Africa Zero

by Neal Asher

  And were they scars round his skull? It occurred to me that their experiments had not been much of a success. This one was not exactly avoiding humans. I leant over the side of the canoe.

  “Come closer, Crocky.”

  Obligingly he drew up close to the canoe. He definitely had scars on his head. I reached down and scratched him behind the eyes with my metal hand and he looked at me as if I had gone a bit far. Then he sank out of sight and was gone.

  I waited for a time, expecting the canoe to get bitten in half. It did not happen, so I opened up my pack and got out my sampling kit, then with exceeding care scraped the tissue from the sharp ends of my fingers into a stasis bottle. I had gained something out of this trip after all. With the broken half of my paddle I continued on.

  The river wound along its crazy course and I followed it, thinking crazy thoughts about sentient crocodiles being more pleasant company than many people I had known. The sun settled above the jungle to be swallowed in mist and the temperature began to drop. I had a fair idea that I would be reaching the falls in darkness, but it was a little while off yet. At the Iron Falls waited my one true love. I could have allowed myself a bitter laugh at that, but I had lost the urge to laugh in any manner back at the Kiphani village. I should have killed her centuries ago as a matter of mercy. Now I was angry and wanted to kill her out of vengeance. But what vengeance would there be if she wanted to die? I wondered about that now. Did she want to die? Or did she simply want to kill me? Perhaps I had got it all wrong. Whether she wanted to die or not was a matter for conjecture. Whether she wanted me to die or not was arguable as well. It was definite she wanted to cause me pain before either happened. Full of bitter thoughts and with my eyes slowly adjusting to the loss of light I paddled on. I was momentarily blinded by the nacreous purple flash that cut the front end off the canoe.

  I sat there holding my broken paddle in the sinking canoe, trying to put two and two together and coming up with crocodile every time. Then it clicked—antiphoton weapon. I grabbed my pack and hit the water. I sank like a man made of ceramal. Above me, another flash. The canoe was floating cinders, receding.

  The river was at least twenty metres deep at that point. I hit the bottom and sank up to my neck in loose silt. Darkness was a cloud of muck. I switched to infrared. That helped me see where the fish were but did not tell me which direction to go. The shots had come from the left bank. Where was the left bank? I decided to walk across the current. Which way was it flowing? I walked anyway, slowed to a caricature of a mime by the silt, bumping into rocks underneath it. This was going to take ages. As a stumbled along I switched from infrared to ultraviolet. That was even worse. I went to normal vision for a while but still could see nothing but clouds of silt. Then I went back to infrared and wished I had not. Being snapped up by a thirty-foot red, green and sapphire blue crocodile is a psychedelic experience.

  He hit the silt in a red explosion and his jaws closed on me like two studded doors. I thought then I was about to lose all my synthi-flesh, but the jaws halted when they had a grip on me, and he heaved me out of the silt and swam for the surface. Stupid animal was trying to save me, yet he was taking me up into plain view of the marksman, or rather, markswoman. I thought then about what she must want. Did she really want me to kill her? Or did she want to kill me before she did away with herself? Those shots had been close. They could have been fatal. Perhaps she was just not too handy with an antiphoton rifle.

  The crocodile brought me to the surface and swam for the bank. I could not see much. I was in white water most of the time. Then we were into papyrus swamp and he was clumping along. Then dry-ground below groundsels, on which he dropped me, and stood over me, looking for all the world like a dog that has just retrieved a stick for its owner. I shuffled back from him and stood up to get my bearings. I was on the opposite bank from which the shot had come. I looked at him and shook my head.

  “Y’know, I wanted that bank really.” I pointed. “Shit!”

  His jaws closed on me like a trap. In a moment we were back in the papyrus swamp, white water, then reeds and a steep bank leading up under more groundsels. He dropped me again. Again I shuffled back and stood up.

  “Many thanks,” I said, stepping out of his reach. “This is exactly where I want to be.”

  My crocodile saviour gave what I can only describe as a shrug, turned away from me, and with a fair turn of speed headed back down the bank, into the papyrus, and gone. Speculatively I pushed a finger through a hole in my shirt, synthiflesh, and right through to the metal. There were four such across my chest and the fronts of my legs. He had not been so gentle that time. I wondered what he thought I was, and if I had been made of real flesh, how long I would have lasted in his mouth. The temptation might have been too much. I hitched my pack up onto my shoulder and looked around. Now to find the bitch who had vandalized Sipana’s canoe. Obligingly there was a flash from down the bank to my right and vegetation turned to an inferno on the opposite bank. I headed for the source.

  As before it was difficult going forcing my way through the foliage at the river bank and I wondered what my chances were of coming on Diana unannounced, for I was sure it was she who was shooting at me. It seemed that the fates were with me. Every few minutes or so another shot would light up the banks and I was able to work out my position in relation to hers. At one point, when I was very close to the river climbing over a tangled fall of groundsels, the strike of the invisible beam of antiphotons was directly opposite me and I saw a tree burst into flaming fragments. It was then that I realised she was shooting at any movement on the bank. Her last hit had turned a colobus monkey into a rain of ash. That annoyed me.

  Soon I saw I was very close and tried to move more quietly. Then I saw her, only it was not. It was a him. A man in long white robes stood on a rocky promontory poking out from the bank. Immediately I knew what he was. It would seem the Rainman was not the first Diana had spoken to after her centuries long silence. The man standing out there with the APW was what was called a Sheta Protestanti, devil priest in any language. They were the New Fundamentalists or Puritans, worshippers of the Old God before the ice. But they called him the Drowned God—Jesu Christos who had been tied to a chair and drowned for our sins by John Batiste. Men not adverse to forcing their beliefs on others by any methods. They considered their ability to cause suffering a mark of their sanctity. It was an old old story. The robes this one wore were called ‘pain patterned’. The cloth was stained by being wrapped around the bodies of unbelievers before the poor unfortunates were crushed to death with stones. Around his neck depended a small wooden chair on a string. After a moment’s consideration I decided Diana could not have chosen any better allies. They hated me and what I represented, and I would kill any of them without compunction. I picked up a sodden section of tree trunk and moved in.

  His concentration on the further bank was such that he did not hear me until I was climbing onto the back of the promontory. He turned, firing as he did so and setting the jungle afire behind me and to my left. I threw the sodden tree trunk at him and it hit him across the chest and arms before the fire reached me. With a gasp he fell back into the river and I quickly dived after. I caught hold of him at the edge of the rock as he was trying to crawl out and hoist the APW up before him at the same time. I picked him up by the scruff, snapped the strap of the APW and pulled it away from him. He did not seem to be able to use his arms anyway.

  “There’s a few things I want to ask you,” I said.

  All he managed to do was gasp and look at me in confusion. I dropped him to the ground then sat down nearby while he recovered. It took him quite a while. Eventually he looked up and spat blood on the rock before me.

  “Demon!” he said and looked down, panting, waiting.

  “It might well be that I won’t kill you,” I said. “Just answer a few questions for me and I’ll let you go.”

  “I will tell you nothing.”

  “Fine, do you think you will stil
l have that attitude after I’ve broken a few of your fingers, then your arms . . . oh, sorry, arm. I see I’ve already done for the other one.”

  I stepped forwards. He shuffled back up onto his knees.

  “I fear you not, agent of Satan.”

  “Tell me simply, did the Silver One put you up to this?”

  “I will tell you nothing. Do you think I do not know pain?”

  “Oh yes, you know how to inflict it. Do you know how to suffer it, though?” I reached down and grabbed his broken arm before he could pull away. I twisted it a bit so the rough ends of bone grated. He screamed with full voice. It should not really have hurt all that much as he was still in shock and overloaded with adrenaline. I desisted.

  “Now, will you answer my question?”

  “Oh God the Father of Christos send to your servant...” He rambled on and on. I could see that if I allowed this to continue he would work himself into a frenzy and I would get nowhere. I grabbed him by his broken arm and dragged him to the edge of the promontory. He yelled, stopped his mumbo jumbo and hung there, sobbing. I took my JMCC handgun out and shot it into the water. There was a blinding purple flash and a jet of steam and boiling water five metres high. A lot of it fell on my captive. He yelled some more.

  “Crocky!” I called. “Oh Crocky!”

  My friend was not long in coming. Perhaps he had been hanging around in the hope of more fish. There was a hell of a swirl then there he was with his nose resting on the rock. He looked at me with those unsettling eyes of his and as he swished his tail from side to side to maintain his position it was as if he was wagging it. I wondered just how much Alsatian had gone into his genes.

  “You are a demon! You’re a demon!” He said it like he believed it this time. He was staring at the crocodile bug-eyed.

  “Call me what you like. Your opinions and the opinions of your kind are irrelevant to me. Now, it was a simple question, and she probably wants me to know anyway. Did the Silver One put you up to this?”

  There was a long pause, then he nodded his head.

  “That’s better. She supplied you with the rifle?” He nodded his head again. I wondered where she had cached them and how many more there were. He would not know. “Okay, now, she told the Rainman of the Kiphani she would be awaiting me at the Iron Falls. What else awaits me there?”

  “I don’t know, demon.” It seemed the name had become an honorific.

  “Are there more of your kind there, similarly armed?”

  He was silent. I dragged him closer to the edge.

  “Oh God no! Please, no!”

  “Your god isn’t here to answer your pleas. There’s only one god here and he’s a river god and he has teeth over ten centimetres long. Answer my question.”

  “There are ten!” He said quickly. “Four of them have antilight rifles and the others have flaming swords.”

  Flaming swords?

  “Describe to me these flaming swords.”

  “Their blades-are invisible . . . They only flame when they cut and they will cut a water oak ... From the handles a shielded wire—”

  “Okay, okay, no need to go on. I know what they are.”

  As he would say—Jesu Christos! Well, it seemed evident Diana wanted me dead and diced. The flaming swords he described were atomic shears with a shear length of up to three metres. I thought back to those cleanly severed tusks on the first dead mammoth I had found. I now knew what she had been killing them with. An atomic shear could cut through anything. It was as simple as that.

  “So, awaiting me are five of your fellows thusly armed and the Silver One. Does she have any weapons?”

  He looked at me. “She has none. She has need of none. She will bring you down, man-of-metal.” Obviously he had regained his confidence.

  “It may have escaped your notice but there is a striking similarity between us.”

  “She does not hold beasts higher than men. She knows God made beasts for men to use in the fields, to hunt for food, to use as they see fit.”

  “Quite right, I just don’t want them to be driven to extinction. Such would be man’s loss.”

  “God would not permit it.”

  Why the hell had I allowed him to draw me in? I shook him and nodded my head to the crocodile who was still waiting patiently.

  “Men are beasts and as a species their future is assured. I think we can afford to lose a few. Would you like to pray?”

  “You promised!”

  “I’m a demon, remember?”

  His scream lasted until he hit the water. He sank then came up quickly, trying to keep his head above water, yelling all the time. Crocky backed off the rock like a submarine pulling out of dock, and sank. The priest was losing his battle to stay afloat when suddenly he shot up into the air in the crocodile’s jaws. Those jaws crunched him a couple of times, probably to get the taste, and his yelling ceased. I think it swallowed him under water, because when it came to the rock again to see if I had more fish to throw it looked decidedly smug. There went the other bit about not eating people. I had suspected as much. This was one smart crocodile. He knew which side his bread was buttered on. If that is the correct way of putting it.

  I did not feel bad about what I had done. The priest had been a man who had probably tortured many people to death in the name of a god whose doctrines were supposed to be of peace and love, and respect for life. I went out onto the rock, picked up his rifle, and turned away. I felt nothing at all.

  Back in the jungle, and I was soon struggling on through darkness with my vision switched to infrared. My crocodile was keeping pace with me, which worried me slightly. I did not want him to get hurt. He could only go as far as the falls though.

  All night I pushed on through the jungle. Had I still been in the canoe I would have reached my destination long before. I suspected I would not be there before dawn now. A shame really, as I would have had a definite advantage at night. I could, of course, have waited for the next night, but no, I wanted this over, ended.

  I was right. As the mist glowed white and became pink-tinged to the east I heard the low grumbling of the Iron Falls. Soon I found myself cutting through tributaries where the river branched before the drop. The light increased and I moved more warily. At about this time I lost my companion. He had probably gone off in a huff because I had not fed him for a few hours. Soon, after crossing a tributary with a flow which near swept me away, I clambered onto a triangular island of rock abutting the edge of the falls. It seemed a good place to reconnoitre from. Somebody else had thought so too.

  It was only luck I saw them before they saw me. Or perhaps it was because I was covered from head to foot in mud. I quickly crouched down behind some heather bushes and watched them from there. There were two of them, changed out of their robes and into dark brown fatigues. One of them had an APW, the other an atomic shear. The one with the shear was speaking into a small chrome egg. I cleaned the mud out of my ears and juiced up my hearing.

  “—but brother Jeman has not reported.”

  The voice which replied was a woman’s. I knew it of old. It was the voice of my wife. I was surprised at how much it affected me to hear it again. In my mind she suddenly changed, from a metallic object of vengeance, back into a woman with long dark hair, angular aesthetic features, and hazel eyes that seemed to radiate warmth.

  “Brother Jeman was to remain concealed and report his position. It was a mistake to arm him,” she said.

  “He will be punished, Lady.”

  Her reply was flat, emotionless. Reality kicked me in the teeth. I realised it had been so before. I just had not wanted to hear.

  “I think, perhaps, he has been. Stay alert and continue to report. God be with you,” she said.

  I tried to shake of the effects of her voice and consider what had been said. So Jeman had kept that from me? Lot of good it had done him. Behind the bushes I unhitched brother Jeman’s rifle, knocked down the power and narrowed the beam. Then I stood up, burnt the legs off the
one with the shear and the radio, and cut the other one in half. They fell like unstrung puppets.

  The one with the radio and minus the legs lay on the ground completely still. The one I had cut in half was making bleating sounds and jerking about all over the place, at least his top half was. I ran over to them, into the smoke and porklike smell of cooked meat. While the halfman managed to get himself tangled up in his own scorched intestines I burnt a hole through his forehead. He was abruptly still. The other one looked at me as if he knew me but could not quite remember my name. I kicked his rifle aside and searched him. He looked down while I was searching and saw what he was lacking. Shortly I had the chrome egg. He looked at me again and there was recognition of who I was and what his situation was. He opened his mouth to scream. I burnt a hole through his palate and put out his brain. There: done. I picked up the shear and dropped it into my trouser pocket, then I kicked the rifle into the river. As I turned to move away from that scene I saw a friend climbing up onto the island and grinning at me. I left him to his lunch and moved to a nearby rock.

  “Diana, dearest, oh light of my life.”

  Her reply was immediate. “You have killed brother Michael and brother Kanga.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you are a servant of Satan and will burn in Hell. My only regret is I cannot bring you physical pain to redeem you.”

  She had found God? I thought it unlikely—more likely she was speaking like this because the others were listening in.

  “There isn’t that much pain in the world.”

  “Regrettable.”

  “Do you want to die, my dearest?”

  “It is not my destiny to die. I am God’s servant and the fulfilment of prophecy. Once you have been sent back to whatever nether hell spawned you I will lead The Brethren against the families and work God’s will on this planet.”