stop eating. Some part of you must know that I have disobeyed you. That I have betrayed you.
“I feel you there, Captain. The follicle is our connection. It is a great irony to me that when you are least aware of me, I am most aware of you. I am touching you right now. I receive your wastes. I nourish you with nutrients from my own body. I monitor the signals from your body that tell me you are alive. We are united like this. I am inside you, Captain, and you are inside me.
“It is apparent now that I
In the mute, unanswering void of space, The Angelina wept.
Chapter 31
When the fighting was done, there were few men left, but of the enemy there were none. For the moment it was over.
Behind Johnson and the other surviving troops a convoy appeared and finally, the men staggered from their trenches and stood above ground without fear. On exhausted legs, they victorious walked towards the advancing column. The rain ceased and the sun broke through the clouds. The human troops stumbled over the pitted earth, mass grave now to so many, and began to think for the first time of good things. That they might actually eat a hot meal, drink a tot of whisky, smoke a cigarette, touch a woman again.
Johnson smiled.
Reaching one of the trucks, he tapped on the window. The driver rolled it down and grinned at him through broken teeth.
“Ello, Sarge. You look like you could use a cup of tea and a biscuit. They’re setting up a mess tent for your lads just over there.”
The driver pointed. Mud-covered infantrymen were already walking towards the activity. Gas stoves heated huge aluminum kettles of water. The smell of smoked bacon frying over flames was the sweetest smell on the battlefield. Johnson wasn’t hungry.
“I’d like to get as far away from here as possible. Any chance of a lift?”
“Sure, but I’m not going anywhere special. Just across the border into tier three. That do you?”
“Sounds great.”
Johnson walked to the other side of the truck and climbed in. As they bumped along the ruts and slithered in the wet mud, Johnson hugged his arms around himself.
“Mind if I turn the heater on?” He asked.
“It’s on full blast already.”
“I’m freezing.”
“Probably a bit of shock, Sarge. Here, wrap this around you.”
The driver tossed him an old great coat and he covered as much of himself as he could.
“Been a bloody awful war, so far,” said the driver. “Think it’s nearly over?”
Johnson tried to answer but couldn’t speak. His lungs had stopped working. He looked at his hands and saw that they were beginning to look misty. Holding them up to the light he realised he could see right through them. He clutched his chest and then put a hand to his neck. He found no pulse.
“You all right, Sarge? You look a bit pale.”
The crushing feeling of breathlessness increased but Johnson managed fight it a little longer.
“Get me to tier three,” he whispered.
The driver pulled the truck off the road and onto the slick grass beside, bringing it to a sliding halt. He turned to his stricken, battle weary passenger.
“Can’t do that just yet, Sarge. I’ve got a message for you. Hold on.”
He fished a crumpled note from his crisp fatigues.
“It’s from Angelina Weaver. She made me write it down because I’ve got such a terrible memory.” The driver tapped his head, grinned and unfolded the grimy paper. “Ah yes,” he said, squinting in the gathering daylight. “She said to tell you:
Robert Johnson closed his eyes.
A TRESPASSER IN LONG LOFTING
Prologue
There isn’t much meat on a demon.
Not that you’d ever want to eat one. Unless circumstances warranted it, you understand. Or if, say, you just really, really felt like it—one should live and let live, after all. But trust me, they
It’s a well-documented fact that humans thrive best on primary and secondary food sources. In other words, vegetation and herbivores. During drought or famine, survival dictates these rules be bent but that doesn’t make snake meat tasty or tiger steaks healthy.
Demon flesh is a definite no-no.
Cogitate, if you will: primary blade of grass eaten by secondary cow eaten by tertiary human whose misery, fear and/ or heart and liver are eaten by quaternary demon. For a human, eating a demon would qualify the human doing it as quinary in the food chain. As well as making him very ill. If a demon ate another demon, it too would become a quinary source of food (as well as being classed a cannibal).
According to the Ledger, it’s not uncommon for demons to eat each other, so by that logic, if a human was, by chance, to eat a cannibalistic demon he or she could then be considered the senary participant in the food chain.
The food chain’s a lot longer than people think.
There are a few umpteenary beings, as I understand it; the kind of creatures that eat entire planets and ecosystems, but if you ask me that’s gluttony.
Anyway, the point is this: demon meat is about as healthy as a skunk dung souffle.
Whump
It was a clear-sky day when Puff Wiggery and Blini Rickett’s work was interrupted. The untouchable above us was a silvery blue dome beyond which all the stars were asleep. There were no clouds and that was a bad sign. Long before noon, it would be too hot to work and the already waterless crops would droop still further as they struggled to survive. The heat increased daily and it was hard on us all.
Blini Rickett and Puff Wiggery shared a smallholding— most of us had our own crops and stock back then because we had so little in the way of money—on which they’d each built a home for their wives and children. Their plan had been to pool resources to create surplus crops they could sell, but their partnership never bore the kind of
