The Marriage of the Living Dark

Gas ... Where the fuck had they got gas?

And then he was falling down a long deep hole, his head as weightless as a leaf blowing on the wind ...

Emily looked down at the corpses at the foot of the slope and shook her head, her voice trembling.

“The idiot The impatient bloody idiot”

The strangers were all dead. She had killed two of them herself, and Lin Chao had shot another, but Daniel had picked off four of them with successive shots. Even so, they’d come too late. Michael was dead. He lay face down in a pool of blood.

“Go help those two,” she said, gesturing urgently towards the two wounded men who knelt beside the cart. Then, forcing herself, feeling like she was in a dark and awful dream, she began to walk towards her fallen husband. She’d heard his bellow even as they’d come out of the trees, had seen him throw himself at the stranger, arms out like a diver. Michael hadn’t stood a chance. The gunshot had ripped into his chest from almost point blank range, and the way the body had jerked she knew it was bad. Emily slowed, the blood pounding in her temples. For a moment she almost stumbled.

“Mother?” Lin Chao’s arm was under her arm, holding her up. “Are you all right?”

“No, no I...”

She had to sit Chao helped her down, then squatted, facing her, his face filled with concern. She looked back at him a moment, a look of pure desolation in her face, then let her head fall forward, beginning to sob. I came too late. The stupid, stupid man! Why couldn’t he wait? For a moment nothing. Then she looked up. Daniel was crouching close by. He had been saying something to her.

“... bad,” he said.

“What?” she said, slurred, like a drunk.

“He’s hurt bad. We have to get him back at once. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Who?” she said, blinking. “Who’s hurt?”

“If s Michael,” Chao said, cutting in. “He’s still alive, mother. He’s still alive!”

The journey back across the mountains was the worst she’d known. She felt every bump, every painful little jolt From time to time she would have them slow, so that she could place her ear against his chest to check he was still breathing, then would make them hurry on, her haste to get back to camp balanced against a desire not to hurt him too much.

Michael’s chest was a mess. It was a miracle really that he was alive. But then she reminded herself of what he’d been like last time - after the bomb that had killed his best friend. Thirty years ago, that had been, in America. Back then he had survived against the odds. And so now. If only they could get him back in time.

When darkness fell they were still an hour from the camp and Emily began to fear the worst To come this far and fail would be dreadful, and yet it seemed they must fail, for Michael’s breathing grew laboured, and with each breath he groaned, as if he wanted to be gone from this world of pain and suffering. But she would not let him go.

“Hold on,” she murmured, walking beside the makeshift stretcher, her hand resting on his arm. “We’ll get there soon, my love, I promise you.” Ahead of them now was a small ravine, crossed by a narrow rope bridge. Beyond it the path sloped down again. Yet, as they climbed the steep path something rattled down the slope to meet them.

The explosion knocked the two stretcher bearers off their feet Emily too went down. The stretcher fell, tilting to the sideDaniel and Lin Chao had opened fire. As the things came down the slope at them, they picked them off. Emily rolled over, bringing her gun up to her shoulder, even as another of the spider-like things scuttled over the rocks towards her. She blew a hole in its pot-like belly.

For a moment there was nothing in the world but gunfire. Then stillness. A sudden, awful stillness. And then a groan.

Emily turned her head. The groan had come from one of the stretcher bearers who lay there, his body hunched into itself, like a caterpillar arching its back, his hands holding his ruined stomach. He had taken the worst of the blast By the look of it, shrapnel had embedded itself in his stomach. Emily took this in at a glance, then clambered up, looking for Michael. “Michael...?”

She saw him almost at once, lying face down on the ledge nearby. He was still. Ominously still. Even as she made to go to him, Lin Chao crouched down beside him, placing his hand to his stepfather’s neck to check for a pulse. Emily shivered. She knew, even before Chao turned and looked at her. Knew because, even before that moment, they had been using up their luck. But knowing was not knowing. She went across and knelt beside the body, her hands gently cradling his head, caressing the soft mantle of his hair. “You should have waited,” she said, whispering the words into the unhearing shell of his ear. “You should have known I’d come.”

The broken packet lay upon the floor of the hut where Masso had thrown it only the day before, a vivid orange glow thrown up into the shadowed room. Close by, stretched out upon his back, one hand frozen into a bloated claw, lay the guard, his bright yet sightless eyes staring at the ceiling. He too glowed, his flesh, where it jutted from the ragged cloth pulsing with a faint blood-pink light Pollen danced in the darkness of the cabin, glowing gently, each spore diseasedly alive.

Brownian motion.

The randomness of particles.

The clawed hand trembled then burst like a pod, spewing a cloud of glowing pollen into the shadows.

Sudden agitation, and then stability. The eternal pattern of nature.

And then silence. A long, inhuman silence.

DeVore threw the door open and stormed from the room. Behind him, his personal staff looked on, white-faced with fear.

He half-ran down the corridor, past the open lift and down the concrete steps that led to the morgue There, on a slab in the centre of the main dissecting room, lay one of his morphs - one of the new generation Neumann - dead. White-coated technicians, their faces masked, cowered against the far wall, their eyes frightened. DeVore looked to them then gestured for one of them to come to him. The man came, his legs almost failing him, until he stood before DeVore, his body half-bowed.

“What happened!” DeVore said, a strange twisted tone in the second word.

“W-we d-don’t know ...” the technician began.

DeVore reached out and lifted the man from his feet with one hand, then sank a knife deep into his heart “Wrong answer.”

He let the body fall, then looked to the others, showing them the knife.

“What... went... wrong!”

“If s diseased,” one of them offered; a young technician at the very end of the line. “The nervous system ...”

DeVore stared at him hawkishly. “What about the nervous system?”

His Chief Technician answered him. “If s rotted away.” Devore shook his head. “Impossible. It was fine this afternoon.” Then, more quietly. “So what caused it?”

The Chief Technician answered quietly. “Thaf s what we don’t yet know. We need to do a proper autopsy ...”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“Tin sorry, Master?”DeVore’s eyes were like steel. “That”s how long you’ve got

to find out Twenty-four hours. And then I start dissecting you”

Ben found DeVore in his rooms, seated in a chair beside the open window, staring out into the moonless dark, his right hand restlessly stroking his chin. “Howard?”

DeVore looked round distractedly. “Oh, if s you ...”

“Whaf s the matter?”

DeVore gestured towards the chair beside his own, then shook his head. “They’re diseased.”

“Your creatures?”

DeVore nodded. “I’ve put the others in isolation, but two others have already gone down with it It’s their nervous systems. It seems they’re simply rotting away.”

“Impossible.”

“Yes.”

“But there must be some explanation for it”

“You think so?”

Nothing happens without a reason.”

“No...”

“And your coat?”

DeVore’s eyes met his blankly. “My coat?”

“Your special invisible force-field. Did the creatures finish it?” “They...” DeVore stopped dead, sitting forward suddenly, his eyes, which had been lifeless, now brightly alive again. “You don’t think...?” “What?”

“The field. You don’t think the field affected them?”

“Why? Could it?”

“I don’t know.” DeVore frowned, then shook his head. “No ... If it was harmful Hannem would have known.”

“Maybe he did.”

“Impossible”

“Why?”

“He would have said there was a danger.”

“Would he?”

DeVore bridled. “Of course he fucking would!”

“Why? You told him to make you a coat of power. It wasn’t his place to question that decision.”

“But that’s stupid. If he knew ...”

“Then he would have said nothing. You said it yourself, Howard - there’s no more obedient creatures in the galaxy than your morphs.” “But that s ...”

“Crazy?”

DeVore nodded, but Ben could see he was already half convinced.

Ben gave a little push. “Which of them have sickened?” DeVore turned and looked at him. For a moment he was silent, then he made a little shrug of acceptance. “You’re right.”

“None of the others have been affected?”

“Not one.”

“And the coat?”

DeVore looked to him, then smiled. “Try touching me”

As the morning sun slowly climbed the sky they buried Michael under the lawn beside his favourite stream, the branches of an ancient elder overhanging the mound. They were all there - at least, all of them that were still alive after six years of campaigns against The Man.

Emily was the last to leave the graveside Lin Chao waited for her some little way off, then walked across and put his arm about her shoulders, letting her weep against his side. But his face too was wet Michael had been a good man, yes and a good father too. He had been a “Mender”, like Lin Shang before him. Mender Lin, who had first taken him from the streets and cared for him. Three fathers he had had now, and each in turn had been taken from him violently. Such was the world he lived in. Yet he did not despair. Not while she was there. Not while she yet strove for a better, kinder world.Daniel was waiting for them beside the tiny wooden bridge that crossed the stream. Seeing him, Chao smiled. K any doubts remained, they were not significant Daniel had proved himself twice over on the journey. Now he was a brother. At the head of the valley, Emily turned, looking down at the stream and at the tree-edged lawn beyond it You could barely see where the mound was from this high up, yet she seemed to see it clearly. Once more her eyes misted. That’s where her heart is now, Lin Chao thought, watching her face, finding a real beauty in those deep-carved lines of hers, in the fine-spun grey of her hair.

They said DeVore kept a copy of his mother. A younger, fairer copy, made from the finger she had lost to him that time. But no copy could match this original. To his eyes there was no finer sight in all the universe than this.

Emily turned, looking to him, her eyes gentle now, a faint smile on her lips.

“What were you thinking, Chao?”

He lied. “I was wondering what was for breakfast.”

She laughed. It was what he always said. “Come,” she said, taking his arm and

holding it overlong, letting the love she felt for him pass between them. “Let7s

go and find out”