400 Billion Stars Omnibus by Paul Mcauley & Paul J. McAuley

Author:Paul Mcauley & Paul J. McAuley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

24. The Ambush

The last night of Cerberus also shone for a moment on the stolen overlander, falling through its windscreen and gleaming in Miguel’s unsleeping eyes like the crystalline essence of his insomnia. Mari, or what had been Mari, was a shadow against the moonlight. She was hunched over the console at the front of the overlander’s cramped cabin, probably communing with the real blue brother in the city, through the compsim. Miguel shivered. Then, as he so often did these nights he got up from the seat where he had been trying to get some sleep and climbed through the hatch into cold black air.

It was bad enough being cooped up with the woman by day; at night it was intolerable. Most of the time she sat still and silent, scarcely seeming to breathe, eyes dully focused on infinity. That was bad. Worse was when she was suddenly raised into activity, to eat or to go outside and relieve herself, or to fieldstrip and reassemble the cryostat which held the stolen aborigine eggs in suspended animation, or start up the overlander and drive it to another hiding place - Miguel had lost count of the number of times that had happened, although their random path never took them very far from Port of Plenty’s perimeter - or to patiently scan the surrounding area through one or another of the over-lander’s devices. But patient was the wrong word, for it implied volition. Not a spark of her personality was left. She was no more than the vessel of the blue brother’s implacable will.

Miguel jumped to the ground and walked to the edge of the drop. This was one of the better hiding places, the top of a hill which crested above the forest like a breaking wave. The overlander was parked among tall trees which grew right to the edge of the cliff. The combination of fitful moonlight and its camouflage circuits made it invisible after only a few steps.

Miguel sat on cold stone and shook out his thermoblanket, drew it around himself like a cape. There was frost in the air. Slowly but perceptibly, the burnished face of the large moon sank into the clouds at the horizon. Shadow swallowed the silvery vista of the forest spread beyond the cliff. Not for the first time, Miguel thought about throwing himself off the edge . . . but it would not necessarily be the end. He had nightmares about the corpse of the blue brother’s other slave, the one killed in the Source Cave, plodding after the overlander’s erratic path, flesh in tatters about its bones. If he killed himself he might awake to find himself trapped in the cold flesh of his own dead body. Anything was possible.

He must have dozed, for he awoke with his hand around the compsim and the soundless voice of the blue brother reverberating in his head.

- It is past midnight, Miguel. You must return to the vehicle.

“I’m sick of the vehicle, and of that woman of yours.

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