GeneStorm: City in the Sky Read online

  Not a bad night’s work!

  The shark put on breakfast for her companions – porridge made from toffee oats, slices of fried meat melon, and sliced sugar bulbs that Onan had industriously dug up the night before. The delicious scent of sizzling meat melon summoned Kitterpokkie out of sleep, and she arose as if hypnotised to sit on a rock beside the little camp fire. She was ever a zombie before her first mug of tea in the morning. Snapper sat a brimming tea cup at her side, a salty dough stick in hand, and then sat back to poke and arrange the sizzling meat strips to their best possible advantage.

  Dawn light glittered from the herd beasts out on the plains.

  Snapper suddenly pointed at a patch of dark sky just to the west.

  “Ah! There he goes!” She nodded to a great grey shape sliding through the sky towards the hills. “That giga-moth has been out here the last three nights. He might even nest in the barrier cliffs.”

  Giga-moths were part moth, part fox or wolf; not big enough to really attack a grown person, but certainly worthy of keeping an eye on. They could swipe livestock or steal a pack of rations at night with sudden, ghost-like stealth. Kitterpokkie watched the creature rise up, then dive gracefully away and out of sight. She gave a rather yearning little sigh.

  “Oh how I would love to fly.” She waved one of her long, elegant grasping claws towards the sky. “It seems a sad affair to have a set of wings, and yet never be able to use them.”

  “Well, they’re definitely useful for expression.” Snapper looked at the pink-white wing cases on Kitterpokkie’s back. “I like them!”

  “Thank you. And may I say, I find your dorsal fin to be extremely jaunty.”

  “Oh!” Snapper shrugged her shoulders to waggle her fin. “Thank you very much.”

  Breakfast over, the team cleared their campsite, filled water skins, then headed onwards through the hills towards the north. By mid morning, they crossed the crest of a rocky ridge. It was high enough to afford them a clear view of the great barrier far beyond.

  From this distance, it was merely a line on the horizon – a distant yellow white shimmer. But by the afternoon, the line had become more definite: a great sweep of solid rock that stretched clear across the world.

  The full-blown hill country was a place with wildlife and flora all of its own. Where the hills and ranges were bare, the dells and valleys were often thick with plants – tall trees and a host of other growth, some of it rather odd indeed. One vine in particular was covered in little bitey mouths, and the vines had a disturbing habit of crawling slowly along the ground. As they made camp on the second evening, Beau gave the vines a wide, wide berth. He even used a long stick to prod at the bottom of the little billabong that they had found, making sure that nothing was lurking in the mud.

  Throckmorton cruised past with a little basket, collecting sugar from the blossoms overhead and occasionally eating flies. Spying a vine with many small but toothy mouths grinning at him from the undergrowth, the fox-bird instantly used his stick to fend the thing away.

  “Throckmorton! Are these things relatives of yours?”

  “Sturt Pea. Throckmorton is Flame Pea.” Throckmorton found sugar syrup dripping from a bloom, and avidly drank it up with several of his mouths. “They OK.”

  “Are they, well, dangerous? Venomous?”

  “No no. Just nibblers.” The plant seemed unconcerned. “But big ones are not so good.”

  “Ah.” Beau thought, and suddenly hastened after the plant. “Wait – there are bigger ones? Where?”

  “You will see!”

  Beau became rather anxious about the possible presence of large carnivorous plants – the hypodermic tree still loomed large in his mind. He was so obsessed with keeping watch for mammoth, all engulfing plants that he neglected to keep watch for their smaller cousins. On his morning trip to commune with nature, he sat down upon a fallen log, and immediately had one of the biter vines latch onto his rear. The fox-bird came racing wailing through the camp with the plant vine attached by several voracious little maws. Snapper laughed far too hard to be of any help. And so it was Kitterpokkie and Throckmorton who came to the rescue, wrestling the vine away by threatening it with a flaming brand from the camp fire. The mortified Beau had his wounds anointed – Throckmorton wielding the ointment while Snapper calling unkind suggestions from afar. Beau was most put-out when he finally winced his way back into camp.

  “I fear that my very real plight has not been treated with proper seriousness.” The shimmering fox-pheasant went into a magnificent feathered sulk. “I wish to register a protest.”

  “You’re right, of course.” Snapper had the grace to look deeply chastened. “We shall have a talk about how we handle these sorts of situation.”

  Beau dusted off his magnificent cuffs. “That would be excellent – I thank you.”

  Snapper patted the man on the back. “We’ll get to the seat of the matter!” She waved a hand. “We’ll establish a sitting committee.”

  Beau flattened his feathers and marched off to saddle Pendleton. Snapper called out from behind him.

  “We don’t want our concepts all in arrears!” She fetched her helmet. “Wait! I might have another one…!”

  “That will do, I thank you.” Beau made certain that a padded blanket was folded over his saddle. “Hmmph!”

  “Have a beer, you big baby!” Snapper gave the man a beer: her last very last. It was indeed a noble gesture. “Are you all right? Can you ride?”

  “I can ride. It didn’t bite too deep. My fur is thick.” The fox decided to share the beer. “I was merely concerned that other, ah, other…”

  “That indelicate things might strike delicate places?” Snapper accepted the bottle and took a pull. “You’re right! Lose anything there and thirty girls in Spark Town will lose all reason for life!”

  “Ah, yes.” Beau had the good grace to blush. “Well, at least it woke us all up!”

  Snapper had left out another little gift pack overnight – some spices, a red cotton scarf and a comb. Once again, the bag had vanished stealthily, with a little something left behind – in this case a silvery red quartz block with the most marvellous sparkle to it. Snapper admired the shine on the crystal and waved to the nearby bushes – bushes that shivered a little as someone craned to peer at the camp. The shark left the rock beside her equipment as she shared the beer with Beau.

  The pendant about Beau’s neck glowed as he held it. He looked at the soft light, then let the pendant drop. The fox-bird looked off towards the cliff face to the north.

  “An impressive feature. Definitely pre-GeneStorm?”

  “So we think. Big fault line or something.”

  “Hmmm…” Beau pondered the route through the hills. “So – we may reach the radiation zone today?”

  “We should. We have about, what, fifty k’s to go?” The shark heaved her saddle up onto Onan’s back. “So today we definitely keep bird riders in front. The birds will jibe if they pick up any radiation.” Snapper took the beautiful crystal given to her by the ferals, and put it into her ammunition pouch for safe keeping.

  “Kenda? You saddled up?”

  “I am.” The man was already mounted, and tied the lead rope for his pack beetle to the back of his saddle. He pulled his immaculate jacket straight. “Let’s go.”

  The last equipment was hauled up into place. Throckmorton tied his scant belongings up into their red and white handkerchief and slung them into place. Kitterpokkie mounted her beautiful budgerigar, then passed Throckmorton his crossbow and ammunition. She looked back as Snapper rode up beside her, and gave a salute with one elegant claw.

  “Ready, I think! Is Beau mollified?”

  “Much recovered.”

  “Well you mustn’t tease him so. He had a rather fragile self esteem, down at its core.”

  “Oh, definitely. A shy violet.” Snapper dug about in her ammunition pouch and found the gleaming scarlet rock. “Oh – here! Isn’t this great? Rose quartz or something. Gorge
ous.”

  Kitterpokkie reached over for the gleaming rock.

  “What is this?”

  “A gift from our little shadows. Cool stuff!”

  The mantis frowned, intensely interested. She turned the rock around and around, trying to let it catch the light. “Would this be local? Do they trade amongst themselves?”

  “I haven’t seen any of it before. Probably washed down a creek. Why?”

  “Well this is cinnabar.” The mantis looked at the rock, quite fascinated. “The ore of mercury.”

  “Mercury!”

  “You bake it in a rotary kiln and it separates into liquid mercury and sulphur. And with some sulphur and oxygen, you can make sulphuric acid. Which makes hydrochloric acid, which then makes nitric acid…”

  Snapper was amazed. “Percussion caps and gun cotton.”

  “Exactly.” The mantis carefully passed back the gleaming rock. “We really must see about making proper contact at some time. Proper trade relations and cultural exchange can only be for the best.”

  The pack beetles were all in train, laden down with the leaden anti-radiation suits. The creatures clacked their mandibles and buzzed, trotting briskly along as the group broke camp and headed out along the hills.

  To the east, smoke hung in the air – cooking fires from a considerable encampment several kilometres away. Snapper paused upon a hill crest to take careful note: the feral camp seemed to run the length of a distant valley, with many small fires. She decided to steer well clear – she certainly didn’t want to become entangled with any herds or herd guards. So as the hills began to lead down towards the barrier cliffs, she chose a route that curved gently to the west. They followed the hill crest, avoiding a stand of suspiciously spiky plants, and moved forward steadily towards the barrier cliffs.

  The route led them on, along hill crests topped with stands of tubby cacti guarded by scowling, watchful little bee-mice. The valleys were sometimes filled with long grass – sometimes with trees, or with grottoes of tangled bushes. Little snappy vines grinned out from the shrubbery here and there, making Beau bite his thumb at the creatures and mutter an extravagant curse.

  Large, armoured herbivores trundled along the slopes, harvesting grass and shoots with long scissor-like pincers. They left straight, clean mown tracks behind them, covering the hills with stripes. Kitterpokkie halted, adding to her photographic record of the journey – marvelling always at the endless ingenuity of life.

  By mid afternoon, the cliffs had assumed identity and character, with individual flutes, juts and clefts now to be seen. The cliffs were made from a yellow-white sandstone, and must have been easily a hundred metres high or more. From a high hilltop twenty kilometres away, they could now be seen as a single massive wall.

  Kenda rode his beetle-horse up beside Snapper, and sat gazing at the cliff wall. He searched carefully along the crest, looking for any sign of slopes or passes.

  “Do you know the way to this supposed pass?”

  “I do.” Snapper was becoming more and more irritated with the man’s manner. “The very definite pass is exactly when Toby and Samuels left it.” The shark stood up in her stirrups, looking at the cliffs. “Yeah, we’re too far east. Let’s shift across by another two hills.”

  They moved laterally across the hills, forcing their way through a tangle of bushes in the valley, and startling a family of glow balls who shot into the air all around them like skyrockets. The pack animals reared, and Kitterpokkie had to use harsh language to curb her mount. Pendleton cast a hungry glance at the glow balls, but Beau chuffed and guided the moth-creature onwards: it was far too soon after lunch to indulge in snacks.

  For the next hour, they toiled up one vast hill, then down another, and then up onto another slope. When they reached the crest, Snapper scanned the cliffs and was finally satisfied. She pointed to a rock formation in the cliff face that looked uncannily like a massive hand giving the world the finger.

  “That’s the marker! It’s left of there, about half a k!”

  They rode down the ridge of the hill, heading north – moving faster now and full of excitement. The grass was shorter here, thin and dry, crackling underfoot as the animals ran. The explorers reached the flats between two bands of hills, when suddenly Onan came slewing to a halt. The bird flashed up his crest and gave a warning screech, bobbing his head wildly up and down. He immediately turned and ran back the way he had come, and the other animals followed in a confused gaggle right behind. He stopped back up on the hill, croaking a warning back to Snapper.

  “Bad! Bad burnie!”

  Snapper patted him on the neck, very pleased with his sharp senses.

  “Good boy! We’re safe. Good boy!”

  The bird bobbed his head up and down in pleasure.

  “Clever birdie!”

  “Clever bird.”

  “Salty cracker?”

  “Yep!” Snapper opened the box containing her birdie’s favourite treat. “Salty cracker for you! Take two. Good boy!”

  “Clever birdie!”

  The other riders gathered around them. Snapper pointed down to the dusty grass ahead.

  “Right. That’s going to be the start of irradiated territory – just at the base of the hill.”

  The group gathered together, alert and aware. They looked to the terrain at the base of the long hill. It seemed drier, with the grass straggling and thinning. Kitterpokkie stood up in her stirrups and carefully scanned the world ahead.

  “The dust is no good. We will need another route. Can you see the pass?”

  Snapper nodded and pointed off towards the cliff.

  “Yeah, see that notch? That’s the marker.”

  “Yes…” Kitterpokkie estimated the distance. Ten kilometres? Twelve? It was quite a distance. “We need exposed rock– preferably a ridge or high ground.”

  Kenda pointed his gloved hand. “The next hill runs north-south. We can follow the ridge.”

  “But is that necessarily the ideal?” Kitterpokkie waved to the flying plant hovering just above. “Throckmorton my dear – can you see if there’s any rock or high ridges that lead that way? Pray do not go out over the radiation. And be careful of strong breezes from the cliffs.”

  Throckmorton honked his horn and set off, wings rowing intrepidly away. The team watched as he rose higher and higher, heading off to the west. The plant returned some twenty minutes later, honking his horn once again.

  “There are rocks. Throckmorton sees a way.” He seemed rather pleased with himself, and waved his tentacles towards the middle of the next valley. “Come this way. Throckmorton has found a thing!” The plant pointed eagerly off towards the next hill. “This way.”

  They all followed westward, down across the next valley, then up a long, steep slope covered with greasy yellow grass. Throckmorton hurried forward and hovered, eagerly awaiting the others just over the hump of the hill. There were bushes here – trees and rocks. He honked and pointed happily to his find, looking wonderfully pleased with himself.

  It was a tall wooden pole painted red, topped with a crossbeam striped in black and white – the sure sign of the striper tribe. There were items tied securely to the pole: carved figures made from wood burls, and a very ancient, well lacquered human skull painted in garish stripes of red, white and green. Snapper waved a hand and kept everybody well back.

  “Taboo pole. Striper tribe. It’s sacred ground beyond this point.” She scowled, then turned to look to the east and west, pondering. “OK – way’s blocked. We’ll have to go around.”

  Kitterpokkie pointed to the next hill. “Well Throckmorton’s route is thankfully to our west…”

  “No no – see the cross bar? That marks a line. Anything beyond there is sacred ground. There’ll be other markers – probably corner posts.” Snapper looked along the line of hills. “Could run for a long way though. We’ll have to parallel the line here and look for the end posts.”

  Kenda gave a sneer. “And how far might this sacred territory
run?”

  “Could be a kilometres. Could be one hill – could be ten or twenty.”

  The man made a noise of disgust. “We cannot delay the mission merely because of superstition.” He pointed to the totem stick with his rifle. “Because of this!”

  “Leave it.”

  The man merely spurred his mount forward. “You people have no ability to act with force!”

  A piercing whistle came from bushes a hundred metes away, streaking across the sky. A whistling arrow that made an ear splitting sound as it whipped through the air.

  Three ferals cantered forward on gold-green beetle-horses. They were muscular, with crocodile tails, and the snouts and tusks of boars. Stiff bristled crests and long flowing manes had been striped black and white with dye. They wore armour made from chitin, and were armed with bows, war clubs and huge two-handed flails. They looked young – inexperienced and full of energy. They rode up, with one youth riding far ahead of the others and holding up his hands to finger-talk.

  “Forbidden.”

  The boy had a red cotton scarf about his head – Snapper’s gift left to the ‘shadowers’ that morning. Snapper walked Onan towards the boy, her hands raised to talk, but Kenda lunged his beetle-horse forward. The youth halted, hand dropping to his bow, and Kenda instantly went for his rifle.

  The feral spurred his mount, crashing it chest to chest with Kenda’s beetle–horse. Bow and rifle clashed together, both weapons falling. The feral grappled Kenda, going for a bone knife, and both men suddenly went tumbling from their saddles to crash onto the grass.

  The feral went tumbling backwards, and rose, tusks bared in fury. Feral blood rage was up. Kenda came up with his sword drawn, driving forward with a snarl. The feral drew knife and war club, trying to leap forward and attack.

  It almost killed him. Kenda stamped forward in a fluid lunge, perfectly executed, and the feral boy twisted away, the blade missing him by a hair’s breadth. The back slash almost opened the boy’s face, sending him flying backwards. Shocked and frightened, the young feral sprang back up to his feet. He crouched, circling club and knife, trying to find an opening, but Kenda continued forward, steel whistling as he made stiff, vicious cuts with his sword.