[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
me." She showed Timka the ring chron. "This is set to ship standard time. My
hours. Up till now I haven't bothered with yours haven't had to and it was
just too much trouble. But your day is a little longer than our arbitrary ship
standard, so I expect your time divisions are quite different. They usually
are, planetside. So if I'm to have some general idea of what a stad is, I need
your help."
"I see& I think."
"Right. Suppose I give you a start, then you tell me when you think we've been
moving for an hour."
"Yes, I can do that."
"Right." She looked at the chron, waited a few breaths. "Now."
"Got it."
"Good." Skeen yawned, rubbed at the nape of her neck. "Djabo! Can you listen
and count time? I need to keep talking or I'm going to fall out and it'll take
a jolt of lightning to wake me."
"Talk. It won't bother me."
"This is something that happened to me when I was a lot younger and a whole
lot rasher, before I had Picarefy oh Tibo you baster, I hope she fries your
liver& "
"What?"
"Never mind. Habit I've got into, meaning nothing. Where was I& yes. What with
one thing and another I was stranded on this crazy world, a place called
Dragons Fart. Vulcanism like you wouldn't believe. What land there was changed
shape day to day, mountain into swamp, swamp into desert, desert to mountain&
well, it was not a place you went for fun. The south pole had the biggest hunk
of land and was fairly stable, warm enough so there was some plant life. The
seas were a real soup, walking on water was no miracle there, and the stink!
Your nose gave out after ten minutes of breathing that air. As air goes it was
reasonable stuff, but the stink would make you swear off living, it was that
Page 34
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
bad. How I don't know, but someone found out that one of the plants on the
fringes of the ocean produced a juice that could be refined into one of the
dandiest aphrodisiacs ever, good for all live-bearing oxygen breathers with
iron-based fluid in their veins. Which made for one hell of a huge market,
especially when the bosses did a little gengineering on it. You couldn't get
that plant to grow anywhere else, and believe me, lots of types tried it.
Which the bosses didn't mind all that much since it gave them a stranglehold
on the stuff.
"A while before I got there, two refinery jocks got in a fight where one of
them was killed. I heard the story in a dozen versions, no one was quite sure
what actually happened. Some said it was over one of the sporting women
working the barracks; some said it was because Erb was a tittuppy, acerbic
type designed to provoke the worst in Dolf who was from a rabidly patriarchal
world and neurotic about his masculinity, that Dolf kept riding Erb until Erb
exploded; some said it was Erb's pet responsible for the nesh, that he bit a
hunk out of Dolf and Dolf tried to stomp him and Erb jumped Dolf. Whatever
started it, they cut each other up till it was hard to find enough pieces to
pray over. When it was done, no one could find that pet.
"The beastie was a singing swamp lizard the length of your forearm, tail
included. Carnivorous little worm Erb used to feed it baby rats, always rats
wherever there are men. It must have lived on garbage and rats, plenty of both
around. A couple of men and a woman said they saw it scuttling about. Problem
was, it grew. Oh how it grew. When it got big enough, it needed something more
substantial than rats and developed a taste for biped& large live wriggling
meals. It grew cunning, too, as it got bigger and bigger, never set pinky in
any of the traps. Soon enough, things reached the point when either someone
took out the Whistler, that's what everyone called it, or all flesh was going
to have to get off-world and wait for the lizard to starve. The bossmen didn't
care for that idea, they needed men down there. Androids rotted out and were a
lot more expensive than your basic flesh machines, so they put a bounty on the
Whistler's head and armed any fool who thought he was a great hunter. What
that did was get Whistler a lot of easy meals.
"When it wasn't dining on hunter, it'd sit outside the settlement and whistle
its meat. Soft and natural so not many heard it. Someone always did. Someone
would go out and for all we knew walk right down Whistler's throat.
"There I was, landed in the middle and broke to my toenails. Living with a
Hulk and a Snake and working in the Gummery to pay my food bill, all of us
were and likely to spend the rest of our lives at it, since the pay was a hair
above slave comp. When the bounty was doubled, Yamchik, that was the snake, he
had a bright idea. The Hulk and me and him. we'd go hunting old Whistler. I
thought it was one of his better ideas; Dragons Fart was wearing on me hard.
What I didn't know was he planned to use me for bait. Come the dawn, there I
was tied to a shaved fern on one of the few dry spots outside town. I did not
appreciate the compliment, no way. Yamchik and the Hulk were in separate
patches of bracken trying to keep leeches out of their shorts, clutching
pellet rifles Yamchik had liberated from Stores. I'll say this for Yamchik, he
had the hands of an artist when it came to locks. Taught me a lot, but that's
nothing for now.
"So picture the scene. Gray slime in all directions. Some sour murky water
standing in hollows of the slime. Hummocks of decayed leaves and fern. Air
thick enough to chew with swarms of gnats and sapsuckers who were turned on by
blood. After a couple of hours with those bugs crawling over me and I couldn't
scratch or slap, I was praying for Ol' Whistler to show. Dead would be a
change for the better. Uhhh! Makes me itch just thinking about it. The only
thing that took my mind off was planning what I was going to do to those&
those& well, Telka didn't supply those kind of words, you supply your own&
anyway, what I was going to do to them when I got my hands on them.
"It got to be noon, turned steamy hot, really unbearable. Us rejects stuck on
Fart didn't much go outside during the midday heat. Ol' Whistler did. The
sound came curling through the stink and the bugs, saying come come to me,
Page 35
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
come to me, come, come, come. Djabo bless, I would've done it if I wasn't tied
to that fern tree. The Hulk and Yamchik, they heard it and they weren't tied.
They came walking out of the bracken, left their guns behind. Yamchik's plan
had this little flaw in it. I was going crazy trying to pull loose. When
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]