Sea of Silver Light (80 page)

"It's getting dark," Renie said quietly. "We have to start moving."

The Stone Girl did not reply, but stayed close as they took their first cautious steps forward. They made it up the riverbank to a low wall at the edge of town without attracting attention. As they huddled behind it, Renie found herself wishing desperately for a weapon of some kind. All she was carrying was the lighter, and the idea of trying to set a flabby-looking creature like a two-meter cuttlefish on fire with a Minisolar was a joke she couldn't much appreciate just now. A torch was a possibility, but the nearest trees were still a long trot away.

"Are Ticks scared of anything?" she asked. The Stone Girl's look of incredulity answered her question for her, but Renie reached into the leafy vegetation covering the wall, thinking that she would at least feel a little better with a large rock in her hand. She found herself digging into the scratchy tangle tar deeper than she would have believed necessary to find a loose stone, then was even more surprised when her hand pushed through and out the other side. It was all bramble.

"Where's the wall? Isn't there a wall under here?"

The Stone Girl had gone an ashier shade than her normal clay color. She looked at Renie nervously. "That
is
the wall."

"But . . . aren't there . . . things under all these leaves?" She had a sudden, confounding thought. "Are all those houses and whatnot just made of plants?"

"This is More Very Bush," the little girl explained.

"Shit." So much for sticks and stones to use as makeshift weapons. It also meant that if her friends were truly besieged in that tower building near the center of town, they had no real walls to keep the creatures out.

In fact, what
was
keeping the creatures out?

Renie took another deep breath, finding it harder than ever to make herself go forward. Something like a cloud of terror seemed to hang over the whole town—not just her obvious and justified fear of the strange Ticks, but something deeper and less explicable. She remembered the wave of panic that had seized her while she was being chased by Jinn ears.

We're inside the operating system. Are we feeling its fear? But what would an artificial intelligence fear?

She led the Stone Girl to a place where the wall was low and they could scramble over it easily, although not without Renie getting scratched quite a few more times. They stopped on the far side. A Tick was moving toward them, undulating across the low vegetation like something swimming along the ocean floor. Despite the Stone Girl saying that sound did not matter, Renie found her throat choked to silence.

The Tick paused a dozen meters away. It did not have legs, but each point of its scalloped sides ended in something like a pseudopod; they rippled gently, in sequence, even when the thing wasn't moving. Dark spots swam beneath the translucent skin, as though the creature were filled with billiard balls and jelly. It was only as the dark spots one after another pressed out against the skin and then receded in turn that she remembered the Stone Girl's words: Ticks had too many eyes.

"Jesus Mercy!" It was a strangled sound.

Whether because it actually could not see them without movement, or because they were too far away to be worth bothering with, the Tick turned and made its way back up the main street. Several of its fellows bumped it as it passed; some even crawled over it. Renie could not tell if they were communicating through touch or were simply terribly stupid.

"I don't want to be here," the little girl said.

"I don't either, but we are. Just hold my hand and keep moving. Do you want me to sing the Sprootie Smart song again?"

The Stone Girl shook her head.

Slowly, they made their way deeper into the town, freezing in place every time one of the Ticks came near, trying to stay behind cover as much as possible. Renie found herself actually grateful for the advancing twilight: if the creatures were dependent on sight, then darkness must be her friend. Still, she definitely wanted to get away from these crawling things before full night if she possibly could.

They reached the first of the houses, a cottage of green leaves and snaking vines. As Renie stole a look inside—even the furniture was composed of vegetation—she couldn't help whispering a question. "Who lived in this town?"

"Bears, mostly," said the Stone Girl in a tight little voice. "And some rabbits. And a big family of hedgehogs called Tinkle or Wrinkle or something, I th–th–think. . . ." Tears seeped from her eyeholes.

"Ssshhh. It's okay. We'll be. . . ."

Three Ticks glided around the corner of the next house and wriggled across the bramble-choked alleyway, heading right toward them. The Stone Girl gave a little squeak of horror and sagged. Renie grabbed her, holding her upright and as still as she could with her own limbs trembling badly.

The Ticks paused and lay pulsing gently atop the vegetative carpet, a mere half-dozen meters from the spot where Renie and the Stone Girl stood. Only their elongated shape gave them a front and a back; both ends seemed identical, but Renie had no doubts from the Ticks postures that they were facing her. They had sensed something, and now were waiting.

One of the Ticks scuttled a little way forward toward the house. Another eased forward and slid over it, then they parted and again lay parallel. Ripples of lighter and darker color ran up and down their bodies. The eye-spots bunched at the things' front ends, three or four dark orbs visible in each creature, pressed up against the membranous skin.

A tiny whine of panic escaped the Stone Girl and Renie could feel the child's arms go taut. Any moment now her panic would become too much and she would bolt. Renie tried to keep a tight grip, but terror was rising fast inside her, too.

Suddenly, with a loud, swishing rattle that almost stopped Renie's heart, something leaped out of the carpet of brambles just in front of the Ticks—a blur of wild, shiny eye and gray fur—then sprang away across the dooryard heading for the open street. The Ticks flowed after it with terrifying speed, moving so quickly they barely seemed to touch the brambles. The child-sized rabbit in the tiny blue coat reached the street but had to dodge away from another Tick that reared up, its mouth a jagged rip on the underside of the head. The sudden change of direction ran the terrified fugitive right into its pursuers. The rabbit let out a single all-too-human scream of horror, then the Ticks fell on it in a squirming, fleshy mass.

Renie pulled the Stone Girl around the side of the house, away from view of the street and the wet sounds of feeding. They were lucky; no other Ticks were waiting there. She shoved the stumbling little girl in front of her, across the alley full of knee-high vegetation and into the shelter of the house next door.

Inside there was just enough light coming in through a small window to make out a quantity of household objects all made from living leaves and vines—chairs, a table, bowls, and even a candlestick; otherwise the little hut was empty. Renie clenched her fists in fear and frustration. She could actually see the church tower through the window, festooned with vines like a maypole, but although it was only a few dozen meters away it might as well have been a thousand. The ground between their temporary refuge and the tower was full of the pale things.

"I'll think of something," Renie declared. "Don't give up. I'll get us out of here."

The little Stone Girl took a deep, shaky breath. "Y–you w–w–will?"

"I promise," Renie said firmly, even as she hugged herself to still the trembling. What else could she say?

Three empty squeeze bottles of Mountain Rose lay on the floor in front of him like bleached bones. Long Joseph contemplated them with a feeling only a small distance from despair.

Knew it was going to happen,
he chided himself.
Drink it a drop at a time, still going to finish some day. . . .

And the hell of it was that there was absolutely nothing he could do. At the moment when he most needed a supply of the healing, warming liquid, with men that wanted to kill both him and his daughter just a short distance above him, after he had been trapped for weeks in a cement tomb under a mountain with no company but boring, disapproving Jeremiah Dako—and adding Del Ray Chiume to the mix hadn't helped much—now of all times he had nothing to drink.

He wiped his hand roughly across his mouth. He knew he wasn't a drunk. He knew drunks, saw them all the time, men who could barely stand, men swaying outside the shebeens with old, dried piss stains on their pants and breath that smelled like paint thinner, men with eyes like ghosts' eyes. That wasn't him. But he also knew he could dearly use some comfort. It wasn't so much that he wanted a drink, not the taste, not even the little glow of satisfaction when the first few swallows made their way into the belly. But it felt like his entire body was a little loose and ill-fitting all over, his skeleton not quite sitting right in his meat, his skin the wrong size.

Joseph grunted and stood up. What was the point, anyway? Even if Renie came back, stepped out of her electrical bathtub like that what-was-his-name, that Lazarus man from the Bible, healthy and happy and proud of her papa, they still weren't going to get out of this mountain alive. Not with four killers up there, cruel hard men determined to dig them out like an anteater on a termite nest.

Joseph took a few stiff steps over to the bank of monitors. The men upstairs had not finished fanning out the smoke, but the atmosphere up there was much clearer. They would be getting back to work soon, chipping out the rest of the concrete floor. Then what—grenades? Flaming petrol dumped down on top of them, so they burned like rats? He counted the shapes in the murk. Yes, four. So at least they had killed one of them with Sellars' bonfire. But that would only mean the rest would be even nastier when the time came.

Nastier? You must be joking, man.
This would never have been one of those simple Pinetown shake-outs after too many beers, fists and boards and maybe a knife just before people started running away, not even the bad kind with the young men and their guns, that terrible noise like a stick dragged along a fence and people stopping, faces slack, knowing something bad had just happened. . . . No, this was always going to be something far worse.

The itch was bad now, a need to move, to get out, to run as fast as he could under open sky. Maybe they could find another way out, a heating duct like he had found before. They would have to take Renie and the little man out of those bathtubs, those wired-up coffins, but surely whatever they were doing in there was not more important than their lives.

Then do what? Run across the mountains while those men come after in their big truck all armored up like a tank?

He smacked his hand down on the console and turned away. All he wanted was to pour something down his throat. Was that too much to ask for a man condemned to die? Even in Westville Prison they gave the poor bugger a last meal before they killed him, didn't they, a beer or a little wine?

Joseph stood, flexing his fingers. Surely in all this big place, there must have been someone who liked a drink, who kept a bottle hid while he was on duty—just one bottle that got left behind when everyone moved out. He looked to the alcove where Jeremiah was discussing supplies with Del Ray, the glow of the light spilling out onto the cement floor that ringed the large chamber. They didn't need Joseph. They didn't even like him, a man of his hands, a man who didn't put on airs so he could work for rich Boers. If it weren't for his daughter, he would say the hell with them both and find himself an air shaft out.

He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth again and, without really thinking about it—because if he thought he would know it was hopeless and foolish, that he had searched the whole place from top to bottom a half-dozen times—wandered off to look for that bottle of beer some faceless soldier or technician had stashed away for the long hours of the watch.

No—wine,
he thought. If he was dreaming a hopeless dream, why not make it perfect?
A whole bottle of something good, something with kick. Not even opened. He hid it away there, then the orders came and they all had to go.
He saluted his anonymous benefactor.
You did not know, but you put it away for Joseph Sulaweyo. In his hour of need, like they say.

His skin prickled. The filing cabinet lay on its side against the wall of the service closet, as wonderful as a treasure chest from a pirate story.

In a fit of nervous energy brought on by fear and frustration, he had unstacked a pile of folding chairs he had passed many times, working at it with no more hope than when he had once more opened cabinets and drawers already searched a dozen times in the last month—but to his astonishment, he had discovered the tipped cabinet hidden beneath the chairs. Now he hardly dared move for fear it would vanish.

Probably just full with papers,
a small, sensible voice told him.
Or spiders. If they are full with anything at all.

Nevertheless his palms were sweaty and it took him some moments to realize that it wasn't merely his slippery grip on the handles that kept the drawers from opening.
Don't work lying down,
he realized.
Thing needs to be standing up.

It was a huge, cumbersome cabinet, the kind meant to survive fires and other disasters. As his muscles protested at the strain he was putting on them, he thought for a moment of calling Jeremiah for help, but could imagine no believable excuse for wanting to get the cabinet upright. At last, with much grunting and swearing, he dragged the top end off the ground. He got it as high as his waist before his back would not take any more, then had to squat and let the full weight of the thing rest on his thighs while he prepared himself to heave it the rest of the way. It felt like it was full of rocks. He thought he could feel his ankle bones grinding down into powder from supporting it, but the solid heft of it gave him hope—there had to be
something
in it.