I saw now that it was.
Once this water would have sparkled. It may even have boasted fish. The only life I saw now were oversized barnacles clinging to the walls like cankers.
The canal wouldn’t take long to swim, but I didn’t need a chemical analysis to know swimming was suicide. Already my nose and eyes streamed. Whatever the canal was excreting into the air was pure toxin. It burnt the back of my throat like a flaming shot of alcohol.
Only there wasn’t any fire - just a thin, almost dissipated trail of smoke low in the sky.
I felt a tingle. The ultralight? I’d damaged it?
I checked it against my compass bearing. It read a steady east. I was heading in the right direction.
‘Now how do I get across?’ I asked no one in particular.
The thick, unnatural colours swirled sluggishly along the surface of the water. I recognised the brilliant blue of copper sulphate. Pure and deadly. There must have been a copper smelter nearby in the early days.
I backed off a few metres and looked around.
The other side lurked across the short distance like malice. It must had been home to the wealthier of the villa dwellers - separated by this thin strip of water that signified status amongst the low-set high-density living.
Loser hunched on the bank like he was pondering world decline, indifferent to the smell and my dilemma.
Keeping a small cushion of distance from the water and its stink, I trudged west looking for an overpass. Several klicks and too many snakes later, I found an old monorail bridge - or what had been. Hard to say if it’d been torn down deliberately or eroded by the toxins flowing beneath it. Only the uprights remained: rusty spiked pylons, eaten at the base by the acidic water.
There must be another way, I reasoned. Human traffic always maps a path.
But there was no human traffic this way. Not any more.
Even the snakes kept a respectable distance from this water. I watched a couple slither out from buildings and veer sharply away as they reached some invisible mark near the canal banks.
Whatever they knew, I wished they’d share it.
As the dark flowed in, I peered at the other side of the canal with frustration. The landscape smudged. No life.
I crouched down in exhaustion and pain and let my eyes drift. In the distance, a luminescent arc of neons caught my eye.
I wanted to go home, tell the Cabal I’d lost Tulu. That Dis was closed to tourists.
But someone was living over there.
Deeper in.
I knew.
I also knew that Tulu had nearly killed Sto and had kidnapped Mei. She was collecting shamans, which meant the karadji. Going home was premature.
I walked back to where I’d left Loser for no reason other than I didn’t know what else to do. All the way back I stayed close to the river, using the breather mask the ferals had given me, and risking the use of my headband light to stop me falling into the noxious soup.
I found him in the same place, still and dejected as a grave-robbed statue. He uttered a series of yowls, which sounded like the last seconds of a catfight, and I wondered if Loser’s hybrid heritage had caused a crosswire in his dograt brain.
I dropped down next to him, leaning against what might have been a mooring post. Mask over my face, Gurkha in one hand, pistol in the other; blood on my clothes.
Glamour puss, Parrish! I was glad I’d left Merry 3# with Teece. I couldn’t stand the bagging.
I turned my mind to my problem. How to get across? I needed a raft but my stomach ached so hard with hunger I couldn’t think. Next time I went on a walking holiday in the enchanted jungle I’d remember to pack lunch.
I worried over a whole lot of things while the night got old and the bungarra caarked threats and paced up and down the borderline.
In the early light it relinquished its pacing vigil and dragged a small, empty palm pod down to the water in its jaws. It leapt aboard and let the sluggish current drift it across in a diagonal to the other side, where it jumped off and shook its scarred feet dry.
I’d considered the pod shells already and dismissed the idea, but the bungarra’s jaunt got me scratching around until I found several that were large enough to sit in. I dragged them to the canal and one by one tested their buoyancy. A couple sank, some stayed afloat. I put my pack and armfuls of berries in the largest one until I thought it approximated my weight. It bobbed low and uncertainly but stayed afloat. After a few minutes I emptied it.
With more than serious doubt at my sanity, I climbed in. If I didn’t breathe or move too much, it might not even leak. Loser took the cue and scrambled in after me. Immediately we began to sink. I tossed him out on to the bank and the canoe steadied again.
I couldn’t take him with me and make it across. The realisation was kind of a relief.
Loser didn’t agree. He stumbled determinedly back.
I used the ghurka to push off out of his reach and endured terrifying minutes as it rocked, and Loser howled with distress.
Water seeped in one end, puddling closer and closer to my feet. I shrank into the smallest area possible and paddled frantically with a smaller pod shell, trying not to watch it eating its way toward me.
A bit longer . . . just a bit longer . . .
When the pod bumped into the bank on the other side, I gave a terror-fueled leap up and out of it. As I fell on to the bank, the front end sank below the water line, followed quickly by the rest.
I ran a couple of steps to the cover of a villa before adrenalin poisoning took over. In a vine-crossed doorway, away from the putrid water, hands over my ears to block out Loser’s aggrieved coughs I fell asleep, too exhausted to slap the bugs.
A foul, burnt taste woke me. It coated my teeth and nose, and rubbed at my skin.
I forced myself up and on. The rainforest strip didn’t extend to this side and I walked into a more normal villascape.
Did I say normal?
If the night noises of the Villas Rosa spooked me, then there were no words to describe what I heard during that day. Inhuman crackling, sizzling, popping sounds, and grinding. Every hair on my body stood rigid enough to snap in a puff of wind.
I crept from one alley to another, seeking the broadest paths, trying to sketch a mind map. The villas here were double the size of those in the outer Tert - luxurious in their time.
Now each one carried a deformity of some kind. A cankerous lump attached to a roof, fleshy wall-length scars, crucifix window frames rough with sharp spikes. Every klick or so a glistening tower shape erupted from a crater in the pavement.
The pavements had altered as well. They’d buckled and warped in places and often led directly into blank walls, like someone had plucked the path up and shifted it, or plonked the building down there at random.
I felt like I’d crossed into another ribbon of existence.
Grubby and wasted as the outer Tert was, families lived there - noisy, abrasive groups of humans that bothered with each other in some peculiar way.
Where I joumeyed now there were no cooking smells, no family arguments, no crying babies and no showy street sex. After a while punters appeared on the pavements as if they’d been hiding, checking me out. But something was wrong. Something vital.
Derangement seeped from them. Some chattered and laughed to private dialogues; others emanated the heavy silence of contained venom. In every imaginable way, I was deep, deep, deep in the nutter zone.
I worked my way close to one of the mysterious towers and discovered they were bundles of fibre optics torn from underground and frozen in a glass haystack. Some pulsed with dying light, others jutted upward in blackened shards, leftovers of a one-time communication system that threaded underneath the villas. Something had eaten away the plas casings and forced the bundles upward in a series of bizarre tower-like structures.
Compelled, I reached out to touch one and couldn’t pull my hand away. A sting to my fingers, and my blood sprayed finely out from the tip. It pulsed
up the length of the nearest fibre and glowed into life.
Heart racing, I pulled a knife and forced it between my finger and the glass, shaving my skin to do it.
Suddenly I was free and the fibre dimmed to a faint red glow.
I became aware of people around me and shoved my hand in my pocket. Pushing past them, I kept on, averting my eyes from their half-faces and bodies. Not like the Pets, but something less wholesome. Like living tissue grafted on to dead bodies. Conjoined creatures - only one of them perceptibly human.
Or was it me? Had the Eskaalim distorted my world so totally I could no longer see reality? Hadn’t I sworn on the Wombat’s name I’d shoot myself before I got this crazy?
I started sneaking glimpses of my reflection in windows. I seemed sane and real. Short hair, off-centre nose, caved cheek, tense mouth, eyes stark with dread.
My paranoia - the need to keep stopping and checking my reflection - scored me several hits from behind. I swivelled each time, chasing the source, and found only blank expressions and bent heads. I choked back my retaliation instinct, ignoring the barely heard sniggers.
Forget your reflection, Parrish! Keep moving!
Clots of people jostled past now. Hands felt me, some sexually, some searching for more than that. My hands clamped rigid to the Lugers.
Humidity seemed worse here, like the season had catapulted ahead into greasy summer heat.
My thoughts got spacier by the heartbeat. Not helped by the knowledge that someone was tailing me. Someone with more than a passing interest.
I rubbed the prickling on my neck and, glancing around, shifted the weight of my pack. If a direct attack came I planned to make my retaliation as quiet as possible.
I slipped a wire from my crop top and held it loosely.
Three days of walking, little sleep, nervous bites of grub too long ago, and a near miss as dograt chow was turning Parrish into a paranoid grrl.
And that was without the claw marks and aching ribs.
I felt like everyone around me was breathing in time, waiting for the attack, lusting after some type of spectacle, looking for leftovers - the crumbs of a violent death.
Sweat made my hands slippery. I slowed down, tilting on to the balls of my feet, pretending to look into the doorway of a bar. Quick and quiet was what I wanted. No fuss. Leave the pickings for the nutters.
As the hand reached for my shoulder, I let the wire uncoil. I swung around, whipping it in neat loops around the attacker’s wrist. My fist came up hard the other side, connecting with meat and bone.
‘Parr—’
Loyl. My fist kissed his chin but I pulled the sting from the punch. I released the wire, but I’d already cut him.
‘Stay still,’ I hissed. With shaking fingers I unwound it. His wrist bled but I’d missed the artery. ‘Quick, bind it before someone decides you smell good enough to eat,’ I panted. ‘How did you find me this time?’
Last time we’d been together in a strange place he’d duped me into carrying a location finder.
‘You leave a trail a mile wide, Parrish. It wasn’t a case of how I’d find you - just when. Following you is like slipstreaming the end of the world.’
‘Don’t joke about the end of the world in this place.’
His eyes were bloodshot. ‘Don’t you ever sleep?’
‘Only when I have to. You should know better than to sneak up on me,’ I growled.
Despite myself, I was pleased to see him. Even Loyl passed for a friend, right here, right now.
‘Didn’t think you’d want me calling out to you,’ he said, wrapping his hand with something from his pack.
‘Next time . . . approach me from the front.’
He gave a curt shake of his head. ‘Next time . . . look first.’
I stared at him. ‘Are you kidding? Look around.’
‘Yeah,’ he said softly. ‘And the place is crawling with wild-tek.’ He gave me the benefit of a strained smile.
Any smile from Loyl was like a present. White teeth, ivory skin, black-juice eyes. How did anyone stay looking so beautiful living in a joint like this? It had to be unnatural. Or a sin.
His skull had a prickling shadow of hair now, the baldness all but gone. His fatigues were crumpled but unstained - not like mine. Only the barely concealed zealot’s glitter in his eyes kept me from hugging him.
‘Wild-tek?’ I shivered. I’d heard talk of it but figured it was romance, like the mystique around the Cabal. The closest thing I could relate it to were the Pets. But they were an intentional creation. One person’s design.
This place looked like a bio-warfare. ‘You mean nanos?’
‘Nuh. Nanos are mostly used for building and repairing. Viva’s literally crawling with that kinda thing. That’s why it’s so damn clean,’ he said.
Viva! I flashed on the broad, immaculate streets and the shining cityscape, the fragrant smell.
‘This stuff’s something to do with the pollution in the soil. Molecular changes. Things have gotten creepier and uglier.’ He took a deep breath. ‘There used to be some underground tek manufacturing here, in amongst all the other industrial ’gineering stuff, back before the villas ever got built. Maybe the two got crazy together . . .’ He was as fascinated and freaked-out as me, talking quickly, eyes flicking around. I wasn’t used to him being afraid.
‘You knew about this place? What it was like?’ I asked.
‘Rumours. Never had any reason to find out until now.’
I gave him a sharp look. ‘How did you cross the canal?’
He shrugged. ‘My grandfather used to make boats from palm pods. Simple enough.’
Naturally.
He clamped his prosthetic hand under my elbow to steer me.
I winced.
‘What hurts?’
I shrugged him off. ‘Had a small dispute a bungarra.’
He laughed. ‘I saw him. We used to get them out at Bitter Plains. Mean and mammoth, some of them.’
‘Did you catch the canrat convention back there?’
We’d fallen automatically into a walk, like we knew where we were going. Standing still got you into trouble. I’d learnt that much.
‘I heard the noise. Figured something was up so I skirted wide of it. Never had any problems.’
Is this what it was like for saints? I wondered. Wandering through hell - oblivious and untouchable.
‘Why? You run into some trouble?’ He twisted my wrist, forcing me to walk closer to him.
I pulled it back. ‘Yeah, I ran into some trouble.’
I didn’t bother to tell him how I got out of it. It sounded too weird. I also wasn’t going to share anything I didn’t have to with my fiercest competitor.
Brain flash! That’s what he was. A competitor.
Putting him in a mental box felt a whole lot better. I could deal with competitor where lover, saint and hero of the people burned holes in my psyche.
We were competing for the right to fashion our own vision of the future in The Tert. Right now that meant who found out what was going down in crazy town.
It occurred to me that he might have seen me in trouble back there among the canrats. Perhaps he’d even left me for dead. I thought I could read Loyl some of the time, but predict him, never.
‘You know where you’re going?’ he asked.
‘Do you?’ I countered.
‘Mind if I follow you?’
I shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’
We walked on in tenuous accord, shoulder to shoulder, like rival cops into a riot.
‘Leesa Tulu’s mine, Loyl,’ I whispered.
He grabbed my sore shoulder. ‘No.’
Despite the pain, my body hair warped at his touch. I suddenly wanted him. Desire rose in the back of my throat like vomit. How could he do this to me? How could anyone do it to me? In a place full of nutters, my head loopy with visions, and some serious shit to deal with, how could I want him so bad?
I shook his hand off. ‘You’re a zealo
t, Loyl. Zealots don’t help people, they use them.’
He smiled. ‘You see, Parrish, you and I have so much in common.’
Not much was said after that - apart from agreeing to stop and share a watch so we could both get some sleep.
I tried to fathom the scene around me. Bars, food stalls, smoking and shooting dens - regular things that weren’t regular. For starters, each stall dished out the same food. Pies and something I took for coffee.
One lit doorway we passed advertised a garish pink ‘kleen beds and air con’ neon and a bunch of warty growths hung under the eaves.
It had to be better than a night out on the pavement.
Didn’t it?
We stepped into the entrance hall: a guest lounge on one side, a small desk unit on the other. Unlit stairs promised bedrooms.
Underfoot the floor crunched. An albino girl/thing perched on a stool behind the desk, her bare legs adhered, literally, to the plas of her seat.
‘Howsitgoin’?’ Her voice was sweet like sugar-switch, but her accent was broad - archaic almost. ‘We gotta beeee-uutiful room for youse.’
Australians had lost their twang sixty-odd years ago, along with their nationality, when refugees from southern Europe, forced away from their own contaminated territories, flooded their borders. The refugees tried Afreeka first, but the Freekans had their perimeter tied up tight with some advanced defence. Their conscience didn’t blink at a horde of white Euros in trouble.
Couldn’t say I blamed them.
Down here, we’d always thought the man-flood would come from the islands to the north, Indo and Malayland and the rest. But they’d got smart and cleaned up their countries.
Although I’d never known the Australia of before, the albino’s accent flooded me with curious nostalgia. Like genetic coding.
Loyl-me-Daac, on the other hand, seemed excited by it. I hunted his face for traces of fanaticism. No way was I sharing watch with this guy when he flipsided into his I’m-on-a-mission-for-myself persona.
‘What happened to your skin?’ he asked her.
I elbowed him hard, figuring personal questions were not the way to a stay unnoticed around here.
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