Code Noir (24 page)

I thought of Geroo, the blind
karadji
, and his gift of calm.
Why did the arseholes always survive?

I spied a ma’soop peeping out from behind the
karadji
’s shoulder - so small I’d scarcely noticed her before.

‘I tell all my famlee go look,’ Glida confirmed. ‘She bring him here.’

‘And you?’ I asked the other shaman.

‘Can you get us home, Parrish Plessis? We’ve seen within you and trust your honesty.’ Ness, the Polynesian
kapna
, spoke for them all.

‘Tell us what you want us to do,’ she added.

Do?
I scrubbed at my face with my fingers, appreciative, for once, of my Eskaalim-driven healing.

Or was it the Eskaalim? Schaum didn’t seem to know what it was. To date I only had the word of some dead shaman and my own hallucinations. I played out the idea that maybe I’d been pumped full of some long-acting PCP which Ike or some other goonie had manufactured.

And yet it was a real presence. Every heartbeat I knew it was there.

Well, whatever it was, I’d use every reserve I had to get the remaining
karadji
to the Cabal and the others back to Torley’s. The rest of my problems could just damn well wait their turn.

‘OK,’ I said, levering on to my haunches. ‘Here’s how it goes. We stay in pairs on the pavements. Except Roo and me. I’m heads, Roo’s tails. If we have to go through the roofs, it’s single file. Same order each time. Remember who’s before you and after you when we do it that way. Each of you’ - I pointed to the shaman - ‘is responsible for one of the ma’soops. Take care of them or . . .’

I didn’t need the threat. Understanding and agreement was in their nods and their serious expressions.

Glida translated my instructions to the ma’soops. They chattered excitedly, but when she barked at them they settled into the laps of their keepers.

‘Glida, you’re my partner. I need you to navigate through here. When we go single file, you’re my number two.’

Reluctantly she and Roo unclasped hands.

I hid my smile.

And my envy.

 

I took Glida’s light strip and scouted down on the pavements, but things had worsened. Mo-Vay changed as I watched - morphing as if it were alive. Plas, timber and neon growing quicker than the jungle after monsoon. As the moon rose higher, the whole place stirred with unheard purpose. Twitchers ran the alleys, wild with new weapons and the change.

Like us, the rest of Mo-Vay scrabbled into the rooftops for safety. It made our progress slow. So did the task of keeping so many bodies moving together.

Punters barricaded the attics like tiny fortresses. A few times we managed to pass by as other groups fought. But most times I had to do the snarling, blade-waving thing.

I did it well, but I knew eventually, someone would call my bluff.

It happened too soon.

As I held a gang at bay, Ness fainted at my feet. Seeing my concentration drift as the shaman collapsed, they came at us on mass. Knives and planks and whatever they could lay their hands on. I waded in with my fists, too scared to use the ghurka in such a small, dark space and cause a massacre.

I repelled the first wave, but in a matter of seconds they were all over me again.

‘Glida, get the others through,’ I bellowed.

Roo hustled to my aid and we fought with fists, like street kids. Only his were metal and relentless. Trouble was, I had two fights going - one against our attackers, the other against my Eskaalim-driven desire to rent them apart and daub their blood over me.

I tried to contain it. These people were just trying to survive in a crisis. Same as us. I even managed to keep a weapon out of my hands. Then one of them jumped the
karadji
carrying the smallest ma’soop.

I had a knife out before I knew it. It slid through the attacker’s skin - effortless and lethal. The smell of blood sent the rest of the gang scuttling into their corner.

Roo hauled the body off the
karadji
and the ma’soop. The
karadji
was shaken.

The ma’soop was dead. Crushed under the weight.

I carried the child’s body into the next cut-thru where Glida had herded the rest. The light was poor, but they all knew, like they were somehow wired together. Listening to their wails, I felt their loss set hard on me. I had to see them out of this nightmare alive. Which meant not staying here a minute longer than we had to.

‘We go down to the pavements,’ I said. ‘Our . . . chances are better there.’

What I really meant was, Down there at least I can see who I’m fighting. Anything else was a lie.

‘Glida.’ I motioned to the feral to lead us down.

The ma’soops cried in unison of pain and huddled together.

‘They won’t leave Cha,’ she whispered, distraught.

I gently levered myself in amongst them as they grieved over the littlest of lives. ‘This won’t happen again.’ The words came out strident with emotion but they seemed to understand.

A couple of them clambered on my back, hugging me. One took my hand and stroked Cha with it. I felt her fading warmth and my own impotence.

‘Let me carry her,’ said the
karadji.

I nodded. ‘Glida, tell them we’ll take Cha with us until we can find a place for her.’

Sombre and timid they followed me down into the moonlight. In the shelter of a doorway we crowded together as refugees. With Glida’s help, I talked to each ma’soop, looking at them properly for the first time. Despite my intentions, Cha’s life had been forfeited without me even knowing her name.

I didn’t want that to ever,
ever
happen again. When I’d stumbled on Bras in the Villas Rosa months before, I’d felt the same way. Humanity wasn’t worth canrat-shit if we didn’t bother to know each other’s names.

Shyly, the ma’soops spoke.

Walbee, Biiby, Bettong, Fat-tail, Wombebe, Quoll, Cuscus.

I ran impressions of them in my mind. Quoll glowers. Black spots on his tail. Wombebe . . . cockroach skin that bulges like smart armour. Fat-tail . . . he struggles to keep up. Biiby, two sets of ears, one encased in the other - loud noise causes him pain. Bettong’s toeclaws unbalance him when he walks. Walbee, she’s Glida’s favourite. Cuscus? What about her?

I looked at Glida.

‘Cus sees what we all hear,’ Glida explained.

There was a name for that sort of thing. I’d heard of it - when the senses got cross-wired. Ibis would know it. If I could just get the ma’soops back to Torley’s alive to ask him.

I told them all to say ‘Parrish’.

They each uttered a mutation of it.

Around me I felt the approval from some of the shamans. Without prompting, each offered their names. As with the ma’soops I memorised something about them.

‘I am Ness, you know I can give renewal.’
Polynesian
kapna.
Waist-length hair. The oldest.

‘Stix.’
Implanted scalp feathers. Chlorine eyes. Lithe young body.

‘Chandra Sujin.’
Tattooed face. Silken voice.

‘Arlli, I tell futures.’
Veiled.

‘Tug. I am a healer.’
Tug, powerful, big hands.
‘And this is Talk Long,’ said Tug.

A mute.
‘What does Talk Long give?’ I asked.

The silent shaman raised a set of tranquil, green eyes. A colour I’d never seen. The eyes of someone not meant for this world.

‘Talk Long gives calm,’ answered Tug.

I trembled. I needed an awful lot of that.

The surly
karadji
spoke last. ‘Billy Myora. I don’t talk my stuff.’ I stared at his unblinking eyes and plump, unconditioned body and wondered if he even was a
karadji.

Whatever he was, I had no wish to know his secrets.

Afterwards, though, a mood change took the group. I felt a sense of connection creep into my own heart - the beginnings of a chosen involvement, not something forced on me by the Cabal. While it dispelled my irritation, it also amplified my anxiety.

Between Glida’s local knowledge and my compass implant we hurried north-west. Around us the pavements bulged with bizarre life. The bulbous wall growths that had first shocked me were now charged with a sickly luminescence like aged neons. The scars on the walls leaked rivulets of a clear plasma-like fluid. It puddled in crevices and dips and began to crystallise and shine.

‘Don’t touch anything you don’t have to. Especially that,’ I told the shamans.

Their expressions spoke of abomination.

‘We must hurry more. King Tide brings it on,’ Stix whispered.

I looked at Ness for confirmation.

She nodded. ‘The voyants say this tide will be significant. It has long concerned us.’

‘Whyso?’

‘Not only the water rises on the tide but the earth’s crust lifts. Nature responds and things breed extraordinarily. They die so, as well, when it wanes. It has been said that this tide will bring on a biological singularity.’

‘Things will grow?’

‘And die.’

So this is what the Cabal feared. Their invasion was already a given, but they wanted their
karadji
clear before the wild-tek spawned. ‘How can you know this is related? The sea is so far away.’

Ness shrugged sympathetically at my ignorance. Stix began to cry. She twisted in his arms to comfort him. He almost carried her, staggering under the weight. I thought of taking his load but sensed a complex relationship between the two that invited no intrusion.

‘This can be healed.’ She touched his cheek.

I wish I had her faith.

Talk Long came behind Stix and concentrated on the rise and fall of his breathing. Gradually Stix calmed.

Suddenly I saw inside Loyl Daac’s world. I saw how belief prevailed over truth every time.

Maybe belief
was
the only way.

We circled around a bristling tower of fibre. It glowed a pulsing siren of red. Ten feet up from the base a body hung. We watched it being slowly tractored up and down and across the glass shards, its blood seeping into the optics. The tower was bleeding the body. I guessed it was one of the shamans who’d gone on alone and glanced at the others. No one spoke. No one confirmed my suspicion but a grim mantle fell across us all.

I shuddered, remembering how my hand had stuck to a tower in the same way. How the blood had leeched from my fingers.

As I harried them onward, the sheaves of glass started to sing to us. The noise was discordant beyond description, a last bawl of life-agony that pleaded for help.

Cuscus screeched in terror, scratching Billy Myora until he dropped Cha’s body, digging her marsupial claws deep into the
karadji
’s leg.

Glida ran to them, forcing the ma’soop to let go. She scooped the distressed child into her arms, uncaring that the claws fixed straight into her arm.

Billy Myora bent over clutching his leg. ‘What she doin’? Wha’s wrong with her?’

‘She sees
blood.
Everywhere. Round us,’ said Glida.

‘Carry her,’ I ordered.

But as we moved on Biiby scrabbled free from Chandra Sujin. Crazed with the noise, he ran back toward the tower like he would fling himself at it.

I caught him just short of it. His heart beat wildly against my arm. He clamped his doubled ears in pain.

‘Keep moving,’ I yelled hoarsely to the others. ‘Whatever you do, don’t stop.’

We skirted the towers after that, veering east or west, though the singing stayed in our ears. Biiby whimpered and tugged his ears constantly as if they hurt. Glida stripped a piece of her clothing and persuaded Biiby to wrap them. After that the ma’soop fell silent, as if he’d lost his connection with the world.

I dropped back to walk alongside Myora. The
karadji
clutched Cha’s body tightly under his arm.

‘We should burn the little one soon.’

He nodded, watching ahead intently.

‘You said Loyl-me-Daac warned your brothers not to wait. Why did Geroo disagree?’

He waited so long to reply I thought perhaps he wouldn’t. Only as I moved to take the lead again did he speak.

‘He b’lieve you the wise.’

‘What do you believe?’

‘I b’lieve you got them killed.’

Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t argue.

 

The pavements remained passable and mostly level, but webs made of a tough fibre had begun to grow from the gutters across the alleys and walkways. Everything glowed under the bulging moon.

The first few times we retraced our steps and found other routes, until I realised we were spending more time moving backward than forward.

The world began to narrow. Claustrophobia crept upon me.