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Website content may offend and disturb. Content includes horror, murder, torture, military carnage and occasional incidents from the adult side of adult life. |
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"En-hen!" said the prospector, with more emphasis. Ida suddenly knew - it was very vivid to her - exactly how badly he would stink. She turned and fled into the tarj, sprinting as fast as she could. Orange mist enveloped her, then she was through to the whiteness of the moid beyond. There was a gunshot blast from behind. She stumbled, fell, and threw out a hand to stop herself from crushing the Suki-Suki can underneath her T-shirt. The impact of her landing almost broke her wrist. "Uh," said Ida, gathering herself to her feet. Shot? Wounded? Dead? No - everything was apparently in working order. She had not been punctured. She was not gushing blood. As she turned to face her enemy, the moid tugged at her faintly; yielding to its promptings, she began walking sideways, going where the moid's currents wanted to take her. The prospector followed, gun in hand. And, as she watched, he brought the weapon up to his shoulder. "Don't shoot!" yelled Ida. But the prospector, dimly visible through the mist, aimed his rifle with full deliberation. Intent on murdering Ida Brahma, he pulled the trigger. Immediately, an aura glowed to life amidst the white mists of the moid, an orange aura slowly turning to red. Ida knew it was the aura of something trying to force its way through the moid in defiance of the moid's internal currents. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the aura strained toward her, pure red by now. It drew nearer and nearer, so close she could have almost reached out to touch it. Then she saw the actual bullet in the middle of the aura. In a manner not to be accounted for by the mechanics of normative reality - several physicists had gone mad trying to understand the mechanics of the moid - the bullet was straining to get at her, heading insolently along its chosen vector in defiance of the forces being exerted upon it. The persuasions of the moid and the thrust of the bullet momentarily canceled each other out, and the bullet hung utterly frozen in the air. To move efficiently through the morphologically variable transcosmic topological integration, it was necessary to be sensitive to its persuasions, and to yield to them. The bullet which had been fired into the moid was incapable of taking a hint, and so the moid was steadily amplifying the force it was exerting to persuade the bullet in the desired direction. For one poised instant, the bullet hung in the air. Then there was a buzz of angry green light and the bullet was gone, snatched away, vanished. And then the currents of the moid lightly scooped Ida off her feet and started wafting her away. Dimly, through the mists, she saw the prospector draw his machete and come charging toward her. His mouth was open, suggesting that he was shouting something, but no sound was reaching her. Then an eddy of the moid currents caught him and tossed him abruptly head over heels. His machete flew off at a tangent as he tumbled and spun. He was turning into a human windmill. Ida caught one last glimpse of his horrified face, and then he was swept away into the contorted darkness. Sensibly submitting to the moid currents, Ida drifted, floating along in the invisible current. After a while, she realized that U-scampi was drifting near her. Like the good photojournalist he was, he had stayed remote from the action, contenting himself with the job of recording it. "Could you cry for me now?" said U-scampi. "Not yet," said Ida. She was still far too incredibly angry to even think about crying. The prospector guy had tried to shoot her! If she had had a gun then she would have shot him right back. Ida drifted, floating, until the moid at last lost interest in her, and dumped her down between two blurs of color, one khaki, one gold. A gold tarj and a khaki tarj. Perhaps they existed in a stable binary relationship, like the green tarj of Velis Tantris and the Tangerine tarj of Una Matoa. Any sign of the prospector? No. Good. U-scampi was still with her, of course. And Giggles? Still no sign of Giggles, that weird crinkling three-dimensional rainbow which she had met earlier, and had taken to be an alien. No sign of Giggles at all. Gone for good? Maybe. Anyway - "Which one do you think I should try first?" said Ida. "Don't ask me," said U-scampi. "I'm just a camera." "Sounds like you're suffering from low self-esteem," said Ida. "I prefer to think of it as professionalism," said U-scampi. "Well," said Ida, heading for the nearer of the two planetary interfaces, "gold first." But the gold tarj brought her to a planet of ice, total ice, upon which she did not dare step out in her bare feet. The sunlit ice was even brighter than the glaring interior of the moid: the glare hurt her eyes, even through her sunglasses. No birds, no penguins, no sign of a walrus. "No, no thank you, not ice," said Ida. She did a couple of Suki-Suki product placements as best she could - tricky when she could not step on the ice on account of having no shoes - then retreated to the interior of the moid and tried the khaki tarj. Khaki mist yielded to a sharpness of sun. A valley of some kind, between high mountains. Venturing beyond the khaki mists, Ida took a few experimental paces, careful in the placement of her feet, then realized she felt strangely tired. There was something wrong with her breathing: it was starting to labor. Furthermore, she had no strength at all: she felt drained. Worse, her ears were hurting, as they had during one of her airplane rides. Remembering airplane experiences, she held her nostrils and blew until her ears popped. She felt better. "Altitude change," she said. Within the moid, gravitation and air pressure were maintained - by mechanisms as yet unexplained by the science of the Zafari Jahar - at something approximating sea level planetary norms. But, when you stepped out through one of the interfaces, there was no guarantee that you would even have air, let alone breathable air, or air at a healthy atmospheric pressure. "But this is tolerable," said Ida, assessing. Still carefully treasuring her bare feet, the most precious of all her possessions, she climbed to the top of a small mound to survey the landscape. The first thing revealed to her was the ruptured carcass of a man - she presumed it was a man - who was lying not far away. He was missing both legs. He was dead and decomposing. She swayed, steadied herself. "You are a scientist." Scientific scrutiny revealed, not far from the dead man, a boot with an ankle sticking out of it. Which meant that the deceased had probably stepped on a landmine. Which meant that this was probably a battlefield, or had been in the past: some landmines were designed to survive for centuries. If a battlefield, it might well be radioactive. Or contaminated with anthrax spores, or worse. A dangerous place, then. Still - She could hear, somewhere, a trickle of running water. Where? And was it worth risking getting both legs blown off in order to find something to drink? She had drunk a lot on the prospector's desert planet, but she was already starting to feel dry again. Probably, it was best to drink whenever you got the chance. Drink first, and worry about dysentery later. "I hear water," said Ida, taking out her Suki-Suki can. "It makes me remember the best thing to drink." "Which is?" said U-scampi, hovering near her. "Shut up," said Ida. "We don't need an interactive dialog. We want something open-ended, suggestive. Okay?" "The great advertising executive," said U-scampi sardonically. "Suki-Suki, take two," said Ida. "I hear water. Water makes me think of good things to drink. Good things - and great things." And where exactly was the water? Scanning the landscape, Ida saw a flashing light in the middle distance, and she looked right at it before she realized what she was doing. Realizing - Realizing the magnitude of her error, Ida threw herself flat, her Suki-Suki can going flying as she went straight down on her belly on the loose stones of the small mound, clenching her eyes tightly. She opened those eyes cautiously. Could she still see? Yes. "Well, don't do it again," said Ida. Meaning: don't look at flashing lights on battlefields. Easily said, more difficult to do, for the eye was naturally attracted to flashing lights. That was why battlefield lasers were often associated with just such lights: as soon as you looked at the light, the laser would blind you. You could be instantaneously and irretrievably blinded: and, little as Ida cared for military history, she was nevertheless aware of the hideous fate of the blundering armies of the blinded which had resulted from some of the more dire conflicts of history. Thousands and thousands of people, staggering across minefield battlegrounds, entirely blinded but lacking the skills of the blind, stumbling eyeless - As Ida was thinking about it, there was an explosion, very near at hand. A mine must have been triggered by mere proximity to her bioactivity. The explosion showered her with dirt. For a moment, Ida lay there, like an electrocuted rag doll. Then, recovering the use of her limbs, she bolted back into the moid. Once she was safe in the misty wilderness of the moid, the shock hit her for real, and soon she was shuddering, red-eyed, weeping. So very close to death! After a while, she became aware of U-scampi circling, recording. "That is very satisfactory," said U-scampi. "Very, very satisfactory indeed. Authentic to the bone." "I'm glad you think so," said Ida shakily, and starting back to the khaki tarj. "Where do you think you're going?" said U-scampi in alarm. "I dropped my Suki-Suki can." "You can't go back for an empty can!" said U-scampi. "Yes I can," said Ida. "But you're the star of my news show!" "Then you should take better care of me, shouldn't you?" said Ida. "I'll be no good for your ratings if I'm dead. Will I now? Now, come on. I need you!" Back in the high altitude environment, Ida found her precious Suki-Suki can. It was scratched on one side. She positioned the can so the scratch was hidden by her hand. "Wow," said Ida, as U-scampi circled, recording. "That landmine almost killed me! But I'm alive! When I'm alive, I appreciate the good things in life." Did that make sense? Well, worry about sense later. Ida faked drinking from the Suki-Suki can. "Wow, that was good," said Ida, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, forcing a big toothy smile. "That was the best!" Done. They had captured the best product placement of all. Near death by landmine would certainly qualify Ida for a "thirsts of real people" spot. It was much better than being threatened by a stinking rapist. Landmines didn't have dirty minds. Death, pure and simple, makes for the best product placements - that's the kind of culture we live in. "All right," said Ida. "Let's get out of here." Ida risked a last one-eyed glance at the landscape of the planet of the khaki tarj, then turned, rose, trotted down the mound and headed back into the moid. "Onwards," she said. Easy to say, harder to do. She became more and more despondent as she trudged thirstily through the eternal white mists. Increasingly, she worried about her physical condition. Her feet were holding up all right - walking over crunchy force fields was no worse than working on sand, and she was accustomed to taking long barefoot walks on the beach - but she was conscious of having over-exerted herself. Her legs were aching, gravely fatigued. How much further could she walk? Then, finally, she saw, looming through the whiteness, a smudge of black. "A black tarj?" said Ida to herself. "There's no such thing as a black tarj." "Yes, there is," said U-scampi, who had not spoken for some time. "I entered the moid through just such a tarj." "Oh?" said Ida. "I was on a starship," said U-scampi. "It's a long story, but, basically, I was the sole survivor." "When was this?" said Ida. "Seven years ago," said U-scampi. "You mean you've been wandering around in the moid for seven years?" said Ida. "It's a big place," said U-scampi. Seven years! That was the most discouraging thing Ida had heard all day. As Ida homed in on the smudge of darkness, it grew and expanded, swelling to definite tarjness. She hesitated. Blackness she associated with blindness, with the unknown. She was convinced that something truly horrific might lie through those black mists. |
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zenvirus.com. Copyright © 2000 Hugh Cook. All rights reserved. |
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