Africa Zero

by Neal Asher

  How did I read that? She was winding me up simultaneous with gulling her other listeners. In a way I envied them their naivety, but, insane or not, I knew I was dealing with a mind over two thousand years old. A mind like my own, mostly. I am not insane of course.

  “Do your friends believe all this crap from you, then?”

  “The truth is here for them to see.”

  Clever.

  “Do they know I was your husband?”

  “They know I was in the thrall of Satan and that my years on the ice were punishment for it.”

  This was getting me nowhere. I sat there for a moment considering and absently listening to the grisly crunching of my friend at his lunch. What now? I had to do what had to be done.

  “Tell me where you are then, and we will settle this.”

  “It is settled already. You are dead.”

  From a brain netted with superconductor, down nerves of the same substance, the signal was near instantaneous. It took perhaps a few microseconds for the motors in my arm to react. She was slow on the button, or perhaps she hesitated. I like to think it was the latter. The radio left my hand with a sonic crack and was a good fifty metres out over the jungle before it blew. Even so, the flash singed my skin, and the blast knocked me sprawling.

  I stayed down as pieces of burning groundsel and heather tree fell about me. I saw a whole tree tumbling end over end into the abyss of the falls. I raised my head higher for a look around. The jungle burnt, then was partially quenched as water rushed back into the blast site. A wave swept past the island, carrying blackened detritus and stunned fish. I looked to the crocodile and saw him struggle to his feet, snatch up a pair of gory legs, and with his back smoking, slide into the water and swim away. Typical—you know who your friends are when the going gets rough. I stood up and quickly moved to the water’s edge to dunk myself and put out a few of the smouldering bits. As soon as the water touched my shirt it fell to powder. I did not think the guarantee would cover this.

  “I’m dead, am I? We’ll see about that.”

  I picked up the shear and set out parallel to the edge of the falls. I suspected Diana was below. You could not see the falls from here and she had always liked inspiring scenery.

  I crossed three tributaries and a couple of islands before I reached the thick jungle at the side of the falls. A cliff dropped away below me to jungle, dimly visible through the mist and spray. Running up from this jungle, keyed into the mossy rock and projecting out to the falls was a spoon fisherman’s scaffold. The final platform of it, right at the edge of the water, was empty but for a couple of long handled nets. These the spoon fishermen used to scoop fish from the falls, probably the huge barbel that were sometimes seen in these rivers. I removed my final hand covering, dropped it in my pack, and began to descend. The rock was damp and slimy where it was exposed and otherwise covered with moss, but the rock face was rugged, with many steps and ledges holding small pools, in which small red frogs and white tadpoles swam, and descent was not difficult. The falls at this point were stepped as well. Soon I reached the scaffold and dropped down onto the projecting platform. From there I had a look around.

  From the platform I could see no more than a couple of hundred metres through the spray. The falls were a continuous dull thunder and I could hear little but that. I switched to infrared and picked up nothing but the occasional leap of a barbel as it fought its way up against the water, though for what purpose I have no idea, and the spectral shape of a goliath heron as it strode across the pool below. Where were the spoon fishermen? I wondered, and descended from the scaffold by ladder. Once on the ground I thought for a moment I saw a triangular head poke over the edge far above me. Could have been imagination. I followed a path hacked through the jungle to the scaffold.

  The smell of wood smoke gave me fair warning and I was glad my sense of smell was on. It is quite easy to forget things like that. I moved off the path, unhitched the rifle, and continued parallel to it as silently as I could. Soon a clearing and the slow coil of smoke from a fire came into view. I ducked down and crawled the last few metres. There had been fishermen here.

  I suppose with what amounted to almost the entire clergy, of this area, of the Church of the Drowned God, all in one place, they had felt compelled to demonstrate their skills to each other. The four spoon fishermen had been available.

  I stood up and walked out into the clearing. Three of the fishermen were dead. One of them had been flayed from the ankles to the waist. They had nailed his ankles to a tree to suspend him upside down. All very professional—that way up they fainted less often. Another had been branded and cut with hot knives. His eyes had been put out as well. The third looked as if just about every bone in his body had been methodically broken. The fourth one, who was still alive and groaning horribly, had been suspended over the fire with a rope threaded through the bones of his forearms. His feet were dripping like roast pork. There was a savoury smell in the clearing. With the rifle I burnt a hole through his head and severed the rope. He fell into the fire quite dead. I turned to the other three and burnt holes through their heads, just to be sure. Little else remained for me to do there after that. I followed a path that had been cut through the jungle upslope with atomic shears. It was the way I assumed the remaining Protestanti and my beloved had gone. Emotionlessly I vowed, quite simply, that all of them would die.

  By midday I had reached the end of the cut path and come to an area where acacias grew tall and shaded all. The bracken-covered ground was fairly boggy so it was quite easy for me to follow their trail. In some places I could see the imprint of my wife’s feet and matched it against my own. Slightly smaller, but much the same. I reckoned she must be completely without covering. I thought it unlikely she would bother with it. I sometimes wonder why I did.

  The acacias became more sparsely scattered and bracken was displaced by elephant grass. As the temperature rose and the ground became drier I found it increasingly difficult to follow their trail, and I wasted a lot of time following the large tracks of a situtunga antelope, which by rights should have been back in one of the papyrus swamps. Eventually I regained their trail, only now it looked as if their numbers were less. I could not tell if Diana was with them. I considered tracing the trail back to see where they had separated, but decided I had wasted enough time already, and followed the trail before me. This took me out onto savannah, where I lost it at sunset.

  When I finally admitted I could see no traces of the tracks of those I was following I spied an acacia tree and set out towards it with the intention of starting a fire. It would draw someone to me, friend or foe. I was fifty metres from the tree when the figure rose out of the elephant grass before me—dark as the night, a foot taller than me, assegai glinting sunset light. He nearly died in that moment. My hand was a claw arcing towards his stomach to eviscerate him before I recognised him. At the last moment I changed it into a fist and pulled the blow. Kephis still oophed loudly and fell to the ground, his assegai stabbing by my feet.

  “You cretinous idiot! Never do that to me. You nearly died!”

  Clutching at his stomach Kephis rolled his eyes and tried to speak between gasps.

  “... Collector ... Spitfire ... Prot...”

  I squatted down. “Take your time. You can tell me in a minute.”

  He took more than a minute to recover and I worried that I might not have pulled the blow enough. It had been a close thing—a split second to damp the motors and snap my hand shut. I could have tried to miss him, but had he moved to one side in that instant he would have been dead. Was I rationalizing? Or had I allowed the blow to land because I was annoyed he had been able to surprise me? He recovered anyway, hoisted himself into a sitting position, and managed to talk.

  “I. . . did not know it was you, Collector. I came here in search of Protestanti, like you said.”

  “How did you know they were here?”

  “Protestanti have been in our valley. Four of our fishermen were killed. I
come for the vengeance of the Kiphani.”

  I tried to figure that out. How had he found out? How had he arrived here so soon? I asked him.

  “The Pykani Spitfire told us of the fishermen. She was searching for you when she found them. Our village is only four kilometres from here.”

  So much for my sense of direction. The river must curve back on itself. I should have realised that the Kiphani would not have used the river to get below the falls, what with the crocodiles—Did they know about my big friend?—and the falls themselves to block their way. All they did to get there was make a short overland trek.

  “I found your fishermen. The Protestanti are with the Silver One.”

  “I had no intention of going after that one. I know I have no weapons of any effectiveness. I have come to kill Protestanti.”

  “Where is Spitfire now?”

  “She searches for you still.”

  I pulled his assegai from the ground and handed it to him. “Well then, you have not changed my plans much. I intended to light a fire to see who would come.”

  He looked at me dubiously. Lighting campfires at night out on the savannah was something I did and I was unusual in that. People who had blood in their veins did not. The fear was an old one, from when there were GAVs out hunting every night. It was an understandable fear, even now, with only one or two.

  He pulled himself to his feet with a grunt and walked beside me to the acacia. There we collected together old wood and I started a fire with a blast of the handgun. He looked at the device with some suspicion.

  “The fishermen were killed with such a weapon,” he said.

  “I killed them.”

  He nodded his head. “The Protestanti... ?”

  “Had done their usual work. One of the fishermen was still alive. I am not so sure about the other three. You know what the Protestanti do.”

  He bowed his head and squatted by the fire. “My sister, Sipana, was much attracted to the fisherman Mkoni. Spitfire told us they had been the toys of Protestanti then killed with energy weapons. I did not like to think what might have happened to them.”

  “Unless Spitfire tells you, or you look for yourself before the jungle takes them, you will never know. Let it suffice that Protestanti will die for it.”

  I stirred the fire with a stick before continuing. “You will come with me now, I have no doubt, but leave the Silver One to me. Don’t try to kill her. You know you will not be able to. Kill the Protestanti, yes, but even there be careful. They have energy weapons...” I trailed off and looked up into the tree hoping to see a familiar dark shape. There was nothing there. Kephis removed a blanket from his pack and sprawled out on the ground. Then with a polite ‘excuse me’, he switched himself off like a light.

  Half the night passed. I walked round and round the acacia tree picking up the occasional branch, or bone from the skeleton of a waterbuck, which I stumbled across in the grass, and fed them to the fire. As the dark hours slid by I regretted my lack of humanity. With all I had been through just lately, as a human, I would have been extremely tired, and been able to sleep like Kephis. Of course, had I been human I would have been dead and rotting by now. All I really needed at that moment was a bit of a polish and some repairs of my synthiflesh. Thinking on that I seated myself by the fire and opened my pack in search of my hand and foot coverings, and my boots. All I found was one hand covering and a boot. Somewhere along the line I had lost the rest. After checking I found this was all I had lost. I sighed. This, I suspected, is what you get for indulging in water sports with a thirty-foot crocodile. After putting the hand covering on I did another circuit of the tree, picked up the skull of the waterbuck on the way round, and threw it on the fire. Kephis raised his head and looked around, pushed a scattering of embers away from his blanket, then looked at the fire and at me with some annoyance before turning over. It was only a minute or so after when Spitfire flapped to a silent landing on a branch of the tree.

  “Welcome, Spitfire,” I said, rousing Kephis again.

  “Kiphani Kephis has found you, Collector,” she lisped at me.

  “He has that... I am sorry for what happened to Hurricane.”

  I could not see her face up there on the branch but in her voice I detected surprise.

  “You are sorry, Collector? That is ... gratifying. We should not feel pity, though. Hurricane ran out of teeth and is now on the soft flesh of the Grey Thunderer.”

  Religion was rearing its ugly head all over the place nowadays. I remember when mammoth had only been food to the Pykani. The Grey Thunderer was the great grey mammoth in the sky: clouds, the weather, Earth, God, whatever. And running out of teeth? That is how the mammoth die, mostly.

  “I do not feel pity. I just feel angry. The Silver One will die for this as for anything else.”

  Abruptly Spitfire launched herself from the tree and landed by the fire. I was surprised to see that her eyes were dry.

  “For anger or for vengeance’s sake kill the two Protestanti to the north of here. Kill them for the mammoth they butchered for a belly full of meat. Hurricane would prefer that.”

  I stood up. “To the north?” I pointed in what I thought to be the right direction. Spitfire corrected me. “Only two Protestanti, you’re sure?” Spitfire nodded. I looked to Kephis. “Shall we go?” After rolling up his blanket he picked up his assegai, hitched on his Optek and pack, stood, and kicked dirt over the burning skull. We went.

  The pace I set was much the same as the one I had set for Jethro Susan. In a short time I noticed Kephis was slowing to stay with me. I increased the pace and his run became a yard-eating lope. It was difficult to judge if this was easy or not for him.

  “Kephis, you set the pace.”

  He looked at me, nodded. His yard-eating lope developed a spring that made it look easier and soon I was running at about twenty kilometres an hour to keep up with him. I wondered just how fast he could move if he meant it. I was destined to find out.

  part six

  As the sky slowly grew lighter we saw the topaz gleam of a campfire far ahead of us in a small grove of baobab, acacia trees, and acacia thorn scrub, by scattering of worn boulders. That they had lit a campfire showed the confidence they had in their new weapons: misplaced confidence. At a certain distance from the fire Kephis raised his hand and slowed.

  “If we run in from here they will see us,” he said.

  I had to agree. He had to be a better judge of human vision than me. We dropped to the ground and began to crawl through the elephant grass. It took a long time, but eventually we came up behind acacia thorn scrub and were able to view the figures by the fire.

  They were back in their robes now, though they had not abandoned their new weapons. One of them lay asleep with a blanket slung across his legs. The other sat looking into the flames. He had an antiphoton rifle across his legs. He did not look very alert. I turned to Kephis.

  “Simple arrangement. You kill the guard when I start running towards them. I want the other one alive.”

  Kephis nodded and began to unhitch his Optek. I looked at it doubtfully and unhitched my own APW. He shook his head.

  “I know this rifle. With that I might kill them both.” With a gentle push he clicked the tubular magazine into the Optek, wrapped the strap around his arm and took aim. Then he nodded to me. The next instant I was on my feet and running.

  I was through the thorn scrub and halfway to the fire before the guard saw me, and as soon as he did a hole appeared in the centre of his forehead and the back of his head opened like a hairy trapdoor. The sleeping Protestanti jerked awake at the sound of the shot and looked blearily at the mess spattered across his blanket, then at his friend who lay on his back in the dirt, twitching. By the time he got the idea, and was reaching for his flaming sword, I was on him and hoisting him to his feet.

  “Oh God!” he managed as I slapped the shear away.

  “No, not really—most of your brothers think I’m a demon, or the Devil, they can’t see
m to make up their minds,” I said, and holding him by the back of his neck with my uncovered hand, I looked around.

  From the acacia bushes I had not seen it. I had seen the wooden spits across the fire, but I had not seen the source of the meat cooked on them. Standing by the fire now I saw that source. As Kephis came up I dragged the Protestanti over to the mammoth.

  They had hit the mammoth in the side with the APW, then moved in and sliced it into pieces with the atomic shear, just as their adopted mistress had done. Thirty tons of meat, a lake of guts, hundreds of gallons of liver. As Spitfire had said—they killed it for a belly full of meat. I did not consider this too blameworthy. What was the point? As far as I was concerned they were already under a death sentence. I dragged the Protestanti back towards the fire while Kephis took a bag from his backpack. Obviously he hated waste as much as Spitfire, but for different reasons.

  Back by the fire I shoved the Protestanti to the ground. He sat there and rubbed the back of his neck, surreptitiously eyeing the APW and shear where they lay.

  “Forget it,” I said, getting his attention. “You try for them and I’ll break your legs and arms, and we’ll still talk.”

  “You are supposed to be dead,” he said.

  “An ugly rumour put about by my enemies.”

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  He seemed more reasonable than the last fanatic I had questioned— he had not called me demon once, so I saw no reason to go heavy on the threats. I picked up the shear and dropped it in my pack. I picked up the APW and hitched it over my shoulder next to the other one I had acquired. I would give it to Kephis, or perhaps to Spitfire, so she could be like her namesake.

  “I want to know where the Silver One has gone.”

  “I want to live.” He looked at me directly. “What are the chances of that happening?”

  “Answer my question and you’ll find out.”

  He snorted. “You have a reputation, Collector, for leaving bodies behind you like footprints in mud.”