The Devil's breath

he gripped the edge of the boulder and hunched down as the roaring spume soared upwards and splattered him as it fell back. He imagined the bile from the devil’s belly would spew Max out; that he would lie on the sand, flapping like a fish out of water. But Max did not appear, and when the surging water subsided!Koga bravely ran to the edge of the devil’s mouth.

Gazing down, all he could see was the last of the white water slipping down the monster’s gullet. And then nothing. Desolation squeezed his chest as he sank to his knees. His fear of the monster was pushed away by his anger, an emotion he was unused to and uncertain of. “Max!” he screamed. But his voice was taken by that frightening place and tossed back and forth like a morsel until it too disappeared.

He picked out the place that Max had shown him-the entrance to the tunnel-but there was no sign that Max had survived. There was no miracle, no smiling face that peered back at him and said something about the explosion of water being scary, or a near miss, or anything. Please, Max, say anything-say you are there; say you have changed into that bird which grips the rocks and pecks at the insects or the snake that slithers from under the rock. But there was only silence. And although there was no body to show that Max had died, he accepted that his friend must surely be dead-taken beneath the ground and devoured while the monster lay in wait for other victims.

!Koga had seen hunters gored by gemsbok, or crushed and ripped apart by lions, but this emptiness he felt was a strange experience. Once the anger subsided and his mind cleared, he stood and gazed at the place where the boy from a distant country had died.!Koga had no power to bring him back from that place, nor could he jump into the gorge and fight the monster with bow and arrow, or knife, or his hands. He was helpless, and he had failed to protect Max.

The boy and his father had given their lives trying to help!Koga’s people, so now he would take the paper with the lines on it that told where others had died, and find the girl van Reenen. He should wait for nightfall, so he could travel fast without needing to seek cover, but the time for waiting was over. He would run all day through the searing heat and risk everything. This time he would not fail.

Turning his back on what he believed to be Max’s grave, he began to run steadily towards the shimmering horizon, making sure he never looked back.

Mr. Slye did not like Skeleton Rock, for it reminded him of the time he had spent in prison in Mongolia, where he had survived on yak fat soup, yak fat gruel and yak fat tea, in an underground cavern of a cell so huge it echoed even when he breathed. There were no yaks in Namibia, but, as he descended into the darkened bowels of this huge fort with its sheer slabs of rock, its cavernous rooms and the depths of its foundations, other unpleasant memories were aroused.

Like a tear down a cheek, the glass-paneled lift slid noiselessly as the supporting cable guided it down the rails in the rock face. A barely audible ping, and then a gentle, almost loving whisper from the automatic voice told him he was at the lowest level. “Basement. Hydroelectric unit to the left, seismic recording instruments straight ahead and torture cells to the right. Have a nice day.”

Shaka Chang had transformed this place with high-tech usability, but privately Mr. Slye thought that the woman with the butterfly voice was just a bit too … nice was the only word he could think of. Nice. An awful word. A bald word without energy. Boring. And irritating. Not very nice, he supposed.

He followed the row of lights in the floor, similar to those used on an aircraft to show the way to the escape hatches in the unlikely event of the aircraft experiencing any technical difficulties. Such as crashing. But there were no escape hatches down here. This was where Mr. Chang sent you when he wanted you one step away from death. A place where no one would ever find you, where you could be easily forgotten.

Slye gave an involuntary shudder as he went further along the corridor. The air-filtering system functioned only in selected areas down here, and he could taste the seeping smell of river water that lay pooling in the hydroelectric chamber, waiting for the next surge to sweep it away. He pressed his hand against a palm-recognition panel and a glass doorway opened, giving him access to the next corridor. Once again the woman’s gentle voice oozingly announced his arrival: “Mr. Lucius Slye has entered the controlled area.”

A white-coated man, whose legs were so short that the white coat almost covered his feet, stepped into the corridor and nervously stroked his beard as he waited for Mr. Slye to reach him. Mr. Slye’s daily visit irritated Professor Doctor Illya Zhernastyn. Despite his best efforts and despite his ongoing reports to Mr. Chang, it was always this shadow of a man who was sent to speak to him and assess his patient’s condition. Patient, not prisoner. How ridiculous words could be sometimes. He was a doctor and the man in his care was being tortured. Nothing physical-no blood, no violence-only drugs. But these drugs could be as punishing as any severe beating. Chemicals that would seep into the cells, find hidden pathways into the brain, and alter consciousness as they mined for the truth.

Zhernastyn had never forgiven himself for the mistake he’d made thirty years ago. He was then the brightest star in the Russian medical firmament, a doctor who had sold nano-cellular secrets. He betrayed his profession and his country, all for the love of a woman who turned out to be an American spy. Had it not been for Mr. Chang, the Russians would have put him in a meat grinder and fed him to the dogs. He regretfully owed Shaka Chang his life, a life Zhernastyn believed had yet to reach its full potential-so Chang was a conduit to his own ambitions. Zhernastyn knew the influence Mr. Slye held, so he was always polite. “Comrade Slye. Welcome.”

Mr. Slye ignored him, flipped open his personal organizer, and ticked his daily schedule, noting the exact time of his arrival. Slye liked to know where he was even when he was already there. He looked at Zhernastyn. There was no need for words; his gaze was command enough. Zhernastyn nodded and turned on his heel. He pressed his palm against a panel and a stainless-steel door slid open, revealing a room of unyielding spartan facilities which reflected the icy determination of the man in charge down here-Zhernastyn. There was a bed, a steel toilet, a sink, and a man, unshaven from his imprisonment, but dressed in clean overalls. The whole thing gave the unmistakable impression of a condemned man in a death-row cell.

“Progress?” Slye demanded.

“Slight,” Zhernastyn said.

“Slight is not an answer. It is not defined by any qualitative analysis or quantitive measurement. Progress?”

Zhernastyn grimly controlled his desire to spit in Mr. Slye’s face, grab him by the neck and shake him until the blood spurted from his eyes and his tongue turned purple. And to scream that he, Zhernastyn, was a scientist, not a lowly minion who emptied bedpans and changed the sheets. He needed time to analyze and compute what was happening inside his patient. The elaborate pathways of the neurological system were not as simple to understand as a map of the London Underground. But he simply nodded.

“Of course, Comrade Slye, forgive me. His blood pressure is now stable and his cognitive ability has increased by thirty percent, given that he was in an almost vegetative state for two weeks, that he could not walk, that whatever drug he had taken to effectively block out his memory was in complete control of neurological functioning, that-”

“I know what happened to him,” Slye interrupted. “He’s a scientist. He took a memory blocker that shut him down like a bank vault so we could not get any information from him. Do not state the obvious. We need to find out what he knows. Do we know anything more than we did then?” Mr. Slye asked emphatically. “That is the progress Mr. Chang seeks. Progress?” he repeated.

“None.”

“Ah.”

“But he is standing and walking, as you can see.”

“Yes, I can see him leaning against the wall, but he does not speak, he shows no sign of hearing, he seems to be a dead man propping up a corner of his cell.” Slye looked at Tom Gordon, who was gazing at the far wall: a blank, uncomprehending stare that reflected the drugs which had closed down his mind. Zhernastyn gasped as Mr. Slye made a sudden move to strike his patient but pulled up short just before contact. Tom Gordon did not even blink.

Mr. Slye looked at Zhernastyn. “Time is now extremely short. If he has passed on what he has discovered, Mr. Chang could be destroyed. Increase the dosage of the drugs.”

“That could destroy his mind forever. He could die,” Zhernastyn said, seeing his experiment being suddenly taken away from him, caring less about the man than the possibilities of scientific exploration.

“Then he will die-and we will be forced to run the risk of not knowing whether anyone else has the