Undertow (22 page)

The bank here, at least, wasn’t covered in wooden knives of broken reeds. André opened his mouth to ask what was going on, closed it again in red frustration. Even if he could get Gourami’s attention and make himself understood, distracting it might get them both killed. And it had no fast way to answer him; he didn’t think either of them wanted to spare the time to type lengthy explanations.

He stumbled gamely along, thought about crawling, decided it would be faster to hop. The splint wouldn’t help him bear any weight; he didn’t dare put the broken leg down. Muscle spasm locked it, anyway. He gritted his teeth and, with intermittent success, tried not to let it drag.

Gourami seemed to be headed for the water, though. Which was smart; less than a meter would protect them from propellant weapons. Less than a meter, and they would be safe.

Pity he couldn’t breathe it. He hoped Gourami remembered that.

There were some reeds standing along the bank. André patted Gourami’s arm as he’d seen the ranids do for attention, and gestured.

Its head didn’t turn, but its eyes swiveled.
Then
it croaked, a deep rolling resonant sound.

He wasn’t sure if he’d expected it to drag him the length of the bank, across the stinking mudflat, or if he thought it would leave him precariously balanced on one leg while it bounded down to the stems and tore them loose. Instead, it croaked again, urgently, and another weed-dotted head lifted from the water, followed by a lean body strung about with nets.

Tetra.

The second ranid lurched from the water, through splintering plants, and up the bank. Something chattered in the near distance; gunfire, and André sucked in his gut, as if that would make the slightest difference. The old atavism didn’t care, though—and the bullets were aimed somewhere else. He didn’t even see the muzzle flash.

Tetra caught them still ten meters from the water, and so did the second wave of choppers. The downdraft was like a strong hand pushing André down. Bullets smacked around them now, and Tetra—slick, tender-fleshed—dove under his other arm. Gourami and Tetra grasped André each by one elbow, and leaped.

His arms snapped against his shoulder sockets; he would have yelped in pain if he’d had the air to do more than huff. His head jerked back on his neck, whiplash and insulted muscle, but the hurt was nothing to when they hit the water.

It knocked the air from him and spasmed his diaphragm; as if expecting it, Tetra punched him in the back. He gasped, kickstarted, and the ranid shoved a broken reed into his hand. One quick desperate breath, that was all, and they were under, muddy water gritty in his eyes. Tetra’s long fingers enfolded his hands, molding them around the reed. He held on somehow, as the ranids pulled him under, turned him bodily, and rolled him onto his back. The water in his ears thrummed with cries and argument. He didn’t understand a note of it, but it beat against his skin until he felt like a sounding chamber, resonating with anger and distress.

But he guessed what Tetra and Gourami meant him to do, and stuffed the end of the reed pipe into his mouth and sucked.

No air.

He might have panicked as the ranids dragged him deeper, but he was too goddamned tired for hysterics. He puffed out, felt whatever was in the reed give way, and blew harder. The air in his lungs was used up anyway.

The plug shot from the reed like a blow-dart.

The next breath came laden with dust and fiber-glass-sharp broken plant. And sweet, sweet moisture-drenched air.

André gasped like a fish, breathed out through his nose because it was faster, dragged at air again. The water was tepid, too close to body temperature to knife shocks of pain through his wounds. But he knew; infection was inevitable, amoebosis likely.

He couldn’t think about that now. He breathed, and let the ranids pull him. Long pulsing strokes kept them moving. André concentrated on breathing, and wished he could ask where they were taking him.

12

GOURAMI SPENT FAR TOO LONG THINKING ABOUT WHAT TO
do with the human. But se couldn’t have left him to be shot. Se had brought him to the village. Se had brought him to the greatparent’s attention. Se had left him stranded on the bank.

Se hadn’t expected Tetra to be the one to help. Se hadn’t expected Tetra to crouch beside se, hunkered under the overhang of a bank of reed bound together by cutthroat weed and broken at the root by the hail.

—They are hunting the greatparent,
Tetra said, bleakly, as the killing machines made another pass. Gourami flinched, but Tetra laid a hand on se thigh.
—And they are hunting us. Watch what happens
.

They crouched low, lifting the human from the water so he could breathe and see. He huddled, quiet despite what must be enormous pain, floating between them. The tide was in. Gourami caught self rattling fingers against the reeds and stopped, an act of will.

And bore witness.

The helicopters came over, gunning, churning the water where the greatparent lay submerged. The bullets could not reach it, and the people stayed out of sight, under cover, under water. But then the explosions began, and Gourami, unwitting, would have started forward if Tetra had not restrained se. Reflex. Programming.

The elder was in danger. Egglings were expendable, but the old were the memory of the race.

Others did not have a far-swimmer to caution them. Some rushed forward heedlessly; they would not be herded by bullets, and some of those were cut down. The water grew violet; it all tasted of blood, like a hunter’s kill. Gourami ducked and shivered, rocking back and forth against Tetra’s touch. Se could not pull free, se could not stay where se was.

Se had to help, and se distress rolled up se throat in ringing harmonics, quickly damped. Tetra took the human’s hand and put it on Gourami’s other arm. The human’s weird irises ringed with white. He held on, as if he meant to do it gently, but he only had one leg to tread water with, and he bobbed up and down, tugging skin.

The first wave of defenders schooled wherever the humen cared to drive them. Vibrations through the water heralded the phalanxes of scoots, roaring up the channels. But it wasn’t the scoots themselves that made Gourami cringe; it was the billowing net each pair dragged between.

The throb of engines was confusing. Se thrashed and warbled—
go to them, go to them
—but Tetra, far-swimmer, less programmed for clanweal, would not let go. Tetra and the human held on, bruising, breaking tender skin, and dragged Gourami farther into their fragile shelter, where the bank was undercut.

The scoots were not moving as fast as they could. They zigged and zagged in unison, keeping the nets untangled, scooping up persons willy-nilly. Gourami saw the captured persons struggling to hold one another up, despite the entangling nets, pushing one another’s noses above water.

Se could not watch. Se could not look away. Se trembled.

If Gourami had been a far-swimmer, if se own reproduction had become important to bandweal, it might have been easier to abide. Se might have maintained Tetra’s presence of mind. But se was a young adult, and not carrying egglings. Se thought of the greatparent, of the babies, of the village.

Se bore witness, and moaned low chords of agony.

These were not se sibs, at least, which made the slaughter and seizure not less terrible, but less compelling. Se had no ties by blood or water here. Except Caetei.

Where was Caetei?

Although the humen were well armed, the persons were not helpless. The second wave of defenders consisted of far-swimmers as much as adults, and many of these had taken the time to arm.

Se tugged the crossbow from se web belt. Tetra, gently, lifted it from se hands, chirruping.

Gourami saw the attack in slashes of action through the reeds. The humen had apparently not expected automatic-weapons fire. Several jerked from their scoots, which cut off as they were meant to when the rider fell. Persons, no longer dragged through the water, struggled free of the nets, bleeding from abrasions and holding wrenched limbs awkwardly. One scoot pilot, insufficiently attentive or lacking adequate reflexes, lost control when his partner’s vehicle stalled. The net swung him into a channel bank. A person Gourami did not know impaled him with a reed spear as he struggled up the bank.

Smoke and fire pillared from one hillock; Gourami’s view of the target was obscured by mats of overhanging reed, but se heard the roar and felt the heat as a helicopter died screaming. Another scoot passed so close Gourami felt the wash, and André flinched against se. He made some whining humen sound; Gourami did not turn her head to see if it was a curse or a cheer.

Gunfire scattered ground to air and air to ground. André yanked again, and se was about to shake him away, send him surging back through the water, but then Tetra tugged, too—Caetei, where was Caetei?—and the violet water churned. A great black thundering belly lowered, flattening the reed shelter against their heads, and Gourami caught confused glimpses of hanging cables, of humen thrashing awkwardly through water, dragging steel rings wired to drawn nets. Another circling chopper died, but then the remaining ones were hovering over the heart of the village, where the netted ranids and the submerged greatparent were.

Something sizzled—a chopper returning fire—the rocket trail a long tumorous arch of smoke, cracked with flame. A flattening boom shook bits of plant on Gourami’s head. Se did not flinch.

There were no more losses among the humen machines.

Tetra and André were still pulling at Gourami. Se turned to the human and saw the shapes his mouth was making, how they resolved into words. Tetra might be croaking something. Gourami could not hear it over the explosions.

—We have to go,
the human said. He jerked his paw up.
—We have to run
.

Gourami did not understand, but the human was confident—and projecting urgency—and Tetra dragged at se other arm. Se let self be moved, pulled through the swamp, bobbing low, slinking from tussock to tussock. They made short dashes underwater, only as long as the human could hold its breath. Tetra was really the only one directing, the only one swimming. André was almost dead weight, and Gourami could only think of Caetei, and the greatparent, of the egglings and adults they were abandoning.

A few other persons ran with them; they caught glimpses of far-swimmers, and of one adult so full of egglings se would have sloshed, risking rupture, if se climbed out of the water. The others, the young adults, had run inward.

Into the trap.

The thrumming, the straining thunder of choppers, the sound of explosions took a long time to soften behind them. They sheltered under vegetation when the choppers passed over, hanging nets dripping water, squirming with green bodies. André finally floated behind Gourami, clinging to se back, his hands over se eyes to force them retracted and closed. It helped when Tetra led.

Se still kept wanting to turn back and look for Caetei.

They had not been running long when both André’s and—he presumed—Tetra’s instincts were proven brutally correct. The explosion flattened all three of them, the compression shock wave through the water thankfully attenuated by distance and topography, or they would have been dynamited like fish. It took both André and Tetra to keep Gourami moving. The froggie was like a sleepwalker; it would paddle despondently as long as somebody directed, but if not provoked and cajoled, it began drifting aimlessly. André wished he could talk to Tetra, ask questions, anything. But there was no means of conversation; damaged Gourami had the slate, and André was not sure Tetra knew how to use it even if it was so inclined.

At first, André thought Gourami might be physically injured. But when they had struggled far enough from the devastated village that Tetra allowed them to rest (not far enough that André felt safe, but he didn’t think he’d feel safe anywhere in the bayou) and André beached himself on the cleanest, least-muddy bank he could find, Gourami crawled up, too, and seemed remarkably unharmed. It sprawled alongside him, ribbiting repeatedly, sawing like a distressed insect. André sat up long enough to glance it over.

No lumps he could see, except the ones that were meant to be there. No twisted bits, no oozing wounds.

Did froggies suffer posttraumatic stress? They must; he was looking at the evidence.

If he’d had the sense to secure one of the abandoned scoots during the massacre—or if he could somehow either drag himself back or explain to Tetra what he needed—then he might make it to Novo Haven before fever in his wounds incapacitated him.

But that would mean leaving Gourami helpless. When it had risked its life coming back for him. When he had promised Jean Kroc he would look out for it.

Still, it was his life. And dying of gangrene in a swamp wasn’t as enticing as a single bullet through the brain.

He was unwilling to sell himself too cheaply.

He knuckled silt from his eyes and regretted it. He’d probably added more mud than he’d wiped away. If he could see himself, he’d be nothing but flaking clots; he felt cracked and itchy already.

Tetra had remained in the water. It swam back and forth restlessly, periodically submerging or darting out of sight, but always reemerging. André forced himself not to watch. It was too unnerving.

Beside him, Gourami also did not seem to be calming. Its distress, if anything, was growing; it shielded its eyes with its hands and curled tight.

At a loss, André reached out and laid a hand on it, as he might anyone.

The response was immediate and striking. Gourami breathed more slowly, scrunched eyes opening. It peeked between webbed digits without flinching.

“Gourami?”

It was looking at him when he spoke. It shuddered, a sort of releasing gesture, and leaned into his palm. He’d been thinking of pulling his hand back, but he left it there, although he knew he might be hurting the froggie.

Sometimes, you took your chances that you were doing more good than harm.

The froggie stared at him, silent, pouch taut and still against its throat. It extended its wrist, the one with the slate on it, and calmly, decisively, typed. André felt the muscle and tendon gliding under its slick skin.

—We have to go back
.

He wasn’t about to argue, anyway.

André had never seen so many dead things. He was used to clean death, quick, in comprehensible quantities.

This was unfathomable.

The water he moved through was thick with dead ranids, and parts of dead ranids; the only reason it didn’t run red was that ranid blood, though violet when oxygenated, was otherwise nearly clear. Once the water diluted it, the color faded, and the river pushed what remained to the sea.

Tetra and Gourami moved away from him as they came within sight of the massacre. André hauled himself up on the bank, slithering like a snake, and tried not to think about his pain.

He tried even harder not to think about what was in the water saturating his open wounds.

He felt fretful, useless. He lay on the bank and watched as Gourami and Tetra worked among the dead, among the drifting chunks, and was sickly glad he could not help them.

They dragged the dead between them, weighted them down and sank them in the mud. Over each one, Tetra made some gestures; André could not tell if words were spoken. Every so often, fingers plucking deliriously through the water as if it tickled fish, Gourami scooped something up and swallowed it, sometimes with a glance at Tetra that André would have said was guilty, if Gourami were human.

Tetra, for its part, seemed unconcerned. André, on the other hand, was reasonably certain that this was one funeral custom he didn’t want a better look at.

He lay back and dozed in a not-too-muddy spot. He’d exhausted himself with the flight, and with the return. He’d salvage a scoot when his leg throbbed less, when he was rested.

But the splashing kept him awake. And a ranid somewhere was ribbiting, wasn’t it? Something was, anyway—a terrible cringing sound that made him want to cover his ears. He did, but he could still hear it, and it occurred to him that it must be a ranid crying somewhere. There was a quality to it that itched at him, demanding action, like the cries of kittens or of terrified children.

André opened his eyes. The body of a ranid floated past on the retreating tide, wreathed in gray loops of intestine, fish tugging at the drifting innards. Surely it couldn’t be making that sound. Surely
it
couldn’t still be dying.

André called out, but maybe he couldn’t make his voice carry or maybe ranids did not care to hear him. He clawed through mud for a rock to throw, anything to get their attention. When he rooted one up, it was slimed and muddy. He chucked it overhand; it plunked into the swamp a few meters from Gourami.

Gourami turned at the sound, and as quickly turned back again. André could not keep its attention. As soon as he stopped shouting, he heard the noise again. He pressed his hand to his mouth. His breath tickled his fingers.

He was the person making it.

Jefferson did not like to look at the cages. They were spacious and comfortable, the floors and walls moistened membrane, misters running intermittently for the comfort of the subjects who would soon be installed. A regular vacation spot, Jefferson told himself. He made a note to have the data trail amended so it would seem that Dr. McCarter had been the requisitioning authority for this equipment. An overstep of her authority, but the other option was Schaffner, and he was an old family friend.

Besides, it wasn’t as if anybody would ever check. Nothing was going to go wrong.

He checked his headset. Schaffner was just out of sight behind a bank of equipment that blocked the view of the processing floor. Jefferson didn’t particularly want to walk out there among the sedated ranids; he contented himself with sending a quick ping.

Schaffner responded immediately, and Jefferson opened the connection. “How are the facilities, Neil?”