wind. But I could see it - malicious salvos from Tulu and a pulsation of earth-heat from the Cabal - opposed forces, one fighting to overturn the rafts, the other to keep them upright.

  Mei stared up at me as if distracted from her task by a physical jolt.

  ‘You!’ she accused. ‘What are you doing in my head?’

  ‘How can you know it’s me?’ I thought back.

  She stood, fists clenched. ‘We’re linked, damn you Parrish. How the crap did that happen?’

  ‘You’re the shaman,’ I retorted.‘Explain it!’

  I tracked her thoughts as she remembered
our union in Mo-Vay. Some bond had been forged then. Unwanted by both of us. Unwanted but undeniable.

  ‘Get out of here. We’re trying to keep the rafts steady.’

  ‘We? Who are you betraying this time, Mei?’

  ‘The Cabal want to know if you have their - aggh—’

  The Cabal swarmed through her and along our connection, reaching for me, hungry with need to find out the fate of their brothers. I banked sharply and fell, desperate to escape them.

  ‘Loyl!’1 screamed as I fell to my death.

  Chapter Seventeen

  They caught me before I crashed. Stix, Chandra Sujin, Ness, Arlli, Talk Long and Tug straining to bear my weight, even though I had no substance, settling me gently on the ground.

  When I became conscious, Roo and Glida helped me up. My nose bled from falling flat on my face. I wiped it and shook them loose.

  ‘Boss?’ Roo’s eyes were dark with strain. ‘We ain’t got time for this.’

  The pressure had gone from my skull, replaced by a peculiar light-headedness. I sensed the satisfaction of the Eskaalim presence, as if it had orchestrated my escape. ‘If it happens again, keep everyone moving.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll catch up.’

  He looked unhappy but didn’t argue.

  I went to the shamans where they squatted together in the creeping daylight on a clear patch of pavement. I didn’t bother to ask them what had happened. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  Ness opened her eyes wearily. Sweat glistened lightly on her brow like fever. ‘You were lucky.’

  Lucky Parrish? I doubted it.

  I thought of the mirage. ‘What was happening in that blurred spot?’

  ‘The Cabal ask their spirits to fight the bitch loa,’ said Billy Myora. ‘They call the fire.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  The shamans mirrored my question in their faces. Billy hadn’t been linked to them, how could he know anything?

  He gave us a sly smile and pointed to a fresh crack in the pavement. ‘The serpent moves through here.’