The Mammoth Book Of Steampunk Part 40

I knew Tintype would not propose so risky a job, no matter the fee, without a plan, without backup. I stifled an urge to scratch my forehead. "Tell," I said, and Tintype bent close, the tissue-film still in hand. "A Nunga, fishes off Van Diemen's Land," he said, low. "Going to swim us west, into the Bight, show us where to trek 'cross the Nullarbor."

"Tickets-of-leave," I said. "Conditions: we can't set foot on a boat. Back to Dockside if we do." Against my side I felt Suicide shudder.

"We can with a pa.s.s from the Governor," he said. "d.i.n.k.u.m, not forged." I stared. Behind him the gnome was beckoning; my scope was fixed.

"Can you get a d.i.n.k.u.m pa.s.s from the Governor?"

He smiled, lipless. "I can."

The Nunga, Johnny Roman, was ashy-gray and saturnine of countenance, and his boat was a big one, with room for five pa.s.sengers. And that's what there was, for there was a duet out of East Botany, Pinkerton Red and Pinkerton Gold, jolly sorts with hair to match their names. They were bound for Nullarbor too, also with pa.s.ses, and that seemed to put Tintype out a bit. He spent most of the three-day trip pondering his accounting-book, while I liked to see the sh.o.r.e go by with its little bays and strange outcroppings, and Suicide sat on the deck with the Pinkertons all friendly and jolly (with them a respectful distance from her blades). I hadn't been to sea before, save for my transport, and a twomonth of seasick in a metal womb full of dirty, vomitous slithies did not compare to this. I volunteered wide-eyes whilst the others snored, and watched the hard, bright pinp.r.i.c.k stars veer by. When we docked at Nullarbor the Pinkertons took off quick, veering east. This mollified Tintype some, though he still looked a touch put out, watching them 'til they dwindled in the distance. He waited for Johnny Roman to dock right and swab down before we all huddled. Johnny took out a double-palm's-breadth span of bark.

"The map," said Tintype, who obviously expected it.

"A map, or a story, much the same thing," said Johnny. With a callused gray finger he traced a white line with a triple row of tiny dots beside it. "These are Anagnu markings," he said.

"I thought there were none left," I said.

He looked at me from beneath bushy eyebrows. "There are some. Hardly enough to matter. This" he pointed again "this is where Uluru was."

"Uluru?"

"She used to be holy, a holy place. She is a monster now. Or so the Anagnu say. She speaks to any that come near, and she drives them mad."

I glanced at Tintype. He didn't seem surprised to hear any of this.

"This path." Tintype's finger echoes Johnny's. "A stream. If we follow that by muleback, will we make it to Uluru?"

"Oh yes." Johnny sat back on his heels. "And then you will die."

Suicide grinned.

We spread out on muleback, following the trickle of water outlined on the Anagnu map. Although a thin green fuzz grew by the water, clas.h.i.+ng with the bright red soil, the air was dry and pulled at my face, drawing the skin tight.

Tintype and I alternated in front, and Suicide always took backup. A day in she yelled and pointed, and I told Tintype via his b.u.t.ton to look to the east. Two gliders, pink and gold in the morning sun, paralleling our path. Heading to Uluru.

"The Pinkertons," I told him, quiet-like.

"Yes," he said. Then, "I don't like this."

"How, with the mag?"

"Cellulose. Hardly any metal in those things." To my puzzled look he said: "They're new."

We rested in the heat of day and also in the very dark of night, listening to the lizards scuttle and watching the Southern Cross sparkle across the black sky. After a while the mules wouldn't go on, although there was enough water. They were nervous, all atwitter, and finally we slapped their rumps and let them go home. According to the Anagnu map, it was time to turn from the stream. We filled our 'skins and bellies with the warm water, me double-loading.

Afternoon, Suicide was on wide-eyes and woke me and Tintype, pointing ahead. Just visible, a grey haze in the hot air, and a taste of smoke.

The wreckage of two gliders, one in the stream: they must have been following the thin green line as a guide. Pinkerton Gold was still in the hub of his craft, neckbroke. A line in the dust showed where Red had crawled from his. He'd made it about fifty feet before collapsing.

The wings of the gliders were pale and flexible. Where one had broken I saw fibres. Cellulose.

Suicide and I salvaged their gear while Tintype searched the bodies, looking puzzled. I thought it odd that he checked their ears.

As we humped on, I kept on thinking about it.

Back at the Parramatta burrows we kept track, close, of the days that pa.s.sed, a convict-habit. Making sure the Squatters didn't cheat you of your ticket-of-leave day. 'Twas too easy to let sunrise and sunset blur in the heat, in the boredom between jobs, in watching your back and the backs of your mates. But now, between red dirt and blue sky, I let day slip into day slip into darkest, star-strewn night. Only the bite of 'skin straps at my shoulders. Only Tintype fussing with his map and compa.s.s. Only Suicide crunching behind.

And thinking of the Pinkertons, of Tintype and his maps and messages, of cellulose planes in the Never-Never.

'Twas midmorning when a hum, faint, started in my head. Almost a whisper. I stopped and listened hard, sure I heard words.

Pain lanced through my head, beginning at my left ear. Ahead, I saw Tintype wince and paw at the side of his head.

The anteflap b.u.t.tons. Feedback screamed through my anterior lobes: Tintype's b.u.t.ton squealing at mine. I could hear myself echoing in Tintype's head.

Louder and louder. My head was in the dirt.

A smaller, quieter pain at my ear, and I fought the impulse to strike back. Suicide, slicing out the implant. I tried to hold still.

Suddenly just the echo between my ears, and a pink b.l.o.o.d.y lump dropped on the red sand before me. I watched her stride quick to Tintype, wrest his hand away from where he was clawing himself, and bend, blade out, over his hunched form. I saw him relax suddenly when she straightened up, implant in hand. b.u.t.tons aren't planted deep: a little pressure and the bleeding stopped. That whispering was still there, however.

I glanced at Suicide. She was tilting her head, looking mazed.

"Hear it?" I asked.

She nodded, frowning in concentration.

"Words. Soon. And hatching. And punishment." She listened a while, then shook her head. "Now just a hum."

"So not just the headmods."

"No."

Tintype untucked a little package. "Here."

White and spongy, little b.a.l.l.s. Something hard in the middle of each. "Like this." He pushed one into each ear. Suicide and I looked at each other. The hum was getting louder, the whispers sharper.

We shrugged and put them in. The sound cut back, and faded. Still there, but still and small, like the voice of G.o.d.

"You were expecting this?" asked Suicide.

"Something like this," he replied.

We trudged on. Once, experimentally, I took a sponge half out of one ear.

DUSTALLWASDUSTAFTERANDTHESTARSTHEMERCILESS STARS.

I staggered and shoved the plug back in. Tintype flashed me a look.

I walked in the quickening heat and thought some more.

You couldn't see it at a distance, but the ground was sloping up. Tintype still seemed to know where to go.

"I've been thinking," I said, close to his ear, since the b.u.t.tons were out.

"Have you?" he said, with mild interest. "Then tell!"

"I'm pondering how a pensioner gets word of that rarest thing, a map to the Source. Or a Governor's pa.s.s to go sea-wise. I'm wondering how a ticket-of-leave man has the very merry little bobbins that will block that too-terrible sound. I'm wondering how you knew about the cellulose gliders.

"The Pinkertons upset you, but you're not surprised. I'd guess you figured quickly that those who sent you would send others. Not the first time a client sent two teams after the same prize.

"But what's stuck in your craw is this: you didn't expect another plant. Because that's what you are, aren't you? You never were a d.i.n.k.u.m convict. You were to find a team and sit, pretty, until the right time came. Until your sources could find a key, or a map, or the right earplugs, or a cellulose glider."

I thumbed backwards in the direction of the wreckage. "Wonder why they didn't get the earplugs. Maybe they did, and forgot. Or something went wrong with the gliders. Or your clients have a touch of the experimental, and want to know what works, what doesn't. How many teams that tried the Never-Never had plants? There's probably another, trying from the north. Scientific method. Try, fail, fail better."

He was quiet for a long time after that.

"I'm not so smart," he said, finally.

The whispering was becoming speech as we went up and up the gentle slope. Uluru driving us mad, Johnny Roman would say.

Soon. Soon. It hatches.

My scope was stinging, and I stopped to wrest it off. Suicide helped with the fine tip of a blade. The variable-mag was becoming permanent. We must be close to the Source.

"How do your blades feel?" I asked, as she neatly dissected the nerve.

" 'Sallright," she said. "Nothing yet. That's why they're custom: the metal's too thin to register."

More speech, dropping like ripe fruit. Cold, here. How do you live? Things grow in the cold that should not grow at all. I'll never be warm.

I wondered if we were all hearing the same thing.

Ahead, a ridge of loose rock. Everywhere was dust in red streaks.

"Wait," said Suicide.

She was standing with fingers spread, looking at the backs of her hands. I had to turn to see her, hating not having my 360 scope.

We went back to her. Under her skin the blades were trembling.

"Back up," said Tintype, and she did. The movement stopped.

He studied the ground minutely. Meantime the voice went on.

Hatches soon. The others are dead.

Tintype was crouched on the ground. "How came you here?" he shouted suddenly. There was a pause while the whisper-speech stopped.

No one has asked in a long time.

Another pause.

I was ... exiled? Yes. A punishment. Transported. From my home I was ... thrown. Very far.

"Why?" I shouted, while Tintype grubbed in the dirt. Didn't see why he had to do all the talking here.

There was something self-satisfied in the answer. I bred where it was forbidden. Only the Matrix can breed the Central, but I won through, I did it. They feared me too much to disseminate, but exile me they did. They threw me to the cold worlds. But they could not stop my hatchings.

"Here," Tintype pointed. If you looked close, you could see a faint line on the ground where the little bits of ore s.h.i.+fted in straight lines. He dug in his toe and made a furrow in the dust, perpendicular to our path.

"You can't go beyond here, not with your blades," he told Suicide. "The mag gets stronger each step, and they'll rip out of your body. Do you understand?" She looked sullen but nodded. We went on and she squatted down, watching.

Because of the cold they fight inside me. They are all devoured, all but one. And he hatches.

We came to the ridge of rocks. And looked over.

Back Home, once, I saw the trap of an ant lion. Biggish sort of insects, they dig a hole, a funnel-shaped trap of loose soil, and ants and such who trip over it fall to the bottom where the ant lion lies buried.

This doodlebug's crib circled wide how wide I could not tell; the slope all chunks of loose ore. One, two miles down, perhaps, was a black dot. I squinted, missing my scope. It might have been a hole. A century of Parramatta pensioners scrabbling a month would be hard-put to dig such a thing. Two century of Botany convicts with h.e.l.l-for-leather Squatters on their tails, perhaps.

The voice was very clear now.

I would be Matrix. I couldn't wait. I should have killed Matrix when I had the chance.

Tintype knelt on the edge of the ridge and peered down. Hypnotic, all those rocks merging into something smooth-looking with that dot, harder to see than it should have been and the heat haze wavering. A long thin something yellowbelly or fierce or maybe just a coppertail scuttled past Tintype's hand and he startled back and overcomped sideways. Before I could grab him he overbalanced and started sliding down that slope of tumbled ore. He struggled for purchase but there was none.

I threw myself belly-down, digging in with my toes and grabbing for his flailing hands.

" 'Type! Superstar!" Suicide yelled from behind the barrier Tintype had toed in the sand. " 'Star! Hold him!"

"Trying to," I grunted, and the shadow of a smile s.h.i.+mmied over Tintype's face. "Told you I wasn't so smart. Don't let her come across," he said, maddening-calm with the long descent, that slope, that maw beneath him. b.l.o.o.d.y rocks were wrong, too round, too slippery for what they were.

I could've killed them both, truly, yelling at me this and that while plowing in my knees and elbows and slipping in anyway.

Are you coming to me now? The voice was curious.

Then something like the wind at my back and she had me around the waist, both her wrist-blades protruding enough to root in my leathers and poke my ribs, thank you very much. I looked back and she had her knee-blades planted deep, enough to hold all three of us for a while.

You may all come. See!

"Get back, Suicide!" yelled Tintype, never mind that I was hauling him inch by inch up the rubble, his feet clawing for toehold, now she had us anch.o.r.ed.

But she hung on, grim as death, and I thought at first it was d.i.n.k.u.m and the mag was variable after all when she started to scream.

I heave-hoed hard as I could and sent Tintype rolling safe past the lip of the trap. Suicide was writhing in the red sand, gashes opening down her leathers where the blades were birthing, ripped from her flesh by the mag.

Tintype grabbed her feet, I took her shoulders and we tried to heave her past the barrier. But she was spasming now, her screams a thin, shrill tea-kettle sound. She thrashed like nothing human, and a blade shot out of her, neatly skinning half my thumb.