In his neunonics he could see Scab in his disguised form and the Monk in hers sitting on the strange coffin-shaped cocoon thing. Somehow Scab’s face behind his visor dominated the image from the ship’s external visual sensors. Vic locked weapon system after weapon system onto Scab as he counted the ways in which he hated that man. There would never be a better time than now. There was no way Scab would survive and he did not have clone insurance. Scab wanted to die – he was daring everyone in Known Space to do it – but nobody had the balls. Now with a thought Vic could kill him. No comebacks. Except. Vic glanced over at the Scorpion in the tank. The navigator that the Scorpion appeared to have fused with was staring at him.
‘Leave me something of her,’ Scab ’faced over their secure link.
He wanted to scream, weep, tear at what little remained of his flesh, thrash around, engage in all the human melodrama he’d experienced in immersions. Instead he just sagged in the couch and cursed himself for a coward. He heard the Monk ’face the St Brendan’s Fire, wondering what was taking so long.
‘I’m sorry,’ Vic ’faced her back.
The Monk’s head whipped around to look at Scab. She was moving for her bone blade. Scab grabbed her wrist. A laser cannon on one of the beam batteries fired. The Monk’s torso turned to red steam which then promptly froze. Scab was still holding her upper arm.
He stared at the St Brendan’s Fire until the forward airlock ramp lowered from the head of the craft like a mouth. With a thought Scab commanded the three AG motors to take him into the airlock.
Scab cut the fused flesh off the Monk’s severed hand and attached the warmer to it, returning it to simulated life. He stared at Vic all the while. Vic would not look at him, could not meet his murky lifeless eyes. He didn’t need to look at him to feel the disdain.
‘Why were the weapons on me?’ Scab finally asked.
‘Dramatic irony?’ Vic suggested.
Scab was not disdainful of Vic for wanting to kill him. He was disdainful of Vic for not going through with it.
Scab stripped the spacesuit gauntlet off the reanimated hand, then he put the hand on the cocoon. It was warm, and he cut the flesh to let some blood leak out onto the cocoon’s strange shell. Slowly the cocoon started to dissolve. Vic stared at it in horror.
32. Southern Britain, a Long Time Ago
Falling through smoke. Falling through a clear blue sky, the churning red water of a feeding frenzy below her. Britha told herself that she couldn’t hear all the screaming. That she couldn’t hear how much she had failed these people. The thing crawling through her head recoiled from the violation of the sky hanging above them like an angry living black sun.
The water hit her hard, tasting of salt, copper and meat. Shapes writhed over each other like a basket full of eels. The sea seemed full. The force of her impact carried her down. To part of her the ocean seemed home, to another part the bloodlust seemed right and proper. The thing in her head howled and sent unimaginable pain lancing through her.
Something grabbed her arm. She did not fight. It pulled her deeper. What was left of her real mind told her that she was not of the sea as the pressure mounted, but somehow she did not die.
It was there, through silted water, down under the mud, something huge, ancient, alive and suffering. Something trying to wake but waking into a world of fear, pain, burning and slaughter. It was so large as to be difficult to comprehend, like a mountain, a living mountain.
The energy in the water was palpable. Patches of its flesh glowed through the murky water, making patterns, lightning playing across those patterns. Britha knew somehow that this was the energy that violated the sky, letting the Hungry Nothingness in.
Someone, something, took her deeper. She should be drowning now. Britha felt the touch of the living mountain’s hard flesh. It felt like rock or a shell but then it opened to softer flesh. She was not being consumed, she told herself. It was more like the births she had helped with over the years. It was like going home. It was not just the blood, the blood which had granted Britha power and magics, that called to this creature. Something at a much more primal level recognised the creator of life.
Now falling again. Britha landed on something warm, wet and alive. She felt a hot wind, like breath, on her skin. She tried to cope with the pain, tried to ignore the horror of what she had just done. She felt feverish. Her body was fighting itself, it wanted her to give in to fury and destroy life, but she was home and would be safe.
Britha opened her eyes and tried to make sense of things. It looked like a tunnel but she knew that she was in a living thing. Living stalactites of translucent white flesh dangled from the ceiling, giving off a faint glow and moving with the warm wind and of their own accord. The long corridor had regular arches of bone. The walls and floor remind her of the dimpled flesh on the inside of a mouth. The flesh rippled with movement.
And Cliodna stood over her. She too seemed to sway with the warm wind. Crouched over like a predatory animal, she did not look like her lover any more. She was all armour and hard edges. She looked like a warrior. No, Britha corrected herself, she looked like a weapon. The other woman seemed to seethe somehow.
Cliodna reached down and ran a sharp black claw across Britha’s skin. Britha did not cry out. Her head wanted to burst and the claw wound seemed like nothing. Even through the war in her body and the agony in her head, even though she was slowly beginning to realise that some of the thoughts in her head were not her own, the thought that Cliodna would hurt her made all the strength that had carried her this far evaporate. She wanted to curl up and end it. If Cliodna wanted to then let her kill her.
Instead Britha got up unsteadily.
Cliodna threw Britha’s spear at her feet. ‘Kill me,’ she said quietly.
Quicksilver tears sprang from Britha’s eyes but she didn’t move. Cliodna darted forward and more slashes appeared in Britha’s flesh. The blood ran down her, dripped onto the flesh of the floor and was instantly absorbed.
‘Kill me,’ Cliodna said more loudly and licked her bloodied nails. Britha knew that the Otherworldly woman couldn’t help herself and shook her head.
Cliodna embraced Britha. Her skin was course and rough now, she felt jagged and sharp. She grabbed Britha’s hair and yanked her head back. ‘Kill me!’ Cliodna screamed in her face, breath smelling of meat, before sinking rows of teeth into the other woman’s shoulder and pushing sharp nails through her skin.
This time Britha screamed and pulled away, Cliodna’s fingers and teeth tearing her flesh.
Britha staggered back, sobbing. ‘I can’t!’ she screamed.
‘I can smell that monster’s scent on you,’ Cliodna growled. ‘Either kill me or I will kill you.’
‘You pushed me away!’ Britha screamed at her. She knew it wasn’t fair. Now more than ever it was evident that Cliodna had done it for Britha’s safety. Not only that, it would seem that Bress was more than a little responsible for Cliodna’s transformation.
‘I don’t want to live like this,’ Cliodna told her. ‘I only destroy. I am hanging on to what little is left of me. My nails are bloodied by the meat of my younger brothers and sisters!’ Britha knew she meant her and the other peoples of Ynys Prydein and beyond. ‘Soon I will be gone. I would rather I be killed by someone I loved, when I was capable of that. Better that than I become a terror to your people.’
‘I’m sorry but—’
‘Then I will kill you and forget my name and all that came with it.’