Ocean in the Sea Page 26

  “No!” shouted Lewis. “You might hit the boom controls or the fuel tank.”

  She lowered the weapon. “What do we do?”

  Live, thought Lewis. Maybe if his mind were fresher he’d have a plan, but he was running on empty. A major earthquake? A freak meteor shower? Anything big like that would kill them too. “How about a swarm of… something that eats insects? Birds or bats maybe?”

  “Tanandor controls these animals. Don’t give him more to work with.”

  “Good point. Alright, what are the odds an aircraft loaded with DDT is going to fly over us and spray the area?” He pushed.

  Jenny looked up, but couldn’t hear a plane. “Lewis, the plane would have to be in the air already. You’d be reaching back through time. I doubt the Attistar anticipates your wishes like that.”

  Lewis frowned. “Yeah…” She was probably right. When he’d asked for a disguise artist, he’d got Bobo the clown. He needed to work with what was available. “Bummer.”

  The insects piling around the sides of the tractor reached the crew cab and scrabbled toward the boom. If they could heat the arm of the crane without burning through the metal, it might fry the little buggers and burn them off. Jenny was right. He needed a flame thrower, but that wasn’t going to miraculously appear out of nowhere. Or was it? The woman who’d sent him here could obviously teleport large objects. What if he put something in her path? Say, maybe a truck full of flaming tar, or a semi tanker loaded with gasoline? Gah! That would kill them. “What’s her name again?”

  “Who?”

  “The black chick that sent all this shit here.”

  “Perillia.”

  “Well what if she sends something helpful to us?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” he snapped. “Something that’ll kill these bugs and not us.”

  “I’ve got an idea.” Sending a radio signal to the sat-radio in her pack, Jenny connected with Randuu. “Can you talk with Perillia?”

  “Yes,” transmitted Randuu.

  “Have her find a tanker full of pesticide and drop it into her junkyard.”

  “She’s busy,” came the crackled response.

  “Busy doing what!? We’re getting swarmed!”

  “I’m not stupid, Jenny. Perillia is busy helping you. Now stop and think. If Perillia sent pesticide it would kill the current swarm, and they’re all crawling insects. Tanandor will be forced to summon something faster that can reach you, probably hornets and bees. Is that what you want?”

  “Hell NO!”

  “I didn’t think so. It looks like Lewis still has a phosphorous grenade. Have him detonate it over the base of the boom. It must be in the air. The goal is to spray the white phosphorous over the metal and keep most of the insects from coming up to you.”

  “Will that melt the boom?”

  “Not quickly. You should have time.”

  “Time for what?”

  Randuu sighed impatiently. “Hurry, Jenny.”

  Returning her eyes to the boom, Jenny saw it was already too late. A few hundred of the bugs were already halfway up. Lewis sighted his rifle, but they both knew it wouldn’t do much good. He was desperate. So was she. “Lewis, Randuu wants you to throw a thermal grenade toward the base of the boom. Make sure it detonates in the air.”

  Lowering the rifle, Lewis pulled the grenade from his vest. “You’re sure? It could weaken the steel.”

  “Perillia is going to help us. We’ve got nothing else, and those bugs are coming.”

  Pulling the pin, he let the spoon fly. “What are the odds this will detonate right over the bottom of the boom?” He pushed and threw. The white cylinder sailed up and curved down in a perfect toss. Ten feet above the bottom, it exploded in a blinding white flash of phosphorous, dusting the area below it and curling up in a smoky white cloud. Flaming insects dropped in a rain of sparks. Covered with phosphorous, the lower lattice remained hot and burning, an effective barrier, at least for a while. But a shitload of the bugs had already past that point. They were still coming, and at the top of the boom, there was nowhere Lewis or Jenny could go. As the first of the swarm hit them, they started kicking.

  It didn’t help much. Tarantulas, black widow spiders, brown recluse, hobo spiders, scorpions, fire ants, harvester ants, and blister beetles. Every toxic insect the New Mexico desert had to offer, and a few no one knew about. Like a mindless lethal army marching over the metal lattice from every angle, they came on with single-minded intent.

  Jenny screamed, kicking and swiping at the spiders. Lewis cursed, grabbing tarantulas from his legs, throwing them off, crushing their bodies in his fists. He felt them squirm in his hands, biting and stinging his fingers. All the while, the fire ants crawled over their arms and boots, seeking any exposed area or a way into their clothing.

  Jenny hammered with her right arm and clung to the lattice with her left. Pain shot through her legs above the tops of her boots where several scorpions pumped venom through the canvas fiber of her trousers and into her flesh. A tarantula made it to her face and bit deeply into her right cheek. Crying, she slapped it off and beat the flat of her hand against her lower torso, dislodging dozens of fire ants. Her fist came back covered with them, their mandibles buried in her skin.

  Dizzy from the toxins, her vision began to blur and double. “Oh God, NO!” she managed to rasp. Muttering through swelling lips, she gripped the lattice harder with her right arm.

  “Jenny?” called Lewis. “JENNY!”

  Slipping out of consciousness, she dropped from the side.

  Animal Domination

  The black van crashed through the rear fence of a small private airport just outside of Portland. Squealing through the corrugated metal buildings, it skid to a stop outside a bright orange hanger. When the driver’s door burst open, an angry black woman in green Army fatigues jumped out. Remembering the sat-phone, Perillia reached back inside and snatched the huge radio, slinging it over her shoulder where it dangled like a brick.

  Stomping across the tarmac with a scowl of impatience, she scanned the organized row of Condor-class jet helicopters and rotated her jaw in consideration. Spotting an aircraft that would do the job, she still needed a pilot. Any warm body would do.

  The sign on the front of the nearest hanger read, “Mount Hood Charter Flights.” A single light was on inside. This early in the morning, she’d take what she could get. Security would be here soon, and they’d sure as shit have issues with someone crashing their gate, let alone a colored girl busting onto an elite white’s-only private airfield. Eyeing one of the security cameras, she threw up her middle finger and tromped to the hanger’s side-access door.

  A look through the window revealed a crotchety old cracker in a one-piece blue work uniform. Perillia banged on the glass. The old man shook his shaggy salt and pepper hair, and stroked his grizzled grey beard, trying to evoke some semblance of intelligence, or imply its existence, which Perillia firmly doubted. The name “Tony” was stitched in big blocky white letters across his chest. Probably the only way he remembered it.

  Opening the door a crack, Tony yelled at her in an irritated voice. “We’re closed. And we ain’t hiring.” With a shrug, he added. “We don’t hire niggers anyhow.”

  “I ain’t lookin fer work,” Perillia snapped. “I’m lookin for a pilot.”

  “Shit, lady, you think they’d be around this time of the morning?” He rolled his eyes and muttered something that sounded a lot like “dumb niggers.”

  Clenching her jaw, Perillia raised the sat-phone and spoke in Paradisian. “You got a fix on me, Randuu? There’s warm meat zero plus two meters east of me. That good enough for Xanatos?”

  Tony raised his eyebrows at the strange language and tried to pull the door closed. Perillia blocked it with her boot. “No you don’t,” she told him, “you dumbass mouth-breather.

  “Xan is trying,” replied Randuu. “I’ve put your location on his screen, but it won’t be easy at this distance. Could
take a minute. Try to keep the target stationary while the connection is established.”

  “Whatever.”

  “HEY!” protested Tony, still trying to close the door as if he could crush her steel-toed boot out of existence. “What the Hell’s wrong with you, crazy bitch!”

  Shouldering the door Perillia pushed her way in. “Ever have a shock baton shoved up your ass?” she snarled.

  Tony backed away. His eyes shown with the kind of fear someone might display when encountering unexpected insanity from an expected source. His head immediately filled with vague remembrances of the ‘Equal but Separate’ rioters going apeshit down south, and the National Guard putting them down in a massacre of gunfire. Fearing this woman might be one of them ‘white-hatin black-power’ folk, Tony held up his hands and waved his palms. “Hold on, Lady. I ain’t got no truck with you people.”

  Perillia grabbed his shoulder and tightened her grip. Tony, she reminded herself, was filler – an Extant. Extraneous flotsam like most simulants, Tony’s existence provided background for this simulation’s real story. Perillia’s host had been the same. Until Latrisha Bronson’s death, she’d been filler too – just another dot on some big-ass statistical curve. Then she’d died and Perillia had jumped into her reanimated corpse. What they shared was the memory of her death, and where they converged was the need for justice. No BODY, No CRIME. That’s what the Klansmen had joked when they were raping Latrisha.

  “I ain’t got no truck with you neither, old man, but like it or not, your vector’s goin inna new direction t’day. Hope you like bein a meat puppet.”

  Tony struggled some more, trying to get away. “Whatever’s got into you, I don’t want none of it.”

  “Oh,” she cackled. “It ain’t whats got inta me, It’s what’s gonna get inta you.”

  “Whuu…?” Tony’s eyes suddenly shot wide. “Unh!” His lips twisted and his arms shook. Opening his mouth as if to vomit, he gagged and his fingers curled into claws.

  Perillia released him and crossed her arms smugly, waiting.

  Tossing his head back, Tony screamed like an eagle shitting an avocado pit. His conscious mind squeezed down, compressing into a spark that puffed out like a blown candle, leaving scarcely a trace. After a second, he calmed and took a deep breath, then looked down at himself and back up at Perillia.

  “This is the best you could get for me?” Xanatos complained from Tony's mouth. “An old janitor named… Tony? Tony!?”

  Turning, Perillia pointed curtly to the helicopters. “You fly them?”

  “Fortunately, yes, but they’ll require access codes. And I can’t scan host memories when I’m in a puppet,” he reminded her.

  “Wouldn’t help no-how,” snarled Perillia. “That dumbass cracker you in barely know how to inhale.” She shoved the sat-phone into his hands. “Ask Randuu for the codes. MOVE, Xan! Jenny’s in deep shit. She need you now!”

  “Always a rush,” he grumbled. “Never mind it’s a miracle I managed a connection from the other side of the fricking planet.”

  Pushing Tony’s aged body to a run, Xanatos raised the phone to his ear. By the time he reached the aircraft, Randuu had the codes from the FBI flight database. Xanatos took the pilot seat and entered the ciphers. Flipping switches and igniting the engines, he opened the secondary throttle to heat them rapidly. The electrical systems were rudimentary, but computerized enough for Randuu to interface with. Following her instructions, he activated the satellite transceiver system and engaged the remote piloting controls. Sixteen hundred miles away, Randuu took over and lifted off.

  “Get to the rear,” Randuu said over the helmet radio. “There’s an emergency ladder by the door. Be ready to drop it.”

  Finding the ladder coiled in a bag, Xanatos felt the copter rise and looked out the passenger observation window. Down on the tarmac, Perillia raised her arms. Behind her, the lights of two security cars grew closer, speeding in their direction. She hadn’t noticed. He pointed to warn her, but Perillia activated her interface and the world around Xanatos shifted.

  Distant stars replaced the bright lights of the airfield. The silhouette of a mountainous horizon replaced the hangers and tower. And where the tarmac had stretched out below there was now a shadow junkyard lit only by the glowing smoke of two chemical fires.

  Hovering in the darkness, Xanatos shook his head to clear it and punched the door switch, remembering to grab a restraining strap as it opened. He hated being ported. Kicking the ladder out, he called to Randuu over the microphone. “Perillia’s got trouble. Cops were coming.”

  “It’s nothing she can’t handle. Watch for Jenny. Look for a crane.”

  “I see it. Get use closer.” Xanatos frowned. “Ah crap.”

  Jenny dangled by one arm over a seething carpet of stinging insects and a frenzied collection of coyotes. Her body wasn’t moving, just hanging there, locked in place and covered with bugs. The other fellow, Tanandor’s newest messenger, beat wildly against his body. Crushed insects dropped off of him like crumbs from a piece of burnt toast. Xanatos felt his gut curdle in sympathy. “Looks like the picnic from Hell, Ran. Key the loudspeaker, will you?”

  On the top of the crane, the chopping ‘whup-whup-whup’ of rotor blades cut the air, signaled Lewis to the helicopter’s arrival. Clawing at another scorpion, Lewis crushed it in his fist, gritting his teeth against the pain. He was fading fast. Part of him hoped to God the helicopter was a friendly. Another part expected God was laughing his ass off, if he existed at all. Both parts of him hated each other.

  Dropping himself flat over the boom Lewis reached for Jenny and clenched her right wrist tight. To his surprise, it felt like rubber-coated metal bar. A prosthetic, he realized. Her eyes were closed, but her arm held regardless. “WAKE UP!” When she didn’t stir he figured she was in anaphylactic shock. She was nearly covered with insects, mostly fire ants. “HELP!” he shouted.

  A voice boomed from the helicopter. “GRAB THE LADDER.”

  Lewis looked back. An old man in a blue janitor’s uniform stood in the doorway. Dangling beneath him hung a wire ladder. Lewis’s vision blurred. As the copter swept closer, he reached out and caught hold, twisting his arm through the rung and around the cable. What were the odds, he thought, that Jenny’s hand would open? Moving his free arm around her waist, he pushed, and with a static crackle of electricity, the hand shorted and released. They both fell away from the crane.

  The cable bit viciously into Lewis’s bicep as Jenny’s weight tugged at him. The ground spun far below as they copter moved away. He should be terrified at the height, but it meant nothing. At least the wind tearing at them pulled some of the bugs off, but he couldn’t hold both of them forever. He could feel her slipping, just like his mind was slipping. Should have taken the LythoCAP when he’d had the chance. Should have changed the odds of one of the vehicles running and got out of dodge instead of climbing the crane. Out of a million options, facing the bugs seemed the dumbest possible decision. He swallowed through his swollen throat and lips. His body felt like he’d rolled through Tobasco-covered cactus field.

  As his mind slipped from him, he had time for one last change of fate before he dropped Jenny. What were the odds he’d keep holding onto her even after he passed out? It was asking the Attistar to change his mind for him – again. But he’d already broken that rule, maybe more than once. He pushed.

  Xinghuazhen

  Senjiita awoke to the sound of crying and kept still, listening to the voices around him. The language was not English, and entirely unfamiliar. That was not unusual. Accessing his memory stream, he felt the brush of his host’s mentality buried in its recent perception of death and pushed his thoughts into the reanimated tissue.

  His name was Zhang Lin. He was seventy three years old and spoke Mandarin and Japanese. The land he lived in was Xinghuazhen, a poor farming village in the Shanxi Province under the rule of the Matsuka Bakufu – a Shogunate established by the Japanese after their invasion and dominion of Asi
a. All of it.

  Adapting to the host language, Senjiita listened to the voices around him. A lot of it involved sobbing and wailing and general sorrow at his passing. Much of it was drama, he suspected. Sincere, but, almost like a contest, his wife, daughters, and female cousins each took turns bawling on about how they could not live without him and how horrible their lives would now become.

  “What will we do? Our family will starve!”

  Bullshit, thought Senjiita. The family would be fine as long as there was rice in the fields and the Shogun was satisfied.

  “They will give our land to the Chen.”

  Again, this was highly unlikely. The Chen family was barely large enough to farm the land they’d been given. His sons would take responsibility for the family plots.

  “I will have to sell myself to the soldiers.”

  This, from his cousin Jia. As if a Japanese soldier would want to screw a forty year old whore when they had their choice of women and could get away with raping whomever they chose.

  Now how was he going to get back to New Mexico? The host’s memories contained little in terms of travel. Zhang Lin had spent his entire life within fifty miles of Xinghuazhen. The roads were dotted with check points, and the Japanese required papers at each one. If unsatisfied, the best one could hope for was to be sent back. Beatings were common, as was imprisonment and torture. The railroads were watched and guarded, and the closest was forty miles from here. Air travel was restricted to the upper elite and members of the ruling party. Even access to telephones was restricted. The only telephones in town were owned by the Bakufu daimyo. Chinese could not use them. Mail was the only form of communication permitted to the peasants, and it was risky to send a letter. They were read and investigated if they contained anything questionable.