The great armored chariot whence the prey had been pulled looked to be the possession of a mad wizard of immense wealth and power. A throbbing, thumping sound whumped methodically at the humid air around them, a mourning cry for the half-consumed master who lay on the ground in a strange, ceremonial robe thrown asunder. The magic chariot itself was a blaze of gold and sparkles on the hide with luscious hide seats of blood red on the inside. Many a magnificent beast must have been slaughtered and drained to provide the opulence for this mode of conveyance that the Queen herself would be proud to rest in. Even the wheels were fashioned of pristine silver that reflected the light from a thousand unseen candles.
The minion could hear the thresh as they maneuvered through the ruins of the calfling village, around the edge of the kill, careful never to stray into the burning light of the carrier beast’s enormous eyes. But the minion could not hear them as they conversed and plotted, for thresh made no noise at all when doing that. Instead, the thresh remained within the shelter of a brick structure possessed of a red metal roof that held the distant memory of meat, spice, and calfling musk. A fallen temple, perhaps, given its size and complexity. They stayed away from the glaring yellow light of another calfling temple where dead flesh was burning, filling the air with a stale, nasty, oily odor that clashed violently with the sweet, delicate scent of the fresh kill.
They spoke into one another’s minds with nary a whisper on the cool night air to give away their communication. Indeed, that was how they had brought down the prey in the first place. Forcing, with great difficulty, a mirage into the mind of the rider who held the odd reins of the golden chariot. The constant drumbeat—whumpety-whump-whump-whump—pounding from the chariot made it difficult to penetrate the comparatively feeble mind of the wagon’s driver.
Surely not a wizard or sorcerer; this mind had been cluttered, addled with drunkenness and some toxin the thresh could not quite puzzle out, for they were both immature and lacked the thinkings of a full grown Thresh or Threshrend. Nonetheless, little did it matter as they shivered and hopped in hungry frustration while other calflings stayed under the protection of great candle lights that burned everywhere. They screamed in fear and anger while holding up charms and glowing amulets as if to ward away thresh and minion alike.
Futile, of course,
So no, it had not been at all easy reaching out into the mind of the chariot master, and the effort had left them exhausted, which was why that minion really was drinking the urmin piss, slouching out there in plain view gobbling down their dinner. After a good while circling and stalking about in the dark, the same thought occurred to both thresh at the same time, as such things often did.
Why did they not flinch from the light of the carrier beast’s eyes? So bright was it that their own eyestalks should have shriveled and burned black from the intense glare. The two shadow creatures exchanged a significant look. Slowly and as quietly as possible they crept upon the feeding scene. They could sense the fevered terror of nearby calflings, but they paid them no further heed. For one, the filthy minion was dining magnificently on the repast that was rightly theirs. And for two, there was the troubling truth of the second minion, or rather its carcass, brought down by some dark magick a calfling wizard had unleashed before the minion overwhelmed them.
They remembered and looked at the crowd as they emerged slowly, cautiously into the light, all the while keeping an eye on the remaining minion. One calfling wizard-warrior, braver than the rest, stood a little forward of the mewling pack. He had long locks of dark hair and wore white robes cut to display his own tattoos. That gold chain might mean something. The strange headdress with a flat tonguelike protrusion was surely significant. A strange, indecipherable rune stood out on it, , a sign of the human wizard’s magical order. In consulting the memory of the thresh, they found nothing to aid in their considerations. None of the magic amulets or boxes spoke the word of death or gave the sign of flame that attended it. That was a relief. Wizards and amulets seemed in copious abundance in this realm.
That, the thresh agreed, was the only explanation for the vexing problem of how calfling prey had brought down a single minion at all. Best to ponder such things at leisure, however, after eating.
The thresh hopped out of the shadows of the red building and into the road. They stalked around the wreck of another magic chariot, fearful that at any moment a stray shaft of light might fall upon their oozing hides and flay them off in a bright phosphorescent burst of white fire and pain. But even as they crept closer and felt the familiar and disagreeable tingle of strong moonlight on their backs, they sensed no threat from the blazing eyes of the carrier beast or the tall candle pyres that threw their own weak glow over the village ruins. It was as though the chariot beast’s eyes were alight and yet dead at the same time, possessed of none of the malevolent puissance that attended illuminations here in the upper realms.
Perhaps the stories were wrong, they exchanged in silence. Perhaps it had been so long since anything had hunted in the realm of Men that myth and legend had replaced true thinkings and ponderings about the Above.
The thresh crouched closest to the greedy minion suddenly started in a panic when an eyestalk dipped and noticed a thin red point of light lying across its forearm. The opalescent pus that ran from its pores should have ignited. But instead it merely glistened in the cold, harmless fire of the light. The thresh skinned back their thin lipless mouths, exposing rows of serrated teeth as a scheme passed between them in a glimmering of quickthinkings.
One hungry, surly minion might well pull the big thinking head of an unwary thresh clean off. Well, maybe not so clean. But one bloated, bood-drunk fool of a minion, engorged with man meat and dizzy with the marrow spins, was almost certainly not a match for two of the quickest, thinkingest thresh the nest of il-Aron had ever hatched.
Their fangs, glinting in the harmless light, began to move along the gum track in their distended mouths, building up such speed that they soon blurred into a single cutting edge, superhard, razor-sharp, and positively humming as they burst from concealment and fell upon the hapless minion.
In the distance, a strange howling sound filled the air, rushing toward them. Perhaps another creature was feeding tonight.
18
Neither Dave nor Professor Ashbury was tired, but Captain Heath was as good as his word and took himself off to his cot, with Professor Compton worrying at his heels the whole way. Once they dropped out of sight, Dave turned to Ashbury and sketched a formal bow.
“Walk you around the grounds, Prof?” he asked in his best imitation of Good Dave. “A stroll can sometimes clear the head and put a fella in the mood for bed.”
“That sounds like a well-worn family aphorism,” she said.
“A what?”
“A saying.”
“Ah, then you’re right. My grandma used to say it all the time. Believed it, too. She came to live with us after the old man took off. To help out, you know.”
He took the splitting maul along with him, not because he expected any trouble on a platform full of marines and Navy SEALs but because it felt like he should. Like it was his responsibility.
“Lucille,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“B.B. King named all of his guitars Lucille. I’m thinking of naming this baby here. Lucille would work.”
“Why, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I like B.B. King.”
“No, why must you name it?”
Dave paused for a moment. The storms of the last days had broken up, and out here, where they walked around the southern terrace, the sky was densely speckled with twinkling points of light. A day of rain and wind had sucked most of the warmth from the air, and he was glad of the new hoodie he wore, this one a thick gray woolen number from the Naval Academy. The prof was buttoned up inside a Burton ski jacket.
“Would you believe me if I said I had to? That I didn’t have a choice? Just like when I get hungry.”
He held the maul up between them, gripping it with one hand just below the head. Moonlight glinted on the ax blade.
“It’s like … I dunno …”
“You birthed it?”
Dave searched her expression for a sign that she was being sarcastic, but the professor seemed more intrigued than anything.
“No. Not birthed it.”
God, that sounded like something Annie would say: “I birthed these children for you, Dave. I birthed them.”
“No,” he said, starting to walk again. “But it feels like I have to. Like leaving it nameless would be wrong.”
“Okay, then. I suppose you had best name her. Lucille is good. I have an aunt by that name. A genuine 1960s hippie. She was groovy, in the dictionary definition of the word. Beads and everything.”
Dave held the head of Marty’s splitting maul up at eye level. He spoke to it as though it were a child.
“Lucille, I’m glad to make your acquaintance.”
He meant it playfully, but as he addressed the maul, it seemed to grow lighter in his hand. His grip became surer, and a strange, not entirely pleasant shiver ran down his arm and through his body, into the deck beneath his feet.
“Whoa.”
“Is there a problem?” Professor Ashbury asked. She had stopped walking, and her eyes were alive with concern. “Are you okay, Dave? You look like you just got a shock. An actual shock.”
She was right. He was covered in goose bumps. They faded quickly, but he hefted the maul, examining it closely.
Lucille did feel lighter. A hell of a lot lighter.
“Well, that was strange,” he said. “Not the strangest thing to happen today but weird enough.” He let the hammer drop, careful not to hit or even touch Emma with it. “I think she likes her name.”
These are their names, and the dead shall know them well.
He shivered and stepped off, eager to be on the way again.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s a nice terrace out of the wind on the far side of the rig.” They walked in silence for a few minutes, exchanging a few “good evenings” with a squad of marines they passed under the communications shack. Marines, he’d been surprised to discover, were all about good manners. Clouds passed over the moon at one point when they were traversing an unlit walkway. Professor Ashbury found herself unable to proceed in the darkness, but Dave’s night vision adjusted without his even being aware of the change. He noticed her difficulty and reached out a hand, gently taking her by the arm. She gasped.
“It’s cool. I got you,” he said. “Just walk forward.”
He led her across the gantry. Small, shuffling baby steps for her and longer, more confident strides for him. But slowly, like a dancer, so she could keep up.
When they reached the other side, a Coleman lamp spilled a wedge of light onto the deck from around the corner of a prefab unit that had housed crew before it burned.
“Thanks,” she said, genuinely shaken. “I don’t like heights or the dark.”
Dave waited a beat before laughing.
“And so you thought you’d seek your career in outer space?”
“Not exactly. No. It’s just … oh, shut up, you.”
She backhanded him, which didn’t hurt at all. The moon came back out, and they made it to the terrace without any further problems.
“You think there’s anything up there? Really?” Dave asked, pointing at the sky with the maul. The dense steel head blotted out some of the star field. When she answered, her voice was tired. She still sounded a little nervous.
“My scientific skepticism took a beating today. I don’t feel like I know much of anything anymore.”
The boots of a marine patrol clanged on the metal runway above them, fading as the men tromped around to the western side of the platform. The running lights of a couple of USN destroyers blinked in the haze to the south, enforcing the exclusion zone around the Longreach. They bobbed and ducked on the swell churned up by the storm, a chaotic drumbeat that sent waves crashing against the pylons below in an unpredictable, arrhythmic dance.
The pylons and the drill shaft were all being monitored by newly emplaced security cams. Infrared and something called “lamps,” according to Heath, which apparently weren’t lamps at all.
Emmeline, who confessed herself too wired and anxious to sleep, let him lead on their stroll around the platform. Dave was familiar with late nights spent walking off his worries. On any given night this last month he could have chosen to lose sleep to worry about his mounting stack of credit card bills, his unfiled tax returns, how to pay for the boys’ school fees, which were about to double when his wife enrolled them in some new joint—not flying in a couple of top-shelf hookers might have helped with that—how to keep a little back for himself so that Annie’s lawyer boyfriend didn’t get everything, the drill of course, which was operating way outside its specs, the bosses in Houston who’d forced that situation on him, the way his car guzzled coolant at about a hundred times the rate it should have, the way he seemed to really need a drink these days instead of just wanting one, a new sore, which looked just like the old ones, that he’d finally decided to pay attention to about a month after it had appeared on his chest and refused to heal—to all of these worries and more he could add his new ones.
And take at least one away.
The small red sore on his chest, which was almost certainly another basal cell carcinoma, was gone.
Woo fucking hoo.
“Something funny, Dave?”
“Just trying to get some perspective,” he said as they climbed the stairwell on the southwestern corner, stopping on the platform just below the helipad, which afforded them a view all the way over to Thunder Horse. The Longreach’s sister platform had its own small flotilla of coast guard vessels and warships, four of them that he could make out, dancing a complicated waltz with the destroyers currently guarding the Longreach, although how exactly a guided missile destroyer was supposed to guard against something like Urgon Htoth Ur Hunn turning up in your media lounge he wasn’t sure.
Emmeline Ashbury leaned against the safety rail protecting her from a long fall to the waters swirling against the massive concrete pylons beneath them and rubbed her hands together. “Cold,” she said. Dave could feel the chill in the air right enough, but tonight it wasn’t cutting into him the way it might normally.
“Seriously,” he said, looking up at the stars again. “Did you ever expect to find anything up there?”
“Expect? No. A good scholar never expects or anticipates anything. You theorize. You test. You wait for the results. But it’s poor form to expect anything. Publicly at least.”
“So why do it?”
Her eyes lit up with a smile that started at the corner of her mouth, highlighted her cheekbones, and crinkled the corners of her eyes.
“You got me.” She put up her hands in mock surrender. “Guilty of expectations.”
Dave’s return smile was queered by the effort of ignoring the rush of sexual imagery that flowed into his mind’s eye when he saw her impossibly white teeth in the moonlight. Annoyed with himself now, he kept a pleasant expression on his face as he jammed his free hand into a pocket, pretending to warm his fingers when he actually was trying to disguise the return of his boner.
Despite what Annie thought, he wasn’t seventeen years old. He knew the difference between appropriate and inappropriate boners. Turning at an angle to shield himself further, he pretended to be fascinated by the flight of a chopper from the rear deck of one of the destroyers.
“You think they’ll keep you on this gig, Prof? Seeing as how it’s not aliens or anything?”
“For a while. We’re here, we’re cleared, the president will want his own eyes on this. That makes us more useful than someone who might have a clue.”
He snorted at that, the weary response of a guy worn down by years of having other people’s idea of compromise forced on him.
“Yeah. I can see that. All the baby scientists and
your guy Compton, are they all likely to stay on? I don’t think he’s a fan of old Dave.”
It was her turn to snort.
“It’s not you, it’s him. He really didn’t want to come down here. On the other hand, when you are partly responsible for the creation of the Human Terrain Team program, your prospects for giving TED Talks in Seattle are slim indeed. He has a knack for organizing and running things.”
“A bureaucrat,” Dave said.
“By necessity,” she said.
“So he’s the boss?”
“He oversees the office,” Ashbury said. “Micromanages quite a bit when he’s not talking at people. He wouldn’t appreciate being lectured about your monsters.”
Dave almost protested that they weren’t his, but of course they were. Neither of them would be standing here if he hadn’t lost his shit and brained the Hunn when it was plastered on—His train of thought nearly jumped the tracks at that point. When it was drunk on Marty’s blood.
“But isn’t this like the discovery of a lifetime? Monsters among us?” Dave asked. “Plenty of juicy research grants out of this. Better than the global warming scam.”
“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” she said quite severely to that. “It’s unbecoming and unnecessary.” Ashbury seemed to gather herself with a deep breath, which she let out in a heavy sigh. “We’re cleared because we’re locked down by nondisclosure agreements. The whole world could be talking about this tomorrow, but we won’t be allowed to. Not in public.”
The navy chopper passed out of view around the bulk of the other platform at the same moment the faint sound of its rotor chop reached them on a vagary of the breeze. A commercial airliner passed high above, away to the south, probably headed for Little Rock or Memphis. He’d had an app on his iPhone that could have told him just by pointing it at the lights in the sky, but of course that was gone now, too. He hadn’t had a chance to get online and check if it was still alive somewhere. The freshening wind carried the scent of the platform away, replacing the industrial smells of oil and chemicals with clean salt air and brine and traces of rainwater.
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