River of Blue Fire (17 page)

“There's something gone seriously weird with the whole system.” Renie shrugged. “I can't even guess. We don't have enough information. We might
never
have enough information, because from what Sellars said, there's never been a system like this.”

“Oh,
shit
.” Cullen had paused at the crest of the lower hill. Before him, the Hive lay open and plundered.

The great windows across the front had been smashed inward, likely by the sheer weight of the ant swarm. The ants had carried out all kinds of objects, but seemed to have rejected many of them, seemingly at random: The promontory in front of the building was littered with virtual objects from inside, sections of walls and bits of furniture and specimens from the museum being among the more recognizable. There were less pleasant remnants as well, bloodless bits of the simulated bodies the Hive's human inhabitants had once worn, strewn all across the landscape. Torn or snipped from the original owners, they looked less real than they had when part of a sim, like a scattering of doll parts, but it was still horrible. Cullen stared at it so bleakly that it seemed he might never move again.

Renie took his arm and urged him forward. They passed through one of the sliding hangar doors, which had been pried upward until it had crumpled, and thus allowed them more than ample headroom. Now it was Renie who felt her insides go cold and heavy. The Hive's small air force, perhaps because of the planes' resemblance to insects, had been shredded by the
Eciton
army. Only a few recognizable pieces remained, and these were not enough to cobble together a patio chair, let alone a flying machine.

Renie wanted to cry, but would not indulge herself. “Are there any other planes?”

“I don't know,” Cullen said bleakly. “Angela's hopper, maybe.”

“What's that? Where is it?”

“Renie?” !Xabbu stood at the hangar door, looking out over the debris-carpeted hillside. His voice was strangely pitched. “Renie, help me.”

Alarmed, she turned and sprinted to his side. Something very large was making its way steadily up the slope toward them, a bright green thing the size of a construction crane. It swiveled its triangular head from side to side as though searching aimlessly, but it was stalking steadily toward them.

“It is him.” !Xabbu spoke in a hushed, clench-throated whisper. “It is Grandfather Mantis.”

“No, it's not.” She wrapped her hand around his slender baboon foreleg, trying to stay calm despite the terror spiking sharply inside her, rattling her heart in her rib cage and squeezing out her breath. “It's . . . it's another simulation, !Xabbu. It's just a regular praying mantis.” If something the relative size of a Tyrannosaurus could be in any way regular, she thought wildly. “It's another one of Kunohara's bugs.”

“That's not fair.” Cullen's voice was flat. “That's a
Sphodromantis Centralis
. They're not indigenous to this environment—they're from Africa.”

Renie thought this was pretty rich coming from the man who'd brought in European robber-ant spray, but with the mantis a few dozen paces away and closing, it didn't seem like a good time to discuss VR ethics. She tugged at !Xabbu's furry arm. “Let's get out of here.”

“Unless it's supposed to have come in on a ship,” Cullen murmured. “That's how they got to the Americas in the first place.”

“Jesus Mercy, will you shut up? Let's—” She broke off. The mantis had turned its head toward them, and now began striding faster up the hillside, scythelike forearms extended, a vast machine of razoring clockwork. “What do those things eat?” Renie asked faintly.

“Anything that moves,” said Cullen.

She let go of !Xabbu and shoved Cullen several steps back into the depths of the hangar. “Let's go! You said there was a plane or something—Angela's plane, you said. Where?”

“Her hopper. On the roof, I think. Unless she took it.”

“Right. Come on!” She looked back. “!Xabbu!” she shrieked. “What are you doing?” The baboon was still crouching beneath the crumpled hangar door as if waiting for death. She sprinted back and picked him up, a not inconsiderable effort after the long day carrying Lenore.

“It is him, and I have seen him,” he said into her ear. “I cannot believe this day has come.”

“It is not a ‘him,' and it certainly isn't God, it's a giant monkey-eating bug. Cullen, will you get goddamn going? I don't know how to get to the roof—you do.”

As if suddenly waking from a dream, the entomologist turned and ran toward the back wall of the hangar with Renie a step behind him. As they reached the door that led inside, the simulated metal of the hangar door gave a protesting screech. Renie looked back. The mantis had almost entirely forced its way in, and was pulling its long abdomen and back legs through the gap. The head pivoted in a horrible, robotic fashion as the blank green domes of its eyes tracked their flight.

The door into the complex was unlocked, and slid open at a touch, but there was no way to bar it behind them. !Xabbu stirred in her arms. “I am all right, Renie,” he promised. “Put me down!”

She let him clamber down, and they all sprinted toward the door at the far end of the corridor.

“Why don't we just . . . go there?” Renie asked Cullen as she dodged bits of simulated debris. “You don't have to do things like walk and run here, do you?”

“Because it's not working, damn it!” he shouted. “I tried. Kunohara turned off the protocol or something. Just be glad we had elevators made for this thing in case he ever changed his mind about how many corners we could cut in here.”

The elevator was on their floor, its doors partially open, but Renie's moment of hope was quickly ended: the doors themselves were bowed outward, as though something inside had tried to smash its way free. As they stared, something large and dark heaved and the parted doors clanked and quivered. One of the ant soldiers had been trapped inside, and was battering the elevator to pieces.

Cullen shouted with frustration and fear as he slid to a halt. They all turned at a loud grinding noise in the corridor behind them. The wedge-shaped head of the mantis had pushed open the door from the hangar, and the doorframe itself was crumpling as the creature forced the rest of its massive body through the opening.

“Stairs! Back there!” Cullen pointed at a branching hallway back down the corridor.

“Let's go, then!” Renie grabbed at !Xabbu's furry arm in case he was struck by another bout of religious devotion. The mantis tore away the last pieces of the doorframe; as they ran toward it, the huge green thing stepped into the corridor and rose until its antennae brushed the high ceiling, a giant museum display come to murderous life. Renie and the others reached the cross-corridor and turned the corner so fast they skidded and almost fell on the slippery floor, but Renie knew the monster could cover the distance to them in only a few strides. She let go of !Xabbu and began to sprint.

“Hurry!” she screamed.

Her friend was on all fours, matching her pace, Cullen a few steps behind as they slammed through the doors and into the stairwell. Renie cursed when she saw that the staircase was too wide to be a deterrent to the pursuing monster, but she prayed that steps might slow it down. She eased her own pace a little and shoved Cullen ahead of her in case he might suddenly remember a better route.

They had only reached the second landing when the mantis knocked the doors spinning off their hinges below them. Renie looked down as she leaped up onto the next set of stairs, but wished she hadn't. The creature had begun climbing straight up the middle of the stairwell, bracing itself with long, jointed legs against both stairs and walls. Its blank, headlight eyes watched her hungrily, so close it seemed she could reach down and touch the armored head.

“Try the doors!” she screamed up to her companions. !Xabbu rattled the latch of the third landing door as they dashed past, but it was firmly locked.

“It's only a few more floors to the roof,” Cullen shouted.

Renie shifted herself into a more careful gear, struggling to avoid slipping. She doubted that any one of them would survive a tumble—their pursuer was only a couple of meters beneath them, filling the stairwell like a demon rising from the infernal pit.

Then, for a moment, the creature actually reached
past
her—the end of a vast green leg rose and touched the staircase wall above her head. Terrified, Renie could only throw herself down against the stairs and crawl underneath it, positive that at any moment one of the forearms would close on her like a giant pair of pliers, but the mantis slipped its hold and sagged, then fell back half a floor before it got a grip against the stairwell again, and she began to feel they might actually outrace it to the roof.

Jesus Mercy
, she thought suddenly.
What if the way onto the roof's locked, too
?

As she staggered onto the last landing. Cullen was rattling the bar of the door with no effect. She could hear the creature clambering toward them again, a leathery creaking and popping like the world's largest umbrella being unfurled.

“It's locked!” Cullen screamed.

Renie threw herself against the door, slamming the bar. It popped open, revealing a broad vista of late afternoon sky.
Not locked, just jammed
. It was a prayer of thanksgiving. She stepped to the side as Cullen stumbled backward through the doorway, !Xabbu at his feet and tugging him. The great green head of the mantis rose up out of the shadows of the stairwell behind him like a tricornered moon. A leg scraped across the stairwell landing as it sought a firm foothold. “Where's the bloody plane?” she shouted at Cullen.

The scientist regained his equilibrium and looked around, his eyes panicky-wide. “Over there!”

Renie slammed the door closed behind him and took the thorn from her belt. She jammed it through the handle, knowing as she did so that it was a straw in a hurricane, then sprinted after the others toward a wind-wall that ran halfway across the gray roof, hiding whatever might be on the far side. “Are you sure it's there?” she shouted. Cullen said nothing, running flat out. As if in answer, something went
pop
behind her. The thorn shot past, skipping along the rooftop, followed by the grating sound of another doorframe being wrenched loose.

As they reached the edge of the wind-wall, she heard the door burst outward. Despite the overwhelming fear, Renie was also furious. How could an insect be so single-minded? Why hadn't it given up long ago? Surely a real mantis in the real world wouldn't behave in this monster-movie fashion? She half-suspected Kunohara—some kind of horrible payback he had built into his simulation for those who ignored Nature's power.

On the far side of the wall, with the panorama of the oversized forest looming above and beyond, Cullen was already dragging the tarp from a lumpy object not much larger than a minibus. Renie and !Xabbu each snatched at a corner and pulled; the covering slid away to reveal an expanse of brown, yellow, and black enameling—a six-legged monstrosity shaped like a sunflower seed.

“It's another damn bug!”

“A
Semiotus
. All our vehicles look like bugs.” Cullen shook his head sadly. “Angela didn't get out, I guess.” He thumbed the latch panel and the doors swung upward. The entomologist pulled down the steps and Renie clambered into the snug cockpit.

As !Xabbu swung up behind her, a shadow fell across them. Renie whirled to see the mantis step around the edge of the wind-wall, massive legs lifting and falling with the terrible precision of sewing machine needles, head swiveling high above the hopper. Cullen stood frozen at the base of the ladder as the great head descended toward him. In the stark, timeless moment, Renie could hear air hissing through the spirucules along the creature's side.

“That spray,” she tried to call, but only huffed a little air through a throat clenched shut by terror. She found her voice. “
Cullen, the spray
!”

He took a stiff pace backward, fumbling in his pocket. The head tilted as it followed him, smooth as if on oiled bearings. The great scythelike arms came up and extended past him on either side with terrible deliberation, until the tip of one touched the side of the ship with a faint metallic
ping
. Cullen held up the cylinder in a trembling hand, then blasted a spattering stream into the blank triangular face.

The moment exploded.

The mantis juddered back, hissing like a steam compressor. The arms snapped down as they retracted, smacking Cullen to the ground, then the creature crabbed backward several steps, sawing at the air and its blinded eyes. Renie saw !Xabbu swing back down to the ground and grab Cullen by the collar; the entomologist's arm remained behind, lying on the roof as if discarded in a forgetful moment, still swaddled in a jumpsuit sleeve that now gaped raggedly at one end.

“You are not Grandfather Mantis!” !Xabbu shrilled at the monster as he struggled to drag the scientist away. “You are only a thing!”

In the depths of the nightmare, operating on pure instinct, Renie scrambled down to help; as the mantis convulsed above them they heaved Cullen into the plane and pulled down the door. Renie could see their pursuer through the side window, still ratcheting in place like a broken toy, but becoming less manic and more purposeful by the second.

There was no blood where Cullen's arm had been. She grabbed and squeezed anyway, not sure what the rules were for near-mortal virtual injuries, and screamed, “How do we make this hopper fly?”

Cullen's eyes fluttered open. “It . . . hurts,” he said breathlessly. “Why should it hurt . . . ?”

“How do we fly the damn plane? That thing's coming back!”

In wheezing monosyllables, Cullen told her, then passed out. She left !Xabbu looking for something to bind his wound, then thumbed the buttons he had mentioned in what she hoped was the right order. The vehicle shuddered as its wings rotated out from under the wing-case, then vibrated into swift-beating life. Renie managed to get the legs moving to turn the head of the vehicle away from the wall and out toward the edge of the building. As the hopper swiveled, the scarecrow form of the mantis heaved into view before the viewscreen, groping toward them.