The Twain Maxim (24 page)

“Jane,” said a voice from the Doombah.

The pygmies gasped and jumped back.

Jim cursed: it had made him jump too.

“Come back in five,” said Jane.

The Doombah sat down and lay flat.

The audience gasped again.

“There will be a war for three days between us and the soldiers and then we hope it will end,” said Jane. “Thank you, friends.”

“We go to the trees,” said Alan. He shouted and the pygmies marched out of the village of giant wilting cabbages.

“Will, Bill, can receive now.”

The Doombah got up. “Everything’s in place. You’re good to move.”

There was a whine of a distant chain-gun.

“It’s started,” said Jane. “Will, can you put this Doombah into stretcher mode?”

“Sure.”

It lay down again and there was a humming noise as the top morphed and a long black sheet rolled out of its side.

Jane took something from the pack. “Terence, I’m going to inject you now and you’ll soon feel a whole lot better.” She jabbed something into his neck. Kitson fell off his elbow face down on to the ground. “Help me get him on the Big Dog,” she said.

Jim grabbed him and Jane turned him over. They laid him across the top of the Doombah and Jane put the rubber sheet over him, then threaded it back into the robot. She selected “secure casualty” from the menu. The sheet tightened and the base formed around Kitson. He was awake.

“Are you OK?” said Jim.

“Comfortable,” said Kitson, dreamily.

“Let’s roll,” said Jane.

Jim picked up his M4. If he had to use it, there was likely to be an almighty fuck-up. Pierre, Jane and the Doombah looked like the meanest crew on the planet. It felt natural. He had crossed an invisible line and nothing could pull him back to his funny little world, where the weather or a parking ticket or a piece of litter could be a big deal.

He wasn’t sure whether he was high on hunger, exhaustion, fear or perhaps the fragile beauty of his own life, but he was high on something. The humid air was pulsating through his lungs like a eucalyptus inhalation.

The lead soldier stopped in his tracks. A black animal was standing in front of him. It was a strange, frightening shape and made an unearthly buzzing noise. He lifted his Kalashnikov. There was a buzz and a burst of fire cut him in half. The soldier behind him fell dead as did the next. The two remaining soldiers in the column were bringing their arms to bear on the black monster. The Doombah hopped to the left and sprayed a short burst of caseless. 22 into the kneeling figure and then blew apart the last soldier as he fired his first shot. The 7.6mm bullet struck the robot on what would have been its chest if it had been a dog, knocking the machine back with a sharp jolt. It left a dent in the armour and took the paint off around a shallow crater. The Doombah galloped down the hill to its new position.

Adash was pacing around the kimberlite. He could hear gunfire and a sound he had never encountered before: a harsh buzz like the short burst of a chainsaw. Something was going on and it was bad. He was calling his commanders, but either he got hold of them scared and ignorant of what was happening or he didn’t get hold of them at all. He stood on the rim of the platform and looked down on the camp, shimmering in the blazing heat. There was shouting behind
him and a soldier was running up to him, waving his arms. Guards intercepted him. He was frantic.

Adash looked to the horizon deep in thought, listening for the next round of fire. The terror-stricken soldier was being brought to him.

“There are devils,” he was screaming, as the guards held him, “terrible devils.”

“There are no devils.” Adash slapped the man hard and he sagged. “Control yourself.”

“Great leader, I swear there are devils in the jungle. One cut my comrades to pieces.”

There was another strange burst of noise from below the kimberlite in the forest. The soldier was shaking.

Adash grabbed him by the shirt. “There are no devils. Tell me what you saw.”

“A beast, a panther, a terrible animal. It looked at us and it killed us. I ran.”

“There are no devils!” shouted Adash, pulling a machete from his belt.

The soldier fell to his knees, cowering.

Adash raised the blade. “What did you see?”

Suddenly a ball of fire erupted in the sky and everyone froze. Then came a shriek – as if a vast monster had opened its mouth and was screaming.

Adash spun around and watched the tongue of fire smash into the mining camp below. There was a flash, a shockwave punched the air, the ground shook and he was deafened by a tremendous roar. A hurricane struck and they were thrown off their feet. Adash crabbed away from the rim of the kimberlite. Dog Bites Man’s words rang in his ears: “God will smite you.” And his own reply: “There are no gods.”

The wind died down and he stood up. He went back to the kimberlite rim and looked out on to the plateau. The huge area of ground around the camp was obliterated and on fire. His guards and the soldier were agog at the devastation.

Adash knew that if he ran now he would be finished. With his reputation broken, his army would evaporate and he would eventually be killed. Now, however overwhelming the vision before him, however terrifying the news from the jungle, he had to fight. He would search out a demon and see it for himself. He had to maintain his legend or perish in the attempt. He put his arm around the man’s shoulders. “Take me to one of these monsters.”

The soldier looked at him. It was twenty feet from the platform to the jungle below. He jumped.

Adash laughed. “You can jump too if you like or come with me,” he said to his guards. “The choice is yours. Or you can stay here until you die of thirst. Come.”

They looked at the devastation below and then at Adash. They were going to fight demons. Who better to fight them with than their own devil? 

Jim, Jane, Pierre and Kitson were ringed by six Doombahs. An outer cordon of eighteen more was fifty yards out with twelve groups of three in a cordon still further away. The three remaining made a far perimeter. The formation would have looked good on a map or as a diagram but in the jungle, where the undergrowth went from skimpy to completely impassable, the plan was unrecognisable in action. The Doombahs were balked and had to backtrack or were forced to make large detours to find their way around an obstacle. They were in effect traversing a giant medieval maze made of shrubbery walls. A robot could be only feet away but cut off from them for hours and hundreds of metres of terrain.

Jane had a small headset in her ear and was constantly talking with Bill and Will back in Virginia.

The machines had coalesced around them as they marched slowly towards the mining camp and the end of the jungle. They had made contact with the militias as they headed to their masters and there had been a constant cracking of the militias’ assault weapons and the chainsaw buzzing of the Doombahs’ Gatlings.

There was a flash, the ground shook and a monstrous growl echoed through the forest. They stopped in their tracks. A high wind buffeted the trees and all manner of
jetsam fell from the canopy to the ground in a shower of twigs, seeds, leaves, flowers and earthy detritus. Jim found himself crouching with his arms over his head. Pierre had crawled under the belly of a Doombah. Jane touched her earpiece. “That must have been the delivery,” she said. She gave Jim the thumbs-up. “Right on target.”

Pierre jumped out as the wind died away.

“That was one fuck of a big bang,” said Jim, dusting leaves off his shoulders. He did the same for Kitson.

“That’s what you get when you hit the ground with the force that costs the Space Shuttle a thousand tonnes of fuel to launch into space. It’s Newton’s third law of thermodynamics combined with his theory of gravity,” Jane told him.

Kitson was glassy-eyed.

“You OK?” asked Jim.

“Fine,” said Kitson. Clearly the diamorphine had done the trick.

They moved on.

Adash peered at the black monster that was walking downhill. There were three in a loose formation stepping along at a measured pace. They weren’t devils: they were machines. He let them fall out of sight and returned to his guard. “You are women,” he said, grabbing an RPG from the captain. “I will kill one of these demons. Wait here for me to return.”

Adash stalked off into the undergrowth, wondering whether they would still be there when he returned – if he returned. He turned. They were following him. “Stay far enough back that you can just see me.” He jumped into a shallow stream and followed it downhill. Soon he could hear the occasional engine noise. He raced along until the sound was behind him, then crouched below the steep line of the stream’s bank. He lay there, his head covered with humus, the RPG beside him. His small squad squatted fifty metres upstream. Two machines passed, plodding methodically along. He could hear the third coming. It passed about thirty feet in front of him and as it showed its rear he swung up the RPG, took aim and fired. He dropped below the rim of the bank. There was an explosion. The RPG struck the rear of the machine and detonated, severing its back end and throwing the front into the air.

Adash ran up the stream away from the heat and smoke the RPG had vented. He saw his squad jump to their feet and run upstream too. He leapt out of the stream into a bush and crawled into the heart of it.

The two machines galloped to their fallen comrade, then to the heat cloud hanging above the stream. They looked into the water. They listened. Within their radius of interest there was nothing. They jumped about and charged off.

Adash waited until everything was silent, then climbed out of the bush and back into the stream. He fixed a new grenade to the launcher. He could see the squad further up the river. His three loyal captains. He beckoned them to him, and when they arrived he crawled slowly up the bank and into the open ground. The sound of the machines was gone. He went to the smashed robot. The front end was still struggling to right
itself, almost rising to its two remaining feet before it fell back to the ground, unable to balance.

“Machines,” Adash said. “War machines.” He grabbed the feet and began to drag it to the stream. Its cameras tried to focus on him, calling its broken Gatling guns to deploy and fire, but the system did not respond to its calls. He heaved it across the bank and into the stream. There was a hiss as water filled the exposed inside of the machine and a crackling noise as the broken chassis twisted and shook. Then, with a sputter, it was still. Adash took out his sat phone and went to switch it on, then had second thoughts. “These people and their army of machines must be very important. If we can ambush them and take them prisoner they will be worth millions and millions of dollars to us. We will be rich.”

The captains kept silent.

“We will follow the machines downstream and see if an opportunity presents itself.” They got up and went to the bank. The fourth soldier was waiting there sheepishly.

Adash smiled evilly at him. “Decided to be a man?”

The soldier said nothing. Silence was always the safest option around General Adash. 

There was an explosion half a mile behind them. “What was that?” said Jim.

“Sounded like an RPG,” said Jane. She listened to
something
in her ear. “We’ve lost our first Doombah. That leaves sixty-three intact, though I think some may be stuck in the undergrowth, but we’ve got plenty of cover on all sides. Pretty soon we’ll be in the zone to set up camp. We don’t want to be split up in the dark. The Doombahs will post sentry. We should start looking for a nice defendable area of cover.”

Jim was imagining each step he took as a step closer to home. He fantasised about riding a Doombah the rest of the way but preferred its guns to be free to deploy if an attack struck, rather than to be locked down like the Gatlings on Kitson’s mount. It had been another exhausting day of struggling through the unpredictable terrain of the forest.

Jane was chatting to Will and Bill in Virginia almost all the time in a low, muffled voice. Half of what she said was in some kind of military lingo that didn’t mean much to him and he found himself concentrating on navigating the rough ground rather than trying to overhear the conversation. It seemed, however, that things were going well.

The sat-phone locations, which represented various militia commanders, were at bay and enemy contact had ceased. Since the RPG there had been nothing. The bad guys were melting away, terrified by the demonic horrors in the jungle. The fragmented army of two thousand men, welded together by greed, had disintegrated under the nauseating pressure of fear. The groups had decided it was best to fall back and fight another day. Their general was out of contact, perhaps dead, and unspeakable monsters were on the prowl. Even the promise of diamonds was not enough reason to stick around.

The air had an acrid, burnt smell; the charred rim of the forest was not far ahead. Dusk had fallen and within minutes it would be night. Between them and a stream there was a large clump of tall grass backed by a giant tree. It was like a giant nest. If they camped there, Jane thought, they would have cover and the Doombahs would encircle them. It looked kind of snug, which was the one thing she didn’t like about it – but Jim, the kid and Kitson looked like they could use a little slack. “In here,” she called.

She laid out the plan to Bill and Will and, taking her as the centre point, they planned the layout of the Doombah sentry picket. As soon as all the robots had fought through the bush and arrived at the campsite, a ring of sixty-three
Gatling-armed
machines would be standing guard. It was a formidable defensive force. The Doombahs would not sleep;
they would watch in the dark for the slightest danger. In the morning the team would be on its way home.

“Not bad, boys,” she said, then logged off from Virginia. The campsite was almost comfortable. She gave Kitson some water and injected him again in the neck. He fell asleep. After they had pitched her tent, Jim and Jane lifted the injured man down from the Doombah and bore him inside. Jim made a pillow by stuffing his dirty clothes into a pair of trousers.

Then Jane broke out her rations and they ate.

Pierre wolfed his calorie-packed sandwich and pulled out Jim’s exploding tent from the backpack. He opened the
contraption and crawled in without a word.

Jim looked at Jane. “Want to share my all-weather blanket?”

“I have my own.”

“Oh, well.”

“But I might let you cosy up,” she said.

“That’s very nice of you.”

“I thought so,” said Jane.

Jim pulled out the blanket-cum-all-weather-sleeping-bag and climbed in, arranging the pack so he could rest his head on it. He moved around to get comfortable and could feel himself drifting away. As he did so, Jane’s arm went around him.