Death Cry, page 14
Rock Streaming didn’t turn his attention from the computer, but he heard Good Father take several steps closer from behind him. “The woman is clearly in this other realm,” Rock Streaming clarified, his voice low.
“Which means she’s with the weapon,” Rabbit in the Moon stated firmly. “Now’s the time to move, Good Father.”
Good Father remained silent as the communication continued to play out.
“For the moment,” the other speaker stated, “I have to strongly advise against it, Grant. We have no idea what sort of trauma that might cause, and our biometric data here shows that she’s in no immediate danger. Her heart rate fluctuates a little, but it’s well within acceptable limits. Nothing out of the ordinary, Grant.”
From the corner of his eye, Rock Streaming saw that Good Father was nodding. “Lock the picture, as well as the biodata feed,” Good Father said as the conversation continued from the laptop’s speakers. “Block their live feeds so that we may enter unnoticed.”
Rock Streaming nodded, his fingers playing across the keyboard once again as he accessed a sequence he had previously set up with Rabbit in the Moon for this very eventuality. The live feeds that provided satellite imagery and biometric data were now looped to provide a reasonable facsimile of a continuing feed. “This won’t stand up to too much examination,” Rock Streaming warned, “but unless they’re looking for it, it should fool them.”
IN THE CERBERUS OPS CENTER, Lakesh watched the feed from Brigid’s subcutaneous transponder as his conversation with Grant continued in staggered bursts.
“What about going into the zone with Brigid?” Grant asked. “Could me or Kane do that maybe?” To Lakesh, Grant was sounding increasingly desperate as he spoke around the subject, retaining as much security as he was able under the circumstances. “Over.”
“It’s the magic-eye picture argument,” Lakesh explained. “Magic-eye pictures were a phenomenon at the end of the twentieth century, where a three-dimensional image of, say, a sailboat could be seen in a two-dimensional pattern, but only if the viewer was able to defocus their eyesight sufficiently. Some people could do this with ease, but for others the pictures never appeared. It is my contention that without the proper mental discipline, you and Kane would be ill suited to enter the zone, as you put it. You may never see the sailboat. Over.”
Lakesh heard Grant bite back a curse before he responded properly. “We’re kinda stuck playing the waiting game, then, is that what you’re telling me? Over.”
Lakesh nodded sadly, conscious of trying to keep the concern out of his voice. “Brigid’s transponder will alert us if there’s any need for action, and either Reba or I am here monitoring that at all times now. I know it’s frustrating, but however it may look, there’s no sign here of physical trauma, Grant.” Lakesh watched as the heart rate dipped back to its normal level, a little slower, in fact, suggesting that Brigid was at rest. “Hold your nerve. Over.”
During the gap in communication, Lakesh took in the satellite image of the Caucasus Mountains. Looking closely, he imagined that he might be able to identify a speck that could be Grant talking to him, close to the grounded Mantas, but he couldn’t be certain.
“Understood, Cerberus,” Grant agreed over the Commtact. “Kane might take a bit of convincing, though. Over and out.”
“Yes,” Lakesh agreed, “good luck with Kane. Over and out.” With that, he walked back to study the data from the transponders, tapping the screen to expand all three feeds from his field operatives. Heart rates, blood pressure and brain-wave activity all remained reassuringly normal. There was nothing to worry about, Lakesh told himself as Domi arrived carrying two mugs of steaming herbal tea, one for him and one for herself.
BRIGID GROANED as Krementsov kicked her for the sixth time beside her right hip. General Serge had left the younger man to the task, instructing him to get as much payback as he felt was reasonable for the loss of his front tooth while he dealt with another matter. Krementsov had punched her in the gut about a dozen times, then began walking around her as she hung from the pipes, kicking her from different angles and laughing when she cried out.
Finally Krementsov stepped back, looking at her bloodied face as she struggled to raise her head to look at him. “Are all you counterrevolutionaries so weak?” he asked her, laughing.
There was no answer and she knew it. It was just sport, another round of the same game that General Serge had played. “Let me speak to Dr. Djugashvili,” she told him, her voice straining where her throat felt raw from vomiting. “Please,” she added after a moment, her bright emerald eyes locking with his.
“Maybe in a while,” the young soldier agreed, clearly not caring one way or the other. “I’m sure that the general will decide when.”
At that, General Serge returned from whatever assignment had taken him from the little, fiercely lit room. Walking across the room, he dismissed Krementsov and the other sentry with a casual wave of his hand before standing before Brigid and clutching her beneath the chin, forcing her to look at him. He smiled when he saw the bruises on her face, the blood trickling from both nostrils and the gobs of spittle that clung to her chin. “You’ve been having quite some fun without me,” he said, leering, “but now, kitten, I think it’s time you started talking.”
“Please,” she breathed in a hoarse voice as he held her face tightly in his grip, “get me Dr. Djugashvili.”
“He doesn’t give the orders in this facility, Miss Baptiste,” General Serge told her, his gloved fingers digging into the flesh of her bottom jaw.
“But he’s the only one likely to understand what trouble you’re all in,” she replied.
Chapter 14
In the sacred tribal hut, Neverwalk watched as the members of the strike team prepared themselves for the oncoming mission. Following the briefest of discussions with Good Father immediately after the most recently overheard broadcast, Bad Father had given the order to move out. It was clear that they needed to act on their information now, or fear either discovery or losing their chance of recovering the astral weapon for their own use.
Including Neverwalk, there were now six people in the armory hut, stashing weapons about their person, readying themselves for the long walkabout through the Dreaming.
Rock Streaming appeared calm. He wore his long duster open to reveal an undershirt that left his tattooed shoulders bare. Tucked into his kangaroo-hide waist holsters were two boomerangs carved of razor-sharp titanium, weighted and potentially lethal. Neverwalk had seen Rock Streaming fell an eagle from the sky on one occasion, and loose a koala from the branch it clung to by cleaving clean through its clinging arms on another, both at a distance of one hundred or more paces. Rock Streaming had brought a portable computer with him, and as the others suited up he continued to refine the programs that they might need in the forthcoming battle with these Cerberus warriors.
Rock Streaming’s cousin and blood brother, Rabbit in the Moon, wore a tattered jacket in vibrant blues and greens along with his low-slung combat pants. Rabbit in the Moon had elected to remain bare-chested, proud of his tattooed circuitry, twin homage to the old days and the new ways. He was checking the thin shafts of each of his arrows before adding them to the quiver he would carry on his back. The compound bow, a two-hundred-year-old tungsten-steel artifact, waited at the desk beside the arrows, its weight and targeting system perfectly attuned to Rabbit in the Moon’s hawklike vision.
Cloud Singer had stripped down to her abbreviated combat wear—the bandage of white material that covered her breasts, the thin white strips that wrapped her knuckles and held her wrists firm, the white skirt ending at midhip and the bandagelike strips wound around her otherwise bare feet and ankles. She carried a hollowed stick that sang when it cleaved the air, the only weapon she required other than her tightly muscled body.
Good Father looked tense as he waited close to the door of the little hut, bull roarer in hand, cup dangling at the end of its limp string. Good Father had taken to using his gnarled walking cane once more, hollow at its tip and holding a dash of hot powder, enough to irritate a surprised opponent into making a foolish mistake. He wore a loose, short-sleeved shirt in a checkered pattern of washed-out red and black along with baggy shorts, leaving his ancient arms and legs bare. He had settled on a pair of sandals to protect his feet, cushioning his steps but still open to the elements.
Dressed in dark pants that ended high above his ankles, his hardened feet bare and his long, brown-black toenails curling, Bad Father stood at the other end of the armory, stocking up with throwing weapons, boomerang and yo-yo.
Neverwalk himself preferred the yo-yo, though had yet to test his ability in genuine combat against a human opponent. He carried a light version of the weapon, carved wood on a string of toughened emu hide. He had displayed much prowess with the yo-yo in mock battle, entangling the limbs of lesser opponents, as well as knocking a female kangaroo senseless from his hiding place in a tree before stealing her joey for food. However, for this, his very first field mission, he would primarily be tasked with the role of lifter and handler, carrying Rock Streaming’s laptop on his back and replenishing weapons if required.
“What we do today,” Bad Father rumbled in his voice of thunder, “will secure the original tribe’s role in this dangerous new world.” The members of the strike force stopped what they were doing and looked at him; even Rock Streaming stopped tapping at his computer program. “This is the next step on the long road to supremacy for each member of the tribe.”
“You have all trained hard,” Good Father added after a moment, picking up where his equal had left off. “The portents are good. We shall succeed in this matter—I have no doubt. The weapon they speak of in their communications, this Death Cry, will be ours before the next moonrise.”
“Let none stand in the way of the original men,” Bad Father hollered.
Everyone in the enclosed room bowed their heads respectfully as Good Father and Bad Father silently left the little hut and waited for the strike force to join them outside.
Neverwalk stood beside Rock Streaming as the programmer powered down his laptop and slipped it into the harness that Neverwalk would strap across his back. “Do you really think that we can win?” the boy asked, the tremor of fear in his voice.
Rock Streaming looked the young warrior squarely in the eye, standing tall and proud. “We must,” he told Neverwalk. “The not-original men have ruined the world, destroyed nature, destroyed themselves. We are the last hope of humankind, as our kind have always been. But without the weapons to enforce what is right, to annex and hold the Dreaming, we will ever face opponents guided only by stupidity and selfishness.”
Cloud Singer’s head turned at this, overhearing the explanation. “We come to create new fiefdoms to rule,” she said. “Are we not ourselves selfish?”
“Rulers come in many stripes,” Rock Streaming told them both with a smile. “To make things better must never be wrong.”
Rabbit in the Moon slung his quiver over his back and folded the compound bow into its holster along its side. “The written future promises ultimate victory for our tribe,” he assured Cloud Singer and Neverwalk.
The young woman nodded at that, before turning to the doorway and walking out of the hut.
Neverwalk added spare arrows to the long pockets in his combat pants and placed the sharpening stone inside his jacket. Then he followed the two warrior men from the hut as they left to join Good Father, Bad Father and Cloud Singer.
Other members of the tribe waited outside in silence as the warriors prepared for their long journey through the Dreaming. Bad Father had described it as a three-dream minimum, but Rabbit in the Moon had plotted a different course, emerging in Africa before trekking the second leg of the journey. With the Dreamslicer, the attack would come as a complete surprise to these Cerberus people, snatching the weapon from right under their noses.
The midmorning air was warm outside, the sun reaching its zenith. Many of the original tribe members had come to proudly watch their warriors depart.
An area at the edge of the settlement had been marked out using pebbles, twin rings beside one another, one small and one large. Good Father stood in the smaller ring, his old eyes closed in contemplation, his chest slowly rising and falling as he drew deep, calming breaths.
Bad Father waited in the second, larger circle. The other warriors joined him, imitating his serene calm but aware that his gaze held fiery rage as it watched them enter the circle. Bad Father was ever impatient with his pupils, despite his apparently endless patience with the world around him. Three months ago, on a mission to the Russian territories, Bad Father had become too impatient with a female warrior called Dashed Accomplice and elected to leave her behind. Without access to the bull roarer that engaged the Dreamslice technology embedded in her skull, Dashed Accomplice had no way to return home to the outback and had been stranded somewhere in Russia.
Dashed Accomplice’s failure to return meant Cloud Singer was promoted to take her place on the strike force. Such an example served as a stern reminder that dawdling would not be tolerated.
They stood across from one another, a five-pointed star within the circle. Once everyone was in place, Good Father began to spin the bull roarer, unleashing the full fury of its droning, ugly song as he raised it above his head and increased its revolutions. The instrument sang, a banshee shriek that carried far into the arid land that surrounded them. Its echoes bounced off the huge rock formation in the distance where the cave was located, the rock formation atop which Rabbit in the Moon had sparred with Cloud Singer for the entertainment of the original tribe.
As the drone of the bull roarer cleaved the air, Neverwalk felt the tingle at the base of his skull where the implant had come to life, fired up and awaiting his instruction. He watched Bad Father, allowing his consciousness to be overwhelmed with the bull roarer’s ceaseless note, waiting for the signal to depart.
Suddenly Bad Father bowed his head, feeling more than hearing the tone of the bull roarer rise and fall, dancing across the spectrum to find its level. And swiftly, he raised his right arm and flicked it down again, like an official starting a race, and the six of them disappeared into the Dreaming. Both circles were now empty, just the trace of their footprints in the sand.
Neverwalk felt it as exquisite pain, that sensation at the top of his spinal column as the implant flipped him into the Dreaming. Its smell was familiar, the scent of dreams.
Neverwalk had closed his eyes automatically in an attempt to stave off the nausea that crept up on him when he entered the Dreaming like this. The others were with him, a few steps ahead, making their way across the deserted plain, their footsteps the only sound other than the soft sussurus of the wind across the shale beneath their feet.
Cloud Singer turned back, beckoning him to join them. “Hurry, Neverwalk,” she said, and her voice was something musical now, the source of her beautiful warrior name. “Don’t get left behind.”
The Dreaming could be hard to navigate. Some of the tribe were experts at finding their way to the part of the Dream that they sought. Rabbit in the Moon had always shown an uncanny sense of tracking across the Dreaming. Good Father had said he was an instinctive dreamwalker.
Rabbit in the Moon dashed ahead, with Bad Father keeping pace at his heels, and the others trotted behind. Good Father remained with the group, spinning his bull roarer overhead as he jogged, ensuring none of them would get lost or left behind. The frequency of the bull roarer determined access to the Dreaming, as well as the length and type of the journey therein.
Neverwalk watched as Cloud Singer took a deep breath before she loosed a high-pitched note from her throat. The note welled deep within her, trilling loud and long, cutting the silence all around them. As the note burst forth, she took to the air, not in the manner of Rabbit in the Moon, all muscle energy and brute force. Instead, Cloud Singer stepped into the air the way a person would step onto a raised hillock, the way a goose lifted into the air as though it were just another part of the ground, angling away from the flat horizon. Cloud Singer stretched her arms out at her sides, her body forming a straight line from toe to neck, her head raised to look forward, her mouth wide as the exquisite note sang forth.
Up ahead, Rabbit in the Moon bent in a crouch, amassing energy before leaping high into the swollen sky like a firework, almost touching the rushing clouds as he lunged into the heavens, with Cloud Singer immediately altering her trajectory so as to follow him.
Bad Father went up in the air behind Rabbit in the Moon, apparently with no effort at all, just hooking into Rabbit in the Moon’s slipstream and being carried into the air, too.
With their feet still on the shale-sprinkled ground, Good Father urged Rock Streaming and Neverwalk to ascend with the others.
Rock Streaming turned back to Neverwalk. “Come, little brother,” he said, “we have much to do.” Then Rock Streaming continued to turn, twisting into the air, like a seed fluttering on the wind.
Neverwalk prepared himself, finding his mental center just as he had been taught. A hop, a skip, a jump and he was airborne, too, gathering speed and feeling the wind in his face as he lunged after his companions. He thrust his arms forward to cut through the air as if diving. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Good Father, sitting cross-legged, the walking cane resting across his lap as he glided low over the ground. No longer in his hands, Good Father’s bull roarer continued to spin, keeping pace with his flight above and a little behind his right shoulder.
Neverwalk turned away, tucking in his head to cut down on drag as his body moved faster and faster, cleaving the skies of the Dreaming.
Travel through the Dreaming was almost instantaneous, covering ground at speeds impossible in Realworld. Two hundred feet or two hundred miles—it was all the same in the Dreaming.
