Empyrion II: The Siege of Dome Read Online Free PDF Page A

nothing to cause him alarm, he gradually relaxed and pushed a less hurried, though still wary, pace.
    He did not know why he ran, or where. All consciousness—that part of himself that knew himself, spoke to and governed himself—had been obliterated. He had a ghostly recollection of a shattering event back there in the hills: of blood and death, and an agony like a firebrand cleaving his skull and burning into his soft brain tissue. His mind had become an inflamed and tortured thing, and he bellowed out his pain to the empty sky.
    As day gave way to day, Crocker retreated deeper and deeper into the core of his being in an effort to escape the drumming pain. He moved with the same cunning and stealth as a wild animal, and with as much self-regard. He ate when he was hungry and slept when he grew tired. He drank from the river, never far away, though he had water in three canteens in the carrier. He considered the robot a companion, accepting it as being alive in the same way that he was alive. In the space of a few days, he came to derive comfort from the machine's presence. It followed him—moving when he moved, stopping when he stopped, purring idly while it waited—giving Crocker a sense of kinship.
    When, on the sixth day, he had stood atop a high promontory and saw the hillscape descending in rippled steps to meet the forest, he knew that he would go there and seek solace beneath the dense dark mass of its interwoven canopy. No one would find him in there; nothing would hurt him anymore.
    Without so much as a backward glance, he had pushed his way into the thicket fringe that rimmed the forest, protecting it like a daunting barrier reef around a vast, serene, imperturbable lagoon.
    Now he labored, pulling himself through brush grown so lush and tangled that it was a solid wall. Above the wall he could see the tops of nearer trees; he watched these to mark his progress, lifting his head now and again as he thrust arms and legs and torso into whatever openings he could force through the growth. His clothes snagged and tore. His hands bled. But he did not heed the little pain, for it was drowned inside the greater, all-pervasive pain that he had become used to.
    As he pushed past a broad-leafed shrub, thick-bodied and twice as tall as a man, he stuck his hand into a hole in the dense covering of leaves. An instant later the bush erupted in a flurry of flashing wings and screams. He threw his hands before his face as the shrieking birds took flight, and then, with instinctual quickness, reached into the feathery melee and closed his fist on the warm body of a bird as its head appeared in the hole, its wings half-unfolded for flight.
    In the same motion, he brought the creature to his lips, put its head in his mouth, and bit down hard, feeling the crunch of delicate bone and hot blood spurting over his tongue. He drank the thick bittersweetness and then spit the head out, tossing the carcass away. He smiled and wiped his mouth. “Meat,” he muttered to himself.
    “How Giloon knowing Tanais be doing as he says when big noise finished?” The Dhog leader put his loathsome face close to Tvrdy and smiled maliciously. “Tanais Supreme Director be forgetting his Dhogs, seh?”
    Tvrdy stared at Giloon, trying not to show his disgust. They were sitting in one of the dwellings across the plaza from where they had met. The kraam had been hastily appointed for the meeting: two filthy cushions had been put down on the grimy floor and a much abused table between them. Beside the low table stood an improvised brazier made of cast-off pieces of fibersteel riveted and bound together with wire. Foul-smelling chips—dried dung, Tvrdy suspected—burned in the brazier, giving off a thick, noxious smoke. There were two skewers with chunks of ratty-looking meat and a few sorry vegetables sputtering on the odorous coals.
    Giloon reached over and turned the skewers expertly, casting a sidelong glance at Tvrdy and grunting with satisfaction.