Context (25 page)

He—it—took
the control ring from the mewling woman’s finger, squinted, saw something else—metal,
pretty:
horse
—and tugged it off the bad man’s corpse. Slipped the bauble
over his, its, own neck.

Good...

Ten burning paces.

Move.

Held up the ring, and the flesh
wall folded back.

Then, hunched over with cramps
and pain, naked body coated with shck warm blood, the half-conscious primate
stumbled through the acid-coated opening, into the cold stone corridor beyond.

Move now.

~ * ~

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NULAPEIRON
AD 3418

Naked,
trembling, the wounded unthinking being called Tom Corcorigan moved, hid
shivering in an alcove at the sound of voices, stumbled out when they had gone.
The conscious rational being could not have moved with such desperate,
effective awareness; but the Corcorigan-thing sensed knots of humanity ahead—from
subtle cues only the deep reptilian senses could work with—and avoided them.

Jade corridors, marble halls.

Move.

Uniforms, voices and ...

Go ...
vibration.

Spiral staircase all of stone:
cold relief beneath his bare acid-burned feet as he ran downwards.

And then a roar which filled the
air.

It
was huge and bronze: a vast cargo train which, stationary, stretched the length
of the great loading platform and still reached invisibly into the dark tunnel
fore and aft.

Wordless fear. An unreasoning
desire to escape—deeper than emotion: a primitive drive at the organism’s
cellular level. Crouched naked behind a pillar, shuddering now.

Pain.

Ignore.

Rolling spheres of raw, stinging
flesh.

See them now.

Hundreds of stevedores were at
work, marshalling the things with wicked stun staves, keeping their distance. A
dozen, two dozen great flesh-spheres -red and glistening wet with exuded toxins—rolled
down brass-coloured ramps, lined up in formation upon the platform.

Brought here by bronze cargo
train, destined to line more torture chambers. Inserted in place, they would
expand to cover any chamber’s walls, pulsing in hunger for the prisoner-morsels
which would be fed to them.

Perhaps some rational fragment in
the escaped creature’s mind wondered what was happening here, deep in the prosperous
Aurineate Grand’aume; but non-rational awareness was filled with a more
immediate knowledge so deep it defined reality: time to leave or die.

A flesh-sphere rolled past, with
a soft, liquid sucking motion, followed by white-faced stevedores who looked as
though they would rather be anywhere else but here.

Shining. Silver.

He frowned, grasping after the
thought.

Then it came—
ring—
and the
near-mindless thing which had been Tom Corcorigan held up the captured control
ring, clenched in his hand. And the flesh-sphere veered in its path, away from
the hidden ring-holder, and the stevedores jumped but too late.

One of them screamed, but it was
his mate who fell back, face already half-digested by pungent acid.

Escape vector: clear.

Time to run.

He
crossed the platform, sprinting fast, then threw himself forward, tucking into
a ball at the last moment and rolling clear. He dropped into darkness, fell,
rolled once more.

Sharp stones, darkness. Distant
shouts—cries for medics, not for soldiers.

Ignore.

He was underneath the platform’s
edge, and he moved quickly now, towards the front of the train, moving by
instinct. Into the black tunnel, where the long leading cars had already been
unloaded.

Membrane...

He clawed his way through,
hoisting himself inside the cold empty car where the air lay flat and dead.
Hard, the floor. Chilling to the bone.

Relief, after acid burns.

Then a howling, a lurch forwards,
and inertia tipped his naked form across the lightless car’s interior, then
nothing.

The
comatose organism whimpered once as the train picked up speed, a rocking motion
as the long cars rode their massive sound wave through passageways in solid
rock. The naked, frail, injured being hunched itself into a foetal curve,
sliding ever deeper into shock, bringing the life process shutdown which can
save the body or destroy, and remained that way until the silence came.

~ * ~

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NULAPEIRON
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Rasping
wounded-animal sounds. Pitiful, crawling ...

The noise came from Tom’s own
throat; he was the wounded creature, crawling in darkness. Trembling, unsure
where he might be.

Get out.

Something in his grip, a
stanchion, and he hauled himself upright. Taking cautious steps forward—his
acid-stripped soles, raw and weeping fluid, adhered to the freezing metallic
floor; gritting his broken teeth, he tugged them free—then stumbled forward,
door-membrane sliding across his naked skin. Cool liquid draughts swirled
around him, and an involuntary sneeze convulsed him, pain clawing his stomach
and fresh blood-flow starting.

The stone platform was grey and
dingy, and quite deserted. Areas of blue-tinged light slid at random, from
cracked glow-globes slowly moving through the air.