The Last Hour of Gann (71 page)

He half-raised his hand twice, very much aware of the other humans, even though Amber herself did not appear to see them, or him for that matter, but in the end, he reached out and
nudged at her with two knuckles.

She looked at him. In spite of her obvious anger, she kept her mouthparts pressed tight together, waiting on his word. So maybe it hadn’t all been undone.

“I forgive you,” he said.

She just looked at him for a while without any apparent change to her expression. Then her eyes shifted past him so that she could watch
Scott.

“I don’t find you at fault,” he said after a moment. “This place is nothing but Gann’s poison. When we are away, things will be better.”

“Well, I’m glad you think so, lizardman,” Amber said, sounding anything but glad. “But I don’t. In fact, I’m pretty sure things are only going to get worse from now on. A fucking
skyport
.”

* * *

The walk out of the city went much quicker than the walk in. They no longer stopped each time a window lit up or a kiosk spoke to them. If a door opened, most of them passed it without even a curious glance at what might be inside. At one of the intersections, an insectoid bot replaced lamps that had been broken in the storm, and they all just strolled by like they’d seen giant metal centipedes doing linework all their lives.

It could have been because the ruins had lost the gothic oppressiveness they’d had in an impending thunderstorm. It could
have been because they were hungry and wanted to be back in the prairie so Meoraq could hunt. It could have been because several towers had collapsed during the night and seeing them instilled everyone with a natural drive to get the hell out from under the rest of them. It could have been a lot of things, but Amber knew the real reason was Scott. Scott and the ship.

One night in a crumbling old ruin with a couple shiny tiles stuck to the wall had completely reinvented his sense of purpose. They were no longer pioneers fording their way across a desolate, alien landscape; now they were also castaways orchestrating their own rescue. Street after echoing street, it was
Scott’s string of outrageous skyport promises and not Meoraq’s grim-faced guidance that kept them moving.

All the way down to the river,
Scott talked. Each groaning, error-thick recording to issue from a corroded kiosk brought on a fresh promise of a working deep-space transmission tower. Every intact window or undamaged wall was greater evidence of a surviving skyport than all the rest of the broken ones. They passed a massive junklot where some unseen bot had towed thousands upon thousands of derelict vehicles, stacked into a single rusted brick filling the back of the lot end to end and easily a hundred meters high; the few vehicles which the tow-bot had missed remained where they had died in the street, most strip-salvaged and weathered away to nothing but a ring of rust and a few unusable parts, yet it was the bot who did it which Scott chose to point out as undeniable proof that a starship would still be able to launch itself and fly them home.

Amber heard all this and worse from her usual place at the tail of the marching line, and not just from
Scott himself. He had shot the idea of a return to Earth into them like a drug and now they were all laughing and talking what-ifs and planning the first thing they were going to eat, the first place they were going to go, the first person they were going to sue. Humming, as the Candyman would say. Amber remembered what that felt like and she knew it wouldn’t last, although Scott managed to keep them going strong all the way through town and down to the river.

The waterfront district of the ruins was just like the waterfront district in any big city. The few surviving windows of the narrow storefronts they walked along promised all the same sleaze that Amber had seen peddled on her own street back home: Cheap rooms, knock-off brands, no-questions loans and quick cash for whatever you wanted to sell, booze and drugs and s
ex. Even worse were the commercial bots; unlike the maintenance units which were happy to ignore and be ignored by the aliens in their empty city, the commercial bots were drawn to them like missiles. They dragged themselves behind Scott and his group, croaking advertisements and error messages and occasionally sparking out or banging into debris. The most stubborn of these limped behind Amber for six blocks, plucking at her sleeve with a damaged tendril and offering up enticements such as, “Young ones, boy- and girl-meat. Be their first, safe and clean! We catch and release. They cry!”

At last, Amber swung on it and raised her spear, but either the bot recognized the threatening gesture or it had reached the end of its territory. Either way, it turned back and crawled away, its horrible litany of services and showtimes receding as the sound of water grew louder.

They crossed at one of the bridges soon afterward—the bridge that had been vomiting lightning all night long, in fact—and not only did Meoraq not try to stop them, he gave the order that marched them across.

“Please be kidding,” Amber had said, horrified. “Nicci, stay off that thing! What, was it some other lizardman telling us that these buildings could fall down any second and God alone was keeping them up?”

He threw her an impatient, annoyed glance as he pointed people onto the bridge. They went, not without hesitation, but they went. “God will hold the bridge if it is His will we move on,” he told her. “As I believe it is His will.”

“Well, I can’t say that’s the craziest thing I’ve heard today,” she countered, looking hard at
Scott. “But only because I’ve heard so much crazy.”

Wasted. The only one close enough to hear her was Meoraq himself. Even Nicci was already heading out across the derelict suspension bridge of unknown age
, spanning the freezing, storm-swollen river.

“This is such a bad idea,” said Amber, following.

Meoraq fell into step beside her. “We walk in God’s sight, Soft-Skin.”

“Yeah? Seems like he’s been doing a lot of bli
nking lately.”

“Do not be blasphemous.”

They walked. The sound of a hundred tromping boots on an otherwise empty bridge made an ugly sound that neither the perpetual wind nor the rushing water below could drown out. She imagined she could feel the bridge swaying in time with their steps, but she was not imagining the groaning, twanging, snapping sound above them as the ancient suspension cables had to carry them. Amber didn’t realize just how much she expected a collapse until she stepped off the bridge onto solid ground on the other side and felt, not relief, but the unmistakable rush of surprise.

She turned around to stare for a while, but the bridge stubbornly refused to fall down, even now at the most blackly appropriate time.

At length, Meoraq tapped at her shoulder. “We are not stopping here.”

“It’s not fai
r.”

He frowned, rubbing at the side of his scaly snout for a few seconds before gruffly saying, “We will rest a short time then.”

“That’s not what I meant. I don’t want to rest here. I don’t want to spend another damn minute here.”

“And yet here you stand.”

She threw him a scowl and started walking. Scott and the others were well ahead of her, beyond all hearing. She knew he was talking by the way he moved, gesturing at the windows as they lit up and at the commercial bots that came skulking in from the alleys. In his exuberance, he turned all the way around to make some point or another, walking backwards and pounding his fist into his open palm. She saw him see her, pause…and then wave her way and say something that made all the others look back.

“Deep breaths, Soft-Skin,” said Meoraq. “A count of six, deep and slow.”

“Don’t you even care what he’s telling them?”

His spines shrugged. “No.”

“It matters, you know.”

“Not to me.”

She didn’t argue the point, but she didn’t bother to hide her annoyance either and after several amused sidelong glances as she walked and fumed, Meoraq finally thumped her on the shoulder with two knuckles. “Hold a moment.”

“No. We’re not stopping until we’re out of the city, that’s what you said.”

He caught her by the wrist and stopped them both. Big scaly jerk. Far down the street, Scott apparently saw something interesting and led everyone around a corner and out of sight. All at once, they were alone—the last two people on the planet.

Meoraq too was watching as
Scott and the others disappeared. Now he grunted, although he continued to gaze in that direction. “S’kot lies. Do you need me to tell you this?”

“No, of course not! But you’ve got this crazy idea that just because everyone knows that
Scott talks out his ass, no one believes him!”

A snort of lizardish laughter. “Talks through his ass,” Meoraq murmured. “And farts from his face.”

“Focus, Meoraq. Our track record for disbelieving things just because they might seem stupid or dangerous is piss-poor. The only reason any of us are here is because we got on an untested ship and let them put us to sleep and shoot us into space.”

“
No, you are here because it is where God willed you to be.”

The effort not to roll her eyes made her hand fly up and slap over her face. She rubbed her eyes wearily.
“You’re killing me with that crap.”

“Truth does not care if it comforts you, Soft-Skin.”

They walked.

“Honestly,” said Amber. “It doesn’t bother you at all when
Scott says your God’s voice is just a two-way radio?”

“Everything S’kot says annoys me,” Meoraq replied
with a flick of his spines. “If he wished me fair weather and a warm bed, still it would be all my will to hold from slapping him to the ground.”

“He says there’s machines in Xi’Matezh,” said Amber, petty as that was.

If it was bait—and it was—Meoraq wouldn’t bite at it. “There may well be,” was his mild reply. “And if S’kot seeks to make himself their master, I will judge him for it. Until then, he can pour piss out of his flapping mouth all he pleases.”

“And you don’t even care who else he hurts with it.”

Meoraq glanced at her, then put his hand on her arm and stopped them again. “I don’t know humans, but I know fools. And I know the surest way to encourage fools to follow a wicked man is to tell them not to.”

Amber
couldn’t argue.

“It is a long walk yet to Xi’Matezh,” said Meoraq, patting her on the head. “For now, his talk may be exciting, but it will pale with time. He will repeat himself and embellish on his lies, and doubts will grow. When we reach the temple
and they see no reward for their wrong-placed faith, yes, it will be difficult, but they will come away stronger, for even the unkindest truth strengthens a man more than the prettiest lie.”

‘Says the man who thinks he’s going to find God there,’ thought Amber, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it, no matter how rotten she felt. He was trying to comfort her. It wasn’t his fault he was terrible at it. What she said, as neutrally as possible, was, “I think you’re seriously underestimating how pretty this lie is.”

“He can’t promise you anything better than God.”

“O
f course he can. None of us have ever met God before and we’re just fine with that. We are!” she snapped when he rolled his eyes. “And for that matter, so are you! So you may
want
to see God when you get there, but you don’t
need
to. You can live without it if you have to.”

“Live without God?” he said with a lizardish smirk
.

“Live without meeting God. Look, all I’m saying is, it’s impossible to miss what you’ve never had.”

“I’ll have to meditate on that, but in this moment, I do not agree. I know a man,” Meoraq mused. “Blood-kin of mine…a friend…who misses very much, or believes he misses, the birth-right that should have belonged to both of us, but which only I achieved. He stood some of the same training. He has at least some understanding of the struggle and pains which I endure, but he misses it anyway. Because it seems so much easier to him, I suppose.”

“I think you’re confusing missing something with wanting it.”

“Perhaps. So. Do you miss your old land—” He looked at her, head cocked, unsmiling. “—or do you just want it?”

To her profound irritation, she had no idea how to answer that.

Meoraq grunted and flicked his spines. “It doesn’t matter anyway. A man may want, or miss, many things in his life, but in the end, we all serve God.”

“
Go ahead, lizardman. Pound it in with a hammer.”

“Eh?”

She was saved from having to explain that admittedly snotty remark by the sudden reappearance of Nicci, running down the street toward them, alone. Adrenaline filled her mouth with the taste of metal and she would have bolted forward to meet her except that Meoraq had better reflexes. He caught Amber at her first twitch forward and thrust her behind him, his hooked sword already in his other fist.

Nicci scraped to a stop immediately, her mouth open in a round hole of alarm, both hands flying up in a helpless gesture of surrender.