The Hunt for Pierre Jnr by David M. Henley Page B

dusty bodies holding them down before the servitors swarmed into the room and tore their attackers away.
     
    ‘You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have come here,’ they repeated, rasping continuously as they were dragged outside.
     
    Try as he might, Pete couldn’t read their thoughts. Pierre had reworked their minds into a composite, so that the first disturbed was a tripwire for the others. They all went crazy. Though he was sweating on the outside, fear had dried out his throat. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this. He’s ... I don’t know what he’s doing.’
     
    ‘Hakking,’ Tamsin supplied. ‘He took four people and fused them together.’
     
    ‘You’ve seen this before?’ Pete was alarmed.
     
    ‘Of course not. I’m just hypothesising.’
     
    ‘You admire him?’
     
    Tamsin looked at him with her grin-smirk. ‘Don’t you? This is unprecedented.’
     
    ‘He’s demented,’ Pete protested.  Look what he’s done to these people.  ’This is inhuman.’
     
    ‘Is it? I think we’ll find before this is over that he is actually very human. More human than any single person should ever be.’  I am looking, Pete, and I’m impressed.
     
    Impressed? A moment ago you didn’t even believe in him.
     
    A little evidence can go a long way , she thought back to him while watching the servitors drag the husks into the squib. Tamsin turned to him with a smile, her thoughts fading from his reach. ‘We should go. I have a lot to think about.’
     
    ~ * ~
     
    Tamsin maintained her block in the squib, staring fixedly through the window at the ground passing below, not letting Pete see her thoughts or her face.
     
    Pete kept taciturn, spending his time sending data back and forth with Geof, selecting images from his symbiot and flicking them across without commentary. Geof in turn fed him background information on the midlanders they’d found, mostly irrelevant details of their lives before they disappeared from the Weave.
     
    Every now and then Tamsin or Pete would glance at the horizon toward the approaching weather front that now covered the skyline; the warning gauge amped up from dull amber to a piqued red until at last Colonel Pinter patched through and projected on the screen. ‘Mister Lazarus, Miz Grey, it looks like we’ve got some weather ahead and we’re going to have to land you quite soon.’
     
    ‘We can’t divert?’ Tamsin asked.
     
    ‘Only by turning back. We’ve been given clearance to land a few miles to the south, behind some brushes, and sit it through.’
     
    ‘Is that standard practice?’ Pete asked.
     
    Pinter shrugged. ‘Oftentimes. This is quite a front coming on, so perhaps they think it’s better to bunk down than try to outpace it. Don’t worry, the squibs can take it. It may just get a little rocky.’
     
    ‘Okay, Colonel.’
     
    ‘When you’re down, please do not leave the safety of your vehicle.’
     
    ‘As you say, Colonel.’
     
    ‘It’s coming in fast so this should be over in a matter of hours, and the escorts will be about fifty feet away in case there’s an emergency. Even if the comms cut out through the worst of it, we’ll be able to keep you in sight.’
     
    For our safety,  Tamsin projected ironically.
     
    Pete assented once more to the Colonel and caught Tamsin looking at him as he switched off the screen.  What?
     
    You’re trapped with me, Pete. No avoiding it for either of us.
     
    No avoiding what?
     
    Don’t be scared. You’ve got me all wrong.
     
    They angled down steeply and Pete swallowed through the shaky descent. The mood of the landscape around them had changed remarkably in the last minutes. Clouds had blocked the sun, and what had been a golden hodgepodge of light and shadow was now discoloured to purple and grey. Shadow had disappeared and one could see the quick dimming toward black. The lights of the squibs pushed out as they