Read Online Parallax View by Eric Brown, Keith Brooke - Free Book Online
Authors: Eric Brown, Keith Brooke
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the river first, a muddy, slow-moving ribbon of slime about ten metres wide. Across the water was a wide, gravelly shelf, a riverine beach enfolded by a great, lazy loop of river. And beyond this area, the land rose in a low cliff-face dotted with the openings of caves, much as Corrie had expected to see.
But she had not anticipated the tableau laid out on the gravel clearing. Strewn like beached jellyfish across the stones were the hulking, bloated bodies of the Denebians Corrie had previously thought of as an ‘elite caste’. But what culture would treat its elite in such a manner?
The beasts had been hauled from their caverns, and that alone must have been responsible for some of the damage Corrie saw before her.
The bodies had been skinned alive. The great hulks lay quivering, sobbing and groaning in the heat of the rising sun. Vivid red trails led from each massed body back to the cave-mouths, scraps of what must have been skin flapping in the breeze, stripped from the bodies as they were dragged out into the open.
Had all of these creatures been cast out for some reason, had they all been rejected as, first Corrie, and then the other three women had been? Did some remain in the caverns?
But no. As Corrie stared, unbelieving, she recognised the flitting movements of the Gargoyles, up by the caves. Clearly, they had not yet finished with their tortured captives.
They moved so fast!
An instant after she had seen them emerging from the caves, some of the Gargoyles were down by their mounded charges in the open. Even as she watched, one of them skipped up onto a flayed torso and was down on the ground again, holding another scrap of skin aloft. A piercing, baby-cry tore through the morning air a split-second later.
Corrie turned away.
“What are they doing ?” she gasped.
Tanya shook her head, still watching. “Some kind of ritualised torture and massacre. Maybe we were wrong all along: it’s not a caste system, but some kind of intensive farming. Maybe they’ve been fattening these creatures up for harvest.”
Corrie remembered the pathetic corpses she had seen at the previous colony. “No,” she said. Although they had physical differences, there was a definite continuity of features between the Gargoyles, the rejected creatures cast out from the caves to die, and the bloated forms being tortured here today. “They’re the same species.”
“Cannibalism, then,” Sue said. “They eat some of their own in order to survive the coming winter season.”
Corrie steeled herself for another look.
Out across the river, the settlement had come alive with the early morning sun. The beach was swarming with Gargoyles.
“Something’s going on,” she said. The Gargoyles were strapping great belts of twisted liana around the mounds of blubber. Soon, every one of them was harnessed and teams of Gargoyles lined up to haul on the straps.
Instantly, a chorus of wails broke through the air,
The things started to move, slithering across the gravel, lubricated by their own seeping body juices.
“How long before they invent the wheel?” Tanya muttered darkly, at Corrie’s shoulder.
They followed them. There was something gruesomely compelling about the spectacle.
They had to find out what was happening, Corrie told herself. They had to understand this world if they were to survive.
The first of the haulage teams reached the river. They waded through, and soon their harnessed charge followed, half-floating in the thick water.
They emerged on the near side, and set out at a grindingly slow pace along the trail Corrie and her companions had followed the previous day.
The journey took most of the day. Deneb hung low and red in the evening sky by the time the first team of Gargoyles entered the clearing of standing stones.
They stopped by one of the stones, and suddenly it was a free-for-all, with Gargoyles swarming over their stupefied charges.
“It’s not cannibalism,” said Corrie, slowly, as the
But she had not anticipated the tableau laid out on the gravel clearing. Strewn like beached jellyfish across the stones were the hulking, bloated bodies of the Denebians Corrie had previously thought of as an ‘elite caste’. But what culture would treat its elite in such a manner?
The beasts had been hauled from their caverns, and that alone must have been responsible for some of the damage Corrie saw before her.
The bodies had been skinned alive. The great hulks lay quivering, sobbing and groaning in the heat of the rising sun. Vivid red trails led from each massed body back to the cave-mouths, scraps of what must have been skin flapping in the breeze, stripped from the bodies as they were dragged out into the open.
Had all of these creatures been cast out for some reason, had they all been rejected as, first Corrie, and then the other three women had been? Did some remain in the caverns?
But no. As Corrie stared, unbelieving, she recognised the flitting movements of the Gargoyles, up by the caves. Clearly, they had not yet finished with their tortured captives.
They moved so fast!
An instant after she had seen them emerging from the caves, some of the Gargoyles were down by their mounded charges in the open. Even as she watched, one of them skipped up onto a flayed torso and was down on the ground again, holding another scrap of skin aloft. A piercing, baby-cry tore through the morning air a split-second later.
Corrie turned away.
“What are they doing ?” she gasped.
Tanya shook her head, still watching. “Some kind of ritualised torture and massacre. Maybe we were wrong all along: it’s not a caste system, but some kind of intensive farming. Maybe they’ve been fattening these creatures up for harvest.”
Corrie remembered the pathetic corpses she had seen at the previous colony. “No,” she said. Although they had physical differences, there was a definite continuity of features between the Gargoyles, the rejected creatures cast out from the caves to die, and the bloated forms being tortured here today. “They’re the same species.”
“Cannibalism, then,” Sue said. “They eat some of their own in order to survive the coming winter season.”
Corrie steeled herself for another look.
Out across the river, the settlement had come alive with the early morning sun. The beach was swarming with Gargoyles.
“Something’s going on,” she said. The Gargoyles were strapping great belts of twisted liana around the mounds of blubber. Soon, every one of them was harnessed and teams of Gargoyles lined up to haul on the straps.
Instantly, a chorus of wails broke through the air,
The things started to move, slithering across the gravel, lubricated by their own seeping body juices.
“How long before they invent the wheel?” Tanya muttered darkly, at Corrie’s shoulder.
They followed them. There was something gruesomely compelling about the spectacle.
They had to find out what was happening, Corrie told herself. They had to understand this world if they were to survive.
The first of the haulage teams reached the river. They waded through, and soon their harnessed charge followed, half-floating in the thick water.
They emerged on the near side, and set out at a grindingly slow pace along the trail Corrie and her companions had followed the previous day.
The journey took most of the day. Deneb hung low and red in the evening sky by the time the first team of Gargoyles entered the clearing of standing stones.
They stopped by one of the stones, and suddenly it was a free-for-all, with Gargoyles swarming over their stupefied charges.
“It’s not cannibalism,” said Corrie, slowly, as the
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