Baxter, Stephen Traces

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

She studied him, the age lines around her eyes softened by the diffuse lichen-light; she wore her hair tied
back behind her neck. 'We can't take you home. I'm sorry.'
Flower wriggled past the women and grabbed Stone's hand. Her face was shining. 'Stone, let's stay with
them.'
Rider touched their shoulders, embracing them both. 'Come with us; let's fly with this larva into the
Downstream. The Upstream's gone... but at least we can find out what's at the end of it all.'
'Can we, Stone? Oh, can we?'
Stone stared beyond the larva's thin flesh beyond the net farm, and into the lost infinity of Upstream.
'I'll always love you,' he whispered.
Then he turned Downstream. And smiled.
The Blood of Angels
The Angel's singing multitonal, delicate as air-snow came to him through water still winter-crisp.
Carver opened his eyes. The last few ice crystals embedded in his flesh made his eyelids crackle, and
prismatic forms crystals within the eyeballs moved across his retinae.
People rained from the frozen surface above him, arms wrapped around their legs, down towards the
Shelf floor. There were Angels everywhere, singing, touching the sleeping people.
Lyra's face swam before him, smiling, translucent. The Angel's bare body was still skeletal from last
autumn's fast, and her pale bones shone through her flesh. Her hands were moving over his body. He
could barely feel her touch; it felt as if layers of chitin had been plated over his dulled senses. She seemed
to be caressing him, welcoming him to the new, month-long summer. He was tempted to close his eyes,
to relax in her soft attention...
He felt her lift away the heavy pack of tools from his waist.
His eyes snapped open. Something was wrong.
'Lyra?' His voice was a croak, barely carrying through the chill water.
She smiled; through the ghostly flesh of her neck he could see vocal cords shimmer as she sang in
harmony with herself. But she clutched his tool bag a simple thing of woven weed, attached to a belt of
rope.
Beyond her, Angels swam coolly through the defenceless rain of people. The Angels were carrying away
tools, clothes, food caches even weapons: spears, knives of bone.
Carver grabbed Lyra's arm. Sheets of his flesh, frozen, ruined peeled away from him, exposing new,
pink skin. 'Lyra... What doing?'
Her flesh was soft, hot; she recoiled from his touch, uncomprehending distress distorting her face.
His brain seemed still to be half-frozen; he struggled to force it to work. Lyra couldn't answer him, of
course; Angels had no speech not even the guttural, verb-free sub-language of the Baskers.
But Angels weren't thieves, either. They'd never been known to steal from True Humans
before especially in the few brief days after the spring thaw, when the sleepless Angels were the first
creatures to recover, to begin functioning, with True Humans and every other Shelf creature still
half-frozen, unconscious, vulnerable.
Unlike people and Baskers, and Anglers Angels didn't freeze. They didn't have to sleep through the
eleven-month winter; they stayed conscious, entombed in the ice, making up their beautiful songs.
He took his tool kit from her unresisting grasp.
'Baskers!'
It was the voice of Hunter, his wife.
Carver turned in the water. Hunter squat, muscular, middle-aged, her hair tied back from her
brow swam through the cloud of stirring people. Layers of dead flesh flaked from her limbs, but she
was moving purposefully, slapping and pushing the adults to make them wake faster. She carried her
spear of chitin and wood. The spear was fouled, stained by smears of something clear, sticky
Angel blood.
The chill of the spring water sank deep into Carver's bones; he felt as if he would never be warm again.
Hunter saw him staring at her. She pointed past him. 'Baskers incoming! Move!'
No-one had killed an Angel a harmless, beautiful Angel ever before...
The Baskers were coming down on them in a great wall across the ocean. Their huge mouths were
clamped shut, and in their wide, clumsy hands they clutched their own crude weapons shards of chitin,
bits of rock and, he saw, True Human weapons: knives, spears, bows.
Human weapons, stolen for them by the Angels.
Too much was happening, too fast. Carver cast about for a weapon. But the knife at his waist was gone,
and the cache of spears and nets he'd helped gather, just before the winter sleep, was vanished.
Stolen by Angels?
He turned to face the Baskers, his fists bunching.
Silhouetted against the ruddy sunlight, a burly female dropped from the ice-coated surface at Carver.
Hair like weed, white and thin, straggled across her broad, flat skull. Her eyes were buried deep in pits of
bone. Her limbs were spread wide, her elbows and knees bent, and she clutched a True Human
knife perhaps it was even his own.
He tipped backwards in the water, bringing up his arms and legs.
The Basker's body smacked into his, full on. Nipples like pebbles pressed into his chest, and she
scrabbled at his back, nails like claws raking his flesh. Her huge mouth loomed before his face, a
translucent cavern, and he could see sunlight through the filtering gills at the sides of her immense throat.
That mouth was designed to filter out immense quantities of plankton and krill, as the Baskers swam in
their great schools through the Shelf waters...
But she wasn't feeding now. If the knife didn't get him, she could simply smother him by wrapping his
face and head in that huge, enclosing mouth.
He brought up his knees, trying to prise her away. He had to ignore the looming mouth before him. The
knife. Where was the knife? Her free hand was still working at his back he ran his left hand along her
bony arm so the knife must be there!
He felt the blade lunge into his hand; it passed through the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.
But there wasn't much pain. Clearly unused to the weapon, the Basker was holding the knife handle
awkwardly, too high.
He closed his palm around the knife. The stone blade rasped into his flesh, and he felt his palm grow slick
with blood. But he had it, and with a twist oh, the pain now as the blade scraped against bone he
was able to wrench the knife out of her grasp.
The knife slipped away from his bloodied fingers.
The Basker, enraged, shrieked into his face. He could smell foul brine, see scraps of krill clinging to the
back of her throat.
Now she had both her legs wrapped around his waist; she tore at his back, and pounded the side of his
head. He tried to fight back. But she was out of reach of his legs and knees. Her skin was hard,
leathery still winter-dehydrated but her muscles, toned by a life of steady swimming, were like
boulders.
She was crude, stupid, little more than an animal. It was impossible to believe that Baskers were humans
too, cousins of True Humans. But it was the truth; every person was born knowing it. And this Basker
was strong, and she was going to win.
Unless...
With his right hand he reached down to the tool bag at his waist. He scrabbled at his back, at the loose
knot in the rope belt at the base of his spine. In a few heartbeats, working blind and one-handed, he had
it free and then almost lost the bag altogether, as the Basker-woman pounded his head and back.
He reached out, past the Basker to an onlooker this must seem like some obscene embrace, he thought
distantly and with his right hand he wrapped the rope belt around his left wrist. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Archiwum