Africa Zero (4 page)

I
considered that.

“It
might be an idea if we did that now. You never know what they might be
planning. Your monofilament gear might stop darts but it won’t stop an arrow or
a spear.”

We
broke into a trot, turned down a side street leading in the direction we wanted
to go. Behind us there was more movement as people began to come out of their
ancient homes.

“Faster,”
I said, and we began to run. Ahead of us I could smell wood smoke and wondered
if it was something they were preparing for us. Soon we rounded a corner and
came face to face with about twenty Zag tribesmen, women, and children. It
seemed we had stumbled in one some kind of celebratory feast. On spits, over
the fire, were the gutted corpses of four men. The air smelt of roast pork.

“Jesu!”
said my companion at the sight.

We
came to a halt. Those in front of us did not look as if they had any intention
of moving. Others were gathering behind. The situation was beginning to look
decidedly sticky. I would have survived it. I am not so sure Jethro Susan would
have.

“Look!”
I shouted, and held up my arms.

Jethro
Susan looked at me as if she thought me mad. I guess she wanted to start
shooting about then. I shook my head at her.

The
Zags were watching me closely now. I lowered my hands to my neck and pressed my
fingers to a sequence of soft spots, then I sent an internal signal to a number
of superconductor nerve nexuses. My face went numb as seals broke and fibres
and synthetic muscle auto-detached.

“Look!”
I shouted again, and when I was absolutely sure I had their attention I pulled
my face off.

To
say that the effect was electric would be an understatement. Just about all of
them screamed. Jethro Susan only just managed to stifle hers. About half of
them ran for it. A lot went face down on the concrete. The remainder stood
there with their mouths open and just stared. I looked behind and got a similar
reaction there. By this time Jethro Susan was getting the idea. She held her
hand of ceramal high and pulled back her sleeve to show the rest of her arm.
Like showmen we advanced then and none barred our way. One gawper reached out to
try and touch my head as I passed but I slapped his hand away and grinned at
him, which at that moment was all I was capable of doing.

Soon
we reached a clear street, broke into a run, and in a matter of minutes were
out on the plain of the landing field. There we stopped while I put my face
back on.

“You
ever pull a stunt like that again ...”

I
looked at Jethro Susan and noticed how white her complexion was. She did not
look very well.

As
the seals pulled down and the fibres reattached, feeling returned to my face,
and I managed a normal-looking smile.

“I’ll
try my best, but it was all I could think of at the time. It worked well,
didn’t it?”

Angrily
she pulled her hood back, took off her remaining glove, and went stomping off
to the south. I shrugged and followed on. That night we continued walking and
did not make camp until we were well away from Z’gora. Jethro Susan was not
very talkative. I guess it must be unnerving to see the true nature of things.
But as she was settling down for the night her curiosity got the better of her.

“Doesn’t
it bother you being ... what you are?” she asked me from her blankets.

“You
mean, does it bother me that I have a wider sensorium that any man,
hyperstrength, and am virtually immortal, then no, it doesn’t bother me.”

“That’s
not what I mean, and you know it.”

I
grinned, but in the darkness I doubted if she could see me.

I
said, “Tell me, why do you not have a synthiflesh covering on your hand and
arm? Such could be easily manufactured at JMCC, and once linked in to your
nervous system it is almost as sensitive as normal flesh. Could it be you were
making a statement to your fellows? ‘Here, I have lost my arm. I am physically
imperfect. Look at me.’ Rubbing their noses in it a bit, weren’t you?”

“You’re
getting away from the point,” she said angrily.

“Ah,
so you don’t like personal questions either.”

She
was silent for a while, then she said, “You’re right. I was rubbing their noses
in it. My imperfections were not my fault. What right did they have to judge me
by them?”

“What
am I, Jethro Susan?”

“A
cyborg.”

“A
cyborg is something part machine and part human. Are the proportions important?
You should know.”

“I
see ...”

“I’m
human, Jethro Susan—I think and I feel. Yes, sometimes it bothers me how I
appear to others. But overall I feel the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
I think, it would be better if you asked these questions of yourself.”

There
was a long silence then, but I knew she had not gone to sleep. Eventually she
asked another question.

“Are
you? Are you really human?”

“Go
to sleep, Jethro Susan.”

On
the fifth day we left our camp of the night and headed toward the distant sound
of vultures squabbling. I was sure of what we would find. Half an hour’s walk
brought to us the stink of putrefaction. An hour’s walk brought us to the
slaughtered carcase of a young female mammoth.

I
held myself at the edge of the trampled clearing and watched as a pack of wild
dogs fed. At my side Jethro Susan pulled the cloth from her mouth then swore
and spat in a most crude manner. I moved to inspect the kill but her hand on my
arm halted me.

“One
like you is killing them,” she said, “I did not know there was another.”

I
turned to her. “There were many of us once, nigh indestructible, unkillable. In
time some of us sought death because of ennui or despair. Those that did sought
it from their own kind mostly, as being the only ones capable. I have been
called.” I turned to go, but she held onto me, staring into the clearing
suspiciously. I said, “It is the curse of some that they must kill those things
they loved.” She released me, and just at that moment I heard it—the sighing
whine, and the electric crackle of undergrowth exploding into flame. In one
motion I caught Jethro Susan round the waist and leapt five metres into the
jungle to one side. My shutters went down as there was a candent purple flash
behind me and a gust of sparkling cinders. I dropped Jethro Susan.

“Hide,”
I said, and leapt again.

To
my right I caught the nacreous glitter of the beam and dropped to the ground as
it swept above me blowing a cycad to candent flinders.

I
ate dirt and felt real fear for the first time in decades. Someone had an
antiphoton weapon. Someone was trying to kill me and could succeed. I could
die.

I
was up and running at full speed, circling the clearing, but trying to keep to
cover which was rapidly being blown away. Trees disappeared like pillars of ash
in a hurricane and red fire flashed through the undergrowth. I had an idea
where it was coming from now and by another circuitous route headed that way.
The firing stopped. I closed in, found the vine-covered log used for shelter
...

It
rested against the log. It looked like a stubby carbine made out of glass and
old wood. Under the glass salamanders writhed. For a moment I did not hear the
high-pitched terminal whine—when I did, I turned and ran. In the clearing I saw
Jethro Susan coming towards me with her rifle.

“Run!”
I yelled. She ran. As I came up beside her I explained while she gasped for
breath. I did not need to gasp. No part of me needed oxygen.

“Antiphoton
rifle keyed to dump its load. About a kiloton.”

She
looked at me with horror.

“I’ll
have to carry you.”

She
nodded agreement. This was no time for silly arguments. She knew my
capabilities. I dashed ahead of her, stopped and stooped down. In a moment she
was on my back and I set out at increased speed.

“Christ!”
she managed, before she got her head down.

In
a moment I was up to thirty-five kilometres an hour, which is fast enough over
such terrain. I was on the edge, clipping cycads and groundsels and only just
maintaining my balance on the soft ground. Jethro Susan yelled as a branch tore
her leg. Nothing I could do then. In a minute we were on to the three-lane
swathe cut by the main herd. I accelerated, feeling heat build up in my joints
because of the extra loading. I turned on my sweat glands, but there was no
water in my gut to supply them. I swore. Forty kilometres an hour, forty five.
I intended to keep this up for as long as possible. Flies spattered my face and
the occasional small bird did not get out of my way quickly enough. Fifty, and
I leapt a very shocked looking lioness. Jethro Susan was swearing unremittingly
in my ear. Her legs and arms were wrapped round me vice-like. Then it hit.

The
jungle whited out. I decelerated fast and got us behind a tree. Jethro Susan
lay face down with her arms around her face and I lay atop her. My eye shutters
adjusted to the glare and I saw the facing sides of trees and cycads smoking.
The flash went as the sound hit: the sound of matter being destroyed, a sound
without regard for animal frailty or softness, hard-edged as broken glass. Then
the air seemed to shift to one side. The pressure dropped, rose steeply, then a
hurricane brought the jungle down on us like a wave.

It
is only fair to say that every vital part of me is shielded against radiation.
Should every shred of synthiflesh be burned from my body I would survive. I had
been out of danger once we were on the trail. I am not flesh. Jethro Susan was.

The
storm ended while the jungle burnt. An ash of burnt and burning leaves snowed
down. Jethro Susan shifted under me and complained with muffled swearing about
my weight. There was no water in me to supply my tear ducts. There were ashes
in my mouth. She could complain as much as she liked, but she was dead, if not
now then some time soon, about a thousand rads dead.

* * *

“Will
you get off of me you great lump of scrap!”

She
had managed to turn her head to one side. I obliged her, hauling her to her
feet as well. She brushed dirt from her coverall, yelled then swore when a
burning leaf touched her face, then unzipped the coverall’s hood from a pocket
at the back of her neck and pulled it up over her head.

After
a moment she said, “I thought we’d lost the tech for those things. How come
there was one here?”

If
I choose for there to be no expression on my face there is none. I was glad of
that ability then. She did not know.

“It
was an old one. It would have fetched a small fortune at JMCC or one of the
other Family complexes. Over five hundred years old. Antique.”

She
looked round at the carnage.

“How
dirty was that explosion?” she asked carefully.

“Pretty
bad, we’ll have to circle round.”

I
set out into the burning jungle with her trailing behind.

Pretty
bad.

At
some point I would have to tell her that the explosion we had been on the edge
of was equivalent to that of a tactical neutron bomb. Even the jungle we were
walking through was fatal. I led us out of the area as quickly as I could.

We
made about ten miles before she started to vomit. Five miles more and she was
vomiting bile turned pink with blood and staggering to keep up with me. I
halted. She sat down abruptly and I saw that she was crying, her tears leaving
dirty streaks down the powder of ash on her face.

“I
don’t want to die,” she protested, her voice breaking.

It
got to me. I realised then I had come to care for her. I did not want her to
die, or rather, I was not indifferent. I unhitched my pack and took out my
sampling and field study kit. She watched me as I took out a hand diagnosticer
and ran it over her from head to foot. I might well have used a Geiger counter.

“How
long have I got?”

One
statement and one question that have dogged humanity for all their time. I
loaded a hollow-beam injector with the few drugs I had that would help her.

“Five
days at the outside, unless you get help.”

I
reached over, pulled back her hood. The injector sighed against her neck. She
slumped immediately. Five days at the outside. With help she might live another
five. I considered increasing the dosage so she would never wake up, and
rejected the idea. A plan was forming: something I might attempt, and which had
a strange kind of justice. Yes. My decision made I scooped her up and ran into
the jungle, heading southeast to where the JMCC complex lay under the harsh sun
of the savannah.

Two
days and one night brought me to the edge of the jungle and the beginning of a
green sea of elephant grass ornamented with theoccasional flat-topped acacia.
Once this place had been called the Sahara Desert, but like the Atlas foot
hills it had bloomed.

I
suspected I had outdistanced the Pykani because I saw no sign of them on that
night of travel. After a further half day of travel through the grasses I had
to search for a water hole for Susan and myself. I had kept her under for most
of the time, only waking her to drink from her water bottle, which was now
empty. I needed water because the extra loading, even at a fairly steady pace
of twenty kilometres per hour, was causing me to overheat again. I needed to
fill my gut and glands with it so I could sweat to cool. It took me the rest of
the day to find the water hole, which lay in a concealed hollow below three
huge baobabs like sentinels. I threw a blanket over Susan and left her to sleep
and wake naturally so she could drink before we moved on. At the water’s edge I
filled her water bottle and myself, batting away curious turtles while I did
so. This done I returned and settled down by her. While I waited I ran a
diagnostic on myself. It was unlikely there was anything wrong, but it passed
the time.