“Now us,” cried one box. “Now us, Fringe. Melt us.”
“Don’t!” demanded the voice from the other box. “Take them back. They can be cloned….”
“Can’t, can’t, left too much out,” the box cried, its eyes swiveling to the lumps of bone, the scattered organs, the bits and pieces of flesh, like a bombed butcher shop, the purple and red and white parts of themselves, the reeking parts, the framework, the network, all that had made them man.
Fringe had avoided that place, that bloody place, and now it erupted with glittering blades, whirring drills.
She turned the beamer on them, sobbing, the roast meat smell rising around her.
The walls howled, and she burned them. The floor howled, and she burned that. All around her was melted stone and air that stank of blood and metal. It was hard to breathe.
“We’ll go back in the little room,” she said to the boxes coaxingly, as she might have tempted a child. “Back in the little room where it’s cooler.”
“Not cooler,” cried Jordel. “Burn it there too. They’re in the walls in there, in the floor. But there’s a place over the ledge where they brought you in, hidden in the shadow, you can get up….”
“Come,” she said to the boxes. “Come with me!” She couldn’t bear to touch them, couldn’t bear to see them. She forced herself to speak softly, lovingly. “Come!” These were her friends, she reminded herself. No matter what they looked like. No matter what they had become! She had sworn an oath of friendship.
One of the assemblages moved at once. Behind her the other one howled, helplessly jerking this way and that. “How?” it cried piteously. “How can we move?”
“Think of walking,” said the Jordel box. “It’s automatic, just think of walking.”
The other box jerked and trembled, moving forward with its various parts strung out behind, clashing together, then strung apart, then clashing together once more, howling and clashing, howling and clashing. Fringe looked away hastily, remembering a toy she’d had as a child, one she had pulled along the ground, clashing together, stringing apart, clashing together, stringing apart. This was no toy. This was Bertran. This was Nela. Her friend Nela. She wanted to scream and choked it down. Perhaps she should have melted them as Nela had asked. That might have been kinder. If it had been her, she’d have wanted that for herself. Now it was too late, now she’d had too much time to think. She couldn’t do it now, but she couldn’t bear to look at them either.
“Here,” said Danivon, leaning from the flier to burn the rocks below, careful pass after careful pass. “Right here, Zasper.”
He set the flier down and they slid onto the heated surface where Danivon bent close to the stones, sniffing. Over the mineral smell he caught a whiff of her, the merest breath. Almost more the memory of a scent than the scent itself. “Here,” he said, pointing downward at a crack no wider than his finger. The crack led waveringly across the rock surface, disappearing behind a standing pillar of stone. He followed it behind the pillar and was attacked from three sides at once by tiny, vicious sharpnesses.
“Nicely done,” growled Zasper, who had come around the other way and was busy destroying the surfaces around him where a dozen screaming devices had burrowed through. “Nice to see you remember to look before you move, boy!” As soon as he had a hand free, he sprayed coagulant on Danivon’s shoulder and passed him an ampule of universal antidote, just in case the blades had been poisoned.
Behind the pillar the crack widened into a hole, a vertical shaft. As they walked around it, trying to see into it, a tiny form erupted from it and flung itself at Danivon’s leg.
Zasper aimed but could not fire in time. The scurrying blob went up Danivon’s leg and into his pocket, squealing all the way.
“Curvis’s munk,” Zasper said weakly.
“Down there.” Danivon pointed. “That’s where it came from.” He leaned forward and bellowed, hearing only echoes in return.
“Somebody has to go down and look,” said Zasper, pulling on his gauntlets. “Me.”
“Why you?”
“Because if you go and get killed, chances are I’d wreck that flier on the way back.” He was already leaning into the crack, spraying it with deadly heat, watching the stones drip like wax.
Then he lowered himself into the hole, touching it only with boots and gloves, feeling his face redden under the heat, smelling the scalded air.
Partway down, something with fangs came at him from a crevice. He burned it before it got to him, then melted the crevice plus another crack or two he could see from where he was. “Fringe?” he yelled. “Fringe, are you down there?”
No answer. Above him, Danivon’s anxious face peered down. He shook his hands, cooling them, then searched for a set of holds farther down.
Another burn, another shaft, and abruptly the crevice changed from vertical to horizontal. “Fringe!” he yelled.
“Here,” her voice came without direction or distance. “Coming.”
Zasper paused, panting for air. He’d burned up all the air. No point in going farther down if she was coming up. “Are the twins there with you?” he hollered.
He heard a sound. Laughter? Crying? He couldn’t tell. Maybe she needed help. He leaned into the horizontal space and burned it carefully, floor, walls, ceiling. Wait for it to cool, he told himself. Go into that thing hot, burn your kneecaps off.
The rock beside his ear howled. Something drilling through. He waited until it emerged, then melted it, so pleased with himself he almost missed the one coming through on the other side. He hung on the rock, panting, resting.
“Too old for this,” he told himself. “Far, far too old.”
He felt of the stone, finding it less searing, cooled enough to crawl on if he didn’t mind blistering a little. After two or three body lengths, it ran into another
