“I’m afraid of the spider,” Li said, trying to keep her voice level. She felt her nostrils flare at the thought of that black, many-legged nightmare, how it had flowed like water as it moved, obscene head still and level, swiveling in every direction. She shuddered, icicles running down her spine.
Warren nodded. “He is quite a sight,” she agreed. “It can be a shock the first time you see him.”
“There were stories,” Li said. “When I was a girl, of how the spiders would get you if you wandered.”
Warren considered this. “Good way to keep you from wandering,” she said. “I imagine there would be stories about them…there used to be more of them. Hundreds. Thousands. Maybe more. This one is the only one left, I’m afraid. The others, though, they were all him, all the same mind. He’s very old.”
“You are very old,” Li said, surprising herself. Warren’s eyebrows raised slightly. “You look young, but you are old. You move…” she trailed off, “…like someone who has lived a long time.”
Warren smiled. “Do you know many such people?”
Li kept her face very still and did not look at Gold. She hung her head. “I did not mean to offend you.”
“I am not offended,” Warren said, “but I think I know the answer.” She looked at Gold.
“I am glad you two are talking,” said a voice from the dark hall opposite their seat. The shape flowed in out of the shadow. The spider. It whirred softly, and Li noticed that it could move nearly silent, resting its weight on the black pads of the first joint of its many legs, with the tips curled upwards. She jerked as it approached them. “I, too, think I know the answer, but this must wait. There is a message.”
The spider stopped some distance from where they sat. Li shrank up next to Gold. The head, which had no real face, swiveled back and forth, settling its bulbous lenses on Gold. “There is a message,” it said again, “for our guest.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Carter glared at the Archer, hunched over the radio again with Silver. He is an absolute monster, he thought to himself. He must have been eight feet tall, and built like the Hulk. Carter shook his head slightly.
He had brought the Dutchman around rather smartly, he thought. Right on schedule. He’d trailed the line out the hatch, secured the dog, and lined up precisely on the clearing he had dropped Silver on.
He had been expecting her to come sprinting from the trees, to latch onto the line, and he would lift them into the sky, out of reach of that big bastard and his bow.
But he saw her, standing there with him beside her, waving. She had motioned him down, making it clear she wanted him to land, which he managed well enough. He frowned at the thought of it. It had been a good landing.
He’d walked down the little ladder, blinking in the sun. The big guy, Lawson, he reminded himself, had shaken his hand, enveloping it almost completely. It made Carter think of being picked last on the schoolyard for basketball.
Lawson had looked hard at him, and Carter stared back, steeling himself into defiance. He was glad he hadn’t shaved the beard completely and stuck with the new name. Lawson was eying him too closely, he felt. Too close for comfort.
“John Carter? Like the comic books?” Lawson had said, his voice rolling like a bucket of rocks. “I’m Lawson.”
“Marine Corps?” Carter had blurted, Lawson’s bushy eyebrows raised. Carter indicated the fat watchband, with the dial on the inside of the man’s cable thick wrist. Marines wore their watches this way, lest the face glint in the sun and give them away.
Lawson nodded gravely, but Carter saw his eyes narrow. This big man will be a problem, he thought. I do not want to tangle with him.
“Didn’t know there were any Marines left,” he said. “Respect.”
“All in the past,” Lawson rumbled. “Did my enlistment, and then some.” He looked down at Carter. “Do I know you? You look familiar.”
“I get that a lot,” he said. But he hadn’t, really, not in a long while. Nobody knew him anymore, that was silly. Still, his eyes lingered on Carter a shade longer than Carter was comfortable with.
But Lawson had nodded and left it at that. Silver had asked him to tie the Dutchman up to a tree and get the dog some exercise. He did that while they set up camp in the clearing, setting up Silver’s little pup tent and the big marine busied himself building a little circle of stones for a hearth.
The rocks, some the size of Carter’s head, looked small in the man’s huge hands.
The horsemen, after some discussion with the Archer, had trotted away. Carter and the dog watched them. Lawson noticed him looking. “I sent them to hunt,” he said. “They’ll run down some rabbits or something. If we’re lucky.”
He looked at the dog. “What’s his name?”
“Dog doesn’t have a name,” Carter said. “Just Dog,” he finished lamely.
“How about Nixon?” Lawson said, grinning at Carter. “Or Reagan?”
Carter cocked his head at the big man. “Oh, I get it. Because I’m Carter.”
“Yeah,” Lawson said. “Like that.” He reached over and scratched Dog behind the ears. Carter pulled him away.
“Not many dogs left,” Lawson said. “Not around here.”
“What happened to them?” Silver asked, over her shoulder. She had been listening.
Lawson shrugged. “Everything froze,” he said. “Any dog with any sense hightailed his ass way off south.”
Silver looked up, a nylon line in her hand. “Why didn’t you? Head south?”
Lawson looked over at her, wincing. “Some did. Couple hundred as I recall.” He spat. “Kind of a mutiny I guess.”
“What happened to them?” Silver said, coiling the line.
Lawson shrugged again. “Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe they’re still down there, living the life.”
“But you stayed,” Silver said. “Why?”
“Marine,” Lawson said. “Seemed important, back then.”
“And now?” Silver said. “Less important?”
He just looked at her. Shook his massive head. He stood up, stomped off.
Carter and Silver watched him go. She looked at Carter. “Do not antagonize him,” she said, once he was out of earshot. “I am not sure that I can take him.”
“Not sure?” Carter scoffed. “He’s only eight feet six and built like the Hulk.”
Silver was silent.
Carter looked at her. “You’re serious? What do you weigh?”
She smiled at him. “One twenty English pounds, maybe.”
“He’s three-fifty, easy,” Carter said. “What makes someone get that big?”
“Experimentation,” Silver said, shrugging when she saw his double-take. “You’re here,” she said. “It’s not that crazy of an idea.”
He considered it. “Something like they dosed me with?”
She nodded. “Like I said,” she said. “New technology, somebody would have tinkered with it, for sure.” She looked at him, considering her words. “Somebody desperate.”
“Desperate for what?” He asked.
“Super soldiers? Big, strong, immortal, self-healing.” She clicked her tongue. “Loyal.”
He considered it. “Some of them mutinied,” he said, after a moment. “Not sure the loyalty drug worked.”
“Worked on him,” she said. “Maybe.”
Carter spent the afternoon mending his gear and exploring the hillside with Dog. People had lived here, he quickly found. There was a set of concrete stairs, highly eroded but still recognizable, on their side in a ravine. How did that get here? Glaciers?
He looked around, following the ravine with his eyes. It was running more or less east to west. A glacier out of the north would have pushed through like a massive bulldozer, dropping whatever it was scraping ahead of it into gullies and ravines like this one. Was that it?
Dog barked suddenly and looked up. There was a horse at the top of the ravine. Closer than he would have thought a horseman could get to him wi
thout him noticing. One of Lawson’s men, he thought. The man looked down at him. Dog barked again. The rider was casually holding a long, thin lance in the crook of one arm.
“Hi,” Carter said. The man shifted slightly but didn’t speak. The horse stood very still. Well-trained, Carter thought. The rider’s eyes shifted behind Carter.
Carter looked behind him. Another rider, with a lance. And another one, on his left. How had they snuck up on him, on horseback no less?
“You’re a terrible watchdog,” he said to Dog, who was spinning now, barking excitedly. “Stop the dumb barking,” he said.
The riders called to each other. A quick conversation. The first one turned and trotted off over the ridge. The other crashed through the underbrush, following him, and not sparing a glance for Carter or the dog. The third rider walked his pony down the slope towards Carter. The lance was very long, Carter thought, at least eight feet, maybe ten, tipped with a blackened spike that looked needle-sharp. The rider eyed him carefully.
He said something in Chinese. He smiled down at Carter. He indicated the dog.
“Dog,” Carter said. “No name. Just Dog.”
“Dog,” the rider said, laughing. “Dog.”
“Guo,” Carter said, remembering what Silver had taught him. The word for Dog. “Dog.”
The second rider appeared on the ridge. He clicked his tongue down the slope. Hurry up. The meaning was clear. The rider snorted. He looked at Carter, rolled his eyes at the one up on the slope. He twisted in his saddle and untied something. He swung it down and tossed it in front of Carter. A deer, a young buck, a red stain on its back.
Carter looked up, but the rider was already wheeling and heading up the slope. He joined the other. Neither of them looked back.
Carter looked after them, then down at Dog, who was sniffing the deer. “Well,” Carter said. “That could have gone worse. Let’s get this back to camp.”
He shouldered the deer and headed back, the dog trotting after him. He glanced back to the lonely flight of stairs, tumbled in the ravine. Everything, he thought to himself, winds up in a ditch, eventually. Dog ran ahead, crashing through the brush.
The sun was low in the sky when he reached the camp. Silver frowned at him.
“Was getting worried,” she said. “Thought I’d have to come find you.” Dog bounded up to her happily. “You’ve been busy.”
“Courtesy of our friends on the ponies,” he said, swinging carcass off his shoulder and handing it to her. “I carried it.”
“Should have drained it,” she admonished. “Be awhile before we can eat this guy.”
He shrugged. “Wasn’t planning on killing a deer when I went out.”
“See anything?” she asked.
“Not really,” he said. “Just the usual trash piled up in ditches. When did he get back?”
She glanced over at Lawson, who had fetched his gear. “About an hour ago.”
“Said anything interesting?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Still trying to raise his home base on that little radio.”
“We can’t use the one in the Dutchman?” he asked.
She shook her head, shouldering the deer. “Not a telegraph, voice stuff. We can listen, but not talk. Not without work. I am not willing to try and brick our radio.”
He nodded. Smart. That was the afternoon, then. He gathered a few armfuls of dry wood while Silver gutted and cleaned the deer. Lawson watched them, bent over his radio with Silver.
“Radio is temperamental,” Lawson said, apologetically.
“How’d you find out?” Carter asked. “About the Bloom?”
“The Bloom?” Lawson frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, how did you learn about it?” Carter said. “That they dosed you?”
Lawson said nothing, his mouth twisted in distaste. He cranked the little blue plastic crank on his radio again.
“You ask a lot of questions,” he said at last. Then he sighed, looking up. “This thing isn’t getting anything. We’re a little out of range, I guess.” He smiled at Silver, who arrived with an armful of wood.
They prepped a fire. Silver reached into a pocket of her jacket and fished out a lighter, a yellow disposable. Lawson started at it. As she bent over the fire to light the tinder, a pile of leaves and some deer’s tail fur, his hand shot out and covered her hand.
She froze. “You’ll want to let go of my hand now,” she said evenly. “I won’t ask again.”
He looked up at her. Released her hand. “That lighter.”
She nodded at him, holding it up. “Disposable.” She shook it, and Carter could hear the swish-swish of fluid inside it.
“Where are you from?” Lawson said. “How can you have a full lighter?”
She looked at him. “It was in my pocket.” She lit the little pile of kindling. She piled twigs on the tiny blaze as it grew. Carter smelled burnt deer hair and leaves. Lawson just watched her.
“Lighters like that don’t work,” he said at last. “They leak.”
It was true, Carter agreed silently. He had found the odd disposable lighter in his scavenging. They were useless. The original ones had had a wheel with flint, but they had replaced those when he was young with a tiny battery that sparked. They were always empty of fluid, the batteries long since drained. Had been for centuries, he guessed.
She shrugged. “This one works.” She tossed it to him. He caught it. “Keep it.”
He shook it. Scowled down at it, then scowled at her. “You going to tell me?”
“We can trade stories, if you want to,” she said. “I’ll be honest with you, you be honest with me.”
“Command doesn’t like people telling stories,” he said. “Or they wouldn’t, if they were here.”
“Tell me about them,” she said. “This Command. Who is it? Senior officers?”
He sighed. “Warren,” he said. “She’s in charge. Has been.”
“Since the mutiny?” Silver asked.
“Mutiny,” Lawson said sourly, as if tasting the word. He shook his head. “She was always in charge, from the beginning.”
Silver said nothing, just watched the fire. Carter sat on his blanket, holding his hands out to the flames. Finally Lawson shook himself, and Carter could see the tension flowing through the slabs of muscle on his arms and back. He twisted his neck back and forth.
“We were force protection detail,” he said at last. “Around the elevator, when it happened.”
“Elevator?” Carter blurted. Silver held up her hand.
“Space elevator?” she said. “Like, for orbit?”
Lawson nodded, looking down at the lighter in his massive hand. “Lots of traffic, mostly military, but plenty of civilians headed upwell.” He looked into the fire. “The war was heating up. Russians and Chinese threatening to close it. Somebody upwell started dropping rocks. Big lumps of iron. It was nuts.”
“Nuclear exchange?” Silver prompted.
He considered this. “Not sure when that started. I think it probably was a month or so afterwards? I remember it was shortly after the first rocks fell that they dosed us. That, I remember.” He looked down at his hands.
“You weren’t always this big?” Silver said, softly.
Lawson looked off into the trees. “No,” he said. “Not this big. I was big, but…not like this.”
Carter looked at Silver. She glanced at him, then got up and went to carve up the deer which she had hung from a tree to drain. Carter looked at Lawson.
“Did it happen all at once?” He asked. “To you, I mean? The…growth?”
Lawson laughed. “No, not all at once. Took a while to really kick in, I guess you could say. They claimed the drug was to protect us. Ordered us to take it.” He shook his head. “It was a long time ago.”
“They? This was Warren?” Silver asked, over her shoulder.
“No,” he said. “I mean, she was there, but she wasn’t in charge then. These were suits, I remember. They looked stressed
. They all wanted to get upwell in a hurry, I think. Politicos. Hangers on. Their women. That’s where they went, all the suits went up, and the grunts like us stayed down to watch their backs.”
“Then the war happened?” Silver said. She had the ribs from the deer, and Carter helped her fashion a framework from twigs for them, to cook over the fire. He tried to keep the dirt off the ribs as much as possible; he brushed at them with his hands. They smelled delicious once they got them over the fire. Silver spitted the liver and started roasting it.
“The war,” Lawson said, “was over in a week. Nobody left to fight it once the damn Bloom happened.”
“How did that happen?” Silver said. “Tell me about it.”
“They all left, went upwell you know?” His big eyes took on a faraway look. “I saw the last car go up, big fucker, the size of a cruise ship. Bigger, maybe, all lit up like a Christmas tree.” He looked at her. “Then, everybody died.”
“All at once?” Silver asked, and Lawson nodded.
“They just dropped in their tracks. All over the world. All at once.” He looked at Silver, and then at Carter. He held up the lighter, yellow in the firelight. “How can you not know this? How can you have things like this? Who are you?”
The radio beeped. Beeped again.
“I’m Silver,” she said. “And I’m from the past, more or less.”
“And this?” he said, holding up the yellow lighter. “This from the past too?”
She nodded. Lawson started at her, doubt furrowing his brow. The radio beeped again. She pointed at it with her chin. “That your friends?”
“Probably. Sometimes reception is better once the sun goes down,” he said. “I don’t like being lied to.”
Silver said nothing. “After we eat,” she said, turning the deer's liver on her spit.
“After we eat, what?” Lawson said.”
“After we eat,” Silver said, “I want to send a message.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Uncle brooded. It was night, and Li was asleep. He monitored her breathing through his microphone. She was nearby, he reckoned, from the strength of the signal and the gentle breathing pattern. Gold, was nearby, but not, Uncle suspected, asleep. It was not possible; his analysis told him, to communicate with her. There was a non-zero chance that Chen had the ability to monitor them from a distance. Uncle remembered the spiders as powerful surveillance tools. It was not safe.
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