«Yes, but.…»
«HAH!»
Cocodrilo was running towards them, followed by a number of his men.
«Push, Karina!» Siervo leaned on the pole. Karina got her fingers under the raft and heaved. It slid a few centimeters, then stuck. «Push!» Siervo jerked at the staff.
It snapped.
Cocodrilo had pulled ahead of his men, skittering across the wet ground in a low-slung run, using his hands from time to time so that, horribly, it looked as though he was scuttling on all fours. As he came he uttered harsh cries.
Karina and Siervo stood shoulder to shoulder, lifting and pushing, feeling the raft move, but too slowly. Siervo was sobbing. After twenty years of subservience the enormity of his actions was almost too much for him.
«Stop!» shouted Cocodrilo.
And Siervo stopped, his body sagging, the raft falling back into the mud.
Karina said, «He’s going to kill us if we don’t get away.» She siezed Siervo’s arm, swinging him round to face her so that he couldn’t see the monstrosity bounding towards them. «Do you really want me to die?» she asked, trying to get him to meet her eyes.
Her eyes were like mountain lakes. Siervo stared.
Her beauty was more important than life itself. It was a gift placed in his care. It was.…
He hurled himself at the raft.
It slid forward into the trench. The current seized it. They jumped aboard. Cocodrilo, arriving seconds too late, trotted alongside, gauging his leap. The raft moved faster, the mud flats slipping by. Cocodrilo, yelling to his men, plunged into the channel and took hold of a corner of the raft. The vessel tilted and swivelled, touching the bank and slowing. The cai‑men were yelping like hounds, closing in.
Cocodrilo, his head protruding from the water, snapped, «Stop. Get off this raft.»
Karina could see Siervo shaking as he dropped to his knees and, with trembling hands, tried to pry Cocodrilo’s fingers away. The raft tilted further, water swilling over the deck.
«We daren’t stop.» Siervo’s tone was pleading. «Your men are out of control. Coco. They’ll kill us. Look at them!»
There were six of them. They scurried along the bank, level with the raft, uttering fearsome coughing sounds, their mouths snapping at air, their coarse lips dripping fluid. They were crazed with the ecstasy of the hunt. They began to roar with anticipation, seeing a shallow place ahead where they could easily drag the raft to a halt. They scuttled on, arms pumping, overtaking the raft and getting ready to jump into the trench.
«You … asked for it,” gasped Cocodrilo, water washing over his face.
Karina found she was holding the shattered end of the staff. She stepped forward. The raft heeled and Cocodrilo disappeared underwater.
«Go to the other end,” she told Siervo.
He glanced at her, uttered a little moan of despair, climbed to his feet and scrambled away. The fence loomed less than fifty meters ahead — but Cocodrilo’s men were waiting for them in the shallows. As Siervo reached the other end, the raft balanced itself.
Karina crouched.
Cocodrilo emerged from the water, gulping air.
Karina rammed the jagged end of the staff down his throat. As he screamed, blood sprayed over her legs. Karina laughed, a harsh yell of pure delight. He let go and drifted away, twisting and turning in the water like a gaffed fish, seaming the surface with pink threads.
Karina ran to the other end where Siervo was struggling with a cai‑man who had got a grip on his ankle. She kicked, and ripped the man’s throat open with her toenails. Blood welled out, bubbling as he fought for breath, then he was gone somewhere under the raft.
Then someone grabbed her leg, scaly fingers digging deep. She kicked out, slipped and fell, sliding towards the edge of the raft. Another hand gripped her thigh just as she caught hold of the cabin front and checked her slide. The fingers were like steel, inhumanly strong, and although she kicked with all her strength she couldn’t shake them free. She caught sight of Siervo in a similar predicament, being dragged off the raft; then two of the men began to climb aboard, grinning, crawling towards her.
The raft tipped.
Karina floundered in deep, icy water. Something struck her a smashing blow across the head, then the grip on her legs slackened and she rose. Surfacing, she found the raft beside her and pulled herself half onto it, gasping for breath. Other heads bobbed up, Siervo’s among them. They began to drop astern as the raft sped over the shallows. Karina stood, preparing to dive to Siervo’s aid.
«No!» The little True Human shouted. «Leave me, Karina!»
She couldn’t do that. But his cry made her pause, and in that instant the raft swept past a tall figure dressed in black, standing motionless beside the ditch. The ruined face turned to Karina, the scarred lips formed just two words.
“ Leave him.…»
And Karina hesitated, just for a second.
Then a fetid blanket enveloped her and she fell.
Siervo had designed his escape route well. The gathering momentum of the raft across the shallows was sufficient to carry it through the fence, and a hundred spiders hissed their fury as the raft smashed through their handiwork and sped on past the guards, across a shallow tributary and into the deeper waters of the delta.
She lay still, wrapped in a dense, translucent web, using every last part of her self‑control to summon her Little Friends against the spiders attacking her body, while the floodwaters hastened her towards the sea.
In later years the Escape of Karina formed an important part of the Song of Earth, being celebrated in the stanza beginning:
«Karina fought the crocodiles with courage and with might,
Then called upon the power of bor to dull the spiders’ bite.»
But there was another Karina on another happentrack, who refused to heed the command of the Dedo’s handmaiden, and who dived into the swift water to swim to the aid of her True Human friend. Now that Karina fought the cai‑men bravely, killing one and mortally wounding another before her neck was broken by two of the brutes.
The minstrels of Late Earth do not sing of that Karina. They do not know of her, because her story is locked in some cold memory of some dying Rainbow on some remote happentrack. On that happentrack the Purpose was not fulfilled, Starquin was not freed, and in his eventual disinterest he allowed Mankind to rot in his Domes and villages. The Dedos were withdrawn into Starquin’s body and Earth spun on its way, of no more use to him than the dead canyons of the Moon, while in the reaches of the Greataway the Hate Bombs circumscribed his eternal tomb.
The Canton Lord
In the year 91342 Cyclic, Earth was threatened by a race of aliens known as the Bo Adon Su. This was during the Age of Resurgence when it seemed that nothing could stop humanity from populating the entire Galaxy, given time. His three‑dimensional spaceships were everywhere and their navigational, drive and defensive equipment were wonders of physical technology. You will understand that this technology was to seem incredibly clumsy fifteen hundred years later, in the age of the Outer Think and the Invisible Spaceships; but at the time it was a thing to be marvelled at. And marvel was what the less-advanced races did.
All except the Bo Adon Su. Refusing to accept the supremacy of Man, they scythed through the Galaxy in a series of clumsily-executed raids of little more than nuisance value, finally arriving at the Solar System itself — the very cradle of Mankind. They poised to attack Earth, trying to mass their fleet into some semblance of order for a concerted onslaught.
Suddenly, humanity woke up to what was happening.
They fed the Bo Adon Su’s tactics into the Rainbow, to prepare their defenses.
The Rainbow found the Bo Adon Su’s tactics incapable of analysis.