The fleye is darting, and Son is watching this way and that, losing track of which POV is which. He's trying to get a new fix on the GameBoys when the dust behind him explodes.
predator, prey
Son springs skyward, and the sweep of a massive tail just misses. He spins to straddle his attacker. He gropes its coat of blur dust, clenches his fingers behind the dragon's jaws, and digs his thumbs through the prosthetic blur lenses into the eye sockets. Hangs on for dear life.
Eventually the beast tires. At first it only pretends. In response, Son himself pretends to ease up on the eyeholds and it heaves with renewed energy. Son plays this game three times, till his opponent gets used to the rules. In the fourth round, it takes too long to ponder some new strategy, and Son releases one ruined eye to snatch the knife from his belt and cut the animal's throat.
It's still twitching as Son, his own face shrouded in blur dust, ignores the stink off it to shove his prosthetic lips into the torrent from its jugular vein and suck hard, replacing precious water lost during the battle. Desert survival manuals, according to Poppy, always say you shouldn't drink blood. It's too salty; besides which it's food, not a drink, and digesting it takes too much bodily fluid. But it's also common knowledge that carnivores get most of their water from fresh meat, and if Son and the others aren't themselves carnivores, what are they?
So they've spent the whole morning setting themselves up for the hunt, and already, before they're properly started, he has scored enough meat and more. He looks around to see Poppy right behind him, blade in hand. Son grins. Never mind that Poppy can't see this through his mantle.
He knows he did good. At the same time he realizes that could as easily have been his own bled‐out carcass lying there feeding the masses. He doesn't need Poppy to tell him he screwed up.
He reviews his attitude, his technique. He didn't see the dragon from here, and he didn't see it from anywhere else either. His special multi‐POV powers, including all that fun with the fleye, appear to be good for sweet bugger all. Of course he's still getting the feel of these new powers, and relying on something so inconsistent is bound to be dangerous.
•
They slice away chunks of flesh to stuff in their catchbags, gobble a bit of it raw. The spoils have gone to the faster and smarter. Or maybe only the luckier. Never mind. Bottom line is, who's the man?
Be that as it may. As the adrenaline rush recedes he discovers considerable pain in his thigh, not to mention some very sore ribs. He reaches to touch a sticky mess of blood and dust. He can almost hear Poppy going "shithot, not," complimenting him on winning his latest slow‐mover badge. Then Poppy does speak, their cover so far blown it couldn't matter less. "You let that dumb fucking lizard bite you?" he says. "Christ. Who else would lapse into daydreams in the middle of wrestling a dragon to death?"
Oh, yeah? Poppy was supposed to be watching his back. So where the hell was he when he was needed? "I killed it, didn't I?" Son says. "On my own."
But Poppy makes a zipping motion at his mouth and indicates they should move off. The rule of silence is once more in force.
The dragon is about to be fast eroded by waves of scavengers. A ratswarm and a pigswarm contend for first dibs while a roachswarm awaits its turn, and the Boogoo abides in the background, sure to get all of it in the end.
The question remains—why didn't Poppy see it? Or, supposing he did, why didn't he do something? Whatever. Right now, it's best they get clear of the scavengers.
•
Not to mention take care of those GameBoys. Son doesn't need the new tricks to zero in on your average GameBoy, who is a fumblewit.
Hand signals confirm Son also sees their quarry and that he'll take a lateral course northwards down the east slope of Long Lookout. He'll aim to head the GameBoys off in Boulder City, an alluvial delta east of Eden at the mouth of an ancient river bed. Meanwhile, Poppy plans to make his way southeast and then come along behind them.
Sound tactics.
Poppy's good at this stuff. Son has to ask himself again: why didn't Poppy spot that dragon?
new allies, old foes
The only feelings you want are for your bunkermates. Everything else is fair game.
– Poppy
rabbit for the greyhounds
Son loves this plan. Still, what he does now goes against all his training.
Following a brief exchange of barely audible clicks of stick against stone, Poppy inches back south and then disappears. At the same time, Son performs a fast slither between two gorges down the gentle eastern slope of Long Lookout. He's kludgy enough the four GameBoys should see him, but not so kludgy they'll realize he's what Poppy calls a rabbit for the greyhounds.
He crosses over into what he's pretty sure will be the path of the GameBoys. Then he breaks cover, rises to his feet. Knows what it would feel like to deliberately step off a cliff. He clatters some rocks for good measure, further scaring the shit out of himself. In his mind's eye he sees the GameBoys look all around before homing in on this commotion. He spins around and then, never mind his leg is hurting, flops back to ground.
Then he goes invisible again and knees‐and‐elbows it toward Boulder City, aiming to reach his appointed station a few minutes before the GameBoys appear. He descends the face of the gorge and, using a defilade, a line of low cover that leaves him invisible to the GameBoy pack, he crosses to the more northern gorge, avoiding one amorphous feature that could be a dragon, and weaves his way through a field of dust‐clad rocks to the back of Boulder City, to where two big smooth rocks stand about four meters high either side of the easiest passage. The GameBoys will come this way, proceeding slightly uphill toward their fate, the defile between the boulders admitting only one of them at a time.
•
Safely established in Boulder City on the upslope side of the trap, he sets up shop. He arranges his spearsticks and his knife on the ground either side of him, checks he can grab them without looking. He slings a water canteen and catchbag full of meat around behind him and secures them there; he can fight, if there's need, without putting them down. Everything is soon neat and tidy and ready for business.
Now to spring their big surprise.
a good plan
Son and Poppy discovered the mantrap at the end of last rainy season. They'd never before seen anything like it.
Boulder City occupies flat ground between steep bluffs rising from scree where loose rocks, concealed by drifted dust, lie waiting to break your ankle. The opposing banks channel anything that's moving in a hurry toward where a limestone sinkhole used to feature here in this old streambed, right in the middle of Boulder City.
The hole, two meters in diameter, was big enough to swallow alluvial boulders that might otherwise close it off, and too big for blur dust to bridge on its own. So, what happened? A roachswarm wove a lens from the living bodies of its own members, extending it out from the edges till the hole was covered. Now, to all appearances, it's nothing but another patch of dust among the boulders.
One day last season Son and Poppy were returning home this way for a change, when they became disoriented. The hole was missing. As they settled down to study this anomaly, a territorial ruckus broke out between two pigswarms that, when they weren't foraging, normally resided on opposite sides of the gorge. Pigs are really smart, according to Auntie, smarter than dogs ever were. She seems to find this an impressive amount of smarts but, even though Son has no first‐hand acquaintance with dogs, he believes pigs may be overrated. Because on this occasion one swarm charged straight at the other one, right across a patch of ground that stood where there should have been a deep hole in the now‐disputed no‐man's land between their respective hillside domains.
A two‐meter hole can swallow quite a few pigs before their buddies in the back of the swarm realize something's wrong and stop shoving, never mind the old boar in front has long since ceased sounding the charge. As the pigs finally did pull back, in this case, a ratswarm‐in‐waiting scu
rried up to pour over the lip of the hole. A ratfall, as Poppy dubbed it, back in the Bunker. He said this was an advantage from the roachswarm's POV, since rats were good at preparing pig carcasses for the roaches' later pleasure.
Who's to say what lurks down that hole? Though their observations suggest the resident roachswarm shares the collective larder only with passing ratswarms and the Boogoo itself, which claims its own fair portion of the goodies.
Whatever. Now the roachtrap has become part of a good plan.
Son feels for his sticks in the dust and then retreats to a position several meters from the trap on the upward side of the GameBoys' approach. Rising from his belly to a crouch, he composes himself again for the watch, just one bump amid a landscape full of dusty bumps, his weapons on the ground beside him.
•
Today has been prime time. He got to play rabbit for the hounds. Plus, there were the godbolt strikes and everything, preparations for boogooman war. The lot. Killing a big dragon with his knife.
Never mind his leg hurts more now and he doesn't feel a hundred percent, he still feels the lift in his spirits that has colored these past days.
And now, together with the Boogoo, they're going to fox the GameBoys.
decoying the decoys
They come lurching up the old riverbed and into Boulder City all in a bunch. Like they're on a picnic, waving sticks and whips and clubs, whooping and chattering, clearly bent on turning Son and Poppy into hamburger. Forget about stealth. By the sound of it, they figure Son's too fucked up to worry about, and there are enough of them to handle Poppy. Or maybe, as Poppy says, they're plain stupid.
So how could they survive this long, if that was true?
Son reads the land extra carefully. Here he has been acting the lunatic, distracting the GameBoys from the real threats. But big irony—a word Auntie loves, though Poppy says irony and a sharp spearstick will kill a pig and so will a spearstick—he suspects this parade of happy idiots is itself a decoy. He and Poppy have been monitoring one pack of GameBoys; what if there are two packs? Or three.
As much as he can, he watches in three‐hundred‐and‐sixty degrees, looking for signs. In the meantime, here comes the cannon fodder, still invisible to Son. He hears them approach the far side of the enfilade, and waits for it. They issue forth from between the boulders, extruded one by one to rampage straight at him in single file.
Son rises to his feet, trusting this doesn't trigger a pop‐up GameBoy ambush. Even without nasty surprises, if the trap doesn't work it'll be a stretch, taking care of half a dozen of these things on his own. Poppy's still too far away to help.
The lead GameBoy disappears. "Oops," is all it says.
Famous last words. Quicker than an eyeblink, the swarm seals over again. This doesn't fool the next two GameBoys, but they follow too close to stop. They also go down, one of them with a "Whoa, fuck!" The other, probably too slow to think of something good, says nothing. Too late, the last three try to step back.
That's when a deadly stick‐wielding fiend appears behind them. Son knows how fast Poppy is, and how good. Still, he's impressed. Two are bleeding before they drop, while the last one, forgetting, retreats right back into the trap, going down about the same time the roachswarm opens up for the ratfall. A huge swarm, it keeps coming like all the lemmings in the universe, more, since these animals, outside of Auntie's books, are long extinct. GameBoys probably make a big treat.
The hole's boundaries are indistinct, and Poppy circles it at a respectful distance, staying clear of the ratfall, spearsticks still at the high port, ready for surprises. An eerie lowing issues from the hole, the lowing agitated by a juicy chittering. Poppy does an impression of the muted GameBoy howls, which makes things worse. He thinks it's funny. Then he disappears once more into the dust.
Son does the same, and they go back to their watching.
•
The noises stop, and after a while the whole roachswarm shimmers and drops, and the hole goes back to gaping the way it used to. There's no sign of the rats. Maybe they've found another way out.
So that's six GameBoys accounted for. Maybe the whole pack. Bam, bam, bam. Slick as a whistle.
Right then, Son spots several more high‐tailing it up over the ridge. Poppy was pointing the other way when he went to ground again, and probably missed these developments. Son eyeballs the sun where it's starting to sag toward the horizon, consults his stomach, and says to hell with it. Let them go.
•
Auntie might know. In their use of the trap, did he and Poppy become part of a colonial bio‐blur organism? Opportunistic partners, at least. Or is it a different kind of bio‐blur relationship, maybe even one with the Boogoo itself? This isn't the kind of thing you ask within earshot of Poppy.
Parked there on his haunches, still as stone, Son reads the land, feels himself part of it, alert to the least movement, the least change in what lies before him. This is life reduced to its bones. He's careless of time, beyond knowing how high the sun is, how this affects bio‐blur behavior and how much time it gives him till nightfall.
His leg hurts like a sonofabitch, though he can set that aside. Same goes for the hip problem and, if he inhales carefully, his ribs don't ache too bad. What worries him are the spells of weakness and difficulty in focusing.
•
There's no more sign of GameBoy activity, but his every instinct tells him others lurk close at hand. If so, however, they've bumbled right off his mental radar. And they're not good enough for that.
Though he himself is not at his best, wounded and increasingly feverish as he is. A bite like this can be deadly. You've got to worry about both venom and infections, though he probably has some hours before he needs to get back to the Bunker where Auntie can tend to things. Whatever. He's no crybaby, and he won't give Poppy a chance to say he is.
Poppy says he's a good hunter, nearly as good as Poppy, and one day, if he lasts that long, he could be better. Because he has his own way of watching. Sometimes, not always, it's as though he sees things before they happen. And that can be useful, Poppy says. What isn't useful is another habit, or faculty, something maybe akin to the early sight. And that's a tendency to drift away in his mind. Poppy says that was what's going to kill him.
•
A sudden growl breaks the silence. Never mind it's only Son's stomach again; it's still dangerous. If he can hear it, so might other predators. He has the fresh meat, though it has to stay in the scent‐proof catchbag for fear scavengers catch wind of it. Anyway, it's really canned peaches he wants. Digging corned beef out of a can and eating it off the point of his knife is also good, though Auntie always says use a fork. But canned peaches were his favorite.
More daydreaming.
Then, already still, he goes stiller. He hears something else. Not his stomach. He grips the sticks tighter. A silken slither and rustle heralds a bio‐blur swarm on the move. Probably a ratswarm. Monkeys rustle more and slither less; same goes for pigs. Now he marks the thing that spooked the ratswarm. There. A slightly elevated patch of dust, about three by three meters square. Something that isn't a pigswarm fragment, trying to look like one.
they're animals
Here's a surprise. Two more GameBoys emerge from between the boulders. Where had they been hiding? Son never saw them coming; this was the least expected line of approach for a second attack. And Poppy clearly overlooked them in his hot pursuit of the six GameBoys already down.
The newcomers stop. They stand there like pint‐size boogoomen, except higher rez. Then they do something way foolhardy. They dump their mantles to remain there, weapons dangling at their sides, naked and exposed to this lethal environment. This is risky behavior, not to say downright dumb. Classic Darwin Award‐winning bravery. They just can't be that stupid.
Son goes to ground, performs a quick scan of their surrounds. These GameBoys must be decoys. Despite himself, he cringes at the imagined impact of club against skull, the hot stab of spearstick. But th
ere's no attack, no untoward signs. Other than that odd bump in the dust, which he continues to monitor.
The male looks about Son's age; the female is younger. It's pretty. The male's chest displays the ritual scarring, though this is only pro forma, like a first draft. The female is clear, aside from a few minor blemishes. Could be its folk didn't want to mess up this perfect bosom. Its face is full of alarm, maybe in part because of the double satray strike that momentarily draws its attention to the north, the flash‐flash glistening in the fine sheen of perspiration on its breasts.
Then the male's eyes widen as Poppy rises from the dust, cocked to throw. It raises its chopper, hoping to deflect the spearstick. At the same time it steps in front of the female. This is strange.
In no way is this typical GameBoy behavior, and the female looks quite nice on the whole, Son is thinking, when three more GameBoys leap up from the false‐pigswarm dust mound. So in fact they aren't always as stupid as they appear.
Son is peripherally aware of how the first one, the youngster, goes down gargling blood, tugging at the spearstick that dangles from its throat. He registers this even as he skip‐lunges straight inside the threesome's headlong attack. He feints, falls to the side with spearstick to stab and whirl from ground level. He jacks himself to his feet, applies knife in a slash‐and‐whirl, slash‐slashing slam dance.
Son cuts his stick free from the first of his victims and pokes the second in the forehead with it, confirming that it's also dead. He slices the throat of the third, who has lingered. This one had only one arm, and the second had moved as though it were ill, facilitating the speed and surprise of Son's straight‐ahead advance into their attack, never mind he isn't firing on all cylinders either. He crouches, spearstick butts socketed in the stony ground either side of him. He watches, poised to undertake whatever work might remain.
Poppy's in control of his side of things. The one survivor is sobbing. It's trying to speak to Poppy. "Ga," it says. "Ga… Ga roo‐na. Ai‐eee."
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