Arkad's World by James L. Cambias

Author:James L. Cambias [Cambias, James L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Action & Adventure, Space Opera, General
ISBN: 9781481483704
Google: EWbRtwEACAAJ
Amazon: 1481483706
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2019-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

“I’ll be honest: I thought we were going to find your corpse,” said Jacob when they finally stopped for a rest in a patch of woods several kilometers away from the dam.

“I was just pretending.”

“Clever of you. Now all we need to do is get that thing off your forehead.”

“Awiza—she’s dead, and so is her sister—said it would be eight or sixteen hours.”

“Yeah, but I bet that was more than eight hours ago. And I don’t want to depend on her telling you the truth.”

The four of them spent several minutes pulling on the plastic hemisphere glued to Arkad’s forehead. Jacob tried to slip the tip of his knife between the skin and the device, but had to stop when blood began to well up around the blade.

“Well,” said Jacob at last, “I guess we could cut it off, if you don’t mind having a gigantic hole in your forehead for a while. Call that our last resort. Any other ideas? Anybody?” He looked at Baichi and Ree.

“Can we drain it?” asked Ree.

“The liquid makes everything it touches catch fire,” said Arkad. “I used to have a little bottle of it.”

“The substance sounds like a form of active smart protein,” said Baichi. “It could change shape to catalyze the reaction depending on what compounds it comes in contact with.”

“Let me guess: Machine tech,” said Jacob.

She didn’t answer. Arkad noticed that Baichi seemed even more quiet and unreadable than ever before. He could almost believe that she really was a mechanical doll, not a human at all.

“It is becoming intensely annoying to me that every two-bit gang boss here can get imported magic tech but we still have to walk or hitchhike to get around,” said Jacob.

“What if we hold him under water?” asked Ree.

Jacob just looked at her.

“I don’t mean drown him. Turn him upside down and stick his head in the water, then cut the thing open.”

“That…could work,” said Jacob, nodding. “What do you think, Arkad?”

Arkad had tried dropping a little of the igniter fluid into water once. The water around the drop boiled furiously, but did not burn. “Okay,” he said.

They hiked through the woods a little longer until they found a stream. It was just a trickle of water through a series of muddy patches bounded by rocks, but they dug out a hollow big enough for Arkad’s head and let it fill up.

He lay on his back in the mud, with his head canted back into the hollow, so that cold water got into his ears and he had to keep his eyes closed. Jacob crouched over him with his hands on either side of Arkad’s head to hold him still, and gave his big folding knife to Baichi because she could move faster and with much greater precision than anyone else.

“Okay, everybody ready?” he asked. Arkad had to keep his eyes closed and couldn’t see Jacob’s face, but he could hear a nervous note in the man’s voice. His hands on Arkad’s head were steady, though.

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