Adrift

by W. Michael Gear

  “So, you can change personalities like some people change clothes?” she’d asked.

  Expression pinching, he’d answered, “It’s more of a philosophy of who you are. I don’t believe in atonement. The hurt, damage, and pain you cause someone can’t be taken back. It’s real and permanent. Atonement is about making the perpetrator feel better about himself by making other people or their conditions better. Me? I live with the guilt. Through it, I am motived to never commit the same acts again.”

  He’d smiled. “Doesn’t mean I’m a saint. I still have my petty side. I did, after all, send Dan Wirth back to Miko as payback. Sort of like lobbing a hand grenade into his well-manicured world.”

  For days now, her existence had been idyllic. Just her and Dek, fishing, taking walks, working in the garden, cooking together, sharing stories and laughter, and rationing out the last of the bourbon. Each of them lost in that first golden haze of exploring a human being they were attracted to.

  And there was the sex.

  Maybe there was something to this Taglioni “training.” If Talina ever ran into this mysterious Kalay, she’d offer her personal thanks.

  Everything going so well, and then Dek had to run off into the forest with this latest bullshit? Hell, he had been dealing: the episodes of blank looks, the sudden flashbacks had been fewer, of less impact.

  “Clap-trapping hell, Dek! Couldn’t you have just gone with the flow?”

  It wasn’t like they had to leave Two Falls Gap. For all Talina had started to care, they might just stay there. Become Wild Ones. The two of them. Hunting, fishing, telling stories by the fire. She loved it when Dek would listen, rapt, as she told stories of quetzal hunts, of taking down bad men, of rescues she’d made out in the bush. No man, not even Cap, had listened with such complete focus.

  In turn, he’d recount stories about his youth, talking about people that Talina had thought of as some sort of gods. Names like Radcek, Montano, Suharto, Grunnels, and Xian Chan among others. He told of remarkable places, stunning residences, and opulent palaces. And then came the tales of intrigue, backstabbing, and the deadly games of the powerful and rabidly ambitious.

  “All that,” Talina groused, leaping to the top of a knot of roots and hopping surefooted down the other side. “And you’re going to lose it all by getting yourself eaten out in the forest?”

  That’s when her nose caught the faint scent. A curious, almost balsamic vinegar kind of . . . The quetzal reaction was immediate: frightened, almost to the point of paralysis. Talina pushed it to the back of her mind, suddenly as wary as she’d ever been.

  “Yeah, guys,” she said softly, lifting her rifle, finger on the rest over the trigger, safety off. “I get the message.”

  The last time she’d felt like this, it had been out at Tyson. Then it had been the treetop terror. That same deep quetzal memory. By the time they’d dealt with that, at least three people, probably more, were dead, and they’d blown up half the forest. The treetop terror had still managed to escape.

  I emptied an entire magazine into that thing. She remembered the explosive rounds hammering into the monster’s wide belly. And it had absorbed the punishment, sort of folded in on itself, and kept right on fighting.

  “Dek, for God’s sake, tell me you smelled that, and you’re backing off!”

  Even as she said it, the bang of a rifle came from up ahead. Immediately it was followed by a soul-searing shriek the likes of which Talina had never heard.

  77

  As the Song flowed through him, Felix decided that he really liked the ax. It was a little shorter than the length of his arm, felt firmly heavy in his eight-year-old grasp, and was capable of marvelous things. Swinging it, he’d completely destroyed the com system, bashing the monitors. The quantum computer had split open with a satisfying clatter of broken ceramic matrix—fragments of which had spilled across the floor.

  As it did, the Song spilling out from the stairway changed; the harmonics charged his nerves, and filled him with excitement. He could see Felicity and Sheena’s reaction, like his own, almost glowing and energized.

  They had finished with the com when Toni had appeared in the doorway; his shining eyes looked odd and totally black. Like, with no pupils or whites. And each time he breathed, the swellings in the side of his neck pulsed and the slits at his collar bones fluttered. When he opened his mouth, it wasn’t to talk. Instead, his utterances carried the same notes and intonation as the Song rising from the UB. Even as Felix watched, Toni’s already-green skin seemed to darken. What was that all about?

  Then he looked at his own fingers; the deep-green color had spread through his hands and into his wrists.

  The Song changed, seemed to vibrate in the air around them. Urgency, that was the message behind the changed harmony.

  “Got to go now,” Sheena told him absently. “Toni’s ready.”

  “Got to go,” Felix agreed. Definitely the right thing since Toni had joined them.

  Weird how different Toni was. The vile little brat was gone. Toni didn’t walk like a kid anymore but had a purposeful stride that got better with each step. He looked, well, somehow smarter, like he was someone Felix didn’t want to know. The change made Felix uncomfortable. Like he was seeing some stranger inside Toni’s body. Freaking spooky!

  He hoped that would never happen to Sheena. She was his best friend, and he didn’t want her to turn into some mean stranger.

  Felicity led the way down the stairs, and Felix could remember when the second level had been off limits, a place where children couldn’t go. Now, everything in the past seemed silly. His entire world was being made right.

  At the bottom of the stairs, they rounded the landing to the hatch that opened to the tube.

  Sheena, as usual, keyed in the code, and together, they undogged the watertight door. “Got to do this right,” Sheena insisted. She looked at Felicity, seemed to fix on the sides of the girl’s neck where the swellings had started to pulse. “Code is 6676. You feeling zambo?”

  “Zambo,” Felicity agreed, then turned to follow Toni down the stairs.

  “Zambo,” Felix chimed as he took the ax and smashed the code box that controlled the hatch. No one could lock them out. All it would take to open it would be to turn the handle.

  It wouldn’t be long now.

  With the com broken, the safety overrides wouldn’t work on the UB hatch lock. It would revert to manual, too.

  They knew the moment Felicity entered the code to the pressurized hatch downstairs. Could hear the seawater surging into the Underwater Bay. Flooding the compartment. It came roaring as it poured through the open hatch and into the tube. A blast of air blew Felix and Sheena off their feet, tumbled them both onto their butts. The violence of it left Felix stunned and afraid. And then it was over, just as fast as it had come. The sound of water could be heard sloshing.

  And the Song was joyous. It filled him, fit to burst his bones. Tears silvered his vision and spilled down his cheeks. We are free!

  While Sheena was giggling like an idiot—apparently getting knocked on her butt had been fun—Felix clambered to his feet, staring down where the algae-thick water lapped and splashed on the steps down at the water line. He extended a hand, could almost feel the Song rising, becoming one with his body.

  Sheena’s eyes were glittering with excitement. “This whole place, Felix! It’s ours now!”

  78

  At the beast’s nerve-chilling shriek, the quetzals were gone. As if they’d never existed. Dek almost fumbled as he dropped another bullet into the receiver. Around him, the forest went deathly quiet. Across the mat of squirming roots, the huge predator appeared shocked, frozen.

  Dek, panting for breath, his heart pounding so hard it was fit to hammer through his sternum, pulled up the Holland & Holland. He fixed the sight, finger on the trigger.

  The three sickle-like blades spr
ead wide on the creature’s head where they had flashed closed after the first shot. With a second scream, the monster started forward, mouth wide.

  This is it!

  Didn’t remember triggering the gun. Barely felt the recoil, was faintly aware of the bang.

  Only that fragmented visual: Charging beast, rifle rising in recoil, the creature jerking, stumbling. As the gun dropped back, the thing staggered sideways, roots gone crazy beneath it. Then it whirled. Colors like rainbow lasers of blaze-orange, translucent indigo, nacre-pink, and midnight-black dazzled along its smooth flanks to be followed by blinding crimson, searing yellows, streaks of blacks and deep purples, searing greens and violet.

  Another of those mind-numbing shrieks, and the whole long length of it whipped around on the tortured root mat and seemed to squirt up the far tangle of thigh-thick roots, only to vanish over the top.

  Dek was already running, trying to keep his footing on the roiling root mat. Managed, somehow, to make it across. The beast’s trail was plain. The reddish fluid that passed for blood in most of Donovan’s more advanced life had left smears across the tops of the roots. They were already reacting to the nutrients.

  “Got to hurry.” Dek threw himself up the thick tangle, barely found footing, and vaulted over the highest of the contorting roots.

  The roots along the creature’s path were a riot of motion, reacting not only to the weight of the animal’s passing, but to the feast of rich blood.

  Dek reloaded his rifle as he went, eyes warily taking in the pillar-like trunks of forest giants rising to either side. Vaguely he wondered if the blade beast could climb. If he needed to worry about being ambushed from above.

  “Didn’t look like it,” he told himself. Those paddle-like flipper feet, they could sure move the beast across the flats and up over tall messes of the thick roots, but they’d be hard put to cling to anything.

  At the top of the next mass of intertwined roots, Dek carefully peeked over. Saw nothing but more of the disturbed roots marking the creature’s passage. It was all the same, endless masses of thickly entwined giant roots giving way to a hollow matted with smaller ones, all interwoven in the endless wrestling match that was the Donovanian forest floor.

  The chime was back along with the usual forest sounds. In the trees he could hear hooting, unearthly chattering, and whooping countercalls.

  And somewhere up ahead was a twenty-meter-long technicolor monster with slashing blades that would slice him into three pieces. Worse, the blade beast was wounded. Probably coming to the conclusion that it had nothing left to lose.

  Maybe realizing that it could still get even.

  What sobered Dek more than anything was the realization that if the monster had made it this far, it sure as hell wasn’t disabled. Had it not been startled by the rifle, had it continued to charge, the blade beast would have already chopped him into butchered chunks, and he’d be ground to burger by those tooth-filled shearing jaws.

  “Dek, old buddy, you might have just gotten lucky again.”

  He slowed, still treading wide of the excited roots on the creature’s bloody trail. Should he go on? Take the chance that the beast might camouflage like a quetzal did? Maybe charge from the side after circling around to ambush its backtrail?

  “I shot it,” Dek muttered under his breath. “It’s my responsibility.”

  If he was making a point—both to himself and to the quetzals—he had to finish this.

  “Doesn’t mean I ever have to do it again,” he told himself sourly.

  Heart hammering, ears pitched for the slightest sound, he kept padding as lightly as he could across the roots, climbed to the left of the blood trail at the next thick tangle, and peered over.

  No dying blade beast met his searching gaze, just the roots doing their manic thing.

  “Damn it, why couldn’t it just be lying dead in the middle of that clearing while a thousand roots were climbing all over it ready for supper?”

  The beast had taken two shots from no more than ten meters. Both of them right down the center. If the blade monster was anything like other Donovanian critters, those shots should have torn through lung, heart, and the net that made up the stomach.

  “But not for the entire twenty-meter length of it.” So what kind of penetration had his bullets made? Maybe a couple of meters?

  “Should have dialed it up more.”

  Dek almost jumped out of his skin as something big flapped past his ear. Four-winged, the flying creature had to be two meters across. Covered with a sort of pelage, it flipped around on beating wings, stared at Dek with three eyes. The long, tooth-filled muzzle didn’t strike Dek as warm and fuzzy. He raised the rifle, finger hovering over the trigger, and tried to get his muscles to stop shivering and his franticly pumping blood from making the rifle jump with each beat.

  The flyer let out a squawk, turned from green to bright yellow before twisting in midair and flapping away.

  “Shit on a shoe,” Dek whispered, realized fear-sweat was beading on his face.

  Where the hell was the blade monster?

  He looked around at the twilight-dim forest. Seeing into the IR had real advantages. Hell, maybe it was worth the constant ache behind his eyes. Right now, all he wanted to do was get this over and get home to Talina. After that, he had nothing to prove to anyone.

  Figured that was made even more probable by the fact that no quetzal was inserting itself into his thoughts or emotions. They really didn’t want anything to do with the blade monster.

  “Guess that makes it unanimous.”

  He slipped over the top root, made his way to the bottom, and picked a careful path around the clearing perimeter. Given the dark, cave-like arch of roots on the right, he chose the left side.

  He was just on the verge of climbing the next tangle of ceiling-high roots when movement caught the corner of his eye. He wheeled, bringing the rifle up.

  The blade monster came like a rocket: fast. As it did, it emitted a deafening squeal that might have been rage augmented by a bloody spray that misted around its three jaws.

  Dek made a snap shot. Recoil hammered his shoulder. The impulse came out of nowhere; he pitched sideways at the last instant. As he did, he heard the sound of rapid gunshots, the meaty hollow pops of bullets spatting into flesh.

  The closest blade hissed through the air less than an inch from Dek’s face. He caught the blur of it—and then the bulk of the thing hurled past, knocking him off his feet as the barrel-thick body twisted. The impact tore the rifle from Dek’s hands. Tossed him like an afterthought. His head hammered the thick root, hard.

  And then everything was . . .

  79

  Kalico had demolished most of a chamois steak, beans simmered in red sauce, and roasted squash when Shig Mosadek appeared at her elbow and climbed up on the high barstool. This was midday; the lunch crowd—such as it was—had flocked in, calling boisterously for beer, bread, and the lunch special. The noise was louder than usual, speculation rampant over a quetzal sighting out at Rand Kope’s claim. Quetzals—it had been learned—had no conception of trip wires tied to strings of tin cans. A big quetzal had run afoul of Kope’s primitive but effective early warning system.

  Kope had forted up, his rifle at the ready, and reported that the would-be raider had a scarred hip and a mangled left front arm.

  Everyone in PA assumed it had been Whitey making another try at an isolated Wild One. Kope—who’d arrived fourth ship—was a grizzled old timer, and his diggings consistently turned up very nice pigeon’s-blood rubies.

  “I was surprised when I heard that you’re here,” Shig noted. “I just got the news that the shuttle dropped you off and lifted again for Corporate Mine. You heard about Whitey being sighted out at Kope’s?”

  “Too bad Kope didn’t get a shot. A lot of us would enjoy a big, thick steak cut off that bastard’s carcass.�
�� Kalico wiped her lips. “You heard about my missing man? Ozawa lost his woman in the cave-in. She was three months pregnant. He’s been off his feed ever since. Didn’t make the return trip this morning. Thought I’d come up and see if I could run him down. Inga says she hasn’t heard a word.” Kalico made a circular gesture. “Not a whole lot of places he could go. Someone’s going to see him.”

  “Maybe he just needs time.” Shig lifted a single finger when Inga glanced his direction. “Grief does funny things.”

  “Yeah,” Kalico lifted her glass of whiskey, sipped.

  “You’ve started early,” Shig noted, leaning forward, his elbows on the scarred bar.

  “It’s a whiskey kind of day,” Kalico retorted. “One of those times when you have to finally face realities and make decisions. So, I’m here. Making the damn decisions. And now I’ve got a missing man.”

  Shig’s placid expression belied his keen eyes as he glanced her way. “Ah. Missing man. Dek or Ozawa?”

  “Excuse me?”

  At her hostile tone, Shig raised a hand. “At ease, Supervisor. That you are here, and not at Two Falls Gap, tells me that you are close to having found sattva when it comes to our mutual friend Dek. With regard to your possible deserter, I suspect you are shifting between tamas and rajas. But, there, too, you will find a solution.”

  “When did you get to know me so well?”

  “By watching you get to know yourself.”

  “Talina says that when you were a baby you got dropped on your head a lot. The longer I know you, the more I think she was right.”

  Shig just gave her that benign, beaming smile as Inga placed a half-glass of wine on the chabacho bar, and asked, “Got an SDR on you, or is this credit?”

  “He’s on my tab today,” Kalico told the woman. It was a well-known fact that Shig was one of the poorest if most prominent men on the planet.