by Ian Watson
That other man who fell off must have broken his leg. Grimacing, he stretched up an arm in appeal. And now two inverted heads peered down from above to snoop into the cab through the windshield.
With a grip upon the neck, Lex stilled the worn-out driver. He undogged the cab door briefly, threw the man out, and dragged the door shut. Grimm scrambled into the driving seat. He shouted at the peering faces, ‘One of you climbing down and straightening that wiper or else I’ll be switching on the guns up top!’
As a man descended hastily, Grimm restarted the engine. While the fellow wrestled with the wiper arm, the land-train moved slowly forward. Maybe the balloon wheels missed the man with the broken leg. To run over him might be kinder than to leave him behind.
THEY WERE TRAVELLING south amidst the migration in the general direction of Bara Bandobast. That labyrinth of rocks and the stone mushrooms, of which the Jester had spoken, was supposedly to the east of Bara Bandobast. A day’s march, Marb’ailtor had said. Some fifty kilometres. Soon they would need to change direction towards the south-east.
If a single land-train were to deviate from the general direction of the trek, it would become conspicuous.
The air in the cab was so hot and vapid, so lifeless. It would only become hotter. Sweat trickled; lungs laboured. The cab possessed a ventilation system. A concealed fan whirred. But no vehicles on Sabulorb had hitherto needed a refrigeration unit, only a heater. Though the cab heater was switched off, it seemed to be operating at maximum output. Under Jaq’s robe his mesh armour was becoming oppressive. Flexible, porous and lightweight it might be – how could he think of forsaking its protection? – yet it taxed him.
Grimm rubbed salty sweat from his eyes. ‘We gotta open the windows.’
Jaq agreed. ‘And it’s about time we changed course.’ A manual winding mechanism operated the window against which he was crushed. In miniature the mechanism reminded him of a torment machine he had once studied as an apprentice inquisitor. He wound down the armoured glass and shouted, ‘All you up there! Hearing me!’
Heads appeared.
‘We are knowing the true way to safety! I am swearing this by Him-on-Earth! We must not be heading to safety in isolation.’ He needed to stop and summon up saliva to lubricate his words. It was a while since they had drained the cab’s water canteen dry. ‘Otherwise aliens and renegades will be stopping us. This whole trek must be veering south eastwards. You must be running to other vehicles to be spreading the word. They must be spreading the word in turn. When enough vehicles are changing direction, only then are we doing likewise. Destination being stone labyrinth in the desert fifty kilometres east of Bara Bandobast.’ He swallowed dryly. ‘Be going and saying this now! Only we here are knowing whereabouts in the labyrinth. I am guiding you to safety. Be going and returning. Otherwise I am shooting you off the roof on a count of ten... And nine...’
Grimm halted the land-train. To any suspicious observer it would seem that the vehicle had simply broken down. Men and women were descending. Several gestured at their throats or croaked for water. How could they say anything without a few sips?
Oh but they could. Jaq mimed the absence of water in the cab. A man bit his wrist, and sucked on trickles of blood.
How could they run? Nevertheless, they managed to stagger, casting fearful glances backwards at the stationary carriage. It remained where it was – nor by now were there any other potential boarders in the vicinity.
‘Nervous fools,’ growled Lex. ‘We need them back, as a crab needs its shell.’
NOT QUITE AS many refugees returned. A few must have collapsed while away from the land-train. Nor could all manage the climb up to their former scorching perch. Nevertheless, once more the train had a coat of people.
Presently the tide of migration began to veer sufficiently, and over a wide enough expanse, for Grimm to begin heading east by south. A mass momentum accumulated. Word of mouth was no longer necessary. Vehicles far away were altering direction merely because so many others were doing so.
FOR SOME WHILE they had been hearing a punctuation of modest explosions. The brisk bangs seemed unrelated to any skirmish. Abruptly an explosion rocked their land-train. The cab lurched to one side.
Another detonation. The train lurched again.
‘Someone’s shooting at our tyres—’
A third explosion. The vehicle was dragging. The floor was at an angle. How the engine toiled.
‘No one’s shooting,’ Rakel said huskily. She gestured as a nearby limousine subsided suddenly upon ruptured flattened rubber. ‘Heat’s expanding the air in the tyres. The tyres are bursting.’
THE LAND-TRAIN was disabled, and they had abandoned the control cab.
Far and near, balloons were banging. With boltguns and laspistols Jaq and Grimm and Rakel covered a small crowd of dizzy refugees who had quit the roof. Lex let down a ramp at the rear. He led out the camelopards one by one. Still hobbled, the animals shuffled with mincing steps. Long necks snaked from side to side, attempting head-butts. Out in the open, each instinctively shifted to present the minimum profile to the great hot sun. How stupidly malevolent the beasts’ whiskery faces looked. How scrawny their bodies. Ribs and other bones stood out prominently as if hairy rubber were wrapped around skeletons. The humps were like giant erupting boils.
These beasts weren’t even sweating. Nor had the air inside the carriage reeked unduly. Camelopards must be able to tolerate higher temperatures than people. Probably the lack of fat on their bodies – apart from in the parasol humps – would allow heat to radiate away more rapidly.
Before the start of human colonization camelopards must have been introduced to Sabulorb with an eye to a possible future rise in temperature. Untold generations of beasts must have shivered for aeons, unable to evolve fat on their bodies because their gene-runes had been locked. At last the beasts were coming into their own. But perhaps not for long. If radiation from the sun continued to intensify, the camelopards’ summer of happiness might only last for a few days – until they all died of heatstroke, though rather later than their erstwhile owners.
A dozen animals stood shuffling, too hampered to attempt an escape or too stupid to think of it. Dazed passengers eyed the beasts covetously. Refugees might have surged feebly had it not been for the guns.
‘There’ll be water in those humps,’ Grimm enthused hoarsely. ‘A figging cistern of water. I’ll stick a knife in as a spigot—’
‘Sir, sir,’ croaked a dusty woman, whose obesity must be causing her great discomfort. ‘Sir, not being so! Humps storing fat, not liquid.’
The abhuman motioned her to advance. ‘Be explaining.’
‘Fat needing burning for releasing water.’
‘Damn it, there ain’t no time for cooking humps.’
‘The blood, sir, the blood—’
‘Damn fool idea drinking salty blood!’
‘Blood not being salty, sir. Red bloodcells being filled with water when camelopards drinking. Bloodcells stretching, engorging. Bloodcells expanding to a quarter-thousand times their original volume—’
‘Bloodcells swelling two hundred and fifty-fold? Tosh!’
‘Being true! Beasts being watered before journey. Be observing how swollen the humps—’
THIS WAS INDEED the truth.
The land-train’s engine was sited mainly beneath the cab. Part jutted forward, protected by a hump-shaped hood. Lex soon unlatched this hood. Wrenching it loose, he hurried back to the camelopards.
A Fist thought. A Fist planned.
With a sand-shovel from the carriage Lex dug a shallow pit to accommodate the hood. The hood was now a big basin.
LITRES OF BLOOD from two butchered camelopards filled the basin. In turn Rakel and Jaq and Grimm and Lex lapped their fill, under the hammer of the sun. Those not drinking pointed their guns at the increasingly desperate refugees. Lex filled the canteen from the cab with blood. Then they let the refugees loose upon the ample remaining blood.
The
other camelopards had watched the fate of their stablemates with what seemed a smug disinterest. From the carriage came reins and rope and four leather saddles.
Lex hauled the fat informant to her feet. Her face was blotched with blood. So was his own face. So were those of his companions. Dried blood and dust would provide protection against sunburn, which no one on Sabulorb could ever have experienced before.
Lex had seen camelopards ridden in the streets of Shandabar. Ordinarily a saddle was strapped behind the hump. These were racing saddles, though, and racing beasts. Maybe different circumstances applied.
‘Saddle going behind the hump, eh, woman?’ he demanded. The pretence of only speaking scum slang was so irrelevant now. ‘Otherwise their heads snaking back, sir, to be biting.’
‘Not keeping mounts muzzled?’
‘Needing to race with mouths open, for air!’ She hesitated, gazing at his bare fused chest abulge with muscle. ‘Your weight, sir. Your mount not racing, only cantering.’
Thirst slaked, refugees turned their attention to the two corpses. Knives emerged. The immediate object wasn’t meat but hairy hide with which to contrive oozing shawls to cover heads and shoulders.
‘How ordering a beast to run?’ Lex demanded. ‘What words being best?’
‘Taking me with you?’ wheedled the woman. ‘Clinging behind the dwarf?’
‘Maybe,’ conceded Lex.
‘Myself knowing much about ’pards, sir.’
‘What about your weight, ma?’ interrupted Grimm.
The woman’s gaze strayed to those ropes which Lex had brought from the carriage.
‘You will be leading spare mounts behind you,’ she said in accusation. They would not be abandoning spare mounts for refugees. ‘Hurry up!’ called Jaq.
They were in no danger of being left behind by the migration. This was still scattered all over the hostile and increasingly hotter terrain, never mind how many hundreds of thousands had fallen behind, or fallen, never to rise. Yet sooner or later someone who hunted Jaq’s party must surely find them.
Rakel aimed her laspistol at the woman. ‘Be telling the words. If wrong, we are not going far.’ True indeed. If the beasts failed to gallop – or at least to canter – then the woman could expect swift punishment.
Anxiously the woman said, ‘To be starting, be crying out hut-hut, shutur! To be cantering, be crying tez-rau. For galloping, yald! For stopping, rokna!’
Though perceptibly smaller than even on the previous day, the sun was still gigantic. How its heat beat down.
Lex told his companions, ‘Listen, we can make it. The heat isn’t quite as bad as it seems. Not yet! It’s bad by contrast with beforehand.’
‘Huh!’ All very well for Lex to say so, when he was modified and trained to endure extreme temperatures. Still, squats could tolerate enough heat in the deep galleries of mines. No doubt it was madness to continue this journey by day. Brain-boiling madness. What other choices did they have? Some of the refugees, having flayed shawls for themselves, cut hunks of raw dripping sinewy meat and retired inside the empty carriage for shade.
Jaq shed his robe, revealing the scaly mesh armour beneath. He unpeeled this from his body, resumed his robe, then he rolled the flexible armour up and tied the roll to a saddle like some shrivelled armadillo.
Rakel was swaying. Abruptly she vomited blood, as if some tiny missile had entered her unseen and unheard and ravaged her internally. Ach, that was only camelopard blood she was chucking up.
A shallow depth of liquid blood still remained in the basin, though around the edges a brownish purple rim was coagulating.
‘DAMN IT, YOU’LL drink again!’ Grimm told Rakel. He grabbed her by the arm. She submitted. She knelt. She lapped.
Lex began roping camelopards behind one another. One spare mount to run behind, for Jaq. One spare for Grimm. One spare for Rakel. And two spares for his own hefty self.
What, canter? When he could try to gallop? At least until his first mount burst its heart.
Lex secured the saddles. He arranged the reins. He unmuzzled the beasts, avoiding a biting. Finally he unhobbled the creatures, avoiding being kicked. The four companions mounted.
One beast remained.
‘Last one being for you, ma,’ Lex told the fat woman, ‘in gratitude for your advice. Hut-hut, shutur!’ he bellowed. His camelopard lurched into motion. The camelopards’ eyes rolled. Strings of spittle flew from floppy lips, peeled back to expose large yellow teeth.
‘Hut-hut, shutur!’ from Jaq.
‘Hut-hut, shutur!’ from Grimm.
‘Hut-hut, shutur!’ from Rakel.
‘TEZ-RAU!’ bellowed Lex. ‘And... YALD!’
Behind, for a short while through dust one could see the fat woman wrestling strenuously with the final beast. Her fellow refugees were hurrying from the carriage to contest ownership.
How sad that so many striving people must be treated as expendable! But Lex and Grimm and Rakel were all too likely to be expended before the day was out.
THIRTEEN
Heatwave
THE AIR SEEMED to be molten glass. The glass was imperfect, full of flaws and distortions. These flaws served as channels for mirages, as lenses for images of far-off vehicles and camelopard riders, and of shuffling refugees on foot – and of corpses, increasing numbers of corpses.
Was this lumbering figure in angular power armour, who shouldered a storm bolter, near at hand? Should Jaq or Lex or Grimm loose off explosive bullets at that renegade? The image wavered and vanished before they could decide.
A natural phenomenon, this! It seemed that the heat might be boiling the blood in one’s brain, breeding lunatic fancies.
The hood of Jaq’s gown shaded, yet did not cool his head. Grimm had his forage cap to protect his cranium somewhat. Lex had been trained to tolerate the intolerable – but might his brain boil, even so? His exposed spinal sockets looked like holes drilled neatly in him by a marksman’s bullets. Rakel wore an improvised hat of vellum folded in a yacht shape, and secured under her chin by the red assassin’s sash. The sash lent her the appearance of someone whose throat had been cut bloodily from ear to ear. That vellum hat was the great page which Jaq had torn from the Book of Rhana Dandra.
Was the rest of the Book of Fate being carried to safety by a Harlequin somewhere amidst the dwindling migration? Had the book already been rushed to the webway portal by Vyper or by jetbike? Such questions seemed remote and meaningless.
Glare reflected from the ground. They rode upon a glowing anvil, with a hot hammer poised overhead. What an inversion of blacksmithery this was. Those on the anvil would not soften like metal in a forge. They would dry up and harden utterly. No one would pluck them up with tongs to plunge them into cool water to quench them.
They passed bodies which were already almost mummies, their fluid content evaporated.
Yet something might well pluck them up. Great whirling cylinders of grit were wandering randomly amidst the mirages and the real refugees. Localized thermal hurricanes, these, the desert equivalent of waterspouts. One such cylinder picked up a refugee from beside an overturned bicycle-rickshaw – and dropped him a short while later as a skeleton, scoured to the bone by the swirling abrasion of sharp particles. At all costs avoid such roaming cylinders.
Constantly stones were bursting and rocks were cracking, uttering loud reports; such was the exceptional heat.
A vision came to Jaq – of the sky as a womb of light. Therein floated a great bloated pulsing blood-red child, the sun. Or was that red mass itself the womb, and did a white dwarf foetus lurk deeper inside it?
Jaq found himself praying croakingly to the Chaos Child:
‘Come into being! Become conscious! Show me the shining path again, the quicksilver way.’
How could a shining path appear when all the world and all the sky seemed ablaze? Was his prayer not heresy? Lex snarled, ‘Let me see the light of Dorn!’
The light was a hot red, edging into white.
; Rakel began to babble huskily. ‘I am an assassin, aren’t I? An invincible assassin who can endure any torment!’
This was fitting. Rakel was conforming to her destiny. Maybe the heat would erase some of the higher functions of her brain, making the transition from herself to Meh’lindi easier...
‘Look!’ gasped Grimm.
Water was fountaining from the ground ahead, falling back in a rainbow. ‘Another mirage—’
‘No, no. Yald! Yald!’
Nostrils flaring, the camelopards were already galloping faster.
THUS FAR ONLY one of the beasts had collapsed under Lex. Resilient creatures, these. During the time it had taken for Lex to transfer the saddle to his second mount, his three companions had simply sat upon theirs inertly. They could have changed mounts but none could summon the energy to do so.
The camelopards needed no cry of Rokna! to halt at the pool which was forming in a depression, fed by that liquid plume. Before Jaq and party could dismount a dozen other dusty burned refugees had arrived from out of the mirages. Three rode on camelopards. Half a dozen more were packed inside a white limousine. Steam billowed from the hood.
The fountain was a shining path, was it not? A vertical path, ascending for half a dozen metres before cascading back, bringing salvation to thirst, at least. Animals and humans crowded together, slaking their thirst and soaking themselves.
Jaq arose, dripping. ‘We should give thanks,’ he said, ‘to Him-on-Earth for this blessing.’
‘Might as well give thanks to the bloody heat,’ said Grimm. ‘Cracking fissures in the rocks. Opening up a water-bearing stratum under pressure.’
Probably this was true. It did not seem to be true. Surely they were the recipients of a miracle.
Lex eyed the steaming vehicle. The turbanned driver, who wore soiled white silks, was carrying water in cupped hands to cool the hood before he would contemplate opening it. A thinker, that one.
‘Hey,’ Lex called to him, ‘you deflated your tyres, eh?’