Africa Zero Read Online Free PDF

synthiflesh covering on your hand and
arm? Such could be easily manufactured at JMCC, and once linked in to your
nervous system it is almost as sensitive as normal flesh. Could it be you were
making a statement to your fellows? ‘Here, I have lost my arm. I am physically
imperfect. Look at me.’ Rubbing their noses in it a bit, weren’t you?”
    “You’re
getting away from the point,” she said angrily.
    “Ah,
so you don’t like personal questions either.”
    She
was silent for a while, then she said, “You’re right. I was rubbing their noses
in it. My imperfections were not my fault. What right did they have to judge me
by them?”
    “What
am I, Jethro Susan?”
    “A
cyborg.”
    “A
cyborg is something part machine and part human. Are the proportions important?
You should know.”
    “I
see ...”
    “I’m
human, Jethro Susan—I think and I feel. Yes, sometimes it bothers me how I
appear to others. But overall I feel the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
I think, it would be better if you asked these questions of yourself.”
    There
was a long silence then, but I knew she had not gone to sleep. Eventually she
asked another question.
    “Are
you? Are you really human?”
    “Go
to sleep, Jethro Susan.”
     

part three
    On
the fifth day we left our camp of the night and headed toward the distant sound
of vultures squabbling. I was sure of what we would find. Half an hour’s walk
brought to us the stink of putrefaction. An hour’s walk brought us to the
slaughtered carcase of a young female mammoth.
    I
held myself at the edge of the trampled clearing and watched as a pack of wild
dogs fed. At my side Jethro Susan pulled the cloth from her mouth then swore
and spat in a most crude manner. I moved to inspect the kill but her hand on my
arm halted me.
    “One
like you is killing them,” she said, “I did not know there was another.”
    I
turned to her. “There were many of us once, nigh indestructible, unkillable. In
time some of us sought death because of ennui or despair. Those that did sought
it from their own kind mostly, as being the only ones capable. I have been
called.” I turned to go, but she held onto me, staring into the clearing
suspiciously. I said, “It is the curse of some that they must kill those things
they loved.” She released me, and just at that moment I heard it—the sighing
whine, and the electric crackle of undergrowth exploding into flame. In one
motion I caught Jethro Susan round the waist and leapt five metres into the
jungle to one side. My shutters went down as there was a candent purple flash
behind me and a gust of sparkling cinders. I dropped Jethro Susan.
    “Hide,”
I said, and leapt again.
    To
my right I caught the nacreous glitter of the beam and dropped to the ground as
it swept above me blowing a cycad to candent flinders.
    I
ate dirt and felt real fear for the first time in decades. Someone had an
antiphoton weapon. Someone was trying to kill me and could succeed. I could
die.
    I
was up and running at full speed, circling the clearing, but trying to keep to
cover which was rapidly being blown away. Trees disappeared like pillars of ash
in a hurricane and red fire flashed through the undergrowth. I had an idea
where it was coming from now and by another circuitous route headed that way.
The firing stopped. I closed in, found the vine-covered log used for shelter
...
    It
rested against the log. It looked like a stubby carbine made out of glass and
old wood. Under the glass salamanders writhed. For a moment I did not hear the
high-pitched terminal whine—when I did, I turned and ran. In the clearing I saw
Jethro Susan coming towards me with her rifle.
    “Run!”
I yelled. She ran. As I came up beside her I explained while she gasped for
breath. I did not need to gasp. No part of me needed oxygen.
    “Antiphoton
rifle keyed to dump its load. About a kiloton.”
    She
looked at me with horror.
    “I’ll
have to carry you.”
    She
nodded agreement. This was no