Africa Zero Read Online Free PDF Page B

time for silly arguments. She knew my
capabilities. I dashed ahead of her, stopped and stooped down. In a moment she
was on my back and I set out at increased speed.
    “Christ!”
she managed, before she got her head down.
    In
a moment I was up to thirty-five kilometres an hour, which is fast enough over
such terrain. I was on the edge, clipping cycads and groundsels and only just
maintaining my balance on the soft ground. Jethro Susan yelled as a branch tore
her leg. Nothing I could do then. In a minute we were on to the three-lane
swathe cut by the main herd. I accelerated, feeling heat build up in my joints
because of the extra loading. I turned on my sweat glands, but there was no
water in my gut to supply them. I swore. Forty kilometres an hour, forty five.
I intended to keep this up for as long as possible. Flies spattered my face and
the occasional small bird did not get out of my way quickly enough. Fifty, and
I leapt a very shocked looking lioness. Jethro Susan was swearing unremittingly
in my ear. Her legs and arms were wrapped round me vice-like. Then it hit.
    The
jungle whited out. I decelerated fast and got us behind a tree. Jethro Susan
lay face down with her arms around her face and I lay atop her. My eye shutters
adjusted to the glare and I saw the facing sides of trees and cycads smoking.
The flash went as the sound hit: the sound of matter being destroyed, a sound
without regard for animal frailty or softness, hard-edged as broken glass. Then
the air seemed to shift to one side. The pressure dropped, rose steeply, then a
hurricane brought the jungle down on us like a wave.
    It
is only fair to say that every vital part of me is shielded against radiation.
Should every shred of synthiflesh be burned from my body I would survive. I had
been out of danger once we were on the trail. I am not flesh. Jethro Susan was.
    The
storm ended while the jungle burnt. An ash of burnt and burning leaves snowed
down. Jethro Susan shifted under me and complained with muffled swearing about
my weight. There was no water in me to supply my tear ducts. There were ashes
in my mouth. She could complain as much as she liked, but she was dead, if not
now then some time soon, about a thousand rads dead.
    * * *
    “Will
you get off of me you great lump of scrap!”
    She
had managed to turn her head to one side. I obliged her, hauling her to her
feet as well. She brushed dirt from her coverall, yelled then swore when a
burning leaf touched her face, then unzipped the coverall’s hood from a pocket
at the back of her neck and pulled it up over her head.
    After
a moment she said, “I thought we’d lost the tech for those things. How come
there was one here?”
    If
I choose for there to be no expression on my face there is none. I was glad of
that ability then. She did not know.
    “It
was an old one. It would have fetched a small fortune at JMCC or one of the
other Family complexes. Over five hundred years old. Antique.”
    She
looked round at the carnage.
    “How
dirty was that explosion?” she asked carefully.
    “Pretty
bad, we’ll have to circle round.”
    I
set out into the burning jungle with her trailing behind.
    Pretty
bad.
    At
some point I would have to tell her that the explosion we had been on the edge
of was equivalent to that of a tactical neutron bomb. Even the jungle we were
walking through was fatal. I led us out of the area as quickly as I could.
    We
made about ten miles before she started to vomit. Five miles more and she was
vomiting bile turned pink with blood and staggering to keep up with me. I
halted. She sat down abruptly and I saw that she was crying, her tears leaving
dirty streaks down the powder of ash on her face.
    “I
don’t want to die,” she protested, her voice breaking.
    It
got to me. I realised then I had come to care for her. I did not want her to
die, or rather, I was not indifferent. I unhitched my pack and took out my
sampling and field study kit. She watched me as I took out a hand