The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine (31 page)

The shudder seemed
to have alarmed the Bombie. Chamberlain froze. The Bombie stopped (it was now
positioned half-way up his arm) and began to vibrate. The vibrations went up
Chamberlain’s arm. Please please please don’t.

The vibrations grew
more frantic. Please please pl—

“Bombie makes baby,”
a voice close to his ear said. He almost jumped. The voice was pleasant, soft,
a little childish. “Makes many baby. You no like?”

Trying not to move
his lips, the words escaping like a hiss of air through closed teeth: “Don’t
want to die.”

“What is die? You
think.”

Somehow he
understood the speaker. The voice made him picture a young girl standing there,
which was insane. There were no young girls on Fly. But he did what the voice
told him. He thought of death.

Pain, and the
absence of pain...and the thing that is, that was, Chamberlain spread out over
a large area, no heart to beat blood into the brain, neurons no longer firing,
the I/We group-mind that is the human brain dispersing like mist—

The voice said,
“Die—strange. You wait.”

On his arm the
Bombie was ready to explode. Its wings juddered and its feelers moved
frantically in an ecstatic display. It had grown larger, inflated, until it was
the size of a hand-grenade.

He whispered: “Can’t...wait.
No time.”

“You no like? Bombie
funny.”

Funny?

Something leaned
over him. He tried not to see it. It was nothing human. It was like two
transparent arms made of glass, or air, passing over him, through him, and
delicately cupping the Bombie. He saw it as a glass globe encircling the
insect, right there on his arm.

The Bombie exploded.
Chamberlain screamed.

“You silly,” the
voice said in his ear.

The Bombie exploded
inside its cage. A cage, Chamberlain thought. He tried to ignore the spreading
wetness in his combat suit. The Bombie exploded into a thousand tiny fragments,
sharp black slivers that shot away from it as it disintegrated, ready to cut,
maim, and embed themselves in any and all available surfaces, but instead—

They’d frozen in a
perfect moment of explosion, within the boundary of an invisible globe. The
globe rested on Chamberlain’s arm. He stared at it. “Better now?” the childish
voice said. “Pretty Bombie.”

Chamberlain rolled
on his back, bringing the gun up in one smooth motion, pointing it at the—

Weirdie.

A maelstrom of wind,
a face above it like a whiskered cat, eyes bright and twinkling. His finger
tightened on the trigger—

“Release Bombie?”
the voice said. It came from the Weirdie, although the lips in that face did
not move. And Chamberlain froze with his finger on the trigger. The threat in
the words was self-evident, with or without the childish voice.

He relaxed his
finger, slowly, and equally slowly he stowed away the gun. Above him the
Weirdie was holding the Bombie. It looked like a grotesque aquarium, like
something you got in the restaurants back on Elephant, only with a living bomb
inside.

“You...Chamberlain?
Pretty name. Pretty face. Me—”

Instead
of words, an image, shoved into his brain like fingers into soft dough. Images,
confused, incoherent. Weirdies, in formation. An area of jungle like all the
others and yet somehow he knew it was the one he was in, the one he had been
sent to, although it looked strange, somehow, as if the jungle were overlaid on
top of something else, like two versions of the same thing getting mixed up.
The area of penetration, he thought.

“Penetration,” the
Weirdy voice said. More images. This Weirdy, with a companion, travelling
through the forest. The companion-Weirdy disappearing in a blaze of—Chamberlain
closed his eyes. The Weirdy had been killed with a vacuum gun. His.

“Mission, take
look,” the Weirdy said. “Mission—learn. After fix. No problem. Now I learn you.
Yes?”

“No,” Chamberlain
said.

“Now I learn you,”
the Weirdy said. “No problem.”

And again, it was
like fingers digging into his skull, but this time it was worse, and he
screamed. The maelstrom of wind picked him up and tendrils of air stroked him,
touched him... “Please!” he said.

“No problem,” the
Weirdy said. “Must relax.”

Tendrils of air
studied him, caressed him, from his ears down to his neck, to his chest and
back, to his buttocks and—

“No, you don’t
understand,” he said.

“Is true,” the
Weirdy said. “Not understand. Must learn. You now. No problem.”

“Stop saying that!”

Then a tentacle of
air entered him and he screamed, and his mind was filled with images of the
war, and back, back, back to:

Two:
Brainstorm

He is at home and
there is a solar-system swirling above his head made of soft colourful foam,
all six planets in rotation. Daddy stands above him. “Monkey,” Chamberlain
says. “Monkey!”

“And this one,
little Shambi?” Daddy says.

“Monkey!”

“Jaguar,” Daddy
says. “And this one?”

“Monkey?”

“Firefly. And this
one is Wolf, and this one is Dog—see how they always circle close to each
other, but never quite meet?—and this is home, this is—”

“Elephant!” Shambi
says, and Daddy smiles and lifts him from the crib and gives him a hug. “You
are a smart boy, Shambilan.”

(somewhere far
away—No, don’t call me that! I’m Chamberlain now, and Shambilan is long gone,
along with the house, the crib and that old useless toy—

—Where is other one?

—What?

—Where other one?

—There is no other
one.

—No! Must look
again!

And dissolve)

“Monkey!” Little
Shambilan says.

“And this one?”

“Monkey!”

There is another
planet on a string, but it is small and ugly, and father sees it and he frowns
and he says, “That’s not supposed to be there. Hold on,” and he goes and he
comes back and he has scissors and he cuts the wire and everything is pretty
again. And Shambilan thinks of a word he had heard somewhere but doesn’t know
where, and he shouts, “Fly!”

“What did you say?”

“Monkey?”

“You should not talk
of that place. It is evil.”

(—What is evil?

—This is.

—No, this memory
only. No evil. What is evil?

—Fly, Chamberlain
says. Fly is evil.

And fade)

“What is evil,
Daddy?”

Daddy is looking at
him as if looking at something alien and strange. “Get away from my son,” he
says.

“Daddy?”

But his father still
looks at him as if he has never seen him before, and there is a hard, scary
look in his eyes. “There is no such place as Fly,” he says. “Get away from him.
Now.”

And the scene
disappears and it is later, years later, and—

(—Man no like new
friend?

—Is this real?

—What is real?

And Chamberlain
groans, and the wind probes deep inside him—

And dissipate)

—and he is lying in
the grass under the stars with Rashmi and they both have their shirts off and
her skin is soft and dark and his heart is beating loudly in his chest and she
says, “One day I’m going to go to the stars.”

“Why? Nothing
there,” he says, and his fingers trace a line under her arm and she giggles.
“Don’t you wonder what it’s like, up there?”

“Rocks,” he says,
with the certainty of a boy. “Why go anywhere? Our ancestors came here because
it was the best place to be.”

“Do you really
believe it?”

“The Party says—”

“I’m
not asking you what the Party says. I’m asking what
you
believe.”

“If they call me
I’ll go,” he says, changing tack, his fingers trying to work their way below
her navel, but she turns and blocks him. “Go where?”

“Into the service.
You could come with me. Then we’ll see what it’s really like out there, on
Firefly and Monkey, Jaguar and Wolf and Dog, maybe even further, back where
people come from, I forget what it’s called.”

“Mars,” Rashmi says.
He shrugs. “Whatever.” She smiles and turns toward him for a kiss—

(—Where is one?

—Oh, come on!

—You are distressed?
Young boy likes young girl?

—Just...can we go
back? Just for a moment?

—But where is other?
Where is one?

—I—

And disperse)

“Rashmi? What is it?”

But she is backing
away from him now, and her eyes are round with fear.

“What did I say?” He
doesn’t understand. “We could go to all of them,” he says again, trying somehow
to get her back. “You’ll like Fly. It’s beautiful. When the living trees are in
bloom and the Gorp are hunting through the woods, and you can hear the music of
the Skaar-et-lam when true night falls—”

“Get away from me!
Get away!”

(—But I don’t
understand! This never happened. I don’t know what Skaar-et-lam is—

—Very beautiful.
Must experience. Now more.

—No more.

—Must.

—Kill me.

—I do not understand
kill.

—Dying?

—Ah, yes,
picture-story you tell. No, no dying.

And—)

The Party Congress,
and he is a young man, standing in the auditorium with all the other cadets.
The Chairman speaks, an elderly man in a plain blue shirt. “Prosperity is our
watchword,” the Chairman says. “Under the Party’s leadership the six worlds are
at peace. The world we have made for ourselves is a world of
good
.”

Cheers.

“Unity!”

Cheers.

“The path of
enlightenment is glorious before us—”

(—Not understand.

But Chamberlain does
not even remember a party conference, does not remember the auditorium, does
not remember the speech, and he says—What are you looking for?

—One! One plus one
plus one plus one plus one plus one plus
one
!

—Ah, Chamberlain
says. Mathematics. Right.

—Where is one?

And—)

He stands up in the
audience and everyone turns to look and their eyes are hard and
uncomprehending. He shouts, “What about the seventh planet?” and there is an
uproar, and somebody screams, and the soldiers turn and the guns are pointing
at him and the speaker roars—“There is no seventh planet!” and the guns—

(and fade. And back.
And—)

Three:
Soldier Plus One

The Weirdy hovered
above him. “One dark,” it said. Its body swirled in an excited turbulence. “One
missing. Like puzzle, in memory of you, one time. You make puzzle with Daddy,
and piece is missing. You cry.”

“I did not
cry
,”
Chamberlain said indignantly. He pulled himself up. The Weirdy did not stop
him. Chamberlain glared at the Weirdy. The trapped, exploding Bombie was still
frozen by their side in its bubble of—of what?

“What did you do to
it?” Chamberlain asked.

“Bombie? Make it
sleep, only. Sleep small. You look?”

He looked, and
looked away.

“Come,” the Weirdy
said. “You, me, go now. Take Bombie.”

“Go where?”

“Home,” the Weirdy
said. “Source. Must change thing that is wrong. Fault of us, you. Never mind.
All same.”

“I should kill you,”
Chamberlain said. He stood up. His hand was on the butt of the Vacuum 300.

“Kill, not kill, all
same,” the Weirdy said.

“Whatever,”
Chamberlain said, resigned.

He followed the
Weirdy. The Weirdy carried the frozen Bombie. What was he supposed to do? The
alien could have killed him. It chose to keep him alive. Did that make him,
technically, a prisoner of war? He’d never heard of anyone being captured by
the Weirdies. And he still had his gun, so technically...

He thought about it.
If he threw down his gun, would
that
make him a prisoner of war? They
couldn’t blame him then, could they? I mean, didn’t he have to obey some kind
of convention then? He said, “Do you want my gun?”

The Weirdy turned to
him, the cat’s eyes inscrutable. “You keep wind-toy. Gorp coming. Gorp no like
you. Smell wrong.”

Gorp.

“Where?” he said.
Panic made him raise his voice. “Where Gorp?”

“You must quiet.
Gorp coming. Many Gorp. Like you no like you.”