The attack on him had separated flesh from bone, but not enough to separate foot from ankle. The crossing impact continued as did the spray of mucus and blood. His attack began to move away from contact. The limb he had chosen as his weapon was damaged and was now moving out of the liquidising cloud. The blow had been glancing; less deep than planned, but it had registered in some way. These par-born were not immune to the world of flesh. As he spun he decided; there would be a second blow with the same damaged limb. He would spin again adding to the momentum just as a dancer pirouettes. A second attack may cost him the limb, but that would only be a temporary loss — it could be re-grown or replaced, and pain was now such a part of his existence that it did not seem possible there could be more. Pain could be borne, but defeat was intolerable. He wanted to live; he wanted to fight and to triumph.
The long dream of motion started again. He was learning how to move in transit, realising that only continuous conscious thought controlled motor movement in this environment. Not an effort anyone would make unless under extreme duress. He had to concentrate hard, feel for every deviation from his will and correct it. Time drifted on and his body moved by degrees until a second blow was hurling itself at the same spot. His head twisted, once again spinning away from and then back towards the fight. He lost sight of it again, knowing that the spin would return him to face the direction of combat; a combat he was re-joining with just a little more understanding than when he entered it. His vision took in the gaping hole in the wall where she had emerged, and inexorably his pivoting peripheral vision began revealing the shape of the two par-born. Images slid in, just hints of light and dark at first then sharper forms in black and white and finally, full colour and full resolution. Light hit his retina and showed a new scene. A winner appeared to be emerging.
In the moments of spin, one of the par-born had returned to near human form. She or it stood over a mass of wet gaseous matter, poised like a fighter in a crouch, knee deep in the organic cloud soup that he assumed was the vanquished. While he prepared his next attack, they had both moved. His kick would make contact with nothing this time. He was free to observe and to try and slow his momentum.
The human form par-born still trailed tiny tendrils from itself; the ghosts of the lances. Each pierced the body in different places, or perhaps emerged from it. It was unclear if they were the remnants of attacks made or received. Each also embedded itself in the liquid matter below, and at every contact point mucus slowly drifted out and away, weightlessly. As he stared, the par-born turned its head and looked at him, the grace and precision of the movement reminding him of how alien it was, how perfectly adapted to this environment. Looking at him it lowered its crouch and reached with one hand into the mess of organic stuff at its feet. The hand entered and probed, and where it did ejaculations of thick liquid matter flew way from the touch. He noticed the crouching figure was also exuding a light mist of droplets that rose from its body and drifted upwards. Surely, this must be a victory for one of them he thought.
Still locked on him, the par-born made some gesture inside the matter. Abruptly the colour of the matter shifted to grey and the screaming noise stopped. As it did much of the matter drifting in air seemed to remember the ship’s gravity and dropped to the floor with a wet splattering sound. He had almost forgotten the noise in his concerted efforts to move. Now it was gone, the silence was shocking. He heard the sound of his own gasping breaths and the low keening noise of pain he had been making. They were suddenly the dominant sounds in the room, and he was shocked by their intensity. He sounded desperate to himself; a reality that was in stark contrast to the mental image of a brave warrior that he had adopted.
He continued to spin, and would not slow fast enough to stay faced towards the scene of victory. His planning and actions must seem painfully obvious to this creature. It would have anticipated his movements in its own time. It would see he was going to continue the decelerating spin and end with his back to it once again. He wondered if it could feel amusement, because his feeble manoeuvres must seem like a joke now; a triumph of hope over transit-physics. And yet, his earlier intervention did seem to have made a difference. It may have been clumsy but it appeared to have tipped the balance. It had distracted one long enough for the other to gain an advantage. At any rate, there was a winner, and now he would know if he had won too.
He sent signals to his body — slow down, stop moving. The intentions were clear but he had not concentrated totally. Part of his mind was distracted, worrying about what would happen next. His muscles received a garbled confusion of orders and he felt himself tipping sideways toward the recliner. He had buckled at the knee. The dream like quality of slow-motion anticipation came again, and he realised that there was another distraction. The guide patch was back and it was demanding his attention. It tugged at his consciousness with a ferocious urgency. Relief flooded in. This was a very good sign. He was no longer isolated. He consented to receiving the communication it channelled.
A presence filled him, “Stop moving” it counselled, accompanying the words with the emotional overtones of a concerned mother. “Return to the couch and prepare to be healed.”
It was the ship he surmised, and then realised, no; it was the par-born. She had found a way into the ship’s communications and into his head.
Another message came “Be calm. I will assist immediately”.
He knew he would not make the couch, so for the second time since the attack started, he ordered his body to slump. He willed it to simply relax and take the one course of action he knew it could complete. His head fell forward as the drop started, and he took in the ragged fringe of flesh that had once been his ankle. Blood pumped from it, pooling on the floor. He was not safe yet. He could die from blood loss and shock. A wave of coldness swept over him. He understood the urgency now. He was badly wounded and in need of immediate medical help.
The first physical contact with her was an oddly familiar embrace. She had moved to catch him. Perfectly positioned in a half-kneeling crouching pose, her arms swept under him and braced his fall, arresting it with the tenderness of a parent lifting an injured child. The masculine and feminine roles of old were perfectly reversed; him swooning and helpless, her powerful and tender. He felt more of his weight taken by her arms, and while he was utterly grateful for her care, he retained an edge of caution. She was after-all an alien being. He was now making physical contact with a life form that had moments ago been a deadly weapon made of something he did not understand in the slightest.
He wondered how she kept this drama out of sight of ship and pilot. And he wondered who sat in the pilot’s chair. His pondering distracted him long enough for her to effortlessly lift and rotate him back into the recliner. He felt no sense of movement as she manoeuvred him. Did she and the things that she touched live in a little world of weightlessness — zero gee sticking to her like air sticking to a diving spider? As if to emphasise the thought she drifted up and in a curling, blossoming gesture moved to a cabinet recess in one wall. Without breaking the arc of movement or reducing speed, she thumbed open the seal, reached inside and extracted a dressing. With it in hand she flipped backwards, completing a three hundred and sixty degree turn that brought her within perfect touching distance of his wounded ankle. She was entrancing. There was not a single wasted movement; every action was plotted to take the perfect path from her location to the next destination. By the time she arrived close to his damaged limb, the dressing was already unpacked and activated. Without hesitation she wrapped it around the exploded flesh of his ankle. As she did so the dressing made contact with the guide patch. It received an instant assessment of his condition and set itself to heal. Bleeding stopped. Pain abated. Breathing slowed. He would survive.
She performed the same aerial ballet to retrieve other items. The eardrum was set to repair and heal, bruises on his body were salved, and a cocktail of drugs were pressed through his skin; some the guide patch did not know and it set about neutrali
sing them. It took the intervention of the par-born to prevent it from rejecting them altogether. There are slow toxins, she explained. The enemy is still trying to kill you from the inside. These counter-toxins will destroy the invaders in your body. Interesting that she said “Your enemy” he thought. It implied that she was not an enemy of those who sought to destroy him. What did she know about his mission? He would not ask for fear of giving away more than he learnt.
The par-born made another gliding tour of the room, collecting an item and returning to drift close to him. She gestured toward it and he recognised it as a breather for use in liquid environments. He reached toward it uncertainly, already feeling groggy from the drugs pumping through him and the microscopic war raging within. She helped him to fasten it over mouth and nose, and at one point the bare flesh of her brushed his cheek. It left a cool dead feeling, like recently deceased flesh. This close, she had a citrus aroma, not entirely unpleasant but unlike anything he had encountered before. He wondered how she felt about being this close to him. He was as alien to her as she was to him; a clumsy intruder in a world he could barely navigate.
The breather activated and he felt the recliner grip him firmly as it began to move. It descended before he could even utter a question or acknowledge her in some way, moving down through the floor and through the hidden internal architecture of the ship. It drifted into a liquid filled tunnel. The liquid was a little denser than water. It was warm and the lighting was low. The liquid enveloped him and the environment conspired with the drugs in his system to comfort and sooth him. Fatigue swept over him and he had time to see an Architue flashing pulses of amber-green concern as he was guided somewhere, drifting into sleep.
He woke violently. The return to wakefulness was greeted by a shocking deep concern. He had slept in transit. He had exposed himself to the danger of incurable mental disorder. After all that had happened he had allowed himself to make a very basic error. His mind and body desperately needed rest, but not here with all the risks it entailed. Reassurance came instantly from the ship sensing his thoughts and feelings. “No, we had already arrived when I allowed you to sleep. We are descending. We have arrived at the world where you leave this vessel. I wish you peace and vitality as you travel on.”
Chapter 6.
He was looking skywards. The ship was losing definition rapidly as it ascended into low, grey cloud, its displacement compressing atmosphere and condensing water. He was standing in a shower of rain that was the ship’s wake, buffeted by a wind that rushed to replace the ship’s mass with atmosphere. The ship was still low enough to reduce light levels, casting its shadow over a swathe of terrain below. The world around him was cold, moist, and dusky. He continued watching, squinting against the steady trickle of precipitation. In the midst of the great departing bulk there was a being he owed his life to. It was tempting to think of the rain sentimentally, as wind-blown tears of farewell.
A gust of cold, damp wind sent a trickle of moisture down his neck, finding a gap in the collar of his suit in the way that only aerial droplets can. He looked down and around him. A few travellers had disembarked with him and were now following a path that spiralled underground and away from the seemingly infinite flat surface area that was cleared, levelled and coated to accommodate ships. There was no sophisticated port architecture in sight here. He let the guide patch confirm the way and he followed the others. All were human. None were dressed in heavy red garments. A few looked native, given away by the bright colours of their clothing and the shifting detailed patterns that played across them.
The designs were typical of this world. Here nature de-saturated colour, and left the hues of life grey and brown and olive. Deprived of it naturally, people made vibrancy and colour for themselves. The passage too had a feeling of crafted cheeriness to it. Lively jangling music greeted the new arrivals and the walls throbbed and strobed with images of a colourful vibrant city beyond the port. He had not been here before, and part of him was curious to understand how people lived in this world of infinite autumn, but he would not be visiting the city. He was driven by the excitement of imminent unification with his people. They were waiting now, only half a world away.
He followed the small gaggle through the bright tunnel, hanging back towards the rear of the group. Occasionally one or two of their number changed course and followed a new path, heading for vehicles that would take them to the city or into a sector of this underground terminal where they could meet safely with sentients breathing other gases or liquids. Eventually he was alone, still striding purposefully through the artificial sights and sounds the people here thought welcoming. He was heading for his vehicle and the other possessions. All were functioning and unharmed he had been assured by the ship. All had been placed as instructed in discrete private storage awaiting his arrival. The guide patch alerted him to a passage and room number. He turned and arrived in front of a door that slid open as he approached. Inside were his possessions, neatly unpacked and arrayed. At the centre — the literal centre-piece — was his vehicle. It looked new, its low purposeful shape gleaming in the artificial light. Even stationary it looked fast and capable; an ergonomic missile of the will; a warrior’s racing toy. He smiled. He was close now and this final part of the journey might be fun.
But before fun came preparation. He dumped his travel pack and popped open several containers. They sighed and hissed, balancing interior pressure with that of this world. Everything seemed in order. There was no residual damage or interference from the attack on board. Nevertheless he spent time examining clothes and equipment. Some of it was new, some of it well travelled. All of it mattered and had to function as intended. The city clothes and apparent gifts were just diversions for over inquisitive officials, or enemies seeking clues. Their journey ended here. The essentials were distributed over several containers. Each element would assemble into the equipment and clothing needed to survive alone for days on this world. He would travel at speed, exposed to the elements, and live off the land; an impossible combination without technology. He would also execute a plan. He had been surprised by his attacker on board the ship, but here there were contingencies. It would be his turn to hunt.
Satisfied that all the parts of his equipment were present and undamaged, he undressed. In a moment he would build a layered defence of clothing and armour around himself that would unite to protect against cold and wet and weapons. First though, he would tend to himself. The dressing on his ankle caught his eye. It had almost disappeared; a sign that it had nearly rebuilt his flesh. The ankle had the appearance of taught shaved skin, and the area healed was noticeably blue in tint like an old tattoo. There was also a little pain now from nerves that had healed rapidly and effectively. The new nerves were learning their trade. New muscle would take longer to build and strengthen, but what was there would do.
The dressing repairing his ear had done its work. A little trickle of liquid seeped out as he tilted his head to one side, clearing the ear of the dressing residue. His body retained the blue-black marks of bruised flesh; those areas were unsightly but functioned. He had been half-killed and returned to health in less time than it took this world to make one revolution. He wondered what impact such medical miracles had on his assessment of risk. Was his attack on the par-born an act of individual bravery or simply the nonchalance of a man from a race that could rebuild shattered bodies? That was a question to consider as he advanced. Careful, he told himself, there are still many ways to die and over-confidence in combat is usually fatal.
The first layer of clothing slipped on easily. It was baggy to start with but sensing life inside, it quickly conformed tightly to his body with a snap-suck noise. This second skin acted just like his own, but with greater power to retain heat, recycle moisture, protect against infection and close over wounds. On top went a similar full length one piece garment. It contained micro reinforcing; millions of tiny structures in the garment reacted to impact and formed a rigid protective lattice with strength far bey
ond that implied by their size. It could keep his bones and flesh intact during a high speed fall or heavy blow. He had not tested the capabilities of this garment, and in his view that was a good thing.
Next he wriggled into the most bulky item — a full military grade combat awareness suit. There was no pretence now; such equipment could not be traded, it had to be supplied. Anyone or anything regarding him furtively would know that this man was not a simple traveler; he was a man preparing for combat. He was a man in the service of those who made fighting their business. Flexible stretch panels linked sections of thin, dense and beautifully laminated armour. In places, warning receiver panels created matt areas against the predominantly iridescent surface. Small streamlined bumps housed medical interventions, and others were loaded with sensors that monitored the environment around him and within him. The suit could sense heat and cold, wet and dry. It could detect threats and feed him data. It could be fine-tuned to drown sensation or amplify it many times. Equipped as he was he could reach into flame and feel nothing or be tickled by the tinniest changes in wind direction or atmospheric pressure. The whole ensemble gave him the appearance of a humanoid insect. It was beautifully crafted. It was a perfect fit. It would protect him from a range of threats he hoped not to encounter.
He continued building, and equipment snicked into place. As it did so it activated itself; each item adding a new capability and linking itself intimately with the combat suit. Discrete weapons declared their operational readiness as they embedded themselves. He was now a living fighting system, capable of inflicting death and injury with a touch, a glance or a thought. The suit asked him for operational commands, and he instructed it to stand-by. It obeyed, settling onto him intimately and making the final connections with nerves, then de-activating weapons. He felt the potential power that all this equipment gave him. ‘Do I stand a little taller’, he wondered? ‘Is the line of my mouth set a little harder? Does my expression and posture convey the warrior’s authority that I feel?’ He laughed to himself. ‘Yes, I am enjoying this. All these things are symbols. They are the icons of men who resist, tools of those who defy, and defiance has been a long time coming.’
The Man Who Talked to Suns Page 6