Crawling Between Heaven And Earth (5 page)

""But that was if we got lost alone." The girl stared at Nary wide-eyed. "I'm sure it's different as a group. Come on. This is just supposed to make it more exciting. Why else would the guide leave?"

A couple of other people stepped forward.

I backed up against the wall. If this was a simulation, its creators had raided an abattoir for parts to make it smell right.

Then again, Mythos had a very good reputation. Perhaps it came from stage-setting like this. Maybe the girl was right.

I took a step forward. A scream sounded, high, insane, ending in a gurgle. Another, then another reverberated off the tunnel walls. The first one had been female, the last two male.

Pol grabbed his girlfriend and pulled her back, against the wall, away from the noise and the smell.

In the doorway on the right, something large and square-shouldered appeared. Two large horns crowned its bovine head.

I took a step back.

"Run," someone screamed. "Oh, dammit, run."

"No," Pol yelled. "No. Be still, make no sound. Maybe it can't see."

They ignored him. His efforts at holding Nary failed. They ran in a group—stumbling and whimpering, missing the left corridor.

The creature lumbered after them, past us, moving fast, much too fast for its gait. Under the bubble lights, I saw it clearly: recurved horns, blood-stained as was the muzzle, wide green eyes—eyes more like a cat's than like a bull's.

Our screaming companions ran straight back, to huddle by the wall that blocked their path. Still within full view of us, they pushed against the wall and screamed and kicked in a writhing pile. In their panic, each prevented the other from getting through the doors on either side.

The Minotaur trotted towards them, head down, and charged bull fashion. It speared a balding man through the chest of his tie-dyed T-shirt. The man whimpered and fell like a deflated balloon. Blood gushed. His cry ended in a sort of gurgle.

The Minotaur charged the group again.

It all seemed to take place in slow motion and yet I knew it was very fast, taking no more than a few breaths. There was nothing I could do, no time to intervene.

My stomach churned. I didn't want to think, to smell, to see, or to hear. But neither could I close my eyes. If I were to die I wanted to know it was going to happen. I wanted to know it was all over, even if only for a few seconds.

Sweat running down my back, I concentrated on standing still, on breathing quietly.

Pol, two steps to the right and in front of me, looked like a statue, only the slight rise of his broad chest betraying life.

The Minotaur lowered its head again. A sharp cry sounded and a dark red stain bloomed on Nary's yellow dress.

Pol swallowed audibly and shifted his weight to the foot closer to his girlfriend.

The Minotaur lifted her, threw her. She landed in a heap close to us. Drops of her blood sprinkled my ankles.

I closed my eyes, biting my lips together as acid bile rose from my stomach.

Pol made a low, keening sound and the Minotaur turned an inquiring head. Pol bit his lips and, though his face glimmered white with shock and his eyes were wide and expressionless, he made no more sound.

I concentrated on remaining still, on not moving to either help or run away. I could do nothing, except, if I were lucky, save my own life.

I knew quite well, from my crèche days, that artifacts with the Minotaur's cat-eyes were not good at perceiving shapes and outlines. But they could always pick out movement, no matter how dark the surroundings.

If I moved, he'd see me.

I'd bet that the Minotaur could also hear better than natural people. It would have to if it had been designed to hunt in these corridors, to follow people by sound, to seek them out by stealth.

Could its sense of smell also be improved? If it was, could it discern Pol's and my smells amid the stench of the labyrinth?

Who was this beast? No,
what
was it? It couldn't be the good, vegetarian, mentally slow Minotaur we'd been promised, could it?

Perhaps this was all an illusion, aided by great special effects. Perhaps. I opened one eye. The Minotaur, having made mince-meat of my companions, had squatted down to feasting. Its muzzle opened and closed. Blood dripped down its neck. Sharp carnivorous teeth gleamed, crunching their way through bones. I looked across at Pol.

He wasn't there.

I looked down.

Pol had knelt on the ground.

He stretched his hand to his girlfriend's corpse.

With infinite, cautious slowness, he got hold of the woman's ridiculously thin stiletto high-heel and pulled the shoe loose.

Engrossed in his meal, the Minotaur paid no attention.

Pol straightened, clutching his prize. His feet worked against each other, stealthily getting rid of his own flopping sandals.

The Minotaur grunted its satisfaction as it crunched into the mass of mangled corpses.

Pol held the shoe with the heel sticking out like a fantastic dagger. Wearing only tiny shorts, he looked like a mythological hero, himself, as he leapt forward and, with the grace of an athlete, launched himself through the air at the Minotaur's back.

Before Pol reached him, the beast turned.

Pol jumped sideways, fell awkwardly just in front of the beast, who bellowed, outraged. Its sharp teeth clamped onto Pol's left arm. Pol screamed, but shoved the shoe's heel into the Minotaur's eye with his right hand, pushing hard, madly.

The Minotaur bayed. It shook the arm it had clamped onto.

Pol screamed higher, a high, insane screech, as the creature lifted him off his feet, and Pol's body arched back in pain.

Sweat flowed down my back. It would kill Pol. And then I'd be left alone in a labyrinth with a rampaging beast. Sooner or later I'd scream, or sneeze. And be killed.

I bent to pick up the other one of the dead woman's shoes.

As I stood up, the Minotaur's strange cat eyes fixed on me, its gaze betraying only madness and hatred.

It opened its mouth to bellow, dropping Pol to the floor.

I jumped with artifact speed and strength, using it to compensate for the lack of a running start.

It stepped on Pol as it lowered his head and charged me.

The Minotaur's horn, aimed at my chest, caught me in the thigh. Pain burst through my body like a succession of electrical shocks. Everything spun around me. I screamed.

The Minotaur lifted me, in preparation to throwing me.

But I had a moment. Long enough. I grabbed onto its ear with all my strength, as I lay half-across the Minotaur's massive head, steadied between its horns, my leg impaled by the right horn. With my free hand, I pushed the heel of the shoe into the back of the creature's neck.

It bellowed and grunted, and it tried to bite me, but it couldn't because I lay astride its head.

It shook its head, crushing my bone. A red veil filmed my vision.

I knew I was going to die, yet something in me refused to give up. I'd survived the crèche and my harsh training as a courier.

Humans were born to coddling and family, but artifacts were ejected from their crèches like objects in an assembly line. No one had ever cared if I lived or died, and yet I'd lived. I'd survived years of being treated like a machine I wouldn't—damn it—die now. I wouldn't let another artifact, some bio-engineered beast destroy what not all the spite and indifference of natural borns had managed.

My hand, as though of its own accord, kept on digging the heel into the monster's neck, as my vision grew dim and dark.

Pol muttered obscenities, whimpered. I heard him move. His harsh, panting breath rasped from behind me.

My hand on the broad shoulders of the beast, I turned my head to yell at him to go back. Nats couldn't survive what we artifacts could. And, gigolo though he might be, he'd shown courage enough to be an artifact himself. He shouldn't just be killed now.

But I couldn't find the strength to talk and warn him off. My mouth was too dry.

Pol, his left arm hanging like a limp rag at his side, lurched up behind me and, evading the creature's teeth with speed and reflexes worthy of the best artifacts, stuck the shoe heel into the human chest beneath the bull's head.

The beast bellowed and shuddered. Its great head snapped up and back.

My thigh ripped. I flew up and then down again, landing against the wall. Darkness closed in.

"Wake up, please. Wake up." Pol's raspy voice sounded like he'd cried himself to exhaustion.

I tried to open my eyes and saw his eyes—sea green and full of tears—floating as if in a sea of darkness.

The Minotaur . . .. A dream?

Sudden stabbing pain from my thigh brought me to full consciousness.

The pain came from a tourniquet which Pol was tying on my leg. He held an end of the cloth in his good hand and the other between his teeth.

He tied the frayed, bloodstained piece of cloth into a tight, tight noose around my mangled limb, and looked apologetically up at me. "I know it hurts, but the blood."

I nodded. "Your arm?" My voice was a bare growl, but my vision improved slowly. I blinked drops of sweat away from my eyes.

Pol had tied a tourniquet on himself, clumsily but effectively enough.

He glanced at it, shrugged as if the ruin of the pretty body that was his fortune meant nothing. "Repairable," he said. "If we get out of here in time." He gave me a mirthless teeth-only grin and sniffled back tears. "Only I don't think rescuers are coming. I think someone sabotaged the whole site. Unless you believe
that
was vegetarian." He gestured towards the corpse of the Minotaur.

"No," I said. Faint and nauseated, I felt bile burn my throat. No one else moved, nothing else made a sound. Pol and I were the only living beings. Smells of spilt blood and torn flesh stung my nostrils. "No."

Pol's companion hadn't wanted to enter the labyrinth. "I'm sorry about your friend," I said, as I dragged myself up on my elbows.

He flashed me another of his quick, joyless smiles. "Nary? Yes, I'll miss her." He glanced at her corpse. Tears shone in his eyes. "I don't even know . . ." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. We're going to die anyway. I have no idea how to get out of here. We can't rely on rescuers finding us. Not after this. So we're going to die here. Lost."

I almost laughed. For the first time since my freedom, my carrier-pigeon sense of direction would come in handy.

Of course, I'd have to tell Pol about it. I sighed. Weak and tired, I needed sympathy and human comfort, both things he wasn't likely to expend on a bio-engineered creature like me. Of course, I hadn't made a secret of my identity. My ring was there, for all to see. However, judging from the way he'd played up to me, his accomplice looks, his smiles, I couldn't believe he'd seen it.

Once he saw it, he was likely to demand I guide him and never mind if I died in the process, dragging myself down the dark, smelly hallways. Freed artifacts were protected from murder by law. But causing their death from neglect probably would bring no penalty. Judges were natural-born.

No matter. We had to get out. We had to. And I had no time for pride, no patience to wheedle sympathy form this pretty, spoiled nat. Even if I had to crawl out of here, I refused to die. I'd survive. I always survived.

Sunken dark rings surrounded Pol's aqua-marine eyes and he had gone so pale that his lips looked grey. Nats were fragile.
He
needed a doctor.

I would have to tell him of my nature and of my talent. "We can get out," I said. "I was created with a sense of direction. For my work."

He nodded. His eyes widened slightly. His generous lips tightened into a line. "All right, then," he said. "I help you out and you guide us, right?" He bent and offered me his good hand, to help me stand.

Either he hadn't heard what I'd said, or he was unusual indeed. He would help me out? He was still willing to touch me after knowing I'd been created?

I gave him a sidelong glance and sighed. Maybe he was just a practical man. He knew I'd take much too long to crawl out of here.

I sighed. Think of mythology enough, and you might find yourself living it. Just like my mythical namesake, I'd get to guide handsome Theseus out. And at the islet of Zeus, or some other convenient purlieu, he could leave me asleep and go on to his glorious destiny.

His companion had looked rich. He'd inherit. She would have made provisions. And, if not, there would be some other natural human hungry for beauty and company who would take him in a heartbeat, and provide him with all his heart's desire.

Something I could never do, on my professor's salary.

He helped me up.

"We turn left here," I told him. "And the next one is right, but I'll have to get there before I sense exactly which doorway it is."

My leg hurt like the blazes. I had to lean against him and put my arms around his neck. My face pressed against his broad, golden chest. His heart thumped rhythmically. He smelled of sweat with faint traces of sun lotion.

He put his arm underneath mine, supporting me.

It was the only way I was likely to be embraced by a natural male, much less one this beautiful.

We progressed slowly. I held onto the walls. He held me up.

"What is your name?" His voice echoed distorted, through his chest.

"Ariadne. Ariadne Knossos." If he didn't know what I was before he would know now. Artifacts were always given mythological or pseudo-classical names. It was another way to make us different.

"Ariadne? Really? How appropriate."

Ah. Two minds that thought like one. My throat closed.

I didn't want him to despise me. Not him. Even though I was in pain, I could feel his attraction. He was beautiful and brave and even if he'd allowed himself to be bought, he'd had the decency of crying for the woman who'd paid him—annoying though she'd seemed.

I wanted his attention, his admiration. Long denied hormones surged to the surface or my being.

I'd been taken out of the crèche just at the onset of puberty and my work hadn't required me to come in contact with men. For the company who'd created and employed me, I had been little more than an animated message system. The body and the gender had come as part of a package they didn't find it worth to break up. From the moment of my official activation, on leaving the crèche, constant traveling had kept me from relationships with my kind. As for male nats, I shied away from them. Too many female artifacts were created as pleasure toys and anyone I approached would only think of me like that.