It was preening.
She surveyed the beasts the other parasites were attached to—dumb, brutish things. Her parasite had landed itself a smart, sleek ride—a starship among bicycles. For parasites, what they were attached to must be an important part of who they were. It determined their status. Their value.
At the edge of the audience, the dog leaped to its hind legs, pawed the air, and barked. None of the others turned to watch. After a moment it stopped, its bark receding into a plaintive whine.
Her parasite prodded her to swim across the black pool, then climb a steep rock. All this time, it had been training her to be strong and swift not only for its survival, but also to impress its friends. That’s why it had insisted she stand up straight, walk just so, because it wasn’t just about being effective, it was about looking good while doing it. They were all watching; it was basking in their attention.
Maybe she couldn’t kill the little fucker, but she could humiliate it if she could tolerate the pain.
When they reached the summit of the rock, it led her down the side, directed her to jump across a series of pools in view of their audience. Ever so subtly, Phillipa let her foot slip on one of the longer jumps. Flailing her arms, she landed in the pool with an ungainly splash.
As she surfaced, sputtering, the parasite punished her, but it didn’t sting. It was an accident, after all. As she lay panting on the rock under the watchful eyes of two-dozen peeping parasites (the peeping sounded suspiciously like laughter), hers directed her to stand her sorry ass up and continue the show.
It sent her up the rocks yet again to show the others that the miss was a fluke. She resumed leaping from rock to rock, her steps high, shoulders back, just as it had trained her. Still, it was pricking her more than usual, holding the reins more tightly. No mistakes now. She hoped it was sweating.
Another big jump loomed. Phillipa steeled herself against the coming pain, gauged her jump to come up short, leaped into the air…
She landed hard on the steep face of the rock; her cheek, forearms, and knees slammed the rough surface, were torn as she slid down the side, then landed hard on the rocks beside the pool.
The parasite let her have it. The pain was blinding. She screamed as the stings landed on her stomach, her breasts, her lower back. A wall of agony enveloped Phillipa. Every muscle in her body clenched. Her vision went gray, then black.
* * *
When she opened her eyes, it felt as if only a minute or two had passed. She lay with her face on the rock, watched parasites warble and bob, the whole scene canted at a ninety-degree angle.
Tentatively, she pushed herself to a sitting position, feeling so light she almost fell backward. Her shredded nightgown was all that covered her torso. She spun to her left, where the long, long body of her parasite stretched out along the rock. It hissed at her.
Not taking her eyes off it, she reached back into her pack and pulled out the pistol. It just stood there, hissing, as she aimed and fired. The parasite’s head exploded, along with a section of rock a dozen meters behind it. Its long body collapsed, the legs closer to the head folding first, the rest following like dominoes.
Then she was running, leaping like a gazelle, bounding across the uneven surface. Behind her she heard the dog bark, the hiss of agitated parasites, like a nest of snakes probably, although Phillipa had never actually heard snakes.
Running on the surface of a high rock, she leaped, her feet bicycling in the air, and landed lithely on the next rock, laughing, feeling light as a feather without the weight of the parasite to carry. She paused to return the pistol to her pack, confident that she could navigate the wilds without it. She took a moment to catch her breath, reveling in how freely her chest rose and fell. There was no hurry, although she was eager to get back.
She wasn’t returning to the settlement, although what she’d learned—what the parasite had taught her—surely raised her value inside. She’d go back to the banished encampment and invite the other misfits to join her in the wild, to found a new settlement. If anyone inside the settlement wanted to join them, they’d be welcome, too, although Phillipa doubted many would. Let them try to hide behind their walls.
The euphoria came.
Meet the Author
Will McIntosh is a Hugo Award winner and Nebula finalist whose short stories have appeared in Asimov’s (where he won the 2010 Readers’ Award for short story), Strange Horizons, Interzone, and Science Fiction and Fantasy: Best of the Year, among others. His first novel, Soft Apocalypse, was released in 2011 from Night Shade Books, and his second novel, Hitchers, was released in 2012. In 2008, he became the father of twins.
Also by Will McIntosh
Soft Apocalypse
Hitchers
About Orbit Short Fiction
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Will McIntosh
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First eBook edition: October 2012
ISBN: 978-0-316-24606-4
The Perimeter Page 3