by J Battle
Dutus offered to lead them; it seemed the safer option.
‘But, it will be dark soon. You can’t march through the night. What about the clickerclackers?’ Heraldus had missed much of what had been said; still stunned by the loss of so many.
‘My Lord, it seems that they will no longer be a danger to us?’
‘If you believe that, then by all means lead them to The Wall and then bring them back when you’ve done whatever it is you plan to do.’
‘Your wish is my command, my Lord.’
With the four enhanced humans recovered enough to follow the army, it was still the middle of the night before they reached Hellion. Dutus was tempted to suggest that there was an urgent requirement for him to be at his desk, that someone had to run the city. Instead, for some reason that he couldn’t quite grasp, he decided to do his duty, and led them past the city, to The Wall.
When Pi came to him, in the guise of a silver white female, he was glad to succumb to her charms. He was not alone as the night was filled with the screeches and cries of passion.
The dull light of dawn found them approaching the wall, tired but relaxed and satisfied.
As the leader, it was his duty to be first to approach The Wall. Determined to put on a show, he strode forward, then paused, with one paw against its warm black surface. In the dim light, he knew that they were all watching him.
‘I do this for my people, and for my land,’ he said, loud enough to ensure that everyone heard his words. Then he tilted his head to one side and stepped through into the utter blackness.
An instant later, he was through to the other side and he screamed as the spasm of pain wracked his body, as the fire rushed through his veins. When it was over, he held his head back and stood for a moment with his chest out, erect and potent. Then he roared.
As morning came in its usual uninspired dullness, a hundred enhanced cats prowled back and forward, occasionally stopping to roar a challenge, or to burst into a mad sprint across the dead-lands.
By midday, there were nearly four hundred of them, snarling and marking their territory; capable and ready for anything; bursting for the fight.
But no more cats emerged from the still, enigmatic surface of The Wall. An hour after the last one had passed through, Pi appeared.
‘Where are the rest?’ asked Dutus, feeling that one swipe of his claw would crush her.
She studied him for a moment, then took half a step back.
‘As I said to the humans, there is a cost to this.’
‘The implication was that you would bear the cost.’
‘It has been shared.’
‘You’ve killed six hundred of us?’
‘Not all were suitable for enhancement.’
‘And the rest?’
‘We no longer have the clickerclackers. We still have to feed.’
She decided that would be a suitable moment to disappear.
Snarling with rage and frustration, Dutus called the cats to attention.
‘It is time to leave. The battle awaits us.’
With their ferocious power, they devoured the distance and were on the beach only a couple of hours later.
When he told D what Pi had done, he raised his head and looked into the distance, at the dark hazy shape of The Wall.
‘Something will have to be done,’ he said quietly.
Dutus followed his gaze. ‘You are quite correct, my friend. But knowing what that is, that is the problem.’
‘We’ll think on it. First, we need to be ready for the fight. Let me tell you how the Succ-y-Rist can be killed.’
They walked off together along the beach, the calm green sea to their left, the dark fetid swamp to their right. The enhanced formed themselves into a line that stretched across the width of the beach. Behind them, the rest of the army gathered in rows, their weapons before them. They were nervous and terrified and excited. Every now and again, they would stare across the water, looking for the first sign of the white menace that they were sure was heading their way.
Chapter 61
Two weeks is a very long time to be stuck in a small room with two large cats who don’t really understand why they can’t be allowed outside and couldn’t be persuaded that ship’s rations actually contained food. In the confined space, using recycled air, the atmosphere was heavy with the smell of fish and potatoes.
At last, it passed. When Jones opened the door, he had to leap out to avoid being knocked over by the eager cats behind him.
‘At last!’ Sighed Perdus, then he began to run around in circles.
‘What is that?’ asked Deylus, sniffing towards a flat cube of charred grey white material with yellow and green streaks.
Jones walked over to it and prodded it with his boot. It gave slightly; then he got the smell. Covering his mouth, he walked back to the ship.
‘Whatever it is, it’s dead now,’ he muttered.
Deylus took a closer look. ‘I think it’s one of them; one of the aliens. Or, at least, it’s part of one. It looks very much like the sur-male I killed.’
‘There’s another,’ said Perdus, as he looked into the bushes that climbed a low hill, ‘and another. ‘
They were all over the hill; none of them whole. Some were sizable chunks, but most were fist sized pieces of meat, thrown the five kilometres from the boundary of the site of the explosion. Any Succ-y-Rist that had been closer would have been vapourised.
‘Can we eat them?’ asked Perdus, nudging at one with his nose.
‘The sur-male tasted disgusting, so I wouldn’t recommend it,’ replied Deylus, watching Jones as he dragged a small dark grey cube from the ship.
‘Is that the lifeboat?’ he asked; eager to see what it would look like. During the two weeks sojourn in the AEC, Jones had explained to him what would happen next, so he was keen to investigate.
‘Yes, we have three of them on board, and I’m going to rob the fuel and supplies from the other two to top up what we’ve got here and hope it will be enough to take us back across the sea.’
‘What will make the lifeboat move across the water?’
‘We have a motor powered propeller and we can put up a sail when the wind is up. It’s going to take us a few weeks, but I’m sure we’ll make it.’
‘Will there be any of the Succ-y-Rist left?’
‘I can’t think there’ll be many. And if there are, they’ll be very sick. And these boats are pretty quick, and I’ve got my plasma gun.’
‘Won’t we get lost? How will you know where we are?’
‘We flew due east to get here, so we need to sail due west. The sun, such as it is, rises in the east and sets in the west. So, in the mornings, we sail with the sun behind us, and in the afternoons, we sail towards it. It’s dead simple, really.’
‘Tell me again. This thing about the sun, I can’t quite grasp it. And the stars, tell me about them.’
‘You should refrain from believing everything you are told,’ said Perdus.
‘He’s been there, Perdus. He knows what he’s talking about.’
‘Nevertheless.’
‘Let’s go now, while we have the full day ahead of us,’ said Jones, ignoring Perdus’s comments.
Soon the cats were settled in the rubber dingy and Jones shoved the boat away from the shore and jumped onboard. The engine sprang to life and they surged through the surf.
‘What are these?’ asked Deylus, after a few moments, holding up two sticks with a flattened, broadened end.
‘They are paddles. We can pull our way through the water with them.’
Deylus examined them carefully, then placed them back in the bottom of the dingy.
‘Look,’ said Perdus as they rounded the spur, his nose held high.
They all looked in amazement at the collapsed western wall of the caldera, bent and twisted, and blocking the rest of the crater.
‘The blast must have pushed it over in to the throat of the volcano.’
‘There's just that thin pl
ume of smoke coming from the top,’ observed Perdus.
‘Perhaps it’s blocked,’ replied Jones, as he turned from the stricken mountain and back to his controls, ‘maybe it’ll get a little less cloudy.’
Perdus glanced at him as if he was talking nonsense.
Jones spent the rest of the morning steering his way around the many thousands of body parts that seemed to be everywhere. Though he was worried that he might come across a live one, so far they were all dead.
‘Why did you come here?’ asked Perdus, out of the blue.
‘Here to the island, or to the planet?’
‘We know why you came to the island, But why did you leave your world? What was it like anyway? Was it so different from our world?’
‘That’s a lot of question to ask.’
‘We have plenty of time for your answers, I believe.’
‘Our world was very different from yours. Yes, we had wars. In our long history there have been many terrible wars. Wars here millions of people died. We didn’t fight the way you do here; in your careful, non-destructive way. When we fought, it always seemed that nothing was out of bounds. I guess you can thank the wall for that.’
‘We should thank the wall for nothing,’ snapped Deylus, ‘it makes us fight.’
‘But why would you say that?’ asked Perdus.
‘The wall controls us and it wants us to waste our time fighting each other, so we don’t fight it.’
‘That’s nonsense, and you know it. The war is part of our tradition, and The Wall is the Twin Gods’ gift to us, may they bless the sky and the land.’
‘That’s what it wants us to think. That’s part of the control. When we get back, we have to fight it.’
‘That’s blasphemy, Deylus. Without The Wall, we’d be lost in this life, and we would have no way to reach the embrace of the Twin Gods, may they bless the sky and the land. And how can you fight The Wall, anyway? There is no way.’
‘There is a way.’
‘Listen,’ interrupted Jones, ’can we stop this bickering? It’s giving me a headache. We don’t know what we’re going to find at the other end, so let’s try and enjoy this historic voyage. Deylus tells me that it’s never been done before.’
The three sailed in silence for a while.
As late afternoon arrived, Jones judged that the wind was strong enough and in the right direction, so he set up the mast and rigged the sail. The boat sailed on into the night with the only sound the snapping of the sail and the moaning of the cats.
**********
The four hundred enhanced cats and the two thousand less extraordinary creatures stood guard on the beach for nearly six weeks. They marched a little, and they dug latrines and arranged for regular deliveries of supplies. Mostly, they just stood there, watching the sea do the same thing over and over again. To some eyes it was a beautiful sight, but after six weeks of nothing else, tedium suddenly had only three letters.
There was a flurry of excitement when five hundred apes appeared one morning, marching out of step along the road. They were a mixture of the very old or the very young, with very little in between.
Some harsh words were spoken, and there was a brief moment when it could have gone very badly, but some calming words from the humans seemed to defuse the situation; at least for now.
Pi made a very brief appearance on the second day.
She stood on the beach, her naked brown feet lapped by the tiny waves, and stared out across the sea.
D was walking up to her from behind; otherwise he would probably not have heard her soft spoken whisper.
‘Something has happened,’ She said, then she disappeared.
‘When are they coming?’ he started to ask, but he was too slow.
The weeks drifted by, with nothing very much happening. Except for the rain. Every day it rained; not all day of course. Sometimes it was dry for minutes at a time. Still, every day they could expect to be soaked to the skin.
Then, one morning, as the rain subsided, D heard it.
‘Sshh!’ he hissed, holding his finger up to his lips in a gesture that no-one but a human would understand.
There it was again. He could hardly believe his ears; that was definitely the sound of a motor, drifting across the sea towards them; and it was getting louder. Then, on the horizon, he saw a flash of black, and he laughed.
‘It’s Jones!’ he yelled and began to run towards the water, ‘he’s only sailed across the sea in a rubber dingy!’
As he waded through the shallow sea, Pi appeared at his side. There were no splashes as her lithe limbs sliced through the water.
‘He’s done it. It’s hard to credit it, but your Mr. Jones has somehow defeated the second wave. That was what we felt, weeks ago; we couldn’t believe that it was true. His presence here is proof that it is. Truly, he, and the cats with him, deserve a hero's welcome. They have saved the lives of all of us.’
Chapter 62
The group paused half-way between the beach and the city.
‘What do we do now?’ Helen asked the question, although it could just as well have been any of the other four humans present.
After the exultant reception for Jones and the cats, no-one felt like spending any more time on the beach, so they were all returning to the city for a little R & R.
‘The Succ-y-Rist have all mostly gone now,’ replied Deylus, surprising both himself and Perdus, ’we should remember that we still have one enemy that we have to deal with.’ He was speaking language, but Jones was almost fluent after their weeks together, and the enhanced humans understood his every word.
‘That enemy is the wall,’ said D, ‘you are quite right, Deylus. But what can we do against it?’
‘What are you saying! The Wall is not our enemy! Without The Wall, the Succ-y-Rist would have defeated us all. Can you not see that?’ Perdus was so angry that he could hardly get the words out.
‘That doesn’t change anything, Perdus. It was our enemy before the white monsters came, and it is still our enemy now they’ve gone.’ Deylus spoke calmly, in deference to his friend’s beliefs.
‘What can we do about it?’ asked Helen.
‘I’m sorry about this, Perdus, but I think we have to ask you to leave before we continue.’
Perdus reared up on to his hinds legs and glared down at Deylus. There was a click as his claws were released from their sheaths.
Deylus lay his belly along the ground, his eyes on the larger cat.
Then the moment passed and Perdus was gone.
‘If you don’t mind, Ma’am,’ said Milligan, breaking the silence that had begun to stretch out after the black cat’s departure, ‘I’m just about knackered; I feel that I’ve been marching up and down that beach for weeks since the battle. It’s been altogether too much excitement and exercise for a man of my age and size. I don’t know what you are all going on about, but I’d like to take a break for a bit of a rest; perhaps just have a lie down, or maybe get a shower.’
Helen smiled. ‘Good luck with that last wish, Milligan. But don’t worry, you deserve your rest. We couldn’t have succeeded down at the beach without you and your sharpshooting. Where did you learn to shoot like that?’
Milligan shrugged. ‘I must be a natural, I suppose. I’ll see you all later.’ He gave a tired salute and began to walk slowly along the yellow road.
‘Before I killed the sur-male,’ Deylus carried on as if nothing had happened, ‘I questioned him about the wall. I may have allowed him to think that his helping us might save his life, so I think he told me the truth.’
He paused for a moment and examined each of his listeners.
‘The wall is alive, and intelligent. It feeds off the land, draining the life from it, which is why nothing grows. It distorts our minds to prevent us being a danger to it and we are also its food. The clickerclackers harvest us for its benefit. Without them, it will weaken. As it absorbed the flesh of six hundred cats, that will take some time. We have to understand that it has
no defence against a physical assault. Pi will attempt to persuade us to turn away, and you know how persuasive she can be. But she cannot stop us. Not when the attack is led by you four, leading an army of four hundred enhanced cats.’
‘Okay,‘ said Helen, ‘so you’ve got us all attacking The Wall. What form do you envisage that assault taking?’
‘The sur-male told me that the wall is not a construct; it’s a living, organic entity.’
‘And how does that help?’
‘Let me show you, when we get there.’
It took most of the day to reach the wall, as they could only move at the pace of the slowest of the group; Jones was more than a little annoyed that he was that person. But he wasn’t enhanced, and he had only the two legs, so he did the best that he could.
When they reached the temple grounds, a group of cats barred their way, led by a big ginger.
‘You shall go no further,’ announced the Lord High Preacher as he reared up to an impressive height, ‘this is the will of the Twin Gods, may they bless the sky and the land.’
D stepped forward, raising one hand to stop any precipitous action from those behind him.
‘You cannot stop us; but there has been enough blood. Step aside and accept that we only do what is necessary.’
The ginger exposed his claws. ‘There will be blood, if you do not turn away.’ The cats behind him looked a little less convinced of the wisdom of his actions.
Pi suddenly appeared on the lowest part of the wall, just a few metres from them.
She smiled directly at D. ‘More blood, Daniel?’ she whispered.
He ignored her and focused on the Lord High Preacher.
Without giving him a chance to act, he leapt forward and gripped his forelegs. The cat struggled, but he didn’t have the strength to dislodge him.
D whispered into his ears, and then released him.
The cat stepped back, confused; he dropped to all fours and wandered slowly towards the temple doors. His followers did just that; they followed him back into the temple.