Middenface was frowning, still not getting it. No one else seemed to either. It occurred to Johnny that Red would have worked it out immediately. It was what made her so useful, and so dangerous.
"But hoo come O'Blarney can speak tae these folks?" Middenface said.
Johnny shrugged. "Being a robot, I guess his mind can work at their pace and talk at it, too. The point is, O'Blarney's got the villagers thinking the chronite can cure them, get them back to normal speed."
One-Eyed Jack looked interested. "And can it?"
Johnny shrugged. "Maybe. The stuff's full of chronodiation. Treated the right way it can alter pretty much anything to do with time. Speed it up, slow it down, twist it round. We thought O'Blarney came to this place to hide out from Delater, but I don't think he's hiding at all. He was after the chronite all along, and now he's got his hands on a pile of the stuff, there's no knowing what he'll do with it."
The others looked at him, horrified. Johnny sympathised - he wasn't too happy at the prospect himself. "O'Blarney's a psychopath," Johnny said. "A stone killer. We can't afford to let him get off-planet with power like that. It's not just about Delater anymore." Several of the other Strontium Dogs put their hands on their chests, as if feeling for the tiny bomb hidden inside their flesh. "O'Blarney's got to be stopped, and we're the only ones who can do it."
"And what aboot Red?" Middenface asked.
Johnny shook his head. "Whatever's happened to her, Red's on her own."
Durham Red was getting tired of being unconscious. More precisely, she was getting tired of the pounding headache and shooting pains behind her eyes that accompanied the end of unconsciousness and the return to wakefulness. She tried to bring up her hands to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun, but didn't seem able to lift them. After a few seconds of useless tugging she realised that they were tied up. As were her legs.
She was spread-eagled on the ground like a rabbit skin left out to dry. She tried to remember what had happened to her, but it was all a blur. The last clear memory she had was of looking over at Johnny... She struggled, to bring some details back, to remember why she had been looking at him, what it was that had attracted her attention, but it was gone. After that, a vague memory of pain, a sudden, unexpected blow - and then nothing.
Gradually, wincing at the pain, she forced her eyes open. Her head had been fixed so that she was staring directly at the sun. Looming over her, dark and featureless, outlined by a glare of light that denied further detail to even Red's sharp eyes, was a human figure. It was sinister, menacing, like a living shadow.
Then the figure spoke, and its voice was high-pitched and young. If Red had to guess, she'd say it belonged to a teenaged girl. The shadow seemed to shrink on itself, falling back into the shape of a human woman no larger than Red herself. "Don't bother trying to escape," the figure said. "I've tied those knots really tight, and even if you do get away I've got a gun pointed at your head."
Red tried to think of something clever, then settled for the obvious. "Who the hell are you?" Her own voice sounded strange to her ears, a dry croak.
"All you need to know is that I'm your rival and that I'm going to win."
"Your rival? For what?" A leaf from the trees above fell onto Red's face, and she blew it off impatiently. It moved a tiny way to settle on her cheek, its touch was infuriatingly light and tickly.
The figure finally stepped out of the light and, after a moment of blindness, Red was able to make it out. She almost laughed. It was only a girl, a young girl, no older than twenty. Her hair was tied up in bunches with little clasps in the shape of tiny birds, and she was wearing a floral-pattered skirt and a light top which hung loosely over the small buds of her breasts. Red felt, somehow, that she'd seen her before, but couldn't imagine where. "For Johnny, of course," the young girl said.
This time Red actually did laugh. "Johnny? Johnny Alpha?"
The young girl's face darkened. "Why are you laughing? Do you think I don't stand a chance with him? Well you're wrong! I love Johnny, and with you gone he'll realise that he loves me too."
Red looked at the girl incredulously, but she seemed to be entirely serious. "I think there's been a misunderstanding," she said eventually. "A big misunderstanding."
"No! You're the one who doesn't understand!" she girl said heatedly. "Johnny's mine. He and I are meant to be together." And then her expression seemed to soften, taking on one almost of pity. "I don't blame you for wanting him, I don't even hate you. But I want Johnny for myself and I'm not prepared to share him."
Red breathed an internal sigh of relief. If this was all it was about - hard though it was to believe - then it would be easily sorted out. "Sweetheart," she said, "you can have him."
The girl look stunned. "Really?"
"Really. You're more than welcome to him."
But then the girl's face scrunched up in an expression of almost comical suspicion.
"No. You're just trying to trick me. You're trying to get me to release you so you can kill me while I've slowed myself down to talk to you, and then you'll have Johnny all to yourself."
"I'm not-" Red began to protest.
But the girl interrupted. "It's no good. I've made up my mind. Anyway, you wouldn't be able to find Johnny again. I carried you quite a few kilometres on my horse to get here." Red heard the animal in question whinny softly somewhere behind her and she realised that the air, and her clothing, was indeed infused with a musty equine smell. "You'd never find your way back," the girl continued. "And besides," her expression hardened, "you're not going to have the chance."
Red's patience, never a plentiful commodity, ran dry. "Listen, you crazy bitch! Johnny and me are nothing to each other. I don't know why you think you love him, or how you think he loves you, but if he does it's got nothing to do with me!" She tugged against her bonds, but all she accomplished was to tighten the leather cords painfully around her wrists.
"Don't lie to me!" the girl shouted. "I know there's something going on with you and him!"
"How? How the hell can you know that? I mean, have you tried asking Johnny?"
The girl shook her head angrily. "I don't need to ask him - I saw the way he looked at you." Red opened her mouth to argue further, but the girl shouted over her. "Shut up! Just shut up! There's nothing you can say that's going to save you."
For the first time, Red felt an icy stab of fear. "Save me?" she asked. "Save me from what?"
"From dying, of course," the girl said.
"You're going to kill me? Over Johnny?" Red couldn't believe the words even as she said them. She'd often thought Johnny might be the death of her, but never like this. It would have been a tiny bit more bearable, she thought, if Johnny actually had loved her. If she weren't about to die for absolutely nothing. But she quashed that idea as soon as she thought it, Johnny had no feelings for her at all, and this girl must be soft in the head to think otherwise.
The girl was wearing a suddenly guilty expression. It didn't look like the kind of guilt that someone contemplating murder ought to be feeling. She looked, instead, like a little girl who'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "No, I'm not going to kill you - that isn't allowed."
Red felt a rush of relief.
"The fire ants I've staked you out over will do that," the girl continued. "They've been hibernating for the winter, but they should be waking up right about now."
Red gazed into her eyes, desperately hoping she wasn't serious. The lingering guilt in the girl's face convinced her she meant every word.
"You don't have to do this, you know," she said, making a huge effort to soften her voice, fill it with understanding. "It won't help you get Johnny. I'm not his lover - you're wrong about that - but I am his friend, and if he thinks you've killed me then he'll never forgive you."
The girl frowned in thought, then smiled. "That's OK, there's no way he'll ever find out. Sorry," she said at Red's expression, "I really can't talk anymore, the chronite's about to wear off. Must dash
, I've got a mission to run."
As she spoke, her movements begun to speed up, her voice become faster, more high-pitched. A second later, she'd disappeared, the only evidence that she'd ever been there the faint sound of a horse, galloping into the distance.
Some distance away, in the direction the hoof beats had vanished, a group of Strontium Dogs was struggling uphill through the scorching mid-morning sun. Behind them, several kilometres now, a blue lake was glittering in the sunlight. But the bounty hunters weren't looking at that. Their attention was focussed forward and upward, towards the mountain whose peak they would have to ascend before the end of the day.
Their leader, a dark-haired, handsome man with the strangest white eyes, was also looking to left and right, bright gaze boring into the lightly wooded landscape around him, as if willing it to give up its secrets, to tell him where his enemy was hiding. But it revealed nothing, and as he and his companions left the grassy plain behind them, ever-thickening vegetation hid more and more from view.
The trees here weren't like the jungle, dripping with moisture and crawling with life. This was a far hardier forest, towering conifers whose needles crunched beneath their feet and whose lower branches were hung with dead-brown growth so that the trees seemed to be wearing their own shrouds.
One of the mutants, a red-faced man whose entire head was covered in tumour-like growths, looked around him unlovingly, as if he found the trees personally offensive. Perhaps they reminded him of a home he'd rather remained forgotten. Beside him, a large, blonde-haired woman seemed happier, perhaps glad of the shade. Her white face and thick neck were already painted a livid red with sunburn. As she walked, she chatted merrily with the man beside her, and he smiled and chatted back.
Behind them walked the one member of the group who looked like he should be entirely at home here, his brown-furred skin and prehensile tail eminently suited to an arboreal environment. But his eyes seemed to be gazing inward, not outward, gazing on an inner landscape which was giving him no pleasure. He didn't speak to the dark-haired woman beside him, nor did she appear to want him to. The ruggedly handsome man beside her seemed to welcome conversation even less. All three were clearly lost in their own dark thoughts.
At the back of the group, a one-eyed man was also alone with his thoughts, but seemed to be enjoying them far more than the others. Occasionally he'd look at his companions, and his good blue eye would narrow, considering, as if sizing them up.
Only their leader, the blank-eyed mutant with the careworn face, seemed to notice when a breeze stirred the forest around him. His head snapped round and his hand dropped to the blaster at his belt, but after a second he relaxed and continued moving forward.
This was a pity. Because if he had continued looking he might have spotted her as she appeared, the indistinct figure of a young woman. Like a mirage, she blinked out of existence a second late. But before she did, she appeared to press something, some small package, into one of his travelling companion's hands.
Without looking at it, the mutant tucked the gift carefully away and carried on walking.
15 / RIVER DEEP
Red struggled against her bonds, struggled so hard that the rough leather sawed through her wrists and drew blood. Any other time, the smell would have set her stomach rumbling with hunger but the fear knotting it left no room for that.
Damn it, that stupid bitch! Red wasn't sure if she was berating herself or her captor. Even in her panic, she knew that she had handled it badly, that she had antagonised the girl more, and that if she had somehow found the right thing to say she might have been able to talk her way to freedom.
Too late now. She struggled one final, convulsive time against her bonds and then slumped back against the ground, defeated. Her head was resting sideways, giving her a good view of the surroundings. In other circumstances, she might have thought it pretty, idyllic even. The girl had tied her in the centre of a small clearing in a forest. It was covered in short, emerald green grass, broken up in places by a darker, patchier moss. As Red watched, a host of multi-coloured wildflowers grew and blossomed in the meadow. She supposed she ought at least to be grateful that the girl hadn't tied her down over any fast-growing plants. At least she would avoid the Sloth's fate. But then, she thought, the Sloth's death had been quick, and probably painless. Red didn't know what a fire ant was, but if the name was any clue then her end was likely to be neither quick nor pleasant.
As soon as she thought about the ants, Red imagined she could feel them, crawling under her clothes, skittering over her skin, searching out her most vulnerable parts, her tender flesh... She felt a bubble of panic building in her chest and ruthlessly squashed it. She couldn't afford to panic. She had to think.
But what was there to think about? She'd pretty much run out of options, and to top it all off there was a sharp stone digging right into the small of her back, so she wasn't just going to die in agony, she was going to die in discomfort too. It was only as she thought this that it occurred to her to wonder how sharp exactly the stone was. Whether, for example, it might be sharp enough to cut through leather. And it was only as she thought this that she became consciously aware of a noise she'd been subconsciously registering for some time. It was a strange high-pitched sound, like a million tiny imps gossiping. Or like the sound of a million fire ants waking up and getting ready to go out and get themselves some food.
With every ounce of energy she possessed, she began shifting her body, moving it backwards and forwards the short distance her bonds would allow, desperately trying to work the lump of stone beneath her out of the ground, to push it towards her hand. For an agonising few moments, it remained in place, stubbornly refusing to give up its place in the earth. Then she felt it move. Redoubling her efforts, she hunched her body and released, hunched and released. She knew she must look ridiculous but she didn't care, it was working. Gradually, the rock was making its way over to where she wanted it. In a few more seconds she'd have it in her hand and then freedom really might be possible.
Except that she didn't have a few more seconds. She didn't even have one. Because a few centimetres from her nose, a red-brown volcano of bodies was erupting from a hole in the ground. They must have been moving slowly at first, sluggish, maybe, with the end of their hibernation, because she actually got a good look at one of them. It was only a few centimetres in length, but half of that length was taken up with a pair of razor-sharp pincers. A nip from one of them might hurt a little. A bite from a hundred, a thousand...
As she thought it, she felt the first agonising nips on the skin of her hands, and she knew that there really was nothing she could do.
The walk was less of a stroll in the woods now. Imperceptibly, the foothills had given way to the mountains proper and now with every step Middenface was conscious of fighting against gravity, which would have liked nothing better than to drag him all the way back to the jungle from which he'd started less than a day ago. It was a tiring thought.
The trees had thinned out as the soil became too poor and rocky to support much growth. The granite bones of the earth were on show here, poking through the ground in tall, jagged outcroppings. The air was thinner, making breathing harder and seeing easier. The sun's rays were scalding, spearing down at them through only a thin layer of atmosphere. In the shadows a sudden and sharp chill descended.
And then there was the river. Middenface guessed it must be one of the tributaries which fed into the great lake, now far below them. They had seen one, a kilometre or so from their campsite, flowing sedately into the blue water. There was nothing sedate about this one. As susceptible to the pull of gravity as Middenface himself, it was roaring and dancing down the mountain faster than his eyes could really see. It looked like a great, white rushing blur. Proving, Middenface supposed, that with enough patience and effort you can achieve anything, it had cut a deep ravine in the surface of the granite. The river itself was at least ten metres wide and God knew how deep. Jumping it or fording it would be a
bsolutely impossible. It was too far even for Johnny's short-range teleporter to work.
So now, at Middenface's suggestion, they were trying to bridge it. Johnny had found them a suitable tree on the banks of the ravine and a few well-placed blaster shots had felled it. But carrying it down the steep bank was proving far harder work and they still had a good hundred metres to haul it to the river. Middenface was already regretting offering to take the front. All the weight was, unsurprisingly, pointing downwards, and only by bracing his feet in the soft mud of the riverbank and pushing backwards with all his might was Middenface able to stop himself being flung into the river. He cursed now as the massive tree-trunk jerked forward suddenly, and his feet skidded out from under him.
He fell to his knees, and the top of the tree plunged into the ground, missing his legs by about two centimetres. "Ye daft gowks, hold on will ye!"
"We're trying!" Johnny gritted from behind him.
"Well try harder!" Middenface snapped.
He looked back to see that the rest of the Stronts had also fallen to their knees as the tree trunk crashed to the ground. Only Johnny was still on his feet, apparently bearing half the load single-handedly. The Blimp was taking the rest of the weight on her ample stomach where she had fallen beneath the trunk. Middenface hurriedly scrambled to his feet and picked the end up again, heaving it back into the air with a joint-popping effort. After a moment, Woman Man joined him, his bristly face set in a grimace of effort. One-Eyed Jack, at the very back, also regained his footing, and heaved the thick trunk onto one of his shoulders.
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