Asymmetry

by A. G. Claymore

  He finally limped out to the heavy grating at the outer end of the tunnel which was designed to keep the larger, more dangerous animals out of the city while allowing smaller species to find their way inside, bearing vital fungal spores on their fur that would contribute to the health of the giant spice-wood tree.

  He tossed the stunner. In the jungle, it would have amounted to a death sentence.

  Viggo was amazed that any wild creature would venture into this dark passage but it seemed to be a popular thoroughfare. He hardly qualified as a small animal but he had just enough room to squeeze between the bars and slip away into the deadly embrace of the forest.

  He looked up at the sky, gaining his bearings and set off at a steady walk. Any faster and he would fail to hear pursuers but, even worse, he’d lose control of his emotions. Venturing out of the city without chimera-salve smeared on your skin was just asking for trouble, but the salve was in his quarters, along with his weapons.

  The chimera were a vicious species. They were like the wolves of old Earth but twice the size, covered in hard, chitinous scales instead of fur and sporting four inch fangs. They could literally smell fear. Under stress, the apocrine glands of Humans activate and, unlike the mostly water-content of regular heat-sweat, they emit a mix of cholesterol, lipids and proteins.

  To a chimera, fear gave off the smell of food.

  Regular sweat was bad enough but, though dangerous, it wasn’t necessarily the death sentence that a panicked race through the bushes would have guaranteed.

  He moved higher, knowing it was tactically foolish but he was willing to risk being outlined against the sky if it meant a chance to improve his understanding of the area. Any pursuit would probably still be concentrating on the city so there was little chance of anyone being downslope, looking up at him.

  He’d hunted this jungle a thousand times but he’d always left by one of the main entrances. Coming out an airshaft put everything into an unfamiliar perspective. He reached the top of a small hill and squatted next to a fallen trunk, easily fifteen feet across near the roots.

  The topography was making more sense now. He could make out the two large hills that marked the entrance to the little valley where he’d made a comfortable hideout in an old crashed shuttle from the imperial days. His father had shown it to him on one of their hunting expeditions and, from his awkward manner, Viggo had deduced that he’d used it for some kind of romantic encounters.

  Probably some Fletcher girl, he thought, sighing, wondering if he’d ever get a chance to sort things out with Hallie. It took a few moments for him to pull up from his descent into hormonal-fueled misery. He had worse problems than a misunderstanding with Hallie.

  How did we not see the rot in our city? He wondered. Should we have made a better attempt to appease the old guard? The Fletchers had ruled the roost here for generations. Still, Barry Fletcher commands the Guadalcanal, so it’s not like we’ve been holding a grudge…

  He grunted, shaking his head. Worst fears. Like Ranulf the Fat used to say, it’s a dangerous pile of tinder for misunderstanding. The leading families from the mutiny suddenly found they’d been wrong about the plague so they feared retribution, complete disenfranchisement or worse.

  Oh, shit! Even a self-absorbed teen can eventually have his moments of clarity. Hallie’s lived with that fear in her family her whole life. No wonder she was ready to believe the worst. I might’ve even been on the verge of cracking some stupid joke about the mutiny. It’s not so easy to laugh the past off when you’re on its short end!

  He was nearly overwhelmed with the irrational desire to sneak back into the city, find Hallie and make things right. To have her in his arms, to smell the scent of her hair… He frowned, wrinkling his nose.

  What the hells is that stink? He turned his head, questing for the origin. He returned to the balls of his feet and loped off quietly into the underbrush. Twenty meters down the slope, he found the source.

  A young fan-tail, a buck, had been trapped under a falling tree. The ground around the festering corpse indicated it had been a nesting site for the animal. Probably died in its sleep, he figured.

  Still, the buck’s loss was Viggo’s gain, an almost universal law of nature. It wasn’t quite as good as the salve his people made from the fat and urine of chimeras, but it improved his chances of reaching the hideout and getting to his field-stash of salve, not to mention arming himself.

  Without hesitation, he threw himself onto the stinking mass and rolled around in it. Definitely not going back to look for her now, he told himself, rubbing rancid fan-tail fat into his hair and opening his tunic to slather it under his arm-pits.

  “Dead sexy,” he muttered as he dropped his pants to cover the glands of the groin. He finished off with a coating on his legs and pulled his pants back up. His clothing now clung to his skin as he moved. His hunting outfits were more tight-fitting so he didn’t notice the effect but his city-clothes were too loose.

  There was nothing he could do about it so he set off down the hill.

  The sun had nearly reached its peak when he heard the whine of an engine overhead. He stopped next to a large tree trunk and scanned the canopy above. There was no threat of showing up on infrared with this dense cover, so they’d have to land if they wanted to get eyes on him and there was a lot of territory to cover.

  He pushed on. He was only a kilometer away from his objective and he wasn’t going to waste time worrying about an ineffectual pursuit. He stopped again.

  The engine sounds were ahead of him. They were sounding like a landing cycle now, the pitch increasing as the vehicle’s body slowed, reducing its aerodynamic lift. Come on! He vented at the Universe. How would they know… He shook his head. I was just thinking dad used to meet some Fletcher girl out here when he was younger.

  He resumed course, but at a steady trot now, the pace used to pursue a wounded prey. He slowed when he was still twenty meters out. He knew the ground here intimately, and probably could have come closer at the increased pace but he was taking no chances.

  He kept moving until he could see himself alerting his pursuers with his noise and stopped, just a few seconds before. He continued to edge in closer, wanting to hear them, to gain as much information as possible.

  They were spice-wood traders. It made sense. If rogue elements of the Fletcher clan were hoping to seize the planet, they’d need to have the wood trade sorted out. These guys were throwing the dice – risking all for the chance of an exclusive contract. That would mean taking on some of the dirty work of the rebellion.

  It was still illegal for them to be out here.

  They were convenient to whichever Fletcher woman his father had consorted with out here. She could direct off-worlders to this location without raising a lot of uncomfortable questions. A local would wonder how she knew about the Heywood’s secret hideaway in the jungle.

  “Found a bow,” a trader announced, emerging from Viggo’s hideout, brandishing Viggo’s newest bow. “No modern weapons at all.”

  “Is it done?” his comrade, standing in the clearing, asked him.

  “’Course it’s done,” the one with the bow said irritably. “Used one of his arrows to drive the point home, you might say.” He waved the bow again. “Look at the size of the damn thing! Made of spicewood – worth a fortune!”

  The air in the Arco was too dry for a new bow of spicewood. The dense heartwood would lose all of its compressive resistance if left in the city. The wood cells needed time to close up properly, so Viggo was keeping it at the hideout. A few months of natural humidity and regular applications of chimera fat would protect it from dryer climates.

  But not from idiots.

  The one with the bow looked at his companion. “Gods, N’Halon! You’re just putting that gloop on now?” He darted nervous glances around the perimeter, looking straight at Viggo for half a heartbeat. “Make sure you get all the exposed skin!”

  Viggo suppressed an incredulous snort. Exposed skin? He looked c
loser, forcing himself to see more than just two fools who didn’t belong out here. He saw the underlying reasons for that judgment.

  The two off-worlders’ clothing moved freely, not sticking to the salve that should have been underneath. They were treating the stuff like protective cream for stellar radiation, only covering exposed areas. The scent from their glands would have no trouble passing through their clothing, which was specifically designed to be permeable so as to allow their EVA suits to recycle any bodily secretions.

  And their weapons…

  Whoever had sent these poor fools into the jungle should have warned them. The electromagnetic fields given off by those weapons were bound to draw the wrong kind of attention.

  “So the little bastard hasn’t been here yet,” the other replied, smearing salve on the back of his neck. “Smash the bow so it looks like remorse and let’s get the hells outta here.”

  “Damned waste,” the one with the bow protested but he lifted the bow with both hands, bringing it down hard as he raised his knee to intercept it. The bow hit his thigh, just above the knee but it didn’t break.

  Moron, Viggo thought gleefully as the man shrieked, dropping the bow and bending over in pain.

  “How’ve you lived this long?” The trader closed the container of salve and tossed it aside. “If you don’t learn to think for yourself…” He stopped in mid-sentence, slowly backing away from the shuttle. “There’s something in there!” he hissed. “One of those chimera things!”

  His comrade half-straightened, his face still contorted with pain. He glanced over his shoulder. “You’ve been at the lag-weed again, haven’t you?” He waved an open-handed gesture. “That thing’s so small I nearly sprained my ankle picking up the bow and you know what’s really in there…”

  “It’s in there!” the trader shrieked, pulling out his weapon. He kept backing up. “Just come this way slowly!”

  A sigh. “Alright. If you promise to calm yourself, I’ll…” He stood there, mouth open in horror.

  “What? Can you hear it?” He brandished his pistol. “Get ready to drop to the ground. I’ll drill the bastard thing right between the eyes!”

  He was so focused on his certainty of a chimera hiding in the wrecked shuttle that he failed to notice the maquahuitl vine that he’d backed into. It was inching its way around his neck and torso.

  The razor-lobed vines were thick here, drawn by the residual energy of the ancient wreck’s pitch drives. They had a special affinity for that particular signature, but they were drawn to most energy fields.

  That was why Viggo only had a bow out here…

  The trader by the wreck finally managed to stand erect. His mouth was still hanging open, his eyes bulging. He reached out a hand and pointed, doing his friend no favors.

  The one with the weapon tried to turn but he was hampered by the vines. His skin and clothing were sliced in several areas and he finally realized his danger. His brain, responding to the adrenaline rush of the fight-or-flight response, gave off an electromagnetic signature that told the vine’s rudimentary nervous system that it was holding a frightened animal.

  The vine undulated, slicing through the man’s torso like a living chainsaw. The spine was severed with a clicking sound as the sharp lobes slid in between the vertebrae and then his lower body was lifted up into the forest canopy where the vast, rain-filled digestion-pod gave off a sickeningly sweet reek.

  The upper body was still alive but the trader by the wrecked shuttle could only stare in horror as his unfortunate companion scrabbled futilely at his own spooling guts. There was nothing to be done for him, in any case.

  A deep, piercing note rang through the trees, setting Viggo’s teeth on edge and sending a shudder down his whole body. Without any conscious will to do so, his eyes shifted to the discarded container of salve in the small clearing.

  A chimera had come.

  Viggo had to remind himself to remain calm. He’d become too invested in the fate of the two fools in front of him. The chimera had smelt their fear, not his. He stood a good chance of surviving if he stayed calm.

  That probably wasn’t what the traders were thinking. The one by the wreck, the one that still had an intact body and, therefore, more to lose, was gibbering in mindless fear as the evil looking beast came bounding into the clearing.

  It went straight for the weakest member of the herd, landing on the dismembered man with a sickening crunch of snapping ribs, a spray of blood erupting from the victim’s mouth.

  Having secured its next meal, the monster threw its head up and emitted a guttural roar, interwoven with a piercing, ululating undertone. Still crouching over its prey, it turned to glare at the remaining trader.

  The poor fellow was muttering some kind of prayer and, when the creature emitted a blast of breath through its nostrils, his voice went up a few octaves and his bladder emptied down his legs. The pace of the prayer increased as he stared back at the living horror in front of him, completely failing to notice the chimera’s mate as she climbed into view over the top of the shuttle behind him.

  There was a little gasp of surprise when he saw her upper jaw descend over his face and then she closed, partially crushing his throat as she swung her head back and forth. Death did not come nearly so fast for the second victim.

  She tossed him in the air and Viggo could see the poor wretch blinking as he landed on the tracery of roots and leaf-mould. Clamping her jaws on his shoulder, she bounded off into the dense growth, her mate following with the remains of the other trader.

  Viggo knew the second victim would probably still be alive when the pair’s young started feeding on him but he accepted the thought with a fatalistic calm. Fear was too deadly to indulge on a world like 3428.

  He loped into the clearing, ignoring the blood spattered energy-pistol as he approached his old home-away-from-home. The dread hit him like a splash of cold water. Filthy bastards! He raged, hoping the second trader would suffer for a long time. He slowed his pace and forced himself to calm down. His anger would do what their plot had so far failed to do if it managed to draw those chimera back.

  He snatched up his bow and ducked inside the airlock door.

  The interior was a mess. The few comforts that had been dragged out here during his and his father’s use of this place over the years had been tossed around by the trader who’d searched for weapons. He’d grabbed Viggo’s bow but had left all the arrows inside.

  Including the one he’d stabbed through Cara’s left eye.

  The two traders had brought her here, torn her clothing to make it look like an attempted assault and then killed her. ‘Break the bow, make it look like remorse,’ he remembered one of the traders saying. They’d killed Hallie’s best friend. She wasn’t a Fletcher and he was fairly certain that someone in the mutinous cabal, someone who disapproved of Hallie’s friendship with Cara, was trying to kill two birds with one stone.

  They were denying him this hiding place and making him look like a vicious criminal at the same time. Or trying to, he thought. He grabbed a blanket from a chair near the cockpit and draped it over her half-exposed body.

  He tossed the quivers and his bow onto the bed and pulled open a small spice-wood chest, taking out a cured fantail stomach filled with chimera salve. After a quick glance to ensure Cara’s face was covered, he stripped off and applied the salve, mixing it liberally with the rotting flesh he’d rolled in earlier.

  He took out an old hunting suit and pulled it on, immediately feeling safer and more comfortable now that he was properly prepared. He slung his quivers, strapped on a knife and rolled his clothing into a bundle.

  He stepped back over to Cara’s body, pulling the blanket down from her face. He gave her cheek a gentle stroke. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this,” he told her. He covered her face again and turned back to the door forcing his emotions back under the surface.

  Viggo didn’t want to leave any indication that he’d been here so he’d drop the clothing somewhere
else. Grabbing his bow, he emerged from the shuttle and took stock.

  The chimera had gone east. Any subsequent search team sent here would know the traders’ fate but Cara’s story would be less clear. At least there were enough scattered remains of the two traders to implicate them.

  The arco was to the south and they’d expect him, if indeed he’d come here, to keep moving as far away from the city as possible. If they expected him to come here, they’d probably concentrate their search, beyond this point, to the north.

  So, west? He grunted, looking down at the obvious trail left by the pair of chimera. He couldn’t shake the feeling that a bad future lay to the west. They’d expect me to go the opposite way. He thought. They’re not idiots.

  With a restrained sigh, he set off after the chimera. If his pace was a little slower than normal, he didn’t take himself to task over it.

  You Gotta Have Drive

  Rebel Meeting-Point, Melchior 5

  Rick felt the cool summer breeze in his mind just before he felt it on his face and he stifled a curse, leaning back to slash his sword at the acantho leaves that would have touched his skin. The long ribbon-like leaves were beautiful, but their edges carried cnidocytes, defensive cells that burst on contact, firing miniscule venomous darts.

  Why does beauty always seem to go hand in hand with danger? he thought, remembering a doomed romance that had nearly gotten him stabbed to death on 3428 in his youth. He appreciated the beauty of the Melchior system’s two habitable worlds but the hazards seemed to outweigh the benefits, making him wonder why Oaxian rebels were so keen to take it from the Dactari Republic. It wasn’t even their homeworld.

  He grinned ruefully at his own unwitting hypocrisy. 3428 was one of the deadliest places he’d ever seen and it was still the capital of his fief.