Parallax View (22 page)

The word, spoken gently, almost wistfully, stirred Abbott from his delirium. His consciousness instantly focused on the dark knot of pain in his stump, as it jogged against the Kryte’s back. He clamped back on another scream.

“The sinner’s reward,” Abbott gasped.

The jungle had thinned now, the canopy down to a few tens of metres above, wide patches of sepia sky visible through the foliage. Flying creatures drifted about the tops, screeching and cooing and twisting with a liquid grace to cut through narrow clefts in the vegetation.

Abbott was thirsty. He couldn’t remember the last time he had drunk. The Kryte had offered him water gathered from the boles of the trees, but he had refused. His skin was covered in scab-like infestations – he did not want the same colonisation to take a hold of his innards. The growths appeared to have accelerated their spread ever since he had commanded the Kryte to withdraw from his head. Again, he felt temptation... if it was a choice between dying and accepting the alien’s protection, which would he choose? Which
should
he choose?

“I am damned? My kind are damned?” Again, the beast was resuming a conversation after an interval.

Abbott closed his eyes to shut out the swirling colours of the vegetation through which they passed. His head still spun, still swam.

“All sinners can be forgiven if it is in their heart,” he answered. He had believed that once. But while the Lord could forgive, could Abbott truly find forgiveness in his heart? He pressed his face into the Kryte’s back and swallowed a sob. He had mourned Stella and Rob for so long after the strike on New Hampton. For far longer than had been healthy, people had told him. He had been offered help, counselling, therapy, but had refused, determined to find his own peace with the world again some day. He had followed the cliché, lost himself in his work, struggled to understand the mind of the truly unknowable.

“Why?” he asked now.

“Because they sang louder than the Ch’tek,” said the Kryte simply.

It had understood his question, had seen into his heart, his head. Abbott shuddered – the beast had never truly left his mind! He was torn between outrage and ... curiosity.

“Who? Who sang?”

“Stella, Rob, the 4,987 souls of the world you call New Hampton.”

“Souls?” Abbott spat. “What do you know of souls? You
are
damned. The lot of you. You will all burn in hell.”

And most likely, Abbott very nearly added, so too will I.

They came to another great step in the land, a drop of hundreds of metres overall, broken up into a succession of smaller descents.

It seemed strange to be looking out above the lower canopy, to see the creatures flying there, great gauze-winged dragonfly-like beasts, with scaly bodies and wedge-shaped heads that twisted and turned continually. Strange, too, to see the sky again. Abbott had forgotten its sepia tones, the umbers and siennas and creams of the drifting clouds, through which a near-white sun burned insipidly.

The Kryte turned and Abbott saw that it intended to descend the crag backwards, hanging on by hand as well as foot. It was not quite a climb, not quite a walk, but something in between – no monk-crafted steps here to help them on their way. Abbott felt even more precarious than before on his perch on the alien’s back, intensely aware that he was hanging over a drop he could no longer see.

Minutes later, they reached an area a few metres across where the ground shelved, offering them respite. The Kryte lowered Abbott to the ground and squatted on its haunches. He watched it. From its posture, from the way it had dropped him so quickly, he believed that it must be verging on exhaustion, but it betrayed no outward sign, no heavy breathing, no trails of sweat through the spores and microbes and scabs that infested its skin. Abbott realised that he could not see it breathing at all, and he recalled now the reports on the three previous Kryte captives: like humans they drew oxygen from the air, but they had no lungs with which to breathe, instead dispersing their equivalents of alveoli throughout their bodies, their breathing localised, scattered.

Suddenly struck with fatalism, Abbott realised that the burden of carrying him through the jungle would kill the alien, but not to carry him would, of course, just as surely kill it.

The Kryte stood and turned towards the next drop. Abbott watched, fascinated, as if he sensed ... danger.

The Kryte leaned forward, looking for a safe route down the next drop. A soft crumbling sound reached Abbott’s ears, and he saw dust rising around the alien’s feet, movement as rock parted, slid, fell away.

The Kryte screeched, the most alien, inhuman sound Abbott had yet heard from it.

It raised its hands, perversely like a toppling child, and – so slowly! – started to tumble. Abbott felt the instinctive reaction to reach out, but he was rooted to the ground, well out of reach. He watched as the Kryte fell, flailing, and vanished from view.

A moment later, he heard it screech again, a weaker cry, piteous, the wail of a lost infant almost. For a few seconds, he thought only of the incident, the alien falling over the crumbling edge, his own predicament: lost, unable to walk, on a hostile alien planet, doomed to die within hours? Days? Then the Kryte whimpered again, and he remembered the anchor-slave relationship – they were separated! The n-ware would be kicking in even now, dissolving the alien’s body tissue from within...

Abbott hauled himself across the rubble to where he could look down over the precipice.

Immediately, he saw the Kryte, lying crumpled below, caught on the next shelf down, about twenty metres away. Its legs were drawn up, its whole body trembling. Its great bauble eyes peered up at him and he knew it was in great pain.

Abbott gripped the edge of his own ledge and felt a surge of emotions... Not vengeance, but... Compassion? Mercy? Kreer?

He heaved at the rock, pulled his body forward until his centre of gravity had passed the point of no return, and he felt himself tip forward, down, start to tumble, start to fall.

He came awake to searing pain.

He lay on his back, staring up at the roiling cloudcover, and screamed.

Unbearable pain knifed the length of his left leg. He struggled to prop himself up on his elbows and stared down at his body. The sight made him moan in despair. The split bone of his femur had sliced through his thigh and his radiation silvers, emerging as a shattered spike just above his groin. Blood pooled around the wound, dripping to the ground.

The pain crescendoed and he screamed again.

He saw movement beside him, turned his head. The Kryte. It sat beside him, staring at his leg with its protuberant eyes.

It said, “Mercy? Compassion? You fell...”

Words were beyond him. He laughed. The bastard would read his mind anyway.

Mercy, compassion? Why had he saved the creature?

“To save yourself?” It blinked.

He laughed. “Save myself for what?” Perhaps, though, he had done it to save himself, or rather to save his soul...

Compassion.

“But you feel no... compassion,” said the Kryte. “Rather, anger, hatred.”

Abbott stared at the alien. He did feel anger, hatred, that was true. These were obvious, surface emotions. But deeper down, on some subconscious stratum of his tortured sensorium, where the Kryte could not reach?

The Godly should feel compassion for all creatures, regardless.

Pain took him again. He screamed.

The Kryte moved, dragged itself closer to Abbott. It reached out, both physically and mentally. Abbott felt a sudden diminishing of his pain, and at the same time a soothing presence in his head. It filled his mind with balm. He laughed. He felt as if he were floating, without a care in the world.

He tried to struggle. “No! Away, get out...” But at the same time he could not deny that he welcomed the cessation of pain.

He sobbed. He had succumbed to temptation.

He stared down the length of his body and watched the alien go about its business.

He could not tell whether it removed the shattered remains of his left leg with its claws or with surgical instruments. It was expert, that much was obvious. With half a dozen deft strokes it sliced through flesh and muscle, and then bone. Blood welled. The Kryte kicked away the remains of the leg, revealing a stump. It folded a flap of flesh, tucking it neatly and securing its edges with n-gel. The gel set, matching the stump of his right leg but for its lack of parasitical adornment.

Abbott stared up at the resting Kryte. “What do you want with me? Why keep me alive?” He felt certain that there was somehow more to it than simple survival...

The alien blinked. “For your enlightenment,” it said cryptically.

“What do you want with me!” Abbott screamed.

“Enlightenment,” the Kryte repeated maddeningly.

“Why keep me alive?” he sobbed.

The alien regarded him. “Enlightenment, certainly. Kreer.”

“Compassion?” he sneered.

The alien climbed to its feet, slowly. It swayed. The fall, the nanoware that had started its destruction of its body after their separation, and the effects of the jungle parasites – all had taken their toll on the creature.

Slowly it reached down to Abbott and picked him up, slung him on its back.

It moved to the edge of the drop and lowered itself over the edge, climbing down the almost vertical, vine-covered face with circumspection. The descent seemed to take an age, and the Kryte stopped often, exhausted, and rested.

They came at last to the foot of the cliff-face and the Kryte turned, swaying. It took one step forward, two, then stopped.

It could not go on, Abbott thought, and he wept as he considered their deaths out here in this God-forsaken, inhospitable jungle.

The Kryte sank to its haunches and shrugged him off its shoulders, arranging him like a sack against the face of the cliff.

It regarded him with large eyes, then said, “Do not despair. What I do now... is necessary.”

“What...?” Abbott felt a surge of panic. He felt, then, the increased presence in his mind, soothing.

Then the alien reached out and sliced the flesh around Abbott’s left shoulder, cutting through muscle, cartilage, bone, so fast that Abbott had hardly time to register shock before the arm fell with a thud to the ground and lay there, its sudden dislocation rendering it a preposterous, surreal object flexed upon the jungle floor.

The Kryte moved. Abbott wept. A flash of movement to his right, and a minute later his right arm too was lying incongruously beside the left, its fist clenched as if in futile anger. The Kryte was dressing the wounds, applying n-gel.

Then it slit the front of his radiation silvers, or what little of them remained. Abbott cried out, begging for mercy. What might the devil do now? Steal his internal organs, lay bare his lungs, his heart, disembowel him for its own inscrutable purposes?

Instead, it pulled the slivers from him and ripped, again and again, and tied the strips of material together. Abbott watched, mystified.

The alien glanced at him. “Do not fear, or grieve.”

Abbott could only laugh, then cry.

The Kryte had fashioned some kind of sling or papoose from his silvers, and now set about arranging his torso within it.

Then the creature crouched before him, its back to Abbott, and eased the sling over its head. It knotted the silvers before its belly and slowly, with care, eased itself upright, and Abbott with it. The sling held. The Kryte made adjustments, tightening the material, and Abbott was pressed hard against its scaled and putrescent back.

Seconds later, having lightened its burden considerably, the Kryte set off once more into the jungle.

It moved much more slowly now, picking its way through the undergrowth with care, It stopped often, standing stock still for perhaps ten seconds before continuing on its way. At first Abbott assumed the exhaustion was taking its toll, but then something about the regularity of the creature’s pauses, and its attitude when it did stop, made him think again. The Kryte not only stopped but stiffened, its head cocked to one side as if it were listening out for something. Its posture was of intense anticipation, not exhaustion.

They were passing through hilly terrain. The vegetation was thinner and the land rolled, creating hillocks and hollows. After perhaps an hour, Abbott noticed something else about the creature’s habit: it stopped only in the hollows, and almost ran up the hillocks, before pausing again in the valleys, tense, alert, listening.

Abbott wondered if they were approaching Fort Campbell.

Later – he had no idea exactly how much later, as he had slipped in and out of unconsciousness many times as they travelled – as they were ascending a small hill, Abbott made out a shape far to his right. At first he thought he was hallucinating.

The shape of the emplacement was a crude, stark geometry against the chaotic lines of the jungle. It was clad in some grey material, an armature designed to deter jungle growth and parasites as well as incoming missiles. It was squat and blocky, and jutted from the jungle bristling cannon and an array of strike missiles.

Some time later, they came upon a second. This was part of the protective defence of Fort Campbell then, the ring of emplacements that surrounded the base proper.

They were close, that much was clear.

So they had finally arrived, or nearly so. The Kryte’s destination. What now, Abbott wondered. Would the alien creep within range of Fort Campbell and detonate whatever warhead was secreted within its body, blowing them all to hell?

The Kryte jogged on, stopped occasionally. Abbott dozed, came awake with a start from time to time, remembering where he was, what was happening, and crying out loud.

But... a part of him was aware of some flaw in his reasoning. His assumption was that the Kryte was a suicide bomber – but how could that be? Would not the surgeons who had spliced the n-ware into its body have noticed that it was harbouring a bomb?

He laughed to himself in his delirious confusion. Who knew what the creature intended?

The emplacement was behind them now. They were approaching Fort Campbell. Soon, all would be explained. He would learn his fate, if it were ever in doubt. How could he survive, now? He was as good as dead, in fact would have died hours ago if not for the alien’s ministrations.