Read Online Parallax View by Eric Brown, Keith Brooke - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Eric Brown, Keith Brooke
Ads: Link
women looked on in horror. “They’re fucking the things.”
“You mean...”
“This is how they treat their females,” Corrie said, and it all started to fall into place. “The males are migratory, the things we’ve been calling Gargoyles. Every winter they head south, and every spring they return to the northern breeding grounds.”
“And the females,” Rachel said, “spend the winter underground. The males dig them up, fatten them up–”
“They must give birth some time,” Tanya said. “We saw children at the last colony.”
“Then they bring them back to the burial grounds, impregnate them and bury them again for the winter. The females pupate underground and then, when it’s time to go through the breeding cycle, they emerge again.”
“And that’s why they took us in!” said Tanya. “When they came back to their burial ground, instead of the reincarnated females they had expected, they found strange-looking humans around the empty pits – just as if we’d hatched out! We looked weird, but we were about the right size and we had the right number of limbs...”
Corrie looked at her companions. “And if they’ve reached this stage here, then this is what’s going to happen further south, too,” she said. “Up here we’re further through the cycle, but soon...” She stopped, staring at the others.
“We have to go back and get the men out,” Rachel said.
Tanya shook her head. “They made their choice,” she said. “They chose to stay there, even if it meant turning us away for fear that we’d threaten their pampered existence. It was them who cast us out, every bit as much as the Gargoyles had. And now they have to pay the consequences.”
“But we can’t just leave them to... to that ,” Corrie said.
“We’ve seen that you were right about conditions further north,” said Tanya. “Already there’s more water available, the oils in the fruits are less intense. The storms are milder, too. If we stay up here we have every chance of surviving until the Darwinian returns. I say we go on.”
A vote. After all this time of unspoken consensus between the four women, Tanya was calling a vote.
“We have to go back,” said Corrie.
Rachel nodded quickly.
They turned to Sue who, in turn, looked at Tanya.
Tanya slumped. “Okay,” she conceded. “I bow to the consensus. We go back, and if we get there in time we rescue the sons of bitches.”
They pushed themselves hard, knowing that every hour gained might be the hour before the Gargoyles went into rut and dragged their breeding stock out to the standing stones.
They reached the second Gargoyle colony in step with the advancing season: as they approached, they heard the anguished wails of bloated females being hauled from their growing chambers for their final journeys.
The women didn’t pause. They kept going, trying to put the awful sound as far behind them as possible.
“We have to speed up,” said Corrie, over and over, mostly to herself.
She tried and tried, but couldn’t work out how they might rescue the men, who would almost certainly be too drugged and bloated to move.
She was realistic enough to know that they could never hope to rescue all nine. But even if they only managed to rescue one or two, that would be something. The expedition had been a complete disaster, but five or six survivors was better than four.
How would they decide who to rescue, she pondered over and again? It would almost certainly be dictated by chance, she knew. Even if chance dictated it to be Rube, though?
They would have made it, if it hadn’t been for the storm.
Almost delirious with fatigue, hunger and thirst, the four women marched south into the territory of the first Gargoyle colony.
Corrie didn’t recognise it, but her comms decal told her that they were close. Over and over, she tried to comm the men, but there was no response. Either they were too late already, or the men were simply too blitzed to respond.
And
“You mean...”
“This is how they treat their females,” Corrie said, and it all started to fall into place. “The males are migratory, the things we’ve been calling Gargoyles. Every winter they head south, and every spring they return to the northern breeding grounds.”
“And the females,” Rachel said, “spend the winter underground. The males dig them up, fatten them up–”
“They must give birth some time,” Tanya said. “We saw children at the last colony.”
“Then they bring them back to the burial grounds, impregnate them and bury them again for the winter. The females pupate underground and then, when it’s time to go through the breeding cycle, they emerge again.”
“And that’s why they took us in!” said Tanya. “When they came back to their burial ground, instead of the reincarnated females they had expected, they found strange-looking humans around the empty pits – just as if we’d hatched out! We looked weird, but we were about the right size and we had the right number of limbs...”
Corrie looked at her companions. “And if they’ve reached this stage here, then this is what’s going to happen further south, too,” she said. “Up here we’re further through the cycle, but soon...” She stopped, staring at the others.
“We have to go back and get the men out,” Rachel said.
Tanya shook her head. “They made their choice,” she said. “They chose to stay there, even if it meant turning us away for fear that we’d threaten their pampered existence. It was them who cast us out, every bit as much as the Gargoyles had. And now they have to pay the consequences.”
“But we can’t just leave them to... to that ,” Corrie said.
“We’ve seen that you were right about conditions further north,” said Tanya. “Already there’s more water available, the oils in the fruits are less intense. The storms are milder, too. If we stay up here we have every chance of surviving until the Darwinian returns. I say we go on.”
A vote. After all this time of unspoken consensus between the four women, Tanya was calling a vote.
“We have to go back,” said Corrie.
Rachel nodded quickly.
They turned to Sue who, in turn, looked at Tanya.
Tanya slumped. “Okay,” she conceded. “I bow to the consensus. We go back, and if we get there in time we rescue the sons of bitches.”
They pushed themselves hard, knowing that every hour gained might be the hour before the Gargoyles went into rut and dragged their breeding stock out to the standing stones.
They reached the second Gargoyle colony in step with the advancing season: as they approached, they heard the anguished wails of bloated females being hauled from their growing chambers for their final journeys.
The women didn’t pause. They kept going, trying to put the awful sound as far behind them as possible.
“We have to speed up,” said Corrie, over and over, mostly to herself.
She tried and tried, but couldn’t work out how they might rescue the men, who would almost certainly be too drugged and bloated to move.
She was realistic enough to know that they could never hope to rescue all nine. But even if they only managed to rescue one or two, that would be something. The expedition had been a complete disaster, but five or six survivors was better than four.
How would they decide who to rescue, she pondered over and again? It would almost certainly be dictated by chance, she knew. Even if chance dictated it to be Rube, though?
They would have made it, if it hadn’t been for the storm.
Almost delirious with fatigue, hunger and thirst, the four women marched south into the territory of the first Gargoyle colony.
Corrie didn’t recognise it, but her comms decal told her that they were close. Over and over, she tried to comm the men, but there was no response. Either they were too late already, or the men were simply too blitzed to respond.
And
Similar Books
