by Gary Gibson
And it was his fault.
She grinned at him, her face becoming a skull and her eyes sinking back to reveal dark pits.
* * *
He came to with a lurch, his heart beating furiously. He gulped at the air, then saw Sun leaning over him, looking alarmed.
‘Take it easy.’ She dropped onto one knee and put a hand on his chest. ‘Lie back down, Sam.’
He twisted around, disoriented. He was in some kind of shed or building; the clearing was visible through an open door.
‘What the hell…?’
‘Down,’ she insisted, pressing her hand more firmly against his chest.
He relented and let himself fall back until he was resting on his elbows. He wiped one hand across his mouth, then looked more closely at the building’s interior: it was recognisably a prefab, a temporary shelter assembled from sheets of extruded plastic and not much bigger than a garden shed.
‘You passed out,’ she reminded him. ‘Kim and Kevin got you back outside and carried you over next to the campfire. You were out cold all night.’
He remembered the vehicle bay. ‘This building…?’
Sun smiled. ‘Jess found some base materials that survived the landing, and Kevin ran them through the printer. Amit figured out how to program the robots, and last night they built this hut and two others. Even better, they’re made of insulating material. No more nights freezing inside that horrible shelter.’ Her smile broadened into a grin. ‘I’m sorry you missed it all, Sam.’
He gave her an appraising look. ‘So…you’ve been watching over me this whole time?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Hardly. Ethan’s been putting his head in from time to time to check on you. I was just passing by and heard you shouting something. I was worried maybe something was wrong.’
‘Oh.’ He glanced away from her, feeling his face redden. ‘Well, thanks.’
‘It’s just after dawn,’ she said. ‘You look better than you did last night. How do you feel?’
‘Better, I guess.’
‘So…I guess Sarah was someone important?’
Jesus. ‘Was that what I was shouting?’
‘If it’s private, don’t worry.’ She started to stand. ‘It’s hardly any of my business.’
‘No, wait.’ He put a hand on her arm and stopped her. ‘She’s someone I knew. She…died a few years back.’
‘Oh.’ Sun’s face fell. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine. Really.’ He still hadn’t taken his hand from her arm, but she didn’t seem to be in a hurry to pull it back either.
He nodded towards the door. ‘Anything else been going on?’
‘Amit’s up on the command deck with Kim, trying to rewire it. Thanks to Jess, Kevin was able to print a barrel for carrying water back from the stream.’
Sam started to get back up. ‘Listen, maybe I’d better—’
Sun stopped him again with her hand on her chest. ‘Nobody put you in charge,’ she said. ‘They’re doing just fine without you acting like you are. Besides, you’re no good to anyone if you don’t give yourself time to recover.’
‘You can’t expect me to just lie in this damn hut all day!’
‘I didn’t say you had to.’ She stood and operated a simple blind that rolled down over the opening, concealing them from the outside world. Then she tugged down the zip of her jumpsuit and let it fall from her shoulders, revealing the smooth curve of her breasts and the taut muscles of her stomach.
‘I can’t make sense of you,’ said Sam, something heavy and warm in his throat as she pushed her jumpsuit down past her hips. ‘You ignored me all of yesterday.’
‘I’m married,’ she said. He saw something fragile in her eyes. ‘Or I was. It’s still hard to make much sense of things, but I suppose I’m adjusting. We all are.’
She stepped out of her clothes and crouched over him, sliding the zip of his jumpsuit down until she could wrap her fingers around his growing erection.
‘I seem,’ she said, her breath catching slightly, ‘to have your attention.’
‘Sun, you don’t have to…’
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I don’t have to. I didn’t speak English until I woke up here, did you know that?’
‘What?’
‘Oh, I knew a few words here and there, enough to get by on family visits. But when I climbed out of that pod and you spoke, I understood you and all the others without hesitation.’ She moved out of the way as he struggled out of his own clothes. ‘How can I speak a language, if I don’t even remember learning it?’
He glanced towards the door. ‘Someone might come in—’
‘They won’t.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because I told them not to.’ Her smile faltered slightly. ‘We might all be dead in a week. I want to enjoy this body while I have it.’
She straddled him, taking hold of his penis and guiding him inside her, shivering with pleasure when he lifted his hips to push deeper. Her tongue pressed against the back of her teeth, and she began to rock backwards and forwards, gently at first, then more rapidly, and soon he lost himself to the rhythm of her movements.
10
THE VOTE
When Sam next woke she was gone again, sunlight slanting through the now-open door. He remembered that after she came she had draped her warm body across his and he’d lain there, luxuriating in the heat and the sensation of her skin against his, until fatigue swallowed him away into darkness.
But now he felt restless, his muscles humming with suppressed energy. He stood carefully, but the ground was comfortingly solid and unmoving beneath his feet. All that remained of the fatigue was a faint ache under his skin.
When he dressed and made his way outside, he saw that three printed huts had been placed in a row just under one of the lander’s wings. DeWitt sat huddled by the campfire, Angel by his side.
‘Hey! You’re alive.’
Sam turned to find Kevin waving to him from next to the ramp, with Irish and Sun by his side. Irish had hold of a long handle attached to a plain-coloured sphere sitting on the not-grass.
Sam went over to join them. ‘Feeling better?’ Kevin asked.
‘A lot.’ He nodded at the sphere. ‘What is that?’
‘This is our water barrel,’ Kevin explained with evident pride. ‘You can roll or push it over pretty much anything—easier than trying to lug it around on your back, right?’
Sam nodded and locked eyes with Sun, gratified when she met his gaze easily. Irish regarded them both with undisguised amusement.
‘So when do we test it out?’ Sam asked, looking back at Kevin.
‘We already did,’ Sun told him. ‘The three of us just got back from the stream.’
Sam looked at her with alarm. ‘Did you—?’
Irish shook her head from beside Sun. ‘We didn’t run into any trouble, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Yeah, we stayed the hell away from where Piper died,’ said Kevin. ‘No sign of anything like whatever got her, anyway.’
‘Well…okay,’ said Sam. ‘Traynor’s right about one thing: we need guns, for defence as well as hunting.’ He looked at Kevin. ‘You should print some, if you haven’t already.’
‘About that,’ said Kevin, looking almost embarrassed. ‘Turns out there are no recipes for firearms anywhere in the printer’s database. And believe me, I looked.’
Sam stared at him like he was trying to figure out if he was joking or not. ‘How the hell is that possible?’
Kevin threw his arms up as if to say search me. ‘I got Amit to take a look in case I missed something, but nada. He’s got this idea it’s a deliberate omission.’
‘A deliberate omission?’
‘Well, what with Tenenbaum being a hardcore Mannite like him and some of the others, it’d fit with the whole philosophy of harming nothing living. Can’t kill anything if you don’t have any guns.’
‘Kind of makes you wonder,’ said Irish, her tone deadpan, ‘wh
o would land us on some alien fucking planet with no way to defend ourselves against the wildlife.’
Sam felt a throbbing in his head, like his fever was coming back. ‘That doesn’t make sense! Half of us have military backgrounds—what’s the point of sending soldiers all the way here if they don’t even get guns?’
Sun nodded. ‘That’s just what Traynor said.’
Sam glanced back at Angel and DeWitt. ‘Where are Traynor and the rest of them?’
Kevin and Irish exchanged a look.
‘We don’t know,’ said Kevin, rubbing the back of his head with one hand.
‘He upped and disappeared again,’ Irish explained, her voice edged with contempt. ‘He took some of his buddies with him. Didn’t even realise they were gone at first.’
Sam looked back over at Angel, who’d hardly even glanced their way. ‘Anyone ask him?’
‘The most we could get out of him was that they were going hunting,’ said Kevin.
* * *
Which was about as much as Sam himself could get out of Angel when he asked him the same question, except the way Angel spoke made it clear that as far as he was concerned, the best thing Sam and the rest of the civilians could do was stay the hell out of the way of the soldiers and let Traynor make all the necessary decisions.
Sam had to fight hard to keep his temper down. He couldn’t get any more sense out of DeWitt, who was clearly still on a long road to recovery.
Rather than risk a confrontation with Angel, he turned and walked away, working the restlessness out of his bones by joining Kevin and Amit inside the transport bay. They’d figured out how to reprogram one of the robots to slice the truck’s chassis into parts, and fat chunks of steel chassis were already being carried by that same robot through the ship’s corridors before being dumped on the not-grass outside.
* * *
‘Hey!’ Irish said later that afternoon, putting her head in through the door of the vehicle bay. ‘Traynor and the others. They’re back!’
Sam emerged from the lander in time to see Traynor and the rest of his hunting party emerge from the forest in a long, bedraggled line that snaked towards the campfire.
‘Doesn’t look like they came back with anything,’ said Kevin, coming up beside Sam. The skin between his eyes wrinkled in a frown. ‘What are those things they’re all carrying? Spears?’
‘I think so,’ said Sam, eyeing the spindly-looking sticks each carried in one hand. They were less than impressive-looking. ‘They should have asked me for help before they tried to make any.’
‘Why, you got some kind of expert knowledge on how to make spears?’
Sam looked at him steadily, and Kevin’s neck coloured. ‘Right. I forgot. I guess that’s a pretty essential skill in the Amazon.’
‘It helps,’ Sam agreed, although questions of sustainability hadn’t kept some of Gaia Army from using weighted, printer-made carbon-fibre spears. ‘I guess I’d better get this over with,’ he said, heading towards the campfire.
‘Get what over with?’ Kevin called after him.
* * *
Traynor had collapsed next to the campfire, watching as Jess tended once more to its maintenance. He nodded to Sam when he approached.
‘I see you’re back in the land of the living, Mr Newman.’
Sam nodded. ‘I gather you went hunting.’
Traynor gave him a speculative look. ‘Well, since nobody else seemed up to it, I figured I might as well give it a shot.’
Sam gestured at the crudely trimmed branch by Traynor’s side. ‘And how did that work out?’
Traynor smiled tightly. ‘Not as well as I’d hoped. Guns would have been nice, but…’
‘I guess Kevin told you we’re not getting guns any time soon.’
‘Which makes absolutely no fucking sense,’ said Wardell, who sat sprawled nearby on the not-grass.
‘We’ll go out again tomorrow,’ said Traynor, as if making a solemn promise. The look on his face suggested the conversation was over.
Sam stayed where he was. ‘We need to talk about the way you keep going off on your own without telling the rest of us. Survival means working together. Why don’t you seem to understand that?’
‘Why don’t you—!’ Jess started to say, but Traynor raised his hand and she fell silent.
‘Just to be clear,’ said Traynor, his voice low and even, ‘I don’t need your permission for anything. Neither does anyone else here.’
‘Three days we’ve been stuck here,’ Sam persisted, ‘and we don’t know one damn thing about where we are or how we got here. We’ve lost one person already and in case you haven’t noticed, some of us are barely keeping it together. If you don’t cut the bullshit and stop acting like the rest of us don’t matter, it’s going to get worse. And that threatens the chances of survival for all of us.’
Traynor shook his head like he almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Again,’ he said, spacing the words out, ‘nobody put you in charge.’
‘Maybe Vic should be in charge,’ Angel muttered from across the campfire.
Traynor grunted a laugh. ‘Now there’s an idea.’
‘To hell with that!’
Sam turned and saw Ethan come stomping towards them, Kevin and Irish in his wake. He stabbed a finger at Traynor, his face twisted up in anger. ‘I want you to know right now I’ll take Sam over you any day, you asshole!’
‘I agree,’ said Irish. ‘In fact, perhaps it’s time we resolved this once and for all by putting it to a vote.’ She glanced at Sam. ‘Assuming you’re willing, that is.’
‘How about it, Vic?’ Sam asked Traynor. ‘Can’t get fairer than that.’
Traynor stared back at him, clearly nettled. ‘Sure,’ he grumbled, standing now. ‘Put it to a damn vote.’
‘Now we’re talking,’ said Ethan with undisguised enthusiasm. ‘Stay right here and I’ll go scare up everyone else.’
Ethan jogged back over to the lander. A few tense minutes passed before he reappeared with Kim, Amit, Joshua and Sun.
‘Okay,’ said Irish, standing next to the campfire and holding one hand high. ‘We’re all present. I, therefore, vote to put Sam in charge of our survival and exploration efforts from this moment on. Who’s for?’
Hands went up. ‘I count eight for,’ said Kim, looking around. ‘Against?’
Traynor raised his hand, as did all of the soldiers.
‘Sam Newman is duly elected our leader, eight votes to six,’ Irish announced with almost savage delight.
‘Just one goddamn minute!’ Karl Gaballo cried, his face twisted up in anger. ‘There’s just six of us and eight of you civilians. How the hell is that fair?’
‘I didn’t realise there were two groups of stranded,’ said Sam. ‘Why? You and the rest of them thinking about going it alone?’
‘Let’s not start arguing all over again,’ said Joshua. ‘The decision’s made, so let’s try to move on.’
‘I agree,’ said Sam. He turned back to Traynor, whose expression was now on the distinctly flinty side. ‘Maybe you didn’t manage to catch anything while you were out there, but did you see anything?’
Traynor stared back without answering for several long moments, then his shoulders sagged in apparent defeat. ‘As a matter of fact, we did. We came across a herd of animals to the north-east. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before.’
Even Kim, the biologist, appeared to forget his distaste for Traynor the moment he heard this news. ‘Describe them to me, please,’ he asked, brushing past Sam and standing before Traynor.
‘They’re bipedal,’ said Traynor. ‘But not human, not intelligent, at least not so far as I could tell. The best way I can describe how they look is a cross between a kangaroo and a dinosaur, and about the same size as a horse.’
‘Carnivorous?’ asked Kim. ‘Sharp or blunt teeth? Or something other than teeth?’
‘We didn’t get close enough to tell, but they’re grazers, alright. They all had this bony plate above thei
r eyes that looked like it was designed for charging. They ran as soon as they caught sight of us. The forest got a lot sparser out that way, so it was near damn impossible to sneak up too close to them.’
‘What about all those traps you put out?’ asked Kevin. ‘Didn’t they catch anything?’
‘Not a thing,’ Jess said glumly.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ said Sam, reaching down and picking up Traynor’s discarded spear. He moved it from hand to hand: the balance was all wrong.
‘I still can’t make sense of why anyone would send us all this way without access to serious weapons,’ Traynor muttered, watching Sam.
‘Maybe,’ said Kim, his voice taut, ‘they thought we could find a way to live without slaughtering every damn thing we encountered.’
‘Actually,’ said Kevin, ‘I found a recipe for a bow and arrow, if that’s any help.’
Angel laughed, and Jess swore under her breath. ‘Jesus,’ she muttered, ‘is there anyone here who even knows how to use one?’
Traynor massaged his forehead, looking weary. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘since it appears you’re in charge, Mr Newman, how about you tell us what you’re going to do to keep us all from starving to death?’
Sam responded by discarding Traynor’s crude spear. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘give me a couple of hours and I’ll see what I can come up with.’
* * *
Just past the lander was a part of the forest that had been thoroughly trampled on by Sam and his fellow stranded. It didn’t take long before he found a cluster of bamboo-like growths that looked sturdy enough for his requirements; it took a lot more effort than he’d hoped it would, but after a lot of swearing and pulling and twisting, he managed to break off a stalk slightly longer than he was tall, then held it above his shoulder like a javelin.
It already felt a lot better balanced than Vic Traynor’s ridiculous pig-sticker.
Joshua had called after Sam, asking him where he was going when he left the rest of them back at the campfire, but he’d just kept walking. Some things just took too long to explain.
He carried the stalk with him as he searched through the undergrowth and across exposed areas of rock until he’d collected several loose pieces of chert. Then he found himself a place to sit and hammered them against each other on top of a larger rock until the largest piece of chert began to take on a more or less diamond-shaped outline. That done, he then used the cut and shaped spearhead to cut away any remaining imperfections from the bamboo stick, then sliced away at one end until he’d created a flat shelf that could support the blade. Lastly, he pulled some long-stemmed leaves from a bush and trimmed them down with another piece of chert until he could wind the bare stalks tight around his improvised spearhead and secure it to the stick.