The Cyber Chronicles Book II: Death Zone (34 page)

After the encounter with the wolves, Sabre ranged less far
afield to hunt. He spent more time with the snail, and as a
consequence, Tassin. Although he enjoyed her company, she unsettled
him. Despite the fact that she had warmed towards him, or perhaps
because of it, she made him nervous and self-conscious. He knew
that in her estimation, he was only the local riffraff. The reality
was far worse. He was just a broken killing machine, and not
supposed to have feelings. The mocking voice shouted that hated
name often from that dark recess in his mind.
Cyborg
! He had a piece of metal
attached to his skull, not to mention that which was welded to his
bones, and he was covered with scars. Certainly she must think him
as ugly as he knew himself to be, yet he wondered why he cared what
she thought of him. The pain that was growing inside him would
never have a voice, for who cared what a cyber felt? He would not
be around long enough for it to matter, anyway.

The snail's
crawl brought them to a rough scrubland, where the beast struggled
between the bushes, pushing them aside with brute force. Sabre knew
that soon they would have to leave it, and did not look forward to
losing their warm, comfortable mobile home. The hunting was poor,
since they had left the herds of grazing beasts behind, and the
wolves too, he hoped.

Sabre was
eating a cooked tuber when he became aware that the snail had
stopped. Tassin sat opposite, peeling a bulb. They had decided to
eat lunch inside, due to the wet weather. He rose and clapped his
hands. Outside, he discovered that a belt of scrubby trees blocked
the way, too dense for the beast to penetrate. The snail waved its
feelers in agitation, its head raised high as its eyestalks roved
back and forth, searching for a way through. Sabre asked the cyber
to remove the compulsion and replace it temporarily with a need for
sleep. The beast relaxed and drew in its eyestalks and feelers,
leaving the head a blunt, blind nub. He re-entered the shell to
inform Tassin of the problem. She stopped peeling a tuber and
groaned.

"You mean now
we have to walk?"

"Unless you
want to live in the grasslands."

She cocked her
head. "Tempting, but no. I'd rather find somewhere where they have
real houses, with indoor plumbing and hot baths."

"I thought as
much. Servants and princes, too."

She ignored
his teasing. "Do we have to leave now? It's raining."

"No, I've made
the snail sleep. We can wait for better weather."

"Good."

The next day
dawned warm and sunny, and they sorted through the collection of
oddments that the snail people had given them, keeping only the
necessities, since now they would have to carry them. The rest they
stored in the space at the top of the curving shell, where perhaps
the next tenants would find them. Sabre shouldered the bulk of the
equipment, and left a bundle for Tassin to carry. When he released
the snail from its enforced slumber, its eyes and feelers popped
out and waved about as if it tried to comprehend how it had ended
up so far from home, and alone. He gave it a pat as it turned back
towards the grasslands, and hoped it would meet no wolves while it
was alone. It stood a far better chance of survival once it had
rejoined a herd.

Tassin watched
the snail leave, and her wistful expression told Sabre that she
already missed its comforts. He headed into the scrub, and she
followed, glancing back often at the receding snail. He could
understand why the grassland tribes had settled in the snails.
People grew attached to a home, especially a living one. The
discomforts of traipsing through the bush soon had the Queen
cursing, as branches scratched any bare skin they found.

That night,
Tassin had the task of pitching the leather tents. Sabre returned
from his hunt with two scrawny rabbits to find her flushed and
bad-tempered. The tents leant drunkenly, sagging in places.
Evidently they had fought her every inch of the way. He fixed them
while she lighted the fire, smiling at her newfound ineptitude.
That night they rediscovered how hard the ground was, and woke
stiff and aching in the morning.

When they set
out, Tassin strode ahead with grim determination, clearly consumed
by a desire to find a village or town with soft beds and hot baths.
This amused Sabre, who knew, from the poor soil and twisted trees,
that no one would live there. As dusk fell, they crossed a stretch
of crumbling tar road, and Sabre stopped to gaze along it, but it
vanished into thick bush.

A little
further on, they came across more ruined road and the remains of
brick walls. He caught a flash of distant light through the bush, a
reflection of the sunset, and made out the faint outlines of tall
towers. It could only be a ruined city, a little off their present
course, and he decided to investigate it the next day, since the
radiation level was normal.

When they had
set up camp and Sabre roasted a pair of rabbits over the fire, he
looked up from his task. "There's a ruined city to the west. I want
to explore it tomorrow."

"Why? That's a
waste of time. I want to find civilisation, not go poking through
some old ruin. What do you think you'll find? And what about the
curse?"

"I don't know
what I'll find, but it might be something useful. As for radiation,
it's clean. It must have been gassed."

She sighed.
"If there were people it would be different, but I don't see what
could still be useful after five hundred years. Everything will be
rotten."

He sliced off
a chunk of meat and gave it to her. "No, they made things then that
never rotted; clothes, knives, shoes, all kinds of useful things.
It might have been looted already, but we won't know unless we
look."

"You just want
to explore it," she accused.

"Okay, there's
that too."

Tassin stared
into the fire. "Oh, all right, but only for a few hours."

"Thank you,
Your Highness."

Her eyes
flicked up to meet his. "I didn't mean to sound condescending."

His brows shot
up. "You've never worried about that before."

"I've been
foolish. I realise that now. You can stop calling me 'Your
Highness', it sounds silly out here. Besides, a princess is
referred to as 'Your Highness', a queen is 'Your Majesty'."

"I'm glad you
can see that now. Even a queen should have tact, don't you
agree?"

She smiled.
"You've taught me a lot. I'm beginning to understand."

He hesitated,
pondering. "You know, after all these months of traipsing through
the countryside with you, it almost feels like I belong here."

"I'm glad. You
deserve a good life. When I get my kingdom back, I think I'll make
you a knight."

"Sir Sabre.
Sounds sort of silly, if you ask me."

She giggled.
"You'll have to adopt a surname. Something grand, like..."

Sabre raised a
hand and turned his head, listening. A distant, lonely call drifted
on the night air. The harsh, klaxon cry trailed off in a mournful
wail, like a squashed bagpipe.

Tassin
grinned. "Donkeys!"

"Better than
rabbit."

She looked
shocked, then glared. "Don't you dare! If you kill one of them,
I'll never forgive you."

"Why?"

"They're
beasts of burden, friends of man. They're supposed to be holy,
that's why they carry a cross on their backs. They, and the horse,
have done more to help mankind than any other beast. I will not
repay that by eating them." She paused, looking thoughtful. "You
could catch some for us to ride, though."

Sabre
chuckled. "I'm not riding a donkey."

"Fine, I'll
ride, you can lead it. At least I'm not too proud to ride a
donkey."

"Pride has
nothing to do with it. They have backbones like knives, and I have
no wish to be sawn in two. Anyway, how will you catch one? They're
wild," he teased.

"You have the
cyber, not me."

He shot her a
martyred look. "Right."

Chapter Twenty

The next
morning, Sabre headed for the city, curious to find out what was
left of it. Gleaming towers rose from a forest of tall trees that
the city's ancient waste nourished, their roots tapped into sewers
and reservoirs. Tassin stared in wonder at the glass towers that
flashed in the sun. Concrete roads ran between them in dead
straight lines, built with precision and uniformity. Time had taken
a toll, however, and trees grew in the concrete paving, lifting it
into humps. Broken windows stared like hollow eyes, and smashed
glass littered the street. Weeds sprouted in every nook and cranny,
and creepers spread their verdure over glass and steel. Rust wept
blood-red streaks down stained white structures, and cracks crawled
like crooked snakes along crumbling walls.

Sabre led the
way down the main street, broken glass crunching under his boots as
he studied the ancient city with keen interest. The functional
architecture was blocky and uninspired, designed to satisfy the
needs of a growing population. How strange, he mused, that these
almost modern buildings were ancient ruins, and the medieval
castles of Arlin were new. Everything was back to front on this
planet. The old had ousted the new, now that technology was
lost.

Furtive
movement amongst the buildings told him that the city now had
four-footed inhabitants, and he wondered how safe it was to walk
amongst these tumbled-down buildings whose fabric was rotting away.
Sagging, rust-riddled skywalks hung overhead, and walls leant
perilously, the encroaching trees that would eventually obliterate
the city undermining their foundations.

Sabre kept a
wary eye on the unstable structures, and stayed in the middle of
the road. Some walls had collapsed, strewing rubble, mixed with
twisted, rusty reinforcing, into the street. Piles of rust, glass
and plastic, some with a skeletal framework, were all that remained
of once shiny hover cars. Tassin picked up bits of glass and bright
plastic, plaguing him with questions.

Near the end
of the street, a squat, sturdy building hunched between two tall
neighbours like a poor relation. Its windows were intact, although
the walls were cracked, and he guessed that the windows were
armoured glass. He stopped and considered it, filled with a strong
urge to walk past. Tassin would never know the difference, yet he
did not have the right to make the decision. Denying her the choice
was wrong. Her life was more important, for his was surely not
going to be his own for too much longer.

Tassin touched
his arm, dragging him from his thoughts. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

Testing the
door, he found it unlocked and forced it open against the rubble on
the other side, then inspected the place before allowing Tassin to
enter. Part of the ceiling had collapsed, and the rest was poised
to take the plunge, sagging concrete blocks hanging from twisted
steel mesh. Rows of shelves and racks lined the showroom, stacked
with silver and crystal tubes covered with a patina of grey dust.
Hundreds of lasers, sonic blasters, rocket launchers, explosives
and power packs stocked the shop. Every instrument of modern
destruction known to man, and they were only a little out-dated. He
gestured to the piles.

"There's the
answer to your problem."

She eyed him.
"Oh? And how will a pile of dirty poles help me?"

"They're
weapons, like the ones the cyber had when it first came here. The
ones that shot blue fire and made big bangs."

"They don't
look the same."

"That's
because these are a little old fashioned, so they're bigger than
the ones I had. With these, you could defeat Torrian, Grissom and
Bardok combined. No one could stand against you."

"How do they
work?" She still looked doubtful, but her eyes held a dawning
eagerness.

"Never mind
that now. We have to figure out how to get them across the desert
and through the Death Zone, if that's still what you want?"

"I want to go
home more than anything, Sabre."

He became
brisk. "Fine. They won't work for long, of course. Only until the
power packs run out, but the kings won't know that."

"But we can't
carry all these."

"No, we'll
have to find something with wheels."

Sabre went
over to a glass cabinet and took out a silver laser rifle, checking
the mechanism. Finding it in good working order, he examined the
ones on the walls, then opened drawers and inspected the selection
of hand lasers and rocket launchers. The shop's inventory was in
good condition. The almost airtight building had protected it from
the elements, and the weapons were made from non-corrosive metal.
He discarded several weapons that were a little stiff, since there
were more than enough good ones. Most of the power packs were fully
charged, and he stacked the weapons he had examined on a
counter.

Sadness stole
over Sabre while he worked. This meant the end of their adventure
through strange lands together, and of her dependence on him for
protection and provision. Once Tassin no longer needed him, his
owner would take him back, so helping her speeded his doom. He
would be returned to the horrible existence of a cyber-controlled
clone. Thrusting the gloomy thoughts aside, he reminded himself
that returning Tassin to her kingdom was far more important than
the fate of a damaged cyborg. When the pile of weapons was large
enough, he left the shop in search of wheeled transport.

Wheels were
hard to find in a city where hover cars had been the main
transport, but he discovered some bicycles in a sports shop. Modern
people still kept fit, he mused. They drove hover cars, then
tortured themselves cycling around recreational parks. The
bicycles' wheels were made from a non-corrosive alloy, but the
frames were rusted and the rubber tyres had perished to black dust.
Tyres were optional, though, and he collected the items he would
need to build a cart.