“We go then.”
The claw frame is a sporting development from military exoskeletons. The frame itself braces your body. A spine column rests against your back like a metal flatworm. Metal bones from this extend down your legs and along your arms. The claws are four times the size of human hands, and splayed out like big spiders from behind them, and from behind the ankles. Each finger is a piton, and programmed to seek out crevices on the rock-face you are climbing. The whole thing is stronger, faster, and more sensitive than a human being. If you want, it can do all the work for you. Alternatively, it can just be set in neutral, the claws folded back, while you do all the climbing yourself-the frame only activating to save your life. Both Anders and Tholan, I noted, set theirs to about a third- assist, which is where I set mine. Blister tents and equipment in their backpacks, and oxygen bottles and catalyzers at their waists, they went over the edge ahead of me. Tameera’s claw frame scrambled after them — a glittery skeleton-slaved to them.
I glanced back at my blimp and wondered if I should just turn round and go back to it. I went over the edge.
With the light intensity increasing and the octupals bubbling down in their pools, we made good time. Later, though, when we had to go lower to keep on course after the sheq, things got a bit more difficult. Despite the three of us being on third-assist we were panting within a few hours, as lower down, there was less climbing and more pushing through tangled vegetation. I noted that my catalyzer pack was having trouble keeping up-cracking the CO7
atmosphere and topping up the two flat body-form bottles at my waist.
“She’s eight kilometers away,” Anders suddenly said. “We’ll not reach her at this rate.”
“Go two-thirds assist,” said Tholan.
We all did that, and soon our claw frames were moving faster through the vegetation and across the rock- faces than was humanly possible. It made me feel lazy- like I was just a sack of flesh hanging on the hard-working claw frame. But we covered those eight kilometers quickly, and, as the sun breached the horizon, glimpsed the sheq far ahead of us, scrambling up from the sudden shadows in the valleys. They were a seven again now, I saw: Tameera being assisted along by creatures that had snatched the killer of one of their own, mistaking her for sheq herself.
“Why do they do it?” Anders asked as we scrambled along a vertical face.
“Do what?”
“Snatch people to make up their sevens.”
“Three reasons I’ve heard: optimum number for survival, or seven sheq required for successful mating, or the start of a primitive religion.”
“Which do you believe it is?”
“Probably a bit of them all.”
As we drew closer, I could hear Tameera sobbing in terror, pure fatigue, and self-pity. The six sheq were close around her, nudging her along, catching her feet when they slipped, grabbing her hands and placing them in firmer holds. I could also see that her dark green slicksuit was spattered with a glutinous yellow substance, and felt my gorge rising at what else she had suffered. They had tried to feed her.
We halted about twenty meters behind on a seventy-degree slope and watched as Tameera was badgered toward where it tilted upright, then past the vertical.
“How do we play this?” Tholan asked.
“We have to get to her before they start negotiating that.” I pointed at the lethal terrain beyond the sheq. “One mistake there and…” I gestured below to tilted slabs jutting from undergrowth, half hidden under fog generated by a nearby waterfall. I didn’t add that we probably wouldn’t even be able to find the body, despite the tracker Tameera evidently wore.
“We’ll have to run a line to her. Anders can act as the anchor. She’ll have to make her way above, and it’s probably best if she takes Tameera’s claw frame with her. You’ll go down slope to grab Tameera if anything goes wrong and she falls. I’ll go in with the line and the harness.”
“You’ve done this before?” Anders asked.
“Have you?” I countered.
“Seems you know how to go about it,” Tholan added.
“Just uploads from the planetary almanac.”
“Okay, we’ll do it like you said,” Tholan agreed.
I’d noticed that all three of them carried fancy monofilament climbing winders on their belts. Anders set hers unwinding its line, which looked thick as rope with cladding applied to the monofilament on its way out. I took up the ring end of the line and attached the webbing harness Tholan took from one of his pack’s many pockets.
“Set?” I asked.
They both nodded, Tholan heading downslope and Anders up above. Now, all I had to do was get to Tameera through the sheq and get her into the harness.
As I drew closer, the creatures began to notice me and those insectile heads swung toward me, proboscises pulsating as if they were sniffing.
“Tameera… Tameera!”
She jerked her head up, yellow gunk all around her mouth and spattered across her face.
“Help me!”
“I’ve got a line here and a harness,” I told her, but I wasn’t sure if she understood.
I was about three meters away when the sheq that had been placing her foot on a thick root growing across the face of stone abruptly spun and scrambled toward me. Tholan’s Optek crashed and I saw the explosive exit wound open in the creature’s jade green torso — a flower of yellow and pink. It sighed, sagged, but did not fall — its eight-fingered hands tangled in verdancy.
The other sheq dived for safer holds and pulled close to the rock-face.
