GeneStorm: City in the Sky (13 page)

They were destined to have no peace.

Talking loudly and merrily, Snapper and Beau came in under the leafy arch. They each had a small package under an arm, and were talking together in easy amity. On seeing Kitterpokkie and Throckmorton, they both waved and called out. Snapper ran up the veranda steps two at a time.

“Up at last! Excellent!” She held out a hand and hauled Kitterpokkie to her feet. “Come on – the perfect cure for all your ills. Meat – and a swim!”

The package under her arm apparently contained raw sausages. The scent was not exactly what Kitterpokkie wanted to smell at this particular moment, but Snapper put an arm about her and managed to steer her slowly along the porch. “Come on. Cool water, shade, sausages! Magic stuff.”

“They do seem to be excellent sausages.” Beau was a little the worse for wear – his long tail feathers dragged. “I confess, sitting beside a river seems an excellent plan.”

“Throcky!” Snapper towed the plant along by one tentacle. “Come on. We have
‘Old Mama Cantaloupe’s Sure-Gro with extra nitrogen’
– a sure cure for all plantly ills. Aaand…” She wagged a second bag. “Jelly babies, made by the one and only candy store currently known to civilisation.”

There was no denying her. Snapper marshalled the others like a procession of the walking dead, and took them out of the yard and off through the lane and into the great, broad main streets of spark town. Riders spurred past on budgerigars, including the crocodile from the night before, who looked hung over and definitely shabby. Snapper took great delight in leading Kitterpokkie past the workshops where metal was being smelted and poured – and inevitably hammered. The shark had to shout to be heard above the noise.

“So I asked about lead foil – really thin sheet? They think it can be done. They’ll put regular gutter sheeting through hot rollers and kinda roll it out like dough. But even at about one or two mil thickness? Those suits will be heavy - particularly for the birds. And we’re going to have to find a way to finance it all.”

“Ah.” Kitterpokkie swayed. The noise of the nearby blacksmith’s anvil was like the apocalypse warned over. “Snapper, my friend, that is… good news.”

“These are the guys who can do it! They’re smelting brass today – that’s thanks to us! The town was down to it’s last half metre of sheet!” The shark watched the forge workers with a great satisfied grin. “These guys do great recycling!” She pointed to where lengths of steel cable was being heated in a forge. “They make the best swords here. Folger there did mine. Hammered out of cable. That’s why it has all the cool patterns in the blade.” The shark was delighted by the sparks showering from the hammer and anvil. “We have to get you a blade before we go. What would you like?”

“A suicide knife?” The mantis had one hand against her skull. Her head reverberated to the beat of the blacksmith’s hammer. “Oh, this is not good.”

“Hmm?” The shark was keen to show Beau, Throckmorton and Kitt the rear of the forge. “Oh! Do you want to see them grind an edge on some blades? They have a mill wheel that drives the grinder!”

“Snapper?” The mantis tried to remain quite calm. “Snapper my friend? I believe I must leave this place, or become copiously sick.”

“What? Oh, sure! Come on – the short cut’s through the back!”

Throckmorton tried to make a getaway, but Snapper towed him along behind her like a kite. They ducked through a room where the local water wheel was being used to power a trip-hammer. The current job seemed to be the punching of armour scales out of a piece of sheet metal. Over in a corner, a table held a clutter of ancient weapons – energy guns in various states of disaster. Snapper beckoned Kitterpokkie to take a look.

“There’s about eight old plasma weapons here. Three rifles, and three big heavy things. Toby and Samuels dragged in most of them. I dragged in the others.” She gestured to the guns. “All busted up – the chambers are melted through. Do you think any of them could be fixed?” Snapper seemed concerned. “We have a lot of walls and limited people. If Screamers ever come in force, I’d feel a lot better knowing we had heavy firepower up there on the walls.”

Kitterpokkie gave a swift glance along the table. She was still feeling blurred. “We would need new focus coils. My gun uses some salvaged from an old generator… but proper spare parts would be the only way…” She took a glance at the generating chambers. “We would need access to superconductive coils, old monopoles…”

“Yep.” Snapper thought for a moment, then rapped upon the table. “And the best place to find those is in the lake city.”

She patted the table in thought, then moved on, towing Throckmorton along behind. “Right! Brain cures! This way.”

Behind the manufactory, a heavy shaft ran to the town walls, then out through a narrow hole and off to a great, slow water wheel. The river gate was wide, guarded by a woman armed with a rifle. The entire town took part in militia duty for a few weeks out of every year, and citizens took the job seriously. The guard nodded to Snapper and her friends as they walked past.

Downstream of the gate there was a broad area where riding animals were being scrubbed down and watered. But to the upstream side, there was a huge old shade tree, some boulders, and a barbecue fashioned out of ancient bricks. Snapper found an armload of twigs and old branches on the ground, and stuffed them into the barbecue. She set the fire going, watched it for a while, then threw on some larger chunks of wood to coal up nicely in the heat. An old metal grill was wiped down with leaves and dragged in place across the flames. Snapper slung her pistol belt and sword belt up over a rock, and gave a great almighty stretch.

“Who’s for a swim?”

Throckmorton was the only taker. He cruised down to sit in the shallows of the cool, slow river, spooning water over himself with his long leafy wings. Kitterpokkie sat against the largest and coolest of the boulders, enjoying the soothing river breeze. Everyone looked to Beau, who stood ready to tend the fire. He looked about at the others, the feathers of his cape and tail glittering in the sun.

“Oh! Well I don’t really… Ah…” He gave an expressive motion of a hand shaped like a pheasant’s claw. “I’m not much of a swimmer. I might paddle about later.”

“You are all flaccid and weak!” Snapper stripped off her boots and pants, leaving only her underwear. Her belly gleamed a delicious white, and there were stripes all over her blue grey back. “Let the grill cool a bit before you put on the snags!”

There were three kinds of sausages: some were crayfish and wild onion, others were smoked and laced with bacon fruit, and the rest were made from wine and wild game. Spark Town was famous in the weird-lands for many things, but the settlement’s sausages destined her to be praised for aeons to come. Beau set the sausages sizzling and rolling on the grill, while out in the river, Snapper plunged and swam – a thing beautiful to behold. A sinuous, powerful creature in the water, she relished the cold against her skin. Finally she came wading back up out of the shallows, breathless and thoroughly in love with the world.

“You guys should come in!”

“Oh hush. I’m coming.” The mantis winced her way carefully down into the water. Her mantis abdomen flinched up behind her backside. “I’m doing it…”

“Just jump in!”

“I shall do it in my own time!” Kitt steeled herself, then finally bobbed down, immersing herself up to the neck in the decidedly cold water.

She was definitely not a good swimmer, having been raised in an area where the deepest water available was in an old enamel bathtub. But Kitterpokkie was happy enough to stay on the shallow banks, crouching in the water. She splashed about and discovered that she was suddenly feeling far, far better. The cool water had cleared her head, and the sausages now smelled heavenly. Kitterpokkie relaxed and began to enjoy her day.

Throckmorton discovered he could make a cup from his tentacles and squeeze out a little squirt of water. He sat floating on the current, squirting here and there, paddling about and enjoying himself. A dorsal fin cut through the water nearby as the shark swam underwater with a sinuous swish of her tail.

Snapper finally came walking and dripping up out of the water. She stood under the tree and shook herself off, then sat on a rock in her underwear to dry. On the town walls above, Kenda had appeared. Leaning on his elbows he frowned critically out over the river, looking dissatisfied with life. Snapper waved to him and called.

“Kenda! Did you find a new gig?”

The man looked down at her for a moment, then shook his head. “There is to be a town meeting. No caravans are leaving until afterwards.”

“Come on down – have a sausage.” The shark waved towards the grill. “I think I know some ranchers who’ll be looking for extra guards.”

“I can eat elsewhere.”

“Come on! Take the weight off!” Snapper waved at the rocks. “There’s always room for sausages.”

A few minutes later, the man came carefully down through the river gate and joined the party on the rocks. He gave a nod to one and all, and finally went to sit upon a rock beside the water.

Beau took off his shirt and pants, then wandered to the river’s edge, dressed only in a pair of old boxer shorts and a small blue and white medallion that hung on a thong about his neck. He dabbled in the water up to his shins, but seemed too nervous to go much further. He called nervously back to Snapper, keeping an eye upon the current.

“Are there predators here?”

Snapper scratched at her neck. “Well, there’s crocadillos. Sort of half crocodile, half armadillo. Oh and some sort of tiny electric eel thing that tries to burrow up your urethra!” The shark watched Beau leap back out of the water. “There’s no predators there, you damned baby! Biggest thing we have round here is a flipper frog. And those are just tasty!”

Still damp, Snapper arose and turned the sausages one last time. They were charred to barbecue perfection. She rescued them with a pair of dented tongs, piling them onto a plate next to some sliced bread and a little brown jug of sauce. “Lunch is on! Help yourselves!”

The entire group closed in upon the grill, and the pile of sausages diminished rapidly. The little group sat all about the rocks eating and watching a billy can come to the boil over the fire. Snapper lounged back, consuming sausage with appreciative snaps of her sharp teeth, and looked up through the branches above toward the flawless sky above, then observed the latest arrival more closely.

Kenda had a heavy single-shot pistol, and a very interesting sword. A long weapon, straight bladed with a bell guard. Excellent steel and very clipped, clean workmanship, complete with silver inlay. Definitely not Spark Town manufacture. The shark polished her spectacles and looked the sword over. It was no weapon for a fast moving cavalry skirmish. More like a duellist’s blade.

“So Kenda! Where are you from? Blue Valley?”

The man thoughtfully ate his sausage, and slowly shook his head.

“No. A ranch east of Iron Towers.”

“You ran cocoplods?”

“Ran a bit of everything. Boks, plods. Lot of hunting.” The man looked out over the river. “Dry land. No rivers.”

“First time in Spark Town?”

“Yes. An impressive place.” Kenda flicked a glance back at the walls. “Most impressive.”

“Well, we’ve got plans to make it safer.” Snapper motioned vaguely off towards the north. “We’ll find some salvage that’ll get us some heavy energy guns at last.”

“Plasma guns? Heavies?” Kenda looked to the north. “Now that would be a coup indeed. But it’s death to approach the barrier…”

“We’re pretty sure we can make our way through.”

“Others have tried and died.”

“Yeah, but they weren’t as smart or pretty as we are.” Snapper licked sauce from her fingers. “We know a pass – and a way through the radiation belt.”

Beau got back into his clothes, and went to place his medallion back beneath his shirt. As he gripped the medallion, it glowed with a soft golden light. Snapper immediately raised one brow.

“Beau, what the hell is that?”

“It was my mother’s.” The fox-bird looked upon the glowing plastic medallion fondly. “She gave it to me. It is the family talisman, passed from parent to eldest down the years. Keeps us safe!”

Kitterpokkie leaned close, peering at the medallion in interest. It was a small piece – ancient – a smooth oblong interlaced with tiny patterns deep inside. Kitt peered at a stylised symbol etched into the top.

“That is a symbol for the wind.” The mantis was deeply interested. “A mistral.”

The chip did not light up in Kitterpokkie’s grasp – nor when Snapper touched it. But when Beau reached back to take the chip, it glowed between his fingers. Kitt was extremely impressed. She tapped at the medallion with one dainty claw.

“Fascinating. I think this might be genetically keyed. Some old keys were designed only to work in the presence of a set DNA.”

Snapper looked at the curling symbol on the medallion - then at Beau, then at the symbol, then at Beau once more. She suddenly waved both hands and backed away.

“Oh no! No no no no no! Do
not
tell Toby! He’ll go into total overdrive!”

“But he must be told!” Kitt was wonderfully pleased. “Oh surely he must be! Then he can entertain us tonight with all the lore, rumours and tales he might have heard.”