Deception Well (The Nanotech Succession Book 2) (34 page)

He fetched up against a tree. His gloved hands tried to grip the marble-smooth trunk, but the effort did little more than slow him. Still, he managed a half-turn as he slid past; his gaze swept the slope behind him.

The serpent had crested. It slipped now in silence over the humus, its mottled brown and black body flowing downward like liquid.

Lot’s grip on the tree failed. He stumbled, and dropped to one knee, sliding down the steepening slope. To his left he caught a flash of silvered motion: Urban or Alta. “Watch out, fury!” Urban’s shout rang through the forest. “The land drops out beneath you—”

Lot saw it before the final word was out. A natural drainage cut at a shallow angle across the slope. It was twelve feet down to a bottom of black rock. No way Lot could stop in time. So he jumped, shooting for the far side of the narrow gorge. Two-thirds across, and he knew he would never make it.

He hit about halfway down the rocky wall. The impact knocked his breath away. But the gloves seized on—for a second anyway. Then their grip failed, and he half-fell, half-scrambled to the bottom, landing with a splash in a knee-deep pool of slowly flowing green water. He glanced over his shoulder. The serpent was already descending the other side of the gorge, running down the wall like a liquid flow of humus. Without slowing, it raised its head and spit a stream of acid at him. He twisted, dodging the strike.

Pushing hard, he plunged out of the pool and onto a water-smoothed rim of black rock. He teetered there a moment, then got a direction on his momentum and took off down the gorge, holding hard onto his balance on the slippery rock, going down once, then again, on patches of green algae, the second time drawing an explosive pain in his knee that was quickly damped by his medical Makers at the same time his leg went numb from the knee down. He half-stood, hobbling, almost knuckle-walking around the shimmering pools of slow  water. The serpent drew near, skimming in silent sine waves over the reflective surface of the ponds. It raised its head again and in his eyes Lot could feel the smarting of its acidic breath.

He remembered the capsule. He groped for it, sliding down a shallow step between two ponds. He could hear the rush of wind in the treetops, though around him the air was perfectly still, only the dribble of water, the buzz of insects, and his own frantic breathing audible. He got the capsule out and had it pointed behind him as the serpent’s head poked out over the rock rim, its rows of sapphire eyes glinting just over his head. He squeezed the capsule, firing a brief, invisible stream that sliced across the spangled eyes, igniting a line of steam, a boiling, stinking, fast-forward putrefaction as the cellular material began to dissolve into baser structures.

The serpent reared back, its acid factories temporarily on hold. Lot tucked the capsule away, then threw himself forward, rolling, half in, half out of the water, his leg dragging behind him, useless dead weight. He glanced over his shoulder, hoping for a reprieve, hoping that by now the serpent’s face would be entirely consumed in a black boil. Instead he saw only a livid pink scar slashing across the closed mouth. A wad of corrupt tissue oozed from the end of it, but the reaction had ceased.

Urban’s voice rang out overhead. “Come on, fury! Go! You’ve got to jump!”

Lot glimpsed him, capering on the rim of the gorge, now almost sixty feet overhead, his fist bunched and his face a featureless black against the bright green of the foliage.

“Jump, fury!”

Perhaps Urban’s voice distracted the serpent, or maybe it had learned caution, for Lot was able to scramble a few more feet, a crawl that brought him to an abrupt edge, and suddenly he understood Urban’s exhortations. The wind he’d heard was no wind at all, but instead an airy waterfall, a long, long, plunging veil, greenish white ghost hair streaming against a cliff face into an emerald pool perhaps two hundred feet below him, first in a series of pools that stepped down the center of a narrow valley. Lot clung now to the valley’s sheer headwalls.

“
Jump!
” Urban screamed. “Lot,
now!
”

Lot didn’t look back. Once again he could feel the serpent’s acid breath. He got his good leg under him, balanced a moment, then leaped off the cliff face.

The waterfall blurred in his vision, spraying him with a fine mist that clung despite the rush of air past his face. He struggled to keep his feet beneath him. He thought he heard Alta’s voice echoing off the cliff walls, and then he hit the water’s surface—
hard
.

His breath slammed out of his lungs as he plunged deep into the fall’s splash pool, and he felt like he’d taken a kick to his genitals. He opened his eyes, to find himself submerged in water like green tea, black darting shapes streaking away from the rising net of silver bubbles that surrounded him. He followed the bubbles up, kicking hard for the gleaming white surface.

His pack held him down.

He knew he should abandon it, but he’d been too hungry too long—he didn’t want to lose the food he carried. So he kept trying and finally his head slipped past the surface. He gasped, drawing in a lungful of cool, wet air. Water splashed in his mouth, washing out the taste of acid. Mist rained down on his face, and the waterfall purred as it trickled and spun down the long scooped face of the cliff.

He worked his way to the edge of the pool and hauled out onto the sun-warmed rock. He rolled onto his side, surveying the cliff face. There was no sign of the serpent, but Alta and Urban were clearly visible, gray figures dropping down the precipice in slow increments. He couldn’t see the gold cord at this distance, but he thought he could pick out their anchors, secured to a face of clean rock.

“
Lot!
” Alta’s tinny voice came to him from the suit’s hood. “
Are you okay?
”

Not really. He ached all over, and his leg was still numb. But he didn’t want to admit that to her. So he pulled his hood partially up, activating his radio, and in a show of bravado he called out, “Next time, remind me to fix my anchor before I jump.”

“Lot!” she shouted. “Can you hear me?”

He sighed. Perhaps they couldn’t hear his transmission with their hoods down and the noise of the waterfall so close. Or maybe his radio wasn’t sending anymore. He waved to them, to signal that he’d heard.

As they continued their descent, he spent a minute listening to the forest. All he could hear over the mutter of the waterfall was an insect chittering. If insect was the right word. He slipped out of his pack and scooted back down into the water.

Slow green ripples marched across its surface, and it was icy cold. He hadn’t noticed that before. Still, he slid all the way in, until the water was over his head. He could both feel and hear the boiling pulse of the waterfall. He let the current work past his face, ease through his hair, sweep away the bitter acid and his own last lingering expectations.

The Well had tried to kill him—and not with anything as sophisticated as a governor. Macro-scale life could be fatal too. He would be dead now, if Sypaon had not given him a moment to leap away.

The Well was deadly. Kona had said so a hundred times.

Where was the harmony Jupiter had promised? Where was the communion? Surely not in the belly of a radial snake.

He popped back up to the surface, then stroked awkwardly toward the shallows. His lower leg remained immobile, but he could feel a heat working inside it now as his medical Makers rushed to repair the damage.

When he could balance against the bottom, he cupped his hands and scooped at the water, watching the afternoon light play upon the liquid. It didn’t look like regular water. It was tinted a soft green and seemed too viscous, almost gooey as it settled in the reservoir of his palms. He held it to his lips and drank a tentative sip. Cold and slick, with a slight, sweet taste. He drank more, then crawled out on the rock and sat in the liquid afternoon light, contemplating the strangest fact of the day:

The serpent had reacted to the assault Maker in much the same way as his own body, sloughing off the infected tissue to limit the reaction. Was it the bloody Chenzeme influence again? In the Well; in him; in Jupiter.
Why?

Urban and Alta were finishing their descent, coming down on the farside of the pond. While they worked their way through the vegetation to the water’s edge, Lot squeezed the seam of his suit, opening it in a line from his throat to his belly. He shrugged out of the sleeves. Kheth’s warm rays played against the bronzy skin of his back and chest.

He thought about going in the water again, then decided to scrounge in his pack instead, pulling out a smashed ahuacatl. He scooped at the browning pulp with two fingers. On the other side of the pond, Urban squatted at the water’s edge, and grinned. “I never knew nirvana could be so exciting.”

Alta stood behind him, her face pale, her eyes still wide with lingering fear. “Are you okay?” she asked again.

Lot shrugged. He ate another bite of ahuacatl, then said, “Leg’s kind of numb. I think it’ll fix.”

She couldn’t let it go. “It almost killed you!”

“Guess it was hungry.”

She didn’t appreciate the humor, and suddenly he was glad they had a body of water between them. “Dammit Lot! What’s the matter with you?”

He scooped at the ahuacatl’s mushy green flesh, his hunger a never-declining demand. “You know,” he mused, “we could have just missed the door to nirvana. What if it was through the belly of that snake?”

She didn’t bother to answer that, just dropped her pack in the bushes before stomping to the end of the pond, where she sat down with her back turned toward him. Her anger boiled like mist off the waterfall.

Urban frowned after her, seeming perplexed. But he let it go and turned to Lot. “So where to, fury? Got any ideas? I don’t think we’re going to find our way back to that road.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Lot said. “The road ended at the top of the ridge.”

Urban laughed shortly, then turned to fish an ahuacatl out of his backpack. Lot tossed him a smashed one instead. “My load didn’t come through too well. Better eat it first.”

Urban made a face at the damaged fruit, but he took a tentative bite. Lot didn’t try too hard to dodge the sudden rise of bitter feelings. “Oh yeah, and here’s one for your girlfriend,” he said, lobbing another ahuacatl across the water.

Urban scrambled to catch it with his free hand. He gave Lot a long, cool look, then called to Alta, tossing the fruit in her direction. “It happens sometimes, fury. It’s nobody’s fault.”

Down the valley, the edge of Kheth’s disk had been cut off by the peak of a jagged ridge. Lot reached into his pack and pulled out a lychee, feeling his bitterness coil upward like cool steam into the dying afternoon. “Jupiter’s out there. I caught his trace up on the ridge, just before the serpent hit. Only . . .”

He frowned at Urban. How to explain? “It wasn’t really him, I . . . don’t think.” Alta had turned around. She stared at him, raw anticipation shoving her anger aside. “It felt too . . . too distinct, maybe. Almost artificial. Like a lure?”

“He could have changed,” Urban said. “That’s what he came here for.”

“I guess.” Lot didn’t feel sure of anything anymore. “Anyway, it’s something to follow.”

CHAPTER

25

D
AYLIGHT WAS FADING BY THE TIME THEY REACHED
the valley’s end. They stood at the head of a six-foot waterfall, looking out over an eroded volcanic crater, its gray walls forming a shallow ring around a plain of low-growing tussocks and sedges and the odd green globular plants. Shadows ran long across the level ground. But where Kheth’s light still reached, tiny white diamonds glinted within the green and bronze turf. “Weird,” Urban said. “Looks like a park, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

The stream dropped into a small splash pool that had no obvious outlet. Lot leaned forward, gauging the distance to the opposite shore. He could jump that far.

He was eager now to get out of the highlands. All during the hard scrabble down the valley, as he’d limped over the slow repair of his knee, Jupiter’s presence had continued to brush him, sweeping past in irregular wisps, mingled with a sensory packet that brought him a salt scent he’d never smelled before. In his ears he could half-hear the purring sound of waves on rocks, just as he’d heard it at times in the VR. He was being called to the ocean. There was something here that was aware of him, that expected him. A straw to grasp. He wanted to find it.

So he jumped first, going long over the tiny splash pool and into the tussocks beyond, landing so most of his weight was taken by his good leg. Green water splashed up around him, splattering the leggings of his suit, and he sank calf-deep into a soft, boggy turf. He looked down in surprise, to discover green water gradually pooling around his legs. “This place is like a sponge!”

“Can you get out?” Urban asked. He crouched anxiously at the top of the falls. “We could throw you a cord.”

“No, I think it’s okay.”

Carefully, he pulled out first one foot, then the other, stepping lightly onto the center of a large tussock. He sank only a few inches this time, the water lapping over the toes of his boots. “The splash pool must have saturated the ground all around here.” He bounced up and down on the springy surface. “This is really weird.”

“I’m coming down.” Urban and Alta climbed down the rockface, then waded through the shallow pool.

Lot had already started hobbling across the crater, making a line for the far wall. A flock of four-legged, scarlet avians startled at his approach, blasting into the air with a noise like farts, leaving an equally foul odor behind them. Other flocks winged past overhead.

The light faded abruptly as Kheth dropped below the crater rim. Long shadows weighted the tussocks, and the brassy afternoon sky swiftly gave way to mild pink and then deep, deep blue. The elevator column still had the light, and as the illumination on the ground faded, it gleamed like an optical fiber, with a pearly luminescence. Though they’d been walking away from it for hours, it still seemed to be almost directly overhead. Now that the day’s glare had faded, Lot could see the swollen joint of the city, with a few stars emerging from the nebula’s veil.