The Perils

by Slush

The ground was coming up fast, and Jilly knew the next few seconds were vital. Carefully, with much practised precision, she guided her parachute towards the one small clearing below. It was surrounded by a massive confusion of rain forest. She landed neatly, with three small strides and a flourishing roll to the left. There wasn’t much time. Within sixty seconds the flamingo pink parachute was dismantled, folded and buried beneath a handy pile of forest refuse.

Jilly ducked under cover.

She snapped open the powder pink face of her wristwatch and using her long curved fingernail punched in the Nethernet code. Eugene Engelbert’s familiar rock-scarred face appeared, flickering somewhat with the uncertain transmission.

“All OK?”

“All OK.”

“Right. Your destiny, my dear, lies about 3km north; 30 degrees North to be precise. In that location you will find another small clearing — and I’m afraid a somewhat larger hill. You must go around this hill until you find the entrance. It will be concealed behind a rather large boulder but your explosives should be sufficient. The Aureole is located inside the cave. But, my dear, you must make haste. Dr Hairball’s Enforcer’s are everywhere. And, most of all, remember, beware of the Pygmy Dwarves. Best of British.” And with that Eugene was gone.

Jilly regarded her surroundings. Fingers of dilute sunlight trickled down through the tangled canopy. Parasitic stranglers and vines dropped down to mingle with the vast array of undergrowth. Flowers of all colours thickened the air so she was breathing a turgid mass of moist wet perfume. And as she became accustomed to the silence, it merged into a collage of calls, whistles, yodels, crackles and yells — and somewhere in the distance are more sinister roar.

Jilly knew there was no time to be wasted. She made a quick routine check of the contents of her crimson rucksack: waterproof bedroll, dehydrated food cubes, polyvalent snake anti venom, a Mark E2 laser pistol( she kept a smaller one in her bra flap), a pale pink change of underwear if required and Barbara Cartland’s “ Here and Now”.

The small red stick of self-detonating dynamite was hidden in a small compartment. Then setting off at a low running crouch she clambered through the forest.

Jilly moved with quicksilver agility, finding a track where no track existed. She knew, however, that her presence was known — and not only to the unseen pairs of eyes piercing her back. She wore a bright fuchsia synthetic skin suit, compete with environmental controls. Her orange-red hair was slicked back, but would still serve as a beacon to anyone who cared to look. This plain visibility however, suited her purpose, so she had to accept it and work with it. Seven years training in the underground unit had served her well, and within one hour she had reached the clearing. She was totally unprepared, however, when a blue-green slime ball slammed into her neck, paralysing her from the chest down.

Alain watched intently as the woman sank silently to the ground. The mass of creepers and jungle flowers almost covered her, but the one slim fuchsia leg he could still see lay motionless and helpless as leaves on all sides started to rustle and move. A hot, violent rush gripped his chest as he saw the pygmy dwarves hide the leg from view, but he stayed silent and unmoving until the natives had finally crept away with their prize. Lowering the tele-oculars he closed his eyes and rested his forehead briefly on their rim.

“Jilly,” he murmured, then his eyes snapped open and he slammed into action.

Hauling his grav pack from the grass and locking it on in one practised movement, he launched himself out over the edge of the cliff and swung ninety degrees into the sun and out over the lake. Activating his cheek transmitter with his tongue as he slipped down his anti-on visor, he signalled base.

“Max, I’m coming in from Surveillance Point C.”

“Roger that Alain. I have you at ten o’clock,” came the instant reply, followed by the sudden appearance of a yacht outline as the controller released anti-ons around the ship’s light shield.

“I see you,” he sent, then sped straight for the vessel, checking his equipment as he flew. His mind kept replaying the image of dwarves swarming over a still, helpless figure, but he clamped down on the loop viciously, running over his arsenal with a single-minded ferocity.

He hit the deck of the yacht with brutal impact, and snapped back the visor. But his voice was calm and low as he addressed the officer waiting.

“Tell Hairball I need to see him immediately.”

Mok was in a foul mood.

“How long do I have to stay here with her?” he asked the departing soldiers.

He sneezed violently. The soldiers, already edgy, bolted for the door and disappeared.

“Great,” said Mok. “Just great. Now what do I do?”

All the while he kept his eyes averted from the bundle of fuschia on the floor, which was not easy to do, because the room in which he stood was roughly three metres square and, apart from the doorway, the walls were entirely covered in a reflective material.

His eyes caught a glimpse of fuschia. “Atchoooo!”

One of the more unusual features of the pygmy dwarf race is the high, in fact almost universal, incidence of synesthesia. For most of the race, this was occasionally disconcerting, but little more. It did not much affect their day-to-day lives of patrolling the forest, grubbing up roots, making slimeballs, preparing for ceremonies and creating perfectly cubic rooms whose interiors were entirely covered in reflective material.

Some anthropologists have posited that this condition is what makes the ceremonies of the pygmy dwarves some the most exciting on the planet. In fact, the last anthropologist to spend any time amongst them, Dr Prometheus Mellon, was so disoriented after witnessing one of these ceremonies that he inflated his tent with a bottle of cooking gas. No one is quite sure why he did this. But it is known that one of the habits he kept secret from the tribes among which he lived was his prediliction for smoking strong French cigarettes, one of which he used to smoke each night in bed before falling asleep. The destruction wrought by the resulting explosion had the result of causing an international controversy about guidelines for contact with remote tribes. It also caused the pygmy dwarves, hitherto relatively peaceful, to become fanatically paranoid about intruders.

Mok doubled up in a fit of sneezing. Flecks of mucus spattered onto the walls.

“I hate this,” he said, to no one in particular. “Atchoo!”

Jilly watched, repelled and fascinated.

“Just as I thought,” she thought, watching as the mucus slid, fizzing, down the walls. As it went, it began to change to a blue-green colour.

Scientists had at first been puzzled by slime-balls, which had proved remarkably effective in the now constant war by the pygmy dwarves against outsiders. The content of these small, paralysing missiles had proved a challenge to unravel, and the few scientists who were prepared to propose a human origin were derided out of hand.

Jilly, however, in her preparation for this trip, had contacted one of these scientists. As they had sat discussing his theory, she had asked him a question.

“How do you suppose they would collect enough material to make these things?”

“This is, indeed, a problem and, in fact, it goes further. Slime balls, to be efficacious, need to be relatively fresh. In other words, we are talking harvesting enough material on demand.”

Jilly remembered the shock she had felt.

“You mean?”

“Yes. Somehow it is induced.”

“How could they do that? Pet viruses? Bacterial soups?”

“Allergies. Provoked by exposure to the relevant allergens.”

“So in a way, some members of the tribe are harvested?”

“Exactly.”

“Any idea what these allergens are?”

“None at all. No one knows what makes a pygmy dwarf sneeze. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, no one has seen a pygmy dwarf sneeze. Which only adds to the mystery.”

The breakthrough had come when Jilly was once again poring over photos of the scene of destruction caused by Dr Mellon’s exploding tent. She was looking at a photo of villagers staring in dismay at the wreckage of their buildings.

She had suddenly gasped in surprise. One of the villagers seemed to be doubled up in what could have been a sneeze and ... what was that? Someone was standing close by, holding a shiny bowl close to his face.

But the really odd thing about the photo was that the sneezer seemed to be trying to shield his eyes. What was going on?

Jilly flicked again through the photos, some of which had been taken before the ceremony by Dr Mellon. Something was different. What had changed, before and after?

She let out a whoop of elation. Of course! That was it!

What she had taken as a colour shift between two lots of film was no such thing. In fact, she wondered how she could ever have thought this. For radiating out from one of the buildings was a sort of a dusting of fuschia colour. The building was one of those strange cubes the pygmy dwarves built with the reflective interiors. It had been completely destroyed by the explosion of Dr Mellon’s tent, which had been right next to it.

A close-up photo revealed that the colouring was due to the scattering of millions of fuschia petals.

“The allergy,” she breathed. “It”s to flowers.”

Only that night, as she lay in bed ruminating on the day’s events, had she make the final connection.

The fellow sneezing in the picture was covering his eyes.

His eyes.

“That’s it!” she had shouted, sending the cat scurrying from the room. “They’re known for synesthesia. He’s not allergic to the flowers. He’s allergic to their colour!”

Hairball was playing idly with a twelfth century fetish object as Alain stormed into the room, ignoring the usual protocols in his anger. Carefully detaching his fingers with a resigned sigh, he leaned back in his chair, taking his time before fixing his eyes firmly on the tense face of his Number Six.

“I imagine you have a personal grievance to express, a grievance that is in fact so pressing that you saw fit to give free reign to your often bombastic nature by forcing your presence upon me with little warning. Hmmm?”

As always, Alain was momentarily taken aback by his employer’s habit of talking in convoluted sentences. The anger in him defused like steam escaping a fissure. Instead of the barrage of words he had been composing on his way down to Hairball’s sublevel office, he found himself voicing an inarticulate “Eark” and slumping into the chair facing Hairball’s desk. Surrounded by red velvet cushions, mahogany and leather wall panelling and intricate tarnished bronze light fittings, he felt claustrophobic after his recent flight.

“Now my boy,” continued Hairball, a microscopic smile playing around the corners of his mouth, “no doubt you have witnessed something disturbing with regards to your erstwhile companion? Yes?”

Alain found himself forced to re-examine his reactions. Playing with the belt clip that usually held his tele-oculars, he avoided Hairball’s piercing gaze and replayed the scene — the moment of rough impact, Jilly slumping suddenly to the ground, the body being dragged away like so much limp meat — and felt again the hot rush of frustration and powerlessness in his body. But there was something else, some emotional reaction he was avoiding.

“Enjoying yourself, my boy?” Hairball’s warm words slipped between the sheets of Alain’s thoughts.

Alain’s body jerked, forcing him to regain his composure. He wondered about the rumours that circulated above decks among the Numbers — stories about Hairball’s years in the Peruvian jungles, stories about mysterious mind and body rites too horrific to go into in detail. Well, he had heard the occasional detail. And stories about the unholy merging of those disciplines with advanced technology to give Hairball skills beyond the parlour room tricks exhibited by University thought readers. What other tricks had Hairball learnt out there with the Pygmies, thought Alain.

“Despite your often amusing ruminations to the contrary, my boy, I was not born in the near past, and do not plan to become obsolete in the near future.” Hairball’s thoughts began slipping again to the fetish object as he spoke, mentally rehearsing finger combinations. “I believe you have a detailed set of instructions that you have contracted to fufill, instructions that require a particular blend of determination and focus, and I also believe that you possess these qualities in more than enough measure to complete those instructions. I wonder, then, if you might continue to the most important stage of your schedule at your most earliest convenience.”

Without thinking, Alain found himself finishing:

“Hmmm?”

The way Hairball’s eyes suddenly narrowed told Alain the interview was over.

Squinting against the sun, lashes as wayward filters, the sun glints off the watery expanse bathing my vision with flecks of brightest silver. The rigging punctuates the transition from sky to a deeper, reflected indigo.

Against the bulwarks, an ease slips through my body, tension draining as the warmth penetrates and bathes away thought. Inertia. Eddies tug at the lee side. Above, the halyards send oriental scales of muted chimes.

The boat tugs around the mooring chivvying the bouy like a border collie. Slowly, the yacht is herded to the south by a lifting breeze, I note a deepening hue. Gradually, easily, I come to the knowledge that it is the shoreline, bisecting my world of blue, the jungle shoreline?

Damn. Frustrated, Alain searched for a word that could release some of his pent up anger. Muttering curses at his parentage, he inwardly railed against an education that prevented him from kicking the cat, uttering a old fashioned anglo-saxon expletive and heading off to the pub. Hunched at the prow, refitting the telemetric systems to his belt, Alain mused at the peregrinations that led him to Hairball’s employ. Even that man’s name was an anathema, his personality and habits perfect accompaniment to a paradigmatic arsehole. Why did he arrive here? Why did he feel so inadequate, knowing that Gillian St James was somewhere in that innocent looking jungle?

Jilly fought the rising nausea as another sneeze sent gobbles of green her way. ““Gross! The Pygmy dwarf tried to cover its ears and eyes at the same time and only succeeded in spreading more slime. Jilly squeezed her eyes shut. Caught in a trans/racial disgust loop was not the plan. It was going to be harder than she thought. Back to basics. Three calming breaths and she was ready to take stock. Body, not paralysed, just caught in slow motion. She breathed into her chest and felt the reassuring shape of her gun nestled under her right breast but hopefully she wouldn’t need it. An internal muscle check against the sensors that formed the inner sheath of her suit revealed little damage. They had avoided touching her as much as possible. Excellent. Her bag was gone. That was going to make it harder to get through the jungle but she had her suit and that’s what mattered. She opened her eyes and forced herself to look at the creature now cowering in the corner, arms wrapped around it’s head, little body racked with spasms. Her fingers pressed slowly and deliberately and her suit responded. The hash of acid pick reflections in the walls faded to grey and crossed over into a soft green, not unlike to accumulated goo. The look of obvious relief and gratitude on the Pygmy Dwarfs face as it peered out from under its arms, surprised Jilly more than the success of her suits new chameleon coating.

She decided in the interests of science to take things as far as she could. The look of glee on Professor Glundheiben’s face would be almost reward enough but instead Alain’s pathetic boudoir spasticities were the final motivator. Glundheim would have to put up with a low res videcapture of the next few minutes to while away his Dwarf research grants with. Beginnining with almost a grim determination she began the sequence.

First up the linguistic interpretation protocols. In her sordid past she had coupled with many offworlders and usually the lack of communication was seen as a positive boon. In this case however she was on a study mission. A quick press of a button turned the Dwarf’s whinning sounds into something that sounded like “Amok ... Amok Vy Sam Amok“ Jilly tweaked the Vernier sub routines until at last she heard the words “I am Amok“. Next up she began the controversial isomorphic suit function. She smiled… in 5 minutes time this creature would see her as one of his own kind, and better yet one of the hideous females of the species. In fact Grundheim’s work already appeared to be paying off as she felt his beady clouded eyes upon her. Jill quickly began the sensory inversion mechanism — flicking through the options she chose a little used favourite: Arnold Schwarzenegger, an obscure entertainer she’d found in the holo-brothels on Shakara Prime. She breathed a sigh of relief as the hideous shrunken figure of the Dwarf began to grow biceps and form. Almost amused as he began at first to gain what appeared to be a neck before abruptly losing it in an ocean of sinewy beef. At last the old pulse began to quicken as the Dwarf’s rags dissapeared into the reassuring shape of a G-string.

Mok watched the human female with interest. She looked as if she might be listening to him. Then with great surprise he realised she was trying to speak. It sounded like “ You are my friend Amok , is this your pad ? It’s so beautiful and slimy. Even more amazing was the fact that she was growing more beautiful the more he looked. Yes he could even see allurinng wafts of nasal hair beginning to appear. He abruptly shook his head, “ Bloody Grabthars mushrooms “ he muttered. Grabthar had indeed been generous with the hallucinogens the night before — trying to butter him up over his three legged daughter Greselda. Well she was the last turkey in the shop as far as Mok was concerned. The beautiful scaly female in front of him now put paid to Greselda Griswald and her family. Trying to hide his enthusiasm beneath his tattered rags Mok advanced towards his beguiling fellow prisoner ...

And the light went on!

Well more precisely, thought Jilly, the sun has come out. Her concentration broken, the advancing sexual sensoid flipped back into a small hairy ball, as the mirrors vanished around them. She had time to see the jungle outside, a silouhette with a stemgun and then Mok exploding like a cheap firework.

She had been saved. Again.

Proud as usual and trying not to smirk, Alain held out his hand to guide her through the shattered glass wall. Around them lay the bodies of twisted pygmies blitzed by stungas and in the distance she could see Hairball’s yacht hovering above the trees, his camera trained on them.

She said nothing to Alain. She looked past him and ignored him. She brushed the glass dust off her skin-suit and readjusted her bra-strap. Whatever Alain was about to say stopped in his throat like a plug. Jilly stood there electric with the thrill of the kill, her compact bra laser aimed squarely at his face.

“Last words?” she queried.

Alain tried to speak. He looked as though he was holding up his hands to surrender.

“Ten” he said, as she counted his upheld fingers, “seconds till the blast”. He pointed to the left and she caught sight of her trashed backpack and the self-detonating dynamite primed and flashing.

She turned back and he was gone.

A swearword leapt into her mind.