Synaptic Manhunt (19 page)

Reave looked dubious.

‘You reckon? It looks like we really … aargh!’

He clamped his hand to his neck. His face contorted with pain. Billy looked at him in alarm.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s this goddamn collar. A.A. Catto must be trying to find us.’

‘Do you think she’s nearby?’

Reave nodded.

‘She must be. The link doesn’t work over a really long distance.’

‘Maybe she’d hear us if we started yelling.’

‘It’s worth a try. It might stop her using her ring on me.’

Billy and Reave both began to shout at the top of their voices. After a while they stopped to listen. Nothing happened. The fog seemed to muffle out all sound. They tried again. When they paused a second time, Billy thought he heard faint shouts. They began to yell as loud as they could. They at least had the consolation that the activity was keeping them warm. They paused for a third time. Billy was sure he could hear faint sounds. He turned to Reave.

‘You hear that?’

‘What?’

‘I thought I heard voices.’

Reave listened.

‘I don’t hear nothing.’

Billy craned forward.

‘Yeah. Listen. There it is again. I’m sure it must be the others.’

He started yelling at the top of his lungs.

‘Hey, hey, over here.’

Even Reave could hear the answering shouts. After a few minutes of yelling they saw two figures begin to emerge from the mist. It was A.A. Catto and Nancy. They both looked cold and wet. Nancy was limping badly and A.A. Catto supported her on one arm. Their thin, revealing city clothes were obviously no protection against the vicious climate. Reave fingered his collar nervously. A.A. Catto looked as though she was in an evil temper. She walked slowly up to the two men.

‘Where in hell are we?’

Billy and Reave looked at each other. Billy shrugged.

‘Don’t have a clue.’

A.A. Catto scowled and said nothing. Nancy hugged her arms to her chest and shivered.

‘We got to get out of this goddamn place before we freeze to death.’

Billy nodded.

‘That’s for sure.’

Reave squatted down and rubbed at his damaged ankle.

‘So where do we go?’

A.A. Catto looked down at him in contempt.

‘Can’t you ever think for yourself?’

‘I don’t see you coming up with too many ideas.’

A.A. Catto’s eyes blazed.

‘Don’t talk to me like that!’

She twisted her ring savagely. Reave screamed and fell on his side kicking. Nancy grabbed her by the shoulders, but A.A. Catto pushed her roughly away. Nancy stumbled and fell over Reave. Billy grabbed A.A. Catto by this wrist and held on to her while she struggled and hit at him.

‘Hold it, damn you. Just take it easy.’

‘Take your hands off me, or I’ll kill you.’

‘You ain’t killing anyone. Calm down now. We’re all in this together. Fighting ain’t going to help us.’

A.A. Catto relaxed into sullen silence. Billy let go of her. He helped Nancy to her feet.

‘Okay, let’s try and get organized. We got to get out of here.’

Nancy tried unavailingly to brush the mud stains from her damp jump suit.

‘Did we manage to save anything useful from the airship?’

Billy patted his jacket.

‘I seem to have lost my gun in the fall.’

A.A. Catto sneered.

‘Typical.’

Billy turned on her.

‘What have you got?’

‘My credit card.’

Billy looked at the ground.

‘I don’t think that’s going to be a whole lot of use in this place.’

Nancy grinned.

‘I’ve got my gun.’

Reave climbed to his feet.

‘I’ve got mine too, and a gravity knife.’

Billy looked round.

‘How about food?’

‘Nothing.’

A.A. Catto grimaced.

‘I suppose nobody has any drugs?’

Everyone shook his head. A.A. Catto pouted sullenly.

‘You all realize I’m going to start coming down in a while?’

Nancy raised an eyebrow.

‘What do you expect?’

Billy quickly intervened before another fight erupted.

‘We ought to decide which way we’re going to go.’

Nancy shrugged.

‘I figure it’s either up or down.’

‘Down ought to be warmer.’

‘Down it is then.’

A.A. Catto shivered.

‘Can we get moving?’

Billy hesitated. A.A. Catto looked at him in exasperation.

‘I think I can hear something.’

‘Rubbish, I can’t hear a thing.’

She started to walk down the hillside. Billy didn’t move.

‘I’m sure I can hear something. It’s a kind of hum. Really high pitched, almost beyond the range of hearing. It’s hard to be sure but I think whatever’s causing it is coming nearer.’

Nancy nodded.

‘I can hear it too.’

A.A. Catto stopped and planted her hands on her hips.

‘Are we moving or aren’t we?’

Before anyone could respond, her question was answered by a reedy mechanical voice.

‘You-will-stay-exactly-as-you-are!’

Three grey steel spheres floated out of the mist. They were about a third of a metre in diameter, and hung some two metres above the ground. A dull black disc was set in the side of each one. The disc moved as the sphere slowly rotated. It was as though the disc was some kind of sensor device and the spheres were scanning the four humans. The surprise at their sudden appearance was so great that nobody moved or spoke. Billy felt as though all his willpower was being drained away.

One of the spheres moved silently away from the other two. It circled A.A. Catto and began gently to shepherd her back towards her companions. She too seemed to have been drained of all will to resist.

Once the spheres had the humans herded together in one tight group, they surrounded them in a triangle formation. The black discs stared implacably down at the four people. Nobody spoke or moved. The voice came again.

‘It-is-necessary-that-we-search-you.’

Billy couldn’t tell whether it came from one single sphere, or all three. A small circular slot opened in the base of each sphere and a steel tentacle snaked out of it. The tentacles extended towards the humans and moved slowly over their bodies, as though inspecting them. Billy stood horrified as the cold steel probe slid into his pockets and under his clothes. Then they began removing things from the group. They took Billy’s timepiece, his cigar lighter and small tri-di cube of a couple screwing that he kept as a good luck charm. They took Nancy’s and Reave’s guns and an electronic doorkey from A.A. Catto. They took everyone’s portable generator. They also took off her ring, and removed Reave’s collar. He had always thought it was permanently locked, but at a single touch from one of the sphere’s tentacles, it just fell open. The various objects were placed carefully together on the ground. The voice came again.

‘These-objects-are-proscribed-in-this-area. It-is-necessary-to-remove-and-destroy-them.’

One of the spheres emitted a thin beam of bright blue light from a point on its underside. It played over the objects on the ground. After a few seconds, they smoked and vanished. The spheres formed themselves into their original formation and silently drifted away into the mist. Billy slowly turned to the other three. His face had gone slack.

‘Did that really happen?’

Nancy nodded.

‘I think so.’

A.A. Catto looked round helplessly.

‘Why did they take all our things? We had little enough to start with. Now we’ve got nothing.’

Billy frowned.

‘They didn’t take our clothes.’

Reave fished in his pocket and pulled out his gravity knife.

‘They missed this.’

He snapped it open. When he came to close it, however, the mechanism no longer worked. He scratched the back of his neck.

‘This place is too fucking weird. I …’

He suddenly received the impact of what the spheres’ removal of his collar meant. A.A. Catto no longer had any physical control over him. He shot her a single intense glance. She pretended not to notice, and spoke quickly to Billy.

‘Have you ever seen anything like them before?’

Billy shook his head.

‘Never.’

He thought for a moment.

‘It seems like they took away anything to do with technology, all mechanical things. They left our clothes and Reave’s knife, but the mechanism on that doesn’t work. I wonder if …’

Nancy cut him short.

‘Could you do your wondering when we get some place that’s warm?’

A.A. Catto joined in.

‘Let’s go somewhere. I’m dying of cold.’

Billy nodded and, without another word, started down the slope. His face was set and thoughtful. Suddenly he stopped and bent down. He fished something from a tuft of grass and held it up.

‘Whatever those things were they didn’t get this.’

‘What is it?’

‘A gun, it looks like my gun.’

He held up a compact .70 recoilless.

‘It must have dropped here after we fell through the nothings.’

A.A. Catto looked grimly pleased.

‘At least we’re armed.’

Billy nodded, and carefully tucked the gun into the holster under his coat. They carried on down the hillside.

The going wasn’t hard. The ground was even and downhill, but the cold became the exhausting factor. Even while they maintained a brisk pace, the freezing damp cut through their thin clothes and seeped into their bones. A.A. Catto’s teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. She massaged her bare arms and looked desperately at Billy.

‘I c-can’t take m-much more of this.’

Billy did his best to be reassuring. He too was half frozen.

‘We got to come out of this in the end. It cant go on for ever.’

A.A. Catto pursed her now blue lips.

‘Anything’s possible.’

Reave flashed her a wry grin.

‘If it don’t stop, it’ll be the end of us.’

A.A. Catto gave him a long hard look, but said nothing. They went on walking. Billy was thankful for the downhill slope. It did at least prove they weren’t going round in circles. Apart from that single fact, they could easily have been back at the point they started from. Nothing appeared to change.

Billy was about to give up hope when, abruptly, they came out of it. The transition was so sudden, it took them totally by surprise. One moment they were trudging through the same thick mist, then for a few paces it thinned and suddenly they were out in the sunshine. The sky above their heads was a clear blue, and the air smelled sweet and clean. All four of them stopped and just drank it in. A.A. Catto raised her chilled arms to the sun.

‘Oh god. It feels so good.’

She turned and hugged Nancy, and they sank down on the short springy turf kissing each other enthusiastically. Billy looked at Reave, and they both shrugged. They turned their attention to their surroundings. Behind them was the wall of cloud completely concealing the upper slopes. In front of them, however, the view was breathtaking. Below them was a wide green valley. It was watered by a slow meandering river. A number of small tributary streams sparkled in the sun, Billy grinned at Reave.

‘This really don’t look too bad.’

Reave nodded.

‘Sure looks good to me. Look at those trees, all that grass.

I could get behind laying up here for a while.’

He peered intently into the distance, and pointed down the valley.

‘What do you think that is?’

Billy shaded his eyes and stared in the same direction.

‘It looks like a building of some kind.’

Billy could just make out a black structure, beside the river, far down the valley. It seemed to have a broad base and then narrow off towards the top. It was surrounded by patchwork squares of different-coloured vegetation. Billy assumed that they were cultivated fields. Reave turned to Billy.

‘Do you suppose we ought to head for that place?’

Billy nodded.

‘I don’t see anywhere else that looks inhabited.’

‘It looks real big, that place.’

‘And a long way away.’

Billy walked over to where the girls were lying entwined on the grass.

‘Come on, you two. I think we’ve found civilization.’

A.A. Catto disengaged herself from Nancy.

‘Civilization?’

‘There’s some kind of big building down in the valley.’

A.A. Catto propped herself up on one elbow.

‘Is it nice?’

Billy shrugged.

‘It don’t look hostile. It’s a long walk, though.’

A.A. Catto scowled.

‘I thought there’d be something wrong with it.’

‘It’s a nice day for a walk.’

‘I’m getting sick of this place.’

Billy grinned down at her.

‘We might as well get moving.’

‘We have to walk?’

Billy nodded.

‘We have to walk.’

A.A. Catto smiled sweetly at him.

‘I had an idea. Why don’t you and Reave walk to this place? Then when you get there you could send out some transport for Nancy and me.’

‘I didn’t see too much that looked like transport.

A.A. Catto sat up.

‘Where is this place?’

Billy pointed out the building in the distance.

‘There.’

‘You don’t expect me to walk that distance? You’re crazy.’

‘You can stay here.’

A.A. Catto beamed.

‘And you’ll send someone to fetch us?’

‘I doubt it.’

A.A. Catto’s expression turned venomous.

‘One day I’ll get the chance to really make you suffer, you little punk.’

‘I’ll do my best to avoid it.’

A.A. Catto climbed grudgingly to her feet. Nancy did the same. They started down the hillside towards the river. A.A. Catto sulked at first, but the walk proved to be no hardship. Very soon she and Nancy were walking along together chattering and giggling. Billy and Reave were slightly in front, deep in their own thoughts. They had been going for about ten minutes. A.A. Catto and Nancy had dropped some way behind. Suddenly Nancy yelled out.

‘Look!’

There was such a note of urgency in her voice that the two men spun round. Nancy was pointing frantically up the hill. A small troop of horsemen were galloping across the hillside just below the cloudbank. Billy couldn’t make out too many details of the riders. The horses were tall and black. The men carried long slender lances. The only obvious thing was that they didn’t look hospitable. He beckoned quickly to the others.