Dark Ararat (41 page)

“I
understand
, Dulcie. I really do. But you’re wrong. You’re wrong about Bernal. You’re wrong about it not being serious, about it just filling in time, about it just being a matter of availability, of scratching an itch.
He wasn’t like that
. I knew him, Dulcie. I knew him as well as any man alive. He was
always
serious. He loved them all, Dulcie. Every last one. He couldn’t help himself. He was utterly and absolutely sincere. It never lasted long, but while it did, he was head over heels. He meant it, Dulcie. Whatever he said to you, he meant it all. He was an honest man. In that, and other things as well, he was totally and incorrigibly honest.

“The problem wasn’t that he forgot too much, but that he didn’t forget enough. At some level, he knew. He couldn’t bring it to the level of consciousness, but something in him knew. If he really had been back to square one, utterly innocent of any sense of having known you before, then he could and would have fallen again, head over heels. He did love you, Dulcie. He loved you as powerfully as he ever loved anyone, and as briefly. You have to believe me, Dulcie. I knew him. I’m the only one who did. I’m the only one who understands.

“I don’t know you at all, but I know how the people on
Hope
—Nita Brownell included—reacted when I lashed out and injured a man, and I think I can understand well enough how you felt when you realized that you’d lashed out, like exactly the kind of barbarian the crewpeople think we are and we’re so very desperate to think we’re not. And I know it wasn’t as mad or bad as it seemed, because I’m beginning to understand how the situation with the crew and the strangeness of the world are messing with our heads in spite of our IT. So
yes
, I
do
understand, well enough to know that it was an accountable accident, and that you have to forgive yourself, not just because we really
do
need you, but because it’s the right thing to do. If Bernal were here, he’d say exactly the same thing. Believe me,
I know
.”

Finally, inevitably, Matthew ran out of breath. But he hadn’t lost his audience. The fish was well and truly hooked.

Matthew had no idea whether he was telling the whole truth or not. He had known Bernal Delgado, and the way he’d just represented and explained him was exactly the way that Bernal Delgado would have represented and explained himself—but how well, Matthew wondered, does any human being ever know any other? And how well, in the final analysis, does any human being ever know himself—or herself?

The point was that it was believable. On this occasion, in these circumstances, it could pass for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

It was reason enough for Dulcie Gherardesca to step away from the edge of the precipice, and step away she did—but before she stepped away, she looked down.

After that, there was no possibility whatsoever of her jumping.

Anything she might have said would have sounded incongruous on her lips, but it was Matthew, when his gaze followed the direction of her pointing finger, who spoke.

“Oh fuck!” he said, with all the feeling he had left.

THIRTY-ONE

T
he two chain saws were already roaring into life again, but it was obvious that they weren’t going to be much use. Matthew was already scrambling for the rifle too, but it was equally obvious that the gun wouldn’t be much use either.

If Ike and Lynn hadn’t been so absorbed in the early stages of the 3-D jigsaw that was
Voconia
they’d have noticed the problem much sooner. If Matthew and Dulcie hadn’t been so absorbed in the question of whether Dulcie was going to hurl herself off the cliff to her death they might have noticed it instead—but on Tyre, everything was purple, and if Matthew hadn’t managed to spill an oversized carton of snow-white boat-food the extent of the problem might not have been obvious to observers on the clifftop even now.

From Matthew’s vantage point the newcomers looked like giant leeches, but that was a reflection of the way they moved rather than an insult to their lifestyle. They were long, flat, dark-hued worms, each half a meter to two meters long, and there were hundreds of them. So far, at least, there were hundreds of them. They were still coming, oozing avidly out of the uncrushed undergrowth like slimline slugs on amphetamine.

Were they dangerous? Ike and Lynn obviously hadn’t been sure at first. When they started the chain saws the first poses they took were defensive. They waited, unwilling to start cutting up the worms unless and until it seemed necessary. When the vanguard reached their legs, however, and began to curl around and climb them, they decided that it was definitely necessary. Matthew would have come to exactly the same conclusion at exactly the same moment.

The worms weren’t hard to cut. Indeed, they seemed to be absurdly easy to slice and shred. But there were hundreds of them already, and more were coming.

Matthew was momentarily astonished by the floods of red that fountained from the severed worms, although he had known perfectly well that Tyre’s animal-analogues had a hemoglobin-analogue in their blood-analogue. The red mingled with the pulpy purple backcloth soon enough, though, dissolving into it and subtly altering its shade. It held its redness only where it spattered Ike’s and Lynn’s additional armor, whose ground color was an ochreous yellow. There the lavishly spilled blood mingled with a light patina of manna-dust, making a dull pink. Had they only been wearing their surface suits the supersmart fibers would already have absorbed the boatfood, and would have made an immediate start on the blood, but the armor was stupid. The red-and-pink splashes stood out like garish items of abstract art.

Matthew didn’t raise the rifle to his shoulder. There was nothing to shoot at but leech soup, and he knew that shooting soup was a fool’s game. He kept the gun in his free hand, though, as he yanked the basket onto the ledge and held it there for Dulcie Gherardesca.

She didn’t hesitate. Like him, she had no clear idea of what they could do once they got to the bottom, but they knew that they had to help. When she was safely in he had to pass her the gun in order to launch the basket over the edge, or he would not have been able to step into it himself, but he kept hold of the control box that signaled to its motor. As soon as he was safely inside and the basket had swung clear of the cliff’s edge, he thumbed the button on the control box, and the descent began.

The basket was still swinging, and its soft fabric felt far less reassuring than Matthew could have wished, but he had watched enough loads go down to know that he and Dulcie were not nearly heavy enough to test its strength.

Meanwhile, Ike and Lynn were managing to stay free of climbing worms, even though the total number of visible worms was still increasing. The various heaps of unshipped cargo and disassembled boat were not as fortunate; they had been overrun. There were too many piles of boxes and equipment, and the piles were too awkwardly spaced, for two humans with chain saws to stand much chance of defending them.

It was not yet obvious that the worms posed any danger at all to people, or to the tough fabric of the boat’s hull, but the avidity of the flood was unmistakable, and Matthew could not doubt that they were bent on consuming
something
.

Nor was that any longer the whole of the rapidly developing problem; before the basket was halfway through its descent he saw the first of the larger creatures following in the wake of the worms. There were “killer anemones” among them—large ones, though none so large as to qualify as super killer anemones by his yardstick—but there were other animal-analogues too: froglike forms and things that might have passed for monkey-analogues had they not been scaly and rubber-limbed. For days they had been trying without success to catch more than a glimpse of creatures like these, and now they were being subjected to a veritable plague of them.

Matthew wondered, briefly, if the chain saws were actually making things worse, by bringing about such a rapid increase in the supply of ready-chopped foodstuffs. It seemed only too plausible—but the thought had not yet occurred to Lynn or Ike.

There was now something to shoot at, if the rifle could only be aimed properly—but Dulcie Gherardesca still held it, and she had not yet attempted to aim it. The basket was still swaying, and she probably would not have been able to shoot straight enough to guarantee that she would not hit Lynn or Ike, who were now moving apart, swinging their chain saws as they went.

Then the cable jammed, and the basket’s descent was abruptly halted.

Dulcie managed to keep hold of the gun, and Matthew managed to keep hold of the control box, but they both had considerable difficulty keeping their feet, and would certainly have fallen had the basket’s elastic sides not bulked so high about them.

Matthew immediately began pumping the control button with his thumb. The groaning of the motor told him that the machine was trying hard to obey the signal, but it was a stupid machine without any robotic ingenuity at all. The basket only moved from side to side, turning about its axis as it swung.

Lynn Gwyer’s chain saw ran out of fuel and died.

Any hope that this might have been a good thing vanished within an instant. She was already surrounded by a living carpet. While she was still on the move with the saw going full blast the worms had made little attempt to swarm up her ankles and calves, and the newcomers had seemed far more interested in the liberally shed blood of the worms than in her, but there was nothing to intimidate them now. The confusion seething around her was so utter and so awful that Matthew could not blame her in the least for what she did next.

She was less than five meters from what seemed to be a calm refuge, almost perfectly placid and apparently clear. Once she had dropped the chain saw it only required four long leaping strides to carry her to the river’s bank, and a headlong dive to carry her over.

She met the water gracefully enough, her arms extended before her.

She must have known that there would be an undertow, because she knew perfectly well that the water cascading over the edge of the plateau was flowing away as quickly as it arrived. Panicked as she was, she had presumably factored that into her calculations, and she must have expected to be carried away by the current. She knew that the greatest danger was becoming entangled close to the shore, so she struck out for the open water even as she disappeared beneath the surface. When her head popped up again, she was thirty meters downstream and ten meters away from the bank—and she was content, for the moment, to go with the flow. She did not want to strike back toward the bank until she had put a hundred meters or more between her intended landfall and the crawling mass that had overwhelmed the expedition’s possessions.

The motor propelling Ikram Mohammed’s chain saw sputtered and died a moment later, but he was further away from the bank and more determined to protect
Voconia
’s cargo. He continued using the saw, not so much as a weapon of mass destruction as a spade or a scoop, trying to clear the creatures away without doing overmuch damage. He knew that he had to stay clear of stinging tentacles and avid mouths, but he obviously thought that he could do it. He was, after all, much stronger and nimbler than any individual in the crowd he was fighting to deter.

Matthew continued to pump the useless button, but whatever had got into the cable mechanism was wedged good and hard, and the cable could not slide past it. He felt doubly helpless, because he could not see what difference the two of them could make even if the basket were to complete its descent. Shooting might help to clear away the bigger and more responsive creatures, as much by noise as by bloodshed, but the elongated slugs were everywhere now, and he could not imagine that
their
tide could be turned with a few loud bangs.

Dulcie thrust the rifle into his hands, briefly tapping the fingers that were clutching the control.

“What….?” he objected

“I’m going to dive,” she told him. “But first we have to increase the amplitude of the swing. We have to get the turning point far enough out over the water. You have to help me.”

Matthew’s first instinct was to protest, but he knew that there was no point in staying where they were. Lynn was still visible in the water, seemingly unhurt and swimming freely, despite having to fight the current. If Dulcie could dive into the deep pool at the foot of the waterfall she would have a great deal of turbulence to contend with, but a strong swimmer ought to be able to cope.

Matthew knew, on the other hand, that a man with an injured arm could not be expected to succeed in such a venture, no matter how good a swimmer he was when fully fit.

“Help me!” Dulcie demanded, as she grasped the cable and began to use her body to exaggerate the basket’s pendular swing.

“Oh shit!” said Matthew—but he dropped the gun and the control box into the bottom of the basket, and gripped the cable with his good hand, forcing himself to complement the insistent movements of the anthropologist’s body.

It was surprisingly easy to increase the amplitude of the basket’s swing, and it only required a couple of minutes to extend the far point into the spray of the falls. The pressure of the water immediately began to confuse their efforts, but Dulcie let go then and grasped the edge of the basket, ready to hurl herself over on the next pass.

Matthew was tempted to call her crazy, but hardly any time seemed to have passed since she had stood on the ledge and thought seriously about casting herself down on to the rocks. This time, she was aiming for the water; to call the effort suicidal would have been a ludicrous insult.

She jumped.

Given her starting position, there was no way that Dulcie could contrive a dive as neat as Lynn’s, and she didn’t even try to adjust her attitude as she fell, preferring to cartwheel her legs as if she were trying to run in midair. She was, indeed, attempting to gain a little extra distance, to make sure that she fell into the calmest and deepest water she could possibly reach.