by Gary Gibson
By the time he was done, the sun was sinking towards the horizon. It hadn’t been easy work, but, with the sun on his back, the last remnants of his fever had finally faded away.
Then at last he studied his handiwork: the binding was tight enough, but it wouldn’t last long. What he needed most was some resin from a tree to help glue it all together. Assuming, of course, you could get resin from the trees here.
‘Not bad,’ said a voice from behind him. ‘But to be honest, still not an optimal solution.’
‘Jesus!’ he shouted, whirling around to discover Irish regarding him from nearby. ‘Don’t creep up on me like that, okay? You frightened the shit out of me.’
She rewarded him with a grin. Only then did he notice the compound bow slung over one of her shoulders, a quiver full of arrows over the other.
‘So how come you’re out here all on your own,’ she asked him, ‘after you told Vic that’s the one thing none of us should ever do?’
He hardly heard the question. ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ he demanded, pointing at the bow.
‘You remember what Kevin said: he had a recipe for a bow and arrow. So I asked him to make me one.’
Sam leaned his new spear against a boulder and walked around behind her, touching a finger to the recurved surface of the bow. ‘It looks impressive as hell,’ he said, then frowned. ‘Is that a telescopic sight?’
‘Sure as hell is.’
‘How did you manage to persuade him to do it? He keeps saying there’s not enough of anything for printing.’
‘He said he wasn’t sure he could spare what he had, but I told him as long as I’ve got one of these, we can defend ourselves as well as hunt. That was good enough for him.’
He stepped back in front of Irish and looked closely at her face. ‘You didn’t tell Traynor about this, did you?’
‘Christ, no,’ she scoffed. ‘He’ll find out soon enough, anyway, once he sees it. And if we can scrounge up any more materials, we can make more bows and I’ll teach the rest of you how to use them.’ She folded her arms. ‘The rest of them weren’t too crazy the way you got up and wandered off with hardly a by-your-leave.’
Sam shrugged. ‘I figured since I’m the only one around with any actual experience hunting without a gun, I should be the one to try. As for coming out here on my own, well…I figure I can be a lot more useful this way than Vic, put it that way. And I move a lot faster on my own. ’
‘Oh.’ Her face creased into a frown. ‘So you don’t need—you mean, you don’t want my help?’
‘Depends.’ Irish looked like a kid who’d just been told she couldn’t play with her new toy on Christmas Day. ‘You any good with that thing?’ he asked her.
‘Got to third place in an international archery tournament,’ she responded with unabashed pride.
That was hardly the same as hunting something living, but it was clear from the way she was bouncing from one foot to the other that she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
‘So I take it you’re not a Mannite?’ he asked her.
‘No. I mean, I’m a vegetarian, but I draw the line at starving to death.’ She regarded him hopefully. ‘So…how about it? Can I tag along?’
Sam glanced again at her printer-manufactured bow, annoyed at how primitive and deficient his spear now looked by comparison.
‘Fine,’ he relented, and she grinned broadly. ‘I’m heading north-east to where Vic said he saw a herd of animals.’ He let out a sigh. ‘I just hope you’re as good with that thing as you say you are.’
‘If there’s an apple anywhere around here,’ she told him levelly, ‘stick it on your head and I’ll show you just how good.’
He laughed, then picked up his spear before waving her towards the deeper forest. ‘Okay. But we need to get moving while we’ve still got daylight.’
11
THE RIVER
‘You were on the Moon?’ Sam asked in amazement.
‘And coming up to the end of a six-month research furlough at the Mare Imbrium base,’ Irish told him.
If not for her jumpsuit, he thought, she might have been a youthful huntress from some bygone age with her bow and quiver slung across her shoulders. He studied the strong-limbed young girl walking by his side through the forest and wondered if she’d looked much different before waking in her new body.
‘What kind of research?’ he asked.
‘Assessing mineral deposits for commercial off-world mining concerns, mostly.’
He nodded. Interesting. That meant she’d been working in roughly the same field as Kevin and Amit.
They had been walking now for an hour, the sun slanting through the trees at a lower and lower angle. Every twenty metres, he stopped to pluck a long blade of not-grass, tying it in a knot around the nearest eye-level branch to mark their path through the forest. They kept a wary eye on the treetops as they moved.
‘Kim mentioned that you’re a geologist,’ he said.
‘Yeah, not that there’s much call here for—’ She came to a halt, stopping him with one hand on his shoulder.
‘Straight ahead,’ she said, her voice low and quiet and eager. ‘Do you see it?’
Sam peered through the half-gloom under the forest canopy until he saw a creature about the size of a large dog, with two powerful-looking forearms like a gopher. It was digging furiously, sending up flurries of black soil. Then it paused, sticking its snout deep into the freshly dug pit like it was looking for something. It wasn’t the same kind of beast Traynor had reported encountering, but it hardly mattered.
‘Get your bow ready,’ Sam whispered, feeling like he hardly dared move.
Irish nodded silently, her face pale as she slid the bow from her shoulder. Sam watched from out of the corner of his eye as she selected an arrow and nocked it, keeping the bow pointed at the ground.
With a sudden motion, the gopher-like creature lifted its head and stared straight towards them, twitching its narrow head first this way, then the other.
Irish held herself statue-still, hardly seeming even to breathe. ‘Should I—?’
‘Yes, damn it,’ Sam whispered. ‘Now.’
Irish raised the bow, took aim, and—
The creature darted out of sight and into the gloom, as if it had somehow known what she was about to do. Irish let out a shaky breath and lowered her bow again.
‘I think I can see more of them,’ Sam muttered, ‘up ahead.’
His eyes had adjusted to the gloom now, and he could see vague shapes moving deeper within the forest. He motioned to Irish to follow, then crept forward, keeping himself bent low at the waist. Irish kept her arrow nocked, the muscles of her arms taut from the strain.
He waved her to a halt once half a dozen of the critters were visible. ‘Take your time,’ he whispered.
Irish once again raised her bow, and he heard it creak faintly as it took up the tension. None of the creatures moved or otherwise paid them any attention.
Several seconds passed. She kept the bow taut, her arm straight.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, lowering the bow again. ‘I can’t do it.’
He gaped at her. ‘What the hell is the matter?’
‘I’ve never killed anything before,’ she hissed back at him. ‘I thought I could if I had to, but…’ she shook her head as if angry with herself.
‘Fine,’ he said, biting back his irritation. ‘Wait here.’
Sam took a firm hold of his spear before taking a few careful steps forward. He raised it until it was level with his right shoulder, his left arm extended, the gloom around him mixing with memories of a jungle countless light-years distant.
A little closer, and…
He made his throw: the spear followed a smooth trajectory through the air—better than he could have hoped, really. But just as he released it, his foot had crunched down on some twig buried in the undergrowth, causing every last one of the critters to raise their heads.
; They scattered immediately into the shadows, his spear burying itself in the soil right where one had been.
Just for a moment, Sam felt a stab of something akin to sympathy for Traynor. It wasn’t as easy as he remembered.
To hell with this, he thought, feeling a sudden spurt of rage: no way was he going to go back to the camp empty-handed. Ethan and the others had only really voted for him to be in charge because he wasn’t as much of an asshole as Traynor.
He still had to prove he was the better leader.
He ran forward, snatching up the spear without breaking stride, and chased after the fleeing animals. He didn’t look back to check if Irish was following or not. The creatures—“diggers” seemed as good a name as any—vanished into the gloom, darting here and there between the trees with what struck him as phenomenal speed.
He soon felt a cramp in his belly and a sour, acid taste in the back of his throat, but ignored it. He could only imagine what Ethan might say if he could see him at that moment.
He pumped his legs harder, seeing that the trees were becoming increasingly sparse, as Traynor had reported they would. If the diggers reached open ground, he’d never catch them.
There. He’d almost caught up with one of the little bastards. He put in an extra spurt of energy, raised his spear and-
The digger came to a sudden halt a couple of metres ahead of Sam, twisting around to face him and displaying a mouth full of huge, flat molars. It let out a sound somewhere between a hiss and a shriek, then charged straight at him.
Sam stumbled back, holding the spear out before him to ward the creature off. But instead of pushing its attack, the digger suddenly reversed direction and darted back the way again.
Sam stared after it in shock, his lungs burning. This is not over.
He set off in pursuit yet again. The trees spread out further and further apart until, suddenly, the ground dropped away at the edge of a cliff immediately before him.
He came to a halt at the very edge of the cliff, staring down with dismay as the diggers rapidly made their way down the nearly vertical rock face with the nimbleness of mountain goats.
So that’s it, he thought, his heart sinking. There was no way he’d catch one of them now.
Then he looked out across the landscape below: a broad green floodplain stretched out from beneath the cliff towards distant mountains, while bipedal animals matching the description Traynor had given wandered here and there along either bank of a meandering river. There were hundreds, possibly thousands, of the creatures as far as he could judge.
He shaded his eyes with the flat of one hand so he could get a better look at the bipedal creatures nearest him. They had clusters of tentacles hanging down the front of their skulls like thick, writhing beards, with which they tore up chunks of not-grass, and flat, bifurcated bony crests on top of their skulls.
He stepped back into the shade of a single tree close by the edge of the cliff and turned to peer behind him. He caught sight of Irish running hard towards him: she was shouting something, but he couldn’t make out the words.
‘You need to take a look at this!’ he called to her, pointing down at the river-plain below.
She came to a sudden halt, slid her bow from her shoulders and nocked an arrow before taking aim at him.
‘Sam,’ she shouted, ‘run!’
He sensed, rather than heard, the creature rushing down towards him from above.
In the next instant, an enormous weight came crashing down on top of Sam with enough force to flatten him against the ground. He let out a shriek and scrabbled frantically to get out from under dark, fleshy tentacles already wrapping themselves around his shoulders, arms and neck.
The creature spasmed and squealed, then let go of Sam as suddenly as it had landed on him. He looked up and saw Irish nock a second arrow and release it.
The creature shuddered, emitting a thin, high-pitched cry that faded away like a burst balloon. Sam crawled out from underneath it as fast as he could before scrabbling upright and out of reach. It twitched spasmodically, a pair of arrows protruding from its flesh, then became still.
Irish came up beside him, gulping air and breathing hard. ‘I…I didn’t even think,’ she gasped, the words catching in her throat. ‘I just…’
‘Thanks,’ he said. He put a hand on her shoulder to steady himself. She placed her fingers lightly over his, then let go.
‘It was right on top of you,’ she said, starting to catch her breath now. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘I don’t think so.’ He could feel a few bruises here and there from when the thing had landed on top of him. Mostly, however, he felt numb from the realisation of how very close to death he had come. ‘That was some shooting, Irish.’
‘Told you I was good,’ she said.
He took a closer look at Irish. Her skin was pale to the point of being pallid, and her lips were formed into a flat line. The whole incident had scared her even more than it had him.
‘How did you know?’ he asked her. ‘Did you see it dropping down ?’
She shook her head. ‘Not at first. It was the flowers,’ she explained, nodding at the spray of blue growths all around where the creature had dropped onto Sam. ‘I remembered the tree where Piper got killed had the same type of plant all around it, and I don’t think I’ve seen them anywhere else.’
Now that he looked, it was startlingly obvious. ‘That’s when I looked up,’ she continued, ‘and saw something moving up there.’
Now that he had the time to study the nightmare-thing lying dead before them, he saw that a dark, ropey umbilical reached up from the middle of its back to some point amidst the tree’s upper foliage. He swallowed his fear and edged closer, poking gingerly at the creature’s side with the toe of one shoe.
It showed no signs of life, but he was badly startled when the rest of its umbilical suddenly came tumbling down, landing on top of the corpse in an untidy heap. Sam pictured it dangling high in the forest canopy like an overgrown spider, waiting for something to stray into its territory.
‘I wonder,’ he said speculatively, ‘if we can eat it.’
Irish looked at him with outright horror. ‘You cannot be serious.’
‘At least we wouldn’t have to return empty-handed.’ He nodded towards the cliff. ‘I saw Traynor’s herd down there, but I don’t fancy our chances of catching one. Especially not this late in the day.’
Irish stared at the dead spider-thing with wide eyes and shuddered. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be hungry enough to eat something that looks like that.’
‘You never know.’ He forced a smile. ‘Might taste better than it looks.’ He nodded down at it. ‘What do you think we should call it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Is there a word for something that hides in trees and looks like all your worst childhood nightmares rolled into one? You can have the honour if you want it.’
He peered up into the foliage overhead, then looked back down at it. ‘Bungee-bug,’ he said.
She blinked at him, then began to laugh, hands on knees. She kept laughing until tears ran down her face.
Her laughter turned to sobs. She walked away from him, pressing her forehead against the trunk of a tree with her back to him, shoulders shaking.
Sam took a step towards her, suddenly unsure of what to say or do. ‘Irish…’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last, turning around and knuckling tears from reddened eyes. ‘I…I was planning to go visit my sister in New York once I got back home from the Moon. I had all these plans. I think it only really just hit me that…’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘But it’s probably going to get dark before long. We need to figure out some way to haul this damn thing back to the lander.’
‘Sure.’ She sniffed, pressing her sleeve against her eyes, then assumed an air of brisk efficiency. ‘I can help carry it, as long as you don’t mind me screaming my head off the whole way back.’
12
THE CAMERA
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nbsp; By the time they finally returned to the lander, tired, dirty and covered in sweat and bug-blood, Sam knew immediately that something was wrong.
Dragging the dead bug back through the forest had rapidly devolved into a struggle of epic proportions. First, the creature’s umbilical kept snagging on rocks or branches: Sam had tried using the tip of his spear to saw through the thick, sinewy muscle, but it proved far tougher than he’d expected and he hardly made a dent. In the end, he’d been forced to wrap it around his waist and shoulders before he and Irish could lift the beast back up.
It was bad enough that it weighed a ton, but the awful stink of it so close against his skin only added insult to injury.
He untangled himself from the umbilical while Irish collapsed at the clearing’s edge. The campfire was deserted, and Joshua and several others stood at the base of the ramp, arguing loudly with Wardell and Angel, who were positioned halfway up the ramp.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Irish groaned as she stared over at the contretemps, ‘what now?’
There was, Sam had to admit, more than a touch of déjà vu about the scene. ‘More trouble, I guess. It’s like the other day all over again.’
He noted that the truck was quickly taking shape nearby on the grass—its chassis had already been welded back together and mounted on top of six fat-looking tyres.
‘Five to one, it’s Vic again,’ said Irish.