FALLEN DRAGON (89 page)

When he stood up, a rush of dizziness almost made his legs buckle. He swayed about for a moment until the Skin muscles tightened and held him upright. His head slowly cleared and he took a big suck on his water.

He started off walking, then slowly broke into a trot. In his mind he could hear his left leg squelching inside the Skin every time his foot hit the ground. The light was beginning to fade, hastened by the cloying mist. This region of the plateau was almost barren. It comprised long stretches of sloping land that ended in ridges that were almost as steep as cliffs. Every time, he would have to scramble and claw his way up through the boulders and scree falls. Stubby toe claws extended from the Skin to give him extra grip over the slippery dripping rock.

Night had fallen half an hour before he reached the ridge that would take him up onto the saddle plain. Mount Kenzi was on his left, with Mount Henkin to the right. He stopped at the base of the rock barrier and took out the second bloodpak. His Skin guzzled it down greedily. While he was waiting, the last fringes of the mist retreated down the slope. There were no stars visible. The sky above was cloaked in dark cloud, its turbulent underbelly swelling and surging as it was provoked by conflicting air currents surging off the mountains. But there was enough light for him to see the ridge. He'd negotiated the last one with laser radar as his only way of seeing what lay ahead. Here, there were broad stripes of white rock zigzagging down through the ridge, almost like a giant's steps. He studied them, trying to concentrate on finding an easy route up.

Indigo icons slipped over his vision. Medical symbology cautioned him on the state of the wound. He responded by ordering another infusion of drugs. The cold numbness was spreading up his ribs. Occasionally he would shiver, which the Skin would automatically mimic.

This time he clambered to his feet with slow, deliberate movements. Even so, when he was upright it felt as though his body were made from jelly, held in shape only by the hard mold of Skin around him. It was a stupid sensation, so he ordered a stimulant infusion. His mind cleared swiftly, and he looked hard at the ridge, finding himself a way up.

When he got to the top he could see the saddle plain stretching away in front of him. The heavy cloud formed an unbroken ceiling five hundred meters up. On either side, the two mountains were massive, curving walls of naked rock, riddled with slender crevices and deep folds. It was an enclosed universe that gave him no choices. According to his map file, it was ten kilometers to the far side. He started walking.

The saddle was classed as alpine desert. Lawrence thought it looked more like the surface of Mars. The exposed soil was a somber rust-red, strewn with small, flinty stones. There were no animals or insects living up here. Even the small crustaceous plants that peeked out from the stones looked desiccated. His Skin reported that the pressure was down to a third sea level. The gills were having to work hard to pull enough oxygen out of the freezing air.

He'd got a kilometer past the ridge when it began snow
i
ng. It
wasn't
big, soft flakes drifting out of the sky; these were small, hard pellets of ice that the wind drove straight at him. He could see them bouncing off the Skin carapace. Visibility was down to seven meters. Laser radar was useless. He didn't even bother with infrared or low-light. All he had was inertial guidance. It was enough for him.

Until the snowstorm engulfed him, all that had mattered was to keep going, to remain focused on the destination. Anything less would be betraying the platoon—which he could never do. Now, Lawrence began to contemplate what he was going to do when he actually reached the crater lake. He'd got a full magazine for the carbine. But against that the villagers had guns that fired weird stars, e-bombs, Prime and biotechnology from Santa Chico. He needed medicine and treatment for himself, and blood for his Skin. Then all he had to do was find out what the source of their wealth was and extort some of it out of them. Oh, and transport, too.

Blind, alone, cocooned by a faltering Skin against an environment that would kill him in minutes, Lawrence Newton started laughing. All this—
insane desperation
—so that he could buy himself back into Amethi. The home he'd run away from so he could explore the universe. It was hard to remember now, but in those days Lawrence Newton had thought the stars were full of excitement and wonder. What was it he'd told Roselyn that first day they'd met?

Nowhere you live can be exotic. That's only ever somewhere else.

Now he knew: it was always somewhere else. If he'd been given the chance, that young Lawrence Newton would have kept on flying and never come back.

Did I really hate myself that much back then?

He smiled happily as his thoughts of Roselyn brought her image to the front of his mind, the one icon that never deserted him. His hand patted the base of his throat, feeling the small lump of the pendant pressing against his skin.

It would be nice to see her one last time.

The clouds swept clear when he was still a couple of kilometers from the end of the saddle plain, taking the snow with them. Stars gleamed brightly in the thin, clear air. Two centimeters of ice pellets lay across the ground. His Skin crunched them down as he trudged onward.

He had to use the last bloodpak before he finished traversing the saddle plain. The Skin had used up a lot of energy keeping him warm in the snow. When he sucked at the water nipple, the tank was empty. His tongue was dry inside his hot mouth. Pain was a constant in his side now, a fierce pulse at the center of a permanently cold hip. The anesthetic made no difference. He wasn't even sure the clotting agent was having any effect. The Skin leg was coated in blood. Its muscles couldn't keep the carapace puncture hole fully sealed anymore.

And still, he had no choice.

The ground began to dip away, and Lawrence could look down across the forested vales of Arnoon Province. It was quiet and beautiful in the starlight, just as he remembered it.

This side of Mount Kenzi was a scree slope that swept down steeply for over two kilometers. Lawrence began his descent. The small stones slid and skittered beneath his feet, clattering away out of sight. As he became used to the subsidence he used it to slide his way down, taking long hops, deliberately landing hard on his heels so the scree would give way underneath him. Time after time he lost his balance or hit a big rock and fell, skidding and sliding down the slope at the head of a miniature avalanche. Without Skin he would have been cut to shreds on the sharp little stones. But the carapace maintained its integrity easily: this kind of treatment was well inside its tolerance limits.

The scree gave way to tough grass. He started to walk down to the treeline several hundred meters below. His left leg was stiff, even with Skin muscles moving it. Several scree stones were stuck in the open puncture. He stopped to pick them out, then continued. Their absence didn't make any difference to the limp. The display revealed that an alarming amount of Skin muscle in his left leg had degraded to a nonviable level. When he checked, blood was still leaking down the leg. It must be coming from the wound inside. There was no clotting agent left.

He stopped when he reached the trees and bent over, trying to throw up. Nothing came, apart from a vile acidic juice that burned his already arid throat. His gills adjusted their filter parameters, feeding him a higher oxygen level. It made breathing a little easier.

The trees thickened quickly once he was inside the forest. But their trunks were never so close as to form a barrier. Undergrowth was a shaggy fern that his Skin legs pushed through with hardly any extra effort. The visibility was as bad here as in the snowstorm. He had to rely on inertial guidance again, following the indigo trail across the slope, always heading down.

Warmth slowly drained out of him, seeping away through the puncture hole in the Skin. His fingers were icy, his feet blocks of ice. Nothing he could do would stop the shivering. The display wanted him to replenish the Skin's blood bladders. He sneered at it and told the Prime to clear the icons away. More medical warnings appeared, indicating the strain he was putting on his own organs now that his body was having to reoxygenate the blood.

The trees came to an end. Lawrence moved forward with small, laborious steps. He was hunched up in an effort to ease the pain throbbing along his ribs. One hand was clamped over the puncture hole in the carapace.

He arrived at the top of the curving cliff. A hundred and twenty meters below, the black waters of the crater lake rippled gently. Low-light sensors turned the gloomy night vista to a glowing blue-and-gray image. He saw the central island. The little stone temple was still sitting at the center.

"Meditation my ass," Lawrence grunted at it, and jumped.

The carapace hardened protectively long before he hit the water. It was a jolt that sent an excruciating pain flaming out from his wounded hip. He screamed inside the helmet. For a moment he though he was about to throw up again. All he was really worried about was the depth of water at the foot of the cliff. Whatever it was, his feet never touched the bottom of the lake.

Low-light sensors showed him faint gray bubbles swarming around him as he slowly floated to the surface. Then he was bobbing about, trying to see where the island was. Once he found it, he brought his legs up so he was floating on his back. His feet kicked slowly, aided by the occasional flap of his arms. He instructed the Prime to make the Skin muscles follow the motions he wanted. His own limbs weren't responding very well. The result wasn't a particularly fast stroke, but he made steady progress.

He was about seventy meters from the island when something brushed against him. The carapace tactile sensors stroked his skin in mimicry of the contact. Lawrence flinched and held still, waiting for it to happen again. When nothing happened, he began kicking again, perhaps a little more urgently now. The fish-creature prodded his left leg. Lawrence shoved at it with his hand. A narrow, pointed head broke surface for a moment, then dived with a small splash.

Something touched him on the other leg. Two of them! He concentrated on kicking, keeping his feet below the surface for maximum effect. One of the fish-creatures slithered over his chest. It was similar to an eel, but pale green, over a meter long, with three ridges running the length of its body. They were vibrating softly.

"Shit!" Lawrence punched at it in panic. But it was too fast.

Pointed jaws with needle teeth worried their way into the puncture hole like a hammer drill. Lawrence chopped at the thing with the edge of his hand. Two more were nuzzling the puncture. He twisted over and started swimming side-stroke, keeping the puncture out of the water. One of the creatures tangled itself round his legs. The puncture was forced below water. Teeth began to bite into the exposed Skin muscle.

The carbine slid out of its recess. Lawrence angled it away from his leg and fired. Bullets chewed the water around the creatures. There was an eruption of spray, and they were gone.

Lawrence started swimming hard, shouting to counter the pain coursing through his body at each hurried motion. Ripples wriggled across the water, arrowing toward him. Several of the creatures were suddenly writhing all over him. Lawrence thrashed about, going under for a moment. Their jaws were tearing at the Skin muscle in the puncture, severing chunks of it. He used the carbine underwater, hearing a dull roar as it fired.

When his head came up, he could see the island thirty meters away. A biohazard alert flashed in the middle of his display. Some kind of toxin was seeping into the Skin's circulatory network. Prime determined the infection point as the muscle cords around the puncture.

They're poisoning me!

Just then one of the fish-creatures began to coil and convulse a few meters away, flinging spray in all directions. Two more started similar berserk motions.

Lawrence kept swimming. Prime closed the valves connecting his major blood vessels with the Skin. Another creature jabbed its head into the puncture. He shot at it.

Dozens of the creatures were racing through the water around him. They slid over and around the Skin. Lawrence's foot touched a solid surface. He struggled for balance and waded out of the water. The creatures were charging around his legs, butting against the carapace. Prime was flashing up information on the toxin. It was spreading through the Skin's leg muscles. Secondary blood vessel valves were being closed, in an attempt to isolate it.

When his feet were finally out of the water, Lawrence managed two steps on the grass, and fell over. His legs wouldn't move, the weight of the inert Skin was too much.

Lawrence surveyed the status display. The toxin had contaminated over a third of the Skin's muscles. There was no blood reaching the rest. With a sob he gave the Prime his last order. The Skin split open smoothly along its chest seal. Lawrence whimpered as he pulled the helmet back off his head. Cool night air licked against his body. He pushed and wriggled, emerging slowly and painfully from the dead Skin like some glistening blue chrysalis. For a while it was all he could do to lie panting on the grass. Then his left hand felt its way along his side and probed at the wound. He grimaced, and slowly sat up.

The clotting agent had left a thin layer of white foam inside the wound, which was cracked and flaking. Blood was dribbling out, running down the slippery layer of dermalez gel. He pressed his hand against it, hoping the pressure would hold the bleeding until he could find something to use as a dressing.