by Gary Gibson
‘Are you sure we’re safe up here?’ Sam finally managed to ask, his voice shaking so hard he could barely get the words out.
Old Amit cleared his throat and spat into the void. ‘The indigenes won’t climb up here. You don’t need to worry about that.’
‘So what now?’
‘We stay here until light. Then we move.’
‘Where?’
‘Not back to your lander. Too dangerous.’
Sam had other ideas about that, but held them back for the moment. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but if not there, then where?’
The old man glanced at him furtively. ‘There’s something I need you to see.’
‘Why not just tell me?’
‘Seeing is believing,’ said the old man. ‘And if I just told you, you might not believe me.’
Amit moved to kneel close by the edge of the branch, peering over its side in a way that sent Sam’s heart climbing into his mouth. ‘Look,’ said the old man, pointing down. ‘See how many there are now?’
Sam couldn’t see anything, not clinging to the branch where he was. But he could certainly hear them, even from way up here: the steady huff of their breath and the occasional high-pitched yelp was all too audible as God knew how many Howlers dashed through forest glades where the two of them had been standing only seconds before.
‘Here,’ said the old man, stepping towards Sam and grabbing hold of his ankle. ‘Take a look. I won’t let you fall.’
Sam thought about arguing, but then he realised he did want to look. He crawled back to the edge of the branch, fighting a sudden rush of vertigo as he peered down at the ground far below. He could make out dozens—no, make that hundreds—of dark-furred shapes flitting past the tree on which they sheltered.
Another minute passed, but the flow of Howlers never relented. They kept coming in an unceasing tide of black fur and fury, an ocean of limbs and claws.
And these, Sam realised, were just the ones he could see.
‘They’re all headed for your lander,’ said Amit from behind him. ‘It was the same the last time,’ he added, his voice taking on a sad quality.
Sam cautiously pushed his way back from the edge of the branch to where he could sit up. ‘Exactly how long has it been since your own expedition landed?’
‘Didn’t you hear me before? Half a century. Fifty years of waiting to see if anyone else might ever come down.’
‘So you were on your way to warn us, is that it?’
‘Amongst other things,’ said the old man.
There was something evasive about the way he spoke. ‘I need you,’ said Sam, ‘to tell me everything.’
‘All in good time. Right now, we need to sleep. We’ve got a long day ahead of us when daybreak comes.’
‘The others—’
‘Are all dead, I assure you. Or if they’re not, they will be soon.’ The old man’s face took on a wistful quality. ‘I wish it were otherwise, but there’s nothing you can do for them.’
25
THE CANOPY
The old man’s blithe disregard for the lives of his fellow stranded infuriated Sam, yet under the circumstances, he could think of nothing he could do.
Old Amit, Sam soon realised, had come well prepared for a night in the canopy. The old man shuffled his way closer to the trunk of the tree, and Sam saw a knapsack had been tied to another, much narrower branch just within reach. Much like the old man’s clothes, the knapsack shared the colours of the surrounding forest.
Amit dug around inside the knapsack, then pulled out two thick lengths of dark green rope that looked like he’d made them himself. Amit looped one rope over one shoulder and under his opposite arm, then reached back inside the knapsack, producing a set of steel pitons and a hammer. He used the hammer to drive two of the pitons side by side into the trunk, then threaded each end of his loop of rope through the eye of a piton.
Only then did he turn and hand Sam the second rope, before explaining precisely what they would do: with a rope tightly secured around each of them, they could thread the ends through the pitons and that would keep them from sliding off the branch as they slept.
Sam couldn’t help but eye the vertiginous drop that lay on either side of them as Amit spoke. ‘We’re really staying here the whole night?’
The old man regarded Sam in what would have been silence, if not for the sound of Howlers still streaming through the forest below. ‘You’d rather fight your way through those things down there?’ Sam watched as he settled back against the trunk before adjusting his rope around his waist. ‘Be my guest.’
* * *
Sam slept only fitfully since he kept snapping awake with the absolute certainty he was about to slide off the branch and into eternity. The old man snored through it all beside him, his head hanging forward over his chest.
Time passed, and the horizon began to redden. The very idea of trying to sleep struck Sam as ridiculous, not after everything the old man had told him. The sound of the Howlers faded as dawn approached, the rope around his shoulder and waist rough and abrasive-feeling through his jumpsuit.
The old man suddenly grumbled from beside Sam and then untied himself, standing and urinating so close to the edge of the branch that the sight of him perched there made Sam’s jaws ache.
‘Time to move,’ said Amit, looking around at him as he finished. ‘Sunrise is close.’
Sam untied himself with enormous care and watched as the old man went through the same routine as the night before, but in reverse, pulling the pitons free and packing them, the hammer and the ropes going back into the knapsack in the same order in which he’d taken them out. Finally, he pulled two small dark bundles from out of a side pocket of the knapsack and handed one to Sam.
‘Breakfast.’
Sam discovered it was cured meat wrapped in a leaf. ‘How do we get back down?’ Sam asked as he ate.
The old man shrugged as he finished his own meal. ‘Same way as before.’
Sam glanced up and sideways at the dark bulk of the bungee-bug still clinging to its nearby perch. ‘I don’t know,’ he said carefully, ‘if I can go through that a second time.’
The old man snorted, then pulled on his knapsack, shifting Karl’s rifle and his crossbow around on his shoulders until he was satisfied before regarding Sam with a pitying expression. ‘Then I guess you’ll have to stay here.’
Sam opened his mouth to say something, but old Amit was already on the move, running along the length of the branch with his body low. He reached up and grabbed hold of a smaller branch above him, pulling himself on top of it like some wizened Tarzan.
Sam scrambled upright and watched, heart thudding, as Amit ascended to a point a little higher than the bungee-bug. He dropped onto the same branch the bug clung to, then carefully lowered himself onto its back.
It reacted much as it had the night before, thrashing its tentacles as it struggled to be free of its unwanted passenger. Then it dropped a metre or so, and then another, its umbilical unravelling slowly at first, then with increasing speed.
‘Jump!’ Amit shouted over at Sam, as the bug dropped past the branch on which Sam stood.
A variety of profanities came to Sam’s mind, but there wasn’t enough time to express so much as a single one. He pushed himself into the air before he could really think about what he was doing, dropping a metre or two before he landed on the bug’s back.
Old Amit grabbed hold of Sam with that same vice-like grip before he could bounce or roll off the creature’s side. He pulled Sam up close to the umbilical until they were face to face, and Sam again took a tight grip on the fleshy rope.
‘Fuck you!’ he screamed at the old man. ‘You might have given me some fucking warning!’
They descended quickly, the writhing of the creature’s tentacles sounding remarkably like the pages of an open book caught in a sudden breeze. The bug hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of Sam. Amit dragged him free and didn’t let go until they’d put some distance
between themselves and the writhing bungee-bug, then turned to see it already winding its way back up into the canopy.
‘All good?’ asked Amit, breathing hard when he let go of Sam.
Sam took a swing at him, but the old man dodged out of the way.
‘Don’t ever pull something like that again,’ Sam shouted, his fists curled at his sides. ‘Not ever!’
Sam staggered over to another tree that lacked any blue flowers and slumped down with his back to it. The old man, unperturbed, dug around inside his knapsack before passing him a scratched and ancient-looking aluminium bottle. Sam gulped water from it, then passed it back.
‘As I said before,’ the old man told him, ‘we should get moving.’
Sam cleared his throat. ‘No. First, tell me what it is you want me to see so badly you can’t even tell me what it is.’
‘You wouldn’t believe me.’
‘Try me.’
The old man regarded him in stony silence.
Sam struggled back onto his feet. ‘Those people back at my own lander are my priority, do you understand?’
‘I already told you,’ said old Amit, ‘they’re already—wait!’
Sam turned and walked away before Amit could finish speaking. He looked ahead, seeing the vine-clad bulk of the second lander through the trees, visualising the route by which he’d come upon it. He began to walk more quickly, reaching up to touch the pocket in which he kept Kevin’s map, as if for good luck.
‘Wait!’ the old man shouted again.
Sam picked up his pace until he was running.
* * *
He made his way back across hills and valleys, pushing himself to such limits that it felt as if his mind had somehow become detached from his body: he became reduced to a point of consciousness, lost in an alien wilderness, hardly aware of the flesh-and-blood machine that carried him along. His blood beat in his skull from fatigue and dehydration.
Eventually he saw a pillar of smoke to the east, rising high above the canopy. The sight filled him with urgent despair.
As he ran, Sam knew the old man was following him at a distance. He could hear the snap of twigs under the old man’s feet, and he caught snatches of his muttered curses. But the old man didn’t stop him, which was all that mattered.
Dehydration and exhaustion finally caught up with Sam in the early hours of the afternoon. He crashed to his knees, the blood pounding in his skull now sounding like the crashing of waves on a shore. He lacked even the strength to resist when hands lifted him back up onto his feet and again pressed the water bottle into his hands. Sam drank thirstily, then leaned hard on the old man as they carried on through the forest, still headed east.
* * *
‘We’re here.’
Sam struggled upright from where Amit had let him slide to the ground and saw that they were back at his own lander. The clearing was deserted; the campfire burned out.
There was no sign of movement, and even the forest seemed somehow quieter than usual. The ramp had been torn from the body of the lander, leaving a ragged hole. Logs from the palisade lay scattered all about, tangled in broken wire.
‘I warned you,’ said the old man.
Sam looked at him. Old Amit was breathing hard, his face bright with sweat. He pulled out his water bottle once more and drank from it before giving Sam the rest. He looked nervous, thought Sam: twitchy.
Sam took a step forward, but the old man stayed where he was. ‘You’re not coming?’ Sam asked, looking back at him.
The old man laughed softly. ‘I’ve seen enough ghosts. And enough death.’
Sam turned back towards the lander and realised something was missing. ‘The truck,’ he said. ‘It’s gone.’
‘Perhaps someone got away after all.’
‘We had a plan,’ said Sam. ‘We were going to head for a mesa east of here. We figured we’d be a lot less vulnerable if we could find our way up on top.’
‘Mesa?’ Sam turned again to see the old man nodding slowly. ‘There’s a way up there all right, but I doubt they’d find it. Assuming any of them really survived the night.’
Sam stared at him. ‘You’ve been there? To the mesa?’
Old Amit pointed towards the lander without answering Sam’s question. ‘There’s a body.’
Sam hurried over, finding Ethan’s body close by the torn-away ramp, his skin and clothes grey with ash. There was a gunshot wound in his chest big enough Sam could have put his fist inside it.
The old man apparently found the courage to come closer, for Sam heard him come to a halt a few feet away. ‘Poor bastard,’ Sam heard him mutter. ‘That wasn’t done by the indigenes.’
‘Traynor,’ Sam said with angry certainty. ‘He did this.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘We had a drone that took pictures of the forest from above. At first, we thought that other lander where you found me might be some kind of building. Traynor, DeWitt and Joshua went to check it out. When they came back without Joshua, they claimed there’d been an accident. I didn’t believe them.’
‘You were right not to.’
Sam stared towards the darkened, exposed interior of the cargo bay. ‘I need to look inside.’
‘You won’t find anyone alive,’ the old man warned him.
Sam had to take a running jump before he managed to grab hold of the lowest edge of the open hull before hauling himself up and inside the cargo bay. He found Kim first, a look of shocked surprise on his face. His neck had been torn out, presumably by a Howler. Kevin’s body lay closer to the inner bay door, but like Ethan, he had been shot to death.
Sam steeled himself before venturing further into the lander. There was no sign of Traynor, Wardell, Jess or DeWitt. They must have taken the truck, he decided, leaving behind anyone they hadn’t already murdered.
He found the bodies of the rest of them squeezed into nooks and crannies. It looked like they’d been trying to hide from the Howlers as they swept through the ship.
He tried to work out what must have happened. Kevin and Ethan, he guessed, had died trying to stop Traynor and the remaining soldiers from fleeing with the truck. The rest of them had holed up inside the lander, hoping somehow to survive the night, but then the smoke had come drifting in, killing them slowly. It was easy to imagine Kim lowering the ramp in desperation, hoping to communicate with the Howlers, knowing the only other choice was slowly suffocating.
That left five at most still alive—six, if he counted the old man waiting outside. He pictured Traynor and DeWitt carrying weapons back from the second lander, hiding them close by and then using them to stage their coup while Sam had still been running through the forest. Knowing they couldn’t last another night, Traynor had saved only those he thought he could trust.
He emerged from the lander’s interior and dropped back down into sunlight, then retched onto the not-grass.
The old man came closer. ‘We should get moving,’ he said, not unsympathetically.
‘I’m not in the mood for fucking games,’ Sam snarled.
‘Everything will start to make a lot more sense once—’
‘Jesus!’ Sam shouted. ‘Can’t you give me one straight answer?’
‘We took too much of a detour coming here,’ the old man replied doggedly.
‘Is that all you think this is—a detour?’
Amit’s expression grew hard. ‘I saw people die, the same as you. I’ve lived with that every day since.’
Sam stepped closer to him. ‘How the hell can there be two landers, two Amit’s, and all the rest of it? How the fuck can something like that come about? How?’
‘The mothership is programmed to grow us, then build and launch a lander to carry us down to the planet’s surface,’ said Amit. ‘You understand that much, right?’ Sam nodded. ‘Well, once it was clear my expedition had failed, it repeated the entire process again—and here you are.’
Sam took a step towards him. ‘Don’t you find it strange that such a thing coul
d even happen?’
‘Of course I do. But it happened, regardless.’
Sam pushed a shaky hand through his hair and fought the desire to tear it from his scalp. ‘Alright. Fine.’ He breathed loudly through his nose. ‘Answer me this, then. We lost a huge chunk of our memories. What about you?’
‘28th August 2050, is the last day I remember before I woke up here.’
The same as the rest of them , Sam realised. He closed his eyes for a moment, senses swimming, even though he had never really expected any other answer. ‘And after all this time, you still haven’t been able to figure out why that is?’
‘If you want answers,’ the old man said carefully, ‘then come with me so I can show them to you. But I need you to stop asking so many questions between now and then. We simply don’t have the time.’
‘And how long before we get to wherever it is we’re going?’
The old man glanced up at the sun. ‘A few hours at most.’
Sam sighed heavily. ‘I guess I don’t really have much of a choice, do I?’
‘Not really, no.’ The old man glanced to the east, then back at him. ‘But I’ll tell you this much: Vic—our Vic—took over our lander just a day or two after we woke, and killed anyone who tried to stand in his way. When the indigenes began their attack, he had us running weapons off our fabricator day and night.’
‘How the hell did he manage that? The most we were able to print were crossbows and knives.’
‘Vic discovered there were ways to circumvent the fabricator’s programming that only he could access. Since we were under attack, we didn’t ask too many questions. But before long there were so many indigenes attacking us there was no way to kill even a fraction of them.’
‘I need to bury them,’ said Sam, staring at Ethan’s corpse.
‘Then you can come back later and do it. Otherwise, you’ll still be here when the indigenes return. Which they will.’
Sam looked at him. ‘Is that all you have to say for them?’ he demanded, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. ‘I can’t just leave them here to rot.’