Escape Velocity: The Anthology (43 page)

      
Doc wandered around on the edge of the bridge, reluctant to leave the regularity of towering supports for the place where the bridge ended, which was a chaos of rock at the base of a cliff where black holes like eyes stared at him. Doc noticed movement along the base of the cliff. He had to strain to see, for there was gauze over his eyes, drying up his eyeballs and sandy when he scraped it away. Doc stepped to the edge of the bridge, which ended jaggedly, with great spikes of metal. In some of the gaps, which he pointedly ignored, Doc could see waves sweeping tiny carts back and forth amid the spray.

      
The thing moving along the cliff was closer now, and Doc only crept closer to the edge of the bridge so that the thing wouldn't notice him in the smash of upreared stone and metal bars. As if it could detect Doc’s unease, the animal turned towards the bridge’s cliff-side edge, and camouflaged its real intent by casually sniffing at the broken stone. “It’s smelling me,” Doc said aloud, and his voice sounded creaky against the roar of the water below and the taut strumming of the wind on the cables.

      
While Doc watched, the thing turned this way and that, looking for a good path through the boulders and sand, and Doc could see its true nature. It was a fake, thin like the metal walls of the cart, like the thin plates of black stone that made up the tarmac. When it turned to come towards him, Doc could see its falseness, although when it turned sideways it loomed large, even compared to the cliff. It was like a moving wall, but with an eye on either side. Its legs moved too fast to count, even if Doc had an inclination to try. The sight was overwhelming. Doc broke from cover and ran for the meagre protection of the cliff.
Maybe in one of the holes
, he panted.

      
Doc was halfway up the piles of sand and gravel that lay at the base of the cliff, when he gasped to a halt, his scattered footsteps below him showing him how little he’d actually climbed. It took him long moments to detect the thing, for it was almost invisible head on and he had to wait for it to move sideways again.

      
Shading his eyes with his hand, for the sun made them ache, Doc became aware of a key, like the one in the cart—
maybe this was his key
—strapped to his wrist with a stretchy multicoloured wire. It shone in the light and hurt Doc’s eyes so he shoved it out of sight into his sleeve.

      
The thing was moving along the gulf, and when it got to the middle of what used to be bridge it paused, as though to wait for a drive from Bob. Doc had a horrible thought.
Perhaps the day’s schedule included the thing. Perhaps the thing was the second passenger, and Bob was coming back. Had Doc merely lost track of the schedule?
But his fears were eased when he saw the thing turn towards the water and back to the cliff again.

      
Since his breathing was now under control Doc was ready to descend, or even go towards the holes, when his decision was made for him. Mumbling to itself like Bob, a skinny, impossibly wrinkled monkey was picking through the rocks at the bottom of the sand pile, mere moments away. Doc sat still, hoping it would go away, and he tried not to listen to its voice, although some of its words were clearer than Bob’s. “around . . . doing nothing . . . rushing water, flowing sand.” Much of what the monkey said sounded like a song without music, and its melody reminded Doc of something, although the memory was fuzzy and slipped away even as he reached for it.

      
The monkey seemed harmless enough, but Doc was unsettled that it had decided to pick through exactly where Doc had climbed. Its occasional pretence at lifting its hand to its mouth was a ruse. Doc was meant to be lulled into a false sense of—
a false sense of security—
for some reason that phrase had resonance. He was meant to ignore the monkey, if that’s what it was.

      
Maybe if he hadn’t seen the other thing earlier, and suddenly realized it had disappeared from view, Doc would have reacted differently, but as it was he crept up the sand backwards, pushing off with his feet and hands, like a spider backing away from a fly. His hunger tortured him while the monkey pretended to enjoy its sham lunch below. Its skinny arms propelled its grotesque fingers to a mouth that never stopped its constant chatter. None of it seemed real, and Doc was just getting an uncomfortable aching in his head when the monkey looked towards the bridge and scampered away to the base of the cliff and was lost from view. Doc reached up to touch where the pain was coming from, but all he could feel was his corrugated skin, as if the remains of a hat had stuck on his head.

      
By the time the monkey had gone, Doc was close enough to the holes for curiosity. Even while he marvelled at his own bravery, he stepped into the rough entrance of the tunnel and halted, so that he could tell if the rustling noise was the wind coming around the corner to see what he was doing, or an animal, eager to be seen for the first time in the world.

      
Doc sat against the cave wall, which was surprisingly smooth, and held his head while he tried to remember the name of the thing he’d seen below, even the name of the monkey-looking thing. While he tried to think of a word for what could be hiding in the dark and could rustle, light slanted in.

      
By the time Doc was feeling up to looking around, he saw that the walls, which were smooth and regular like the bridge, were covered in markings and loose leaves. Doc tore one of them off and it fell apart in his hands, but not before it reminded him of something. Whatever it was, it made him feel like he could enter the cave. Doc went farther in with a feeling of security, ignoring the sounds from within of falling rocks and clanging metal. From one chamber to another, by clambering over fallen stone and patternless metal, even in one case something like the cart, Doc wandered the labyrinth, unsure what he was looking for. He had repeated to himself that he was looking for food, and the mantra had finally worked. He found some round hard pebbles in one flat space built into the wall. When he put them to his mouth they could be eaten, although they tasted like dust. He held them in his mouth to soften then ground them slowly, feeling for the first time how hard it was to chew, perhaps because so many of his teeth were missing.

      
It was getting dark when Doc came to what he thought was the source of the pipe water. A large metal door blocked the passageway and other passages led off into the gloom. He lapped at some of the water before he was ready to turn away and it was only then that he noticed, by a chance glint of metal, a place to put a key, just like on the cart. He reached into his sleeve for the key, a movement which made his head hurt. His hand had volunteered the movement by reaching out first, so Doc was not surprised when his fingers clumsily turned the key and something inside the door moved.

      
He stepped back at the sound, and because his hand was fastened to the door by his wristband, it stretched and then pulled the door open, letting go a flood of water that spilled over Doc’s ankles.

      
It was much darker in this inner chamber, and large boulders peered from the gloom. There was the sound of pouring water, dripping and trickling, squeals and chittering. Doc stepped over the threshold into the splash over his shoes, which squeaked now that they were wet, until he came to one of the boulders and climbed upon it. It proved to be hollow, and by creeping along its unnaturally straight edge, Doc could go from shelf to shelf, from ledge to ledge, in this vast meaningless place, peering all the while into the murky depths of each container.

      
The water in most was clear, and he checked on their contents as if he were following some ritual. The water seemed to well from below the chambers, spilling over the edges and adding to the flood on the floor, but some boulders had indefinable shapes in them, and Doc looked at one for a long time, his arms crooked and holding him away from the water’s surface, trying to determine the thing’s contours. One such globular shape seemed to move suddenly, and Doc flailed backwards, fearing all the while to fall into another hole whose water had not been examined.

      
Doc let his arms and legs lead him towards a closed section at the rear of the chamber. When he was close enough to see the open door he was uneasy, far more so than when Mickey leapt with a rock. This feeling of dread was the same as when he looked at the flat thing outside, picking its way along the edge of the cliff smelling his trail, or when the leaf crumbled in his hands, leaving his hands whitish and dusty. Doc pulled his arms and legs back, but they were stubborn, and the struggle, nearly silent in the background rushing water and crashing of the cave roof, took a long time to resolve. Doc finally gave up. Although he knew advancing was a bad idea, he foisted the responsibility onto limbs he could no longer control. He was dragged inside this last chamber, strangely capsuled within the larger one, and walked into a flat shape in the middle of the floor. He was held there while his eyes became acclimatized to the light. When he could finally see, in front of him sat a tiny person.

      
His mouth was too dry to allow a scream, and before he could stop them his hands took up the tiny person, who was not Bob, or Mickey, and lifted the person. It was still, and surprisingly flat, and when Doc got a closer look he realized it was a drawing, like when Bob, just for fun, would scratch on the dirt with a stick, plotting where Mickey would pop out next. The drawing was uncomfortable to look at, and Doc soon realized why. As he turned it in the light to see more easily, the drawing changed. It changed into three things, depending which way he turned it. At its bottom were some lines and smaller drawings, but they were meaningless, and Doc found his attention coming back to the three images.

      
When the drawing was towards the light, it was a thin monkey, looking disconcertingly straight towards the viewer. Turned away from the light, a person appeared, with a white coat and pasty face and blurred hands. One of its hands was fingering its coat and Doc could make out a bracelet on its wrist. The middle image, half in light and half away, was the most disturbing. It was a monkey man, Doc decided, trying to grapple with the image. It was wrinkled like the monkey outside, and hairy like the monkey on the first drawing, but it had the busy hands of the man, and his pale face. Doc first thought the middle face was laughing, and he felt like backing away, but then he realized, the face was stretched into some other expression. Caught between the monkey and the man, the face had something of both in it, and, Doc realized, was not laughing at all.

      
He dropped the person as though he’d been burned, and calling out first for Bob and then for Doc, he went stumbling through the huge echoing chamber, ignoring the splashing water. He followed the remaining light for the door, which slammed behind him. The passageways were a maze and his path was further hindered by piles of curved sticks left periodically littering the floor. At times he stumbled against metal things like carts, upturned, or perhaps differently shaped, their flat panels reminding him unpleasantly of the thing sniffing his trail outside.

      
Doc collapsed, exhausted in the entrance, even the sun gasped out its last rays into his hole in the cliff. He couldn’t protect himself from whatever was making the noise in the cave, from the skinny monkey below picking through the dry gravel for sustenance, the thin thing sniffing the rocks.

      
The sun was back when Doc woke to multiple rooms like memories through which he merely passed. He expected the chambers to be lit and full of people, dressed like the man in the drawing. Their white coat barely hid their impatience as they strode through the echoing white chambers, checking on the containers, just as Doc had yesterday.

      
The light and gnashing of the metal doors was painful, the constant mumble of the people, as they brushed past him, nodding to him as though they knew him. Doc had a headache and drank the water flowing out of the cave to ease it, but it followed him down the sandy cliff, winked at him from the key he’d just noticed dangling from his wrist, and made him slip and fall.

      
Sensing movement in the distance, it was only with difficulty that Doc could peer around the edges of his headache and see something trotting along the edge of the cliff. He watched it closely while digging his feet into the sand, his wet shoes dark and slippery looking, his coat getting increasingly stained with the dirt although you could tell it had been white at one time. When the thing turned towards him, Doc felt a sickening dread, for it looked as though it were flat. It was bigger depending on which way it turned, he realized, and that made him sick with fear. He lurched to his feet to escape, and went towards the edge of the bridge, its stable regularity only broken in a few spots—four, he counted—but otherwise stable and secure. There he waited, without knowing why, until a cart left the far end of the bridge, and got closer and he recognized the driver.
He looks like a Bob
, he thought,
and I think he’s coming to get me
.

Symbiosis

Jonathan Pinnock

So you want to know what really happened to Shane? All right, I’ll tell you. Just keep it to yourself for the time being, OK? There are still people who might not quite see it my way, if you know what I mean. Even if it was his entire fault. If the stupid tosser hadn’t have made such a fuss about me putting on a couple of pounds, all this wouldn’t have happened, would it? Git.

      
Anyway, we was ‘round at his place watching one of those medical programmes on Five.
Help Me, I’m a Fat Bastard
, or something like that. Honestly, you should have seen some of them. Talk about gross. But there was this one woman who had this surgery, like, and by the end of the programme she was as thin as a rake. Really! And you know what Shane did after the programme was over? He grabbed hold of my stomach and said, “Well, you could do with a bit of that, couldn’t you?”