Doctor Who: Combat Rock (14 page)

Soon the party was trudging along the precarious trail that topped the ravine, and despite the more relaxed atmosphere, the machetes and rifles were still very much in evidence.

It soon became clear exactly how they were going to traverse the river. Ahead of them a
very
insubstantial and frail-looking rope bridge hung above the torrent.

Tigus led the party to the two wooden poles that were the piers of the bridge. Santi took one look at all the missing rungs and folded her arms.

‘No way Santi cross
that
!’

‘It doesn’t look very safe, does it?’ the Doctor agreed. The bridge consisted of two parallel ropes at shoulder height spanning the river, and two beneath, the latter attached to each other by slats of wood or rungs that were supposed to provide effective passage across the ravine. Trouble was, most of them were missing. The bridge was suspended about thirty metres above the frothing tumult and didn’t look very inspiring at all.

Tigus nudged Santi’s backside with his machete. She rounded on him furiously, but the look on his face made her think twice about slapping him. Wina smiled with genuine pleasure.

When nobody made any move towards crossing, Tigus dropped the machete and snatched a rifle from one of his cohorts. He ratcheted the catch and placed the barrel securely against the Doctor’s head.

‘I – I think we’d better do as he says,’ the Doctor stammered woefully.

The river was everything in this part of Papul. It was the main road, the artery, the connection between isolated communities.

It provided food, clothes, news, even civilisation of a sort. The seemingly endless Wildmaan meant life to all the lonely river stations situated along its banks, separated from any town –

and the nearest was Agat – in some cases, by hundreds of miles.

Right now it brought Indoni traders, on their monthly route to Agat from Meraowk – the only other town on the south coast and a good three-day motor-canoe trip away from the main missionary outpost.

The two traders were used to this lonely stretch of the river. They hadn’t seen a human face since early that morning, when they had left the station that had put them up for the night. It could be hard sometimes, travelling the endless miles of wide river. Nothing to see on either side but weird vegetation, and towering trees whose branches and trunks were completely hidden by shape-hugging thick leaves, almost as if they were wearing mittens of green. Now and again they would pass minor tributaries, some no more than narrow tunnels leading off into the depths of the jungle, others broader, more defined. When the traders pondered about what sort of unexplored, hellish heart of darkness those smaller tributaries might lead to, and what sort of savage offshoot of mankind might dwell there, they would shiver inwardly and reach for a cigarette as the motor canoe puttered past the vine-tangled entrances. But most times, they simply did not think of such things. They were traders, not explorers.

The river station they were seeking was just around the next bend in the river, and the traders were more than looking forward to a hot meal and maybe a drop of something alcoholic made from local berries. Soley sat aft, guiding the motor canoe morosely through the murky water, eyes always locked on some unseen goal, rarely speaking, his features peaceful yet lost-looking, as if he were always drearhing of some better place he knew he would never find. His friend Elan sat forward, impatiently waiting for the river station to appear, forever fidgeting, forever chattering, even if Soley rarely answered him.

Huge, graceful birds dropped from the trees around them, sweeping the river with immense white wings, long beaks dipping, seizing, the birds lifting again, all in one seamless move, retreating to the tree tops to watch the traders. Soley barely noticed them, he was seeing things beyond the present; maybe his own future, maybe his own fate. His large moustache twitched as he sniffed – his only response to Elan’s continual monkey babble.

Round the bend, and there was the river station. Only two huts on stilts rising from the water’s edge, a little pier, a tin drum of benzine and a little stockade with a couple of Babi.

That was the river station. That was civilisation in this wilderness along the Wiklmaan.

‘Where is the idiot?’ Elan said, shielding his gaze against the fierce sun and frowning at the pier. Baccha was normally waiting for them, sitting on the landing, big legs dangling like a child’s, face beaming happily. He knew when to expect them each month. This was the first time in ages the big Papul man had not been there to greet them.

Soley said nothing, steering the motor canoe in towards the landing, reducing the speed so the motor chug-chugchugged sedately into harbour.

He killed the motor altogether as Elan scrambled to his feet, calling Baccha’s name impatiently. The canoe bumped against the wooden pier.

There was absolute silence. The Babi in the stockade blinked at them with disinterest, not even eating their swill.

The swooping stalkbirds ceased their swooping, watched impassively from the treetops. Even the river was quiet.

Elan’s world could not accept silence, which explained his slightly demented continual jabbering; he was in the wrong job. He abhorred a vacuum of noise and speech. It had to be filled. He shouted the Papul’s name repeatedly, each time with more urgency. He turned to Soley, his face twisted with puzzlement. ‘But he’s
always
here,’ he said, scratching his thin moustache.

While Soley tethered the canoe, Elan leaped onto the pier.

‘He better have some shavings,’ he muttered distractedly.

‘Counting on that stuff to get me through the next few weeks.’

Soley joined him on the landing pier. This was very unusual indeed. Normally Baccha would be more than eager to sell them a nice big bag of wood chips, and the traders would be more than eager to accept them. The shavings were used extensively on Batu for incense, and fetched nice prices there.

This was troubling, both for the traders’ minds, and their pockets.

‘Hey, Baccha, you fat tree-creeper!’ Elan made for the darkened doorway of the thatch and sapling-constructed hut rearing up on stilts from the river’s edge. Although Baccha had no children, his plump, huge-breasted wife should be in there at least, cooking some delicious repast for the weary traders.

The door was open. Elan stepped up to the threshold. And Baccha was there, emerging from the darkness of the hut. Or at least his huge black hand was there, reaching out towards them, clutching a stuffed bag of wood chips.

They couldn’t see the rest of him. This odd coyness on the part of their usually jovial and straightforward contact moved even the laconic Soley to speech.

‘Come out and play, Baccha. You want your money, come out and play.’

So Baccha came out to play.

All the preceding night and half the next morning, Wayun had sharpened his femur knife. He said nothing, concentrating on the long Kassowark bone like it was his world and nothing else mattered. He spoke to no-one. The other guerrillas in the temple left him alone, respecting his grief. Now and again his friends would glance at him, then resume playing cards, drinking what little whisky they had left. Some cleaned their old and barely useable rifles patiently. Others hunted. They were all waiting.

Waiting.

Wayun stood up. The others in the large central chamber turned at the abruptness of the movement.

Wayun looked at them, clutching the femur knife in his hands demonstratively. He was done with waiting. His eyes, small by Papul standards, moved to the ladder that led up through a hatch in the low ceiling. His intention was obvious.

He began walking towards the ladder even as one of his friends rose to intercept him.

‘No,’ he said simply, pre-empting his friend’s words. The guerrilla opened his mouth to speak again, and again Wayun said the one word.

‘No.’ His young face had matured more in one night than in all the seven months he had been living and fighting with the OPG. He was ready.

For seven months he had obeyed orders from the Krallik; attacked military nests, raided trading posts, sabotaged mining equipment in the mountains. Yes, even killed. But only Indoni.

He had never really understood what war meant until now. All the barriers had crashed. Naked whore war, bare to the bone, and he could stare right into her fleshless eye sockets and recognise the bitch for what she was.

This was evil. Unnatural. False.

This had to be cut out and burned.

This was cancer.

He put his foot on the first step of the ladder.

Baccha was wearing the best in cannibal chic: human jawbone necklace – very old, belonged to his grandfather – animal grease war-paint on his face, Babi tusks distorting his nostrils, leaves gummed around his penis. Baccha the jovial farmer and river station trader was gone. The past had taken him away.

The new Baccha felt like a man for the first time in his life.

A warrior.

Beside him, squatting on the floor of the hut, his wife: huge pendulous breasts swinging over her busy hands as she stripped their meal, naked but for a skirt of grass.

Baccha raised his elaborately carved wooden axe with its sharpened green quartz ‘blade’ – this a hand-down from his father – and brought it down hard a few times until the sinewy bits rolled away from the round object he was balancing in the dirt before him. Then, pleased with his work, he pushed the axe away, stood up and signalled to his wife to help him. She promptly positioned a flat oval-shaped stone with a hole in its centre on top of the object. Baccha lifted a spear down from the wall of the but and, measuring force and resistance, slammed the spear down repeatedly so the wickedly sharp flint head passed through the hole in the stone to pierce the flesh and bone beneath. When he had punched an abrasure roughly corresponding with that in the stone, he grunted with satisfaction and reverently hung the spear back on the wall.

He knelt to examine his work. His wife was already rooting around in the mess on the floor for a bone knife, and finding it, began prodding the sharp end through the breach in the round and very bloody object that Baccha was now clasping between his knees.

She unspooled the grey matter from inside with great relish. Neither of them spoke.

Outside the hut, the bag of shavings drifted slowly away on the river.

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

‘You look like ’im.’

‘What?’ He was still admiring his fresh tattoo, and
scarcely beard the bearded biker’s words.

‘I said, that fing looks like you.’

Now he looked up. The biker finished stacking away his
laser needles and colours and fished for a cigarette out of a
packet he’d just sat on a moment ago.

‘You tryin’ to be funny?’

The biker shrugged without smiling or doing any of the
things that usually signalled an attempt at humour.

He let it go. Gazed again at the tattoo – the half-man, half-animal relaxing in the black grass, clutching Pan Pipes to its
naked breast, yellow horns sweeping back, sinister smile.

Yeah. He could see the resemblance himself now. He
wondered what she’d think of it. She’d be here soon. He’d
wanted a new tattoo and hoped she’d help work on it, but she
was late. She’d be here soon and then she could see it and she
would know be was wonderful.

Yeah... Looked like him. That was soulful, man.

Sensitive side y’see. It would show her that special him
that once sat in the purple dusk ‘neath a whispering tree while
the musbies laughed and chuckled and distorted his fingers
and his mind, and everything was natural, and everything was
right, and to be lived for. All good stuff Elemental, man. She
would recognise that, and she would love him even more.

His heart lifted, ran a few yards. She was coming. Could
hear her opening the door. Footsteps down the short corridor,
into the parlour. There.

Long blonde hair, nose slightly too large, but what did he
care. Bluest eyes that took him in, smile so sexy just for him.

The biker ignored her face, but was looking at her breasts,
fettered by the leather tunic.

She reached to touch him, caressed his face; he reached
forward to kiss her but the biker put a hairy hand in the way,
leaning it against the wall between them.

‘Forty-five,’ he said laconically.

That made no sense. ‘Huh?’ Anger at being prevented
from kissing his woman took on an added dimension. Surprise.

He didn’t like to be surprised.

‘You don’t get discount cos you’re stiffin’ my staff. That’ll
cost you forty-five sweet ones.’

He was back in the tattoo parlour.

Back where it all went wrong.

Where it all went red.

The line between reality and absurdity was tenuous on the road with the Dogs at the best of times, but now Pan was sure it had dissolved altogether. Clown had decided to deck himself out in war gear of a particularly surreal bent. He was going into combat made up as his circus namesake and that made Pan want to laugh and cry all at once, because it just proved life was The line between reality and absurdity was tenuous on the road with the Dogs at the best of times, but now Pan was sure it had dissolved altogether. Clown had decided to deck himself out in war gear of a particularly surreal bent. He was going into combat made up as his circus namesake and that made Pan want to laugh and cry all at once, because it just proved life was
wrong
.

Everything
was wrong.

But he had to carry on with it ‘cos he had no choice. This shit had to be lived out. ‘Sides, sometimes there were fun things to do. And while he didn’t particularly enjoy killing any more – not like Grave and Saw for instance – it did pave the way for plenty of what he did enjoy. And he’d
never
lose his appetite for whorin’.