Dante

by Guy Haley

  Moving carefully so as not to set the roamer rocking, he crept to the neatly arranged cupboards. Space in the roamer was limited. Everything had its place. He opened his father’s strongbox, tensed and ready for the man to come awake in outrage, but he didn’t even stir. From inside, Luis took one of three strings of lead coins. The guilt of this action bit at him deeply. He tried to drive it off by telling himself his father wouldn’t need so much money with him gone. Nothing could be less true.

  Luis paused by the door, taking one last look around the roamer’s interior. It was cramped, barely enough room for two people. His bed curled around the rear wall of the driver’s cabin, his father’s at the back of the vehicle. Their sleeping places defined the whole of their lives. There was not enough space between for an adult to stand with their arms spread.

  He looked at the man under the blanket for too long. Now he was on the edge of departure, he could not tear himself away.

  ‘Goodbye, da,’ he whispered to himself. He bowed to their household shrine. The alcove lamp had burned out, and the crude clay figures of the Emperor and Sanguinius looked on with quizzical expressions from the shadows. He took up his staff of rare wood, a gift from his mother and most prized possession.

  As an afterthought, he unhooked his father’s goggles from their peg and placed them around his neck.

  For once, the door opened quietly. He pushed it to, and moved down the steps to the ground. The air was cool and crisp. He sneaked through the camp, heading for Orrini’s roamer. He skirted around pools of fire and lamplight. A shout rang out from one roamer, and he froze, fearing detection, but the shout had not been for him. Laughter followed it, and he stole away.

  The lights were off inside Orrini’s roamer. Luis went to the dustbike fastened to the rear. He looked about himself. The bike was strapped high up. There was no quiet way to get it down; once it was off, he would have to flee immediately. Clenching his teeth, he undid one buckle. The roamer bounced on its suspension as the bike slipped. With tentative hands he released the second. The bike thumped to the ground. He froze, expecting shouts at any moment. None came.

  Luis levered the bike up, got on, placed the staff across the handlebars and started the motor.

  ‘Hey! Hey!’ Orrini was on the way back to his roamer from a neighbour’s, half drunk. ‘Hey! Someone’s stealing my ride!’

  ‘Sorry, Orrini!’ shouted Luis over his shoulder. He opened the throttle. The bike was made for a grown man, and the power of it was an unwelcome surprise that almost ended Luis’ adventure as soon as it started. He slewed about as the duster shot out towards the edge of the camp. He had just wrestled it back under control when the shocked face of a sentry leapt out at him. Luis swore, swerved around him and then was away. Shouts and engine noise dwindled behind him. He was off before anyone could catch him. Sounds of pursuit petered out. Orrini’s duster was the fastest in the clan, and he trusted no one would want to follow him out into the deep waste.

  He drove by the light of Baal and Baalind until the camp was well behind him, then turned on the headlights. The lumens had cost Orrini a half-year’s salt wage, bought from a technothurge in Kemrender, and cut a dazzling line across the flats.

  Night beckoned. On the other side was his future.

  The sun shone through Luis’ eyelids, waking him from dreams of his mother.

  He grumbled and flapped his arm across his face. He was lying on his soft bed. It was comfortable and he was tired. If he let himself sink into the yielding surface, he might sleep a little longer.

  ‘Shut the door, da,’ he mumbled.

  He tasted salt on his lips. Wind caressed his skin.

  Luis frowned. Through spread fingers he peered up. Blue sky shimmered in place of the roamer’s ceiling. He lifted his head. With a start he remembered. The bike had struck something. He had come off.

  Luis jerked fully awake. The ground he was on creaked ominously. He froze, and spread his weight as wide as he could.

  Orrini’s bike was disappearing into tarry mud under the salt crust. Only the rear wheel protruded over broken ground, and that was already sinking out of sight.

  ‘Crack salt,’ he whispered to himself. Under a thin crust of salt and sand, deep pools of mud large enough to swallow a roamer whole waited. He cursed his inattention. Normal salt pan and crack salt looked virtually the same, but they could be told apart. He had not noticed.

  Fear sharpened his mind. He couldn’t be too far from the edge, he thought. The bike would have broken through as soon as the crust grew thin enough. It should support his weight. With painful slowness, he crawled on his back, moving towards the tracks he had left in the waste, keeping clear of the hole the duster had made. As he moved, cracks spidered out from the hole, inching their way out towards him. He slowed, but the cracks came on. The ground creaked ominously and began to tilt. He flipped himself onto his front, and pushed hard. His foot broke the sand crust and his heart leapt, propelling him into a scrambling run to firmer ground. Behind him the crust broke into fragments that disappeared into the oily muck beneath. A foul, briny stink rose from the hole.

  He was not safe yet. Luis slowed and unwrapped the fabric from one hand, exposing his fist to the poison sun. He rapped upon the salt with a knuckle, listening for the hollow tock that was the sole reliable telltale of crack salt. Carefully, with his ear hovering over the ground and his weight spread, he crept further away until his knocking returned a solid thump. He tentatively stood, and looked back.

  The duster disappeared under the crust, slow, fat bubbles popping in the exposed mud. Already it was scabbing over, the mud turning from black to light grey under the heat of the sun. He cast up his hood to shade his face, his eyes fixed on the indentation of the crust where he had fallen.

  One of his precious bottles of water had slid out of his pack. It lay on the crack salt, casting a long shadow dappled with broken light. His staff was a few yards from the edge.

  Panic rising, he slipped off his backpack. The flap had come open. With mounting fear he went through its contents, lying them out on the bright pan so that he could see them. All was there, his rad suit, tools, scorpion biltong, water still, his precious handful of dried fruit, knife – all the things he had taken with him to survive. There were two water bottles of ancient glass scratched dull by long use. His third lay there on the crack salt.

  He had calculated he would need one and a half bottles of water to cross the pan on the duster. Without the bike, even the extra he had taken would not sustain him all the way across, and he had lost a third of that. Beyond the dead sea was desert. Water was easier to find there, but still scarce. He thought through the scenarios. The worst case came to him most easily: him dying in the salt pan. The next worst case was his arrival at the edge of the Great Salt Waste, and him dying in the sand.

  ‘Think!’ he hissed angrily through his teeth. It was yet early, but already becoming hot. He weighed the warming bottles in his hands. They held his life in them. The white of the salt wastes went on to every horizon, inimical to all life. He imagined that expanse sucking the water from him as he dithered. There was not a single object anywhere to offer shade. His skin itched with dryness. At that moment he wished his clan would find him, and take him home. Whatever punishment they meted out, it would be better than death. He had made a dreadful mistake. He was going to die.

  ‘Stop it!’ he said, and hit his forehead hard with a bunched fist.

  He breathed slowly through his nose and out through his mouth. Panic kills, his father had said hundreds of times to him. Think your way out of danger.

  The bottle was out of reach. His staff was not. He lay down flat on the ground. Slowly, he crept out to the staff, and drew it to him with careful fingers.

  The bottle was not much further. He moved towards it, and tried to hook it with his staff to roll it towards him. He succeeded only it bashing it through the crust, and it disappeared. Alarmed at the thinness of the crack salt, he retreated.

  Luis l
ooked up at the sun. He had to wait it out, travel at night. That was his only chance. Calmer now, he repacked his pack, removed his hood and took off his long, outer robe, exposing the lighter garments underneath. Unwrapped, his outer robe was a sheet three yards in area.

  He took out three sections of tube from the edge of his pack, joined them together, and set the end in the salt. By draping one end of the robe over the pole, he made a low tent that would shelter him from the sun.

  Hunkering down in the stuffy interior, he watched the robe ripple in the hot wind until he fell into a fitful sleep.

  Luis awoke when the night wind came to snatch at his shelter. It was stronger than usual, and he was forced to wait it out. His eyes were gummy and mouth dry. He had not dared drink during the day, but while he waited he took a sip of the water. When the wind cooled and dropped he went out to urinate. He caught the stream in the evaporation bowl of his water still, and drank it all, grimacing at the taste. He could drink his own urine only twice before the poisons in it became too concentrated. After that he would have to distil it, if he could, and that meant losing a lot of it.

  Setting his course by Baal and Baalind, Luis headed out across the salt. By day the Great Salt Waste was a searing pinkish white; by night it was stained red by the looming presence of Baal and the Red Scar. At those times every crevice in the pan was sharp with shadow, making the world look sick.

  He paused when Baal was halfway across the sky and ate a single strip of biltong. The food woke his stomach, and it rumbled for more. He denied it. He finished his meal quickly. In a couple of hours, Baal would set, and real darkness would descend. That was the most dangerous time of the night, when catch spiders emerged from their holes to hunt. He could not afford to stop.

  The red grew deeper as Baal sailed away. Baalind followed soon after her brother, and Luis’ world became a ruby murk lit by the Red Scar and its sea of stars. When the pulsing glare of Cryptus came up, he had something to steer by and continued forwards confident of his course. Water was another matter. He drank his own urine again.

  He trudged on, his feet crunching on the endless salt. Monotony dulled his senses. Out of a need for stimulation he took to counting his footsteps, and became dangerously absorbed by the task.

  He didn’t hear the skittering behind him until it was nearly too late. Part of the background of thumping heart, rushing blood, muttered counting and weary trudging, when noticed it leapt to the forefront of his attention.

  He stopped. The noise stopped a moment later, a many-legged tread coming to a stealthy halt.

  Gripping his staff, Luis turned about. He could see nothing. The night was deathly still. A black line separated the deep red of the sky from the dark rose of the salt. He peered into the ruddy gloom, practically blind.

  A movement to his side caught his eye. Whirling around, he swung out with his staff, hitting a soft body. A blur shifted across the ground, and he struck again. A long limb caressed his knee, and he aimed blindly at a shifting mass by his feet. The catch spider yanked at his foot, pulling him backwards, and leapt at his chest. Luis brought his staff across his body, catching the thing’s head as it protruded from the hooded integument of its thorax. Four tooth-tipped palps wiggled half an inch from his face, dripping acidic venom onto his cheek. Screaming with shock and pain, he thrust backwards, sending the catch spider off his body. He leapt up. The creature was on its back, coarse hairs rasping on the ground as it thrashed about, trying to right itself. Luis brought his staff down on the thing’s segmented abdomen. The exoskeleton cracked and it thrashed harder. He brought his staff down again, then again, until the catch spider’s belly was open to the air and its ten legs twitched inwards. Its complicated mouth let out a clicking rasp, and it lay still.

  Luis breathed hard. Even so close, the catch spider’s speckled white-and-red camouflage made it hard to see. He went around to the front and drove the tip of his staff into the armoured cavity where the head nestled, and pounded it to mush.

  The salt around the spider’s body was stained dark with fluid. Luis swallowed dryly at the sight of so much liquid going to waste. He could use none of the creature; unlike its scorpion cousins, every part of a catch spider was tainted by its poison. Shaking with adrenaline, he continued on his walk, ears straining for more pattering footsteps.

  The days dragged by. The salt never ended. Luis distilled his urine during the day. The still was a cone of stiff canvas held up on wire legs, set over double bowls. His urine went into the central bowl where it evaporated, collected on the cone and trickled down the canvas into the outer bowl. Every day his urine grew darker and less in volume, until the outer bowl began to catch only a few drops. At first he regretfully scraped away the thick paste left after distillation, unhappy to be wasting the resources trapped within. But as the days passed and the amount of water he produced declined, he became apathetic, performing his tasks out of ingrained habit. He rationed his bottled water carefully, a few sips a day. He could not save the water he shed as sweat, and nor could the still catch all the vapour. Gradually, his water dwindled, until it ran out. His urine ceased to come not long after.

  Luis sat in the evening, looking into the outer bowl. A faint smear of water was all that his still had produced while he slept in the day. He stared at it; this was to be his last.

  His dry tongue rasped on the plate when he licked the water away.

  With heavy limbs he gathered his things, and stared out across the waste. There was no end to the whiteness. The temperature had been increasing steadily as High Summer approached. Haze shimmered to the west, making the sinking red sun and the arc of Baal jump and shiver.

  His head had been throbbing for days. His lips were cracked and his mouth was dry. He took out his thirst pebble from his robes and placed it into his mouth. Sucking on the small stone produced saliva, and though it could not help rehydrate his drying body, it alleviated his thirst a little. He dragged his pack onto his back, as great a burden as Baalfora herself, so it felt.

  Setting his sights on the north, he began to walk again. He had stopped resting during the day. The need to cover ground trumped all other concerns. Night came and passed. Throughout he was uncomfortably aware of his heart as it worked sluggishly in his chest. His joints ached. When he blinked, his eyelids caught on his sticky eyes.

  He went on. He could not stop. In the day the sun pounded on his head, adding a further beat to the throb of his headache and pulse of his heart. His body was ruled by painful drums. His head drooped, his feet dragged. Still he would not give up. Would the lords of Baal stop here and die? No! He would prove his father wrong and become an angel.

  So he told his heart, so he told his feet. They listened to him for a time, until the moment came when they rebelled. He lifted his foot and it did not move, and he toppled into the dry salt, landing on his back.

  Luis drifted in and out of consciousness. The sky was halfway between day and night, and Baal was directly overhead. He stared at it blearily, looking for the lights his father showed him the day his mother died. Perhaps if he saw them, the angels might come, but he saw no lights.

  ‘Emperor save me,’ he said, his voice a husky whisper.

  Luis fell unconscious, and he dreamt.

  He stood on a field of rust-red sands. Time ran quickly, clouds raced overhead and two moons rose and sank above them. The sun arced through the sky so fast it left a trail.

  Ahead of Luis an armoured figure of gold knelt. It had the shape of a man, but was far bigger. White wings of metal spread out from its back; a spiked halo of polished iron was set over its head. The armour was fashioned to look like a heavily muscled body. Long strips of parchment hung from its backpack and chest. Upon its shoulder pads were insignia of red and white. A sword as tall as an adult was belted at its waist, but upon the angel it did not seem too large. In one hand, it clasped a chalice.

  Luis approached. Its bowed head came up to his shoulders. It remained motionless.

  Sorely afraid, L
uis reached out to touch the angel. His fingers caressed smooth, golden armour.

  The face lifted. The helm was made in the likeness of a beautiful man with long waves of hair. Tears of gold were frozen on its cheeks. Slowly, the being got to its feet. Luis stepped back, craning his neck to look into expressionless glass eyes.

  The silent figure lifted a hand to point. The landscape shifted, becoming the salt of Baalfora’s wastes. Fifty yards away a dark shape lay huddled. Was this his own body he looked at?

  It stared at him, its outstretched hand a command to live. Its metal wings began to beat, and it rose from the ground. The appearance of armour was lost; metal curves became muscle, cast hair growing blond and waving in the stir of air. The tears melted to water and began to run. A true angel looked down on Luis with sorrowful compassion, before flying away.

  ‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘Take me with you!’

  Luis was awakened by the clap of huge wings. With the last of his strength, he rolled onto his stomach and began to crawl. He sobbed dryly with the effort of keeping his head off the ground, but he had to see.

  He spied the dark shape not far off.

  Hope lent him one last surge of strength, enough to get him to the figure on the salt.

  A body, long dead, skin cured deep reddish brown by the salt and sun. The gossamer remains of spider silk fluttered away from the body as Luis clambered over it. He half embraced the hard, dead corpse and reached for the backpack. His fingers trembled on leather made unyielding as iron by years of exposure.