Tabitha (55 page)

A little later
Tabitha left her ship sitting in the sunshine and wandered off down the beach
for a look around. She heard a crash behind her, and turned around to see the
ship lie down in the sand like a giant dog. It was basking; that was the only
word for it. Looking much more animal than mechanical. It was a mystery to her.

Laika would have
loved it here, Tabitha thought, as she wandered further down the beach. Her mum
too, and Emma and Jen. And the Ghosts, of course. What a place she could have
brought them to, if only she’d known what to do at the time. That old aching
sadness started eating away at her. She couldn’t think like that though, filled
up with regret. Tabitha stopped walking and squinted at the striking blue sky.
At the lonely white beach around her, stark and beautiful. This was it; this was
how it had all happened, and she couldn’t go back and change anything. She
couldn’t bring anyone back, so what was the point in feeling guilty about it?
She felt glad to be alive, even if she was the only one left. It was a cold
selfish thought, but she couldn’t just pretend that self-preservation didn’t
apply. Not in a world like this. It really was everyone for themselves, and
she’d finally made it out of that grey hell back home. It wasn’t like she’d
abandoned anyone; they were all gone. As for Chris… she was surprised how
justified she felt about it. He’d already killed her once, after all. He got a
quicker death than her, anyway. And he had it coming.

Tabitha walked
on a little further, following the line of palms that circled the island.
Sweating in the heat, she paused for a moment to watch the clear whispering
tide. She sighed contentedly at the view and gave up on her walk, and lay down
in the sugar-white sand. It felt hot against her legs; so hot that she scooted
down the beach a bit further to stretch her legs in the lapping waves. She lay
back on wet sand and put her hands behind her head, feeling the gentle tide
rush against her sides. She breathed deep, and stared up at the sky. There
wasn’t a single cloud up there, just endless jewel-blue. She watched an
unfamiliar seabird glide overhead, sharp black and white, tilting its wings in
the breeze. No thoughts, no worries for a while. No sadness. Just… whatever
this was. A
sunbleached
reverie. By the time her
thoughts came back again, Tabitha was too hot to lie around anyway. She
couldn’t help but dwell on her next fix; a
bloodmeal
that wasn’t coming. She stood up and turned her back on the beach, and swore
she could hear running water in the forest beyond the palm trees.

Tabitha wandered through the palms and
into the shaded jungle beyond. She came out at a small clearing just beyond the
beach, mesmerised at the sight. There ahead a cold fresh waterfall tumbled down
into a rocky pool, crowded with ferns and framed by the forest. Tabitha took a
few parched sips from the pool, stripped off, and walked down the rocks into
the cold water. It felt good to shiver in there, like her past was washing
away. Her base-layer catsuit was draped and dripping on a boulder nearby, and
looked much healthier for a wash. Tabitha slicked her wet hair back and closed
her eyes, and felt the cold water
goosebumping
her
arms. She remembered shivering in the rain, back when she’d hidden from the
monster in the city of skin. A dark memory that was all too recent, and yet
suddenly a lifetime away. All around her in the clear pool, the grime and brick
dust of a ruined city in England drifted away in coffee-coloured clouds.
Tabitha felt new. She waded over to the waterfall and edged beneath it. Gasped
at the cold endless smack of the water pounding down on her back, beating the
sad thoughts out of her head.

The beach felt
warm and inviting when she ambled back, drained and chilly from her cold
shower. Tabitha sat down in the sand in her underwear to dry off, close to the
grey hill of the sleeping dragon. She couldn’t really think of it as a ship
any more
; not if it was curled up asleep. Tabitha shook out
her wet hair and watched a crab on the shore, scurrying along where the tide
broke and soaked into the sand.

‘What do you
think?’ she said, looking over at the dragon. ‘It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?’
a bright white eye blinked open on the grey mound, and the creature raised its
head to look over at her.

‘
Do
you
think?’ she asked it, scratching her arms. Dwelling on her next fix. ‘I mean
what are you, anyway?’ the dragon raised its head and yawned wide before
curling back up again.

‘Machines don’t
yawn,’ Tabitha mumbled to herself. ‘But… animals don’t have cockpits.’ There
had to be some animal in there somewhere. She
wanted
there to be some
animal in there. A longing for companionship, probably. And besides, she’d
already made up her mind really. It was animal to her; one thing left in the
lonely world with a personality to reach out to. Tabitha got up and walked over
cautiously, looking the dragon in the eyes. It stared right back, watching her
approach. It looked like a rubbery lizard impersonating a shark; sprawled out
in the sand with all the graceless menace of a basking crocodile. Tabitha
reached out a black hand towards it, and heard a deep rumbling growl from its
throat. It stared. Tabitha didn’t flinch as it growled louder; a crackling buzz
that she felt in her chest like nightclub bass. She looked it right in the eye,
stepped closer still, and placed her hand on its big flat shark snout. Some
feeling filled her up then, and quickened her breath. She felt current coursing
out of its skin and into hers, racing her
heartcore
.
A new high. When she staggered back and the ringing faded from her ears, the
dragon wasn’t growling any more. Tabitha felt a tingling in her hands and feet,
like pins and needles. Her body went numb, and she dropped down onto the sand.
She didn’t feel her hunger any more though, biting away and cramping her
stomach like it usually did. The new feeling was small at first; tickly tingles
like feathers and tinsel on her limbs. But in a couple of minutes it was a
strong sensation, like someone was pressing their warm skin against her hands
and feet. Tabitha raised her metal hands up and felt energy flowing into her.
She looked at the dragon, which had lost interest and gone back to sleep in the
sand. Tabitha stared at nothing, trying to place the feeling. This energy
wasn’t coming to her from the creature, or from her core. It was coming from
the sky. Tabitha looked back at the dragon, staring in disbelief.

‘I think you
just made me solar powered,’ she mumbled.

Walking for a while down the beach,
Tabitha felt a new kind of rested strength. It was like nothing she’d ever felt
before; a renewing current flowing into her, as unconscious and gentle as
breath. Her hunger was gone. She’d left her base layer by the waterfall and
taken to wearing just her underwear; it was far too hot out here for anything
more. Walking in the lapping waves and stopping to stretch out on the hot sand,
she focussed all her thought on soaking in the sunlight through her hands and
feet. It felt weird at first, a strange tingling. But once she’d learned the
feeling and how to control it, she felt the sunlight pour into her skin. Energy
massaged her muscles. If she’d ever felt this good before, she couldn’t
remember it. It felt like all the light in the sky had wrapped itself around
her where she lay, like a blanket or a breeze. That was the only way she could
think to get her head around it. It felt like a cool drink and a warm hug; like
good sex and a morning stretch all at the same time. For a few brief moments,
she saw the sunshine very differently. Like a revelation. The world around her
paled away; only the sun mattered. Lust. White lances of sunlight pierced the
sky; shining down celestial from a god-reactor with a megaton halo. Holy light.
Divine fusion. Tabitha felt the tingling light reach into her body and moaned,
gasped, climaxed. Mouth gaping, she rolled her eyes to the sky in orgasmic
prayer. Shivered with a deep warm wholeness she’d never known before. One last
wave of pleasure came rolling and rushing and crashing through her body, and
she floated feather-light back to waking life. Tabitha dropped out of her daze;
saw the sky shining blue again. The sun was… just the sun again. She sat up in
the sand. Saw the beach, the island. She remembered now. She felt strange and
new;
electrosexual
. Over to her right the dragon
slept on. The breeze swayed the palm trees and tickled through the leaves; the
sound gave her tingles. The sky above looked deeper than the sea. An electrical
eternity, stretching up into endless space beyond the blue. Tipsy and sated,
Tabitha got to her feet and staggered dishevelled down the beach.

A little later
she waded out into the shallows, and floated on her back with nothing but the
blue sky to see. The salty water lapped at her lips; filled her ears in
whispering glugs and trickled out again with the tide. The water felt warm,
floating her hair and soaking her underwear. Gulls called overhead as the sun
fed her skin. Bright turquoise water glowed all around her; shimmering
life-blue in the light. Tabitha slept peacefully on the beach that night, warm
and free and thoughtless, curled up under a million clear stars in a
light-marbled sky.

42

Tabitha woke up with a confused scowl
the next morning. She sat up and looked around. White sand covered one side of
her face; she brushed it off with a rough black palm. Slowly it all came back
to her; alien invasion, end of humanity, flying a dragon to paradise. She
questioned her sanity as she sat there on the beach, shaking the sand from her
hair. But the dragon was definitely there, a big grey hill by the tide. Curled
up like a giant lizard, drinking in the light of the rising sun. Tabitha yawned
and lay back, and stretched out on the sand. It was a good, long, lie-in kind
of stretch that she could feel in her shoulders. She sat up, looked around at
the beach, and idly took a handful of silvery white sand. She watched it whisper
through her fingers in silky waterfalls, and thought about the thrill of flying
again.

Back inside the
dragon’s cockpit the controls seemed to respond to her much faster. Tabitha
even found herself slipping into the creature’s vision straight away. The
wings, the movement, the motion of its flight… they all seemed to fit better.
She felt a connection.

A leisurely
flight over the island showed Tabitha just how small it really was. Beyond the beach
and the waterfall was nothing but thick forest, and the steep mountain looming
up near the island’s centre. It was much the same around the far side of the
island too; thick tropical forest, jutting rocky shore, and lots of birds
flocking away in terror at the sight of them overhead. There was no village, no
harbour that she could see; not even a wooden shack. There was nothing in the
sea around the coastline either, save for a couple of dolphins further out. It
looked like she was completely alone here, and clearly the aliens hadn’t made
it this far.

Tabitha flew
back around the steep mountain in a wide lazy circle, and already she could see
her familiar beach in the distance. It was strange how she felt so much in sync
with the creature; like her mind and its body worked as one. Suddenly she
jumped out of her seat in shock, and let the ship glide to a stop and just
hover in the air. Flying high over the island just then, with the warmth of the
sun beating down on them, she’d felt something. Happiness. Except it wasn’t
hers. It came from the dragon.

‘Dragon, fly
away,’ Tabitha called to it across the beach. She wanted to test this weird
connection between them; to see if they could understand one another better. To
see if she didn’t have to be in direct control for it to respond. Down the
beach the huge animal just sat there staring, blinking its white eyes.

‘Dragon, take
off!’ Tabitha commanded, as if she were casting a spell. She even added a sweep
of her hand for effect. Nothing. ‘Up! Go! Fly!
Er
… verbal
command! Fly away!’ no response. Tabitha sighed in defeat and walked away down
the beach, thinking. An idea hit her. Turning back to the dragon, she put her
hands to her temples and thought about it taking off into the sky. With a few
deep breaths, she tried to blank her thoughts out and just picture the dragon
taking off, or her taking off. It didn’t work. She clapped her hands at the
creature with a steely clank. Nothing. She ran towards it waving her arms,
trying to startle it, but there was no reaction. She tried to mime taking off,
and patted its wing for encouragement. It just watched her. She tried to think
back to the cockpit, and the purple glowing symbol on the bony console. The
maker’s logo, or whatever it was. Tabitha mulled it over while the dragon
stared at her. When she crouched down and traced a shape in the wet sand the
creature craned its neck and peered over to see. It was the lotus symbol from
the console, with the mystery mark inside it that looked like a fallen seven.
Maybe that was the key to communicating with it.

‘Seven?’ Tabitha
tried, pointing at the glyph in the sand. The dragon watched her with interest.
‘Seven?’ she tried again, pointing to the symbol nice and clearly. ‘Seven,
fly!’ she called out. ‘You’re Seven, this is you!’ no reaction. The dragon just
looked at her, looked at the sand, and lay down again. Tabitha sighed and
walked over to it, and put her black hand on its grey snout. Except for the
colour difference it was practically the same rough skin.

‘Please. I need you
to fly,’ she said. But the dragon made no response. It simply stared with
luminous eyes; circles of light that could just as easily have been cameras as
windows to a soul. The waves washed against the white sand beside them in an
endless tumbling whisper.

‘Why did you
feel happy, when we were flying before?’ Tabitha asked it quietly, stroking its
warm snout with a rasping sound. ‘And how come I could feel it too?’ she felt
its warm skin against her hands; maybe it was the electric current she could
feel. Whatever it was she liked the sensation. Her hands had long since lost
all feeling for everything else, but she could feel her touch against the
dragon’s rubbery metal skin. She felt its deep warmth, like a rock in the
summer sun. She put her face to its side while it slept, and it felt hot
against her cheek. It smelled like summer metal; like oven-hot cars parked in
the sunshine. Huge thick scales interlocked all down its body like stone paving
slabs. She felt its breath rise and fall. Heard it breathing, big and deep. But
nothing she did could bring her closer to it. There was more to the creature
than just idleness and aggression; she was sure of it. It wasn’t just a weapon
of war. There were feelings and personality in there just waiting to be opened
up… except she didn’t have a clue how to bring them out. Maybe more than
anything she needed to feel like she wasn’t alone in the world. Like someone or
something shared her feelings and knew what it was like to be a monster.
Sighing in defeat Tabitha slid down to the sand, lying down by the dragon’s
side. The sun disappeared then, as the dragon arched its wing around to give
her shade. Looking up in surprise, Tabitha grinned at the realisation. The
animal’s nature was coming out regardless of her, in its own good time. Laying
a hand against its side, Tabitha curled up and dozed off smiling in her living
metal cave.

Familiar skins hung limp from branches
that were claws. Spiders filled the dark with shrieks and human wails.
Tree-thick tentacles reached up for her from a deep abyss, dragging her
screaming into a gaping mouth of white flame. Waking up dizzy and dry-mouthed
from her nightmare, Tabitha crawled out groggily from the shade of the dragon’s
wing. Stretching and wandering down the beach, she felt an unearned hangover
sinking its claws into her. It was different though. It didn’t feel like blood
withdrawal, and it couldn’t be the aftermath of booze; it could only be
dehydration. The hot bright beach was a stinging daze, surreal when she thought
back to all the rain and tarmac where she’d grown up. A bit of rain would be
nice.

After a few good
gulps from the cold pool, Tabitha stretched her back and looked around the
clearing. A bright beetle on a bush popped its shell open and flew by. Birds
whooped and called in the thick forest, hidden by a million leaves glowing
emerald green in the sunshine. Tabitha looked around lethargically, inspecting
her pink sunburn.

‘It’s too hot,’
she grumbled, almost a whisper, as if she didn’t want to offend the island.

Tabitha dived down into the sea with a
muffled warping rush. The white sand of the sea bed stretched off into a
blue-green eternity. The water’s surface rippled and shifted like a dancing
mirror a few feet above, glowing white in the streaming sunlight. Kicking her
black feet, Tabitha swam down to the bottom and ran the lazy sand through her
fingers. She’d expected to see fish around; there was nothing. Maybe too many
nature documentaries had made all that wildlife seem a little too close and
immediate. After all, it took months to film all those animal shots; she
couldn’t just expect to see teeming life all around her. Something tapped
against her leg then, something rough. Tabitha freaked out and shot back for
the surface, kicking out to get away. She swam for the shallows and tumbled
back onto her bum, chest-deep in the sea. There it was again, whatever it was,
bumping against her leg. Tabitha looked down and saw a wide grey shape in the
clear water. Another drifted in beside it, vague under the rippling surface. A
stingray poked its snout out from the water, flapping gently against her hands.

‘Hi,’ Tabitha
said uncertainly. She seemed to be holding the ray from beneath. Its dark eyes
peered out from two bumps on its flat head; a friendly grey
fishpuddle
that rippled and flapped against her.

‘Look at you,’
she said, smiling, stroking her hand gently along its back. It was almost like
a dog. The second ray
splished
up at the surface,
investigating. Tabitha tried her best to split her strokes evenly between them.

‘You’re just a
pair of little attention seekers, aren’t you?’ she said happily, leading them
out into deeper water. Tabitha put her head back under and swam down to the
sand a few feet below. The rays swept around her, flapping their sides in slow motion;
angelic splats in the clear blue. Tabitha swam back up and gasped for air at
the surface, and wished that she had some diving gear to stay down longer. Not
that it mattered that much; her new friends promptly came back to her at the
surface. She gently fended off a ray’s advances as it bumped against her face,
and gave it a soft kiss on the snout. It only seemed to want more though, and
the other ray pushed in for attention too. For the first time in a long time,
Tabitha laughed.

She felt in a
better mood as she dried out on the beach, wiggling her black toes against the
white sand. Her damp hair dried stiff from the salt water; tickly blood-red
curls draped down beside her neck. She flicked her claws out and combed it
through. Strange how much more contented she felt now; she was amazed at what a
little animal interaction could do to lift her spirits. At least she had some
friends here now. She smiled at the thought. A curiosity grew in her though, as
she got to her feet and stretched on her tip-toes. An urge to know more about
the dragon, still basking on the sand. She watched it resting. Had the thing
gotten darker? She could’ve sworn it used to be a paler grey than that. If she
could find out more about her ship and what it was, maybe it could tell her
more about what she was becoming. She wasn’t strictly human any more, she knew
that much. She still looked like one, but there was no getting around her hands
and feet. Or her heart. Maybe she was something else now; a new species. If she
was feeding on sunlight then she had more in common with the dragon now than
she did with other people. She clung to the idea of her ship as another
castout
, to fend off the loneliness. And it’d probably gone
rogue itself now, since she’d kind of taken ownership of it. It was the one
thing in the world that wasn’t trying to hunt her down and kill her. Well not
any more, anyway.

Sinking down
into the cockpit, Tabitha’s rummage for truths did little to enlighten her. The
strange bony console remained a mystery, solid and unmoving like a marble
ribcage. There weren’t any metal panels in here that she could remove and look
underneath; more like rubbery scales that she didn’t want to pull on in case it
hurt. Studying it from the outside there weren’t any engine parts that she
could get to, wandering around the dragon’s sides as it watched her. No pipes
or components in sight. Its jets were just rows of scales that could tilt open,
like vents or gills. Everything was organic, and all of it connected like a
living thing. What about the cockpit though? Something had to have built this,
she told herself. Built a living thing around a ship, or engineered some
bizarre hybrid. It was strange, though hardly shocking. She’d seen plenty of
bizarre things already. But this ship was a masterpiece. And, considering the
seat and the controls, it was designed to be flown by something like a human.
She thought back to the dark figure she’d seen with the Ghosts, out on the
field beyond the castle. The watcher during their war.

Fumbling around
the cockpit, Tabitha discovered two containers concealed under the seat. She
found a strange water dispenser tucked behind the chair in the back wall, and
slurped at the cool filtered flow gratefully; it felt like it was coming from
some huge tank or sac in the ship’s body. There was a handle down there by the
seat too, which she guessed from the bright warning symbol was possibly a
control for an ejector seat. She thought better of trying it to find out, and
turned her attentions back on her new finds. The containers were black and
ridged, and made a strange squelching beep when she pushed at them with her
fingers. Both containers slid out from the base of the seat then, and Tabitha’s
face lit up with a smile. She had some new toys.

The dragon kept
a sleepy white eye on Tabitha as she carted the two boxes out onto the beach,
and spread their contents out on the sand.

‘You’re so
lazy,’ she said, turning to the dragon. ‘Is that all you things do, when you’re
not flying around blowing everything up? You just snooze on beaches?’ the
dragon closed its eye and breathed deep by way of response, and went back to
sleep.

‘Fine,’ she
sighed, turning back to her new toys on the white sand. ‘Ooh, it feels like
Christmas!’ Tabitha rubbed her hands together with excitement, adding a sharp
grinding sound to the birdsong and the tumbling waves. The first box held a
folded slab of scaly fabric, probably padding. Tabitha set it aside in favour
of more exciting prospects underneath. She took out something sleek and scaled,
shaped like a fish without a tail. Closer inspection caused the top to peel
back into a spout, and she sniffed at the contents. No smell. She poured it
into her hand; it looked like water. She looked back at the dragon; looked
around the beach while she thought about it. Daring herself, she took a sip and
waited for something to happen. It didn’t have a taste. She waited a bit longer
for something to happen to her;
tutting
a tune as she
looked around at the beach. Just water then.