Half Discovered Wings (47 page)

‘
Something’s still running in here,’ said Caeles.

‘
The door did open for us,’ Gabel said. ‘It’s still
venting.’

‘
Yes, but I thought that would be automated. You have to
understand the complexity and efficiency of the machines built at
the time before the cybernetic war. They were made to be competent
and productive, and above all
to
last
. No time could be
lost on maintenance.’

‘
Nothing works forever,’ the hunter countered
brusquely.

‘
You just don’t get it. In times of war, you can’t be thinking
about fixing little problems in your machinery and tiny little bugs
in your computer systems. You just make sure you build it right the
first time. Otherwise all the hours spent plugging leaky piping and
sealing cracked motherboards means you have less time to deal with
the things that matter.’

‘Killing, you
mean?’ asked Rowan.

They had come to an area where the colours of the walls were
different. Before they had been a pale steely blue, and the group
hadn’t even realised they were painted at all. Now they were a
muted green, and they realised the colours reflected the areas they
were in.

‘
Exit this way,’ Caeles said laconically.

Rowan put a
hand to her head. ‘I feel dizzy.’

Caeles nodded,
but said nothing.

They moved on. There were no doors on either side of the
hallway, merely the same pale strip lighting and spotless tiles.
They soon arrived at a gate, the lights and screens of which were
long since dead, and passed through into a wide open room with a
vast door on one side.

‘What’s this?’
asked the magus.

‘
It’s a Transitway,’ Caeles replied, a smile
splitting his face. ‘Super-fast transport beneath the
deser
t. I never dreamed any of them had survived. They were
locked down and used purely by the military, but common bombing
targets.’

‘Have you used
one before?’

‘Only a couple
times. I had a lot of odd jobs through the military during the
Conflict, and I got to use a lot of top-secret tech. Look, this
console should operate the platform.’

Caeles yanked a burned-out battery from a computer consule
and soon found a replacement. Amazingly it worked, its translucent
symbols buzzing to life the second he waved his hand over it. After
keying in a simple code, the huge door in front of them opened like
an eyelid, disappearing into the ceiling. Behind it sat a large
metal platform mounted on rails.

‘
Get on,’ Gabel said to Rowan, seeing exactly what the
Transitway was: a way to expedite their journey and reach the city
where Rowan’s cure awaited.

They piled
onto the Transit platform, lying flat as Caeles ordered them to,
while he pushed further buttons and then leapt onto the thing as it
began to pull away. The dark tunnel echoed with the sound of heavy
clanging machinery.

Behind them,
as the platform picked up speed and they shot off down the channel
underneath the desert, they saw the muted illumination of the
Transitway control room recede. The great door to the tunnel slowly
lowered itself, rapidly getting smaller through distance, sealing
itself closed and plunging the party once again into total
darkness.

~

They lay for two hours on the platform as wind whistled over
them, snatching at their clothes and drying the sweat off their
skin, with nothing but the darkness to keep them company. They
could see nothing but each other’s outlines. Caeles shifted against
the warmth of Gabel’s arm, uncomfortable being so close to the man.
He wondered if Rowan’s new anger toward the hunter was rubbing off
on him.

At the end of
the second hour the platform ground to a halt, and the travellers
came to another heavy steel door. Caeles opened it by another
computer panel and the group climbed up and out into a freezing
desert’s night.

Immediately in
front of them stood the startling greenery of the rainforest.

They had
crossed the Sinh-ha Plains.

~

Venturing as far into the rainforest as they dared, they set
up camp in a sandy break in the foliage. A large fire was lit and
food was prepared, but no-one was in the mood to eat. The long
silence of the Transitway journey continued into their camp amidst
the dense bracken, saturating them just as the moisture of the
rainforest saturated the air. They all sensed the approaching
closure of their respective journeys.

The magus sat
by Caeles but said nothing, only picked at a small piece of bread
and gazed into the fire. Beside him, Caeles looked on as Rowan
allowed herself to be held by Gabel. The two sat on the opposite
side of the blaze, and further around Sarai and the knight sat
close together. Her hand was on his armoured wrist, and they talked
quietly.

‘
We’re getting close to the end,’ Caeles muttered.

‘
And that concerns you?’ the magus replied.

‘
There’s no telling what Tan Cleric has been up to all this
time. And you can damn well bet he’s got something special for me,
just waiting until we bump into one another again. I bet that’s the
first thing he prepared after the war ended.’

‘
You’re not worried that an errant freak can get one up on the
mighty John Parland, are you?’

Caeles turned and caught the shine in the magus’ eye. ‘That
isn’t funny. And he’s not just an errant freak. It’s an errant
freak with a cybernetically augmented body.’

‘
Like you.’

‘
Like me. Only without the pleasant temperament. And if
–
if
– Cleric’s
got some grand scheme with the consequences you’ve been implying,
how the hell am I meant to keep Gabel out of it? That’s why I’m
here, right? To protect that fool.’

‘
I’d like to tell you something about the factotum you distrust
so completely.
He
knows that fretting over the future – however near – solves
nothing. He’s happy with what he has.’

‘
Rowan? He might not have her for long. Look at her. She’s
skeletal: you can see the bones in her arms. Look how pale she is.
I’m surprised she lasted this long.’

‘
She’s fighting because she has to.’

‘
You know as well as I do what’s wrong with her. I’m sure the
ninja senses it too. There’s nothing anyone can do to help
her.’

‘
There might be. The man we all seek has the
knowledge.’

‘
Perhaps,’ Caeles said, and rolled over.

~

Across the fire, Sarai leaned into Colan and they held each
other. The
Caballeros
had surprised himself by accepting her company, despite his
natural revulsion at her errant condition. The Horsemen of Death
were not good teachers or fine thinkers; their every notion was
trained toward battle and strategy, from their leader Captain
Alvares on down to the lowest stable hand. Colan wondered at how
quickly disparate he had become from the group that had raised him,
and how easily he had allowed himself to open up to the group and
Sarai in particular. The
Caballeros
were notorious for their intolerance, their
brutality. He wondered why he should be so different.

‘
I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘Of what will happen now that we’re in
the rainforest.’

‘
There aren’t many dangers here. Nothing that I can’t protect
you from.’

‘
You’re going to leave me.’

The knight’s
grip around her waist tightened slightly, and he released her,
fearful of making her uncomfortable with the sharp edges of his
armour.

‘
I don’t want you to leave,’ she murmured, and he held her
again.

‘
I’ve things to do once I get to the camp.’

‘
Are you going to try and get back with the
Caballeros
?’

‘
They’re my family,’ he said.

‘
They were your jailers.’

‘
My protectors. My benefactors.’

‘
They might kill you.’

‘
They might not.’

Sarai
surprised him by throwing her knuckles against the black wall of
his chestplate. She’d taken to wearing her facebelt loose around
her neck, revealing more of her Caribbean skin and her unsettling
green eyes. Looking closely with the fire close enough to aid his
vision, Colan could just make out the darker, thinner layer of
pigment that must cover her pupils. He realised then that the
Scathac must see the world in an indomitable shade of green.

‘
Don’t play around with me,’ she said sharply. ‘You said
yourself that you weren’t good enough for them. They kicked you out
and now you’re an outcast. Stay with me; help me find my
son.’

‘
What about his father…?’

‘
The man doesn’t want Isaac, he wants me. He can’t have
me.’

Colan sighed
and tightened his hold around Sarai.

‘
I wish I could see your face,’ she murmured quietly, but
before he could reply she had fallen asleep.

~

Gabel watched
them through the flames and couldn’t help but growl to himself.
Rowan looked up at him. In the light of the fire, her eyes had the
same odd peculiarity as the night Bethany died; the same curious
hint of colour, the unnerving iridescent gleam.

‘
What is it?’ she asked softly, her face orange in the
firelight.

‘
Nothing,’ he replied. After blinking, the gleam to her eyes
had gone. ‘I’m just exhausted. And angry.’

He didn’t tell
her that he was also feeling progressively ill in his stomach. What
he had always taken for general anxiety seemed to have fast
developed into hot nausea since their departure from the
Transitway. He speculated on the cause – perhaps a pollen or spore
originating in the rainforest – but knew that his unease and his
mild hair loss had started long before even Iilyani.

‘
What do you have to be angry about?’ Rowan asked him, teasing
his thoughts back to the present.

‘
The old man, for one,’ he replied. ‘He never told us that we
would be facing pre-Conflict super weapons and the madmen that
control them.’

The hunter
hissed and his hand, which had been palm-down in the dirt, balled
into a fist. He had scooped up a mound of sandy earth, which he
looked at briefly before tossing into the fire.

‘
I only came here to help you, and he’s made this into some
ridiculous crusade.’

‘
Hush,’ she replied, and put a hand on his. ‘When you speak
like that…’

‘
What?’

‘
You have the same look as when you talk about William
Teague…’

‘
Teague’s dead! I killed him.’

‘
And don’t think that I am not glad of it. That beast killed
Bethany and her parents.’

‘
And others!’ Gabel cried, and saw out of the corner of his eye
when Caeles turned and stared. Gabel quickly drew from his pack a
large flask of water and emptied the contents over his hands,
dropping the flask to rub them together.

‘Joseph!’ said
Rowan, pulling away the half-empty flask. ‘Stop it!’

‘
And others! Not just Bethany … He killed her, not me!’ he
stammered as he stood, and for a second looked through the fire and
caught Caeles’ eye just as the cyborg said:

‘
He’s fucking insane.’

‘
You!’ Gabel yelled. ‘You know
nothing
.’

He spun and
walked to the edge of the clearing and threw himself down into the
ferny grass to sleep.

Rowan sat
alone by the fire, her eyes on Caeles. The others were quietly
observing.

‘
Who was he talking about if not his girl Bethany?’ the cyborg
asked, quieter now. ‘A friend of his?’

‘
No,’ Rowan said. ‘I think that he was talking about
Rebekah.’

‘
Who’s that?’

‘
He and Bethany talked about her sometimes, in the church in
Niu Correntia. He never spoke of her to me, though,’ she added,
curling up beside the fire and closing her eyes. ‘All I know is
that she died.’

~

They journeyed for three days before coming across the first
signs of the nomadic camp that Colan hoped to find. With each
passing hour Gabel felt within himself a flaming winged creature
that soaked itself into his organs, filling his stomach, his lungs,
grasping his heart. Nausea welled up in him, often making him stop
to vomit into the cavernous hollows between the roots of the giant
trees. His skin felt like it was slipping from his body, and what
was left of his hair constantly itched. He was more than half bald
now, and to hide it he kept his hat firmly on his head at all
times.

At night, he
dreamed of white fire and endless pits, of great courtyards inside
towering ramparts made of ashen stone, and decorated with bodies.
He saw monstrous creatures all around him, and a dark winged
presence that he could never see, but watched over him always. By
day, he felt nothing but the burning in his stomach. He was stoic
and quiet, and fancied the others saw no change, but on the inside
he knew he was already past salvation.

He wondered if
he had contracted some hideous tropical illness, but knew that he
was trying to find an explanation other than the obvious one: he
was changing somehow. It had been very gradual, but was now
peaking. This metamorphosis, he knew, would change everything. The
creature from his dreams had caught up with him at last, and he
would never be himself again.