Old Venus Read online

  Colt rolled, firing. He preferred a projectile weapon. Beam weapons were fine for dry worlds, for the sterility of space. But on a swamp world such as Venus, Colt felt better with an honest, Earth-made gun, the sort that fired bullets. You knew where you were, with bullets. It was almost like being back home.

  The bullets certainly took the attackers by surprise. Colt did not know what they were. He gleaned impressions as he rolled and fired: tall, ungainly creatures, metal-plated, skinny: two purple antennae moved sinuously above their heads. He had no doubt they were communicating silently. They moved as one: they were made for war.

  But so was Colt, who had survived worse odds on a dozen rough and wild planets. To the other side of him, the Venusian, Sharol, was firing steadily, his beam weapon flashing, but it merely glanced off the armor plating of the attacking, antlike creatures. “Aim for their antennae!” Colt called, and felt rather than saw the Venusian’s grin. Sharol swept his weapon high, and a terrible hissing sound emanated from the attackers as their fragile communication fronds were seared off. Colt continued to fire, his bullets snapping the attackers’ armor. He saw one, two, three drop. Clearly, whatever make or design these things were, they had not been prepared for an Earthman’s old-fashioned weapon.

  But then—he saw! Rising behind the antlike creatures, the source of the explosions that had rocked the bar, a fire burning bright in the sky, dispelling clouds, casting a deathly glow over the swamps and the spaceport itself. Within its glow, Colt could dimly make out a sinuous body, a reptilian head with large diamond eyes, and thin, graceful wings … “What is that?” he said—whispered—and heard Sharol’s choked reply, “It’s a Sun Eater.”

  The attackers parted, and through the open swathe of space, Colt could see the creature soaring high above, a sleek, beautiful being flying on wings of—so it seemed—pure song; and whose exact dimensions it was too difficult to make out, so brightly did it burn.

  Graceful it might have been. Yet it was not free.

  The antlike creatures had, somehow, tethered the Sun Eater to ropes of a metallic hue, and, like children flying a kite, were controlling it from the ground. “We cannot fight it!” Sharol said, and Colt said, “It’s beautiful …”

  “We will die here, Earthman,” Sharol said, sounding resigned. But inside Colt, the coldness of battle was replaced with the heat of rage. Whatever these things were, however much they wanted to kill him—these were things he understood. Yet to enslave such a creature—such a spirit!—was to sin against nature itself.

  And he could not—would not!—allow it.

  He threw Sharol his gun. The Venusian caught it. “Take care of the advance party,” Colt said. “Then follow me.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Set it free,” Colt said, and with that he was running, the rifle strapped to his back now in his hands. It was a Martian Corps carbine, manufactured for an old war in which Colt had once been a soldier, though it was unclear, to this day, on which side.

  He came upon them like a Martian dust devil, a Fury as of some lost legend out of Lemuria or Mu, those continents of Earth now lost to the mists of time. The rifle barked, spewing fire. He watched one enemy fall, then another. Blaster fire singed the air and a pain crawled over Colt’s arm, a burning that made him cry out, but he did not drop the gun. Then he was in their midst, battering, kicking, slamming the butt of the rifle into the strange creatures’ featureless faces. They were machines, he thought, and memory returned, but he had no time for it, not now: he fired and punched, paying no heed to his own safety, watching only as the thin streaks of silver rope were let drift, one by one. Above him, slowly, the Sun Eater was rising higher into the air. It cried out then, a voice as pure as the water of a glacier. The remaining attackers came at Colt then with renewed fury, and he knew he was done for. They had surrounded him, they had beaten him down to the ground, in the Venusian mud he lay, looking up into a sky illuminated with an artificial sun. Is this how I die? he thought, not bitterly, but with a certain disappointment: he had always seen himself dying, at last, amidst the rolling green hills of Earth.

  But then, as from afar, he heard the renewed sound of fire, and, turning his head so that his cheek rested against the muddy ground, saw the Venusian Sharol come running, firing with Colt’s own gun. Colt reached out, grabbed one of the ant-thing’s legs, and pulled, unbalancing it. He would not die without a fight, he thought, and he set on the metallic creature, prying open its armor with his bare hands, until its plates parted, and inside it, a violent green and vociferous purple, like congealing blood. The inside of the creature was indeed organic, it was alive! Colt reached for the dagger strapped to his leg, raised it with the last of his power, and plunged it into the ant-thing’s gelatinous flesh. A terrible shock ran up his arm from the creature’s body as it convulsed and died. Overhead, the Sun Eater roared, finding its tethers suddenly unmanned. Colt heard the beating of wings and felt the heat of the sun blast down around him. He covered his head with his hands, his fingers slimy with the ant-creature’s blood, and waited to die.

  A moment later, still alive, he opened his eyes. All about him was a ring of ash where an unbearable heat had touched down. The ant-things were charred bodies of molten metal and bubbling ichor. Colt raised his eyes to the sky. Above his head, the Sun Eater hovered, its diamond eyes looking into Colt’s. Its wings beat gently, almost lazily, against the air, raising a hot dry wind. For a long moment, they held each other’s gaze. Then, with a final cry, in which gratitude or triumph, Colt never knew which, intermingled, the majestic being rose into the sky like the dawning sun.

  “Colt? Colt!” It was Sharol, kneeling beside him, one arm dangling uselessly by his side: white bone jutted out of the flesh. “You’re alive!”

  Colt winced. “Your arm is broken,” he said. “It’s nothing,” Sharol said. He threw Colt his gun back. Colt caught it one-handed. His own arm was badly burnt. “Come on!”

  “Where?”

  “Back to the bar. Before spaceport security or more of these creatures show up.”

  “You want a drink that badly?”

  But Colt was rising, following the Venusian. His rifle was back in its place, his gun back in its holster. He felt good. It felt good to be alive, on Venus or any other world.

  “Wait,” he said, as they approached the bar. The bodies of ant-things littered the ground here, where Colt and Sharol had killed them. He knelt beside one, examined it cautiously. “What are they?” Sharol said.

  “ReplicAnts …” Colt said. He turned one armored foot over, squinting. Imprinted into the metal, as he had expected, was a serial number. The memory returned. He had never seen them, until now … “They were manufactured back in the Jovean Wars,” he said. “The bodies of human conscripts, embalmed alive into machine bodies. They were meant for war in space, not on the ground. I had thought that all of them were decommissioned and destroyed years ago.”

  “So how did they come to be here?” Sharol asked, and Colt said, “I have no idea.”

  “Come on,” Sharol said, losing interest. He pushed into the dark interior of the bar and Colt followed. The bottle of arkia miraculously remained undamaged, though it had fallen to the floor. Sharol picked it up, took a long swig, and handed it to Colt. The drink burned pleasantly as it slid down his throat. The corpse of the man who had begun all this lay on the floor. “Roog,” Sharol said thoughtfully.

  “Treasure,” Colt said. They traded glances. “Well,” Colt said, “I guess we’ll never know where he came from.”

  Sharol laughed. It was a surprisingly deep sound, and it echoed around the silent room. “I told you, Earthman,” he said. “Death is not the end. Here. Fetch me your knife.”

  So the Venusian had noticed Colt’s concealed dagger. He had proven himself a man of action, as good as any Earthman, if not better. He was worthy of grudging respect. And so Colt drew the knife, still slimed with the ReplicAnt’s goo, its blood, and tossed it to the Venusian, who caught it ea
sily with his good hand. “What are you going to—” Colt began, but the Venusian merely grinned cheerfully as he knelt by the dead man. Sharol applied the sharp knife to the dead man’s throat and began to saw off the head, whistling cheerfully as he worked. Colt took another swig of arkia. In moments, it was over, and Sharol straightened up, tossed Colt back the knife, and picked up the dead man’s head by the hair. The face stared sorrowfully at Colt.

  “Was that really necessary?” Colt said. Sharol paid him no mind. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We need to find some mud,” Sharol said.

  “Mud?”

  “And we need,” Sharol said, and grinned again as he swung the head back and forth, back and forth with his good hand, “to find ourselves a witch.”

  2.

  THE MUD STANK. IT REEKED OF FETID WATER AND DECOMPOSING plant and animal matter. Colt and Sharol were nestling in the shallow of the swamp. Their clothes lay in an untidy heap on the bank nearby, though Colt kept his gun near. The dead man’s head was in a sack drawn with a string. Overhead the sky was a violent shade of purple and lightning flashed in the distance, heralding the coming of yet another storm.

  They were two days away from Port Smith, deep into the Venusian jungles. The mud itched where it covered Colt’s burns. It was healing them. Sharol, beside him, was peacefully puffing on a cigar, his arm entirely encased in thick, grey mud. Colt’s toes stuck out of the water. Beyond them he could see the reeds of the swamp, and, here and there, the water predators circling, unseen. Sometimes a tentacle broke the surface, thick and veined, before dropping into the depths again. “If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you,” Sharol said. His naked chest was scarred with old wounds, much like Colt’s. His nipples were small and hard. Colt looked away. When he peeled the mud off, new skin was forming over the burns. “Remarkable.”

  “Venus,” Sharol said, “has many depths.” Colt eyed the swamp as another tentacle rose to the surface. It was immense, and he did not like the thought of the underwater creature it belonged to. “I’m sure,” he said.

  “Relax!” Sharol replied. “Here, give me your back.” Colt turned, and Sharol began to apply mud to Colt’s skin. The water was as warm as a bath, and Sharol’s fingers dug deep into Colt’s skin, releasing a pressure Colt hadn’t even realized was there. He sighed in satisfaction. “Don’t stop,” he said.

  They remained in the water for some time. When they were done, they washed off the mud and dried themselves on the banks of the swamp. The sun was setting, the sky awash with blood-red hues. In the swamp, a majestic creature was rising to the surface, as large as a ship. Its domelike head had a beak and enormous red eyes. Around the creature, tentacles rose up to the surface, moving sinuously, creating waves. The beak opened and a forlorn cry sounded, piercing the night. “It is the cry of the Dwellers,” Sharol said. There was a sadness, as well as love, in his voice. “Listen.” Colt did, and became aware of other, distant cries rising into the air in answer. “They are calling to each other, as they do, each night, across the world. But each year there are fewer and fewer to answer the call.”

  Colt stared ahead. The creature, this Dweller, raised its massive bulbous head toward the unseen stars, crying in a language Colt could not understand. He cleared his throat, embarrassed, perhaps, at the Venusian’s naked display of emotion. “Earth’s colonial policy is not my prerogative …” he began, awkwardly.

  “I know, Earthman,” Sharol said, and there was bitter mockery in his voice. “You mean well, you all do, children of Earth, reaching for the stars. So enthusiastic, so sure of yourselves. Like overgrown toddlers, you mean us well … and yet, you continue to come.”

  Colt flexed his arm. His new skin tingled. There was a fortune to be made in Venusian mud, if it could be exported off-world. There were other places like Port Smith all around the continents of Venus, now. New Earth colonies on this once-grand world, existing on the sufferance of Venus’s ancient, decaying civilization. One day the swamps would be drained, their Dwellers processed into dried-up delicacies for the enjoyment of the off-world rich, their mud packaged and sold in minute quantities for those who could afford its healing properties … He clapped Sharol on the back, for those days were not yet, and perhaps, he thought, would never come to be. “Believe me,” he said, “I have no desire to stay on this stinking mudball of a planet any more than I have to. I’m light of funds, I’ve been shot at and nearly killed and I don’t even know why, and we’re carrying a dead man’s head in a pouch. Where is this damned witch?”

  Sharol laughed. Overhead, the sky darkened as the unseen sun sank beyond the clouds. “Oh, Earthman,” he said, but not without genuine fondness. “Like a toddler, you look, but you do not see.”

  “See what?” Colt said.

  Sharol, wordlessly, pointed.

  Colt squinted. In the dim light, the Dweller seemed to grow more immense, rising higher, like a lotus flower opening at night. And then he saw her—a lighter shade against the monster’s own. A female figure, nude and lithe, hairless and smooth, her skin the same shade of violet as Sharol’s own. She was perched on the Dweller’s mantle, and her long, reddish-violet hair caught the rays of dying sunlight through the clouds and momentarily shone. For a moment, Colt forgot to breathe. With a graceful movement, the female Venusian dove, headfirst, into the water of the swamp. With strong, economical strokes, she swam toward them and soon climbed on shore, her body shining with droplets of water like tiny diamonds. He had expected a witch—he had not expected to be bewitched instead! The swampwoman smiled, revealing small, sharp teeth. “Welcome back, Sharol,” she said. “You bring strange friends.”

  The Venusian inched his head in reply. “An empty head, and a dead one,” he said, grinning. “This is Colt, the Earthman. Who our companion is, I do not yet know.”

  “And so you came seeking me.” She turned her attention away from him, abruptly, transferring her gaze to Colt’s. Her eyes were fever-bright; her scrutiny discomfited Colt. “I would have come to you earlier,” she said, “but I was observing your proclivities in the shallows, and, well … I thought it best to wait.”

  Colt found himself blushing. Sharol grinned harder. “This,” he said, “is my sister, Yaro.”

  “A pleasure,” Colt said. “Ma’am.”

  But again her attention snapped away, this time to the sack in Sharol’s hand. “A dead man walking, who yet did not know it …” she said. “Who of us, walking around, alive under the scarlet skies, can ever truly name the time of our demise?”

  “We were hoping,” Sharol said, “to find out where he came from.”

  “Still hunting for treasure, brother?”

  “Sure,” Sharol said, easily. “Only this time, I have a partner.”

  Again, she cast that quick, mayfly glance at Colt, and away. She turned abruptly. “Come,” she said. She led them through a narrow trail, away from the swamp, into the jungle.

  There was nothing for them to do but follow.

  3.

  THE WITCH’S HOUSE SAT DEEP IN THE WOODS. BEYOND THE forest, far in the distance, rose a range of volcanic mountains. At their base stood Earth’s last settlement on this Venusian continent, which the Earthmen had called Lucille Town, perhaps named by its founder for some long bygone sweetheart. Beyond it lay only the unknown of the primeval Venusian wildlands.

  “There is no Sunday west of Lucille Town,” so the colonists said, “and no God west of Port Smith.”

  Though in that, as Colt and Sharol were soon to find out, the colonists could not have been more wrong …

  “So, brother,” Yaro said. “What do you have for me?”

  They were in her house. It was simply but tastefully decorated, and a fire burned violet in the hearth, sending plumes of scented smoke into the air. Sharol opened the string and drew the dead man’s head from the bag. “It stinks,” Colt said. The head looked bad. The Venusian weather had not been kind to it, and it was begin
ning to decompose. Yaro said, “You should have brought it to me sooner.”

  Sharol shrugged. “Can you speak with it, still?”

  “I can try.” She took the head from him. She was dressed now, in a plain shift that rippled around her. She held the head in both hands, staring into its dead, glassy eyes. At last, Yaro shook her head. “Perhaps,” she murmured. “Though he is long gone down the Dark Path.”

  She gestured for them to follow her. Colt moved sluggishly, the smoke making his senses dull and pleasant. Yaro opened the door to a second room. The air was colder there. A curious contraption stood in the middle of the room. It was as if it had grown out of the ground, a blunt trunk surrounded by many twisting branches that spread out and in again upon themselves like tentacles. Yaro placed the dead man’s head on the trunk. She began to bend the branches, attaching them, one by one, to the head, pushing them deep into the melting skin and reluctant bone. Colt gritted his teeth but did not look away. When it was done, the head had been penetrated multiple times by the branches, and Yaro took a position in the tangle of branches. This time it was as though the tree itself was responding to her. The branches moved, snaking under Yaro’s shift, attaching themselves to her. She began to murmur words in a language Colt did not understand. Her eyes closed and a faint blue light began to glow along the branches of the tree, spreading out from Yaro to the disembodied head. Colt stared in horrified fascination as the air began to fizz and hiss with a powerful discharge. Yaro began to shake, engulfed by cold fire.

  The dead man blinked.

  Colt stared. This could not be happening, surely.

  The head blinked again. Then it opened its mouth and screamed.

  Colt took an involuntary step back and bumped into Sharol, who held him steady. Yaro made a sharp gesture and the dead man immediately fell silent. “There is not much there,” Yaro said.

  “Try,” Sharol said, gripping Colt’s arm. Yaro closed her eyes. The head opened its mouth again. It began to speak.