Africa Zero (8 page)

He
hit the silt in a red explosion and his jaws closed on me like two studded
doors. I thought then I was about to lose all my synthi-flesh, but the jaws
halted when they had a grip on me, and he heaved me out of the silt and swam
for the surface. Stupid animal was trying to save me, yet he was taking me up
into plain view of the marksman, or rather, markswoman. I thought then about
what she must want. Did she really want me to kill her? Or did she want to kill
me before she did away with herself? Those shots had been close. They could
have been fatal. Perhaps she was just not too handy with an antiphoton rifle.

The
crocodile brought me to the surface and swam for the bank. I could not see
much. I was in white water most of the time. Then we were into papyrus swamp
and he was clumping along. Then dry-ground below groundsels, on which he
dropped me, and stood over me, looking for all the world like a dog that has
just retrieved a stick for its owner. I shuffled back from him and stood up to
get my bearings. I was on the opposite bank from which the shot had come. I
looked at him and shook my head.

“Y’know,
I wanted that bank really.” I pointed. “Shit!”

His
jaws closed on me like a trap. In a moment we were back in the papyrus swamp,
white water, then reeds and a steep bank leading up under more groundsels. He
dropped me again. Again I shuffled back and stood up.

“Many
thanks,” I said, stepping out of his reach. “This is exactly where I want to
be.”

My
crocodile saviour gave what I can only describe as a shrug, turned away from
me, and with a fair turn of speed headed back down the bank, into the papyrus,
and gone. Speculatively I pushed a finger through a hole in my shirt,
synthiflesh, and right through to the metal. There were four such across my
chest and the fronts of my legs. He had not been so gentle that time. I
wondered what he thought I was, and if I had been made of real flesh, how long
I would have lasted in his mouth. The temptation might have been too much. I
hitched my pack up onto my shoulder and looked around. Now to find the bitch
who had vandalized Sipana’s canoe. Obligingly there was a flash from down the
bank to my right and vegetation turned to an inferno on the opposite bank. I
headed for the source.

As
before it was difficult going forcing my way through the foliage at the river
bank and I wondered what my chances were of coming on Diana unannounced, for I
was sure it was she who was shooting at me. It seemed that the fates were with
me. Every few minutes or so another shot would light up the banks and I was
able to work out my position in relation to hers. At one point, when I was very
close to the river climbing over a tangled fall of groundsels, the strike of
the invisible beam of antiphotons was directly opposite me and I saw a tree
burst into flaming fragments. It was then that I realised she was shooting at
any movement on the bank. Her last hit had turned a colobus monkey into a rain
of ash. That annoyed me.

Soon
I saw I was very close and tried to move more quietly. Then I saw her, only it
was not. It was a him. A man in long white robes stood on a rocky promontory
poking out from the bank. Immediately I knew what he was. It would seem the
Rainman was not the first Diana had spoken to after her centuries long silence.
The man standing out there with the APW was what was called a Sheta
Protestanti, devil priest in any language. They were the New Fundamentalists or
Puritans, worshippers of the Old God before the ice. But they called him the
Drowned God—Jesu Christos who had been tied to a chair and drowned for our sins
by John Batiste. Men not adverse to forcing their beliefs on others by any
methods. They considered their ability to cause suffering a mark of their
sanctity. It was an old old story. The robes this one wore were called ‘pain patterned’.
The cloth was stained by being wrapped around the bodies of unbelievers before
the poor unfortunates were crushed to death with stones. Around his neck
depended a small wooden chair on a string. After a moment’s consideration I
decided Diana could not have chosen any better allies. They hated me and what I
represented, and I would kill any of them without compunction. I picked up a
sodden section of tree trunk and moved in.

His
concentration on the further bank was such that he did not hear me until I was
climbing onto the back of the promontory. He turned, firing as he did so and
setting the jungle afire behind me and to my left. I threw the sodden tree
trunk at him and it hit him across the chest and arms before the fire reached
me. With a gasp he fell back into the river and I quickly dived after. I caught
hold of him at the edge of the rock as he was trying to crawl out and hoist the
APW up before him at the same time. I picked him up by the scruff, snapped the
strap of the APW and pulled it away from him. He did not seem to be able to use
his arms anyway.

“There’s
a few things I want to ask you,” I said.

All
he managed to do was gasp and look at me in confusion. I dropped him to the
ground then sat down nearby while he recovered. It took him quite a while.
Eventually he looked up and spat blood on the rock before me.

“Demon!”
he said and looked down, panting, waiting.

“It
might well be that I won’t kill you,” I said. “Just answer a few questions for
me and I’ll let you go.”

“I
will tell you nothing.”

“Fine,
do you think you will still have that attitude after I’ve broken a few of your
fingers, then your arms . . . oh, sorry, arm. I see I’ve already done for the
other one.”

I
stepped forwards. He shuffled back up onto his knees.

“I
fear you not, agent of Satan.”

“Tell
me simply, did the Silver One put you up to this?”

“I
will tell you nothing. Do you think I do not know pain?”

“Oh
yes, you know how to inflict it. Do you know how to suffer it, though?” I
reached down and grabbed his broken arm before he could pull away. I twisted it
a bit so the rough ends of bone grated. He screamed with full voice. It should
not really have hurt all that much as he was still in shock and overloaded with
adrenaline. I desisted.

“Now,
will you answer my question?”

“Oh
God the Father of Christos send to your servant...” He rambled on and on. I
could see that if I allowed this to continue he would work himself into a
frenzy and I would get nowhere. I grabbed him by his broken arm and dragged him
to the edge of the promontory. He yelled, stopped his mumbo jumbo and hung
there, sobbing. I took my JMCC handgun out and shot it into the water. There
was a blinding purple flash and a jet of steam and boiling water five metres
high. A lot of it fell on my captive. He yelled some more.

“Crocky!”
I called. “Oh Crocky!”

My
friend was not long in coming. Perhaps he had been hanging around in the hope
of more fish. There was a hell of a swirl then there he was with his nose
resting on the rock. He looked at me with those unsettling eyes of his and as
he swished his tail from side to side to maintain his position it was as if he
was wagging it. I wondered just how much Alsatian had gone into his genes.

“You
are a demon! You’re a demon!” He said it like he believed it this time. He was
staring at the crocodile bug-eyed.

“Call
me what you like. Your opinions and the opinions of your kind are irrelevant to
me. Now, it was a simple question, and she probably wants me to know anyway.
Did the Silver One put you up to this?”

There
was a long pause, then he nodded his head.

“That’s
better. She supplied you with the rifle?” He nodded his head again. I wondered
where she had cached them and how many more there were. He would not know.
“Okay, now, she told the Rainman of the Kiphani she would be awaiting me at the
Iron Falls. What else awaits me there?”

“I
don’t know, demon.” It seemed the name had become an honorific.

“Are
there more of your kind there, similarly armed?”

He
was silent. I dragged him closer to the edge.

“Oh
God no! Please, no!”

“Your
god isn’t here to answer your pleas. There’s only one god here and he’s a river
god and he has teeth over ten centimetres long. Answer my question.”

“There
are ten!” He said quickly. “Four of them have antilight rifles and the others
have flaming swords.”

Flaming
swords?

“Describe
to me these flaming swords.”

“Their
blades-are invisible . . . They only flame when they cut and they will cut a
water oak ... From the handles a shielded wire—”

“Okay,
okay, no need to go on. I know what they are.”

As
he would say—Jesu Christos! Well, it seemed evident Diana wanted me dead and
diced. The flaming swords he described were atomic shears with a shear length
of up to three metres. I thought back to those cleanly severed tusks on the
first dead mammoth I had found. I now knew what she had been killing them with.
An atomic shear could cut through anything. It was as simple as that.

“So,
awaiting me are five of your fellows thusly armed and the Silver One. Does she
have any weapons?”

He
looked at me. “She has none. She has need of none. She will bring you down,
man-of-metal.” Obviously he had regained his confidence.

“It
may have escaped your notice but there is a striking similarity between us.”

“She
does not hold beasts higher than men. She knows God made beasts for men to use
in the fields, to hunt for food, to use as they see fit.”

“Quite
right, I just don’t want them to be driven to extinction. Such would be man’s
loss.”

“God
would not permit it.”

Why
the hell had I allowed him to draw me in? I shook him and nodded my head to the
crocodile who was still waiting patiently.

“Men
are beasts and as a species their future is assured. I think we can afford to
lose a few. Would you like to pray?”

“You
promised!”

“I’m
a demon, remember?”

His
scream lasted until he hit the water. He sank then came up quickly, trying to
keep his head above water, yelling all the time. Crocky backed off the rock
like a submarine pulling out of dock, and sank. The priest was losing his
battle to stay afloat when suddenly he shot up into the air in the crocodile’s
jaws. Those jaws crunched him a couple of times, probably to get the taste, and
his yelling ceased. I think it swallowed him under water, because when it came
to the rock again to see if I had more fish to throw it looked decidedly smug.
There went the other bit about not eating people. I had suspected as much. This
was one smart crocodile. He knew which side his bread was buttered on. If that
is the correct way of putting it.

I
did not feel bad about what I had done. The priest had been a man who had
probably tortured many people to death in the name of a god whose doctrines
were supposed to be of peace and love, and respect for life. I went out onto
the rock, picked up his rifle, and turned away. I felt nothing at all.

Back
in the jungle, and I was soon struggling on through darkness with my vision
switched to infrared. My crocodile was keeping pace with me, which worried me
slightly. I did not want him to get hurt. He could only go as far as the falls
though.

All
night I pushed on through the jungle. Had I still been in the canoe I would
have reached my destination long before. I suspected I would not be there
before dawn now. A shame really, as I would have had a definite advantage at
night. I could, of course, have waited for the next night, but no, I wanted
this over, ended.

I
was right. As the mist glowed white and became pink-tinged to the east I heard
the low grumbling of the Iron Falls. Soon I found myself cutting through
tributaries where the river branched before the drop. The light increased and I
moved more warily. At about this time I lost my companion. He had probably gone
off in a huff because I had not fed him for a few hours. Soon, after crossing a
tributary with a flow which near swept me away, I clambered onto a triangular
island of rock abutting the edge of the falls. It seemed a good place to
reconnoitre from. Somebody else had thought so too.

It
was only luck I saw them before they saw me. Or perhaps it was because I was
covered from head to foot in mud. I quickly crouched down behind some heather
bushes and watched them from there. There were two of them, changed out of
their robes and into dark brown fatigues. One of them had an APW, the other an
atomic shear. The one with the shear was speaking into a small chrome egg. I
cleaned the mud out of my ears and juiced up my hearing.

“—but
brother Jeman has not reported.”

The
voice which replied was a woman’s. I knew it of old. It was the voice of my
wife. I was surprised at how much it affected me to hear it again. In my mind
she suddenly changed, from a metallic object of vengeance, back into a woman
with long dark hair, angular aesthetic features, and hazel eyes that seemed to
radiate warmth.

“Brother
Jeman was to remain concealed and report his position. It was a mistake to arm
him,” she said.

“He
will be punished, Lady.”

Her
reply was flat, emotionless. Reality kicked me in the teeth. I realised it had
been so before. I just had not wanted to hear.

“I
think, perhaps, he has been. Stay alert and continue to report. God be with
you,” she said.

I
tried to shake of the effects of her voice and consider what had been said. So
Jeman had kept that from me? Lot of good it had done him. Behind the bushes I
unhitched brother Jeman’s rifle, knocked down the power and narrowed the beam.
Then I stood up, burnt the legs off the one with the shear and the radio, and
cut the other one in half. They fell like unstrung puppets.

The
one with the radio and minus the legs lay on the ground completely still. The
one I had cut in half was making bleating sounds and jerking about all over the
place, at least his top half was. I ran over to them, into the smoke and
porklike smell of cooked meat. While the halfman managed to get himself tangled
up in his own scorched intestines I burnt a hole through his forehead. He was
abruptly still. The other one looked at me as if he knew me but could not quite
remember my name. I kicked his rifle aside and searched him. He looked down
while I was searching and saw what he was lacking. Shortly I had the chrome egg.
He looked at me again and there was recognition of who I was and what his
situation was. He opened his mouth to scream. I burnt a hole through his palate
and put out his brain. There: done. I picked up the shear and dropped it into
my trouser pocket, then I kicked the rifle into the river. As I turned to move
away from that scene I saw a friend climbing up onto the island and grinning at
me. I left him to his lunch and moved to a nearby rock.