The Cyber Chronicles Book III - The Core (23 page)

The sun slug
left three hours later, at which time Sabre rose and woke Tassin.
They drank and ate again, and, since his bio status was now
forty-nine per cent, he decided it was time to search for the
sword. At the door, the scanners showed no trendils close by,
although the tunnels limited their effective range. It was logical
to assume the sword would end up where they had arrived, so he
headed back in that direction, hoping the trendils had not found
it. They passed the place where the dead trendil had lain, the soft
soil muffling their footsteps. Sabre moved with cat-like stealth,
but Tassin had no such ability. After an hour of fruitless
searching and two close encounters with passing trendils, Sabre
rested against the wall, Tassin close beside him.

"This isn't
working," he muttered. "The sword's gone."

"So what do we
do now?"

"Well, if I
was a skifgar, and I found a strange thing like a sword lying
around inside the hive, I'd take it to a higher authority."

She shivered.
"That means going further into the hive."

"Yeah. You can
stay in the garden cave. You'll be safer there."

"No!"

Sabre smiled.
He had predicted that reply, and did not waste his breath arguing
with her. "Okay, then let's see if we can find this place's nerve
centre."

Sabre led the
way to a junction, passing under a busy sun slug, and he wondered
how large the hive was. If it was as big as he suspected, it could
take days to locate the seat of authority. The fastest way to find
it would be to allow himself to be captured, but with Tassin in tow
that was not an option.

The tunnel
widened, side tunnels joining it periodically, which indicated that
they were heading in the right direction, but the increased traffic
slowed them. As the tunnel grew wider, however, it developed ridges
for strength, which afforded a little cover. At one stop, Sabre
picked at the thick layer of hard, tacky resin-like substance that
covered the wall. According to the cyber, it was a form of dried
mucus, and he refrained from mentioning this to Tassin.

When they
reached an intersection with a main thoroughfare, Sabre hid behind
a rib and studied the steady stream of workers that marched along
it. Most were in pairs, some in groups of four or six, and only a
few alone. A warrior, identical to the one they had encountered in
the Death Zone, passed by, and Sabre suspected that trendils, like
Purr, were too intelligent for the Core to mutate. The warrior's
blade arms were coiled close to its chest, and workers gave it a
wide berth, lowering their heads as it passed. There was no way
Sabre and Tassin could cross the thoroughfare without being
spotted, and he looked around for a side tunnel. Tassin gasped, and
he whipped around to clamp a hand over her mouth, following her
gaze.

Two naked,
dirty, obese men walked along the thoroughfare, followed by a pair
of workers. They stared ahead with a blank-eyed, idiot gaze,
drooling a little from slack lips. Their state puzzled Sabre, then
realisation dawned and bile stung the back of his throat. He became
aware of Tassin trying to pry his hand off her mouth and released
her. Taking her arm, he led her back to a dim side tunnel and
turned to her, wincing at the excitement in her eyes.

"There are
people here!" she whispered.

"Those aren't
people, they're cattle."

"But... What
do you mean?"

Sabre tugged
her along the tunnel to another garden cave, almost identical to
the first one, with a pool at the far end. Tassin joined him beside
the water, looking worried.

"What do you
mean, 'they're cattle'?"

Sabre picked a
grey mushroom and tried to think of a way of telling her gently,
but found none. "The skifgar eat them."

She stared at
him, covered her mouth and looked sick, then gulped. "How do you
know that?"

Sabre forced
himself to eat the fungus despite his queasy stomach. "Just by
looking at them. If they were slaves they'd be fit, and those men
were idiots. I guess some of the settlers were captured, and that's
what happened to them. I thought it odd that skifgar grow and
harvest fungi, since they're carnivorous. Now I know why."

"To feed the
people."

"Yeah."

"But why are
they idiots?"

Sabre picked
another mushroom and brushed dirt from it. "Man's greatest asset is
his brain. Take that away, and he's no better than any other
animal."

"How can they
do that to people?"

He shrugged.
"They might have bred them that way, or deprived them of
stimulation as children."

"I mean how
can they do that to people? We're not cattle!"

"If there was
such a thing as a talking cow, it would ask the same question." He
sighed. "They're aliens. They don't care about people. To them,
we're just another kind of animal." He paused, thinking. "What I'd
like to know is how they became the main, if not the only food
source."

"You don't
know that."

"Skifgar don't
strike me as farmers. They're hunters, or they were. They wouldn't
be farming people unless they had to."

"So what are
we going to do about it?"

"Do about it?"
His brows shot up.

"We have to
help them."

"No." He
plucked another fungus. "We're going to find the sword and get back
to Arlin." He raised a hand when she opened her mouth. "We can't
help them. They're mindless. They'd die without care. Do you want
to stay here and look after them? Besides, I can't defeat a hive of
skifgars."

Tassin
frowned, but after a few minutes of contemplation, she picked a
fungus. They rested for a four hours and ate again before they
left. Sabre headed down the tunnel, which ran parallel to the
thoroughfare and towards the hive centre, he hoped. They passed two
more garden caves, and the slime's light grew dimmer. Evidently the
tunnel was not used, which suited Sabre. When it became too dark to
see, the cyber provided infrared and Tassin clung to his hand.

In places, the
tunnel's roof sagged, and water dripped from it. In others, the
resin had given way and earth slides partially blocked it. No
others joined it, and he hoped it was not a dead end. When he
reached the end, a faint yellow glow shone through a thick layer of
resin, and the scanners showed teeming human life forms on the
other side of it. Sabre tore a hole in it and peered through.

The disused
tunnel's former entrance afforded a panoramic view of a vast,
brightly lighted cavern. Hundreds of fat, mindless people were
occupied with basic pursuits such as sleeping, eating, drinking,
defecating and rutting. Some sat and stared at the walls, others
rocked and grunted, or scratched in a leisurely, ape-like manner.
The mature females were in various stages of pregnancy, most
nursing as well, some with several children around them.

Sabre looked
for signs of normality amongst the children and found none. They
appeared to be as mindless as their parents. Skifgar workers handed
out fungus from their panniers, others scraped up excrement and
dumped it in a hole at one end of the chamber. Sabre turned away,
pondering. There was no way through the chamber without being
spotted, so they would have to backtrack and find another tunnel.
Tassin stepped towards the hole, and he caught her arm.

"You don't
want to see that."

"I do."

"You won't
like it."

"I want to
see!"

Sabre released
her, and she peered through the hole, then turned away, scowling.
"It's horrible."

"Yeah. Come
on, we have to find another tunnel."

Sabre returned
to the garden cave to eat and rest, and pondered the situation
while Tassin slept. The chance of finding the seat of trendil
authority by blundering around in the tunnels was slim to none. He
considered leaving the Queen asleep and going on alone, but Tassin
would not stay here. He needed a guide, and wondered if trendils
would be susceptible to the cyber. With a sigh, he settled down and
to sleep.

The cyber's
warning woke Sabre, and he sat up, glancing around. The scanners
showed two trendils approaching along the tunnel outside, and a few
moments later a pair of workers entered. Waking Tassin, he raised a
finger to his lips. She glared at the trendils.

"I'm going to
capture one," he whispered.

"No!" She
gripped his arm, her eyes wide. "It's too dangerous. I forbid
it!"

He raised a
brow. "You forbid it?"

"Yes." She
frowned. "You mustn't... Can't... Don't leave me alone!"

"Relax. We
need a guide or we'll be rattling around this place until we're
caught."

"They might
kill you!"

He shook his
head. "They're only workers."

"Even
so..."

"You just stay
here. Nothing's going to happen to me." He tried to pry her fingers
off his arm.

"But what if
you're hurt, or captured?"

"What if the
roof falls in? What if the sun goes out?" He sighed. "I'm going to
go down there and capture one, kill the other, that's it, no 'what
ifs'. Now let go."

Tassin
released him, her mulish, sulky expression telling him she expected
to be proven right.

One trendil
was near the pool, the other on the far side of the cavern. Sabre
moved across it, his senses alert. The aliens conversed in hisses,
and the garbled translation tickled his brain. They discussed the
fungi's growth and health.

Sabre stopped,
allowing the cyber to absorb more of the strange language and
analyse it. When it was able to translate ninety per cent of the
conversation, he crept towards his target again. Secure in the
hive's safety, the beast was clearly unaware of him. Sabre crept up
behind his prey and sprang onto its back. The worker hissed and
raised its hand-arms, but Sabre gripped its neck and twisted,
snapping it.

The second
worker looked up at the sound of its comrade's collapse, spotted
Sabre and galloped for the door. It moved like a centaur, the
crushed fungi giving off a musky reek. Sabre bounded after it, the
springy fungus aiding him. The alien gave a high-pitched hiss when
he sprang onto its back, sending it sprawling. The trendil
struggled to rise, but Sabre sat on its neck. Its hand-arms clawed
him, and he grabbed them and held them away, its weakness
surprising him. The cyber translated the beast's hisses, whispering
the words in Sabre's brain.

"Help! Help
me! Do not hurt me, man-thing!"

Sabre had not
expected the alien to have a sense of self, and thought it odd that
it did not try to bite him. Now he had a new problem, for while it
was one thing to understand the strange language, it was quite
another to speak it.

The cyber
translated what he wanted to say into a single rising hiss.
Pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth, he tried to imitate
the sound. It came out wrong, but the worker fell silent, staring
at him. He had meant to say 'be quiet', but in fact had said 'be
happy'. The effect was the same, however, and he twisted his tongue
to speak the next, far more difficult words.

"Don't
struggle and I won't hurt you." The cyber re-translated his hiss as
'don't wriggle I and you won't kill’.

The meaning
was still there, and Sabre was quite pleased with his effort. The
skifgar hissed, "You're not a wooden-head?"

Sabre frowned.
"What's a wooden-head?" The hiss came out as 'wood-brain be?'.

The skifgar
said, "I won't wriggle. Will you let me rise?"

Sabre released
it, and it towered over him before it lowered its head. It watched
him with red eyes, its hand arms folded. For all its fearsome
appearance, it showed no inclination to fight. He wondered how
clever it was, and whether it was trying to lull him into a false
sense of security. It had recovered its aplomb as soon as it learnt
he was not a wooden-head, but it was an alien, and therefore
thought differently. Perhaps his ability to speak its language was
sufficient to reassure it.

Sabre tried a
more difficult sentence. "I'm looking for a metal object."

The words came
out jumbled, some slightly different, and the trendil cocked its
head. Sabre tried again, this time a little more intelligibly.

The worker
bobbed. "I Garchish."

Sabre
introduced himself and repeated his question.

Garchish said,
"Must ask kin-mother-queen."

"You don't
know?"

"Must ask
kin-mother-queen. I know."

Sabre frowned.
"Then why don't you tell me?"

"Must ask
kin-mother-queen."

"Does she have
it?"

The trendil
said, "You warrior. Must ask kin-mother-queen."

Sabre sighed.
Evidently trendils had strict rules the worker could not break, but
he did not relish the idea of asking kin-mother-queen. It could be
a trap. Garchish waited, unmoving.

Sabre said,
"I'm not a warrior. You tell me." He had to repeat it twice before
he got it right.

Garchish
glanced at his dead comrade. "You kill kin-brother-worker, you
warrior. Kin-sister-warrior won't tell you, for you not kin. Only
kin-mother-queen might tell you."

"Or eat
me."

"You full of
bones. If she wants, she makes you a wooden-head first."

Sabre shivered
at the matter-of-fact words. "What's a wooden-head?"

"Like you, but
no brains. When born, put seed in hole-in-side-of-head. Seed grow,
eat brain, only wood left."

Sabre
swallowed stinging bile. He had encountered worse when the cyber
had controlled him, though. Questions multiplied in his mind, but
they were too complex to ask. Trendil society seemed to be based on
status, and no matter what the race, all were treated accordingly.
Since killing the other worker had proven that Sabre was a warrior,
he now outranked Garchish. That was why the worker showed him
respect, but other warriors were his equal, and the
kin-mother-queen was his superior. Still, it seemed he would have
to ask the kin-mother-queen for the sword.