Cronix (3 page)

"Do you know who you were supposed to be?" he asked.

The hunter knew that these pathetic, dangerous creatures had all been intended, once upon a time, to be someone else, a beautiful vessel for some vain immortal returning to Earth, either to oversee the administration of the few remaining urban communities, or more rarely, to spawn. But occasionally the mind transfer went wrong, some glitch in transmission between those ships riding at anchor in the Earth's orbit, and the receivers down here, planet-side. The animation of the body went ahead as planned, but the mind never quite made it. The beautiful Cronix awoke as startled animals, possessed of a blind instinct to run for their lives: most were caught and penned. Very rarely, one would fight its way out and roam the woods until it died, with all the self-knowledge of a troglodyte. They were quick and wily creatures, and could look a man in the eye and seeing nothing but their next meal.

Rarer were the scolds: part of the client's mind actually implanted, but in a mangled, sub-standard state, leaving the bewildered creature with enough self-awareness to wonder what it was doing suddenly in a room full of white-coated technicians. Some were more conscious than others, and would scream and howl in the terror at their miscarried inception: hence the name, scold. They were taken away for observation by psychologists, to see if the client had actually arrived in-body but was simply suffering from earth-side disorientation. Or as they called it, reincarnation sickness. If the client’s personality emerged from that autistic scramble of howls within a day or two, all well and good: if not, they too were led off to the holding pens until a judge signed the euthanasia order.

The woman shook her head again: no idea who she was supposed to have been. Or maybe she wasn't even aware she had even been destined to be someone else, rich and carefree. She only knew the feral life of the woods, the dank huts at the edge of the stockade and the fear of men. Clearly expensive genes, though. Even after living in the dirt and the cold winter forest, her skin had a soft glow that made the hunter want to reach out and stroke her cheek. He wisely resisted the temptation.

"I'm hunting," he said. She had hitched up her trousers and was standing with a hip cocked towards him. "Wolf. Big one. I need your help to track him." Again, the withering silence as her big brown eyes scrutinized him. Probably sizing him up, he figured. He would present little threat: she would be faster and stronger than him. Whether she was actually safe to travel with on those quiet forest tracks, was another matter.

"Will you do it?" he asked. "I will give you food and clothes. You can shelter in my tent."

"Boots," she said, her voice slurry.

He looked at her feet. He had not noticed until now they were bare, almost blue in the morning chill.

"Okay," he said, smiling: at least she could speak a little. "No problem. I'll get you a coat too. You wait here, I'll get you kitted out at the exchange. Anything else you need?"

No answer.

He walked back into Dorking and bought a pair of boots, three pairs of thick socks, a winter coat and another sweater. When he returned, the scold was waiting, petting his dogs. She quickly pulled two pairs of socks over her frozen feet, one over the other, then shoved her feet into the boots. He smiled as she stood in front of him. She did not smile back. He untied the dogs, handed her the leashes and mounted his mule.

"Okay, let's go," he said. She turned and jogged off, the dogs loping easily at her side. It was always the same with scolds, especially the females – they understood hunting dogs. As he spurred his mule, the hunter reflected that right here was a real life Diana, huddled in the dirty shacks of the poorest Dianite farmers. They were simply too blind to recognize the goddess in her.

"Humans," he muttered. "Always were dumb, always will be."

***

The forest hung thick across the path. The first buds dusted the bare branches with the chlorophyll urgency of spring. From time to time they passed a steel skeleton of a high-rise, entwined in ivy and creepers. Business parks, light industrial zones, red brick housing estates, all had retreated beneath centuries of moist forest floor.

The scold walked ahead, the dogs pulling her along with a sense of purpose. Oriente peered through the trees, ever the hunter, but more often than not he found his gaze returning to the woman. Her figure was almost lost in the thick baggy clothes, like a refugee fleeing a bombed-out city of old. But occasionally the twill molded itself to the curve of a calf or buttock, and the hunter would feel the stir of vestigial longing.

It was getting late. The sun lolled on the horizon as they emerged from the trees onto open, rolling hills dotted with oaks. This was the fat lip of downs.

“We’ll stop there, by that split oak,” he said.

He pulled out his blankets and the canvas tent he'd bought years ago in Dorking. The scold lay down as he hopped about, picking up kindling for a fire. She slipped off her boots and socks and massaged her feet, contorting as easily as a grooming cat. She caught his gaze and stared back. He dropped his eyes like a guilty schoolboy.

As night fell, they sat by the fire, huddled in blankets and coats. To the west, Oriente saw a hint of light, possibly the hamlet of Kingston: a warm glow from the aquamarine depths of the valley. He prodded the fire, gave some beef jerky to the woman and threw a few chunks to the dogs. He noted, jealously, that they had chosen to sleep next to her.

“You have a way with the dogs,” he said. “Traitors,” he said, with a fake snarl at Arthur, who snored on. Jess pinned her ears guiltily to her head.

The scold seemed at first not to understand, but then reached over and ruffled Jess’ fur.

Aside from his talk that morning with Guld, Oriente hadn’t had what might be termed as a real conversation in months. Not since a government technician had stayed with him in his woodland retreat while repairing the transmitters used to capture the minds of the newly departed and beam them to the off-world Orbiters. For their life-saving and often lonely work, the technicians were known as 'priests': the sturdy transmitters they maintained on hilltops across the land were known as ‘soul poles.’ The priest had stayed with Oriente a few days, chatting about his life in London and enjoying the nature. Since then, Oriente had lived only with his dogs. He wondered whether such a recluse could have anything meaningful to say to a woman with a will-o’-the-wisp mind. He cast around for something to break the ice, and pointed up to the sky where constellations wheeled slowly across the heavens.

“See that cluster of stars?” he said. “That’s Andromeda, the chained lady. And that over there, that’s…er…” he racked his brain to dredge up the name. “Ursa Major! That’s it, the Great Bear.” The woman glanced up: not seeing anything worth looking at, she reverted to the hypnotic flicker of the fire.

Oriente looked for another constellation. Occasionally, a bright speck of yellow light would trace a luminous trail across the night sky: the souls of billions of people floating in space.

He pointed to the bright dot. “And 
that
 is where you come from,” he said. She looked up at him. “Yes, you. From up there.” This time she peered up for longer, squinting into space.

“Those are the Orbiters,” he said. “Look, there’s another.” He pointed at another quadrant of the open sky. Her eyes followed his finger. “
Forever beyond the reach of the cold woods, the bears and wolves, all these antediluvian fears of man
,” he quoted, though he could not recall who he was quoting. “Until they come back, which they don’t do very often. I wonder why you were coming back?”

She looked at him, pointed at her chest, as if to say 'Me?' She hadn't uttered a work since her monosyllabic demand for footwear that morning. She certainly didn’t talk much, but for a scold it was plenty.

“Yes, you. You see, a long time ago, all this was full of people.” He swept his arm across the horizon. “You couldn’t even see the stars at night because of all the light from the city.”

All those generations who had slept in the valley below, who could never have imagined that one day their descendants would glide silently across the night skies above, abandoned to whatever dreams they cared to indulge in. Not even Fitch had quite grasped what would happen when he unleashed his invention on the world.

The thought of Fitch made him restless again.

“They lived here, and they died here, for a very long time,” he said. “Until someone came up with an idea, a sort of machine, that allowed them to live on, but just their minds,” said touching his own head, aware she would have trouble grasping even a fraction of what he was saying. He kept talking anyway, because he was starting to find he liked it. “To keep them safe, they put them in these big containers up there. And sometimes they come back here for a few years, to work or have children, or…”

He stopped. She was frowning, trying to follow what he was saying.

“Yes,” he said gently. “Your mind, all that you think, or remember…” Except he knew it wasn’t her. What she was, in fact, was just a fragment of what she might have been. And yet she was still, irrevocably, her. “But now you are here. With me.” He smiled. She gazed at him and slowly the crease on her brows smoothed. She cocked her head and stared into the fire, then back up at the sky.

“Okay,” he said. “Sleep now. Tent.” He opened the flap of the tent.

“You take the sleeping bag, I’ll take the blanket.” She looked warily at the tent, so he put his hands to the side of his face in a gesture of sleep. “Warm in there. Cold out here.”

He stepped inside, stripped down and wrapped himself in his insulating blanket. Through the wall of the tent he saw her silhouette move against the firelight, perhaps scouting for any lurking predator, Cronix or wolf. Or Fitch. Then she came in and lay on the sleeping bag.

“No,” he said, reaching across, “You get inside...”

The woman reached reflexively for where he knew her knife was hidden. He pulled back quickly as she squatted on her haunches, ready to defend herself.

“That’s okay, that’s okay,” he cooed. “I’m not going to touch you.” He opened the neck of the bag. “You go in here. Warm.” He turned his back on her and made as if to sleep, listening as she slipped into the sleeping bag, fully clothed. He turned and snuffed the lantern. A little while later, he could hear her awkwardly pulling off her sweater in the dark, clearly too hot. Then he drifted off to sleep.

He thought he was dreaming at first, an adolescent fancy of fumbled arousal. A soft hand infiltrating his blanket and creeping like an erotic spider, warm and menacing, across his belly. He smiled in his sleep and the spider pressed southwards on its padded feet. He felt himself stiffen. In his mind, he sighed at the sweet adolescent association of camping and sex. But there was something else, something tickling at his mind like a teasing feather: he had never been an adolescent.

He opened his eyes a crack, just as the scold was pulling back his blanket. She did not notice at first that he was awake. She was naked too. He lay still in the darkness to avoid scaring her off. Because this was too pleasant, he thought, being groped by this woman who was no doubt responding to some inner animal call. She pushed herself down on him roughly and he let out a gasp, almost of pain. Clearly this was her first sexual experience, or at least her first voluntary one. She straddled him, one knee propping her upright, the other crooked into a crouch so she could work herself against him. She started gently rocking backwards and forth, letting out a little gasp every now and then. He lifted his hands slowly to stroke her arms, which were smooth and marbled with muscle. She didn’t seem to care whether he was awake now, so he slid his hands over her shoulders and breasts. She let out a long breath and moved her hands down on his chest. She pressed down so hard he started to worry she might suffocate him, but the sensation pleased him nonetheless.

She was perched on the balls of both feet by now, grinding frantically. The aggression of her mating tantalized him, igniting forgotten fantasies he had imagined long since laid to rest. The disturbing thought again occurred to him that perhaps they weren’t fantasies, but memories of long ago, things buried deep under the hill of time. No thought could trouble him for more than a second now, though, as she writhed atop him. He let out a strangled howl as his back arched and collapsed, his mind and body spent. One of the dogs outside got to its feet and started sniffing at the flap of the tent. But she kept moving on top of him, perhaps unaware that he had finished. The pleasure started to turn to discomfort, then pain, so he put his hands up to her shoulders and pushed her gently back.

“Okay, that’s enough now. It’s finished.”

He realized how selfish the words would sound to any other woman, but she simply retreated to her side of the tent, apparently satisfied. He decided to take his life in his hands, and lent across the canvas floor to where he could just make out her head in the dark. He tried to kiss her on the cheek but missed and ended up planting his lips on her ear. She didn’t try to stab him, which he took as a good sign. Ten minutes later he was asleep again, as contented as he been in a long, long time.

The woman was already up and dressed when he awoke. She had resurrected the fire and was stirring cornmeal in a metal pot. The dogs lay next to her, soaking up the weak sun. He smiled, squinting in the bright morning light. She stared back at him blankly.