Outlanders 37 Rim of the World, page 5
Their sensor circuitry incorporated an analog-to-digital voice encoder. The transmissions were picked up by the auditory canals, and the dermal sensors transmitted the electronic signals directly through the cranial casing. Even if someone went deaf, as long as they wore a Commtact, they would still have a form of hearing.
In conjunction with a sophisticated translation program within the PDAs all of them carried, the Commtacts analyzed the pattern of a language and then provided a real-time translation. Some foreign phrases and words wouldn't be exact translations, but the program recognized enough words to supply an English equivalent. Conversely, the program would supply them with the appropriate responses in the language it heard.
As the three Cerberus warriors struggled up the steep path, Kane felt as if eyes watched them. Despite the little bristling sensation at the nape of his neck, he continued to climb up the slanting parapet.
The pools of shadow lengthened and darkened as they climbed farther. The path became more rugged with sharp, zigzagging upward turns. They squeezed between and clambered around a litter of huge boulders that had broken off from the megalith's upper rim.
Yusef, Suliedor, Brigid, Grant and Kane crept along a sharp-edged causeway butting up against a rock wall on their right and a sheer drop on their left. A rock turned under Kane's foot and he staggered, arms waving as he tried to regain his balance. A miniature avalanche started under his boots, pebbles and gravel cascading down the path and over the edge. Grant snatched out for him, but his groping hand missed his partner's arm. Whirling around, Brigid latched on to his wrist with a surprising strength and anchored him in place.
When he was steadied, he husked out, "Thanks, Baptiste"
"My pleasure," she responded, releasing him.
Rubbing his wrist where she had secured a grip, Kane commented, "You've been working out."
"Quiet back there," Yusef called in an annoyed tone. "Save the muscle admiration for when we're safe."
Kane and Brigid raised ironic eyebrows at one another but said nothing. They started climbing again. Kane couldn't help but reflect that Brigid Baptiste was quite possibly the toughest woman—and one of the toughest people, for that matter—he had ever met.
For a woman who had been trained as an archivist— an academic—and had never strayed more than ten miles from the sheltering walls of Cobaltville, her resiliency and resourcefulness never failed to impress him. Over the past few years, she had left her tracks in the most distant and alien of climes and waded through very deep, very dangerous waters.
She, Grant and Kane had come a very long way in distances that could not be measured in mere miles from the day they had escaped from Cobaltville. As veterans of the Magistrate Division, both Kane and Grant were accustomed to danger and hardship, but nothing like what they and Brigid had been exposed to since their exile.
Kane occasionally wondered how his and Grant's regimented, ville-bred minds had managed to adapt to all the new situations they had found themselves in over the past three years. But somehow he and his friends had not only adapted but also learned an entirely new set of superior skills.
Superior skills were certainly needed after the nukecaust of 2001. The world lay wasted, nature violated and outraged, transformed overnight into a contaminated shockscape littered with the shattered aspirations of human civilization.
Much of the United States became a hell on Earth where vast tracts of deserts replaced green fields, lakes either boiled away or became toxic inland seas and great cities were reduced to towering, vine-hung ruins. The passage of time had not cleansed the first-strike targets of hideous, invisible poisons. The African subcontinent had been spared much of the scorching radioactive hellfire.
The five people climbed farther until they reached a rampart of heaped-up boulders. Panting from exertion, the muscles of their legs aching, Kane, Brigid and Grant stared at the semicircular doorway cut in solid rock. It was about eight feet high and twice that wide.
Suliedor Entwhistle glanced over his shoulder and said softly, "This is where the god appeared to me."
He stepped through the cleft and the darkness beyond shimmered with a lurid glow. With a multicolored rainbow effect the three Cerberus warriors might have appreciated under other circumstances, a human- shaped but not exactly human figure took form. Little pools of molten light that might have been eyes gazed at them. A ghostly voice, speaking in Arabic intoned, "Do not intrude on the crucible of creation if you value your immortal soul."
CLAD IN THE ELABORATE armor fashioned after the ancient warrior kings of Sumeria, the figure gazed down at them with an austere yet blood-chilling calm. Its skin, showing a delicate pattern of scales, seemed to shimmer. Brigid noted the red spines curving back on the hairless head and murmured, "Utu."
In a soft voice, like the liquid sibilance of a serpent's hiss muffled by velvet, Utu said, "This is the holy tabernacle of the old gods who ruled this land long before the birth of Mohammed. This is the sacred ground of the Annunaki, Those-Who-from-Heaven-to-Earth-Came. If you transgress, you will die in shrieking ag ony, your soul shredded and divided up among the jinn and the afreet."
"Oh, please," Kane side-mouthed to Grant in exasperation. "Why do they have to talk that way?"
Suliedor fell to his knees, clutching at Yusef's hand, trying to pull him down beside him. The young man's expression registered fear, but he steadfastly refused to kneel before the shimmering image of Utu.
"However," Utu continued, "if you safeguard this most holy of tabernacles from foreign infidels, then I will reward you and ensure your spirit's place in Paradise."
"Oh, mighty one," Suliedor moaned, covering his face with shaking hands, "please spare my son. He has his doubts as to your divinity."
"Your mighty one's name is Utu," Brigid declared contemptuously, stepping forward. "And he's not really here. He's an artificial vision, an illusion, nothing but a projection. Watch."
Bending down, Brigid grabbed a fistful of dust from the ground and threw it before her into the cleft. The dirt particles swirled through the air then lit up with thready light beams crisscrossing from various hidden apertures on the rock walls. Peeking through his fingers, Suliedor uttered a wordless cry of surprise.
"We call it a hologram," she said matter-of-factly. "This one is a pretty good example as far as those things go, but it's still just a trick."
"If you wish to earn the rewards," Utu continued sententiously, "then I bid you watch for three outlanders in particular. A pale-eyed killer, a dark-skinned giant and an arrogant woman with hair like the sunset."
"That sounds like us, all right," Grant grunted. Brigid eyed him resentfully. "You're about half right."
"Kill them," Utu stated, "and all who accompany them. But be careful. They are dangerous, they are deceitful, they are liars. If you heed their words, you will put your immortal souls in jeopardy."
Suliedor cast a surreptitious, suspicious glance toward Brigid. Sensing that the sheikh was reconsidering the hologram's reality, Kane took a long deliberate step forward, and strode right through Utu. The image rippled as he passed through it, like the surface of a pond disturbed by a stone.
"He's not really here, see?" Kane waved his arms through the figure, extending two fingers of his left hand and poking them through the image's eyes. "The scaly son of a bitch recorded this hologram and then programmed it to play when a motion detector was triggered."
"Obey my edicts," Utu droned on. "And you will enjoy peace, prosperity—"
"Oh, shut the fuck up," Grant growled, stiffening his wrist tendons. The Sin Eater sprang from the holster, slapping solidly into his palm, his index finger depressing the trigger stud.
The report of the pistol was like a thunderclap within the cleft. Sparks spurted from a lens inset into the ceiling. The image of Utu wavered and disappeared with the suddenness of a candle being extinguished.
A stretch of silence followed the gunshot, broken by Grant saying in rough whisper, "Not much of a god if one bullet can blow him out."
Yusef threw Grant a fleeting, appreciative smile. He tugged on Suliedor's arm. "You can get up now, Dad."
Suliedor allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, his lips shaping whispered words of astonishment. Turning toward Brigid, he asked, "But what about the jinn?"
She smiled at the way the man now sought out her counsel. "I imagine they are as fraudulent as Utu. Shall we move on?"
The five people walked through the cleft and entered a plaza surrounded by crumbling ruins. Kane commented wryly, "Interesting how Utu expected that we three might show up. I guess the overlords don't underestimate us the same way they did when they were barons."
"I wouldn't be too proud of that if I were you," Brigid admonished. "When they were barons, we were able to get over on them because of the element of surprise. Their arrogance blinded them to what we could accomplish. They never expected inferior humans, us ape-lings, to be so daring. As overlords, they appear to have learned their lessons."
The Byzantine arches of an ancient cloister reared black against the mercury brightness of the Moon. Part of one tower still stood intact, forming a gateway at the head of the treacherous path they had followed. The archway gaped open like a black maw.
As they came closer to the opening, the feeling of being watched doubled in Kane. His Sin Eater slid out of its power holster into his hand. They halted at the arched entrance, gazing into a blackness—darker than any night—that waited to swallow them.
Grant swept the narrow amber beam of the small Nighthawk microlight into the deep pool of shadow. Brigid, Kane, Suliedor and Yusef followed the beam of the flashlight, their eyes narrowing as they tried to penetrate the indigo pit. A shape shifted within it and a pair of red, slit-pupiled eyes glared out of the murk, hellish orbs staring into their own.
Brigid turned on her own flashlight. A clicking, as of claws clattering against wood and a rustle like leather reached their ears. They caught only a fragmented glimpse of a small figure skittering across the ground, half running and half hopping with a blurring speed. A pair of thick hind legs propelled it in quick, rapid motions as the creature scuttled out of the light. For an instant, the flashlight haloed an oval head that seemed to be all eyes, brow ridges and a wetly hissing open mouth.
The beam gleamed briefly on needle-pointed teeth. Two disproportionately small arms ended in three-fingered hands tipped with curving talons. Leathery membranes stretched out beneath the creature's arms, as if it were a nightmarishly distorted flying squirrel.
Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the creature was gone, as though the gloom reached out and swallowed it. Somewhere in the murk, they heard the bang of a door slamming shut.
Limbs shaking, voice hitting a shrill note of panic, Suliedor demanded, "What was that? What in the name of Allah was it? If it was not a jinn, then what the bloody blue hell could it have been?"
Neither Brigid, Kane nor Grant had moved. "Whatever it was," Kane said, "it didn't look very fraudulent to me, Baptiste."
Calmly, Brigid intoned, "I stand corrected." "Do you know what it is?" Grant demanded. She nodded. "I've seen pictures. I suppose you could call it a Djinn. Two hundred years ago, in another place, it was best known as El Chupacabra."
Chapter 6
"El Chupacabra!" Kane echoed in disbelief. "The goatsucker?"
"So you do remember the briefing," Brigid said, forcing a smile. "I'm impressed. It was a couple of years ago, after all."
"I remember it, too," rumbled Grant.
El Chupacabra was a semi legendary creature that terrorized Puerto Rico a few years before the nukecaust. First found draining the blood from a goat, the entity was dubbed the goatsucker.
Brigid Baptiste's research in the Cerberus database provided sufficient evidence that the monsters were genetically engineered, failed experiments of a subdivision of Overproject Excalibur, brought into the post nuke world through tampering with Operation Chronos technology.
"Goatsucker?" Yusef demanded incredulously.
Brigid nodded distractedly, eyeing the blackness on the other side of the archway. "The name is a misnomer. They sucked just about anything they could get their tongues into—dogs, cats, cows, even people. Apparently, some experiments with the creatures were performed here...sightings of them among superstitious bedouin were attributed to the jinn."
Yusef and Suliedor stared in astounded disbelief at Brigid. Kane didn't blame them. Clearing his throat, Yusef asked, "You're joking, having fun with us, right? That was a monkey or something, no?"
"No," Brigid answered flatly.
"So it really was a jinn?" Suliedor's voice quavered.
"What you call the jinn are genetically engineered creatures," answered Brigid, "using chimerical gene combinations."
"What?" Yusef asked raggedly.
"DNA taken from one organism and transplanted into another. Shake well, let ferment and see what surprise monster you've made."
"What?" Yusef demanded again. He turned to Grant, a beseeching expression on his face.
"There's a little more to it than that," Grant told him wryly.
Brigid, Kane and Grant put on dark-lensed glasses. The electrochemical polymer of the lenses gathered all available light and made the most of it to give them a limited form of night vision.
A flagstone path on the other side of the crumbling arch led them within the walls of the monastery. Kane took the point and his companions followed him past an old well and a high heap of rubble bordered by squat, bulbous columns. They strode past vaulted, dust-filled chambers that Brigid guessed had once been the cells of the Byzantine monks.
The five people walked along a narrow gallery that dead-ended before a heavy door, at first glance made of bound-together timbers. A tentative tap of knuckles produced a faint metallic clank. Carefully, Kane pushed the door open with the toe of a boot. It swung open almost silently on oiled hinges, revealing an empty cell. The shafts of moonlight slanting in through the broken roof cast a checkerboard pattern on the debris-littered floor.
"There's nothing there," Suliedor husked.
Kane didn't answer, stepping slowly and cautiously into the bare room. The narrow floorboards bent slightly, creaking, beneath his weight. He detected a faint difference of sound when he moved farther into the corner. Bending low, he lightly stamped on the smoothly sawn planks with the sole of a boot.
"What are you doing?" Suliedor asked anxiously.
Kane didn't reply. He cleared shards of pottery away from the corner. He saw only bare floorboards at first, then the beam of the microlight revealed a thread-thin outline of the trapdoor.
Running his fingers along the edges and tugging, he said, "The jinn or goatsucker or whatever you want to call it went through here and locked the door behind it."
"Is it smart enough to do that?" Yusef inquired haltingly.
"Apparently," Brigid answered in a monotone.
Drawing his combat knife, Kane jammed the long tungsten steel blade into the tiny crack between the edge of the trapdoor and the floorboards. He tried prying it open, but it refused to budge, held fast by a catch on the underside.
He put his back against the wall and launched a straight-leg kick at the knife's handle. Metal snapped sharply as the catch broke, and a three-by-three square of flooring popped up. A faint, foul odor rose from the opening, carrying with it a charnel-house reek.
Yusef and Suliedor murmured something and covered their noses and mouths with one hand. Brigid moved closer, face registering worry. Kane put a finger to his lips and gestured for her and Grant to stay put. He returned the knife to its belt sheath and carefully shone the light down into a dark shaft. The metal rungs of a ladder ran down one side of the shaft into the dimness. The walls were made of heavy, mortared concrete blocks. The shaft was a perfect square, six feet wide and fifteen feet deep.
Kane signaled for Grant and Brigid to follow him, eased over the edge and began to climb down. Brigid waited until Grant had descended halfway before swinging her legs over and out. She motioned for Yusef and Suliedor to follow her.
At the bottom of the shaft, on the facing wall, was a slab of steel set tightly in the concrete blocks, a wheel lock jutting from the rivet-studded, cross-beamed mass. When Brigid dropped from the ladder, Grant went to the door. He put his hands on the wheel lock, giving it a counter-clockwise twist. It didn't budge. Taking and holding a deep breath, he threw all of his considerable weight and upper-body strength against the lock.
With a tortured screech of solenoids, the wheel turned. Slowly, resisting at first, then Grant was able to get a hand-over-hand spin going.
Kane pushed his shoulder against the steel door and there was the sticky, sucking sound of old rubber seals separating. The door opened inward. The charnel-house odor crowded into the shaft like a tidal wave of stink. Grant uttered a gagging noise, Brigid covered her mouth and Kane fought down a rise of bile, forcing himself to breathe through his mouth.
When Yusef reached the bottom of the ladder he made a sound as if he was going to dry-heave, but he got his nausea under control. Suliedor used his burnoose as an odor filter, holding the fabric against his nose. Kane stepped forward, leading with his Sin Eater. Brigid and Grant followed him, alert and watchful. The three people stopped and stared. A neon light tube flickered overhead with a dim yellow illumination.
"What is it?" Yusef demanded in a strident whisper from behind them. "What's in there?"
Grant threw him an over-the-shoulder scowl, making a sharp gesture across his throat with a forefinger. Then he waved him forward. Stepping with almost exaggerated caution, Yusef and Suliedor crossed the threshold.
They stood in a large, low-ceilinged room with a dozen desks, most of them covered with computer terminals and keyboards. A control console ran the length of the right-hand wall, consisting primarily of plastic- encased readouts and gauges. The left wall was composed of panes of glass, beaded with condensation. Their eyes took in at a glance the heavy tables loaded down with a complicated network of glass tubes, beakers and retorts.
