Crouching in preparation, she took a long, steady breath and held it, her eyes fixed on the female.
I will give you a good death.
With a practiced, fluid, motion, she sprang outwards from her position on the rock, twisting in the air so that her feet would hit first. There was a moment in her fall when everything was absolutely quiet. The ha’zek were half-dozing in the shade, their heads down. Sopharndi’s sense of time and awareness of anything else around her was now completely gone, as time slowed and the world shrank to just her and the female.
For the space of just under a second, she didn’t think of Cley.
Then the soles of her feet hit the shoulder of the ha’zek, driving her into the ground, and the world came back to life in a riot of sound and movement.
The rest of the small herd reacted exactly as Sopharndi knew they would. She had targeted an animal on the edge of the group, so—even as the older female shrieked in surprise and pain—every other ha’zek ran in the opposite direction, away from the threat, abandoning their wounded comrade without any hesitation. As well as being predictable, it was the best course of action to ensure they stood the optimum chance of survival. If Sopharndi had been part of a hunting group, the remaining animals now presented a fast-moving target, much harder to hit.
There was a crack as the older female hit the ground and rolled onto her side. Her scream of agony was cut short and she lay still. It was the best result Sopharndi could have hoped for. Either it had hit its head hard enough to lose consciousness, or the shock had caused it to faint. If it was the latter, as Sopharndi suspected, she didn’t have much time to finish the job before the animal woke up.
She took her knife from her belt and knelt by the ha’zek’s head. Before slitting its throat, she offered up the traditional prayer of gratitude to the Singer. At that precise moment, the beast opened its eyes, grunted and—with its good foreleg—kicked Sopharndi in the chest. Sopharndi skidded backward and hit the rocks hard enough to hurt. She ran her fingers across her chest and pushed down on the bones underneath. Bruised, not broken.
Sopharndi and the ha’zek got to their feet at the same time and eyed each other. Then the animal took an experimental step forward, decided the injury to her right foreleg wasn’t painful enough to stop her, and sprinted away to the north in the same direction as the rest of the group.
Sopharndi growled a few choice curses, then made a grab for her spear, which had fallen a few feet away.
She watched the pace of the animal as it tried to escape. The impact may not have broken its leg, but it had done enough damage to significantly affect its ability to run. The beast slowed a few times, limping, before looking back and setting off at another sprint, each time a little slower than the last.
Sopharndi pulled the spear back as she ran. She waited until the ha’zek slowed again, then increased her own speed for a few steps - just long enough to give her throw more momentum.
The sharpened tip of the spear glinted in the sun as it flashed into the sky in a low arc. The beast, startled by Sopharndi’s sudden burst of speed behind her, stumbled into another run, but her pursuer had allowed for this. The point of the spear, spinning as it fell, pierced the skin at the base of its neck. It emitted a pained scream as it fell, then lay twitching, trying to drag itself back upright, blood spurting onto the sand.
Sopharndi sprinted now, not wanting the animal to suffer more than it had to. As she reached the stricken creature, she drew her knife and buried it into the ha’zek’s throat, slicing into its flesh as she pulled it swiftly upward. The scream turned into a wet gargle for a few seconds, then the creature lost consciousness. Its head dropped to the floor, and its death came quickly and quietly.
The journey back was tiring and uncomfortable, but Sopharndi welcomed the distraction from her grief. She had hefted the body of the ha’zek onto her shoulders before making the long hike home, and she had only allowed herself two brief rests. Her muscles were beginning to complain now, and she knew she would feel the ache there for the next few days.
First of all, she had get though the coming night, joining the whole tribe around the fire, while they awaited the return of the one who had made the Journey. Only this time, they all knew there would be no return.
It was late afternoon when she crossed the ford back to the Settlement, nodding at the guard posted there.
She dropped the carcass next to the dwelling of the skinners. Foiyat, an old woman now, but still strong of arm, looked up as Sopharndi approached, but said nothing. The traditional greeting on receiving bounty from the hunt would be, “the Singer blesses you and us,” but Foiyat had sense, and decency enough to remain silent. The old woman and her apprentices would skin the animal expertly, passing on the meat to the food preparers and the skin to the men who made clothes, waterskins, and even toys for children from it. No part of the animal would be wasted. To do so would be an insult to the Singer, who used every part of everything, always.
As she made her way back to her own dwelling, Sopharndi saw Cochta and her supporters speaking in low voices. Cochta looked up and saw her. Sopharndi stared back at the female, almost willing her to say something, taunt her again. Her self-control, she realized, was frayed to breaking point. If Cochta pushed her now, her suppressed rage was such that she would certainly kill her. Such an action outside the law would lead inevitably to her own death, but the trade-off seemed an attractive one at that moment.
Cochta half-smiled as Sopharndi passed, then seemed to think better of it, and drew her group of cronies away. Whatever she had seen in Sopharndi’s expression had been enough to warn her off, but she would be back. Cochta was far from stupid. It was just a pity that the intelligence she shared with her mother, instead of maturing into wisdom, looked certain to continue as slyness. Where Laak was a mediator and a conciliator, Cochta was a plotter and a manipulator.
Sopharndi threw back the hide at the door to her dwelling and stretched out on her sleeping skins. She was done with weeping. She would carry her grief over Cley like an invisible wound, but none would know her pain.
She would sleep for a while, and face the tribe proud, strong, and in control.
Chapter 20
It was like waking from a dream to find himself in a nightmare. Seb had felt weightless, free and inexpressibly joyful as he had willed his consciousness away from his own body. Bok’s instructions had been straightforward enough, and he found himself following them without hesitation.
Just as Bok had warned, it took an effort of will at first to stay focused. The lack of any physical presence gave everything a slightly unreal tinge as he contemplated the new reality being offered to him. In his bodiless state, the artificial nature of the simulation he was entering was obvious, the original fingerprints of the Gyeuk clear on their design. Exactly as the “clockmaker god” deists had posited back on Earth, the Gyeuk had created the perfect conditions for life in their simulation, then stepped away and taken no further role in events. The result was an evolving planetary ecosystem, rich with diversity. Seb was aware of hundreds of thousands of species, from the tiniest insect right up to huge plant-eating mammals, placid and graceful, grazing in rainforests.
The dominant species had evolved from apelike creatures in a similar way to humanity - that much had been specified by the T’hn’uuth when they had requested this Gyeuk Egg. Seb knew he had to will himself to join the human-like creatures on the planet. For a moment, he felt the temptation to stay as he was. He could feel the presence of this entire world within himself, and it took all of his mental strength to narrow his focus and find the species he had promised to join.
He mourned the loss of his all-embracing consciousness as he narrowed his search and channeled his energy into becoming an individual again. Internally, Seb focused on the name of the creature he was to become, the person he would be in the Gyeuk Egg, the name of the one who he hoped would lead his community into a new way of experiencing reality and—in doing so—might save Baiyaan
from exile and allow future species in the universe to develop without the interference of the Rozzers. Seb let the name sound within his mind.
Cley.
At first, there was nothing, and Seb wondered if he had misunderstood in some way, or if his inexperience as a T’hn’uuth meant he wouldn’t be able to inhabit the simulation in the way Bok had promised. There was a slight feeling of alarm as he brought his attention back to focus on the name again. This time, he put all his awareness into the simple sounding of the single syllable.
Cley.
He knew something was different immediately. It was far from a pleasant sensation. It was as if he had been standing in a huge open space and had suddenly become aware that the walls around him weren’t as distant as he’d first imagined. Not only were they closer, but they were closing in on him at speed. Before he could react, a canyon became a space the size of a concert hall, then a school gym, a large room, a bathroom, a corridor, a coffin.
A terrible pressure began building somewhere inside him, demanding relief. He knew he had to do something, but couldn’t find out what, or how, to do it. The pressure became at first uncomfortable, then painful, burning, dangerous. Just as he thought he’d succeeded in doing what Bok had said he must do, Seb felt the real fear of failure and—for the first time in as long as he could remember—the fear of death. The pressure, the pain was intolerable.
Just as he thought he could stand no more, some kind of instinctive muscle memory kicked in. Seb drew a huge breath, his chest heaving and aching.
I have a chest?
He felt oxygen course into his body, filling his lungs, setting his blood singing and his heart thumping.
He was alive. He was here. He had a body.
And he was being dragged into a dark cave by a massive lizard with far too many teeth.
All Seb knew was pain. A lot of pain. For a while, all-consuming pain. The poison released by the venomous fangs at the front of the skimtail’s impressive array of teeth may have stopped signals from Cley’s brain traveling to his limbs, but it had done nothing to prevent pain signals going the other way.
Overwhelmed by sheer agony, lost in physical sensations, it took Seb a few seconds—seconds that felt like minutes—to gain enough mental equilibrium to remember who he was. Cley himself had very little sense of identity. His automatic response to hearing his name was due to the way his mother’s voice sounded when she said it, not because he associated the word with any sense of self.
Seb’s personality stretched tendrils into parts of Cley’s brain that he’d never used, and he retreated without resistance or fear. As Cley became Seb, the agony drained away, and Cley returned to his natural state of passive observer.
Seb nullified the effects of the poison and twisted his head to look at the creature whose jaws were locked onto his forearm. They were more than ten yards inside the cave now, and the darkness was almost impenetrable. Even so, Seb realized he could see more than he would have been able to through human eyes. He could make out the outline of the thing as it dragged him and could even see the back of the cave where more creatures waited. As Seb acknowledged this, he enhanced his vision further, and the scene became as clear as if it had been broad daylight. He had time to wonder if this was because his body was already partly, or fully, that of a World Walker again, or if the fact that this was a simulation meant that a physical solution was unnecessary. If all of this were just ones and zeroes in some vast cosmic computer—however sophisticated—then his manipulation of reality was just a case of tweaking the programming.
The existence of such visceral, immediate pain had come as a shock. The pain was still there, but Seb was able to detach himself from it, observe the synapses firing urgent signals, but move them aside while he worked on something else. His body demanded fight or flight, but he knew the answer was neither.
He looked along his arm at the head of the animal attached to the end of it. Cley’s memory was perfectly functional despite the fact he’d never been able to use its contents to learn anything. So Seb knew the beast was known as a skimtail, and that it was dangerous, although he’d already reached that conclusion without Cley’s help.
The skimtail was shuffling backward, pulling Seb with it. Its head was like a truncated version of a crocodile, with similar bark-like skin and reptilian eyes. The teeth were smaller and sharper than a crocodile’s, designed to quickly penetrate the skin of its prey, the fangs releasing poison and the hooked incisors assuring a firm grip should the victim prove slow to succumb. The body reminded Seb of a Komodo dragon’s, thickset, strong, low to the ground. He wasn’t sure how the skimtail got its name, so he lifted his head in an attempt to get a better look at the rear of the beast. Even as his head moved, the creature’s body twisted, and something flicked across the floor of the cave with incredible speed and smashed into the side of Seb’s skull, leaving a dent which would certainly have resulted in death in anyone else.
Well, that answers that question, anyway.
Seb’s eyes failed for a split second while he reacted to the immediate problem of his staved-in skull. As brain tissue moved into place, shards of bone binding and knitting back together, there was a strange sensation as if his ears had popped, then he could see again. He reviewed what had just happened. The tail that had inflicted such damage had been long and sinewy, able to move with great speed and accuracy. It had looked like an anaconda as it propelled itself across the sand, but instead of a head at the end, it had a hardened solid mass, made up of a similar skin to the crocodile-like head. If that hit you, you stayed hit.
Seb decided to keep his head still rather than draw attention to the fact that he was conscious. No need to give the thing a reason to smack him again. He needed time to adjust to the chaos of this new reality and having his skull repeatedly bludgeoned would probably prove to be somewhat of a distraction. However, he was going to have to do something fast. He didn’t need the evidence of his eyes to know the situation was about to get worse. He could hear and smell the rest of the skimtail’s family as they waited for their unexpected meal. They were only a few yards away.
Seb focused on his arm, starting with the cells closest to the point of the creature’s vicious teeth. He repaired the damage layer by layer and, as he did so, replaced the yielding flesh with something harder, denser, armored.
From the skimtail’s point of view, the result was unprecedented and incomprehensible. The huge creature, top of the predatory pile in the Parched Lands, suddenly found its mouth had lost all grip on its prey. Worse, it couldn’t reattach itself. It was like trying to bite a rock. After staring briefly at the impossible sight of Cley’s undamaged arm, it tried, savagely and with blinding speed, to repeat its earlier success. After a few failed attempts, it paused and stared at the mysteriously changed limb. After a few seconds, it was joined by its mate and three young. The first skimtail took a few paces back and allowed its family to attack the strange thing he had found. They met with no more success than he had.
The five skimtails looked at each other, then back at what was supposed to be dinner. With the pragmatism inherent in nature, they swung round and used their lethal tails to batter their prey into a ready-tenderized mass of meat.
Only, that wasn’t what followed their usually-lethal attack. Tails swished and cracked with the distinctive sound that always sent smaller creatures running for their lives, but they either missed completely, or smacked loudly into the tail of another member of the family. They turned again to look at the result of their actions and found themselves looking at an empty space. There was nothing there. Logic dictated that their prey must—somehow—have escaped, so all five of them made for the mouth of the cave with another surprising lick of speed, considering their mass.
Seb watched them go from his position on the ceiling, four yards above their heads. His fingers and toes had sunk about an inch into the solid rock. He waited until he heard the animals scuttling away before dropping down. He walked to the cave mouth and watch
ed the skimtails searching for him on the slopes below, following his earlier trail. He wasn’t sure how keen their sense of smell was, but he’d temporarily disabled his own odor, his scent mimicking that of his immediate surroundings.
When he looked out from his vantage point, he was momentarily shocked into absolute stillness. He knew he was visiting a place that would seem unfamiliar to him, but the psychic shock delivered by what he saw rendered him incapable of coherent thought for almost a minute.
The stars were different, to start with. No familiar constellations. And, due to the lack of light pollution, utterly clear in their alien positions. A large, orange-tinged moon lit the barren land in front of him. Seb looked at the ground, the other-world dirt squeezing up between his toes. His three, sloth-like toes.
I’ll think about that later.
As he looked at his feet, Seb’s mind sounded a false note, an intimation that something else was completely unfamiliar about what he was seeing. He blinked a few times before he realized what was different. He had a double shadow stretching out from his feet, at about the ten o’clock position on an imaginary clock face. But the moon was in front of him, slightly to the right. Still looking at the floor, he turned and found the shadow behind him. Then he looked up to his left and confirmed his hypothesis. High in the darkling void, another two moons hung there, yellow, smaller than their single sister opposite.
The Unnamed Way (The World Walker Series Book 4) Page 11