She took a moment to orient herself. Yes, the clearing was directly behind her, she hadn’t strayed off course. And that meant the crash site was … that way. She pressed on.
I could almost enjoy this, Nikki thought a few minutes later. Even under the sheltering blanket of the foliage, it was bright enough to see, while the cover diminished the heat. The air was moist and heavy-feeling, but not uncomfortably so, and the going underfoot was relatively easy. From time to time, beams of sunlight — thin, like spears of golden brilliance — would penetrate the foliage, to lance down and pinpoint something on the ground below: a blood-red flower, a shrub of brilliant green, a fallen branch. As long as she didn’t let her tension overwhelm her, Nikki found the jungle beautiful — alien, but lovely nonetheless. She checked her watch. Another two minutes or so and she’d be at the crash site …
What was that? Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a flicker of movement. Suddenly chilled despite the warmth of the air, she spun around.
Nothing, just some leaves moving on a tree branch. Probably hit by a big drop of water falling from above, she told herself. She forced herself to relax again, breathed deeply until her heartrate had dropped back to some semblance of normal. She began to walk again, more slowly now, looking around her. I’m getting paranoid again, she chided herself.
But paranoia is a tool, another part of her mind recalled Toshikazu’s words. For a moment, her vision blurred with unshed tears.
Crack! Loud as a rifle shot, a branch broke behind her. She spun again.
Again nothing. No movement, nothing out of the ordinary.
The sound had shaken her a lot worse than the barely-glimpsed movement. Anything could have stirred the leaves: falling water like she thought, a bird, even a slight breeze. But branches don’t just break for no reason.
There’s something out there. The realization was like ice water in her veins. Something … the same something that pulled down the helicopter? In suddenly growing panic, she turned slowly right the way around, her eyes — bugged wide, she knew — scanning. She couldn’t see anything …
Yes. Another quick flash of movement, again in her peripheral vision. Something had moved behind the
thick trunk of a tree to her right, something had ducked back into cover. She wanted to run, back to the clearing, back to the outpost. Back to safety.
But which way was the outpost? Her fear, and her turning around had clouded her sense of direction. Which way? For one of the first times in her life, she suddenly knew she was lost. She could run, but she might well head away from the outpost, deeper into the jungle.
Her breathing was fast, shallow. With a supreme effort, she slowed her breathing, forcing herself to fill her lungs with air.
The additional oxygen seemed to help. She felt her panic abating a little …
Then came another noise, close behind her. A rustle of leaves, the crack of another breaking branch. She spun again, so fast that the pistol holster thudded against her hip.
The pistol. She drew the weapon. It was cool and hard in her hands, its weight reassuring. She moved her left thumb up the grip, felt the little lever that Dei had said was the safety. She flicked it off, applied pressure to the trigger.
The sighting laser came to light, its ruby aiming dot
drifting over the leaves of a thick bush a couple of yards away. That was where the sounds had come from, she knew — the bush was still moving. There’s something hiding in the bush! What was it?
She squeezed the trigger harder, but not quite hard enough to fire the weapon. Not yet. It was suddenly tempting to shoot, to empty the pistol’s clip into the bush.
But what if it’s the security guards? she suddenly asked herself. The stockade gate had been open; didn’t that mean that there might be security people in the jungle? They might have heard her moving through the undergrowth, might have thought she was something dangerous. Maybe they were stalking her, carefully moving close enough so they could identify her. She couldn’t shoot; she could be killing one of the people who could take her back to the outpost. She removed her finger from the trigger. The spot of laser light vanished.
“Hello?” she called quietly, tentatively. “It’s Nikki Carlson …”
Something’s behind me! The thought — she’d never know where it came from — struck with the impact of blow. She spun, bringing the pistol up.
There was a figure moving toward her, less than ten feet away. A human figure …
No, a human figure made horrible, somehow twisted out of true. Its shoulders were broad, its chest sunken. Its skin was pale, the color of bleached bones, and it hung away from the thing’s face in flaps. Beneath the skin she could see its skull. It looked like a decaying corpse.
But decaying corpses don’t move. It reached out toward her with rotting hands.
She screamed in horror, brought the pistol to bear. The laser aiming spot bloomed in the center of its chest. She pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. The gun didn’t fire. I didn’t cock it, she realized in terror.
The thing lurched forward. Nikki screamed again, turned and fled.
As if her cry had been a signal, more of the horrors burst from the undergrowth around her, reaching for her with claw-tipped fingers.
They were all around her; she was surrounded …
No! There was a gap in the rough circle. She sprinted toward it.
A hand, as hard and cold as stone, grabbed her shoulder, its fingers sinking into her flesh. The thing spun her around.
Wailing in panic, she brought her pistol around. Not as a firearm, now, but as a club. With all her strength, she brought the barrel down on the creature’s wrist, heard the dry crack of bones breaking.
The grip didn’t loosen. Again she struck with the pistol, again, and again. And then the hand fell away.
They were almost on her, shambling forward like things from nightmare. But the gap was still there. She spun away from them, lowered her head and ran.
Sharp talons clawed her back, ripping through her light shirt and the skin beneath. The sudden flash of pain goaded her to even greater speed.
She ran, faster than she’d ever run before in her life. Dodging around trees, bursting through the undergrowth. She still had enough presence of mind to keep her knees high, to minimize the risk of tripping over something unseen on the jungle floor.
They were after her, she could hear them crashing through the vegetation behind her. But how fast can they run? They’d seemed like slow, shambling creatures. How could they catch her?
But of course she couldn’t slow down to check, couldn’t even risk a glance over her shoulder. Maybe they were quicker than they appeared, maybe they could run if they had to, run as fast as she could or even faster. She could imagine them gaining on her, reaching out with carrion-smelling hands, reaching for her back, her throat… She forced her legs to pump even faster, ignored the burning in her lungs, the frenzied tatoo of her heart. Run, Nikki, she told herself, run for your life.
She had no idea how long the mad pursuit went on, no clue of what direction she was running. She was aware of nothing but the branches lashing at her face, the low shrubs catching at her legs, threatening to send her flying. She might as well have been deaf; her ears were filled with the triphammer pounding of her own heart. Her lungs were on fire. Sudden pain drove into her side like a knife-thrust. But still she forced herself on.
Are they still there? Are they close? her mind babbled. What will it feel like to die?
The jungle lightened ahead, sunlight beaming down. A clearing. The outpost clearing? Somewhere, deep inside, she found the energy for one final burst of speed.
And then she was out into the clearing. Not the outpost clearing, she saw with sick horror, not even the crash site. Just a small, almost-circular natural clearing in the jungle.
There were figures ahead …
Her left foot struck something — a root? — and she was pitching forward. She struck the ground hard eno
ugh to drive the air from her lungs. For a moment she lay there, gasping into the wet ground. Her chest felt like it would burst at any moment.
Something touched her shoulder.
Galvanized, as though it was a cattle-prod that touched her, she rolled over with a shout. Even though she knew it was useless, she brought the pistol to bear. The laser dot flared in the center of a face.
Not the rotting, tattered face of one of her pursuers. This face was human, pale-skinned like her, with dark hair and a tidy, close-trimmed beard.
She looked up into the man’s concerned expression. And then, without warning, the darkness took her.
Chapter Eight
Consciousness returned slowly. For an un-measurable time, Nikki floated in a kind of dream world. She was comfortable and warm, free of pain, free of fear. She was surrounded by the muted murmur of conversation, a familiar, comforting sound. Gradually, like a diver surfacing from the black depths of the ocean, she rose toward awareness.
Nightmares, she thought muzzily. The nightmares came back. The dream had seemed so real, she mused, her expedition into the jungle, and the pursuit by the things. So real … but it’s over now. The thought was infinitely reassuring. I’m safe. I’m awake.
With a gentle smile, she opened her eyes.
And thought she’d been plunged back into the dream. She wasn’t in her quarters in the outpost, in her own bed. She was … somewhere else.
Still in the jungle, in a dark clearing. Instead of her own familiar ceiling, the night sky of Sumatra — of Orrorsh — was above her, studded with its panoply of brilliant stars. The murmur of voices — which she’d assumed was the last vestige of her nightmare — fell silent, and for the first time she heard the crackling of a fire.
“She’s awake,” a male voice said quietly — in English, she was surprised to realize. She rolled over toward the voice, looked around her.
She was lying on a folding camp bed of some kind, she saw, out under the sky in the middle of the clearing into which she’d plunged. (Then it wasn’t a dream, she understood.) A fire was burning a dozen feet away, a small camp fire. Its flickering, ruddy light illuminated six figures sitting or squatting around it. They were looking at her, she saw, their expressions quizzical. Near her, further from the fire than her cot, were several tents — simple, canvas things supported by poles and guy-ropes.
One of the figures rose to his feet, took a step toward Nikki. She shied back a little, suddenly terrified.
The man saw her reaction and stopped. He held his hands out from his side, showing that they were empty. “I mean you no harm,” he said in precise English. He smiled, his teeth gleaming in the firelight, framed by his neat beard and mustache.
Nikki recognized him. She’d last seen that face hovering over her as she lay on the jungle floor, the targeting spot of her pistol quivering on his forehead.
“May I approach you?” he asked.
Nikki hesitated, then nodded. There wasn’t much she could do to stop him if he wanted to, anyway. What could she do? Jump up and run again, into the night-black jungle? She couldn’t do that again.
The man came over to her, squatted down beside the camp bed. His smile was warm, reassuring.
He was wearing clothes that were both strange and familiar, she noted. Tan pants bloused over the top of military-looking boots, laced tight. A matching tan jacket, buttoned across his chest. Beneath the color of the jacket, she could see a white shirt and a brown tie crossed with diagonal blue lines. A tie ? In the jungle? It look her a moment to realize why the outfit looked familiar. She’d seen men dressed this way in movies and in books. This was the way explorers had dressed at the end of the Nineteenth Century.
At first she guessed he was about forty, maybe even older. But then she realized it was just his beard that made him look that age. When she looked closer at his eyes — hazel, she thought — she revised her estimate downward. He’s probably about my age, she judged.
“Are you well?” the man asked her, concern obvious in his voice. “You fell hard, and when you fainted 1 was afraid you were injured.”
Nikki ran a quick inventory of the sensations her body was feeding her. Her left ankle—the one that had caught on the root or whatever it was — throbbed dully, and her legs were leaden, as if she’d run a marathon. But otherwiseshe didn’t feel too bad. Scared, of course, and confused, but physically she was in one piece.
“I’m okay,” she told him. She saw his eyebrows rise as if he didn’t understand her. “I’m well,” she amended.
“Good.” He shifted into a more comfortable position. “My name is Peter Hollingforth,” he said. “May I ask yours?” Again, his voice was precise, with an accent it took her a moment to place. He’s British, she realized. But his accent wasn’t quite like that of the few English people she’d met. It was more pronounced, almost the quintessence of Britishness.
“Nikki Carlson,” she said.
His eyebrows rose again. “Nikki?” he repeated. “Would that be short for Nicola?”
“It’s not short for anything. Just Nikki.”
She glanced over at the other men around the fire. One of them was dressed much the same as Hollingforth. The other four, though, were wearing uniforms. Black trousers tucked into calf-high black boots. Bright scarlet jackets with stiff-looking black colors. Two rows of brass buttons down the chests caught the firelight. Soldiers? she wondered. But what army still wears uniforms like that?
“Who are you?” she asked. “I mean, what are you doing here?”
“We are a scientific expedition,” Hollingforth explained, “authorized under the Victorian Majestic Charter. The leader is Professor Roderick Black. I have the honor of serving as his assistant.”
That has to be the older man wearing the “explorer” clothes, Nikki thought. “And the … the others?”
“Members of the 15th Regiment of the Gallic Legion,” Hollingforth said with a touch of pride. “Sergeant MacHeath and the men of his section.”
The 15th Regiment of the Gallic Legion? And the—what did he call it? — the Victorian Majestic Charter? Nikki felt as though she’d been dropped into the middle of a play — a historical costume drama — and somebody had neglected to give her the script. Just what the hell’s going on here?
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“Well, that would be, um, something of a long story,” Hollingforth said with a chuckle. “For the moment, suffice it to say that our expedition started in New London. What the natives used to call Padang,” he added in explanation. “New London has been my home since I came to Majestic.”
Nikki’s mind stumbled over his last word. Majestic? Oh, that’s right — that’s what people call Sumatra now.
“And yourself, Miss Carlson?” he asked politely. “How might you come to be here?”
She hesitated, then thought, What harm would it do to tell him? “I came here from Japan,” she said. “I’m an American, but I was working in Tokyo. Nagara Corporation sent me here.” She could tell from the way his eyebrows rose again that something about what she’d said puzzled him. “I’m on a scientific expedition, too,” she concluded.
“Are you really?” he asked in pleased surprise. “What would be your goal? May one ask?”
His convoluted choice of words was amusing, Nikki found, but his interest seemed sincere and guileless. “I don’t really know, that’s the strange thing,” she explained. “They didn’t tell me why we’re here.” She shrugged. “I’m not one of the key team, I just help out with support.”
“Are you a secretary, then?”
“No,” she said sharply, “I’m not a secretary. I’m a genetic analyst, and a damn good one.”
Hollingforth raised his hands as if to ward her off. “My apologies,” he said hastily, “I meant no insult, I assure you, Miss Carlson. If I gave offense …”
She had to smile at his earnestness. “It’s okay,” she told him. He looks like he’s from turn-of-the-century England, she thought, h
e talks like it, and he thinks like it.
“What is it that you do, then?” he inquired a little hesitantly. “May one ask?”
“One may,” she answered demurely, suppressing a chuckle. “I perform genetic analysis on samples sent to me by the main science group,” she explained. “I and my team break the sample down and chemically analyze it, elucidating its primary, secondary and tertiary structure.” She could see from Hollingforth’s expression that he hardly understood a thing she was saying. But he’s too polite to admit it, she thought wryly. Or maybe too embarrassed to admit his ignorance to a woman.
“Where do they come from, these samples you analyze?” the young man asked.
“I’m not quite sure,” Nikki said, “they don’t tell me. I’m pretty sure they synthesize them.”
Hollingforth’s eyes widened. “But you say these samples are genetic material?”
“Sometimes.”
“These scientists, then — they can synthesize the material of heredity?”
Nikki was surprised at the man’s reaction. “Of course,” she told him.
“How?”
She launched into a description of how DNA strands can be cleaved using restriction enzymes, then the fragments — in the form of plasmids — inserted into viral vectors… But then she stopped short. Hollingforth was staring at her blankly, obviously understanding no more than if she’d suddenly broken into gibberish. “The techniques are quite complex,” she concluded.
“So it would seem.” Hollingforth’s mouth quirked in an ironic smile. Then he shook his head again in amazement. “To synthesize the material of heredity itself,” he mused. “I’ve heard it said that this is possible. There are some natives in New London who say that the news from the rest of the world used to discuss this, and other wonders.” He shrugged. “Of course, few people save for me ever troubled to speak to the natives, and those who did never believed more than one word in five.”
Nigel Findley Page 21