Crash Deluxe (30 page)

Shock jerked me out of the realities that I’d slipped between. Skeletons littered the dirt around the outcrop. The crunching underfoot . . . looked behind me at what I’d walked across.

A burial ground.

‘Who are you?’ I whispered.

Squatting down, he beckoned me inside, his yellow teeth bared and broken.

I shook my head as if to clear it and stepped forward on to sun-hot ironstone.

I had to bend double to enter the cave. He was smaller than me. Much.

I rested again. My eyes slow to adjust, seeing spirals in the dark. Spirals and ghosts. Roo, Wombebe, Jamon.
Dead people never leave you. Never. They hang out, all melancholy, in your mind-corners.

‘Gahhh.’

The noise again.

I followed the sound, crawling forward and downwards, fingers clawing into the packed-down dirt. The dark was welcome. I shivered in it and began to see shapes other than those in my conscience.

It levelled off into a larger, brighter cave, and another. Joined together by a low passage.

I recognised crude furnishings and worship poles. Food scrapings and the smell of waste. Enough light to see. But coming from where?

The short figure poured water on my head and into my mouth from a muddy puddle that had collected against the wall. The cold bitterness of it stung me and constricted the back of my throat. I coughed and coughed.

Then the man pushed and chivvied me on, into the more distant cave. I felt his sinew and muscle and hair and smelled the scent of a different animal. The smell made me gag again.

He dropped me on the packed dirt in the middle of the smaller cave.

A woman reclined there against the wall, her outsized skull hooked into and supported by a tangle of mismatched mek-ware that lay scattered around her like offerings to a god - some of it was older than me, some as spanking new as the gear in King Ban’s hide.

Organic tendrils fed back into the ironstone of the cave from her withered brown-skinned body. Around her the rock radiated warmth. Smooth furrows existed where her hands rubbed restlessly.

I couldn’t speak - my throat was too dry and sore - only wonder.

‘I’m the one you have come to kill.’

And yet her presence was strong, shimmering around me, sinister and aged.

Amusement crinkled her thick, dark lips.

‘Not what you was thinkin’, eh, darlin’? See, I’m from the old tribes.
Homo Erectus
, you lot called us.’

I strained to remember my conversation with the Angel in vreal land. Its story of its origins.

But
Homo Erectus
had its own survival mechanism.

‘That can’t be,’ I finally managed, swallowing between each word.

‘Ho, ho - yes, it can.
Anything
can be. I am an original. Survivor of the bloodsucker when it first come here. One of the higher-evolved.’ A rattling laugh. ‘Like you, I was a freak - one who survived out of balance. That’s how I live so long. Mebbe the same will be for you.’ She rambled on. ‘Mebbe you’re one of my tribe. Come closer. Lemme check your gene code.’

I backed away instead.

‘How can you be Brilliance?’

‘That kid not me.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

Silence for a bit and then another chuckle. ‘See, girl, this is how it goes. Them local tribes bring me all this tek. Works real good in this place.’ Her broad, slippery hand patted the rocks. ‘Ironstone. So I go muck in that place - what youse all call it - vreal. I’m not so bored when I there. Met me some hard-working kid - the one youse keep calling Brilliance. I say roll over, kiddo. Let me have a bit o’ fun.’

Her laugh this time was genuine and rusty.
Big joke.

The short man wiped a thick, sulphur-stinking paste onto my palm and squashed something that squirmed into it. A worm, long and thin.

‘Eat, so you can listen better,’ the woman ordered. ‘I don’t get to talk with this old throat much.’

I swallowed obediently, like a kid, and got a small surge of energy followed by spasming pains in my arms and throat.

‘Cabal, youse call them local boys,’ she said.

‘The Cabal
help
you?’

‘She giggled. ‘They think me Biami’s child. Think I’m dreaming in here. I tell ’em, yeah I need big tek to dream.’

‘You’ve been living in vreal?’

The old female ignored me, rambling on. ‘My god’s a damn grub - a parasite from out there in them dark frozen places.’

‘It’s not a god,’ I protested.

‘You gone broke me and my fun, girl. Given me one big headache. I gotta regrow all this stuff. Takes time.’

I stared at the rock under her skull. The tendrils writhed, growing as I watched. The cave was one large transceiver and she would be back on-line soon.

‘Someone’s started spreading the parasite again not far from here in a place called MoVay.’

She gave a sniff through broad, crusty nostrils. ‘That one damn bad place. That woman you dropped in the shit there - Bau? Good job, I say. She knew I was roundabouts here. She set all that stuff goin’. Wanted to stop me havin fun.’

I finally exhaled the breath that I’d been holding. I
hadn’t
killed the wrong person - it was just more complicated than that.

And now I had to stop this creature broadcasting - having her fun. If she went back on-line then Teece and everyone I knew would perish.

I raised my hand to send my wire slicing through her brain.

That was when I saw it - a dark whorl on my fingers where they gripped the wire.

She rolled her eyes, slyly. ‘Kill me and the net stuff stays dead all right but then you got no clue how to beat the grub. You got the change comin’
now
and I know how to stop it. You can be like me, living on for ever.’ The giggle. ‘Say, grrlie, what you gonna choose?’ she asked.

Roo was back again, hat pulled low. Wombebe hung around his neck.

I wasn’t going to let them down again.

I coiled the wire. ‘You’re wrong. See, this time there is no choice.’

I would like to complete this series by acknowledging Eidolon editors, Jeremy Byrne and Jonathon Strahan. Jeremy gave Parrish her first outing as Loretta in issue 28 of Eidolon. He let her strut her stuff when no one else in the world would have dared.

 

The original Parrish’s Patchers, Amy, Cj and Mouse, thanks for digging The Tert enough to create your own community.

 

Crash Deluxe
was written in a period of considerable personal difficulty. I wish to thank our loving families who sustained us through it and some special friends who supported me as I wrote: Helen Smith, the RORETTES (Maxine, Rowena, Margo, Trent and Tansy), Kate Eltham, Julie Walsh, Pam Haling, Debbie Phillips, Desiree Johnson, Kath Holliday and Vicky Heiwari.

 

Many thanks also to Darren, my new editor - how impossibly lucky have I been - Ben Sharpe and now Darren Nash. Sheesh! Darren embraced Parrish’s quirkiness without batting an eyelid and she’s better for it.

 

Lastly, to Tara Wynne, my lovely agent, who never fails to look out for me.

 
 
 

 
Crash Deluxe

 

 
MARIANNE DE PIERRES

 
 
Hachette Digital