Superluminal Page 31

  “We can’t swim it, Sarge,” said long-fingered Benetorro. “Have we got to make a sacrifice?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Kwame said. “Let’s see if there’s another way across.”

  “But the Shadows are right behind us.”

  “I know that, goddamn it,” he replied, “but I don’t want to make a sacrifice unless we have to. One of these days, it’s not going to work. Or they won’t come back.” He scanned the riverbank. “Benetorro, I want you, Denmark, Fusili, and Mays to scout up north a half klick for a crossing tree. Hardrind, you stay with me. The rest of you scout down south.”

  “But Sarge,” said Fusili, “the last crossing tree put us on the other side of the world.”

  “I know that,” Kwame answered. “But it’s better than a sacrifice.”

  “I guess.”

  “Come here. You and Benetorro.” The soldiers approached him. He reached into his shoulder bag and pulled out a canteen. He opened it and carefully dribbled some of the contents on the palms of his two platoon members. Their hands began to glow a ghostly white.

  “When that moon shine glow starts to fade,” he said, “I want you hightailing it back here. By the time the glow’s gone, you’d better be here. Else you might miss the sacrifice—if we have to do one.” He gave each of them a hard look. “Got it?”

  “Got it, Sarge.”

  The platoon scuttled off to search for one of the elusive crossing trees, leaving Kwame and Hardrind at the river’s edge. They settled down. Kwame took out some of the chewy hardtack that they had subsisted on for as long as anyone could remember. Kwame didn’t even recall how they’d discovered the stuff in the first place. It grew underneath a vivid green moss that occurred in certain clearings in the jungle. The higher in the mountains you traveled, the more hardtack you found. Kwame guessed it had something to do with proximity to the moon.

  Hardrind chewed her food with her mouth open. The insides of her cheeks were stained deep purple by hard-tack juice.

  “Who do you think we’ll sacrifice this time, Sarge?” she asked him between mouthfuls.

  “Nobody, I hope.”

  “What about if the Shadows catch us, then.”

  “We’ll fight,” Kwame said.

  “’Cause we’re the Tigers?”

  “Because the Shadows won’t fucking leave us alone until we fight, Hardrind.”

  Chew, swallow. Another full-mouthed bite.

  “How come they’re called the Shadows, Sarge?”

  Kwame had to think about that for a moment. It had been so long since they’d given their nemesis the name. He couldn’t remember who came up with it. Maybe the lieutenant. “Because we’re real,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  They ate in silence for a while. The jungle surrounding them was noisy. Birds and iridescent flying lizards flitted from tree to tree. A parasitic clinger plant lowered a vine and tried to find a vein on Kwame’s arm. He absentmindedly slapped it away.

  He looked at the orange-and-black stripes on his hand. They crawled and twisted slowly across his skin’s surface.

  Another change was coming.

  A cloud crossed over the moon. Hardrind started. She sat up straight and sniffed the air. “I smell rain,” she said.

  “Maybe,” Kwame said. “Or something else.”

  “The Winds?”

  “Yep.”

  There was a crackling in the brush. Kwame rolled behind a tree quickly. He reemerged when he saw it was Benetorro’s group, returning from their recognizance.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  Benetorro jumped back a good two paces in fright.

  “Jesus, where’d you come from, Sarge?”

  “What did you find?”

  “No crossing trees up that way.”

  Kwame nodded acknowledgment. “We’ll wait and see what the others found.”

  The returned soldiers sat down and ate hardtack. They all kept him in their line of sight.

  How had this come to be? All these people looking to him to figure out what to do. Who was he? He couldn’t remember. It had been longer than years. It had been centuries. He’d lost all memory of who he might once have been. And the hundreds of changes, when the world uncoiled and wrapped itself into a new pattern—he’d become a new person each time. His mind felt as fuzzy as the green moss under which the hardtack grew.

  “We’d better get the sacrifice ready,” Kwame told the platoon. “When the others get back, we’ll go ahead with it.”

  “Whose turn is it, Sarge?” Fusili asked in a quiet voice. “It’s mine, isn’t it?”

  Kwame sighed. “Yes, Fusili. It’s your turn.”

  “What if I don’t want to, Sarge?”

  Kwame considered. Perpetual strife with the Shadows. Stabbing, rending, screams of pain that turn out to be you, dying. Reconstitution—only to die all over again. Staring into those murderous pink eyes when you resuscitate. Fighting, fighting, fighting the Shadow you. Down through the centuries. The millennia.

  “You’ll be all right, Fusili,” Kwame finally said. “It won’t hurt like the Shadows do.”

  “I know that, but I’m scared, Sarge.”

  The boy was shaking. He must have completely forgotten he was next in line, Kwame thought. Of course, forgetting was a pretty common occurrence among the platoon.

  “Can I at least pick out the rock?” Fusili asked in a pathetic voice.

  “Pick it out, Fusili,” Kwame replied. “Just shut up about it, would you?”

  “Yeah, sure, Sarge.”

  A few minutes later, the second unit returned from downstream. They had encountered no crossing tree.

  Their luck was running out. There was no way across the river, and the Shadows would be there momentarily.

  It was time for the sacrifice.

  Fusili chose a large stone that jutted out of the ground near the river. He lay on his back, testing it.

  “Hard,” he muttered. “Maybe I can find a better one.” He sat up.

  Kwame quickly glanced at Benetoro and Mays. The soldiers, one a wiry, middle-aged man, the other a muscular young woman, moved on Fusili. Mays pushed him back down against the rock. Benetorro held him in place, her long fingers wrapping all the way around Fusili’s wrists. Fusili, startled, struggled wildly. Mays sat on him, straddling his stomach. She gave him a couple of quick slaps across the face.

  “It’s not like I won’t do it; it’s just that this isn’t a good place.” Fusili was crying. “This is a bad place.”

  Kwame unsheathed his knife, stepped forward, and bent down on a knee over Fusili. He put a hand on Fusili’s chest, found his sternum.

  “Sarge, not now,” Fusili said. “Don’t do it now, you goddamn bastard. You fucking rock-shitting cold worlder.”

  Kwame ignored him. He marked Fusili’s heart with his left forefinger, finding a spot between his ribs.

  Fusili gave one more buck, trying to get away, but Kwame had his place marked, and as the man settled back to the rock to try to squirm in another direction, Kwame slid the knife in between the ribs.

  It was a damn shame that you couldn’t just cut a guy’s throat or stab him in the back of the brain. They were in the grist so thick that anything like that would heal. You could only kill by cutting off the flow of Bloodsap and keeping it cut off for several minutes.

  Fusili’s legs kicked out at the knife thrust. Kwame pushed the knife down hard. He twisted it against the ribs and locked it into place. Fusili gave another shudder.

  “Shit,” he said. “I’m thirsty as hell. I’m so thirsty.”

  Dying sometimes had weird effects on the sense perceptions. Kwame knew, having died a few times himself over the years they’d been there. Fusili thought he was thirsty.

  “Jesus, just a cup of water. Can somebody give me something to drink,” Fusili whispered.

  Nobody moved to help him. He wouldn’t be so thirsty in a moment.

  Fusili’s last words were the last words of many a soldier.

  �
��Mama.”

  He lay back on the rock, still.

  Kwame turned the knife, unlocking it from the ribs. He quickly made a two-foot slice horizontally across Fusili’s chest. He then found the middle of the cut and sliced up and down a foot, neatly opening up Fusili’s chest.

  The luminous Bloodsap welled up and pooled in the chest cavity. Kwame reached in and extracted the man’s heart. Much Bloodsap had leaked out of it, but it was still seeping with the stuff. He handed the heart to Mays.

  “Take it,” he told her. “Smear up with it. Pass it around.”

  Mays did as he told her. She held the heart above her head and wrung it between her fists. Bloodsap flowed over her upturned face and down her arms and neck. Soon she glowed a bright neon red.

  Kwame dipped his hands into Fusili’s body and splashed the syrupy Bloodsap over himself, daubing down his arms and shirt. Once introduced, the sap disseminated itself over the rest of his body surface like quicksilver. Soon he, too, was glowing red.

  There was a crackling in the bushes. A distant voice that sounded like his own.

  “The Shadows are almost here,” Kwame said. He stepped back from body. “The rest of you get yourselves sapped up.”

  The platoon quickly did as he said, some wiping themselves with the heart, others splashing themselves from the opened body as if it were a gooey pool for washing. Soon the entire platoon was shining as bright as fire.

  There was excited screaming in the underbrush. The jungle parted.

  The Shadows were upon them.

  The Bloodsap did its job. Slippery Shadow hands grasped for them and slid off skin without effect. The Shadows brought out their machetes. But the sap began to take effect in earnest. The Shadows spun around in grim revulsion.

  “Got some Shadow repellent on today, you fuckers,” Mays called out at them. “You can’t touch us now.”

  Shadow-Mays followed the sound of her own voice, raising the machete to strike, but she couldn’t follow up, so repugnant was the sap to her senses.

  “Shut up,” Kwame told Mays. Taunting the Shadows would only make them into more ferocious hunters than they already were. “You’re humping Fusili’s body after we’re done here.”

  “Right, Sarge.” Mays sounded chagrined. “I’ll get him.”

  “All right, people,” Kwame said. “Ready your blades.”

  The platoon unsheathed their own machetes. Doing so would have been unthinkable without the sap on their side. The Shadows were easily twice as strong as the Tigers in a normal situation.

  The Tigers did as ordered. The Shadows understood what was happening, of course. But, as always happened, the Shadows’ killing lust overcame their intelligence. The Shadows were completely incapable of retreat. They were drawn inexorably to the Tigers, hanging on the edge of the Bloodsap’s repulsing power like the panting predators they were.

  “Time to do some hacking,” Kwame called out. “Find your target.” He raised his own blade high above his head. Gazing about, he spotted his own doppelganger. For some reason, attacking your own double was far more effective than hacking away indiscriminately.

  Shadow-Kwame was staring in the direction of the platoon with fierce, searching eyes despite what had to be the blinding glow of the Bloodsap.

  “On my mark!” Kwame squared up and readied his blade. “Strike!”

  There was a bright, jagged flash.

  A crackling, electric shock that paralyzed Kwame’s muscles in midswing.

  Thunder in Kwame’s ears.

  “Hold!”

  Kwame shook his head, slapped an ear.

  “You are commanded to hold.” The same voice. A woman’s voice. An unknown voice.

  Not a Tiger. Not a Shadow.

  But who else was there?

  “This is Major Philately of the First Sky and Light Virtual Extraction Corps.”

  Major? There had never been any majors in the jungle. As far as Kwame had ever known, it was a theoretical rank the lieutenant had sometimes referred to, sort of like a minor god.

  Kwame didn’t believe in any gods.

  “Sergeant Neiderer, your pellicle has been infiltrated by DIED anti-information zone on the Plutonian moon Charon,” the voice said.

  Charon? What the hell was this Philately talking about? There was only the jungle. There had only ever been the jungle.

  “This is some kind of trick the Shadows have come up with,” Kwame yelled to his platoon. “Don’t listen to this shit.” He reared back and took a huge swing with his machete.

  Another bolt of lightning. Another jolt of electrical paralysis. His couldn’t finish his strike.

  “Sorry about this, Sergeant, but we don’t have much time,” said the voice. “We’ve got to get you extricated, decontaminated, and bugged out as quickly as possible. We’ve got a half cycle before your code key mutates again.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” It sounded like his voice, but it was Shadow-Neiderer.

  “You’re about to find out, Sergeant,” said the voice. “And it’s going to happen fast. Sometimes bringing a trooper out of the zone pushes him or her over the brink and into psychosis.”

  “The only psychotics around here are those fucking Shadows,” Kwame said. “We have to hack them to pieces or they’ll kill us all.” Maybe he could get this “major” to see reason.

  The thunder rumbled again. But this time, instead of lightning, there came blinding revelation.

  The past flooded in first. His youth spent in deep space on a remote Oort precomet. The orphanage on Pluto after his mother died, and the semisentient despot, the Rules, that governed the children there using the sadistic, irrational letter of the law. His early manhood: unprepared for life on his own, dysfunctional, addicted, dissolute.

  Then the Army. A new chance. A family. Even if it was a brusque, strict family. Even if it was occasionally sadistic, the Army wasn’t the Rules. It had a purpose. That purpose was to put its members in harm’s way. To put him in harm’s way.

  Well, you couldn’t have everything. At least he had a purpose beyond himself—because the Army did. He was a protector.

  Across from him, across the barrier of the sap’s shine, Shadow-Kwame, too, stood as if riveted to the ground.

  There was such things as rivets. As spaceships. There was vacuum, and planets, and stars. There was grist.

  “Where am I?” he said. But it was the Shadow Kwame who spoke.

  “On Charon,” said Philately. “You are trapped in a grist-mil anti-information zone. The zone was originally set up by the Met defenders here. We dropped in our own insurgency grist, and the ‘native’ stuff was modified. But it wasn’t deactivated. When you made your moonfall, your pellicle was invaded by the grist-mil. The Federal Army grist couldn’t stop this. But it protected you from death by disassociating you. By splitting your mentality into several pieces so that the grist-mil couldn’t localize you.”

  “The Shadows?” said Tiger Kwame.

  “The Tigers?” said Shadow Kwame.

  “All part of you,” said Philately.

  “But we fight…”

  “To keep the enemy confused. To blur the target.”

  “We’ve fucking killed each other!”

  “You never have succeeded.”

  “The Tiger lieutenant—she’s dead,” said Shadow Kwame. “I killed her. I boiled her in moon shine to make sure she couldn’t reconstitute.”

  “You killed a fragment of your own personality, a memory. As long as the shadow lieutenant is alive, the memory is preserved.” Philately’s voice became more urgent. “We don’t have much time, Sergeant Neiderer. The extraction window is closing.”

  “What about the rest of my platoon?”

  “All but you and Benetorro were killed instantly, Sergeant Neiderer.”

  “But that’s impossible. They’re all here.”

  “In your mind,” said Philately.

  “No, here—in the jungle ,”

  “You’ve been dreaming in the grist, Sergeant,
” Philately said. “It’s time to wake up.”

  “But I am awake!”

  “Not half as awake as you’re going to be,” Philately replied dryly.

  The jungle grew brighter. What was that? A giant fire? Brighter still. It wasn’t the moon. The moon was in the west. The moon was always in the west, skewered on the mountain peaks there.

  I’ve touched the moon, and it bled.

  This light came from the east.

  Brighter than the moon. Nothing was brighter than the moon.

  What the fuck is that in the east? Shining like—

  Like the sun.

  Impossible. There was no such thing. It was just a word for something imaginary. It didn’t exist. It couldn’t exist. Nothing that bright was possible.

  The sun rose in Kwame’s mind.

  Sun.

  Solar system. War. His real life.

  It all came to him in an instant. Shadow and Tiger melted away.

  The sun burnt brightly. Then it dimmed. Farther and farther away. As far away as Pluto.

  On the surface of Charon, Kwame Neiderer stood up from where he’d collapsed in the grist-laden crust.

  His internals told him that two e-days older had passed. Just two days. A wave of panic. Couldn’t be. Impossible.

  Was.

  He was tougher than the panic. He was Tiger and Shadow combined.

  Terror was always present. It could be handled. It could be used to survive.

  To fucking get on with things.

  To fight the enemy.

  “Did we win the battle?” he asked. His voice made no sound in the airless vacuum. But he had communicated through the merci, through the knit. He remembered how that worked now.

  Philately answered him through his pellicle, through the Army’s knit. Being a free convert, she was not physically present, of course. She was somewhere in the grist. He remembered how that worked, too.